GURPS and roleplaying

[RyanW]

If you want to keep mental disadvantages, but not give PC control over to the dice, emphasize other aspects of disadvantages. Characters that regularly go against their disadvantages, or do so for trivial reasons, shouldn't be getting as big a CP award at the end of adventures for roleplaying.

Regarding social skills, it comes down to player vs. character capabilities. I wouldn't want to force players to always play characters with the same social skills as themselves, any more than I'd want them to have to play characters with the same physical or mental skills as themselves.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by LaFoot

Thank you for the explanations. I'd definitely misinterpreted the nature of mental disadvantages. The way Stormcrow and others have explained it is much more appealing to me.

I still have misgivings about influence skills, though. Let me clarify my position: I don't have a problem with the concept of influence skills in and of themselves; it's the effect they seem to have on players that bothers me. I've used social skill systems with two seperate groups. On both occasions I used the standard strategy of giving a bonus to the social check for good roleplaying. What happened was that the roll would steal focus from the roleplaying. In freeform RP, the players wholeheartedly did their best to persuade, cajole, wheedle, frighten or otherwise influence the NPC they were talking to, and even the less social players managed to exceed themselves (and were given a bit of leeway in the sense of "your character probably said that better than you could" to even things up). With social skills, the players tended to make one short statement and then reach for the dice. Those with high social skills wouldn't bother coming up with clever things to say, because they expected their high skill level to carry them. I don't want to punish them too much for that sort of behaviour, because that just leads to frustration - it seems to work better to simply remove the issue altogether. I can reward roleplaying, of course, but it just doesn't seem to get them as immersed in it as they are when it's their only option. They just seem to be less interested in interaction with NPCS once the dice get involved.

I'm open to persuasion, obviously. If there's a compromise to be had, I'm all for it. And it's possible that it's just my inexperience with the system speaking. I did have the idea of keeping all influence rolls on the DM side of the screen, in the hopes that it would keep the players in the same sort of freeform mindset they had before. I haven't tried it yet, though.

I think it's mentioned somewhere that good roleplaying should give a bonus to influence skills and poor roleplaying a penalty. You could make this more severe by requiring Unusual Background to raise those skills above a certain level. Players tend to be very point conscious and if they can save points by RPing instead they pretty likely to. On the other hand, they might resent that sort of limitation.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by LaFoot

Here's my problem. Coming from a gaming background that mostly consists of 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, I'm used to roleplaying being a matter between the players and the DM. If a player wants to roleplay their character as being bad-tempered, or absent-minded, then that's their choice. They have control over that aspect of their character, they can roleplay it to a greater or lesser extent as they want, and they can choose their moments for maximum entertainment value. Good times are had by all.

In GURPS, however, as you know there are these mental disadvantages, where the dice control the player's actions. If a player takes the bad tempered disadvantage, then their character becomes angry when the dice show that they become angry. Rather than being a matter of timing, drama, humour, wit, and an occasional willingness to hinder onself for the sake of entertainment, suddenly it's a matter of game mechanics. Not only does the player have to become angry when they roll under their self control number, but only the most dedicated of roleplayers are also going to blow their in-character top at other times as well, since that's just piling disadvantage on disadvantage. I feel that the fewer rules govern roleplaying, the more enjoyable it becomes, and the more the players are encouraged to enter into their characters.

Not Quite. You only make a self control roll only if the character has a reason to try to keep it under control. Without a valid cause to make a roll, go with the default mode. In the case of bad temper, the player contracted with the GM to play the character as a cantankerous easily angered son of a bitch. That is pretty much an almost 'always on' state. That's why they got ten more CP to build the PC. The control roll represnts the ability to not show that still burning anger.

A bad tempered sargeant had better control it when talking to an officer, for example. The player now needs to roll.

You don't have to roll anytme the character speaks or makes a social action.

[dbm]

With regards to influencing skills, I use a different approach. Instead of asking the player to RP an exchange then make roll, I sequence things the other way round. The player makes a roll, then starts to roleplay. If they got a good roll, I react positively to what they say, but I can still only react to what they said or asked for. Obviously, you need the players to join in with the spirit of this and not switch to 'negative psychology' when they get a bad roll. But roleplaying is a collaborative passtime and GURPS more so than some others.

In my opinion the inclusion of interaction skills is one of the things which makes GURPS a superior experence to some other RPGs which devolve into a strategy / combat game. I certainly wouldn't exclude them from the game without giving them a solid try first.

Cheers,
Dan

[Ogo]

Originally Posted by LaFoot

On both occasions I used the standard strategy of giving a bonus to the social check for good roleplaying. What happened was that the roll would steal focus from the roleplaying. In freeform RP, the players wholeheartedly did their best to persuade, cajole, wheedle, frighten or otherwise influence the NPC they were talking to, and even the less social players managed to exceed themselves (and were given a bit of leeway in the sense of "your character probably said that better than you could" to even things up). With social skills, the players tended to make one short statement and then reach for the dice. Those with high social skills wouldn't bother coming up with clever things to say, because they expected their high skill level to carry them. I don't want to punish them too much for that sort of behaviour, because that just leads to frustration - it seems to work better to simply remove the issue altogether. I can reward roleplaying, of course, but it just doesn't seem to get them as immersed in it as they are when it's their only option. They just seem to be less interested in interaction with NPCS once the dice get involved.

There's a pretty simple way around this problem: require some level of roleplaying before you allow a character to make an influence roll. The role and the roll always have to go together.

There's a good mechanic for this cribbed from the Toon game: the Pitch.

1. For each NPC worth negotiating with, the GM has (or dreams up on the fly) an idea of what kind of "angle(s)" will work to persuade them. This has to fit the situation, obviously. In some cases, anything might work. In highly constrained situations, maybe only one approach is appropriate.

2. The player has to act out or describe his or her "line": s/he has to make the Pitch. The GM judges the Pitch both a) on its own merits (logical, entertaining, whatever) and b) whether it's the right "angle" for that NPC. Based on this, the GM mentally assigns a bonus or penalty. It's possible that not-so-good roleplaying and a bad idea combined will end up giving the player a net negative on the roll, but the GM doesn't tell the player what modifier he's working with!

3. Player makes the roll. The GM asks how much it was made or missed by. If he makes the roll, but doesn't beat the penalty, you say "guess he wasn't receptive to what you were trying to do." If he fails the roll, but falls within the bonus, you say "you must have done something right!"

This gives credit for everything! Good skills, good roleplaying, and GM's situational discretion.

If you want to give heavier emphasis to the roleplay, you can mentally assign bonuses and penalties in the +/-5 area and greater. If you want the paid-for skills to be the chief factor, then keep them within +/-3

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by LaFoot

Thank you for the explanations. I'd definitely misinterpreted the nature of mental disadvantages. The way Stormcrow and others have explained it is much more appealing to me.

I still have misgivings about influence skills, though. Let me clarify my position: I don't have a problem with the concept of influence skills in and of themselves; it's the effect they seem to have on players that bothers me. I've used social skill systems with two seperate groups. On both occasions I used the standard strategy of giving a bonus to the social check for good roleplaying. What happened was that the roll would steal focus from the roleplaying. In freeform RP, the players wholeheartedly did their best to persuade, cajole, wheedle, frighten or otherwise influence the NPC they were talking to, and even the less social players managed to exceed themselves (and were given a bit of leeway in the sense of "your character probably said that better than you could" to even things up). With social skills, the players tended to make one short statement and then reach for the dice. Those with high social skills wouldn't bother coming up with clever things to say, because they expected their high skill level to carry them. I don't want to punish them too much for that sort of behaviour, because that just leads to frustration - it seems to work better to simply remove the issue altogether. I can reward roleplaying, of course, but it just doesn't seem to get them as immersed in it as they are when it's their only option. They just seem to be less interested in interaction with NPCS once the dice get involved.

I'm open to persuasion, obviously. If there's a compromise to be had, I'm all for it. And it's possible that it's just my inexperience with the system speaking. I did have the idea of keeping all influence rolls on the DM side of the screen, in the hopes that it would keep the players in the same sort of freeform mindset they had before.

If you do things the way you are describing you are failing to use the real beauty of GURPS in it's modifiers. The final social action roll is more about the effect of delivery then the content of the message.

It's the difference between a world famous actor delivering hamlets iconic speech and a high school student reading it off a sheet; the words are the same, but the effect can be leagues apart.

Here are a few examples for a single scenario:

Scenario: PC is a well dressed individual, wearing fancy clothes, attempting to convince a guard that yes, a thief stole his drab leather purse (a leftover relic of when he started adventuring, or because its been enchanted with multiple hideaways making it's actual utility worth much more then its appearance), which is monogrammed with his initials, and the PC caught up with the thief and in the ensuing fistfight the guard have arrived. Both the thief and the PC wish to convince the guard that the purse is theirs and the the other is the thief.
The thief has fast talk 15
The PC has Public Speaking 11
The Guard has Detect lies at 11

Interaction 1:
Player : I convince the guard that the purse is mine
Result: contested social roll between thief and PC; guard gets a secondary detect lies -5 roll to try to discern the truth (due to having no real familiarity with either or reason to trust either);
results:
If the PC and guard both fail there guard gives the purse to the thief and arrests the PC
If Either succeeds the guard will hold both of them until he can discern the truth
If both rolls succeed the guard will arrest the thief and give the purse back to the PC

Interaction 2
Player: I convince the guard that the purse is mine; pointing out that it is monogrammed with my initials
Result: Contested social roll between the thief and PC; guard gets a secondary social roll on detect lies at -3 ONLY if the PC fails the first roll.
Results:
PC succeeds- PC gets purse back, thief arrested
PC fails, guard succeeds- Second contest for PC to prove that initials are actually his name
PC fails, Guard fails- both parties detained

Interaction 3:
Player: I challenge the thief to list the initials inside the rim of the purse if it's his, then point out the guard that the initials are R.L., and also identify that there is a note within written in my handwriting that contains a list of the things I am to find inside this town. I then spit in contempt at the thief for his crass attempt to claim my proporty, and demand that the guard take him away immediately.
Result:
1-Contested social roll between PC and thief, PC is at +5
2-Second contested social roll between PC and thief to try to get the thief to react poorly
3-Third contested social roll between PC and guards detect lies skill with +5 to PC due to his fine garb making his reaction seem normal (uppity nobles always demanding stuff of us guards)
4-Guard gets a detect lies skill at -5, but +5 for each of 2 and 3 that succeed (potential for +5)
Results
1- succeeds: PC gets purse, thief arrested
1 fails, 4 succeeds: PC gets purse, thief arrested
1 fails, 4 fails, but 2 or 3 succeeds; resolve second contest as the battle rages on, keep successes from first contest and add to applicable skills
all rolls fail: both parties detained
all rolls succeed- PC gets purse, and the thief is fiercely beaten and arrested, the guard apologies for the behavior of some elements in the city, and gives the PC a special codeword to say at a local pub for a free meal or 5% off lodging

Role playing is still VERY important to make the best use of a social situation, but the dice allow the more charismatic PC to get further easier, and require those with less social skills to think harder about making airtight arguments in order for there rolls to have the best chance of success

[ThomasSmith]

The advice in this thread is beautiful. I'm going to be subscribing to it and I believe I will be referring back to it in the future. Bravo!

[Kalzazz]

I like the opposed rolls, vs willpower or whatever for social skill

Player outlines what they are trying to do. Roll occurs. Poof, next thing

If they do it in an extremely cool fashion bonuses may occur

[Stone Dog]

Even though it is more humorous than accurate, I tend to like the argument "If you force a player to act out the character's social skills, you should force the player to act out the combat skills as well."

If the player has the chops to act out a scene, then let them run with it (so long as it doesn't hog spotlight or bog down play). If they don't, don't make them limit their character according to their own abilities.

They are just trying to play a game, not maintain a deep cover identity or land an acting gig. Cut them some slack.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Stone Dog

If the player has the chops to act out a scene, then let them run with it (so long as it doesn't hog spotlight or bog down play). If they don't, don't make them limit their character according to their own abilities.

Quoted for truth. Many people role-play so that they can indulge in fantasies about being better as things than they are in real life.

A small, weak player can pretend to be a mighty warrior for a few hours. A family man trapped in a boring job can be a super-hero once a week.

Yet, many people think that this opportunity to play someone who can do things you can't should not extend to a tongue-tied or shy player who wants to play someone smooth and witty. I disagree.

I believe that role-playing should be about playing a role, and that talking and thinking your way out of problems is some of the fun. I just don't think that socially adept characters should be restricted to socially adept players.

Social Influence mechanics are the only way this is possible.