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My wife is a bit shy. She enjoys playing, and for the right group she can really come out of her shell. When she does, everyone at the table enjoys her PC and her gaming.
Sometimes she plays a Diplomat. Yeah, a shy Diplomat.
She has practiced the speach "My character is much more diplomatic than I am. I would like her to convense (insert NPC here) to (insert what we need to know here)." She has this speech printed on the back of the table tent for her "Diplomat", where she can read it when she needs to, when she finds herself overcome with shyness.
I've seen judges "hold her to the task" and say "What EXACTLY does your PC say?" and watch helplessly while a fun game turned into a painful experience for her. Anyone else trying to help her (me, or any...
And if that ever happens again, loudly remind the GM that a player isn't their character. She isn't obligated to roleplay her character just because he wants to put her on the spot. That why people have "Int" and "Wis" rolls when players struggle with puzzles. The Diplomacy skill is there for a reason.
lol! thanks In_digo. though I'm not likely to "loudly remind the GM" of anything at the table. To confrontational for me. Talk to him after the game maybe, or in this case (as it was at a CON away from home) just note the judges name on our list of gamers to avoid and play on. "Life is too short of bad gaming..."
Yeah, sorry. I'm vocal about that sort of stuff. I wasn't there, but it sounded like she was being picked on. Probably better to do it in private anyways :P
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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In regards to asking the player to say more, I will occasionally prod players who are maybe a little bit shy, but I rarely demand it. I think that slowly encouraging them helps them break out of their shell - after a few good experiences, they're much more likely to get involved in the roleplaying aspects of the game.
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Ok, so in a game about talking in character and rolling dice she doesn't like talking in character and you don't like rolling dice....
I hope you realize that dealing seamlessly with that sort of paradigm shift is well outside the social skills of most people, and well outside that of most gamers...
In regards to asking the player to say more, I will occasionally prod players who are maybe a little bit shy, but I rarely demand it. I think that slowly encouraging them helps them break out of their shell - after a few good experiences, they're much more likely to get involved in the roleplaying aspects of the game.
This is how I always handle it too. And even better, I find shy people can get caught up in other player's excitement, and start to come out of their shell on their own.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Hopefully I don't intimidate people when I ask for more detail. Like in <redacted> I asked *how* they were using the evidence to get <redacted> released.
Amusingly it led to a route I didn't think of as the maxed out linguistics person went all 'professional witness' to explain the differences in the forgery vs the real handwriting. I let them use linguistics then in place of diplomacy or bluff.
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As a GM, when someone is playing a diplomat character, I find the best thing to do is let them play it their way. If the player is actually very good at talking and is willing to do so, let them do it and then roll the check afterwards. If the player is rather shy or feels like they're "going through the motions," let them just make their check.
Although, I do usually ask what their character is trying to say. There's a difference between trying to convince an NPC that you are trying to help them or that you are trying to negotiate with them. Essentially, the terms of the condition your character is trying to say needs to be described, especially since diplomacy can be retried if you have different requests of them.
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Sorry BNW, I do not understand this... guess it must be a Monday for me (Wednesday, the third Monday this week). My brain may just be running on "slow" today. Can you please expand on this?Ok, so in a game about talking in character and rolling dice she doesn't like talking in character and you don't like rolling dice....
I hope you realize that dealing seamlessly with that sort of paradigm shift is well outside the social skills of most people, and well outside that of most gamers...
I think he is trying to say, Most gamers like to Roll Dice, You Don't... Most gamers like talking in character or at least roleplaying a little, you Wife does not.
So you 2 together is way out side the norm so expect GMs and other players to react differently to this.
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Sorry BNW, I do not understand this... guess it must be a Monday for me (Wednesday, the third Monday this week). My brain may just be running on "slow" today. Can you please expand on this?Ok, so in a game about talking in character and rolling dice she doesn't like talking in character and you don't like rolling dice....
I hope you realize that dealing seamlessly with that sort of paradigm shift is well outside the social skills of most people, and well outside that of most gamers...
I think he is trying to say, Most gamers like to Roll Dice, You Don't... Most gamers like talking in character or at least roleplaying a little, you Wife does not.
So you 2 together is way out side the norm so expect GMs and other players to react differently to this.
AH! ok...
but my wife likes to roll dice...that's why she often runs Blaster Casters - don't know what to do? Magic Missile it.
and it's hard to get me to shut up (in case no one noticed), I mean, I like to talk in character (funny voices and all) - so you get the best of both with us. ;)
It is an amusing combination :).
I have called GMs out on "Don't be a jerk" when pressing for exact phrases.
I organize 5-6 events a month (not counting my home group) So I "manage" a couple GMs, and sometimes I have to tell them -
"hey, that guy is shy, be nicer about it and if you have to say things like 'he might respond differently is you mention certain things'" This often gets the player to realize you're trying to bring life to the NPC instead of feeling bullied. If the player just doesn't want to talk, let them roll the die, that's part of the game.
At gencon I saw a player clearly getting upset (very similar to nosig's example actually) and I stepped in. I said "just roll the check, we're all here to have fun and we all play things we don't do in real life :)"; I actually thought the poor girl was going to cry, I looked at the GM when I said it, maybe I overstepped my bounds but feel like I did the right thing.
NOTE: I don't think the GM was aware of how she was feeling, he was just trying to open up role-playing to make the game more fun, but a room full of hundreds of people at a table full of strangers was clearly not where that young lady wanted to open up. After that the GM asked if there was anything specific she wanted to mention, and then asked her to roll her check, and much fun was had by all!
I have been gaming a long time, and a lot of people don't have interpersonal awareness. ALMOST ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE are good humans and honestly don't realize that they are making someone uncomfortable.
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With roleplaying games I feel from my personal experience we have a higher percentage of people with social difficulties than in other environments. I often play with people that can not understand the feelings of others, or get furious at what I would think is a slight misunderstanding.
I often will have secret chats with people trying to ease the tension from people that have this difficulty. I will not deny that sometimes I am very difficult. Ask Purple Fluffy CatBunnyGnome, my opinions and poor choice of words do seem to have the wrong intention.
To all those that are annoyed with me I am sorry and open to any critisism
Removed post that seemed designed to stir up trouble.
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Role playing has no place in character creation.
Roll playing takes place in character creation.
I don't know about that. Character creation is where you come up with what the role that you'll be playing IS: a clueless farm boy from the sticks, a vicious half orc from Belken, or a dashing rogue from the gutters trying to pass himself off as a noble. Role and roll playing work best when they work together.
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I have called GMs out on "Don't be a jerk" when pressing for exact phrases.
Its also part of the DM's job to try to encourage role playing. If there's ever an opportunity for role playing its during a diplomacy roll.
There are way too many passive aggressive accusations of being a jerk by invoking "don't be a jerk" around here. Any more jerkiness and we're going to have a Sasquatch commercial on our hands.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Something else that I think should probably be said here is that a player has a choice regarding what kind of character to play. Don't want to roleplay? That's fine, but don't build a party face. If you DO build a face, but want to just roll, I feel like you're sort of doing the party a disservice, and you're also setting yourself up for an unenjoyable game. Why? Because you're eliminating a lot of the plot of the story, and you're willingly putting yourself into an uncomfortable situation.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Re: Shy diplomats.
For me, yes I understand the concept of playing against type (I like playing lithe, dex based builds for example) But for Cayden's sake, give me something!
If I'm GMing, I am going to want to know something of how you're going to diplomancy the NPC, if for no other reason he might have certain 'triggers' in his character. Movie example, never say "he was just following orders" to Eric Lensherr.
I don't expect a Shy PLAYER to give me a St. Crispins day speech, but even just "Um, I'll start by talking about his shoes, and go from there." gives me something to work with. Boiling it down to "I roll a 36 diplomacy, is that enough" doesn't tell me if any circumstances might have an effect. (like if the NPC is a shoe-collector and mentioning his shoes gives a positive reaciton.)
Re: shy diplomats.
I'm also with the GM on this one. Reducing the social scene to a single roll is akin to reducing combat to a single roll*; there's more to it than that. No-one is asking the player to be diplomatic, and a rude player rolling 36 on a diplomacy check can be fun (I guess it's his rogueish charm and winning smile that comes through even whilst being insulting). What we're asking is for the player to think through the conversation in the same way she might think through tactics in combat. What does she want to know? What is she asking about first? What is she not mentioning in case it causes a problem? Let the other players assist if she can't think of anything, as they can offer up questions she can ask. It's still her roll, but the whole table then gets involved. Just don't expect the GM to hand-wave the encounter because of one player.
*I did think about designing a game where it was assumed the characters would always win in combat, but in every fight every character rolls a d20 and on a 1 they died. One die roll, 5% chance of death. "Are you sure you want to start that fight?" For big bosses that could increase to a 1 or 2, or 10%. Fighting style, stats, specialisation were all descriptive, and in the end it just came down to one roll - so there was always a risk no matter how good you thought you were, and no matter how easy the foe appeared. There wasn't much of a game left to design though, rules-wise. :-)
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Yesterday I posted an example of a "bored boyfriend" at the table and how that could lead a GM to confuse a shy person for an uninterested person.
Where did my post go? That was the most helpful thing I posted yesterday. A post from experience as a GM.
Why did it get deleted? What is going on around here? I just double checked my posts for the last 48 hours and its not in there. Am I going crazy or did it really get deleted?
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"Well David, I hate to tell you but PFS is the home of optimizers"
That absolutely boggles my mind. Why not save it for home brews where the DM can respond to the optimization level? Or save it for uber Starcraft build orders?
The levels of optimization I've seen literally border on DM abuse. The DMs just have sit there and play the scenario as written. <Yawn>
"Good groups are just that: characters that work at supporting each other."
I'm talking about characters that don't need support. That's my whole point. When someone is running a PC that literally can not be touched by anything in the scenario short of a nat 20, they don't need support, because they are effectively immortal.
David:
Why not save the optimization for home brew games? I think for some, that's the point. Because GMs are compelled to run scenarios as written, and scenarios (at least in theory) are balanced for a group of players that aren't necessarily optimized. Optimizing players, by default, win the arms race. In a home brew game, the GM can just make the monsters more powerful to contend with powerful PCs. Not so in PFS.
While I agree this can hurt games (and may have hurt PFS; Many I've talked to point to season 4 being more difficult to challenge optimizers.), I can't say that at least on occasion, I don't mind playing a character that trounces a scenario. It's nice to be able to say, "I wiped the dungeon down with the monsters' faces. Why? 'Cause I'm a boss." But for me it would get boring to have that be a week in, week out thing. Some prefer it all the time. But how do we balance it so that optimizers are challenged and the rest aren't crushed? I'm not sure there's an answer to that.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I don't have to show that I can be stealthy or chop things in half with a huge sword in real life, why do I have to show that I can be diplomatic in real life? (I can, I'm just playing devil's advocate)
Again, it's not asking you to show you're Conan IRL. But the hows apply to combat just as much.
"I hit it with my sword."
"Ok, are you power attacking or not? Vital slicing or not? You're 10 feat away, show me how you're moving (because there's a trap 5' in front of him/reading action by the guy with the crossbow/narrow walkway, etc.)."
I don't expect Mrs. Jiggy to be Ronald Reagan anymore than I expect a fighter to be William Sherman* at my table. I *do* need to know how you are doing things. Just like knowing if fighter X will do action Y that triggers event Z by moving, I need to know how Diplomat A will approach encounter B to see if it his his Berseerk button C.
*
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I haven't seen unhittable pets, but they do have evasion and usually a lot of hps, too. There is only so much damage output written into the scenarios, so after you crunch the math, they are back on easy mode. Unless the DM is ignoring the pets as targets, which I feel is not appropriate most of the time.
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Except you can still do this with pets. I've seen two season 4 scenarios overwhelmed by body count because of pets.
You can do this with a lot of things. Six hyper optimized characters of any sort would too. I have seen plenty of Season 4 (more than 4) with multiple characters playing pet classes and not having such an easy time.
There is already another thread chuck full of pet complaints/discussions. Maybe we can leave those there.
I think the problem you cite is with the players, not the scenarios.
I don't play PFS that often, and usually levels 1-5. But I've found the combats to be fairly easy 80% of the time. And when it isn't, the judge all of a sudden starts softballing us, which I hate.
The few really challenging encounters have been "own goals", where no one had, say, a silver weapon, or a way to fight a swarm. Ok, at 1st level everyone is broke, but after that?
I hear that changes with season four, and with 7+, but I can't really say for sure, I don't play there often enough to know.
I optimize the hell out of my characters, because I like the process as a mental challenge, and frankly I'd rather have the capability and not need it, than need it and not have it.
But not everyone likes that, and the game shouldn't be built around it.
-j
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I've been told that *not* having an intelligence of 7 on a melee characters was foolish. More than once.
Pardon me for not wanting to play "Forrest Gump the RPG." ;-)
Most folks don't tell my Tower Shield specialist that when her AC creeps up into the 30s thanks to combat expertise. I block well and while I have flaws (Dominate sucks!) I dislike the very idea of a Dump stat.
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A Short Essay on Optamization, Power and Where our Hearts are at.
I know this has been said, but optimization is primarily subjective, but it has boundaries and you can look at most scenarios and judge what is effective but still has a chance of failure (I am saying rolling under 10) but again that is a subjective experience.
Optimization is primarily about one thing: Power. We often go to this game as a form of escape, which is what it is. We want to escape from the mundane of our lives to be something more. When a person builds a character that is optimized to the max and breaks the game, guess what they don't have in their life? Power. I will be the first to say that I go to this game as a source of enjoyment and yes I get a feeling of power from the game but they don't have drive us.
Power works itself out in multiple ways as we play this game, but the two main sources it shows itself in is how a player can take a loss and the willingness of the player to be in control.
We see a how a person deals with loss in two ways: Faction missions and the death of a character. Faction mission is where we see this the most. How many times have we seen people try to finagle every which way into completing their faction mission and then get upset, shut down, emotional and angry when they are not able to complete it. They fight tooth and nail to get that 1 prestige point while disrupting the entire table's flow. This directly assaults why they are coming to the game, the power of their character.
The second is character death. People that often optimize deal with this poorly. Now I am not saying that we can't get disappointed when our character dies, it sucks, however, we as a community to need to say "Hey, it is OK to die," rather than believing it is weakness in our character creation. We play a game with dice and sometimes they are not on our side and that is actually more like life. When we go up against a hard fight and get our butts handed to us, our first reaction shouldn't be “I need to build a better character.” But we see this all the time. This is probably the greatest blow to an optimized player's pursuit of power in the game. Their imaginary power is laid bare before them and it shows where they have placed their heart in this game. People view death as a mark of shame rather than a mark of the character's adventures. People that don't pursue power end up taking death a lot better than people who do.
I would also like call attention to how an optimizer hunger for control. This is the "Metagamer." Dice and unknowns are the things they wish to defeat and when they can't predict them or deal with them, that sense of power crumbles. These are the ones that get frustrated when they can't identify a monster because they don't have skill ranks or they try to presume an ambush or betrayal. The whole Spindle argument goes into this category by negating challenges that would crush a person's sense of power in the game. Ironically, trying to negate the unknown robs the character of the narrative experience he is involved in. Rather than being submissive to the story the character steal power from the story for his own personal power.
Most of this thread focuses on the symptom, namely the uber optimized character, however the disease which is the pursuit of power at the expense of the narrative is a harder discussion but one we need to star having if we wish to be a healthier community. Hopefully this will be a paradigm shift in the community.
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"We see a how a person deals with loss in two ways: Faction missions and the death of a character. Faction mission is where we see this the most. How many times have we seen people try to finagle every which way into completing their faction mission and then get upset, shut down, emotional and angry when they are not able to complete it. They fight tooth and nail to get that 1 prestige point while disrupting the entire table's flow. This directly assaults why they are coming to the game, the power of their character."
My first character was silver crusade, so I rarely failed, but my Osirion character has completely desensitized me to failing faction missions.
As for death, none of my characters have died yet. My highest level characters have the PP for a raise dead, however, so this is not a huge fear. Plus, while I'm not optimized out the wazoo, I try to equip my PCs in a genre-savvy manner and play with some savvy.
For example, my tin can cleric has boots of spider climb and several ways to get under water breathing, because he sinks like a rock and has to climb out Juggernaut style. My archer ranger (who does at least rock an 18 DEX; my only character with an 18 I believe) carries a spare bow and a ton of weapon blanche and oil of bless weapon to get through DR. But he doesn't worry about drowning as much.
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I optimize the hell out of my characters, because I like the process as a mental challenge, and frankly I'd rather have the capability and not need it, than need it and not have it.
But not everyone likes that, and the game shouldn't be built around it.
-j
I agree with this completely. I will limit my characters through roleplay when I am power housing the game. Someone described my favorite character as an overpowered toddler.
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I agree with this completely. I will limit my characters through roleplay when I am power housing the game. Someone described my favorite character as an overpowered toddler.I optimize the hell out of my characters, because I like the process as a mental challenge, and frankly I'd rather have the capability and not need it, than need it and not have it.
But not everyone likes that, and the game shouldn't be built around it.
-j
So you played Franklin Richards?