Negotiating, How do you use it? Options

[Dog]

Back in my teenager years I was in a D&D tournament. (Second d&d confession in as many days. Shame on me.) I was randomly selected to play a dumb-ass barbarian, but apparently the real dumb-asses were the strangers whose party I was to join. The adventure scenario (d&d is so linear!) included puzzles to solve, that I didn't find too hard, but the other players apparently did, so I found it a great roleplaying challenge to solve them by accident rather than smarts.
"This riddle is too hard for me guys. I'll take a break while you solve it and lean up against, I dunno.... THE SECOND PILLAR ON THE RIGHT, or something..."

I agree that it is fun to play a character who is less competent in an skill area than you are, but nigh impossible to play one with a higher skill or knowledge area without the aid of game mechanics.

Player: "I try to fix the nuclear reactor before it blows."
GM: "How?"
Player: "How the hell should I know? By rolling my nuclear reactor build/repair skill, that's how!"

Now just change 'fix nuclear reactor' for 'talk troll out of killing me.'

Good actors still need good scripts. Good roleplayers still need good mechanics.

[Arethusa]

Good writers do good research. It's not really a good comparison to compare roleplaying exclusively to acting.

[Dawnshadow]

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Arethusa]

[Da9iel]

Arethusa: You are the GM, yes? Do you ever portray powerful NPCs? I will assume you are extremely exceptional and have mental stats of all 6 irl. Does it limit your games to never have NPCs with superhuman stats? Do you merely keep it low level so that you may accurately portray fixers, Johnsons, fences, etc that can be fooled, charmed, conned, intimidated, etc. by regular people? (Though it may be rare given your exceptional personal stats in this case for arguments sake.) If you are not the GM, please ask him or her and/or answer for him or her to the best of your knowledge.

[Arethusa]

First off, I'm not playing. This is for a number of reasons, largest being that there's no one to play with, as I go to a community college (and will be for another year before transferring), and community colleges have no community.

But, that said, I'll answer your questions as if I were running that game. Assuming I did have straight 6 stats in real life (and I won't comment on whether I do or not; I'm not saying this was your intent, but that sort of thing almost invariably turns into internet ego masturbation, and for obvious reasons, I'd rather not go there), that by no means strictly limits me to playing characters (or non player characters, for that matter) of equal or lesser ability scores (for argument's sake, let's ignore the fact that ability scores are, overall, necessarily poor representations of real world ability, not to mention fundamentally difficult to accurately apply in reality). My personal abilities, skills, and knowledge factor in, yes— and significantly— but they are not hard ceilings.

To draw a limited analogy back to acting (which is appropriate so long as it's not absolute), there are plenty of actors who have portrayed characters with abilities, skills, and knowledge beyond their own. For example, Russel Crowe, who is by no means stupid, is still not a Nobel laureate and genius mathematician— at least not so far— and yet his portrayal of Nash was excellent. In writing, as well, a writer is not necessarily (nor often) exactly whom or what he or she is writing about. That is not to say limitations don't exist, but I don't believe that those limitations are hard nor to I believe they are necessarily permanent. And, really, I'd say the same would apply to any potential players.

All of this should be tempered by a pretty big caveat, because no matter how seriously I may take a game I may be running and no matter how much I may advocate players and GMs doing research to prepare for games, I am not suggesting that anyone take this to an extreme and spend two years preparing for a character. That's obviously pretty silly from just about any remotely reasonable perspective.

[Da9iel]

I'm sorry, Arethusa, I still need more. Russel Crowe did not write the lines he performed as Nash. Even assuming he could, authors spend days or even years researching and refining to accurately script geniuses and other great men and women. Since you eschew dice, how can you portray greater men and women than yourself on the fly with the extemporaneous nature of role play?

edited: extemporaneous is a better adjective than spontaneous.

[Talia Invierno]

[hahnsoo]

That, and Russell Crowe's protrayal of Nash wasn't very accurate of both the person that Nash was (one of the major criticisms of the movie) nor his particular condition (which was "softened" for dramatic purposes, and downplayed the role of his non-compliance of his meds). It was a good empathic performance, but one that was structured by context (the script and the story-telling nature of cinema) to make you believe the part.

There are certain situations in roleplaying where you can get away with playing the role versus certain situations where you really do need to do your homework (method acting often encorporates this), have crib notes (a script, for example), or simply bypass the details with a roll of the dice (in the case of roleplaying games). More importantly, it has to be set up for you in terms of the context in order for it to work... in other words, if the GM rewards X behavior vs. Y behavior, simply because it fits in his standard of roleplaying. As impartial as most GMs claim to be, PC roleplaying really is an appeal to an audience of one. This is not to dismiss the personal gratification of such acts, but mechanics-wise, that's what it comes down to.

We used to have "Clue" parties when I was in high school. I and a bunch of my friends (most of whom did improv comedy, drama club, or theater of some sort) would get together at someone's house, dress up in period costumes, and have a little murder mystery. There were underlying mechanics, but the main outcomes were determined solely by how many people you interacted with and to what degree, rather than your personal ability to solve the mystery or familiarity with the genre. Or take the game of Diplomacy, where it is beneficial to talk to everyone, as many times as possible, over the most important subjects you can think of. The context of the game supports the ability to communicate quickly and effectively, and makes it necessary in order to do anything within the game.

My personal preference, when it comes to RPGs, is to let the mechanics sort out the outcomes, while letting the roleplaying overlay the structure set down by the mechanics. In other words, let the dice fall as they may, and then improvise the scene, rather than improvising the scene to influence the outcome. But some people prefer to let the roleplaying take precedence (like the Clue parties) and others like the set up a context where such roleplaying leads to actions (like Diplomacy or a LARP). The thing about roleplaying games is that it is simply a social construct from which one derives enjoyment (after all, it is a game). So as long as everyone at the table is playing by the same rules, then play however the hell you want (like in Monopoly, where we have a house rule that all "Tax money" can be won by landing on Free Parking).

[Da9iel]

Talia, I see your point. You didn't answer the right question. Arethusa arrives at outcomes of negotiations (in specific) and social interaction (in general) based solely upon role play (no dice). I understand that it is easy to play a great character without being one, but how can you get the results of a great character without being one? I could shout and gesticulate wildly, but I could never lead a devastated European nation to greatness and bring it to the brink of conquering all of Europe. The only way I could get such leadership and charisma results is with the willing participation and "dumbing down" of my fellow players. This is the suspended disbelief you speak of. I have no struggles with role playing.

However, the way Arethusa describes his game, I could have a character with charisma 6 and negotiations 6, but if I couldn't match them with my real life charisma of 3 (2?) and real life negotiations skill of 1 (defaulting?), all my strutting and acting would provide nothing but failure against his NPC of all 4s. He won't dumb down the NPCs to match my feeble personality and feeble skills. The results in his game are limited by player personality and skills. I understand how he and the players he's played with prevent acting above a character's levels when the player is superior to the character, but there is no allowance for enabling a player to play a character who is superior to the player.

I am assuming the players hold the GM to the same standards.

Does this limit Arethusa's portrayal of truly great NPCs? For our example we assumed that Arethusa is all 6s irl. Even if the best of his players is a (for example) 5 charisma irl, Arethusa could never accurately portray an NPC who more than marginally out-charms the PC.

Caveat: I understand that real life has no numbers for attributes. Real people do, however, have various levels of charm and charisma. The numbers assigned in this example are merely examples to help me properly phrase my question as it pertains to characters' numbered attributes.

I have difficulty seeing how this diceless style of playing is not limiting. I would like to know how Arethusa gets around this. I am also tacitly trying to show why most people roll the dice, then act out the scene with a known outcome.

hahnsoo: Yes. You see my point then?