Chris Perkins doesn't use Passive Insight

[I'm A Banana]

1. Insight checks require interaction.
2. That 3 strikes rule of mine refers to the group, not per PC. So typically no more than 3 PCs would get to make Insight rolls.

An artificial solution like that can work, but it's awfully gamist. "So I can't check to see if he's lying, just because David's Character already checked?"

Again, that's not to say that if it works at your table, change it. If it works, it works! That is to say that it's not going to work for every group, so as a general rule, it's not going to work for everyone. It's not a universal solution.

I guess that's why computer games are so popular then - the computer can't possibly show favouritism! I refuse to accept that the best DM is the DM most like a computer, or that the best game is the one with the least role for player ability - or charisma. RPGs are a great venue for normally shy people to practice being charming.

Sure. But I'm not really interested in changing my friends' social behavior through the mode of D&D. I want to get together and pretend to be magical gumdrop elves for a few hours, not worry about Bill's social failings. It's a game of make-believe, not an intervention. I also want Bill to have a good time, even if he is super-shy, so I'm not going to penalize him for playing the party bard by ignoring him for being socially awkward. I am going to help him realize that power fantasy, just as I help Andrew realize his to be a rampaging barbarian, despite the fact that he's a 98-lb weakling with a MENSA membership, or clean-shaven african-american Robert's desire to play a dwarf with a long, luxurious beard and a heafty scottish accent.

In short, I'm not interested in penalizing my players for not being the things they want to pretend to be.

I realize that's something of a stylistic choice in D&D, and some DMs like more player challenge, but that's not a mode I prefer to play in, and if D&D assumed I wanted to play like by challenging my players' actual social abilities (but not their actual raging barbarian abilities), it would not work for my groups.

 

[Fox Lee]

I don't think passive and active are mutually exclusive in this context. For example, if I have an NPC who is lyng, I will use passive checks - that's a baseline chance that the PCs have to notice that something is suspicious. If they succeed marginally, I'll throw in reasonably obvious tell that "shows without telling", so they can reach the conclusion that it's a lie themselves - the liar keeps scratching his ear, or slips up when he says a particular word, or avoids making eye contact. If they succeed on a grand scale, I'll usually just show the hand and say something like "yeah, you've heard this one before".

However, failing the passive check doesn't force the PCs to trust the liar - it just means that they don't notice the lie automatically. If they find the story, or the liar, to be suspicious, they can call for an insight check any time they like - the degree of success usually shows how sure they are of their current suspicions (anything from "yep, that does sound kind of dodgy" to "he is way too scared to lie to you").

My point is, the passive check never removes the right to make the active check. It's just an initial chance to get a hint. I can't see whay that should be removed.

However, I am looking at this a bit from an actor/writer perspective. I find it easy to adjust either mannerisms or dialogue to make it more obvious that a lie is taking place. If they party succeeds on passive, I can make it fairly clear that the person is lying without just telling them so. If they don't, I can totally play it straight, and give them no reason to be suspicious unless they have extra knowledge. A GM who found those things more difficult - or took a less "relative" approach to how the NPC communicated - might not find it so easy.

 

[KarinsDad]

I disagree about the value of misdirection. IME a lot of players spend their time in a fug of confusion with no idea what is going on, even when the DM is trying to lay it all out as clearly as possible. And personally I hate 'smoke & mirrors' and 'pixel bitching' DM styles; solving mysterious mysteries isn't what I play for. I have to think hard at work as an academic lawyer, puzzling stuff out is not what I want to do in play. What interests me as player & DM is decision-making - the PCs understand the situation, what will they do about it? I dislike linear play, I am very interested in choices made between several valid options, eg which side do we support in a civil war. That kind of choice requires information. Occasionally there may be secrets - the heroic usurper is actually a demon lord, say - which can mislead even players who are paying attention - but those should be the rare exception.

No, they should be the rule.

Anyone can go fight Goblins.

Heroes fight Demons and Gods who have large agendas.

It's not a matter of mysterious mysteries. It's about entertainment. The more interesting movies are the ones with twists in them, not the ones you can sit in the theater and predict.

As for players being in a "fog of confusion", that's mainly due to two things:

1) The PCs are adventuring day in and day out. It's been nearly a week or more since the players were in adventure mode. It's extremely easy to forget a lot of details in a week.

2) DMs sometimes make their plots too complex. Having a mystery is cool. Having a super complex set of many multiple subplots where even the DM has difficulty keeping them all juggled at the same time isn't.

The way to avoid the "fog of confusion" is for the DM to have reoccurring villains, and a few reoccurring subplots. The game keeps coming back to the same campaign subplots over and over again. When that happens, the players become engaged because the DM isn't confusing them with minutia or pulling obscure plot points out of his butt months after he first introduced them. Instead, he is repeatedly reinforcing what the players have already encountered and adding more information to those subplots as the adventures unfold.

And by mystery, it just means that there are things going on that the players are not totally aware of, but that eventually need to be discovered if the PCs are going to be successful in their own goals. It's not a Sherlock Holmes "the players have to be super brilliant to figure it out" type of mystery. The players are not working their brains on overtime. That's not entertainment, that's work.


The advantage of misdirection is not in making the players think hard, the advantage of misdirection is that it allows for those cool cinematic moments where the players go "WTF?". Just like what happened in your game, but not just because the PCs were betrayed. I try to avoid the betrayed type "WTF?"s (because it is so easy to do and because so many players have had it happened so many times) and instead go for things like the evil merchants were selling magic items to the Orcs in order to protect the merchant's homeland, not because they are evil. They are only evil to the PCs because the PCs have for 8 levels been trying to stop the magic item shipments to the Orcs who are threatening the PCs homelands. In this case, one of the reoccurring villains wasn't so much evil as neutral. The merchants didn't care if the PC's homeland was threatened as long as their own homeland wasn't.

On the other hand, if the players make poor decisions like in your example, a betrayal is ok.

I actually cringe when I read yet another WotC adventure where there is a female captive that the PCs rescue who is actually a monster with an illusion. Most of the time, it should just be a female captive that isn't a bad guy. This is not the type of misdirection that the DM should use. Cliches are predictable. The secret portions of the game are ones that for the most part, should become known eventually. It's not a matter of fooling the players. It's a matter of surprising the players. It's harder to surprise your players if they understand most everything going on when they have discussions with NPCs.

 

[S'mon]

In short, I'm not interested in penalizing my players for not being the things they want to pretend to be.

I realize that's something of a stylistic choice in D&D, and some DMs like more player challenge, but that's not a mode I prefer to play in, and if D&D assumed I wanted to play like that, it would not work for my groups.

Yes, it's clearly a matter of preference - I like to stretch myself as player & GM, and in-character roleplay is one of the main things I play for. If you can't make a good-faith effort at playing a charming swashbuckler in-character, ripping off cheesy lines from movies or whatever it takes, but making an effort - then I don't want you playing a charming swashbuckler at my table. I often play with strangers, and even if playing with friends I don't want them playing in a way that I won't enjoy. But I'm not saying my way is better, just better for me.

 

[S'mon]

I try to avoid the betrayed type "WTF?"s (because it is so easy to do and because so many players have had it happened so many times) and instead go for things like the evil merchants were selling magic items to the Orcs in order to protect the merchant's homeland, not because they are evil. They are only evil to the PCs because the PCs have for 8 levels been trying to stop the magic item shipments to the Orcs who are threatening the PCs homelands. In this case, one of the reoccurring villains wasn't so much evil as neutral. The merchants didn't care if the PC's homeland was threatened as long as their own homeland wasn't.

On the other hand, if the players make poor decisions like in your example, a betrayal is ok.

I actually cringe when I read yet another WotC adventure where there is a female captive that the PCs rescue who is actually a monster with an illusion. Most of the time, it should just be a female captive that isn't a bad guy.

Both your examples comply with my GMing approach too - people tend to do things for understandable human emotions like greed, ambition & revenge. And the vast majority of captives IMCs are real captives, not monsters in disguise. Maybe we're not so far apart. NPCs will lie to my PCs, like the Zark example - it's just that I'm happy to give players plenty of chances to spot lies themselves, without relying on dice rolls, since I prioritise in-character interaction over the mechanics, I treat the mechanical abilities as player resources (the way the 4e PHB describes them), not as definitional of what happens in play, sim-style (as the 4e DMG advice tends towards). Some of the 4e DMG advice seems to see 'talky stuff' as 'getting in the way of the fun', whereas for me it is the highest part of the fun.

 

[S'mon]

An artificial solution like that can work, but it's awfully gamist. "So I can't check to see if he's lying, just because David's Character already checked?"

Presumably the NPC wasn't giving off any 'tells', or there wasn't any structural weakness in the door, or the lock is of a kind you've not encountered before.

If the players were suspicious and kept interrogating the NPC I would usually allow further Insight checks, though - new circumstances allow new checks. But in general the 4e Skill Challenge '3 failures' rule is a good one IMO and it can be beneficially applied in a range of circumstances.

 

[Walking Dad]

I like passive Insight and Perception.

And I would like to see Chris Perkins to use the official rules for his 'open' DM work.
I really dislike him ignoring the saving throw for moving creatures on dangerous ground

 

[Balesir]

I don't think any of my players would think my NPCs were passive - they're always plotting! One reason I try for a very clear direct GMing style is that there's so much going on that otherwise it would be indecipherable to the average player, and would just seem like a big confusing mess.

Yeah, that's not quite what I meant. It's more that, to me (and I'm not sure this is really a rational thing), having the NPCs/monsters actions create "passive use" DCs for the players to roll against makes them feel passive in a wider sense. Partly it's the simple fact that, if the players roll for every contest, the players will always know that there was a contest to be rolled for. Partly it's the non-rational psychology of me, as DM, feeling like the NPCs are running around just erecting cardboard cut-out barriers for the PCs to knock down, instead of having an active agenda of their own. Personal preferences based on personal reactions, basically - I've no idea how rare or widespread it may be.

I use Passive Perception a fair bit, but only to reduce swinginess - so no problem asking "What's your Passive Per?" - usually if it's too low the reason swiftly becomes clear as there's an immediate ambush.

NPCs hiding works this way, for sure; also "environmental effects" like the old "dwarves realise when they encounter sloping passages 1/3 of the time" or "elves detect secret doors 1/3 of the time just by passing near them" stuff.

Something I also do is give players active rolls if they are about to trigger a trap. This is basically to stop the pixel-bitching stuff with endless checking and searching; they get a simple, automatic chance - succeed and the action stops just before they set the trap off, fail and the action stops just after they set the trap off...

I assume they don't - vast numbers of Heroic Tier NPCs get chomped on by the Epic Tier monsters IMCs - offstage.

So the "magic zoning" applies only to the PCs? That's even more anti-simulationist, isn't it?!

Actually, with 4E I generally take the view that the PCs are the only "characters, as such, in the world. All the NPCs only "exist" as "monster statblocks" and obey the "monster rules" in terms of the numbers being mutable to suit the party level (so, a 1st level NPC meeting a 12th level party will morph to a 9th level minion). So the "hordes of low level NPCs" don't exist, per se - the world isn't simulated to that degree.

And there's nothing to stop my level 7 Wilderlands PCs seeking out the EL 16+ Dead Queen's Valley, or the Cryptic Citadel of the Invincible Overlord, or whatever. But I do take it that (a) Epic Tier threats are fairly rare on a global scale, they typically have to be sought out and (b) the PCs have at least a chance to locate adventures of suitable level, with a bit of scouting & smarts.

The question is, though, why are these Paragon or Epic creatures confined to those Valleys and Citadels? If the Invincible Overlord has scads of Paragon level creatures to command, why doesn't s/he just send them out to take over all the low level lairs and towns? Why hole up in some dingy "Paragon dungeon" when you could take a kingdom and live in luxury?

Yes, it's clearly a matter of preference - I like to stretch myself as player & GM, and in-character roleplay is one of the main things I play for. If you can't make a good-faith effort at playing a charming swashbuckler in-character, ripping off cheesy lines from movies or whatever it takes, but making an effort - then I don't want you playing a charming swashbuckler at my table. I often play with strangers, and even if playing with friends I don't want them playing in a way that I won't enjoy. But I'm not saying my way is better, just better for me.

That's a fascinating example of what sounds like a Simulationist agenda (exploring "what it's like to be a...") specific to the player/actor's experience. Interesting and perfectly valid (obviously), but not a drive I think I have ever felt.

Both your examples comply with my GMing approach too - people tend to do things for understandable human emotions like greed, ambition & revenge.

Even when they are not human?

Actually, I very much agree with "understandable" motivations for non-player creatures. It's akin to the "computer player" playing by the game rules (i.e. not "cheating"). The reson is simply that, if the rules as understood by the players don't apply to the opposition, how the heck are the players supposed to figure out what they can and cannot/will and will not do? If the opposition are not, at some level, comprehensible, the whole thing becomes an arbitrary crapshoot.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, it's clearly a matter of preference - I like to stretch myself as player & GM, and in-character roleplay is one of the main things I play for. If you can't make a good-faith effort at playing a charming swashbuckler in-character, ripping off cheesy lines from movies or whatever it takes, but making an effort - then I don't want you playing a charming swashbuckler at my table. I often play with strangers, and even if playing with friends I don't want them playing in a way that I won't enjoy. But I'm not saying my way is better, just better for me.

To each their own of course, and more power to ya. I was merely presenting why I DID like Passive Insight (and other passive skills), how someone could find that rule useful, regardless of what Chris Perkins, DM To The Stars (tm) does. I don't mind that someone who has never watched an Errol Flynn flick plays a charming swashbuckler.

Presumably the NPC wasn't giving off any 'tells', or there wasn't any structural weakness in the door, or the lock is of a kind you've not encountered before.

If the players were suspicious and kept interrogating the NPC I would usually allow further Insight checks, though - new circumstances allow new checks. But in general the 4e Skill Challenge '3 failures' rule is a good one IMO and it can be beneficially applied in a range of circumstances.

Again, it's just very abstract. There's no logical reason that everyone can't try to get their own gut feelings, there's just a game-logic-balance reason, and that can have a lot of unfortunate effects at the table (wrenching you from an in-character moment, for instance).

 

[S'mon]

So the "magic zoning" applies only to the PCs? That's even more anti-simulationist, isn't it?!

Sure - I am running a game, not a world sim. The simulation elements are there to support the game, they should not get in the way of it being a fair challenge. Eg there are monsters out there that would kill the PCs in a fight, but at the point of the initial start conditions the PCs have a fair chance to not encounter them.