Challenge based on Party Creativity, or Give Me My Genitals Back!

[Aeric]

My last group of players turned everything into a Creativity Challenge. I don't know if they had been screwed over one too many times by RBDMs or if they were just naturally paranoid, but in their minds, nothing could ever be handled in a cut-and-dry, frontal-assault fashion. A night's worth of preparation would last for months with these guys; they analyzed every possible way things could backfire or go wrong and planned everything to death. I swear, they could turn Orc and Pie into Mission Impossible!

 

[Capn_Danger]

For instance, the game I mention, the players are all con artists. And they come up with some odd cons, like, "I'm going to convince this superstitious apothecary that his shop is possessed. So he will pay us lots of money to exercise the demon." So what do you roll for that? Just some bluffs?

I'm fond of having the PCs roll a number of times during a single conversation. Typically they just roleplay conversations and I ask them to make diplomacy, bluff, etc rolls every now and again to determine NPC reactions and the resulting flow of the encounter. Negotiations can meander and take sudden turns for the worse or better. Social skills are not supernatural powers that enable PCs to exercise some kind of bizarre compulsion over NPCs!

Typically, I adjust rolls depending on various factors. NPCs get a big bonus for sense motive against ridiculous lies, for example (especially if they're quite wise, knowledgeable or experienced). Sometimes you just won't be able to convince someone no matter how good your bluff/dipl/intim check is- you may need to resort to other kinds of trickery, bargaining, or leveraging before you have a good chance at the desired results. Make social encounters like an adventure: provide twists and turns, and obstacles for the PCs to overcome!

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Social skills are not supernatural powers that enable PCs to exercise some kind of bizarre compulsion over NPCs!

Very true. Had one player who needed to be told that Sense Motive was not mind reading. He was miffed at first but has gotten into the swing of it.

For creative challenge: most games I run have at least some of this. OH, there's the occasional kick in the door and kill anything that moves game, as a break but mostly me and my players like to br creative. SUrely it's why people play the game?