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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7331138" data-attributes="member: 42582">Let's just focus on bribing witnesses.I know of two main ways to resolve this.One is: the GM has notes on the witness. (Either literal or notional, in his/her head.) When the players declare their PCs attempt to bribe the witness, the GM relies upon his/her notes to determine a likely response. Perhaps the GM sets a different price - "I'll lie for you, but only if you go and bring me the [XYZ]".The other is: the GM has some generic rules for the difficulty of bribing people. The players establish their attempt to bribe the witness, and then a check is made. If it succeeds, the witness is bribed; if it fails, the GM decides the consequence - maybe the witness is outraged, maybe the witness asks for a higher price - "I'll lie for you, but only if you go and bring me the [XYZ]".Classic Traveller is a variant on the second: first a reaction check is made, and a hostile reaction means that no bribery is possible. If the reaction is neutral or favourable, then the bribery check is made based on the difficulty set in accordance with the rules.On the second approach, the GM is typically going to have to introduce some connecting backstory to help reconcile what is already established in the fiction and the outcome of the check - this can be anything from a cursory "Her eyes light up at your mention of money - she'll lie for you no worries!" to something more elaborate to give context and consequences to a failure (eg the NPC declaims her backstory about her parent who was an incorruptible official and was murdered for it, and that's why she won't take the PCs' dirty money).I can see the player agency over the content of the shared ficiton in the second method: the players want there to be a bribable NPC, and on a successful check they get what they want.I have more trouble seeing it in the first method: the players want there to be a bribable NPC, and the GM gets to decide whether or not there is one.There's also scope to consider how the [XYZ] of the higher price is established - eg in Burning Wheel it would be obligatory for the referee to make that something that the will bring the player either into self-conflict or conflict with another player and that player's PC (so when one of the PCs in my game was dominated by a naga, the task set by the naga was to bring it the mage Joachim so that his blood might be spilled in sacrifice to the spirits; Joachim being the brother of another PC who was trying to save him from possession by a balrog). In some other games XYZ would be something decided by the GM in accordance with his/her priorities and views about the gameworld, rather than by following a player-established cue. That's also relevant to considering the degree of player agency.EDIT: I've only discussed how a player might make it true, in the fiction, that his/her PC has successfully bribed a witness to lie for him/her. I haven't even got onto the issue of how this might factor into the likelihood of the PC being arrested or convicted.If that is all resolved via method 1 above, then again I have trouble seeing much player agency.The only edition of D&D I can think of that really has robust mechanics for resolving a trial is 4e (via the skill challenge rules). Bribing a witness would then be a particular action within the context of that challenge.In AD&D you might try and resolve it using the reaction/loyalty rules (with the judge as the NPC whose reaction is being checked), with a successful bribing of a witness generating a favourable modifier (or at least the absence of a negative one for someone telling the judge that the PC is a bad person).</blockquote>

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