Quote from: Christopher Brady;868927I remember you.  You're the Bad Wrong Fun guy.  Right.  Moving on.

I don't remember you. But this will be the last time I recap this since I'm detecting a buttload of dishonesty emanating from your posts.

What I wrote is that if you're not having fun, you're playing it wrong. Yes, that very controversial statement found on WEG GM screens.

Contrast this with bad wrong fun, defined as illegitimate enjoyment.

See. The key to bad wrong fun is it has to be fun. If you're not having fun, you're not having bad wrong fun. Bad wrong fun does not apply to people criticizing those who are NOT having fun.

Playing D&D without reaction and morale checks, like I did when I was a kid and had tons of fun doing it, hey, that's bad wrong fun. It is foolish to criticize that given that we were all having a good time.

Playing D&D without reaction and morale checks, and then complaining that the game isn't fun because it's all combat and lacks role-play, that is NOT bad wrong fun because no fun is being had. It is legitimate to criticize that because the people playing it are not having a good time.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;868927I remember you.  You're the Bad Wrong Fun guy.  Right.  Moving on.

I don't remember you. But this will be the last time I recap this. If you can't comprehend it, that's your problem

What I wrote is that if you're not having fun, you're playing it wrong. Yes, that very controversial statement found on WEG GM screens.

Contrast this with bad wrong fun, defined as illegitimate enjoyment.

See. The key to bad wrong fun is it has to be fun. If you're not having fun, you're not having bad wrong fun. Bad wrong fun does not apply to people criticizing those who are NOT having fun.

Playing D&D without reaction and morale checks, like I did when I was a kid and had tons of fun doing it, hey, that's bad wrong fun. It is foolish to criticize that given that we were all having a good time.

Playing D&D without reaction and morale checks, and then complaining that the game isn't fun because it's all combat and lacks role-play, that is NOT bad wrong fun because no fun is being had. It is legitimate to criticize that because the people playing it are not having a good time.

Quote from: Lunamancer;868950Playing D&D without reaction and morale checks, and then complaining that the game isn't fun because it's all combat and lacks role-play, that is NOT bad wrong fun because no fun is being had. It is legitimate to criticize that because the people playing it are not having a good time.

MY comment was that if you went back and tried to use the Morale System, it MAY not actually improve on the lack of fun.

It might, but assuming it will is a fallacy.

And the game being all combat is the GM's fault for not reading his friends as to what they want.  This is why you TALK it out first.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;869008MY comment was that if you went back and tried to use the Morale System, it MAY not actually improve on the lack of fun.

It might, but assuming it will is a fallacy.

Good thing I didn't assume that. Shitty thing that you did assume that I assumed it.

QuoteAnd the game being all combat is the GM's fault

No. That would be the players fault for attacking everything.

Quotefor not reading his friends as to what they want.  This is why you TALK it out first.

No. You talk it out.

I only have a little bit of free time to dedicate to gaming once a week. I don't want to spend it talking about playing. Talk is cheap. I want to play. Or is that bad wrong fun?

Quote from: Lunamancer;869054I only have a little bit of free time to dedicate to gaming once a week. I don't want to spend it talking about playing. Talk is cheap. I want to play. Or is that bad wrong fun?

Communication is WRONG?  To blindly assume is RIGHT?  Really?  Cuz that's what I'm reading here.

This ENTIRE medium of entertainment is based on communication.  Making sure all sides can relate what they are meant to imagine (at least to a certain degree, everyone sees things differently after all) and how to react to it.

But if you have so little time to dedicate to actually playing, maybe you should find a less intensive hobby?  Otherwise, you'll just stress out instead of relaxing...

As for me, I'll keep talking to my players via phone or E-Mail, should they have questions, wants or needs in my game, outside of game time, if they can make the time.  Five minutes here, five minutes there, they add up for me.

Quote from: Lunamancer;869054No. That would be the players fault for attacking everything.

Could go either way, really.  It could be the players' fault for mindlessly attacking everything, but it could also be the GM's fault for creating a world/adventure where combat is the only effective (or even allowed) way to interact with anything.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;869075Communication is WRONG?  To blindly assume is RIGHT?  Really?  Cuz that's what I'm reading here.

Of course that's what you're reading. You're the same guy who equates "If you aren't having fun, you're playing wrong" to "bad wrong fun."  The key to effective communication is listening. You don't seem to be very good at it. Maybe that's why YOU need a talk session before you game.

Many of us don't.

Quote from: nDervish;869076Could go either way, really.  It could be the players' fault for mindlessly attacking everything, but it could also be the GM's fault for creating a world/adventure where combat is the only effective (or even allowed) way to interact with anything.

Which circles back to the point of all this. If the GM is using reaction and morale checks, then combat is not the only effective or allowable way to interact with anything.

But in all honesty, I have never seen what you describe actually done. Where the players go out of their way to find non-combat solutions and the GM railroads them into combat. I've seen GMs railroad according to a pre-determined story, and that story may include unavoidable combats, but the story itself is never all combat.

We played a module a few years back where the party was pressed into service by the local lord who commanded us to clear the monsters out of a cave. It turned out to be a lot more combat than we anticipated. It was becoming bothersome. So we turned to creating a plan to fake our deaths to get out of it.

I've never seen players who weren't having fun fail to ruin the GMs plan. The reality is the GM controls shit.

It's funny I was just about to post on this.

Regardless of system, in combat, in games I run, everyone seems to feel useful because there's something they can do. I RP or investigation, if there is any rolling it's usually 1 roll by 1 person (roll to search, roll to convince X of something), which means the rest of the group doesn't feel as useful.

Quote from: Lunamancer;869088Of course that's what you're reading. You're the same guy who equates "If you aren't having fun, you're playing wrong" to "bad wrong fun."  The key to effective communication is listening. You don't seem to be very good at it. Maybe that's why YOU need a talk session before you game.

Many of us don't.

I don't even...

Really?  I chat with my players and hear their complaints and try to change my game for the better by explaining and compromising my 'vision' (which is never set in stone anyway) and you're accusing me of not listening?

Really?  Wow.

I once played the board game RISK by the rules, and four hours in, I realized, I wasn't having fun.  Sometimes using all the rules doesn't always equate fun.

In the last 30 years of gaming and GMing, I've had several groups and I've had more people return to my games than leave them.  I think I do OK, at least.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;869160I don't even...

:rotfl:

QuoteReally?  I chat with my players and hear their complaints and try to change my game for the better by explaining and compromising my 'vision' (which is never set in stone anyway) and you're accusing me of not listening?

:teehee: You did it again. I didn't accuse you of not listening. I was saying you're bad at listening. :teehee:

QuoteReally?  Wow.

:rotfl:

QuoteI once played the board game RISK by the rules, and four hours in, I realized, I wasn't having fun.  Sometimes using all the rules doesn't always equate fun.

Why, do you think anyone's arguing that using all the rules always equates to fun? Please say yes. One more example of poor listening skills is just what this thread needs.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;869140It's funny I was just about to post on this.

Regardless of system, in combat, in games I run, everyone seems to feel useful because there's something they can do. I RP or investigation, if there is any rolling it's usually 1 roll by 1 person (roll to search, roll to convince X of something), which means the rest of the group doesn't feel as useful.

I'd say that calls for a look at why you're rolling and to what effect. How is it that a number attached to this or that character and compared to a die toss is all that matters? Why are players' decisions so much irrelevant?

That has not been my experience, going all the way back to early "skill list" oriented games such as Traveller,  RuneQuest and The Fantasy Trip. It's not the presence of such factors that created the situation; it's some weird (to my mind) notion of how an RPG ought to be played.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;868846The aforementioned 'Duke' is the opposite extreme.  The issue is that everyone assume ransoming was the only way those types of situations, like some sort of genteel fantasy land and anyone who thinks otherwise is a delusional wannabe murder hobo.

People are stupid, and crooks are stupider.  That's pretty much been the only constant in all of history.  First off, the Bandits would be morons for wanting to negotiate a price for the Ducal whelp, simply because they could get tracked back to their hideout, or worse, the guy(s) they sent to collect the ransom took it, split it and took off never to be seen again.  And unlike in modern times, tracking someone is more difficult, cuz they don't have GPS or able to track a cellphone.  Criminals are not known for their sense of honour after all.

So that nixes that plan.  More than likely, the Duke WILL assume his child is dead, rightly or wrongly, and send a retaliatory force, simply because we still do it now.  If they rescue the kid?  Sweet!  If not, then sympathies on their loss, but at least the bandits are dead and scattered.

This, of course, is assuming they found the bandit camp in the first place, which may be a trick in itself.

Ransoming was a thing that Nobles did among each other, due to social rules.  No one else got to 'benefit' from that.

You know what?
That kind of thinking is exactly what I mean by "out of touch with reality due to not knowing history".
Yes, some people might do exactly that. Those are going to be the kind of rulers known for their ruthlessness.
Most people aren't going to do that.

Quote from: Lunamancer;867856That'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.

A nice approach I've taken in the past is "your roll tells you what the NPC might be susceptible to". Seems like a decent compromise.
And yes, some players suss it out before even making an argument. They just roll to confirm the delivery was right, or in your terms, to close - or in my terms, rolling to see whether the NPC would have second thoughts in the last moment:D.

QuoteThough 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."

Well, that works then:).

QuoteI'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.

Agreed. Though if the player gets some info from the portrayal, it's only for the better.

QuoteYou 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.

Right. Admittedly,that's the moment we tend to see players resort to illegal means of persuasion...though not always.

QuoteNow 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.

In the same vein, though, you might as well try the hard close on everyone you have doubts about, then...whether it works or not, there's at least a chance it would work.
I suspect some players would do exactly that.

QuoteFor 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.

Yeah, I think that's the greatest advantage of your method.

QuoteYeah, 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.

Well, never played LA, but glad this mechanic is representing it well.

QuoteBack 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.

I'm not sure what this means in game terms for you.
Do you mean you're fine with people without skills having 3% chance, while some investment would allow it to get to 33-60%? Or do you mean someone without skill investment would have the 33% with good roleplaying, and with it could get to nearly 60%?

QuoteWell, 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."

Well, if the odds of finding your watch are getting a heavier penalty for bad lightening than the penalty for looking in the wrong place...
Damn. I think there are systems that probably work this way:)!

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

OTOH, free will also makes people tractable. Try negotiating with a slave that's going to be punished for agreeing with you, and I suspect you might be meeting someone unswayed by almost any arguments. Will can be influenced by many things - peer pressure and perceived expertise, for one;).

QuoteI 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."

Agreed, but we were talking about what people that like being snobbish about games would approve of. And my point was, they'd probably approve of a long bio and a small amount of system input.
In fact, freeform roleplayers can be among the most snobbish of roleplayers, IME.

Quote from: Lunamancer;869088Of course that's what you're reading. You're the same guy who equates "If you aren't having fun, you're playing wrong" to "bad wrong fun."  The key to effective communication is listening. You don't seem to be very good at it. Maybe that's why YOU need a talk session before you game.

Many of us don't.

Hey, a talk session takes about an hour at most. It's good because some players actually suck at telling you what they like unless you ask them.
BTW, does anyone really devote a whole session to it?

Quote from: Lunamancer;869204:rotfl:



:teehee: You did it again. I didn't accuse you of not listening. I was saying you're bad at listening. :teehee:



:rotfl:



Why, do you think anyone's arguing that using all the rules always equates to fun? Please say yes. One more example of poor listening skills is just what this thread needs.

While I appreciate the verbal jujutsu skills you're showing... are you done already?
Just add CBrady to your IL and move on. The thread is interesting even without popcorn-munching, and it's not a fun show due to skill mismatch.

Quote from: AsenRG;869275You know what?
That kind of thinking is exactly what I mean by "out of touch with reality due to not knowing history".
Yes, some people might do exactly that. Those are going to be the kind of rulers known for their ruthlessness.
Most people aren't going to do that.

Just chiming in to agree with you. I'd say history is besides the point. Each Duke is entitled to have their own values, and moreover there might be something special with that particular child. You don't need to establish some general fact of history to use it as an example.

QuoteA nice approach I've taken in the past is "your roll tells you what the NPC might be susceptible to". Seems like a decent compromise.
And yes, some players suss it out before even making an argument. They just roll to confirm the delivery was right, or in your terms, to close - or in my terms, rolling to see whether the NPC would have second thoughts in the last moment:D.

Maybe it's just my personal experience, but I think gamers do tend to want more information about a situation to see if there's a way they can gain some kind of edge. I see this a lot in combat, especially. (The phenomenon of boring hit, miss, hit, hit combat that has led some to creating more "interesting" combat systems is just something I don't see a lot of.)

So I think you'll find even if you require players to take an active role in discovery, they'll catch on real quick.

QuoteWell, that works then:).

Discovery outside of the prospects presence has another side-benefit. Since the information can be discovered by many possible means, it gives PCs who aren't skilled in the art of persuasion the opportunity to contribute in a big way if the central point or goal in an adventure is to convince an NPC of something or another.

A common drawback to heavy emphasis on social interaction is that persuasion has a higher likelihood of being one-on-one than is combat one-on-one. But discovery can be the purpose of an entire side-adventure. So even if your character doesn't have the skills to be in that final social encounter, at least you can take credit for an assist.

QuoteAgreed. Though if the player gets some info from the portrayal, it's only for the better.

That is the best-case scenario, yes. And I think for that reason, GMs tend to ham up and over-emphasize the subtext. That's great in some cases. Players don't pursue a really boring, unintentional red-herring. In other cases, though, it could be tantamount to telegraphing the twist and kill the mystery. NPCs with eccentric personalities work as great camouflage for bad acting.

QuoteIn the same vein, though, you might as well try the hard close on everyone you have doubts about, then...whether it works or not, there's at least a chance it would work.
I suspect some players would do exactly that.

The thing is, once you go for a hard close, it can be hard to keep a good working relationship. Let's say you get a phone call from a salesman one day. He hooks you right from the beginning, seems like a nice enough guy, he's selling something you're actually interested in. Then at the end, you want time to think things over, so he hard closes you. You're weak, so you cave to his awesome verbal jujitsu. Now what do you do the next time he calls? Basically, if what he sold you didn't straight up save your life, you are not taking that call.

If you're a player and your character is a social skill ninja, you get to the end, and the close doesn't work, which do you do? Go for the hard close at 10% of your skill? Or do you fall back to discovery thinking maybe you missed something? Because you can always try the hard close after your second pitch, or third pitch. But if you go for the hard close the first time out and it doesn't work, falling back to discovery is virtually never an option at that point.

Maybe in the interest of full disclosure I should say, in real life, I almost never use a hard close. I think I hard-closed once in the past year. And even that, I just asked for the close then shut up. First one to speak loses. I hate that. But in that case, I felt it was appropriate, and it did work. It was a long-ass silence. It's the kind of thing sales people brag about. For me, if I'd done my job better, it would have never come down to that.

On the other hand, I do love the take-away close. If I know I've done everything I could to listen to the prospect, find out what they need, find just the right product for them, and frame the pitch in a way that's tailor-suited to them and they're still not giving me a yes, I'll take it off the table. It usually doesn't work. But sometimes, maybe 20% of the time, it does. And in either case, I haven't shoved anything down anyone's throat. So deal or no deal, the next time the phone rings, this person will still take my calls.

QuoteI'm not sure what this means in game terms for you.
Do you mean you're fine with people without skills having 3% chance, while some investment would allow it to get to 33-60%? Or do you mean someone without skill investment would have the 33% with good roleplaying, and with it could get to nearly 60%?

I assume a character with no skill points has a base chance of zero. They rely entirely on player skill in the discovery phase (or other character skills in cases where discovery is a side-adventure) to get just the perfect offer, and apart from that, either a very open-minded NPC (some people are just like that) or else you're running on sit mods. I've mentioned way up thread about PCs with no skills having to offer a gift or something on the intro to gain willingness to listen.

I also gave an example way, way, way up-thread of a "quick-sell", where the unskilled PC does discovery as some side quest, he knows exactly what the NPC wants, so his "introduction" is just the summary question that would usually come at the end of discovery. Just blurting it out like that to get attention. Now it has to be spot on if it's going to work. And blurting something out like that may also be perceived as rude, so there's some risk there as well. But if it is spot on and the player presents it in a way--in particular a way in which the PC has skin in the game to ward off trust-based objections--that could legitimately work without ever calling for a skill check.

QuoteWell, if the odds of finding your watch are getting a heavier penalty for bad lightening than the penalty for looking in the wrong place...
Damn. I think there are systems that probably work this way

I can just imagine the argument from abstraction. The player has his character search where it's light to get a light bonus (or avoid the darkness penalty). But hey, separation of player knowledge from character knowledge. The CHARACTER knows he lost the watch on the other side of the street, and that's abstractly figured into the die roll.

And the light bonus still counts, because of (take your pick):
a) respecting the player's choice,
b) because the player made a smart decision,
c) because the player was role playing not just roll playing,
d) because the player referenced the scenery in his description

QuoteOTOH, free will also makes people tractable. Try negotiating with a slave that's going to be punished for agreeing with you, and I suspect you might be meeting someone unswayed by almost any arguments. Will can be influenced by many things - peer pressure and perceived expertise, for one;).

I agree with your example, only I would use the word "intractable" to describe it. Why? Because suppose I pointed to a counter-example. A slave who, despite being beaten for agreeing with you, ends up doing so anyway. What makes free will intractable is my counter-example does not disprove your point one bit. The slave does still respond to incentives. Same external stimuli. But maybe he just evaluates those incentives differently.

Put another way. Suppose I offer to pay you $100 to cut off your arm. If you decline my offer, does that prove you ignore incentives? No. It just proves that your arm is worth more to you than $100. So you have greater incentive to turn down my offer than you do to accept it.

QuoteIn fact, freeform roleplayers can be among the most snobbish of roleplayers, IME.

Great thing about being in highschool when Amber was popular is we had tons of time to game, and so we were able to experiment with a lot of different games and just different approaches to games we were already playing. We had a few adventures that were simple, straight forward stories. Devoid of nuance, unless you count goofy quirkiness as nuance. When we spent 2 hours talking about what our characters were having for breakfast, I thought it was time to shut down the free form experiment.

QuoteHey, a talk session takes about an hour at most. It's good because some players actually suck at telling you what they like unless you ask them.

Yeah, asking the right questions is really key. Because even when players are talking, they still suck at telling you what they want (like that guy who came up to me and said he wants to invest in something high risk). I had this one player back during my college days, who after session 4 of a 5-session dungeon adventure was complaining about the lack of encounters with humans. Well, the next multi-session mini-saga was a mainly urban-based adventure that involved a secret society. Wouldn't you know it, he soon wanted to go back to orcs and goblins.

"Just talk it out, man" is a weird kind of advice. It doesn't really give you any hint as to how to accomplish the goals but at the same time sounds so reasonable, who could argue with it. That's why people who are clueless love invoking it. It keeps you from having to actually say anything while putting you in a critique-free zone.

Take the last campaign I ran in college. By then I had come to grips with reality. I wasn't going to have my perfect campaign. People had home work and projects and term papers and exams. Things that made their schedules irregular. So I said fuck it. No more story bullshit. Just dungeon crawls. We begin in town, we end in town. Whoever shows up, shows up.

The way that campaign grew in popularity was absolutely staggering to me. I booked huge tables in conference rooms on campus and we still got to the point of standing room only. We had to continue one session in a laundry mat, because the campus center building was closing and everyone was having too much fun to stop playing. The emotional highs some of the encounters brought players too was unbelievable. All those years of trying hard, trying to make sure there was a little of something for every type of player never measured up.

Stupid me. I saw we had a core group that kept showing up reliably, week after week. And they all wanted to do something more. More story. Some kind of epic quest. Bigger adventure. I said fine. That fell apart after 3 weeks. After 3 months of these 6 players never missing one game, making 2 games back-to-back proved too much of a burden.

Let me be clear, the moral here is not that we should all play dungeon crawls and nothing else. Notice, things never went right when I "listened to my players." They only went right when I was responsive to the reality of actual play. I only switched to dungeon crawls to alleviate the pressure of being expected to show up to the weekly game. It wasn't the dungeon crawl itself so much as saying, "Hey, fuck all your tight-ass aesthetics. This is supposed to be fun. Not work." And when things fell apart is when I decided to change gears from something that was already working perfectly.

Listen to the players. But listen to their actions more than their words. I don't care how much they bitch. If they show up every week, they're having fun. For some people, bitching IS fun. And if they tell you how awesome your game is and how sorry they are they have to miss it this month, they might not be telling you the whole story.

QuoteWhile I appreciate the verbal jujutsu skills you're showing... are you done already?
Just add CBrady to your IL and move on. The thread is interesting even without popcorn-munching, and it's not a fun show due to skill mismatch.

There are some lessons in there to learn.

First, don't under-estimate the CBrady. I think one great way of being a really successful forum bully is to take the weak/pathetic stance. It makes it easier to make everyone else out to be the asshole that way. Second, I would classify his posts as being verbal jujitsu of the purest form. Notice none of them deliver any actual substance. They only twist the words of the person he's arguing with while he himself hides in safe zones like, "Talk it out, man" "Communication" "Don't assume." "Bad wrong fun."

Aaaaand you can see how well the verbal jujitsu approach to persuasion works.

What I was doing, I haven't really given it a name or specified it in my persuasion procedure. But it's part of my real life job. Some people you talk to are just unreasonable, or are liars, or have nothing of value to offer in return, or are just otherwise wastes of time. Others are just playing with their cards close to their chests. And still with others there is a genuine misunderstanding.

First, I assume it's a misunderstanding. I make the appropriate corrections/clarifications, or repeat or recap what I said. If misunderstandings continue, I assume the other person is of value, for whatever reason they're just being difficult. Go back up-thread to see my PC vs PC example of persuasion, namely the ordered preferences of outcomes. Someone playing their cards close to them may be angling for a poker close. By calling them out, you're saying, "Hey, I'm not going for this bullshit, let's put the cards out on the table." Calling them on it is usually the best course of action at that point. Failure to do so almost certainly guarantees they won't respect you.

If that still doesn't work, you're dealing with someone who is a waste of time. At that point, you're right, it's time to ignore him. I gave it second and third thoughts before posting that final response. I don't care if his opinion is different than mine. It happens. I don't care if I can't convince him to do things differently. Not everyone can be closed. But I figure I have a right to raise an objection to him putting words in my mouth.

Quote from: Lunamancer;869317The thing is, once you go for a hard close, it can be hard to keep a good working relationship. Let's say you get a phone call from a salesman one day. He hooks you right from the beginning, seems like a nice enough guy, he's selling something you're actually interested in. Then at the end, you want time to think things over, so he hard closes you. You're weak, so you cave to his awesome verbal jujitsu. Now what do you do the next time he calls? Basically, if what he sold you didn't straight up save your life, you are not taking that call.

Is the "hard close" what is sometimes called "hard sell'?  Because that is the instant at which I leave/hang up.  And yes, I have.  Somebody starts to pressure me, it's over.