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Grac
2014-08-20, 06:17 AM
Well we have a long thread about 'how much' rules for social interaction there should be in a game. This isn't that. Rather, this thread is asking:
Assuming you want a game that has fleshed out rules for combat,
Assuming you want similarly fleshed out rules for social interaction,
Assuming you want those rules to be based on the same basic mechanic used in combat,
How would you go about doing that?

HammeredWharf
2014-08-20, 06:37 AM
I'd probably let social characters get followers, like in Fallout. Then they could use their social skills to manipulate their followers. A bit like 3.5e's Handle Animal skill, but more involved.

The Brute smashes things in combat and intimidates in social encounters. He also has in-depth knowledge of warfare that can help in planning.
The Skilled Guy has followers and traps in combat and uses various diplomatic skills in social encounters. He also has in-depth knowledge of sneaky operations.
The Wizard has magic in combat and charm/illusion spells for social encounters. He knows a lot about magic.

The key feature being that being a badass in combat should help you intimidate people, being a natural leader should help you in combat, etc. The worst thing about many systems is that they make you sacrifice combat prowess for social skills, leading to the typical "I'll just sit here and play on my mobile phone" situations OOC.

NichG
2014-08-20, 06:50 AM
Assuming you want those rules to be based on the same basic mechanic used in combat

What does this mean?

valadil
2014-08-20, 08:16 AM
I would tone back the combat rules. Combat would be just another skill.

I think it would be really cool to see a game with a social subsystem that rivaled D&D's combat system. But I don't think it would work well. You'd activate abilities rather than speaking. Players would literally play the race card, but fail to speak through their characters. I hope I'm wrong and that such a system wouldn't impede speech, but I've seen enough players declare "I diplomacy the guard," that I just don't see more rules helping.

mig el pig
2014-08-20, 08:32 AM
My rule when I DM is quite simple. I only use/allow dice when asked for. As long as we are roleplaying I don't want to disrupt the flow with looking at stats, dice, etc.
My second rule is that I only ask for dice if 'failure' actually has a meaningful and story enhancing possibilities.

I do realize my way can make character sheets less important but I try to take my players stats/traits and the circumstances in account when conducting the conversation.

Now regarding the actual question:

If I was designing a rpg system with heavy combat and social rules I would let the dice do the talking but include +'s to their roll that the player can accumulate by roleplaying.

So in the case of a player intimidating a local lord it would be something like this:

a + if you have some dirt to blackmail him,
a + if you make a good point (like an archer pointing out that he could draw and fire before the lord's champion has even made a move, if the lord has already seen your marksmanship qualities in action you might get an extra +),
a + if you can get whoever listens besides the lord on your side, (like the sell-sword in his company)
a + if you make a convincing logical statement,

and perhaps limit the amount of +'s you can get depending on your relevant skill or increasing the bonus a + gives.
Example: If you have Whateversocialskill rank 3 you can get up to 3 additional +'s when relevant
Example2: a + gives a better bonus if you have rank 3 then if it's rank 1.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-08-20, 08:51 AM
I actually have very few requirements here. Just two three.


It should be clear in how it interacts with the at-the-table social interaction.
The mechanics should prompt me to do meaningful and interesting things with my character's beliefs/traits/etc.
There should be real consequences to losing.


Bonus points if you can make it feel different from physical combat. More bonus points if it's a preferential option to physical combat.

The base rule underlying all of these is the same one I apply to mechanics: it should bring me something worthwhile that I don't get when I freeform. That's easier than it seems, most times, actually.

Social systems that I like: Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits, Smallville's conflict mechanism (which sorta rolls social, physical, and personal conflicts into one), how Dungeon World uses the Parley move, the way that Dogs in the Vineyard incorporates social conflict into an escalating continuum (social/physical/weapons/guns).

Segev
2014-08-20, 09:24 AM
The tricky thing about social interaction is determining victory conditions. In a skill check (say, picking a lock), the victory condition is obvious (e.g. the lock is picked and whatever it seals is now opened). In combat, the other side has been defeated. "Defeat" has a few possible forms, but usually involves a full-scale retreat, surrender, or death. We do get into potential for mixed results, here, though: escaping with the MacGuffin can be victory even if you were outclassed and badly beaten the whole fight...if you just CAN escape.

Social interaction gets much murkier when it comes to "victory." Generally, you have to know what it is you want to achieve with your social moves. This may or may not coincide with the goals of others involved. Many an interesting social scene in fiction derives its tension from not knowing whether the "other side" is really after the same thing you are, or is lying to you for some nefarious purpose. ("You" being whatever perspective the audience has into the scene, so generally the protagonist.)

If you both have the same goal, the victory condition is realizing this and coming to an agreement mixed with correctly trusting each other to work together. If you have opposing goals, victory is one side or the other convincing the other or the one to go along with his way...or tricking him into giving up or giving in. It could also simply be persuading somebody to see things your way. ("Seduction" is a good example here, as it can be used to turn somebody who wants nothing to do with you into a mass of hormones and desire, or to simply persuade somebody who is also looking for a hot date that you're the one to go with.)

This makes system design harder because there's not a simple binary trait to be examined, as in skills, and there's not a clear "final endgame" that will indicate victory in spite of any desires on the other party's part (e.g. death). It also runs up against one of the big sacrosanct things in RPGs: player agency. While GMs may often have NPCs resist social mechanics, it is still a lot easier to think of NPCs as "another lock to pick" and roll diplomacy at them, under most circumstances. But when you start using mechanics on PCs, the fact that the player's desires and the character's are so often aligned makes it start to smell like "mind control."

The PC does what his player says he does; introduce mechanics that can remove some of that player control, and some people feel violated, like the mechanics are hostile. Consider the hero who spends all his time honing his mission-critical skills and gives nary a thought to entertainment when he could be spending time better improving his stats, equipment, or other mechanical traits. In real-world terms, he does nothing but work, work out, and manage his finances and maintain his home and gear. Real people don't behave that way, but a PC absolutely could, because the player doesn't have to endure the tedium nor miss anything HE cares about while his PC devotes everything to being the best he can be at the parts of his life about which the player cares.

The student cramming for his finals in reality knows that going out with his friends for a drink is a bad idea. We've all seen the movie or TV show where said student justifies it as "just an hour or two," and is shown partying hard into the wee hours such that he gets neither sleep nor studying done. Often, this is the result of a friend cajoling him, "C'mon, have some fun; you've been cooped up all day!"

The player of a PC whose game-winning ability is based around making that final, who knows that he gets another +2 to his relevant skill checks if he studies, but suffers a -4 if he overindulges (on top of losing the +2 for studying), will either refuse to go out at all, or will go out for "just the hour or two" and then return without any trouble struggling to work up the will to get back to work.

So even persuading the PC to go out would involve overriding the player's agency over his character. Yet, real people make those kinds of choices. Again: the player isn't the one sitting there for hours, studying. The player is out having fun with his friends at a gaming table RIGHT THEN. It's very easy to say, "My character wouldn't go out when he has studying to do." The player isn't the one being actually tempted.

Nobody has a real problem if their character is physically overpowered and tied up. They don't feel their agency as a player's been overridden; the character did his best and was overpowered. But if the character makes a choice other than what the player would have wanted him to make, that starts to feel like mind control to the player. Even if it's just the character's "weak will" giving in, or something. We're more or less accepting of "fear checks" making us retreat, or magical charms or dominations honestly taking over. We may not like it, but we accept it. But it's harder to swallow an NPC or fellow PC making our own PC do something we don't want him to. It feels like PvP, and thus inherently hostile, even if it's no more hostile than what your own friends do when they try to talk you into seeing a movie tonight when you may not initially have wanted to.


This post has gotten long enough, but I hope it's at least helpful in outlining why social systems can be difficult to design.

Jay R
2014-08-20, 09:45 AM
...

Assuming you want those rules to be based on the same basic mechanic used in combat,

It should be based on the same basic mechanic used in combat only to the extent that what it's trying to simulate works the same way that real combat works - which is to say, not at all.

In combat, either the sword hits or it doesn't, and then, it does a certain random amount of damage. Social interactions don't have a "it works or it doesn't" component, so modeling it with a roll for success or failure is simply wrong.

A simulation should try to act like what it's simulating, only simplified.

The best one I saw really the one we inferred from the rules in original D&D. (Original D&D was not really a game; it was a structure a DM could build a game with.) The DM decided what the most reasonable reaction was, the most negative reasonably likely reaction, and the most positive reasonably likely reaction.

The DM rolled a 2d6, added a CHA bonus to it and any situational modifiers, and then applied that number, on the assumption that 7 was a neutral reaction, 2 the most negative reasonably likely reaction, and twelve the most positive reasonably likely reaction. (This meant that an outrageously good or bad reaction was possible, but required both a roll and modifiers in that direction.)

Once the DM knew the overall reaction, he would play it out, based on what you said and did.

It meant that almost always, you would get a reasonable response. You couldn't successfully convince the orcs to let you go and prepare you a picnic lunch, and you couldn't completely fail to get the king to help arm you to rescue his daughter.

Eisenheim
2014-08-20, 10:10 AM
Fate does this incredibly well. Everything is skills, and all kinds of skills can be used in different kinds of challenges. You can have physical conflicts, where you use 'combat' skills to do physical stress and consequences to someone or social conflict where you deal composure stress and mental consequences. Part of the power is the mechanic for when someone wins a conflict. if you win, you "take out" your opponent and get to specify, negotiating with the gm, what that means. In a physical conflict that might mean you kill them, knock them out or force them to flee or surrender, depending on what you want. I've had social conflicts with take outs as diverse as "he gives in to his bloodlust and runs onto my sword" to "he realizes what he is doing is wrong and helps us stop the Nazis."

Both kinds of conflict use the same basic mechanics: opposed skill rolls causing stress and consequences leading to someone being taken out, but the freedom of the resolution mechanics and the narrative style of fate lets the same mechanics serve to represent everything from a deadly gunfight to a lofty debate.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-08-20, 10:56 AM
Oh, also! An interesting thing I've seen (and I can't believe I forgot this) is the dynamic you find in Monsterhearts and Smallville. There, social conflicts are messy and they also don't truly resolve. When you get into a social conflict with someone, your objective is to get them out of the way so that you can do something. You're not changing their mind, you're not convincing them of much. Instead, what you're doing is putting leverage on them so that they do what you want this time.

As a result? DRAMA! Because then the characters come back and butt heads because the conflict isn't really resolved, just postponed until later. And it keeps looping back and back until somebody unleashes a lot of force or a bigger outside force gets them both to bury the hatchet. For now, at least.

Monsterhearts does it with incredible panache, because of how it frames the game. Your social moves are all negative or destructive in some way. When faced with a tense situation, you can run away from it, you can start physically lashing out at it, you can entice someone, or you can coldly shut them down. There are no ways to actually deal with the situation productively. Those moves do exist in the game, but you can only get them after playing through a lot of sessions and advancing your character.

Deliberately messy. But at the end of the road, you get to learn the "good" versions of your basic moves, like making someone feel good about themselves, or protecting someone, or helping someone with their issues. It sets out to do something very particular, and it does it well.

Actually, there's another interesting bit that Monsterhearts does: it doesn't have a dedicated "social conflict" phase. Instead, social manipulations are a tool that you can throw into gameplay. I've seen a situation go from cold glares to arguments to physical violence to someone running away in a matter of minutes.

Sample of the social manipulation tools: you have Strings on other players, and you can spend a String to do a few things, like getting in the way of something they're doing (e.g., "Please, you can't do this! Think of what we've gone through!") or forcing them to "hold steady" (e.g., "Before you do that, remember: I'm the one keeping the Browders off your back."). You can even spend a String to bribe someone (give them an XP) to do something for you. Strings become one of the tools in your kit, and using them means playing with them in the story and in the system created by all of the moves.

Wow, I forgot how cool this game was.