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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7743662" data-attributes="member: 996">You're welcome, I guess, but you did not actually answer either question, at all. It's necessarily the character drawing a conclusion based on it's ability to spot and interpret cues/clues indicating deception.  Literally what he thinks.   Actually, I'm pretty sure there's no other camp.  Afterall you can choose quite a lot of actions when you think someone is lying - including to second guess yourself and decide you must be wrong and he's telling the truth (maybe because the lie is so consistent with the facts you do have, and no alternate theory makes any sense, perhaps because you just /really/ want to accept the lie because the alternative is hard to deal with in some way, be it logistical or emotional).  Alternately, you could just be prone never to trust anyone, which gets very inconvenient, IMX. So, my actual camp divides the issue in an entirely different way:  do you resolve tasks based on the abilities of the character, or those of the player?  If you're resolving certain tasks based on the abilities of the player, then the character needs no skill or attributes in those areas.  If the player controls what the character thinks/feels, then there's no point having morale checks, charm spells, social skills, reaction rolls, INT, WIS, or CHA.  (It's worth noting, BTW, that when 1e AD&D had morale checks, PCs were exempt from them, and it didn't have much in the way of 'social skills,' so the game has long come down - partially - on the 'player resolution' side of things).  If the player controls /how/ a character searches for a secret door or picks a lock or which wire he cuts to disarm a trap, there's no need for skills in those areas.  Etc...I'm in the camp that says resolve tasks based on the abilities of the character.  It allows players to play characters very different from themselves along a wider range of dimensions.  Players still portray & make decisions for their character, of course, so in games with formal 'framing' (or GMs, like Iserith, who choose to impose it) I think, that heads off any issues around resolving social tasks using character abilities carrying a risk of undermining agency.  In other systems where that sort of step is left vague, obviously it can cause issues.  Even in such systems, it's worth the risk to player agency, IMHO, because it gives players freedom to play characters substantively different from themselves in more ways than physical & supernatural abilities.</blockquote>

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