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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinAlexander" data-source="post: 6078910" data-attributes="member: 6700092">Let's break this down. First, <a href="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/683/roleplaying-games/diplomacy-design-notes-part-i" target="_blank">Diplomacy is broken</a>. The concept of permanently re-pegging attitudes is so broken that the badly balanced DCs only serve to exacerbate the underlying problem. The RAW turns every character specializing in Diplomacy into the Mule from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy (and the Mule broke an entire galaxy-worth of game balance).Note that RAW provides for this: A Diplomacy check can be attempted as a full action (6 seconds), but you take a -10 penalty on the roll. If your players aren't willing to actually engage the problem long enough to talk through even its most basic parameters, hit them with the penalty and they'll mend their ways.This is a problem you'll face with a lot of skills. For example, if the DM says, "You see a wall." And the player says, "I go to the other side of it." Well... what skill are they using, exactly? Are they climbing the wall? Jumping over it? Busting through it? Is it a Climb check, Jump check, or Strength check vs. Break DC?When I pose the question like this, of course, the solution is probably self-evident: You need to ask the player to be more specific. Exactly how are they going to get to the other side of the wall?Same thing applies in social situations. If you're uncertain which skill they're using, ask for more details about what they're actually attempting.If they're actually using an approach which combines several skills (like climbing halfway up a wall to a ledge and then jumping over the rest of it), either let the secondary skills offer them synergy bonuses or have them actually make a skill check to aid themselves (as per the aid another action). For example, if they decide the best way to talk their way through the door is to lie to the occupants and tell them that a local swamp gas pocket has exploded and they need to evacuate the area before they get poisoned then you could ask them to make a Bluff vs. Sense Motive check and on a success grant them a +2 bonus to their Diplomacy check.Good use of the <a href="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule" target="_blank">Three Clue Rule</a>, but you've run into one of two problems. Either:(1) You need to back up and provide two other ways to hook into this scenario.(2) Or your players are quite consciously rejecting the scenario and you need to decide just how much you want to avoid railroading. If entirely rejecting a scenario is OK with you, then let them do it. If not, your best bet is to say: "Look, guys, the scenario hook requires you to investigate the house."(3) Let the chosen action have consequences which escalate the scenario. The goal here is basically to go back to #1 and find a way to proactively provide two new hooks into the scenario. I don't know what's contained in the secret passages inside the house, so I don't know what form this might take. But, for example, if secret cultists are using those tunnels to sacrifice innocent victims then maybe a friend/comrade of the PCs can be kidnapped. Or maybe someone approaches them because their daughter has been kidnapped. Or maybe the ritual of the cultists succeeds and releases a horrific monster onto the streets of the city. Subsequent investigations can then lead them back to the house and re-engage them in the scenario.</blockquote>

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