Smart vs. Intelligence and Combatless Roleplaying Sessions

[Mishihari Lord]

I have a code to open the door to the garage here on a keypad. I do not put on the keypad a little reminder giving a hint as to the combonation that will unlock it. Do you know people that do this regularly? Organizations? Is this something that is seen anywhere in real life?

How about password hints for website logins? Also, secret information questions for when you lose your password. Almost every website with logins uses these.

 

[Tarangil]

You, sir, are a Rat Bastard GM. Having been on the recieving end of a very similar experience, if it ever happens again I (not my character, me) will get up and leave. You can sit there and chuckle all you want, for me it's just hours of wasted game time and utter frustration. In other words, I'm not having fun! (Which is supposed to be the whole point of gaming in the first place.)

I'm not as cruel as you think...First I did mention that they were stubborn players. Shadowdale wasn't very far away and they already had an appointment with Elminster, all they had to do was go back, and I'd shoo them back up there with a rock. But Noooooo they wouldn't leave the summit. I was pulling my hair out for the whole bloody duration, it's not that I wouldn't let them leave or not give out hints. They got the hints and wouldn't leave. Did I mention that they were stubborn?

It was worth it in the end because they were expecting something overley complicated. So after many fruitless hours of saying "no that doesn't work either" their AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG! at the end was worth it.

 

[DonTadow]

You seem to handle puzzles better than most DMs. A commentary of some kind to give advice to the more heavy-handed or stingy DMs would probably be appreciated by the gaming populace. Unfortunately, the DMs who would most need to read such an article probably wouldn't.

I'd still like to put something like that out though. Its obvious that there are some dms whom like puzzles, but don't know how to incorporate them in a way that no one sees the puzzle or it doesnt become a distractions. I think thats who it would be aimed at. There are some guys whom like hack and slash and that is fine, but there are some whom hate puzzles simply because it was pourly done before.

I"ve come across some great puzzles that just don't fit in. I've come across far too many riddles that are great but don't fit in as well.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Originally Posted by The going home part reminded me of some stubborn players I had. Sometimes the simplest puzzle will wrack your brain even when you're sitting on the answer.

These guys had to go to the Elemental plane of earth, and had found the gate on the summit of a mountain. They had enough hints through aguries and such to know the key is within a hands reach. These guys tried everything in the book to get this gate functioning (lets say about 4-5 real game hours), until around 4:00am out of frustration, they find out the key was a rock...yes just a rock.

You know, they probably could've rolled for the answer, but it's worth seeing the players faces when they find something out on their own...especially when it's a simple answer and they spent most of their gaming time trying to figger it out. Yes the faces and sounds accompanying them were worth the wait.

You, sir, are a Rat Bastard GM. Having been on the recieving end of a very similar experience, if it ever happens again I (not my character, me) will get up and leave. You can sit there and chuckle all you want, for me it's just hours of wasted game time and utter frustration. In other words, I'm not having fun! (Which is supposed to be the whole point of gaming in the first place.)

You're making a pretty poor assumption here. How do you know the players didn't have fun? A lot of people enjoy this sort of thing, and enduring a little frustration is just par for the course.

This reminds of of an episode in Sagiro's story hour where the PCs needed a password to enter a tower and continue the adventure. Their usual method for solving such a problem was using thought capture to see what people were thinking about at the entry. Unfortunately all the thoughts the could capture were of people thinking that that didn't know the password. I believe they spent hours on trying to figure out it. It turns out the password was "I don't know the password." That sounds like fun to me, and I think most players I konw would enjoy figuring out a riddle of this type.

 

[Tarangil]

You're making a pretty poor assumption here. How do you know the players didn't have fun? A lot of people enjoy this sort of thing, and enduring a little frustration is just par for the course.

This reminds of of an episode in Sagiro's story hour where the PCs needed a password to enter a tower and continue the adventure. Their usual method for solving such a problem was using thought capture to see what people were thinking about at the entry. Unfortunately all the thoughts the could capture were of people thinking that that didn't know the password. I believe they spent hours on trying to figure out it. It turns out the password was "I don't know the password." That sounds like fun to me, and I think most players I konw would enjoy figuring out a riddle of this type.

They did have fun. And found some very creative ideas. In the end they learned a valuable lesson on overassumption.

"I don't know the password." I'm going to remember that one, I like it.

 

[Voadam]

(Edited for proper quoting)
This, Voadam, is where I will always disagree with you.

You disagree that a DM can determine an NPC's reactions?

Kamikaze ThirdWizard gave you a perfectly concise, valid description of his intimidation attempt. To hand-waive that a 16 is not successful only encourages your players to do one thing: Never spend ranks in Intimidate. Put them in tumble, or jump, or climb, something useful in combat, because those are the only places mechanics have fidelity in the game universe.

Two options here.
1 Ignore the social and mental mechanics entirely, in which point putting points there is not mechanically useful.

2 Adjudicate situations by DM judgment and modify based on the character, giving more leeway and better reactions to a player who is playing to the character concept (mechanical and description concepts). This ignores the poor task resolution of the existing 3e social skill system but the numbers retain meaning though it is not as well defined.[/QUOTE]

If I play in your games and you have the right to arbitrarily decide whether my character is intimidating or persuasive, or knowledgable, or any has other non-combat mechanic working for him, how can I ever make a character that is STRONGER in those qualities than myself?

You can't, except in the minor way that roleplaying frees you from real world constraints on how you normally act.

Maybe I happen to be a bad liar. You let someone who is a bad martial artist explore the option of slaying orcs to have fun, and you do that without question for the simple reason that the actions can't be done at the table. Why are you eliminating the possiblity of me playing a lying piece of crap just because I can't do it to meet your satisfaction at the table?

I'm not eliminating the possibility of you playing a lying piece of crap.

I have faith that you, or anyone, could play a lying piece of crap.

I'm eliminating you being able to sidestep roleplaying that concept through dice mechanics in my games.

There are only so many pieces of character capital a player has at their disposal: ability rolls or point buys, one to two feats at first level, 1 to 48 skill points at first level, etc. If intimidate can be resolved without using mechanics by DM fiat, why would I ever invest in the feat persuasive, for example? There's no return on that investment compared to Power Attack, so all that encourages is one-dimensional combat-designed characters.

If a DM is using option 1 and a player doesn't care for the mechanical aspects of say feinting for bluff, then bluff enhancing feats would not be useful and there is no incentive to get such feats. No big deal.

If a DM is using option 2 and considering the character mechanics though not using the task resolution of the social skills in the RAW then feats like skill focus are more indicators for the DM to consider as he makes his judgments. There is still an incentive to take such a feat, but it is not as easy to measure mechanically against combat ones such as power attack. The marginal difference between maxing out a skill and maxing it out and taking a skill focus in it might not be noticeable, or it might. Not a big deal again.

 

[ThirdWizard]

How about password hints for website logins? Also, secret information questions for when you lose your password. Almost every website with logins uses these.

I see that as different because it isn't a puzzle, its just a question that only you have the answer to. Those are as much a riddle as "What's in my pocket?" is a riddle.

I'd still like to put something like that out though.

A book less about lists of puzzles and instead how to construct puzzles yourself and how to handle them in game (<-- that especially) would be great, I think. I'd say try it out.

 

[Voadam]

Best use of puzzles I've seen in a module was in Doom of Odin by Avalanche press. The puzzle was based on magical runes which are a setting element. IIRC they were on the floor and figuring out the puzzle showed the safe passage to get into a rune wizard's tomb. However, characters could jump past a certain number so as not to trigger them, or just suck it up and take the damage from triggering them, or rely on saves to partially mollify the effects.

Solving the rune puzzle made things easier. Failure just meant things were harder but not game stopping. And other tactics could bypass the puzzle.

I liked that style on many levels. It led to more immersion in the world and allowed many styles of tactics to be usefully employed and different character types to approach it differently and achieve "success".

I didn't like how they threw in a riddle skill to give away the answers with a simple roll though.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Right, the mechanics themselves are not the roleplaying.

Taking your third example giving the speech is roleplaying the character, rolling the dice is an optional task resolution mechanic. How the bandits react can be determined by mechanical skills and dice rolls or by DM judgment.

...the latter of which would encourage charismatic players to put their skill and ability score points into things other than Charisma and Charisma-based skills. Since it's they, and not their characters, that will be doing all the negotiating and intimidating, and die-rolling is optional, there's no reason to build a charismatic character.

Saying "My character is good at intimidation, I'm not. I use intimidate to get them to surrender . . . 16" is simple character task resolution without roleplaying.

I disagree completely. If I can't intimidate a flea, and the DM demands that I be intimidating in order to use the skill I bought using valuable skill points, I'm going to be plenty cheesed off. Dave the Barbarian is a scary guy, but I'm not. I can say "Dave goes 'Grr' at his foes and stares them down in a frightening manner, saying something unpleasant involving his axe and their soft bits," but I can't reasonably be expected to deliver an intimidating monologue. The game mechanic determines what Dave can accomplish. Any acting on my part is simply icing on the cake. If I happen to be playing a patently uncharismatic character, but I'm charismatic IRL, and use my charisma to talk my way through encounters, I'm cheating. I'm gaining an unfair advantage over the people who spent their skill points on Charisma-based skills.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

How about password hints for website logins? Also, secret information questions for when you lose your password. Almost every website with logins uses these.

Actually, what they usually do is keep track of the email associated with the password, and if you forget it, they tell you what it is via email (necessitating the use of another secure password). Most of the time the whole "challenge question" thing is more trouble than it's worth.