‘Florentine Street Artists’ courtesy of freeimages.com / Jenny Rollo

This is a somewhat unusual article for Campaign Mastery in that it is pitched as much, or even more strongly, at players than at GMs…

While planning the next adventure in the Adventurer’s Club campaign yesterday with my co-GM, I made an observation regarding the changing style of roleplaying.

Both my co-GM, Blair, and I, are old-school. We speak in character when roleplaying except when describing an action the character is making or attempting – and even then, we’re just as likely to say “I” instead of referring to the character in the third person.

When our characters have a conversation, we have a conversation.

Many newer players don’t seem to handle their roleplaying in the same way, or at least. not as often. Quite often, instead of speaking in character, they will describe what they want their character to say using the third person. And instead of using a character’s skills as a guide to how “clumsily” they should make their efforts, they rely on a roll against that skill to determine success or failure.

My observation was that we were having to accommodate this “modern” approach more and more often when writing adventures.

Is this a sign of player laziness? Absolutely not. One of the players in whom we have most noticed a tenancy in this direction (no names) works harder than just about anyone else at being a player.

No, we attribute the change to a desire to be sure the character gets the full measure of value from their investment in skills, and a reliance on the rules to interpret the meaning of a skill level of X rather than the player doing the interpretation based on guidelines.

I don’t think the change is an improvement. It makes some things easier – in particular, it takes the competence difference between player and character out of the equation almost entirely – but the price seems too high, because what is being sacrificed is immersion. Immersion of player into character. immersion of character into story, and even immersion of story into world.

Resorting to third-person roleplaying should be reserved only for the most difficult of conversational tasks. But, in order for that to become the case, players who have never been shown how will have to be educated in the techniques and processes of first-person roleplaying.

Modern games provide all the tools necessary. All it takes is understanding the systems sufficiently well to interpret a given skill level into playable expressions of capability. You, as the GM, will need to be the source of that education – a tough assignment if you haven’t been educated in the techniques of skill interpretation. And that’s the purpose of this article.

In order to make the article as universally-accessible as possible, I’m going to use Pathfinder as my example game system. But the same basic techniques, properly adjusted, work for any game system, and to demonstrate that, I’ll use the hero system as my secondary example. Why? Because Pathfinder is based around a linear die roll (a d20) while the Hero System is non-linear (based around 3d6). Between them, they cover the fundamentals of most game mechanics.

Finally, to ensure common ground, I need some skill that’s functionally similar in both game systems. Pathfinder has a skill, Diplomacy, which can be used to persuade others. The Hero System has a skill, Persuasion, which is specific to that function. And these are exactly the sort of in-game function that this article is talking about, making these perfect for the purpose. So, with everything organized, let’s get started.

The Pathfinder Example

Skills in Pathfinder work by adding the bonus from a stat to the number of ranks in the skill. The character then rolls a d20 and adds the result to this total, needing to roll a target number or better – the DC – in order to succeed. In addition, the GM may add bonuses or penalties to adjust the DC for specific circumstances.

So let’s assume a stat bonus of +2 and a skill level of 4 ranks, which is a total of +6.

The average roll of a d20 is 10.5 – call it 10. the minimum is 1, and the maximum is 20.

So the lowest result total is 7, the average is 16, and the maximum is 26.

In Pathfinder, the DC is initially set according to the attitude of the target:

• Hostile = 25 + target’s CHA modifier
• Unfriendly = 20 + target’s CHA modifier
• Indifferent = 15 + target’s CHA modifier
• Friendly = 10 + target’s CHA modifier
• Helpful = 5 + target’s CHA modifier

You need to succeed in a Diplomacy check to shift the attitude of the target on a temporary basis. Succeed and you get a one-step improvement; for every 5 more than the DC you get, the attitude can be shifted one more step, but there. is usually a limit of two steps of improvement that the GM can waive.

At the moment, you don’t know what the target’s charisma modifier is. It could reasonably be anything from -2 to +5 or even more. So let’s start with a CHA modifier of zero and see where those adjustments take us a little later.

The formula is: Roll + 6 >eq; DC. We can subtract 6 from both sides to get Roll >eq; DC – 6.

That lets me analyze the significance of the character’s skill in Diplomacy, which is the object of the exercise.

• Hostile = 19 + target’s CHA modifier, and the chance of getting 19 or better on a d20 is 2×5=10%. If the target has below-average charisma, that chance goes up by 5% for each -1 CHAR modifier, to a realistic chance of 20%. However, it doesn’t take a very high CHA modifier to make the roll impossible to achieve successfully. A CHA modifier of +2 and there is no hope of success – unless the GM can be persuaded to incorporate a bonus for circumstances that favor the character – warning of some imminent threat to the NPC, for example, or otherwise engaging his self-interest. Even then, the odds of success are going to be slim if you target anyone who deals in popularity – leaders, religious figures, entertainers, even a well-spoken educator might be out of the question.
• Unfriendly = 14 + target’s CHA modifier. The chance of rolling 14 or better is 35%. If the target has high charisma, that could drop by as much as 25% (from a +5 CHA modifier) to 10%. If the target has low charisma, the chance improves to almost 50%. Further adjustments are possible if there are circumstantial modifiers in the character’s favor, but declines equally quickly if circumstances oppose. So this is right on the cusp of success.
  • If the target has high charisma, the chances get pretty slim, so I would focus on achieving as many positive circumstantial modifiers as I could think of – gifts, flattery, the self-interest of the target – while doing as much as possible to undermine the relevance of anything that might give a negative modifier.
  • If the target has moderately high charisma, the same approach could make success almost a 50/50 proposition – enough that I would be confident of at least being heard.
  • If the target has average or less charisma, the odds are already fairly good. Rather than employing the “butter him up” approach, I would make a virtue of not doing so, focusing on his self-interest and being direct and matter-of-fact, with a prefatory comment about not wasting his time on hollow flattery. My focus would be on appearing honest and trustworthy. This approach is more effective because empty flattery turns people off when it’s recognized.
• Indifferent = 9 + target’s CHA modifier. The odds of rolling 9 or better are already over 50%. More importantly, there is a 35% chance – roughly one-in-three – of success even if the target has a substantial CHA modifier (+5). Success still can’t be taken for granted, but it is certainly within reach. Employing the gifts-and-flattery approach, and engaging the target’s self-interests, to hopefully get a +5 modifier effectively nullifies the CHA modifier, letting what you have to say stand or fail on its own merits. But unless I was dealing with a prominent leader or other high-charisma figure, I would focus on the direct approach described above.
• Friendly = 4 + target’s CHA modifier. The odds of success even with a high-CHA target are 50-50 or better even without flattery and circumstantial modifiers. If there was a pressing self-interest for the target or some mutual interest that we have in common, I would focus on those, otherwise politeness and making satisfying the request as painless as possible would be my focus.
• Helpful = target’s CHA modifier – 1. Any reasonable request is likely to be successful, so my focus shifts completely to establishing a longer-term relationship of trust and mutual advantage with the target.

The more leaning towards ‘helpful’ the target’s attitude is, the more I shift my approach from one in which the target may have to be ‘bribed’ with a service or the satisfaction of a very clear self-interest to one in which I offer a service that I hope to be of value to them, not so much to get approval of whatever request I have at the time, but to ensure that the attitude is protected and encouraged as much as possible.

A shortcut

Of course, in play, you don’t have time to perform this sort of intensive analysis. Fortunately, there’s a shortcut, made possible by thinking of everything in terms of shifts to the target needed for success. If you have a skill of +6 ranks (including stat bonus), that is how much operating room you have to overcome any reluctance due to attitude to get you back to a 50-50 chance. If that’s not enough, you need to work on improving the perceived circumstances to counterbalance the shortfall. All you need do is pay attention to who you’re “talking” to and it becomes
easy to assess (roughly) their initial attitude and charisma bonus. It only takes a second or so to select how much flattery and goodwill you need to muster to overcome a negative attitude, and to select an approach accordingly. Since there are practical limits to what you can achieve in that respect, any shortfall gets “paid for” in diminished chance of success.

In other words, I set a personal target for what modifier I need to get from the GM with my approach to the target and then roleplay accordingly. The goal is to make a die roll irrelevant, or more precisely, to enable the GM to interpret your actions and dialogue as a result rolled on the die and hence determine the outcome. It becomes a sign of failed or inadequate roleplaying for the GM to say, “make a Diplomacy check”.

The Realism Side-Benefit

It’s always possible to misjudge your target. Sometimes, you put a lot of effort into trying to force open a door, only to find that it was already ajar; sometimes there’s a cause for reluctance that you either didn’t know about or didn’t factor in, and what seems like a slam-dunk turns out to be dead in the water before you even opened your mouth. The variety of unexpected outcomes that emerge naturally make the game world seem more realistic, populated with real people.

That’s a potent benefit, but it’s not the primary reason for this approach – the reason is immersion, because that makes every aspect of the game more fun and less an intellectual exercise.

The Non-linear roll

The Hero system works by building a stat’s contribution directly into a roll required. GM modifiers are applied to the die roll, and not to the target. The formula is 9 +(stat / 5). To that, the character can add additional “skill levels” by improving their basic skill.

Unlike Pathfinder / D&D, the target’s characteristics don’t matter; instead, the predisposition and stats are just another factor that the GM takes into account when choosing modifiers.

For our D&D example, we gave the character a stat bonus of +2. That corresponds to a stat of about 15. While the stats in the hero system are different at higher values, below about 20 they are fairly directly comparable. The equivalent of that 15 would probably be a Hero Games stat of 13 or 14. Which one doesn’t matter – dividing by five still gives 2-point-something, which rounds in the character’s favor to 3. So the equivalent of stat bonus alone gives a base roll of 9+3=12.

On top of that, we gave the character 4 ranks in the skill, the equivalent of +20% chance. That’s harder to assess in terms of picking an equivalent, but a rough rule of thumb that works at lower values – up to, say, 8 ranks – is to halve the number of ranks to get the equivalent number of ‘extra levels’ in a skill that the character has, rounding up if necessary. So 4 ranks is roughly the equivalent of +2, giving the equivalent character a total skill of 14 or less.

Because 3d6 is a non-linear roll, the game system makes it easier to interpret a skill level in relation to a result.

Above is a graph of the chances of getting x or less on 3d6, which I sourced back in April from Anydice for the thematically-related article, Narratives Of Skill: How To ‘Improv’ Outcome Descriptions In Advance.

If you pick some key target numbers – 10% chance of success, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90%, – and analyze the graph, you get some very interesting results, as you can see from the modified graph below:

As you can see, the 10% chance happens with an adjusted result of 6 or less, the 25% at 8/-, the 50% at 10/-, the 75% at 12/-, and the 90% at 14/-! That’s such a simple progression that it’s easy to remember.

It also puts that 14/- into perspective: if there are no modifiers, or if the balance of modifiers is at least neutral or even in favor of the character, he has a 90% chance of success.

Every +2 to the die roll from modifiers drops his chances of success another bracket. So +2 to the die roll makes success 75% likely, +4 makes it 50%, +6 makes it 25%, and +8 drops the chances to a mere 10%.

It’s not going too far to equate each of those +2’s to a shift up the ‘initial attitude’ table – from Helpful to Friendly to Indifferent to Unfriendly to Hostile.

It follows that if you can estimate how the GM will interpret the circumstances, you can make the corresponding interpretation and choose your approach accordingly, exactly as described earlier. What you are actually doing, in Hero Games’ game mechanics, is trying to load in additional modifiers in your favor to neutralize or counter these modifiers.

Certainly, when I’m GMing the Adventurer’s Club, and I want to adjudicate something along these lines, I would use the margin of success over requirements to assess the shift in attitude on a +2-to-a-step basis.

How First-Person Roleplaying Fits In

The key here is to “sell” the notion of a circumstantial modifier in your favor to the GM. Simply announcing what you are doing, or trying to do, third-person style, lacks the impact of actually “doing” it through dialogue. As a player, you are far more likely to succeed in getting the bonus you are seeking if you can immerse the GM in what you are doing.

Getting the GM on-side in this way is far more likely to enable you to get the NPC you are speaking to on-side, because you are making the game more fun for the GM in the process. So many GM decisions are subjective and nuanced, getting the vision of the world slanted in your favor is always worthwhile!

And everyone has more fun at the game table! Now, I ask you – isn’t that worth a little fuzziness when it comes to exact numbers?