D&D 5E Persuade, Intimidate, and Deceive used vs. PCs

[sunshadow21]

Actually, that points up another interesting thing about 5e, as compared to other versions of the game: it's not really reasonable for a player to declare a check. In your example, a 3.5 player might have said "I diplomacize the Orc.... six plus thirty-three ...47 diplomacy." But a 5e player should wait for the DM to rule whether - and which - check is called for. That's both a philosophical and a design difference. 3.5 wasn't just player-empowering, but the gap between a trained and untrained skill could be /huge/, so you needed to suit your actions to your build proactively. In 5e, any character has a shot with any check thanks to Bounded Accuracy, so it's OK to 'empower' the DM to call for a check, even if it's not always the one the player may be angling for.

See, this is why I tend to question your position that 5E is player driven. I do not consider narrative alone to be enough to put someone in the drivers seat. If a player can't declare a check, than they are not in the driver's seat. If they have to rely on the DM to tell them when to make a check, they are not in the driver's seat. I don't care what role the check has vs what role narrative has; if the player cannot initiate dice rolls themselves, they are not in the driver's seat.

It still boils down to putting these types of interactions in a strange position of not being rule driven but not being purely roleplay driven either. Maybe it's because I am part of a group that has a lot of true bards that really know storytelling, but the results of that particular position are generally unsatisfying to me. You don't get the limitless imagination that comes with pure story telling, as the effects are still going to be bound by the rules to at least some degree, and you don't get any of the benefits of having rules as a player unless you actually control when dice are rolled. To be fair to 5E, this is an issue I have with D&D in general; none of the rulesets handle this aspect well. When there are rules, the assumption is that all the rules must be followed to the letter; when there aren't any clear rules, the assumption is that the rules don't matter at all, and roleplay is king. My personal position is that if I sit down to any rpg system, I accept the inherent limitations of that system in order to gain it's benefits. For D&D, that generally means that I accept that dice rolls matter, for both PC and NPC, and that will often limit my roleplaying options in exchange for being able to participate and shape the story in ways beyond simply being a good story teller myself. I don't have to be a master carpenter in real life to effectively play a PC that grew up learning the carpentry trade; the dice are there to cover whatever gaps I may have as a player. And the most frustrating part to me is that every single edition of D&D since AD&D can be played in this middle ground, yet almost no one does. Even the examples I've seen you use in this thread and others very much come across as being very much DM focused with relatively little benefits to the player aside from being able to bask in the glow of amazing DMing; in real life, they probably aren't actually that harsh, but they would still likely be close enough to that side of the spectrum to leave me wanting a bit more from the game than your position seems to offer.

 

[Tony Vargas]

See, this is why I tend to question your position that 5E is player driven.

Just the resolution system. Players declare actions, that's what sets the sub-system in motion.

I do not consider narrative alone to be enough to put someone in the drivers seat. If a player can't declare a check, than they are not in the driver's seat. If they have to rely on the DM to tell them when to make a check, they are not in the driver's seat.

It's not the check that's critical, but the action. The DM determines success or failure, or delegates that determination to a die, but the player decides what he's trying to accomplish, using what resources.

Declaring a die roll has never been a great idea, IMHO, because the player may know what he want's to do, but doing it may not be based on what he thinks it is. The key to getting an NPCs cooperation may be insight into his motivation (WIS), and no amount of diplomancy/intimidation/deception (CHA) will matter, for instance. Though the need to reduce it to single check doesn't help.

It still boils down to putting these types of interactions in a strange position of not being rule driven but not being purely roleplay driven either. You don't get the limitless imagination that comes with pure story telling, as the effects are still going to be bound by the rules to at least some degree, and you don't get any of the benefits of having rules as a player unless you actually control when dice are rolled. To be fair to 5E, this is an issue I have with D&D in general; none of the rulesets handle this aspect well. When there are rules, the assumption is that all the rules must be followed to the letter; when there aren't any clear rules, the assumption is that the rules don't matter at all, and roleplay is king.

In 5e, the assumption is that the DM's Rulings trump the rules, whether the rules dictate something or are silent. That's more than just 'Rule-0' permission to change the rules, it's more dynamic than that, it can be in the moment, ruling what's best for the play experience.

My personal position is that if I sit down to any rpg system, I accept the inherent limitations of that system in order to gain it's benefits. For D&D, that generally means that I accept that dice rolls matter, for both PC and NPC, and that will often limit my roleplaying options in exchange for being able to participate and shape the story in ways beyond simply being a good story teller myself.

When they matter, sure, and that's not a problem. The DM does get to decide when there's uncertainty that calls for a die roll, though, so there's some flexibility, there. If the players /should/ succeed at something to move the story along or because it makes sense, they do. If not, they don't. If it's uncertain, you roll. The check, itself, isn't narrative power, it's delegating narrative power to the dice. The player's agency is in choosing the actions.

I don't have to be a master carpenter in real life to effectively play a PC that grew up learning the carpentry trade; the dice are there to cover whatever gaps I may have as a player. And the most frustrating part to me is that every single edition of D&D since AD&D can be played in this middle ground, yet almost no one does.

I'm with you on this point, I think. In terms of resolving what a character can do, what needs to matter is the character, not the player. The player's agency is in deciding what the character tries to accomplish, not whether he succeeds (beyond meta-game bits like spending Inspiration or making chargen/level-up choices, of course). It's the abilities of the character and the difficulty of the action, now how well the player might be able to accomplish that action or a facsimile of it that the DM should weigh in determining success. That's why 'just RP it,' can be so un-satisfying and frustrating, because it goes from resolving the scene based on the character's abilities, to based on the player's, the character stops mattering.

Even the examples I've seen you use in this thread and others very much come across as being very much DM focused with relatively little benefits to the player aside from being able to bask in the glow of amazing DMing; in real life, they probably aren't actually that harsh, but they would still likely be close enough to that side of the spectrum to leave me wanting a bit more from the game than your position seems to offer.

DM Empowerment is relative to the system, not necessarily to the players. The game is still player-focused and player-driven, it's their heroes' collective story. 5e DMs are Empowered over the system, the system has DM-dependency built-in from the most basic mechanics on. The system's only as good as the DM. The player's aren't irrelevant, the system just doesn't depend on them to remain functional.

 

[sunshadow21]

The player's aren't irrelevant, the system just doesn't depend on them to remain functional.

And that to me is the part that renders all of what you said pointless. By not requiring players to be functional, it does render the players at least partially irrelevant. You say that I, as a player, can declare an action, but you go on to make it quite clear that I have no control over it's resolution, since that is entirely up to the DM. It is entirely up to the DM, and the player has no control over, the amount of uncertainty any particular situation contains. That is not player agency, that is not player driven action resolution; that is a player making a suggestion, and hoping that the DM recognizes it for what it was intended to do. The player has no control over the use of the game mechanics outside of combat, and therefore, and no direct control over anything outside of combat. If it's going to come down to how well I, as a player, tell a story and describe actions anyway, I am not going to bother playing D&D; I am going to actually sit around a campfire and swap stories with others where we all have the freedom to tell the precise story we want to tell. I lose a bit of interactivity, but gain a lot more by not having to worry about dice and rules and books. Player driven narrative without player driven mechanics is just a weak form of quasi interactive story telling to me, and when I can go elsewhere and get the full story telling experience without the limits imposed by the system, not worth the effort of pulling out books, dice, and character sheet. It obviously works for a lot of people, but I expect a bit more crunch if I am going to take the effort to learn a rpg system and make up a character; simple story telling doesn't require D&D. It doesn't have to be 3.5 level of crunch, but it needs to be more than a four hour long conversation with the DM.

Despite our differences, I appreciate your posts, because I think I can now answer Iserith's question of why that approach is alien to me. It's because I don't sit down at the table for narrative; I sit down at the table for the interactivity. Narrative is important, but narrative for the sake of narrative, especially if it masks legitimate game mechanics I can be using to my advantage, regardless of what side of the screen I am on, is nice, but eats a lot of what is often limited game time. If interactivity is aided by narrative great; if the narrative takes five minutes, and using a game mechanic takes 5 seconds, that narrative is going to have to do a lot more than simply be a flowery expression of the game mechanic to be worth it to me. Taking 5 seconds to tell me my character is intimidated has exactly the same effect as taking 5 minutes to describe it in great, and usually unnecessary, detail, but eats up more time and leaves a lot more room for confusion. The narrative truly is not worth that much to me; just give me the shorthand and keep the game moving. Same with quibbling over how a request for more information about what is in a room; whether it be phrased as a question or an action, I really don't care. It yields the exact same information either way. Ditto with worrying about whether something is magic or nonmagic; I make a ruling based on the effect and move on; getting picky about the source just wastes time and energy. Many here, especially Iserith, very much treat the game like a novel, and I find that if I want a novel, I will go read an actual novel; the experience may lack interactivity, but if I want a novel, interactivity isn't a concern to begin with, so I haven't really lost anything. Tabletop rpgs and novels are two different types of story telling and trying to turn one into the other is not, for me, a particularly worth while endeavor.

 

[Tony Vargas]

By not requiring players to be functional, it does render the players at least partially irrelevant.

I feel like I'm making a very small point that looming unnecessarily large. I'm still talking about the system, itself. It doesn't require player intervention to work. Players still use the system, they just get to use it to play, they don't expend effort to keep it from breaking.

You say that I, as a player, can declare an action, but you go on to make it quite clear that I have no control over it's resolution, since that is entirely up to the DM.

Unless the DM actually takes the decisions you made at chargen/level-up, resources devoted to the action, and the action itself into account, since you had control over all those things.

But, yes, in theory, a DM could have your every action fail without a check, rules notwithstanding. Really, an RBDM could always do that. 5e just gives him more rope. Whether he hangs you, ties you up, or lets you climb it is up to him.

I expect a bit more crunch if I am going to take the effort to learn a rpg system and make up a character; simple story telling doesn't require D&D.

5e does have plenty of crunch, it just also gives the DM license not only to change it but to rule whether/how it applies. Assuming a good DM, you're not going to see a big difference between that and running some more hard-and-fast system 'by the book.' Your character who's good at something will generally succeed at that something - if anything you'll have fewer incongruous failures because the DM won't call for rolls when success is easy or appropriate.

Despite our differences, I appreciate your posts, because I think I can now answer Iserith's question of why that approach is alien to me.

Glad I could help, even if I'm not sure how I did it.

It's because I don't sit down at the table for narrative; I sit down at the table for the interactivity. Narrative is important, but narrative for the sake of narrative, especially if it masks legitimate game mechanics I can be using to my advantage, regardless of what side of the screen I am on, is nice, but eats a lot of what is often limited game time.

OK, that's a stylistic choice, and, if you & your DM are on the same page in that sense, there's no reason it shouldn't play out that way for you.

Many here, especially Iserith, very much treat the game like a novel, and I find that if I want a novel, I will go read an actual novel; the experience may lack interactivity, but if I want a novel, interactivity isn't a concern to beging with, so I haven't really lost anything. Tabletop rpgs and novels are two different types of story telling and trying to turn one into the other is not, for me, a particularly worth while endeavor.

Sure. Some groups emphasize the Role-Playing over Playing the Game, some the reverse, but we're all still RPGing.

 

[sunshadow21]

5e does have plenty of crunch, it just also gives the DM license not only to change it but to rule whether/how it applies. Assuming a good DM, you're not going to see a big difference between that and running some more hard-and-fast system 'by the book.' Your character who's good at something will generally succeed at that something - if anything you'll have fewer incongruous failures because the DM won't call for rolls when success is easy or appropriate.

That is a valid point, and if and when I find a DM and other players that is on the same page as me, I am perfectly willing to consider 5E or any other system that does similar things. However, it's not a system I would play with just anybody or be particularly excited about just sitting down at a random table to play. I've been burned way too many times to assume a good group, and I don't care if a bad DM ends up hanging himself in the process of doing a bad job; I don't want to sit through the experience of watching him do so. I reached this point long before 5E after playing 4E when it first came out. For all that 3.5 has flaws and weaknesses, I could always find some value or relaxation by playing a Living Grayhawk module with a random table. 4E made it very clear very quickly that DM empowerment just as often means DM abuse of power and/or DM ignorance ruining the experience completely. I have no particular interest in wasting limited and precious relaxation time because the DM wants something completely different from the game than I do, especially since I have since found a couple of groups I can enjoy playing with. Since most DMs who choose 5E over other systems do so precisely because of the narrative control and perceived lack of robust rules, that tends to limit my available options for playing 5E; the system itself isn't bad, but pretty much all the available DMs are doing it for all the reasons I actively avoid. So I play it where I see an opportunity to do so while enjoying it, and stick to Pathfinder as the primary system I personally run because I don't have the money to shell out for yet another set of books that is really only a slight varient on the rulesets I already have. Ultimately, though, I find myself slowly moving away from the D&D family of games altogether, because of the reasons I've listed elsewhere. There are just a few too many contradictory assumptions in all of the D&D rulesets for me to be particularly thrilled with any of them at this point.

 

[iserith]

Despite our differences, I appreciate your posts, because I think I can now answer Iserith's question of why that approach is alien to me.

The approach you then go on to describe isn't mine, for the record.

It's because I don't sit down at the table for narrative; I sit down at the table for the interactivity.

You seem to suggest here that if the group is creating a story together, there is somehow less "interactivity." Why is this necessarily so?

Many here, especially Iserith, very much treat the game like a novel

The goals of D&D do include creating an exciting, memorable story, according to the Basic Rules anyway.

 

[Ristamar]

That is a valid point, and if and when I find a DM and other players that is on the same page as me, I am perfectly willing to consider 5E or any other system that does similar things. However, it's not a system I would play with just anybody or be particularly excited about just sitting down at a random table to play. I've been burned way too many times to assume a good group, and I don't care if a bad DM ends up hanging himself in the process of doing a bad job; I don't want to sit through the experience of watching him do so.

I have to admit that I'm a bit envious of people that can be this selective about their gaming group.

I rarely get to be a player. Regardless of my own preferences as a DM, if I'm on the players' side of the screen I'll almost always sit through any style of play for at least one session if another DM is gracious enough to take the time to prep and run a game. I don't mind if he's not particularly good as long as he's not combative and obnoxious.

 

[sunshadow21]

The approach you then go on to describe isn't mine, for the record.

You seem to suggest here that if the group is creating a story together, there is somehow less "interactivity." Why is this necessarily so?

The goals of D&D do include creating an exciting, memorable story, according to the Basic Rules anyway.

It's very much the approach that comes across on this thread, and it's less the desire of creating a memorable experience that is different, but how we approach it.

You very clearly prefer a novel like approach, with every single action described and resolved in very in character language; using descriptions over mechanical terms and dice rolls is very clearly important to you. I don't care about the language used; I truly don't see any benefit to taking twice as long to describe an orc guard being intimidating when I have a perfectly functional skill check that does exactly the same thing, but a lot faster and a lot clearer.

You clearly set it up so that the player experiences the story almost entirely from the character's perspective, or at worst, from the perspective of a co-author; I personally find that memorability of a story is rarely impacted by whether the player experiences it as the character would or as more of a bystander, so keeping all descriptions and terms largely in game is not a particular concern for me or for most that I play with. As long as the general gist of what is said is more or less in line with past actions and background of the character and gets the objective across, I don't care about specific phrasing the the way you have clearly shown you do.

You focus on narrative as the primary tool to tell the story and keep people focused; I treat it as one of many tools I have available, regardless of which side of the screen I am on, and find the interaction between all of the available tools to be part of the interest for me, so a heavy focus on any one aspect, whether it be narrative as you do it or on the rules as many at the Paizo forums do, tends to make me lose interest very quickly.

You treat dice rolls as being a very definitive end to roleplaying that has already occurred; I let the situation dictate where in the scene the dice get rolled, and let the scene dictate how much influence those dice rolls have on the rest of the scene. You also treat dice as being entirely optional, where I consider them as intergral to the story telling as the roleplaying.

Those are the biggest differences I've noticed from your posts in this thread as far as I understand them. The goal is not necessarily all that different, but the preferred path to reach it is vey different.

 

[sunshadow21]

I have to admit that I'm a bit envious of people that can be this selective about their gaming group.

I rarely get to be a player. Regardless of my own preferences as a DM, if I'm on the players' side of the screen I'll almost always sit through any style of play for at least one session if another DM is gracious enough to take the time to prep and run a game. I don't mind if he's not particularly good as long as he's not combative and obnoxious.

I didn't have that luxury for a very long time, and endured a lot of merely decent and outright mediocre DMs in the process; most experiences were ok, a few were really bad, but none were particularly great, regardless of the system being used. It's only in the last couple of years that life finally settled down enough for me to make friends outside of gaming, a few of which are also gamers, and thus provide a core group of people that I can rely on to have a really good experience gaming with. I am very thankful that I have that now, and, while I am glad to have had the experience of bouncing between groups because of the perspective it gave me that many don't have, I am glad that I no longer have to rely solely on that kind of experience to get any gaming done at all. I still have one group I play with regularly that is a public pick up group, even if it's mostly the same players every week, but I don't approach that group the same way I do the closed groups played at DM's houses, and it's not my only game.

It was okay enough when I was younger and had the time and energy to deal with the inevitable bad experience, but I have less time and energy for hobbies now, so not having to deal with all of that is really nice.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That is a valid point, and if and when I find a DM and other players that is on the same page as me, I am perfectly willing to consider 5E or any other system that does similar things. However, it's not a system I would play with just anybody or be particularly excited about just sitting down at a random table to play. I've been burned way too many times to assume a good group, and I don't care if a bad DM ends up hanging himself in the process of doing a bad job; I don't want to sit through the experience of watching him do so.

Ironically, nothing much about 5e - or 3.5 for that matter - causes a 'bad' DM (though what 'bad' means in this context can vary, it can be just 'not good /enough/' or 'inexperienced' as well as outright pathological) to exactly 'hang himself.' The main evidence you'll have of sub-par DMing is that you're not having much fun, but that's far from proof that the DM's lack of skill is the problem...

For all that 3.5 has flaws and weaknesses, I could always find some value or relaxation by playing a Living Grayhawk module with a random table.

If you say so. I enjoyed 3.5 in it's time (and still play it, once in a while, though I doubt I'd never DM it again), but I can't say I ever found it relaxing. ;P

I reached this point long before 5E after playing 4E when it first came out. 4E made it very clear very quickly that DM empowerment just as often means DM abuse of power and/or DM ignorance ruining the experience completely.

Interesting. 5e's pendulum-swing back to classic-D&D levels of DM empowerment (and then some, arguably) is largely a reaction against 4e, which, though it made DMing tasks easier than ever, was very player-empowering and above-board, with less built-in DM-dependence for rulings and rule interpretations. Player-empowerment was not as pronounced when it came to system mastery at chargen/level-up as in 3.5, but still in the same ballpark. I find it odd that you'd group 4e and 5e together in that regard, as 3.5 and 4e ('modern D&D,' as I often put it) are more in alignment along that dimension, while 5e leans strongly towards the classic game.

Since most DMs who choose 5E over other systems do so precisely because of the narrative control and perceived lack of robust rules, that tends to limit my available options for playing 5E; the system itself isn't bad, but pretty much all the available DMs are doing it for all the reasons I actively avoid.

I'm running 5e to support the game. It's the current edition, running a past edition wouldn't do the hobby much good, I'd just be creating embittered, un-supported players and sabotaging what little success there is to be had in WotC continuing to publish D&D. I'd hate to see it go out of print, entirely. I'm participating as a DM rather than a player, though, not just because DMs are always in short supply, but because 5e's DM empowerment makes it fun to run in the improvisational style that I used with AD&D back in the day. 3.5 and 4e didn't lend themselves to that style, both requiring more prep and rules-adherence (3.5 requiring both, and such broad system mastery to run /well/ that I only made the effort for one relatively short campaign, while 4e depended so little on the DM it barely felt like DMing at all).

So I play it where I see an opportunity to do so while enjoying it, and stick to Pathfinder as the primary system I personally run because I don't have the money to shell out for yet another set of books that is really only a slight varient on the rulesets I already have.

Pathfinder was just a 'slight varient' on 3.5 when it came out. Still is closer to 3.5 than any other version of D&D is.

Ultimately, though, I find myself slowly moving away from the D&D family of games altogether, because of the reasons I've listed elsewhere. There are just a few too many contradictory assumptions in all of the D&D rulesets for me to be particularly thrilled with any of them at this point.

OK, now you just sound like you're shilling for Paizo. Pathfinder is very much a close cousin in the D&D family, though, so don't feel like you're straying that far. ;P