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RFLS
2015-08-26, 04:04 AM
Hey, Playground, I'm looking for advice on part of a system I'm writing. It's still in early stages, but I wanted to get the social interaction rules hammered out fairly quickly after the initial bits. The system uses a d8 for all rolls, and I'm trying to keep the modifiers relatively small (maxing around +10). Social skills are as follows:


Diplomacy. This is countered by Mind or Diplomacy rolls, depending on what you want to do.
Intimidate. This is generally used to generate other modifiers. It can also be used in place of Diplomacy in select circumstances. Countered by Mind.
Mind. This is the character's ability to withstand mental punishment and manipulation. It applies to magic and plain-old smooth talking.
Lying. Fairly self explanatory. Counteracted by Sense Motive.
Sense Motive. This is used to see past lies. It also has uses in combat and initiative, which are irrelevant here.



As you can see, they're fairly similar to pretty much every layout of social skills in every ttrpg. Here's what I've got for Diplomacy rules so far:


Diplomacy: This skill is used to convince people to do things they otherwise might not. Depending on the situation, it’s either opposed by a Mind check or another Diplomacy check. A Mind check is used if the other party wants to continue the conversation without agreeing to anything, while a Diplomacy check is used to try to gain something from the encounter. At any point, either party can choose to walk away from the conversation without giving anything up.

Example 1: A PC is trying to get past a guard into an office building at night.

Case 1: The guard raises the alarm and demands the PC leaves immediately.
Case 2: The guard makes a Mind check.

If he’s successful, the conversation continues. The PC has failed (and therefore does not get to attempt the check again under the same circumstances).
If he fails, he allows the PC into the office building.

Case 3: The guard makes a Diplomacy check (in this case, for a $20 bribe).

If he’s successful, the PC is left with two choices - give him $20, or walk away.
If he fails, the PC isn’t forced into anything, but the conversation can continue (and the PC knows he wants money).





What does the Playground think? Does that seem like a reasonable way to pursue the other social interaction skills? Should I have more skills to cover other aspects of interaction?

noob
2015-08-26, 04:58 AM
Well social skills are something very easy to mess up so try to think how much a player could abuse it to control entirely everybody they meet and turn them into slaves doing everything for the players.
If you do not find a way it is that you are not imaginative enough and that you need play-testers to help you
If you find some then fix them and try to get play-testers a little later for fixing more
Else you might just try to prevent the social interactions to do too many things because in real life you can do overpowered things in social interaction that 101% of the GM would call intense cheating and derailing their campaign and grossly overpowered so being realistic must never ever be attempted because in real life social interaction is a completely cheated and unbalanced skill.

Amechra
2015-08-26, 01:34 PM
Keep in mind that the ability to simply drop conversations is... strong. The "proper" reaction to someone trying to get you to do something you don't like is to drop the conversation entirely; after all, if you're just trying to resist their manipulations, why pick an option that can fail?

Also, Intimidate and Lying seem less useful than Diplomacy to me - plus, there is the metagame issue that you know that anyone rolling Lying is, in fact, lying. It puts a bit more strain on the player-character knowledge divide, and can give things away when GMs call for a Sense Motive roll.



One alternative idea would be to have social skills based around emotions. For example:

Depress: Sadden someone in a way that's useful to you.
Disgust: Disgust someone in a way that's useful to you.
Divert: Distract someone or hide your emotions in a way that's useful to you.
Empathize: Figure out someone's emotions in a way that's useful to you.
Gladden: Cheer someone up in a way that's useful to you.
Infuriate: Anger someone in a way that's useful to you.
Intimidate: Scare someone in a way that's useful to you.
Mingle: A "social camouflage" skill; let's you blend in with the crowd.

You can do any of the above in an unfocused way without a roll, but if you want to benefit from it, you've gotta make that d8 clatter. In other words, telling someone their cat died makes them sad; trying to manage their reaction so that they'll think that you're a nice guy who was willing to be a shoulder to cry on (and therefore can be trusted) requires you to roll Depress.

As a second layer, anyone resisting can put down a Demand, and anyone using the skill can put down a Bribe. A Demand gives a bonus to the resistance roll, but causes the resistance roll to automatically fail if the other guy fulfils it. If a Bribe is on the table, the guy resisting can claim it as a Demand.

To use your example:

The PC (let's call her Penny) wants to leave the building; the guard (let's call him George) is at his post, and the Penny needs to get past him.

Now, she has a few options (being a social character):
• She could attempt to Divert him - in other words, she would come up with some lie about actually having authorization.
• She could let out that she's amenable to offering a bribe - that would be Empathize.
• She could Gladden him - but seducing the guard never helps.
• Intimidate is on the table - but a failure means that the guard is probably going to hit the panic button.

Her other 4 social skills are either inappropriate or don't have a good bonus to them, so we'll ignore them.

Anyway, it seems her choices boil down to Divert or Empathize. Let's just look at both of them.

EXAMPLE: Divert
Penny sidles up to George's desk and makes up a (lame) excuse about working late. She sees that he isn't really buying that (it's three in the morning, after all), so she pulls a $20 dollar bill out of her pocket and discretely offers it to him.

In game terms, she has made a Divert roll with a Bribe of $20. If George accepts the Bribe (claims it as a Demand), he'll just wave her through, and won't give it a second thought. If he doesn't, she'll put her money back in her pockets and will hope that she rolls better than he does.

EXAMPLE: Empathize
Penny walks up to George's desk and lays down the sympathy. While George is not entirely taken in, it's a good chance to vent (the boss made him work the late shift again, would you believe it?). He mentions that he wants to get a cola or something, but he's out of change.

In game terms, Penny just rolled Empathize; if she succeeds, she knows that George has a Demand of "enough change to buy a soda". If she fishes that out of her pocket, she can then continue with a Divert or Gladden roll, handing him a handful of change.

Penny listens sympathetically to his gripes, and then follows up by saying that, hey, her shift was late too, so she knows what he feels like. But, hey, her shift's over, and she does happen to have some change, so hey, he should go grab a drink when he's got a chance. He cheers up (hey, something going right for a change!), and waves her through. Later on he might give the whole thing a second thought, though.



A couple issues do stand out:

1. All Demands and Bribes are not created equal. I think there needs to be a way to retract or refuse a Bribe/Demand if it is out of scale with the interaction in question (so no Demanding ONE MILLION DOLLARS from the guy trying to bribe you, and Penny couldn't use the Demand of "enough change to buy a soda" to get George to abandon his post).
2. The above example assumes that George is amenable to talking - there isn't any way to force someone to have a chat with you.
3. Not all skills are created equal. I choose to view this as a neutral thing (for some characters, Disgust, Infuriate, and Intimidate are going to be more useful than Divert, Gladden, and Mingle, and vice-versa).
4. Maybe too many skills? I dunno how specific your other skills are going.

RFLS
2015-08-26, 05:32 PM
First of all, thank you so much for the detailed reply. It always means a lot when someone takes the time and energy to put as much thought as you have into a question.

Here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jDeUPD5CK8Bk004cmG4ApVbD3Iqhoyxd_YYKWsHyxes/edit) are the skills I currently have. I'm trying to hit the middle ground of simple enough to not be overwhelming, while being complex enough to reasonably model what's happening in-game.

I like your breakdown of ways to manipulate someone. While I'm not inclined to have 8 separate social skills (just to stay in line with the level of complexity provided by the other skills), what would you think of providing all 8 as a way to use the Diplomacy skill? I think it'd have to come with a table of modifiers, but it'd be a step simpler that way. There could also be abilities/items/etc that provide a bonus to one specific use of the Diplomacy skill, ensuring that different people have different strengths when it comes to manipulating others. For instance, you could provide a way to use another stat for Intimidation.

With walking away, I definitely agree that it's a powerful ability to have. The reason I currently have it as an options is that, well, it's an option anyone has with any conversation. If I offer you $1000 to shoot someone, you might want to find out why without agreeing to anything - which would be a Mind check. You're essentially leaving yourself open to the possibility to see where it might lead. On the other hand, if it's completely outside the realm of things you'd ever do, you might just choose to walk away. Sometimes, there's no amount of diplomacy that will make someone do something.

Amechra
2015-08-26, 08:39 PM
Out of curiosity, what is your game "about"?

What I mean is that you have very fine divisions with your Science skills. Compare, say, NWoD or Atomic Robo, where Science is a single skill that you can take specialities in. So is your game about using Science to solve problems?

But yes, you could have all of my suggested "skills" be uses of Diplomacy - it would reduce clutter. I'd actually suggest doing that with all your Science-y skills - it would be cleaner to have a generalized "Science", with fields you can specialize in.

Actually, scanning your skill list... a lot of that could be condensed down if you had a speciality system. Like collapsing Handguns/Shotguns/Rifles into one skill (Guns, mayhaps?), but allowing you to then specialize on certain classes of guns.

Still, it would be really helpful to know about what kind of games your system is going to be for. Are they going for gritty? Cinematic? You appear to be aiming for a modern-day game, what with having no Raygun or Sword skill.

To give a little example of how the goal of a system can decide the skill list, here was one I was working on for a "prep school with magic" game:

Arithmetic
Art
Dance
Etiquette
History
Language
Magic
Music
Philosophy
Rhetoric
Sports
Theatre

Extra-Curricular:
Hand-to-Hand
Occult
Seduction
Theft

You would get skills from what classes you picked, and could "tap" a class that was on your syllabus that semester for a bonus to your action (it was a diceless system). Extra-Curricular skills could only be picked up by doing stuff that was outside your "upper class" lifestyle - you could get Theft by running with a gang, for example. Extra-Curricular skills would be better than normal skills within their field (in a fight, Hand-to-Hand would beat Sports hands down), but would have more limited applicability and their use is frowned on IC.

RFLS
2015-08-27, 04:16 PM
Out of curiosity, what is your game "about"?

What I mean is that you have very fine divisions with your Science skills. Compare, say, NWoD or Atomic Robo, where Science is a single skill that you can take specialities in. So is your game about using Science to solve problems?

But yes, you could have all of my suggested "skills" be uses of Diplomacy - it would reduce clutter. I'd actually suggest doing that with all your Science-y skills - it would be cleaner to have a generalized "Science", with fields you can specialize in.

Actually, scanning your skill list... a lot of that could be condensed down if you had a speciality system. Like collapsing Handguns/Shotguns/Rifles into one skill (Guns, mayhaps?), but allowing you to then specialize on certain classes of guns.

Still, it would be really helpful to know about what kind of games your system is going to be for. Are they going for gritty? Cinematic? You appear to be aiming for a modern-day game, what with having no Raygun or Sword skill.

That's...actually a really good point. I hadn't stopped to think about what stories I want the game to be able to tell. Here's (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_RVzTbMqi1IBVlBDFBB6CwyRm0mJHndzRjPLf3iylHY/edit) what I have for setting notes. I want the game to model combat fairly well. I'd also like it to have the ability to handle larger scale things (companies, bands of mercenaries, cities, churches, etc). So, I suppose I'm looking for a reasonably versatile system that's capable of handling most things a player might do, with room for expansion should it not cover something they want to do. Also, here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18otsNmotrlJ0WnBoHgkzgeB5uYuAWaJCUO-quRx07CY/edit) are the notes on magic I have so far. I haven't settled on how to incorporate magic into the system at all.

Side note - I took your suggestion and collapsed some skills down into Science and Guns.