Players characters evading direct questions

[Kish]

Maybe I was being stubborn? Maybe I was trying not to reward bad behavior? I can't remember exactly was going through my head, it was several years ago.

Well then. If you start with the extremely simple, basic presumption that the players are acting according to a point of view as valid as your own instead of being black boxes that spit out inexplicable bad behavior, you already have the answer to "why did they do that," don't you? Most likely...they were being stubborn, or trying not to reward bad behavior, or both.

In general, I am fairly "by the book" and don't like deviating from the printed adventure.

I do remember I spent the time basically begging them to just try things rather than sitting back stymied.

You were the only one there who could have stopped the standoff with a word. I imagine your players are thoroughly unimpressed with "I am not willing to change my approach by an iota, but I'm begging you to change yours!" If you were and are that sure of your moral high ground and willing to escalate hostilities over it, the word in question could be extremely sarcastic and still work: "You stand around for an hour or more doing nothing as your feet get increasingly sore. Finally one of you is having trouble standing and leans on the statue. You hear a click."

You wouldn't have brought up the three hours of nothing happening if you didn't recognize that as a failure state. You just, apparently, somehow think that the GM has no responsibility for that failure.

That's what the purpose of the scene was, learning about the fey.

What happened to the purpose of the scene being to recruit allies against the Black Spiral Dancers?

(Also, why did you call the game a Werewolf/Changeling crossover game if nearly all the PCs are from a third game? Pretty sure this website isn't practicing slash budgeting.)

That wasn't something we RPed out in game, so you would have to ask the players.

I'd love to. Got an email address for any of them? (Probably shouldn't give that out.) You could give them a link to this thread.

[gbaji]

[ASIDE: I picked cops because it was the closest good guys/bad guys option. So yes, we're geese and ganderers]

Lol! Yeah. I get that.

Talakael says if they had suggested they had mommy and daddy and were beating them that would have advanced the conversation. But they just went with "They are bad guys and you are good guys, so fight!".

To be fair. I'm assuming that this quote: "they are evil and in the city and are up to no good" is being run through a filter a bit here, and that this was likely not literally the only words they spoke at all in response to the NPCs asking them what was going on and why they were asking for help.

I'm admittedly going out on a crazy limb and assuming they did mention that there were fomori and evil werewolves in their building abducting people and doing <whtever evil things they do> to them. I thought I read at some point that they were kidnapping people and turning them, to build up forces for the attack, but maybe I'm misremembering. In any case, I'm assuming the bad guys were doing "something" in the building, otherwise the PCs would not have been there in the first place.

I find it telling that the question he kept asking the players wasn't "what are the <bad guys> doing?", but "what are the <bad guys> planning?". Again, I may be reading a bit into linguistic clues here, but that suggests that the players did tell them about what the bad guys were doing in their building and in the city (which they likely thought was sufficient to get assistance), but Talakeal had already decided that the only thing that would get help was if they told them about the plan to attack the woods, so that's what he kept asking them about.

To which, I could totally see a group of players who have maybe discounted the attack they learned about as irrelevant to the Fae folks, being really confused. Like "why do you care what they are planning? We're telling you what they are doing in our building and to our neighbors right now". And I could see them stumbling around trying to think of things and not coming up with anything other than very vague "um... they're planning to do bad things to more people?".

It does come off heavily as a mental map difference. The players were in a completely different headspace and just didn't grok what Talakael was after. Maybe? Dunno. Obviously none of us where in the room at the time. But my general rule of thumb when diagnosing things like this is to assume that the players aren't actually intentionally trying to fail to achieve what they went there to do. And my experience in gaming is that while accidents happen in terms of physical actions (which is what we often use dice to determine in game), when the problem is a social disconnect, it's because someone didn't realize something, or failed to make the same mental connection in relation to something that someone else expected them to. That's almost always a player/GM perception disconnect.

I have, in fact, very very very rarely seen players receive information and just utterly fail to arrive at the actual obvious meaning of that information. What usually happens is that there is a disconnect between what the GM thinks is "obvious" and what the players do. And, also as a general rule, if you think some bit of information should "obviously" result in a given conclusion, but none of the players at your table arrive at that conclusion? You are the one who is wrong. Not always. But... well... most of the time. And even if you are not wrong, it really doesn't matter. If you've provided the players with information that you consider to have an "obvious" conclusion, you've already decided that "this is a conclusion they should arrive at if they do <in game action> to get the information". Heck. It's probably written right in your adventure ("If the PCs get the werewolf to talk about their plans to attack the woods, then they'll know to tell the Fae about it, and this will convince the Fae to help them"). If it's literally so obvious, and they went through the required step to get the information, then... give them the conclusion as well. They already "earned" the outcome in terms of in-game actions, so give them the "reward" for that.

If they "get the obvious conclusion" then that's great. If they dont, then you need to make sure they do, even if that comes to the point of just flat out telling them. I mean, if it's really obvious, then your not telling them anything they should not already know (cause it's "obvious", right?). But... on the off chance that it's not really as obvious as you think it is, you're covering for that as well.

The requirement for flow of information is based on which side is asking which side for help. The PCs had no leverage, so it is on them to convince the Fae to help...and it seems the bar for convincing was low.

Oh absolutely. They're the ones showing up hat in hand and asking for help. I'm just pointing out that the GM can use the other direction to help them out when they are stuck.

100% agree...certainly was an opportunity to have two background Fae discussing having just come from the House in the Woods to ring the bell. Of course, the PCs could have just answered the question as reasonably posed.

Yup. That falls into the category of "give the players multiple (three) clues". One clue is the werewolf telling them about the planned attack. A second one could absolutely have been the party overhearing a conversation in which a Fae presence in the Muir woods is mentioned (which may jog their memories about the first clue). A third clue might be more of a "clue by four", where you literally have one of the Fae tell them about this new freehold in Muir woods, and it's somewhat precarious, and they're still negotiating with the werewolves there, and anything going on the the area would be a real problem for us, and boy if someone knew about something that might be a threat to that freehold in Muir woods, Baron whathisname would be really interested in knowing all about it, and would be willing to do a huge favor in return for the information. (hint hint hint).

Provide more clues than just the one. If they get it on the first one, you're golden and the players feel great about being clever. But you should provide increasingly more "obivous" clues until they "get it".

[Talakeal]

They did give an answer. They told the Fae about the werewolves in their building. Ok. After re-reading, it was the fomorians in the building, who were attacking the werewolves in the woods (I literlally have no clue about this setting, so whatever), and the are asking the Changlings for help (Are the Fae changelings? Or something else?). Were there werewolves, or representatvies thereof, in this gathering? If not, then why would they think that an attack on someone else would matter? Heck. They may have suspected that if they mentioned that the Fomorians were planning to attack the Werewoves, the folks at the court might have been like "That's great! They'll weaken themselves fighting", or something similar.

There are two tribes of werewolves who are at war, the evil Black Spiral Dancers, and the Children of Gaia who live in Muir Woods. They are roughly evenly matched.
The Black Spiral Dancers are secretly turning the inhabitants of the PCs apartment building into Fomori, who are humans possessed by evil spirits. Once they have enough of them, they are going to lead them to attack Muir Woods, killed the local werewolves, defiling the holy sight, and releasing the monster that is imprisoned beneath their Cairn.

Changelings are humans with Fey / Fairy souls. They are divided into two courts, the ruling Seelie, who are mostly about honor, and the Un-Seelie, who are more about passion. There is also the Shadow Court which is more or less evil.

Although some individual Werewolves and Changelings have relationships, they have no formal dealings as a whole between their societies.

There are however, other groups such as the Selkie (seal folk) and the Nunnehei (native American fairies) who have ties to both groups, but the players have not encountered them yet despite hearing of them.

There are also two other packs of werewolves and a band of human monster hunters who are involved in the scenario but not directly in this scene.

I don't really think any of this lore is relevant to the thread, but if you have any other questions I am happy to elaborate further.

You keep asking the question: "Why do players give evasive answers?" I'm reasonably sure your players could post a counter question: "Why do GMs play their NPCs in such an evasive and obtuse way?". At the end of the day, the players intent was to go to the court and get help with the Fomorians. They had a problem. They came up with a solution to that problem. You need to facilitate that process, not hinder it. You lambast your players for not providing the clue "they are planning an attack on the woods", !!!!!!!!!!but don't seem to have spent any effort having any NPC actually try to dig this out of them!!!!!!!!!!. Instead, you ask one question, they give the same answer, and you have the NPCs say "nope", and we move on.

That's literally all I did!

I spent well over an hour in character having half a dozen different NPCs try and ask thrice as many leading questions to get this information out the PCs!

That's the whole point of this thread!

That's not an equivalent question though. Your actual question was much more broad and open ended. It's closer to "Did you have dinner last night?", but if I just say "yes, I did", you shut down the rest of the conversation because you expected me to tell you what I ate, what I had for dessert, the fact that I went to a show afterwards, etc. Most people would expect a back and forth. You ask if I ate. I say yes. You ask me what I had for dinner. Then I tell you. You maybe ask if there was dessert with that. Then I tell you about dessert. You ask if there was anything else going on. I tell you that we went out for a show. You ask what show. I provide you details about the show. And now we've arrived at the information you maybe wanted (that I went to a show, and what it was).

The dialogue is supposed to be a back and forth process, where each side bounces off each other as information is shared. But you seem to be playing your NPCs like they are CRPG objects, standing motionless in a field, waiting for someone to say the right trigger phrase to them, but otherwise doing nothing useful. As a GM, you need to be proactive with this kind of thing. Making the players play 20 questions is not fun for them. When it becomes obvious that they are not providing the "correct information" right off the bat, you need to have your NPCs dig a little.

This is the most bizarre conversation, it's like talking to a mirror.

Everything you are saying is the same thing I am saying about the PCs.

They had information the changelings did not. The changelings kept trying to get it out of them, asking them all sorts of the different questions. But they wouldn't spill the beans.

The players were the ones making the NPCs play 20 questions trying to get the answer from the PCs.


Now, all the stuff about standing there like a CRPG object is just totally out of left field though; it didn't happen, it isn't relevant, and I am not sure what made you think that was the case. If I wrote the scene out in screenplay format, it would probably be a good 10-20 pages, we were talking IC for several hours and I revealed a metric butt-ton of information. I don't think anyone who has played at my table would ever accuse me of having NPCs who aren't talkative enough! (Indeed, I am pretty sure the world you are describing would be Bob's paradise!)

Did he actually ask you to make him roll a die to determine this? Or did he just say he didn't want to RP out the conversation with the statue?

In this particular case, neither. As I said, he misunderstood how the spell worked and I misunderstood what his objection was.

In general, it isn't that he doesn't want to RP. It's that he feels that it is unfair for me to base success of failure in a conversation on the player's verbal skills, as you could have a stuttering introvert like himself playing a character with maximum charisma, or Dave, a smooth-talking door to door salesman irl, playing a character with a minimum charisma.

Instead, he just wants a flat charisma roll to determine how successful a character is in conversation.

I agree with his premise. But talking in character is also a great deal of fun and is a great way to convey information without long exposition dumps, and gives both the PCs and the NPCs a chance to RP and show off their personality.

So, what I try and do to be fair is not base the result on how charming or eloquent the player is, but instead what approach you use. (Flatter? Threats? Bribes? Reason? Pathos? Demands? Logic? etc.) as well as what you are asking for, and what you are willing to give in turn (as well as any additional leverage you may have) to come up with a difficulty for said social mechanic.

It is an argument we have had many times in the past, and which I mistakenly thought we were having again.

You seem to have turned this into "You must enter into a RP session with the GM *or* make a skill roll". Which, whether intended or not, strongly comes off to the player like the GM "making me jump through hoops".

What you call "jumping through hoops" I call playing the game.

I like the fluff, and I like the crunch. I like all three pillars of the game; exploration, dialogue, and combat.

It's no more fair to me (and the other players who like the dialogue pillar) to just handwave the social aspects of the game away any more than it would be far to the hack-and-slash players to simply say "Ok you kill them, now let's get back to the talking!" every time a fight breaks out.

Saying "I don't want to RP a scene talking to a stone statue" does not mean "I want to roll dice instead". It literally means "I don't want to spend table time, coming up with long tedious dialogue with a freaking rock. Can we just assume I cast the spell and I get the information and we move on?".

This isn't what Brian meant, either at this point or in the past.

However, if it had, I would politely tell him that the social and exploration pillars are as important as combat at my table, and he is better off not playing if he really feels that dialogue is so tedious.

Also, it is really bizarre that he created a character whose whole shtick was being an archeologist who communes with the spirits of the earth to learn about the ancient past and then being dismissive about having a conversation with a statue in an ancient tomb; and if he really feels that way he might want to rework his character as that attitude is going to seriously limit his progress going forward as "talking to freaking rocks" is a core part of his character.

But again, this is literally beating up a straw-man as that is not what he meant (unless he was secretly thinking it and then lying to cover it up).

And I disagree 100% This is a free willed creation of the PC (and the personality is defined by the PC). That means that it should be under the control of the same player who is running that PC. In the exact same way I'd expect a PCs familiar or animal companion to also be controlled by the player. I'm frankly baffled that you would do it the other way around.

Again, in the previous thread, you got very irate that I thought you were talking about minions as a whole and were very adamant that you were only talking about illusions and creatures and the dominate spell.

But sure, you are allowed to run your table however you like. And if by some freak occurrence I play at your table, I will be sure to play a super OP minionmancer who monopolizes all the power and spotlight time, but you can't act like that is objectively the right way to play. I have never been at a table which allowed players to run minions as second PCs, nor have I ever read an RPG that suggested that was the intended way to play.

And, as a broader issue, no, metagaming is not allowed at my table, even when it comes to PCs directly.

Just like I wouldn't allow Brian to attack Bob because Bob successfully picked his character's pocket without him finding out about it IC, and I don't allow Dave to skip the part of the adventure where they learn about the villain's secret weakness because he has read the module before, I would not allow a ranger's animal companion to solve puzzles requiring human intelligence or allow the ranger to know what was going on for an event that the animal observed that he was not present for and the wolf has no way of informing him of; barring some supernatural power that allowed for those sorts of things of course.

You're literally creating more work for yourself and the only possible thing you can accomplish with it is to create conflict between you and your players every time you think the creation should do one thing and they think it should do something different. Just... don't do that.

I mean... you could say that about anything?

Yeah, sure, you could say that enforcing any rules at all accomplishes nothing but creating conflict with the players, but nobody actually believes that, right?

I mean heck, using that logic I could argue that by responding to my posts with anything but "I agree with Talakeal 100% and all of you other people are dumb meanies," is just creating unncessary conflict between us, right?


IMO Enforcing the limitations on spells and restricting PCs from metagaming is hardly pointless, it is trying to play the game in the spirit it was designed.

You were the only one there who could have stopped the standoff with a word. I imagine your players are thoroughly unimpressed with "I am not willing to change my approach by an iota, but I'm begging you to change yours!" If you were and are that sure of your moral high ground and willing to escalate hostilities over it, the word in question could be extremely sarcastic and still work: "You stand around for an hour or more doing nothing as your feet get increasingly sore. Finally one of you is having trouble standing and leans on the statue. You hear a click."

You wouldn't have brought up the three hours of nothing happening if you didn't recognize that as a failure state. You just, apparently, somehow think that the GM has no responsibility for that failure.

No responsibility? I mean, from a game mechanics perspective I guess so, but from a social perspective I would say everyone is being stubborn.

I suppose you could frame it as a battle of wills.

The players could have cast any number of spells to resolve the situation automatically. I could have pulled any number of Deus Ex Machina out of my butt to resolve the situation automatically.

The players could have told me they were not having fun OOC and asked me to give them a hint, and I could have told them I wasn't having fun OOC and just given them a hint unsolicited.

But yeah, my gaming style is very high player agency and very by the book. That absolutely does lend itself to problems like this.

This is one of those "everyone needed to be a lot more careful with their words" things (because it's one of those frankenstein stitches I mentioned earlier where two games on a very similar system were not designed to be plugged together).

Fomorians are the Elder Darks, the gods of nightmares. They wouldn't be a in a building, they don't exist in the physical world, they're trapped in the deepest Dreaming.

The Fomori are possessed humans corrupted by servants of the Wyrm, the celestial incarnation of entropy and destruction run wild. Black Spiral Dancers are werewolves pledged to the Wyrm who are commonly accompanied by Fomori. (Any other werewolves would drop everything to kill Black Spiral Dancers, they're pretty much the worst thing that's not a Vampire as far as the Garou are concerned)

The two are not related in any way.

Huh. I never noticed White Wolf actually made that distinction before. In actual Irish mythology fomori, fomorian, and formarch are used interchangeably, and I assumed it was the same way in World of Darkness. White Wolf uses a lot of repeat terminology across their games, and I figured this was just more of the same.

Regardless, in character everyone knew that they were talking about humans possessed by evil spirits and there was no distinction.

The way I run the game, nobody except a member of said species or an absolute master of occult lore even understands that there is a distinction between formori, The Fallen, Thallain, and the various other forms of humans possessed by evil spirits in the setting, let alone tell them apart, so it's really just semantics.

You have completely missed the point of my counter point. I don't care about the history of spellcasting and "written contracts" here. If the only way you would allow Bob's illusion to draw the monsters attacks instead of cower from them, was for Bob to have previously stated exactly what his illusion would do if a monster showed up, then you are requiring Bob to write a contract like description of the spell effects.

Assuming no one actually wants that, the "solution" is to just let the player decide how their illusion behaves. If the GMs ruling is that "anything not excplicitly spelled out will be controlled by me", then the only way the player can ensure that their illusion does what they want is to write a contract. So... Don't do that.

And you are completely missing the point of what I said.

No, the player is not allowed to write a contract or a code. I would not accept it.

The spell gives the caster the ability to define the *general* personality of the construct, not unlimited agency to define whatever details they could possibly imagine.

And I am then going to do my best to understand the players intent and play it to the best of my ability.

In this case, he wanted something to pretend to be him and follow the party around using bardic inspiration, which it did. But it did not suddenly start face tanking hydras, because that is not in character for the real him (based on 100% of observed cases) and not something he intended when he cast the spell. There was however, another time, when he created an illusion of a valiant knight for the purposes of drawing fire from the party, and it did exactly that, allowing them to win out against a beholder and its cyclops minions while they were distracted by the illusionary warrior.

Both of these are good, powerful, useful spells. But allowing them to switch between types at will would make them too good and too powerful and too useful, and doesn't really even make sense from an in character perspective because how is the caster communicating these instructions to them?

And again, any talk about the GM trying to subvert the intent of the spell by having the illusion betray the party or turn on them or do nothing or whatever is bad GMing, but that isn't what actually happened at my table or what is intended by my rules.

I'm talking about the effect of the GM engaging in the kinds of semantic games you are playing.

In the words of Vahnvoi, "You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means."

A semantic argument would be something like "I point at the minotaur and order my construct to slay the beast," and then I respond "Your construct says 'Duh, actually, minotaurs are monstrous humanoids. I don't see no beasts around,' and wastes his turn searching in vain for a beast to slay." (and yeah, I have played under GM's who did exactly that sort of bull-crap).

That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about a player setting clear and unambiguous parameters for his spells, me following them to the best of my ability and understanding in good faith, and then the player wanting to go back and ignore those original parameters and change them to something else in any situation where it would be more effective, which gives said spells far more power and versatility than is appropriate for a spell of their level.

And you know what, if the player does actually require that sort of control, there are metamagics in my system which do exactly that!

What happened to the purpose of the scene being to recruit allies against the Black Spiral Dancers?

That was the goal the players set for themselves in the moment, it was not what I had in mind when I first came up with the scene.

Even if we assume that the players had a good reason not to talk about (or possibly having forgotten) the information, it doesn't sound like it kept the adventure from proceeding, even if it wasn't in the expected direction.

Correct.

Which is one of the reasons why I don't like to but in and give them OOC solutions, because that forces the adventure down my desired path rather than allowing it to go off organically in unexpected ways.

(Also, why did you call the game a Werewolf/Changeling crossover game if nearly all the PCs are from a third game? Pretty sure this website isn't practicing slash budgeting.

Because werewolves and changelings are relevant to the scenario.

If you want to be technical, it is a game of Chronicles of Darkness: Innocents that is using the Nameless Tower adventure hook from Werewolf The Apocalypse 20th Edition Book of the Wyrm (but transposed from New York to our existing campaign setting in San Francisco) in which some of the players are Werewolf Kinfolk and one of them asked me if he could play a Changeling instead and I said ok, and which will include some but not all setting elements from the various other Storyteller system games as I see fit.

But yeah... that's a mouthful and didn't really seem relevant. (Still doesn't frankly).

100% agree...certainly was an opportunity to have two background Fae discussing having just come from the House in the Woods to ring the bell. Of course, the PCs could have just answered the question as reasonably posed.- M

I actually tried that, by having several of the NPCs mention the Barony of Caer Redwood in the forests north of the city. The players said they ignored the hook because they mistook Caer (the changeling word for castle) for Cairn (the werewolves' word for a sacred place).

What logical sense this makes, I have no idea.

Nope. Wrong. Failure. It's still PC-dependent information. THAT makes it the domain of the PC/player, full stop, UNTIL/UNLESS they hand it over to you. It's a mechanic of THEIR sheet, they control it.

I don't believe you actually run games this way.

Like, you are telling me, that if I am playing D&D at your table, if I set up a contingency to cast heal on me if I drop to negative HP, I can then later change my mind after a shipwreck to cast water breathing on me when I am submerged? Or if I create a wand of fireballs with the keyword "Pepperoni" I can instead have it trigger when someone picks it up and says "poppycock"? Or if I cast Wish I decide whether or not an effect is too great and how it is resolved rather than the DM?

Are you saying that if I take the leadership feet and have a hundred men-at-arms, I can send them off to every corner of the land and not only RP 100 scenes at once (and thus get 99% of the spotlight time from the other PCs) but also instantaneously pass information back and forth between them and my PC with no in character method of communicating?

Or hell, are you saying I can cast fireball in my face and have it not damage my allies, or proclaim my longsword does d20 damage because those are abilities on my sheet and thus I decide how they work?

For that matter, does this also work the other way? Like if an NPC casts charm on your PC, does the GM suddenly get complete and utter control over your character?

These are all ridiculous examples (I hope); but that fact of the matter is that just because a mechanic is on a PC's sheet, the PC is not the one who chooses how it is resolved. Games have rules.

Take the hand off the reins and the players will be able to run.

It's not about controlling PCs, it's about how spells work in the setting.

There are limits on how well wizards can control their minions. For example, I don't think the players would be happy if a random mob of zombies acted with the full knowledge, intelligence, and motivation of the ancient lich who created them centuries ago, and everything the zombies see and hear is instantly transported to every other undead creature that lich had ever created as if it were a giant hive-mind.

Except that's not what they did. They told them what the Formori were doing "in their building", and not about some (seemingly unrelated) bit of information. Imagine this scenario as played out at a gaming table:
A child calls 911 for help.
Child: "Masked men have broken into my house and are holding mommy and daddy. Come help!".
Police: "Ok. What are the plans of the masked men?"
Child: "They're in our house! And they're mean and bad. And they're hurting mommy and daddy. Please come quick!"
Poilce: "But what plans do these masked men have?"
Child: "Why wont you come help? They're beating up mommy. I can hear her screaming in pain. Why wont you help?"
Police: "Well. If you'd just tell us what their plans are, then we might be able to"

The problem with this analogy is that there is an expectation that the police have an interest in stopping crimes and catching criminals.

The Seelie have no such obligations.

A better analogy would be calling a random bowling alley two states over and then refusing to tell him where you are so that he can call the local police for you.

And then the GM posts on an online forum asking about why players don't give straight answers to direct questions and cause game sessions to blow up.

I have never seen a session blow up over it.

I have seen players fail their objectives because they couldn't answer a direct question though.

If you routinely punish your players for "doing dumb things" when what really happened is that they didn't understand the situation, then you're the one at fault, not them. Because it's one of your jobs as GM to make sure they understand the situation before you resolve the outcome of their choices.

I agree 100%.

I just don't think "We looked at the clue, got an accurate understanding of what it was and what it meant, and then tossed it out because we analyzed all of the evidence and came to the conclusion that it wasn't relevant to our investigation" falls into that category.

The point is that it doesn't matter what I think, or what I know about the setting. The point is that the players were the ones playing in your game, and they didn't think that information was significant. How or why doesn't matter. You assumed they would think to provide this information and use it to get help, and they didn't think it was information that would get them help.

And they were wrong. So, they had to pursue another avenue. And the game goes on.

[glass]

Child: "Bad guys live nearby. Come make them go away!".
Police: "Ok. What are the bad guys doing?"
Child: "They're bad! You're good guys. Come get them."
Poilce: "But what what makes them bad guys?"
Child: "They just are. Why wont you help?"
Police: "Well, because you haven't told me why they are bad."
Child: <click><dialtone>

(cop): "Seriously? That's the seventh crank call from a kid this shift!"

Talakael says if they had suggested they had mommy and daddy and were beating them that would have advanced the conversation. But they just went with "They are bad guys and you are good guys, so fight!".

My impression was more like gbaji's, I don't think Talakael has ever confirmed exactly they did say (apologies if I missed it - long posts are long), so direct question:

Talakael, did the players say that they were Black Spiral Dancers making a bunch of Fomori? Or did they just say "bad guys" and say nothing about their current activities? Or somewhere in between?

In general, it isn't that he doesn't want to RP. It's that he feels that it is unfair for me to base success of failure in a conversation on the player's verbal skills, as you could have a stuttering introvert like himself playing a character with maximum charisma, or Dave, a smooth-talking door to door salesman irl, playing a character with a minimum charisma.

I'm with him (and you) so far....

Instead, he just wants a flat charisma roll to determine how successful a character is in conversation.

...but this is where we part company. Whether he wants to talk it out in character or just give me a general approach (eg "I flatter him about his neatly presented uniform, and then try to work the conversation around to letting me in to look at the files"), the die rolls or lack thereof are the same and depend on the situation and what the player is trying to achieve, not how comfortable they are talking in character. Adding an extra die roll Brian but not Dave is punishing Brian for not being as charismatic as his character is, and defeats the purpose.

I agree with his premise. But talking in character is also a great deal of fun

For some people; for others it is torture. And even some of those who find it fun also find it tiring so don't want to do too much of it.

For those who enjoy it, talking in character is its own reward. It doesn't need to be further rewarded with auto-successes.

So, what I try and do to be fair is not base the result on how charming or eloquent the player is, but instead what approach you use. (Flatter? Threats? Bribes? Reason? Pathos? Demands? Logic? etc.) as well as what you are asking for, and what you are willing to give in turn (as well as any additional leverage you may have) to come up with a difficulty for said social mechanic.

...and hear we seem to be back in agreement, but this is not what seemed to be saying just a couple of paragraphs ago. I am confused.

I like the fluff, and I like the crunch. I like all three pillars of the game; exploration, dialogue, and combat.

The middle pillar is usually expressed as "social" or "interaction" not "dialogue".

And, as a broader issue, no, metagaming is not allowed at my table, even when it comes to PCs directly.

"No metagaming" is a completely impossible standard, because how metagame something is is a continuum, not binary.

Yeah, sure, you could say that enforcing any rules at all accomplishes nothing but creating conflict with the players, but nobody actually believes that, right?

If enforcing the rules created conflict (and it doesn't, with a healthy group), it would still do a bunch of other things (enable gameplay, help with consistency) so you couldn't say that. Well, you can say anything, but it would not be true.

If you want to be technical, it is a game of Chronicles of Darkness: Innocents that is using the Nameless Tower adventure hook from Werewolf The Apocalypse 20th Edition Book of the Wyrm (but transposed from New York to our existing campaign setting in San Francisco) in which some of the players are Werewolf Kinfolk and one of them asked me if he could play a Changeling instead and I said ok, and which will include some but not all setting elements from the various other Storyteller system games as I see fit

As an aside, am I right in thinking that Chronicles of Darkness is what the new World of Darkness evolved into, while Werewolf: the Apocalypse and Changeling: the Dreaming are old World of Darkness?

(With ...the Forsaken and ...the Lost being the CofD equivalents). No issue with that, just curious why you went with that particular mix?

I actually tried that, by having several of the NPCs mention the Barony of Caer Redwood in the forests north of the city. The players said they ignored the hook because they mistook Caer (the changeling word for castle) for Cairn (the werewolves' word for a sacred place).

That actually makes a lot of sense, and is an example of the kind of misunderstanding that can arise even with top-of-the-line communications skills. I cannot really see how that could have been avoided (beyond not having Caers and Cairns in the same adventure). Which is all the more reason to make sure any misunderstanding you can easily avoid, you do!

[GloatingSwine]

Huh. I never noticed White Wolf actually made that distinction before. In actual Irish mythology fomori, fomorian, and formarch are used interchangeably, and I assumed it was the same way in World of Darkness. White Wolf uses a lot of repeat terminology across their games, and I figured this was just more of the same.

Regardless, in character everyone knew that they were talking about humans possessed by evil spirits and there was no distinction.

The way I run the game, nobody except a member of said species or an absolute master of occult lore even understands that there is a distinction between formori, The Fallen, Thallain, and the various other forms of humans possessed by evil spirits in the setting, let alone tell them apart, so it's really just semantics.

It's a consequence of the World of Darkness games despite all using the same system with different bells on not actually being designed to be crossed over. Fomorians are only relevant to Changeling the Dreaming, Fomori are only relevant to Werewolf the Apocalypse.

(One of the other consequences is that if you attempt to run a combat where one side is a werewolf and the other side is pretty much anything else ever the werewolf just wins, soaking aggravated damage is something anyone else needs serious magic to pull off and Werewolves just do it, on top of regenerating bashing and lethal and being able to rage heal once at incapacitated, and dealing aggravated damage by default and getting +4 strength in Crinos form that can take them over normal cap meaning they're just chucking massive quantities of aggravated damage out per turn. And you can't even wear them down over time because they heal 1 aggravated/day not one per six weeks like it takes anything else. They're nature's perfect killing machines and everything else isn't.

Even for sufficently powerful vampires, hardcore by normal standards, the advice is "wait for it to die of old age".)

That actually makes a lot of sense, and is an example of the kind of misunderstanding that can arise even with top-of-the-line communications skills. I cannot really see how that could have been avoided (beyond not having Caers and Cairns in the same adventure). Which is all the more reason to make sure any misunderstanding you can easily avoid, you do!

TBH if you're going to have both make sure you pronounce them sufficiently differently. (Caer is two syllables where the vowel sounds don't flow together, Cairn is one syllable where they do).

[glass]

(One of the other consequences is that if you attempt to run a combat where one side is a werewolf and the other side is pretty much anything else ever the werewolf just wins, soaking aggravated damage is something anyone else needs serious magic to pull off and Werewolves just do it, on top of regenerating bashing and lethal and being able to rage heal once at incapacitated, and dealing aggravated damage by default and getting +4 strength in Crinos form that can take them over normal cap meaning they're just chucking massive quantities of aggravated damage out per turn. And you can't even wear them down over time because they heal 1 aggravated/day not one per six weeks like it takes anything else. They're nature's perfect killing machines and everything else isn't.

I remember a rather fun thread over on RPGnet a while back about whether a Werewolf werewolf could beat a 40k space marine. IIRC, the consensus was "probably".

TBH if you're going to have both make sure you pronounce them sufficiently differently. (Caer is two syllables where the vowel sounds don't flow together, Cairn is one syllable where they do).

Today years old, etc....

In my defence, I am pretty sure Caerphilly is three syllables not four!

[Jason]

In general, it isn't that he doesn't want to RP. It's that he feels that it is unfair for me to base success of failure in a conversation on the player's verbal skills, as you could have a stuttering introvert like himself playing a character with maximum charisma, or Dave, a smooth-talking door to door salesman irl, playing a character with a minimum charisma.

Instead, he just wants a flat charisma roll to determine how successful a character is in conversation.

I agree with his premise. But talking in character is also a great deal of fun and is a great way to convey information without long exposition dumps, and gives both the PCs and the NPCs a chance to RP and show off their personality.

So, what I try and do to be fair is not base the result on how charming or eloquent the player is, but instead what approach you use. (Flatter? Threats? Bribes? Reason? Pathos? Demands? Logic? etc.) as well as what you are asking for, and what you are willing to give in turn (as well as any additional leverage you may have) to come up with a difficulty for said social mechanic.

No argument here. You don't ask your players to become real-life combat specialists in order to play a fighter, so why ask them to become real-life masters of persuasion in order to play a bard? Get their general approach, decide if that makes it easier or more difficult to get what they want from the NPC, and then have them make a roll to determine if they are persuasive enough.

I will, however, adjust difficulty down for someone who does role-play out a social encounter well and makes good arguments before a roll is made. Player effort counts for something as well.

No responsibility? I mean, from a game mechanics perspective I guess so, but from a social perspective I would say everyone is being stubborn.

I suppose you could frame it as a battle of wills.

That's a problem. Gaming shouldn't be a battle of wills between players and GM until one side gives in. When gaming is done right everybody wins.

If he finds himself fighting battles of wills over and over, a good GM says to himself, "That session drank deeply from the fountain of suck. What can I do better next time to defuse a disagreement before it becomes a battle of wills?" He doesn't say "well, I guess Brian is just plain stubborn and this is the way it's going to be." You can encourage your players to do better, but you have much more control over your own conduct, so I would look there first.

I actually tried that, by having several of the NPCs mention the Barony of Caer Redwood in the forests north of the city. The players said they ignored the hook because they mistook Caer (the changeling word for castle) for Cairn (the werewolves' word for a sacred place).

I'm not sure why they would think that makes the clue insignificant, but I've only dabbled in World of Darkness games. I'm not steeped in their lore.

I just don't think "We looked at the clue, got an accurate understanding of what it was and what it meant, and then tossed it out because we analyzed all of the evidence and came to the conclusion that it wasn't relevant to our investigation" falls into that category.

If they tossed it out as irrelevant then obviously they didn't have an accurate understanding of what it was and what it meant, did they?

[GloatingSwine]

No argument here. You don't ask your players to become real-life combat specialists in order to play a fighter, so why ask them to become real-life masters of persuasion in order to play a bard? Get their general approach, decide if that makes it easier or more difficult to get what they want from the NPC, and then have them make a roll to determine if they are persuasive enough.

I will, however, adjust difficulty down for someone who does role-play out a social encounter well and makes good arguments before a roll is made. Player effort counts for something as well.

Really the basis of doing social skills should be the same basis as most other skills.

The player says what they want to achieve* and how they want to do it including any specifics like tools, arguments, spells, or other resources they intend to use, and then the DM/Storyteller decides on how difficult it's going to be, what skills are involved, and calls for a check if needed.

If the player also wants to act it out in character they can, but the important bit is what, why, and how.

(In this case that could have been eg. rolling a difficulty 6 manipulation + persuade, needs 3 successes to get them to commit to attack, 1-2 success and they send a scouting party, mentioning the target being in the Muir Woods is worth 2 successes, on a botch they choose to defend/conceal themselves instead of helping and the Freehold becomes inaccessible later.)

*Not what they are going to do, what outcome they want from doing it, this is much more useful to the DM to make sure everyone expects the same thing to happen on a success.

[kyoryu]

Really the basis of doing social skills should be the same basis as most other skills.

The player says what they want to achieve* and how they want to do it including any specifics like tools, arguments, spells, or other resources they intend to use, and then the DM/Storyteller decides on how difficult it's going to be, what skills are involved, and calls for a check if needed.

If the player also wants to act it out in character they can, but the important bit is what, why, and how.

I usually hear this encoded as "Intent and Task" - what do you intend to accomplish, and what are you doing to achieve it?

The other model is that intent is irrelevant, and that the system is responsible for giving the results from a given action. I'm not as much of a fan of this model, as it requires that every possible outcome is encoded into the system. It can work in low-trust tables, however. It gets really tricky in social situations as those tend to be less cut-and-dried than "how far did you jump?" or "you charge the guy, where does he end up?" I much prefer intent and task as a working model.

[KorvinStarmast]

Nope. Their goals are just sufficiently different that they end up with different actions.

Their goal is "maximize comedy", and their actions are consistent with that.

Hmm, I can see your point on that but some of the actions/reactions are non linear...

[GloatingSwine]

I usually here this encoded as "Intent and Task" - what do you intend to do, and what are you doing to achieve it?

The other model is that intent is irrelevant, and that the system is responsible for giving the results from a given action. I'm not as much of a fan of this model, as it requires that every possible outcome is encoded into the system. It can work in low-trust tables, however. It gets really tricky in social situations as those tend to be less cut-and-dried than "how far did you jump?" or "you charge the guy, where does he end up?"

Yeah, though "what do you intend to do" has problems when the players give you a sequence of actions they perform without you knowing their end goal. Like if you enter a social scene at, say, a casino where there's a mark they want to get information out of and they declare actions that are relevant to being in a casino without telling you how they want those actions to lead to approaching the mark. (Especially if you might call for a different skill roll, like if they ask to be dealt in at the blackjack table the mark is at without mentioning talking to them and you call for a gambling related skill, instead of saying "I approach the mark by making small talk as I play at the same table." and you call for something like a carouse skill instead because now you all know that performance at the blackjack table isn't the point of what the player intends (unless they say "I want to impress him with a big win and use that to start a conversation", when you do call for gamble).

"What outcome do you want, what are your steps towards it" is the model that puts everyone on the same page.

[kyoryu]

Changed it to "what do you intend to accomplish" as I think that's more clear. What's the goal, and how do you get there?

[Jason]

Really the basis of doing social skills should be the same basis as most other skills.

The player says what they want to achieve* and how they want to do it including any specifics like tools, arguments, spells, or other resources they intend to use, and then the DM/Storyteller decides on how difficult it's going to be, what skills are involved, and calls for a check if needed.

If the player also wants to act it out in character they can, but the important bit is what, why, and how.

*Not what they are going to do, what outcome they want from doing it, this is much more useful to the DM to make sure everyone expects the same thing to happen on a success.

Exactly. You judge intent and basic specifics, like tools used, not whether the player specifically stated all the little steps that would be required to achieve his intent in real life.

When a player wants to shoot a bad guy, he doesn't have to say, "I release the catch on my holster and draw my pistol with my right hand, being careful not to put my finger on the trigger yet. I pull back the receiver with my left hand to chamber a round, then switch off the safety with my right thumb as I bring the pistol up. I use both hands and move into a Weaver stance while bringing the handgun in line with my target, placing my right index finger on the trigger when I am sure the target is the only thing I might hit with a shot. I use my right eye to look through the iron sights, aiming at the target's center of mass. I draw a deep breath, then exhale about half of it hold my breath while I squeeze the trigger. I keep the gun aimed at the target while I evaluate where the shot landed and whether another shot is required to stop the target."

Instead he just says "I draw my gun and shoot the guy." The GM knows the character has formal firearms training because he has the skill, so it's assumed he does all of these steps without having to go into more detail.

[Telok]

If they tossed it out as irrelevant then obviously they didn't have an accurate understanding of what it was and what it meant, did they?

Possibly not. I once had a bunch of players where things went sort of like:

GM: the chancellor tells you that your deeds have been noticed by the king and he has granted you an audience
Players: nah, the king can't do anything for us, we'll just leave
GM: really? You tell the chancellor that?
Players: yeah, he's usless, we leave
GM: you're sure?
Players: yup, lets go

This was in a sort of 'strangers in a strange land' game based off the old Spiderweb Software Exile/Avernum games. The PCs are sent to a ultra deep sealed off not-Underdark/Australia with even less resources & food plus more monsters. Because the law & order empire ruling the entire surface world just recently invented teleportation and decided to go "kinder & nicer" by sending undesireables to starve and get eaten by monsters instead of just executing them.

Yeah, just in-your-face dis the leaders of the only safe places in your world. That'll never come back to bite you. It made some things rather harder for them in the long run. Specifically the only thing they ever got offered after that was money for an artifact (can't eat it & no magic marts, too bad) and a suicide mission that they weren't told was a suicide mission and resulted in a TPK (npc reasoning was explained & discussed & accepted without drama post campaign). And its not like I have NPCs hide critical info, its often either on a "this is important" handout at the start of game or at most they usually just have to ask an NPC.

It's like here I've assumed everyone knows what the D&D FR Underdark is and the "Australia full of death animals" memes. Because its a common cultural reference among this subculture. But if anyone doesn't know they just ask and it gets explained. Players interacting with NPCs often won't ask or won't tell. And its not because as GMs we're trying to screw with the players, I'm trying to provide all info the characters would know and have NPCs act like normal people. That was the question in the opening post; "why does this seem to happen across many groups and decades and game systems?"

I've had players toss stuff, insult NPCs, not share info, assassinate good guys, and plan to murder children. All because maybe they either think this stuff doesn't matter, or the NPCs weren't obesquious push-overs that did exactly what the players want.

Others

Npc: you ditched the part of the artifact anti-demon sword in demon infested ruins? Thats important! We might need it to stop a planar invasion. Go back and get it or else bad **** will happen!
Players: you aren't the boss of us! Die you backstabbing NPC bastard!

Npc: there is a judge taking bribes but I can't move against her because politics. Can you kill the criminal scum doing the bribing? Quietly? Make it look like an accident.
Players: kill the criminals in broad daylight! Hide nothing! Kill the judge! Kill her family! Kill the pet dog! Kill the servants! Torch the houses!

PCs get attacked at night in an inn, beat off the attacker. Then police show up prepped for a fight involving lightning bolts and fireballs and order the PCs to lay down arms and answer some questions.
Players: kill the pigs! Kill the inn keeper! Burn the place down! Everyone is trying to kill us!

PCs get blown up at a charity gala because an enemy want's to frame one for of them for murder on video. They're legitimately the victims here but they run off without talking to anyone or doing anything about the camera crew or escaping bad guys. About 12 hours later...
Npc: this is the navy, please hold position and stand by for boarding. We need to search your ship for a suspected assassin.
Players: never! Look at the video! Eat our lasers losers! We're outta here!

[kyoryu]

Those are all situations where I'd give players info that their characters know, since it seems the players are not aligned on that.

"Your characters know of this underdark. You know that it's incredibly hostile at every turn - what the king can do for you is offer you some safe places, potentially, and some possible supplies. Given what you've heard about this place, you know that could be really useful - without it, even getting food is going to be harder, much less having a safe place to rest."

For the judge, "your characters know that that kind of violence against a public figure, in broad daylight, has caused massive responses in the past - the guards and troops that would be brought in are almost certainly beyond your ability to deal with at this time, and you'd certainly get known as fugitives throughout the land."

In these cases you're filling in the gaps between player and character knowledge. Doing that from the perspective of the PC is going to come off different than a random NPC - the NPC could be mistaken or lying or manipulating them.

[Talakeal]

If they tossed it out as irrelevant then obviously they didn't have an accurate understanding of what it was and what it meant, did they?

I think the misunderstanding here is that the word "meant" is too broad.

What I am talking about is they didn't misunderstand the words you use, or not know the definition of said words, or not being able to parse what the GM is talking about.


I am not talking about making the necessary connections to realize the significance of every clue and draw the correct conclusions from it.



Like, for example, if the GM tells the player's that they find plane tickets to Cairo in the suspect's desk, it would be a misunderstanding if they don't know that Cairo is a city in Egypt*, or get confused and think that he is flying to Cairo Illinois. But it is not the GM's job to make sure the players come to the conclusion that he has had business dealings with the Egyptian cult that was mentioned in the previous session.

*Assuming the characters would know this.

When a player wants to shoot a bad guy, he doesn't have to say, "I release the catch on my holster and draw my pistol with my right hand, being careful not to put my finger on the trigger yet. I pull back the receiver with my left hand to chamber a round, then switch off the safety with my right thumb as I bring the pistol up. I use both hands and move into a Weaver stance while bringing the handgun in line with my target, placing my right index finger on the trigger when I am sure the target is the only thing I might hit with a shot. I use my right eye to look through the iron sights, aiming at the target's center of mass. I draw a deep breath, then exhale about half of it hold my breath while I squeeze the trigger. I keep the gun aimed at the target while I evaluate where the shot landed and whether another shot is required to stop the target."

This is true, but sort of misleading. In practice, I find the opposite to be the case.

For one, ideally, conversation with NPCs is a lot more interesting and conveys a lot more information than simply describing the minute details of a rote mechanical task like drawing a gun.

Second, most games do go into a great deal about combat. The players take turns, they describe their precise positioning and movement, they decide what weapons and what combat maneuvers to use, they apply situational modifiers for things like cover and flanking, and they roll out each attack separately followed by damage. This is quite an involved and time-consuming process!

In theory, combat and social are both core pillars of the game, but in practice I find combat takes up a lot more time and energy than dialogue.

It's weird to me that people think it's appropriate to skip dialogue and resolve social encounters with a single dice roll, yet would be aghast at the idea of rolling a single dice to see which side wins a fight.

I remember a rather fun thread over on RPGnet a while back about whether a Werewolf werewolf could beat a 40k space marine. IIRC, the consensus was "probably".

I actually read that thread in preparation for this campaign.

I remember one super insightful post saying that the problem is that while werewolves have a fairly consistent portrayal in White Wolf media, Space Marines vary drastically between ever representation, so that some times they are just really elite human soldiers, and other times they are demigods on par with mid-tier Marvel Superheroes.

My opinion is yes, unless the marine is armed with silver, btw.

(One of the other consequences is that if you attempt to run a combat where one side is a werewolf and the other side is pretty much anything else ever the werewolf just wins, soaking aggravated damage is something anyone else needs serious magic to pull off and Werewolves just do it, on top of regenerating bashing and lethal and being able to rage heal once at incapacitated, and dealing aggravated damage by default and getting +4 strength in Crinos form that can take them over normal cap meaning they're just chucking massive quantities of aggravated damage out per turn. And you can't even wear them down over time because they heal 1 aggravated/day not one per six weeks like it takes anything else. They're nature's perfect killing machines and everything else isn't.

Yeah. Werewolves are the beef. Which is why I am saying that the players aren't going to beat them in combat without a lot of allies. It's not that I am trying to railroad my scenario into that, it's just a fact of the system.


On a tangent, I really like that the more recent editions have gotten rid of the soak mechanic. It really levels the playing field a lot.

Of course, Bob still whines about it, because he says it's unfair that his changeling can no longer soak lethal damage (with his whopping 1 stamina), because it doesn't make him feel as special compared to the mortal PCs, but he seems totally oblivious to the fact that almost every other supernatural he would be fighting can soak better than he can!

I'm not sure why they would think that makes the clue insignificant, but I've only dabbled in World of Darkness games. I'm not steeped in their lore.

Yeah. This totally throws me as well. The idea that the Changelings are talking about the Cairn in Muir Woods makes the fact that there is an impending attack on it *less* likely to draw their attention? That seems pants on head backward to me.

I have asked my players several times what their thought process was with this one, and they just trail off and change the topic. Which, to me, implies they were just making excuses without thinking them through and realized how little sense it made in hindsight but are too embarrassed to admit it.

Others

Npc: you ditched the part of the artifact anti-demon sword in demon infested ruins? Thats important! We might need it to stop a planar invasion. Go back and get it or else bad **** will happen!
Players: you aren't the boss of us! Die you backstabbing NPC bastard!

Npc: there is a judge taking bribes but I can't move against her because politics. Can you kill the criminal scum doing the bribing? Quietly? Make it look like an accident.
Players: kill the criminals in broad daylight! Hide nothing! Kill the judge! Kill her family! Kill the pet dog! Kill the servants! Torch the houses!

PCs get attacked at night in an inn, beat off the attacker. Then police show up prepped for a fight involving lightning bolts and fireballs and order the PCs to lay down arms and answer some questions.
Players: kill the pigs! Kill the inn keeper! Burn the place down! Everyone is trying to kill us!

PCs get blown up at a charity gala because an enemy want's to frame one for of them for murder on video. They're legitimately the victims here but they run off without talking to anyone or doing anything about the camera crew or escaping bad guys. About 12 hours later...
Npc: this is the navy, please hold position and stand by for boarding. We need to search your ship for a suspected assassin.
Players: never! Look at the video! Eat our lasers losers! We're outta here!

Yep.

That is something that a lot of advice I receive doesn't take into account; some players just hate being told what to do.

Dave, who doesn't play with us anymore, was really bad about this. If an NPC ever made a reasonable request of him or gave him good advice, he would make sure to double down on the situation and do the opposite, and also usually attack the NPC and / or their allies in an over the top, and often suicidal, faction. Bob has lost three long running PCs because a powerful NPC made a reasonable request of him, and he chose to attack them rather than aquisce.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah. Werewolves are the beef. Which is why I am saying that the players aren't going to beat them in combat without a lot of allies. It's not that I am trying to railroad my scenario into that, it's just a fact of the system.


On a tangent, I really like that the more recent editions have gotten rid of the soak mechanic. It really levels the playing field a lot.

Of course, Bob still whines about it, because he says it's unfair that his changeling can no longer soak lethal damage (with his whopping 1 stamina), because it doesn't make him feel as special compared to the mortal PCs, but he seems totally oblivious to the fact that almost every other supernatural he would be fighting can soak better than he can!

Why would the mortals be soaking Lethal? Vampires soak lethal because their bodies are dead and they don't care about damage to organs they weren't using anyway.

Changelings have their weird chimerical/physical damage split and weird death consequences instead but IIRC soak bashing the same as mortals (because their bodies are mortals).

[Jason]

Like, for example, if the GM tells the player's that they find plane tickets to Cairo in the suspect's desk, it would be a misunderstanding if they don't know that Cairo is a city in Egypt*, or get confused and think that he is flying to Cairo Illinois. But it is not the GM's job to make sure the players come to the conclusion that he has had business dealings with the Egyptian cult that was mentioned in the previous session.

*Assuming the characters would know this.

The Assuming is the tricky part here. It is the GM's part, if the players say "let's go to Cairo, Illinois" to point out that the tickets they found are clearly labeled to Cairo, Egypt, not Cairo, Illinois.

That assumes that this is a game set in the present day, of course, because in a 1920s Call of Cthulhu game, assuming you're in New England somewhere it's much more likely that the tickets would in fact be to Illinois, and wouldn't specify the country the plane is flying to on the tickets either, since there's no oversees plane service at that date. Your modern player might not know this, and it would be unfair to let them waste a lot of time trying to book a flight to Cairo, Egypt to follow the suspect when their characters would know that you can't fly directly to Egypt from New England in 1925.

The GM has to fill in for the places where the characters would know something but the players do not.

Second, most games do go into a great deal about combat.

Sure, but not in that much detail (though GURPS can come close).

It's weird to me that people think it's appropriate to skip dialogue and resolve social encounters with a single dice roll, yet would be aghast at the idea of rolling a single dice to see which side wins a fight.

I'm not saying skip it entirely. I am saying that allowances can be made to gloss over some details for players who aren't comfortable with their abilities to persuade someone but are playing a persuasive character.

That is something that a lot of advice I receive doesn't take into account; some players just hate being told what to do.

I would see these examples (basically, going murder-hobo on NPCs) not as "players who hate being told what to do", but as the players failing to engage with the world. They are not treating the game as if they were people living in a real world with real consequences for their actions, and going off on power fantasies instead. New players often do this sort of thing until they "get it" and engage. Some players don't ever engage and either stop gaming on their own or are asked to leave because the other players don't want a loose cannon.

For the rest, who only have occasional bouts of this and are okay the rest of the time, I would say they are disengaging again when they aren't getting what they want from the game. Talk to these players about the game, take constructive feedback, and try to accommodate what they want. Or tell them they want a different kind of game than what you can provide and have them move on.

[gbaji]

There are two tribes of werewolves who are at war...

Cool. Thanks for the background. That actually helped a lot. It does lead me to the position that there was little to no expectation by the players that anyone at that gathering would have any care or interest in one faction of werewolves attacking another though. Though I suppose the whole "Releasing a monster under the Cairn" might have maybe raised an eyebrow. But yeah. I can see why they might have thought it wasn't significant.

That's literally all I did!

I spent well over an hour in character having half a dozen different NPCs try and ask thrice as many leading questions to get this information out the PCs!

As I've already pointed out, having your NPCs ask the players questions is only half of the equation. Have your NPCs tell the players things too. I've already written several example dialogues which could have been used to help "clue the players in" about what direction to go.

Again. What is obvious to you is not always going to be obvious to your players. If you think they have the information they need to take the expected action in a scene, but then they don't, then instead of assuming they are idiots who can't figure out the correct action to take, a better approach is to assume that you failed to properly provide them with sufficient information to conclude they need to take that action.

They had information the changelings did not. The changelings kept trying to get it out of them, asking them all sorts of the different questions. But they wouldn't spill the beans.

It feels like you're still not getting what I'm trying to get across.

The NPCs also had information that the players did not.

You could just as easily have shared the information about the freehold in Muir Woods to the PCs, as the PCs could have shared the information about the planned attack to the NPCs. You did mention that you said something about this, but used broad labeling terminology, which the players didn't understand.

You need to be explicit here. Literally have an NPC sidle up to one of the PCs and engage them in a conversation in which they talk all about "the freehold in Muir Woods". Have said NPC talk about how fragile it is. Talk about how they have to be careful due to the werewolves currently in the area. Drumbeat the freaking idea by literally saing something like "And it would be really bad if some kind of attack were to occur here, and <some other NPC> would be very interested if such a thing were to occur and would reward anyone with such information".

Don't go to this immediately, but if the more subtle hints have failed, do this. You can't just let the game stall out because the players are stuck on some clue you gave them, which you assumed would prompt a specific response from them. If it fails, give them more blatant clues.

Now, all the stuff about standing there like a CRPG object is just totally out of left field though; it didn't happen, it isn't relevant, and I am not sure what made you think that was the case. If I wrote the scene out in screenplay format, it would probably be a good 10-20 pages, we were talking IC for several hours and I revealed a metric butt-ton of information. I don't think anyone who has played at my table would ever accuse me of having NPCs who aren't talkative enough! (Indeed, I am pretty sure the world you are describing would be Bob's paradise!)

I think you may be spending too much time focusing on the window dressing of a scene, to the detriment of the core purpose of the scene. All the window dressing is worthless if the core mechanical stuff doesn't work.

The core is this: "The players go to the Seelie Court, speak to the various members there, tell them about the planned attack by the BSD folks, and are able to get assistence from some of the Fae in return".

That's literally what this scene is about. That's the skeletal framework upon which everything else is built. On top of that, you can add details like the color of the drapes, and the food being served, and the clothes being worn, and the various strange and interesting people in attendance, and some volume of "fluff dialogue". But if you fail to get the core bits to work, the rest of the scene is going to be a frustrating time-waster for the players. Players (at least in most games) are task oriented. They view this though the lense of "what are we here to accomplish?". Everything else, while nice, is secondary to that.

The players had all of the information that was available in your scenario to conclude that "we need to warn someone at the seelie court about the planned attack on the woods". They didn't do that. Ergo, the information that was available in your scenario was not sufficient. There is a gap between data and conclusion, and GMs need to be really cognizant of that fact. When the information you provide is not resulting in the conclusion you expect, you need to provide more information. The players have succeded in whatever actions they needed to do to get the information. They should receive the reward for doing that.

I agree with his premise. But talking in character is also a great deal of fun and is a great way to convey information without long exposition dumps, and gives both the PCs and the NPCs a chance to RP and show off their personality.

It is fun for some people. It ranges from "tedious" to "nerve wracking fear inducing stage fright terror" for others. Never require players to do this.

So, what I try and do to be fair is not base the result on how charming or eloquent the player is, but instead what approach you use. (Flatter? Threats? Bribes? Reason? Pathos? Demands? Logic? etc.) as well as what you are asking for, and what you are willing to give in turn (as well as any additional leverage you may have) to come up with a difficulty for said social mechanic.

That's fine. My question is: Do you allow your player to just say "My player will try to convince the NPC by using <flattery>", and give that player the exact same roll (or auto success in some situations) as you'd give them if they dramatically roleplayed out the scene in character?

I treat those identically becuase I realize that many players are quite uncomfortable with actually speaking in character.

However, if it had, I would politely tell him that the social and exploration pillars are as important as combat at my table, and he is better off not playing if he really feels that dialogue is so tedious.

That, right there, may be your problem. You're presenting a "my way or the highway" ultimatum to your player(s). Which may very well be why this creates an argument so often. At some point, you have to realize that your players may not want to play the way you want them to. It's their game time too. And this is such an incredibly silly thing to argue over. Also, "social" is not the same as "dialogue".

Examine two players:

Player 1: Gronk enters the meadhall. I say"Good day to you fine barkeep! And a good day to all your fine patrons! I'd like a round of ale for myself and my stalwart companions for we are road weary and parched. And here is a tip for your trouble!". Gronk pays for the ale and gives a 2cp tip to the barkeep.

Player 2: Gronk will greet the barkeep and patrons in the bar, order a round of ales for the party, and give a 2cp tip.


Both are absolutely 100% identical. The NPC should react to them the same way. The GM should treat any results from this social interaction the same way. The only difference is that in one, the player is roleplaying out the dialogue, and in the other the player is simply narrating the character actions. But neither should be rewarded nor punished. They should be treated identically.

If players want to roleplay out dialogue, by all means allow that. But don't force them, or require them to do this. And definitely do not ever punish them for not doing so by requiring social die rolls which you would not require if RP was used, or more difficult rolls, or well any change at all. Let the players play the way they are comfortable playing. And yes. Giving a bonus for RP like this also acts as a soft penalty for not doing so, so I'd avoid that as well.

Let this be sometihng they do, or don't do, as their own choice. I've just never found any value to be found by forcing the issue as a GM.

Also, it is really bizarre that he created a character whose whole shtick was being an archeologist who communes with the spirits of the earth to learn about the ancient past and then being dismissive about having a conversation with a statue in an ancient tomb; and if he really feels that way he might want to rework his character as that attitude is going to seriously limit his progress going forward as "talking to freaking rocks" is a core part of his character.

Because he expects that he should just be able to tell you "I'm using my stonespeak spell to get information from the stones about the history of this chamber", and for you to accept that and provide him the relevant and available information that his spell should give him.

You, on the other hand, seem to expect/require him to RP out the scene with "talking to the rocks", and will punish him if he doesn't. If he wants to RP this out, let him. But never require it IMO.

And yes. What you are doing is textbook "making the players jump through hoops". You have decided that there is a specific thing you want them to do in order to succeed at any phase of your adventure, and if they don't do it, then they don't succeed. In this case, it's "RP the conversation with the statue". In another it's "tell the Fae about the werewolf attack". In another it was "attack the wizard and the monster he's in the process of controlling". In yet another it was "flee from the monster, down the unknown hallway and find the exit".

There is a noticable pattern here. You need to recognize this and adjust how you set up and run your adventures accordingly. Otherwise, you will endlessly run into arguments and conflict with your players.


And this does not at all mean that your players aren't just insane people who do insane things. But you've chosen to run adventures for them to play in. At the end of the day, your job is to create and run adventures that they will enjoy playing. That doesn't mean that you can't try to get things to work differently. But, while you can lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink. Responding to that by repeatedly pushing the horses head towards the water isn't the right answer (and will likely just get you bit or kicked). You have to figure out what the players actually want, and then provide that for them (within reason, of course!).

Again, in the previous thread, you got very irate that I thought you were talking about minions as a whole and were very adamant that you were only talking about illusions and creatures and the dominate spell.

This is a pretty gross misrepresentation of what I said. I did not make absolute statements differentiating them. I simply said that in the spectrum of "things that the player should have control over", I place illusions/creations/constructs at the top, then dominated creatures, and then farther down things like minions and hirelings.

I was responding to your own post where you stated that players should run minions and hirelings as though they were secondary PCs, but in the same thread seemed to insist that an illusion or dominated creature should be run by the GM as an NPC". I just found your "how much control does the GM vs Player have" determination to be backwards. At no point was I saying which one was "100% this" or "100% that".

Minions and hirelings are NPCs who choose to work for/with the PCs. They are, however, NPCs. If the GM wants to run a story arc where one of them betrays their lord/boss, that's a perfectly viable thing to do. Illusions/constructs and dominated creatures are literally controlled/created via magic by the PC. They are very much "controlled by" that PC, and therefore should fall very far on the "run similarly to a PC by the player" side of the spectrum. Obviously, different game settings and systems will have different specifics to those spells, and thus vary a bit. But... within any given game system/setting? I'd expect the spell based created/controlled creatures to be more under direct control by the player than hirelings/henchmen. I thought I was quite clear aboout this in the previous thread, but apparently not.

Just like I wouldn't allow Brian to attack Bob because Bob successfully picked his character's pocket without him finding out about it IC, and I don't allow Dave to skip the part of the adventure where they learn about the villain's secret weakness because he has read the module before, I would not allow a ranger's animal companion to solve puzzles requiring human intelligence or allow the ranger to know what was going on for an event that the animal observed that he was not present for and the wolf has no way of informing him of; barring some supernatural power that allowed for those sorts of things of course.

I think you are muddling up the concept of "metagaming" and "metaknowledge". The temptation to avoid metagaming is to restrict metaknolwege, right? But the reality is that this is impossible to do as a whole. As you say, Brian's player may very well know that Bob's character pickpocketed his character, even though his own character is unaware of this fact. Or a player may have read the module you are running. Or the entire table knows that the rogue has run into trouble while sneaking into the castle (cause it's being played out in front of them), but their characters don't because they are standing ouside the gate waiting for the rogue to open it from the inside.

This happens all the time. You cannot run a game without encountering this. Which means that the GM has to be able to detect and enforce situations where player knowledge is different from character knowledge and prevent characters from acting on knowledge they do not have. But it seems like you are giving in to that templtatin and deciding to not allow players to run things they should have control over, because then they'd have knowledge and might metagame with it.

That's wrong IMO. The ranger's player should run the ranger's animal companion even when it is some distance away, and the ranger should not know specifically what's going on. You just need to act to prevent the ranger from acting on that knowledge, in the same way you'd do this for any other situation where metaknowledge comes up. Most players are reasonably good about this, and avoid acting on such knowlege, but yeah, sometimes you have to give them a gentle reminder that they don't know X info and thus would not reasonably have taken some action they just proposed.

But here's the thing. Sometimes, players are going to take some action that "I would have done anway", which you can't prove they wouldn't, but also "just happens" to be a very useful thing to do due to some other metaknowledge they have. And you know what? Just give it to them. If it's an edge case, it's just not worth arguing over.

More to the point. You are going to damage your game far more by so agressively trying to avoid metaknowledge that you take control of the players own characters or illusions or dominated creatures, than will ever occur if the players occasionally "get away" with using metaknowledge. And in many of those examples in that previous thread, you were actively arguing that if you allowed the player to know the specific choices and decisions the dominated creature encountered, they'd have knowledge they should not have, so you (the GM) should make all of those decisions instead. That is IMO, the exact wrong way to handle that situation. Doubly so given our own seemingly dramatic inability to accurately predict how the players would actually want their dominated creatures or self-willed illusion creatures to actually behave.


You have a demonsted inability to do this well. So stop trying to do it. Let the players control the game objects that they should have control over. Don't worry about metaknowlege. That's manageable, and if it's abused, that's on the players. But you taking over the players "stuff"? That's on you.

Yeah, sure, you could say that enforcing any rules at all accomplishes nothing but creating conflict with the players, but nobody actually believes that, right?

The "nothing but" bit is kinda important. Most rulings serve the purpose of guilding the outcomes in the game in a way that is reasonable and expected. So enforcing those rules does something more than potentially create conflict.

Your ruling on the stone statue did not enforce an expected actions/outcomes relationship, but also created conflict and stalled out the game. The player cast his spell and expected to get the information as a result. That's the expected action/outcome relationship. Your ruled in way that violated that, and also stalled the game.

That's why that was a bad ruling. The player used a spell to make up for a failed perception roll. Let that just succeed. Then move on. Why the heck hang the game up on this because you want the player to RP out the scene, and then if he doesn't, require him to make an arbitrary die roll. He's already using this spell as a replacement for a previously failed die roll. The "cost of failing the skill check" is already being paid. Don't make him pay again.

Really the basis of doing social skills should be the same basis as most other skills.

The player says what they want to achieve* and how they want to do it including any specifics like tools, arguments, spells, or other resources they intend to use, and then the DM/Storyteller decides on how difficult it's going to be, what skills are involved, and calls for a check if needed.

If the player also wants to act it out in character they can, but the important bit is what, why, and how.

This. 100% this.

As long as the player tells the GM what their character is trying to achieve, and what the character is doing to try to achieve it, that is all the information the GM needs to decide what skill rolls may be required (if any), and then generate a resolution.

Any extra color added to that is great, but is just that: Added to that. It is not a requirement.

And yeah. I also agree with the whole "tell the GM what outcome you are going for here". This goes to the communication between players and GM thing. If this communication is open and free, then everyone will be on the same page, and there are no shocks or surprises. There's very little worse in a game than the PC doing X, and expecting Y, and the GM gives them Z instead. If Z was the actual likely expected outcome of X, the GM should have informed the player of that when the player first said "I'm going try to get Y, by doing X".

Waiting to spring that surprise outcome on the player falls far into the "gotcha GM" side of things. Obvious exceptions for cases where the PCs legitimately do expect to get Y result from action X, and have no way to know that Z will actually occur instead. But those should actually be excpetions, and not things that happen frequently to the PCs. If the players are constantly feeling like Lucy is pulling the football away every time they try to do something, the GM is doing things horribly wrong IMO.

I usually hear this encoded as "Intent and Task" - what do you intend to accomplish, and what are you doing to achieve it?

The other model is that intent is irrelevant, and that the system is responsible for giving the results from a given action. I'm not as much of a fan of this model, as it requires that every possible outcome is encoded into the system. It can work in low-trust tables, however. It gets really tricky in social situations as those tend to be less cut-and-dried than "how far did you jump?" or "you charge the guy, where does he end up?" I much prefer intent and task as a working model.

Yeah. And I personally think that other model, while possible to run well, is absolutely and massively fraught with peril. The innate problem with it, is that it's something players may fall towards when they don't trust the GM not to move the football if they tell them what their intent is, but it's also strongly susceptible to the same issue of trust. If the GM is playing things straight, it may work. But at that low-trust table, the GM will likely not play it straight, but will instead try to "guess what the players are trying to do" anyway.

Which generally makes the gameplay a sequence of each side trying to trick the other into the outcomes they want, rather than both sides just... talking to eachother. If you feel like you need to use this model, there are larger problems going on at the table IMO.

As a side note, that methodology is akin to how resolutions are done in adversarial games. In a game of chess, you don't tell your opponent what the intention is behind any given move. You just make the move. The other player needs to figure out what that means, and how to respond. That's the point of the game. But it's done that way because they are opponents in the game and thus don't want the other to know what they are planning. It also tends to only work when there are a set number of defined possible action/outcome combinatioins *and* the rules for determing resolutions are fixed and agreed upon by all playing.

In RPGs, the GM is not the "oppoonent" of the game (or should not be). Treating the GM like an opponent to be tricked is an indicator that the GM is acting like an opponent, which again, is an indication of a problem at the table. Not the least of which is that the whole "rules for determining resolutions are fixed and agreed upon" is not an equal thing. The GM has the authority to decide how things are resolved. So the moment the GM becomes an opponent, this is a problem. While using this methodology may mitigate the "we don't trust the GM" issue, it will never solve it.


And yes. Frequent arguments over how the GM is resolving things may be an indication that this "GM as opponent" model is in play.

[Mordar]

It's weird to me that people think it's appropriate to skip dialogue and resolve social encounters with a single dice roll, yet would be aghast at the idea of rolling a single dice to see which side wins a fight.

See also: RPGs are Social Games. No, we don't need voice acting lessons to play...but if a player can't even try to describe what they are saying (and leave the "how well" to character attributes and skills) then maybe a social game isn't the best fit for their interests.

I actually read that thread in preparation for this campaign.

I remember one super insightful post saying that the problem is that while werewolves have a fairly consistent portrayal in White Wolf media, Space Marines vary drastically between ever representation, so that some times they are just really elite human soldiers, and other times they are demigods on par with mid-tier Marvel Superheroes.

My opinion is yes, unless the marine is armed with silver, btw.

Promethium and Plasma! My favorite chapter (Blood Angels) and least favorite (Space Wolves) seem well suited for this conversation.

That is something that a lot of advice I receive doesn't take into account; some players just hate being told what to do.

Dave, who doesn't play with us anymore, was really bad about this. If an NPC ever made a reasonable request of him or gave him good advice, he would make sure to double down on the situation and do the opposite, and also usually attack the NPC and / or their allies in an over the top, and often suicidal, faction. Bob has lost three long running PCs because a powerful NPC made a reasonable request of him, and he chose to attack them rather than aquisce.

Frankly I wondered a bit about this - were the players playing a game of "I can be more stubborn" in not telling the Fae what they were asking?

- M

[Telok]

Those are all situations where I'd give players info that their characters know, since it seems the players are not aligned on that.

Why do you assume the players don't already know those things? Why assume they aren't told in-character information? Why assume a king with an army, treasury, and a 15th level wizard in the library can't help you? Why assume the players don't ask basic questions of NPCs?

Ok, these guys don't ask basic questions of NPCs much of the time. But its still not good to make your assumptions and try to advise based on them.

The Assuming is the tricky part here. It is the GM's part, if the players say "let's go to Cairo, Illinois" to point out that the tickets they found are clearly labeled to Cairo, Egypt, not Cairo, Illinois.

That assumes that this is a game set in the present day, of course, because in a 1920s Call of Cthulhu game,

Why assume 1920s CoC and invent additional problems? Why not d20 Modern, Shadowrun, Delta Green, or any of another games where cross Atlantic air travel isn't an issue? Why assume the GM doesn't normally correct basic factual mistakes? Why assume people aren't playing and running games in good faith? Why assume incompetent, killer, or gotcha GMing?

Edit: also, who the frell runs around with 1 stamina (if I recall translating to about 4 constitution) without an ironclad alternate defense?... oh, Bob. Of course.

I'm sorry for your suffering.

[GloatingSwine]

Edit: also, who the frell runs around with 1 stamina (if I recall translating to about 4 constitution) without an ironclad alternate defense?... oh, Bob. Of course.

I'm sorry for your suffering.

Remember the others are playing child characters created using Innocents rules where 5 pips in a physical attribute is "nearly average adult" (2 pips being "average" in the other games).

And you only get 7 pips to distribute to physical attributes even if you make it primary, so one of them being a 1 isn't unreasonable.

(Not that there aren't other odd choices at play, like being a Pooka with what sounds like a weird off-brand art choice for a free spirited Robin Goodfellow-esque prankster)

[Jason]

Why assume 1920s CoC and invent additional problems? Why not d20 Modern, Shadowrun, Delta Green, or any of another games where cross Atlantic air travel isn't an issue?

Because most of us aren't playing RPG games which are set in the modern day in a 100% mundane setting. Where the setting differs from modern reality the GM has to make allowances for differences between what the players know and what the characters should know (actually he would probably have to do that in a 100% mundane modern setting too, since most player's perceptions aren't a perfect match for reality).

Why assume the GM doesn't normally correct basic factual mistakes?

Talakeal has said several times that his players misunderstood basic facts about what was going on in the game or how the game world works and that he didn't correct these in play but after the fact.

Why assume people aren't playing and running games in good faith?

Because Talakeal seems to feel his players are not playing in good faith. He has said they maybe are being stubborn, said some have tried to gaslight him about what happened when during the game, and suspects they may be making up false excuses for why they did what they did in game.

Why assume incompetent, killer, or gotcha GMing?

Well I'm not assuming that, but something certainly appears to be dysfunctional at Talakeal's table.