I think we need to discuss how the social encounter system works. You guys really need to think more about how to work together to accomplish your objectives. Here's a link to the Subsystem in PF2e. You can engage or not in the system, but it will definitely be running in the background as your actions have consequences.
You are currently at: (-5) Disliked with the residents of this area, and within a few days (-1) Ignored by Varisians of the City in genera.
We should have gone over this before we ran the encounter, SB. If you feel like the players should coordinate before an encounter starts, you should tell us what's going to happen and then let us coordinate instead of having us run the encounter blind and then you explain after the fact.
I totally disagree with that statement. This is a Roleplaying game. You should all already know that the charismatic guy should do the talking. I rolled initiative which should let you know that something is happening here.
The problem is you guys constantly play your characters as individuals adventuring together instead of an adventuring group. I'm not going to tell you how to play your characters or what is going to happen in advance. You are intended to be playing a role!!!
I'm beginning to think we should just call this game. I really don't know what your characters expect of me. You want me to tell you "Hey wait stop a minute you need to play your characters at this time. I don't know how much more set-up I should do.
You all knew in advance this guy had information you needed, and you decided to try and intimidate it out of him... just like the group did with the priests in the earlier setting in Bards Gate. It didn't work because frankly most of the party isn't really good at intimidation, and this guy is higher level than you.
It's difficult to run social encounters in PbP in general, so I'm thinking maybe this system isn't ideal for PbP.
Sorry if I seem short... but your comments just blew my mind. I should tell you what's going to happen!!! Why have players.
Okay, on review I do feel like this thread has cost me more stress than it's gained me enjoyment, so sure, let's just call the game.
I think we miscommunicated.
To be honest, I was kind of confused.
Firstly, I thought we were in exploration mode attempting to gather info or coerce the NPC.
Then, I understood we were attempting to use the Influence Subsystem and questing or attempting our approaches. However, we seemed to have hit a barrier? Or did we never use Influence?
SB, I think that Rail is not expecting you to hand us everything over, but some more guidance is appreciated.
If you told us: look, we're using Influence and/or Reputation or another subsystem, my approach would have been totally different. However, from what I gathered was that we were in a conversation and each of us would be able to attempt an approach...
And, on that matter, a degree of metagaming is expected when using Victory Points. Heck, when PFS uses Infiltration, they straight up tell you what's available to roll.
This is not me pilling on you. I truly appreciate the effort and have enjoyed what little I could of the game. I understand there seem to be issues that date back to before I joined...
If you feel like calling it a game, I thank you for running.
Okay. I appreciate all the input... and am sorry I couldn't provide the game you all expected. My enjoyment of the game is just gone, mainly due to constantly having to defend my decisions. I'll end the campaign tomorrow... but for tonight I'll address the final post. The rules are clear here and I obviously didn't communicate them too well... however at some time the players have to take responsibility for comprehending some of the rules as well.
1. We were in exploration mode until Zograthy was found. (Which was communicated). Neither coerce nor gather information are Exploration activities.
2. When Zograthy was found we went into ENCOUNTER Mode. Not all encounter modes are combat Here is a passage from the GM Core (PP31)
I stated this clearly and rolled initiative to go into Social Encounter mode. At no time did we address or enter the "Influence Mode".
It is said more guidance is needed but I told you guys who to talk to, told you where to find the clues. Told you how the NPC was motivated, had you roll for initiative in the Social Encounter... I'm not sure what else I can do. If you have questions, then ask them. I'm not responsible to choose the activities the PC's attempt to take. You at some time have to play the role of your character and how it chooses to interact in the world.
If you choose to use the Reputation rules you can, but it can be invisible to the PC's I stated what was happening so you could all see that your actions have consequences. If you want to try and change your reputation, I was letting you know what your current status was. It doesn't have to affect how you play the game but does help me keep track of the party's status with social groups in the game. If you as a player don't really care what a particular group thinks of you that's fine but understand it does have an effect on how you are received... just as it does in our real lives. We are in no way using "Victory Points".
And it really is kind of pilling on as your group didn't play the social encounter ideally and are not taking responsibility for your decisions. I'm not saying they're "Bad" Decisions, but they are ones that you have to live with and perhaps learn lessons on how to approach them differently going forward if you wish.
Again, I'm not angry with anyone just very frustrated that I was unable to communicate the PF2e game system as I run it. I hope to game with any of you going forward... from the other side of the screen. It's pretty clear that unless I have a group that fully buys in with what I'm trying to accomplish I'm not a very good GM.
I appreciate the effort you made.
As a long-time GM (nearly fifty years!), I understand the frustration from a group going in a direction that appears to be wrong. I still make mistakes, but I try to learn and adapt.
Because of time constraints, I really miss face-to-face gaming. There, a social interaction encounter can really shine, and we can make adjustments on the fly. Play-by-post can allow deeper interactions, but, can also completely lose the continuity of what is happening because of the time between 'actions'.
I totally disagree with that statement. This is a Roleplaying game. You should all already know that the charismatic guy should do the talking. I rolled initiative which should let you know that something is happening here.
The problem is you guys constantly play your characters as individuals adventuring together instead of an adventuring group. I'm not going to tell you how to play your characters or what is going to happen in advance. You are intended to be playing a role!!!
I'm beginning to think we should just call this game. I really don't know what your characters expect of me. You want me to tell you "Hey wait stop a minute you need to play your characters at this time. I don't know how much more set-up I should do.
You all knew in advance this guy had information you needed, and you decided to try and intimidate it out of him... just like the group did with the priests in the earlier setting in Bards Gate. It didn't work because frankly most of the party isn't really good at intimidation, and this guy is higher level than you.
It's difficult to run social encounters in PbP in general, so I'm thinking maybe this system isn't ideal for PbP.
Sorry if I seem short... but your comments just blew my mind. I should tell you what's going to happen!!! Why have players.
I'm mostly a forever DM and I joined this game because I appreciated your effort to run the rules as written so I can learn how to run PF2. I've gained a lot of understanding of the system through your posts, so thank you for that.
I see what you're saying about the PCs all playing as individuals. It is harder to coordinate in PbP because you can't table talk, and sometimes people step on each other's plans for encounters. Maybe we should have coordinated our approach when the encounter started, I could agree with that.
In this case, to respond to your question, yes I think here the DM should have stopped the group and said 'look guys, not everybody has to roll here. In fact, if people roll poorly it will make the result worse so you should let the high Cha PCs do their thing and everybody else just stand around and look menacing.' That's because we as players do not understand this system. It's not like combat where everybody can participate and equally contribute; some rolls can negatively effect the effort. I did not understand that going into the encounter and it seems like none of the other players did either.
Sometimes the DM does need to step in and directly tell the players how things work. This is a game with rules and you have a higher system mastery than we do; things need to be laid out so the players know how to play. I'm fine pulling the plug on this game, but you might want to consider taking that into your games in the future.
This is a tough one, for me anyway, because I feel the issue is at both the heart of PbP, but also rpgs in general. That said, I also feel like it's been discussed for most of the ~50 years role playing has been a thing.
The missing word I haven't seen typed here is: TEAM.
Not sure the GM should be at fault for an expectation that the players will act like a team. A little unity coaching is an awesome idea, but I don't think it reasonably falls to the GM to do this on an encounter basis. In principle it's what the "everyone accidently meets at an inn" scene is for.
Interestingly, we had a longer discussion of "team" back in August of last year in this campaign's other iteration, when absolutely everyone approached a mostly social encounter at an insane asylum, oddly enough, kind of insanely. After that breakdown, we spent a while discussing what didn't make sense both mechanically and from a role playing perspective but basically it was a miscarriage of expectations. The team should have been acting like a team, for better or worse, and not all spining off into a bunch of different directions.
So while I agree in principle with Rail's statement that "Sometimes the DM does need to step in and directly tell the players how things work ...", and I totally agree that it is amazing to work with a GM who knows the rules really well, I'd have a tough time agreeing that teamwork itself should have to be explained by a GM. While it's wildly lacking in PbP overall, I'm still not sure that falls to GMs to fix this; in many ways, I feel like GMs should mandate Session Zeros where this stuff is worked out.
Reflecting upon this, a lot could have been solved by us going “how do we want to approach this?” Granted, it kind of slows things down, but if we had ‘table talked’ we might have performed better.
Anyway, I apologize on my part and thank SB again for the game.