A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

It allows players who aren't good at 'laying it on' to play the same kind of character, and it also takes the results out of the judgement of the GM and places them in the even hands of Fate. It also nips in the bud that age old issue of 'that guy' who takes CHA as his dump stat and then proceeds to own the social phase anyway because the player is a charming fellow.

I'm not advocating for over-rolling mind you, I'd only call for a roll when the task has consequences.

I agree that one downside of my approach is player skill becomes more relevant so players with a weaker ability to make compelling arguments, might have a harder time. But the same can be said for players who are weak at battefield tactics or weak at puzzle solving. Now if part of your enjoyment of the game comes from the challenge, and overcoming the challenge (i.e. solving the puzzle, or finding a clever way to persuade the consul to your point), then having those situations boil down to a roll rather than what you choose to do or so, just doesn't feel as satisfying.

That said, you can do things to help the player who isn't good at laying it on (I tend to give an A for effort in these cases). Also you can weight stats into your decision and you can call for a roll when it a character with a really high or low skill makes such an effort and you feel the need to factor in that high level or low level of skill (I don't like social skills, but I do use them because people expect them, and this is largely my approach: I only roll when there is some doubt in my mind about what the reaction would be, or when I feel the character's skill needs to have some weight)

Still though, I don't think people appreciate just how much skill rolls for social interaction take away from the game for folks who are largely their to engage in direct social interaction with NPCs, solve puzzles directly, etc. This was a noticeable issue for me as social skills became more prevalent in the hobby (and in particular, since it was usually the game played the most that I was in, when 3rd edition D&D made them part of the core game). For me this change had a pretty immediate impact on my enjoyment of play and that impact was fixed the moment I ran earlier editions of the game.

There is also a flow issue with these kinds of skills. i really don't like taking time to roll and resolve mechanics when I am engaged in the RP part of play. Now if it is just a simple roll against a target number, fair, that isn't too too much. But there are much more involved social systems (like social combat in some games) and those drive me nuts just from a flow perspective.

All that said, I don't expect everyone to take my view. I have said my preference appears to be out of the norm, and that I do include social skills in the games I make because even most of my own players expect them in some way. I just have a very particular way of using them to preserve my style (which has taken me a while to figure out how to work).

 

[Bedrockgames]

. It also nips in the bud that age old issue of 'that guy' who takes CHA as his dump stat and then proceeds to own the social phase anyway because the player is a charming fellow.

This doesn't bother me quite as much. Ideally people are playing their character, but if they just play themselves, I am fine with that too. I will say, in earlier versions of D&D at least, CHR will still be a factor though with reaction rolls (but that is more about a person's disposition at the start of the encounter). In the case of a player who uses lots of charming language but has a low CHR, I tend to read that as something like them looking like Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds if he were well spoken.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just to maybe step in and hopefully clarify, neither of you seem to be approaching this from an “engineer’s mindset”. Your appeal to believability sounded like some kind of simulationist angle, so I think that’s how @Manbearcat took it.

That is because your side's use of the term simulationist doesn't jive with the way we play the game. This is one of the major reasons people on my side reject GNS theory for example. I have tried to explain I am not running a realistic simulation of reality.

I do think Manbearcat's approach to my way of handling NPCs was very engineer-like. I get that may not be how he plays at the table. But his insistence that to do it my way, I'd need to be figuring out the actual level of 'hits' in real life social situations and using a formula to replicate that....that struck me as very 'engineer-like'.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The roll adds tension. If the outcome is uncertain, calling for a roll brings that uncertainty to the table in a tangible way.

Sure, but that tension isn't necessarily connected to what the player is saying (I could add tension with all kinds of mechanics outside the actual events of play----I could create a whole mini-game to increase the tension). But I want to focus on the actual exchange (and there is usually plenty of tension there: often something as simple as the GM pausing before giving an answer will produce it).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just to be clear @Manbearcat, I love genre RPGs and I like having worlds that follow genre physics. I think there are different ways of producing genre physics (some games will make sure certain plot elements always arise for example, others are more focused on letting you explore the world that say Bruce Lee inhabited in Enter the Dragon, but they are not necessarily guaranteeing you get to be Bruce Lee. But I use genre logic all the time in my campaigns. I run plenty of wuxia campaigns for instance and many genre conventions are factored into my judgements. Still if you are consistent about it, that continues to create the sense of a believable world (albeit a believable world of wuxia rather than our mundane reality).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I suspect this attitude may come, in part, out of Gygaxian libertarianism. The Gygaxian approach to game agency, rational actors, "the invisible hand" of the GM, and meaningful decision-making that is prevalent in D&D's make-up seems to have vaguely libertarian underpinnings.* But being able to elucidate with any erudition the extent to which that hypothesis holds true is another matter.

I don't really buy this. I think this is a very questionable idea. I understand for a lot of people now, the mechanics of a game are somehow inseparable from political belief, but as a person who didn't share most of Gygax's politics, I've never found the game to be in conflict with my own: because these are rules for play in a fake world, not rules meant to be taken out into the real world and applied. By the same token, allowing for an uneven power structure between players and the GM in a game, doesn't mean you would want that kind of uneven power structure in real life. Also, if the game and it’s mechanics truly reflected a libertarian worldview, there would likely be extreme distrust of GM authority, wouldn’t there? i just think this kind of thinking breaks down once you get past a superficial reading of the game

 

[FrogReaver]

Just to be clear @Manbearcat, I love genre RPGs and I like having worlds that follow genre physics. I think there are different ways of producing genre physics (some games will make sure certain plot elements always arise for example, others are more focused on letting you explore the world that say Bruce Lee inhabited in Enter the Dragon, but they are not necessarily guaranteeing you get to be Bruce Lee. But I use genre logic all the time in my campaigns. I run plenty of wuxia campaigns for instance and many genre conventions are factored into my judgements. Still if you are consistent about it, that continues to create the sense of a believable world (albeit a believable world of wuxia rather than our mundane reality).

I’d say genre logic is actually a main component that drives believability.

I think that when people talk about believable in relation to the real world they really mean believable in respect to the genre logic. It’s just that in this instance for them the real world and genre logic are in alignment.

it’s why the refrain against certain mechanics is: if I wanted to play a supers game I would do so. They dont view the abilities in question as genre appropriate which detracts from their believability.

 

[darkbard]

Just to be clear @Manbearcat, I love genre RPGs and I like having worlds that follow genre physics.

@Bedrockgames, you suggested that exchanges between you and @Manbearcat be closed down, to which he agreed, and now here (and a few posts earlier when you indirectly address him), you seem unable to stop yourself from jumping in with one (or two) last word(s). Do you not see why it becomes frustrating interacting with you?

I add that this mirrors your claims of not being opposed to (much) analysis with subsequent repeated posts decrying the ills of analysis (see our earlier exchanges on this subject).

 

[FrogReaver]

I add that this mirrors your claims of not being opposed to (much) analysis with subsequent repeated posts decrying the ills of analysis (see our earlier exchanges on this subject).

Maybe he is just opposed to bad analysis that frames his playstyle in a very negative light? Afterall, one can complain about bad analysis without being opposed to analysis.

 

[Fenris-77]

I agree that one downside of my approach is player skill becomes more relevant so players with a weaker ability to make compelling arguments, might have a harder time. But the same can be said for players who are weak at battefield tactics or weak at puzzle solving. Now if part of your enjoyment of the game comes from the challenge, and overcoming the challenge (i.e. solving the puzzle, or finding a clever way to persuade the consul to your point), then having those situations boil down to a roll rather than what you choose to do or so, just doesn't feel as satisfying.

That said, you can do things to help the player who isn't good at laying it on (I tend to give an A for effort in these cases). Also you can weight stats into your decision and you can call for a roll when it a character with a really high or low skill makes such an effort and you feel the need to factor in that high level or low level of skill (I don't like social skills, but I do use them because people expect them, and this is largely my approach: I only roll when there is some doubt in my mind about what the reaction would be, or when I feel the character's skill needs to have some weight)

Still though, I don't think people appreciate just how much skill rolls for social interaction take away from the game for folks who are largely their to engage in direct social interaction with NPCs, solve puzzles directly, etc. This was a noticeable issue for me as social skills became more prevalent in the hobby (and in particular, since it was usually the game played the most that I was in, when 3rd edition D&D made them part of the core game). For me this change had a pretty immediate impact on my enjoyment of play and that impact was fixed the moment I ran earlier editions of the game.

There is also a flow issue with these kinds of skills. i really don't like taking time to roll and resolve mechanics when I am engaged in the RP part of play. Now if it is just a simple roll against a target number, fair, that isn't too too much. But there are much more involved social systems (like social combat in some games) and those drive me nuts just from a flow perspective.

All that said, I don't expect everyone to take my view. I have said my preference appears to be out of the norm, and that I do include social skills in the games I make because even most of my own players expect them in some way. I just have a very particular way of using them to preserve my style (which has taken me a while to figure out how to work).

Don't get me wrong, I agree with pretty much everything you have to say here. I was just laying out the reasons in favour of using the roll. My GMing style involves rolling the fewest dice possible, so in the case where a suave player does a nifty bit of roleplaying I will often just nod and say yes rather than calling for a roll. However, in a game where someone less suave wants to play the Face I will lean more heavily into the roll and succeed method to help scaffold their lack of innate people skills. In both cases my goal is to be a fan of the characters.

As far as rolling dice and the flow goes, I don't find it's an issue for me any more than it is in combat. When the stakes get high enough I am going to get the player to roll some dice no matter what the RP looks like because, IMO, that's the game.