Am I a cruel DM?

[fusangite]

So when is metagame thinking a substitute for role playing and what the character nows instead of what the player knows? It appears to me that too many people are sustituting what they would know as players for what the PCs know and have evidence to back it up.

I'm not talking about what the player knows. I'm talking about what the character knows. No matter how many times I repeat it, you guys can't seem to remember that the party has a history with these gnomes and has killed some of them in the past.

So, here's the actual scenario:

The party talks to some gnomes and by being very very charming, they persuade the gnomes that despite the bad blood that has existed between them in the past, the gnomes should adopt the party's agenda. They are so very successful that the gnomes agree to
(a) adopt the characters' agenda and transport them and their artifact
(b) come up with a plan to facilitate this
(c) plead the characters' case to their superiors.
Using their Sense Motive check, the characters discern that these particular gnomes are sincere. However, because the characters know they gnomes' superiors hate them, what with all the past bad blood and them having killed some of the gnomes, they remain apprehensive. But because the gnomes with whom they made the preliminary arrangement do not, after talking to their superiors, tell them the arrangement is off, the characters decide to assume that things are going ahead as planned.

Both the characters and the players know that some of the gnomes hate them. Both the characters and the players know that they have killed some of the gnomes in the past. Both the characters and the players know that the gnomes with whom they spoke did not have the power to decide important things unilaterally and over-rule the other gnomes. So how is this using player-only knowledge?

For some reason people in this thread keep confusing remembering what happened in previous sessions with metagaming.

I listed all the evidence present and no one has been able to dismiss that.

I don't know what post you're talking about here. I've been pretty thorough in my examination of what you've had to say.

But let's make a real-world comparison:

I have a set of suitcases containing $10 million in unmarked, untraceable bills. I want to transport the money across the Canada-US border but I am worried that my car will get searched. I remember a shady cruise ship company that I used to work with but got into a financial dispute with earlier this year. I approach some of the employees of the company and persuade them that even though we were involved in a 4-month court battle that lost both of us tens of thousands of dollars, they should really help me move the money. They agree and make arrangements to take the money on board their ship. I never actually speak to the captain or the company's CEO but I am fully convinced that the employees with whom I did speak are on my side. Is it unforeseeable that the captain would steal my suitcases?

Saying the PCs didn't look somewhere only applies if they have a reason to want to look. In this case the result of the sense motive would have (IMO) been an indication to the PCs that their long time attempts to work on diplomatic relationship with the gnomes had indeed worked - i.e., the payoff of all that previous effort.

What long attempt? There was ONE DIPLOMACY CHECK. Yes. They rolled very well. But that's it.

And I wasn't refering to the effects of a charm on the NPCs

I think you need to read my posts more carefully. What I said was that you seem to believe that rolling a Diplomacy check of 30 is equivalent to casting Charm Person on everyone within earshot.

And since it appears that 1 out 5 and quite likely 2 out of 5 (nearly half of the players) weren't satisfied

Do you work with the Compas research group or something? It's amazing how someone can make 1 out of 6 people involved in a situation equal to "nearly half." I can be dissatisfied with a game because nobody performed oral sex on me during the session but that doesn't mean that everyone needs to start looking seriously at changing the game dynamic in order to make me happy. It does not follow that because someone is unhappy with how things went that something went wrong.

 

[fusangite]

its wasn't that the PCs used the skills wrong or that the Gm used the skills wrong, its just that the sources of info were just totally wrong, clueless as to the risks, possessing only info that would mislead the PCs...

Here is where we disagree. If one looks at the whole history of the characters' relationship with the gnomes rather than just the one scene, other evidence does come into view.

But imagine how this overall situation might have turned out if, instead of getting "hey, they seem trustworthy and aren't deceiving us" hits from those well developed skills, the PCs had gotten also "yeah, but they still seem nervous, unsure, there is still something up here"

You raise a good point here. You're right that the Sense Motive check could have been more nuanced and informative.

At any time as GM, i can hand the PCs a contact who "believes everything he is saying" but who is just plain wrong and use my PCs own skills at reading people and at convincing people against them. Thats simple and easy and requires no more cleverness or fairness that me saying "hey, lets use their skills against them" and then, either before the fact or later when asked, adding to the NPC the relevent lack of knowledge or simply having the NPCs who served as my "info conduit" be just plain totally wrong on everything that mattered.

The problem with your reasoning here is this: why were these particular gnomes well-disposed to the characters in this situation? Because the characters rolled a very high Diplomacy check. The reason these gnomes' views were different from those of the other gnomes is because of something the characters did. You cannot then turn around and argue that these gnomes having different views of the characters than their compatriots is part of some kind of duplicitous behaviour on the GM's part.

But, of course, once i do turn their own character's expertise against them, ESPECIALLY if it is in a HUGE for the campaign situation like say blowing the end of a year long quest, I really ought not to expect them to be willing to trust their abilities or traits the next time.

How many action movies do you watch? One of the single most common narrative conventions in an action movie is the main characters losing the object of their quest to the villains just before the climax. Someone in this thread already mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark but of course you don't have to go back so far. Watch National Treasure -- it's still in theatres. I don't have that many action movies at home but I'm looking up at my shelf and I can see The Ninth Gate and Goldeneye.

Given that this is a common narrative convention in quest stories, why would you argue that losing the item just before the climax is identical to failing the quest?

Why should they in the future believe what NPCs are saying when their great skills at reading people and at convincing people to join their cause have proven in the past to be this unreliable?

(a) They haven't proven unreliable
(b) I'm guessing that there have been more than two NPC interactions in this 35-episode campaign

Or is it your contention that if any NPCs ever betray the party, no future NPC should be trusted again?

They should learn the lesson the first time, shouldn't they?

Especially if its such a costly error for them the first time.

I'm lost here. What do you think they have been doing for the past 35 episodes? How can you possibly generalize this one situation to all NPC interactions in the entire campaign?

 

[hong]

You raise a good point here. You're right that the Sense Motive check could have been more nuanced and informative.

Exactly. Put it down to careless game management on the part of the DM, in allowing this situation to develop.

The problem with your reasoning here is this: why were these particular gnomes well-disposed to the characters in this situation? Because the characters rolled a very high Diplomacy check. The reason these gnomes' views were different from those of the other gnomes is because of something the characters did. You cannot then turn around and argue that these gnomes having different views of the characters than their compatriots is part of some kind of duplicitous behaviour on the GM's part.

But the DM should have provided a hint that not all the gnomes would have been on the party's side. That's ESPECIALLY if these gnomes got swayed by the super-high Diplomacy check, unless they're like vat-grown gnomes who have never checked the grapevine in their own organisation. By not providing relevant information, the DM significantly curtailed the possibility that the players would be able to influence the outcome.

So what if the group got into a fight with the gnomes 35 sessions ago? Do you remember every fight from back in the mists of time? In particular, since the party was willing to talk to these gnomes as opposed to drawing weapons immediately (and similarly on the gnomes' part), any bad blood between them can't have been very close to the surface. That's all the more reason why it's entirely reasonable for the players to get pissed off at bait-and-switch tactics by the DM, and all the more reason why a smart DM makes a plan to head off that possibility.

How many action movies do you watch? One of the single most common narrative conventions in an action movie is the main characters losing the object of their quest to the villains just before the climax.

Hint: the climax had already occurred. They tracked down this artifact for 35 sessions (a tad longer than most 2-hour movies), went into the dungeon, killed the bad guys, and got out again. For all intents and purposes, especially in a game like D&D that tends to have a more highly structured setup than most RPGs, that constitutes successfully finishing the plot arc. The DM deciding to pull a trick like this during the denouement is nothing more than an anticlimax, and the way the players reacted during the session shows that they knew it.

(a) They haven't proven unreliable

So why did it suddenly start being the case now?

(b) I'm guessing that there have been more than two NPC interactions in this 35-episode campaign

Or is it your contention that if any NPCs ever betray the party, no future NPC should be trusted again?

Strawman. NPCs can and will betray the party in any campaign. That doesn't mean it's something that happens without making damn sure you know what you're doing. In particular, a DM who pulls a completely out-of-the-blue betrayal like this, at a moment in time when the group was understandably feeling like they'd finally done all the hard work, cannot complain if the group starts becoming a lot more suspicious of people.

 

[swrushing]

We wont agree, so just a few points to make

Here is where we disagree. If one looks at the whole history of the characters' relationship with the gnomes rather than just the one scene, other evidence does come into view.

And as such, if you argument is that the PCs should not have trusted what their skills use told them in this REALLY HUGE circumstance, then we agree after all.

You raise a good point here. You're right that the Sense Motive check could have been more nuanced and informative.

This gets back to something i said in the first post...

We agree that the sense motive could have been more informative, if the gnomes had knowledge that they were cutting a deal that they themselves could not actually assure would happen.

For this to have been the case tho, the Gm would have to have known ahead of time that the two different gnome groups (one group is all the other gnomes who actually have power and one group all the gnomes talking to the party) were of differing opinions and he would have had to have known ahead of time that the group negotiating were not absolutely certain they had enough clout to pull this agreement off.

One of two things happened here...

1. The "winging it" style GM did not know "ahead of time" the other gnomes planned to betray the PCs. he played the good-gnomes straight up because thats where he thought at that moment the session was running. But, when the players "messed up" and presented him, the GM, with such an opening, he threw in the curve. The reason all the gnomes working with the PCs never gave off a hint of suspicion and never gave off the whiff of doubt about "can we actually do this" was because that only came in after the fact in the Gm's mind. This fits with the "winging it, make it up as i go along" style of GMing expressed by this GM as his style better than the "baited trap."

2. The "planned ahead" style GM set these "ignorant of what we can and cannot do and incorrectly believe totally that we can pull off anything we ahree to sincerely" gnomes in as a sort of "baited trap", which effectively use the PCs' skills against them.

Back to my earlier post, a major reversal like this in a game deserves much thought and planning, to make it come off right. if it plays out so as to leave the PLAYERS melancholy, the PLAYERS ticked off, and even some of the PLAYERS ticked off or feeling they are fighting THE GM, then it was not well executed, it was not "good job", it was bad GMing.

Notice the word PLAYERS used repeatedly. Its fine and dandy for the CHARACTERS to be melancholy, for the CHARACTERS to be pissed at the NPCs, and so forth, as long as the players, in contrast, are having fun and are seeing it as IN CHARACTER and the NPCs not "the GM."

The problem with your reasoning here is this: why were these particular gnomes well-disposed to the characters in this situation? Because the characters rolled a very high Diplomacy check. The reason these gnomes' views were different from those of the other gnomes is because of something the characters did. You cannot then turn around and argue that these gnomes having different views of the characters than their compatriots is part of some kind of duplicitous behaviour on the GM's part.

When the GM made the decision that the helpful gnomes had no idea that they actually did not have any ability to make the plan work like they agreed to, that was perhaps a duplictous act.

After all, if these "helpful" or even "friendly" gnomes had told the party "you know, before we get you all in crates and you hand over the artifact, we ought to tell you that we are not in charge and our bosses might decide to hose you. Now, who's in the crate first?!"

How many action movies do you watch? One of the single most common narrative conventions in an action movie is the main characters losing the object of their quest to the villains just before the climax. Someone in this thread already mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark but of course you don't have to go back so far. Watch National Treasure -- it's still in theatres. I don't have that many action movies at home but I'm looking up at my shelf and I can see The Ninth Gate and Goldeneye.

The difference is that, taking raiders for instance, when the sub showed up and the nazis too the ark, it was nothing Jones did. His capabilites were not "turned against him." He had not spent time working up deals with the nazis, getting to trust them, etc. He simply had a case of "man, those nazis are outgunning me".

There is a big difference in a story arc between having the PCs badly lose and having the PCs badly lose at something they are really good at. You can play the "fish out of water" losses to even comedic effect, by putting say am uncouth fighter in a formal social event and have it play off well and enjoyable for most everyone. But, if you do the same sort of "you lose badly" scenario in the fighter's "thing i am good at", aka fighting, you should expect a different response.

(a) They haven't proven unreliable

The absense of the artifact seems to me at least to be some evidence of unreliability among the PCs social skills. More to the point, if the PLAYERS believe the Gm is making it up as they go along and if the PLAYERS buy his "the gnomes with you had no clues", then why in the world would they not at least worry that this sort of "accidentally ignorant NPCs" thing wont happen next time, or the time after that?

(b) I'm guessing that there have been more than two NPC interactions in this 35-episode campaign

Any this HUGE?

I'm sorry, but it sounds like on one hand, you think the PCS were not suspicious and untrusting ENOUGH for this scenario and thus set themselves up for a fall, but at the same time, you seem to want to argue that they should NOT take from this a lesson telling them that, next time they interact and make deals with NPCs, they should not rely on those same skills which failed them this time!!! next time, they should trust these skills, as they did this time, and what??? hope for the best?

The PCs trusted their skills, used their abilities, and paid the price.

As a GM, if that was the lesson plan for this scenario, i would HOPE they learned it.

Or is it your contention that if any NPCs ever betray the party, no future NPC should be trusted again?

No, my argument is that if the PCs skills are effectively used against them, if the PCs good-at-them skills lead them astray on such a crucial moment, the players should learn not to trust those skills to lead them in the future.

I'm lost here. What do you think they have been doing for the past 35 episodes? How can you possibly generalize this one situation to all NPC interactions in the entire campaign?

The players have just been taught how "not smart" it is to rely on those skills and to act on that info gained from those skills. Thats a lesson that should stick with them.

its not a case at all of whwther they should or should not trust other NPCs... its a case of whether they should expect their characters' skills and aptitudes (as opposed to their characters' lacks and weaknesses) to serve them well or simply be another means of tricki9ng them.

getting led astray by you weakness, by your failings, by your worse aspects... thats usual and typical and fine storeytelling. Thats good character, IMO.

getting led astray by your strengths, by things you are good at, etc is a wholly different animal to me.

Of course, not everyone will agree and thats fine. As i stated in my original post, the issue of what I think is ireelevent as is anyone else on this board who is not in the game. The only opinions that matter are the players and if they leave seeing the :GM as the enemy", if they leave feeling "cheated" as opposed to...

well, its already been said. No need to go on again.

YMMV and clearly does.

 

[fusangite]

But the DM should have provided a hint that not all the gnomes would have been on the party's side.

Why would the DM need to tell them this again? As has already been clearly established, the past relationship with the gnomes has been rocky to the point of the characters killing some of the gnomes. Why would it be surprising that some members of a group that you have violently attacked in the recent past might not like you?

That's ESPECIALLY if these gnomes got swayed by the super-high Diplomacy check,

Hong, you're lapsing back into this belief in telepathic Diplomacy checks that I think I've pretty conclusively disproved. Just to reiterate,

DIPLOMACY CHECKS CAN ONLY AFFECT PEOPLE WHO ARE THERE!!!!!!!

By not providing relevant information, the DM significantly curtailed the possibility that the players would be able to influence the outcome.

But the party already had the relevant information. What happened last week is relevant information.

So what if the group got into a fight with the gnomes 35 sessions ago? Do you remember every fight from back in the mists of time?

Firstly, we have already established that the party did remember this. That's why some of them remained nervous and tentative about their new arrangement with the gnomes. Secondly, it didn't happen 35 episodes ago; it happened more recently than that. The campaign has been 35 episodes long.

I guess you run very very different games than I do. But for me, remembering that you have had a violent confrontation with a particular group of NPCs in the past is a pretty basic requirement of competent RPG play where I come from. If a party cannot be expected to recall who the NPCs are from session to session, what is the point of running a campaign?

Hint: the climax had already occurred.

On what basis do you assert this?

They tracked down this artifact for 35 sessions (a tad longer than most 2-hour movies),

Of the many completely ridiculous things you have said in this post, I think this ranks first. If you are making a direct equivalency between the amount of time it takes to resolve things in movies and the amount of time it takes to resolve things in RPG play, there should be two complete stories (climax and all) per episode.

went into the dungeon, killed the bad guys, and got out again. For all intents and purposes, especially in a game like D&D that tends to have a more highly structured setup than most RPGs, that constitutes successfully finishing the plot arc.

So all that stuff about the quest specifically mandating that the characters repair the artifact and return it to the gods has nothing to do with a story arc? Or is it that you believe that a genre convention of all D&D adventures requires that the climax be a big fight in a dungeon regardless of what the GM thinks?

By any standards other than the completely absurd genre convention you may be attempting to introduce, it is abundantly clear that the climax of the game has not yet happened.

NPCs can and will betray the party in any campaign. That doesn't mean it's something that happens without making damn sure you know what you're doing.

So, having NPCs act rationally in their own interest is not knowing what you are doing?

In particular, a DM who pulls a completely out-of-the-blue betrayal like this, at a moment in time when the group was understandably feeling like they'd finally done all the hard work, cannot complain if the group starts becoming a lot more suspicious of people.

Hong, for people who think that remembering what happened last week is a requirement of being an effective player, this is not "out of the blue."

And as such, if you argument is that the PCs should not have trusted what their skills use told them in this REALLY HUGE circumstance, then we agree after all.

But their skill check didn't tell them anything about the gnomes they couldn't see. The only information they had about those gnomes was the data they had from previous interactions.

When the GM made the decision that the helpful gnomes had no idea that they actually did not have any ability to make the plan work like they agreed to, that was perhaps a duplictous act. After all, if these "helpful" or even "friendly" gnomes had told the party "you know, before we get you all in crates and you hand over the artifact, we ought to tell you that we are not in charge and our bosses might decide to hose you. Now, who's in the crate first?!"

In my experience, when people have been newly convinced of something, it does not occur to them that others like them will not be easily convinced thereof. You are expecting that the gnomes who have just been bamboozled by the characters are going to immediately think through how the characters' plan could go wrong.

When you have been very successfully charmed by someone, you do not think "Oh -- I've just been convinced of this because this person is so damned charming," you think "Those arguments are so sensible and convincing." I therefore see no way, aside from the NPCs actually being conscious of how the Diplomacy skill mechanic works, for the gnomes not to anticipate these highly persuasive arguments wouldn't be equally effective on the other gnomes.

There is a big difference in a story arc between having the PCs badly lose and having the PCs badly lose at something they are really good at.

You are assuming that the thing the PCs needed to be good at was detecting and affecting the emotional state of those around them. In fact, what the PCs needed to be good at, and turned out not to be, was thinking politically and strategically. These are player skills that are not represented mechanically precisely because good gaming is more than buying up skill ranks.

But, if you do the same sort of "you lose badly" scenario in the fighter's "thing i am good at", aka fighting, you should expect a different response.

Great example. A Fighter facing 10 orcs is a test of his ability to fight. A fighter facing 100 orcs is a test of his judgement, his ability to think strategically. The capacity for strategic thought -- what is really at issue here -- is not modeled by any skill but it is a crucial feature of effective play.

The absense of the artifact seems to me at least to be some evidence of unreliability among the PCs social skills.

See above. The skills that were required here were abstract reasoning, not just charm and sensitivity.

More to the point, if the PLAYERS believe the Gm is making it up as they go along and if the PLAYERS buy his "the gnomes with you had no clues", then why in the world would they not at least worry that this sort of "accidentally ignorant NPCs" thing wont happen next time, or the time after that?

But of course that's not what the players believe. That is what one player believes. Every other player we have heard from has stated the GM's actions were reasonable. If we are to use what the players believe as the standard for assessing this argument, I have already won it.

Any this HUGE?

So, your argument is that because this is the most important NPC interaction, it should then become the sole basis on which the PCs assess all other NPC interactions irrespective of their individual characteristics?

I'm sorry, but it sounds like on one hand, you think the PCS were not suspicious and untrusting ENOUGH for this scenario and thus set themselves up for a fall,

You have that right.

but at the same time, you seem to want to argue that they should NOT take from this a lesson telling them that, next time they interact and make deals with NPCs, they should not rely on those same skills which failed them this time!!! next time, they should trust these skills, as they did this time, and what??? hope for the best?

No. I think they should take away a much more important lesson: Sense Motive and Diplomacy can only tell you about NPCs you can use them on. They cannot be extrapolated to NPCs you don't interact with. Here's another lesson: rolling dice does is not an adequate substitute for reasoning.

The lesson to be gained here is not "disbelieve all NPCs" the lesson is "place the results of skill checks in the context of their circumstances. Don't decontextualize skill checks because they are only giving you information about the situation you are in."

The PCs trusted their skills, used their abilities,

ignoring all other evidence and past experience with no reference to anyone outside of the scene where the abilities were used,

and paid the price. As a GM, if that was the lesson plan for this scenario, i would HOPE they learned it.

I would hope so too.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

In my experience, when people have been newly convinced of something, it does not occur to them that others like them will not be easily convinced thereof. You are expecting that the gnomes who have just been bamboozled by the characters are going to immediately think through how the characters' plan could go wrong.

"bamboozled"?

perhaos this is part of the difference of opinion we have.

i do not see successful DIPLOMACY checks as bamboozling people. bamboozling people is IMO the effect of successful BLUFF checks.

One is a negotiation, the other is a scam.

When you have been very successfully charmed by someone, you do not think "Oh -- I've just been convinced of this because this person is so damned charming," you think "Those arguments are so sensible and convincing." I therefore see no way, aside from the NPCs actually being conscious of how the Diplomacy skill mechanic works, for the gnomes not to anticipate these highly persuasive arguments wouldn't be equally effective on the other gnomes.

So, its seems like BECAUSE the PCs used their very good diplomacy and charm to move these front gnomes from enemies to allies, that they sowed the seeds for their own downfall because SINCE THEY DID SUCH A GOOD JOB at convining the front gnomes the front gnomes were incapable of letting on that they were really not able to deliver?

if the PCs had been less convincing, if the gnomes were not so totally convinced that the PCs were right and that this would convince everyone, then the gnomes could have had suspicions that the other back gnomes would be so swayed and could have warned the PCs or let slip or otherwise tipped them off.

Wow! another twist on the "use the PCs talents against them" theory...

Can you imagine a GM explaining this...

GM: "they were so overwhelmed by your smooth talking and friendship that they couldn't tip you off to the potential betrayal."
PLAYER: "So, next time we should be less convincing and they might not set us up?"
GM: "Yup! you got it!"

Already said but... its not particularly hard or clever to "fool" someone when you control all the input.

You are assuming that the thing the PCs needed to be good at was detecting and affecting the emotional state of those around them. In fact, what the PCs needed to be good at, and turned out not to be, was thinking politically and strategically. These are player skills that are not represented mechanically precisely because good gaming is more than buying up skill ranks.

So, that whole "player skill" vs "character skill" distinction isn't really an issue for you?

So, your argument is that because this is the most important NPC interaction, it should then become the sole basis on which the PCs assess all other NPC interactions irrespective of their individual characteristics?

you keep seeming to want to argue with yourself. Where did i say or suggest "sole basis" at all?

Answer: i didn't.

You did.

Frankly, i think we have precious little info to draw conclusions about those 35 other sessions and the diplomacy on. We know that one group the PCs worked with geased them, a geas still in effect with its innate threat of death hanging.

So, honestly, i do not have much to go on to say "yes, but their previous 35 sessions indicates they can trust NPCs and this one is an abberation." Maybe you do.

But i can definitely say that going from this one, I think they have a lesson to learn in regards to this GM and his games.

or perhaps he does. I don't think i ever got an answer to the question to him about whether he saw any of this coming, had any clue there were problems, etc.

No. I think they should take away a much more important lesson: Sense Motive and Diplomacy can only tell you about NPCs you can use them on. They cannot be extrapolated to NPCs you don't interact with. Here's another lesson: rolling dice does is not an adequate substitute for reasoning.

and, don't forget the one above... don't do too well with diplomacy because that might cause your contacts to be so overwhelmed they might fail to be able to give you clues or info you need.

The lesson to be gained here is not "disbelieve all NPCs" the lesson is "place the results of skill checks in the context of their circumstances. Don't decontextualize skill checks because they are only giving you information about the situation you are in."

and as such, in future engagements, they should REMEMBER this incident and not trust the results unless they can also cover all the ways the skill checks can be misleading.

heck, its really not a case of mistrusting the NPCs, as it wasn't the NPCs cunningly placing ignorant front gnomes, right? it was that the front gnomes were so overwhelmed by the PCs diplomacy skill at bamboozling that the front gnomes were effectively rendered ignorant by the PCs of the risk of being overruled.

So, really, the lesson they should take awa is "we are so good, we might cost ourselves the victory", right?

ignoring all other evidence and past experience with no reference to anyone outside of the scene where the abilities were used,

this event enters into the realm of "past experience" and should NOT be forgotten in future events.

I would hope so too.

and see, agreement reached.

 

[fusangite]

i do not see successful DIPLOMACY checks as bamboozling people. bamboozling people is IMO the effect of successful BLUFF checks.

One is a negotiation, the other is a scam.

If you think directly lying to people is the only way to bamboozle them, you should watch the OC more often.

So, that whole "player skill" vs "character skill" distinction isn't really an issue for you?

It depends entirely on whether the rules contain the skill. For example: obviously, the ability to convince an NPC of something is not based solely on the player's capacity to sound convincing him or herself. Why is this? Because there are various skills like Diplomacy, Bluff, etc. that model this. Similarly, the ability to recognize creatures from the Monster Manual is also condition, in part, on a rules mechanic as outlined in the Knowledge skills.

This simply isn't true of cognitive and memory skills. The rules do not have a skill you can roll on to remember what happened last session. The rules do not have a skill you can roll on to discern whether your strategy is smart or ill-advised. If your players come up with a good battle plan, do you force them to roll Int checks to determine if it crossed their characters' minds? Of course not. Some games do have that mechanic but D&D does not.

So yes, I believe that reasoning and thinking strategically are things that the players do unmediated by the rolling of dice. Rolling on Knowledge-Arcana can only tell you that what you are looking at is a Great Wyrm and how overwhelmingly powerful a Great Wyrm is; what it cannot tell you is whether or not your first level Wizard should attack it. That decision is one that you make unmediated by the dice based on the best available data.

Rather than going through another round of point by point responses to your arguments about the Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks, which at this point are getting repetitive, let me pose a hypothetical question that should clarify things:

What if the gnome they were talking to was hostile and had swallowed a Glibness potion? Would the GM's actions still have been wrong?

 

[irdeggman]

Quote:
And I wasn't refering to the effects of a charm on the NPCs


I think you need to read my posts more carefully. What I said was that you seem to believe that rolling a Diplomacy check of 30 is equivalent to casting Charm Person on everyone within earshot.

I guess you need to reread the posts made. I have never made a big deal over the diplomacy check and the result of 30, nor have I made the comparison to it being like a charm person spell.

The point I have been making and focusing on was the Sense Motive and its results.

Quote:
And since it appears that 1 out 5 and quite likely 2 out of 5 (nearly half of the players) weren't satisfied


Do you work with the Compas research group or something? It's amazing how someone can make 1 out of 6 people involved in a situation equal to "nearly half." I can be dissatisfied with a game because nobody performed oral sex on me during the session but that doesn't mean that everyone needs to start looking seriously at changing the game dynamic in order to make me happy. It does not follow that because someone is unhappy with how things went that something went wrong.
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A Fusangite

No, but I am a CQA (Certified Quality Auditor) and an engineer and deal with percentages and overall concepts on a routine basis. If you read further you wil see that I specifically stated that a single person is not reason to doubt the reuslts but that when 2 out 5 (sorry but that is nearly half by anyone's use of math) is an indication of a bad thing. I get that extra 1 being dissatisfied because the DM himself stated that that person wasn't going to post but had that opinion once notified of what had happened. Also the DM should not be counted into this number (which is where you get are getting the total of 6). The DM does not factor in the the reception of the players since he is the cause or means of their enjoyment.



One thing that is constantly taught in the military is to trust your indications until they can be proven false. There were no contrary indications in this scenario, despite what you seem to think.

I also know that I am not alone in my contention on the fact that the PCs had nothing else to really go on here. There was no additional info being provided by the DM - there was no interaction with the "bad" gnomes

 

[fusangite]

No, but I am a CQA (Certified Quality Auditor) and an engineer and deal with percentages and overall concepts on a routine basis. If you read further you wil see that I specifically stated that a single person is not reason to doubt the reuslts but that when 2 out 5 (sorry but that is nearly half by anyone's use of math) is an indication of a bad thing. I get that extra 1 being dissatisfied because the DM himself stated that that person wasn't going to post but had that opinion once notified of what had happened.

We have never heard from this second player. The GM feared this person would also dislike his decision but we have never been told how she actually felt. The actual evidence we have at our disposal is from the GM and four players. So I really don't accept your reading of 40% when the actual number is 20%.

Also the DM should not be counted into this number (which is where you get are getting the total of 6). The DM does not factor in the the reception of the players since he is the cause or means of their enjoyment.

What rot! Of course the DM's enjoyment of the game is relevant to whether people enjoyed it. The DM is not a standup comic. He's not a paid actor. He's a person trying to enjoy the game too. The fact that he has a different job in the game doesn't make his enjoyment of it any more or less important.

One thing that is constantly taught in the military is to trust your indications until they can be proven false. There were no contrary indications in this scenario, despite what you seem to think.

I think it really depends on what evidence you consider indicative. A major issues for us is whether the GM's performance met the generally held criteria for good GMing in the gaming community.

You are also assuming that altering how the universe runs to placate one player does not affect anyone else's enjoyment. For me, having NPCs behave in a rational self-interested way is a criterion for my enjoyment of a game. If I'm in a game and another player successfully exerts pressure to make NPCs behave otherwise, my enjoyment is reduced or eliminated. This is equally true whether I am acting as player or GM.

I also know that I am not alone in my contention on the fact that the PCs had nothing else to really go on here. There was no additional info being provided by the DM - there was no interaction with the "bad" gnomes

In that episode. Your argument only works if this one interaction is completely decontextualized. Being involved in mortal combat with these gnomes in a previous episode is meaningful evidence.

 

[swrushing]

What if the gnome they were talking to was hostile and had swallowed a Glibness potion? Would the GM's actions still have been wrong?

"Actions" as in the mechanical imp,ementation of the rules: They would have been legal then, which is a wholly different thing from "right" or "wrong".

"Actions" as in his choice for this script, well, based on his own assessments of the aftermath, I would still judge it as wrong. i cannot say whether he had foreknowledge of the current players opinions (and if so ought to have seen this reaction coming) or if he was clueless as to how they felt about the game/plot so far (and if so that is a much bigger problem than this flare up), but either way,

if I ended a session with players in the mood and even one player who had been gaming with me for a long time, who i knew well, leaving with that much ill feelings about not only my game but specifically me running it... I would feel i had done something wrong.

and, of course, my first move would have been to go to a net board and seek support for my case... uhh.. no wait...

As stated before, when you control the world its easy to fool the players. You can equip the face gnome with the right potions to beat their good-at-it-traits and thus use their own skills against them. You can even, amazingly, try and buffalo the notion that doing "too well" on their skills ends up costing them by preventing them from gaining info that would alert them, as you suggested. When you have all the numbers and unlimited creation ability and serve as the total conduit for info to the players and characters, its no great deal for them to come out of it surprised.

had he equipped the gnomes with glibness potions so that his answer would have been "they were better than you because they all used glibness potions and other magics so they could fool you" then he would have been taking credit for the betrayal as a planned, deliberate thing. That would have produced possibly different, though not perhaps better reactions, from the players.

the "i make it up as i go along and these gnomes expressed their true intentions but were too starstruck to admit they were making promises they could not keep" probably did not make it better.

When i pull major reversals of fortune like this in my games, and i do, i tend to do several things, and take several precautions in my setup.

1. thru foreshadowing and prior/current clues, i want this to not come as a surprise. It can come as a shock. It can be a "well, now that we put two and two together, its obvious." The best result is when they look at me right after and go SMILINGLY "dang, you are right! geesh!" its even better if they are hosited on their character's failings.
2. it is NOT hinged on beating them at their character's strong suits. beating a character at his strong suit is usually a humiliating thing and stomps heavily on the "concepts" in a lot of cases. This is saying "you are not good enough at the things you do" as opposed to "everyone has a weakness".
3. it NEVER under any circumstances is the end of a session. I dont want the players slumping off for a week with the failure, with a sense of THEIR failure, hanging over them. I make this at the very least a mid-session event, although it makes a GREAT session opener. Either way, I let them move immediately forward into the "next step" and "recovery" ops. I leave them on a positive note, on to (for me at least) a later development that takes the sting out of this failure.

Imagine the difference had this scene stopped at the "you get crated up" stage, then next week it starts with the "something is wrong" and the pcs break out to find they have been had... but then hear the sounds of tied up gnomes nearby, find out the gnomes had been duped, and when the gnomes describe this stranger who did the duping, its some skulduggerous past-foe the PCs have been at odds with, who, yes, even back then had had a few gnome lackies.

Suddenly this turns into a chase to grab the known bad guy before he can get away with it. You drop a clue or two or remain consistent with previous knowledge and now you have fired up PCs and players with a FACE for their pain (other than you the GM) and you probably have one of the most fired up sessions in your game. One potential and IMO somewhat ideal script would have them spend that session FURIOUSLY pursuing the guy and mowing thru obstacles and the session ends with the face off... break scene and resolve it next week on a climactic finish.

Everyone left the first session with the sense of accomplishment.
everyone leaves the second session with the "we want his carcass NOW" sense
presumably they win in the third session and leave with a sense of accomplishment renewed.

they never leave ticked at YOU at all.

These are the types of things a deliberate, planned, well thought out reversal story arc done by a Gm who is aware of how his players feelings are (and cares about that) can be better than one mishandled on the fly.

As i said in my first post, these things aren't just things which come up, if you want them to work well in your game.