Roleplaying & Exploration Stunts examples

[zooroos]

Hi!

Well, what it says on the tin, I have some trouble imagining possible situations for roleplaying and/or exploration stunts. So I'm humbly requesting the wisdom of my fellow forumites to show me practical examples of said stunts (personal experiences trumps all!).

Thanks in advance!

ZOOROOS

[Disemvowel]

There will be some instances in which they simply do not apply, even with creative imaginings.

[Elfie]

Both of these things happened at our session yesterday.

Roleplaying
The PCs sneaked into the Library at the University of Orlais. Some campus guards come in with a snooty Orlesian student who turned them in, and the PCs have to convince the guard that they're students. One of them succeeds on a Communication (Deception) test and gets six stunt points. She uses Sway the Crowd the convince two of the guards instead of just one, Bon Mot to insult the snooty student's mother, and Stunned Silence to shut everyone up while they make their way toward the exit.

Exploration
The PCs find themselves in a house that is starting to burn down. They flee out the front door in a panic, but a quick headcount outside reveals that they left someone inside (she actually went out the back). So one of the PCs runs back in the house and uses Perception (Searching) to quickly survey the house for her missing party member. She gets 2 stunt points and uses Speedy Search to complete the search in half the top (spotting the other PC out the back window), and therefore only has to make a single Dexterity (Acrobatics) to avoid fire damage instead of two. She gets another 4 stunt points on that tests and uses them on With a Flourish to make an incredibly impressive leap and tumble out the front door, greatly impressing everyone who witnessed the daring escape.

[Piperdog]

Well, while I enjoy set 2's new options, i really don't like the exploration or roleplaying stunts, as those are all things I want to see actually roleplayed by the characters. I think a good roll, a creative player, and a talented storyteller can and do regularly have all those conditions occur without the necessity of having them listed as stunts on a chart. Each to their own I guess.

[Zapp]

Well, while I enjoy set 2's new options, i really don't like the exploration or roleplaying stunts, as those are all things I want to see actually roleplayed by the characters. I think a good roll, a creative player, and a talented storyteller can and do regularly have all those conditions occur without the necessity of having them listed as stunts on a chart. Each to their own I guess.

I think this is a fair point. But nothing prevents you from having the cake and eat it too! You could easily run your game in such a way that good roleplaying and smart ideas allow you to pull off stunts, just like you're used to, but that rolling dice and getting stunt points allow you to pull off even more stunts.

This is especially good in cases where you simply can't find a good roleplaying angle, where you doesn't feel inspired right now, or for those players that simply are a bit shy.

Having things encoded in rules, together with conditions for their use, tend to make people think that is the only legit way to do these things.

And for combat stunts, I guess for most people that is perfectly reasonable. What's the point of trying to go up in levels and become a better warrior if you can just "roleplay" a stunt taking out all your enemies at once? Many games, AGE included, make it a point of leaving combat to the rules.

But in roleplaying and exploration, it doesn't need to be this way. It doesn't need to be "a game within the game". To me, it seems perfectly reasonable to use RP and Explo stunts in addition to plain old good roleplaying.

After all, in scenarios of these types, there can only be more winners with more cool ways of doing stuff. In fact, what starts out as a "mere" dice-generated stunt can well turn into a major rp session, simply by the group's need to explain what the frack just happened; something that never would occur if you "only" use roleplaying to resolve such a scenario.

[Lynata]

I see it exactly like Zapp here! The way my group handled it was not to limit the usual roleplaying - the stunts simply were a way to add mechanical advantages. For example, whilst my City Elf was never shy of throwing some cheeky comment around, only with a stunt would it actually be "good" enough to have an impact noticeable enough to warrant assigning rule-benefits.

It's not dissimilar from how combat stunts work, actually. We could just as well argue how cool it would be if our characters would pull off various cool moves all the time. And maybe they do! But only with a stunt do we actually manage to knock the enemy down for good instead of just staggering him etc.

[Zapp]

I see it exactly like Zapp here! The way my group handled it was not to limit the usual roleplaying - the stunts simply were a way to add mechanical advantages. For example, whilst my City Elf was never shy of throwing some cheeky comment around, only with a stunt would it actually be "good" enough to have an impact noticeable enough to warrant assigning rule-benefits.

It's not dissimilar from how combat stunts work, actually. We could just as well argue how cool it would be if our characters would pull off various cool moves all the time. And maybe they do! But only with a stunt do we actually manage to knock the enemy down for good instead of just staggering him etc.

Well, I don't know how to break this to you Lynata, but you're actually an example of what I wanted to move away from...

I do encourage you all to treat rp stunts as fundamentally dissimilar to combat stunts in this regard...!

To elaborate, my point was that in combat, there are good reasons why roleplaying isn't allowed to have a mechanical impact. (Everyone: Feel free to ask if you aren't sure about what they are) But outside of combat, it doesn't need to be this way. I urge you all to make a mental check so you don't restrict social and rp stunts to only dice rolling only because you do so in combat. It's alright to restrict them, but hopefully you have a better reason than that!

My point, Lynata, is that you (the player) SHOULD be able to just throw around cheeky comments on behalf of your City Elf (i.e. roleplaying), and have that to make deep impacts on NPCs AND you should ALSO be able to roll dice and have them dice tell you that cheeky comments were thrown about by your City Elf with the same level of impact.

(Yes, enthusiastic players gain access to both sources of "stunts". Shy players only get access to the latter, but that's still better than in some other games where they miss out entirely.)

Best regards,
Zapp

[Lynata]

Oooh! Alright, a misunderstanding then.

Now, a clever or benign GM will likely find ways to grant the affiliated effects to kick in anyways if a player's idea was particularly good or cool just so it makes for a better scene - but aside from that ... well, matter of preferences. I thought the idea was pretty interesting (and so am thankful that these lists was included, even if we don't get to use them much), but in the end everybody should do what works best for his of her group.

[Zapp]

Cheers!

(You realize that I had to reply to your post, since the stance your post took was the very thing Piperdog complained about)

Edit: Piperdog, not teh OP.

[zooroos]

I understand the roleplaying and exploration stunts much better now, thanks! I especially like Zapp's point of view, I was thinking R&E stunts from an excessively mechanical perspective. Now I see that said stunts should add some crunchy bits to the roleplaying experience instead of replacing them.

I think I'll left the stunts application and their use to the players, after all. The R&E stunts system will be there if any of them want to make use of them, but otherwise I won't be pushing the issue on them.

If there's anyone with more examples to share, please do!

Thanks again.

ZOOROOS