It was only late in this strange hobby of mine that it became clear that it applied to more than just D&D. It happened when a DM tried to explain that he wanted to have the games somewhere other than his place because it wasn't fair for him to be the only one that didn't have to drive. It was an obvious lie, though no one pressed the issue, but what amazed me was how similar his excuse and the manner he delivered it was to the way he gave his prepared speeches during games.

It was somewhere around that time that I began to listened to everything, not with the intent to comprehend the words, but with a great focus to discern the different rhythms and inflections. It got me in trouble a fair bit, considering it almost seemed like I never paid attention to what anyone said, but I continued it, finding a perverse sense of enjoyment in learning how people lied. Perhaps it came from my fascination with the sense motive skill, but I think it was part of my prior disposition that led to my fondness of that skill.

People lie in different ways, and one of the biggest distinctions is the amount of preparation put into it. Quick lies have a certain... flavor to them, a sharp taste that strikes the mind quickly. Being purely improvised, they tend to be caught quickly. Usually, there's only an instant to catch it, as most of these little lies that people come up with on the spot tend to be about minor concerns, and they pass through the mind quickly. Finding them during games was easy, and I thank my DM's for confirming all my suspicions when I asked them afterwards. When I asked whether they had fudged a roll or changed something on the spot, they were more impressed by my perception than concerned about whether I'd be examining them outside of games.

The greater lie, the lie that has time to build up and dance around in a person's head, the ones that tend to hurt the most when revealed and the ones that the person works hard to conceal, those are the lies that I learned much of. If a quick lie has a sharp bite with little aftertaste, the practiced lie is smooth yet awkwardly thick, so much that it would be uncomfortable to drink, like trying to gulp down peanut butter. And the taste lingers, rolling in your head just as it must have rolled around in theirs. There were many times where I realized a lie only long after it was delivered, where a sudden flash of something amiss then moved to unravel the rest.

The subtle "unnaturalness" of a delivered line is something even professional actors have difficulty removing, and the full, unabashed knowledge that they are lying makes watching their deliveries a fetish I developed unexpectedly. I watched films and television and even other people with only a single concept demanding my focus. I soon felt my fixation on lies may have started to get out of control, so I returned my focus towards D&D, trying hard not to be suspicious of people outside of that game.

When a DM prepares a campaign, he prepares a lie. All the work that stems from his desire to make the game believable is far more distinct than the little effort put into the quick, improvised lies, and once allowed behind the DM's curtain, all that is seen cannot be forgotten. I could no longer avoid seeing my group's lies, but was thankful that they were never anything more serious than avoiding hurting someone's feelings.

Interesting portrayal of Obama.

I think I managed to pick up a minor talent in lying thanks to my "studies", though it only extended so far as enabling me to keep a straight face despite knowing I was being lied to. As far as my "studies," I eventually realized the foolishness of it all, when I realized simply how long it took me to understand a small group of people, but it eventually dawned on me that the lies of other people were becoming frighteningly obvious. I though myself paranoid, and I think I may have despaired at one point thinking I had lost all sense of trust in others.

This despair came from my girlfriend. I felt paranoid often when we spoke to each other, and as our relationship deepened, I realized that I had been right in many of my assumptions, though it was probably mostly because she was a miserable liar. Her quick lies were simple, first-thought blurts, while her composed lies were about as unnatural as they could be. I think one of the reasons she dated me to begin with was that I didn't object to her lies, nor did I ever call her out on them. She lied freely around me, and by the time I realized just how much she did, I had almost perfect accuracy with my "paranoid feeling." It took some time to disassemble the feeling into particular clues, but by that time the relationship had become more than simply sour. She came to realize I was obsessive, though she thought it was about work and D&D as opposed to my true hobby. I had already become addicted to my hobby of falsehoods, to the point where I feel that even as the nastiness of her true character was revealed, I stayed with her just to hear her lies.

Finally, she did something. I knew it was something, since she said she had done nothing. I don't think I cared what it was then, in fact, I don't really think I cared anything about her at all. But it grew. Her lies grew worse, and almost everything she said was just a practiced lie. Her eyes would flicker before becoming unnaturally fixated on me. She didn't even lift her tone beyond the first few words of her practiced lies, allowing it to settle. I knew something was wrong, but I simply let her lie to me, pretending for all the world that I was a trusting person.

She had been cheating on me. She told me this as she broke up with me. For a brief moment, I thought it was another of her lies. But, I guess that was just a false hope. I knew too well when she lied and when she didn't. As I listened silently, she told me how many times, with how many people. I can't believe how stupid I was. As she was telling me this, herself breaking into tears, I stupidly was congratulating myself for having seen through her. I thought about her reasons for doing it, and even as I correctly placed a fair amount of the blame on myself, I was more concerned with figuring out how to spite her in return.

As she became more emotional, with heavy tears falling and telling me how much she had come to hate me, I felt it. Perhaps that's the wrong word. In fact, I think that might be the most horrible misuse of the word "felt" ever used. I didn't "feel" her emotions, I absorbed them, both her anger and her sorrow. I then, in a manner that I am ashamed of, returned her sadness. It was careful, deliberate, and false in the purest form. I willed my eyes to tear up, and they did. I opened my mouth, and my voice was raspy, my breathing labored. "How could you? I love you."

She stared at me. I think she was the first person to see me cry after my mother died when I was in third grade. I think the missing practice hurt my act, but I'm fairly certain she found it convincing. She stared at me, snot running down her face while still panting slightly from all the crying and yelling, and asked me in the most pathetic display I doubt I will ever see again, "Really? ...You still love me?"

I waited a moment. It was just the perfect scene. As she looked up at me and saw my teary eyes, waiting for my response, I saw her slowly form a smile.

I shut off my waterworks like a switch had been flipped. I returned the smile, which is once again a gross misuse of a few words. To phrase it better, I sneered, and replied "No. I don't think I -ever- did."

I didn't think it was funny. But I laughed anyway. Laughed like I wanted each "HA" to echo forever in her head. She tried to lie and tell me I was the most miserable person she had ever known, but I didn't even need to see her telltale signs to know that wasn't true. She had never met me, and looking at who I am, I don't think anyone ever will.

Thank you, Dungeons and Dragons. From the bottom of my heart.

>>8269209
Damn.
Fiction or nonfiction?

Sociopaths we are, lest sociopaths we become.

10/10, OP.

I stuff my women before I talk to them now. Less alcohol and mood music involved.

I thought I was the only one...

tl;dr.

Holy shit, good story OP, be it fact or fiction.

And thanks for writing it in advance.

I hope it's fact. Not because i wish someone was like this, in fact I feel sorry for you if it's fact, but because it's so interesting.

He's a Bene Gesserit witch with Truthsense!

>>8269337
Me too.

What would be interesting is if it were true, and then OP got a hold of books on interrogation/interview methods that discuss facial cues and other means of telling if people are lying.

OP's Sense Motive bonus would be through the roof.

>>8269396
Skill focus: Sense Motive

>>8269270

What do you use? Wood ships itch, and most everything else will rot more quickly than my interest will fade.

>>8269437
Model ships are not sex toys you fucking pervert.

I want to send this to some concerned parents who are wondering if there's anything wrong with their child playing DnD.

>>8269581

Sorry, meant wood chips, and my finger slipped. It's the corpse to the left of me, you see. Her head fell off and it got in my way.

>>8269383
damn. not bad writing OP, not bat at all.

Sad story, but the revenge was beautiful to behold. It's good to own the ability to read other people, and a good way to go about it. will copypasta

This needs some archiving.

Excellent story.

>>8269156
Poor Barbarian :<

I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I definitely like the tighter focus you put into this story, and posting it all at once is definitely preferred.

I'm just wondering why you stay anonymous.

This is the reason I stopped leaving my house. Where as you seem not to care when people lie, I can't get over it and slowly go crazy thinking about it.

Touching, but then again, this one hits pretty close to home for me.

OP, I must praise your newfound skill of lying and discerning truth. Such a talent takes quite a bit of practice, and is not something easily mastered. However...

I believe you are looking at lies in the wrong light. Lies are not something that's right or wrong, at least in the moral sense. Lies are simply tools you use when speaking to others, and the illusion you create with them is their product. The illusion, just as the tool used to create one, is neither inherently good or bad -- only its context makes it so.

When you created that masterpiece at the end, building your ex up until you delivered the final blow, your deception may very well cut deeper than any physical torment. It may have been a terrible thing you did, but even so, it was a work of art. Behold your new craft.

When you tell lies in the future, which now is sure to happen as it has become you, think about why you do it. Do you do it out of spite, to cause pain? Or do you do it to protect someone, to build that person up, with something that even though may not be true, still stands to strengthen them? Look at most lies people tell, and you will notice almost all of them to be born of good intentions.

Bumping for a tl;dr story of awesome.

The OPs picture fills me with a rage fueled by 6 years too many playing Diablo 2

Necromancer and Barbarian, the awesome classes, get fucked trying to kill Diablo while Sorceress and Amazon fucking hide. Then Hammerdin waltzes in, kills the boss, gets the girls. Game over.

Fuck you Paladin.

Awesome.

>>8270204
Seems to me, the angle of "awesome characters" is truly reversed; at least in my mind anyhow. For the record, I didn't play a Hammerdin, mostly a lightning aura/conviction aura zealadin. (Zeal is the one that gives you lots of strikes, right? Or is that reckoning...lawd it's been so long...)

I would say that OP is a bastard, but the girl probably had it coming.

>>8270629
You can still say he's a bastard.

What a load of crap.

>>8269156

hey dude, you seem autistic, since all your metaphors to explain things are of a sensory 'synesthesiactic' nature, that normal people don't really get.

i solve the problem of lying by not giving a crap, and generally joking around all the time even when lying. am generally never guilty or hesitant about anything.

Stop...

Hammer time

Great story.

OP, you are a dick. You should have just called your girl on her lies long before then.

>>8274642
Actually, outside of fiction, women love men who let them lie to them constantly.

Fact or fiction, it was a good read.

>>8270617
zeal lets you attack a max of 5 times per use, real fast attack speed. use zeal with a huge hammer and have a decent % of life drain/damage dealt heals, and you are effectively immortal as long as you have something close enough to attack.

This is fiction. But it's imaginative, entertaining, and almost believable.

Cool story OP.

Not even trolling.