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Message: <blockquote data-quote="M_Natas" data-source="post: 9293663" data-attributes="member: 7025918">Of course that can be shown by description. The ORC is barley scratched. He has big gashing wound on his side. He is barley able to stand .The feylord is sober and watches you with mistrust. He is a little tipsy. A smile crosses the lord's face as you dance together over the floor. You can feel his body relax under your arms while ...It becomes a metacurrency when it is arbitrarily decided with no relation to the Ingame World how many successes are needed.Again: You need to convince 5 out of 9 Councilmen is fine by me.But: You need 3 successes before 3 failures to convince the King to lend you an army is meta. Also it doesn't take take into account all the stuff the PCs can get up to.Like ... for example I prefer a dynamic system, like a morale or loyalty system for retainers. Just as an example: they start with Morale 0. Every thing positive a PC does can raise the morale by one or more (depending on the action the PC takes). Every thing bad can lower it by one or more (again, depending on the action). You can also have actions in this system that make it impossible to change the loyalty further (like killing the child of a retainer).So If I would use such a system to influence a single NPC, I wouldn't use 5 successes or 3 failures or something but more a morale or attitude like system.Of course I wouldn't tell the players the current attitude score of the NPC.Have you ever run a (half)marathon? I did several times. While on the race track you don't look at the markers, you don't look at your watch, you run until you see the finish line. Counting the meters or kilometers on a marathon race would just make it super slow, like watching a microwave clock makes it feel like this 1 minute it takes the food to be finished like an eternity.I thinknI see were our Philosophical Difference now stems from.I don't use finish lines. I don't like set meta goals. Not a certain amount of steps needed to finish this. Dynamic systems with win and loose conditions that can be achieved in a 100 different kind of ways. Like real life, like war, like running a business, like a soccer game were on brilliant action could change the whole outcome or could have catastrophic consequences. Which is why it doesn't really make sense for me to habe "3 successes before 3 failures" as a good condition. And which where it also doesn't make sense to tell the players that, because the finish line is not fixed, it is dynamic, based on the player actions.I always break the paragraphs to early ... is there a way to undo that?For me that is the DMs job, to make sure every player has the time to shine. For social situations I would fine any kind of Initiative to restraining. It would ki the natural flow of any conversation, which for me is a big part of roleplaying.Again, as long as it has inworld reasons it is fine.Convince 5 out of 9 councilmen. Stop the enemies before they finish 3 rituals. Find 10 supporters in the house of common to be eligible to get voted on. Convince 6 put of 10 jury members of your innocence. But for the Playe4s to.know the correct amount of "successes ", the characters need to know that amount, too.Like ... an election, you need more voters than your opposition, but exactly how may are enough? You only know after the count.But especially with a single NPC, any fixed number of successes/failures is arbitrary- it is meta.Like, why do I need to convince the King three times? Why can't I just kidnap his infant son and blackmail him to do my bidding? Why can I insult him two times but only the third time will he throw me in the dungeon?Yes, as a DM you need to have some kind of measure (your 3/3 successes/failures, I my dynamic point system), but telling the players the mechanics is like ... killing the suspension of disbelief. Is like seeing the microphone bouncing into the screen in a movie or the seeing the camera operator reflected in a window.It is the difference of"You hit the Orc with your sword, cutting a deep wound onto his right arm. You can see the fear in his eyes" to"You hit the ORC, reducing him to 12 HP, his morale score is lowered to 1."One js a fantastic adventure, the other is some guys sitting around the table playing with math.Yes, you need some kind of visible mechanics to facilitate the game, but the less you can get away with the better it is.</blockquote>

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