Quote from: rgrove0172;914787How critical do you hold the player's roleplaying, or lack of it. If they really suck it up and perform terribly would you let it count against a charisma roll or whatever?

It goes back to that post I made before. If it's someone I know is capable of great RP and they just suck, no modifier. If they are capable of great RP and don't just suck, but actively screw up, like telling Darth Vader that they're in the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia, they are going to suffer a negative modifier. And, of course, if they have great RP and a convincing story they will get a nice bonus.

I'm not quite sure how to quantify that as far as holding players critical. Hopefully the examples work. And obviously, there is always in-between where the modifier may be less significant based on less than stellar failures or successes.

I don't pay attention to theatrical performance at all when trying to decide how to modify reaction rolls. I listen for keywords. If I wrote that a character is unquestioningly loyal to the king and the player insults the king, that shifts reaction down. Doesn't matter whether the player did it with great style, or kind of blandly, or stuttered, or was interrupted by another player... none of that matters. All that matters is the content of what the player said.

The player's skill or lack there of is a small part of modifiers. The player's intentions and the content of what they say are more important. If their stated intention is to decieve the gate guard but they are incapable of lying with a straight face, they are not their character.  If their stated goal is to decieve the gate guard and they say something either so outrageous that there is no way the guard will believe it, or they say something like "we are here to break out the prisoner", then they get a big negative.

I am more likely to give a positive modifier for good role-play than a negative modifier for poor role-play. Operant conditioning works on gamers too.

Rolling reactions for all NPCs can go to some weird places, especially with systems where characters can have social modifiers which are capable of basically guaranteeing that everyone likes them.

Personally, I tend to take what a player says his character is saying, and run it through a sort of mental filter. Perhaps the player is socially awkward and poorly spoken, but if his character has an 18 charisma or whatever, I am going to try to mentally strip down what he is saying to it's basics and then respond to that as if the delivery were extremely magnetic, compelling, eloquent and etc. I don't penalize them for an awkward presentation that their character would not be making. I find this approach actually works really well for lending players with poor social skills a bit of confidence. (Though this also works the other way around. If a player is well-spoken and decides to rely on that, while putting a 4 in his Charisma as a dump stat, that is going to get filtered so that the raw content of the speech is imagined in a very crude or abrasive way.)

Another thing I do is make rolls at key points. So let discussion between a PC and an NPC unfold organically, and then make a Skill roll like Persuade or Bargain at key points, possibly with modifiers based on how the conversation has unfolded.

Finally, I try to keep in mind, that for most people, how well you like someone is not the sole determiner of your behavior. So, for example, yeah, the castle guard may think you are really fucking cool, but that doesn't mean he's going to let you by him to see the king. Same goes for the mercenary that's been hired to kill you. He may well say to you, "Under other circumstances we might have been friends," but he's drawing his sword as he says it.

If it's not interesting, I handwave it. If it's interesting, I'll roll for it. The dice take me places I'd never go by myself.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682For example - reactions by NPCs. A few posters mentioned simply placing themselves in the role of the NPC and reacting logically. Others declared any such bias as a GM overstep that a random result or one based on the system at hand is preferred.

This one seems silly to me. The GM, after all, is the one who role-plays the NPCs. That said, if these sorts of social interactions are vital to the scenario, adventure, or campaign, then the GM probably ought to prepare notes for NPCs as surely as one might prepare combat stats. Reactions then are not random. Nor are they any sort of bias or fiat. Logical reaction, then, has as much basis as any game stat in the system. It then becomes sort of hypocritical for the player to gripe "but muh Charisma is being nerfed" whilst demanding the nerfing the relevant NPC characteristics.

QuoteWhat about environmental conditions? Do you roll for the weather or just pick something theatrically appealing?

Either. Both. I mean the NPCs (and I'd wager the PCs) are going to behave differently in sunshine than they do snow. If a certain type of weather is a precondition for the scenario, it's not going to play out unless the weather's right anyway. So when we show up to play, the appropriate weather is just chosen. However, in the case of prolonged outdoor exploration, varied and unpredictable weather is part of the challenge and so random generation makes it appropriately varied and unpredictable.

QuoteWhen the players barter for goods, do you roll to see how stingy the merchant is where pricing is concerned or just pick a price somewhere close to that recommended by the rulebook?

I generally find that if you really, really, really want to do econ right in an RPG, it's got to be a process, not a price list. Virtually any set of starting conditions will do, so I randomize things like price spreads (buy and sell prices). Of course, no such "price list" will ever be "rational"--its imbalances are calls for action. If PCs don't try to exploit them, eventually NPCs will, and in do so correct the imbalance. So it's a combination of random and logic.

QuoteYou get the idea, how random is your world as a GM and how much do you just 'make so'?

It occurs to me that the real world is different than it used to be. When I was a kid playing D&D with my friends, if I went out and spent my allowance on a module, I was pretty certain none of my friends had read it. It's unlikely they would have so much as gone to the game store without my knowing, and if they did it's unlikely they'd blow their scarce pocket change on something one of us already had. But now? It's very easy to find a free pirated version in one quick google search. And its easy to do it quietly in the privacy of the home. The possibility for players to "cheat" by reading the module is a lot more substantial than ever.

To me, the obvious solution is that key encounters, puzzles, traps, and NPC motivations need to be randomized--I come up with 5 new alternatives, 6 in all, and randomly determine which is it we're going to play. I've gotten in the habit of doing that with my homebrew adventures as well. The advantage there is I can re-use the material without it quite repeating itself.

My overall answer to the things you've asked about is that, like multiple earlier responses, I roll dice when I don't already know the answer, or can't readily deduce it.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682For example - reactions by NPCs. A few posters mentioned simply placing themselves in the role of the NPC and reacting logically. Others declared any such bias as a GM overstep that a random result or one based on the system at hand is preferred.

Unless the conversation stays to topics that are relevant to information I've previously determined about the NPC's personality, desires, etc., I'm likely to be making multiple rolls as the conversation proceeds to determine how the NPC feels about what the PC is saying, then using those results to inform my roleplay of the NPC and their reactions, which in turn feeds into the final outcome.  There may or may not be a final roll to specifically determine the ultimate outcome, depending on whether or not a result is already obvious based on what I know of the NPC (including the information gathered from the dice over the course of the conversation).

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682What about environmental conditions? Do you roll for the weather or just pick something theatrically appealing?

I'm not doing theater, so theatrical appeal is nothing to me.

Depending on the game at hand, I'll either ignore weather entirely or go to the other extreme and use software to generate detailed weather far in advance.  As in "we're playing at a rate of a few days, maybe a week per session and I know daily weather for the next year".  I don't like generating weather on the fly because most tables for doing that are too random and fail to take recent weather, weather trends, etc. into account.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682When the players barter for goods, do you roll to see how stingy the merchant is where pricing is concerned or just pick a price somewhere close to that recommended by the rulebook?

In principle, I prefer to handle it exactly the same as any other social interaction with an NPC.

In practice, player interest in shopping tends to be low enough that I just let them buy things off the shelf at the book's listed price, unless it's a post-apoc game or something else where supply availability is severely restricted and "is it available to buy at all?" is a major part of the atmosphere.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682You get the idea, how random is your world as a GM and how much do you just 'make so'?

I tend to say that I like to use as much random generation as possible, but it would really be more accurate to say I make heavy use of procedural generation.  I always use a computer when prepping and when running, so I can use more complex models if they're available and, even when they aren't, I prefer generators which take existing conditions into account rather than something more literally random which might generate "potential heat stroke" one day and "severe blizzard" the next.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914787How critical do you hold the player's roleplaying, or lack of it. If they really suck it up and perform terribly would you let it count against a charisma roll or whatever?

It depends on the type of bad roleplaying. I think it mainly tends to come down to differentiating between the PC and player.

If the player is just socially awkward but the character isn't, I don't penalize for lack of player skill.

If the player roleplays badly by consciously making a bad choice because again the player just lacks something the PC has, again I may correct the player or give the player the benefit of the knowledge, training, skill or understanding of the PC, to correct the behavior and/or give them a chance to change their choice.

However if the player isn't lacking anything compared to the PC, but while roleplaying the PC, competently roleplays that PC making a mistake or being sloppy or something, then that does determine what the PC does and affects the outcome.

Sometimes I'll talk to the player to figure out what's going on - are they tired or bored as players, or are they roleplaying the character being in a state, etc.?

Oh, and similar for the other direction. If a player is being brilliant and charming but their character isn't that way, I'll point that out and probably remind them of the difference between their wit and their PC's deficiencies, and have them either re-roleplay it, or narrate that PC says a rather less brilliant version of that.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682Thats behind us now but it got me thinking. Many of the examples mentioned in that thread showed a wide variety of attitudes towards when the dice are actually rolled and when the GM simply declares something.

NPC attitudes change how difficult things are unless they are extreme in which case no roll is needed.  If the NPCs distrust outsiders because of past events, it's a difficult check.  You may be able to persuade them but it will be hard.  If they are fanatical cultists who hate everyone outside the cult, there's no roll.  You won't be able to persuade them to be friendly.  

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682What about environmental conditions? Do you roll for the weather or just pick something theatrically appealing?

I look at the map, figure out what I think the climate should be and go from there.  Two of the game I am running are in places with Mediterranean climates.  One is in a desert which adds a high diurnal and means little rain at any time.  One is in an abyssal labyrinth right now so there really isn't any weather.  I just go by what I think is logical based on the topology of the area and the real world area I think it resembles.  One is fantasy Egypt so that's easy.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682When the players barter for goods, do you roll to see how stingy the merchant is where pricing is concerned or just pick a price somewhere close to that recommended by the rulebook?

The price in the rule book is the baseline.  If they have the right skills, they can get a bit better deal.  If they have a good reputation, people are more likely to cut them a break.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914682You get the idea, how random is your world as a GM and how much do you just 'make so'?

I don't like running the world by random tables.  I prefer to use my own judgement and sense of what makes sense.

Rolling is always better, except on those occasions where it isn't. But those are few and far between.