NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Bill Zebub]

'My character can never be tricked, persuaded, entertained, intimidated, or scared, he has perfect control over his emotional response to all external stimuli' does not strike me as verisimilitudinous. Unless your character is a robot I guess.

Yeah, I wouldn't play with that person. Again, even if the rules force that player to sometimes roleplay in ways that they would rather not, they will find other ways to be disruptive and non-cooperative. So I don't need those rules.

 

[soviet]

But that's not what's happening. The whole conversation is bizarre to me. Are you not capable of roleplaying a character who has a personality, emotions, flaws, natural reactions etc without the rules telling you to?

I am, yes. And I do. I don't necessarily have a full mental model of how my character would react to every possible situation, at least without it too-easily slipping into the perfect self control thing I described earlier, so I think that a 'save versus fear' type mechanic can sometimes be a useful prompt, but I'd like that to be a guide rather than a straitjacket.

What we're talking about ultimately is a failure of game design. Should you mechanise a character's emotional and intellectual response to social influence, and if so is there a distinction between PCs and NPCs, and what are the stakes of such interactions i.e. are they determinative of a response, or do they impose a penalty for acting against the rolled result, or do they act as a guideline only that can be entirely ignored? I don't believe that 5e (at least 2014 5e) has an answer to this.

 

[Bill Zebub]

If the results of those rolls can logically follow from the setting details and circumstances, in logical proportions (more or less), then yes, they absolutely can IMO generate verisimilitude.

There are some posters here with whom I disagree on the conclusions, but with whom I agree on the part of their argument that says mental states are complex and unpredictable. People are weird! So I don't think there is any such thing as "logically following from the setting details and circumstances" when it comes to thought processes and mental states.

 

[soviet]

I think one reason for this is that don't really see any story value, in terms of expressing my character's individuality, in the decision.

Bronn in GoT just sprang to mind. Chris Claremont's X-Men as well. I think in reducing combat to a mini wargame, that's often so complex and long-winded that describing every action would be a significant time sink, a lot of RPGs miss out on the very simple narrative technique of showing a character's personality through the way they fight.

 

[Aldarc]

This has nothing to do with the characters being unaffectable perfectly rational robots. They are not. It is just that it is the player who runs the mental model of the character, which determines how they react and how they're affected. I see this as the primary role of the players and it is highly undesirable for the mechanics to try to substitute for this process.

Yes, but sometimes the player who is roleplaying that character may have reasons to want their character immune from being affected by other characters or behaving in uncharacteristic ways that are more optimal for winning strategies or not screwing over the rest of the party. Also, I am aware that I am not my character. The desires and nature of my character may be at odds with what I as a player recognize as the optimal choice.

But that's not what's happening. The whole conversation is bizarre to me. Are you not capable of roleplaying a character who has a personality, emotions, flaws, natural reactions etc without the rules telling you to?

For me, it's sometimes about roleplaying that character with integrity, discovering who they are, binding myself to the resolution of the rules, and roleplaying this other character who may behave in ways that I would not entirely expect, and in so doing, also finding myself enjoying the surprise of choices that maybe I would not have otherwise made as a player who is aware that I am playing a game.

So, that strikes me as a "some players will be jerks, and we need rules to protect us from that" kind of argument, which I see a lot. My response is that jerks will be jerks, and no amount of rules will prevent that, so your best strategy is to not play with jerks.

This is not about jerks. I'm talking about good people. So please stop trying to dismiss this as something that only jerks do and that I could just avoid it entirely by not playing with jerks. Not every TTRPG problem can be solved by just pretending that the only people who engage in questionable behavior are jerks.

Usually this leads to the "well then why roll dice for combat?" argument, so I'll pre-emptively answer: while I want to make mental decisions for my character, I do not want to do the same for combat. I don't want to try to imagine the scene and the trajectory of the sword and the placement of the shield and the quality of light etc. etc. etc. and try to make that call.

I see nothing wrong with wanting that for social situations too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not intentionally! I must have overlooked it somehow. Sorry.



So, that strikes me as a "some players will be jerks, and we need rules to protect us from that" kind of argument, which I see a lot. My response is that jerks will be jerks, and no amount of rules will prevent that, so your best strategy is to not play with jerks.



I think this is a variant of the previous argument. It is saying that players won't choose to take sub-optimal actions for the good of the overall story. And I disagree.

And, again, if they refuse to do that...don't play with them.

Usually this leads to the "well then why roll dice for combat?" argument, so I'll pre-emptively answer: while I want to make mental decisions for my character, I do not want to do the same for combat. I don't want to try to imagine the scene and the trajectory of the sword and the placement of the shield and the quality of light etc. etc. etc. and try to make that call.

I think one reason for this is that don't really see any story value, in terms of expressing my character's individuality, in the decision. So there's much less incentive, compared to mental decisions, to allow the sword to hit me, or allow mine to miss, in order to better portray my character. It's all downside, no upside. And I don't want to have to make that call for every sword stroke.

However, I will say that when I have used @iserith's* rule for PvP, that when one PC attacks another the target gets to narrate the result, that I have frequently seen players allow the blows to land. So there's that.

Well, all I can say is that "expressing my character's individuality" isn't every player's highest priority.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are some posters here with whom I disagree on the conclusions, but with whom I agree on the part of their argument that says mental states are complex and unpredictable. People are weird! So I don't think there is any such thing as "logically following from the setting details and circumstances" when it comes to thought processes and mental states.

I think the fields of sociology and psychology would likely disagree with that, but ok.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think the fields of sociology and psychology would likely disagree with that, but ok.

Seems to me the opposite is true! Can you suggest a study or principle I could go read about that suggests these things are logical/deterministic/predictable?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Bronn in GoT just sprang to mind. Chris Claremont's X-Men as well. I think in reducing combat to a mini wargame, that's often so complex and long-winded that describing every action would be a significant time sink, a lot of RPGs miss out on the very simple narrative technique of showing a character's personality through the way they fight.

Oh, I still experience a lot of "expression of personality" through the narration of combat. I was specifically referring to the binary decision of whether or not attacks are successful.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Just got back from getting a much-needed haircut. Here is what I was thinking about:

• Having just leveled up, you get to choose a new spell. Do you take "Fireball" or "Lightning Bolt". You choose lightning bolt...
• Then the NPC offers to pay you to go recover an artifact from a dungeon. Do you accept or reject? You accept...
• You get the dungeon entrance on a dreary, raingy day, and find a menacing-appearing maw in the ground, and out of the darkness emanates a putrid smell. Do you dare venture forth? You go forward...
• The passage ends at a T. Do you go left or right? You choose left...
• You emerge into a cave with foul orcs, including a fearsome chieftan who hefts his mighty axe and roars ferociously at you! Do you fight or run? You fight...
• The battle is going poorly, and most of you are wounded and near death. Do you fight on, or try to flee? You fight on...
• Miraculously, you turn the tide. The chieftain grovels on the ground, his followers slaughtered, and begs for mercy. Eyes glinting, he tells you of a fabulous Horde, and he will share the location if you let him live. Do you believe him, or assume he's lying? You...

"...believe him," interjects the GM, looking at the 19 on the d20.

Why? Why of all the decisions you make, many of which have a significant impact on the story, does this one suddenly require a dice roll to determine? Why aren't you rolling on ALL of those decisions? All of the arguments I've been reading in this thread in favor of mechanics...about symmetry, consistency, verisimilitude, surprise, roleplaying, the dangers of letting players always make the most optimal choice, etc....could all apply to every one of those decisions. So why only some (or one) of them?

Unless EVERY decision will be a dice roll, I can't think of a consistent and predictable (in the sense that players know what to expect) way to play the game other than:

1. Players decide what actions they take
2. GMs determine the effect of those actions, which at their discretion may require somebody to roll dice.

Exceptions to #1 need to be clearly encoded in the game (such as spells, psionics, monster abilities, etc.)