Thing's That Can Make a Role Play Go Bad

[S'mon]

I also get frustrated with inactive characters. I run a very open campaign, and if you wait to figure out what you're "supposed" to do, you'll end up not doing anything. You aren't supposed to do anything, you're presented with a situation, about which you can do A, B, or C. None of them are right and none of them are wrong, but they all have consequences and reprocussions. I've had some players that it took some time for them to get, used to DMs that would simply spoonfeed them plot.

Yup - as GM I just let them fail, it's annoying but I can deal with it; but as a player it can be infuriating when the other players refuse to 'step on up', eg I was in a mystery game where my PC was the newbie and the 2 veteran PCs were the only ones who had the clues needed to solve the mystery, but they refused to talk to anyone and preferred to sit around 'waiting for something to happen', so in the end I had to rush around trying everything I could think of (without adequate info since the other PCs wouldn't talk to me), or else the game would have failed utterly.

 

[S'mon]

Dialogue that is just mentioned, rather than fully recounted, has its place. Every time you meet a "He told him" sentence in a book, you have an occasion where an "I tell him" would be appropriate in a RPG. Sometimes the characters find themselves having to repeat something to several people, and sometimes the pacing of the current moment demands to shorten a dialogue.

This is certainly true, and there are times when it should be abstracted - routine equipment purchase, say - but many players (and some GMs) use it as an excuse to avoid roleplaying, and for me roleplaying is the point of an RPG; if I want a skirmish wargame I'll play one.

 

[S'mon]

I have played characters with good diplomacy skills before. Personally I suck at stuff like that. So I tell the DM: I'm using my diplomacy skill to get the info we ned from the prince" I roll. The player has no idea what to say, but the character does. Yes it takes away from the beliviblitty, but tpart of the fun of roleplay is playing characters totally different then yourself.

It wouldn't be fun for me as GM or fellow player though. For me abstracting it is fine if it's a trivial background event (and what's important at 1st level might be trivial at 15th), but I hate playing or GMing with people who consistently refuse to roleplay. I guess if I were running a 1-1 game with a good friend who couldn't roleplay, yet wanted to play a high-Diplomacy PC I could probably have a good time by focussing on other elements of the game, but for a regular multiplayer game it sucks & detracts from everyone else's enjoyment of the game.

 

[S'mon]

Of course I have this all predefined - Diplomacy and Bluff are passive skills. You don't say "I'm going to Bluff him", you just say your line of BS. If the crap gets too thick I'll make you roll Bluff. I use it just like I used Cha checks in AD&D, only now you can put points into it and get better at it.

Sense Motive on the other hand is an active skill. You have to tell me you're going to try and use it to get a feel for your opponent. It works rather well for me.

That's pretty much how I use it. NPCs generally don't get to make Bluff rolls (players can choose to disbelieve them or not), but if a player asks for SM then the (lying) NPC's Bluff skill is used for the opposed roll, if the NPC wins the GM says "they seem truthful".

 

[S'mon]

If the guy with the RL charisma of 3 wants to play a character with a 20 charisma and 20 ranks of diplomacy, I'm going to filter what he says through that difference and I'm not going to make him say everything in character. That's just being a jerk.

Likewise, the overly verbose RL 18 Cha player with the 6 Cha dwarf PC is going through the same filter in the other direction.

In both cases I expect the player to make a genuine effort to roleplay the PC as written. I'd generally expect a CHA-18 player to play their CHA 6 PC in a very entertaining & enjoyable way, CHA 18 players are usually an asset to the table whoever they play. Conversely if a player refuses to roleplay or does so embarrassingly badly, I don't want to play in the same game as them.