Maybe once or twice when the game was running late and people are getting really tired. We are spotlight hogs and we like being the center of attention to do this.
Social Skills, starting to bug me.
- Thread starter dagger
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Maybe once or twice when the game was running late and people are getting really tired. We are spotlight hogs and we like being the center of attention to do this.
I think I might enjoy playing with your group after all, then.
I think you would from everything I have read I think we are closer in play styles than we are different.
I felt a lot more resentful & railroaded in the Savage Worlds game I mentioned, where I gave a good speech AND had maxed-out persuasion skills and the GM wouldn't let it have an impact because of the adventure. Even worse was that I had to leave the game early due to the massive riots in London that night, and after I left the GM let a PC WITHOUT massive persuasion skills, but the player very forceful IRL, do what I had been trying to accomplish!
At least if there are no social skills, the GM's bias is all behind the curtain!
I think we have all had our share of DM who we have wanted to strangle at times.
Hussar
Legend
But, walking down the street isn't resolved in any fashion. You automatically do it. No mechanics are needed because there is no consequence of failure (well, other than maybe embarrassment). I guess I didn't quite specify well enough. Nowhere else in RPG's is pure DM judgement used as the sole arbiter of success of a PC action where failure carries consequences. ((Well, presuming you're not free-forming in the first place, that's a different kettle of fish))
There's another element here that I think should be examined as well. I think many players are far more willing to accept failure when it comes from an objective source, rather than the subjective DM. Not that it always causes problems. I'm not saying that at all. But, we've seen this on the boards lots of times, what one person considers perfectly reasonable, another can consider impossible.
And that can sometimes lead to tension between the players and the DM. The player believes that his idea is reasonable and should work, and the only reason it doesn't is because the DM decides so. All the "trust your DM" advice in the world isn't going to sweep that under the carpet every single time. A number of quite acrimonious arguments can occur at the table over this kind of thing.
Adding in mechanics acts as a buffer between the player's judgement and the DM's judgement. The player didn't fail because he didn't convince the DM, he failed because the dice gods decreed that he failed. And, in some cases, this goes a lot more smoothly at the table.
I don't ever remember seeing this kind of play, but it may have happened many years ago.
Sure, I find that kind of play unsatisfactory. But I think it's worth noting that it has nothing to do with social skills - ie I would find this equally frustrating...
"I rolled a 12. Do I kill the guard?"
"What were you rolling to do?"
"Sneak up behind and stab him."
"No."
"Push him over the parapet?"
"With your strength, probably not."
"Okay I just hit him."
The problem both examples describe is one of rolling dice before everyone present has agreed what the roll represents, what's at stake and how it is creating a new situation in the fiction. I find that problematic at any time in a game, irrespective of the system.
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Note, I didn't say never.
It's always possible that somebody who is painfully shy and avoids drawing attention to themselves is going to try playing a bard.
It's just not probable.
I'm pretty certain that Painfully Shy Guy (PSG) is not thinking "hey, I can be a bard, there's new rules for social situations so I don't actually have to be a loud and social and have everybody looking at me!"
People tend to play concepts they enjoy or are like themselves (at least as a default). The bard is the opposite of PSG. It's going to take some serious gumption for him to want to try a bard. Especially if the rest of the player do HAM IT UP. That sets the bar of expectation that the Bard is a social creature, something he dreads.
There are people who are enabled by these rules. Danny's friend for instance. But that's incidental.
The primary beneficiary of the social rules is regular gamers getting a standardized resolution to social encounters. It's not about the PSG's.
So you grant a bonus for one kind of player skill ("tactical considerations").
But not another ("roleplay"/social intelligence/me talk pretty sometime).
Does the PC of the player using "tactics" need a minimum INT score, ie so as not to dump-stat INT?
XP bonuses are nice, but I've found the thing that's most important to players is the feeling of accomplishment they get from solving the immediate challenge. They want to know they did something that helped the team "win". Allowing for this --at a table with people with different abilities/levels of social savvy-- is more important to me than combating dump-statting.
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Speaking in character (#1) is a style preference. #4 is equally as valid, in being descriptive and still roleplaying, just not speaking in character.
The problem with judging on speaking with character is that the evaluation is subjective, and prone to double-modifying the situation.
If you have a low CHA and you play it as the silent quiet type, you may get through more situations than somebody who truly hams it up and acts all creepy and dislikable.
Without even rolling, the GM is going to react negatively to the latter kind of PC, even though they both have the same stat.
This in turn gets amplified when it comes to actually doing any kind of social skill check. The GM will inherently bias against the performance.
My recommendation is to isolate that. The performance is great, give them XP for it if it is "in character" But strictly follow what the numbers say, not the performance. The perfomance shows intent. That's it.
As for your comment about giving a bonus for tactical (perhaps I should have said situational) factors also being a player skill, I don't have a problem with that.
I already accept that not all players are created equal. A tactical genius will do smarter things with his fighter than the village idiot, despite both of them having the same stats.
Somebody who is trying to bluff the guard while wearing the wrong clothes, covered in blood, stating blatant lies is an idiot, and is going to suffer a situational penalty. But not for roleplaying. For being a tactical idiot. The same way the player gets hit with AoOs and rushes into fights that get him killed.
Remember, I do not see the rules as some sort of Great Equalizer for stupid people and smart people, shy people or social people.
My approach levels out the abjudication of speaking in character, by excising it from the resolution mechanic. It's not for the shy guy's benefit or detriment.
Note: I don't see a reason why the Shy Guy would be prone to screwing up handling a Bluff check by declaring how he approaches the situation. It's more probable that Undiplomatic Guy will screw it up by being a jerk, when he should have been deferrential. That's a situational modifier, not by his speaking in character, but by the very intent that is evident in his approach.
I have actually experienced this in my online 1e AD&D game. Twice recently I felt that some of the players weren't very accepting of the notion that they could fail in a social encounter, fail to achieve their desired goals, through GM adjudication of the impact of their words and actions. In each case there were several good reasons why the NPCs reacted as they did, not all of which were obvious to the PCs. In the second case I ended up explaining stuff - "She's a Thief! She has Hear Noise! She knows you're right outside!" - which would not have been obvious to the PC, and I wasn't very happy about that. OTOH the same players would have likely accepted me killing all their PCs in a combat encounter, because with combat there are rules.
I've found just the opposite in my games - my last campaign was 3.5E D&D and the guy in my group who is gruff and rather offputting socially IRL was the one who played the charismatic sorcerer with an 18 CHA in game. Most of the time his role playing was limited to a sarcastic out of game comment. (As DM, I would often interject something about his "powerful presence" or "air of command" or similar)
In my current 4E game, the guy in my group that is by far the most loquacious out of game is playing the strong silent type in game this time around. His previous PC in the campaign just died, and he had modeled the role playing after the guy from House (dour, sarcastic, grinchy) (the guy who played a sorcerer last time out is now a human fighter with a 10 CHA)
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