Just a vibe check of the Lemmy community with a deliberately exaggerated meme.
A reddit post would get flooded with argumentative mini-essays from folks who can’t string together 5 words in-character.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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I feel like you've missed the point of the comment you're replying to
No, a barbarian is not expected to deadlift IRL. But if a barbarian walked into the middle of a situation and declared he was going to solve it with Athletics, without explaining how he was going to do that, he would be met with blank stares. You need to state intent. "I'll use Athletics" is meaningless. "I'll pile up these boulders into a staircase so we can climb over the wall" is a course of action.
Similarly, "I'll use Persuasion" is meaningless. Worse, are the people who just say "I've got proficiency in all the charisma skills, so I'll just use whatever one's most effective" lol. "I'll use my wit and charm to convince the guard that we have been invited to the castle" is a course of action. "I'll use facts and logic to convince the guard that it is in his best interest to allow us into the castle" is a course of action. I don't care if you're charismatic in real life, but if you can't even summarize what you're trying to say, how is the rest of the game world supposed to respond to it? "I'll Persuade them" is only the first half of a sentence.
This makes sense but I think still has a small problem. Someone with good real life people skills is going to be better able to put together a cogent argument, or understand the social dynamics and where to apply pressure.
I don't really know how to solve this. It quickly becomes a "players making these decisions is the whole game" thing.
But I do think that if you have someone who's trying to be a social face without the real life skills, it is okay for the GM to give more hints. Remind players that the knight respects honor and honesty, that the thief is scared and just wants to eat, and so on. Hopefully from there even a shaky player can figure out being honest with the knight is a better move than deception.