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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1890696" data-attributes="member: 7240">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?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!!!!!!!But the party already had the relevant information. What happened last week is relevant information.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?On what basis do you assert this? 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. 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. So, having NPCs act rationally in their own interest is not knowing what you are doing?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."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. 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.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. 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. See above. The skills that were required here were abstract reasoning, not just charm and sensitivity. 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.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 have that right. 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."ignoring all other evidence and past experience with no reference to anyone outside of the scene where the abilities were used, I would hope so too.</blockquote>

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