NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Bill Zebub]

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

But that's actually a great example: discerning the difference between "he wants you to buy something" and "he seems to be having fun yanking your chain" are really two very different things, but lying might be an approach to achieving either of them.

I'd prefer to use Insight that way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I would say the system forces the players to be so obliged rather than allows them to, but otherwise I agree.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Really I think the only viable solution is to discard all social interaction. Kick in the door, kill the monster, take its stuff.

 

[KYRON45]

Really I think the only viable solution is to discard all social interaction. Kick in the door, kill the monster, take its stuff.

Does that say something about your social skills or the games social mechanics?

 

[KYRON45]

With regards to social mechanics there needs to be a certain amount of trust between the players and the DM.
This is where i would say that we need to believe that both the players and the DM are doing what's best for the story game at hand.
Were all volunteers here and we all play different games. Make the most of what you have in front of you.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

This is really tortured. Players negotiating about campaign premise is not even remotely the same thing as players having access to mechanics that allow them to direct the events of the game outside of the control of their characters.

I don’t understand why you do this. Why can’t you admit your game works differently than D&D etc? It is not an attack; presumably you prefer this game because it does not work like D&D. Why not instead talk about how these different approaches enhance the play instead of trying to obfuscate their existence?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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).

Yes, this. And yeah, it means that like @pemerton says, this makes insight a free roll to gain more information. I just don’t see this as any sort of a problem. A lot of rolls in the game work like this. Knowledge rolls, many perception and investigation rolls. It is perfectly fine.

 

[TwoSix]

I don’t understand why you do this. Why can’t you admit your game works differently than D&D etc? It is not an attack; presumably you prefer this game because it does not work like D&D. Why not instead talk about how these different approaches enhance the play instead of trying to obfuscate their existence?

Because your approach isn't definitional of D&D. D&D is my primary game, and my play experiences are much more like @pemerton's than to the type of game you describe playing.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Does that say something about your social skills or the games social mechanics?

Well it couldn't possibly say anything about my social skills because all that matters is the numbers on my character sheet, right?

Oh, wait....maybe that's why some people want to rely on the dice?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Because your approach isn't definitional of D&D. D&D is my primary game, and my play experiences are much more like @pemerton's than to the type of game you describe playing.

Could you elaborate on this? What D&D mechanics you are using to give players control of events outside the control of their characters?