"This game will take place in Victorian London...

>Start Dark Heresy campaign.
>Me: "this is a subtlety oriented campaign. You're not murderhobo space marines, you're investigators. Please don't turn this into Rogue Trader or Monty Python. Please don't kick down every door screaming Inquisition at the top of your lungs, don't shoot everyone even slightly suspected of wrongdoing, don't walk arthe und dressed like stormtroopers, and don't just run-and-gun through every situation.
Two sessions later, with some liberal abusing of the Influence mechanic.
>Party of murdrhobo run-and-gunners dressed like storm troopers who murder anyone even slightly shady and everyone who doesn't immediately capitulate and give them what they want when they want it. Their subtlety score is practically zero, and they begin every aspect of the investigation by kicking down the door and to the location and announcing Inquisition to everyone inside.

While that story is probably BS, never underestimate the sheer autism of 3.5 players.
There was an infamous "That Guy" at the LGS that would demand he be allowed to play a "Celestial Half Gold Dragon Cloud Giant" every fucking game. Then he'd just make it anyway and hope to slip it past the GM, then finally whine through the games that his dragon "could have beaten x".
Spergs gonna sperg I guess.

That should result in a TPK as soon as the inquisitor finds out what they're doing.

>"This is a game that's not all about combat, and the combat that actually happens isn't going to be your basic "I roll my numbers at it until one of us dies" type affairs. Actually doing your research and thinking is going to be very important"
>Everyone agrees that this is the kind of game they'd like
>3/4 of characters show up with almost the same character sheet type. A melee-focused fighting guy with no skills taken that aren't directly related to combat, same thing applies to gear.
>Queue one player complaining for thirty minutes because I meant what I said and they couldn't stand still and roll to attack everything.

The one player who didn't make a melee-focused fightan man is currently carrying the entire group because he actually listened and has skills that help. The other 3 don't even have this game's version of Perception. You'd think they'd at least take that because seeing surprise attacks coming, but nope

I have seen this a lot.

I have begun to lay down the hammer.

I now don't run as many campaigns.

I'm happy.

I had a similar thing happen to me.

>DM says he doesn't like persuasion/deception/intimidation as skills
>DM says all conversation stuff will be based on what we actually say and how we roleplay it.
>Move my skill points elsewhere because of what the DM said, despite playing a character who likes to resolve things non-violently.
>Game actually starts and the DM tells me to roll every time I say anything, then makes me fail even when what my character is saying makes for really strong appeals
>Jackass rogue of the group puts his class-feature boost into persuasion
>Is basically mind-controlling the NPCs despite making non-sensical shit arguments to them, due to a mix of being built for it and abusing the Lucky Feat.
>Literally only uses this ability to milk extra money out of our quest rewards (which he keeps for himself) and start fights between NPCs or otherwise make them do stupid shit to get killed for the lulz, rather than anything that actually helps the party.

I tried to bring this up to the DM, as did another player, and he got all stammery and was like "W-w-well your skill is gonna matter a little!" before refusing to let either of re-spec.

>Friend wants to run Call of Cthulhu
>Party is made up of me, a /k/ommando, and 3 other people who had never played an RPG before
>GM tells us the game is going be based in Miskatonic Uni
>Character lineup at the first game: lit professor (me), history professor, doctor, european nobleman, WW1 veteran (/k/ommando)
>first quest we are sent into the south-american jungle looking for a lost expedition
>why.jpg
>first few sessions are a grueling march into the jungle, constantly attacked by natives
>no NPCs to interact with
>no investigations whatsoever
>/k/ommando is the only dude with a gun
>somehow we get to some incan(?) ruins
>I take a big San loss due to a vision
>Doctor starts to feed me drugs without my consent
>GM rules that I have become an addict, so I'm even more useless
>We find the guy who was missing
>/k/ommando shoots him, not fatally
>/k/ommando argues that since we're in the jungle and the guy has no medical attention, the guy should get worse
>GM rules he dies
>Suddenly, natives everywhere
>last session is basically Predator, with the /k/ommando and a couple NPCs shooting up natives and the rest of us trying not to die
>Game ends during the boat trip back

It's not as much a horror story as other I've read here, but it was a pretty bad campaign. The doctor guy was super-creepy and constantly making rape jokes and mimicking sexual acts. One time the DM met a friend of his at the bar before the game, and he tagged along and proceeded to spend the night telling the DM how it would be cooler if one of the characters did X instead of what the player said, and even managed to break my dice box before leaving.

>say I didn't know the guy was guard captain
>"You did."
>"I really didn't know—"
>"You did."

Players playing non-humans are scum.

>>DM says he doesn't like persuasion/deception/intimidation as skills
>>DM says all conversation stuff will be based on what we actually say and how we roleplay it.
>>Move my skill points elsewhere because of what the DM said, despite playing a character who likes to resolve things non-violently.
I DM this way, so I just completely remove social skills from the game. I don't roll any kind of diplomacy check whatsoever. Even if the party is trying to pass a lie or something, it's solely based on the characters' relevant experiences, motivations, and dialogue. I find if you have a group that trusts each other enough to play right rather than have NPCs believe or not believe the party just because they're the protagonists, it works a lot better. Too many DMs let social skills basically become soft mind control.

>online game
>only information in LFG is that the PCs are skilled but inexperienced people trying to find their way in a foreign city
>make socialite character who detests getting dirty and has most skill points invested in comminication skills
>make it clear that I am interested in the diplomatic and political aspects of the game
>get accepted
>30 minutes in, first quest is to go innawoods to find magic mcguffin
>have character go along with it because party cohesion and I figure it will probably be a short adventure anyway
>quest spans several sessions and goes on even longer due to complications
>all background skills are useless because woods
>all NPCs we meet are vastly more powerful than us so bargaining is useless
>actually all talking skills are useless because even bandits refuse to surrender or flee even after the party cuts down half of their band with ease
>eventually we return to the city from the beginning only to immediately make preparations to set out again
>have my character get shanked in an alley and roll a generic fighter

It's one thing when a player misreads the tone of a game or if the tone of the game changes due to unforseen circumstances, but why accept someone into your game already knowing that their character will clash with the game?

>I want my players to suck my GM cock until I'm satisfied

>>actually all talking skills are useless because even bandits refuse to surrender or flee even after the party cuts down half of their band with ease
Ugh. GMing pet peeve right here. Even pack animals are smart enough to turn tail and run if they're getting #rekt. Bandits are certainly not the leave no man behind type and will tend to run from any fight that proves too risky and unprofitable. I hate GMs who fall for the 'all fights are to the death' fallacy.

>How dare you expect me to roleplay in this roleplaying game! My dice and feats say this person has to listen to me no matter what!

>What is Fortune in the Middle

>you can play a high strength character while being a weakling, but god forbid you're a socially awkward person who'd like to play someone charismatic

Obviously you shouldn't let a player just sit there and say "I roll for diplomacy", but those skills do serve a purpose.

>what is a system where the GM can abuse fiat to disregard rolls he doesn't like for good or ill because the dice don't actually mean you succeed or fail

I don't expect a player who isn't well versed in swordfighting to give me an in depth analysis of their fighter's blow-by-blow engagement. Likewise, I don't expect a player to actually write a master-level speech, merely that I know what their character is trying to get at.

If you're so bad at playing a role that you can't even give that basic, shallow level of investment, might I suggest finding a hobby other than roleplaying games?

>Unlucky farm kid who is actually a low lvl Orical
The Black Cauldron?

The problem I have with your approach is that PC will just make arguments for you, the GM, and will learn to what you respond positively.
Unless you're a very, very good psychologist and you have no problem imagining why any argument could be reasonable for X or Y person, they're gonna rely on the same tricks and methods of argumentation because it works.

Letting the dice do decide is a guarantee that the NPC has is own mind and will sometimes disagree with what you think is reasonable.

I'd like to think I'm good enough at playing roles different to myself that this isn't a major issue, though obviously I'll never be a neutral source on the topic of my own biases. I've had NPCs that caved to threats and NPCs that reacted proactively to them, I've had NPCs with love or patriotism or greed that was discoverable and easy to play to, I've had NPCs with hidden motives that made their actions seem random or nonsensical at the time...Any time I have an NPC that I think the party will try to persuade rather than murder for whatever reason, I always try to choose at least one logical as in OOC logical, not that characters IC are always reasonable and rational thing that they might be persuaded by an appeal to and, if that thing isn't immediately evident, think up ways that it might be figured out or identified. I don't feel like that requires a keen knowledge of psychology, just a basic part of character creation that any character more detailed than a shopkeep should have.

>Letting the dice do decide is a guarantee that the NPC has is own mind and will sometimes disagree with what you think is reasonable.
Or is it a recipe for guaranteeing NPCs are occasionally random and nonsensical?

As always, if there should be no chance for an action to fail or succeed, don't roll to see whether it does.

THAT PROFESSOR WAS LIT
Please kill me

While I sort of agree with your point, lying is something that I feel should be adjudicated by dice. The reason being, bluff/deception and sense motive/insight/whatever skills aren't just a representation of whether the PC can come up with a convincing lie, it's a representation of controlling body language and reading those cues.
Plus, as others have said, this method can devolve diplomacy into trying to convince you as the DM rather than the NPC, and negatively impact awkward players. Flattery and other methods of getting people on your side are based not just on what you say, but how you say it.
Personally, I use the PCs in-character arguments as a way of setting the DC: a good argument, or a well-thought out lie, means it's easier to convince the NPC, while a bad argument or lie can make for an almost impossible DC (especially if the 'lie' is something the NPC knows is bullshit 100%; then the check is literally impossible to succeed).

I prefer to try and compromise with the two.
>Roll for social interaction.
>Adjust the minimum score required to convince depending on the character's argument.
I think it strikes a good enough balance to challenge me to think up why a certain character might disagree with something that even I, as a GM, might otherwise see as perfectly reasonable.

Also, let the conversation drag on for a while longer if necessary. Throw in a couple of counterpoints from the NPC which the player has to respond to. Don't make it too apparent if their character was able to actually convince them immediately or not. And try to crack down on unreasonable Jedi mind tricks no one in their right mind would play along with, no matter how high the roll or dumb Nat 20 meme shenanigans.

>game based around having access to social skills
>remove them all because you're a sperg

What's stopping a player from just using a spell that makes them a good liar and just saying I used a spell they believe me, you moron.

Yes, the one who actually expects a roleplay conversation to be thoughtful rather than reading a dice roll is the sperg. Yes. That makes sense.

So you don't know what Fortune in the Middle is, and yet you feel the need to comment. Gotcha.

Oh for the love of God.
It's like the tenth time I have to explain this in the last few days.
There's a fucking middle ground.
It's not roll and that's done, it's not talk a bit and hope the GM likes it.
You do both things. Mechanics and narration feed into each other. Skills are there in a game for a reason, players are there for a reason, both are needed for the game to work.
I don't know what's up with the wave of cunts that's putting up strawmen all over the place in the last few days, as if the only way to "properly" do an RPG is with the GM as a sort of iron-fisted dictator and the players that have to entertain him. Either the gates of hell opened and a bunch of dead players from the eighties have started posting on Veeky Forums, or y'all are a bunch of contrarians who never actually sat a gaming table before.

Would you agree that the best way to do it is a roll, with bonuses given out by the GM if the speech/argument/whatever was really good?

If the speech or argument or whatever was really good, why then give it the dice-decided chance of it randomly not working?

If the fighter is really strong, as has probably been shown in past instances, why give it a dice-decided chance of him randomly being unable to lift something heavy?

>Wow, that was a really good argument from your character, nice roleplaying there
>Oh but you rolled a 1 so the guard isn't persuaded and attempts to arrest you, haha roleplay better next time faggot

I don't ask the fighter to roll to lift something of a weight or size that he's previously been able to lift, unless there's some context that would change it such as an injury.

see
>As always, if there should be no chance for an action to fail or succeed, don't roll to see whether it does.

Why play a game with dice at all if you want the players success and failure to be based purely on their quality as roleplayers without luck and chance having any sort of impact on the outcome of their actions?

No, I won't. Fucking fortune in the middle. You start narrating your intent, then you roll, then you finish the narration based on your roll.
Arbitrary GM modifiers is exactly the same as arbitrary GM results.

Dice are best used for things where the outcome can't be reasonably determined with certainty. There is a fundamental difference between saying something like, "Does the archer hit that moving target?" and "Does the party face persuade the judge that the party's only crime is loving America?"

The former is determined by something we can't act out or roleplay, or at least, would be pretty unreasonable to play in person. The latter can be determined through an understanding of the context and roleplaying involved. The former can be estimated in numerical terms - for instance, we could express the archer's chance of hitting the target in terms like "they would hit the target X times out of 100" a lot easier than we can estimate "the judge would be persuaded X times out of 100."

What does the roll represent in that case?

>As always, if there should be no chance for an action to fail or succeed, don't roll to see whether it does
Fair enough, that's a perfectly good way of doing things.

Couldn't the dice represent something like the judge's mood, the character not stumbling over their words, or even the judge's in universe arbitrary decision as to whether or not he wants to believe the players? People aren't robots who automatically change opinions when the correct input is given.

>the judge's mood
Should be something determined given the context of the situation, rather than something random and unpredictable.

>the character not stumbling over their words
Assuming the character is basically competent, this shouldn't happen for no reason. If the character is incompetent, this shouldn't suddenly not happen for no reason.

>arbitrary decision
I don't believe such decisions are arbitrary.

>People aren't robots who automatically change opinions when the correct input is given.
People aren't robots whose whims can be quantified and given a meaningful statistical likelihood.

As explained here
>Any time I have an NPC that I think the party will try to persuade rather than murder for whatever reason, I always try to choose at least one logical as in OOC logical, not that characters IC are always reasonable and rational thing that they might be persuaded by an appeal to and, if that thing isn't immediately evident, think up ways that it might be figured out or identified.

It's also worth remembering that this isn't just a simulation of real life. Sometimes just because an arbitrary facto could plausibly exist doesn't mean it's good gameplay to include it if it could instead be replaced by something that gives the players more agency and ability to affect the world. So while I could just bullshit a bad dice roll as "Well the judge was in a bad mood today so you never really stood a chance, lol" I feel like it's more fun to instead attribute it to something the party can identify, respond to, and attempt to correct. Which is not to say that all factors are always evident or so on, but I digress.

>What does the roll represent in that case?

Fortune (as in, elements that are outside the player's control), character skill, and situation.

>Decide to be a talky man
>GM puts us in France after like 3 sessions
>Fucking every interaction in the French countryside is failing because they don't understand English
>I start gesturing at the table, signing what I want, what I mean, etc.
>Even shit like shaking my head is waved off by the GM
>"You have something in your hair?" "He looks confused as to why you're looking him up and down."

He wasn't "That GM" tier but he fucking sucked.

>>Even shit like shaking my head is waved off by the GM
That kinda just sounds like the GM was fucking with you.

The French do that intentionally because they hate foreigners. Try ordering a Coke in Paris and you'll see what I mean.

Its better than the opposite, I made a skill monkey mystic in a 5e game advertised as "low combat, focused on problem solving" and none of my skill checks made any difference.

This one is weird because if you're starting at level 6 you're already close to casting Black Tentacles, it's a level 4 spell which a wizard gets at level 7. A scroll of black Tentacles would not even be very strong due to scrolls casting with the minimum casting stat possible, and black tentacles isn't bad, but it has been nerfed a bit in PF. A strong werewolf type boss would likely not be severely impeded by a scroll. You also don't need permission to use a scroll that you're not high enough level for, IIRC you can use UMD to mimic any components to a spell completion item you're lacking.

I think a while ago I realized a while back that no one really knows how to play Pathfinder, and when I try to read the actual rules it makes sense, because the rules themselves are totally retarded.

Retarded GM, but a pretty funny story tßh. Especially the predator part.

>>be playing Only War as a tank crew.
>>fuck yea, Fury!
>>be techpriest, usual bullshit of caring more about the tank than the fleshy crew mates.
>>you receive a distress call. When you reach 300 meters away, you can see another tank crew chained to some sort of altar, chanting coming over your comms.
>>fuck that. Fire the battlecannon until that's gone.
>>"you'll have to drive a little closer to get a clear shot over the dune. Next thing you know you are 15 feet from the altar."
>>wut
"The cultists swarm your tank.
>>WAT
>>A green light washes over the area, and you are suddenly transported into a spaceship."
>>nani?!?!
>>you see runes on the walls you recognize as Necron. Aaand let's call it here for the night? Same time next week?"

I can speak French.

Irrelevant.

If this was a modern game you should've just got your cell phone out and google translated everything, if the GM is going to get shitty you get shitty back.

But why is jamming the roll for that in the middle of the player's speech/action any better than putting it at the end?

>start game of 5e
>players are mostly skillmonkeys ad casters
>one new guy's a fighter(LOL)
>everyone knows they have to use their skills to succeed
>fight with ogre
>mage throws fireball does decent damage
>fighter guy enters melee(LOL again)
>tell him, "all right. you want to hurt him you have to arm wrestle me"
>fighter's confused, "b-but I have my attack roll and my stats"
>no faggot. everyone else knows you have to prove yourself at my table. You have to role play, not roll play
>I put his arm down with no resistance
>"the ogre killed you."
>he stomps away in a huff
>whole lgs lols at him
Geeze, you ever have fags like that? Getting all huffy because they can't win?

>you'll have to drive a little closer to get a clear shot over the dune. Next thing you know you are 15 feet from the altar
JESUS FUCK I hate this shit. I love my current GM like a brother but fuck me if he doesn't downright REFUSE to let us make any attacks or relevant combat decisions until the enemy is close enough to shave our ass hairs. I've learned to just ignore any ranged options that extend past 100 ft.

...

>But why is jamming the roll for that in the middle of the player's speech/action any better than putting it at the end?

Because it leaves decision points open in the player's hands even after the roll.

big-model.info/wiki/Fortune-in-the-middle

A roll isn't supposed to represent the outcome of an action. The random factor is in what the character has no control over, and if the outcome of player action is based on chance there's no point in developing uniqe characters in the first place. You try a thing, roll the dice to see how well it goes over considering the uncontrolled or unknown variables, some of which may be then rationalized and/or elaborated on by the GM, and then work with that to decide how the action actually plays out. The chance happens during the action, not after it, hence the name. Don't roll play, fag. Role play.

This really happened. The guy was a total attention whore/autist who always wanted to be the spotlight hero. Even after the other guys in the session got him to agree to his character's death, his next one was a pixie wizard that could summon a hydra due to bullshit monster spellcaster rules, and after I forced us over to Pathfinder which I knew better he first made a very straightforward paladin, that he purposely got killed because he was 'bored' and made a Vampire with a personal pocket dimension that he slipped by me.

Since him, I avoid 3.5 just because I don't want to memorize every issue of dragon just so I can keep shitters from inserting their hyper special bullshit characters.

This, Veeky Forums's turned against Pathfinder but 3.5 was the original special snowflake 8,000 races ruleset.

The game Badass has an ability that lets you arm wrestle the GM instead of rolling at times.

God please give this man a game that isn't absolute shit.

As someone who doesn't play humans whenever I have the chance and approval, just cause it's kind of boring to play something that I am to be honest, I still find this hyper sperg over-compensating min maxing your own race special snowflake bullshit to be extremely detrimental to the enjoyment of games, and it puts a bad impression on anyone who dares to glance at even Kenku as a race option.

You realize the whole reason interaction skills and Mental Stats exist is because most tabletop games are primarily designed for dumb idiots who are bad at social interaction right?
That's impressive that you have a group of well-functioning human beings who don't need that crutch to appease what you are proving is your own actually autistic preferences and biases, but a lot of other people don't have that leisure when it comes to throwing dice around.