u/DJShohan

Just a funny story about how giants in my game became unable to lie.

It all started when my party entered a castle built in giant proportions. They did some exploring and learned the castle was home to a giant, so naturally they wanted to do some nature checks to see what they knew about giants before they went in to negotiate.

They rolled pretty high, so I asked them what they wanted to know about giants. They asked what giants were into, what they liked and disliked. In my head I said "giants are big so they like big things". But what came out of my millennial mouth was "they like big butts, and they cannot lie". So there's two facts about giants I guess.

What sealed the deal was the players' reaction. The tiefling fighter immediately stood up and started doing lunges and squats to get that post workout booty pump. When I say she stood up and did this, I mean the player stood up and did lunges and squats in the middle of the living room. I had to give her advantage on the performance check plus inspiration of course.

Needless to say, the giant was impressed with the buns on the fighter and spoke only the truth during the negotiation.

I'm sure this is a common thing and has been addressed many times, but my brief searching turned up little, so here we are.

My party is a group of five friends, we play in person once a month. I'm struggling with social interactions for the party and I suspect it's because they are still pretty new players (little less than two years). I'm seeing a few issues that I'm curious how y'all handle.

1. Everyone talks at once or interrogates a poor shopkeeper back to back in social encounters. I've considered giving them an annoyance counter, so if they keep asking the same question or wasting the shopkeeper's time, they can see that he is getting annoyed and will only do this for so long before leaving. I'm also trying with the idea of making NPCs only speak to one person in the party. They can either nominate someone as a spokesperson or roll initiative. They can talk amongst themselves to determine what they want the spokesperson to say or ask. They can help on checks like insight, intimidation, persuasion, etc, but they can't all roll separate checks.

2. The inverse of the first, nobody talks to an NPC. More than once, they come face to face with a potential source of information and just go silent. Instead of trying to pump them for information or strategize a way to give them enough information to get or keep them talking, they simply kind of cower and cast side glances at each other wondering what to say. I suspect this is a roleplaying thing, and they are not playing their character, but instead playing themselves. I'm considering giving them a little help here and pausing the game so they can talk amongst themselves and make a plan before engaging with the NPC.

3. One player gets offended if an NPC is the least bit surly or unpleasant. Look, the shopkeeper is busy and doesn't have time to haggle over the price of rope or whatever. He still will, but he's not going to be happy about it. The villain with a traumatic backstory and a potentially world-ending plot to execute? Yeah, she's kind of a bitch. This player gets personally offended if the NPCs are not all perfectly pleasant people and shuts down. This would be fine if it didn't drag the rest of the players with them. It goes like this "move along citizen, no loitering here." "What's your problem? Why are you so mean? I guess we have to shoot our way into the castle." The rest of the party is like, ok, I guess we'll shoot our way into the castle instead of trying to convince that guard to let us in. Maybe I need to give them another pause before the encounter to discuss with each other and make a plan? I'm guessing it's a lack of creativity and thinking in black and white terms when it comes to NPCs, either they are nice and friendly and therefore useful, or they are mean and hostile and only good as pincushions.

4. This kind of builds off the third, there is a general lack of creativity, strategy, and possibly understanding when there is a social encounter. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that a guard might be persuaded to take a bribe, or that a villain might divulge some essential information if they can get them monologuing. Even when I prompt them for checks like insight, intimidation, performance, etc, it's like they don't take the bait to keep asking or talking and don't trust their own abilities even with high rolls. I think they maybe don't care enough about the information they could get, and find the direct approach too easy to try to find a more subtle way into a location like bribing a guard.