NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[pemerton]

That's all fine and good, but that definitely is the players affecting the stakes via means their characters are not aware of.

Yes. And?

In D&D play, players set the stakes by means that their characters are not aware of - eg someone might say "This new WotC module looks cool", or the GM might say "Who wants a campaign about fighting Kobolds and their dragon overlords?"

It's natural, in a game that involves creating a shared fiction, that participants in the game will shape what the game is about in all sorts of ways, both formal and informal.

EDIT: here's another example, from D&D.

Suppose that the PCs all build their PCs who are LG or NG. It would be very atypical for the GM to then frame the PCs into an adventure that is designed to proceed on the basis that the players will kill and/or torture a whole lot of villagers.

But obviously the PCs aren't deciding, via their moral and religious convictions, what sorts of challenges they are confronted by.

 

[KYRON45]

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."

Social rules will always have holes in them. They will always be too wordy or not wordy enough. There are no clear rules because you can’t quantify social interactions. If you could; there would be no divorce, or estrangement and the entire field of psychology wouldn’t be required.

An insight check tells you if you THINK the other person is lying or not. If the DM wants you to be placated by the lie….no matter what you roll the lie is still a lie, but you are convinced (mechanically) you aren’t being lied to.

Social interactions are more complicated than just…roll high and live happily ever after.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Whst do we expect happens now if the player fails their roll? Do we now expect them to roleplay like they’re totally convinced? Do they get to go “hey guys something feels off here I just don’t know what?” How is their “agency” constrained by what is in essence a passive deception roll (which seems to be far more what the rules expect)?

Ok, with the tangent reconverging I will agree that this is a real problem and one of the reasons I really struggle with skill rolls for knowledge in general.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The results of a process can't exist if the process hasn't been performed. I mean, that's like saying that the cookies I would have baked today exist - I just haven't bothered baking them yet!

Is there an issue with making the rolls when they become relevant to the players and not making the rolls (but being fully prepared to do so) when they aren't relevant? The tables are right there when I need them. Why would I roll on them before it becomes relevant to anything?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. And?

In D&D play, players set the stakes by means that their characters are not aware of - eg someone might say "This new WotC module looks cool", or the GM might say "Who wants a campaign about fighting Kobolds and their dragon overlords?"

It's natural, in a game that involves creating a shared fiction, that participants in the game will shape what the game is about in all sorts of ways, both formal and informal.

I think there's a difference between doing that before the campaign begins and doing that during play.

 

[Bill Zebub]

An insight check tells you if you THINK the other person is lying or not. If the DM wants you to be placated by the lie….no matter what you roll the lie is still a lie, but you are convinced (mechanically) you aren’t being lied to.

Yeah that would probably be my last session at that table.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think it's particularly complicated.

In our real lives, we don't have anything like "perfect agency". So much of what we feel and experience and do happens involuntarily.

Thus, asking for perfect agency over the character we're inhabiting in a TTRPG feels more alien than the system resolution assigning involuntary experiences to our characters.

It feels more like real life that my character (and my inhabitation of such) got angry just because rather than choosing to act out my character as being angry.

You can make an argument that when I was playing semi-freeform on MUSHes, the only reason my characters played naturalistically was that I was on some level intervening in author mode to make them; in other words it was the part that wasn't being in character that made it work.

But I'd need to peel back the onion at least one layer further; the truth is in many cases I couldn't tell you where some decisions were made; I wasn't aware of consciously making them on any real level, they just--emerged. In a few cases I even found myself consciously resisting a bit because the decision was inconvenient for metagame reasons, but it was clearly what whatever part of my brain was running the character thought they should do.

 

[pemerton]

Is there an issue with making the rolls when they become relevant to the players and not making the rolls (but being fully prepared to do so) when they aren't relevant? The tables are right there when I need them. Why would I roll on them before it becomes relevant to anything?

No reason at all. But if you haven't made the roll, then its result doesn't exist.

The NPCs that the PCs might recruit as henchmen don't exist - as elements of the game, as entities in play, as distinct elements of the fiction (as opposed to a generic implied background) - until you make a roll that generates them.

And that roll is prompted by the players declaring that their PCs set out to recruit henchmen. Which was my point.

 

[pemerton]

I think there's a difference between doing that before the campaign begins and doing that during play.

What difference? And does each campaign involve only one adventure?

 

[Umbran]

Just for the fun of it?

When people try to deceive, isn't it because they have a goal beyond simply being believed?

I don't know if "laugh at how gullible you are" counts as "beyond" much of anything....