4 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Some players (and some groups) are just happier rolling the dice and providing the bare minimum of "role" playing in their RPGs. While it's not my preferred style of gaming (I very much prefer to add role-playing elements when and where I can), that doesn't mean it's an inherently "wrong" or "bad" way to play RPGs.

As has been mentioned, some players just aren't comfortable giving all the extra fluff for social interactions that a face character would know how to say. To quote Krista (wife of GM Chris of the Order 66 podcast) with regards to an old Saga Edition campaign he was running where she played a Twi'lek Noble (who was indeed the party face), "I don't know the exact right words to say, but my character sure as **** would" at a point when the GM (Chris) was trying to get her to engage in deeper social interaction with an NPC, and at that point in the night she really wanted to just roll the dice against what was ultimately a throw-away character with minimal plot relevance at that point.

I honestly feel the best approach is to just require the bare minimum of how the PC wants go about the social check, such as a general gist of the dialogue or a summary sentence, and not penalize them or harangue them for not being interested or capable of getting into a deeper social interaction with an NPC, especially if that NPC isn't uber-critical to the campaign's plot. And if the player is willing to get more into the dialogue exchange or even comes up with some really choice lines prior to making the skill check, then toss them a boost die or two.

It's not unlike the way 7th Sea 2nd edition handles skill checks, namely that while you really don't need much to determine what it is your rolling, going the extra mile for a cool description of how you're doing it is worth a bonus to the roll, with a better and more evocative description potentially being worth a bigger bonus to the roll.

As for the "well my players have no problem describing their attacks in combat," I think a part of that is it is the very rare RPG player that's not seen a decent volume of action movies (fantasy, historical, modern, sci-fi, etc) where combat occurs, and thus can use those as a reference point even if the player themselves has no actual combat training. I myself have no training in classical fencing, but I've seen enough films featuring such things that for a swashbuckler character I can give at least a half-way decent description of how my swordsman goes about dueling his foe. And while a great many of those films do feature dialogue exchanges, such scenes tend not to stick out in most viewers' minds save for the ones where there's some really cool and/or funny one-liner. After Blade and the Matrix came out, the Shadowrun games I was in was almost drowning in PCs who described their actions in combat by drawing from those films, and I'm sure the John Wick film inspired characters who attack with near-clinical efficiency. Over in Legend of the Five Rings during the time AEG owned the property, various samurai anime were a big influence to both characters and how they attacked, with Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Champloo being particularly notable.

I guess something else to keep in mind is that Star Wars is primarily about action, about the heroes (the PCs) doing things. I remember one of the complaints when the prequels came out was that there was too much talking in TPM and AotC about what were plot-trivial matters (YMMV on how much of that is true.) There's probably a great many players that view conversation-based encounters as akin to cut-scenes in an action-orientated video game; something to endure or preferably skip through as quickly as possible to get back to the action.

Yeah I can't argue against the Character being better at stuff than the Player, as that's just not logical to me. Also, I didn't feel that you were leveling it at me but I do want to say that I really don't ascribe to a "wrong" or "bad" argument, but I feel like this hobby has a lot of tastes and if you find the right ones for you it's just that much better. Good to Great.

I love and use the boost for description thing and seeing it brought up again is just great. One of the things I love about SWRPG is Boost/Setback instead of +x/-x.

11 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Time and a place. Stand up comedy at a memorial service? Maybe I suppose, depending the decedent, but in general? Nope.

Charm, certainly not while weapon fire is going off, even if they're potentially willing to listen most people are focusing on leaving with the same number of holes in them they walked in with, not your bubbly effervescent wit. Even Scathing Tirade and Inspiration Rhetoric need at least for people to be able to hear you realistically.

Charm check for getting the price down on an item? In reality maybe, but in game mechanics it's supposed to be Negotiation, because when it's time to talk money, bidness is bidness.

Just like the Deception conversation, using Charm to lie, in reality it's the smart way to lie and get away with it, but we aren't talking about actual definitions of words, we are talking about mechanics in game terms, so what it is, not how you're doing it.

Too thin a line between all the social skills imo, if you let them blur a little you might as well not bother. I tend to insist on the Skill required simply because there are too many Talents focused on specific Skills, and if I let the player who didn't invest in being business savvy suddenly able to do it in another way the merchant character is slighted.

Pretty much goes for all the Skills, you blur lines and you might as well toss em all and just go with a few Skills. Kill, Move, Talk, Think, and Touch, and call it done....

Thank you for this. I have actually had a player draw on a bad guy, shoot him successfully, and in the next round try to talk his way out of the combat.

I think that there are too many, so for me it seems like the old school solution of Rulings not Rules is the way to go. I feel like making static uses just continues the constant narrowing and handing over authority to a giant bureaucratic rules process instead of having the GM rule quickly and decisively as you pointed out recently.

10 hours ago, korjik said:

I'm not going to make a player narrate out everything to do anything. If the player wants to, that is great, some of the best moments in role playing come when someone comes up with a killer idea, but having to come up with a way to be charming to a throw away NPC is mostly a waste of time. If they say just 'I roll charm' my response in invariably 'To do what?', but if you say I want to charm the bartender into letting us know when the target shows up' is fine. I dont need details on how. Its nice when you get them, but hardly essential.

I don't mean to argue for absolutes, but I am worried about the frequency of the Auto-Roll solution in a session. At times I know I feel like "let's just roll and get past this" and every session has rhythms and flow. But I notice that if something is easy it gets repeated, if it gets repeated enough you gotta use a prybar to get it back to a different pattern.

I would also say that this subject is related to Pacing. If you are trying to achieve a faster pace you can't have people counting the tiles on the floor before they move on.

But there are very great scenes to be had by someone trying to charm the bartender. If you know the player can't do it and it's gong to be bad then fine, skip it. But if you have players with strong Narrativist or Simulationist tendencies they are going to start to find the world a bit hollow when no one outside of the party or quest givers actually has any dialogue.

@Archlyte

Yeah, the "bad" or "wrong" comments weren't meant towards you.

Just an observation that I've seen GMs who get all huffy when players (or even other GMs) don't give a lot of fluffy prose for their social skill checks, and many of those same GMs don't bat an eye when a player at their games just says "I roll to attack the monster with my weapon" while decrying that those GMs who don't require fluffy prose for social checks are "doing it wrong!"

13 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

@Archlyte

Yeah, the "bad" or "wrong" comments weren't meant towards you.

Just an observation that I've seen GMs who get all huffy when players (or even other GMs) don't give a lot of fluffy prose for their social skill checks, and many of those same GMs don't bat an eye when a player at their games just says "I roll to attack the monster with my weapon" while decrying that those GMs who don't require fluffy prose for social checks are "doing it wrong!"

There was no emoji for **** Straight, so I just have to write it out. lol

20 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

You should extend that to other skills too. The player that whips out a handgun and fires off a few shots deserves a Boost on his Ranged (Light) check... right before you call the cops.

19 hours ago, korjik said:

I'd smack him upside the head a few times first. Those things are loud indoors

Unless it's a prop (toy) gun. Then it's perfect. I remember the various old systems often encouraged the use of props, such as toy guns, and toy lightsabers, to aid in role-play

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Unless it's a prop (toy) gun. Then it's perfect. I remember the various old systems often encouraged the use of props, such as toy guns, and toy lightsabers, to aid in role-play

Ironically, my GM is a bail enforcer and usually has his pistol at our games.

1 minute ago, Ahrimon said:

Ironically, my GM is a bail enforcer and usually has his pistol at our games.

That makes perfect sense. Law enforcement officers are required to be armed at all times.

Cops too. That was weird the first couple times my brother showed up with his sidearm.

I'd fix that, now that I really saw what Trump Graphics said, but its kinda funny this way.....

On 9/11/2018 at 9:10 AM, Archlyte said:

I don't mean to argue for absolutes, but I am worried about the frequency of the Auto-Roll solution in a session. At times I know I feel like "let's just roll and get past this" and every session has rhythms and flow. But I notice that if something is easy it gets repeated, if it gets repeated enough you gotta use a prybar to get it back to a different pattern.

I would also say that this subject is related to Pacing. If you are trying to achieve a faster pace you can't have people counting the tiles on the floor before they move on.

But there are very great scenes to be had by someone trying to charm the bartender. If you know the player can't do it and it's gong to be bad then fine, skip it. But if you have players with strong Narrativist or Simulationist tendencies they are going to start to find the world a bit hollow when no one outside of the party or quest givers actually has any dialogue.

Yeah, there are great scenes to be had charming the bartender, chatting up a guard, and a whole host of only semi-important things. My experience has been that those scenes are great when the players make them great, not when the GM tries to force them to be great. You may think that roleplaying out the charming of the bartender is the most important thing in the game, cause this person will be the best contact and source of information in this arm of the galaxy, but the players may only see an obstacle they dont care about. The opposite can be true too, where you have a bartender who you have never thought twice about, whos only job is to tell the players to go to the blue door, but one of the players has found the love of their life and now wants to know everything about Generic Bartender.

Extreme examples, but I have had similar things happen in games I was running.

You can lead a player to an NPC but you cant force them to role play. When they do engage, try to make it fun, when they dont, move on and try to figure out later why they didnt take the roleplay bait. Talk to the players and find out why they did things and didnt do things. You may find out that there is a disconnect between your understanding and theirs.

But dont try to force them to do what you want. They arent there to be your puppets

50 minutes ago, korjik said:

Yeah, there are great scenes to be had charming the bartender, chatting up a guard, and a whole host of only semi-important things. My experience has been that those scenes are great when the players make them great, not when the GM tries to force them to be great. You may think that roleplaying out the charming of the bartender is the most important thing in the game, cause this person will be the best contact and source of information in this arm of the galaxy, but the players may only see an obstacle they dont care about. The opposite can be true too, where you have a bartender who you have never thought twice about, whos only job is to tell the players to go to the blue door, but one of the players has found the love of their life and now wants to know everything about Generic Bartender.

Extreme examples, but I have had similar things happen in games I was running.

You can lead a player to an NPC but you cant force them to role play. When they do engage, try to make it fun, when they dont, move on and try to figure out later why they didnt take the roleplay bait. Talk to the players and find out why they did things and didnt do things. You may find out that there is a disconnect between your understanding and theirs.

But dont try to force them to do what you want. They arent there to be your puppets

I think it becomes apparent very quickly if you have players who can't do anything but roll dice. Been there many times, seen it many times.

But I think there is a big difference between asking them to try and do some more description, and engaging in the kind of overt direction that you are characterizing my position as being.

I think it would be germane to this discussion if we also talked about the whole Crushing GM Fiat thing. I notice that people often react to what they perceive as "GM Tyranny" or conversely "Player Radicalism." I am more likely to speak out against Player Radicalism (aka Munchkin Behavior, Min/Maxing, Gamist Motivations), but there are a lot of people who seem to get their blood up over perceived mistreatment of players in games mentioned on the forums. If you did have someone who was mistreating their players it is just as likely that they would double down on those behaviors if you offer them hostility. Allows them to paint you as a jerk and therefore they don't get as far as re-thinking their ideas: they are too busy being annoyed with you.

I would hope that no one has players chained to the table or is holding them there by threat against their children or family. It would seem to me a safe constant that anyone who is at your table is there willingly and can leave at any time they want. I know that is the case for me. I have kicked people and had people leave, and that is fine. It means that the tastes didn't match up is all.

Also, this stuff just isn't all that important in the grand scheme of life. It's an entertaining and engaging hobby, but it's not something that should result in any kind of interpersonal malice. I like the color Red but you hate it isn't an adult basis for discourtesy and anger.

Also I notice a pervasive tendency toward being an officious interloper concerning pedantry. I wrote earlier in the thread that I am not looking to be taught how to GM and don't need your help to save my players from anguish, I am looking to discuss this stuff. I am open to new ideas, but that doesn't mean I have no experience and you need to save my players from doom. I have run into this on a more local level so it may be the way I write that invites it, but I don't mean to imply that I am a neophyte in need of a mentor.

lol I feel like your post was appropriate Nytwyng, as I went a bit overboard there. I try not to be overbearing but I often fail. A very big point I forgot to mention is that often on the forum I'm having a purely theoretical discussion and doing the devil's advocate thing to bring out the points. I do change my mind and I have picked up a lot of different ways of doing things from these boards.

Also very often it ends up bearing little or no resemblance to what happens in game. So even if I take a position that is authoritarian or seemingly harsh it always gets translated into appropriate interaction and interface with the players or with my GM.

Thank you for discussing this stuff, it is very much appreciated

4 hours ago, korjik said:

Yeah, there are great scenes to be had charming the bartender, chatting up a guard, and a whole host of only semi-important things. My experience has been that those scenes are great when the players make them great, not when the GM tries to force them to be great. You may think that roleplaying out the charming of the bartender is the most important thing in the game, cause this person will be the best contact and source of information in this arm of the galaxy, but the players may only see an obstacle they dont care about. The opposite can be true too, where you have a bartender who you have never thought twice about, whos only job is to tell the players to go to the blue door, but one of the players has found the love of their life and now wants to know everything about Generic Bartender.

Extreme examples, but I have had similar things happen in games I was running.

You can lead a player to an NPC but you cant force them to role play. When they do engage, try to make it fun, when they dont, move on and try to figure out later why they didnt take the roleplay bait. Talk to the players and find out why they did things and didnt do things. You may find out that there is a disconnect between your understanding and theirs.

But dont try to force them to do what you want. They arent there to be your puppets

Yeah, I get where you're coming from here. Some of the best RP moments I've experienced have evolved naturally from focus on an incidental NPC. In fact, a recent game of Call of Cthulhu saw an entire session revolving around such a character and everyone was buzzing after that session.

Conversely, I've had some really awkward moments, where - as you say - I know an encounter is significant so have tried too hard to get traction with the players who just weren't up for it. It's always a learning experience but I think ultimately, you are right. It's a group game and the primary purpose is for everyone to just have fun. As the GM you can and perhaps should key off the players and be ready to adapt. There are some great approaches identified in the thread for trying to boost the experience for the more reticent or mechanically minded player but in the end, I think we should be enabling them to enjoy the game the way they like to play, whether that's first person role play, 3rd person narration or a tactical mechanical approach. It's all pretty valid to my mind, though it can be hard to balance the attention your players receive, it takes some mindfulness.

Anyway, this is a nice thread! SavageBob basically reached into my head and transcribed my own opinions right off the bat but there's some great ideas here I'll be using.

36 minutes ago, SanguineAngel said:

Anyway, this is a nice thread! SavageBob basically reached into my head and transcribed my own opinions right off the bat but there's some great ideas here I'll be using.

I do ask my players to master Force-based mind-reading before I let them play Jedi.

6 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I think it becomes apparent very quickly if you have players who can't do anything but roll dice. Been there many times, seen it many times.

But I think there is a big difference between asking them to try and do some more description, and engaging in the kind of overt direction that you are characterizing my position as being.

Generic you. I am not characterizing your position. I would use your name if I was talking to you specifically. Isnt asking them to try to describe things the very definition of overt direction? I personally dislike it when, as a player, I am directly asked for a description. If I had one I would have provided it.

Thing is, if your players like rolling dice and dont like role-ing dice then let them roll the dice. If you have a real problem with that, then dont GM.

Reward description, well good description, when it happens, but dont push the players to provide it if they dont want to.

Again, generic you

On the topic of "forcing the players to give in-depth descriptions," there was a live-play from the Roll4It group called "Pirates of the Broken Skies," a D&D 5e game using a homebrew steampunk-ish setting. Loved the concept, thought most of the characters were neat and/or interesting (the Halfling wizard's player was just plain annoying), but what killed my interest in watching this was that the GM kept prodding the players over and over about "how does this make you feel?" or "how precisely do you go about doing that action?" even if the players had given a basic description, to the point you got the feeling the GM was less running a game and more trying to write a book. While the GM did have a house-rule that provided a flair bonus for a good description, he kept prodding the players over and over, to the point I have to wonder if some of them were getting frustrated at having to give soliloquies just for striking at a monster round after round.

As a GM, I will occasionally - usually in the face of a spectacular roll at a dramatic point - say, “Narrate that out for me.” And if they can’t come up with anything...move on. As a player, my GM does much the same thing. He calls more for in-depth narration when we go waaay outside of where he thought we might go (like when I used Misdirect to turn part of Chronicles of the Gatekeeper into A Christmas Caro l ? ).

I am finding that this game has some particular barriers to implementing more description over dice checks. This game uses dice checks to resolve things like Social Interactions, and the character actually gets better at these things as they pick up more ranks or the better superlatively described version (Improved Bull***tting). This makes it problematic to have the Player describe how they are now even better at what they are trying to accomplish before or in lieu of a check.

So for instance if the character has Improved X and wants to try and play out the scene the Gm would have to come up with a schema for how to resolve that based on the character having such advanced skills in that area. It's hard because o have skill levels and you also have the Talents which are another axis of the ability. So you could have 1 rank in Coerce but 3 talents that help it, or maybe 3 ranks in coerce but no Talents. Adjudicating the level of how well the character does X activity based on the formula Characteristic + Ranks + Talents - Difficulty - Misc. is a tough call as you don't want to invalidate the XP the character has spent in X.

In the end, they spend that because they want to succeed and because they want to roll. I imagine that determining how important each one is in the situation at hand would be an important consideration.

it sounds like you're wrapping at least two issues into one. The first is scaling, and yes, it is more difficult with this game than others, but there are a few guidelines...actually you only need one, and that is if you want a ~50/50 chance of PC success, your negative pool should be the PC's positive pool - 1. You can mess with that by adding or subtracting difficulty dice, upgrades/downgrades, and boost/setback. That's at least 3 axes of tweaking, which takes a bit of experience to deal with, but X:X-1 is a good starting ratio.

The second appears to be narratively justifying PC/NPC awesomeness and/or situational modifiers. The latter is easy, eg: "add a setback, it's dark". The former can be difficult, especially if the player is playing a PC that has abilities they aren't good at expressing, eg: if your player is a scrawny adolescent whose voice still cracks, it's kind of hard to channel Conan the Barbarian doing Coercion with any level of conviction. And personally I'd find it tedious to have to justify my PC's awesomeness every time I attempt a social roll...I can't imagine you'd require that for, say, taking a sniper shot.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

it sounds like you're wrapping at least two issues into one. The first is scaling, and yes, it is more difficult with this game than others, but there are a few guidelines...actually you only need one, and that is if you want a ~50/50 chance of PC success, your negative pool should be the PC's positive pool - 1. You can mess with that by adding or subtracting difficulty dice, upgrades/downgrades, and boost/setback. That's at least 3 axes of tweaking, which takes a bit of experience to deal with, but X:X-1 is a good starting ratio.

The second appears to be narratively justifying PC/NPC awesomeness and/or situational modifiers. The latter is easy, eg: "add a setback, it's dark". The former can be difficult, especially if the player is playing a PC that has abilities they aren't good at expressing, eg: if your player is a scrawny adolescent whose voice still cracks, it's kind of hard to channel Conan the Barbarian doing Coercion with any level of conviction. And personally I'd find it tedious to have to justify my PC's awesomeness every time I attempt a social roll...I can't imagine you'd require that for, say, taking a sniper shot.

I would find that tedious too which would be why I wouldn't do that, but in some instances I would like to just have the player actually describe how they talk the governor into letting them borrow his starship.

I didn't really think about the character description but that was a great point too, and maybe even the source of some issues in description. What if the Character is a scrawny alien with no vocal chords but the GM allowed the character to have 3 in Charm and 4 or 5 Talent boxes in being a charming orator. The tendency seems to be to allow anything in character creation if it can be slammed together between the eaves of the many books of the system even if it's nonsense.

Let me use an example less hyperbolic: what if you have a Trandoshan Hunter talking to a group of Wookiees? A Twi'lek talking to Imperial Officers? A child trying to convince a Ranat not to eat her?

The character itself may be a factor that is responsible for an upgrade and enough setbacks to make it look like someone made ice cubes out of crude oil.

1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

Let me use an example less hyperbolic: what if you have a Trandoshan Hunter talking to a group of Wookiees? ...

The character itself may be a factor that is responsible for an upgrade and enough setbacks to make it look like someone made ice cubes out of crude oil.

Absolutely, no argument with that.

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I didn't really think about the character description but that was a great point too, and maybe even the source of some issues in description. What if the Character is a scrawny alien with no vocal chords but the GM allowed the character to have 3 in Charm and 4 or 5 Talent boxes in being a charming orator. The tendency seems to be to allow anything in character creation if it can be slammed together between the eaves of the many books of the system even if it's nonsense.

Let me use an example less hyperbolic: what if you have a Trandoshan Hunter talking to a group of Wookiees? A Twi'lek talking to Imperial Officers? A child trying to convince a Ranat not to eat her?

The character itself may be a factor that is responsible for an upgrade and enough setbacks to make it look like someone made ice cubes out of crude oil.

These examples are no different from someone trying to play a Drall Heavy or an Anx Thief; you're always within your rights as a GM to say "That concept is silly, so I'd like you to find something else."

As for the examples of Trandoshans and Wookiees, children and Ranats, etc., you're also always within your rights to say it's am impossible task and will require a Destiny Point to even try. Then flip a DP and add a Challenge die to the pool.

At the end of the day, though, I get the impression you and your table may not be right for this system. If you can't allow that some players may want to play face character without being eloquent orators in real life, you might want to consider a system that doesn't allow you to take ranks in socials skills and other abilities.

Well that's the thing. I would never expect a player to actually roleplay out the best social politician ever; we are just here to have fun at the end of the day.

But I would at the very least need them to describe what they want; what the aim of the conversation is, whether their aim is honest (which is the difference between a charm and a deception check for example) and to be able to list out a couple of things to improve the conversation, and of course have other players chip in (so while they are the main social face, there will be other characters that can assist when possible.).

I don't mind particularly if they role play all of it, some of it, or sometimes if the player is exhausted sometimes just stating it out might be enough, especially if it isn't their strong suit. Just as a roleplaying game I kinda expect a player to embody the role they have adopted in some capacity. If they are asking to roll for it all the time without being able to give those four statements; something is missing and eventually the role of the GM would become more flat and boring if they have to be prodded, say, 6 sessions in, to produce some description. I stand by my convictions that just rolling, and only ever rolling is a complete waste of everyone's time.

Of course I actively discourage all encompassing social characters; in my group most of us have separate contributions. My PC for example is generally dishonest and somewhat slimy, he is a manipulative individual who much prefer hand them a noose to hang themselves on as juicy bait, ]. We have a social talker that is well versed in poltical speaking and is learning to be a doctor, and a force seer who is an immensely imitating bully that uses his strength to corc individuals that seem weak, and several other individuals who while aren't social characters, have enough of a learning to offer a passable check in either of the three areas.

It might seem like an arbitrary set of examples, but it allows situations where multiple players can engage in a social conversation without any of us being "that social guy", most of us have one combat role and one specialist role as commandos, so conversations often consist of two/three of us talking to the target receptiant, which enables individuals to pick up and support other characters through conversations. That I find greatly alleviates the pressure for just one player to provide all the social description and shares it out so all our characters can pitch in to varied degrees. Rather then muscle man who just starts twiddling his thumbs as soon as conversation rears it's head. XD

1 hour ago, SavageBob said:

These examples are no different from someone trying to play a Drall Heavy or an Anx Thief; you're always within your rights as a GM to say "That concept is silly, so I'd like you to find something else."

As for the examples of Trandoshans and Wookiees, children and Ranats, etc., you're also always within your rights to say it's am impossible task and will require a Destiny Point to even try. Then flip a DP and add a Challenge die to the pool.

At the end of the day, though, I get the impression you and your table may not be right for this system. If you can't allow that some players may want to play face character without being eloquent orators in real life, you might want to consider a system that doesn't allow you to take ranks in socials skills and other abilities.

Agreed.

The End of the World might be an ideal system for the group, since the intent is to create yourself as the character, and not take any skills that you don't really have.