That’s probably where I’d plan for a later twist where the GMPC was actually the BBEG at one point but got replaced by the current, more ruthless BBEG. There’d be a whole succession of people of varying evilness sharing the same name and title. Kind of like a Dread Pirate Roberts situation.

You havent even watched it yet? What the fork, ash-hole?

I’ve seen season 1, but it was a long time ago.

No. Are you watching it? One of my favorite series of all time.

Time for a rewatch!

No they both just have sinister laughing face. This is actually in response to a clown doing a hijink

Yes, but what about elevensieth times?

It’s certainly one way to get the table to listen to you when you tell them for the last goddamn time, you’re not DMing the next campaign…

… Because it’s you, isn’t it.

The Good Place is unspoilable, I enjoyed it much more when I knew some of the plot points beforehand.

Of course literal time years. It would be about a decade before an actual ingame year has passed.

I will say it like this: That is a frame from the show. At some point, Michael and Eleanor stand next to each other and laugh. When you get to this moment, you will not think this meme is a spoiler.

Now go watch it.

Do y’all not handwave down/travel time?

What’s funnier is when everyone already knows you’re playing an evil character, but all their attempts to prove it in-game, even through meta-gaming, fail because the dice are on my side (evil). The best was when the DM just gave me an ability to straight up magically kill 1 person a day with a touch attack and I killed the main quest giver. Just to test it out. I was all alone with him and through my extremely high skills of deception and persuasion–and the paladin’s shitty dice rolls–I convinced the party they died of a heart attack.

No. At best we get something like 3-4 days of ingame downtime.

Travel time is part of the dungeon.

Skill issue.

PvP dialogue checks only work on other players if they allow them to, because every player can effectively set the difficulty of the check to “impossible”

This is just how the mechanics are supposed to work, btw. Persuasion checks are rarely supposed to be simple +0 contested rolls. The DM sets the difficulty for NPCs, but only you are supposed to be able to say how difficult it is to persuade your character of something.

Further, even a contested success doesn’t always equal a complete success. If the paladin is willing to buy the heart attack story because there’s no actual evidence otherwise they might still decide to harbor suspicions that make the next check harder, for example.

Uh… What? Your skills are still just a d20+bonuses even against another player. Their sense motive check has to beat my bluff check to catch my lie.

I roll d20, add my whopping 33 bonus to it and that’s the DC the other player’s sense motive has to beat.

Wrong. For one thing, players don’t have to agree to contested persuasion at all, feel free to look that up. Even if they do it’s not just a simple dice contest, otherwise every face character would have free mind control over their entire party.

For example:

Player Elon Musk throws a Nazi salute. He uses his Deception +6 to claim that’s not what it is, rolls a 5 for a total of 11.

Player Not A Moron rolls a 1. This does not matter, because they know what they saw, and further, they remember all that other Nazi shit he’s been saying. They have effectly set their own Deception/Persuasion check DC to 30+, or roll+bonus+30 circumstance bonus.

Player Stupid Fucking Simp rolls a 20. This also does not matter because, as a stupid fucking simp, they already believe everything Elon says and take a -30 circumstantial negative and critical success skill checks are silly homebrew nonsense.

Tl;Dr you’re forgetting that circumstance, including character emotions and affection, affects difficulty of all skill checks. If a player agrees to ignore that that’s on them.

This also, btw, applies to NPCs trying to persuade the party. The DM does not a have a right to tell your character what they believe or disbelieve without magical effects.

If you think about it, beyond the fact of the player being the only one can say what their character is in totality and is biased towards as a result, this is how a system must work to prevent RPG horror stories of incels forcing other players into sexual or abusive situations, eg “ummm I rolled a +29 so your character has to sleep with mine and you have to roleplay it”

This depends on the table and their own rules honestly. In my DM’s table we go for a contested roll of deception/insight between our players or between NPCs. Now this might not be RAW, but we do it that way and we like it since it creates funny and interesting scenarios.

And for the RPG horror stories bit, I don’t think that if the DM is trying to force something that they’ll just obey the dice blindly if they aren’t in their favour. They’re just gonna turn around and say “oh no, you didn’t pass the DC / my NPC also has +30 to his persuasion, you lose.”

Sure, you can agree to anything.

If you didn’t think it through and thus suffer from skill issues.

And there are of course good stories to tell with it, like in this secret traitor situation, and good players will apply circumstantial bonuses fairly.

Like perhaps that paladin doesn’t WANT to believe their comrade is a murderer.

Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be aware that another player can’t force you into simple contested rolls on the nature of reality that you can’t possibly contest, ever.

Hell, even if they’re right! You can play a completely deluded madman that looks at a windmill, hears an NPC tell him the absolute, objective truth that it is a windmill, and decides it’s a giant instead.