What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

[GrimCo]

Last time i checked contested/opposed roles are still a thing. Problem with D&D in particular is lack of "social" combat. While 90% of the rules and PC ablities are centered around physical combat, social aspect is like an after thought.

Yes, 4e and 5e go for different rules for bulding PCs and NPCs. But in 3.x, NPCs and PCs were built using same mechanics. NPCs had regular class levels, class abilities and skills. When it came to social combat, it was mostly opposed roll and gentleman agreement that you play according to dice result. If NPC bluffs, you roll sense motive. If you win, you know he is lying, if he wins, you think he is telling the truth. "i still don't trust him" is just bad sportsmanship imho. We always played that in contested situations, dice rolls determines the outcome and treated skill vs skill same as attack vs save. To move away from D&D, VtM (at least Revised) and VtR use same rules for both PC and NPC creation. Contested rolls are norm. And if you lose social roll, there are mechanics to enforce outcome. If NPC Elder succeds on it's intimidation check, you are intimidated. Try to act tough and ST can call Beast check (Courage, Self Control) and you don't wanna go into Frenzy or Rotschrek. There is "no you don't" mechanic, Willpower. But willpower is resource both sides can use and it's limited in how much you have it and how much you can use.

I played in campaign based on GoT. DM removed all social skills from the game. No bluff, no intimidate, no sense motive, no diplomacy. It was all done trough role play. If DM wants to bluff or intimidate - he needs to roleplay it convincingly enough to player and vice versa. It's not for everyone, it's mentally taxing, and requires lots of trust and mutual respect among the group ( and acting like adults).

I also played with group where people don't bother to roleplay social encounters. Lot's of times, the don't even bother to describe what and how they try to do. It's more like " I roll Diplomacy to try convincing Ork warboss to let us trough". That's it. They declare what skill they use, DM sets DC, they roll. Same with opposed rolls. Players lose on sense motive, they accept that NPC is telling the truth and go on with the game.

Those 2 are two extreme ends in a game where social pillar is mostly non existent outside few spells and abilities. Can we all agree that when it comes to "social combat" and mechanics around it, D&D is bad at it trough all editions and it's mostly up to DM/players to figure out something that works at their table?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There's also no RAW saying it can't,

Seriously, go read the pages 244 and 245 of 5.9 DMG. Do you seriously and honestly think that it is a reasonable interpretation that the process described there was intended to be used against the PCs?

and given how the PCs are (pretty much) all people who came from a community of NPCs, why should things that affect those NPCs not affect them? Bob the Fighter is just as human as his parents and a bunch of other people from his home village. Why is he somehow completely immune to a Persuasion roll and they aren't?

They are not immune! NPCs in my game manage to persuade the PCs of all sort of times all the time. We just do not roll the dice for it.

Remember how in paleo-D&D there used to be reaction rolls for monsters which determined their attitude when they met the PCs? Or hell, there still are random encounter rolls that determine whether the monster is at a location. Yet we did not roll reaction rolls for the PCs and we let the player actions to determine the location the PCs end up at, instead of letting a random table determine it. Same thing.

 

[GrimCo]

To be fair, when it comes to RAW, there is always legal stands. Quod lege prohibitum non est, permissum intelligitur ( what isn't prohibited by law, is considered allowed). Since there is no direct and explicit rule that prohibits use of social skill from NPCs on PCs, one can interpret it that is allowed. And as i said in my previous post, social pillar in D&D sucks and outside few spells and abilities it's largely left to table to decide how they are gonna handle it.

 

[bsss]

If NPC bluffs, you roll sense motive. If you win, you know he is lying, if he wins, you think he is telling the truth. "i still don't trust him" is just bad sportsmanship imho.

To be fair to D&D and because this is germane to the debate, the bolded part is not how Sense Motive is written. Failing to make the skill check merely results in the lack of information, not a imposing need for the PC to believe what they are being told. In a contested scenario, all a Bluff skill check by an NPC does to Sense Motive is set the DC for the Sense Motive check, and Bluff itself is restricted in scope (though left to DM reason, ultimately).

EDIT: I'll mea culpa a bit on this one because upon rereading Bluff, there is some severe wiggle room that I forgot about:

d20srd.org: A successful Bluff check indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe. Bluff, however, is not a suggestion spell.

I was thinking solely of the limited time frame behind the "reacts as you wish" part above, but the rules do say the target "believes something that you want it to believe [which can include a lie]". So, you are right, there is a resolution of the contest where the Motive Senser believes some part of what the Bluffer's telling them. However, that does not compel action, especially beyond "a short time". The "I still don't trust him, so I do [xyz] to test my theory" is still a valid course of action.