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Message: <blockquote data-quote="milotha" data-source="post: 1537624" data-attributes="member: 17122">I think we disagree on the method, and perhaps this boils down to the fact that I've played a lot of 1e and 2e.  In these systems, without the social skills rules, we would just sit down and role play out the situations.  I guess I gamed with a bunch of really talented gamers.  No one ever really had a problem with this approach.  We all pretty much had strong character backgrounds, good character concepts and a good grasp of how our characters would handle the situation.  This added the role playing side to D&D for me.  Not only that, but it was a blast.  We all strongly remember the role playing parts of the adventures.  There was very minimal dice rolling beyond NPC reaction checks for those the GM hadn't predetermined.  Did this mean that we succeeded every time - No!  But it did mean that our actions were used as a basis for determining if we succeeded.  Good role playing, creative ideas, and good fast talk were rewarded.  If you had designed up an intelligent charismatic character and role played it as a social character, then the GM was more likely to allow you to succeed.  If you were a big dumb uncharismatic type, then you were less likely to succeed.  This mentality encourages an active voice for the players.Consider combat.  Most of the GMs I'v played with allow you to describe your actions, and then you role a die in combat and you see how it went.  Sometimes we are fairly creative often doing things completely outside the rules, other times using combinations of the rules.  Eitherway, we describe what we try to do, and then let the dice determine our success.  I agree that you can't hit with your sword, get your spell off, or succeed everytime.Now consider 3.X social skills.  I have two groups of players that I've gamed with.  One set, I've played all editions with, and newer groups that I've joined.  In the older group that I game with, we've continued with our previous method of role playing out situations.  Sometimes we then role the dice. (This depends on how important a situation we are dealing with.)  Except now, we have hefty modifiers onto the results of the die roles based on the role playing.  The GM determines how the NPCs respond based on the dice roles.  Yes, we have characters that will intentionally sabotage their success.  That's part of the fun.  In addition, we have a sliding scale of success DCs.  As in on a DC5 the following level of success happens, on a DC 10 we get a slightly better level of sucess, etc on up.  I find this method encourages an active voice for the players.  It allows the social skills to still be useful and encourages role playing.  I don't have any complaints about this group, we've reached a happy medium for this set of players.In the newer groups all of the social skill uses go like this:  example: I attempt to role play out bluffing someone.  The GM then makes me roll without regard to what I actually said.  You either succeed or fail.  If it was a DC 25, then the DC stays at 25.  The GM had set in stone what the DC was before I ever even opened my mouth.  This doesn't encourage role playing.  This doesn't encourage creative tactics.  It just encourages dice rolling.  I don't find this fun.  I think the quashes the role playing aspect of D&D.  After a while, I've realized that no one is role playing in these games.  They are just dice rolling.  This mentality encourages a passive voice for the players, and these games are less fun for me and for the other players.The few players that we have brought into our older gaming group over the last couple of years have all told us that they love our style of play.  That it's the most fun they have ever had.  Why, because our group encourages an active voice for the players.  It makes you feel like you had an effect on the situation rather than just a mechanical roll it out game.  I haven't been trying to make this an arguement that there is something wrong with people who don't want to role play.  I've been trying to argue that there are people who like to role play and the current system is discouraging them from doing what they enjoy.  If you have players that have fun role playing, why not reward them for it.  Anyway, I think there are many GMs out there who can't see how poorly they are using the social skills, and how they are discouraging role playing. Not that they've read to the end of this post anyway. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /></blockquote>

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