Thread #97628802
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What's the point of social skills? Evil people can't be reasoned with, and good people don't need to be. And even more than that, GMs never let you resolve a situation just by talking it out because that's anticlimactic.

And, you know, if you want to say something, you can just fucking say it.

Social skills objectively just don't do anything. So why the fuck do game designers keep adding these shitty trap options to their games?
+Showing all 129 replies.
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>>97628802
>What's the point of social skills?
/tg/ autists in a nutshell.
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>>97628802
>autistic nerd doesn't understand social skills
We know.
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OP’s post indicates he’s never played a game in his life and just lurks /tg/ complaining that doesn’t affect him.
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>>97628802
The point of dms is to leverage the situation by giving a bonus or malus based on your output to his game. If you don't have social skills that means you give the gm even more power, never cede an inch of power to authority or you will be losing something you care about next time. Skills are the proficiency of your character at tasks, not yours or do you roll before doing anything and accept the outcome by performing the dice result? If so, you clearly failed the roll when making this thread, a social skill roll.
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>>97628802
>Social skills
Finding where good stuff is sold.
Using contacts to find high paying jobs.
Hiring henchmen at good rates to help with a job.
Convincing those same henchmen to not cut and run when shit hits the fan.
Whipping a crowd into a frenzy.
Convincing the authorities to look the other way for a minor offense.

There are a lot of reasons to use social skills, but they don't come up much in a lot of games because most GMs don't have social skills so don't think about how to incorporate them. Genesys at least clearly lays out social stuff in the core rules and provides a lot of examples to help GMs.
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Because theres a lot of neutral out there that may need to be reasoned with.
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>>97628815
There was a troll thread a few months ago with this exact premise.
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>>97628802
How many times are we going to have this debate? Charisma is useful with some creativity.
>"Two guards stand in front of the entrance, what do you do?"
>[Intimidation] "Are you're lives worth minimum wage"
>[Deception] "We're here for our onboarding to BBEG Inc."

>"The old man is refusing to give you the wizard killing weapon needed"
>[Persuasion] "Please, we need the weapon to save the world. We'll give it back."
>[Intimidation] "Give it or we'll fuck you up"
>[Deception] "I'm your long lost son, its rightfully mine"

>"The minion is refusing to give you the information you need"
>[Intimidation] "Talk or I'll fuck you up"
>[Persuasion] "The BBEG wants to destroy the world, you'll die along with it. Please help stop him"

>"The Town Guard caught you stealing"
>[Intimidation] "You ain't seen shit"
>[Deception] "I know that guy, its a thing we do"
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with, and good people don't need to be.
Neither of these premises is true.

>And even more than that, GMs never let you resolve a situation just by talking it out because that's anticlimactic.
Speaking as both a GM and a player, neither is this one.
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>>97629419
Funny how persuasion is the most useless out of those three examples, it's much easier to use intimidation or deception creatively.
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with,
This is only true if you're playing a shit game. As long as someone has some kind of interest you can try to appeal to it. Be it their sense of self preservation, their greed or their vanity.
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with
What if this isn't true?
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>>97628802
For situations when the GM hasn't decided if a nameless NPC is good or evil yet. Not everything has to be a linear story planned out all the way down to the finest detail multiple arc in advance. Sometimes random shit can happen. Because, y'know, it's a game.
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with
youre fucking stupid
>and good people don't need to be
really fucking stupid
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with
You're absolutely right OP.
*Hide Thread*
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>>97628802
This is your brain on being retarded/autistic/both
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>>97628802
What setting and worldbuilding?
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>>97629490
Intimidation and Deception are both still social skills.
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>>97628802
I just think that heroes don't have dumpstats in general, which kind of makes rolling a character feel like shit. Like, if I'm strong and dexterous I can't also be handsome. Bitch, have you seen people IRL? Have you seen Han Solo, Aragorn, James Bond, any pulp hero? They're physically gifted and attractive, plus smart.
But here I'm making John Dungeons, who's either intelligent and weak/ugly or physically gifted but mentally stunted/about as charismatic as a barn door.

Basically I don't think social skills should be statted up at all and just roleplayed.
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>>97629419
>Stab the guards
>Stab the old man
>Stab the minion in a non-vital organ and start twisting
>Stab the guard
You aren't really helping the case anon
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>>97630071
I didn't say they weren't. I said some social skills are better than others.
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>another stale mud-raking thread
I'd like to talk about the incredible use of the power of lying, but fuck the OP.
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>>97630118
Most of those heroes aren’t inexperienced newbs and would have rounded out their stats overtime. Though given a fair few of them are also hotheaded and with a talent for finding or getting into trouble or pissing off the wrong people, if they did have a theoretical dump stat it would be wisdom.
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>>97629490
The tradeoff is that persuasion is the least likely to cause more problems than it solves. Fuck persuasion up and you can usually try something else. Intimidation and Deception both tend to burn bridges.
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so this is just piggybacking off the other shitpost thread asking about charisma, right?
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>Evil people can't be reasoned with, and good people don't need to be
Both of these statements are false though.
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with, and good people don't need to be.
Are you quoting this from somewhere or is this your original idea?
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>>97630182
I know this is a troll, but fuck it
>Stab the guards
>Reinforcements are called. Even if you manage to kill them quickly, you lose the option to walk around freely.

>Stab the old man
>Now you're a criminal assuming the old man isn't a high level retired adventurer

>Stab the minion in a non-vital organ and start twisting
>That's still going to be an Intimidation roll, if at a lower DC with advantage.

>Stab the guard
>In broad daylight with potential witnesses. Reinforcements are called.
There's a reason murderhobos are frowned upon.
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>>97628802
>And, you know, if you want to say something, you can just fucking say it.
Autismos always whine when I tell them this and say they can't actually play as the character they've written. Maybe play one you can then you unskilled retard
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>>97631645
>Reinforcements are called.
Dead men call no reinforcements, anon.
>Now you're a criminal
Adventurers are either criminals or above the law by default.
>That's still going to be an Intimidation
Nope, it's an attack roll.
>In broad daylight with potential witnesses
Kek good, free XP and gear.
>There's a reason murderhobos are frowned upon.
They aren't, what's frowned upon by shitty GMs (Like you) are people who approach the game freely. We're playing D&D, stabbing people is the only thing our characters are consistently and mathematically guaranteed to be good at, so of course we're going to stab people to solve our problems. Maybe you should've picked a different game if you don't like us getting off your railroad LMAO
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>>97629419
The point that >>97630182 highlights is that there are far more OBJECTIVE methods that will get you through any of those situations, whereas social skills are always wishy washy bullshit that absolutely requires the GM to be holding your cock to get you across.
>sneak past the guards
>climb in through a window
>disguise as a guard
>pickpocket an invitation
>forge an invitation
>dig a tunnel under the premises
>sic a wild animal on them as a distraction
>or indeed, just fucking kill them
And the list just goes on and on.
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>>97632284
Literally all of those except initiating combat are objectively terrible options.
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>this thread again, again
It's all so tiresome.
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>>97628802
I see you cannot be reasoned with.
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>>97632437
See? Social slop doesn't even work in real life.
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10 bucks says OP made this thread because he's asspained about getting BTFOed in some other thread. Any takers?
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>>97632674
He's made this exact thread at least two other times before, probably more. I think it's just "hurr durr I am retarded, give me yous" level trolling.
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>>97628802
NPCs both in game and real life can be easily tricked to do things if you how to talk to them. That's how most evil things happens. You get the dumb to think what they doing is good or for the best or just piss them off and lead them to someone in your way.
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>>97631944
>We're playing D&D, stabbing people is the only thing our characters are consistently and mathematically guaranteed to be good at, so of course we're going to stab people to solve our problems.

Problematic and on the wrong side of history, chud.

My character's consistently mathematically good at running his diverse, LGBTQ+++ friendly Seattle rainbow district coffee shop and taking his half-orc boyfriend's strap-on up the ass.

And that's a good thing!
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>>97633557
Stop being so asspained, you simple creature.
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>>97628802
>And even more than that, GMs never let you resolve a situation just by talking it out because that's anticlimactic.
Yup. Charisma is good IRL because it's better to get other people to do shit for you. But that makes for an awful, boring game. Therefore, TTRPGs are about doing things directly.
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I love three kingdoms man, watching it all the way through again for like the fifth time
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>>97634268
How do you reconcile this with the fact that there are many RPGs, such as old-school D&D or WoD, that are about making other people do things? Keep in mind that if you assess these as being bad games, it doesn't stop them from being games.
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>>97635230
>such as old-school D&D
No, that was a game about going into the dungeon yourself. Hirelings would tell you to fuck off if you asked them to do anything dangeous and nobody ever used the level 9 fighter castle shit for anything because it was an exercise in tedium for the DM.
>WoD
Not about making other people do things.
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>>97634268
Talking to various factions and subfactions, manipulating them into dicking each other over while avoiding scrutiny, can make for a fun game. Plus restricting your threats only to those that can be personally dispatched by the PCs limits the amount of shit you can throw at them.
I do think the "You hit an epic natty 20 on your persuasion check, so the NPC you're talking to has become retarded/suicidal" shit is deeply cancerous, but anyone with the baseline capacity to model another person's potential reactions to their behavior can play a decent game that's as much or more reliant on scheming as/than combat.
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>>97635323
>Talking to various factions and subfactions, manipulating them into dicking each other over while avoiding scrutiny, can make for a fun game.
And it will have nothing to do with the character's social skills but instead the player's.

You can simply say things.
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with
Plenty of evil people are perfectly reasonable. I wrote one up a long while back for a thread in which anons suggested that evil people can't be in love.
They're simply willing to be evil to achieve their goals.

>and good people don't need to be.
Riiiiight. Because everyone who disagrees with you *has* to be evil, right? Stop huffing /pol/ fumes.

Plenty of antagonists are good people whose goals are counter to the protagonist.
The classic example is ranchers versus farmers. Both need large tracks of land to survive and there's a limited amount of land to use. That doesn't mean that the other guy is evil.
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>>97635331
Lift my fridge.

Sometimes dumb players want to play smart characters and socially inept players want to play suave characters.
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>>97635543
>and socially inept players want to play suave characters
And they can't because the rules don't actually support that even when they claim otherwise.

The rules do, however, support weak people playing strong characters, and to a more limited extent the dumb playing the smart.
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>>97635538
>Plenty of evil people are perfectly reasonable
Not really, no. If you are reasonable you don't act evil.
>Riiiiight. Because everyone who disagrees with you *has* to be evil
Nothing in OP's post said this.
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>>97635543
>Sometimes dumb players want to play smart characters
Tough shit.
>and socially inept players want to play suave characters.
Even tougher shit.
Play what you're capable of playing, unskilled faggot.
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>>97635557
>the rules don't actually support that even when they claim otherwise.
Cool story bro.
Perhaps you're reading different rules than me.

>>97635617
Shut and lift my fridge already.
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>>97635606
>>Plenty of evil people are perfectly reasonable
>Not really, no. If you are reasonable you don't act evil.
I don't think you understand what the words "reasonable" or "evil" mean.
If you're insane you don't act reasonable.
If you're evil, you occasionally act in evil ways.
It's never good to be evil.
But it is sometimes reasonable to be evil.

>>Riiiiight. Because everyone who disagrees with you *has* to be evil
>Nothing in OP's post said this.
"Good people don't need to be reasoned with".
Who do you need to reason with? People who already agree with you or people who disagree with you?
If you disagree with someone good, why would you not need to reason with them?

The take away is "I wouldn't disagree with someone good!"
But two good people can have mutually exclusive goals.
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>>97634827
Too bad OP doesn't seem to have watched it - it might've helped answer his question.
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>>97638083
Evil people say shit like this to make excuses for themselves. Wrong on all counts.
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>>97638051
Seethe noskills
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>>97635606
Okay, I play a socially inept but wealthy weirdo. I use my wealth to hire an ogre, and to play the ogre I bring my buddy who're borderline retarded but can bicep curl a chest freezer. Also, since we're playing ourselves, my annoyance and disgust at the sight of you is my character's, so my ogre attacks you, personally - have fun fighting him you poofter.
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>>97634268
Except in in real life the "charismatic" are basically just clowns for the actually skilled (or the wealthy). They don't actually have any subordinates or any real power.
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>>97638410
>Okay, I play a socially inept but wealthy weirdo. I use my wealth to hire an ogre
How do you hire the ogre?
>and to play the ogre I bring
Nothing because that's up to the GM.
>Also, since we're playing ourselves
You aren't, as you said socially inept but wealthy when you're pretty obviously poor or you'd know that you can't just say "I hire someone to heed my every whim and command."
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>>97629419
This is a very good list of the exact kind of shit that NEVER works in real games.
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>>97638083
>If you're evil, you occasionally act in evil ways.
Anon, acting evil is what makes you evil. You aren't "evil, therefore I must do evil". It's committing evil that makes you evil. And committing evil is unreasonable. Therefore you cannot reason with evil people.
>Who do you need to reason with?
Not good people, because they are already acting reasonably.
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>>97628802
I roll "not to care"
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>>97638343
>Evil people say shit like this to make excuses for themselves.
You mean they explain themselves using reason? Hmmm...
Again, an act can be reasonable and yet still evil. Like just because a corporation is ensuring that it remains profitable and in business and supporting it's employees is reasonable, that doesn't mean it isn't also evil by doing it.

>Wrong on all counts
If you don't explain exactly how and why it's wrong, that assertion is completely ...unreasonable.
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>>97639027
There was no reason involved in any of that.

You continue to prove that evil people can't be reasoned with. They don't even think they're evil. Social skills don't work on them.
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>>97632284
>OBJECTIVE methods that will get you through any of those situations, whereas social skills are always wishy washy bullshit that absolutely requires the GM to be holding your cock to get you across
I'll let you in on a secret anon, GM "holding your cock" is the game working as intended. If he wanted, he'd make a guard capable of killing you, or just drop a fucking boulder on your head at any time. Set a magic ward exactly here you're trying to sneak. Or make you roll CON until you got dysentery and shat yourself to death.
TTRPGs are not designed as competitive one vs many game where you're trying to beat the GM. If that's your experience, either you're playing with shitty GMs or being a problem player yourself.
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>>97639038
Nope, objective solutions are practically immune to that kind of treatment. If the GM starts pulling bullshit to weasel out of one such solution, it's always evident that he's full of shit, and the table simply won't let him get away with it.

But if you stake your success on a subjective non-solution like a quirky one-liner then the GM can shut it down however he wants to and the rest of the table won't make a peep about it. Or of course he might accept it if he was particularly entertained by whatever shit you said, but in both cases it's entirely within his own hands.
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>>97638701
>Anon, acting evil is what makes you evil.
Accurate.

>You aren't "evil, therefore I must do evil".
Nobody said that. Evil people occasionally act evil because if they didn't, we wouldn't call them evil people. Savvy?

>It's committing evil that makes you evil.
Yes. Very good.

>And committing evil is unreasonable.
Unsupported assertion.
Sometimes an evil act is a reasonable thing to do. It's just not good. Killing your enemy that is going to kill you is reasonable. Murder is considered evil. Murdering your enemy while they sleep is safer than honorable open battle and therefore reasonable. But many would say it's evil.

>Therefore you cannot reason with evil people.
>Therefore
Completely unrelated and unsupported assertion.
Just because someone commits or has committed evil acts that doesn't mean that you can't to talk to them in a calm, logical, and sensible manner to persuade them to change their mind, behavior, or decision.
You're actually suggesting that anyone who has done enough evil to be considered evil is necessarily completely unhinged.

Reasoning with evil people and convincing them to stop being evil has occurred many times in fiction and real life.

In real life, there was a sociopath who stumbled into organized crime and became a successful hitman because it didn't bother him in the slightest and he considered just an easy job to make a lot of money. When he eventually got caught with evidence, he confessed and explained everything because it was reasonable to do so at that point.

I think you're simply being too restrictive in your perception of the word "reasonable".

>>Who do you need to reason with?
>Not good people, because they are already acting reasonably.
You still need to to talk to then in a calm, logical, and sensible manner to persuade them to change their mind, behavior, or decision if their goals conflict with yours.

>inb4 "no, all evil is unreasonable because it is!"
They aren't equivalent.
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>>97639076
>Sometimes an evil act is a reasonable thing to do
Wrong.
>Killing your enemy that is going to kill you is reasonable
Not evil.

Not reading the rest. You lost.
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>>97639029
>prove
You don't understand anything.
...you realize that something being a reasonable act doesn't mean that it's justified or defensible, right?

Go home and work on studying core concepts lil bro.
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>>97639078
>Not evil.
Didn't say it was.

>Not reading
Not surprised. Reading and understanding clearly aren't things you're interested in.
We're done here.
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>>97628802
>What's the point of social skills?

to make people with ONLY social skills feel important.

Mr Pink was right, tipping is for the birds.

Servers should earn an actual wage, and they would ALL kill themselves if they couldn't subliminally threaten boomers into giving them 30% of the cost of the meal.
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>>97639095
the department of health and human services should really send "secret shoppers" into the store for the sole purpose of telling the server that they don't tip, and then taking the food to a lab and seeing if it has spit/fecal matter in it.


and if it does, putting that server in JAIL.

I've never been a fan of my food being held hostage to a spoiled brat.
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>>97639095
man being a waiter doesn't take any social skills
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>>97639104
STOP SOCIALIZING ON THE SERVER LINE YOU LARD ASS FUCK!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw429JGL5zo
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>>97639115
yeah, lol....

the saddest thing anyone has ever said.

why do they deserve 30%-40% of total restaurant sales?

TAX FUCKING FREE?
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>>97639118
the reason IS, because there is a subliminal threat that they will fuck with your food if you don't tip them good.

it's literally Stockholm syndrome. monetized and weaponized.
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>>97639120
too many DM's and players think that "social skills" are a form of mind control that gets anything you want.

but if you KNEW how much taxpayer money went into the social engineering making boomers give 30-40% of their foods cost to someone who didn't do a damn thing but walk the food from the cook to you, you would be furious... and demanding your food be tested for bodily fluids as well.

and it's fucking SAD.
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>>97639124
people tip servers because they are scared of their servers illegally infecting them with a disease, and i'm tired of pretending that this isn't the fucking case.
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>>97639118
>>97639120
>>97639124
Eat at fucking McDonald's then.

In the US, tip your servers because they aren't paid enough to tolerate customers. They live off tips.
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>>97639143
how about you live off this tip bitch
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with, and good people don't need to be

citation needed
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>>97639152
Nobody could live off anything *that* small!
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>>97639118
>why do they deserve 30%-40% of total restaurant sales?
because they work there
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>>97639143
Tips are a subsidy not a bonus. If they dont make minimum wage in tips, they get paid the difference anyway.
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>>97639401
Fast food workers get paid minimum wage and aren't expected to do more than the base minimum.
Wait staff do a lot more and provide a lot more customer service.
If you don't tip in the US, go eat fucking fast food.

Outside the US, I hear it's different.
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>>97630118
Play GURPS and make any of those dudes instead of John then
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>>97639076
>Nobody said that.
You kind of did. I'll accept your concession that you didn't understand what makes someone evil.
>Unsupported assertion.
Evil is unreasonable, that's a fact.
>Completely unrelated and unsupported assertion.
Evil people act unreasonable, therefore they cannot be reasoned with. That's a fact.
>doesn't mean that you can't to talk to them in a calm, logical, and sensible manner
You can talk to them, but it's pointless.
>When he eventually got caught with evidence
Oh ok so he wasn't reasoned into doing so, got it. Your story proves my point.
>You still need to to talk to then in a calm, logical, and sensible manner to persuade them
No you don't, because they are already acting reasonably.
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>>97640253
Evil is selfish and uncaring of others, not inherently unreasonable. A conman scamming the elderly out of their savings is evil as fuck, but someone like that is motivated by his own personal benefit and can definitely be reasoned with as long as your arguments are based on practicality rather than morality.
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>>97628802
The worst part is that you aren't baiting.
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>>97640277
>Evil is [...] not inherently unreasonable
Wrong yet again.
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>>97640290
>Refuses to accept or even consider arguments
So you are saying you're evil?

Check mate, ateist
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>>97640289
Of course not. I'm speaking from almost two decades of experience with the medium.
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>>97640292
I'm saying you're evil. Because you think evil can be reasoned with, which it very evidently, even if we're drawing solely from your own examples, cannot.
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>>97640290
Are you saying that you wouldn't consider rational but ruthless pursuit of personal benefit with no care for either law, morality or suffering of other people evil? If that's what you're saying, I hate to break it to you but you might be actually evil IRL yourself.
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>>97640293
You weren't even born two decades ago
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>>97640253
>Evil is unreasonable, that's a fact.
>I'm right because I'm right and that's a fact!"
Cool story bro.

>You don't need to talk to a good person with an opposing view on an important matter in a calm, logical, and sensible manner to persuade them because they are already acting reasonably
So you're either a moron, a psychopath, or both. Gotcha. Nice chatting with you.
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>>97640293
>experience
Talking about games without ever playing them doesn't count.
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>>97640336
>>97640453
Want to reply one more time?
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>>97640458
I'm the second poster. I was just taking a cheap shot at low hanging fruit for the lulz.

Obviously, someone can actively play ttrpg for decades and still have terrible opinions. So my comment was baseless and silly, as many such jokes are.
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>>97640293
You can be doing something wrong for two decades and you'll just be really fucking good at being wrong.
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>>97640298
Suppose a criminal wants to kill a witness to one of his crimes. I could argue with him that this is a bad idea, because the witness is a public figure who is currently protected by the police and killing them will be risky and difficult. Rather, he should focus on fleeing the scene to avoid capture. Have I not successfully reasoned with evil?
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>>97641421
No. You just played along.
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>>97641431
I have quite literally dissuaded an evil person from a course of action, meaning I reasoned with him. Evil people aren't murder robots calculating the most agony they can possibly inflict. They are selfish and have interests of their own.

If an evil cultist wants to attack a monastery to steal a relic and I explain to him that it's too well defended, I reasoned with him.

If an assassin wants to kill someone and I convince him his client is going to betray and not pay him so he shouldn't do that, I reasoned with him.

People, good or evil, are people.
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>>97641469
>>97641431
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>>97641514
The issue here seems to be that you don't understand what it means to reason with someone. You also seem to have a oretty shaky grasp of what good and evil mean.
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>>97640293
If you haven’t figured out how social skills in a ttrpg work for two whole decades, then I think that qualifies as a learning disability. So either way, I think this is a skill issue for you.
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>>97641602
>>97641390
>>97640453
>>97640336
You've got at least one more in you.
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>>97629419
>[Deception] "We're here for our onboarding to BBEG Inc

Players unironically expect to walk up to guards with 6 armed people with a mix clothes and races, say this, roll an 18 and expect to walk in without being disarmed and allowed to freely roam inside. They then get pissy if you say this makes no sense.
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>>97640293
>>97628802
I think I've had a somewhat similar experience but with a somewhat different conclusion. Social skills are merely alright; it's combat skills that are just completely worthless in their entirety. It is just too easy to render them irrelevant by properly utilizing your environment. Even if you're out to win fights, actually being good at fighting is not nearly as important as it may seem. The complexities of life are just too vast for something so simplistic to be able to handle, and what matters is having the ability to turn the situation to your advantage. Most battles are won and lost before they begin.
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>>97643886
I see what you and OP are trying to do, trying to make some point about hyper-specialization and optimization in games, but I can tell you haven’t played at a table because the reality is it’s not how most games actually work. In a vacuum, it is very easy to make a claim that a certain build or certain skills don’t hold as much worth as others, especially in combat heavy games like D&D. But the reality is that certain skills are always bad…right up until the second you really fucking need them. Especially if you’re trying to minmax or lean on the other players to shield you.

Social skills in my experience are generally not worth heavily investing in, but still worth having a buffer for those rare instances where you end up in civilization and all the muscle in the world won’t force someone better armed or with more manpower to back off without a good reason. And combat skills aren’t good for anything but combat, a situation which will inevitably come up because most games have some element of it baked into the mechanics.

It reminds me of how so many trolls in L5R spec into dueling due to the fact that the legal system has a loophole that allows you to issue a challenge to almost anyone as the ultimate legal defense since the winner is always the one who is right due to “muh honor”, and it usually works …right up until the very first person says “no”, since a duel may be a legal defense, but it has to be consensual on both parties’ parts. And there are plenty of people who are willing to look momentarily cowardly would-be duelist is fucking cooked otherwise. At which point hey probably wish they spent more points into Courtier instead, which is also a skill that most fighting focused samurai don’t use right up until the point they absolutely in need it to make themselves not look like spastics in front of the Meperor or his courtroom.

Basically, you’re both fags who don’t know what you’re talking about. Fuck off.
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>>97643994
Nah, games don't work that way. No matter how many fake greentext stories you make up about how basketweaving epicly defeated the BBEG of your campaign, some skills and builds are just irredeemably dog shit in every context.
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>>97644000
I don’t believe you, and I doubt you have the stones to provide an actual breakdown to prove what you mean that isn’t the equivalent of “nun-uh”, you disingenuous faggot.
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>>97628802
>What's the point of social skills?
The epitome of /tg/ right here
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>>97644023
>anon identified a troll
I'm so proud
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>>97643994
>But the reality is that certain skills are always bad…right up until the second you really fucking need them.
So true.
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>>97643994
>right up until the very first person says “no”, since a duel may be a legal defense, but it has to be consensual on both parties’ parts. And there are plenty of people who are willing to look momentarily cowardly would-be duelist is fucking cooked otherwise.
...Except if you refuse a duel, you're not just "temporarily embarrassed." You concede the entire legal issue.
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>>97628802
>Evil people can't be reasoned with
>good people don't need to be reasoned with
These assertions are fucking retarded. Alignment has absolutely nothing to do with how reasonable someone is.
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>>97645268
See, that’s the mistake most wannabe Kakita duelists make, and it’s a very understandable one to do when the entire setting is about “muh honor”. But see, there’s two main wrinkles to the duel situation that would-be duelists run into;

1) A duel does not work like an instant get out of jail free card, nor does it magically change public opinion like that. It’s intended as basically the last day when there are irreconcilable differences on the line OR it’s a matter of law where he-said she-said is in effect and the only other choice is to drop the matter entirely, which some things are outright impossible for. Otherwise, if someone is convicted of murder and all the evidence is pointed against them, invoking a duel challenge to the prosecutor is a massive waste of time since everyone can see it for the desperation move it is.

2) Duels aren’t exclusively between the person who issued it and the person they’re challenging. Nor does it always have to invoke ketsuiki. Not only can courtiers and shugenja and people much higher ranked than you can invoke a champion to fight in their place, they might well challenge you to something entirely different, like an archery contest or poetry. At which point, again, you better hope you put some of your skill points into more than just dueling, cause you might have bitten off more than you can chew.
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>>97645442
>evidence
>in Rokugan
I'm afraid you've got some reading up to do about their legal system.
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>>97645455
I take it you don’t know about those meddling Kitsuki and their autistic insistence on “evidence” and “logic”, anon? Nor how they’re also trained to know how to duel on the very likely chance someone cries foul and tries to scare the nerdy prosecutor into backing off by challenging them to a duel while forgetting they openly display their Daisha for a reason?
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>>97645525
The Kitsuki are a joke in-setting. Nobody takes their evidence-based methods seriously.
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>>97645532
Clearly not in your games, anon.
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>>97645539
It has nothing to do with anyone's games in particular. Read the lore.
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>>97645544
You’re still missing the crucial point that duels are often mistaken for a fix-all solution bandaid to social woes when the reality is that they’re not, and that there are numerous occasions where just demanding a duel to push people around or escalate any minor embarrassment will either prove ineffective or just dig yourself deeper into trouble, not least of which when it comes to legal issues since the Scorpions wouldn’t write thar loophole into public law without knowing how to exploit it far better than a bunch of Kakita duelists.

That and those kind of assholes tend to be ironically useless anywhere outside of a court setting because they build their duelists poorly to ONLY duel and maybe be middling courtiers instead of being good in overall combat.
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>>97633101
That reminds me
>Playing post-apoc ttrpg
>Players are escaped convicts in a shootout with cops at a roadside diner
>One of the players had stolen a police uniform from a previous encounter
>After the initial shootout some more cops pull up and he immediately takes cover behind a police cruiser from the rest of the party and shouts to the reinforcements "Thank god you've arrived!"
>Don't even make a charisma check because he's set it up perfectly and the reinforcements would be too juiced up to doubt him
>Describe a cop they missed from the initial encounter leaning out of cover on the roof of the diner, getting the drop on the rest of the party
>Dude in disguise shouts "There's one on the roof! Light him up boys!"
>Proceeds to misinform the reinforcements into bad tactical decisions making it easier for the party to finish them off
He played it so fuckin well man, took out half the enemies with social skills alone. I feel bad for people who think ttrpgs are just pushing numbers around
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>>97630182
>>97631944
>Stab the guards
You don't have enough Actions in a Turn to kill them all, nor do you deal enough damage to kill them all, nor are you guaranteed to hit them all. Reinforcements are almost always guaranteed, and because they're NPCs and thus are not beholden to the same rules as (you), they can call reinforcements before initiative is even rolled.
>Stab the old man
Adventurers are not above the law, nor are they inherently criminals. That's why you have guilds. Killing innocents gets you excommunicated from the guild and you go from honorable adventurer to bloodthirsty criminal in an instant, and your betters - other, noble adventurers - will fall upon you and turn you into a corpse with ease.
>Stab the minion in a non-vital organ and start twisting
You miss your attack and the minion gets away. Sorry, shouldn't have tried to overrule the GM faggot.
>Stab the guard
See the first point, stronger adventurers are called and you are either apprehended or killed with the city locked down and powerful heroic adventurers called to bring you in dead or alive. Also, given the looks the other players are giving you, they want in on the hunt. And I won't be hiding your location as the GM, so best get on making a new character who isn't a subhuman monster.
>They aren't
They are. They reduce an RPG into skryim with dice.
>We're playing D&D, stabbing people is the only thing our characters are consistently and mathematically guaranteed to be good at
That's not even true, you stupid nogames. In fact, it's consistently easier to get a higher bonus to Persuasion than it is to your Attack rolls. Using the latest editions, Attack Rolls cannot gain the benefits of Expertise, meaning that your attack is gonna cap out at +11 at most, while a Persuasion Check can have a maximum modifier of +17. You are objectively more likely to succeed on a Persuasion Check than you are on an Attack in D&D, because the D20 ensures a 5% chance to hit any value in the range.
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>>97647042
>more likely to succeed on a Persuasion Check
Even more so with Persuasion having set DCs
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>>97628802
>What's the point of social skills?
The answer is simple, to let players who have poor social skills play a character that has good social skills. How well that is implemented is entirely system dependent and personally I think any systems that use binary succeed/failure for social skills are complete garbage. Anecdotally I have a had many players that have poor social skills and/or autism play characters with a social skill focus and be fine despite their difficulties... With some exceptions.

I currently have a player that is playing an extremely social focused character but they are so socially inept they are sabotaging the players efforts and I can tell this is starting to frustrate the other players. Normally I'd just ask the player if they want to make another character but they are really enjoying that character despite their fuck ups. Considering OP is a nogames fag I'll ask a better question for all the GMs and players that have had a similar experience.

How can I approach this in a way that everyone can enjoy themselves without being extremely patronizing to the players or asking them to make another character?
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>>97628802
>What's the point of social skills? Evil people can't be reasoned with, and good people don't need to be.

Neutral people.
Reminder that 98% of people in any world including the real world are True Neutral. Having an aligment other than neutral is a mental illness.

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