Post originally by jay verkuilen at 2005-04-21 12:00:52
Converted from Phorums BB System



James A Beggs wrote:
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>>The problem is that these skills often end up becoming a kind of mind control.<<

Yeah, that's true but I think the alternative of leaving it all up to *player* skill isn't a good one either.

If you've got some kind of personality mechanic in place, this can be helpful. For instance, in a D20 game I might well call for a Will save if the player wants to resist the effect of some kind of social roll.


>>Furthermore, NPCs cant use them against PCs, without getting into a fight with the GM. If a GM said, "Ok, he rolled a 35 on his Diplomacy Check... even though you disliked him, you now think he is the coolest thing since cheese spread," a lot of players would revolt.<<

Well I tend to use this sort of thing judiciously. Mostly NPC use of Diplomacy or the like is in haggling or other obviously "opposed" circumstances that I don't want to play out otherwise. I also tend to judge an NPC's position by skills such as Diplomacy.




>>That being beside the point, I was simply commenting that Wulf's response seemed to suggest a complete indulgence into rolling dice without regard to roleplaying. Hence, my reply.<<

Fair enough.


>>As it is, though, Fireborn DOES have a system for interacting with others... it just isn't as deep as the combat system - but then, few rules system ever get more complex than during combat anyway.<<

Yeah, that's true, though sometimes I think that a bit more attention to making non-combat exciting would be a good thing. It just seems to be true that some dice rolling makes for tension in a way that pure RP does not. I've thrown in all sorts of things in games in the past that are "combat-like" but not combat. For instance, something like a horse race can involve a surprisingly large number of players if you set things up right. Even if their chars are not in the race itself, you can have them making side bets and so forth. The dice rolls are there to keep people honest.

Jay