The Speech Check Problem

[Vergil]

A common issue that I've noticed personally and seen brought up before is how RPGs handle dialog related skills and abilities in games. It seems the most common way this is done now is you get a special bit of dialog with a big line of text saying [SKILL X] or a specially colored dialog option. This presents the issue of training the player to just mindlessly click the specially highlighted "press this to objectively win the encounter" button. New Vegas is a big offender with this and it only flirts with doing something interesting with the system one time during Dead Money where a speech check can actually make a character hostile later.
What is your preferred method of dialog related skills in RPGs? How would you fix this system to be deeper and more interesting than just dumping points into speech and pressing the "win" button in dialog?

[rusty_shackleford]

Visible skillchecks bad
Hidden skillchecks good

The only time a game should tell you about a skillcheck is after you've succeeded at it, or the character has knowledge of the situation.

Argument against before:
The only way to know how difficult a skill check is like in the OP is through ESP, which... fine. Except for the part where it deals in raw numbers.
Judging how difficult it is to jump over a gap is expertise: the knowledge of your abilities. Someone who is unathletic would judge their own ability poorly, and probably judge how difficult it is poorly. Again, raw numbers are terrible for this, humans don't use raw numbers when trying to decide if they'll make it over a ravine if they jump across.
Therefore:

• Low athletics: Jump across ravine.
• High athletics, small ravine: Jump across ravine. [You think you'll probably make it across.]
• High athletics, large ravine: Jump across ravine. [You know the gap is too wide and you'll fall.]

You, in this context, is the gestalt. The player and the character need to become one, therefore the game must tell the player anything the character should know while restricting the player from abusing information the character wouldn't be privy to.

Argument against after+failure:
If you fail it either should be obvious and therefore not required, or non-obvious and therefore you shouldn't know.

Devs need to stop giving the player meta-information.

Related:
https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Common_Sense <-- also has some decent discussion links within on the topic
https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Intuition
https://livingmythrpg.wordpress.com/201 ... ation-gap/

The advisory check is asking the GM, (and possibly the other players depending on the dynamics at your table) for a brainstorm. Remember the Player is just some guy, the person they are playing is an expert at something. So, the player says “What are some of the ways I can break into this mansion?”. A roll is made, and based on that roll the GM lays down things that the Player should probably consider. So the GM might say “The front door is probably guarded. There are windows, but since a Mage lives here there’s the possibility of ensorcellment that would alert someone. There is a cellar entrance, but that will mean more distance to cover. Servants come in and out every morning and evening. Finally, you know this person socializes a lot, so there’s a good chance they are throwing a party soon.”

Notice, the GM didn’t give the player straight advice or tell the player what to do, the GM just stated facts that a thief would probably consider (and that the GM has probably already considered) in terms of breaking into a house. The advisory check is not a way to Deus Ex Machina a solution, it is to provide the player with the sort of strategic advice she needs to make good decisions.

This check should also be reflexive. It’s a ‘common sense’ check for domain specific things. The thief says “I try to climb through the window” and the GM knows that’s an immersion breaking and unrealistic choice for this PC. He has the character make a check and says “Okay, but you’re pretty sure those will have alarm spells cast on them” if the roll succeeds.

Of note, the Advisory check to a certain extent is a resolution to the issue of “Challenge” vs “Action” resolution that you read about in RPG theory. It is a mechanism by which a player can anchor a “Challenge” (what they want to accomplish) in a set of “Actions” (things that they can actually do).

The second kind of Player information is about getting specific, or tactical facts, instead of getting strategic information. Here the player says “Is the glass cutter I have likely to cut through this glass?”, or “Are the servants loyal enough that they’ll be resistant to bribes”. Also, “how hard is it likely to be to pick the lock on the cellar”. These are specific questions about the state of the world that the Player Character would likely have access to, but the Player doesn’t. A thief knows the tools of the trade, a wizard knows what sorts of spells are going around, and a fighter understands the effects of terrain and weather on a combat situation.

Players should be encouraged to ask specific meaningful questions about in-game facts that would be relevant. How hard is this check? It depends on how esoteric the question is. A fighter asking “Who’s the best blacksmith in town” should be pretty **** easy, the Mage asking “What library has information of the Elder God Xool” is much more difficult. What social class is this person could be trivial or very hard depending on how much that person is trying to hide their social class.

These are purely meta mechanics that are in actuality anti-metagaming because they help the player understand their own character. The player should always be able to access any information or knowledge that is available to their character in order to form the gestalt.


The picture in the OP is a result of degeneration, ouroboros. Video games are eating their own feces. This is a problem in nearly every entertainment medium now, because kids who grew up on those mediums went on to work in that industry. If you want an example of this in the tabletop world, look at garbage like GNS theory, which is the result of mutual masturbation.

[Vergil]

Playing VTMB again I like that some dialog checks basically open you up to the possibility of manipulating the NPC but you still have the ability to **** up and choose the wrong option. The last blood doll can still be annoying to get if you don't know just the right dialog choices to make even after your seduction is high enough.

[Oyster Sauce]

It's finally time for games to look back to Façade for dialogue system inspiration.

[1998]

It's easy really. Don't show options unless skill checks succeeded, and don't highlight these options. I guess devs are usually highlighting AWESOME options for the dopamine kick.

[Tweed]

It's finally time for games to look back to Façade for dialogue system inspiration.

Melon.

[Lhynn]

[Rand]

What is your preferred method of dialog related skills in RPGs?

Yes. Definitely the Oblivion speech wheel.

[Vergil]

I actually don't mind persuasion pie it just needed some tweaks to not be so redundant. You shouldn't be able to tell how characters will respond to certain topics until you've tried it at least once and gauge their reactions with some characters having a better "poker face" depending on their skill vs yours.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's easy really. Don't show options unless skill checks succeeded, and don't highlight these options. I guess devs are usually highlighting AWESOME options for the dopamine kick.

Pretty much, yeah. this is the easiest solution. There's no need to tell the player that there's a check happening in dialogue.

[rusty_shackleford]

What is your preferred method of dialog related skills in RPGs?

Yes. Definitely the Oblivion speech wheel.

I actually don't mind persuasion pie it just needed some tweaks to not be so redundant. You shouldn't be able to tell how characters will respond to certain topics until you've tried it at least once and gauge their reactions with some characters having a better "poker face" depending on their skill vs yours.

I actually liked the Starfield iteration upon this, it could still use some work but felt like one of the very few areas where Starfield tried something new.

[Rand]

I actually liked the Starfield iteration upon this, it could still use some work but felt like one of the very few areas where Starfield tried something new.

I played that game for 80 hours last year and I can't tell you what the persuasion system even is.
I have deleted everything except the memories of it sucking.

[Vergil]

I actually liked the Starfield iteration upon this, it could still use some work but felt like one of the very few areas where Starfield tried something new.

I wasn't aware Starfield even had a unique speech system I assumed it took that from Fallout 4 like everything else.

[rusty_shackleford]

I actually liked the Starfield iteration upon this, it could still use some work but felt like one of the very few areas where Starfield tried something new.

I wasn't aware Starfield even had a unique speech system I assumed it took that from Fallout 4 like everything else.

When you start a diplomacy check you have a little minigame where you have to get a number of successful checks before pissing them off. I'd say the main issue is they didn't write enough unique dialogue for all the checks, because some of them have generic dialogue but some are directly related to the conversation.
So you get to pick from harder to easier checks in the minigame, and the harder ones move it further along but are (obviously) harder to pass.

That how I remember it, anyways. Haven't played it since it released.

[Norfleet]

What is your preferred method of dialog related skills in RPGs? How would you fix this system to be deeper and more interesting than just dumping points into speech and pressing the "win" button in dialog?

At its core, speechfication systems works as follows:

1. You click a button and the desired outcome [might] occur. By this, I mean the result the player wishes to see out of a given playthrough, not necessarily what might be defined as "success" by the game, since maybe the desired outcome is to see le funny death scene resulting from it.

2. If the desired outcome does not occur, you reload and try again because your playthrough is basically dead.

I therefore propose not having a speech check system at all, because there's fundamentally no point. Instead, simply offer speechification options and let the player actually figure out on his own which one will produce his desired outcome.

This allows us to thus discard the now irrelevant "speechification" skill entirely (i.e., the "gimp your character so that you can see/skip game content" skill).

[rusty_shackleford]

Most things put in dialogue don't belong there at all. My favorite comparison for this is the White March burning building VS BG3 burning inn:

First thing that comes to mind is BG3. You can activate turn-based mode whenever and they do use it for scenes that would be CYOA-style adventures in similar games.
e.g., There's a scene where you have to save people from a burning inn working against the clock. You need to make use of your speed boosting abilities, any magic that creates water to temporarily douse the flames, etc., to help get people out. Pillars of Eternity has a similar scene in its first DLC where a building is burning and it's a much more boring CYOA section.

Here's some of the White March CYOA event:

► Show Spoiler

Larian has essentially the same exact encounter, except it's actually an encounter: You go around breaking down debris, putting out fire using buckets of water or magic, etc., You're supposed to do the entire event in turn-based mode, too. I see no reason Obsidian couldn't have done this in-engine, treating the encounter like combat, they just didn't think of it. Their first thought was to make it non-gameplay.

This is why I advocate for the death of the dialogue tree, game developers simply cannot use it properly and it is heavily misused.

[Lhynn]

Theres the matchless kung fu verbal system. In which you can verbally spar with people, even destroy their entire lives with your words if you are good enough.

Update post

I havent tangled with it, because I stopped playing shortly before it was introduced and I am waiting for release to get back into it.