thanks to an increase willpower +2 spell on a sustaining focus, my character does now have a willpower of 9. This leads me to the question... from the player's perspective, how do you roleplay high mental attributes ?

If you have a high Char or social skills, be prepared to act like it. Dice may be rolled, but it is generally RP, and if you're incompetent at negotiating, for example, you're screwed. Besides, it's an essential (IMO) element of the PC to reflect the higher values in skills and attributes in their person, and someone who can't RP someone with a high Char skill isn't doing a good job of RP with the character.

Besides, it makes things much more interesting.

Well, someone with a high willpower is not going to give up easily.

Someone with a high INT may know exactly what they are doing, be able to think of creative solutions to problems, or may use a lot of large words.

And someone with a high CHA or high social skills is generally sociable.

That's how I generally do it.

Totally agree with the above post.

If someone is just an average roleplayer, but wants to play a guy who has a gigantic charisma and amazing social skills, of course he should be allowed to. Social skills should be rolled for just as much as other ones. Otherwise, why bother taking them at all?

I usually handle it with a die roll and role play. Basically the character makes his Etiquette (Mafia) test when he starts talking to the Mafia Don. That role determines how my Mafia Don npc reacts to the player's character. Now, things my not always go smoothly, and if the character makes a good role, but starts talking like a dumbass I'll usually give them a nudge or two, but that rarely happens.

Basically, yes the die reflects what's going to happen, unless it's just role played well enough to over ride dice, sometimes this happens. Otherwise, I let the dice play their part, but also have the player work for it in their role playing. I'll never just let it go at "i'll roll my mafia etiquette of 10 and talk my out of it" and let it go at that. There will always be some role play involved. Even if the player isn't as smooth as the character should be, its the effort that I look for first and foremost. And on an individual basis, I don't expect the same things from all of my players, they all have their strengths and weaknesses and I take those into accounts as well.

I've found the only mental attribute that the player needs as much as his character is Intelligence. You can roll social skills instead of being genuinely charismatic, you can say "he attached a car battery to my balls, demanding I talk? I laugh!" instead of being genuinely willful, but you can't roll to create a good decision. Playing smart is really stuck in the realm of the player.

I'd say you can just roll for most negotiations/ettiquette tests but the player has to say something. Depending on what the player says it may get him/her TN mod. (good or bad).

I'm a big fan of "I don't know how to [x] but my character does..." Mostly because I don't know how to do a lot of the things my characters do. (ie. thow a manabolt, fire a full auto SMG, beat up a Troll, etc...) But with most things that my character does, what I say won't affect the die roll.

Its just another situation were being a veteran RPer helps out.

I've taken a cue from John Campbell (I think that's who mentioned it once): I assume all characters have the Common Sense edge as it relates to their character. If someone is playing a character with a high Intelligence (or any other trait) who likely would have considered something the player didn't even if it has no bearing on the run whatsoever, I'll mention it to them. The player can then choose to take that advise and run with it, or ignore it and do what he wants to do.

I can understand why some people have a problem with rules relating to social encounters, but those same people often seem to forget that they're playing a game first and foremost. As long as a player is putting effort towards playing their character correctly, even to the point where they admit that they don't know how their character would handle a situation and would rather rely on the stats alone, that's their perogative and -- if anything -- they should be applauded for it.

It's the charming player playing a character with a Charisma of 1 and no social skills to speak of who should get smacked upside the head for trying to fast talk their way past a guard or romance a simsense starlet... not the other way around.

I make players RP out social situations even if they're clumsy with words or say the wrong things. Then I have them make the roll, modifiying by their RPing to a degree. If the player comes up with this great story when trying to bluff the guard, I'll give him/her a few extra dice or a few bonuses on the roll. If the player fumbles through the whole thing horribly, I might increase the target number, but only if they did something horribly wrong that they should have known better about (like having a neon-pink trihawk when trying to pass themselves off as a corporate wageslave).

As far as High-Int PCs having players that do stupid things, I try to be as subtle as possible to warn them. The best way is to tell them what they just asked to do taking out any context they've added in so they can see how stupid it is. "So you're going to draw your gun in the middle of the mall with security all around and point it in the face of the corporate officer, right?" "Umm, wait..."

The Abstruse One

I see the difference between "Common Sense" the edge and helping someone roleplay a very different character from themselves as being delineated by the skill/attribute roll. If someone with a really high charisma says "I'm going to punch Mr. J." It's a combat roll and not a cha roll. "Common Sense" the edge would probably have the GM suggesting another course of action, but this isn't a case of someone struggling with how to use charisma so without the edge--punch away. But if they want to charm him into special favors, suggesting the use of sex appeal or golf banter as appropriate is a very good thing for a GM to do to help illustrate and act out the dice roll.

I award extra karma for good roleplaying taking into consideration of the limits of the player. For example, someone who is a total social klutz is going to have a harder time roleplaying a high cha char well than someone who was the prom queen. The bar for the prom queen would be higher.

But roleplaying a high Willpower/Intelligence char is going to be more difficult, simply because of the mental limitations of th player.

I would let the Attribute and skill level be a major factor in determining how the NPCs react to a character. If a clutzy player has a character with a high Charisma and etiquette, then NPCs will tend to turn to the character and pay attention whenever he says anything, tend to be more friendly towards that character, etc. Smooth-talking players who run a character with low Charisma and little or nothing in the way of social skills will find that their real-life smoothness doesn't translate to the character. NPCs' eyes will glaze over with boredom, or they will grit their teeth with annoyance, whenever the character tries to be "smooth". I would let a skilled player roleplay his way out of a situation with a low-Charisma/social skills character, IF it was in-character. In other words, if your uncouth troll tells a dirty joke, it's one thing, but if he tries to bluff his way through a Japanese tea ceremony, it's another thing.

Roleplaying high willpower? Staring contest!!

Playing a character with high willpower isn't often so hard. It's easy to say your character will stay up for 10 hours a day programming that utility, or laugh it off when five trolls are brutally interrogating him, but somewhat harder to actually do.

Likewise it's easier to be single-minded and determined when you're sitting at table somewhere comfortable, rather than trudging through jungles in the pouring rain or whatever.

Being pretty dim in real life and coming up with good plans though, that's hard.

So I hear anyway..

Just because your character is smart doesn't mean he's good at formulating plans.

Likewise, just because you're smart (of course, I don't know you- but let's not get offensive here, we'll stick to polite assumptions) doesn't mean you are a master at Chess (generally considered fairly high-brow).

I tend to take stats as a starting point and let the character RP it from there. Then they get a dice roll which to me represents how well they pulled it off on that occasion. A charisma of six gets you a high baseline thats hard to screw up, a charisma of 1 is almost impossible to recover from. Intelligence I handle from an almost purely RP standpoint. I ignore the character with the 1 Int as he talks about wave theory and how its relates to the problem at hand and enforce that no one else listens either. People with low intelligence (1 or 2) really shouldn't be planning anything or coming up with the bright idea more than once in a blue moon. Before you get on my case I'm talking game mechanics only, not real life. People with high intelligence get hints about the deeper meaning of what they see or when something just doesn't jive.

Willpower I rarely use outside the game mechanic. Sorry, to each there own on that score.

Well no, but a high SR intelligence would certainly help for formulating plans. Chess would be (and is, in fact, for some NPCS I've seen) a knowledge skill. I suppose you get things like Small Unit Tactics, or various planning and tactical knowledge skills, but failing that Int a reasonable indicator.

Yeah often I think the only time a lot of characters (including mine) use their willpower is for resisting manabolts and calculating combat pool..

As long as GMs enforce it in a general way it's fine. A willpower 1 guy isn't going too likely to have the patience or perseverence to hang around for several days staking out some site or other, or to spend two weeks pushing himself through eight hour training sessions every day without an instructor.

But then, having a willpower of 1 is bad enough even for pure game mechanics so I guess he could do with a break..

It was intended as a comparison to the opposite. Most GMs have no problem doing what you just did, but as made evident in this thread alone, quite a few do have a problem when the situation is reversed.

I've sat in on enough of these character vs. player skills/knowledge/ability discussions to finally have a brief meditation to offer.

I think folks need to give more credence to those who suggest that players need to rely more on their roleplaying ability and less on their roles, or rather, that "good" players will do this, and more mediocre players won't.

Gaming is a social activity, in which real people interact (players) to create a world which exists only in their minds. Hopefully, what folks get out of gaming is that it is fun-- that you get to hang around with your friends, down some cold ones, eat some chips, and frag off some repeating villain one more time.

The thing is, good gaming requires a little responsibility on the part of the players. The richness of the world is going to be reflected in the degree of understanding shared betweent he GM and the players. I can create an incredibly rich and varied world, based on as many canon sources as I can find, but it hardly amounts to anything if my players still don't understand how their spell pool works, let alone, could give a good in-character description of how it works in-game.

This is a long way of saying, get in character, you silly slags! There are incredible resources on-line and in your local library that will help you develop your knowledge as a player, enhancing you ability to play as a character. If you want to play a gun-bunny, do some quick reading on firearms. If you want to be a wiz decker, read some cyberpunk about surfing the matrix. If you want to be a better negotiator, rent some high-powered movies about inside traders or power-brokers (but not the 5th Element).

As a GM, you have to push players hard to really be the best player they can be. This can be difficult. Fact is, though, if a shy, bumbling player really wants to play a slick Face character, then there is some slick face buried in that bumbling geek just itching to get out. The player wouldn't want to spend time "being" that character otherwise. As a GM, the responsibility is to provide opportunities where such role-playing opportunities can really come out and shine, rather than relegating skills to dice rolls.

Finally, a good tip for doing this is to provide some flavor text or dialogue. If you're having trouble getting a shy person to play their out-going character, or vice-versa, show them some cool dialogue, either from films, or by acting it out for them. Once they get an example or three under their belts, you'd be surprised how keen they are to show off their smooth side.

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One difference between high-intelligence and low-intelligence is in the quality of the things a person thinks up, but in rapdily-changing situations (such as shadowruns) the real limiting factor for most people is time. The high-intelligence person can think quickly and quickly come up with their plan. The low-intelligence person needs more time to chew on it and think it through.

Therefore, to balance players vs. characters intelligence, I modify how much time the player gets to think. A really stupid player with a really smart character gets huge amounts of real time to think through things that are happening quickly in-game. If the player and character are roughly equal in intelligence, I try to give them "real time" planning time -- if the character has an hour to plan, so does the player (if they want it all). If the player is smart and their character is an idiot, they get very little time to think. "You've got 30 seconds to come up with the plan that your troll produces in his hour of down-time."

That seems to work well enough. Lacking that, you can also use alcohol as an impairment. "You, playing the troll -- you must take 2 shots of whiskey before the game starts, and another one every hour thereafter. At my discretion, if you are too smart, more shots may be applied." This method works best when everyone is playing trolls.

--K

I think that NPC reaction should be the deciding factor. In cases where a smart player with an idiot char formulates a plan I think the player/char should "discover" overlooked hindrances. ie motion sensors, patrolling critters, free spirits. However if a "idiot" player playing a smart char should have whatever plan he comes up with go off as he expected. Im not saying it should be easy but there should be limited surprises. For CHA it should be much the same. A geeky guy asking a supermodel for her number can use the same cheesy pick-up line as say Sean Connery. The results of the two meetings will be drastically different. WIL should come into RP as a mental breakdown point. Chars with low WIL will give up at some point and should temporarily lose playability. For example a char with a WIL of one caught by guards would "lose" control of his char until rescued, whereas a 6 WIL char would retain control, try to escape, fight with guards etc. Its an imperfect system but I feel its most acurately portrays the meaning behind the numbers.