Weekly Games: M&M

I've been on holiday, and have just finished my marathon "re-read Questionable Content" stint, I have half an hour until I finish work for the day, and figured I'd take a stab at writing a quick blogpost. I'll let you know if it gets done in the half hour, or if I have to finish it when I get home tonight.

So, the weekly Mutants & Masterminds game.

Last night was another "talky", moving the plot along a bit. Everyone headed to the school (leaving the police to deal with the crucified gardener), and there was much exposition.

It was kind of slow going, really, and not a lot actually happened... in the plot anyway.

New character: Burned Ice, played by my good buddy Floating Fat Man - teenaged, full of herself, ice and fire powers.

While I was busy undertaking the extensive and deep plot-related conversing involving my current whiny NPC and most of the characters, Burned Ice decided to spy on everyone and listen in. She got noticed, and a couple of the characters decided to go and have words with her.

I'm not overly ashamed to admit that I pretty much ignored that whole side-conversation. The players were self-managing inter-character interaction, and I really didn;t need to get involved. There was some dice-rolling, though, when it came to use of powers (I'd better read the logs and make sure nothing overly naughty happened), but I was busy on the plot side of things, and really wasn't needed for that particular conversation.

Until, that is, I come back from one of my occassional cigarette breaks (please, don't smoke. It sucks), and was asked to adjudicate things regarding one character attempting to persuade another character to do something.

And thus we come to the real point of this post.

Every RPG should have this rule explicitly stated somewhere: Social interaction skills can NEVER be used to influence the actions of another Player Character.

I'm not talking about powers, or spells, or Force Powers or whatever "supernatural" abilities are present in the game - when you use those, you're using special abilities - I'm talking about skills: Bluff, Persuasion, Diplomacy, Social, whatever it's called in whatever game you're playing, no GM should allow those skills to affect player decisions. Social skills are for use on NPCs. They're a way for the GM to quickly determine NPC responses, and are never a straitjacket for players.

Here's an example or two, to illustrate:

1) NPC Assassin uses the Bluff skill to attempt to convince one of the PCs that he didn't kill the Prince. PC fumbles up Sense Motive, Assassin criticals Bluff. However - the crime has the Assassin's MO, and he was caught stepping out of the Prince's bedchamber where the Prince was found dead moments later... The GM will tell the PC that they believe the Assassin's story, but there is no way the Player should be forced to be constrained by that limitation. The phrase "bang to rights" springs to mind. I'd suggest that the PC be lenient, perhaps just capturing and imprisoning the Assassin, rather than allowing instant justice, but there is no way on Earth that I would force the PC to just let the Assassin go. If that's the Player's decision, then fine. It's not my character, so I'm not going to make that decision for them.

2) PC 1 uses their Persuasion skill to attempt to convince PC 2 to let them out of the room they've been shut in (for good reason, as far as all of the characters except PC 1 are concerned). Ahem. NO. As GM I would never require Player 2 to submit to this. It's Player 2's character - if they want to keep PC 1 shut in that room, then fine, and if Player 1 comes up with a convincing In-Character reasoning that Player 2 decides will sway them, then that's fine as well, but there is no way that I would force Player-vs-Player social interaction to be resolved that way. If Player 2 decides to take the roll anyway, to help them make that decision, then that is fine, but they are not constrained or bound by the results of that roll. It is their character, and they can make their own choices.

This all comes down to the most contradictory aspect of RPing - Shared Storytelling. It is not one person telling a story. It is several people all telling their own stories that happen to all be happening at the same time, usually in the same place. It's tricky to manage, but very fulfilling when it works.

Edit: Awesome. Under 30 minutes.