Who said that aristocrats were wilting flowers who blush at the use of a curse word? The scented-handkerchief-sniffing type is a silly caricature. Nobles might expect a level of respect, but there's no reason why they wouldn't be tough, worldly folk. Especially in warrior societies where those higher up the social scale see plenty of rough and tumble.

Quote from: The_Shadow;235032Who said that aristocrats were wilting flowers who blush at the use of a curse word? The scented-handkerchief-sniffing type is a silly caricature. Nobles might expect a level of respect, but there's no reason why they wouldn't be tough, worldly folk. Especially in warrior societies where those higher up the social scale see plenty of rough and tumble.

In a follow-on to this, I find that the players reaction to a situation is usually balanced by the level of danger their characters could possibly get into. In my experience, if the noble or even the people the noble has at their finger tips them could seriously damage or impede the players, they play by the rules... the vice versa being true also.

Quote from: tellius;235033In my experience, if the noble or even the people the noble has at their finger tips them could seriously damage or impede the players, they play by the rules... the vice versa being true also.

Exactly. Roleplayers are essentially dogs in a pack, or monkeys in a troop, and respond to the threat of violent force.

So long as they know you're willing to bend them over the table and hump their hams, they behave properly. The GM must be the Putin to their Saakashvili, the King Carlos to their Hugo Chavez.

I think it's as much the GM's fault for having the noble NPCs act like jerks.  When I encountered the Earl of Mull (a Scottish island) IRL many years ago I was blown away - the guy was driving along on the island, saw my family walking in the hot sun, and stopped to give us all a lift to his stately home.  We were blown away by his graciousness and courtesy to complete strangers.

I suggest that if you want your PCs to get on with noble NPCs, have them be polite, respectful and generous.  Look at how Tolkien has Elrond and Galadriel behave in Lord of the Rings.  Avoid the Gygaxian trope of "The Baron offers you 500 gp to get the MacGuffin" - that's how merchants behave, not nobles.  A noble would (a) give gifts - no bargaining - and (b) if he asked for something, ask it as a 'favour', creating a web of mutual obligation.  Stereotypical Mafia behaviour is a degenerate form of this.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;235018I just treat it the same as anything else which the character would know but the player might not. "I charge at the enemy screaming firing from the hip!" says the player of a modern soldier. "Well, since you have the modern soldier's training, you know that Rambo was not a documentary, and if you do that probably you'll be killed."

I remember from my army training that there is a time when we were taught to charge screaming & firing - it's called "assaulting through the position" and it occurs at the final part of the attack, preferably from the flank, in conjunction with the fire element providing suppressive fire at right-angles to the assault (an "L" shape with the enemy at the intersection of the L).  It also involves throwing grenades, and is used by a superior force to clear out an entrenched enemy position.   There's a time and a place for everything.

It's amusing when it's flipped on its head too. How about a character who is a noble? How his companions in the party treat him informs how NPCs treat him. In a typical adventuring party, a noble born character isn't going to get special treatment from the other party members. NPCs see this and act accordingly.

I'm reminded of an ad&d campaign where we had a ranger, magic-user (me), cleric and paladin. The paladin built a stronghold and a small town grew around it. He was lord of the manor and he was always complaining that NPCs were not polite when they addressed him. Probably because of the banter that we as the party engaged in. My MU got more respect (well, fear really) from the commoners. A particularly cranky gnome jeweller always yanked the paladins chain - one area of donations he thought were going to an orphanage was in fact funding a small thieves guild, and the temple of which he was the head still charged him for services. The player of the paladin didn't take it too seriously, but muttered about lack of respect from time to time.The boot was on the other foot and as the party was irreverent to each other, some of the commoners picked up on it. I suggest the same happens when dealing with NPC nobles. As GM, just play it straight and have NPCs act as you want the PCs to. If there is enough of a prelude, most players pick up on it - unless it's one of those 'silly five minutes' that sometimes intrude on sessions.

Edit: I think that treatment of law officials and the like is more of a problem - especially police, guardsmen etc. The poor old guardsman gets a rough deal from PCs in general. Same technique i mentioned above can work, but just encountered doing their job or, worse, placing hands on a PC or giving orders rarely goes down well.

Quote from: One Horse Town;235052Edit: I think that treatment of law officials and the like is more of a problem - especially police, guardsmen etc. The poor old guardsman gets a rough deal from PCs in general. Same technique i mentioned above can work, but just encountered doing their job or, worse, placing hands on a PC or giving orders rarely goes down well.

Yeah I think this is esp true for fantasy campaigns. I've always made it clear that there will always be consequences so my players rarely turn their encounters with the law into the Wild Bunch.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Jackalope;234957Suicide missions.  The kind PCs are best at.

That's my thinking. That, and the sort of job which in theory the king would never, ever countenance ordering any of his loyal vassals to do, like assassinating foreign dignitaries or stealing important artifacts and the like.

Quote from: S'mon;235046I remember from my army training that there is a time when we were taught to charge screaming & firing[...]

Yep, me too.

But it is not the usual practice. Either you've stupidly walked into an ambush - not usual Commonwealth army practice, we leave that to the Americans - or else you're doing a frontal assault on an entrenched position, the need for which indicates someone failed on the Seven Ps. All the rest of the time you'll be doing something else.

Still, as you say, occasionally it's needed.

Quote from: S'monThere's a time and a place for everything.

Leave it to the players, and it's always time to charge like Rambo.

Likewise, it's always time to tell police to fuck themselves, to abuse guards, to bargain hard just for a mug of ale, to slap NPCs of the desired gender on the arse, and so on.

A lot of roleplayers got their acting method from Samuel L Motherfuckin' Jackson.
NPC: "Hi."
PC: "You dissin' me bitch?!"

Quote from: Alnag;234900I've been discussing this issue with my friend recently. That in groups we know (fantasy RPGs mostly) player characters don't respond to nobles and such powerful figures in adequate manner. They lack politeness, respect, manners and such things.

As a post-communist country, there is this attitute toward nobles in real-life as well, so we were wondering if this is culture-specific issues that manifest itself in RPGs as well or is does this happen all around the globe, in countries where aristocracy still has its place in society or where was no such exposure to egalitarianism as in here.

So what are your experience with behavior towards NPC nobles in your games. Feel free to elaborate your response as you see fit :-)

I've found that people generally respond with either intentional derision or exaggerated respect; its a gut reaction typical of proletarian thinking, either "so what? you're not better than me!" or "oohhhh a real aristocrat!YOUR MAJESTY!!".

RPGPundit

I must be blessed with good players - they are usually unfailingly polite to any NPC of wealth or title. Of course, this is the result of many years spent playing irreverant mercenaries and reaping the consequences of their disrespect. These days they've long since decided that the ultimate aim of most PCs will be to acquire wealth and status of their own, and nothing hinders that like irritating the existing power set.

Players may be like a pack of dogs but they can be trained. Stern reprisals have worked best in the past, especially with any thief type who is disrespectful to guild superiors, but the same applies to any party that relies to any extent on the support or good will of an external authority. Make it clear that the support will be withdrawn and that dangerous consequences might follow (ideally as a two step process - withdraw support and hint at worse if they don't change their behaviour) and most PCs realise what's in their own best interests.

The biggest complication I've had with this subject has been in Pendragon.  Certain players will at times not get the different levels of nobility and what they mean in terms of how one must address them and interact with them.
So they go around trying to offering unsolicited advice to the Pendragon or the nobles, or trying to get help with their own personal/local issues from Merlin, or trying to publicly criticize (or even publicly insult) a nobleman.

I think one of the things that causes this problem is that at times the Nobles will interact with them, ask them for advice, or be generally "casual" with them.  But what players don't get is that in a world like Pendragon's, a Noble can choose to be casual with someone of lower rank, but that person cannot decide to just start being casual with the noble. Its not a two-way street.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;235065But it is not the usual practice. Either you've stupidly walked into an ambush - not usual Commonwealth army practice, we leave that to the Americans...

Oh Please. The french ambushed the English on the way to Fort Dunquesne and sent them packing home even though the french were outnumbered by almost 2-1.

Lexington and Concord.

Yorktown

At Normandy outside of Caen. Villars-Bocage... three Tiger tanks halted the entire advance of the British 7th armored division, and it took commonwealth forces until the end of June to capture Caen.

In more modern times, there was Ireland... and of course Iraq and Afghanistan...

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20030625/ai_n14552132

http://www.examiner.com/a-1500924~British_soldier_wounded_in_Afghan_ambush_dies.html

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=59885_4207

http://michellemalkin.com/2007/04/09/bias-at-the-bbc-and-britain-gone-soft-again/

and so on...

Players in my game tend to either respect or show deference to authority figures who are perceived to be on the side of good (which some of them in my game are). I think this is because they have become attached to their characters and know I won't hesitate to bring down a crapstorm of societal wrath on them if they really try to jerk the power structure around, just for kicks. This isn't to say that haven't gone up against nobility from time to time, but at least the declaration of immanent hostility was politely worded. Manners count, you know?

But my players are older, atypical, and play in a long running sandbox game where the consequences of their actions have been known to come back around at them, in a variety of forms - sometimes years later. Just last game, the players were discussing the fact that in many games they've seen, charisma is the dump stat - just not in mine.

For the roleplay part, I don't force players to devolve into court speech - most of my nobility save that for special occasions anyway. To avoid the problems of unnecessary and accidental offense, I arranged for them to run  across a book entitled "The Implications Of Nobility", which talked about noble etiquette, among other things. I didn't mention that the book was almost a generation out of date; this gave the characters a sort of "old-fashioned charm" to their dealings, which played well with older nobles, but tended to yark off the younger ones.

RPGPundit example from Pendragon brings a good point to mind.

If it is important to your campaign that social class be modeled realistically then you can't do it with out sufficient prep. It is no different than starting a new campaign world, or any other type of setting detail that has a rich and detailed background.

You need to ease the players into not hit them with the Baseball bat of truth over and over and over again. For example in the Pendragon run a pre-game adventure where everyone is a squire.

The same for other campaign with a strong "theme". Run one or two what I call "Powder puff" sessions where it really hard to screw up the details but at the same time immerse the player in the setting details you are working on.

If the campaign is not a "theme" campaign. Then make sure your players deal with the lower rung of the noble social ladder first. Introduce one or two concepts per session until they get the hang of it.

In some ways is like learning the RPG rules themselves. The social situation around nobility has it own rules that need to be learned.

With this being said there are two distinct problems. One of them being learning the social rules as above. The other, mentioned earlier, is the Wild Bunch response to authority. The two are separate and have different solutions.

Of course mine was to turn the pyromanic elf wizard into a donkey by the Elven King. His sentence was to remain at the elven city's gate and offer rides and carry loads for a century. "As you treated mortals as animals, so you shall be treated as an animal." The breaking point is when he fireballed a entire village (using multiple fireballs) just to get at a couple of bandits. Then compounded it by killing a knight and his men at arms who tried to arrest him.