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Message: <blockquote data-quote="roguerouge" data-source="post: 4681990" data-attributes="member: 13855">My mileage does. Respectfully, here's why: when I played in a 2e campaign, I was the party's rogue. And my DM has a skill that I just don't have: the ability to visualize objects and environments in three dimensions and examine them. I'd find a trap. He'd describe it and ask how I was going to disarm it before I could make the roll. He might as well have required me to speak a sentence in Polish for all that I could do that. I didn't resent him for the requirement. I understood what he was doing. So, my basic schtick was to find the trap then announce to the party that a trap was there and have my PC walk to the back ranks of the group for protection. It was their job to figure out how to disarm it. That was good for our particular group as it fostered group problem-solving. But you can see how close it gets to being frustrating and disastrous, can't you? Now imagine that you have a player who is not good at human interactions for various reasons. Perhaps English is his second language. Perhaps he's got a documented emotional disability. Perhaps he stutters. Perhaps he's simply not charismatic. (These are all real examples from my DMing kids and adults.) Are you seriously going to tell that player that he can't succeed in game because he can't do certain things as a person? I won't. I bet that you wouldn't. Are you going to tell him that he can't pretend to be a charismatic hero in your game? You better, because if he wants to play that you're setting him up for humiliating failure. I'll let him play it. I bet that you would. That's why in my games you role play out the social skill checks to the best of your ability, in first person or in third person, as you choose. Then, based on your performance, you get a small bonus or penalty to the roll, based on those decisions. But you can pretend to be whomever you want and your character succeeds or fails based on how you build him and what decisions you make for him. It's not based on whether you stutter or whether you have superior visualization capabilities.</blockquote>

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