NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Crimson Longinus]

The problem therein can be that it becomes more about the player trying to convince the GM rather than the PC trying to convince the NPC. I would prefer to play a character interacting with the world with their particular abilities rather than a player interacting directly with the GM. That would likely draw me out of character and break my own immersion.

That is such a weird thing to say. You're still immersing in the character, you're still portraying the character and the GM is interpreting what you say trough the viewpoint of the NPC they're portraying.

Have you ever been in a LARP? In a LARP there are no rules for almost anything, definitely not for social interaction. Everyone just inhabits and portrays their characters. People should LARP more, as so many seem to be unable to actually roleplay without rules telling them what to do.

As for immersion breaking, what is immersion breaking to me is to interrupt the intense social situation to consult the rules.

 

[Aldarc]

That is such a weird thing to say.

Would you consider rewording this in a less rude way?

You're still immersing in the character, you're still portraying the character and the GM is interpreting what you say trough the viewpoint of the NPC they're portraying.

I mostly feel like I'm just playing the GM and not the NPC as Aldarc and not my character.

Have you ever been in a LARP? In a LARP there are no rules for almost anything, definitely not for social interaction. Everyone just inhabits and portrays their characters. People should LARP more,

No offense to you as I know that you enjoy them, but I strongly dislike LARPs, which is why I am here to talk about TTRPGs and not LARPs.

as so many seem to be unable to actually roleplay without rules telling them what to do.

Please cut this sort of condescending language and pot shots out of your repertoire. This does NOTHING to convince me about your points or make me want to LARP. However, it does a lot to poison future discussion between us.

As for immersion breaking, what is immersion breaking to me is to interrupt the intense social situation to consult the rules.

And that's for you, but I am speaking for myself. The "intense social situation" feels less like a situation between my character and the NPC, but, rather, between the GM and me.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Would you consider rewording this in a less rude way?


I mostly feel like I'm just playing the GM and not the NPC as Aldarc and not my character.


No offense to you as I know that you enjoy them, but I strongly dislike LARPs, which is why I am here to talk about TTRPGs and not LARPs.


Please cut this sort of condescending language and pot shots out of your repertoire. This does NOTHING to convince me about your points or make me want to LARP. However, it does a lot to poison future discussion between us.


And that's for you, but I am speaking for myself. The "intense social situation" feels less like a situation between my character and the NPC, but, rather, between the GM and me.

I don't know how to phrase it so that it doesn't come across as offensive to you. But to me this just reads like you do not know how to roleplay in the way I understand roleplaying. Like without the rules it is just you talking to the GM not a character talking to the NPC. That is the thing that is weird to me. Like incomprehensibly weird. To me the core of roleplaying is to inhabitation and expression of the character, and I don't need rules to do that, and I literally cannot even comprehend the viewpoint that one would.

I don't mean to be rude, I really don't, but it also feels that there is not enough common ground that any sort of understanding can be reached. Like we do not even seem to agree what roleplaying in its core actually is.

 

[Aldarc]

If that is the case, then it sounds like we are done.

 

[Celebrim]

'The NPC intimidates you. There is no-one else in the room. You don't have to back away, but if you swallow your fear and continue to stand up to him, you will have a penalty to your attacks/other rolls'.

'The NPC persuades/deceives you. There is no-one else in the room. You don't have to go along with what he says, but if you don't, you will appear rude and unreasonable and will have a penalty to all future interactions'.

This wouldn't even work logically in a case of being deceived publicly. If you are deceived in public, unless everyone in the room is similarly deceived, you will appear foolish and simple if you are deceived. You get public contempt if you go along with the deception, not if you don't.

One of the biggest problems with social rules isn't that there is some sort of means of negotiating whether or not a character is persuasive or deceptive, but that in general real world social interaction is too complex and subtle to handle well with social rules without heavily applying the GMs judgement to handle circumstantial modifiers and outcomes. Handling social "combat" isn't less complicated than physical combat, it's more complicated.

But also, the whole reason for having complex physical combat rules is to make the resolution of combat less abstract and more like a cinematic scene filled with action and drama. The goal is to make the experience of play more like the real thing. But the problem with having a very complex set of rules to handle social interaction is that makes it less abstract. Because in a social situation the thing we fundamentally are trying to simulate is a conversation, and the more complex the rules we have the more abstract we are making that conversation.

I do in fact adjudicate conversations using social skill checks, but also I am always adjudicating a conversation because that is the transcript of play I'm trying to produce and that is the literal player proposition to be judged. And frequently, how I plan to judge that conversation is complicated - the proud old man is hard to intimidate, unless you threaten to reveal his secret affair with a younger lady at court. He's not easy to persuade, unless the players present a plan that actually has a reasonable chance of success. He's not easy to bargain with, unless the players promise to restore his stolen granddaughter, and so forth.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't mean to be rude, I really don't, but it also feels that there is not enough common ground that any sort of understanding can be reached. Like we do not even seem to agree what roleplaying in its core actually is.

I either have blocked who you are talking to or they have me blocked, but it's both. It's both playing a role and being able to play the role. They aren't in my mind really separatable. If you can make the choices the character would make, but can't speak as that character, you aren't capable of role-playing that character. And if you could passably speak as that character, but not make the choices they would make, then you still aren't capable of role-playing that character. What a character says is closely related to what they think, and is very much what we think of when we think of the word "character". A person's personality is most revealed in their speech.

 

[Bill Zebub]

One of the biggest problems with social rules isn't that there is some sort of means of negotiating whether or not a character is persuasive or deceptive, but that in general real world social interaction is too complex and subtle to handle well with social rules without heavily applying the GMs judgement to handle circumstantial modifiers and outcomes. Handling social "combat" isn't less complicated than physical combat, it's more complicated.

But also, the whole reason for having complex physical combat rules is to make the resolution of combat less abstract and more like a cinematic scene filled with action and drama. The goal is to make the experience of play more like the real thing. But the problem with having a very complex set of rules to handle social interaction is that makes it less abstract. Because in a social situation the thing we fundamentally are trying to simulate is a conversation, and the more complex the rules we have the more abstract we are making that conversation.

I do in fact adjudicate conversations using social skill checks, but also I am always adjudicating a conversation because that is the transcript of play I'm trying to produce and that is the literal player proposition to be judged. And frequently, how I plan to judge that conversation is complicated - the proud old man is hard to intimidate, unless you threaten to reveal his secret affair with a younger lady at court. He's not easy to persuade, unless the players present a plan that actually has a reasonable chance of success. He's not easy to bargain with, unless the players promise to restore his stolen granddaughter, and so forth.

So well said!

And we reduce that complex interaction (in most cases) to a single roll, or perhaps a contested pair of rolls.

How un-fun would RPG combat be if it were resolved in a single roll? I'm not sure I'd even play RPGs at that point.

But at the same time, I can't really imagine what a complex system of rules for social interaction would look like. As you said, we are using dice rolls to represent sword swings, but that's partly because we aren't actually swinging swords at the same time. Replacing something we are capable of doing...talking...with abstraction makes the game less rich, not more.

And even if we keep the talking, but what matters is the dice rolls, then the talking feels...pointless.

It just occurred to me that I treat social interaction not like combat, but like traps: I have two kinds of traps: those that are hard to find but easy to avoid, and those that are easy to find but hard to avoid. In the former case I telegraph the presence and it's up to the players to read the clues, and in the latter case I leave the solution to their imaginations. In both cases I consider it a success if no dice are ever rolled.

What I find boring (and honestly, in my opinion, "boardgame-ish") is:
"I roll to search for traps...17"
"You find a poison needle trap"
"I roll to disarm...23"
"You disarm it."

I don't want that to happen in social interaction, either.

 

[Celebrim]

Bovine feces.

For someone who doesn't even offer a good faith argument, doesn't show signs you even understand my argument, and who spends most of your post doing ad hominem attacks in an apparent attempt to draw moderation down on me, you have a massive amount of confidence.

it's only an absolute truth if, and only if, you do absolutely zero abstractions.

That's not true and it doesn't even describe my playstyle, as anyone who has ever been at my table would know.

It's only a volition drain if one considers volition to directly equate to character success solely upon the skill of the player.

No, because that's not even my playstyle, as anyone who has ever been at my table would know. You can for example build a 'diplomancer' at my table whose incredibly high skill at social interactions lets you readily manipulate NPCs. But you are so hung up on pass/fail success rates that you don't even seem to understand what I'm saying.

that's a playstyle issue, and damned near an edition war declaration. A dogwhistle, if you will, for a certain OSR-favored playstyle that is nearly impossible to enjoy for many who are mentally disabled, or are socially impaired.

If you can't produce an argument, apparently you just throw out some insults and innuendo? Personally, I'd consider that a social fumble, but whatever. Let's just hit this head on, if you really are mentally disabled then yes, there is a good chance you will find it impossible to roleplay a highly intelligent person successfully. I mean, I've known some really smart guys that were just math learning disabled and struggled with basic addition, but who could read literature at a college level, but if we're talking about a general difficulty with abstract thought then they aren't going to be able to play someone who is super smart on their own. The rules won't be able to help this, as if intelligence was a quality so simple that we could easily emulate with a few text blocks.

I tried to avoid going this way out of respect, but here we are. I tried instead to suggest playing with some 5 year old players (or younger) in order to get a learning experience for those that disagree with me. The reality is that if you have that sort of gap, ultimately the only way to make up for it is to have the GM playing their character to some extent or another, via prompting or other railroading techniques.

As for the socially impaired, depending on the social impairment you can have the same problem. If the player is merely cripplingly shy, introverted and lacking in self-confidence, that we can move past to a certain extent using character skill and some gentle encouragement. If the player lacks the ability to understand cause and effect in social interactions because they lack basic empathy and theory of mind skills, they will have a real struggle playing a character that is empathetic and can successfully manipulate people without making enemies. That's reality. Little blocks of text describing character skill can't add the complexity of the thing that is missing.

 

[Bill Zebub]

As a general comment, I can't say I've budged from my position about how I like my RPGs, but this debate, and being pushed to justify/explain/respond, has helped me sort out those opinions into a (perhaps) more coherent design philosophy. So thank you all for that.

 

[payn]

The problem therein can be that it becomes more about the player trying to convince the GM rather than the PC trying to convince the NPC. I would prefer to play a character interacting with the world with their particular abilities rather than a player interacting directly with the GM. That would likely draw me out of character and break my own immersion.

Yeap. I like social mechanics because it reminds everyone specifically that they are playing a character that is interacting with another character being played by a person. I know the social mechanics are not necessary for this, but for many its a great aid in reminding them of it. Instead of just saying to the GM what you want from the characters and/or scene, you are forced to engage from the character to character mindset point of view. That is what im looking for, and often without social mechanics, players drop any pretense of character to character interaction. YMMV.