NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Aldarc]

When I saw it first used a long time ago, it served a general purpose (and still does, IMO) in describing a play style where the player while playing tries to relate as deeply to a character in their experience and decision making as they can, but its always going to be impossible to say what does and doesn't do that for someone outside their personal experience because what leads to that better and what disrupts it is immensely personal. As such its largely a personal and aspiration term and you can't really talk about rules approaches "leading to it" or "interfering with it" outside a personal experience, which makes it mostly useless as a term of art for critique of certain rules elements.

Yeah, I generally prefer and think about myself in terms of game immersion. Am I immersed in the play of the game? Because I think that immersion in and out of the character can be incredibly fluid and it's not necessarily consistent with the game processes or mechanics being performed. For example, my character immersion in one time may be broken as easily as the GM asking for a d20 roll without necessarily breaking my game immersion. However in another time that won't be the case. My character immersion may even be broken by how another immersed player roleplays their character!

 

[KYRON45]

So why do they bother with this indirect language of “determine a creature’s true intentions” and “gleaming clues”? Why not just say “…whether a creature is lying”?

They do this because some people require rules for such things. As i am often reminded by other board members, RPGs are games and games have rules and if you don't use rules you aren't playing a game. I'd mention that almost all RPG rules books start off with something equivalent to "just have have fun with it."

When someone like me states that RPGs are collaborative story telling.....the conversation goes sideways with definitions of what a story is and isn't. So I'm not going to bring that up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So this is not the player actually being distracted because emotionally moved. This is the player making decisions in the play of their PC about what is interesting to their PC. I think this sort of thing is very common-place in RPGing.

But does the player get distracted? Which is what, above, you said should be happening in these cases - just as the viewer of a horror film gets scared.

Or does the player decide to play their rogue as attending to the beautiful person? My assumption is that this is what is happening.

I don't think the answer is such a clear cut binary as you think. The players decisions are informed by the genuine feeling the fictional situation elicits, and when the player is immersed to the PoV of their character they're primed to have emotional reaction appropriate to the character. These most likely are quite shallow feelings most of the time, but they still are integral in informing the character's reactions.

As I already posted upthread (twice), it depends on the system, and what aspects of the fiction the system makes the focus of uncertainty in play.

So in The Dying Earth (Pelgrane version), absolutely. In Prince Valiant, likewise - I've already given examples upthread. I've not played very much Pendragon, but it's another RPG which has rules for this - rolls against the appropriate Passion or Virtue.

Yeah, I'd hate that.

And your description of having no choice from their immersed point of view sounds to me closer to a player making choices for their PC as an author makes choices in writing a story - they can't see any other way for things to proceed - than it does like the player themself genuinely being captivated.

Yeah, it is not just that. But even if you could not conceive roleplaying evoking genuine feelings,* we can still identify the issue. When my mental model of the character (whether that was immersive or intellectually detached in the manner you describe) says the character reacts one way but the rules say they react in some other way, we have a problem. That is the thing I hate, that is the thing that I don't want to happen; it breaks my immersion, takes me out of the character, out of the game.

* And really? Certainly you do not actually mean that? If that was true, what's even the point?

Why not? The character is Injured, Sick, perhaps also Exhausted and Afraid. They do not want to risk dying, so they choose not to launch a lethal attack. Especially because their Goal is to get out of the swamp.

The player considers the situation, including their PC's conditions and Goal. And so decides to approach the bandits with a lie, about being emissaries from Roy, to try and persuade the bandits to host them in their moathouse. The player does not choose to threaten, or to push towards escalation. They choose to speak, and to defuse, with the help of the Dire Wolf trying to push the bandits to favour the PC's proposal.

How is this not making a decision from the point of view of the character? In what way would a decision from the point of view of the character be different? What aspect of that point of view is being neglected?

As I have repeatedly said, the players exercise a lot of control over what is at stake in a conflict. They did not attempt to push towards lethality. They had a strong desire to avoid lethality, and deliberately pushed events in that direction.

Right. But the characters can only make decisions regarding their own approach. You imply that the choices the players make are binding to the NPCs as well. Like when the players chose the non-lethal approach to the bandits, then the bandits could not initiate lethal violence either?

As I've already posted, to me you seem to be having trouble envisaging genuinely binding stakes, perhaps outside of death by D&D-style hit point reduction.

Then illuminate me. You're being awfully vague regarding how the stakes are set. But my understanding is, that the stakes can be bound by the players in a manner that does not directly correspond to the things their characters can control.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Searching out a lie is expressly mentioned. The check determines whether you can determine the creature's true intentions - eg to deceive the listener by lying to them. This is done by gleaning clues - but at least as I read it, this is an explanation of the in-fiction process, not the outcome of the check. The outcome of the check decides whether the PC determines the true intentions of the creature.

EDIT: And I see that @Old Fezziwig has made the same point above.

I mean, if an WIS (Insight) check didn't decide whether or not the PC is able to determine the true intentions of a creature, why would the rules say that it does?

I always interpreted that to refer to one more remove: what is the creature's true intention in this conversation? Probably not "to be a liar".

Similar to goal and approach. Lying is the approach; what's the goal?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think the answer is such a clear cut binary as you think. The players decisions are informed by the genuine feeling the fictional situation elicits, and when the player is immersed to the PoV of their character they're primed to have emotional reaction appropriate to the character. These most likely are quite shallow feelings most of the time, but they still are integral in informing the character's reactions.


Yeah, I'd hate that.



Yeah, it is not just that. But even if you could not conceive roleplaying evoking genuine feelings,* we can still identify the issue. When my mental model of the character (whether that was immersive or intellectually detached in the manner you describe) says the character reacts one way but the rules say they react in some other way, we have a problem. That is the thing I hate, that is the thing that I don't want to happen; it breaks my immersion, takes me out of the character, out of the game.

* And really? Certainly you do not actually mean that? If that was true, what's even the point?



Right. But the characters can only make decisions regarding their own approach. You imply that the choices the players make are binding to the NPCs as well. Like when the players chose the non-lethal approach to the bandits, then the bandits could not initiate lethal violence either?



Then illuminate me. You're being awfully vague regarding how the stakes are set. But my understanding is, that the stakes can be bound by the players in a manner that does not directly correspond to the things their characters can control.

I am curious about that too. How do the players set stakes in these games, when they ostensibly aren't in control of things outside their PC? If I'm being threatened by some with a knife, I have no control over whether or not that person intends to inflict violence on me. Without that, how can the PC set the stakes?

 

[Bill Zebub]

They do this because some people require rules for such things.

I guess I don't understand your point here. I was asking why, if that paragraph on Insight is meant to say that a successful check lets you determine if a creature is lying, it didn't just say, "A success Wisdom (Insight) check tells you whether or not a creature is lying." Or "...let's you detect a lie." Wouldn't that be a clear rule? Why all this roundabout language about discerning true intentions?

Even where it mentions the word "lie" it says "such as when searching out a lie". Not detecting, but searching out.

And then it adds the "gleaning clues" about body language, etc.

To me this all adds up that the writers intended for Insight to give you clues to help you search out a lie. Not a binary, "Yup, you know he's lying."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I sorta lost the track why it is a problem if insight lets you figure out that someone is lying...

 

[Bill Zebub]

Here's an example of what you've just described. It's from my own TB2e play:


Conversely, here's an (imagined) example of the players having to act surprised when they're not. It could come from any version of classic D&D (eg OD&D, B/X, AD&D, etc):

*The GM rolls for a wandering monster, and it comes up positive.​

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*The GM asks the players to roll for surprise, and rolls for surprise for the monsters;​

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*The players' roll indicates that the PCs are surprised; the GM's roll indicates that the monsters are not surprised;​

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*The GM rolls for a reaction, and gets a response that indicates that the monster's attack the PCs;​

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*The GM tells the players - "The monsters attack you, with surprise!"​

In this situation, of course the players aren't surprised - they've seen the GM rolling all these dice, and they've been asked by the GM to roll their own surprise dice. But they have to "pretend" that their PCs are surprised, and the mechanics - which forbid them from taking actions, enforce this.

Classic Traveller uses a slightly different way of handling surprise, but it could play out in a broadly similar fashion.

But has anyone ever argued that the surprise rules in these well-known, well-established RPGs are an obstacle to roleplaying or a burden on player agency?

Interesting that you moved the context from social interaction to combat to make this point.

I guess a couple points:

• Certainly I have been surprised lots of times by the appearances of monsters while playing D&D
• There also have been many occasions where I have even watched a random encounter roll with suspense and dread (such as when we are all low on resources and can ill afford another combat encounter)
• All that aside, I'm certainly not claiming that I feel everything my character supposedly feels, just that, for me, this is my goal. If a session has a couple of moments where "I am my character and my character is me", emotionally, then I call it a success.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I sorta lost the track why it is a problem if insight lets you figure out that someone is lying...

Somebody suggested that it's how Insight is meant to be used. And I said I think that's an assumption that isn't necessary supported by the text.

Whether or not it's a problem is another topic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I sorta lost the track why it is a problem if insight lets you figure out that someone is lying...

Well, it's a little boring to have such things just be a binary based on a single die roll. Discourages you from having any NPC ever lie if it's that easy to call them out. Same as dealing with a PC with crazy high passive Perception (and there's always one): now you essentially can't hide stuff because there's virtually no chance it won't be found. Both things harm realism IMO.