Roleplaying Mental and Social Stats

[The Hive Custodian]

While coming up with a set of stats for a game of mine, I encountered an issue I'm sure many of you have experienced before: the roleplaying of mental and social stats. (I use the word "roleplay" because, although a character's decisions can influence mechanical results in the game, the influence of stats on those decisions is often not strictly defined in the rules.) We can easily imagine being stronger, weaker, clumsier, quicker, tougher, frailer, and so on. Physical stats are relatively easy to visualize and quantify. Mental and social stats, however, can be more difficult. While there is more margin for fudging, since we understand such things in less concrete terms, in my experience this is far outweighed by the challenge of roleplaying such stats, especially if the character's stats are wildly different from the player's real-life ability in the area. Unfortunately, both the effort and skill put into roleplaying these stats is often inadequate.

And now for a few questions that I think cover the main points of this issue. One from the player's perspective, and one from the game designer's:

1. Should players be forced to play mental stats?
Let me start by responding to a common, but mostly unwritten sentiment:

"Mental and social stats, by their very nature, don't need to be roleplayed."
Nonsense. If you have a character with a low Strength stat, it would be wrong for you to say "my character lifts the car off the ground and tosses it at the building". Likewise, if you have a character with a high Strength stat, it would be wrong for you to say "my character tries to lift the folding chair, but can't get it off the ground". Your stats define certain things about your character; it is your contract to stay within the bounds of those stats. Otherwise the stats are meaningless. If your character has a low Intelligence stat, they're not going to figure out how to toss a rock so that the two sentry guns shoot at and destroy each other. Likewise, if your character has a high Intelligence stat, they're not going to walk off the castle wall just because the party wizard did it after casting feather fall.

Unfortunately, taking the example of the published game I know best, D&D tries to stand halfway on the issue. On one hand, it is mentioned that DMs should play monsters to their mental stats, and ability scores in D&D, if nothing else, are meant to say something about the character beyond simply being a factor in determining mechanical results. On the other hand, many creatures and high level characters have mental stats that are so high that they are virtually impossible to roleplay, and the CR system, for the most part, fails to give full compensation for the value of mental stats were they roleplayed to what they should be.

However, I do realize some difficulties with my view. First of all, it excludes players solving puzzles (as opposed to making a roll on their characters' Intelligence stats). Second, as mentioned earlier, roleplaying such stats is not the easiest thing in the world. Smart players will have to consciously dumb down for stupid characters, and normal people playing super-geniuses or extremely charismatic characters. (I'm sorry, ripping off lines from movies does not make your character charismatic.) While there are several proposed solutions to these problems, I will not discuss them now, although we may do so later.

2. Should there be mental and social stats?
So if a character's stats are a contract, but you still want players to figure out things for themselves as well as project the proper social graces for their characters, what can be done? One solution is to simply make some of these mental and social things not stats. Some things should certainly be kept as stats; for example, knowledge of the game world, and appearance (which is generally listed as a mental/social stat as opposed to physical, go figure). But if you want players to figure out puzzles rather than rolling on Intelligence, devise their own tactics without consulting how much they would know about such things, and judge their lines on their wittiness rather than the character's Deliver Quip stat, perhaps the proper solution is to simply make these things not stats.

Something of a middle ground could be found where people can play their characters dumb, and say explicitly OOC that they are doing so. This would allow players to play lower mental/social stat characters without special penalty, as the GM would then be able to take this into account.

Thoughts?

[Benicus]

I never really liked how people would just consult their intelligence stat instead of really trying to solve the puzzle or their charisma for a good line, but how would you mechanically fix this? How would the wizard or bard (or sorcerror[sp?]) stay in the game?

[BigRedRod]

It's a problem which I'm fairly sure every single system has to deal with, and as far as I'm aware nobody has actually found a solution yet.

As a DM I'm often in the situation where my players are facing some kind of difficult situation or problem and after a period of people throwing their hands up in the air and/or suggesting bad ideas, I'm left with the problem of whether to inform them of a possible solution based on the broadness of mental outlook their character should posses. Really though, if I do this, it seems like a slippery slope to me simply giving the players potential options based on their stats and playing through the game in a multiple choice style (much like those old choose your own adventure).

The problem of a player mentally or socially surpassing his own character is more easily dealt with and seems to be done the same way in most games. A player has a stunning idea of how to fix the spaceship, stop the zombie plague and reunite the moon tribes all in one move, sadly his character is busily working out whether pen lids are edible. The character just posts his plan in the OOC and presents it for one of the more intelligent others to suggest.
And I've just realised that was what you meant with:
Something of a middle ground could be found where people can play their characters dumb, and say explicitly OOC that they are doing so. This would allow players to play lower mental/social stat characters without special penalty, as the GM would then be able to take this into account
Oh well, just goes to show that everybody seems to have reached the same conclusion.

I remember a long time ago somebody suggested limiting the characters of players with regards to their mental and social stats in D&D (it may have been on the 3ebb). It involved giving the players upper limits on what the DM thought that they could manage and their characters just had to keep below this limit. The idea was poorly received, as I'm sure you can imagine for it isn't a very good one and involves a DM having to inform players (who are more than likely his friends) that no, they can't have an intelligence score of anything above 8 and maybe a wisdom of 6 (and really how many gamers would possess a charisma above a 4?).

When it comes down to it, roleplaying is about escapism. Billy may be ugly, ignorant and dumb as a post in real life, but Generico the mighty wizard is one of the greatest minds in all of the world. All that you can really do is hope that his DM and the other players prod him gently whenever he's about to do something profoundly stupid.

[LynMars]

ADRPG discusses the high intelligence and manipulative qualities of the Elder NPCs and gives GMs good advice on how to handle that (I really think ADRPG, despite the lack of cohesive rules overall, has excellent GMing sections that can apply to most any game). But it's kinda easier for a GM in that regard as they can react to something and pretend that was the plan all along.

In the freeform community I play on, my character is a far sharper tactical mind than I, and knows a lot more about fighting in all regards. I tend to make up for it by getting the OOC advise of other players, some involved in that particular RP and some not, as well as the GM, before I figure out a post in a lot of situations. PbP games also afford an amount of time for a little quick and dirty research if necessary, as well as taking time to think out the wording of a post and maybe getting a second opinion before tossing it up on the board. Not an entirely perfect system, but it helps.

Tabletop is a little harder, granted; due to the immediacy of the session, but one can still take some time to confer with other players and the GM about the situation and a fw details. Unless the GM is being that much of a jerk that he wants a combat action decision right now and refuses to allow players to help each other.

Most GMs I know let players make an attempt at mental or social actions to the best they can, and/or give the GM an overview of what they'd want to do and like to see occur before finally getting them to make a roll. It's a balance between trying to get them to RP it out and letting the dice do it for them. Seems intuitive to me, but some less seasoned RPers may need to be guided toward that sort of resolution, especially if feeling awkward due to real life inadequacy compared to their character's ideal response already.

Cuz if not handled with care by GMs, these sort of situations can end up being rather aggravating for a lot of players. They end up eventually only making characters within their set boundaries, and you end up with "Bob always plays the thief, Dave's always the fighter..." situations, with the players never trying anything new and different, and RP stagnates.

[The Hive Custodian]

I never really liked how people would just consult their intelligence stat instead of really trying to solve the puzzle or their charisma for a good line, but how would you mechanically fix this? How would the wizard or bard (or sorcerror[sp?]) stay in the game?

Unfortunately, the ability scores of D&D are fairly hard-coded, and they bundle several questionably related aspects of a character together. You might be able to get by by renaming ability scores so that they exclude what you want to keep outside of stats and then removing skills likewise, but it probably wouldn't be very easy to balance. Also, you then run into the problem of allowing for escapism, as BigRedRod mentioned.

Anyhow, thanks all for the responses. As for my own game, I believe I will keep mental and social stats in the game, and hope (and try!) for the best in the way you've mentioned.

[Linklegacy77]

The biggest problem I've had with roleplaying mental stats is when a player of mine says "But my character wouldn't have done that, he would have been smarter than that, he's got an 18 intelligence."

I'll then say "But you said that is what your character is doing, just because you didn't see a possible outcome that your character might have doesn't mean you can take it back."

The big issue in my groups is when a player is playing a character much more intelligent than he is. What we've basically said is that you can ask the DM for an intelligence check to see what your character thinks he should do based on personality if you want to, but if you don't ask for it, you are screwed.

[Doomsmile]

I have to say that I frequently play characters who are far brighter and a lot more charasmatic than I am. Another tendancy I have is to play characters with seemingly misplayed ability scores.

Ability scores in most games can be fairly nebulous in terms of what they represent. I'll use D20 for my examples here, since that's the system I'm most familiar with.
Wisdom, for example, is supposed to represent willpower, self-confidence, and common sense... and perception, apperantly. Still, what if you were to have a character who has no shortage of common sence and utterly refuses to comprimise her deepest morals, but has next to no self-confidence and a bit of an inferiority complex, making her incredibly shy?
Similarly, what if this same character was to posess a sharp wit and noteworthy powers of persuasion, but seldom uses them due to the afforementioned shyness?

I think I'm straying from my point here, but I think it had something to do with the difficulty with which you can make someone "roleplay their ability scores." Just thought I'd throw it out there.

[LeadPal]

There's actually a dishonest solution to the problem of monsters being way smarter than the DM: just cheat. As the DM, you know all the capabilities of the PCs and are most likely privy to their schemes, so just roleplay extremely intelligent or wise creatures as if they already know everything about the characters. When the great red wyrm pre-empts every attack that the characters make and targets weaknesses that the players thought they had masked well, it will simulate the creature coming to brilliant deductions based on clues that lesser beings could never pick up. Even that might not work, though, especially if the DM doesn't have the charisma IRL (or at least the ranks in Bluff) to pull it off convincingly.

The only comprehensive solution would be to code strict responses to every situation that all characters must follow, but then you wouldn't be playing a game anymore... and even then, it's hard to come up with a response for someone vastly greater than yourself.