social actions roleplay or dice roll?

[Mordante]

dear all,

How to you deal with social interactions in your game? I know some GMs will say a dice roll for say diplomacy or intimidate are enough. Some require more info what is your character going to say and do in 3rd person. Some also ask for a more 1st person story.
I'm curious how do other tables deal with social interaction. Personally I'm not a fan of solving every problem with a dice roll. I think this kills the R in RPG.

[Blackhawk748]

dear all,

How to you deal with social interactions in your game? I know some GMs will say a dice roll for say diplomacy or intimidate are enough. Some require more info what is your character going to say and do in 3rd person. Some also ask for a more 1st person story.
I'm curious how do other tables deal with social interaction. Personally I'm not a fan of solving every problem with a dice roll. I think this kills the R in RPG.

I ask for a basic outline of what they are saying and generally how and then have them roll.

There's a Diplo skill, and despite the base rules being abject ass, I'm not gonna just ignore the skill someone has put points in

[AnonJr]

Often a combination of both?

Generally it comes down to the realization that while the player may not have the skill in say, composing a poem to woo the NPC, the character does. So if the player decides to completely RP, we let it go until a roll is clearly needed. Or the player can acknowledge that the character is skilled, and so here's the outline and expected outcome - so let's roll.

[InvisibleBison]

While I wouldn't object to a player roleplaying a social skill attempt, I wouldn't require it either, and in either case the outcome would be decided purely by the dice. Talking to people is a skill that not everyone has, and just as I wouldn't require someone to actually be able to swordfight for their character to attack an orc, I wouldn't require someone to be able to be persuasive for their character to seduce an orc.

[Batcathat]

I ask for a basic outline of what they are saying and generally how and then have them roll.

There's a Diplo skill, and despite the base rules being abject ass, I'm not gonna just ignore the skill someone has put points in

Yeah, pretty much this for me too.

Personally, I kind of prefer acting it out (whether I'm a player or GM), but as has already been pointed out, it ends up being sort of unfair (at least as long as I don't also require people to act out how they're stabbing someone. Now that I think about it, that might be kinda fun...)

[NichG]

The player says what they want to say, I ignore details of how they actually spoke (if they stuttered, paused, were uncertain, etc), and focus on the content. The outcome is entirely determined by the content as it compares to what the people in the interaction are looking for. Character abilities (skills, etc) in this arena are instead explicitly rewritten to provide things like extra information about how the other person would react, what they might react favorably or unfavorably to, do-overs, OOC workshopping of the content before the player has to commit to what they're going to say, and the ability to make spoken agreements 'stick' with consequences or awareness if they've been broken.

So e.g. the Diplomacy skill cannot be used to determine whether someone accepts or rejects an offer, or to change their basic attitude. However, a DC 15 check (or 10+Bluff of the other person if they're trying to conceal this info) can determine if they would accept an offer or not before making it, and what points would need to change to make it acceptable. A DC 20 (or 10+Bluff if higher) check determines what the other person most desires. A DC 25 (or 10+Bluff) exposes a weakness or insecurity of the other person. DC 15 (+5 times number of times it's been used, or +10 if doing it for someone else) lets you take back something you said (or something a party member said) that turned out to be a mistake. And so on...

[arkangel111]

Like others have said. I definitely require more information than just the roll. Often times as a GM I am just stuck on what exactly they WANT to roll for. "can I roll Diplomacy?" well yea always but what do you want from him? if they can't give me an answer I have nothing to go with. That said the roll does not determine the success, rather the degree of success or failure. While a nat 20 may not grant them the evil bad guys dragon familiar, it may instead impress the BBEG and cause him to not quite kill the PC out of some respect for their earlier argument. Or perhaps he offers the PC his own chance at a dragon familiar if he'll turn on the other players, or complete some evil task.

I'll use the roll to determine more how well the NPC reacts to the argument rather than how good of an argument was made. It's a subtle difference I know but it lets me keep the NPC reaction to a more realistic level. Perhaps an amazing argument was given and while trying to respond the NPC might slip up and do a Hagrid "Oops I shouldn't have said that."

Just last night my players were trying to sell their warehouse (which they were renting) as a makeshift inn, because of refugee overcrowding. They wanted to mark up the price like 10000% and even with their amazing roll of 30+ I couldn't justify coming even fractionally close to the price they were wanting. So I marked up the price like 30% and justified it that commoners can't afford much and the new "owners" were well aware it was a temporary deal since they knew these outsiders didn't own the warehouse, AND that the new proprietors would need to make some profit off the deal.

[SangoProduction]

In the nearly hundreds of different gaming groups I've been with, I've literally had almost none that wasn't basically "a bit of both."
Although also, for most of them (certainly not all), if you've roleplayed out a convincing argument that the NPC isn't strongly opposed to, it's rather rare for it to go to a roll.
One of my current groups actually has this homebrewed "social combat" ruleset, which is neat.

What I do for my games? Mostly just roleplay. It's a roleplaying game after all. If there's a chance of a presented argument failing, and it's meaningful, then that's where dice rolls come into play. No reason to interrupt roleplay to roll dice when it's not needed.

[Zanos]

I don't use book diplomacy because it's bad.

I ask the player to either roleplay out or describe the gist of their argument, then I set a DC based on how receptive to that argument that particular NPC is. If the argument is good or bad enough I might waive the roll or not allow one at all. It encourages people to pay attention and use their brains without reducing all NPC interactions to a skill modifier or demanding players be master wordsmiths.

Funnily enough, I have played with a DM where a player role-played a multi-paragraph argument and did a back and forth with an NPC for >15 minutes and the players argument was very convincing. IIRC, we were trying to convince a town mayor to aid in the defense of a nearby town, because once it fell, his town was next. After this entire exchange the DM just said "He doesn't want to help you." And then the player said "okay fine, I roll diplomacy, natural 20 plus 15 modifier for DC 35. He's helpful now and he does what I want". And the DM just said "Okay, sure." So I have played with at least one DM where what you say does not matter and you just declare you're rolling diplomacy and NPCs do what you want if you make the DC.

[Zombulian]

The player says what they want to say, I ignore details of how they actually spoke (if they stuttered, paused, were uncertain, etc), and focus on the content. The outcome is entirely determined by the content as it compares to what the people in the interaction are looking for. Character abilities (skills, etc) in this arena are instead explicitly rewritten to provide things like extra information about how the other person would react, what they might react favorably or unfavorably to, do-overs, OOC workshopping of the content before the player has to commit to what they're going to say, and the ability to make spoken agreements 'stick' with consequences or awareness if they've been broken.

So e.g. the Diplomacy skill cannot be used to determine whether someone accepts or rejects an offer, or to change their basic attitude. However, a DC 15 check (or 10+Bluff of the other person if they're trying to conceal this info) can determine if they would accept an offer or not before making it, and what points would need to change to make it acceptable. A DC 20 (or 10+Bluff if higher) check determines what the other person most desires. A DC 25 (or 10+Bluff) exposes a weakness or insecurity of the other person. DC 15 (+5 times number of times it's been used, or +10 if doing it for someone else) lets you take back something you said (or something a party member said) that turned out to be a mistake. And so on...

I like this.


I ask for a basic outline of what they are saying and generally how and then have them roll.

There's a Diplo skill, and despite the base rules being abject ass, I'm not gonna just ignore the skill someone has put points in

This is basically how I run it, then we do a check with circumstance bonuses/penalties based on how strong of an argument the player made, what type of leverage/intel they have, etc. If the argument is compelling and there's no reason for the NPC to disagree though we usually skip the dice.

[Eldonauran]

I run things based off of the character's charisma score for initial NPC reaction. Then, its a combination of the character's passive diplomacy score (or whatever social skill they appear to be using) and it is only after they want to do something that can have good or bad consequences do I make them roll for it.

[Maat Mons]

I'm a fan of handling social actions, combat actions, and miscellaneous actions all the same way. My groups like to state what we're trying to do (woo the maiden, stab the orc, climb the cliff), then roll the dice (unless there was no reasonable chance of failure), and finally characterize the methods and results based on the degree of success (or lack there of). So if you get a good roll, you RP your character as a smooth talker, describe the epic display of swordsmanship your character just pulled off, or pull off some cool parkour. If you roll badly, you RP your character trying a cheesy pick-up line, describe the enemy deftly ducking under your swing, or slip and fall comically.

I could see doing some more detailed RP up front, and assigning bonuses or penalties based on how good it was, but only if you also let people gain combat bonuses by giving cool and exciting descriptions of how their character twirls through the battlefield, carving a swathe of destruction with her scimitars.

[Cortillaen]

I could see doing some more detailed RP up front, and assigning bonuses or penalties based on how good it was, but only if you also let people gain combat bonuses by giving cool and exciting descriptions of how their character twirls through the battlefield, carving a swathe of destruction with her scimitars.
Funny enough, that's exactly what I've done before. I had some homebrew stunt/edge rules (vaguely based on 7th Sea 2e) where players could "stunt", that is describe their actions for the turn of combat to gain an Edge die. The die was a d4-d12 depending on the description; uniqueness, detail, using the environment, etc lending towards bigger dice. They could choose to use the die on a d20 roll (after rolling) during that turn or hang onto it and use it later in the encounter (before rolling). They could only hold one die of each size, so getting a second d10, for instance, required them to either spend it during that turn or trade down to a d8 (or lower if they already had one of those, too).

After a while, we liked it well enough to expand to most of the game. A single Edge die could be held after the end of an encounter and used any time during that day. Stunting during skill rolls, saves, etc gave a +1, +2, or +4 ("an attempt was made", "good description", and "wow", respectively) on the roll. For social interactions, the simpler rules were in play for simple interactions like intimidating the shopkeeper into giving a discount, but the combat rules were used for the two longer, more involved social encounters I can recall. I didn't make any distinction between players doing things in-character or giving 3rd-person descriptions of what their characters did, which seemed to help the two more reserved players get into the RP more. I also introduced a handful of feats making use of Edge dice for various other benefits, like one counted the Edge die roll (only when used before the d20 roll) towards checking whether an attack roll was a critical threat; ie getting a 3 from Edge and 17 on the d20 was a critical threat.

Overall, it seemed to work pretty well for us. One big thing I noticed is it really helped mitigate the occasional "party is rolling terribly" blues since staying engaged with stunting offset that (and I might have been a little more generous with Edge dice when I noticed a slump). I could see it not working well if you have one or two people who just refuse to give more than the most basic descriptions and then get upset that they never get more than d4s.

[D+1]

How to you deal with social interactions in your game?The answer is in the question - it's an INTERACTION. The applicable skills have a purpose but we are LITERALLY talking about whether or not you ROLEPLAY interactions between PC's and NPC's. So the answer is obvious (or should be).

Personally I'm not a fan of solving every problem with a dice roll. I think this kills the R in RPG.The more heavily players lean on skill rolls to substitute for interaction, the less fun or interesting any interaction there actually IS will be. The skills are, obviously, a significant aspect of the game. There WILL BE moments in adventures (whether purchased adventures or made up myself) where there will be specific calls for such rolls: "It will require a diplomacy roll with a DC of X to convince the mayor to agree," or, "The captured orc is tough but he CAN be intimidated and a roll against DC of X will get him to tell you what he REALLY ate for lunch."

If you want your PC to be intimidating, go for it - but intimidation skill is not a magic bullet to getting information or cooperation any more than diplomacy skill is. The success or failure of your skill rolls are either going to produce useful results or they aren't - but using them to just skip over ALL the roleplaying associated with them amounts to just selecting one of 4 dialog options on your console controller and then repeatedly hitting "SKIP". I sure as hell don't want to BORE my players with NPC interactions, but if you insist on just ignoring those interactions by making more die rolls you're playing in the wrong DM's game.

[Mordante]

I'm a fan of handling social actions, combat actions, and miscellaneous actions all the same way. My groups like to state what we're trying to do (woo the maiden, stab the orc, climb the cliff), then roll the dice (unless there was no reasonable chance of failure), and finally characterize the methods and results based on the degree of success (or lack there of). So if you get a good roll, you RP your character as a smooth talker, describe the epic display of swordsmanship your character just pulled off, or pull off some cool parkour. If you roll badly, you RP your character trying a cheesy pick-up line, describe the enemy deftly ducking under your swing, or slip and fall comically.

I could see doing some more detailed RP up front, and assigning bonuses or penalties based on how good it was, but only if you also let people gain combat bonuses by giving cool and exciting descriptions of how their character twirls through the battlefield, carving a swathe of destruction with her scimitars.

Isn't that what battle tactics are, the pre battle role playing on how to attack the village, how to kidnap the fair maiden, or how the attack the horde of humans? I do not GM often but if the party role plays how they will do the combat beforehand. Then I will give them a bonus of some kind. Even if I think the plan sucks. But at least they thought about it and did not blindly rush in. The same goes for social interactions. Think what you are trying to achieve and tell me.

[Mnemnosyne]

It's important to go into sufficient detail about how you're doing what you're trying to do. I don't mean flowery or exciting descriptions, but simply specifying actions. Saying 'I want to convince the NPC' is kinda like saying 'I want to defeat the monster.' You don't (presumably) let the player tell you 'I'm going to attempt to defeat the monster' without telling you what spell he's casting, or what maneuver he's using. Similarly, 'I'm going to convince the mayor' seems insufficient without at least an idea of approach. The player needs to select what spells or attacks they're going to use, as it were.

Consider a situation where the player wants to convince an NPC to give them information, or assistance, or something along those lines. They can go about it in a myriad of ways. They could go with Intimidate or with Diplomacy, or they could try some third option like bribes or lies. If we compare this to combat, this is a little bit like choosing the broad approach to the situation. Walk in and roll initiative, do an ambush, stealth, etc. Let's assume they choose diplomacy, now they need to select specific tactics. Are they trying to make friends with the NPC enough to gain the information through that friendship? Are they trying to convince the NPC that it will be in their best interest to give them the information, laying out the reasons why they should? Are they playing on 'it's the right thing to do' or on the target's greed? Are they trying to take advantage of some preexisting animosity to convince the NPC to give information that will be harmful to someone she doesn't like? If we compare this to combat, this is selecting your spell or attack. This is deciding whether to try an orb of fire, or a save or die, or summoning some monsters.

You don't have to play out every line of dialogue; entire roleplay interactions, done entirely in third person descriptive format 'I tell him about X', 'He explains Y' are totally fine. They don't call on the player or the DM to be charming or accurately portray the massive charisma or intelligence or scariness of their PC or NPC. But you do have to explain what you're doing in sufficient granularity to interact meaningfully and produce an interesting narrative. No book that says 'He walked into the mayor's office and convinced her to help' without going into some level of detail as to HOW he 'convinced her to help' is satisfying or believable, and the same thing happens at the table in roleplay.

Of course, the flipside of this problem are the players who want the rp they describe to resolve the situation on its own. And that too can be compared to combat. It would be unlikely for a DM to accept that a sufficiently detailed description of exactly how the player attacks the enemy is going to lead to automatic success, and it generally shouldn't be accepted in social situations either. It must be a combination of the character's stats and the approach that works.

But the approach does need to be considered! Again, like combat, it matters! You can't declare 'the mayor is DC 20 to convince' and have that work for all situations. In combat, you might attack an enemy with a high armor bonus with a touch attack to bypass the armor bonus. In combat, you might target a low saving throw bonus on a target. Choosing the right approach should make things easier in social encounters just like it does in combat.

[SangoProduction]

Have to respect a man who can fully articulate his point. Bravo.

[Batcathat]

Have to respect a man who can fully articulate his point. Bravo.

It would've been more on topic if you'd rolled a dice before being impressed by the articulation. :smallwink:

[SangoProduction]

It would've been more on topic if you'd rolled a dice before being impressed by the articulation. :smallwink:

Oh bugger. What was my social save DC vs embarrassment? 2, drag the 1, plus 3 for internet anonymity, minus...