Should Insight be able to determine if an NPC is lying?

Satyrn said:

What about how I handle it:

When the player declares he's trying to detect if the NPC is lying,* I tell him to roll an Insight check, and that if he beats the DC he learns if the NPC is lying or not. If the player beats the DC, all I need to say is "he's lying," or"he's not lying" whichever is true.

That's not telling the player what his character thinks, is it?



*Whether this is by goal/approach method or asking to make an insight check, fill in that blank whatever way you prefer.

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Buuuuut, it's not really helpful and provides no useful contextual information. The player could have flipped a coin, or just picked a choice from the hat to determine if they believe the NPC is lying or not, because without the correct information, that's all they have belief that the NPC is lying.

The problem with the DM saying "he's lying" or "he's not lying" is that it doesn't answer what the NPC is lying about.

Sure, if the NPC is saying something like "The sky is blue." and the DM says "he's not lying" the PC can intuit that the sky is likely blue.

BUT if the NPC is saying something like "The King left on Tuesday with his wife and son to visit their family's hunting grounds, where the Queen's mother and father reside." Then responding with "hes lying" doesn't provide enough context to help the players out. The NPC could be lying about everything, or any of the following could also be true: the date the King left is wrong. The King didn't take his wife and son, those aren't his family's hunting grounds, and it isn't the Queen's mother who live there; and about a dozen combinations or variations thereof. Maybe he took the wife but not the son, or the son and not the wife. Or he went someplace else entirely where the Queen's mother and father do live, or somewhere else where neither live, or maybe the King didn't leave at all!

Certainly you can avoid this by avoiding NPCs giving out compound information. But quite honestly, if you're good at lying, this is how you do it. You make big bold claims that are utterly false "batteries are powered by the souls of the unborn" or you subtly alter the truth in a way so it remains believable, but the end result is faulty information. The King actually left Tuesday, he took his Mistress, not the Queen as they left the day before to go to her parents. The King went to see the witch of the woods because he accidentally knocked up his mistress and needs an out.

You've told the player they know the NPC is lying....but you haven't told the player how they know the NPC is lying. And if the party just starts accusing people of note of lying, they're more likely to end up dead than furthering the story. I mean, unless you're soft-balling intrigue and how wealthy and powerful nobles would react to a bunch of dirty scoundrels accusing them of misdeeds.

Now, granted, maybe you're just not going that deep on the lies. Maybe it is all simple stuff and well, okay your approach works. The player can reverse engineer the lie to determine what the truth actually is and therefore retroactively have the knowledge to know the NPC is lying. Maybe you're not doing plot and poison. Okay cool beans.

But this is one of those moments where the application of Insight would have to be handled like Quantum Physics. Regular physics just doesn't apply on a sufficiently deep level. Insight may certainly be one of those skills.

Oh and to note, I'm not terribly worried about the "telling the player what their character thinks" note. In certain circumstances, I think it's fine to do it, and others not.

Elfcrusher said:

there's no way to use Insight as a lie detector without telling the player, in some form, what their character thinks.

And that's a major reason why Insight shouldn't be used as a lie detector.

I'd much rather have hints and clues be revealed, and let the player decide what the character thinks.

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As I said upthread, I think that the rules in the Basic PDF are amibguous as between the two options, of learning clues or understanding feelings and true intentions.

But personally I find your threshold for violating player agency a bit hard to work out. I assume that you allow the GM to say things lilke "Cresting the hill, you see a large castle with 4 round towers" or "In front of you is an ogre holding a club. It looks angry." That sort of stuff is pretty banal FRPG narration. But it clearly carries implications for what a PC believes. (I mean, even if the PC suspects the castle is an illusion, s/he is still thinking "There is the appearance of a castle up ahead.")

Elfcrusher said:

Can you give an example, because I don’t think we are disagreeing.

“The NPC has a bead of sweat running down his forehead even though it’s cold” is evidence that is left up to the player to interpret. I think that’s fine.

EDIT: To rephrase, I think the right approach is to give the player evidence to interpret, but not provide the interpretation.

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Why is knowledge of the "external world" (and the concomitant beliefs) unproblematic, but knowledge of other minds an issue?

Another example that I thought of that makes it hard for me to see where you're drawing the line is this: when NPC speak to the PCs, I'm assuming that you directly utter, or perhaps report, their speech. You don't describe the phonic event that occurs and leave it for the players to interpret it as words carrying (I'm guessing English at your table) meanings.

I'm not sure why linguistic intentions aren't (I'm assuming) treated as opaque, but deceptive intentions are.

EDIT: I saw this:

Elfcrusher said:

Well, yeah, in a subtle way it is. Because people don't actually know somebody is lying unless they uncover proof (e.g. we spy on them and hear them talking to somebody else...and even then we often only know that he is lying to one of us.)

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OK, so your view really is resting on a particular (in my opinion fairly contentious) view about epistemic access and the nature of knowledge.

(And I think it's doubly contentions in D&D, where illusions are farily common and hence when I crest the hill and see the castle with four round towers I can believe or suspect but not really know until I've touched it, cast Detect Illusion on it, etc.)

Yep, that's generally how this argument gets presented, historically speaking: "Well, any amount of describing the environment is telling the players what their characters think or believe, so..." Right on cue.

iserith said:

Yep, that's generally how this argument gets presented, historically speaking: "Well, any amount of describing the environment is telling the players what their characters think or believe, so..." Right on cue.

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There just might be a reason you keep getting the same argument over and over [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]. From lots of different people with various playstyles. Never minding things like, well, that big old poll right there that says that the overwhelming majority of people don't agree with you.

Just a thought.

Hussar said:

There just might be a reason you keep getting the same argument over and over [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]. From lots of different people with various playstyles. Never minding things like, well, that big old poll right there that says that the overwhelming majority of people don't agree with you.

Just a thought.

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Except I voted "Yes."

Elfcrusher said:

“The NPC has a bead of sweat running down his forehead even though it’s cold” is evidence that is left up to the player to interpret. I think that’s fine.

EDIT: To rephrase, I think the right approach is to give the player evidence to interpret, but not provide the interpretation.

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Here's the problem with this, and it goes for most of the interpersonal skills in the game: it asks more from the player than other skill uses do, and therefore limits a player's choices of playable character types. In the simplest and most obvious example, a player's physical fitness has no bearing at all on that player's character's physical fitness, so any player can choose an action adventure hero to play. But when a GM requires a player to say exactly what their character would say to convince the king to do the thing, the player with social anxiety or another limitation can't contribute as meaningfully. In the Insight example, providing a clue ("The baron seems to be sweating excessively.") potentially asks the player to be smarter, more observant or more experienced in social interactions than they are in real life.

What's more, it also puts a lot of weight on the GM's shoulder's to provide very precise sensory information to the players and attempt to avoid miscommunications that will send the PCs off after an unintentional red herring. GMs have a lot to manage on their won side of the screen and trying to also manage the perceptions of the players (as opposed to their characters) is extra work the GM doesn't need.

The player character is the tool through which the player interacts with the world, and the character stats are the measure of the efficacy of that interaction. By saying "You sense the baron is not telling you everything," you are trusting the system and the player to engage the game just as surely as when you say, "You hear scratching at the other side of the door" or "Those are owlbear tracks." Drawing an arbitrary line between social interaction skills and literally everything else in the game is, well, arbitrary and makes the game less fun, IMO.

I have a new, better answer to the question in the title of this thread:

Depending on what actions take, any skill might be called upon by the DM to resolve uncertainty. They might use stealth to spy on the subject, or call upon their knowledge of religion to find falsehoods in their cover story, or persuade the subject to fess up. And, yes, they might describe an approach that results in an Insight roll.

So, yes.

Reynard said:

Here's the problem with this, and it goes for most of the interpersonal skills in the game: it asks more from the player than other skill uses do, and therefore limits a player's choices of playable character types. In the simplest and most obvious example, a player's physical fitness has no bearing at all on that player's character's physical fitness, so any player can choose an action adventure hero to play. But when a GM requires a player to say exactly what their character would say to convince the king to do the thing, the player with social anxiety or another limitation can't contribute as meaningfully. In the Insight example, providing a clue ("The baron seems to be sweating excessively.") potentially asks the player to be smarter, more observant or more experienced in social interactions than they are in real life.

What's more, it also puts a lot of weight on the GM's shoulder's to provide very precise sensory information to the players and attempt to avoid miscommunications that will send the PCs off after an unintentional red herring. GMs have a lot to manage on their won side of the screen and trying to also manage the perceptions of the players (as opposed to their characters) is extra work the GM doesn't need.

The player character is the tool through which the player interacts with the world, and the character stats are the measure of the efficacy of that interaction. By saying "You sense the baron is not telling you everything," you are trusting the system and the player to engage the game just as surely as when you say, "You hear scratching at the other side of the door" or "Those are owlbear tracks." Drawing an arbitrary line between social interaction skills and literally everything else in the game is, well, arbitrary and makes the game less fun, IMO.

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This is an old, oft-repeated argument. And I think a poor one.

No, we don’t expect players to know how to swing swords, but we do expect them to decide which target to attack, or which 5’ square to stand in (for those who use grids.)

Now, perhaps you don’t like the bead of sweat example because it’s ambiguous; it doesn’t provide certainty. For me that’s the whole point: lie detection shouldn’t provide certainty.

Elfcrusher said:

I have a new, better answer to the question in the title of this thread:

Depending on what actions take, any skill might be called upon by the DM to resolve uncertainty. They might use stealth to spy on the subject, or call upon their knowledge of religion to find falsehoods in their cover story, or persuade the subject to fess up. And, yes, they might describe an approach that results in an Insight roll.

So, yes.

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Very much agree that "Insight" is not the only skill that might be used to determine the NPC is lying.

Reynard said:

Here's the problem with this, and it goes for most of the interpersonal skills in the game: it asks more from the player than other skill uses do, and therefore limits a player's choices of playable character types. In the simplest and most obvious example, a player's physical fitness has no bearing at all on that player's character's physical fitness, so any player can choose an action adventure hero to play. But when a GM requires a player to say exactly what their character would say to convince the king to do the thing, the player with social anxiety or another limitation can't contribute as meaningfully. In the Insight example, providing a clue ("The baron seems to be sweating excessively.") potentially asks the player to be smarter, more observant or more experienced in social interactions than they are in real life.

What's more, it also puts a lot of weight on the GM's shoulder's to provide very precise sensory information to the players and attempt to avoid miscommunications that will send the PCs off after an unintentional red herring. GMs have a lot to manage on their won side of the screen and trying to also manage the perceptions of the players (as opposed to their characters) is extra work the GM doesn't need.

The player character is the tool through which the player interacts with the world, and the character stats are the measure of the efficacy of that interaction. By saying "You sense the baron is not telling you everything," you are trusting the system and the player to engage the game just as surely as when you say, "You hear scratching at the other side of the door" or "Those are owlbear tracks." Drawing an arbitrary line between social interaction skills and literally everything else in the game is, well, arbitrary and makes the game less fun, IMO.

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And also very much agree with this. This is why I always make the dice the medium between the player and the game world. I've played with many cunning linguists who use their great word skills to attempt to bypass the dice rolling part of the game, and even play low-mental-score/skill characters while trying to speak like their characters are highly intelligent. But I've also played with new, young and challenged players who still want to play a smart wizard, a wise monk, a clever rogue or some other sort of high-mental-stat character but these folks just aren't capable of saying the kinds of things their character would.

So the dice as always the middleman between the words the player uses, and the words the PC uses.

Elfcrusher said:

This is an old, oft-repeated argument. And I think a poor one.

No, we don’t expect players to know how to swing swords, but we do expect them to decide which target to attack, or which 5’ square to stand in (for those who use grids.)

Now, perhaps you don’t like the bead of sweat example because it’s ambiguous; it doesn’t provide certainty. For me that’s the whole point: lie detection shouldn’t provide certainty.

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But none of that addresses his point. Just because you think his argument is poor doesn't mean it is or even that it's wrong. It's anecdotal but I've seen his argument in action. I've played with DMs who let good player words completely bypass things that less-clever wordsmiths have to make checks for.

Elfcrusher said:

This is an old, oft-repeated argument. And I think a poor one.

No, we don’t expect players to know how to swing swords, but we do expect them to decide which target to attack, or which 5’ square to stand in (for those who use grids.)

Now, perhaps you don’t like the bead of sweat example because it’s ambiguous; it doesn’t provide certainty. For me that’s the whole point: lie detection shouldn’t provide certainty.

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Right. And we expect the player to decide *what* actions they will take when conducting the social part of the game, but it's silly to ask them to actually perform those actions (speaking in character, interpreting cues). Just as silly as asking them to explain how they are going to disarm the trap or asking them to go outside and climb a tree. that is what the values on the character sheet are for. Why should there be any difference between the following scenarios:

GM: There is a narrow ledge on the southern wall of the chasm.
Player: Okay, I try and hug the wall and walk the ledge to the other side.
GM: Give me an Athletics roll. [player succeeds] You make it across safely.
Player: Phew! Okay, I search the area.
GM: Give me a Perception roll.

and

GM: The bartender tells you he hasn't seen the alchemists daughter since last week.
Player: That doesn't fit with what we've heard. I try and tell if he is lying.
GM: Give me an Insight check. [player succeeds] Yeah, the bartender is definitely hiding something.
Player: I knew it! Okay, I press him for more information, letting him know I know he's lying.
GM: Give me a Intimidation roll.