Should the Bluff skill be usable on PCs?

Hypothetical situation proposed on another forum: Billy doesn’t trust Sue. Billy’s player argues that, even if Sue succeeded on her Bluff check, Billy still wouldn’t believe her. It doesn’t matter how good a lie is if the person being lied to inherently doesn’t trust the speaker. Counterargument? If you inherently distrust someone, that’s what roll modifiers are for.

This is a common discussion. I had a couple of immediate reactions to this particular scenario that I thought might be of general interest.

Note that there are, in fact, two different issues here.

First: Whether or not social skills should compel PC behavior.

One group will argue that playing an RPG is fundamentally about making choices as if you were your character. Therefore, a mechanic which effectively “plays the game for you” is really problematic, particularly if it fundamentally disrupts a player’s conception of the character they’re playing. (The GM gets to create and control the entire universe; it might be best if the player gets to at least have undisputed control over his one character.)

The flip-side of this argument is that being forced to believe a lie against your will is not fundamentally different than being stabbed through your kidney with three feet of steel against your will. Both remove character agency and there’s really no reason to distinguish between the two.

What decides the issue for me, personally, is that I’ve never encountered a player in the latter group who has their enjoyment of the game negatively affected if compulsory social mechanics aren’t used: They’re OK with them, but they don’t need them. On the other hand, I’ve met lots of players in the first group who have their playing experience totally ruined by the presence of compulsory social mechanics.

So, for me, this is kind of a no-brainer: I’ve got an option that will make a lot of people happier and which will have no negative impact on anyone else. That’s the option I should go with.

Second: How the specific mechanic is being applied.

Is the mechanic sufficiently taking into account the level of distrust that Billy has for Sue? It looks like there are roll modifiers, but are those modifiers large enough to truly represent the amount of distrust he has?

Also, should the outcome of a successful Bluff check be “you believe the lie and you have to act as if you are completely gulled and have no doubts whatsoever” or should the outcome of a successful Bluff check be “she looks like she’s telling the truth / you don’t see anyone reason not to believe what she’s saying”?

This ties back into the question of whether or not the social mechanics should be compulsory or not.

To put this in perspective, imagine that this was a Poker game: Someone makes a Bluff check and succeeds against your Sense Motive check. Should the mechanics force the PC to call his bet (or go all in) without having any choice in the matter? Or should the mechanics simply report back “you think he’s got the better hand” and then let the player make the decision?

In general, I prefer social mechanics to either (a) provide information or (b) have a mechanical impact without compelling action.

If you make a Spot check to see someone hiding in a room, a successful check doesn’t compel you to attack them: The Spot check provides you with information (“there’s a dude hiding in there” or “the room appears to be empty”) and then you make a decision about what to do with that information. Similarly, a Sense Motive check should provide you with information (“you think he’s in love with Sarah” or “you don’t think she’s lying”) and it’s still up to you to make a decision about what to do with that information.

Similarly, a successful Intimidate check might apply a morale penalty to your action, but the ultimate decision of whether you drop your sword and run away screaming is up to you.

What about NPCs?

I’m perfectly OK with social mechanics being compulsory for NPCs. In fact, as a GM, I generally prefer it. The difference is that I don’t think of them as “compulsory” — instead those mechanics are the oracle that I consult to tell me what’s happening in the game world. (It’s very similar to a random encounter check: I don’t know what’s going to happen. Let’s consult the mechanics and find out.)

For similar reasons, I find it perhaps unsurprising that people have a lot less problem with compulsory social mechanics in STGs: They are playing a game of narrative control and the relationship they have to their character is very different than the relationship a player has to their character in an RPG. An oracular consultation of the mechanics to determine what their character is doing is more likely to fit into their mental landscape; it also just becomes one more mechanic for determining narrative control among a plethora of such mechanics.

I’ve been a big fan of Level 7: Escape since I first played it at GenCon a couple years back. The basic concept of the game is simple: You’ve been kidnapped by aliens based out of an Area 51 look-a-like named Subterra Bravo. Now something has gone wrong in the facility, the stasis pods you were being held in have cracked open, and you need to figure out how to escape from the complex as everything goes to hell.

It’s a co-op ‘crawler, but with gameplay that’s based primarily around escape instead of combat. The scenarios are clever, varied, and tell a nice little story over the course of a full campaign.

I wish that the game supported more than 4 players, but the only real problem I have with the game is the rulebook, which has proven to be very difficult and convoluted to use during play. As a result, rules are frequently missed and mistakes are often made. This has hampered my enjoyment of the game, particularly because it provides a hurdle that needs to be cleared whenever I come back to the game after a long break (and all those niggling little rules go scurrying off again).

So I’ve ended up compiling a completely revised rulebook.

DESIGN NOTES FOR THE REVISED RULEBOOK

The key problem with the published rulebook is that it features both procedural and indexed organization.

Procedurally-organized rules are listed when you use them. (For example, you might say: “When you make an attack, first you do X, then you do Y, and that will tell you if Z happens.”) Index-organized rules, on the other hand, are grouped together into broad categories suitable for quick reference. (For example, you might say: “Z is something that will happen during A, B, or C.”)

Either of these approaches can work well. And, in fact, you can use both of them at the same time as long as both sets of information are fully functional. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with the Level 7: Escape rulebook. Instead, half of the rules are indexed under general headings and half the rules are listed procedurally.

This is a really huge problem.

For example, there’s a section of the rulebook titled “Raising Fear” and it includes a list of things that raise your fear. One of the items on the list is, “When you leave a tile with a darkness marker, raise your fear by 1.” That rule is not listed in the procedures for moving off a tile. Later in the rulebook, however, there are other effects that raise fear which aren’t listed in the “Raising Fear” section.

You can see the problem: If you’re wondering if something raises fear or not, you can’t reliably check the “Raising Fear” index. Simultaneously, if you’re wondering what to do when moving off a darkness title, you’ll likely check the procedure for moving off a tile and end up forgetting to raise your fear.

In practice, it’s even more confusing because there isn’t a single section of “indexed rules”. Instead, these little index sections are scattered haphazardly around the rulebook. So if you’re following a procedure detailed in the rulebook, you can never be sure that there isn’t some crucial step that’s buried somewhere else.

For this revised rulebook, the rules are reorganized to be entirely procedural: If you need to move off a tile, look at the rules for movement and you’ll see everything you’re supposed to do (including raising your fear level if the tile has a darkness marker on it).

In practice, this has resolved a lot of the confusion surrounding the rules of the game and drastically reduced the number of errors being made during play. Hopefully you’ll find this to be true at your table, too!

UNOFFICIAL ERRATA

The rulebook also includes the errata and clarifications from the official FAQ. However, in addition to those changes I also discovered a number of other discrepancies or unclear rules in the course of my revising. In order to make the revised rulebook as clear as possible, I needed to include some “unofficial” errata.

All of those changes, however, are listed on the final page of the unofficial rulebook (along with an explanation of my rationale for making a particular ruling in each case). So if you want to make a different choice than I did, it should be easy enough!

It should be noted, however, that I’ve made no effort to resolve some of the difficulties found in the Scenario book for the game. I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this project. The official FAQ will resolve several of the most problematic mechanics (including the game-breaking errors in the final scenario), but when it comes to the remaining issues I recommend just taking your best guess. (When in doubt, go with the option which makes the game more difficult for you!)

Revised Rulebook (PDF)

(If you have a printer that can do booklet printing, I recommend it.)

The map for Dweredell was originally created with large key entries. It looked like this:

It’s a beautiful map, but I always wished that I had a version that had no map key numbers on it.

Then a fellow by the name of Andrew Shields contacted me: He’d done an absurdly awesome amount of Photoshop work and managed to rebuild the map sans numbers. Instead of posting it here, I’m going to point you over to Andrew’s website: Here.

It’s well worth checking out, particularly if you’re the proud owner of a copy of City Supplement 1: Dweredell. (And if you’re not a proud owner of that book, you should check it out. Hint, hint.).

Spam on this site has gotten out of control over the past few months. I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to the Alexandrian lately and, unfortunately, most of that time gets chewed up just trying to stay on top of the spam.

So I’m increasing the moderation filters on the site: This means that your comments are much more likely to hit the moderation queue and will require manual approval before they get posted. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully it will make this place look a little bit less like a Russian garbage dump.

My original essay on the Three Clue Rule has been translated into Czech for an awesome-looking fanzine:

Direct Link (PDF) / Facebook Page

I’ll be honest: I can’t read a word of it, but I think it’s pretty cool nonetheless.