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| Charisma reaction adjustments, Player's Handbook, p. 13: -5% per point of charisma below 8; +5% per point of charisma above 12. |
The above, for those who do not recognize the passage, originates with the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 63. With the charisma adjustments that I've added in the caption, this represents pretty much all the rules designed to manage character interactions with NPCs ... or "role-play."
When I was a teenager and dumb as a post about the game, I played by these rules. Or to put it another way, omg, I played by these rules. These rules are awful. Just awful. If your real life interactions were this random, you'd attack strangers first and parley afterwards. It would be the only sane way to act.
This is an example of pothole game design. A hole exists. We need some kind of rule for interactions. Anyone have any ideas? No? How about a scale of the worst imaginable reaction to instant acceptance, with a die roll that exactly balances the two? Hey, awesome! Good enough! Well done! Let's go fix something else ~ dibs on tossing together rules for spell research!
It's completely pointless, but I want to mock the rules a moment. A group of bandits, bent on robbing from the next people who come up the road, suddenly decide, because the fellow in front seems very jolly and quite handsome, to rush out from behind their trees and shake his hand. "Well met, well met, we can't rob you! You're far too charismatic!"
Or a group of pilgrims, bound for a shrine in a distant land, see a group of adventurers step out into the road. "Arg!" they cry. "That one's hideous! Kill them all!"
A random roll simply doesn't work. What about the number of the enemy, their equipment or their heraldry? Shouldn't our purposes be the first arbiter of what we'll do when we meet others? When was the last time you changed your mind about something because a total stranger with charisma wanted you to act in a particular way? Don't we deal with ALL strangers with distrust and caution, before all else?
Friendly, enthusiastically friendly and immediate acceptance are somewhat vague. Shouldn't we be concerned with more concrete issues, like asking for directions, getting news, bartering for equipment and food, possibly gaining aid for sickly companions, asking for a ride ... or simply ignoring passersby? What do four adventurers, decked in armor and weapons, have to say to a peasant if they got directions already, just five minutes ago? What peasant would be comfortable looking ahead on the road and seeing armed adventurers at a distance, coming along? They could be anybody; they look dirty and unclean, perhaps they're recruiters for some war, or three armed guards for a tax farmer. That one isn't wearing armor, after all.
I don't see any possible random table that could be built for parley or NPC reactions, without it being something awful silly. In many campaigns, no doubt the need to improvise some ridiculous scenario to suit the die roll provides much fun and frivolity. But it seems ... dumb.
I would like to write some rules for parley & negotiation, but I can't see a random roll. Nor do I need a negotiation system that will tell me what bandits, or a local patrol, a given monster or most things that are bound to be encountered would do. Nor do I need something as complicated as an I-mech ... though that is probably where I'll have to go, if I want to nail a system down.
It all seems needlessly complicated for a set up where two groups meet on a road, at a bar or while sitting near each other at an event to just start talking.
First, determine if the NPCs are agreeable types, or disagreeable types.
ReplyDeleteSecond, are they rational, or are they suffering from some kind of mental health issue?
Third, if rational, then what is their main desire/goal/motive?
Looking back at your posts from this time last year, I wonder if there's some way to use the character of a Block to drive the types of NPC interactions the players might have there. What NPC concerns and attitudes are typical to this area? How frequent, and how extreme, are the outliers? Then we're not looking at a series of erratic, random parleys, but something more like a coherent social setting, with cues and mores the players can start to understand.
ReplyDeleteI realize they are not explicitly written this way, but I look at these as metagame improvisational cues. If a GM invents an encounter on the fly, such as a random encounter while traveling a road, they use the roll to make the NPCs. A negative result means inventing bandits or similar, while a positive result means inventing a traveling peddler or similar. I justify the mechanical effect coming from the PCs as a bit of divine intervention, helping or hindering the party more or less often over time.
ReplyDeleteI don't think these rules should be used for any NPCs the GM creates with their own purpose in mind.
My thought is in the same vein as the earlier commenters. You *could* give an NPC a randomly assigned *attitude* ... maybe it's a good day, maybe it's bad and the NPC is grumpy. I like Silberman's notion of developing social attitudes within a locale.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm quite in agreement that the outcomes of the encounter must follow from the interactions in play.
ReplyDeleteReading through Columbus's adventures in island hopping (during his first voyage), he found some tribes friendly, welcoming, and eager for trade and others to be totally murderous, even when approached in the same fashion. This speaks to me of random reaction tables.
Columbus was a spectacular asshole, a dick, a known liar and a plundering fuckwit. I have no doubts that he was perfectly able to see the "totally murderous" behaviour of a group of islanders as having nothing whatsoever to do with his actions, and to write it down that way.
ReplyDelete