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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 8009694" data-attributes="member: 6993955">[USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] - I think you might be mistaking the fact that I gave the two examples of leverage and overcoming objections for my thinking those are the only two possibilities. Playing from a place of passion and strong belief is also great, and your example of the angel is a strong example of great dramatic play. If you wanted to slot that in to my post I'd call the rhetorical performance leverage - you're appealing to the NPCs strongly held beliefs. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to attempt, and D&D has more than enough tools to make it work.As for the dragon's horde, I would disagree with your characterization. The notion that the dragon isn't giving away it's horde has nothing to do with the possible nature of D&D as a treasure hunting game. First off, that is a common but by no means universal descriptor of D&D, and even if it were the case, it's not an idea that IMO drives a lot of the fictional framing that goes into the game, at least as we're discussing it here. That example was to illustrate that just walking up to a dragon and saying, hey, can I have that horde? isn't going to work on a straight CHA check. Persuade is not mind control. I would assume that a simple roll of that sort also wouldn't talk a dragon out of it's horde in your game. Why? Because it beggars belief. It's a moon arrow. That is very different from saying it's not possible to talk a dragon out of it's horde. Of course that should be possible, just very, very difficult, and something that would need a very clever approach and probably some great roleplaying and rolling.I would also argue that expedient play is not necessarily the same thing as expedience in the fictional framing. Expedient play, at least as far as that term describes what I was talking about,  just means choosing actions based on information and outcomes. I brought it up as way to illustrate the importance of giving the players enough information that they can make decisions. LotR isn't free of this, Pippin kneeling before Denethor is an action that lives wholly within what I was trying to describe. Pippin didn't make that decision based solely on himself as Hobbit, but also based on what he knew about Denethor and about Gondor. Hobbit's don't offer service to one another, but men of Gondor do. I don't want to belabor the examples from fiction though. Save to say that I am not limiting social interaction to calculated maneuvers, passion is in the mix. The word leverage wasn't meant to convey just the calculated manipulation of others, but also to include speaking to strongly held beliefs. Anything that you could describe as a handhold by which an NPC might be moved should be in play, the players just need to be given/acquire/figure out the information they need to determine what those handholds are.</blockquote>

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