All Characters Should be Good at Talking to NPCs

[pemerton]

For social interaction, we don’t see formal training as often, so it’s hard to judge. Maybe consider learning to act?

Based on my own experience, I think there's a big difference between being competent at acting and being competent at social interaction. A big part of being competent at social interaction is attention and a degree of sincerity (even a charlatan has to be sincere in the sense of recognising and genuinely responding to what matters to the mark). Acting has a performative element that I think is different. I think it's quite hard to pretend to be engaged with a situation that you know is not real.

 

[CubicsRube]

The subject of niche protection goes back to what i said before about a lot of rpgs having a single social skill (such as persuade in 5e).

I think if you have a collection of skills it does two things: allows for different social niches to exist within a group (multiple "faces"), and presents to players some clear social approaches that can be taken to a social conflict.

For example if you have skills of intimidate, convince, charm, incite, inspire and command - you could have up to 6 characters filling a social niche.

You'd have to enhance your mwchanics around social conflict, but it could be as easy as the GM setting a general DC for most apprpachs but one approach has an easier DC. E.g, using Command to get past guards might be the most effecrive approach, but if you want to get information out of the local thugs, intimidate might work better.

Then you can set up a situation where characters are more competent in general about talking to certain types of groups.

 

[Staffan]

For example if you have skills of intimidate, convince, charm, incite, inspire and command - you could have up to 6 characters filling a social niche.

If skills being linked to ability scores are a thing in your game, you might also want to spread the social stuff around some. For example, in FFG's Star Wars games, Charm, Leadership, and Negotiate are based on Presence, Coercion on Willpower, and Deception and Streetwise on Cunning. This gives you the opportunity to play the guy who's scary as heck, but whom you don't want to bring to afternoon tea with the governor.

 

[CubicsRube]

If skills being linked to ability scores are a thing in your game, you might also want to spread the social stuff around some. For example, in FFG's Star Wars games, Charm, Leadership, and Negotiate are based on Presence, Coercion on Willpower, and Deception and Streetwise on Cunning. This gives you the opportunity to play the guy who's scary as heck, but whom you don't want to bring to afternoon tea with the governor.

You've just given me another reason to give FFG SW a try..

 

[Lanefan]

Second, before you compose a righteous evisceration of my position, please allow me to explain myself.

Sorry, no righteous evisceration here, just a quick surgical strike...

But you made some good points in the first paragraph. We don't expect every character to be good at swinging a sword or shooting a bow, why should we expect all of them to be good at talking to NPCs? While I do like niche protection as it allows each PC some time to shine, I have found that taking it to the extreme often limits a player's ability to participate in the game. Very often I run into situations where characters who have not invested much into social skills are hesitant to participate in dialogues with NPCs. This can result in a session heavy on socializing and light on combat where many PCs don't really do much of anything.

When I say characters should be good at talking to NPCs I don't mean they should all be equal. By all means, the player who invests heavily into their character's social skills should have a more persuasive character than the player who invests heavily elsewhere. But they should all be able to move the plot along. So what are some ways you encourage players to fully participate in the game even if they're not social butterflies?

Drop the concept noted in bold right out of the mechanics of the game, along with just about any other way in which dice can override at-table roleplaying. Then, just let your players play their PCs through social situations however they see fit; and if a few players end up not talking much it's by their own choice in how they want to roleplay those particular characters rather than anything forced by numbers on the character sheet.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not all that obvious to me. What makes the physical dimension worthy of simulation/representation, but not the psychological/neurological?

Simple answer: the fact that we cannot play out in reality the game's physical dimension at the table, due to a combination of player (lack of) abilities commensurate to their PCs, physical space limitations, and in many cases the laws of whatever jurisdiction you're playing in.

But, we CAN play out the psychological/neurological dimension* to a much greater - ideally, almost total - degree; thus why not do so?

* - i.e. conversations, thoughts, opinions, decisions, non-physical interactions, feelings, emotions, etc. etc.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll take ya one further: every single RPG character should be able to contribute meaningfully to every aspect of the game. In the terms of D&D and the "three pillars," that means that every character should be able to provide something when talking with NPCs, when exploring in the dungeon or the wilderness, and within a combat encounter.

A broader perspective: all RPG characters should be able to participate in all scenes. The alternative creates bad gameplay and usually results in players "checking out" during certain gameplay elements because they feel useless or as though they will hinder the party.

Thing is, all RPG characters can participate in all scenes, unless for some reason they aren't in said scenes due to being elsewhere.

What you seem to be after is that all characters be able to participate equally effectively in all scenes; and here I differ in that I very much want characters to have fairly clear strengths and weaknesses, in order to encourage some inter-dependency between the characters. And if a character's participation in a scene ends up hindering the party, so what; as long as it's entertaining.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Simple answer: the fact that we cannot play out in reality the game's physical dimension at the table, due to a combination of player (lack of) abilities commensurate to their PCs, physical space limitations, and in many cases the laws of whatever jurisdiction you're playing in.

But, we CAN play out the psychological/neurological dimension* to a much greater - ideally, almost total - degree; thus why not do so?

* - i.e. conversations, thoughts, opinions, decisions, non-physical interactions, feelings, emotions, etc. etc.

No, you really can't. You can't actually BE your character, you just pretend. The GM can't actually BE the NPC, they just pretend. You aren't actually in a fantasy world, you just pretend. So, what you're doing is pretending these things, pretty much exactly how you pretend to swing a sword at a pretend orc in a pretend dungeon.

The idea that you're actually doing the social stuff is fooling yourself. Not that it's not fun -- I have a ton of fun pretending to be my character, or NPCs, and like to do silly voices and dialogue. But I don't think I'm being my character any more than I think I'm swinging a sword around.

Further, what you're doing is swapping dice and player-facing mechanics for Bob Says. GM Bob just gets to say what happens, and the players may, or may not, have any real input into what Bob Says. I'm not a huge fan of this, although I played this way for decades. I very much grok that many do find this optimally fun, but let's not dress it up as something you can actually do rather than just another piece of the pretend puzzle -- it's not on a pedestal of "different."

 

[Lanefan]

No, you really can't. You can't actually BE your character, you just pretend. The GM can't actually BE the NPC, they just pretend. You aren't actually in a fantasy world, you just pretend. So, what you're doing is pretending these things, pretty much exactly how you pretend to swing a sword at a pretend orc in a pretend dungeon.

Indeed, but the social pretending at the table can unquestionably be far more closely aligned with what's happening in the fiction than can the sword-swinging pretending.

As for "being" a character or NPC: an actor can't often "be" the character he/she is portraying* but as long as what ends up on the stage or screen is close enough to keep the audience immersed, that's enough. Same is true of roleplaying a PC or NPC: close enough is good enough, and perfection isn't required.

* - obvious exception, of course, is when the actor is appearing in the role of "self".

The idea that you're actually doing the social stuff is fooling yourself. Not that it's not fun -- I have a ton of fun pretending to be my character, or NPCs, and like to do silly voices and dialogue. But I don't think I'm being my character any more than I think I'm swinging a sword around.

I don't achieve it nearly as often as I'd like, but my best roleplay comes at those times when I do in fact stop thinking like a player at the table and start thinking like the in-fiction character I'm trying to portray. And even within the relatively tiny sample size of our own group, I'm not alone in this.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Indeed, but the social pretending at the table can unquestionably be far more closely aligned with what's happening in the fiction than can the sword-swinging pretending.

I disagree. It's closely aligned to what who the players are and who the GM is, but not aligned closely to what completely different people in a completely fantastic place are going to do. It's still highly artificial.

As for "being" a character or NPC: an actor can't often "be" the character he/she is portraying* but as long as what ends up on the stage or screen is close enough to keep the audience immersed, that's enough. Same is true of roleplaying a PC or NPC: close enough is good enough, and perfection isn't required.

This is not the same thing, though, you've swapped arguments from one where you're suggesting that playacting at the table is more aligned with the fiction for one where you're judging entertainment value. I don't play with professional actors, that do lots of work to make for a great performance at the table, so I'm as entertained by my friends acting as I am when at a barbeque -- this argument doesn't hold much water. Especially when I find I'm as least as, and often more, tuned in when using mechanical systems with teeth. This, to me, make my character feel more like a different person doing fantastic things than me pretending in a funny voice.

Which isn't to say that you don't find the playacting much more entertaining, and there's nothing at all wrong with that. I'm mostly pointing out the terrible justifications you're using when you present your preference as better.

* - obvious exception, of course, is when the actor is appearing in the role of "self".

I don't achieve it nearly as often as I'd like, but my best roleplay comes at those times when I do in fact stop thinking like a player at the table and start thinking like the in-fiction character I'm trying to portray. And even within the relatively tiny sample size of our own group, I'm not alone in this.

Oh, I agree, but playacting rarely does that for me, while I get it quite often in games that have mechanical teeth. There's nothing magical or special about playacting that does this more often than other methods (on average, individual preference and results, of course, vary).