The Gaming Den

Swordslinger wrote:Because seriously, I have no fucking clue why the king who was diplomacied went form loving elves to hating them. I have no idea what would convince him otherwise, because keep in mind: no proof is presented, no arguments are actually made. It's just: toss a dice and poof, the king becomes a new person with new beliefs with no storyline as to how that happened. In fact, mechanically there is no need for a reason at all.

Before I begin I should point out that I hate the diplomacy rules in general.

But the notion that you can by sheer power of your honey sweet tongue so poison the heart of a king to make him do vile things, against his normal nature?



Yes I can totally see that. Hey do I get a bonus if I use poison?

Thing about Wormtongue was that he used diplomacy about 100 times a day, and magic/poison to get his way. It wasn't a one & done thing. The power he had at that point came from *years* of rolls, which I'm totally down for. If the bard wants to spend two years in game wearing the King down to hate elves, that's far more believable than a 6 second or 1 minute diplomacy check. At that point I don't even need to know what was said and done, I know that it's hundreds and thousands of small things and petty manipulations.

Edited for grammar

The game is all abstractions and dice, but your level of abstraction may vary. I can totally just roll some dice and say "I try to convince the king to kill the elves, I got a 30 diplomacy" and the rules of the game say that's just as effective as somebody giving a long speech and rolling a 30. Those are the rules of the damn game, there is nothing written about speeches.

Having to make arguments is ass, and people who want to play social characters can either do it or not. You shouldn't force them into doing it (and if you don't like they're style you might not want to play with them) because you think it hurts your immersion.

Tell me, do the reasons have to be good reasons, Swordslinger? If they do then it's all MC fiat because he can say "I don't think that's a good reason" to whatever you come up with. That's all MTP and the MC shouldn't be able to fuck with my character just because I can't construct a sentence without the word horsecock.

If you just need any reason the diplomancer can say something insane like "Elves smell bad and the entire kingdom will be infected with elf-stench if we don't eliminate them." That makes for storytelling that is just as terrible, if not more so, than not giving a reason and making up what the diplomancer said through the king's reaction or something.

A bad reason is more poisonous than no reason at all. You can always fill in a blank space.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:The game is all abstractions and dice, but your level of abstraction may vary. I can totally just roll some dice and say "I try to convince the king to kill the elves, I got a 30 diplomacy" and the rules of the game say that's just as effective as somebody giving a long speech and rolling a 30. Those are the rules of the damn game, there is nothing written about speeches.

Having to make arguments is ass, and people who want to play social characters can either do it or not. You shouldn't force them into doing it (and if you don't like they're style you might not want to play with them) because you think it hurts your immersion.

Tell me, do the reasons have to be good reasons, Swordslinger? If they do then it's all MC fiat because he can say "I don't think that's a good reason" to whatever you come up with. That's all MTP and the MC shouldn't be able to fuck with my character just because I can't construct a sentence without the word horsecock.

If you just need any reason the diplomancer can say something insane like "Elves smell bad and the entire kingdom will be infected with elf-stench if we don't eliminate them." That makes for storytelling that is just as terrible, if not more so, than not giving a reason and making up what the diplomancer said through the king's reaction or something.

A bad reason is more poisonous than no reason at all. You can always fill in a blank space.

So again. As a DM, if we're just going to roll and move on, and the players always want something desirable to them to happen, why have players? I can roll those dice myself and have a solo game. The whole point of having players interact with a DM is because players can come up with funky solutions and shit that throw an on-rails game off the rails and lead to new places.

And actually, the rules do support rewarding in-character roleplaying. It's called a situation bonus (and if memory serves they talk about bypassing the roll if someone has a really good idea and their skill is high enough). If you glossed over that it's not our fault.

Anyway, it's not like we're asking them to actually draft a petition to the Supreme Court. As a DM I want a basic idea of intent and how they want to go about achieving that intent. Otherwise players are reduced to "I am rolling Diplomacy for something good to happen." And that's not gaming, or at least any gaming I want to participate with.

Edit: Okay I re-read your post again and you're actually saying that roleplaying is ass. Dude, you're not pseudo stupid. You're just stupid.

Important die rolls deserve a description not just in terms of the result, but also in terms of a plausible process that led to it.

In other words, if I'm going to suspend my disbelief, I demand something to suspend it from. "Look, on page xxx it says that yyy" simply doesn't cut it. Not by a long way.

I know that not everybody was born a good narrator, but in my experience people tend to improve a lot with practice, provided the group doesn't bury them in an avalanche of scorn and derision for some initial failures.

On the other hand, if somebody consistently refuses to contribute to the narrative, then what the fuck are they doing sitting around a table playing a game that generates stories?

"Because fucking magic," is sufficient to suspend your disbelief.*

But, "because fucking skill," is not sufficient to suspend your disbelief.**

Therefore, you hate fighters.

QED





*charm
**Diplomacy

You might conceivably have a point if I played D&D*. But I really hate that game.

*or any game where spells a) compete with skills and b) are so OP that designers felt the need to inflate skill effects to a similarly ridiculous degree, because half a million anally retentive teenagers would never buy the new edition if they caught a whiff of nerf

What game(s) do you play, and do any of them have mind control/influence magic? In fact, do any of them have magic/implausible-SF at all? Because if they do, then ...

NineInchNall wrote:What game(s) do you play, and do any of them have mind control/influence magic? In fact, do any of them have magic/implausible-SF at all? Because if they do, then ...

The best campaigns I played in/GMed for any length of time (i.e., years) were Earthdawn, Talislanta, Decipher's Middle Earth (all more or less modded, mostly by throwing out stuff) and an actual home-brew game. As to mind control, none of them had anything even remotely like *zap*, you're my BFF now.

I mean, how would a society even work if some people had these abilities, magical or as 'skills'? Certainly not by appointing rulers who are susceptible to such crap. Long-term corruption or short-term, easily recognizable hypnosis/enslavement effects are another matter.

Also, your notion of 'implausible' is off. Just because something doesn't exist in the real world doesn't mean it's implausible in fiction. However, if your fictional world has such stuff, it needs a consistent background and a social model that allows for it -- if society tolerates it, that is.

[quote="]But that's just the problem. Once you introduce any level of arbitrary diplomacy where you convince someone without a reason, you toss well reasoned arguments out the window.

You can't pose a well reasoned argument to counter "I just think that way for no logical reason."

Because seriously, I have no fucking clue why the king who was diplomacied went form loving elves to hating them. [/quote]

The king thinks like that... because he's been diplomacied. I'm not sure why this it so hard. When someone uses diplomacy the character is assumed to be presenting their argument to the person they're using diplomacy on.

As has been pointed out player's play so they can feel like they can feel like they're doing doing stuff even though they may not know how to do what they're character is doing. So you could insist they everyone always present an argument every time they want to try diplomacy. Or you can say, oh they're using diplomacy, that implies the character is making an argument for their side of an argument. Then ask if they'd like to actually say that argument.

I'm not sure why people have this insistance to know why the king suddenly hate the elves. They are elves that is reason enough to hate them in my book.

Plenty of people I interact with in real life hate things and if I ask them why they can't answer me. That doesn't mean they have been 'diplomacied'.

Hell even if you convince the king to wage war on the elves doesn't mean that he'll use those reasons when explaining it to others.

It is just manipulation of things you say, how you say them and other ways to influence his mind.

I mean fuck lets grab some random research:

Words are only 7 percent of your conversation. The rest is your voice tonality (38 percent) and your body language at 55 percent. That’s according to research done by Albert Mehrabian, currently Professor Emeritus in psychology at UCLA.

Good luck properly roleplaying voice tonality and body language to the king.

All you need to know is that he changed his mind and now wants to wage war on the elves. If you for some weird reason don't want all the elves exterminated than you try to convince him in conversation or try to find out his reasons or whatever.

TheFlatline wrote: So again. As a DM, if we're just going to roll and move on, and the players always want something desirable to them to happen, why have players?

Because they make decisions? Because they do roleplay and just didn't feel like constructing an argument at that time? There are dozens of reasons to want to abstract a single roll. Maybe you're having an off day, maybe you just couldn't think of something but you know your character would give it a shot, maybe you're tired of the MC railroading you into the king. There's no reason to force the players to do something they clearly don't want to do. I personally roll and then do something appropriate based on what I roll, but I've seen people just say "I try to convince <NPC> to help us, I got a # diplomacy" and I'm completely fine with them doing that.

TheFlatline wrote:I can roll those dice myself and have a solo game. The whole point of having players interact with a DM is because players can come up with funky solutions and shit that throw an on-rails game off the rails and lead to new places.

They did come up with a funky solution you twit. They decided to diplomance the king instead of stab him and take over. They have a huge number of options available, they went with diplomance the king. Who cares if they didn't have an IC chat about it? They still made a decision and played their roles, they just abstracted a scene they obviously did not care about that much.

TheFlatline wrote:And actually, the rules do support rewarding in-character roleplaying. It's called a situation bonus (and if memory serves they talk about bypassing the roll if someone has a really good idea and their skill is high enough). If you glossed over that it's not our fault.

It's a suggestion that is all MC fiat. That's like saying that stunt page of 4e means there are hard-coded rules for stunts in combat. There sort of are (look it up and pick something appropriate is...sort of a rule), but it's just a suggestion and thus not a real thing you can point to. You're also saying my socially-dysfunctional wizard with a cha of 7 and no diplomacy can convince the king of shit (in a friendly way!) if I'm good at arguing/making friends. That's not roleplaying you fucking idiot, that's playing against my role. If the best talker in your party is playing a murder machine with no diplomacy he should STILL be the face in your game. How can you possibly think that's a good thing?

TheFlatline wrote:Anyway, it's not like we're asking them to actually draft a petition to the Supreme Court. As a DM I want a basic idea of intent and how they want to go about achieving that intent. Otherwise players are reduced to "I am rolling Diplomacy for something good to happen." And that's not gaming, or at least any gaming I want to participate with.

They had intentions. They wanted the king to do something so they talked to the king. The bard came up with <some reason to do that something> and the king totally agreed to it because the bard made it sound great. They can't just say "I roll diplomacy for good things" because that's like saying "I cast wish for good things." You have to specify what result you want. "I diplomacy the king to go to war with the elves" is a legitimate thing you do can. "I diplomacy the king to get into his good graces" is also fine. "I diplomacy the king, did I win yet?" Means absolutely nothing in the context of the game or story.

TheFlatline wrote:Edit: Okay I re-read your post again and you're actually saying that roleplaying is ass. Dude, you're not pseudo stupid. You're just stupid.

That's weird, it's almost like you have horrible reading comprehension. If you looked at all the letters, observed the spaces that divide them into words and then read those words while taking punctuation into account you would have seen I said "having to make arguments is ass." It appears you missed the "having to" part, which means "being required to" in case you do not understand the phrase. Being forced to do something you may not be in the mood to do is ass.

Besides, if you think roleplaying is comprised solely of talking in character you're incredibly stupid. Every decision you make in the game (sans metagame choices) is roleplaying, you inane dullard.

darkmaster wrote: The king thinks like that... because he's been diplomacied. I'm not sure why this it so hard. When someone uses diplomacy the character is assumed to be presenting their argument to the person they're using diplomacy on.

Yeah. But I'm finding it just the slightest bit implausible that a ruler -- who should be thoroughly inured to all kinds of well-honed tongues with interests attached slobbering in his ears -- should do a full policy reversal based on a little chat with a single person who is not even a member of his court.

(Not that actual historical kings had ever been capable of u-turning their realm's policy like Evil Kneivel a hotrod. Kingdoms tend to have lots of powers in a delicate balance. Pissing off too many of them at the same time is a great way to get yourself deposed and your beloved offspring murdered. End of dynasty.)

However, if your game system requires that our king do exactly that or die trying based on a single roll of the dice and without a compelling story reason, then your game system generates shit results that should better be ignored.

tenuki wrote:

darkmaster wrote: The king thinks like that... because he's been diplomacied. I'm not sure why this it so hard. When someone uses diplomacy the character is assumed to be presenting their argument to the person they're using diplomacy on.

Yeah. But I'm finding it just the slightest bit implausible that a ruler -- who should be thoroughly inured to all kinds of well-honed tongues with interests attached slobbering in his ears -- should do a full policy reversal based on a little chat with a single person who is not even a member of his court.

He is. That's why there's an appropriate modifier to the DC of the skill check, making it so that only a high powered Diplomancer can do it reliably.

Would you find it "implausible" for the same result to be achieved via a powerful spell?

I mean, Wormtongue did it. Wormtongue presumably has a level, which we'll call X. In 3.x terms, power roughly doubles every 2 levels. Let's assume a direct relationship between diplomancer power and time required to achieve results. Let's further say it takes Wormtongue six months of work to do his thing. To get six months down to one day needs eight doublings, so an additional 16 levels. Let's be kind and say Grima's somehow 4th level, which puts us up to 20th level.

At 20th level, if a diplomancer isn't convincing people to drink poisoned Kool Aid with a single chat, there's something seriously wrong. Remember, 20th level is where you're expected to be able to take on effectively limitless armies of creatures that can individually take on limitless armies of vampire spawn, wyrmling red dragons, minotaurs, and five-headed hydras without getting experience for it because those creatures are seriously not a meaningful challenge.

Once again, I think the diplomacy rules need massive revisions.

One more point; screw "magic" this is a fantasy game; it's about the "fantastic." Magic is only a flavor of fantastic, it is not the sole flavor of fantastic.

TheFlatline wrote:Thing about Wormtongue was that he used diplomacy about 100 times a day, and magic/poison to get his way.

This is a good point. Wormtongue had a solid control over the King that took a long time to get. But if you are going for short term goals you don't need to take that long. Doubt, confsion, and misdirection is actually easy to accomplish. It's easy to get someone to think his ally is his enemy. (Getting him to continue to believe it for a long time is harder but then again I mentioned that I don't like the rules as written.)

Not that I want to off track the subject, but the whole issue is being played out in the real world in the whole election / primary process in the United States, in bulk so you can see statistics at work. In Iowa, Romney used massive negative advertising to get his supporters not to support him. Now in NH, we see an attempt to pull words out of context to get his supporters not to support him ("I like to fire people"). It is not all that impossible to get someone to do something they would not normally do. Generally, however, that tends to be short lasting and the rebound can bring the person to a point that is even worse than what you started with.

A good example is "the emperor's new clothes."

Another good example is all over the place in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Ellsworth Toohey is an example of someone with diplomacy up the wazoo.

He manages to convince a plethora of people to include the title of a generally rotten book in their articles in order to make it a best seller.

He manages to convince the drama critic to actually use the ENC argument in order to get people to come to a pretty awful and vulgar play (originally titled "no skin off my ass.").

More interestingly he does this while remaining under the radar of Gail Wynand, who rose up as a street thug to become a powerful newspaper tycoon, and manages to bring about his own downfall in the process.

EDIT: This is in response to NineInchNails post above.

I'm somewhat reluctant to discuss Middle Earth in D&D terms because, no matter what you think of one or the other, D&D is not very well suited for representing this particular background. See your description of what happens at level 20.

That said, I would call Gríma a quite powerful diplomancer -- I believe this is the first time I'm even writing the word -- one of the most powerful ones around at the time. Please also note that
- all Grima does is lull Théoden into inaction by nursing his fear and urging caution. It's not like he made Rohan go to war with Gondor just on a whim.
- it takes him years, not months, if Gandalf is to be believed.
- the whole thing is extremely well supported by narrative in the books.

If you take a similar case, in the late Second Age it takes Sauron (the most powerful individual outside the Undying Lands at the time) decades to make Númenor go to war with Aman. And Tar-Calion/Ar-Pharazôn (the last king of Númenor) is pretty corrupt to begin with.

But as I said, D&D and Tolkien don't click in my opinion.

NineInchNail wrote: Would you find it "implausible" for the same result to be achieved via a powerful spell?

I see where you're going, but I really don't want to get involved in the "does the existence of hopelessly OP magic justify the existence of only slightly less OP skill effects" debate.

In a game that I'd play -- let's say Earthdawn -- only a very powerful horror would be able to pull off something like that, at least if the victim is someone of significance who, even if a non-adept, would be heavily protected by wards and mages. However, getting the job done quickly and with lasting effect would require a full-on possession, essentially destroying or overriding the victim's soul.

I'd like to see more examples from other media where there are Diplomantic bits that people like/don't like. I'll contribute one that I like: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. I'd like "Being There" to be one, but ultimately I guess it subverts it.

NineInchNall wrote: I mean, Wormtongue did it. Wormtongue presumably has a level, which we'll call X. In 3.x terms, power roughly doubles every 2 levels. Let's assume a direct relationship between diplomancer power and time required to achieve results. Let's further say it takes Wormtongue six months of work to do his thing. To get six months down to one day needs eight doublings, so an additional 16 levels. Let's be kind and say Grima's somehow 4th level, which puts us up to 20th level.

Okay, nice how you're using some weird time reduction formula that isn't used anywhere else in D&D. Are wizards going to now cast their spells twice as fast every 2 levels? Are fighters attacks doubling every 2 levels?

Dude... come on.

Swordslinger wrote:

NineInchNall wrote: I mean, Wormtongue did it. Wormtongue presumably has a level, which we'll call X. In 3.x terms, power roughly doubles every 2 levels. Let's assume a direct relationship between diplomancer power and time required to achieve results. Let's further say it takes Wormtongue six months of work to do his thing. To get six months down to one day needs eight doublings, so an additional 16 levels. Let's be kind and say Grima's somehow 4th level, which puts us up to 20th level.

Okay, nice how you're using some weird time reduction formula that isn't used anywhere else in D&D. Are wizards going to now cast their spells twice as fast every 2 levels? Are fighters attacks doubling every 2 levels?

Dude... come on.

His conclusion is "at level 20, D&D characters can do crazy shit", and you're questioning that?

Swordslinger wrote:

NineInchNall wrote: I mean, Wormtongue did it. Wormtongue presumably has a level, which we'll call X. In 3.x terms, power roughly doubles every 2 levels. Let's assume a direct relationship between diplomancer power and time required to achieve results. Let's further say it takes Wormtongue six months of work to do his thing. To get six months down to one day needs eight doublings, so an additional 16 levels. Let's be kind and say Grima's somehow 4th level, which puts us up to 20th level.

Okay, nice how you're using some weird time reduction formula that isn't used anywhere else in D&D. Are wizards going to now cast their spells twice as fast every 2 levels? Are fighters attacks doubling every 2 levels?

Dude... come on.

*banghead*

The point is that the power of characters' shticks is expected to grow exponentially. Yes, I'm making up the time reduction as part of a hypothetical example used for illustrative purposes. That is irrelevant. Also, you are an idiot.

tenuki wrote:That said, I would call Gríma a quite powerful diplomancer -- I believe this is the first time I'm even writing the word -- one of the most powerful ones around at the time. Please also note that
- all Grima does is lull Théoden into inaction by nursing his fear and urging caution. It's not like he made Rohan go to war with Gondor just on a whim.
- it takes him years, not months, if Gandalf is to be believed.
- the whole thing is extremely well supported by narrative in the books.

Well, Grima's a powerful diplomancer in that setting. If no one in Setting X is above 5th level, then 4th level abilities represent the penultimate rank of ability, and thus would rightly be called a "quite powerful" diplomancer.

tenuki wrote:In a game that I'd play -- let's say Earthdawn -- only a very powerful horror would be able to pull off something like that, at least if the victim is someone of significance who, even if a non-adept, would be heavily protected by wards and mages. However, getting the job done quickly and with lasting effect would require a full-on possession, essentially destroying or overriding the victim's soul.

This is basically another example of a setting with a level cap. The horror is "higher level" than everyone else, but still lower level than what is possible in D&D, Rifts, Exalted, WoD, GURPS, BESM, WotG, MnM, etc.

tenuki wrote: I see where you're going, but I really don't want to get involved in the "does the existence of hopelessly OP magic justify the existence of only slightly less OP skill effects" debate.

That's actually not my basic point. The point is this question: By what criteria do you judge something implausible? Because from what you are saying below it seems that you think convincing the king to do some arbitrary thing based on a conversation is implausible because you can't see it as possible. And if that is the case, then that's fine. No, really.

tenuki wrote:Yeah. But I'm finding it just the slightest bit implausible that a ruler -- who should be thoroughly inured to all kinds of well-honed tongues with interests attached slobbering in his ears -- should do a full policy reversal based on a little chat with a single person who is not even a member of his court.

Consistency just requires that such reasoning (impossibility implies implausibility) also be applied to everything else; e.g., fucking invisibility rings.

But all of this is irrelevant to the thrust of the thread. To wit, that having to speak in a funny voice in order to convince an NPC of something rather than roll some dice is stupid.

The problem is that diplomacy as suggested is entirely magical tea party elision, and worse, that people think that's okay. Let's compare:
- "I sword the king into attacking the elves."
- "I magic the king into attacking the elves."
- "I Turn Undead the king into attacking the elves."
- "I Knowledge(Arcana) the king into attacking the elves."
- "I diplomacy the king into attacking the elves."
The first four are patently ridiculous. Some are potentially reasonable, but there is not enough information in those descriptions to be useful. I mean, you could construct a narrative where the king was a zombie, there were elves who considered an intrusion on their forest an attack, and you used turn undead to drive the king into that forest, but you have to actually say that. Similar for 'magic' (charm the king, tell him that if he trusts you, he must order an attack now) or for 'sword' (attack the king's son while yelling "long live the elf empire") or 'Knowledge(Arcana) (find a racist book about elves? Not sure there). These vignettes aren't super-detailed, and they don't require the player to personally know how to e.g. cause undead creatures to flee his presence. Even so, there's still more information on what exactly you're doing than just what skill you want to roll.
It is not at all out of line to require more than "I diplomacy him", and asking "what do you say?" is a fair way of asking for that information. However, much like "What does Ron Paul say about _____", long,verbatim answers tend to be somewhat excruciating.

fectin wrote: His conclusion is "at level 20, D&D characters can do crazy shit", and you're questioning that?

His conclusion is something specific about diplomacy, where high level characters get faster at diplomacy as they level up to the point of being able to diplomacy someone near instantaneously. And yes, I question that.

Lets not try to obfuscate the situation by changing the subject.

And since you guys probably wont' get what I'm talking about, allow me to respond with my own strawman.

1. At level 20, D&D characters can do crazy shit.
2. Killing every wizard in the multiverse as a standard action is crazy shit.
3. A 20th level fighter should be able to kill every wizard in the multiverse with a standard action.

We can play the game of extremes all day long. At some point there's a limit to power, even if you're 20th level.

Don't make me Rule 0 you guys.

fectin wrote:It is not at all out of line to require more than "I diplomacy him", and asking "what do you say?" is a fair way of asking for that information. However, much like "What does Ron Paul say about _____", long,verbatim answers tend to be somewhat excruciating.

I agree, but on the other hand you don't want the equivalent of wish lawyering. The character is the diplomat not the player. (Just as you don't need to be an expert in sword fighting to have your character swing a sword ... just common general tactics.) Consider the classic example of the Devil and Daniel Webster

Daniel starts to orate on all of simple and good things—"the freshness of a fine morning...the taste of food when you're hungry...the new day that's every day when you're a child"—and how "without freedom, they sickened." He speaks passionately of how wonderful it is to be a man, and to be an American. He admits the wrongs done in the USA, but argues that something new and good had grown from it, "and everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors." Mankind "got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey," something "no demon that was ever foaled" could ever understand.

The jury announces its verdict: "We find for the defendant, Jabez Stone." They admit that, "Perhaps 'tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence, but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster." The judge and jury disappear with the break of dawn. Mr. Scratch congratulates Daniel and the contract is torn up.