Problems with the Diplomacy skill (plus a total halt to a campaign)

[Sunseeker]

Within the game-mechanics, how would you resolve the following dialogue?
"Let us in. We want to check your house."
"What?! Hell no!"
"Please reconsider."
"NO!"
"Ok, bye then."
(end of conversation)

I see a few glaring problems with the diplomacy skill:
1. It requires at least a one minute of conversation. Sometimes a player briefly explains the situation (maybe a 2-3 fullround actions) and then easily gives up with the conversation. The minimum timeframe is not reached.

What? Says who?

2. Sometimes it's hard to know if they are trying to bluff, negotiate or intimidate. We can't roll all this at once.

Why is that a problem? The point of dialog is to determine facts without violence. Yes, someone may be trying to mislead you, but you've got at least 3 players(hopefully), so all three can be done. Bob rolls Diplomacy by saying "Mister, we know you're a good guy, and we want to help you out." Jane rolls Intimidate by saying "Yeah, we don't take %^$ from nobody so you better talk straight!" or maybe by making an intimidating pose. Phil rolls Bluff by saying "And that other guy we talked to said that you knew what was what."

Or are you looking for seeing if the NPC is saying this? Wouldn't making an Insight/Sense Motive check be all you need?

3. It's hard to know if I should ask for a rushed diplomacy check (-10) or a standard one.

When in doubt roll a die.

In my game the players need to investigate a house for secret doors. This is crucial for the campaign and I can easily compare this to a dungeon crawl and the moment where the players first enter the dungeon; if they don't enter the dungeon, there is no dungeon crawl. Searching for secret doors from the house is the nexus of the adventure.

At the moment, there's a family living in the house and they're not too keen on having stangers in the house. You can imagine if somewhere knocked on your door and asked to check your house. It's really not that appealing.

I have made an effort to minimize railroading. You can negotiate with the husband or the wife or with both (or intimidate them or bluff them), or you can sneak into the house or you can use magic or you come with a ruse in order to have the house cleared. Also an NPC offers the players a chance to use forged documents to pose as members of the city guard and investigate the house.

But in this case the players went over to the house and asked a few questions from the man. The husband answered them. Then the party spokesman asked to enter the house but he said "no". After that the group went back to the tavern and will not investigate the case any further.

Now I don't know if I should somehow railroad them to the adventure or should I just accept the fact that they don't want to investigate the house. They have plenty of ways to do it and since the whole group is exclusively of the neutral alignment, it shouldn't be against their alignment to use underhanded methods to investigate the house.

Are they aware they could bash down the door and "shoot first and ask questions later"?

 

[pemerton]

A few posters have mentioned that I put the entrance somewhere else. But it's not that simple.
In that dungeon there's the corpse of the father of an important NPC. There is also the corpse of a previous PC. The NPC will not rest until he finds his father and he will not help the PCs in their other quests unless he finds his father.
The very small dungeon, meant to accommodate one or two people, was built by the grandmaster of the Stonemasons' Guild. It's not consistent if its entrance is found accidently outside the house. The grandmaster would've been certain about his privacy and it's not consistent that someone with such superior skills would allow someone to find the dungeon by accident, at least outside his house.

I don't know if you read my earlier post - number 2 in the thread - but I'll draw it to your attention again.

With the passage of time, streets wear down, structures wear out, and holes appear. Anyone who's verisimilitude is threatened by falling through a hole in the road into a dungeon built immediately beneath a house hasn't lived in a part of a 100-year old city with aging streets and leaking water pipes beneath them!

 

[MarkB]

It's a good idea to have the wife appear at the market place and talk to the players, that could work. I just don't understand why would she talk to strangers about anything related to her family.

Just have the entire family show up on the high street, and as they pass the PCs, allow an easy Listen check to overhear from their conversation that they're off to worship at their temple of choice, the husband complaining that it's Padre Sullivan giving the service today, and he always drones on for hours...

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Just have the entire family show up on the high street, and as they pass the PCs, allow an easy Listen check to overhear from their conversation that they're off to worship at their temple of choice, the husband complaining that it's Padre Sullivan giving the service today, and he always drones on for hours...

This is the winning post. Why didn't I think of that?

 

[N'raac]

I prefer ROLE playing to ROLL playing in these situations. What I mean by that is that I have the PC's actually talk to the NPC's the way they would try to talk someone into doing something or not doing something BEFORE I ask for a roll of their dice. Based on how they talk to the NPC's I will either give a bonus or a penalty to them for the upcoming check (between -10 and +10). The caveat here is that if they are good enough to convince with their role playing, I don't ask for an actual roll and allow them to convince the NPC to do what they wish.

So, will you similarly give a +10 bonus to -10 penalty to players for their ability to role play - describe and act out - their combat actions? A wallflower player who pumps character attributes into charisma and skill points into interaction skills should be able to play a suave, persuasive character, despite the player lacking these skills. The same way the guy flopped in the armchair munching junk food and guzzling sugar water, who can't make it up the basement steps in one go and needs a rest in the middle, wheezing all the way, is allowed to pump his character's STR and DEX and play a dashing warrior who tumbles from point to point on the battlefield while lugging 75 pounds of gear.

If the persuasive charasmatic character will be penalized unless the player demonstrates a reasonable facsimile of that persuasiveness and charisma, then Tubby there needs to show us a decent simulation of the shoulder roll from which he springs up deftly thrusting a 2 foot blade into his opponent, while carrying three cinder blocks in a backback and two more strapped to his thighs.

This does two things:
1) Gives them a chance to immerse themselves in the game more via the role-playing.
2) Gives actual positives (with a chance to auto-win) before the roll of the dice on the table.

It also penalizes players running characters whose strengths differ from their own. I won't allow the chemist to "discover" gunpowder, nor the physicist to cobble together a nuke, in the game. Why would I penalize the wallflower trying to play James Bond, or the 98 pound weakling playing a hulking brute? And why would I give a +10 bonus to the good talker whose character is socially inept with an 8 CHA and no ranks in diplomacy, and let him be better at those skills than a shy, stuttering player whose character has a 16 CHA and 12 ranks invested in Diplomacy?

I've never been a fan of straight up roll-playing in the social challenges or skill checks, it just doesn't seem like a good way to ROLE play in this ROLE PLAYING GAME. Too many people get hung up on the dice determining everything and forget about their imaginations and immersion into these fantasy worlds.

Then tell the players up front that no character should buy ranks in interaction skills, because success or failure will be determined based on player ability, not character ability.

Sorry if the above comes across as harsh. This tends to be a hot button issue for me. I am boggled by how many gamers will decry metagaming in all its forms, but will cheerfully base success in social interactions on the abilities of the player as much, even more, or ignoring entirely, the ability of the character.

In-game bonuses (like discovering this guy likes fine wine and giving him a gift, or showing the Duke persuasive evidence that the Lord-Mayor is plotting against him), sure. Bonuses for the skills and abilities of the player? Nope – you want to have a 16 CHA and 7 ranks of diplomacy in the game, your character, not the player, needs those abilities. The martial arts enthusiast sitting next to you didn’t get 5 free monk levels either.

As to the original problem, either roll with it and use one of the in-game solutions presented, or talk to your players about how you thought the encounter should have gone as the group is clearly not on the same page.

“Changing another’s attitude” normally requires one minute (10 rounds). But if the guy who opened the door was, at worst, indifferent, I’d allow that he would generally listen to a one minute request, so there’s time to use diplomacy. If he’s unfriendly or hostile, I might require an immediate diplomacy check to determine whether he will listen long enough for you to have a chance, but clearly the skill can change even those attitudes or they would not have DC’s.

 

[Greenfield]

This brings up a good point about circumstance modifiers: Do we reward glib players and punish those less articulate?

I mean, I love a good story, and can seriously appreciate a well crafted piece of BS being spun at the table. But all players are not created equal.

Would we penalize a PC's Climb, Tumble or Jump ability just because the player was overweight, non-athletic or disabled? Would we bonus a PC at any of those things just because the player was active and athletic?

Why would we apply any other standard to Charisma based skills?

So, after some thought, I think I'll start basing it not on the player's eloquence (or lack thereof), but on the effort they put in on the pitch, and whether they've come up with a good "cover story". That is, if they can argue an incentive for the NPC to believe and go along, that's good, even if they themselves aren't that persuasive. At the same time, it doesn't matter how charmingly the PC tells a blatant, obvious lie, it's still blatantly obvious that they're lying.

So I'll reward nerve and I'll reward clever from now on, I think. The character really has to be a separate person from the player.

 

[Herobizkit]

One of the biggest difficulties you can put yourself in as a DM is to hinge the progress of a "plot" on your players. By extension, you've seen what happens when you try and dictate results before they happen; the players don't follow your plan, and the whole adventure gets derailed.

Here's what I'd do.

Later in the day, wherever the PC's happen to be, have some excitable youth or halfling go running by and approach the guards who also happen to be nearby. Have the kid explain that xyz house's door has been broken/torn off and it looks like the people inside are knocked out/dead. A few intelligence/lore checks reveal it to be the same house they were at earlier that day. Then the players get to decide if they're going to try and beat the guards there, or investigate after the fact, or still ignore it. If they still ignore it... well...

My favorite tactic is to create a NPC "copy" of the player characters. Doesn't have to be exact, but basically another group of intrepid whoevers who act when the PC's fail to act. The joy of this comes when, later, the PC's are chilling out at wherever and said NPC group shows up with treasure and riches and explains just how they got them -- and maybe soon the players will clue in that ACTION, not inaction, gets rewarded.

 

[Vegepygmy]

It's a good idea to have the wife appear at the market place and talk to the players, that could work. I just don't understand why would she talk to strangers about anything related to her family.

Your experiences with women must be very different than mine. I can't get them to shut up about their families!

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Hold on hold on. I'm not talking about overweight or clumsy people suffering penalties or gaining bonuses to their characters because of the player. I'm talking about the actual ROLE PLAYING here guys, don't take me so far out of context that will just piss me off here and I won't even talk to you anymore.

In a role playing game we all know this is in our imagination. I reward imagination, there's nothing that says that the group can't walk from the table then talk about what they want to do and come up with a plan together using their combined imaginations. Perhaps someone is better than another at thinking outside of the box, but they want to use the "face" of the PC's to add more bonuses to the scenario. I'm totally cool with that. I tell my players to try to role-play out good things that aren't just "I am barbarian, I kick door down, I slaughter man wife and kids" perhaps the player plays that kind of stupid barbarian but IRL he's a member of MENSA, he can talk to the fat dumb guy in the group who plays a paladin with 25 CHA and they can come up with a plan where the Paladin "thought" up the words to say or perhaps the Barbarian had a moment of greatness. I don't care, but to say something so silly as to accuse me of discriminating against my players based on their RL abilities is preposterous.

 

[Blammoh]

I sense a diplomacy roll will be needed here soon!

On topic:

I let anyone of my players play out any part of any social encounter they get with roleplay addition whenever they want to which can add about a +2 to a +4 (depending on creative awesomeness) modifier to their social skill roll for that encounter. But as DM I always describe the results in character. Those two things together usually tends to make them want to do it too. And if they don't sometimes, no biggy, we roll and move on. Not everyone wants to achieve shakespear greatness every 10 mins.