Gather Information
I don’t care how high your stats are. I don’t care that you took the “witty and charming” background. No matter what kind of monster combo you’ve cobbled together from the depths of the Super Powers Compendium, at some point, you’re going to have to step out from behind your dice and actually play the game. You’re going to have to roleplay.
Of course, there’s the ever-popular argument that, “You wouldn’t make Throg’s player lift a boulder in real life. Why are you forcing me to be this silver-tongued, fast-talking, master manipulator? You’re punishing me for not having a 27 Charisma in real life!” For the longest time I was bothered by this line of reasoning, and had no real way to refute it. On the surface, it does seem like players ought to resolve social situations with dice, just like they do in combat encounters. Happily, one of the hosts of Happy Jacks recently saved me from the logic trap, providing the next step in the argument. To paraphrase a bit: “Throg can’t just roll a single stat called ‘tactics’ and win at combat.” For me, there’s the conundrum solved. In the same way that you’ve got to use some amount of skill and system mastery to win in combat situations, you’ve got to make your arguments persuasive in “social combat.” You’ve got to play to NPCs’ hopes and fears, undertake a bit of flattery, or concoct a clever lie. This is social tactics, and is about player skill rather than character capabilities. And whether you like it or not—whether it’s fair or not—skillful players have an advantage in games.
What do the rest of you guys think? When do you allow a handwave on simple “gather information” checks, and when do you insist that the player actually engage in a battle of wits?
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As this is one of my pet peeves, and I don’t agree with Happy Jacks argument at all…
“Social tactics” would be the _topics_ of the conversation. To actually base the result on the _player’s_ conversation is exactly like requiring the mage player to throw a fireball in real life.
I do agree that a simple “I roll Persuasion” won’t do, thought. The player should still come up with said topics! If you’re trying to persuade a guard to let you pass you have to provide some reasons for him to do that – then the GM can provide modifiers based on how good the reasons were.
But of course there’s nothing stopping you from acting out the conversation. As long as you’re not penalized for doing it badly!
I don’t think we’re in disagreement. I’m not saying you’ve got to be eloquent, but you do have to describe your arguments. For example, if the guard values gold more than honor, your appeal to his better nature is likely to fail. The context provides a mechanical modifier, and may make it impossible to succeed regardless of the number on the die…at least until you change tactics.
Here’s what I don’t want though. I was once in an Exalted game where a dude wanted to bypass an intelligent door possessed by a magi-tech AI. “I roll War,” he says. He would not explain what he was attempting to use the skill for. He simply wanted to roll his best stat. Needless to say, his efforts were less than successful.
Pretty much in agreement here. You don’t have to actually be convincing, you just have to figure out what you’re attempting to accomplish and how.
As far as “gather information” goes, to me that’s usually around the same as making a skill check to lift a log. You have to actually point at the thing you want to learn about/lift before you roll but there’s no particular reason you’d have to go into detail about how you go about doing it unless it’s some plot important scene or the like.
I think people are scared to death that, if they stumble on a word or go “ummm,” they’re going to get dinged with a -20 penalty. Naw man. I want people to describe their actions and speak in character because that’s more fun. Sure you might get a bonus or a penalty depending on context, but that has more to do with content than delivery.
I mean, can you imagine if your GM acted like some kind of dickish acting coach?
“I’m sorry, Dwarfguy McBeardface. You muffed your Scottish accent. The dwarven high king thinks you’re just a dwarf poseur. -5 to your check.”
As someone who accidentally turned down a date offer IRL, I can say that I am exactly as willing to do a social encounter in D&D as you are to write some clearly defined mechanics for it.
Good timing coming back to this question a few months later. I’m writing an MA thesis on narrative in tabletop RPGs (TRPGs), and I’ve just come to this thorny question of the nature of player choice. My contention is that “I hit it with my sword” is a different order of action in a TRPG as opposed to a video game RPG (VRPG), with the difference lying in the infinity of choice. When you can do or say literally anything in a TRPG, you a limited by the programming in a VRPG. Obvious stuff, I know, but the implications are interesting. Choosing an action in a TRPG makes you an author as well as a game player. Every time your character does something, you’re actively choosing which way the story goes. That’s why it’s so hard to represent “the talky stuff” with game mechanics. It’s difficult enough to do that in combat. Representing every conceivable social interaction is like trying to write the rules for IRL social interaction. Systems that make the attempt (Exalted springs to mind) can feel stilted. The “social combat” may work well in specific setup (e.g. you’ve got to figure out who the assassin is at the costume ball) but may get tiresome to play out in every scenario (e.g. an investigation where you’ve got to ask the same questions of multiple suspects). That all combines to mean that vague social mechanics are a feature, not a bug. You propose a story idea in the form of a conversational gambit, the GM decides how the NPC would react, and you wind up going back and forth from there in the same way that the co-writers of a screenplay might. The difference is that you don’t get a chance to revise the script later, and the “movie” is happening now, as you play.
I had a GM who would give bonuses to social-skill checks for good roleplay, thereby ENCOURAGING players to try and play something out without strictly requiring it of them.
I think you’re describing a best practice right there. That’s what I try to do as well.
“Throg can’t just roll a single stat called ‘tactics’ and win at combat.”
Excuse me, but I’m going to call bull on this. Throg’s tactics are exactly “I walk up and swing my [weapon] at it”. Well, a social character’s weapons are their voice. Unless you’re making Throg to describe the exact angle of his swing, how his feet are planted, and which muscle groups he’s engaging, it’s not comparable. “I attack with my X” and “I talk to them about X” are equivalent statements. Any other so-called “tactics” are just choosing who to engage with in what order.
Throg gets into flanking position, pushes a dude off the balcony, decides when to activate power attack / great weapon master, and asks what kind of check it takes to land sword-first onto his enemy from three stories up. The GM thinks that last bit is cool, so Throg gets advantage / a circumstance bonus to the attempt.
You get mechanical benefits for coming up with cool stuff to do in combat. You get mechanical benefits for coming up with cool stuff to do in talky encounters. In 5e that might look like Inspiration. In Exalted that might look like stunt dice. It’s not about speaking in the character’s voice. It’s about making the game more interesting than “pressing X at the problem.”
And what is my argument for this logic? All of my characters have 7 INT, 7 CHA, and 7 WIS for a reason. I already know all the monsters in the handbook, and I never socialize – so why waste points in things I already know and why waste points in playing a character type I know I’ll never succeed at? It is better to have a beat-face-beat-stick when you have a DM that makes you do real life social encounters to do roleplay social encounters than to use points on something your DM is going to punish you for.
I don’t think acting ability should determine success or failure. But I do think the content of what you say informs circumstance bonuses/penalties. Telling the dragon to piss off before rolling Diplomacy ought to have an in-game impact. Being clever enough to appeal to its vanity should as well.
This isn’t about rewards and punishment. It’s about providing enough content and context for the game world to react appropriately to the PC.
acting ability should not determine success or failure.
if your character is more social and silvertongued than you are it should be able to be played that way. thief doesn’t have to pick the lock on dave’s mom’s liquor cabinet to get past the locked door in game, fighter doesn’t have to armwrestle/punch the dm before he’s allowed to sword the dragon, wizard should at least be able to lean on his stats to get hints for the riddle (and get to roll to solve if you’ve accidentally stumped the players even after the hints), and face should get to say “i give an impassioned speech” and roll his stats without doing a dramatic reading for you if he doesn’t want to. you ARE punishing the guy for not having 27 char irl if what should be a successful check fails because of dialogue. also what’s the point of putting ranks in gather information if you can’t roll it to do literally the one thing it’s there for?
A quick copy+paste from the reply directly above this one:
I don’t think acting ability should determine success or failure. But I do think the content of what you say informs circumstance bonuses/penalties. Telling the dragon to piss off before rolling Diplomacy ought to have an in-game impact. Being clever enough to appeal to its vanity should as well.
This isn’t about rewards and punishment. It’s about providing enough content and context for the game world to react appropriately to the PC.
See here for further thoughts on the subject: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/strong-silent-type
your random informant most likely isn’t important enough to have a whole roleplayed conversation with, that’s the kind of background roll gather information checks are made for, just like finding the contact int he first place probably would have been.
In most cases yes. But if for some reason you are trying to RP it out, and if you’re being prompted by your GM to have a conversation, why would you tap the brakes on the interaction?
What extent does this go to though? lets say you’re trying to persuade someone through flattery for example. Do you:
A) Accept “I try to flatter/compliment them”
B) Require a specific topic to compliment them on? (ie: their clothes, appearance, intelligence)
C) Require a specific compliment (ie: that necklace is absolutely gorgeous, Your hair looks radiant done that way)
D) something else/more?
I would personally go for A, and have the roll determine whether or not you complimented them on the right thing or not. Give some sort of bonus if they say what they’re complimenting on or a specific compliment, unless it somehow would backfire
It’s going to depend on a number of factors. The players in questions. The significance of the encounter to the storyline. The flow of the session, and whether you want to hurry the scene along or settle in for drawn-out RP.
I think the word “require” is a little too hard-and-fast for my taste. I’d go with “encourage” instead. That’s what circumstance bonuses / advantage are there to do. Clever ideas get you bonuses in any of the three D&D pillars: combat, exploration, or social interaction.
I’m actually fond of games which try to write “social combat” rules. It makes adjudication of weird demands (or normal requests under vague circumstances) seem less arbitrary while making RP challenges feel like they’re part of the game. And obviously people who roleplay well during “social combat” should get some kind of advantage, just like one who plans out a clever ambush should get some kind of advantage in violent combat.
…or maybe I’m just bad at figuring out when NPCs should say no.
I personally find the notion of there being so-called “best practice” and all those “should” and “should nots” utterly ridiculous. The only real best practice and what players and GMs should do is communicate what kind of game they’re looking for.
The coming above is an illustration of failing to communicate that.
I have crippling social anxiety, so I usually default to “hitting the X button” at both NPCs and real-life human beings. It very rarely gives me the results I hope for, for some reason. I am beginning to suspect that it will never help me find love.
I’m definitely a proponent of the perspective that social aptitude in real life should not be a requirement for social success in-game. Just as players might want to pretend to be a sword-swinging badass, players should be able to pretend to be a genius intellectual, or a streetwise conman.
It may not be unreasonable to ask for a little bit of actual interaction, but be careful with this, and know your player. If they created a cunning linguist and you shoot them down at every turn because they can’t guess the NPC’s backstory, that’s gonna get very discouraging. Thok the Barbarian, on the other hand, when faced with a combat challenge MIGHT occasionally run into cases where “hit with axe” is insufficient, but most of the time they’re going to be just fine.
Additionally, Thok’s success rate can be improved with identify monster checks and such – help that can be lent by other party members. What is Thok bringing to assist those conversations? Intimidation? Even if Thok is meant to be a menacing character, Charisma is still required, and that’s probably his dump stat.
Social situations are very different from combat situations. In combat, generally EVERYONE has something they can do to chip in and help. Rare is the game where any player is completely useless on the field of battle. Social is generally one on one with the party face taking point, and assistance from the group is usually more of a hindrance than a help. All the same, it can be a very important role, and players should not be discouraged from trying it out – ESPECIALLY if being erudite is a fantasy of theirs that they’re trying to fulfill.