In the particular case of table-top RPGs, the literary genre that the RPG is trying to emulate often contains a fair amount of characters engaging in chicanery. A meta rule (understood by both players and GM) might be: chicanery is about as limited as it is in the literary sources the particular RPG is based on.
Player: I tell the stormtrooper “These droids are not the ones you want.”
GM: I’d like a roll against your Force skill, please.
Some RPGs with magic (Ars Magica comes to mind), illusions are cheap but changing actual physical matter is hard. This provides a ready answer to many questions about chicanery.
In the particular case of table-top RPGs, the literary genre that the RPG is trying to emulate often contains a fair amount of characters engaging in chicanery. A meta rule (understood by both players and GM) might be: chicanery is about as limited as it is in the literary sources the particular RPG is based on.
Player: I tell the stormtrooper “These droids are not the ones you want.”
GM: I’d like a roll against your Force skill, please.
Some RPGs with magic (Ars Magica comes to mind), illusions are cheap but changing actual physical matter is hard. This provides a ready answer to many questions about chicanery.
Call of Cthulhu GM’s have the advantage that the player character is dealing with entities that will probably eat them if they try to be too clever.
I am not convinced this is true.
The game certainly has entities that will eat you regardless of whether you’re too clever, but that’s not the same thing.
In other words, there is an in-universe for an out of universe constraint
Out of universe: we don’t want player characters to be too powerful.
In universe: Well, we all know what happens to those guys in Lovecraft stories, right?