Following up on the previous entry, I asked my players to do the following:
Give the following a thought:
- do you think this would have changed your PC's personality? If so, let's swap around disads to reflect that. I'd allow stat drops to accommodate changes, here.
- do you think your PC might have learned something? If so, let's talk skills and traits. Maybe you've developed High Pain Threshold (if you have the points), or upped Will, or something of that sort. Perhaps you've learned Psychology, or Interrogation (not that they questioned you), or something else of that sort.
And you can just say, nope, I take this in stride and keep on going. That's fine, too. It's your guy.
I don't normally give people a chance to change their characters, but they've suffered a big loss, here, and suffered a big event. It's a good excuse to make a big change.
At the moment, there haven't been any negative costs to their characters . . . but not all has been revealed. Got to save some stuff for game time!
In the meantime, Aldwyn's player will run Varmus. Varmus will eventually either become a recruitable NPC from the pool of NPC delvers, or Aldwyn's player can promote him up to 250 points and make him a full delver. He'd essentially just finish building his stats and advantages and spell pool out to reflect a starting Wizard instead of an experience Apprentice.
Showing posts with label negotiations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label negotiations. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2022
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Awesome Play Report Over at Dreams in the Lichhouse
I really enjoyed this play report over at Dreams in the Lichhouse.
Checking in on Chult - Fane of the Night Serpent
My PCs definitely know how to cut their losses and run. His did not, and chose to fight just a bit too long to escape.
But this also illustrates an important thing - you don't have to end a combat loss with a TPK. And PCs who make a fight either a TPK or a victory, with do-or-die tactics and characters who can't be captured until they're dead, take away an important way to keep the adventure going forward. That is, capture.
This could easily have been a TPK and a campaign ender, as it would have been tough to start back over with new PCs and finish the job of the existing PCs. Instead, the enemy captured them for nefarious purposes and found that they have some common goals. The PCs sure as heck aren't going to benefit as much as if they'd won (best case), or just come and negotiated to help (second best case). But third best case is better than a TPK, which was the other remaining option.
I wrote a whole article back for Pyramid 2.0 that dealt with this. I wish those were up online for linking. But in any case, this is a good example. Don't let the campaign end just because the PCs lose. And PCs, don't bet the farm on victory against all odds . . . but don't give up trying to improve your situation when you've lost. By all means don't pretend to be negotiating from strength you both know you don't have . . . but do offer up what you've got. And GMs, remember to negotiate as the NPCs, not as you. They may see an asset where you're just frustrated by your players (or gloating over their erroneous ways.)
This is basically a bad error on the part of the players turning into a whole new spin on the adventure, not an end of the adventure. Great stuff to read!
Checking in on Chult - Fane of the Night Serpent
My PCs definitely know how to cut their losses and run. His did not, and chose to fight just a bit too long to escape.
But this also illustrates an important thing - you don't have to end a combat loss with a TPK. And PCs who make a fight either a TPK or a victory, with do-or-die tactics and characters who can't be captured until they're dead, take away an important way to keep the adventure going forward. That is, capture.
This could easily have been a TPK and a campaign ender, as it would have been tough to start back over with new PCs and finish the job of the existing PCs. Instead, the enemy captured them for nefarious purposes and found that they have some common goals. The PCs sure as heck aren't going to benefit as much as if they'd won (best case), or just come and negotiated to help (second best case). But third best case is better than a TPK, which was the other remaining option.
I wrote a whole article back for Pyramid 2.0 that dealt with this. I wish those were up online for linking. But in any case, this is a good example. Don't let the campaign end just because the PCs lose. And PCs, don't bet the farm on victory against all odds . . . but don't give up trying to improve your situation when you've lost. By all means don't pretend to be negotiating from strength you both know you don't have . . . but do offer up what you've got. And GMs, remember to negotiate as the NPCs, not as you. They may see an asset where you're just frustrated by your players (or gloating over their erroneous ways.)
This is basically a bad error on the part of the players turning into a whole new spin on the adventure, not an end of the adventure. Great stuff to read!
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Turning Purists into Tomorrow Men
The Gamma Terra crew picked up some new recruits the old fashioned way - by recruiting NPCs.
We have about 16 new folks in the group - 11 mutated humans, 4 "pure strain" humans, and 1 scientist "pure strain" human.
All of them are ex-Purists. Some very, very recently ex-Purists, although clearly they'd made some kind of decision internally that it took just our offer to get them to switch.
But it's a big issue for us. We're now outnumbered almost 2:1 by new recruits of dubious upbringing. Heh.
Also, of different rank - many of them outrank us, two of them very badly (two Majors.) We already made it clear they can keep their rank titles but it's not coming with any command authority in our group. Surely within their group it will, which is its own issue. We need to avoid parallel command structures.
We need to figure out a way to integrate them into our group and into our goals.
I have a couple of ideas.
We Do Solemnly Swear . . .
We all have an oath on our character sheets. We're O.G. 20th Homeland, as the new recruits called us. Did they take the same oath?
I think they probably did not. They should take the one we took. We know it by heart, otherwise we wouldn't be bound by it now with no one to enforce it.
Time Off Together
They've been trapped for two year with just each other. We've got a medical base with reading materials of sorts, people who aren't them, proper facilities, and plenty of time to relax.
And safety. No one will shoot at them.
It's possible that hanging around with the crew might help us all get a little more friendly and familiar. Hillbilly's already done his part by befriending Lynne.
Team Building Field Trip!
It's trust fall time. We can take them out on a mission. Non-Purist related. Maybe visiting the Citadel at Greenbay would be touchy right now, but maybe going to the Proving Grounds wouldn't be Or going somewhere none of us have been - not Angel Hill, too much temptation to split off - and seeing what we can find. That big Pyramid to the west, maybe the wandering forest, the AFB? Something where we have to work together and get to know each other. Even just some maneuvers would help. And they know the world better than we do, so it's a good chance for them to feel like they're showing us their worth and bringing something to the table.
Code Names
We might have to consider giving them nicknames. No one calls Hillbilly Arnold. Maybe we need 15-16 more nicknames? That might help with the rank issues. If we call Major Cho "Major Cho" it implies that she's, say, a Major of some kind. If we call her "Notorious" or "Hardass" or something like that, she might feel like one of us.*
Plus it's easier than remembering their full names and old rank.
Something to think about . . .
* This isn't crazy. I know a guy named John, but no one calls him that. Not even him. His nickname is Mother****er. He introduces himself that way. It's a good part of why he's a guy everyone knows. His story is here, at the 43 minute mark of the podcast.
We have about 16 new folks in the group - 11 mutated humans, 4 "pure strain" humans, and 1 scientist "pure strain" human.
All of them are ex-Purists. Some very, very recently ex-Purists, although clearly they'd made some kind of decision internally that it took just our offer to get them to switch.
But it's a big issue for us. We're now outnumbered almost 2:1 by new recruits of dubious upbringing. Heh.
Also, of different rank - many of them outrank us, two of them very badly (two Majors.) We already made it clear they can keep their rank titles but it's not coming with any command authority in our group. Surely within their group it will, which is its own issue. We need to avoid parallel command structures.
We need to figure out a way to integrate them into our group and into our goals.
I have a couple of ideas.
We Do Solemnly Swear . . .
We all have an oath on our character sheets. We're O.G. 20th Homeland, as the new recruits called us. Did they take the same oath?
I think they probably did not. They should take the one we took. We know it by heart, otherwise we wouldn't be bound by it now with no one to enforce it.
Time Off Together
They've been trapped for two year with just each other. We've got a medical base with reading materials of sorts, people who aren't them, proper facilities, and plenty of time to relax.
And safety. No one will shoot at them.
It's possible that hanging around with the crew might help us all get a little more friendly and familiar. Hillbilly's already done his part by befriending Lynne.
Team Building Field Trip!
It's trust fall time. We can take them out on a mission. Non-Purist related. Maybe visiting the Citadel at Greenbay would be touchy right now, but maybe going to the Proving Grounds wouldn't be Or going somewhere none of us have been - not Angel Hill, too much temptation to split off - and seeing what we can find. That big Pyramid to the west, maybe the wandering forest, the AFB? Something where we have to work together and get to know each other. Even just some maneuvers would help. And they know the world better than we do, so it's a good chance for them to feel like they're showing us their worth and bringing something to the table.
Code Names
We might have to consider giving them nicknames. No one calls Hillbilly Arnold. Maybe we need 15-16 more nicknames? That might help with the rank issues. If we call Major Cho "Major Cho" it implies that she's, say, a Major of some kind. If we call her "Notorious" or "Hardass" or something like that, she might feel like one of us.*
Plus it's easier than remembering their full names and old rank.
Something to think about . . .
* This isn't crazy. I know a guy named John, but no one calls him that. Not even him. His nickname is Mother****er. He introduces himself that way. It's a good part of why he's a guy everyone knows. His story is here, at the 43 minute mark of the podcast.
Friday, January 12, 2018
My friend the black pudding will help!
Normally, being trapped in a small, freezing room with a black pudding is bad.
Black pudding saves butcher trapped in freezer
But this butcher was able to leverage destructive powers of the pudding to save himself. A door? No problem, those suckers do 3-24 damage in AD&D. This butcher must have rolled extraordinarily well on his Reaction Roll for it to get it to help.
Perhaps he'd taken some advice from Gary Gygax, who wrote a war story called How to Tame A Black Pudding (link to Grodog's resources) back in Dragon 289.
(A real black pudding)
Either way, it just goes to show you can't just paint all oozes out to be horrid, vile, unfeeling foes. Sometimes they can be horrid, vile, unfeeling friends!
Black pudding saves butcher trapped in freezer
But this butcher was able to leverage destructive powers of the pudding to save himself. A door? No problem, those suckers do 3-24 damage in AD&D. This butcher must have rolled extraordinarily well on his Reaction Roll for it to get it to help.
Perhaps he'd taken some advice from Gary Gygax, who wrote a war story called How to Tame A Black Pudding (link to Grodog's resources) back in Dragon 289.
(A real black pudding)
Either way, it just goes to show you can't just paint all oozes out to be horrid, vile, unfeeling foes. Sometimes they can be horrid, vile, unfeeling friends!
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
GM Mistakes Negotiating as Monsters
Courtney over at Hack & Slash linked to my post about player mistakes negotiating with monsters. That reminded me, I never did get around to GM Mistakes Negotiating as Monsters. So here is that post.
Negotiating as a player can be tricky, and it's not hard to take the wrong tack and end up failing.
As a GM, though, it can also be tough, especially if you aren't used to negotiating on behalf of NPCs. Here are some errors I've seen, and I've committed, over the years.
Taking it Personally.
In a word, don't. It's not a negotiation between you and the players. It's between your NPCs and the player's PCs. There isn't a win or lose, it's just you determining the results of their actions.
That's pretty basic GMing stuff - GMing 101, day one, right after, "You run the game, the rule book doesn't run the game." But sometimes you have to remind yourself. Unlike a combat, where dice are determining so much of success or failure between NPCs and PCs, negotiations involves roleplaying between the GM and the players. Especially when you're first starting out, it can feel competitive since it's being resolved with a strong element of out-talking each other.
You can get this subtly, too, where you feel annoyed that the players tricked your clever NPC or thought they'd fall for some crazy proposal.
In really old-school games, there aren't any mechanics (or only reaction roll mechanics, like the one in OD&D) for determining how well the PCs negotiate. That makes sense given the sheer amount of games of Diplomacy the early players played (at least according to Jon Peterson) - negotiating by actually doing so fit their skillset and mode of play. In games with mechanics to resolve negotiations, like GURPS, it's a little easier to disassociated yourself from the sheer obnoxiousness of PC demands - if you stack up a -10 to their roll because they demand both of their partner's legs and then demand he dance and then roll a 3, well, that's a story to tell whenever the game comes up reminiscing. It's like when someone rolls a series of crits and takes out the big bad guy with a lucky shot - story time. Plus you all get to be surprised, which is always a bonus.
Like I said, GMing 101, but it's worth starting out with this one. It's not you and your friend, it's a monster and a PC negotiating. Use whatever mechanisms and distancing you need to just be able to sit back and let it happen.
Not knowing the NPC's interests.
Like I said in a post on the subject, factions have interests.
If you don't know, you can't really effectively negotiate.
Omniscient NPCs.
Basically, negotiating as if they know everything. Unless monsters really do have access to unlimited knowledge, it's bad form to negotiate as if they do. Some might actually have a lot of information - and either conceal this to their advantage or reveal it to their advantage. Or to their disadvantage, for either case.
But it's tempting (and probably was my standard when I started GMing as a kid) to have the monsters know everything and recognize everything. Don't. It discourages negotiating at all (the PCs are always at a knowledge disadvantage) and shows the PCs that even if they try they're playing on a slanted playing field.
Know-Nothing NPCs.
Basically, negotiating as if the NPCs know nothing. This may hold true for some, but not all of them. Just like playing them all too smart or too knowledgeable is bad, so is treating them all like they existed in a vacuum until the players showed up.
Omniscient/Know-Nothing Resolution - One way you can resolve this is with an IQ, INT, Wisdom, etc. check for the monsters. You can quickly determine if they understand what's being negotiated, recognize the long and short term consequences on decisions, know the party's reputation, etc. You can basically let the dice take the decision out of your hands and avoid needing to track who knows what about whom.
Also, you know the PCs because you're referring their actions. But how do they appear? Are they grubby and suspicious looking and drenched in blood? Do they wear the signs of their religious affiliations openly (great in some situations, bad in others)? Do they have a reputation, and does this NPC know of it? Use that to determine what NPCs know or don't know. Perception checks are a good way to see what they can see, and IQ and IQ-based skill rolls (or Int and Wis in D&D games) to see what they understand.
Not initiating.
Really simple - if you never have monsters initiate negotiations, the players learn that it's only their side that uses negotiations. They determine if it's in play or not. By using it as the GM, you tell them two things: negotiating is a valid tactic, and negotiating is an expected part of the game.
Over-using Pre-determined Results.
It's okay to have some negotiations doomed to failure. It's okay that sometimes monsters negotiate in bad faith, aiming just to buy some time. Especially moderately clever evil ones, who show just how evil they are by doing so. But don't over do it. Too much "fixed" results in negotiates tells the players they have to guess which monsters they can negotiate with, not assume that basically they can negotiate with most.
This probably rings hollow coming from a guy who has filled two monster books half-way up with monsters that say, "Will not negotiate," "Can't usefully negotiate," and/or "too stupid to negotiate." But those critters should be the labeled exceptions, not the norm. They should be flagged as, "Hey, special feature - these guys don't negotiate, unlike everything else without this label."
Disclaimer: I don't do all of those. I have done all of those in the past. I probably do some of them sometimes, even without knowing it. I should do more of them, and I've initiated some automatic reaction rolls to keep myself on track. You probably don't do all of these - but reading them can't hurt, and articulating them sure helped me clean up my thoughts on the subject. Enjoy!
Negotiating as a player can be tricky, and it's not hard to take the wrong tack and end up failing.
As a GM, though, it can also be tough, especially if you aren't used to negotiating on behalf of NPCs. Here are some errors I've seen, and I've committed, over the years.
Taking it Personally.
In a word, don't. It's not a negotiation between you and the players. It's between your NPCs and the player's PCs. There isn't a win or lose, it's just you determining the results of their actions.
That's pretty basic GMing stuff - GMing 101, day one, right after, "You run the game, the rule book doesn't run the game." But sometimes you have to remind yourself. Unlike a combat, where dice are determining so much of success or failure between NPCs and PCs, negotiations involves roleplaying between the GM and the players. Especially when you're first starting out, it can feel competitive since it's being resolved with a strong element of out-talking each other.
You can get this subtly, too, where you feel annoyed that the players tricked your clever NPC or thought they'd fall for some crazy proposal.
In really old-school games, there aren't any mechanics (or only reaction roll mechanics, like the one in OD&D) for determining how well the PCs negotiate. That makes sense given the sheer amount of games of Diplomacy the early players played (at least according to Jon Peterson) - negotiating by actually doing so fit their skillset and mode of play. In games with mechanics to resolve negotiations, like GURPS, it's a little easier to disassociated yourself from the sheer obnoxiousness of PC demands - if you stack up a -10 to their roll because they demand both of their partner's legs and then demand he dance and then roll a 3, well, that's a story to tell whenever the game comes up reminiscing. It's like when someone rolls a series of crits and takes out the big bad guy with a lucky shot - story time. Plus you all get to be surprised, which is always a bonus.
Like I said, GMing 101, but it's worth starting out with this one. It's not you and your friend, it's a monster and a PC negotiating. Use whatever mechanisms and distancing you need to just be able to sit back and let it happen.
Not knowing the NPC's interests.
Like I said in a post on the subject, factions have interests.
If you don't know, you can't really effectively negotiate.
Omniscient NPCs.
Basically, negotiating as if they know everything. Unless monsters really do have access to unlimited knowledge, it's bad form to negotiate as if they do. Some might actually have a lot of information - and either conceal this to their advantage or reveal it to their advantage. Or to their disadvantage, for either case.
But it's tempting (and probably was my standard when I started GMing as a kid) to have the monsters know everything and recognize everything. Don't. It discourages negotiating at all (the PCs are always at a knowledge disadvantage) and shows the PCs that even if they try they're playing on a slanted playing field.
Know-Nothing NPCs.
Basically, negotiating as if the NPCs know nothing. This may hold true for some, but not all of them. Just like playing them all too smart or too knowledgeable is bad, so is treating them all like they existed in a vacuum until the players showed up.
Omniscient/Know-Nothing Resolution - One way you can resolve this is with an IQ, INT, Wisdom, etc. check for the monsters. You can quickly determine if they understand what's being negotiated, recognize the long and short term consequences on decisions, know the party's reputation, etc. You can basically let the dice take the decision out of your hands and avoid needing to track who knows what about whom.
Also, you know the PCs because you're referring their actions. But how do they appear? Are they grubby and suspicious looking and drenched in blood? Do they wear the signs of their religious affiliations openly (great in some situations, bad in others)? Do they have a reputation, and does this NPC know of it? Use that to determine what NPCs know or don't know. Perception checks are a good way to see what they can see, and IQ and IQ-based skill rolls (or Int and Wis in D&D games) to see what they understand.
Not initiating.
Really simple - if you never have monsters initiate negotiations, the players learn that it's only their side that uses negotiations. They determine if it's in play or not. By using it as the GM, you tell them two things: negotiating is a valid tactic, and negotiating is an expected part of the game.
Over-using Pre-determined Results.
It's okay to have some negotiations doomed to failure. It's okay that sometimes monsters negotiate in bad faith, aiming just to buy some time. Especially moderately clever evil ones, who show just how evil they are by doing so. But don't over do it. Too much "fixed" results in negotiates tells the players they have to guess which monsters they can negotiate with, not assume that basically they can negotiate with most.
This probably rings hollow coming from a guy who has filled two monster books half-way up with monsters that say, "Will not negotiate," "Can't usefully negotiate," and/or "too stupid to negotiate." But those critters should be the labeled exceptions, not the norm. They should be flagged as, "Hey, special feature - these guys don't negotiate, unlike everything else without this label."
Disclaimer: I don't do all of those. I have done all of those in the past. I probably do some of them sometimes, even without knowing it. I should do more of them, and I've initiated some automatic reaction rolls to keep myself on track. You probably don't do all of these - but reading them can't hurt, and articulating them sure helped me clean up my thoughts on the subject. Enjoy!
Monday, April 11, 2016
Negotiating with Monsters in DF rulings
Here are some questions I think will come up regarding negotiating with monsters.
Can't my PC use Intimidation to bolster Diplomacy?
Sure. Complementary Skills work normally. However, it's not just a flat roll against Intimidation. The penalties that apply to an Intimidation roll will affect this normally. If you still succeed, you get a +1. This does inevitably color negotiations to a degree - you might get the "my kind of scum" reaction but you might also inspire resentment.
Do we get a bonus to Diplomacy if we've killed a bunch of guys to make them respect us?
First, see Intimidation, above.
Next, you might get an unwilling negotiating partner to the table this way, but it will make negotiations tougher in most cases. Callous enemies might not care that you killed their friends, but if you whacked the dragon's mate and then try to negotiate on the "now you get twice as much treasure in this deal!" you're going to be in trouble.
Diplomacy isn't about relative power, ultimately, it's about deal making. A more powerful party might not need to offer as much, but that's resolved by roleplaying not by giving a bonus or penalty to Diplomacy.
How about bribes?
The better the deal you offer, the higher the bonus to your Diplomacy skill roll. Or it might obviate the need for a roll at all. A direct bribe is effectively a better deal offer and will get to the roll faster and may get a bonus. A poor deal that you insist on might not get to a roll, or it might be a roll with a penalty (hey, maybe they are desperate or you are persuasive.)
Hopefully that'll head off some at-the-table discussion so we can get right to the deal making and the die rolling.
Can't my PC use Intimidation to bolster Diplomacy?
Sure. Complementary Skills work normally. However, it's not just a flat roll against Intimidation. The penalties that apply to an Intimidation roll will affect this normally. If you still succeed, you get a +1. This does inevitably color negotiations to a degree - you might get the "my kind of scum" reaction but you might also inspire resentment.
Do we get a bonus to Diplomacy if we've killed a bunch of guys to make them respect us?
First, see Intimidation, above.
Next, you might get an unwilling negotiating partner to the table this way, but it will make negotiations tougher in most cases. Callous enemies might not care that you killed their friends, but if you whacked the dragon's mate and then try to negotiate on the "now you get twice as much treasure in this deal!" you're going to be in trouble.
Diplomacy isn't about relative power, ultimately, it's about deal making. A more powerful party might not need to offer as much, but that's resolved by roleplaying not by giving a bonus or penalty to Diplomacy.
How about bribes?
The better the deal you offer, the higher the bonus to your Diplomacy skill roll. Or it might obviate the need for a roll at all. A direct bribe is effectively a better deal offer and will get to the roll faster and may get a bonus. A poor deal that you insist on might not get to a roll, or it might be a roll with a penalty (hey, maybe they are desperate or you are persuasive.)
Hopefully that'll head off some at-the-table discussion so we can get right to the deal making and the die rolling.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Negotiating with Monsters in DF
A month or so back I wrote about some common PC errors when when negotiating with monsters.
This is a look at how you do it in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, specifically negotiations with intelligent monsters.
My primary source for this is Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons. GURPS also has Social Engineering, but that's a pretty heavy expansion for a game that's myopically focused on getting loot from dungeons. DF doesn't even reference much of Martial Arts, and combat will outweigh negotiations in any standard DF game run as-written. This post assumes you're familiar with negotiations as written on page 10 of DF2.
The Players
First and foremost, negotiating calls for good player skills. You need to be able to understand what's at stake for you and the other side. You need to know the value of what you're trading off in a deal. You need to have some ability to create a reasonable framework for negotiating and settling.
For the most part it ultimately comes down to a skill roll - a silver-tongued player running a character with no Diplomacy skill, a pile of reaction roll penalties, and a Reputation (-2, Lying backstabbing nogoodnik) can't talk his way out of his poor choice of point spending. Even a tongue-tied player can get some placed with a well-crafted Bard. But you can't even get to the roll without role-playing.
Knowing your enemy helps. What do they want?
Nothing torpedoes negotiations like a fundamental misunderstanding of what your opponent wants or what they find valuable. You can ask, but it's generally better to have an idea walking in the door, or you've skipped right to "negotiating from a position of weakness."
Tip: Think it through, but don't overthink it. It's easy to go from "fear of missing out" or "offer you can't refuse" to "offer you don't understand" and "TL;DR."
You also need to know what your potential negotiating partner is like. Beyond detecting trickery, you want to know how they regard deals. You don't want to spend mere seconds agreeing to vague terms when negotiating with a high-IQ foe with Law and a penchant for "technically within the terms of the agreement." O conversely spend hours hammering out precise wording with a low-IQ foe who isn't going to really get what you meant by "shall not directly aid and abet those we may consider foes at this time" and might just think something different than you anyway.
The Skills
Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, and Intimidation are the main character skills you'll find useful in negotiations.
To sum up what those skills do in a sentence: Diplomacy is the skill of negotiating, Fast-Talk the skill of trickery, and Intimidation the skill of coercion. Diplomacy gets the other side to agree - they might not hold to the deal, but this gets a deal made. Fast-Talk gets the other side to believe some trickery or lies long enough to let you act - usually to get past without a fight (this time) or gain surprise in some fashion. Intimidation gets fear-based cooperation, rather than agreement. Fans of misapplying Machiavelli love to rely on this - better to be feared than loved, eh? But fear of you has a way of weakening as you weaken, and ideally, you want the monsters a lot of afraid and yet very fond of you all the same.
In short, use Fast-Talk for temporary trickery, Intimidation to inspire fear or scare foes or get a combatant to back off, and Diplomacy to get some real lasting agreement. You can use these to help each other, of course - using Fast-Talk to get someone to listen, or Intimidation to get you foes to back off so you can initiate real talks, for example. You can try to use them as Complementary Skills, of course, but they can poison the well with failure. There is nothing wrong with being scary, but it's more useful for short-term effects than long-term ones.
You don't want to be too low skill, either, as there is a default -3 for cross-cultural encounters with Diplomacy. On the upside, though, don't forget that success seals the deal, but failure just means you need to make some more concessions. Only critical failure on Diplomacy causes a true breakdown in negotiations!
Don't fall into the 1-point expert trap ("I'm a negotiator, I have 1 point in a social skill") but equally don't get discouraged. You can always try talking. And a good enough deal might just bypass the roll - the GM might just rule the monsters want that deal and just take it, no matter how poorly you get it across. But if it comes to a roll, realize that like combat skills, social skills work better if you're actually good them.
The Abilities
You need some way to talk - a language in common. The Gift of Tongues spell is a lifesaver, here. Broken language gives a -3, and in my games at least severely limits your ability to impart nuance. (No, "We tell him to do A, or we'll do B, and if C happens we want D instead!" with Broken. You're still at the "This is a pen" level of Goblinese for 1 point.) Accented is only a -1, because you're just missing nuance and annoying each other with poor grammar and word choices. Worse comes to worse, you can try Gesture, but your Diplomacy skill is capped by it!
Besides that, consider Social Chameleon and/or Cultural Adaptability on your Bard. If you don't have a bard, Persuasion spells are helpful to make up for your likely lack of Charisma . . . but it's a resisted spell so it's not foolproof. Serendipity is a potentially good way to find you have something in common, or just happen to have the right kind of loot the monsters want, or something else to grease the gears of friendly dealmaking. Luck might be needed to re-roll your skill rolls!
The Combination
None of the pieces above really functions in a vacuum. You need the basic abilities to communicate. You need the skills to get a good result. And you need the player skill to offer a deal worth taking to the monsters (and worth paying, as the PCs!) Of course, it's not always going to work - but armed with some of the hints above, it's more likely to work.
This is a look at how you do it in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, specifically negotiations with intelligent monsters.
My primary source for this is Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons. GURPS also has Social Engineering, but that's a pretty heavy expansion for a game that's myopically focused on getting loot from dungeons. DF doesn't even reference much of Martial Arts, and combat will outweigh negotiations in any standard DF game run as-written. This post assumes you're familiar with negotiations as written on page 10 of DF2.
The Players
First and foremost, negotiating calls for good player skills. You need to be able to understand what's at stake for you and the other side. You need to know the value of what you're trading off in a deal. You need to have some ability to create a reasonable framework for negotiating and settling.
For the most part it ultimately comes down to a skill roll - a silver-tongued player running a character with no Diplomacy skill, a pile of reaction roll penalties, and a Reputation (-2, Lying backstabbing nogoodnik) can't talk his way out of his poor choice of point spending. Even a tongue-tied player can get some placed with a well-crafted Bard. But you can't even get to the roll without role-playing.
Knowing your enemy helps. What do they want?
Nothing torpedoes negotiations like a fundamental misunderstanding of what your opponent wants or what they find valuable. You can ask, but it's generally better to have an idea walking in the door, or you've skipped right to "negotiating from a position of weakness."
Tip: Think it through, but don't overthink it. It's easy to go from "fear of missing out" or "offer you can't refuse" to "offer you don't understand" and "TL;DR."
You also need to know what your potential negotiating partner is like. Beyond detecting trickery, you want to know how they regard deals. You don't want to spend mere seconds agreeing to vague terms when negotiating with a high-IQ foe with Law and a penchant for "technically within the terms of the agreement." O conversely spend hours hammering out precise wording with a low-IQ foe who isn't going to really get what you meant by "shall not directly aid and abet those we may consider foes at this time" and might just think something different than you anyway.
The Skills
Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, and Intimidation are the main character skills you'll find useful in negotiations.
To sum up what those skills do in a sentence: Diplomacy is the skill of negotiating, Fast-Talk the skill of trickery, and Intimidation the skill of coercion. Diplomacy gets the other side to agree - they might not hold to the deal, but this gets a deal made. Fast-Talk gets the other side to believe some trickery or lies long enough to let you act - usually to get past without a fight (this time) or gain surprise in some fashion. Intimidation gets fear-based cooperation, rather than agreement. Fans of misapplying Machiavelli love to rely on this - better to be feared than loved, eh? But fear of you has a way of weakening as you weaken, and ideally, you want the monsters a lot of afraid and yet very fond of you all the same.
In short, use Fast-Talk for temporary trickery, Intimidation to inspire fear or scare foes or get a combatant to back off, and Diplomacy to get some real lasting agreement. You can use these to help each other, of course - using Fast-Talk to get someone to listen, or Intimidation to get you foes to back off so you can initiate real talks, for example. You can try to use them as Complementary Skills, of course, but they can poison the well with failure. There is nothing wrong with being scary, but it's more useful for short-term effects than long-term ones.
You don't want to be too low skill, either, as there is a default -3 for cross-cultural encounters with Diplomacy. On the upside, though, don't forget that success seals the deal, but failure just means you need to make some more concessions. Only critical failure on Diplomacy causes a true breakdown in negotiations!
Don't fall into the 1-point expert trap ("I'm a negotiator, I have 1 point in a social skill") but equally don't get discouraged. You can always try talking. And a good enough deal might just bypass the roll - the GM might just rule the monsters want that deal and just take it, no matter how poorly you get it across. But if it comes to a roll, realize that like combat skills, social skills work better if you're actually good them.
The Abilities
You need some way to talk - a language in common. The Gift of Tongues spell is a lifesaver, here. Broken language gives a -3, and in my games at least severely limits your ability to impart nuance. (No, "We tell him to do A, or we'll do B, and if C happens we want D instead!" with Broken. You're still at the "This is a pen" level of Goblinese for 1 point.) Accented is only a -1, because you're just missing nuance and annoying each other with poor grammar and word choices. Worse comes to worse, you can try Gesture, but your Diplomacy skill is capped by it!
Besides that, consider Social Chameleon and/or Cultural Adaptability on your Bard. If you don't have a bard, Persuasion spells are helpful to make up for your likely lack of Charisma . . . but it's a resisted spell so it's not foolproof. Serendipity is a potentially good way to find you have something in common, or just happen to have the right kind of loot the monsters want, or something else to grease the gears of friendly dealmaking. Luck might be needed to re-roll your skill rolls!
The Combination
None of the pieces above really functions in a vacuum. You need the basic abilities to communicate. You need the skills to get a good result. And you need the player skill to offer a deal worth taking to the monsters (and worth paying, as the PCs!) Of course, it's not always going to work - but armed with some of the hints above, it's more likely to work.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Negotiating with Monsters: Common PC Errors
I've been thinking about how players negotiate with monsters. This post is about the errors players make - I'll get something up about GM errors with negotiations in the future.
Here are common approach errors I see when negotiations with monsters come up.
What is Negotiation?
Let's get this started with a definition. Negotiation for purposes of this post is when you're talking, trading, intimidating, and/or otherwise using non-force approaches to accomplish your goal. It's not a euphemism for killing everything or for Charm spells.
Not Negotiating
Quite simply, some PCs don't negotiate. Everything is a fight to the death. They win or they lose, win the field or flee. They might sneak and steal, instead, or go around a foe. But they don't really talk to them.
The error here is that you're leaving a lot of potential benefit on the table.
Negotiation is, ultimately, a trade. You're offering to give something for something. Combat is equally a trade - you're risking death, dismemberment, loss of resources, etc. and trading off time, consumables (ammunition, magic, potions, etc.) for whatever loot you can get, and the benefits of defeating those foes.
If you look at negotiations as "we give up stuff to get stuff" and combat as "we get stuff basically for free" then you're never going to see negotiations as an equally valid choice. It's a sub-optimal choice, but only because you're not seeing risk and loss as costs. Instead, see it as using means other than combat and total destruction of your foe to get things done.
There is also the meta-reality of game time. If combat is large, time consuming, or complex, it takes a lot of time. Negotiation is likely to take less time - so negotiating is potentially saving the players time to do other fighting, other negotiations, and get other things done.
Negotiating from Imagined Strength.
One more problem is the "excessive demands" approach. Many times I've seen PCs negotiate with demands that are basically this:
- unconditional surrender.
- some variation of "give us everything and maybe we'll spare you"
It's a demand pattern that works if the opposition's situation is totally and plainly hopeless, but surrender or bribing the PCs is a possible way to survive.
The problem is that it's often the basic negotiating strategy. The basis of the negotiation is that the NPCs have to accept that they are automatically defeated, with no chance of causing real losses to the PCs and no chance of escape or survival otherwise.
I call this "imagined strength" because it's not likely you're negotiating from a position of utter and complete dominance. You might be, but if not, it's going to fail. And if the cost you want to impose is higher than your foe is willing to pay without convincing (say, Intimidation rolls or combat), or higher than you could have gotten without winning the fight in the first place, it's likely to backfire. It can poison the well for future negotiations, too.
Negotiating from Weakness
PCs will often wait until things are bad to negotiate.
If you're fighting and losing, or the NPCs have reinforcements coming, or you've cornered yourselves and it's clear it's a tough fight but you'll only win or die . . . the NPCs have reason to ask for higher compensation.
Better to negotiate while you still have something to trade.
Sometimes you have to negotiate from weakness - you realize you can plead and bribe your way out of disaster and merely get away with loss. This is often when a secondary error comes in - unwillingness to pay up.
Sometimes this is a logical fallacy - if I pay them off, they'll ask for stuff I can't give up, so I won't consider paying them off. Better to die with my stuff than to surrender it all.
Of course, you can attempt to negotiate to keep things you can't part with. "I'll fork over my cash, and some other things, but I need to keep my sword or we'll keep fighting."
But if you have to negotiate from a position of weakness, realize that you still have room to make offers . . . and that "fight to the death" is probably worse than "make some painful concessions."
The demands only go up.
"Give us 100 and we'll let you go."
"How about 50?"
"120!"
Okay, that's fun to do.
It's a bad faith negotiation, really, and ties into the "imagined strength" issue. You've basically said you aren't negotiating, you are demanding, and the demands only go up. If you're dealing with genuinely weak foes, they might have to accede to this.
If you ask for 100 and they don't have 100 and offer 50 (let's say they have 70), you literally can't get 100 right now. Or maybe ever. Raising the demand won't get you more. And if you raise the demand and then lower it, what was raising the demand about? If it's a negotiating strategy it's assuming the NPCs (and the GM) feeling intimidated by the growing demands and caving.
Raising the demands works if the situation changes. Offering surrender with terms that will become surrender without terms if you make us keep fighting? Sure, that makes sense. It's easy to understand - if I keep fighting, it'll only get worse for me. But as part of a basic negotiation, it says, don't talk or make counter-offers. Don't attempt to make it clear your position isn't as weak (or you don't perceive it to be) as the opposition thinks. Accept or reject, period. And that pushes you towards, "reject." That's especially true if the demand made is impossible or unlikely.
It's a variation of Vader Syndrome. "Pray I don't alter the deal any further." Also fun, but Vader got away with that because he was negotiating from overwhelming strength against someone cutting a deal to avoid total loss. You can't assume all negotiations have you as Vader and the Empire, and your foes as Lando and his dinky cloud city.
I can see a lot of arguments and "yeah, buts" coming back to this. But, as a player, imagine the tables were turned. Imagine kicking down a door and the orcs say, "Parley! Give us everything you carry and maybe we'll let some of you live!" You accept the offer, right? No, you fight to the death? Yeah. That's why the monsters do that too.
All Deals Are Final
Players sometimes assume a deal, once made, is final. Forever. Permanent.
In other words, if circumstances change, too bad, no re-negotiating.
A deal is a deal, but how long is it for? Was it specified? Was the specified term reasonable? Was it even understood? (Witness the gargoyles in my Felltower game agreeing to a deal "forever." Do gargoyles know what "forever" means to you? Were they just unreliable?)
Alter the deal in any way? You broke it. Want to re-negotiate? Too bad, now we're back to total war to the death.
In historical circumstances, tribute wasn't usually a one-time thing. It could be, but plenty of rulers had "tributaries" that pay them in gifts and money regularly. In the modern world costs go up and prices change. Terms of agreement come up. The lease details change a bit, for good or for ill.
If a deal works for a while, but it shows signs of breaking down (or just breaks), that doesn't automatically mean the other side is unfaithful and worthy of death. It might be the case that they are, but you just make it a little harder to negotiate if word gets around that people have one chance only to win concessions from you. It's as poisonous to deals as giving a pig in a poke (in other words, fake goods).
And it doesn't necessarily mean the deal was a bad one. If you make a deal with Group A to fight Group B, and later you break with Group A because the deal doesn't help you anymore, does that mean you never should have negotiated with Group A? Nope. Just that it's not a useful alliance anymore. Maybe it could be again, but you need to start back over talking.
A corollary to this is that only the NPCs have to hew to the deal. That is, if the PCs break the deal, tough noogies. The NPCs break it? Death to them all! That's also likely to get around.
Another is that "all NPCs are equally trustworthy." Or not. Not a good assumption.
Demanding One-Way Trust
The final error I see pretty often is the assumption that the PCs have a lot to lose, the NPCs don't. The PCs want hostages, concessions, proof of trustworthiness, safeguards, and so on. The NPCs get nothing in return. "You'll have to trust us." That works if you have a Reputation as being trustworthy. If you don't, well, if they agree you better deliver or over-deliver on your half.
If you legitimately can't trust the NPCs you're negotiating with, then you might want to reconsider negotiating at all. Just because negotiating is a useful tool doesn't mean you must use it. It's not more or less reasonable to avoid negotiating with the untrustworthy than to run away from those you can't beat in a fight.
The shorter version is this:
Recognize that negotiation is no more or less a tool in your toolbox than combat. Use it to get what you want. Accept that it's a tradeoff. Don't treat it as one-way demands from NPCs or a total either/or with combat. It's a tool - use it when appropriate and use it appropriately.
Here are common approach errors I see when negotiations with monsters come up.
What is Negotiation?
Let's get this started with a definition. Negotiation for purposes of this post is when you're talking, trading, intimidating, and/or otherwise using non-force approaches to accomplish your goal. It's not a euphemism for killing everything or for Charm spells.
Not Negotiating
Quite simply, some PCs don't negotiate. Everything is a fight to the death. They win or they lose, win the field or flee. They might sneak and steal, instead, or go around a foe. But they don't really talk to them.
The error here is that you're leaving a lot of potential benefit on the table.
Negotiation is, ultimately, a trade. You're offering to give something for something. Combat is equally a trade - you're risking death, dismemberment, loss of resources, etc. and trading off time, consumables (ammunition, magic, potions, etc.) for whatever loot you can get, and the benefits of defeating those foes.
If you look at negotiations as "we give up stuff to get stuff" and combat as "we get stuff basically for free" then you're never going to see negotiations as an equally valid choice. It's a sub-optimal choice, but only because you're not seeing risk and loss as costs. Instead, see it as using means other than combat and total destruction of your foe to get things done.
There is also the meta-reality of game time. If combat is large, time consuming, or complex, it takes a lot of time. Negotiation is likely to take less time - so negotiating is potentially saving the players time to do other fighting, other negotiations, and get other things done.
Negotiating from Imagined Strength.
One more problem is the "excessive demands" approach. Many times I've seen PCs negotiate with demands that are basically this:
- unconditional surrender.
- some variation of "give us everything and maybe we'll spare you"
It's a demand pattern that works if the opposition's situation is totally and plainly hopeless, but surrender or bribing the PCs is a possible way to survive.
The problem is that it's often the basic negotiating strategy. The basis of the negotiation is that the NPCs have to accept that they are automatically defeated, with no chance of causing real losses to the PCs and no chance of escape or survival otherwise.
I call this "imagined strength" because it's not likely you're negotiating from a position of utter and complete dominance. You might be, but if not, it's going to fail. And if the cost you want to impose is higher than your foe is willing to pay without convincing (say, Intimidation rolls or combat), or higher than you could have gotten without winning the fight in the first place, it's likely to backfire. It can poison the well for future negotiations, too.
Negotiating from Weakness
PCs will often wait until things are bad to negotiate.
If you're fighting and losing, or the NPCs have reinforcements coming, or you've cornered yourselves and it's clear it's a tough fight but you'll only win or die . . . the NPCs have reason to ask for higher compensation.
Better to negotiate while you still have something to trade.
Sometimes you have to negotiate from weakness - you realize you can plead and bribe your way out of disaster and merely get away with loss. This is often when a secondary error comes in - unwillingness to pay up.
Sometimes this is a logical fallacy - if I pay them off, they'll ask for stuff I can't give up, so I won't consider paying them off. Better to die with my stuff than to surrender it all.
Of course, you can attempt to negotiate to keep things you can't part with. "I'll fork over my cash, and some other things, but I need to keep my sword or we'll keep fighting."
But if you have to negotiate from a position of weakness, realize that you still have room to make offers . . . and that "fight to the death" is probably worse than "make some painful concessions."
The demands only go up.
"Give us 100 and we'll let you go."
"How about 50?"
"120!"
Okay, that's fun to do.
It's a bad faith negotiation, really, and ties into the "imagined strength" issue. You've basically said you aren't negotiating, you are demanding, and the demands only go up. If you're dealing with genuinely weak foes, they might have to accede to this.
If you ask for 100 and they don't have 100 and offer 50 (let's say they have 70), you literally can't get 100 right now. Or maybe ever. Raising the demand won't get you more. And if you raise the demand and then lower it, what was raising the demand about? If it's a negotiating strategy it's assuming the NPCs (and the GM) feeling intimidated by the growing demands and caving.
Raising the demands works if the situation changes. Offering surrender with terms that will become surrender without terms if you make us keep fighting? Sure, that makes sense. It's easy to understand - if I keep fighting, it'll only get worse for me. But as part of a basic negotiation, it says, don't talk or make counter-offers. Don't attempt to make it clear your position isn't as weak (or you don't perceive it to be) as the opposition thinks. Accept or reject, period. And that pushes you towards, "reject." That's especially true if the demand made is impossible or unlikely.
It's a variation of Vader Syndrome. "Pray I don't alter the deal any further." Also fun, but Vader got away with that because he was negotiating from overwhelming strength against someone cutting a deal to avoid total loss. You can't assume all negotiations have you as Vader and the Empire, and your foes as Lando and his dinky cloud city.
I can see a lot of arguments and "yeah, buts" coming back to this. But, as a player, imagine the tables were turned. Imagine kicking down a door and the orcs say, "Parley! Give us everything you carry and maybe we'll let some of you live!" You accept the offer, right? No, you fight to the death? Yeah. That's why the monsters do that too.
All Deals Are Final
Players sometimes assume a deal, once made, is final. Forever. Permanent.
In other words, if circumstances change, too bad, no re-negotiating.
A deal is a deal, but how long is it for? Was it specified? Was the specified term reasonable? Was it even understood? (Witness the gargoyles in my Felltower game agreeing to a deal "forever." Do gargoyles know what "forever" means to you? Were they just unreliable?)
Alter the deal in any way? You broke it. Want to re-negotiate? Too bad, now we're back to total war to the death.
In historical circumstances, tribute wasn't usually a one-time thing. It could be, but plenty of rulers had "tributaries" that pay them in gifts and money regularly. In the modern world costs go up and prices change. Terms of agreement come up. The lease details change a bit, for good or for ill.
If a deal works for a while, but it shows signs of breaking down (or just breaks), that doesn't automatically mean the other side is unfaithful and worthy of death. It might be the case that they are, but you just make it a little harder to negotiate if word gets around that people have one chance only to win concessions from you. It's as poisonous to deals as giving a pig in a poke (in other words, fake goods).
And it doesn't necessarily mean the deal was a bad one. If you make a deal with Group A to fight Group B, and later you break with Group A because the deal doesn't help you anymore, does that mean you never should have negotiated with Group A? Nope. Just that it's not a useful alliance anymore. Maybe it could be again, but you need to start back over talking.
A corollary to this is that only the NPCs have to hew to the deal. That is, if the PCs break the deal, tough noogies. The NPCs break it? Death to them all! That's also likely to get around.
Another is that "all NPCs are equally trustworthy." Or not. Not a good assumption.
Demanding One-Way Trust
The final error I see pretty often is the assumption that the PCs have a lot to lose, the NPCs don't. The PCs want hostages, concessions, proof of trustworthiness, safeguards, and so on. The NPCs get nothing in return. "You'll have to trust us." That works if you have a Reputation as being trustworthy. If you don't, well, if they agree you better deliver or over-deliver on your half.
If you legitimately can't trust the NPCs you're negotiating with, then you might want to reconsider negotiating at all. Just because negotiating is a useful tool doesn't mean you must use it. It's not more or less reasonable to avoid negotiating with the untrustworthy than to run away from those you can't beat in a fight.
The shorter version is this:
Recognize that negotiation is no more or less a tool in your toolbox than combat. Use it to get what you want. Accept that it's a tradeoff. Don't treat it as one-way demands from NPCs or a total either/or with combat. It's a tool - use it when appropriate and use it appropriately.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Idle thoughts on monster reaction rolls in GURPS DF
Back in the day when I played D&D and AD&D, we rolled for monster reactions exactly never. Well, maybe someone may have rolled one once, while reading the book or something. In play, never.
Which is odd, because in one of the books we used there was a really remarkable rule about reactions.
Yet looking at the Tom Moldvay Basic Set, it's a really critical roll. You should be rolling reactions, at least by a strict reading of the rules, for every encounter with monsters. Doesn't seem to matter which kinds - slimes, dragons, crab spiders, hobgoblins who don't know who Gary is, etc.
Using the chart from p. B24:
Monster Reactions
Dice Roll / Reaction
2 Immediate Attack
3-5 Hostile, Possible Attack
6-8 Uncertain, monster confused
9-11 No attack, monster leaves or considers offer
12 Enthusiastic friendship
It's a flexible table, since you also use it for determining intensity of pursuit, and to allow re-rolls if the PCs try to establish better relations (you can see an example of that on p. B28). Charisma 13+ gives you a +1 to the roll; Charisma 18 gives a +2. A +1 means nothing is going to just attack you immediately, and a +2 skews your results to where a 10-12 is Enthusiastic friendship and a 7+ is at least "No attack." Nice. Especially in a game where treasure provides so much of the XP, the ability to basically waive off monsters with some nice talk is pretty potent.
(It's also worth considering with wandering monsters - you should be table to talk or bribe or distract your way out of fights about half the time, if you assume 6-8 is going to just force another roll.)
Where is GURPS DF in this?
My idle thoughts are, what if I rolled reactions for monsters every encounter in GURPS? The table split isn't terribly different, ranging from "Disastrous" on a 0 or less to "Excellent" on a 19+. GURPS has more native modifiers to reactions, too, which probably makes sense.
The modifiers on p. B561 range from a +1 to +5 for PC strength, -1 to -5 for NPC strength, -2 for being on the NPC's turf, and -2 for no shared language. Plus the PC's reaction bonuses and penalties, as well - and the NPC's, too. If orcs have Intolerance (Elves) you'll get their -3 on that roll. Foes with Overconfidence might knock your +4 for strength down to +2, or ones with Bad Temper might react well but be ready for any "insult" to set them off.
Appropriate actions would help, too - weapons away and friends words would be a +1 to +2, or use of a social skill roll. Of course it might encourage an aggressive creature who isn't smart enough to recognize "weapons away" as s sign of friendliness not weakness. Weapons out might put an otherwise friendly person on guard - if only because GMs have NPCs react like PCs, who regard any weapons on display as prima facie proof the owner is a violent psychopath who can't be trusted and must be killed.
I'd probably zero out any relative strength bonuses and penalties for unintelligent creatures.
I haven't dug around in Social Engineering yet, but I will. There might be useful material in there. I'm just thinking out loud this morning and I haven't had time to really read up.
It might be fun to roll out any reaction like this, just purely mechanically, and let the results stands and see if you can explain them. That slime isn't hungry, thanks to that 18 you just rolled that drops to 14 for "no common language" and "intruders." It just wanders off somewhere else, and you'll never know exactly why. The orcs might be neutral (say, on an 11) except you look weak compared to them (for a -2) and you blundered into "their" section and try to pass off Broken Goblinese as a way to speak to Orcs, for a total of -6. That's a 5, which is "Bad" and "attack unless outnumbered." Begin combat!
None of this is really "new" for GURPS, it's just me thinking . . . what if I followed the rules-literal reading of D&D Basic Rules and applied that to critters encountered in GURPS? In a way, GURPS is natively a lot closer to OD&D, which has a similar table but it seems to be for NPCs being hired, or monsters being negotiated with and induced into service.
Either way . . .
I'll try this a bit more. I do tend to just decide how the monsters would react and do that. I roll a lot for allied NPCs, of course, because Loyalty is a thing. Which is fine, but it's kind of fun to roll for monsters. Of course, I suspect most of the PCs have stacked up massive reaction penalties because, hey, who cares if the monsters hate you . . .
Which is odd, because in one of the books we used there was a really remarkable rule about reactions.
Yet looking at the Tom Moldvay Basic Set, it's a really critical roll. You should be rolling reactions, at least by a strict reading of the rules, for every encounter with monsters. Doesn't seem to matter which kinds - slimes, dragons, crab spiders, hobgoblins who don't know who Gary is, etc.
Using the chart from p. B24:
Monster Reactions
Dice Roll / Reaction
2 Immediate Attack
3-5 Hostile, Possible Attack
6-8 Uncertain, monster confused
9-11 No attack, monster leaves or considers offer
12 Enthusiastic friendship
It's a flexible table, since you also use it for determining intensity of pursuit, and to allow re-rolls if the PCs try to establish better relations (you can see an example of that on p. B28). Charisma 13+ gives you a +1 to the roll; Charisma 18 gives a +2. A +1 means nothing is going to just attack you immediately, and a +2 skews your results to where a 10-12 is Enthusiastic friendship and a 7+ is at least "No attack." Nice. Especially in a game where treasure provides so much of the XP, the ability to basically waive off monsters with some nice talk is pretty potent.
(It's also worth considering with wandering monsters - you should be table to talk or bribe or distract your way out of fights about half the time, if you assume 6-8 is going to just force another roll.)
Where is GURPS DF in this?
My idle thoughts are, what if I rolled reactions for monsters every encounter in GURPS? The table split isn't terribly different, ranging from "Disastrous" on a 0 or less to "Excellent" on a 19+. GURPS has more native modifiers to reactions, too, which probably makes sense.
The modifiers on p. B561 range from a +1 to +5 for PC strength, -1 to -5 for NPC strength, -2 for being on the NPC's turf, and -2 for no shared language. Plus the PC's reaction bonuses and penalties, as well - and the NPC's, too. If orcs have Intolerance (Elves) you'll get their -3 on that roll. Foes with Overconfidence might knock your +4 for strength down to +2, or ones with Bad Temper might react well but be ready for any "insult" to set them off.
Appropriate actions would help, too - weapons away and friends words would be a +1 to +2, or use of a social skill roll. Of course it might encourage an aggressive creature who isn't smart enough to recognize "weapons away" as s sign of friendliness not weakness. Weapons out might put an otherwise friendly person on guard - if only because GMs have NPCs react like PCs, who regard any weapons on display as prima facie proof the owner is a violent psychopath who can't be trusted and must be killed.
I'd probably zero out any relative strength bonuses and penalties for unintelligent creatures.
I haven't dug around in Social Engineering yet, but I will. There might be useful material in there. I'm just thinking out loud this morning and I haven't had time to really read up.
It might be fun to roll out any reaction like this, just purely mechanically, and let the results stands and see if you can explain them. That slime isn't hungry, thanks to that 18 you just rolled that drops to 14 for "no common language" and "intruders." It just wanders off somewhere else, and you'll never know exactly why. The orcs might be neutral (say, on an 11) except you look weak compared to them (for a -2) and you blundered into "their" section and try to pass off Broken Goblinese as a way to speak to Orcs, for a total of -6. That's a 5, which is "Bad" and "attack unless outnumbered." Begin combat!
None of this is really "new" for GURPS, it's just me thinking . . . what if I followed the rules-literal reading of D&D Basic Rules and applied that to critters encountered in GURPS? In a way, GURPS is natively a lot closer to OD&D, which has a similar table but it seems to be for NPCs being hired, or monsters being negotiated with and induced into service.
Either way . . .
I'll try this a bit more. I do tend to just decide how the monsters would react and do that. I roll a lot for allied NPCs, of course, because Loyalty is a thing. Which is fine, but it's kind of fun to roll for monsters. Of course, I suspect most of the PCs have stacked up massive reaction penalties because, hey, who cares if the monsters hate you . . .
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Never trust a dungeon-dweller
Do your players even bother to try and talk to folks they meet in dungeons?
In my game the players have met a lot of people in dungeons. It started out well, but I think they've come to the conclusion that you need to just kill what you meet.
- they met two men-at-arms in the hobgoblin caves. They turned out okay (and Korric and Orrie might make a comeback, who knows)
- they rescued Raggi Ragnarsson the berserker from some gnolls.
So far, so good. But then, Felltower.
- They met the Choke brothers. Heheheh. Sorry, that's still funny. Five throttlers, who tried to kill them. They got one of the PCs.
- they met a crafty gnome, believed his lies, and they've been stumbling across his vicious traps ever since.
- they rescued a petrified hobgoblin, recruited him, and then beat the survivors of a hobgoblin tribe into working from them. They didn't last.
That's about it for meet-and-greet people in the dungeon. Not a lot, really. But couple that with the various creatures that try to kill them, they've started to think they need to just kill who they meet. They've made good on that, and killed at least two other monster-types that would have happily negotiated with them or made a deal with them without even making an attempt. When they do negotiate, they tend to work from a point of "you capitulate and we'll see if we're willing to give you anything after that. Otherwise you die." Not a real incentive to talk to the PCs, really.
They may have a point, though. Most people, most critters, and in the dungeon with bad intentions. Direct attack at least takes advantage of your constant wariness and positioning. You're ready to fight immediately, and trying to make a deal inevitably gives the other guys a chance to stab you in the back or re-start a fight on better terms. Starting from a totally lopsided negotiating platform might work, and if not, you wanted a fight anyway. It's a good assumption that violence will occur, and often both sides just skip right to the violence. Especially since I've made it clear that officially, what happens in the dungeon is flat-out legal. Fighting has a real cost in resources and potentially in lives (a bad roll in any fight can kill your guy), but getting jumped by "allies" has a potentially worse cost, and attacking everything puts it on a cost basis you are best prepared to pay. You're coming ready and able to inflict violence.
I'm sure they'll just attack the next guys to try to talk to them.
That tells me it's time to make sure there are a few more upright folks who'd honor their deals, just to make sure it's always a potential loss to fight everything you meet. If my ratio of backstabbers to frontstabbers to potential friends is off by too much, there really is no point to try and talk to anyone. There must be a cost to not talking.
And the players will be right: never trust a dungeon dweller.
In my game the players have met a lot of people in dungeons. It started out well, but I think they've come to the conclusion that you need to just kill what you meet.
- they met two men-at-arms in the hobgoblin caves. They turned out okay (and Korric and Orrie might make a comeback, who knows)
- they rescued Raggi Ragnarsson the berserker from some gnolls.
So far, so good. But then, Felltower.
- They met the Choke brothers. Heheheh. Sorry, that's still funny. Five throttlers, who tried to kill them. They got one of the PCs.
- they met a crafty gnome, believed his lies, and they've been stumbling across his vicious traps ever since.
- they rescued a petrified hobgoblin, recruited him, and then beat the survivors of a hobgoblin tribe into working from them. They didn't last.
That's about it for meet-and-greet people in the dungeon. Not a lot, really. But couple that with the various creatures that try to kill them, they've started to think they need to just kill who they meet. They've made good on that, and killed at least two other monster-types that would have happily negotiated with them or made a deal with them without even making an attempt. When they do negotiate, they tend to work from a point of "you capitulate and we'll see if we're willing to give you anything after that. Otherwise you die." Not a real incentive to talk to the PCs, really.
They may have a point, though. Most people, most critters, and in the dungeon with bad intentions. Direct attack at least takes advantage of your constant wariness and positioning. You're ready to fight immediately, and trying to make a deal inevitably gives the other guys a chance to stab you in the back or re-start a fight on better terms. Starting from a totally lopsided negotiating platform might work, and if not, you wanted a fight anyway. It's a good assumption that violence will occur, and often both sides just skip right to the violence. Especially since I've made it clear that officially, what happens in the dungeon is flat-out legal. Fighting has a real cost in resources and potentially in lives (a bad roll in any fight can kill your guy), but getting jumped by "allies" has a potentially worse cost, and attacking everything puts it on a cost basis you are best prepared to pay. You're coming ready and able to inflict violence.
I'm sure they'll just attack the next guys to try to talk to them.
That tells me it's time to make sure there are a few more upright folks who'd honor their deals, just to make sure it's always a potential loss to fight everything you meet. If my ratio of backstabbers to frontstabbers to potential friends is off by too much, there really is no point to try and talk to anyone. There must be a cost to not talking.
And the players will be right: never trust a dungeon dweller.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
PCs who won't run
Some players won't ever have their PCs run. Or surrender. Or negotiate from a position of weakness (read: "Take our money and spare us" instead of "Give us your money and we'll spare you.")
These players always go "all in" - essentially betting the whole campaign, or at least just their characters, on winning every fight.
They have reasons/rationalizations for this:
- our enemies will kill us if we surrender, so it's a fight to the death anyway.
- our stuff is so valuable that it can't be replaced, and if we lose it, it's as bad as starting over, so it's a fight to the death anyway.
- these enemies won't let us surrender, so its . . . (refrain)
- my character wouldn't surrender, (refrain).
- (in town) we'll be arrested and put in prison or sold into slavery, which will end the campaign, (refrain).
- and so on.
I find that some players also regard every fight, especially fights in town versus guardsmen, as a game of chicken with the GM - "He won't kill us in a fight with guards after spending so much time developing this city" is an example of that. To my mind, the solution is to kill them all off if they play chicken with me that way, and use the city with new PCs. They can view the heads of their old PCs on stakes as they come into town. It's winnowing out bad behavior.
If the PCs literally can't surrender (berserkers, say, or under some kind of magical compulsion or curse) you can be nice and spare them when it's not really their fault. But that's case by case, in my opinion. Maybe the downside of that very fine longsword with Puissance +3 and Penetrating Blade (5) is that you go Berserk occasionally and might fight to the death when surrender would have been a valid choice. You knew the breaks when you picked the sword up. Or maybe you chose Compulsive Behavior (Fighting) and Berserk and Bloodlust and Intolerance (all non-humans) and then you get into a bar fight in Dwarftown and get out of hand. Maybe your disads will kill your character.
But, as a GM you do need to make it clear that:
- you aren't going to bail them out if they play chicken with your game, or make characters who can't avoid fights/back out of bad ones, or make terrible choices. Combat is potentially lethal.
- you can flee. Not all encounters are beatable, and running away is acceptable. Some encounters can only be "beaten" by fleeing.
- you can negotiate. For Gygax's sake, talk to them.
- it's just stuff, you can get more stuff. But you start over at the bottom if you die and have to make a new character.
- you can (sometimes) safely surrender, especially if the law is involved.
About that last one, The Law. Zak S. has a great line in Vornheim about the law - basically that legal consequences have to make the game better. To quote him precisely, "the arrest process should lead to something unexpected and interesting rather than just meaning the game grinds to a halt" (Vornheim, pg 39) So one trick to town battles, in any case, is to let the players know that arrest is going somewhere interesting. Maybe they'll be tossed into the gladiator pits and get to fight. Maybe they'll be sent to recover the Soul Gem (see C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness for this exact plot). Maybe they'll be cursed to always tithe 50% of their cash until they pay off their debt and turned loose on the worst dungeon imaginable. All of which are fun, but the players must know that surrendering for crimes committed isn't death.
As a player you need to find out if fighting to the death is the only thing allowed in the game. Odds are, it isn't. Know when to run. Remember permanently dead characters don't advance, and it's better to lose your vorpal blade to a magistrate after surrendering to than to lose to his men after they kill you and burn your corpse to ashes. It's better to bribe the goblins than to die against them. It's not always do-or-die; you can lose a fight and keep playing. And running away isn't really losing, it's just not killing those monsters now. Come back and get them when the odds are unfair in your favor.
Short version: The GM needs to make it clear that running, surrendering, or negotiating are going to be valid options (although not all options are valid at all times). The GM also needs to make clear that these options will lead interesting places, not end the game. And finally, the GM needs to be willing to pull the trigger and kill off characters who don't take these options when they need to.
All in my experience. Maybe it's just my players who won't run . . . how about yours?
These players always go "all in" - essentially betting the whole campaign, or at least just their characters, on winning every fight.
They have reasons/rationalizations for this:
- our enemies will kill us if we surrender, so it's a fight to the death anyway.
- our stuff is so valuable that it can't be replaced, and if we lose it, it's as bad as starting over, so it's a fight to the death anyway.
- these enemies won't let us surrender, so its . . . (refrain)
- my character wouldn't surrender, (refrain).
- (in town) we'll be arrested and put in prison or sold into slavery, which will end the campaign, (refrain).
- and so on.
I find that some players also regard every fight, especially fights in town versus guardsmen, as a game of chicken with the GM - "He won't kill us in a fight with guards after spending so much time developing this city" is an example of that. To my mind, the solution is to kill them all off if they play chicken with me that way, and use the city with new PCs. They can view the heads of their old PCs on stakes as they come into town. It's winnowing out bad behavior.
If the PCs literally can't surrender (berserkers, say, or under some kind of magical compulsion or curse) you can be nice and spare them when it's not really their fault. But that's case by case, in my opinion. Maybe the downside of that very fine longsword with Puissance +3 and Penetrating Blade (5) is that you go Berserk occasionally and might fight to the death when surrender would have been a valid choice. You knew the breaks when you picked the sword up. Or maybe you chose Compulsive Behavior (Fighting) and Berserk and Bloodlust and Intolerance (all non-humans) and then you get into a bar fight in Dwarftown and get out of hand. Maybe your disads will kill your character.
But, as a GM you do need to make it clear that:
- you aren't going to bail them out if they play chicken with your game, or make characters who can't avoid fights/back out of bad ones, or make terrible choices. Combat is potentially lethal.
- you can flee. Not all encounters are beatable, and running away is acceptable. Some encounters can only be "beaten" by fleeing.
- you can negotiate. For Gygax's sake, talk to them.
- it's just stuff, you can get more stuff. But you start over at the bottom if you die and have to make a new character.
- you can (sometimes) safely surrender, especially if the law is involved.
About that last one, The Law. Zak S. has a great line in Vornheim about the law - basically that legal consequences have to make the game better. To quote him precisely, "the arrest process should lead to something unexpected and interesting rather than just meaning the game grinds to a halt" (Vornheim, pg 39) So one trick to town battles, in any case, is to let the players know that arrest is going somewhere interesting. Maybe they'll be tossed into the gladiator pits and get to fight. Maybe they'll be sent to recover the Soul Gem (see C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness for this exact plot). Maybe they'll be cursed to always tithe 50% of their cash until they pay off their debt and turned loose on the worst dungeon imaginable. All of which are fun, but the players must know that surrendering for crimes committed isn't death.
As a player you need to find out if fighting to the death is the only thing allowed in the game. Odds are, it isn't. Know when to run. Remember permanently dead characters don't advance, and it's better to lose your vorpal blade to a magistrate after surrendering to than to lose to his men after they kill you and burn your corpse to ashes. It's better to bribe the goblins than to die against them. It's not always do-or-die; you can lose a fight and keep playing. And running away isn't really losing, it's just not killing those monsters now. Come back and get them when the odds are unfair in your favor.
Short version: The GM needs to make it clear that running, surrendering, or negotiating are going to be valid options (although not all options are valid at all times). The GM also needs to make clear that these options will lead interesting places, not end the game. And finally, the GM needs to be willing to pull the trigger and kill off characters who don't take these options when they need to.
All in my experience. Maybe it's just my players who won't run . . . how about yours?
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
"It's okay, Gary sent us."
Way back in my early years of D&D, I started with the red box Basic Set.
Page B28 had an Example of Combat. Here's a small excerpt of the party encountering some hobgoblins. The party consists of four 1st and 2nd level characters . . . their fifth member having died in another example further on.
Silverleaf steps forward with both hands empty in a token of friendship, and says "Greetings, noble dwellers of deep caverns; can we help you?". Just in case, Silverleaf is thinking of the words he must chant to cast his spell [Sleep]
[snip some stuff about reaction rolls]
The largest of the hobgoblins shouts, in his language, "Go away! You're not allowed in this room!"
"It's okay, Gary sent us," Silverleaf answers.
"Huh?" the hobgoblin wittily responds.
The DM rolls a new reaction roll with no adjustments. The roll is a 3; the hobgoblins charge.
Picture me reading this as a nine year old. The editor of the book is a guy named Tom Moldvay, and even his name isn't on the cover. Who wrote this I wouldn't even have known.
So who the hell Gary was, I didn't know.
This only became funny years later when I connected the "Gary sent us" to Gary Gygax. By then I was playing AD&D and hobgoblins were Lawful Evil and no Good or Neutral player would never have negotiated with them.
A few things strike me about this example, years later. Things I'd like to see emulated in my Dungeon Fantasy play:
People negotiate with intelligent creatures. Not just bribes tossed to hungry monsters or a sword dropped to discourage a rust monster from eating your armor. They talk to monsters to try to avoid combat.
There isn't a big emphasis on slaying things for experience points. By the time I got to playing in a big way, and understood things like how to gain levels (we had a few guys at first level until it seemed like second level seemed appropriate) . . . we knew that you killed every freaking monsters you ran into and looted it. A properly "done" dungeon was empty of anything alive that was worth XP. The idea of exploring further and conserving resources by trying to deal with intelligent creatures who obviously won't be wealthy never even came up. The fact that this encounter netted the PCs nothing much beyond some information and a dead PC shows what could happen in combat.
Prisoners are taken and spared. I'm trying to remember last time that happened and it wasn't a group of lawful mercs that the PCs didn't want to kill to avoid pissing off other mercs. Everyone else got Black Company'd and had to dig their own graves. Heck, the example says outright that the Sister Rebecca "tells Morgan [Ironwolf] that a Lawful person keeps her word" - to evil humanoids!
So yeah, Gary sent us. He sure did, but as a kid I missed the joke and as an older GM we got away from "get some treasure out of this hole!" and moved to "kill everything we can to gain levels." Shame, that.
Page B28 had an Example of Combat. Here's a small excerpt of the party encountering some hobgoblins. The party consists of four 1st and 2nd level characters . . . their fifth member having died in another example further on.
Silverleaf steps forward with both hands empty in a token of friendship, and says "Greetings, noble dwellers of deep caverns; can we help you?". Just in case, Silverleaf is thinking of the words he must chant to cast his spell [Sleep]
[snip some stuff about reaction rolls]
The largest of the hobgoblins shouts, in his language, "Go away! You're not allowed in this room!"
"It's okay, Gary sent us," Silverleaf answers.
"Huh?" the hobgoblin wittily responds.
The DM rolls a new reaction roll with no adjustments. The roll is a 3; the hobgoblins charge.
Picture me reading this as a nine year old. The editor of the book is a guy named Tom Moldvay, and even his name isn't on the cover. Who wrote this I wouldn't even have known.
So who the hell Gary was, I didn't know.
This only became funny years later when I connected the "Gary sent us" to Gary Gygax. By then I was playing AD&D and hobgoblins were Lawful Evil and no Good or Neutral player would never have negotiated with them.
A few things strike me about this example, years later. Things I'd like to see emulated in my Dungeon Fantasy play:
People negotiate with intelligent creatures. Not just bribes tossed to hungry monsters or a sword dropped to discourage a rust monster from eating your armor. They talk to monsters to try to avoid combat.
There isn't a big emphasis on slaying things for experience points. By the time I got to playing in a big way, and understood things like how to gain levels (we had a few guys at first level until it seemed like second level seemed appropriate) . . . we knew that you killed every freaking monsters you ran into and looted it. A properly "done" dungeon was empty of anything alive that was worth XP. The idea of exploring further and conserving resources by trying to deal with intelligent creatures who obviously won't be wealthy never even came up. The fact that this encounter netted the PCs nothing much beyond some information and a dead PC shows what could happen in combat.
Prisoners are taken and spared. I'm trying to remember last time that happened and it wasn't a group of lawful mercs that the PCs didn't want to kill to avoid pissing off other mercs. Everyone else got Black Company'd and had to dig their own graves. Heck, the example says outright that the Sister Rebecca "tells Morgan [Ironwolf] that a Lawful person keeps her word" - to evil humanoids!
So yeah, Gary sent us. He sure did, but as a kid I missed the joke and as an older GM we got away from "get some treasure out of this hole!" and moved to "kill everything we can to gain levels." Shame, that.
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