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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2682967" data-attributes="member: 26473">Voadam is right, Storm Raven - there is a difference.As the GM, I can't tell you specifically how to parry a sword blow with a shield, or how to estimate the value of a ruby, or how to recognize the somatic gesture of a web spell. What I can do, however, is know what an NPC is thinking and feeling, the same way that an adventurer's player does. The NPCs are "my characters" in the game - I know their motivations, their morals, their ethics, their feelings, and I can guide their social actions and reactions accordingly without recourse to dice, in ways that I can't with combat or other skills.I'm not a skilled swordsman, but I know if the guard at the gate is willing to accept a bribe or not. I'm not able to cast a spell, but I know if the wizard is willing to listen to an entreaty from the adventurers to enchant a staff on their behalf, and under what circumstances. I need the dice to resolve the sword blow and the save to avoid the spell - I don't to tell me how the characters are likely to react to what the players' characters propose. The only time I've ever used things like random reaction tables and charisma checks was when I wanted to be surprised myself by the NPC's reaction, to challenge my own ability to think on my feet in deciding how to interpret the rolls to the circumstances.Now Storm Raven will jump in here and say that this imposes an unfair burden on the players - how can a player with agoraphobia, a speech impediment, and English as a second language possibly hope to play a glib bard in my campaign? My first response is, is this really a problem that exists around a lot of gaming tables?I've been wracking my brain trying to remember playing at any time in the last twenty-eight years with someone so introverted that they couldn't meaningfully participate in the social give-and-take among the players and their characters, and even the shyest player that I can recall still had no problems with in-game interactions - at the risk of heading off into pop psych territory, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this particular gamer enjoyed the opportunity to break out of his shell and live vicariously through his character and was inspired to be more outgoing as a result.If anything, the shyest players I know gravitated toward roles like "wizard who blew stuff up" or "fighter that smashed things a lot" - I can't ever recall a gamer complaining about not being able to woo the prince(ss) because (s)he was too tongue-tied.It seems that the social interaction rules, like many of the rules in 3e, are designed to solve problems that I never experienced as a gamer. Our games have always had a social element and a tactical element. I just shake my head when gamers say that d20 games offer all these great tactical options and skills that were "missing" in previous editions. They were never missing - we always had them in our games, because (1) the GMs in our gaming groups all came equipped with functioning gray matter and (2) because we all enjoyed playing with each other so we talked through differences of opinion and interpretation to reach a consensus. Shocking as it may seem, we had badwrongfun without a game designer explicating every last detail for us, often using complete rulebooks with fewer pages than deluxe character sheets for 3e.As GM using systems that lacked the level of intricacy of many of today's games, I would take into account a player character's ability scores when gauging what a character could or could not do in different circumstances. Got a brilliant wizard who should figure out a puzzle even though the C- student player is completely lost? Slip the player a note with a clue. The shy player running the paladin wants to make a speech to the townsfolk regarding the orcs sweeping down out of the mountains? Of course the speech is more stirring to the townsfolk than what the player says at the table, and the townsfolk rally to the paladin's banner. As Psion noted (and I'm stunned to find myself actually agreeing for a change), it's not a dichotomy - the player and the character both contribute to the final outcome. If a shy player wants to tackle being the party diplomat, I expect the player to make a meaningful attempt at describing the character's actions, and I will interpret the outcome in light of the character's skills and abilities.Finally, I'm going to add something that will probably be a bit controversial: when I'm sitting behind the screen, I'm running a roleplaying game, not a public mental health project - if a player wants to play a silver-tounged rogue but can't string together a coherent sentence in or out of character, then <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> 'im. The social interaction between players is more important to me that what happens in-game, so anyone so introverted as to be unable to manage the social element of being a gamer isn't welcome, end of story.Elitist? Perhaps, but this is my leisure time we're talking about - I get to decide how and with whom I'm going to spend it. A big part of the badwrongfun for me are the things players say and do, both in and out of character, and I'm not willing to play with anyone who doesn't contribute to that.</blockquote>

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