Quote from: Christopher Brady;867835The issue with the last bit of this scenario is the assumption that the Lord Duke will not give up his heir as lost and simply get his entourage to wipe out the bandits anyway, instead of ransoming.

Most Dukes have multiple heirs anyway, what's losing one really cost?

That kind of misunderstanding how medieval society actually works is almost starting to get on my nerves lately...

Quote from: AsenRG;867762I can see your point here. But my con example assumes that what's important for the target is already known, so the discovery happened.
There's just no "close". Once he or she accepts the facts, the target gets the wrong conclusion without our help.

That's fine. It still fits the form. I don't anticipate people will do things the way I say is most effective. I wouldn't expect most players to know the system. I anticipate most PCs hopped up on social skills will skip discovery altogether and instead engage in verbal jujitsu.

Though I should point out that in my procedure, it is okay for discovery to happen outside of the prospects presence. The elaboration phase is not always present as it is initiated entirely by the prospect. And the close, in most cases, doesn't require any sort of skill check. Indeed, if the introduction, discovery, and presentation are all on point, the prospect will close themselves with a statement like, "I think I'd like to try it."

QuoteI'd call "reading between the lines" to be more of a bureaucratic skill, but other than that, I agree:).

I'm not sure what the best terms are. I can usually hear a lot of things just in someone's voice inflections. I don't jump to conclusions or try to come off like the Amazing Kreskin, but it's something that should be addressed. In game, this would be largely dependent on the character's skill, not what the player can hear. After all, who's to say the GM is a flawless character actor? The GM may not be accurately portraying inflection.

QuoteYeah, one difference between sales and persuasion of the kind PCs are doing is that you have to persuade a specific person. A lack of interest isn't acceptable, except as a means to signal you to change the proposal.
So I saved the guy from Sales some time by cutting him off after less than 2 minutes. But if he was a PC and had to sell me on a given plan, that wouldn't be to his advantage.

You are correct that it in the context of RPGs it is framed this way. However, persuasion is persuasion is persuasion. There are ways it works and ways it doesn't. And the simple fact is not everyone can be closed. This is actually why the roleplay element is so irreplaceable. It puts it onto the player to think up an argument that could plausibly work. A player may come up with something I never thought of and find a way to close someone I thought would be impossible. And that's fine. In fact, I consider it great.

Now it doesn't take someone of extraordinary skill to just give up  when a prospect doesn't play along nicely. It takes someone of skill to know the difference between someone who is a waste of time and someone who is just playing hard to get.

For those who are playing hard to get, the procedure I use allows characters of high skill to use their skill to keep the prospect engaged so you can go back to discovery take another run at it. And when all else fails, you have the hard close with a few percent probability of working. Because that really is about the percentage difference in rate of success when you just don't give up. Not really much.

QuoteFun fact, 1/10th normal skill is exactly the difficulty before "you don't get to roll" in RQ6. Then again, it's also your odds of rolling a critical, so maybe "you need a critical" is better:D.

Yeah, that's also how "criticals" work in LA, too, and that was one of the things I had in mind when I came out with that figure. But it's also realistic.

Back to serious, would you make every player roll with these odds? If he hasn't got the character resource skills and is using a hard close instead of the roll, as in your previous example, that would be something like 3% chance for those guys. One-in-Three, or 33% is a very common expected closing ratio over the long run. Someone at that caliber can bump that close to 40% by bringing the A game. A high-end superstar performs at about 50%, but can often perform just above 50% up to just shy of 60%.

So 10-20% of the base chance is about what it amounts to. I figure make it 10% and then have instances where a bonus could apply.

QuoteI think you might be up to something here.

Well, it doesn't just apply to gamers. There's a joke about an economist who loses his watch, so he's looking for it. A stranger comes up and offers to help him find the watch and asks, "Now just where abouts did you lose it?" and the economist points down to the other end of the street, "Down there somewhere."

So the stranger asks, "Then why are you looking over here?" to which the economist replies, "Because the light here is better."

Free will makes people intractable. Anything that takes human action as an input, whether it's an economy, a roleplaying game, or a social encounter.

QuoteThe rules for making a good piece of fiction aren't exactly unknown. It's usually simple to apply them.

I found the right 3 lines did more than 3 pages. I don't expect the backstory to tell a story. I expect to get just enough information that the character has a compelling reason to "adventure."

Quote from: Lunamancer;866395Forgive the thread necromancy, especially one that was apparently started by a now banned user.

We don't have a problem with thread necromancy here.

Damn though, this was from a while back! It was just before I started running the Dark Albion campaign that became the inspiration for the book.

Quote from: RPGPundit;868100We don't have a problem with thread necromancy here.

Damn though, this was from a while back! It was just before I started running the Dark Albion campaign that became the inspiration for the book.

Frankly, I was surprised how few hits I got on my search terms through google. I tried setting my filters to items just from the past year, but I wasn't happy with the results.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;866829What's the reaction table in BX. I assume the NPC's disposition?

I've only played 5E. (Though I read up on the rest.)

I had tried very hard to push for the resurrection of the Reaction table in 5e.  Unfortunately it was not one of the suggestions that ended up in the final product.

Quote from: RPGPundit;868258I had tried very hard to push for the resurrection of the Reaction table in 5e.  Unfortunately it was not one of the suggestions that ended up in the final product.

Were they opposed to it for some reason?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;867835Most Dukes have multiple heirs anyway, what's losing one really cost?

The premise that the Duke gives a damn about his heirs.  Odd though it might have seemed, some folks -- even in medieval times -- did value their family members.

In any event, ransom of captives was so endemic in period that a number of scholars credit it as an influence on the spread of heraldry.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;868291Were they opposed to it for some reason?

I just think that it was too long since it had been a part of things, and didn't fit the priorities for them. It was a step too far into Old School.

Quote from: RPGPundit;868258I had tried very hard to push for the resurrection of the Reaction table in 5e.  Unfortunately it was not one of the suggestions that ended up in the final product.

Its kinda sorta not really in there.

Page 244-245 social interactions and charisma checks. It folds into the rest of the NPC interaction system.

Problem is its spread out between two chapters and can end up forgotten or overlooked.

Quote from: Omega;868506Problem is its spread out between two chapters and can end up forgotten or overlooked.

Which would make it a lot like the morale rules in OD&D/AD&D...at least if one goes by the number of times fighting-to-the-death comes up in Internet discussions.

Quote from: Bren;868593Which would make it a lot like the morale rules in OD&D/AD&D...at least if one goes by the number of times fighting-to-the-death comes up in Internet discussions.

OD&Ds interaction rules are fairly prominent so would be hard to miss. But they are in the book used just for bribing monsters to join you. I believe it was Gronan who mentioned that they also used it for random demeanor and negotiation like it is used in BX.

Id have to dig out the DMG to see where it is in AD&D.

Quote from: Omega;868595OD&Ds interaction rules are fairly prominent so would be hard to miss.

And yet people who appear not to have had the wargaming context appear to have missed it. A lot. That's all I meant.

If you are suggesting that morale and reaction mechanics ought to have sufficient prominence in a rule set so that people who lack a wargaming context and any real-world knowledge of the effect of morale would still have a good chance of noticing and possibly using morale rules, then I agree. I get the sense that the frame of reference for WotC is card games far more than it is wargames.

Quote from: Bren;868600And yet people who appear not to have had the wargaming context appear to have missed it. A lot. That's all I meant.

If you are suggesting that morale and reaction mechanics ought to have sufficient prominence in a rule set so that people who lack a wargaming context and any real-world knowledge of the effect of morale would still have a good chance of noticing and possibly using morale rules, then I agree. I get the sense that the frame of reference for WotC is card games far more than it is wargames.

Actually, a lot of people have said "Oh, we just ignored that."

Take away gold for XP, don't raise monster XP, have all fights be to the death, then complain that low level D&D is a bloodbath.  Crom's hairy nutsack.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;868617Actually, a lot of people have said "Oh, we just ignored that."

I submit that most of those people don't have a wargaming background or any relevant real world experience. I'd imagine that a few do and just don't care. But only a few.

Quote from: Bren;868628I submit that most of those people don't have a wargaming background or any relevant real world experience. I'd imagine that a few do and just don't care. But only a few.

I think I would use a narrower term than "wargaming" here.  Back in junior high and high school, we played AD&D the way Gronan describes - don't bother with morale, XP-for-GP is stupid and unrealistic, etc.  But I did have a wargaming background.

It's just that it was an Avalon Hill wargaming background, centered mostly on Tactics 2, Blitzkrieg, Panzer Blitz/Panzer Leader, etc., none of which explicitly modeled morale.  I'm sure morale was a factor in their combat results tables, but they didn't distinguish between units being eliminated because everyone died and units being eliminated because their morale failed.  Being a teenage boy with no outside experience to suggest otherwise, I just assumed that the units were literally "destroyed", so fights to the death in D&D fit perfectly with that.

I never really had that view challenged until I was 17 or 18 and got introduced to Squad Leader, which is very heavily invested in modeling the effects of morale and leadership.