The conversation over at Stargazer’s about social conflict posted yesterday is mainly coming down to a question of player skill vs character skill. A lot of the answers seems to be to use both but is that right?
For those unfamiliar with the question of player skill vs. character skill, the conflict arises because RPGs often have mental and social attributes. If a player is smart and figures out strategies and puzzles but their character is a dimwitted fool, who is making the strategy? Is it the player? They don’t exist in the game world. Is it the character? How is the fool coming up with these brilliant ideas? In that case it’s obvious that the solution is coming from the player’s skill.
On the reverse, if a character has a superhuman intellect and the player is just your average Joe, do you rely on player skill to form plans and come up with solutions to problems? Really, the character’s skill is important to take into account. The player should (according to game logic) be able to roll for that attribute and come up with a solution. Unfortunately that’s not very interesting, especially for the GM who probably worked hard to make a challenging puzzle only to have it solved by a dice roll.
Some have suggested doing away with intelligence or social attributes. The problem with that is they exist for a reason. In a game where a character has to speak a different language, the question is how well do they speak? Are they fluent enough to bluff they are a native speaker or are they stuttering out single words? Another example is in Sci-Fi games, how can a player use their skill (intelligence) to fix the stardrive since it doesn’t exist? How would a player know what to look for? Clearly the engineer character should know but also is intended to be challenged by the task so clearly character skill is needed. One more example, in the reverse, as a player I know how to blacksmith but in some games the art of blacksmithing is a jealously guarded secret that my character should not know.
Where I start to defend player skill but actually defend character skill
Does that mean I’m completely on the side of character skills determining a challenge? No, not entirely. Like I wrote before, relying on character skill alone is mechanical and can be boring as there is no depth to it. There’s nothing for the players to do but roll dice where they could be filling the shoes of their characters and trying to figure out the puzzle.
Of course that argument could be applied to combat, which is almost mainly determined by dice rolls. There is one exception to that, when it comes to strategy, it is generally the skill of the player that is important (again intelligence). Strategy works for combat because there are different weapons with different bonuses, there’s terrain to take into account at times, there is usually a choice in how to attack based on direction, surprise, brute force or speed. These are relatively easily understood but could a similar string of options be given to a social or intellectual challenge? No one that I know of has ever explored the subject in the kind of depth that combat has been developed to.
So for a social challenge, is there a way to surprise attack? Can a player sneak around and strike from behind (metaphorically)? What kind of weapons are there? Maybe the weapon “skeleton in the closet” or “dirty secret” would give bonuses. More simply, understanding a character’s motives should give a mechanical advantage (most people like money). There’s also the possibility of not limiting social conflict to the charisma and beauty stats, social challenges should include intelligence and prestige.
For intelligence challenges the opposite thought process needs to be used. People rarely think just to think (philosophers might, transcendental meditators do). They think to solve a problem which usually has a real world application, so intelligence is used in connection with Dexterity for repair jobs, it’s connected to social conflicts, it’s connected to intuition for puzzles, it really should also apply in combat. Weapons could be reference works or memory aids.
So it is possible to have a player line up a strategy for mental and social challenges that are resolved by dice rolls and still have a challenge associated with it. I think having this kind of robust system would make RPGs more varied and mental challenges more accessible to more players. I’m working on just such a system for Steampunkfitters, mainly because the system relies on out maneuvering instead of dice.
Let’s try defending player skill again
Does that mean a player’s skill should not be used? We humans are often reasonably good at parsing speech. Even if we don’t know exactly why, we usually do a good job of knowing if a story is believable, persuasive or not. This is probably the number one reason using player skill is so attractive. In a social or intellectual challenges it’s faster and simpler to act out the part of the character.
There is one problem with this premise. What if one player (who may be the GM) is not particularly good at evaluating another player’s ideas or social interactions because it isn’t their way of solving the problem. What if a GM does not want the players to solve a problem using social combat? Then anything the players do in this situation is likely going to fail. No GM wants to be this way but our mental biases can get the best of us.
I’m supposed to be defending player skill here so here goes. Some GMs that commented on the Stargazer post suggested that when a player acts out their character’s actions you want to reward them for it. I’d suggest doing this whether they did a particularly good job or not. If they do a great job, the GM might want to give them an even larger reward, possibly simply allowing the action to succeed without a skill check. Is that fair? If it were two PCs going at it and one had a knack for persuading and the other didn’t, I’d have to think twice about it. Still some have suggested giving in game rewards for doing things like drawing a picture of their character, bringing in props and even bringing food to the game. Things like that don’t normally occur to me, but I like the idea of encouraging players to make things more enjoyable. I think acting out the character’s social interactions falls along the same lines.
Some in the old school movement have argued that anything that can be done by the players at the table should be. If there is a clue the players should automatically get it because the game requires it. If there’s a secret door and a player says they want to look for one they should find it. I can see the logic of this concept. No one wants a game to grind to a halt because the dice weren’t co-operating.
There are some really brilliant solutions to this kind of problem that have been proposed (not by me). Things like allowing the PCs to go ahead but with a disadvantage. This requires a good deal of creativity on the part of the GM. This often takes the form of not looking at a skill test as a pass/fail test but can the player pass without a sacrifice.
The last two paragraphs, highlight how these story flow problems have solutions regardless of where you fall on the player vs character skill debate. It really is a matter of preference. Unfortunately a lot of games give little or no guidance on functional ways of handling these situations so GMs kludge together their own solutions.
The Verdict
I tend to rely on mechanics in games, they’re safe and predictable. Most GMs will defer to the book if the players are asking to follow a rule as written. I also understand that a GM may skip mechanics because they take time and mental effort to keep in mind.
I think that character skill should be the determining factor in a mental or social challenge but I think that player effort should also be rewarded predictably. Let’s face it, a player is controlling their character so the player’s desire and effort becomes the character’s. It’s often the case that a person succeeds because they want to with skill coming in to make the job easier. To that end, acting out a role should be rewarded mechanically with bonuses to the rolls. I think that NPCs should also get this bonus when the GM acts out a role too. This really encourages more acting at the table all around, especially if the GM is doing it because the players will see the GM as being at an advantage if they don’t act out their parts. If the GM doesn’t want to act out a part then the players that do should get the advantage. If everyone just wants this part of the game over with, then roll the dice and live with the result.
Feel free to disagree with me, even if it’s just because you think I’m ugly but let us know what you think in the comments.
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