You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[N'raac]

As I said upthread, because it was the anchor of a whole lot of intraparty roleplay and player-driven stuff (histories, backstories, relationships, prophecy interpretation).

Let me go out on a limb and suggest that these setting elements did not start out as "the anchor of a whole lot of intraparty roleplay and player-driven stuff", but that you actually had to play through some games where the setting presented itself before you could follow up on those aspects which became "the anchor of a whole lot of intraparty roleplay and player-driven stuff", and perhaps even play through some elements which did not become part of that anchor. Had you simply dismissed intro scenes out of hand, I suspect you would not have had the makings of "the anchor of a whole lot of intraparty roleplay and player-driven stuff".

Which is quite unlike the desert in Hussar's game, which was not the anchor of, or the goal of, anything player-driven.

The need to cross the desert, as noted upthread, stems directly from the desire to travel to City B. If I want to visit, say, the Temple in City B, then having to cross the desert between there and here is as relevant a complication as arriving at the city gates to discover that, for whatever reason, I cannot be granted immediate entry to visit the temple.

If there is a siege at the city? Fantastic!! At least we're doing something directly related to the goal. Although, to be perfectly honest, it would seem a bit contrived that we arrive just in time for a siege, but, meh, I've got a pretty healthy sense of disbelief, so, I'll live with it. At least we initiated the engagement of the scene.

I would suggest crossing the desert between you and the city is directly related to engaging in any activity which requires you be in that city, and by choosing to travel, you initiated the engagement of the scene as well. And I note that you would also find it somewhat contrived that there is a seige. It does not seem at all contrived that there would be a desert, presuming maps of the area were available before you decided on the travel.

You seem to think that this involves contradiction. What I think it does is highlight nicely the contrast between a complication that draws the players in ("What we want is in City B. City B is under siege. How are we going to get in?" and compications that fail to draw the players in ("What we want is in City B. In order to get there, we're going to have to spend a session or more faffing around in this unrelated desert.")

No, instead we'll have to spend a session or more faffing around dealing with this unrelated siege. So much better!

Because the desert scene is an expected and appropriate complication of the PC's attempt to reach the city. The PCs and players knew they'd have a 5-500 mile journey after the plane shift it's the rules for the spell. you want to cross the desert as a cut scene? Provide a resource that explicitly gives you that ability or hope the DM decides that this complication is irrelevant and can be hand waved. If the DM decides not to make that call and the PCs do not offer such a resource, you get to play through the desert. Go figure.

Exactly.

That was roughly the fiat I had in mind, although there has been no indication that it is mandatory that the NPCs accept payment (I'm sure Hussar would have been happy for them to work for free!), nor that they introduce no downstream complications (I don't think Hussar has expressed a view on that one way or the other).

An alternate fiat would be that there are no warriors seeking a day or less work risking their lives battling some supernatural beast. Or that it is illegal to build a mercenary force with no licensure. Sorry I misinterpreted your "GM fiat" for anything but "the GM allowing me whatever I find convenient".

No. I'm saying that my game has interactions with NPCs that are more compelling than the hiring of mercenaries: interactions that drive the game forward in ways that are engaging to the players.

So you cannot envision the possibility there could be some level of engagement interacting with well written mercenaries. I found the Myth Adventures book where the protagonists gather a force to defend against an army had very engaging mercenary characters myself. The Magnificent Seven and the Dirty Dozen provide other examples. Or we can just hire half a dozen cardboard cutouts who add nothing to the game. Now, which one would be more engaging?

To my mind, any GM who thinks it is worth spending 90 minutes of game time interacting with NPCs whose opinions and life stories have no connection to anything of signficance to the players and their concerns in the game is not a GM under whom I want to play. To me, it implies one of two things: either the GM has no better material; or the GM is completely incapable of making judgements about what is interesting and engaging and what is not.

I think the onus is on the GM to make that interaction have meaning, and be connected to something of significance to the players, and I would much rather game at a table where the NPC's have their own unique personalities and are memorable than one who provides Generic Spearmen #1 through #6.

Well, I would say that kicking someone out of the game for not wanting to play one scene would be an over reaction. But, that's just me. If it was a recurring issue, then fine. But the first time?

I would concur - with the caveat that, like everything, it depends on a lot of factors. If the player comes across as demanding that this scene he thinks may not be interesting be cut before it even begins, and we've been gaming with him for two whole hours, that seems a lot more likely to result in an invitation to depart than if he is polite in his request, engages in the scene before condemning it and/or has already demonstrated he is otherwise a decent fit for the group.

Let me ask you this.

I am the player and I want to hire six 1st level warriors. Let's skip over the recruitment process, it's not germane. I have 10 guys in front of me now. I say to you, the DM, "I look over the ten guys, talk to them a bit and pick the 6 best."

Would that be a problem for you? Would I still be subject to a random chances?

As is pointed out later, that leaves me to assess which ones you think are the best, so I guess I'd simply ask you for a Sense Motive check and we'll see who Bluffs you. To be clear, the character has the Sense Motive skill, so the roll should, IMP, be made regardless of the play-out of interaction.

And, if I actually did play out every single interview, would I still have a chance of getting the bottom of the barrel. After all, people lie, and it's entirely possible that they beat my Sense Motive check.

So, if I do play it out, how am I ahead? And, if I'm not ahead, why spend the table time to play it out when I don't want to?

The two potential advantages I see to playing it out? First, you get the opportunity to decide for yourself which factors you discover weigh heaviest in your decision. Second, if the GM is going to spend the time on it, I would hope the NPC's have personalities that will make them engaging enough that the distraction from tactical combat is an enjoyable gaming diversion, and not a grind we have to endure in order to be permitted to have another battle. I do prefer a game where investigation, NPC interaction, etc. is there for reasons other than filling time and drawing a link between combat scenes.

But, we have no engagement with bandits in the desert or bandits in the forest. None. Sure, you can post hoc add in some relevance after the fact, but, meh, why bother? It's not like I'm going to suddenly say, "OHhhh, that's why you forced us to play out several hours of desert travel!" and it justifies those several hours of frustration. No, instead it's going to be several hours of frustration followed by a WTF moment when your totally contrived bit of plot key falls into our laps.

Is it better that I "force you to play out several hours of" trying to get past the gates, or trying to get an NPC to direct you to where you want to go in the city? No one who supports playing these scenes out is arguing that there should be hours of game play meandering aimlessly and being bored - only you and Pemerton seem to think the GM has a vested interest in boring you to tears.

If you provide a resource that may speed the travel but not negate it, the DM will have to judge whether it is sufficient to achieve a hand wave (or even your intent -- like I said a long time ago summoning a mount would signal to me that you want to stay in the desert longer as a player). There are a lot of reasons to not bypass the complication the DM needs to weigh against a player or table's desire to skip ahead. Is the group prepared for the environment and the dangers therein? Is the travel likely to deplete consumable resources? Are there items of note that at least one PC will be tempted by? Are there further complications unknown to the group that the group will discover (spells don't recover, hit point recovery is slowed, hit points are ablated every day) as they travel but long before they reach the destination?

All of which requires trusting the GM to present an interesting encounter or series of encounters rather than a slog through the sand, a measure of trust [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] seems unable to build up. Yet we should all trust that he would require a cut scene only when it is in the clear best interests of all at the table, and only very rarely, despite the rather common nature of the scenes he so desperately wants to skip.

Yup, the DM screwing over the players. If your definition of "best" includes wanted criminals and characters who will kill us in our sleep? Yeah, I'm pretty sure my definition of best wouldn't include those things. And, fortunately, I play with DM's whom I trust will also not have that definition of "best". I would quit games for this sort of thing.

So you hang up a sign saying "Wanted: brave stalwart heroes to come and help us kill a creature for revenge - departure in three hours" and you expect that you will get a bunch of brave, reliable and loyal stalwarts with no one in the bunch that may have a skeleton in the closet? Newsflash: you are hiring people to take money for going out to kill something that has done them no harm. The likelihood of getting a crew of Paladins with a spare afternoon seems remarkably remote. Or, to choose another word bandied about a lot here, "contrived".

It's no different than any other Aha-gotcha DM who falls back and says, "Well, you didn't actually say that you were putting on winter gear before you headed into the blizzard, so, I guess you are now all suffereing exposure."

I would suggest you sound like the kind of player who "of course" had winter gear packed away for just such an emergency, and has simply neglected to transcribe it when updating that character sheet last.

No. Applicants who show up for dangerous poorly paid assignments can and will span a spectrum of ability, circumstance, and desire. Wanted criminals included -- especially if the group doesn't appear heavily aligned with local law; "the best way to hide out is not be here" .

BTW, you still haven't defined 'best'.

I think he mentioned being quite irked that the first applicant was a Dwarf, so I guess there is a racial determinant. Why a Dwarf was unsuitable never came up, IIRC. But what's more important, someone who seems very capable with that spear, or someone who seems very calm and rational? I'd expect it won't be an easy decision if I'm going to play through extensive interviews with each applicant, and we might very well differ as to who we would choose.

 

[pemerton]

Because the desert scene is an expected and appropriate complication of the PC's attempt to reach the city. The PCs and players knew they'd have a 5-500 mile journey after the plane shift it's the rules for the spell. you want to cross the desert as a cut scene? Provide a resource that explicitly gives you that ability or hope the DM decides that this complication is irrelevant and can be hand waved. If the DM decides not to make that call and the PCs do not offer such a resource, you get to play through the desert. Go figure.

I don't think it has to be a given that D&D plays this way. Or, to put it another way, I don't think that a player who uses 3E Plane Shift is, per se, agreeing to the acceptability of the GM running a more-or-less freestanding, unrelated scenario for a session while we get from the point of arrival to our desired destination.

I think this is also borne out by the history of the Plane Shift spell. In AD&D (1st ed, at least), it is a cleric only spell and silent as to accuracy. In AD&D, the wizard doesn't get Plane Shift, but as a 7th level spell (in UA) gets Teleport Without Error, which can cross planes but when it does so has the ordinary (5th level Teleport) chance of failure.

In 3E the plane-crossing function of TWE was pulled out, and given to the wizard instead in the form of access to Plane Shift as a 7th level spell. And the designers seem to have reached some sort of compromise or clarification on the accuracy issue - no chance of failure in the Teleport sense, but a random deviation from the intended destination. This makes the spell unreliable from the point of view of Scry-Buff-Teleport, but I don't think it was done with the intention of marking out any special realm of GM authority over pacing or scenario content. Which is to say, if the group in general plays a more tightly focused, player-driven game, I don't think Plane Shift is in any special way intended to figure as an exception to that.

Of course, in a certain sense the GM is always free to frame things however s/he wants, including on insisting playing through the desert. But for a player-driven group that would be bad GMing, regardless of the use of a Plane Shift spell.

Applicants who show up for dangerous poorly paid assignments can and will span a spectrum of ability, circumstance, and desire. Wanted criminals included -- especially if the group doesn't appear heavily aligned with local law; "the best way to hide out is not be here" .

Does the world contort to remove these categories for the PCs? No. Is any particular applicant likely to have any of the qualities I've listed? No, but there is a chance. Are any six chosen likely to include a single person of those qualities? No, but there is a chance.

If the PCs want to reduce the chance further they can use their resources and wits to do so or they can go "those six look good, let's move' and live with the result.

But this doesn't require any extended playing out. Within the confines of 3E, for instance, it can be resolved within 5 minutes via Gather Information checks ("What's their reputation?") and Sense Motive checks ("Do they seem shifty or unreliable?").

Furthermore, as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] pointed out above, there is no particular reason to think that playing things out over 90 mintues makes it particularly more likely that the players (or the PCs) would do better at learning any of this stuff. I'm 99% confident that the GM Hussar is complaining about did not do the resolution the way he (?) did because he thought that was required to be fair to the players. He did it that way because he learned somewhere (from a rulebook, or a magazine article, or some other RPGer) that "real" roleplaying is not about combat but is about immersion, and that immersion includes free roleplay between PCs and NPCs even in completely mundane, low-dramatic-stakes situations.

Maybe Hussar and I are the only ones on these boards who have encountered such GMs, but in my part of the world they were a dime-a-dozen at least in the late 80s through late 90s. (Maybe still today, but I don't get out as much as I used to.)

First, because I don't think anyone has ever argued that a scene should be played out "regardless of player interests and story momentum" except those building strawmen so that they can amuse themselves torching positions held by no one. I think there is pretty much universal agreement that if the scene serves no purpose, it shouldn't be run.

This passage seems to me to treat "player interests and story momentum" and "purpose" as equivalent. I was not treating them as such. I was not suggesting that GMs are running their desert and hiring scenes without purpose. I was suggesting, rather, that purposes other than player interest or story momentum are not purposes I'm interested in. With world exploration being the number one such purpose.

I've already stated what I would have done in the particular situation.

You also stated how you would handle the purchasing of the horse, and determination of whether or not it is lame. I said above that what you described is different from what I would do, and what I would want in a game. Likewise your description of how you would handle the desert scenario.

You can keep on believing that you are a special snow flake

I don't think I'm a special snowflake at all. I'm pretty confident that Hussar would recognise his approach to GMing as being present in my game, and vice versa. Likewise [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], plus many other ENworld posters who aren't participants in this thread. That I think my preferences and approach differ from yours and [MENTION=6681948]N'raac[/MENTION]'s doesn't mean I think I'm different from everyone else. And that you think your preferred approach to play is no different from mine or Hussar's strikes me as odd, given that you seem to be at pains to explain why Hussar's judgement about the two episodes of play (desert and hiring) was wrong, while he and I both think that he was correct.

 

[Manbearcat]

The GM is there to provide challenges and role-playing opportunities, but at some level you're supposed to earn the rewards.

You want great success, you should be willing to engage in the process of achieving the success. If you want to hand-wave things, then the results will be at best middle-of-the-road.

I agree with the first part. You are indeed supposed to earn the rewards of the success. In D&D, these rewards are (i) character progression (XP and resources/items) and (ii) favorable story progression.

However, framing the challenges to be surmounted is really a playstyle/technique and system issue.

For instance, in this post I detailed how I skipped the Rogue's infiltration of the temple and securing an idol that had to be brought to a village for a curse-purging ritual. I started the scene off with the assumption that the Rogue had already secured the idol and was immediately dealing with different pressure (his hidden horse was being attacked by a pack of whooping hyenas, which attracted the attention of the snake cult). My approach here was multi-fold;

1 - Within the last month, the Rogue performed his shtick of "master infiltrator" by sneaking into a difficult place and performing a particularly difficult task.
2 - As in Burning Wheel's Instincts, I don't set up scene Bangs that violate base assumptions of characters; eg the master infiltrator shtick.
3 - The players in my game are all outdoorsmen (and one woman), proficient (but not masters) in several "chase-oriented" skill-sets (Skills, Powers, Feats). However, their acumen is limited relative to the Rogue's mastery in the infiltration/burgling arts.
4 - My players love chase scenes and will request them on their own or I will solicit scene Kickers to create them. One of the players actually requested a chase scene a few weeks before this occurred. I wanted to ensure that a proper chase scene ensued out of this conflict. Hoping for a chase scene to emerge organically through standard, procedural D&D exploration is playing against the casino house advantage.

So what could have happened? The Rogue goes inside and is successful on a "Secure the Idol" infiltration Skill Challenge while the other two party members (also stealthy) quietly dispatch any sentries that may cause a problem for the Rogue's egress. Knowing this group, this is a very likely outcome. They ride off afterwards.

What did happen? I assumed the success of the Rogue but then put him immediately in a difficult spot to start off the scene...in an area that is out of his expertise (dealing with wild animals, especially an aggressive, starving pack of hyenas). The chase scene was extremely exciting and ultimately resulted in a failed Skill Challenge and led to a very interesting outcome. The players didn't decide to try to jump the gorge, they didn't try to pull a feint (escaping one direction while they sent their horses off in another, hoping the enemies give chase), and they didn't try to climb down the steep face of the gorge and escape via river travel. They looked for natural terrain features to try to escape via subterranean passage (narrow caverns allowing them to more easily create choke points). Well, they found one, but it wasn't what they were hoping for as this accrued failure was the final one in the Skill Challenge, causing them to lose it. A sinkhole opened up beneath them, swallowing the group and their pursuers (see Florida). The injured players (each took 2 Healing Surges in damage) dealt with a short (L + 2) combat with the snake-men cultists who survived the fall and then an "Escape the Underdark" scene (pulled straight out of "The Descent").

Ultimately, they succeeded their "Escape the Underdark" Skill Challenge (and defeated a difficult, L + 4 combat). Queue Transition Scene - we didn't play out the 12 hour travel via forest trail - of them hoofing it to the village on foot. Ritual performed. Curse lifted. Game session over.

So. We have:

1 - Unplayed, assumed successful Rogue Infiltration.
2 - Framed Chase Scene which was unsuccessful. The failed resolution of this naturally led to 3 and 4 which ended in 5.
3 - Off-the-cuff snake men combat in the pitch-black underdark which was successful.
4 - Off-the-cuff Escape The Underdark scene with a genre-esque ("The Descent") being hunted by "mole-men" ordeal. This ultimately led to a deadly combat at the exit to the lair. Both of these were successful.
5 - Mostly unplayed, 12 hour forest-trail-jaunt, Transition Scene where the players, took inventory of the situation and their future; roleplaying a bit.

1 and 5 were hand-waved and 3 and 4 were completely unscripted (I had several ideas about what the follow-up scene would look like pre-game...that certainly wasn't one of them). I'm curious, does anyone feel that there is player entitlement or players not earning their spoils there? Should I have just played out 1 and hoped that they were unsuccessful in their "sweet spot" SOP and that maybe a chase might manifest? Should I have had an extra random encounter during 5?

 

[pemerton]

But don't try to tell me that your games are prioritizing story and mine clearly aren't unless you can show me that the story of your game makes for good literature.

That has basically no bearing on the sense of "story now" as I was using it, which is in the Forge sense. Story now, in the Forge sense, has nothing to do with the nature or quality of what is produced by play. It's about the way in which it is produced - and in particular, the role of the players in that production.

 

[Hussar]

Agreed.

Do you expect to win a combat just because you say you want to, or do you expect to have to engage in the tactical exercise and take some risks with your character in order to beat the enemies the GM puts there? If the GM was in the business of handing out success for no effort or risk, there wouldn't be much of a game to begin with. The GM is there to provide challenges and role-playing opportunities, but at some level you're supposed to earn the rewards.

You want great success, you should be willing to engage in the process of achieving the success. If you want to hand-wave things, then the results will be at best middle-of-the-road.

I'd totally agree with this.

Now, do you think "wanted criminals" counts as middle of the road?

But, also, why "at best"? Why do I get poor results when I want to skim over a scene?

I would suggest you sound like the kind of player who "of course" had winter gear packed away for just such an emergency, and has simply neglected to transcribe it when updating that character sheet last.

Not quite. I'm a player, and DM, who presumes that this level of minutia is a given and I simply don't even reference it. If you are going out into a winter scene, of course you have winter clothes, even if it's not on your character sheet, unless there is a reason why you don't that is established in play. For example, you are teleported naked into the snow would be a good reason why you don't have any winter clothes.

But, I long gave up on this level of detail tracking. I simply don't care. It's fiddly (again, IMO) and boring. And, as a DM, I'm very up front about this - any reasonable equipment can be assumed. And I trust my players not to abuse that. And they don't.

I can be pretty sure, though, that in your game, anything that isn't on the character sheet is not present. Every bit must be tracked. Again, I've played this way and it's certainly not a bad thing. Just not for me.

So, yeah, I view a DM who would consider a wanted criminal to be the "best" to be an aha-gotcha DM and not someone I would care to play with. And it's because of this. Say the DM is going to chuck in this kind of complication 10% of the time. Totally arbitrary number, just work with me here.

The problem is, the players cannot ever know when that 10% will come up, so, they have to treat EVERY situation as that 10%. They can never skip by any scene because there is a non-zero chance that they will get lame horses, or miss needed resources, or get lame men-at-arms. Not because they are doing anything wrong, particularly, but, because they know that if they don't treat every scene as having complications, then the one that they don't will bite them on the ass.

Which grinds the game to a screaming halt as every possible loop-hole must be plugged. Every scene must be played out to a complete conclusion. It doesn't matter that 90% of the scenes are exactly what's written on the box and it didn't actually need to be played out. The players cannot ever presume that.

 

[pemerton]

The GM is there to provide challenges and role-playing opportunities, but at some level you're supposed to earn the rewards.

You want great success, you should be willing to engage in the process of achieving the success. If you want to hand-wave things, then the results will be at best middle-of-the-road.

This seems to imply that a game adjudicated on the basis of "say yes or roll the dice" - ie only focus on those challenges that are built up around player cues and player-driven story momentum - must necessarily be middle-of-the-road. I don't agree with that.

To put it another way: if I can think of a million and one challenges and complications that relate to player cues, that I know will engage the players via their express PC goals (such as investigating things in City B, or wreaking vengeance on the grell), why would I detour play through an hour or more of stuff that is irrelevant to all that? It's not like in the game where I resolve the desert, or the hiring, in a few minutes of free narration is going to have any lesser density of challenge per unit of play time, nor per unit of PC advancement. It's just that all the challenges will be ones that are centred around the signals sent by the players.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

I think the key thing to note here is that Celebrim and Nagol (and likely others) prefer a simulationist style where everything is set up and can't just be handwaved while Hussar and Permerton (and likely others) see the game as being there to be fun first and foremost, even if a sense of verisimilitude is lost by breaking the simulation to get on with more interesting things. Neither way of playing the game is, in and of itself, wrong. The only wrong part would be if those people come together and their massive differences in what they expect the game to be led to problems for themselves and other people.

You won't come to an agreement, other than perhaps agreeing each other can be a jerk and/or stubborn and that you shouldn't play at the same table ever. Things that matter to one side mean little to nothing or might even impede things for the other side, and vice versa. Congratulations, you've got opinions! Just like everybody else. You are unique and special, just like everybody else.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'd totally agree with this.

Now, do you think "wanted criminals" counts as middle of the road?

But, also, why "at best"? Why do I get poor results when I want to skim over a scene?

Again, this is easily enough handled as my post above (a la Burning Wheel's Instincts). Make an assumption based on PC build focus. Are you a "social savvy" Face/Tyrion Lannister character? Does your PC have the requisite platform of Skills (maybe some assemblage of Streetwise, Insight, Diplomacy), or have some other PC build resources (Class Features, Feats, Rituals, Theme or Skill power) that assumes you have such an acumen? If you don't want to mechanically resolve it and your character is a complete nub, then expect poor results. If your character is moderately proficient or a master, then expect results accordingly.

Easily enough done as a base, narrative assumption or a transition scene and now you can get to the table-preferred conflict/action scene (be it social, combat, investigatory or exploration).

Alternatively, if the character is below Master level (meaning doesn't fit the base assumption of auto-success) and its more than mere color (meaning it is an actual resource to be deployed for advantage in some impending conflict), then you could either mechanically resolve it (via a quick Skill Challenge or contest) or make the PC spend some resource that actually costs (Action Point, maybe a Daily slot or multiple, scaling Surges). If its just color, then hand-wave away.

 

[Hussar]

I think the key thing to note here is that Celebrim and Nagol (and likely others) prefer a simulationist style where everything is set up and can't just be handwaved while Hussar and Permerton (and likely others) see the game as being there to be fun first and foremost, even if a sense of verisimilitude is lost by breaking the simulation to get on with more interesting things. Neither way of playing the game is, in and of itself, wrong. The only wrong part would be if those people come together and their massive differences in what they expect the game to be led to problems for themselves and other people.

You won't come to an agreement, other than perhaps agreeing each other can be a jerk and/or stubborn and that you shouldn't play at the same table ever. Things that matter to one side mean little to nothing or might even impede things for the other side, and vice versa. Congratulations, you've got opinions! Just like everybody else. You are unique and special, just like everybody else.

This I completely and totally agree with.

But don't try to tell me that your games are prioritizing story and mine clearly aren't unless you can show me that the story of your game makes for good literature. And don't try to tell me that your quite different way is the one true way to a good story or that those tricks you are using are some sort of esoteric knowledge or that an RPG story device because it can be a good story telling technique is always a good story telling technique. Or you can try to tell me, just don't expect me to agree about it.

Nope. Never said any of that. Did say that my games prioritize pacing and I'm going to stand by that one. Note, there's a whole lot of one-true-wayism being tossed around, but, not by me. I've been very, very careful to state that your way is perfectly fine, just not for me. I've been repeatedly characterized in this thread as a bad player who's out to steal the spotlight and destroy tables. About the worst I've said is that I would not like your game and I think you're an antagonistic DM. Again, I'll stand by that on the evidence in this thread that every single interpretation of the rules is never in favor of the players. Lame horse, missed resources, lame mercenaries who will murder me in my sleep, NPC's who are immune to diplomacy? Yeah, I'm thinking that's not in favor of the players.

 

[Hussar]

Again, this is easily enough handled as my post above (a la Burning Wheel's Instincts). Make an assumption based on PC build focus. Are you a "social savvy" Face/Tyrion Lannister character? Does your PC have the requisite platform of Skills (maybe some assemblage of Streetwise, Insight, Diplomacy), or have some other PC build resources (Class Features, Feats, Rituals, Theme or Skill power) that assumes you have such an acumen? If you don't want to mechanically resolve it and your character is a complete nub, then expect poor results. If your character is moderately proficient or a master, then expect results accordingly.

Easily enough done as a base, narrative assumption or a transition scene and now you can get to the table-preferred conflict/action scene (be it social, combat, investigatory or exploration).

Alternatively, if the character is below Master level (meaning doesn't fit the base assumption of auto-success) and its more than mere color (meaning it is an actual resource to be deployed for advantage in some impending conflict), then you could either mechanically resolve it (via a quick Skill Challenge or contest) or make the PC spend some resource that actually costs (Action Point, maybe a Daily slot or multiple, scaling Surges). If its just color, then hand-wave away.

Well, it was a D&D game, so that mechanical framework doesn't quite apply. However, my character was a fighter and a caravan guard as his background. I figured that should give him a fair bit of insight into the hiring process.