Wow.
We had forty-seven comments on last week’s blog commentary about my experience in a game at Fear the Con where I attempted to use my character’s Persuasion skill on another player character. It spawned a forum discussion and commentary from the guys at Kicked in the Dicebags (they’re wrong) as well as Happy Jacks RPG Podcast (they’re wrong, too).
Folks feel a bit strongly about this subject.
If you’ll recall, I said:
At game’s end we were faced with a several options… I wanted to stop the elder god’s arrival. To do this I was willing to destroy the summon-elder-god-machine. Clearly, doing so would kill us, but the world would be safe.
Understanding what our villain had told us, I agreed. “We’ll die heroes!”
I role played my argument. No one was biting.
So, I chose to use my persuasion skill against one of the other player characters to win him to my side.
“I’m not going to allow you to rob him of free will,” Payton said, shutting down my move.
Many have misconstrued my attempt to persuade my fellow player’s character via utilizing my character’s Persuasion skill as my attempt to control another’s mind. That really wasn’t my intent at all.
I don’t see Persuasion as Mind Control. The player never would have lost control of his character beyond this one decision. I simply wanted to use the skill on my character sheet in a situation that I thought the skill would have application. I’d imagined that had I rolled successfully, the GM might have argued on my behalf – applying some peer pressure to the other player in a genuine attempt to persuade the other player to my position.
“He makes a good point,” The GM might have said, “You have to admit, things are dark… this is the one sure way to end this danger… It’s the heroic thing to do.”
Maybe that would have swayed the other player. Maybe it wouldn’t have. We’ll never know because the GM just said ‘no.’
In reading all the comments and listening to all the feedback, I’ve settled on how I will handle this from here on out in my Savage Worlds campaign.
If a player chooses to roll Persuade against a fellow player character and a SUCCESS is rolled, I will offer the Persuadee a Bennie.
“You are persuaded,” I will say setting the Bennie down before him.
Now, the persuadee can accept the Bennie and be persuaded – or he may choose not to be Persuaded, but he doesn’t get the Bennie AND it will cost him one out of his own stash.
I will apply this rule to all social skills utilized against player characters.
You’re on notice.
Glad I’m not playing in your game.
Get your grubby hands off my bennies.
And how is it not denying someone their free will if you make their decision for them? Sure they get to make all those other decisions, but you still made that one for them. And you didn’t want the GM to apply peer pressure. You wanted him to rule that the guy was persuaded.
The reason why BW’s duel of wits is so convincing is because it has rules for opposed persuasion. In that case both players are equipped to argue their point. You weren’t playing a system set up to do that. You were playing an “I roll and I win” system, which is why persuasion/diplomacy is rarely allowed to affect other players.
Not sure why you thought a second post on the subject would yield you any different public opinion. We’re not affected by your persuasion rolls either.
I’m won over on the Bennie rule. I can accept this.
I can see your point but I don’t give con players the same latitudes I give to my home group since I don’t know them. Also Wild Talents doesn’t have a bennies type system in place.
Again, it boils down to my belief that players should make decisions without any external metagamey type factors weighing in. I don’t want players changing their decisions because I said they should. That’s too coercive for my taste.
I would actually be sorta okay with the bennies setup; at least it keeps the final decision in the Persuadee’s hands. I would even be okay with pc-on-pc psionic persuasion, if your char has that ability and you make your roll and you want to deal with the in-game consequences.
What I’m never going to be okay with is making a decision about where I want to take my character, and then being told that my char has to “voluntarily” change his/her mind and do something else instead, not because I think it’s a promising course of action, not because it seems like the sort of thing my char would do, not because I have ANY desire to take the game in that direction, but simply because another player made his Persuasion roll. That is Just Not Cool.
I like the idea of the DM compelling a player with a bennie. It works well in situations where giving in would create an awkward or interesting situation, or make a scene more dramatic. But I still disagree with your approach the way you’ve presented it here.
Offering a bennie to a player who goes along with another player’s persuasion roll == okay. Depending on the scene, it can be appropriate. But removing a bennie when a player refuses to do so? That’s negative reinforcement, and in my opinion is not the right way to handle the situation. Giving up a bonus die or what have you in order to avoid having to give in to a persuasion attempt implies to me that I’m spending a bennie to resist a subtle form of mind control. From the sounds of it, even if I tell you that my character would never agree to a particular course of action, I would be punished for staying true to my character.
Also, what happens when a player is fresh out of bennies? Does he then have to go along with the persuasion roll since he can’t pay the toll? Or would you just let it be?
I totally agree with the bennie suggestion. It provides a meaningful incentive and a meta-representation of a persuasive argument. I actually suggested something similar over on the RPPR forums as a future way to handle the situation. (I suggested the use of SAN points instead, because of the system.)
To people who ask “why take away bennies”, I think it’s a good call. You basically ARE resisting a subtle form of mind control, that’s what the art of persuasion is. Sticking to your morals in the face of a really good argument is hard, and the sacrifice of a bennie represents that toll on your will.
That said, I have to agree with Ross’s decision under the circumstances. That “one decision” would determine if the character lived or died. Without knowing the players well there’s no way to be sure how impactful a GM saying “you’re convinced” will be. They might take it as an order and think they have essentially been “mind controlled”. In that situation it is equivalent to saying to the other player “you failed a skill check, now your character dies outright”. Imagine how the other guy would feel under those circumstances?
In a regular game setting where the GM and players have an established relationship and know how to handle each other, your idea of trying to persuade the player would work great. Under the circumstances of a con game, I as a GM would feel uncomfortable trying to force a player to essentially commit suicide on the basis of a skill check.
Persuasion is a subtle form of mind control, true. I guess my issue with it is treating it too similarly to how you would with NPCs. Saying that you have to resist persuasion rolls by giving up bennies even if you [legitimately] think your character’s disposition would dictate that you can’t be persuaded is a big part of what I don’t like. The story is about the player characters, therefore it can be appropriate to trivialize social encounters by rolling off against NPCs but it doesn’t work quite as well when it’s PC vs PC. I would rather trust my players to act out their characters faithfully without forcing anything.
Ha! Little does everyone (including, perhaps, you) know that not a single character in your game actually has the Persuasion skill.
We’re Rangers! Our subtle forms of mind control come from the business end of a gun…or sword.
That being said, I like the bennie reward system. Especially if bennies are fluid. If the players just get their three at the start of the game and someone can be a jack hole and try to burn you out of your bennies by persuading you take shots of tequila or flirt with that bigozian, then its going to get really tiring, really fast. But if good role playing and acting in character keeps a good flow of bennies coming then that’s interesting.
Especially if your gaming group is sans jack holes.
Oh and I have to disagree with giving people at Con games less leeway. I’m generally inclined to give them MORE leeway. After all, generally the people did not make the characters they’re playing and they’re never going to play them again, so who cares if the character dies? As long as they don’t die in a boring way or an hour or two before the game ends.
It’s always interesting to see what GMs consider dice rolls and checks are actually for. I know for me, a check roll is a story telling mechanics when there is a conflict between what the players would want to happen, and what I as a GM consider might be an equally valid and fun path.
I never understand when a check roll is used for something critical the GM wants players to find/do, and the players want to find/do. If a poor result is going to cause problems with no fun alternatives, and the task was possible, why roll?
To me the result of the die roll does not let me tell the player their character did something badly, and the result of a good roll does not let me tell the player their character did well. Instead, the dice roll tells me how to bend reality and retcon the story to fit the result – the creature they attempted to attack was distracted and shifted close, the NPC they attempted to pursuade actually had a tragic history that makes him sympathetic.
The player’s actions, and thus the character’s, shape the world and story for me. It’s up to the player to tell me how the story shapes their character and assimilate that.
Therefore, I consider dice mechanics between players in a storytelling sense strange for most cases. The players choose – using player actions, character actions, character attributes and story history – how their character is shaped by the other characters. As a GM I’m uncomfortable treading on that area for many reasons. Being the storyteller my domain should end where the world meets a player’s character. Being the rules arbitrator, I have no rules to decide upon unless the players invoke them together. Being the social abitrator of the player disputes, bad roleplaying in either direction is not a matter for dice alone. Being a fellow player, it’s not my place to tell two players how to enjoy the game, unless it becomes a matter for social arbitration!
I heartily support players deciding to use dice mechanics for resolution if they enter into it in the spirit of ‘I obviously like my idea of how the story should go, but your way sounds interesting too, there’s enough RP wiggle room for either, let’s resolve it using mechanics’. However, I always stress to my own new players that the general rule is you don’t roll dice against another player for anything RP (storytelling) related.