Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[Lanefan]

holding your tongue isn’t an action. It’s doing nothing.

"Sometimes nothings lead to the best somethings." - Winnie the Pooh.

 

[prabe]

If they are at 1, they are friendly. Anywhere in between is indifferent. They start at a predetermined attitude (possibly random), say, 4. At this point I raise various objections or tough questions by the NPC during the conversation that the PCs can try to overcome or answer. If they do, then the slider moves toward friendly. If they don't, it moves toward hostile. Once I'm out of objections or questions, that's the final attitude of the NPC and now we can get to the PCs' ask.

I genuinely don't think there's a bad answer here, but I'm curious: Is that slider visible to the players?

 

[Ovinomancer]

One thing to bear in mind is that if you use the social interaction rules as written, the ask at the end is still an ability check (if there's an ability check at all) which means a botched roll can be resolved into failure or progress combined with a setback. So it doesn't have to be "you get it or you don't." Progress combined with a setback is generally how I do it.

It sounds like we may do something similar with multiple steps during the conversation piece. What I often do is have a slider on the screen or at the table that is labeled 1 to 6. If the NPC is at 6, they are hostile. If they are at 1, they are friendly. Anywhere in between is indifferent. They start at a predetermined attitude (possibly random), say, 4. At this point I raise various objections or tough questions by the NPC during the conversation that the PCs can try to overcome or answer. If they do, then the slider moves toward friendly. If they don't, it moves toward hostile. Once I'm out of objections or questions, that's the final attitude of the NPC and now we can get to the PCs' ask.

Roger that about the success with setback. I probably should have phrased it with 'you succeed or you fail.' The complaint wasn't that you couldn't fail forward with the DMG method, but that it either results in a success or a failure, there's no real way for it to end in a more complex situation where you might overall succeed at the goal but have lasting consequences from failures along the way, or fail at your goal but still have some lasting consequences from your successes. The roll-up to the final check leaves the outcome of the whole situation up to the GM's end narration rather than accruing as you go.

I do very much like the attitude slider, though. Reminds me of the clocks in Blades in the Dark -- a bit of game tech I adore. I'm just not as much a fan of the stock 5e social interaction mini-game. However, I did use it as written first, before I decided I'd like to add some bits from other games to expand the social pillar. I agree with you that you should try a game as it's presented before you run off and start playing it like a different game.

 

[iserith]

I genuinely don't think there's a bad answer here, but I'm curious: Is that slider visible to the players?

Yes, it's visible to the players. Visually moving that slider toward hostile reinforces the failure and increases the tension.

 

[prabe]

Yes, it's visible to the players. Visually moving that slider toward hostile reinforces the failure and increases the tension.

Given how transparent you seem to be as a GM, that was my first guess, but I could see it being useful as a GM-facing tool, also.

 

[iserith]

Roger that about the success with setback. I probably should have phrased it with 'you succeed or you fail.' The complaint wasn't that you couldn't fail forward with the DMG method, but that it either results in a success or a failure, there's no real way for it to end in a more complex situation where you might overall succeed at the goal but have lasting consequences from failures along the way, or fail at your goal but still have some lasting consequences from your successes. The roll-up to the final check leaves the outcome of the whole situation up to the GM's end narration rather than accruing as you go.

I see. It does seem to be very transactional in that regard for lack of a better word.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Turtles all the way down isn't a compelling argument, no. Of course, no one has suggested that it's turtles all the way down, so....

I mean, there was a turtle (the baron), and then another turtle (the Captain) and according to you the Captain's failure state wasn't discussed, so there could be another turtle under him and so forth.

It's not that this isn't a interesting direction to go. I've said as much. But as a DM who, a long long time ago, was leery of letting characters fail because I wanted them to always feel like Big Damn Heroes, I definitely think it can be overused. Hence the disclaimer.

Over time I came to recognize that heroes can be defined as much if not more so by their failures as their successes. So nowadays I don't sweat it so much. Although I do think about what might happen if they fail and how to enable progress despite it.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure. In instances when the a party has all been dealing with someone like that, it's usually been because all the party wanted to be there--and I've let the PCs who wanted to speak, speak, and not beaten up on someone for having a low CHA. So far, no one has tried insulting their way to social success, so I haven't had to deal with this precise problem.

For soem reason I'm reminded of a situation in the game I play in, from a few years back:

We'd rescued two prisoners from somewhere or other, and brought them home with us. The prisoners were very obviously members of a particular culture whose goal is world domination, i.e. they're everyone's enemy.

My PC had by a mile the worst Charisma in the party (and one of the worst ever seen in our crew!), yet somehow I ended up doing all the diplomacy with these guys once we got home mostly because no other PC was willing to talk to them! So, in my best gruff beer-soaked smelly-Dwarf way I bought them beers (which I slopped all over them while putting them on the table), sat down with them, and told them how it was gonna be - they were strangers in a strange land, enemies of all they saw, and they'd better make themselves scarce quick because even if we saw them again we'd most likely shoot first and ask questions later using Speak With Dead.

We haven't seen them since. They're probably still running...

 

[Ovinomancer]

I see. It does seem to be very transactional in that regard for lack of a better word.

I don't mind it. The structure is that every check along the way changes the fiction in a substantial way, but doesn't individually result in overall success of failure. So, yes, it is transactional in that each check has an independent pay-off, but it's also cumulative, in that the total number of successes and failures determines the overall result.

 

[Nagol]

Massive disconnect here.

The PC is being retired by the player thus is (for now or forever) no longer adventuring; but the player still controls what it does in its retirement. This can be as simple as saying "I stay in town and do spell research for a few years." (which really needs little if any further input from anyone until those few years are up) or as complex as "I hire a ship and a crew and where the map is blank, I go." (which probably means a night in the pub sometime where you and the player determine what becomes of this voyage).

Reprise his ownership? Ownership never left the player in the first place!

Ah...something's beginning to dawn on me here - are you coming from a strict standpoint of "a player may only ever have one PC in the campaign world at a time"? Because if this is so, there's another big disconnect: as both player and DM I expect players to end up with several (or more!) PCs out there in the game world, of whom one or two are active at any given time.

In the game I play in, I currently have nine. One is in the party we'll (I think) be playing tonight. Another three are in three other active parties, each currently on hold while we play this one. One is retired for now; one is retired probably forever, but they are both still mine. One has in effect made herself a hench to another player's PC and if asked I'd hand her over either to that player or the DM. And two who I had thought were long-term dead were recently found and rescued (one) and revived (the other), so in that party I'll have three active PCs if-when we get back to it, at least for the remainder of that adventure. (I've good in-character reasons to split 'em up afterwards)

Retiring my PC from adventuring is my choice, and a common enough occurrence. Retiring my control over that PC - particularly if I'm still otherwise in the game - is also my choice and mine alone, and is an extremely rare occurrence. The two choices are not tied together.

That, and often I'm retiring one PC in order to cycle another back in; and in a year I might reverse the process. Gets boring playing the same one all the time.

If that PC's player is still in the game the PC is the player's to control.

If that PC's player has left the game I'll only use it with the player's permission (if I can contact said player) or I won't use it at all. The exceptions to this are a) having old characters reappear in something like a dream sequence, that has no lasting impact on anything or b) active PCs touching base with retired characters to keep up friendships, exchange info, and the like.

Even if that player is still sitting there at the table?

This touches on a whole different can o' worms, that being adventuring NPCs and their status within the party. I treat 'em just like PCs, as do the players; mostly because the PCs in the fiction would treat them as just one of the team.

Again a hard one-PC-per-player stance; I'd almost always allow the player to run both; even more so in this case because it's the other players (as PCs) seeking out that character.

I am not a hard-fast 1 PC per player in many campaigns. In others, I am, it depends strongly on the table experience I am looking for for a particulalr campaign.

However, I have had poor experiences in the past with particular players seeking extra-special attention / advantages from maintaining a variety of PCs part-time and coordinating their abilities and resources (such as freely sharing magic items and cash) and trying to jump back and forth between PCs in games where that was not the expectation.

You lose ownership of the PC as soon as you utter the words "I'm not playing that character any more." The immediate inference is "so someone else has to" so that someone takes complete ownership of that instance of the character. The former player has no more say -- at all -- in the NPC's actions, reactions, or choices. It does not matter if the player is sitting at the table every week or left the game permanently and is 2,000 km away. Just as I will not tolerate a DM telling me how to run my PC, I won't tolerate a player telling me how to run a NPC. I may ask for advice, direction, or insight so as to maintain the character's apparent personality, knowledge, and preferences, but that ask is certainly not mandatory. I may even delegate the NPC to player control to ease my workload, but again that is completely discretionary and subject to change.

Now in a multi-PC game, you can certainly set a PC aside without retiring it, but if it is retired, it becomes a NPC. If you want it back as a PC, I'll take a look at what's happened to the NPC since it retired and decide if it still fits the campaign before allowing it back.

As an example, in my last 3.5 campaign, the group had a major falling out with their Wizard. and the PC was retired. He effectively usurped control of what the group wanted to do because only he had the power to travel to and from the adventure locale (a dwarven city cut off since the great devastation) and he didn't want to do that adventure. The PC did express a strong desire to "get in" with a college of wizards so when the PC was retired, the NPC went off to pursue that goal.

A few members of the party discovered much later that the Wizard was selling tours to that adventure locale to those interested in its history and development. The player couldn't recover that character as a PC even if he wanted to because his circumstances were so strongly altered between being retired as a PC and what it had become. (That, and I would not expect the other PCs to accept him back as a member).