NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Crimson Longinus]

This is one of the reasons i feel sometimes players shouldn’t be aware of their rolls, so they can’t ‘know’ they failed a perception or investigation or insight, they need to take what their GM tells them as what they get.

Yeah, that makes sense. But the question still remains. If the GM tells them that they notice no trap, is the PC still allowed to suspect that there might be one nevertheless and take precautions?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Then again, I repeat, if you're going to ignore the information anyway, why are we rolling? After all, false positives are possible too.

At some point you're going to do something with the information provided or you aren't. If you aren't, the time spent on resolution is pointless.

So how do you think this should be handled then?

This happened in my game. the rogue wanted to open a fancy chest in place that already had other security measures. They investigated it for traps and did not find signs for it being trapped. They said that despite this, they open the lid whilst being behind the chest. A poison needle shot from the chest, but as the rogue was not in front of the chest, it missed. The chest was trapped, and they had just failed to notice the trap.

Do you think that instead the GM should have insisted that the rogue must act like they believe that the chest is not trapped, and thus open it normally?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'd suggest people who are chronically making perception rolls and then ignoring them are, at the very least, wasting people's time. If you're going to do that anyway, what was the point in asking for the roll?

Right!!!

I'm not sure our trees fall in the same direction, though. I aspire to get rid of perception rolls completely. (Which is really the topic I wanted to discuss in my agency thread.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

Which is why a lot of people do make those secret rolls, even among GMs who otherwise roll everything out in the open.

And for me this is somewhat of a Schrödinger's Cat sort of thing. If you're rolling in secret, and the player has not declared any action, and presumably either result won't break the game, why are you leaving it to RNG? (Other than....tradition?)

Not just in any particular game. I'm really asking, "Why do we design games this way?"

 

[Bill Zebub]

So how do you think this should be handled then?

This happened in my game. the rogue wanted to open a fancy chest in place that already had other security measures. They investigated it for traps and did not find signs for it being trapped. They said that despite this, they open the lid whilst being behind the chest. A poison needle shot from the chest, but as the rogue was not in front of the chest, it missed. The chest was trapped, and they had just failed to notice the trap.

Do you think that instead the GM should have insisted that the rogue must act like they believe that the chest is not trapped, and thus open it normally?

I'm now thinking about @Thomas Shey 's comments about the difference between "You can't tell if the NPC is lying" and "You think the NPC is telling the truth."

It's entirely possible that I am "sheltered" and really have never heard the latter. (I mean, I took a decade or two off from RPGs, and don't go to conventions, and have only done limited open table play at FLGS's.). But, really, "You believe the NPC" or "You believe there are no traps" is just anathema to how I've always played RPGs. So if I have heard that, I must have translated it in my mind: "Surely he just means I can't tell...because nobody would actually tell me what my character thinks. Would they?"

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And for me this is somewhat of a Schrödinger's Cat sort of thing. If you're rolling in secret, and the player has not declared any action, and presumably either result won't break the game, why are you leaving it to RNG? (Other than....tradition?)

Not just in any particular game. I'm really asking, "Why do we design games this way?"

Results are random, which might be interesting to some, but more importantly to me the probabilities are based on the character skill, which means it has an impact. People with better perception notice things more often. As they should.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Results are random, which might be interesting to some, but more importantly to me the probabilities are based on the character skill, which means it has an impact. People with better perception notice things more often. As they should.

DM fiat does not have to exclude character skill.

And just as I trust players to roleplay their own characters, I trust DMs to make these determinations in the best interest of the game.

P.S. I like how Shadowdark treats lock picking for rogues: if there's no time pressure or other notable consequences of failure, they always succeed at picking locks that can be picked. So if the GM doesn't a door to be bypassed this way, they shouldn't use a door with a pickable lock.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So how do you think this should be handled then?

This happened in my game. the rogue wanted to open a fancy chest in place that already had other security measures. They investigated it for traps and did not find signs for it being trapped. They said that despite this, they open the lid whilst being behind the chest. A poison needle shot from the chest, but as the rogue was not in front of the chest, it missed. The chest was trapped, and they had just failed to notice the trap.

Do you think that instead the GM should have insisted that the rogue must act like they believe that the chest is not trapped, and thus open it normally?

Let them.

But again, if this is a common behavior on their part, I'm going to go "Why are you having me roll checks for this if you're going to go through this song and dance anyway?" And that's over and above whether I think letting them go through the old-school "Let's do everything to minimize risk" trap operation is a good use of our game time. If that's what they want to do every time, we're probably having a discussion anyway.

Basically, either these kind of skill rolls serve a purpose or they don't, and bothering with them and ignoring them is the worse of both worlds. There are parallels in the social rolls; if players are going to chronically assume NPCs are lying (and I think there's problems there, too) or insist on trying to figure it out by my roleplaying of same (which will probably give them a lot of false positives and negatives depending on how my week's gone), then the rolls were a waste of time in the first place.

So my inclination is to ask them "What are you going to do if you assume they're telling you the truth when they say X? What are you going to do if you assume they're lying? Are you going to pay any attention if I have you make a skill roll and tell you one way or the other?" If the latter answer is "no", I'm certainly not going to bother to roll, and we'll probably have a discussion of expectations.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

DM fiat does not have to exclude character skill.

And just as I trust players to roleplay their own characters, I trust DMs to make these determinations in the best interest of the game.

Yes, if you want to eliminate the random factor, you can effectively compare the passive score in the skill against the DC. Then the character skill still matters but there is no roll.

P.S. I like how Shadowdark treats lock picking for rogues: if there's no time pressure or other notable consequences of failure, they always succeed at picking locks that can be picked. So if the GM doesn't a door to be bypassed this way, they shouldn't use a door with a pickable lock.

Can be picked by whom? Certainly there are more skilled and less skilled rogues and some locks are easier to pick than others?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right!!!

I'm not sure our trees fall in the same direction, though. I aspire to get rid of perception rolls completely. (Which is really the topic I wanted to discuss in my agency thread.)

We aren't.

As I've said, I don't think GM/player bandwidth is a good enough vessel to fully handle almost anything where uncertainty is involved, and I see no virtue and pushing all the skill related elements up to the player level in, well, much of anything: perception, social interactions, puzzle solving, nothing. If someone wants one or more of those to be done entirely at the player end of it they fundamentally want different things than I do.