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

Immortal Sun said:

You can't have a bunch of people running around with shared experiences of "Bad DMs" using the same methods and not start to wonder if it's really a case of a bad DM or bad methodology. At some point you gotta stop and say "certain approaches may be problematic". Not everything can be chalked up to "that one guy was a jerk".

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Except that it's not the method we're talking about. You are mistaking one thing for another. Somehow that point just doesn't seem to get through.

Immortal Sun said:

He dismissed my comment, regardless of how anecdotal it was, as not happening because it hadn't happened to him.

Frankly, that's not a discussion nor a person I want to have one with.

If he meant something else, the onus is on him to clarify.

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No, he wasn't even remotely saying that. He first said that what you are describing is not what he/we are talking about (exactly my point to Reynard, above) and then went on to describe how well the thing we are talking about does work, even for groups that are especially non-eloquent.

Elfcrusher said:

Except that it's not the method we're talking about. You are mistaking one thing for another. Somehow that point just doesn't seem to get through.

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I'm not sure which method YOU are talking about honestly. I was, in those posts, talking about the methods [MENTION=467]Reynard[/MENTION] was talking about.

@Elfcrusher

Bawylie said:

I’m not gonna debate action resolution in this thread but the idea that more eloquent people have an unfair advantage is bunk.

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Well, that certainly doesn't sound like "Those things you're talking about aren't the things we're talking about." It certainly sounds a lot more like "That thing you said is wrong."

We’re not looking for perfect description or dissertations.

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Which I never implied nor suggested other DMs, in this context ones like @iserith were expecting. @Elfcrusher, while I felt dismissed by @Bawylie, I found @iserith to actually be constructive on the subject, at least until he bailed on defending his point and said "I just do what the book says."

We’re looking for an articulated objective and a reasonable approach to achieve that objective. No more complicated than “I attack with my sword.”

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I find "I attack with my sword." to be exactly as descriptive as "I search the room." Assuming there is only one enemy, just like there is only one room, these two statements are identical to me.

I don't particularly want to go rounds with my player over "I search the cabinets." then "I search the bed." Then "I search the trunk." And so on and so on and so on. If there is limited time I will explain that the player may only have time to search a limited number of items, I'll describe what items are present and relevant in the room. The player then says "I search X and Y." But otherwise, "I search the room." is sufficient to convey to me that the character is engaging in searching the various objects in the room.

I ran a game for 8 years for players with various disabilities. One player was a severely autistic kid, one was a mentally retarded adult. Neither of them ever had a problem saying what they wanted their characters to do nor how they tried to do it. I don’t think anyone with social anxiety would be in a worse position than either of those two. They weren’t worse players than the two with physical-only disabilities.

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Again, and now we're back to "My experience was different than yours, therefore I don't believe your experiences to be legitimate."

So the first sentence of his post, and the second paragraph of his post, were entirely devoted to describing how he felt his experiences negated mine. Leaving only TWO SENTENCES devoted to actually discussing his methods and what he expected from his players.

So paaaarrrrrdon me if I misread that the majority of his post was dedicated to calling my experiences "bunk" and I wasn't particularly inclined to "have a discussion" with that.

Reynard said:

GM: You slip into the study and close the door quietly behind you. Based on your observations of the house guards, you have about three minutes before they come to inspect the room.

Player: Okay, I go to the desk and and check all the drawers for false bottoms and then look behind all the wall pictures for hidden safes.

GM: Hold on. The desk is a big heavy oak thing but it doesn't have any drawers.

[cue extended back and forth with the GM trying to get the player's vision of the study to align perfectly with their vision of it].

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That’s on the DM, regardless of play style. If it mattered that the desk had no drawers, then the DM should describe it as such when setting up the scene.

If a player wants to search the drawers of a desk but I as DM pictured in my mind a desk with no drawers for no particular reason, well, the desk now has drawers because it doesn’t matter and there’s no reason to halt a scene for it.

Similarly if I describe a big room and it is the scene of a battle and at some point someone asks if there is a chandelier, well, hells yeah there is (even if I hadn’t pictured one in my DM mind)! Letting the players fill in some reasonable details for the world will enrich the experience for everyone and keep things flowing.

Immortal Sun said:

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.

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Everything you say makes sense.

My post was pretty narrow and focused solely on the assumption that the player was simply trying to determine if the NPC was lying, like a lie detector does. Like, imagine the player had said to me. "I try to determine if the NPC is lying . . . " The player is looking for a binary answer so I'm gonna give him a binary answer.

However, and this is where you're totally right, If the player was trying to figure out what the NPC was lying about, he should get the far more useful info like you're taking about. To get that info, though, I would expect the player to instead say "I try to determine what he's lying about . . ." or something like that.

And hopefully I'm not such a terrible DM that, after responding to the first declaration with "He's lying" I don't dead-end the players by refusing to let them continue their interrogation/interview with the second more useful declaration.

Satyrn said:

Everything you say makes sense.

My post was pretty narrow and focused solely on the assumption that the player was simply trying to determine if the NPC was lying, like a lie detector does. Like, imagine the player had said to me. "I try to determine if the NPC is lying . . . " The player is looking for a binary answer so I'm gonna give him a binary answer.

However, and this is where you're totally right, If the player was trying to figure out what the NPC was lying about, he should get the far more useful info like you're taking about. To get that info, though, I would expect the player to instead say "I try to determine what he's lying about . . ." or something like that.

And hopefully I'm not such a terrible DM that, after responding to the first declaration with "He's lying" I don't dead-end the players by refusing to let them continue their interrogation/interview with the second more useful declaration.

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Okay that makes sense to me. I mean hopefully they would try to follow up their "I think he's lying." feeling with "I try to figure out what he's lying about." But I suppose that like in my comments about searching the room, a player who states they're trying to figure out if the NPC is lying would get a DC, and a result, based on the information they retain. But it's all just one check to me. Not a series of every increasingly specific checks.

Though I'll run that for players who enjoy it. It can make a nice scene as the players slowly nail an NPC to the wall with ever more specific questions. But it requires a certain type of player who is personally quick-witted enough to do this. Unlike my comments above about not being interested in searching X, then Y, then Z individually, running that kind of scene as questioning an NPC can be more fun, since it's a lot more interactive.

Although I will state that my past experience has led me to believe players who learn that an NPC is lying, rather than asking more detailed questions, tend make the following statement: "I stab the NPC!"

Immortal Sun said:

Okay that makes sense to me. I mean hopefully they would try to follow up their "I think he's lying." feeling with "I try to figure out what he's lying about." But I suppose that like in my comments about searching the room, a player who states they're trying to figure out if the NPC is lying would get a DC, and a result, based on the information they retain. But it's all just one check to me. Not a series of every increasingly specific checks.

Though I'll run that for players who enjoy it. It can make a nice scene as the players slowly nail an NPC to the wall with ever more specific questions. But it requires a certain type of player who is personally quick-witted enough to do this. Unlike my comments above about not being interested in searching X, then Y, then Z individually, running that kind of scene as questioning an NPC can be more fun, since it's a lot more interactive.

Although I will state that my past experience has led me to believe players who learn that an NPC is lying, rather than asking more detailed questions, tend make the following statement: "I stab the NPC!"

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Perhaps this is why I'm inclined to start with "he's lying*" - since it's gonna result in bloodshed no matter how specific I get, I might as well skip the details and get to the point, so the stabbing can begin.


*I'm not really inclined to start from the general and move through a series of ever increasing specific checks, but it does happen when the players themselves act that way. If they wind up beating around the bush first, I'm content to go with the flow. I've surrendered control of the pace of the game to the players when they're exploiting the dungeon. That is, I have no goal for how much we should get through in a session, what an "adventuring day" should look like, or even how any encounter plays out.

But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that what my players declare they do is totally the driving factor on how many checks a social encounter will have, from zero to way too many.

DM Dave1 said:

That’s on the DM, regardless of play style. If it mattered that the desk had no drawers, then the DM should describe it as such when setting up the scene.

If a player wants to search the drawers of a desk but I as DM pictured in my mind a desk with no drawers for no particular reason, well, the desk now has drawers because it doesn’t matter and there’s no reason to halt a scene for it.

Similarly if I describe a big room and it is the scene of a battle and at some point someone asks if there is a chandelier, well, hells yeah there is (even if I hadn’t pictured one in my DM mind)! Letting the players fill in some reasonable details for the world will enrich the experience for everyone and keep things flowing.

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None of that contradicts my point: players do not necessarily benefit from being overly granular in declaring actions at my table. "I search the study" is as good as and possibly superior to a series of more specific declarations. Similarly, on topic, "I try to determine if he's lying" is good enough.

Satyrn said:

Perhaps this is why I'm inclined to start with "he's lying*" - since it's gonna result in bloodshed no matter how specific I get, I might as well skip the details and get to the point, so the stabbing can begin.


*I'm not really inclined to start from the general and move through a series of ever increasing specific checks, but it does happen when the players themselves act that way. If they wind up beating around the bush first, I'm content to go with the flow. I've surrendered control of the pace of the game to the players when they're exploiting the dungeon. That is, I have no goal for how much we should get through in a session, what an "adventuring day" should look like, or even how any encounter plays out.

But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that what my players declare they do is totally the driving factor on how many checks a social encounter will have, from zero to way too many.

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Fair, while I also want to have fun as DM, if the people at the table are having fun doing detailed searching well...*shrug* okay. And yeah, if they're gonna stab it anyway, might as well skip to the stabbing.

Then they can just Speak with Dead and get the truth!