Tag: prevent

Like all things in rpgs, communication is key. I have played many games of GURPS 4e and I have played in many, and detecting lies tends to be one of those skills that almost everyone acquires. There are some reasons why it will not be as problematic as "Detect evil" could be in some DnD games.
First, the uses of detection lies are opposed by the speaker's acting ability. And even if the speaker does not have the ability, you will still fail your roll from time to time. Therefore, you cannot use it to reliably catch good liars, and it could fail even when you catch bad liars. If your whole group has the ability and you all roll, then success is much more likely, but that is a different problem.

GURPS is a system where degrees of success are important. If you win the quick contest of detecting lies by a small margin, most GMs will not tell you exactly what the lie is, only that you are pretty sure that the speaker was not sincere. I don't know any rules about where the gradient should be, but "knowing exactly what was true and what wasn't" is clearly a complete success, which I would only give in a 5+ roll. Therefore, in the mysterious games you can add a new dimension to the investigation, especially if the rolls are made in secret so that you do not know about the failures you made (or simply manage to voluntarily incorporate in your research information to you, as a player , knowing is false).

Finally, what for me is the main problem in this scenario is to respond to each statement of any npc with "I roll detect lies" On the one hand, it is what you should do as a player to maximize the use of your character skills. On the other hand, it can be annoying and slow down the game. I believe that almost any satisfactory solution to this problem has to come from the side of GM. This is what I have done:

• When a roll to detect lies is likely to be successful, make the lie obvious when interpreting your NPC. Look the other way, stutter, use a lot of "mmm" or any other way you think best fits the NPC. Players tend to get quite fast, and then you don't need to roll for the skill to be useful.

• Try not to have too many round-trip conversations where the player feels that anything can be a lie. Obviously in an interrogation this will not be possible, but for that:

• Go to the beginning and then only for any specific important statement. That is the best balance I found between "rolling once and forgetting", which can be too oscillating for my taste, and "rolling in each sentence", which can be tedious and unnecessary.

• Roll secretly in each sentence. This is a solution that I really don't like, but in convention games or when there are disagreements and your players insist that you should always throw, this is the least obstructive way to do it.

Finally two things. Even in a murder mystery, you are not likely to suspect every word by any NPC. This depends a bit on the campaign, but try to pass only when necessary, not just to "make sure" of irrelevant information. And, in case of doubt, communicate. As you have seen that most of the solutions to this tend to come from the GM side, then tell them your problem and we hope they take steps to accommodate you. And if you suspect that the use of the skill may bother your fellow players, ask them for their opinion in a neutral and non-accusatory way. If the final result is "we don't want to detect lies in our table", redistribute those points with the permission of your GM and take note of this for the next session 0 in which you participate.