Then it is the player's own fault for overestimating his prowess. Nothing to do with Roll or Role playing at all. If the PC had more dice in the first place, but you added an overwhelming number of dice for your GM PC, then you are just escalating the conflict. But if you built your GM PC as a 1 trick pony(hence the overwhelming dice), then don't blame your PCs for doing so as well. Then it all depends on what you want in your game.

...it did come to that on a couple occasions, but to little or no avail.

Because the character was continually played so out of context even after stepping OOC made it a roleplay issue.

No - the only thing saying stupid and insulting things and then rolling 18 dice on a negotiation test achieves, is to damage the reality of the game and everyone's suspension of disbelief.

We use dice for combat and piloting helicopters because we don't want to run around our living rooms with swords or making vroom vroom noises and playing with make believe controls whilst a critical panel of experts estimates the likely results of our actions. But you can bet if we actually could have a fight or fly a helicopter without consequences as part of the game, we would. The difference with social actions is to a large part we can get closer to actually being there. And so we tend to do that by considering our own words to be the literal PC to PC / NPC dialogue in game. To do otherwise cuts us off from a large part of the immersion in the game. But that means a player should make an effort to keep their dialogue in-line with the effects they want to achieve in order to make that immersion real. The ideal is where the player is fully capable of the social interaction that his or her character is capable of. If the player is willing, but simply has difficulty then I as a GM (and I'm sure most others) would do our best to smooth things over and make things easy on the player. If the player is deliberately at odds with what they state their character's aims are, then that sympathy evaporates in zero time. They are damaging the reality that we as a GM's strive so hard to create. When did acting out of character become acceptable again, because I think I missed that post?

If people insist on drawing parrallels with non-social attributes and skills, such as the aforementioned combat scenarios, then let us at least draw a more accurate parrallel. Calling the Johnson a name then rolling an armload of negotiation dice is the equivalent of saying "I'm going to stand on one leg when I attack" and then rolling an armload of close combat dice. Is the GM justified in imposing severe dice pool penalties? Absolutely.

If a player is struggling to play a socially adept character then take the simple approach of abstracting the dialogue. "I go up to the barman and try to get talking, and bring it round to who was in here last night." You don't have to make the player try to think of smooth ways of leading the conversation around. But if a player is just being an arse, they take the consequences.

My opinion.

-K.

I kinda agree with you. I think the roleplaying should be a tool used to increase or decrease chances on the actual rolls. In combat you can get bonuses for taking cover or teaming up on one guy or numerous other things that would be considered good tactics and strategy. If you do something stupid in combat like run out in the middle of a gun fight or stand on one leg to attack someone then yeah you would get penalties to.

If the player who is the face wants to know who was in the bar last night then saying, "I talk to the bartender and try and find out who was here last night." would be perfectly acceptable and you would ask the player to roll his skill and be done with it. If the play went up and roleplayed the situation well you should be like ok, roll you skill and here is some extra dice for roleplaying the situation. When I say roleplay the situation well, I mean in a way that just about anyone could do it. You go up and make some small talk, and try and steer the conversation to whatever it was you were looking for. It isn't really how well you were but that you tried to roleplay it well. If the player went up and started being rude and calling the bartender names and then asked I would say ok roll your skill and roll this many less dice for your roleplaying. Rolling a bunch of hits and still getting the information might be represented by the character being really annoying and the bartender telling him what he wants to know to get him the hell out of there.

Thats what I think.

So if someone can realistically perform jujitsu or shoot a gun, do you go fire off some rounds to see if you hit the target? Or do you give bonus dice for shooting?

"I'm going to stand on one leg when I attack" - "If do right, no can defend." So roll the 18 dice, kick the guy dead. Dice pool penalties? What dice pool penalties?

Emphasis mine.

MFB:

That is the key point. If the player is intentionally trying to drawk attention then no they dont get a stealth roll.

Likewise if the player in trying to piss somebody off (perhaps to get them to take a swing) then they arent going to roll to make friendly friendly.


However, The implied question and what several of us are commenting on, is when a non-social PLAYER attempts to have a face CHARACTER.

Here you should not penalize a player for poor social skills any more then you would penalize a player for poor endurance. (how many of us could still run a mile with a full pack on)


Now from some of the later comments it does sound like the player in this direct example IS trying to be obnoxious. In which case there is even a better solution than not allowing them to make rolls.

'Hey bub, we all here are trying to have fun, If you're not having fun, or your fun is in antaganizing the rest of us then your are more then welcome to not come to the game!"


If the character is attempting to make smooth talk, and player is social inept and bumbles it bad (but does try to roll play). Make the roll, and then describe out what happens, giving the player a better idea how it might have gone.

If the character is trying to make smooth talk, and the player is just being an obvoxious jerk. Address the obnoxious jerk like you would any other, whether it is their face, or it is the gun-bunny. Players causing problems are not welcome in my games (atleast).

If character is purposly being oboxious (for some reason) then modify dice rolls as appropriate (or even deny dice rolls).




Player SKILLS do not matter in determining outcome.


Player INENTIONS do matter in determining outcome.

There are already canon modifiers for the various skills. Use them. If your player wants to sneak across the brightly lit compound in day glo orange, use the canon modifiers for that. There is no need for GM extras.

If the PC speaks in an insulting manner to the J, then so be it. Impose the canon modifiers if you wish. The mods are already in the book. Imposing more modifiers because you think the PC shouldn't succeed is tantamount to handwaving in his failure. What's the point?

The modifiers are all there in the books, use them. I am not going to punish my players because they researched the rules better than I. If the worst canon mod is -4 dice for an enemy, then I won't impose a -5(and I'd just impose the -3 for a Hostile at most), just because the PC was rude to the J. Adjucate within the framework of the rules.

Granted that Notoriety affects Street Cred in Negotiation or Etiquette rolls, but if the PC can take the -3 hostile and -1 Street Cred(Notoriety) and still have a good chance of success, he gets the roll without the GM modifiers. And it gets better from Intimidation or fear based rolls, I do not punish such behavior in my games. There is a rule mechanic consequence, I apply that. If you succeed, you succeed. If you don't, you don't.

Huh? What does this have to do with the discussion?

Anyway, if the PC did piss on some crime lord's mum(if he did not already sell her to the ghouls), then he would be hostile. Maybe even to the point he upgrades to enemy. But that would be it. The consequences of the upgrade from hostility to enemity might have a story effect but mechanically if the PC talks to the crime lord again, it would be a -1 dice more. But certainly, the crime lord would remember that, whatever the subject of conversation, he was convinced or persuaded or some such and cool with that. Unless the conversation was specifically about the crimelord's mom, then I would certainly have the crimelord use his Edge.

This is an excellent way of handling social interaction. I've used it in the past.

While it may be a "role vs roll" argument; not everyone I invite to my table has experience with role playing, or has the right personality/skillset/maturity to play a character concept they want to try. I let the dice to the talking.

I do ask for basics. Who are you questioning? What basic tactic are you putting into use? And what type of information are you looking for? Additional bonuses/penalties are rare in my games, unless someone does something spectacularly brilliant or dumb. I guess I "roll play" the game, while I reward "role playing" with additional karma rewards rather than non-standard game mechanic bonuses.

Well that depends did the GM say there was a Naked Marathon in support of the local colledge football team who's colors happen to be orange and blue?

We don't? Come on, that would make such a great game.

vroom


I just wanted to jump back in and clarify my earlier statement a bit. I do impose penalties in social situations, but I do so when what the player is saying/doing run counter to what they are actually trying to achieve. This has been mentioned by others, but I wanted my earlier post to be more clear.

Sure. And I absolutely refuse to do so just to support player asshattery.

Not to be crass, but that last part seems a little biased, to me...

I believe he was telling Congressmen to make thier point and move on.
If sometime during your speach a person wonders,"What were we talking about?" Then you have been talking to long. And Yes it might be a little biased, as if that is new to boards..

If you guys are in the groove, doing some RP, and you run out of thing to say when your character wouldn't. Ask the GM to help give you some ideas of what to say next based on the roll you make. Or if you make a good roll, let every one come up with something to say at the next spot and use it.

However, between two characters, influence skill wouldn't affect anything I don't think.

Edit: didn't realize this was 4 pages long, this reply is from the first page I think. Sorry for the disruption.