D&D thread
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@Mason_Wheeler I am terribly sorry that you don't find this entertaining.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
@Mason_Wheeler said in D&D thread:
There are so many opportunities for things to go terribly wrong on an ocean voyage...
Like being attacked by a giant sea monster.
Or being in a storm that lasts long enough that it pushes the crew to breaking point and some of them start a mutiny.
I once started an AD&D campaign off that way: the players, all level 1, were on a ship sailing across the ocean to another continent, in a big storm that had been raging for days. The players ended up fighting the mutineers, with one of them fumbling an attack and lodging his sword in an overhead beam. This turned out to be somewhat prophetic for the whole campaign, because I think that one player alone doubled the number of fumbles rolled by the group over the next year or so of playing … Even his replacement character (after his first fumbled a roll, causing him to fall to his death in boiling mud) did no better …
That first character, though, had a giant stroke of luck. As I think I mentioned before, I like to give newly made (A)D&D characters a random magic item when they start, via a roll on the tables in the DMG. Before he rolled, I joked, “Would you like an Apparatus of Kwalish?" So what does the guy do? He randomly rolls an Apparatus of Kwalish …! ¹ And then the campaign starts on a ship in a storm, a ship that will sink in the second game session, and he’s got a magic item artificial submarine lobster type of vehicle …
¹ That requires, in order, rolls of:—- 59 or 60 on 1d100
- 1, 2 or 3 on 1d6
- 1 on 1d20
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Status: So... today's one-shot in the Feywilds. We were tasked by some fey queen a super-secret mission to find a very dangerous missing artifact. As a bunch of (mostly) noobs we played it straight. I felt a bit useless with my monk. The sole combat encounter was against some wee zombie moles which surprised us (in the
sort of way), but me and a badass mountain dwarf barb made short work of whac-a-moling them back to where they had come from. My honesty and fair-dealing saved us from a yuge, fluffy white spider who had caught all the previous adventurers in its webs. Then civilized discourse (
) by the group's chatty folks got us the artifact - actually an agreeable flesh construct that sort of had absorbed evil magic for ~5000 years - without much trouble, too. However, when we delivered it back to the queen (or rather, it delivered itself along with us), it released it all in one dark wave. It warned us to run, I chose not to, failed the saving throw and got turned NE. Task failed successfully 
More in the Lounge.
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Picked up a 5e Monster Manual for $3 at a local thrift store. WotC charges $50 for it.
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This afternoon’s Shadowrun game, one of the players, playing a Chinese ork street samurai-type, decided his character has been having moral problems with having killed a ghost a few adventures ago, because of reasons of ancestor worship. He consults the group’s magician about this, who knows pretty much nothing about ghosts but plays along to keep his friend happy. The magician suggests they try to contact the ghost by means of a ouija board, which the sam eagerly agrees to.
They go to a magical paraphernalia shop and buy a ouija board, the magician choosing a much more ornate one than necessary because hey, the sam is paying for it. The sam then treats them both to a meal at a good Chinese restaurant to thank the magician for what he’s going to do for him. Once they’ve finished their meal, they pull out the ouija board in the restaurant, put it on the table and the magician pretends to call up the dead ghost.
I ask the magician’s player to roll a test with his Magical Theory skill, to see if he can come up with something that sounds plausibly esoteric and ghost-summoning-esque.
He fumbles the roll.
Somehow, rather than putting on a minor occult show for the sam’s benefit, they actually call up an ancestor spirit … in the middle of a restaurant. Which has plenty of Chinese staff running around. A spirit that looks like an old Chinese man.
The sam immediately throws himself to the ground, profusely apologising to the spirit and trying to make it offerings. The staff are horrified, not sure what to do and afraid of doing anything at all.
The magician pretends to go along with it, while surreptitiously attempting to tell the spirit this was not the plan and was just meant for show to ease his friend’s mind. Unfortunately for him, this is difficult because he doesn’t want the sam to realise that, so he tries to tell the spirit this in Romanian (vampire-wannabe, remember?). Old Chinese men probably don’t understand much Romanian either, though, so this doesn’t really work very well.
The sam eventually gathers his wits a bit and asks the spirit where its shrine is so that he can make an offering. The spirit points across the restaurant, to a photograph of an old man to whom it bears an uncanny resemblance …
The staff is still mortified by all this, of course, because probably the last thing they expected in their lives is to see granddad back in the restaurant he used to own. You know, before he died.
Eventually, the spirit is convinced enough that things are OK, and leaves. The PCs do soon after as well, the person letting them out of the restaurant telling them to “please not do that again here” which the magician understands to mean “come back anytime, just don’t summon spirits in here again” but the sam correctly interprets as “don’t you ever dare come back.”
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Things that remind you...
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Ever use a flaming sword in your campaign?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9f98hloEtw
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@Mason_Wheeler
there is using a sand-coloured vehicle in a heavily forested area. But US Army, I guess …Oh, and it reminds me of an anecdote someone once told me of when he was in the army (the British one) out on an exercise in the field. Someone woke up in the middle of the night because he needed a piss. He walked up to a nearby bush, upzipped his trousers, and the bush moved out of his way. Him still being half asleep, he took a step after it. The bush then whispered, “If you piss on me I’ll fucking kill you.”
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Logical.
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I don't know if there is a "Games that remind you of work" thread, but there should be one.
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@Applied-Mediocrity and this is why I don’t enjoy TTRPGs much, because my experience is that there too much time spent rolling dice at each other than storytelling or exploring or, well, role playing.
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@Arantor Well, what do you propose?
See, not all of people who play are good at role playing. It does require a certain kind of active imagination and being able to overcome various neurotic behaviors in a social situation (knowing other players well helps, of course, but that appears to be quite a luxury these days).
A related issue to it is that having a well-rounded party that can cover all sorts of situations in a heroic tale requires lots of prep and planning.So far I've been in groups where there's at least one talkative type who'll quickly take the lead, and the rest of us will mostly nod our heads in agreement. Even if it maybe doesn't really go with their character (poor CHA, etc.), someone must.
And eventually someone will be looking to to bash someone else's head in. How do you resolve combat in a way meaningful enough so that your high-level demi-god character is still properly tested? They just win? Well, it's not much of a game then, is it?
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@Arantor Occasionally, a player wants to role-play, but it doesn't work out.
One-shot. Bad guy was a shopkeeper who was doing something nefarious with potions; it's been a while, and I don't remember the details. Shopkeeper had a thing for female elves. I was playing a female elf. I thought she might be able to get access to non-public areas of the shop by being "friendly".
My son was the DM. He said, "Nope. Not going there with you, Dad."
End of role-playing.
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@HardwareGeek TBH, DM's job is terrible that way. In retrospect it's easy to see, of course, but he knew the facts ahead of time, so he could have avoided the thing altogether by just not mentioning the shopkeepers proclivities.
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@Applied-Mediocrity whoa whoa whoa. Everyone can enjoy their TTRPGs! It’s just not for me because, from my experience, it ends up being all about the dice and nothing about any of the rest of it, which ti me… just isn’t fun.
If it is for other people, great! It’s also possible (very likely) that I’ve just had a run of shit luck with D&D groups leading to a “not even going to try” outlook.
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@Arantor No, I mean... look, you seem to tumble around. I didn't even know who that promopotz or something was in the other thread, for example. You must have seen some stuff.
Systems I've seen so far (not many, count on two hands) do glorify dice rolling and trip over themselves to come up with some arcane arithmetics. Nerds are gonna nerd. But... what exactly makes a thing a game? Where's the boundary of theater and LARPing?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
Where's the boundary of theater and LARPing?
The difference is that nobody would pay to see your typical LARPer acting on a stage
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@Zerosquare You'd be surprised what nerds spend their money on
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@Zerosquare said in D&D thread:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
Where's the boundary of theater and LARPing?
The difference is that nobody would pay to see your typical LARPer acting on a stage
Let's be honest: "let me tell you about my character" are words that should send you running. Even when the players aren't put on the spot (i.e., in the middle of a game), most people are bad at storytelling.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
not all of people who play are good at role playing.
That caused me to remember this message that shows this discussion is not exactly new:—
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 16:32:00 EDT
Reply-To: Discussion of the Fantasy game ShadowRun SHADOWRN@HEARN.BITNET
Sender: Discussion of the Fantasy game ShadowRun SHADOWRN@HEARN.BITNET
From: Terry Amburgey XANTH@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject: Roll PlayingA recent post about realism in gaming [might as well play pencil & paperwork]
has stimulate me to do something I'm sure I'll regret -- defend roll-playing as
opposed to role-playing. In a nutshell, roll-playing allows the dramatically
impaired, such as me, to have fun playing rpg's such as shadowrun. Players
differ in their approach to gaming, but a large number of the people I've
played with end up in the same position as me, their characters are better
than they are. My characters are usually smarter, stronger, quicker, and more
charismatic than I am. The same is usually true for skills; they can fight,
shoot, drive, swim, and cast mana bolts better than I.
Another recent post described finding a street-doc, the character had to
describe who he/she talked to, what was said etc. [if I'm distorting the
situation I apologize]. While this procedure can make for fun, a little can go
a long way. If my character has a street ettiquette of 6 and I-the-player have
a street ettiquette of 0 [you find a streetdoc by looking under S in the yellow
pages] which score do you use in the game?
Most of the emphasis on role-playing seems to occur in the context of social
skills/social interaction and since this is not a strong area for me I find it
particularly troublesome. I would note that none of the referee's I've known
ever took players to a shooting range to determine their success with firearms
but on occaision they would determine my success in 'fast talking' by having me
actually 'fast talk'.
Although roll-playing seems to suffer universal scorn I think it is crucial for
those of us without social skills. If outcomes in the game are largely
determined by my abilities & skills rather than those of my character(s) then
I might as well play 'pencil-and-paperwork'.
TerryAnd TBH, I agree with him. Part of it is that I’m also not a great roleplayer, but also, I think that characters’ abilities should matter — else why do they have them, and why are some better or worse than others?
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@Arantor said in D&D thread:
It’s just not for me because, from my experience, it ends up being all about the dice and nothing about any of the rest of it, which ti me… just isn’t fun.
It is indeed what most groups do, and especially newly formed groups because they don't really know what the others want (forcing role play on an unwilling table yields catastrophically bad results) and the rules (and dice) offer a nice framework to "hide behind" so to speak.
But you can very much find groups that value role playing above rolling, and you can start pushing in that direction by picking your rule set. D&D is by nature roll-oriented, compared to e.g. (and because this is the one I played, years ago) Amber (which is dice-less!). Sadly, IME it's not something you can find just by snapping your fingers, you often have to stumble through many players until you get a group that more or less works for you. And then life happens and people move away and you can't play anymore with them.
At one time I had two campaigns on-going, one in D&D that was pretty much dice-rolling and rule-lawyering, and another in some home-brew version of Amber that was even more rule-light than Amber itself and was almost exclusively role play. It worked pretty well for me, and there were at least 2 other players (uh... 3? maybe even 4?) that were in both groups, so... it can happen?
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So what are some systems that you know (i.e., didn't find on Bing) that are role-playing, but are diceless and otherwise free of [excessive] random chance? I mean, you can role-play in Settlers or even Checkers, but the ruleset doesn't support that.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
So what are some systems that you know (i.e., didn't find on Bing) that are role-playing, but are diceless and otherwise free of [excessive] random chance? I mean, you can role-play in Settlers or even Checkers, but the ruleset doesn't support that.
Amber Diceless Role Playing Game? Basically free of random chance, because if your ability level > opponent’s ability level, you succeed and your opponent doesn’t.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Basically free of random chance, because if your ability level > opponent’s ability level, you succeed and your opponent doesn’t.
That's not necessarily realistic, though. Luck can play a huge role in RL combat. Consider, for example, naval combat between two ships A and B. A completely outclasses B — better armed, better armored, almost invulnerable to anything B can throw at it. But B happens to get a lucky hit that damages one of A's propeller shafts and rudders, leaving it slow and unable to steer. Even if B didn't sink it (and no other, more powerful ships arrive to help finish it off), it's probably a mission kill. You can find a similar role for luck in almost any other form of combat, or even many non-combat situations.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
That's not necessarily realistic, though.
I hate to tell you that, but many people play RPGs to escape reality.
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@HardwareGeek the advantage of the Amber Diceless system is that you can literally play it while soaking in a hot tub, if you can remember your stats and abilities, which is a pretty short list.
I've always wondered how it would play out in a longer campaign, because the main meaningful source of conflict is the other players. (Or NPCs, of which there are maybe a couple dozen who are more powerful than the players.) The Amberites are almost gods, and in any stat vs. stat challenge, they beat anyone who isn't an Amberite.
(For long-term play, it really doesn't help that the system was made for con games, with a character generation system that involves bidding against the other players, and a very GM-vs-players mindset.)
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
Consider, for example, naval combat between two ships A and B. A completely outclasses B — better armed, better armored, almost invulnerable to anything B can throw at it... B wins.
See Battle off Samar for this happening in real life.
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
you can literally play it while soaking in a hot tub, if you can remember your stats and abilities
My understanding of hot tubs is that they often involve alcohol and scanty, if any, clothing, which could tend to make this more difficult than you seem to be implying.
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Not to mention that fooling around in a hot tub is probably more fun in the first place, as long as you choose the right partners.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Basically free of random chance, because if your ability level > opponent’s ability level, you succeed and your opponent doesn’t.
That's not necessarily realistic, though. Luck can play a huge role in RL combat. Consider, for example, naval combat between two ships A and B. A completely outclasses B — better armed, better armored, almost invulnerable to anything B can throw at it. But B happens to get a lucky hit that damages one of A's propeller shafts and rudders, leaving it slow and unable to steer. Even if B didn't sink it (and no other, more powerful ships arrive to help finish it off), it's probably a mission kill. You can find a similar role for luck in almost any other form of combat, or even many non-combat situations.
Yeah, luck can be a factor. My problem with the d20 system is that it makes luck the most important factor. You'd expect Ship B to be able to pull off a lucky shot like that extremely rarely. In D&D or similar systems, they'll do it consistently about 5% of the time.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in D&D thread:
@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Basically free of random chance, because if your ability level > opponent’s ability level, you succeed and your opponent doesn’t.
That's not necessarily realistic, though. Luck can play a huge role in RL combat. Consider, for example, naval combat between two ships A and B. A completely outclasses B — better armed, better armored, almost invulnerable to anything B can throw at it. But B happens to get a lucky hit that damages one of A's propeller shafts and rudders, leaving it slow and unable to steer. Even if B didn't sink it (and no other, more powerful ships arrive to help finish it off), it's probably a mission kill. You can find a similar role for luck in almost any other form of combat, or even many non-combat situations.
Yeah, luck can be a factor. My problem with the d20 system is that it makes luck the most important factor. You'd expect Ship B to be able to pull off a lucky shot like that extremely rarely. In D&D or similar systems, they'll do it consistently about 5% of the time.
Only for attacks and only if using a crit table. Because they only thing you can do 5% of the time is hit with an attack and deal potentially more damage.
The Bismarck scenario doesn't really fit in the D&D model from the get go, since called shots aren't really a thing and don't fit either.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in D&D thread:
Yeah, luck can be a factor. My problem with the d20 system is that it makes luck the most important factor. You'd expect Ship B to be able to pull off a lucky shot like that extremely rarely. In D&D or similar systems, they'll do it consistently about 5% of the time.
You don't roll that many dice at the table, a 5% wild-success rate means it'll actually happen from time to time. (Though maybe ~3% would be a better rate?)
The real problem with D20 is that having a +10 on a roll still has you failing distressingly often. It's hard to feel competent when you still have a 25% failure rate -- you can't rely on your skills.
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@PotatoEngineer Yeah, that too. That's what I mean, it makes luck the most important factor. Even good GMs fall victim to this; witness just how distressingly often Matt Mercer has players roll a Perception check to see whether they notice something that, logically, ought to be clearly visible in plain sight. That makes no sense, it's not even (strictly speaking) how the rules say it's supposed to work, but the cultural norm of D20 Supremacy is just that infectious.
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@Mason_Wheeler I'll admit I don't watch/listen to many Actual Plays -- the closest I've gotten is a few podcast episodes of One Shot, which always uses rules-light systems (so they don't have to learn gobs of rules before they switch to the next system). GMs asking for Perception checks on The Bloody Obvious is a GMing problem; if it's that obvious, skip the check; if it's only somewhat visible, then use Passive Perception and skip the roll. And if both success and failure are interesting, then roll!
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@PotatoEngineer Yeah, the PF1e rulebook I have with me now has a section on Taking 10 and Taking 20. In no uncertain words, players can choose to go for a passive check when there's no danger or distractions. I don't have the 5e book right now (actually not at all, because I don't want to give WotC any money), but IIRC passives are a footnote's worth. On the character sheet (which is shit in several ways, I might add) there's only passive perception, which in my mind creates a false impression that it doesn't apply for any others.
Anyway, how do you like this then:
- Out of combat players can take 20 if not pressed for time and trying again and again is reasonable
- Otherwise, out of combat they can treat 10 as one of the advantage rolls (i.e., minimum 10)
- Players who are proficient can take 10 (or sides/2) for combat and damage rolls
- Players can still choose to roll for that lucky shot (or not, as it happens)
Also, people shouldn't look up to people on the telly, so to speak. For my money, CR is considered harmful.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Part of it is that I’m also not a great roleplayer, but also, I think that characters’ abilities should matter — else why do they have them, and why are some better or worse than others?
I think part of the problem is that you're dealing not only with "some characters are better at some things than others", but also trying to do "no character is better at everything than others" - in other words, you're trying to maintain some balance between party members for the sake of party unity.
Which is okay, as it goes, but it does mean that if your character is good at, say, hitting people in the face with heavy objects, they aren't going to be terribly good at persuading people, because the aforementioned balancing act means tradeoffs.
The last game I played in had the highest CHA character being played by possibly the worst roleplayer in the group - both in terms of ability and player initiative (he would typically need to be prompted by the rest of the party). The people who were actually decent at and enjoyed the "talk to NPCs" aspect of play all had lower (or just low) CHA for character build reasons, so having them actually talk to people was a losing proposition.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
So what are some systems that you know (i.e., didn't find on Bing) that are role-playing, but are diceless and otherwise free of [excessive] random chance? I mean, you can role-play in Settlers or even Checkers, but the ruleset doesn't support that.
What @Gurth said i.e. Amber is the only one I really know anything about.
Of course the universe is special and might not appeal to everyone, so there's that. Though in theory you could use the ruleset in any setting, but it's also designed for more competition than collaboration between players: the stats are mostly expressed as a ranking between players and while it's easy for the GM to decide where an NPC slots in that ranking, it's not really intended to be used this way (with the lack of randomness, it would be a bit pointless as by arbitrarily deciding the ranking of an NPC the GM would also arbitrarily decide how the encounter will go, which makes the encounter not very interesting!).
This focus on interactions (competition?) between PCs make the lack of randomness less of an issue because instead of having many actions to resolve, some of relatively low importance, the ruleset/stats are focused on resolving a few high-stakes actions (everything else being handled through roleplay) where you don't really want to put too much randomness.
That aspect plays well with the universe where PCs are uber-powerful beings that can change reality around them (more or less...) so really nothing in their environment can ever truly be a challenge -- thus, the only possible source of opposition can only be other beings similarly powerful. You'll never have a "random encounter" in Amber, it just wouldn't make sense (though
the books do contain quite a few of these but you can always roleplay them in the same way as an author is "roleplaying" when they tell their story).It definitely encourages a very, very different type of play than most other RPGs and I had quite a few players that simply didn't like it, at all. I also believe that this "rules-light" approach means there is going to be a larger variation between gaming experience of different groups than with a more constrained ruleset where you can more or less predict how any group will behave. So I guess it's really hit-or-miss.
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I've always wondered how it would play out in a longer campaign
TBH, I always struggled to see how it could work in any other way than a campaign. Because of the focus on roleplay, I'm not sure it makes much sense to play a one-shot -- if you don't have time to build your character and have it interact at length with other PCs, I fear you'd quickly fall down to direct stats comparisons and given the lack of randomness, it's probably not a hugely enjoyable game experience...
But then again, each group is probably way more different than any other with Amber, so what worked for us may not have worked for others.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Basically free of random chance, because if your ability level > opponent’s ability level, you succeed and your opponent doesn’t.
That's not necessarily realistic, though.
I didn’t say it’s my cup of tea ;) TBH I’ve never even read the rules, but I have read about them and I know someone who has read them. This was enough to decide that it’s not my cup of tea …
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@GOG said in D&D thread:
The last game I played in had the highest CHA character being played by possibly the worst roleplayer in the group - both in terms of ability and player initiative (he would typically need to be prompted by the rest of the party).
That reminds me of... me, actually. And more than once.
The first time ever, when I rolled a tabaxi monk, I had racial CHA bonus and one point spare. I suppose I could have removed a point and use it elsewhere, but we had two bards in the group, so I reasoned, whatever, I'm a cat. Of course everyone likes me! But I won't have to do anything with it. In reality bards didn't either, and most of the talking was done by a creaky robot cleric.
This last time I was supposed to be good at rogue-ish scouting things. You know, knowing the back-alleys, spotting things out of place, that kind of thing. I might have missed some of the cues by the DM and/or other players, too, but generally blind leading the blind applied.
Goddamn, people. I'm not good at anything
If I were, chances are I'd go and do things rather than just sit on my ass and pretend.
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@remi said in D&D thread:
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I've always wondered how it would play out in a longer campaign
TBH, I always struggled to see how it could work in any other way than a campaign. Because of the focus on roleplay, I'm not sure it makes much sense to play a one-shot -- if you don't have time to build your character and have it interact at length with other PCs, I fear you'd quickly fall down to direct stats comparisons and given the lack of randomness, it's probably not a hugely enjoyable game experience...
But then again, each group is probably way more different than any other with Amber, so what worked for us may not have worked for others.
I haven't played Amber, but I have listened to a podcast review of it. And the rulebook itself apparently thinks of it as a "con game," not a long-term game. (The rulebook also tries very hard to make sure that all of the abilities are useless and has GM fiat make the players fail as often as possible: the cards should always fail (or connect to a demon instead), the world-walking gets penalties if you don't do it just the way the GM likes, bad things should happen to players regardless of how much Good Stuff or Bad Stuff they have, etc. etc.)
But since I'm pretty bad at writing my own plot or doing PvP, Amber is not for me. I'm glad you're enjoying it, though!
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I haven't played Amber, but I have listened to a podcast review of it. And the rulebook itself apparently thinks of it as a "con game," not a long-term game.
TBH, I don't remember having had this impression while reading it. But this was a very long time ago and also I had the French version, which maybe pitched it a bit differently.
This isn't how we saw it, but that could very well just have been how we read it. Since it does leave a lot of room for variation, and since from the start we picked it up with the idea that it would be for a campaign, maybe we simply never considered it otherwise.
(The rulebook also tries very hard to make sure that all of the abilities are useless and has GM fiat make the players fail as often as possible: the cards should always fail (or connect to a demon instead), the world-walking gets penalties if you don't do it just the way the GM likes, bad things should happen to players regardless of how much Good Stuff or Bad Stuff they have, etc. etc.)
That definitely doesn't match, at all, what I remember of the rules. Yes, the GM has more fiat power than in other rulesets since there is no "objective" exterior randomness to tamper it. But I don't remember the rules saying, or implying, that this should be used to make everything fail.If this is the case (and again, maybe I'm just misremembering), this would definitely have been one of the first things we threw away. But, despite the game being very much adversarial, we saw "everyone having fun" as the greater goal and thus players didn't really try to "win" (their characters did, of course). As time passed, we also saw the GM more like "one normal player that also handles all NPCs" rather than like a very different role, so I guess this also framed things.
(for example, at some point we accepted that all players could "summon" random events happening if that made sense in universe, while this would normally be strictly and exclusively the GM call)
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@GOG said in D&D thread:
The last game I played in had the highest CHA character being played by possibly the worst roleplayer in the group - both in terms of ability and player initiative (he would typically need to be prompted by the rest of the party). The people who were actually decent at and enjoyed the "talk to NPCs" aspect of play all had lower (or just low) CHA for character build reasons, so having them actually talk to people was a losing proposition.
This is exactly why I agree with the basic sentiment of that old message I posted: if you have a player who is good with people, playing a character with very low Charisma and social skills, letting social interaction depend mainly on the player’s abilities rather than on dice rolls gives unrealistic results for the character just as much as when it’s the other way around.
In addition to which, talking to NPCs is not the same as influencing their actions. The players who enjoy this kind of thing can still do that — they just shouldn’t expect their characters to get their way only because they had a nice chat with the NPCs. This may feel a bit odd, but I can easily imagine people talking easily and comfortably with strangers but not being able to get those strangers to do things for them.
Also, if you as a player know you’re good with people, and want to play your character that way … why take low Charisma? In a long-ago campaign I had a player who really was good with people, but he generally took characters with maximum Charisma and good social skills exactly so they would be too. I suspect that playing a character who couldn’t talk his way into a shop would very quickly have been frustrating for him.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Also, if you as a player know you’re good with people, and want to play your character that way … why take low Charisma?
At a price, yes. Is there any particular reason why dwarven fighter couldn't be as charismatic as half-elf retard?
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Also, if you as a player know you’re good with people, and want to play your character that way … why take low Charisma?
I can see at least two other reasons (in addition to gaming reasons): first, because (some) people behave differently in different settings.
You can define yourself as introverted, not liking to talk with people, and yet when in a small group of familiar people all gathered for the same activity (RPG), quite enjoy being quite talkative and good at roleplay (maybe you're saying a lot of shit, but that's not the point). Or the other way round, you may consider yourself a people-person but when bound into the semi-formal setting/ruleset of an RPG, you find it hard to "play-pretend" and often hide behind the rules/dice. I met both kind of players, and I think I was the first kind when I started RPG.
Second, most people aren't necessarily very good at knowing themselves.
Someone may say "oh no I'm no good at talking" and yet... do it quite fluently and spontaneously. Or the other way round.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
why dwarven fighter couldn't be as charismatic as half-elf retard?
... because they are dwarves and not half-elves? That's generally how these races tend to be defined in the game setting as it fits the common stereotypes. You don't like that, you're free to design (or find) a different setting where dwarves are more charismatic than elves. Of course then you'll have to get your group, including the GM, to accept it.
Or give a good reason why your dwarf is exceptionally charismatic. Though if I was the GM, that better be a very good reason or I'll politely ask you to review your character build so it has a minimum of consistency with the setting.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Also, if you as a player know you’re good with people, and want to play your character that way … why take low Charisma?
At a price, yes. Is there any particular reason why dwarven fighter couldn't be as charismatic as half-elf retard?
I’m not sure how this is relevant to the line you quoted, but: if they have equal Charisma values they would be equally charismatic. The maximum Charisma may be different, so the half-elf has a greater Charisma potential than the dwarf, but that’s not the same as any dwarf automatically being less charismatic than any half-elf.
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@ixvedeusi You're right that it's what the setting says. What I have an issue with is that the stereotypes are homogeneous across literally everyone you might ever meet. For example, dwarves and elves have this mutual dislike, right? The setting imparts unfounded advantage for one side. It should be that CHA bonus/penalty depends on the interlocutors. Of course, we have CHA-casters, so we can't really have a mutable value.
You don't like that, you're free to design
Uh, I'm not sure I've said anything that would warrant a crass "you don't like, you don't buy" reply. Must be my low social skills.
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There was a short discussion earlier in this thread how CHA is crappy stat to begin with, in V:tM, I believe. By all means, CHA is quantifiable. But unlike other 5 in DnD specifically, it's not an objective measurement.
