NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[payn]

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?

I think its going to fall on play style. I had an old school GM some years ago with a pretty new school minded group. That GM was the skill play type where everything, I mean everything, was trying to kill your character. Nothing was a certainty unless you searched it high and low, prodded it with a ten foot pole, and even then didnt trust it. The GM didnt get why folks were not enjoying his game. It just wasnt what they wanted to spend their session time doing.

I've taken to moments of moving the game along. That manifests as a certain look on my face or more recently a confident tone that "we are all good here". As in, "the PC is sure there is no trap" or "you spend as long as the character wants, but nothing is discovered." I dont go there until I feel one of two things. Either the players are being too thorough with something that has no significance, or are fixated on pursuing a red herring.

I know some folks are of a mind thats a cardinal sin of deciding something of interest for the players, but I dont see the matter as simple black and white issue. I dont want a pixelbitching session and so im going to inform the players they dont need to treat my games like one. I will, provide plenty of opportunity to explore a situation out as interests my players, but I wont waste our time on cobwebs and dead ends either. YMMV

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?

Its pretty rare for me these days to set up a narrative around opening a trapped chest. I might make a thing of it, if its part of an adventure and thus a well thought out puzzle which will be completely telepgraphed. If its just an average chest with some goodies in it, im going with the abstraction as the rules offer. Meaning, in order to open the chest you need to operate the latch in a way thats going to mean facing the trap. Doesnt matter if you are in front of it, on the side, or behind it. Operate the latch, and make a save against the trap.

If the PCs really go out of their way to use poles, or drop the chest down a pit, or hit it with a fireball, etc.. im just going to give it to them. Then, ill probably never use a chest again unless its actually a puzzle to solve. As far as I am converned, this is how I presented the situation as a GM issue, and not the PCs have to follow a protocol based on their perception result matter.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think its going to fall on play style. I had an old school GM some years ago with a pretty new school minded group. That GM was the skill play type where everything, I mean everything, was trying to kill your character. Nothing was a certainty unless you searched it high and low, prodded it with a ten foot pole, and even then didnt trust it. The GM didnt get why folks were not enjoying his game. It just wasnt what they wanted to spend their session time doing.

I've taken to moments of moving the game along. That manifests as a certain look on my face or more recently a confident tone that "we are all good here". As in, "the PC is sure there is no trap" or "you spend as long as the character wants, but nothing is discovered." I dont go there until I feel one of two things. Either the players are being too thorough with something that has no significance, or are fixated on pursuing a red herring.

I know some folks are of a mind thats a cardinal sin of deciding something of interest for the players, but I dont see the matter as simple black and white issue. I dont want a pixelbitching session and so im going to inform the players they dont need to treat my games like one. I will, provide plenty of opportunity to explore a situation out as interests my players, but I wont waste our time on cobwebs and dead ends either. YMMV

Its pretty rare for me these days to set up a narrative around opening a trapped chest. I might make a thing of it, if its part of an adventure and thus a well thought out puzzle which will be completely telepgraphed. If its just an average chest with some goodies in it, im going with the abstraction as the rules offer. Meaning, in order to open the chest you need to operate the latch in a way thats going to mean facing the trap. Doesnt matter if you are in front of it, on the side, or behind it. Operate the latch, and make a save against the trap.

If the PCs really go out of their way to use poles, or drop the chest down a pit, or hit it with a fireball, etc.. im just going to give it to them. Then, ill probably never use a chest again unless its actually a puzzle to solve. As far as I am converned, this is how I presented the situation as a GM issue, and not the PCs have to follow a protocol based on their perception result matter.

Here are four very broad approaches to this (I'm sure there are more, or different ones, but this is how I'm choosing to frame it):

• The really old school method of describing how you search prod every square inch of the dungeon. Con: a ton of game time is wasted narrating all this searching.
• The more streamlined and less repetitive method of just "rolling to search". Con: still wastes game time.
• The even more streamlined version of using passive search skills. Con: at this point the players aren't even 'playing'. The only relevant player decision happened at chargen.
• What I propose: Either telegraph their existence so that players (which then becomes the old-school method, but without time wasted when there are no secrets) or just announce their existence and make the opening/disarming the challenge. Con: it's hard to think of enough novel ideas, so you have to get rid of 90% of your traps and secret doors. Which I think is fine.

 

[zakael19]

I think its going to fall on play style. I had an old school GM some years ago with a pretty new school minded group. That GM was the skill play type where everything, I mean everything, was trying to kill your character. Nothing was a certainty unless you searched it high and low, prodded it with a ten foot pole, and even then didnt trust it. The GM didnt get why folks were not enjoying his game. It just wasnt what they wanted to spend their session time doing.

I've taken to moments of moving the game along. That manifests as a certain look on my face or more recently a confident tone that "we are all good here". As in, "the PC is sure there is no trap" or "you spend as long as the character wants, but nothing is discovered." I dont go there until I feel one of two things. Either the players are being too thorough with something that has no significance, or are fixated on pursuing a red herring.

I know some folks are of a mind thats a cardinal sin of deciding something of interest for the players, but I dont see the matter as simple black and white issue. I dont want a pixelbitching session and so im going to inform the players they dont need to treat my games like one. I will, provide plenty of opportunity to explore a situation out as interests my players, but I wont waste our time on cobwebs and dead ends either. YMMV

Its pretty rare for me these days to set up a narrative around opening a trapped chest. I might make a thing of it, if its part of an adventure and thus a well thought out puzzle which will be completely telepgraphed. If its just an average chest with some goodies in it, im going with the abstraction as the rules offer. Meaning, in order to open the chest you need to operate the latch in a way thats going to mean facing the trap. Doesnt matter if you are in front of it, on the side, or behind it. Operate the latch, and make a save against the trap.

If the PCs really go out of their way to use poles, or drop the chest down a pit, or hit it with a fireball, etc.. im just going to give it to them. Then, ill probably never use a chest again unless its actually a puzzle to solve. As far as I am converned, this is how I presented the situation as a GM issue, and not the PCs have to follow a protocol based on their perception result matter.

NuSR games and a lot of the top OSR advice I've seen says to, as long as the players are moving at standard dungeon pace (which assumes cautious movement, basic degrees of awareness that a skill adventurer would have, and probing for obvious stuff) or being generally thoughtful: telegraph the absolute crap out of your traps. The goal these days is to give players interesting problems to solve, not gotchas.

To quote from a really interesting series of posts by the author of His Majesty the Worm (Josh McCrowell) in a discussion we were having on the discord there:

I think the most important thing about save or die traps--whether you use mechanics to negotiate around the death or not--is broadcasting them clearly. The deadlier the trap, the clearer the telegraphy needs to be. As players explore, broadcast the presence of traps loudly by engaging all five senses. Speak generously as they investigate, telling them as much as possible about their environment. Thoughtful play should be rewarded with safety from casual-and-certain death. Good ideas should circumvent the mechanics you rely on to see whether or not they suffer a terrible fate...[examples of what he considers bad GM play]
...

Seems like fair deuce to me:​

GM: You see a stone hallway proceeding 50' from the door you just opened, with a door on the other side. The walls are splattered with dried blood, concentrated towards the mid-way point of the hallway. You see bones--wait let me revise. Uhh, you see almost entirely intact skeletons. Intact, except that they're sitting in quarters on the ground. What do you do?
Player: I throw a rock into the room. GM: The rock taps onto the ground, but nothing happens. It was pretty light, though. Maybe the pressure plate isn't sensitive enough, or maybe it's not a trap, and there was like, a wizard duel here.
Player: Hmm. I'll try and push into the hallway with my halberd.

GM: You press down with your halberd, and indeed, there IS a pressure plate. It clicks down. A laser shoots down from the ceiling. It travels, slowly, down the hallway, hits the other side, changes direction, and comes back. If you had been in the hallway, you would have been eviscerated, unless you hugged the walls tightly.
Player: But we can see the....we can like, see the progress it made? Going down and then back up? Could we hug the walls when it passed by?GM: Seems reasonablePlayer: Do we have to make a test for that?
GM: Uh, if there was a troll here, I'd make them test, but not if you're human sized or smaller.

 

[Bill Zebub]

NuSR games and a lot of the top OSR advice I've seen says to, as long as the players are moving at standard dungeon pace (which assumes cautious movement, basic degrees of awareness that a skill adventurer would have, and probing for obvious stuff) or being generally thoughtful: telegraph the absolute crap out of your traps. The goal these days is to give players interesting problems to solve, not gotchas.

To quote from a really interesting series of posts by the author of His Majesty the Worm (Josh McCrowell) in a discussion we were having on the discord there:

100.0% agree, with the bold part in particular.

And gaming time is finite: I want to spend as much of it as possible on solving interesting problems.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

But the roll serves and obvious purpose. Now the player made a lucky guess about what type of trap there might be. But they didn't know. It could have been nothing, or it could have been a gas cloud or an explosion, in which case it would have not mattered from what direction they opened the chest. A successful roll would have given them useful information.

Same with insight. Successful roll gives you useful information (and in my games usually something more nuanced than "they're lying.") Failed roll does not give them this information. But ultimately it is up to the players what they do with this information or lack thereof. And unlike with a chest, where there probably aren't much drawbacks in taking some simple safety measures, with people it is more complex. There are pretty obvious drawbacks in not believing that people are truthful when they in fact are.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes. And....

....the DM could say, "Ok, I think that (challenge) is about a DC 12. What's the PC's passive skill?" And that might feel like they are using "the rules".

But not only are they making up the DC, they are (probably) also factoring in what they know about the PCs, at least subconsciously.

So maybe just skip the charade of objective mechanics and choose whatever will be more interesting?

Like I said in the other thread, too railroady to me and downplays the importance of character skills. And one would hope that the GM has some internal model by which they assign DCs, so that they're not completely arbitrary. For example in my game the lock would never be DC 12, as I only use the suggested DCs that come in increments of five. I feel that I can keep six step scale pretty consistently linked to the fiction without it feeling arbitrary which I assign, but that would be hella lot harder to do with a 30 point scale!

Sure. And the less skilled ones take longer. But, remember, no time pressure.

I am not convinced that anyone with any familiarity with lockpicking can open any lock given time. (Still assuming some sensible amount of time, like hours, rather than months or years.) And if the game has character building resources that can be used to improve lockpicking, then they will have way less impact as in many situations the minimum amount is sufficient.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think its going to fall on play style. I had an old school GM some years ago with a pretty new school minded group. That GM was the skill play type where everything, I mean everything, was trying to kill your character. Nothing was a certainty unless you searched it high and low, prodded it with a ten foot pole, and even then didnt trust it. The GM didnt get why folks were not enjoying his game. It just wasnt what they wanted to spend their session time doing.

I've taken to moments of moving the game along. That manifests as a certain look on my face or more recently a confident tone that "we are all good here". As in, "the PC is sure there is no trap" or "you spend as long as the character wants, but nothing is discovered." I dont go there until I feel one of two things. Either the players are being too thorough with something that has no significance, or are fixated on pursuing a red herring.

I know some folks are of a mind thats a cardinal sin of deciding something of interest for the players, but I dont see the matter as simple black and white issue. I dont want a pixelbitching session and so im going to inform the players they dont need to treat my games like one. I will, provide plenty of opportunity to explore a situation out as interests my players, but I wont waste our time on cobwebs and dead ends either. YMMV

Its pretty rare for me these days to set up a narrative around opening a trapped chest. I might make a thing of it, if its part of an adventure and thus a well thought out puzzle which will be completely telepgraphed. If its just an average chest with some goodies in it, im going with the abstraction as the rules offer. Meaning, in order to open the chest you need to operate the latch in a way thats going to mean facing the trap. Doesnt matter if you are in front of it, on the side, or behind it. Operate the latch, and make a save against the trap.

If the PCs really go out of their way to use poles, or drop the chest down a pit, or hit it with a fireball, etc.. im just going to give it to them. Then, ill probably never use a chest again unless its actually a puzzle to solve. As far as I am converned, this is how I presented the situation as a GM issue, and not the PCs have to follow a protocol based on their perception result matter.

Yeah I get that. I don't like the old school über paranoia playstyle either. I use traps rarely and in rather obvious places. And indeed, more dangerous they are, more clearly telegraphed they will be. But I still like the players to be able to engage with them via fictional positioning rather than purely through skill rolls.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I am not convinced that anyone with any familiarity with lockpicking can open any lock given time. (Still assuming some sensible amount of time, like hours, rather than months or years.) And if the game has character building resources that can be used to improve lockpicking, then they will have way less impact as in many situations the minimum amount is sufficient.

Well, honestly, with old-style locks, the minimum amount mostly was sufficient if you could play with it for hours without risk. Its just that in most cases, taking indefinite periods of time is not a risk-free operation; in all but a small subset, you really want to get it done and git.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Like I said in the other thread, too railroady to me and downplays the importance of character skills.

100% agree.

What I'm advocating is replacing 10 (or however many. "N") low agency, low stakes, sort-of-pointless dice rolls with one really good, well thought out, high stakes challenge.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

100% agree.

What I'm advocating is replacing 10 (or however many. "N") low agency, low stakes, sort-of-pointless dice rolls with one really good, well thought out, high stakes challenge.