NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Umbran]

The issue is getting the players to accept not getting a straight answer from a successful attribute roll when they've been trained to expect one.

Getting buy-in on how the mechanics work is a session zero kind of thing. If you haven't gotten players ready to accept things before play begins, that's not the game's problem.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

If there was "perfect agency," then Lancelot would not have chosen to fall hard for Guinevere and ruin his friendship with Arthur. He would have and did recognize how that is a bad idea, and it's arguably not "in character" based on what we knew about him. But part of the point that Greg Stafford makes (and cites) in Pendragon is that at the end of the day Lancelot did involuntarily fall for Guinevere and thereby would break the unity of the Round Table.

 

[pemerton]

An insight check tells you if you THINK the other person is lying or not.

I will try and explain @zakael19's point, as I understand it.

Let's suppose that the player declares for their PC, "I observe the NPC's body language, dryness of the mouth, sweat, etc. Do they seem to me to be lying?"

The GM, who has read the rules - Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms. - responds "OK, roll WIS (Insight)." And the GM sets a DC.

The player makes the roll, adding their appropriate modifiers. If the GM has told them the DC, they can see whether or not they succeed. If the GM has kept the DC secret, they can still see whether they rolled high or low and hence hazard a guess as to whether or not they succeeded.

If the GM says, "The NPC seems to you to be lying", and the player knows or reasonably believes that they succeeded, then their suspicion is confirmed. They can confidently declare actions for their PC on the premise that the NPC is lying.

But what if the player knows or reasonably believes that they failed? If the GM says, "The NPC seems to you be sincere", is the player allowed to nevertheless declare actions for their PC premised on the NPC being a liar? If they do, doesn't that contradict the GM's narration of the outcome?

And suppose that the GM says, "You don't get any sense of whether or not the NPC is lying or sincere", then the same question arises - is the the player allowed to nevertheless proceed on the basis that their PC is suspicious of the NPC's sincerity? If they are, what was the point of the check? What meaningful contribution did it make to the fiction?

The moral of the story - speaking now for myself rather than trying to explain my understanding of @zakael19 - is that the mechanics don't seem to work in any sensible way if the player is not bound in some fashion by a failed roll. Because it just becomes a free test to try and get extra information from the GM. Unless the GM takes a completely different approach - eg on a failed check, the GM narrates "The NPC is incensed by you staring at them!" - to enforce some sort of consequence for failure. But I don't get the sense that that sort of failure narration is very common among 5e D&D players.

 

[pemerton]

If there was "perfect agency," then Lancelot would not have chosen to fall hard for Guinevere and ruin his friendship with Arthur. He would have and did recognize how that is a bad idea, and it's arguably not "in character" based on what we knew about him. But part of the point that Greg Stafford makes (and cites) in Pendragon is that at the end of the day Lancelot did involuntarily fall for Guinevere and thereby would break the unity of the Round Table.

Right!

Now, as I've often posted on these boards, I actually think that Prince Valiant, rather than Pendragon, is Greg Stafford's Arthurian masterpiece. And there are important differences between the two systems when it comes to expectations for how the GM will frame scenes, call for checks etc.

But both systems make it possible for Lancelot to fall for Guinevere even if the player doesn't think this should happen because it would ruin everything. I'm not going to pretend that my Prince Valiant campaign approaches Arthurian levels of pathos; but when Sir Morgath's player, playing the drunk Sir Morgath, proclaimed Lorette of Lothian rather than his wife Elizabeth of York as his true love, it was pretty funny at the table! And sad at the same time, because everyone - including Sir Morgath's player, and probably even Sir Morgath when sober, knew that Lorette had no interest in Morgath. And this was all precipitated by a mechanical framework that allows players to be obliged to accept certain unwanted truths about their PCs.

 

[Manbearcat]

What are you talking about? This seems to be almost complete non sequitur to me. Why would you think these things are related, why would you think people mean "heroic power fantasy" when they say "immersion"?

This is the exact opposite reading of my post that I intended.

I’m not saying Heroic Power Fantasy priorities and Immersionist priorities are intrinsically related.

I’m saying they’re not.

I’m saying that they’ve been run together for so long that people don’t even realize they’ve run them together and that they’re making tradeoffs that either (a) they apparently don’t even realize they’re making or (b) it was so long ago that they’ve made such peace with the sacrifice so it doesn’t now register.

Heroic Power Fantasy priority: I want to collectively author a fiction that ensures this heroic fantasy conception I have is realized during play.

Immersionist priority: I want to experience the character : player synthesis inherent to possessing accumulated knowledge and the experiences inherent to someone who has lived a life…in a place…amongst people they know.

Immersionist priority: I want to experience the character : player synthesis inherent to living the life of a an actual, recognizable person which necessitates that their inner workings are not under their total control. I want it to be possible to be compelled beyond my control to be afraid, to be smitten, to fall prey to foibles…like an actual person…so that I may also surmount them and one day give redress to their fallout (as a “hero” does).

Exclusive GM Setting Authority priority: GM authors and stewards all aspects of setting.

Metagame-averse, Challenge-based priority: I want participants to overcome challenges without any access to meta-constructs (authorship, currencies, reliance on trope knowledge earned outside of this particular game/character).

---

I’m pointing at two things:

1) These are all separate things. They don’t all play nice with each other. Sacrifices of one for another (tradeoffs) have to be made.

2) That paragraph at the top (again): I’m saying that they’ve been run together for so long that people don’t even realize they’ve run them together and that they’re making tradeoffs that either (a) they apparently don’t even realize they’re making or (b) it was so long ago that they’ve made such peace with the sacrifice so it doesn’t now register.

 

[KYRON45]

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

How would you know you’re being lied to?

 

[Aldarc]

How would you know you’re being lied to?

 

[Argyle King]

I'm building an NPC adversary for a campaign (a cleric of Asmodeus), and their key Deity skill is deception.

But then it occurred to me that rolling to see if the NPC successfully deceived the PC's takes away player agency. That is, the player should be able to decide whether their PC believes the NPC or not.

So, from that perspective, social skill abilities for NPCs are a waste of a skill "slot". (Game mechanically speaking, not from a roleplay perspective)

Any thoughts on this? How do you/would you handle it?)

I don't think that NPC Deception means that a PC believes them.

A player can still choose to not believe a NPC.

What Deception does is make the PC unable to know for sure if the NPC is lying (assuming that they are).

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

It is far more acceptable to me to receive and integrate player input before the campaign begins (ie at session 0 or before) than during play, when they should only be interacting with the setting and the other players in game through their PCs. There is of course nothing wrong with handling this stuff differently, but it's not my preference in a D&D-style game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Getting buy-in on how the mechanics work is a session zero kind of thing. If you haven't gotten players ready to accept things before play begins, that's not the game's problem.

Never said it was, but unless you're playing with folks who have never played any sort of game at all, they will likely expect that a successful roll leads to solid results (as opposed to suggestions), and the rules don't really contraduct that perspective. Session 0 can only do so much when virtually the entire player pool is encouraged to think that way.