Social skills in D&D

[Melan]

The above poll concerns strictly D&D3 play. The below question concerns play in earlier editions.

For those of you who used to, or still do, play earlier editions of this game, how did you handle social interaction in the game? How did you adjudicate/rule on PCs bluffing guards, intimidating bullies, diplomacizing merchants, etc.?

We roleplayed it. Not deeply, not skillfully, but we always did. Still do.

How did you handle Players with low charisma/social skills playing characters with high Charisma?

Gave them a lot of leeway.

How did you handle Players with high charisma/social skills playing characters with low Charisma?
Quasqueton

No matter what they said, the NPCs reacted poorly - more so than if they were of a higher Charisma. Mind you, for us, Charisma was closer to "physical beauty" than "personal magnetism" at the time.

 

[Melan]

What this poll is showing is that with all the moaning and complaining about how with the D&D3 social skills players have stopped role playing social encounters and now just roll the dice, only 4% actually do that.
Quasqueton

Of course this is not an universal occurance. But it happens often enough to be irritating. Essentially, a player with a high Diplomacy can righteously point out that with rolls around 24, he can convince almost everyone of almost everything. If you penalize them, you are being an unfair DM because they paid with dearly earned skill points for the privilege of "skipping" the roleplaying bits. I had some trouble with this when I started running 3e, and after a few sessions, I canned all social skills, asking the PCs who had them to reinvest them in other areas. Play progressed more smoothly afterwards...

 

[Jacen]

Ahh... social interaction...
Can't do nothing, but this topic is always bringing the loud and stubborn side of me forward =). Some things are exaggerated to bring my point of view more clearly up. Don't let the flames to rise too high

I let my Player as his PC talk it out with me as the NPC, then I have the Player roll the dice (and I roll dice, if applicable) to determine how well the character handled the situation. I use the "DM's best friend" (+2/-2 circumstance modifiers) depending on what the Player said.

I pay attention to what they say, not how they say it. If what they say it stupid or inappropriate, then the PC and player suffer the consequences.

So im my opinion this means that there are two votes for situationgame and not for roleplay.

Seriously though, I'd handle it in the same way as above, paying attention to what the player says, not how he says it. Any advantage a player might gain in the "what" department through having good social skills is, IMO, deserved and not a problem AFAIAC.

So if I had an bad day at work and at game I am still sulking quiet mood what is the reason for my CHARACTER to have a bad day? If I am in a quiet mood there will be dice roll and thats it. Punishing for it with negative situation modifiers because bad "role"play and doing "roll"play doesn't help. I would prefer no modifiers acording how or what said even if none said and see if my character have a bad day by rolling insted of the fact that I am.

So If someone can IRL smooth talk DM to give out his dices that is no reason why that players character with 5 diplomacy is always doing better than one with 15.

So in my mind if you have to "role"play character by telling what he says is more situationplay and not roleplay. Only role you are doing is that your character has better physical stats and your mental ones. Whats fun on that?

My real problem with social skills isn't really that they discourage RP or anything.

Do they? If I don't want to say and let the die roll then I don't say anything. Even if that gives -20 to my roll. It just keeps me wondering how my character got that far because with all those -20 he wouldn't have got this far.

It's that a player can do a good job of RPing - have a decent Cha, Diplomacy score, etc. and still roll really bad and get screwed when (by any reasonable standard) his scores and performance should have led to a better result. As a DM, I just simply don't let this kind of thing happen by fiat (i.e. - "good enough, you don't need to roll") but I've gotten screwed by it as a player a few times with DMs who are (IMO) too BtB and it's really frustrating.

Ever heard about bad day? Ever had a bad day? Ever been tired even before game starts and your brain apears to be already sleeping. So what the h*** that you have been working 20h already and your character been sleeping two weeks and recovering from last avdenture and sharpening his mind and flirting with nurse. Shut up and take your minuses from bad "role"play and be a man. I have had a period when I did work over 20 days without free weekends and avereage over 10h per day. And if I still attend to game and only get more s*** hit the fan... well that would be it - I like to play but I do not need to play.

I DO like when then there is discussions and players are talking in character. But IMHO that is getting players into mood and making good game. That is not the definition of roleplaying that is a mark of good roleplayer. And like I said, in situations like those I would prefer no modifiers. Getting a good session should be more rewarding than getting all extra bonuses. I do have a bad days too I just hate when they are at the same time with my character because DM says so. Let the dice choose.

PS. I do have quite bad luck with dices but so what. It still IS only a game and I prefer randomness over DM controlling everything.

Edit. By situationplay I mean that if you are soing all the talking all the thinking etc it is just like a question what would YOU do if you were in a situation like this. Only difference is that you are in no real danger like you could be in real situation like bribing a police officer.

 

[S'mon]

Something else:

Normally we roleplay the conversation. Whenever I'm unsure how the NPC will react, I request a bluff/diplomacy/intimidate roll, with the DC influenced by how plausible the spiel/how charming the request/how scary the threat is. The die rolling thus supports the roleplay. This means that better roleplayers do better, OTOH skill ranks are fully meaningful to everyone - good roleplayers & bad roleplayers benefit roughly equally from a high Dip score (etc), without it dominating the game. To me this is kinda similar to a player's tactical knowledge making their PC more effective in a battle; the player's knowledge of interpersonal interaction supports their PC's social interaction but in either case it's always nice to have a good big bonus on the die roll.

 

[S'mon]

Earlier editions: Off-hand I don't recall ever rolling for social interactions, which rather made Cha a dump stat. If anything I think my 3e approach is superior, although it would probably work just as well without the social skills & just rolling CHA + d20, especially if it was total CHA rather than the relatively small bonus.

 

[The Shaman]

1e: I had an NPC reaction chart and used the Cha modifier to affect the roll, along with ad hoc circumstance modifiers. As far as content and style (bluff, coercion, negotiations), that was all roleplay.

Come to think of it, I handle it about the same way now - roleplay it out, then roll, and interpret the NPCs reaction from the results of both.

 

[Gold Roger]

I've chosen "talk then roll", but it actually depends on the the skill involved. In advance I'll have to say that I think it's important for immersion and roleplaying that the players play out their dialogues to some degree:

Sense motive is a simple roll. It's easy to figure out why. Sense motive is a thing of good perception and knowledge, mixed with a little empathy. No thinking involved.

Intimidate is simple as well. The player tells how he wants to intimidate the NPC, then the dice is rolled. It's simply a thing of confidence, bearing and body language. Everybody can say "Don't do that or I'll crush your head", but some people get laughed at for it and others are feared.

Bluff is similar. I think Bluff isn't really the skill to come up with a good lie, it's about the ability to not move your eyes the wrong way, keeping your voice streight, that kind of thing. Basically about selfcontrol and confidence. You can try it out against a person that knows how to detect lies, tell them something perfectly plausible and they know from you behavior when you say it that it's a lie (at best as part of a bet, it's easier to tell a lie when nothing depends on it)

Gather information is really hard. The question is if GI is the skill to ask the right questions, ask questions the right way or the skill to look at the right place for answers.
The third way is the easiest skill to roleplay: Grang the Halforc wants to gather informatins (modifier -2): He goes up to the next best peasant that knows nothing (roll of 10-2=8), the is played out. Janus the Bard (modifier +12) wants to know the same thing, he enters the next best Bar, scans the room and spots a person that is likely to know something (roll of 10+12=22), he goes up to him, the rest is diplomacy, a bribe, roleplay, and possibly even bluff and intimidate. Now this would be more of a wisdom or inteligence based skill, it also goes into the area of spot and search.
The two other approaches give us the question: how do we roleplay this encounter? Normal roleplay, followed by a roll is somewhat not very logical, but if you just say what you want to know, roll and get an answer, this isn't very flavorfull.
The gather information skill makes a lot of sense from a design/metagame point of view as a shortcut to get information to the players, however it has no in game reason to exist, as it can easily be covered by roleplaying and the other social skills, it also has the two big drawbacks that it pushs the players to spend some of their precious skillpoints on a skill with little more than use of plot funktionality and a single messed up roll can have the PC's miss important clues or be left stranded with loose end and no idea how to go on.
When I think of gather information in the Sharn campaign I played in, which at some points was very heavy on investigation it shortened some parts of play significantly, but through this took away a lot of possible roleplaying and deeper imersion in the setting, and often got us end up with the mentioned problems.
I feel if the DM thinks a informatio is trivial/easy to optain, he could give it the players without a need to roll, if he thinks a information is to important/hard to optain to just hand it out, the players deserve to work harder for it than one skillcheck, just like any other challenge.

Diplomacy really troubles me to no end. I still don't know what to do with it and often thought about removing it alltogether.
One could treat it like I treat bluff and intimidate: The skill isn't about what you say, but about your body language etc. Now, this shurely part of the diplomacy skill, but I think diplomacy is more than any skill out there about what you say and how well your formulation is.
One way to simulate this is, that you roleplay it normaly, then roll and tell the players how his PC really said it. Now, the pure absurdity of this just feels wrong, and will also make players just parafrase what he wants to say.
This is also the last possible solution to the problem, the player parafrases what he wants to say then rolls, and the DM determines how well it was formulated. Sure this works perfect mechanically, but just isn't immersive at all.
Unless I find a solution soon, I'll propably scratch diplomacy.

On the question of players with higher/lower personal charisma than their PC's, well, I handle them just like players with higher/lower wisdom and intelligence.
Higher mental abilities of the player are his own responsibility. He has to keep himself in check, if he can't the DM may step in sometimes ("Do you think that's apropiate for Nork?"), if they have an idea they just have to get out of their system, they could tell it the player of a PC with higher stats OOG.
Obviously, players with lower abilities can't take that responsibility for themselfes. Here the DM should just more often ask the player "Do you really want to say/do this?", the other players can make advises on plans/dialogues. Players also often have more time to think about their plans/what they say than their PC's would have in game.

 

[Belen]

What this poll is showing is that with all the moaning and complaining about how with the D&D3 social skills players have stopped role playing social encounters and now just roll the dice, only 4% actually do that.

You have obviously had no experience with people who play in the RPGA. I saw someone get up from the table and quit the game because the DM would not except. "I roll at 22. He is bluffed."

I would expect the people at ENWorld to do it differently. You should probably trying polling the WOTC boards with the same question.

 

[Akrasia]

... As anyone with any knowledge of proper statistical sampling will tell you, this poll is showing nothing of the sort.

Quoted because people on boards like this one frequently fail to realize this.

...I would expect the people at ENWorld to do it differently. You should probably trying polling the WOTC boards with the same question.

Yes, this would be an interesting experiment.

 

[Quasqueton]

BelenUmeria, go post this poll on the WotC forums. Word it exactly the same so the comparison is accurate (as can be).

I'm going to be getting very busy in the next day to week, so I don't have time to go look it up and post it. (I have no account over there.)

Quasqueton