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<blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 8302961" data-attributes="member: 6795602"><p>I don't think the guard himself needs to be invented on the fly, just the important details about him. One can have a gate guard not generated on the fly with no other details worked out other than that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree this case is different but it's not the case that's causing contention.</p><p></p><p></p><p>There's only so much information one can glean by looking at someone. The GM would rightfully provide very little worthwhile detail in this situation. A slightly better approach might be, 'is it known if guards of this city are normally fiercely loyal' (can rule out bribery). 'Is it known if they are particularly unwatchful' (can rule in sneaking). If the answers to enough of your questions is 'you don't know' then you are basically at square one again. You will have to interact with the current fiction to try and get more information, but those interactions can lead to bad results since trying to gain information about someone and the ways you try to do it can have their own points of failure.</p><p></p><p>Also, at the end of the day, it boils down to simply basing the guards reactions on stereotypes. Which seems to be the unspoken rule in the kinds of social interactions in this kind of play. Use stereotypes to fill the gaps for every detail that isn't explicitly different. Which does help make a playable game under this style - but there's cons there as well.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This circles us right back around to the same problem. If you don't know anything about the guard, then feeling him out in conversation and how you try to do that is just as likely to fail as the 'blind' bluff attempt. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I suppose if your world is premised on the idea that how a man looks defines the kind of man. Not a particularly normal premise IMO.</p><p></p><p></p><p>And if the answer is no simply because those aren't visible. No is going to be what happens with many of these questions. An impartial GM is going to ultimately conclude that very little information about a guards personality can be determined by watching a guard closely (and heck the very act of watching him closely may come with it's own set of negative consequences). So we are really left with stereotypes being the primary driver for non-named NPC behavior.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Interaction of any kind comes with the same potential pitfalls of just bluffing him. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I get those complaints, but the answer to those complaints isn't to simply do away with those skills. It's to structure the game such that all NPC's introduced are people that the DM has at least mapped out enough to make many decisions about their behavior. That means fewer NPC's. Fewer big cities - or at least less interactive ones. Think Diablo style towns with 5-10 NPC's or towns where you just fast forward through. Which I think goes back to what [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] was saying about that particular mode of play primarily needing to be confined to a dungeon - where the whole adventure is premised on the internal dungeon and every NPC applicable to that adventure is present and defined within that dungeon.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FrogReaver, post: 8302961, member: 6795602"] I don't think the guard himself needs to be invented on the fly, just the important details about him. One can have a gate guard not generated on the fly with no other details worked out other than that. I agree this case is different but it's not the case that's causing contention. There's only so much information one can glean by looking at someone. The GM would rightfully provide very little worthwhile detail in this situation. A slightly better approach might be, 'is it known if guards of this city are normally fiercely loyal' (can rule out bribery). 'Is it known if they are particularly unwatchful' (can rule in sneaking). If the answers to enough of your questions is 'you don't know' then you are basically at square one again. You will have to interact with the current fiction to try and get more information, but those interactions can lead to bad results since trying to gain information about someone and the ways you try to do it can have their own points of failure. Also, at the end of the day, it boils down to simply basing the guards reactions on stereotypes. Which seems to be the unspoken rule in the kinds of social interactions in this kind of play. Use stereotypes to fill the gaps for every detail that isn't explicitly different. Which does help make a playable game under this style - but there's cons there as well. This circles us right back around to the same problem. If you don't know anything about the guard, then feeling him out in conversation and how you try to do that is just as likely to fail as the 'blind' bluff attempt. I suppose if your world is premised on the idea that how a man looks defines the kind of man. Not a particularly normal premise IMO. And if the answer is no simply because those aren't visible. No is going to be what happens with many of these questions. An impartial GM is going to ultimately conclude that very little information about a guards personality can be determined by watching a guard closely (and heck the very act of watching him closely may come with it's own set of negative consequences). So we are really left with stereotypes being the primary driver for non-named NPC behavior. Interaction of any kind comes with the same potential pitfalls of just bluffing him. I get those complaints, but the answer to those complaints isn't to simply do away with those skills. It's to structure the game such that all NPC's introduced are people that the DM has at least mapped out enough to make many decisions about their behavior. That means fewer NPC's. Fewer big cities - or at least less interactive ones. Think Diablo style towns with 5-10 NPC's or towns where you just fast forward through. Which I think goes back to what [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] was saying about that particular mode of play primarily needing to be confined to a dungeon - where the whole adventure is premised on the internal dungeon and every NPC applicable to that adventure is present and defined within that dungeon. [/QUOTE]
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