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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5207599" data-attributes="member: 3424">I am reminded of an old Chinese story that goes something like this (Disclaimer: to save myself time, I just copied the following off the Internet. It's close enough to how I remember it.):Once a woman came to the hermitage of an old wise man. She complained that her husband had gone away to war, and ever since he returned, he had been nasty, cruel, and mean. She asked the old wise man what she should do. He replied, "Go and get a whisker from a tiger and bring it to me." She proceeded to do just that. One night, she crept out of her house with a bowl of meat. She approached a tiger who lived in a cave some distance from the village. She set the bowl of meat down on the ground several hundred yards from the mouth of the cave. She went back to her house and went to bed. The next morning, she retrieved the empty bowl. That night, she again set out with the bowl filled with meat for the tiger. This time she set the bowl down closer to the tiger's cave. She stood there for a moment looking toward the mouth of the cave. Then she left and spent the night in her house. The next morning, she went to retrieve the bowl. Again, it was empty. The tiger was eating the meat, so she was encouraged. That night, she left the bowl of meat even closer to the tiger's cave. Again and again she repeated her ritual, moving closer and closer every night to the mouth of the cave. At last, she placed the bowl right in front of the cave. The tiger came out and looked at her. He had grown accustomed to seeing her there and had come to feel indebted to her. He asked her, "Oh lady, what do you want?" She replied, "Oh tiger, I want a whisker from your face." The tiger said, "All right, you may take a whisker." She reached out, pulled a whisker from his face, turned quickly and ran, leaving the bowl of meat, never to return. She ran all the way to the wise man's hermitage. The old sage always kept a small sacrificial fire burning nearby as he meditated. She bowed down and waited, watching him meditate as the light of the fire danced on his wrinkled, old face. His meditation broke and he opened his eyes. "Oh, you have returned!" "Yes, sir. I have brought you a whisker from a tiger." She held out the whisker. The old man took it from her hand, and without a moment's hesitation, immediately threw it into the fire. She was surprised. "Why did you throw the whisker into the fire?" she gasped. She had worked so hard and exercised so much patience to get that whisker! The sage replied, "If you can tame a tiger, then you can tame a man. Go now, and with the same patience and cleverness you used to tame the tiger, tame your husband."It seems obvious to me that your friends are playing the game in this manner either because it is the only way they know how, or because it is the only way they enjoy it. As the DM, you may be able to teach them to enjoy another play style, but as the lady in the story, you may have to do it in baby steps, and you may have to exercise a lot of patience. Start simple. Put them in a situation where they need to interact briefly with a powerful, allied NPC (perhaps the local ruler has heard of their exploits and invites them to meet him, hinting that he may have a mission for them if they impress him). If the PCs perform well during the meeting, perhaps they get extra XP and a reward in addition to the mission. It may be blatant and crude, but if the players are motivated by XP and treasure, perhaps the fastest way to get them to role-play is to give XP and treasure for role-playing. From then on, slowly increase the complexity and difficulty of the interactions. Frankly speaking, negotiating with a known enemy really is not the kind of role-playing encounter that players with a predominantly hack and slash mindset are normally inclined to engage in without extensive preparations on the part of the DM.Good luck!</blockquote>

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