NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Thomas Shey]

Agreed. There’s also the meta gaming aspect. Players are media savvy enough to recognize the Keyser Soze character in front of them, and immediately not trust a single word they say. Even if the are “deceived” per a deception roll, the player knows the NPC is a lying snake.

Its almost impossible to entirely address the fact that a player is capable of often picking out functions an NPC serves in the ongoing narrative in a way their character can't, or at least isn't expected to. To avoid it requires an extremely naturalistic style of presentation that most people neither want, nor to be blunt, are likely up to managing on a regular basis.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So, a few things here. If Elam was an NPC, and the constable a PC, how would you play this out? The goal for Elam was to throw off suspicions and get the authorities to protect him from his enemies. He couldnt simply tell them he had suspicions that an assassin was there to kill him. Also, he'd have to give up on his "just a shop keep" ruse and/or reveal info he didnt want to provide. So, he concocted an event that forced his unwitting allies to act on instead of convincing them with a simple lie. Now if the constable was a PC, they could just say "nope, this guy is lying not gonna do this at all" despite the facts before the character. What is the justification for that other than meta gaming though?

Quote "This doesn't feel right". Might very well be metagaming, but its the core of the problem; is the player just going with what he thinks his character would do for reasons that can't be articulated, or is he using that as a smokescreen to cover metagaming?

It can be functionally impossible to separate the two from outside the player's head (and in some cases, maybe difficult to do so inside it).

 

[Thomas Shey]

100%. That's why my first words were "My stance..."

I was primarily noting in that particular post that there are games that cannot be used as-written with that stance. Your answer can, of course, be "that's a good reason for me not to use those games".

 

[Bill Zebub]

I was primarily noting in that particular post that there are games that cannot be used as-written with that stance. Your answer can, of course, be "that's a good reason for me not to use those games".

Roger that. I noted as much in my post about Torchbearer. Super interesting to read about; not my cup of tea.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Totally agree here. I'm only cautioning against designing adventures so that if the players know, or even guess, a certain truth it spoils the DMs preparation. Or at least be the kind of DM that rolls with that change and is able to pivot.

Well, honestly, single-points-of-failure aren't any better an idea in adventure design than they are in most other places, and that isn't limited to things like this. I learned this the hard way in a TORG scenario I ran a number of years ago.

Because sometimes in these discussions about NPC deception and player agency, there is (or there seems to be, to me?) a subtext of "...because it will ruin the story if the players don't go along with the lie."

Well, of course, in some cases they probably aren't wrong, but see my note above. You insert those sort of situations at your own risk. Because even if you're using a really hardcore social system, at the end you can't force the players to believe what the roll tells them their characters believe. That's why I don't really try; I tell them what the roll tells them about what their characters natural or trained skills with accessing how an NPC presents things suggests, and past that they're going to do what they do. But then, I do the same on the other side, so...

 

[Bill Zebub]

or is he using that as a smokescreen to cover metagaming?

Which is exactly the reason 'metagaming' (defined as 'using knowledge the player has that the character does not') shouldn't be banned: players who want to play that way will still do so, but they will try to pretend they are not, and the metagame police will suspect as much and try to catch them doing it. That doesn't make anything more fun for anybody.

Find like-minded players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Agree 100%, but reading your post made me realize that perhaps some people who disagree are coming from the position of believing that you shouldn't have to have these skills in order to DM. And that's actually a really interesting question. Should you have to be a good actor in order to be a good DM? Or is it fine that some DMs can pull off humor and deception, and other DMs have to rely on other tools?

I don't think you should have to, but you also need to understand the practical limits in this area of the lack of skill in that area. There are techniques to minimize your lacks in this area (though some people don't like them because they require being a bit flat when roleplaying characters who's truthfulness is important and pushing more of it off to the rolls, since otherwise you provide the players with more information (sometimes bad information) on a meta level than they're being supplied on an IC level) but you can't entirely solve the problem any more than you can entirely solve the problem of being a bad tactician in a game where combat is more than just an exchange of die rolls.

 

[pemerton]

It's still not the case that in most games a social skill check by an NPC forces particular courses of action on a player though. D&D, CoC, BRP generally, OSR, etc etc - the list of games where that's not the case is extensive.

I'm not suggesting that via roleplaying that a player might not choose to believe those things, or act as if they are true, only that (unlike NPCs going the other way) many games, perhaps even most games, don't decide that issue for the player.

To me, this links back to @kenada's post(s) upthread.

For many years (1990-2008 inclusive) my main RPG was Rolemaster, RM has an extensive list of social/influence skills, and (of course) has a resolution chart for when players declare actions involving those skills. But the assumption, as for the various games that you list, is that these skills are figuring primarily in players' rolls to have their PCs influence NPCs.

But when we played, there was a type of "honour code", which back then we would have labelled "good roleplaying", that if the GM told you that a NPC said such-and-such to you, and had a result of (say) 150 on their Duping roll, then you would roleplay your PC being duped even though you, the player, knew that it was a lie.

I think this is what @kenada was getting at, in referring to RPGs that are less "toothy" in their social conflict resolution than systems like the ones I mentioned in my post (MHRP, Torchbearer, etc).

EDIT: I think @payn is getting at a similar point in post 112 upthread.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

BTW, if you have a plot that absolutely requires the players to buy a lie, don't start by the deceitful NPC lying to the PCs directly. Instead they have duped an another NPC, preferably one the players already trust. Then this NPC relies this information (which they believe to be true) to the PCs.

 

[TiQuinn]

Its almost impossible to entirely address the fact that a player is capable of often picking out functions an NPC serves in the ongoing narrative in a way their character can't, or at least isn't expected to. To avoid it requires an extremely naturalistic style of presentation that most people neither want, nor to be blunt, are likely up to managing on a regular basis.

There are times I can pull it off but the thing that helps is actively working to make sure there are also genuinely helpful NPCs who do not harbor ulterior motives. If every helpful NPC betrays the characters or is set up to die horribly or be an obstacle, players get conditioned to treat NPCs accordingly.