Social Pillar

[Tanarii]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?

To me, it's always "PCs negotiate with the bad guys that they potentially can work with, but certainly can't trust".

Classic examples that have set the tone for me defining what "Social Pillar" means are Kobolds. Specifically the Kobolds in Keep On the Borderlands in the Caves of Chaos, and the Kobolds in The Sunless Citadel. The white Dragon in the latter is also a good example of where it's smarter to negotiate than fight.

In the rare Urban adventuring I've run, it's typically Thieves Guilds, usually trying to pit factions against one another. Never bribing guards, nor asking a king for his crown or an army.

[kazaryu]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?

To me, it's always "PCs negotiate with the bad guys that they potentially can work with, but certainly can't trust".

Classic examples that have set the tone for me defining what "Social Pillar" means are Kobolds. Specifically the Kobolds in Keep On the Borderlands in the Caves of Chaos, and the Kobolds in The Sunless Citadel. The white Dragon in the latter is also a good example of where it's smarter to negotiate than fight.

In the rare Urban adventuring I've run, it's typically Thieves Guilds, usually trying to pit factions against one another. Never bribing guards, nor asking a king for his crown or an army.

whenever i think about the 'social pillar' its always 'all of the above'. im thinking/talking about any ability that relates to accomplishing a goal via conversation, essentially. so yes, bribing a guard, or asking for assistance from someone more powerful. but also attempts to negotiate with an enemy, even mid combat. its all part of the social pillar IMO

[Sparky McDibben]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?

To me, it's always "PCs negotiate with the bad guys that they potentially can work with, but certainly can't trust".

Classic examples that have set the tone for me defining what "Social Pillar" means are Kobolds. Specifically the Kobolds in Keep On the Borderlands in the Caves of Chaos, and the Kobolds in The Sunless Citadel. The white Dragon in the latter is also a good example of where it's smarter to negotiate than fight.

In the rare Urban adventuring I've run, it's typically Thieves Guilds, usually trying to pit factions against one another. Never bribing guards, nor asking a king for his crown or an army.

To me it's learning goals, secrets, motivations. "What does the Rat King want" is a more interesting question (to me) because the answer is open-ended. Much like a dungeon, I can engage, disengage, and re-engage with an NPC and not feel like I've wasted my time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The social pillar is "fixing problems (or at least contributing to fixing them) via talking." The combat pillar is "fixing problems (or at least contributing to fixing them) via fighting". The exploration pillar is "fixing problems (or at least contributing to fixing them" via finding things." They're not separate events, they're not even separate scenes. Many scenes have involved multiple pillars simultaneously. Including talking during combat, exploring during combat, or talking while trying to find things.

The people you talk to may be
* allies
* prospective allies
* enemies
* prospective enemies
* indifferent people
* people you think are allies but are enemies or indifferent
* people you think are enemies but are allies or indifferent
* people you think are indifferent but are enemies or allies
* etc.

And only a tiny fraction of the social pillar (just like the exploration pillar and even the combat pillar) requires pressing buttons on the character sheet.

/rant

[MrStabby]

When I hear it, I sometimes worry. It depends who is talking and what I know of their views.

When it is defined as mot combat and not exploration then it can be a bit narrow. When it is defined as "charisma stuff" it is very narrow indeed.

I think a broad approach of it being that part of the game concerned with hearts and minds of NPCs would be my preferred description. Now you may persuade the king to lime you by assassinating someone, so the assassination might be part of the social pillar by this definition. But that's fine by me.

[animorte]

Interesting that most examples thus far deal with enemies as opposed to... how shall I say it... opposition in general.

Various skills can be used in the social pillar to determine where you need to go and what you need to do. It can help you to make friends and overcome the loopholes that NPCs and monsters alike may have in your way. Navigate your way through the hierarchy of society with educated diplomacy. This is easily accounted for by clever use of many skills including History, Investigation, Insight, Perception, and anything including Charisma. Sure others can be used, get creative.

There is a notable difference between the social and exploration pillars for me:
- Social is used to discover information; who is it, what to do, when is it, and where to go.
- Exploration is how you get there.

All pillars combined often reveals why.

[Sparky McDibben]

- Social is used to discover information; who is it, what to do, when is it, and where to go.

This is an interesting summation. Information is certainly more valuable in social encounters. But social is also the realm of influence (typically derived from information). You don't just Gather Information (RIP 3.5E skill list), you can leverage it, too. For examples, see Leverage. :)

[Tanarii]

Interesting that most examples thus far deal with enemies as opposed to... how shall I say it... opposition in general.
Exactly why I posted this.

I think of opposition first (potential enemies you'll have to fight if handled poorly, definitely opposition unless converted to Allies by social pillar), and maneuvering through non-oppositional challenges second (society, bureaucracy, gathering information, etc). Because I don't run urban games very often, and when I do they're focused on opposition that can also be a fight if not handled right.

[Leon]

A part of the game as a whole that like the other "two pillars" doesn't need to be singled out as its own entity for any reason, just exists and can be used or ignored as each group of players sees fit.

[Corran]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?
Convince some NPC to allow the party to commit evil acts in the name of some greater good?:smallwink:

[Kane0]

Any interpersonal interaction, including potential and implied. Its pretty damn broad.

[animorte]

This is an interesting summation. Information is certainly more valuable in social encounters. But social is also the realm of influence (typically derived from information). You don't just Gather Information (RIP 3.5E skill list), you can leverage it, too. For examples, see Leverage. :)
Yes, exactly where I was going with that. Being able to acquire information and build relationships (good or bad), then use that to your advantage.


Exactly why I posted this.

I think of opposition first (potential enemies you'll have to fight if handled poorly, definitely opposition unless converted to Allies by social pillar), and maneuvering through non-oppositional challenges second (society, bureaucracy, gathering information, etc). Because I don't run urban games very often, and when I do they're focused on opposition that can also be a fight if not handled right.
I think concerns like this in any aspect, whether they have the potential or ability to challenge you to fisticuffs or not, is still considered an opposed force. If it's a hoop to dive through or a hurdle to jump over by any degree, I still define that as opposition. That's why I tried to take the time with that word specifically, something or someone that puts up a resistance. Just to be clear, I completely agree with you. I'm just rephrasing and redefining to make myself feel better about my choice of terminology.


Any interpersonal interaction, including potential and implied. Its pretty damn broad.
Even some things that aren't directly interpersonal, which proves that last bit of your statement even more.

[Tanarii]

Convince some NPC to allow the party to commit evil acts in the name of some greater good?:smallwink:Ha! 😂



I think concerns like this in any aspect, whether they have the potential or ability to challenge you to fisticuffs or not, is still considered an opposed force. If it's a hoop to dive through or a hurdle to jump over by any degree, I still define that as opposition. That's why I tried to take the time with that word specifically, something or someone that puts up a resistance. Just to be clear, I completely agree with you. I'm just rephrasing and redefining to make myself feel better about my choice of terminology.I actually misread what you wrote. Yes, I first think of (at least potential/likely/traditionally) enemies being negotiated with, to work with as allies for at least a time. There's plenty of ground for other kinds of oppositional between that and the courtly/merchants/bureaucrat style stuff that many other people seem to use as go-to examples for social pillar, at least on these forums.

[Segev]

The social pillar is the one most concerned with what is sometimes termed "soft power." Who do you know? How do you talk people into doing things for you?

As a player, even without a well-supported social pillar, I generally try to take the "interesting" option whenever presented with a "trade this for that" or "do this thing to get this thing" type choice. Making fey bargains - albeit while trying to make sure they will screw you over as little as possible, but still running with the screws when they happen and just trying to leverage those - accepting commissions from nobles, doing favors for shadowy figures... it's all opportunities.

Now, a social pillar supported by mechanics gives a little more leverage to the player in terms of how to interact with these structures. It is a lot of work for the DM and a lot of fumbling in the metaphorical dark to require him and the player to feel out just how much info a given PC can get to work with, and just how well the PC sells his agenda to the NPC(s). A well-done social pillar makes enough of a game structure here that you can actually have a pretty firm idea how NPCs will respond to certain things, and also how PCs "should" respond to things even when they're not in the obviously-optimum interest. e.g. the fact that a real world person typically doesn't go to the gym and exercise an optimal amount of time, all the time, and may spend too much money on frivolities when he should be saving it up and living frugally, while a PC in a game often will do exactly those optimal behaviors and never indulge in pleasures and fun that are not conducive to making him more powerful at the parts the PLAYER gets to play out most directly. A good social pillar will helm mitigate that by making the things that are fun and enjoyable for the PC more fun and engaging for the player, amongst other things.

[Sparky McDibben]

Now, a social pillar supported by mechanics gives a little more leverage to the player in terms of how to interact with these structures. It is a lot of work for the DM and a lot of fumbling in the metaphorical dark to require him and the player to feel out just how much info a given PC can get to work with, and just how well the PC sells his agenda to the NPC(s). A well-done social pillar makes enough of a game structure here that you can actually have a pretty firm idea how NPCs will respond to certain things, and also how PCs "should" respond to things even when they're not in the obviously-optimum interest. e.g. the fact that a real world person typically doesn't go to the gym and exercise an optimal amount of time, all the time, and may spend too much money on frivolities when he should be saving it up and living frugally, while a PC in a game often will do exactly those optimal behaviors and never indulge in pleasures and fun that are not conducive to making him more powerful at the parts the PLAYER gets to play out most directly. A good social pillar will helm mitigate that by making the things that are fun and enjoyable for the PC more fun and engaging for the player, amongst other things.

Can you give me any examples of games with well-done social pillars? This is something of a white whale of mine.

[Thrudd]

I think the game designers might just mean "the times when your characters talk to someone", which often includes talking in-character to each other or the DM. Whether it is something actually using the ability check mechanics or just making the DM do a silly voice as the quirky shop keeper, it's still the "social pillar". "Exploration pillar" is the parts where your characters are exploring/traveling and aren't in a fight- no matter whether the only thing going on is the DM describing their surroundings, or they are making ability checks left and right. Only the combat pillar absolutely requires mechanical engagement. These are "pillars", because they are broadly the categories of what players actually spend their time doing at the table. Talking to each other and the DM as their characters, Listening to the DM tell them about the environment and asking questions about it, and Engaging in the (usually) tactical combat game.

What is the place of the social pillar in a game that is going to be largely a dungeon or wilderness adventure? It's mostly talking to the people/creatures you run into, usually to try to avoid having to fight them or to get information from them, and this should involve the mechanics.

[Psyren]

I start with the rulebook definition. PHB 8:


The Three Pillars Of Adventure
Adventurers can try to do anything their players can imagine, but it can be helpful to talk about their activities in three broad categories: exploration, social interaction, and combat.
...
Social interaction features the adventurers talking to someone (or something) else. It might mean demanding that a captured scout reveal the secret entrance to the goblin lair, getting information from a rescued prisoner, pleading for mercy from an orc chieftain, or persuading a talkative magic mirror to show a distant location to the adventurers.

"Talking to someone" is very broad, but the examples give a clearer lens into the intent behind this pillar - all of them deal with getting information to bypass an obstacle, persuading an NPC of a course of action to bypass an obstacle, or both. Thus, social interaction is talking to someone or something with the ultimate goal of clearing an obstacle.

[Witty Username]

Talking,
Bribing,
Manipulating,
Building connections and status

The Social Pillar is the social aspects of an adventure and the basis of an aventure that is primarily social aspects.

Intrigue games are the poster child of this, but only one kind of social adventure. Resolving factional disputes, crime mysteries, and espionage plots can all be specificly social adventures.

[Telok]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?

In D&D: A +11 deception and a 18 roll means "the guy believes thet you think you're telling the truth" and nothing changes. A +8 insight and a nat 20 roll means "the guy might be holding something back, maybe, you aren't sure". A +9 persuasion and a 5 roll means you failed to bribe the guard that... just asked for a bribe... with more money then he asked for...

In other games... well its system specific and not this subforum.

I can discuss different approaches and ideas. But the first thing I think of in a D&D forum when someone says "social pillar" is "I have no freaking clue what's going on in the DM's head and nothing on my character sheet nor any dice I roll will do anything unless it's mind-reading or the Dominate spell."

[Catullus64]

The character of the Social pillar should, in my mind at least, change significantly as characters advance in level. Interrogating, bluffing, and negotiating with bad gus* definitely does take up a lot of the talking in lower-level play, but things should get progressively more political as the PCs accrue more power in the world, and should (again, just to my taste) get more and more philosophical as the entities the PCs deal with become more important on a political/metaphysical level.

EDIT: Should say 'bad guys.' Never try to negotiate with Bad Gus.

[KorvinStarmast]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?
1. Getting information.

2. Making deals, negotiating. <= that is to me some of the best parts of the social pillar, and I think they hit your initial examples pretty well.

To me, it's always "PCs negotiate with the bad guys that they potentially can work with, but certainly can't trust". The players in my brother's campaign had a hard time a year or so ago in working a deal with a tribe of orcs rather than just attacking them on sight. They did, however, rescue some of the orc tribe's members along with a lot of villagers who had been kidnapped (and enslaved by a pair of Lamia). (I was DMing while my brother's RL work load was too heavy). As it worked out, only two of the players really got into it, sad to say :smallfrown:

I had much more luck in the other part of the campaign, where my brother plays a Devotion Paladin and he leans into the LG aspect of that. Granted, in negotiating with the kobolds, him being dragonborn kinda helped. :smallsmile:

3. Creating misdirection. Only experienced players seem to be any good at this, IMX. Creating a situation where the opposition is induced to believe that the party is "here" when they are actually "over there" is one of the most satisfying applications of the social pillar. It may or may not include the use of spells (like non-detection), altar self, disguise self, etc.

4. Getting favors done or sweet talking one's way out of a sticky situation. But all DM's need to remember, an attempt a persuasion or deception is not magic.

In the rare Urban adventuring I've run, it's typically Thieves Guilds, usually trying to pit factions against one another. Never bribing guards, nor asking a king for his crown or an army. FWIW, the Salt Marsh published adventure has ample room for this built into the module.

The social pillar is "fixing problems (or at least contributing to fixing them) via talking." The combat pillar is "fixing problems (or at least contributing to fixing them) via fighting". The exploration pillar is "fixing problems (or at least contributing to fixing them" via finding things." They're not separate events, they're not even separate scenes. Many scenes have involved multiple pillars simultaneously. Including talking during combat, exploring during combat, or talking while trying to find things.

The people you talk to may be
* allies
* prospective allies
* enemies
* prospective enemies
* indifferent people
* people you think are allies but are enemies or indifferent
* people you think are enemies but are allies or indifferent
* people you think are indifferent but are enemies or allies
* etc.

And only a tiny fraction of the social pillar (just like the exploration pillar and even the combat pillar) requires pressing buttons on the character sheet.

/rant Yes.


I think a broad approach of it being that part of the game concerned with hearts and minds of NPCs would be my preferred description. Now you may persuade the king to lime you by assassinating someone, so the assassination might be part of the social pillar by this definition. But that's fine by me. I agree, but with Mister Stabby saying that I kinda grinned. :smallbiggrin:


There is a notable difference between the social and exploration pillars for me:
- Social is used to discover information; who is it, what to do, when is it, and where to go.
- Exploration is how you get there.

All pillars combined often reveals why. I am simply gonna steal this. Nicely put.

[Segev]

Can you give me any examples of games with well-done social pillars? This is something of a white whale of mine.

The best example I have is a game in a homebrew setting run by @Jathaan (no idea if @-ing even works here, but hey). We were a company under a mercenary army that basically ran a smallish northern nation and had a strong naval tradition. Our second quest got us a boat as a reward, and we tended to bait pirates into attacking us and then claiming their ships to sell for profit. A great deal of how we solved problems - including missions and wars we were fighting in for pay - involved leveraging past alliances and favors owed into resources and influence to get things done, rather than having to murder our way through all of the enemies.

My own PC wound up making a number of fey bargains that, while they were pricey and put him in tense situations, also gave him tools and contacts to be able to leverage them into further bargains and such.

To outline that second mission that got us our ship, we were hired by an old leader of a House that had fallen on hard times since the grand ship of his line, carrying the starter kit for a massive mining colony he was planning to set up (and thus a significant portion of his House's wealth), vanished 10 years ago. He'd come across some info on the rough area it'd disappeared, and wanted us to discretely investigate, and see if we could recover certain highly-vaulable documents that would at least let him start to recover. He gave us a cog to use for merchanting as our cover and transport, and arranged for us to have a cargo. He also put us in touch with a shady contact of his who often had high-value, low-volume cargo to transport as long as you didn't ask too many questions.

We wound up taking said contact and her cargo with us, which led to being pursued by a magical, crow-and-night-shrouded ship easily four times our size. Through very careful wording, we convinced the mysterious fey captain that we didn't, to our knowledge, have what he specifically was looking for. But he was suspicious and kept following us from a distance. And, yes, we were pretty sure it was our passenger and her cargo he was after.

I'd just gotten to level 4 in my Rogue 1/Shadow Monk 3 build, and, while performing katas on the deck in the night, offered to use pass without trace to aid our passenger in absconding. Since this was not part of our bargain, she paid my character with a card that had an invitation to the Dream Lord's Banquet on one side, and a magical gateway to the Goblin Market on the other.

This led to a lot of fey shenanigans for my PC, as his first trip to the Goblin Market involved him eventually trading not just for what we'd gone there for, but for a magical bargain that would let him "escape any situation...for a price." He was hooked into that by finding out that his surrogate father - the pirate captain who'd raised him and whom he'd thought dead along with the rest of the crew when they'd been caught in his backstory - was alive, and imprisoned. He bought it with his knowledge of Theives' Tools and Thieves' Cant, which took him a few levels and adventures to eventually find the time and training to relearn.

The passenger who fled the fey pursuer also told us our payment was "in the jar she left in her room." Why she left the one she left is an open question, since it's the one she valued so much as to try to transport it, personally, but she took the pile of gems we'd negotiated for and left a shard of a mirror packed in sawdust. Which turned out to be a fragment of an ancient outer goddess known as "The Memory of Starlight," and which we used to negotiate with the fey chasing us to take us to his archfey master, who wanted it. Just agreeing to go see his master and negotiate for it allowed us to talk the crow-fey (whom we know now as "Void") into a bargain of his own: he helped us restore the ship we were searching for once we found it to working order and get it back to our original patron. This was so over-and-above what the original patron expected that it secured us a very legendary reputation amongst the Nourvaii (our nation/mercenary army collective).

All of this was interspersed with other adventure involving fighting things, capturing pirates, exploring, etc., though the exploration aspect was the least of the challenges because we were able to provision well and plan our routes.

But a significant amount of the power our party could wield came from who we knew, what favors we were owed, who was willing to do us favors without owing us anything or because they knew we would do the same for them even without a bargain, etc.

This was almost entirely unsupported by D&D 5e's mechanics, though we did use the ability check system to roll for things like persuasion, deception, and insight, and I actually think the ideal/bond/flaw system was useful because it did give us some insights and levers into various NPCs - and also levers for the DM to play with on our PCs - to engage in social interaction. I think the system could've been stronger as a game tool, but Jathaan did a solid job of handling it through pure RP and letting the ability checks handle things where social skills should matter. (Admittedly, my Cha 9 monk rolled 18s and 20s on the dice often enough that he managed to perform some clutch persuasions when his sincerity was all that was between him and tragedy.)



Oh, one of the bargains he made in the Goblin Market - the primary one he went there to make before we went to meet the Collector - was for "insight and understanding into the fey." What he got was a potion that granted him an ongoing set of visions and auras around any fey he met that showed him their interests and desires and nature, if metaphorically, and also a 3x use of a perfect insight into a particular being of his choice he was interacting with. This made him, despite his low Charisma, a key player in the interactions with the fey our party had. He used the perfect insight on The Collector to make sure that the trade wasn't a horrible mistake - and it wasn't, since The Collector really does just want to HAVE stuff, and would be a powerful guardian of the mirror shard.

But for that, he bartered his own services as an impartial arbiter with a mortal perspective to enable fey who are having a difficult time bargaining with mortals (or getting mortals to pay up on bargains) to find a solution. Three times, for the three perfect insights, he could be approached in his dreams to be brought to perform this service.

The first client was Grandmother Night, the hag of hags and mother of all Redcaps. A lot fell out from this, but one thing it did was entangle him with the fate of a village she'd stolen generations ago and was continually tormenting.

The third client was the Dream Lord, who was displeased that Ikalos (my character) had allowed Grandmother Night into dreams again by letting her have access to his via those bargains. That one ended...reasonably favorably.

At a later point, Grandmother Night cornered the party in our own dreams, threatening and twisting events to try to garner power over us. Ikalos activated the Dream Lord's invitation that he'd gotten months ago from that first interaction with the fey, when he helped her escape undetected. Because Grandmother Night "accidentally" was drawn in...uninvited...to the Banquet, the Dream Lord was able to deal with her as he saw fit.

So, social pillar: leveraging one Archfey against another, and the one leveraged saw it, if not as a straight-up favor, at least a mutally-agreeable bargain that he was glad to have participated in.



By the time the campaign went on hiatus, Ikalos was a minor landed knight in the Nourvaii and also the owner of the village Grandmother Night had, and the lord of a small village of myconids she had been trying to take over, as well as building himself a small army of redcaps of his own. The last adventure we had was helping one of the Nourvaii House Heads - who it turned out was an exiled dragon princess - take over a dragon-ruled nation from her sister in a massive war effort.

Once again, the social pillar was a major one in our success, here. We used tools earned from our fey adventures, as well as a stolen Name of a dragon equivalent of a duke, to both trick the enemy dragon god-queen into leaving her palace while we infiltrated, let us set up our traps to rip and tear their navy apart and undermine their defenses, and politically subvert things. It still ended in a big fight, but that big fight was in a location of our choosing due to social pillar interactions we had with her own bound servants. (We had a dragon ghostling on our side who we used to start nabbing bits of her hoard to lure her back to when and where we wanted her.) That ambush went as well as it probably could have, and thus we removed one dragon queen and let our patroness have her throne.

After that, Jathaan wanted to run some stories that set up distant past backstory of the campaign setting, so we went on hiatus and have been playing in a Sumerian-era type setting in a wholly different part of the world, thousands of years before the other game.

This has been a more traditional series of dungeon crawls, but we have talked our way past some fairly major bosses, and also are just past a major investigative part of the current arc. My character has some plans to try to wriggle his way in good with a powerful local merchant family whose patriarch is revealed to be a heretic and worshipper of a would-be-god who likes killing people for power.


So social pillar stuff comes up a lot in Jathaan's games, so far, and is a big source of soft power.

Edit to add: If Jathaan has any insights of his own from the DM side of the screen on these, or anecdotes he wants to share or elaborate on, I'm sure they'll be useful insights. This is me being scattershot about what we did, as the campaign covered a lot of ground, but some of the biggest moments to me were social pillar things. I don't think any of the other players have accounts here.

[Psyren]

The best example I have is a game in a homebrew setting run by @Jathaan (no idea if @-ing even works here, but hey). We were a company under a mercenary army that basically ran a smallish northern nation and had a strong naval tradition. Our second quest got us a boat as a reward, and we tended to bait pirates into attacking us and then claiming their ships to sell for profit. A great deal of how we solved problems - including missions and wars we were fighting in for pay - involved leveraging past alliances and favors owed into resources and influence to get things done, rather than having to murder our way through all of the enemies.

My own PC wound up making a number of fey bargains that, while they were pricey and put him in tense situations, also gave him tools and contacts to be able to leverage them into further bargains and such.

To outline that second mission that got us our ship, we were hired by an old leader of a House that had fallen on hard times since the grand ship of his line, carrying the starter kit for a massive mining colony he was planning to set up (and thus a significant portion of his House's wealth), vanished 10 years ago. He'd come across some info on the rough area it'd disappeared, and wanted us to discretely investigate, and see if we could recover certain highly-vaulable documents that would at least let him start to recover. He gave us a cog to use for merchanting as our cover and transport, and arranged for us to have a cargo. He also put us in touch with a shady contact of his who often had high-value, low-volume cargo to transport as long as you didn't ask too many questions.

We wound up taking said contact and her cargo with us, which led to being pursued by a magical, crow-and-night-shrouded ship easily four times our size. Through very careful wording, we convinced the mysterious fey captain that we didn't, to our knowledge, have what he specifically was looking for. But he was suspicious and kept following us from a distance. And, yes, we were pretty sure it was our passenger and her cargo he was after.

I'd just gotten to level 4 in my Rogue 1/Shadow Monk 3 build, and, while performing katas on the deck in the night, offered to use pass without trace to aid our passenger in absconding. Since this was not part of our bargain, she paid my character with a card that had an invitation to the Dream Lord's Banquet on one side, and a magical gateway to the Goblin Market on the other.

This led to a lot of fey shenanigans for my PC, as his first trip to the Goblin Market involved him eventually trading not just for what we'd gone there for, but for a magical bargain that would let him "escape any situation...for a price." He was hooked into that by finding out that his surrogate father - the pirate captain who'd raised him and whom he'd thought dead along with the rest of the crew when they'd been caught in his backstory - was alive, and imprisoned. He bought it with his knowledge of Theives' Tools and Thieves' Cant, which took him a few levels and adventures to eventually find the time and training to relearn.

The passenger who fled the fey pursuer also told us our payment was "in the jar she left in her room." Why she left the one she left is an open question, since it's the one she valued so much as to try to transport it, personally, but she took the pile of gems we'd negotiated for and left a shard of a mirror packed in sawdust. Which turned out to be a fragment of an ancient outer goddess known as "The Memory of Starlight," and which we used to negotiate with the fey chasing us to take us to his archfey master, who wanted it. Just agreeing to go see his master and negotiate for it allowed us to talk the crow-fey (whom we know now as "Void") into a bargain of his own: he helped us restore the ship we were searching for once we found it to working order and get it back to our original patron. This was so over-and-above what the original patron expected that it secured us a very legendary reputation amongst the Nourvaii (our nation/mercenary army collective).

All of this was interspersed with other adventure involving fighting things, capturing pirates, exploring, etc., though the exploration aspect was the least of the challenges because we were able to provision well and plan our routes.

But a significant amount of the power our party could wield came from who we knew, what favors we were owed, who was willing to do us favors without owing us anything or because they knew we would do the same for them even without a bargain, etc.

This was almost entirely unsupported by D&D 5e's mechanics, though we did use the ability check system to roll for things like persuasion, deception, and insight, and I actually think the ideal/bond/flaw system was useful because it did give us some insights and levers into various NPCs - and also levers for the DM to play with on our PCs - to engage in social interaction. I think the system could've been stronger as a game tool, but Jathaan did a solid job of handling it through pure RP and letting the ability checks handle things where social skills should matter. (Admittedly, my Cha 9 monk rolled 18s and 20s on the dice often enough that he managed to perform some clutch persuasions when his sincerity was all that was between him and tragedy.)



Oh, one of the bargains he made in the Goblin Market - the primary one he went there to make before we went to meet the Collector - was for "insight and understanding into the fey." What he got was a potion that granted him an ongoing set of visions and auras around any fey he met that showed him their interests and desires and nature, if metaphorically, and also a 3x use of a perfect insight into a particular being of his choice he was interacting with. This made him, despite his low Charisma, a key player in the interactions with the fey our party had. He used the perfect insight on The Collector to make sure that the trade wasn't a horrible mistake - and it wasn't, since The Collector really does just want to HAVE stuff, and would be a powerful guardian of the mirror shard.

But for that, he bartered his own services as an impartial arbiter with a mortal perspective to enable fey who are having a difficult time bargaining with mortals (or getting mortals to pay up on bargains) to find a solution. Three times, for the three perfect insights, he could be approached in his dreams to be brought to perform this service.

The first client was Grandmother Night, the hag of hags and mother of all Redcaps. A lot fell out from this, but one thing it did was entangle him with the fate of a village she'd stolen generations ago and was continually tormenting.

The third client was the Dream Lord, who was displeased that Ikalos (my character) had allowed Grandmother Night into dreams again by letting her have access to his via those bargains. That one ended...reasonably favorably.

At a later point, Grandmother Night cornered the party in our own dreams, threatening and twisting events to try to garner power over us. Ikalos activated the Dream Lord's invitation that he'd gotten months ago from that first interaction with the fey, when he helped her escape undetected. Because Grandmother Night "accidentally" was drawn in...uninvited...to the Banquet, the Dream Lord was able to deal with her as he saw fit.

So, social pillar: leveraging one Archfey against another, and the one leveraged saw it, if not as a straight-up favor, at least a mutally-agreeable bargain that he was glad to have participated in.



By the time the campaign went on hiatus, Ikalos was a minor landed knight in the Nourvaii and also the owner of the village Grandmother Night had, and the lord of a small village of myconids she had been trying to take over, as well as building himself a small army of redcaps of his own. The last adventure we had was helping one of the Nourvaii House Heads - who it turned out was an exiled dragon princess - take over a dragon-ruled nation from her sister in a massive war effort.

Once again, the social pillar was a major one in our success, here. We used tools earned from our fey adventures, as well as a stolen Name of a dragon equivalent of a duke, to both trick the enemy dragon god-queen into leaving her palace while we infiltrated, let us set up our traps to rip and tear their navy apart and undermine their defenses, and politically subvert things. It still ended in a big fight, but that big fight was in a location of our choosing due to social pillar interactions we had with her own bound servants. (We had a dragon ghostling on our side who we used to start nabbing bits of her hoard to lure her back to when and where we wanted her.) That ambush went as well as it probably could have, and thus we removed one dragon queen and let our patroness have her throne.

After that, Jathaan wanted to run some stories that set up distant past backstory of the campaign setting, so we went on hiatus and have been playing in a Sumerian-era type setting in a wholly different part of the world, thousands of years before the other game.

This has been a more traditional series of dungeon crawls, but we have talked our way past some fairly major bosses, and also are just past a major investigative part of the current arc. My character has some plans to try to wriggle his way in good with a powerful local merchant family whose patriarch is revealed to be a heretic and worshipper of a would-be-god who likes killing people for power.


So social pillar stuff comes up a lot in Jathaan's games, so far, and is a big source of soft power.

Edit to add: If Jathaan has any insights of his own from the DM side of the screen on these, or anecdotes he wants to share or elaborate on, I'm sure they'll be useful insights. This is me being scattershot about what we did, as the campaign covered a lot of ground, but some of the biggest moments to me were social pillar things. I don't think any of the other players have accounts here.

I can agree that this would all make for an interesting campaign, but what I'm struggling with is what sort of mechanics you think would enhance this experience at all. My reading of this is that anything much more granular or prescribed than broad rolls to intuit, persuade, deceive, or browbeat the NPCs involved would just get in the way of this kind of storytelling. The one semi-mechanical thing I see here is the use of your Blessing to escape any situation, and that was pure plot magic anyway.

[MadBear]

At its most basic, it's any interaction with an NPC that can have meaningful consequences.

[Segev]

I can agree that this would all make for an interesting campaign, but what I'm struggling with is what sort of mechanics you think would enhance this experience at all. My reading of this is that anything much more granular or prescribed than broad rolls to intuit, persuade, deceive, or browbeat the NPCs involved would just get in the way of this kind of storytelling. The one semi-mechanical thing I see here is the use of your Blessing to escape any situation, and that was pure plot magic anyway.

That actually didn't come up in any of the things listed here; it turned into another social ally, as a god of trickery, thieves, disguise, and escapes was bound by contract to show up and bargain with whomever had the blessing (it was the form of a tattoo on Ikalos's hand) to help them out. Ikalos wound up giving it back to the god in question, because he didn't like the situation, though he did hold on to it just in case while he went to rescue his father. The god was...understanding, and they have a friendly relationship now. Heck, Ikalos is not quite a devout worshipper, but he's about as close as his non-religious temperament will let him come to being a devotee.

What he actually used the "one free escape" on was ... a long story. The shortest version I can manage is: The fragment of the Memory of Starlight that was in the mirror shard wound up haunting Ikalos's dreams, and after using another of his "perfect insight" things on her, he got the god to liberate her in return for the tattoo, restoring the god's freedom from that eternal obligation. So far, this seems to have been a good thing.



As to more robust mechanics, I don't think any were necessary for this story, no. We managed well enough. However, there was a lot of "playing along" and very careful weighing on my part of what foibles my character would give into, rather than pure optimal play. And I am a fan of the game mechanics not punishing RP, but rather encouraging them. I've gone into detail in other posts, but having penalties and boons for acting in line with social obligations and temptations to behave in ways that are sub-optimal would be a good thing. The inspiration for acting in accordance with ideal/bond/flaw is a good start, but inspiration is too binary and too rarely useful (I know, it's useful frequently, but I often wind up already still having it when I am awarded it again, and then not having opportunities to get it after spending it and needing it again) to be the only enticement.

As an example, though, I would like to see ways to induce new ideals, bonds, or flaws in somebody, if only temporarily, through social interaction. Maybe more narrow ones, or not called those things, but something like "That bard's cute, and I want to impress her" as a temporary bond the bard could induce in a target, allowing her to play off that attraction to get more cooperation from an NPC, for example. Or something the dashing prince might use on a PC. What, other than inspiration for cooperating with the new bond, could be the reward (or what could be the penalty for NOT cooperating) is a subject for possibly its own post, if not its own thread.

The simplest would be to give disadvantage to any checks or saves made in defiance of such things, but that's anywhere from overpowered to not incentive enough, depending on the circumstances, how often the penalty could be inflicted, and how it works in general.

[Psyren]

That actually didn't come up in any of the things listed here; it turned into another social ally, as a god of trickery, thieves, disguise, and escapes was bound by contract to show up and bargain with whomever had the blessing (it was the form of a tattoo on Ikalos's hand) to help them out. Ikalos wound up giving it back to the god in question, because he didn't like the situation, though he did hold on to it just in case while he went to rescue his father. The god was...understanding, and they have a friendly relationship now. Heck, Ikalos is not quite a devout worshipper, but he's about as close as his non-religious temperament will let him come to being a devotee.

What he actually used the "one free escape" on was ... a long story. The shortest version I can manage is: The fragment of the Memory of Starlight that was in the mirror shard wound up haunting Ikalos's dreams, and after using another of his "perfect insight" things on her, he got the god to liberate her in return for the tattoo, restoring the god's freedom from that eternal obligation. So far, this seems to have been a good thing.

Oh, I conflated the "escape anything" boon with the "Dream Lord's Invitation" boon. But I stand by my broader point, either way that's a plot coupon and 5e can generate those just fine.


As to more robust mechanics, I don't think any were necessary for this story, no. We managed well enough. However, there was a lot of "playing along" and very careful weighing on my part of what foibles my character would give into, rather than pure optimal play. And I am a fan of the game mechanics not punishing RP, but rather encouraging them. I've gone into detail in other posts, but having penalties and boons for acting in line with social obligations and temptations to behave in ways that are sub-optimal would be a good thing. The inspiration for acting in accordance with ideal/bond/flaw is a good start, but inspiration is too binary and too rarely useful (I know, it's useful frequently, but I often wind up already still having it when I am awarded it again, and then not having opportunities to get it after spending it and needing it again) to be the only enticement.

Does your GM use Charms? They are essentially one-time magical consumables that get applied to your character directly rather than being tied to items. They'd make for great RP rewards, especially if you're talking your way around archfey and other powerful entities, and you can tie them to otherwise very situational spells like Locate Plants that the party might not otherwise pick up themselves but might actually end up randomly saving the day. There's no need to limit your rewards purely to Inspiration.

If you want to avoid tracking a bunch of them indefinitely, you can put some kind of arbitrary time limit on them after which they fade, like "a year and a day" or "until the moon wanes" etc.


As an example, though, I would like to see ways to induce new ideals, bonds, or flaws in somebody, if only temporarily, through social interaction. Maybe more narrow ones, or not called those things, but something like "That bard's cute, and I want to impress her" as a temporary bond the bard could induce in a target, allowing her to play off that attraction to get more cooperation from an NPC, for example. Or something the dashing prince might use on a PC. What, other than inspiration for cooperating with the new bond, could be the reward (or what could be the penalty for NOT cooperating) is a subject for possibly its own post, if not its own thread.

The simplest would be to give disadvantage to any checks or saves made in defiance of such things, but that's anywhere from overpowered to not incentive enough, depending on the circumstances, how often the penalty could be inflicted, and how it works in general.

I guess I'm not seeing any reason you can't do that. There's nothing restricting any NPC to a single Ideal/Bond/Flaw, nor is there anything saying they can't develop more during a campaign.

[Segev]

Does your GM use Charms? They are essentially one-time magical consumables that get applied to your character directly rather than being tied to items. They'd make for great RP rewards, especially if you're talking your way around archfey and other powerful entities, and you can tie them to otherwise very situational spells like Locate Plants that the party might not otherwise pick up themselves but might actually end up randomly saving the day. There's no need to limit your rewards purely to Inspiration.

If you want to avoid tracking a bunch of them indefinitely, you can put some kind of arbitrary time limit on them after which they fade, like "a year and a day" or "until the moon wanes" etc.Your charismatic paladin or fighter probably can't give Charms as rewards to NPCs for going along with being persuaded. And the charming vizier can't give out Charms for playing your PC as if he found the vizier's offer of a night in the Pleasure Palace to be enticing enough to consider an obvious-to-the-outside-the-game-player bad choice, such as forgoing a magic item reward.

I am not saying Charms are bad rewards. I'm just saying that the point I was aiming at is more along the lines of mechanics to entice the PLAYER in the same way the CHARACTER is enticed, and to help the PLAYER ensure there's mechanical oomph behind his social actions, rather than it being the equivalent of a combat where the DM doesn't track hp or anything and just decides the monster dies when he decides the players have fought it long enough.


I guess I'm not seeing any reason you can't do that. There's nothing restricting any NPC to a single Ideal/Bond/Flaw, nor is there anything saying they can't develop more during a campaign.Sure, and there's nothing restricting you from inflicting blindness on a creature by making a tiny effigy with a bit of the creature's hair and jabbing pins into the effigy's face where its eyes would be. There's nothing restricting magic to ONLY being spells and magic items, after all.

When you have to say, "Well, sure, you can decide to add more mechanics to it in your game; the rules don't say you can't," you're acknowledging that the proposed rules and mechanics are not present in the game as-is. If you agree they represent an improvement, then asking for them - or something like them - in the actual rules is not a bad thing.

Now, admittedly, I'm not a terribly creative person, so anything I can think of, many others can, too. But even I sometimes have ideas that others hadn't thought of. If I had to come up with the idea of adding ideals/bonds/flaws to people through social interactions, because the rules don't suggest it, then perhaps one should not assume the rules as provided will automatically lead to people coming up with equivalent solutions.

It takes a higher-skill DM to manage social itneractions when the rules are silent on how they work than it does when the rules give more levers and knobs. And a higher-skill DM can use that same higher level of skill with the levers and knobs in place to either edit or disregard them if they're problematic, or to heighten his game further by exploiting them well. Meanwhile, a lower-skill (but still decent, especially in the "wants to run a good and fun game" sense) DM will benefit from the rules giving him more guidance on how to fairly adjudicate things.

[Psyren]

Your charismatic paladin or fighter probably can't give Charms as rewards to NPCs for going along with being persuaded. And the charming vizier can't give out Charms for playing your PC as if he found the vizier's offer of a night in the Pleasure Palace to be enticing enough to consider an obvious-to-the-outside-the-game-player bad choice, such as forgoing a magic item reward.

You misunderstand, I'm talking about your character getting a Charm for outsmarting a fey. They don't even have to be from the fey that lost the exchange, they can come from something abstract like the Dream itself.

Essentially, if you limit yourself to Inspiration being the only possible reward for beating a social encounter, then of course social encounters will feel boring.


Sure, and there's nothing restricting you from inflicting blindness on a creature by making a tiny effigy with a bit of the creature's hair and jabbing pins into the effigy's face where its eyes would be. There's nothing restricting magic to ONLY being spells and magic items, after all.

Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are not mechanical conditions, they are entirely RP hooks. I'm not seeing any parallel between these examples at all.

[Segev]

You misunderstand, I'm talking about your character getting a Charm for outsmarting a fey. They don't even have to be from the fey that lost the exchange, they can come from something abstract like the Dream itself.

Essentially, if you limit yourself to Inspiration being the only possible reward for beating a social encounter, then of course social encounters will feel boring.You misunderstand. I am not talking about "rewards for beating a social encounter." At all.

I am talking about consequences of actions wtihin a social encounter. You don't consider "dealing hp damage" to be a "reward for beating a combat encounter." Because it isn't. It's a part of the process of a combat encounter.

Let's say you've got a few coppers and can get enough food to stave off hunger for a day. The shady merchant offers you a sumptuous feast if you'll hear out his request. In real life, such things tend to make people more receptive to the request, especially if implication of more tasty food is on hand. In game terms, though, there's zero actual incentive to take on the sumptuous feast over the bare minimum, except maybe that the coppers might be saved for buying some thing else mechanically useful.

In real life, a beautiful/handsome lover whom a character has enjoyed a night of passion with begging the character to stay in bed for "another round" is tempting to people, as a general rule. There are men and women who will choose to shirk a duty or even risk social and material consequences (such as being late to work or missing a meeting or the like) in order to indulge. People have been talked into committing murder for a promise of another such night of passion. Even if they have other prospects, people can be talked into viewing THIS partner as so desirable that they'd make more sacrifices or do more things to be with THIS partner again.

In game terms, there's literally no incentive to the player to go along with such things. The player feels none of that temptation (at least, usually won't), because the player isn't actually getting the reward. To the player, even without "do this favor for me" on the table, the only enticement to choose a night of passion vs. choosing to just sleep alone is a coin flip. (Heck, the promise of a quest may be more enticing to the player than the lover's embrace, and there are players who will view the night of passion as a negative to be avoided because it renders the PC more vulnerable than sleeping in his armor with his sword in easy reach, by himself.)

A fan of a band could be bribed with a ticket and backstage passes to see the band live in concert and meet them in person, IRL. He might be talked into any number of things, depending on his own morals, ethics, likes and dislikes aside from the band, and his reluctance to perform the activities requested. He may also sacrifice his good grades or an opportunity at work to go to the performance.

A player of a character who is a fan of such a band would feel no incentive to have his character go see the band at the expense of mechanical benefit. If the "work opportunity" is a chance to get a magic item or get permission from a noble to go investigate a dungeon, there's nothing but a vague sense that you're not RPing correctly to make the player view going to the band performance as a thing he should even consider. The band performance and experience isn't something the player will get, while he would definitely enjoy the dungeon crawl or the new magic item. (Now, a good DM will always be leveraging activities the PCs engage in for more plot hooks, and the reward of plot hooks at the band performance may well be something a player anticipates, but that's entirely outside the mechanics of the social pillar, in the same way that whether or not an ogre is on the bridge is entirely outside the mechanics of combat, even though the ogre being there will invoke those mechanics.)

What I'm suggesting would be useful is for mechanical incentives that simulate the level, if not kind, of drive/desire/temptation that the characters feel in mechanics. How exactly to represent that is wide open.

As probably not a good choice, but just an example: every time you act in accordance with the thing you've been influenced to like (or to avoid the thing you've been influenced to dislike), you have Advantage, and every time you act against your influenced likes/dislikes, you have Disadvantage.

Now, again, that's not a good solution, as a specific. Lots of problems, balance-wise. But I hope the kind of incentive I am talking about is illustrated by that.


Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are not mechanical conditions, they are entirely RP hooks. I'm not seeing any parallel between these examples at all.
Ideals, bonds, and flaws have one mechanical hook/incentive that is often forgotten about because it's relatively minor: When you act in accordance with any of them, you're supposed to gain Inspiration. Especially if doing so involves risk or sacrifice.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You misunderstand. I am not talking about "rewards for beating a social encounter." At all.

I am talking about consequences of actions wtihin a social encounter. You don't consider "dealing hp damage" to be a "reward for beating a combat encounter." Because it isn't. It's a part of the process of a combat encounter.

Let's say you've got a few coppers and can get enough food to stave off hunger for a day. The shady merchant offers you a sumptuous feast if you'll hear out his request. In real life, such things tend to make people more receptive to the request, especially if implication of more tasty food is on hand. In game terms, though, there's zero actual incentive to take on the sumptuous feast over the bare minimum, except maybe that the coppers might be saved for buying some thing else mechanically useful.

In real life, a beautiful/handsome lover whom a character has enjoyed a night of passion with begging the character to stay in bed for "another round" is tempting to people, as a general rule. There are men and women who will choose to shirk a duty or even risk social and material consequences (such as being late to work or missing a meeting or the like) in order to indulge. People have been talked into committing murder for a promise of another such night of passion. Even if they have other prospects, people can be talked into viewing THIS partner as so desirable that they'd make more sacrifices or do more things to be with THIS partner again.

In game terms, there's literally no incentive to the player to go along with such things. The player feels none of that temptation (at least, usually won't), because the player isn't actually getting the reward. To the player, even without "do this favor for me" on the table, the only enticement to choose a night of passion vs. choosing to just sleep alone is a coin flip. (Heck, the promise of a quest may be more enticing to the player than the lover's embrace, and there are players who will view the night of passion as a negative to be avoided because it renders the PC more vulnerable than sleeping in his armor with his sword in easy reach, by himself.)

A fan of a band could be bribed with a ticket and backstage passes to see the band live in concert and meet them in person, IRL. He might be talked into any number of things, depending on his own morals, ethics, likes and dislikes aside from the band, and his reluctance to perform the activities requested. He may also sacrifice his good grades or an opportunity at work to go to the performance.

A player of a character who is a fan of such a band would feel no incentive to have his character go see the band at the expense of mechanical benefit. If the "work opportunity" is a chance to get a magic item or get permission from a noble to go investigate a dungeon, there's nothing but a vague sense that you're not RPing correctly to make the player view going to the band performance as a thing he should even consider. The band performance and experience isn't something the player will get, while he would definitely enjoy the dungeon crawl or the new magic item. (Now, a good DM will always be leveraging activities the PCs engage in for more plot hooks, and the reward of plot hooks at the band performance may well be something a player anticipates, but that's entirely outside the mechanics of the social pillar, in the same way that whether or not an ogre is on the bridge is entirely outside the mechanics of combat, even though the ogre being there will invoke those mechanics.)

What I'm suggesting would be useful is for mechanical incentives that simulate the level, if not kind, of drive/desire/temptation that the characters feel in mechanics. How exactly to represent that is wide open.

As probably not a good choice, but just an example: every time you act in accordance with the thing you've been influenced to like (or to avoid the thing you've been influenced to dislike), you have Advantage, and every time you act against your influenced likes/dislikes, you have Disadvantage.

Now, again, that's not a good solution, as a specific. Lots of problems, balance-wise. But I hope the kind of incentive I am talking about is illustrated by that.


Ideals, bonds, and flaws have one mechanical hook/incentive that is often forgotten about because it's relatively minor: When you act in accordance with any of them, you're supposed to gain Inspiration. Especially if doing so involves risk or sacrifice.

If a player is only incentivized by mechanical considerations, I'd say that they're better off playing a boardgame. Roleplaying is supposed to actually, you know, consider the fiction at hand. With or without mechanical plusses and minuses.

And trying to enforce anything like that against the player characters would go...badly. Because fundamentally, making decisions about how your character reacts is at the core of what most players consider agency.

[Psyren]

In game terms, there's literally no incentive to the player to go along with such things. The player feels none of that temptation (at least, usually won't), because the player isn't actually getting the reward. To the player, even without "do this favor for me" on the table, the only enticement to choose a night of passion vs. choosing to just sleep alone is a coin flip.

You're drifting into a much broader game design topic here, i.e. how (and why) to reward player actions in a game. Specifically, extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h86g-XgUCA8) It's too broad to go into here, though if you want to cover it in a different thread I'd be happy to swing by, but the short version is that D&D is a game where the vast majority of rewards flow from the DM, and therefore there is no real incentive to doing anything if your DM doesn't provide incentive to do anything. That is not a fault of the game system, but it is a pitfall that a DM who doesn't fully grasp their role can stumble into.


Ideals, bonds, and flaws have one mechanical hook/incentive that is often forgotten about because it's relatively minor: When you act in accordance with any of them, you're supposed to gain Inspiration. Especially if doing so involves risk or sacrifice.

Sure, but social encounters are still encounters, and encounters can have many rewards above and beyond Inspiration. Blessings, Charms, Treasure, XP, and even Boons/Feats are all tools in your DM's toolbelt to make the other pillars feel just as realized and impactful as the Combat pillar.

[Segev]

If a player is only incentivized by mechanical considerations, I'd say that they're better off playing a boardgame. Roleplaying is supposed to actually, you know, consider the fiction at hand. With or without mechanical plusses and minuses.

And trying to enforce anything like that against the player characters would go...badly. Because fundamentally, making decisions about how your character reacts is at the core of what most players consider agency.I sort-of agree, but consider your argument taken to the extreme: If that's the case, why do we need rules at all? Why can't we just RP the resolution of combat ,rather than needing to roll it out and use rules to determine outcomes?

Put another way: why should a player be punished for making the RP choice over the mechanically optimal one?


You're drifting into a much broader game design topic hereAgreed. I have tried to keep it succinct, here. But you did ask about what more mechanics could possibly be useful.


Sure, but social encounters are still encounters, and encounters can have many rewards above and beyond Inspiration. Blessings, Charms, Treasure, XP, and even Boons/Feats are all tools in your DM's toolbelt to make the other pillars feel just as realized and impactful as the Combat pillar.I agree. I am not sure what you think this is disputing, disproving, or contradicting my comments.

The fact remains that the combat pillar is the only fully fleshed-out one by the rules. The other two are left with a lot of required heft work for the DM just to build the structures they work with, or to hold them up with his bare hands with no structural support at all.

[Psyren]

I agree. I am not sure what you think this is disputing, disproving, or contradicting my comments.

You appear to think the only way to reward someone for leveraging someone else's (or their own) Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws is via granting Inspiration, which is of course useless when you already have it. But doing those things can also resolve a social encounter, much as you did by successfully convincing a pursuing fey to take you to their archfey master. That was an encounter, and clearing it can feasibly result in a reward.


The fact remains that the combat pillar is the only fully fleshed-out one by the rules. The other two are left with a lot of required heft work for the DM just to build the structures they work with, or to hold them up with his bare hands with no structural support at all.

Walls might provide structure but they also set limitations. I'd much rather the combat pillar remain the only/most fleshed out one; not every table would want to play a fey hijinks campaign like the one you described, so additional mechanics aimed at such a scenario will at best be wasted text and at worst constraints on creativity.

[Tanarii]

Segev, I feel like you'd be cool with a social system like Exalted 2e Intimacies.

Those certainly seem like they can work, provided players buy in to needing to use a resource to overcome them / act against them. Unfortunately (from a buyin perspective) many players hold the view that they should always be free to decide how their character decides to act, at least in terms of motivations impacting decision making.

[Sorinth]

When you say / hear / read "Social Pillar", what's the first thing that jumps to your mind?

To me, it's always "PCs negotiate with the bad guys that they potentially can work with, but certainly can't trust".

Classic examples that have set the tone for me defining what "Social Pillar" means are Kobolds. Specifically the Kobolds in Keep On the Borderlands in the Caves of Chaos, and the Kobolds in The Sunless Citadel. The white Dragon in the latter is also a good example of where it's smarter to negotiate than fight.

In the rare Urban adventuring I've run, it's typically Thieves Guilds, usually trying to pit factions against one another. Never bribing guards, nor asking a king for his crown or an army.

The first thing that comes to my mind is NPCs that might help or hinder depending on how the players approach the situation. It can mean "bad guys" but just as often is someone who will want to help. The social pillar is all the interactions/relationships with those NPCs as well as the party's reputation in the world.

But I'm firmly in the camp of the 3 pillars not being silos but that most gameplay/encounters will have elements of multiple pillars at the same time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I sort-of agree, but consider your argument taken to the extreme: If that's the case, why do we need rules at all? Why can't we just RP the resolution of combat ,rather than needing to roll it out and use rules to determine outcomes?

Put another way: why should a player be punished for making the RP choice over the mechanically optimal one?


Taking things to extremes is generally a bad idea. So...just don't do that. However, in a hypothetical system (or really in a lot of real ones), they do just that. There's nothing wrong with that, in principle.

Rules are scaffolds. Helps. UI interface elements. Nothing more. Adding them where they help (on net) is good, removing them where they don't help enough for their cost (because all rules come at a cost, inherently) is also good. And everyone's going to differ on exactly where that line is. For me, the current social pillar is just about right AND the current combat pillar is just about right. Different needs for different areas.

And no one's punishing nobody--if all you care about is the mechanical outcome, if anything less than "mechanically optimal" is a punishment...roleplaying is not for you. Because roleplay is all about making decisions that aren't mechanically weighted. You don't roleplay in chess, because everything is mechanically determined. Roleplay inherently involves incorporating the fiction and its demands as heavily or more heavily than the abstract mechanical framework. Yes, that means doing a lot of things that aren't "optimal" if the characters were completely blank-slate chess pieces. Playing to "win" (achieve maximally mechanically optimal outcomes) is entirely not in the spirit of modern D&D.

My players (including completely new players and experienced ones) don't consider it "punishment"--they consider it playing the game. You do what your character would do, not what some outside force (the player) considers is the best meta-option. All of those mechanical "roleplaying" aides? They're metagaming and pull people out of immersion. In fact, that's one cost of rules at all--all rules, everywhere, inherently reduce immersion (relative to a good free-form), because they add impedence mismatches. That's, in most cases, outweighed heavily by the gains from the rules, so I'm not saying rules are bad. Merely that ALL rules have costs and those need to be considered.

And there are rewards that aren't mechanical. Reducing everything to mechanical terms impoverishes the game. And provides all sorts of funky incentives. If, by some quirk, doing the macarena produced an optimal outcome in persuasion attempts, you'd see everyone doing the macarena. No matter if it fit the circumstances. We see this constantly with MMOs, which are the end result of mechanizing everything. And you can't encode all the options. It must be left up to the DM and the scenario designer. Because otherwise you're railroading at the system level. If every interaction must go through a mechanical gate and push mechanical levers, then the system is closed and is a glorified board game or video game.

[Sparky McDibben]

But the first thing I think of in a D&D forum when someone says "social pillar" is "I have no freaking clue what's going on in the DM's head and nothing on my character sheet nor any dice I roll will do anything unless it's mind-reading or the Dominate spell."

This kind of just sounds like doing a bad job running the game, which is an interesting sub-genre of this question. Note, I'm not saying you're doing a bad job, just the hypothetical example you've given is doing a bad job.


I can agree that this would all make for an interesting campaign, but what I'm struggling with is what sort of mechanics you think would enhance this experience at all. My reading of this is that anything much more granular or prescribed than broad rolls to intuit, persuade, deceive, or browbeat the NPCs involved would just get in the way of this kind of storytelling. The one semi-mechanical thing I see here is the use of your Blessing to escape any situation, and that was pure plot magic anyway.

I mean, for starters, how much time is needed talking to an NPC before I can start to sway them? How can I discover secrets, clues, etc., about an NPC? How much time does that take? How can the NPC (or their retainers) detect me? What ability checks are needed / recommended? Under what circumstances am I required to disclose a secret to an NPC?

None of these are rules, necessarily, but they could definitely form a procedure.

And, to animorte's point, most of this is to do with information, not with persuasion.

[Psyren]

I mean, for starters, how much time is needed talking to an NPC before I can start to sway them? How can I discover secrets, clues, etc., about an NPC? How much time does that take? How can the NPC (or their retainers) detect me? What ability checks are needed / recommended? Under what circumstances am I required to disclose a secret to an NPC?

How long it takes depends on the situation and your DM. Why should this be prescribed for every conversation under creation? What does that possibly add?

As for what checks are needed - discovering secrets/clues is usually Insight, but you can influence people to tell you something they wouldn't otherwise tell you using any of the face skills.

[animorte]

You can read lips, eavesdrop, forge notes, etc... There are a lot of ways to gain information within the social pillar using other skills that have nothing to do with Charisma. Of course there are many things (entirely different or of the same nature) that can be discovered through varying methods, especially Charisma. The point is, opposite approaches can be equally valuable.

[Telok]

This kind of just sounds like doing a bad job running the game, which is an interesting sub-genre of this question. Note, I'm not saying you're doing a bad job, just the hypothetical example you've given is doing a bad job.

That's my response because ever since the AD&D reaction rolls went away every iteration social anything in D&D has gotten more vague and handwavy every time a paid rules goon has gotten their gribby mitts on them. Most other nonD&D-like games I have a half decent idea what I can do with a particular set of "social" related numbers on a character sheet. But in D&D it keeps getting more & more "whatever the DM makes up" and fewer & fewer actual guidelines or suggestions or rules anyone can agree on.

Its to the point in the last 15 years I've basically given up on all "social pillar" stuff on character sheet meaning anything in the same way I've given up on D&D illusions. Heck, I've seen players happier to try Bootlicking and Chutzpah skills in Paranoia one shots than bards wanting to try rolling to convince any D&D npcs of stuff.

What I think it is, D&D has come to this point where what happens is after some rp & talking the DM is going to call for a roll or an opposed roll, and that translates into "roll high or fail, no second chances". Because the DM isn't certain if you should succeed or not, the game (as a whole) communicates stuff about needing to have challenge & risk, all outcomes are stated in binary pass/fail language, and the way numbers have worked since 4e has ended up being "roll high or else". Its not any one thing and no one blurb or something labelled as optional in the last third or quarter of the DMG can really counterweight the rest of the entire system. I could be wrong, and at some people's tables I would be (if I could play at a game I DMed I'd be wrong, but illusions are worth using in my games too). But hey, a bunch of DM over more than 10 years have all hammered this home pretty hard so its not a "you just got a bad DM that time" sort of thing and it didn't just start with this edition, although some of those DMs did start with 5e and/or didn't have the problem in other games so its not exactly carried over from other editions either.

I can't say right or wrong on this, just report my experience.

[Psyren]

^ Giving up on illusions and social skills in D&D is certainly your prerogative, but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of tables manage to have fun with them even when they require adjudication.

[Segev]

You appear to think the only way to reward someone for leveraging someone else's (or their own) Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws is via granting Inspiration, which is of course useless when you already have it. But doing those things can also resolve a social encounter, much as you did by successfully convincing a pursuing fey to take you to their archfey master. That was an encounter, and clearing it can feasibly result in a reward.You do misunderstand. It isn't "rewarding people for leveraging Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws" that I'm talking about.

It's creating mechanical incentives to give the player mechanical "feelings" akin to the feelings driving his character.

And no one's punishing nobody--if all you care about is the mechanical outcome, if anything less than "mechanically optimal" is a punishment...roleplaying is not for you.
"Maybe roleplay isn't for you if you don't want to make non-optimal choices" is unhelpful, other than as a "get out of my game" sort of dismissal.

As an example, if I am playing a chaste knight, it is very easy, as a player, to simply turn down all enticements of the flesh offered to my character. I do not experience the temptations, if those temptations are their own "rewards" (as the nature of such inducements tend to be). There's no struggle OOC, and trying to determine how much struggle IC he might be experiencing to remain steadfast in his chastity is nontrivial. I could claim I am role playing my character perfectly by remaining chaste and acting in no way tempted. But am I? Real people who seek to be chaste face temptations in real life, and while many manage to stay steadfast in their convictions, others do give in to temptation even though they believe it to be wrong. And those who remain steadfast are likely still tempted even if they make the right choice; there is probably at least some internal struggle over the decision. Just like there's internal struggle over a decision whether to get up on time or stay in bead "5 more minutes" even when you know the latter is a bad idea.

A well-designed social system would offer tools to translate the kind and amount of temptation the character is feeling to something "tangible" to the player. It doesn't need to be 1:1, and honestly shouldn't be. But suffering some sort of ongoing penalty for acting in a way that denies the character a strongly-felt desire would help simulate it. As an example that is totally not balanced, but hopefully offers some insight, if you were a full day without food, IC, and your character was very hungry, and somebody offered your character food if you would just do this unethical task for them, you as the player don't suffer the pangs of hunger and the temptations of the food, the sense that doing this might just be worth the relief. But if the social check made you crave that food so badly that you suffer a -5 to any d20 roll you make that isn't dedicated to getting yourself that food, now you, the player, feel some pain of resisting the temptation. You are now tempted, at least a little, by the massive mechanical penalty, to follow the social influence that is making your character feel tempted to do the thing.


Walls might provide structure but they also set limitations. I'd much rather the combat pillar remain the only/most fleshed out one; not every table would want to play a fey hijinks campaign like the one you described, so additional mechanics aimed at such a scenario will at best be wasted text and at worst constraints on creativity.Nothing I have proposed is designed with fey hijinks in mind.


Segev, I feel like you'd be cool with a social system like Exalted 2e Intimacies.Indeed, the concept is something I think is a good core for a social system. As implemented, it is not good enough for actual use, but the ideas are there that can build a decent system, I think.


Those certainly seem like they can work, provided players buy in to needing to use a resource to overcome them / act against them. Unfortunately (from a buyin perspective) many players hold the view that they should always be free to decide how their character decides to act, at least in terms of motivations impacting decision making.The beauty of having it be bonuses for acting in accord with social influence and/or penalties for defying them is that you never actually remove the agency of the character from the player's control. Never is the character's action dictated by the GM. But the internal push to "give in" or otherwise act according to the socially-applied pressure will be felt in proportion, ideally, to what the character is experiencing emotionally, through the player's ability to do the things HE values with the character (i.e. invoke the character's mechanics to accomplish things) will be stronger if he goes along with it and weaker if he doesn't.

On the other side of the table, such inducements and maluses applied to NPCs and other creatures the GM controls both help players feel that their social actions have consequences even if they don't result in the NPC complying with their requests, and help GMs gauge how badly the NPC is tempted to just do what was asked of him.

"What was asked of him" can also be non-requests, like a smoker trying to give up smoking and having to resist accepting a cigarette from an old frienemy.

At no point are the character's actions or even thoughts dictated by anybody but the player; his feelings are dictated by the social mechanics, and represented as bonuses or penalties relating to complying with / resisting the results of social influence.

If you want your paragon of chastity to resist the Seven Salacious Sirens of the Sensual Spire, despite failing and flubbing every roll or having them magnificently succeed at every roll, you can. He'll be a bit of a wreck, mechanically, until he can calm down from the experience, but you can have him absolutely say "no," no matter how amazing the beauteous sirens are at seduction, and no matter how well they did at pushing his metaphorical buttons. The consequences will be felt in ways that make the player feel at least some of the sting of regret the character does at having to adhere to his morals. Similarly, if you want your greedy goblin rogue to resist being offered a manor and a lifetime of wealth and luxury because you suspect Mammon may have ulterior motives, it is your choice as a player to refuse, no matter how persuasive Mammon is nor how much wealth he offers nor how much he convinces your PC that he's telling the truth and really will pay up. Again, the penalties for having turned down and continuing to act in ways that will prevent your PC from getting the gold are likely to be high, particularly so if Mammon was extra-successful at the social encounter.

Finally, I reiterate that I don't actually have a specific system, nor am I sure that the enticements to comply / not refrain should necessarily be raw addition of numbers to d20 rolls. But it's an example to illustrate the nature of the kind of pressure I think would be useful for social characters to be able to put on people.

[Psyren]

You do misunderstand. It isn't "rewarding people for leveraging Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws" that I'm talking about.

It's creating mechanical incentives to give the player mechanical "feelings" akin to the feelings driving his character.

I genuinely don't know what "mechanical incentives" you're after if Rewards are not it, then. You could punish the player(s) with disincentives as in your hunger pangs example I suppose, but I suspect that style of game wouldn't be particularly popular.



"Maybe roleplay isn't for you if you don't want to make non-optimal choices" is unhelpful, other than as a "get out of my game" sort of dismissal.

That comment was from PhoenixPhyre, not me, please direct this reply at them.

[Segev]

I genuinely don't know what "mechanical incentives" you're after if Rewards are not it, then. You could punish the player(s) with disincentives as in your hunger pangs example I suppose, but I suspect that style of game wouldn't be particularly popular.Okay. Rewards are, such as the things you listed, things that you get AFTER you do something. "If you do X, you will get a magic item," for example.

Incentives and pressures and inducements are things that apply in the moment. "You get a +2 to all rolls that pertain to advancing your Ideal," is more along the lines of what I'm getting at. If you term that a "reward," then "reward" it is, but I do want to draw a sharp distinction between such benefits and the kinds of rewards where you get something as a payment after completing a thing. Similarly, the penalties side of it, "You have a -2 to all rolls that work against your Bond," is more in line with what I'm talking about.

Now, please don't get hung up on the fact that I used "Ideal" and "Bond" as examples, here. Rewards can factor into it, too. But the reward isn't the benefit/penalty, but rather a thing you get the benefit as long as your efforts are pushing towards that reward, or a thing you get the penalty if you're engaged in activity that you know makes the reward less likely. If, for example, the princess has made herself a desirable marriage partner to you and the king has promised her hand to you if you bring him back the head of the ice dragon, you get the benefit whenever you're engaging in activity designed to get you to the point you can slay the ice dragon and thence to get the head back to the king. You would suffer a penalty to anything that gets in the way of doing that, such as learning the ice dragon isn't actually evil and trying to defend it now against others come to slay it. Since "crushing on the princess" is likely one of the intimacies (to borrow Exalted 2e's terminology) that's driving this, you also likely would get the bonus to anything that lets you stay faithful to her and a penalty to any efforts to seduce others / cheat on her.

Now, again, "+2/-2" is just a placeholder, as much as "advantage/disadvantage" would be. I'm not sure what the actual benefit/penalty would best be.

But I hope this illustrates the difference between "reward" (e.g. "The princess's hand in marriage" or "a cool magic item") and "benefit/penalty" (e.g. "You have advantage on rolls that are to accomplish something that serves your induced goal" / "You have disadvantage on rolls that would support activities that would hinder your induced goal/are ignoring the goal entirely on purpose.")


That comment was from PhoenixPhyre, not me, please direct this reply at them.Okay. Apologies for any offense given.

[Psyren]

Okay. Apologies for any offense given.

Not offended, just wanted to be sure you knew I didn't say anything like that. Thanks for the correction!



Now, again, "+2/-2" is just a placeholder, as much as "advantage/disadvantage" would be. I'm not sure what the actual benefit/penalty would best be.

But I hope this illustrates the difference between "reward" (e.g. "The princess's hand in marriage" or "a cool magic item") and "benefit/penalty" (e.g. "You have advantage on rolls that are to accomplish something that serves your induced goal" / "You have disadvantage on rolls that would support activities that would hinder your induced goal/are ignoring the goal entirely on purpose.")


Neither would I, and the examples you list just seem excessively fiddly to me for 5e's design. Not trying to be dismissive but I don't think there's anything I can add to this style of play (but thank you for attempting to explain it in detail.)

[Segev]

Not offended, just wanted to be sure you knew I didn't say anything like that. Thanks for the correction!Fair enough, and you're welcome. :) Accuracy in communication is crucial, and difficult in forums, so anything I can do to improve it on my end is something I should strive to do.


Neither would I, and the examples you list just seem excessively fiddly to me for 5e's design. Not trying to be dismissive but I don't think there's anything I can add to this style of play (but thank you for attempting to explain it in detail.)
Yes, the examples here are fiddly and not quite right. It might be better to give out pseudo-inspiration that can stack as a pool based on certain inducements, so Bob can choose to use it any time he fails a roll that would help him get somewhere.

While this would be better modeled as Tiger Lily having Bardic Inspiration, I think, you could also model Tiger Lily socially influencing John in the 2005 (2006? I forget) Peter Pan movie when she gives him that kiss that makes him suddenly able to lift that portcullis. (The scene popped to mind, which is why I reference it.)

If a greedy character is reminded that there's a lot of money in it for him if he gets into that vault, the social influence used to push him there might give him a number of pseudo-inspiration points that he can use to psych himself up when he fails a stealth check or a lockpicking check or an attack roll meant to take out a guard.

On the other hand, that same pool might be something the DM could tap to impose DISadvantage, like reverse inspiration, when the character is resisting/refusing to pursue the socially-induced thingamabob. If Bob was offered a chance to shell out extra money for more luxurious accommodations and food, he might suffer some number of disadvantaged rolls as he struggles through the low-quality meal and accommodations, or get that pool of advantaged rolls for accepting it. Maybe, in this formulation, it does come out as a reward/punishment, granting benefit or imposing penalty until it's exhausted for making the short-term choice.



How to make it non-fiddly and only as impactful as it should be, and to avoid it becoming a "silly"-seeming set of mechanics that encourage lots of social rolls made against each other in the party for umpteen bazillion pseudo-inspiration points being tossed around is a much longer discussion.

[animorte]

Accuracy in communication is crucial, and difficult in forums, so anything I can do to improve it on my end is something I should strive to do.
You don’t mind if I throw this in my extended sig that I don’t have yet, do you? I think we all can strive to improve daily.

[Telok]

How to make it non-fiddly and only as impactful as it should be, and to avoid it becoming a "silly"-seeming set of mechanics that encourage lots of social rolls made against each other in the party for umpteen bazillion pseudo-inspiration points being tossed around is a much longer discussion.

Non-fiddly is pretty easy, you just keep die modifiers to rolls as adv/disadv and use something like the mental stats or the spell save calculation (8+mod+prof) as DCs. Your challenge is presenting a framework that flows well, has a clear &easily implemented process, and keeps playey agency over the character.

Lets see... strong advice on when to use it and when not to. Multiple rolls to even out excessive randomness and allow changing tactics. Maybe feed off the ideals & bonds & etc. with insight or other rolls to discover them, although that might require the DM picking those for monsters.

Hmm... DC is 8 + int mod + prof. Need an "amount" of effect equal to wisdom (or x+mod? maybe prof+mod). Ideals, bonds, etc. dictate what approaches or proficiencies get advantage or disadvantage. Go with 1s fail, 20s crit, a success gets you one amount of effect, two for beading the DC by 10+, doubled on a crit. Nat 1s impose disadvantage on the next roll. Opposed rolls, if they happen could restore the target's effect amount needed or reduce your own. Anyone can just shut down or walk away after a failure against them but that basically kicks them out of being convinced of anything. So even if its used on PCs they can always just walk off with fingers in ears or suck like. Your amount of effect needed restores... mod amount on a short rest and fully on a long rest? Run out of effect and the target is demoralized/charmed, believes you're a friend, or goes aling with what you want.

Eh, might work for yelling arguments, slow seduction, or multi-attempt persuasions. Probably not a frame for one-offs exceot you can use the DC & ideal/bond giving adv/disadv. It does sort of look like "social hp & ac" which will bring on screamies from some corners. I think it starts to capture a bit of the "yeah, whatever, I don't care enough and I want to have some mental energy left for later" result that you can get.



^ Giving up on illusions and social skills in D&D is certainly your prerogative, but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of tables manage to have fun with them even when they require adjudication.
Your "all your dms are bad" comments are still inaccurate and not useful. Please give constructive suggestions.

[Psyren]

Your "all your dms are bad" comments are still inaccurate and not useful. Please give constructive suggestions.

I didn't say "all your dms are bad," I said that giving up on illusions and ability checks is very likely a fringe way to play this edition.

Fringe playstyles can be very fun, but catering to them further through design is not the most business-savvy approach when resources are finite.

[Segev]

You don’t mind if I throw this in my extended sig that I don’t have yet, do you? I think we all can strive to improve daily.Not at all! Go ahead! :smallbiggrin: I'm kind-of flattered.


Non-fiddly is pretty easy, you just keep die modifiers to rolls as adv/disadv and use something like the mental stats or the spell save calculation (8+mod+prof) as DCs. Your challenge is presenting a framework that flows well, has a clear &easily implemented process, and keeps playey agency over the character.

Lets see... strong advice on when to use it and when not to. Multiple rolls to even out excessive randomness and allow changing tactics. Maybe feed off the ideals & bonds & etc. with insight or other rolls to discover them, although that might require the DM picking those for monsters.

Hmm... DC is 8 + int mod + prof. Need an "amount" of effect equal to wisdom (or x+mod? maybe prof+mod). Ideals, bonds, etc. dictate what approaches or proficiencies get advantage or disadvantage. Go with 1s fail, 20s crit, a success gets you one amount of effect, two for beading the DC by 10+, doubled on a crit. Nat 1s impose disadvantage on the next roll. Opposed rolls, if they happen could restore the target's effect amount needed or reduce your own. Anyone can just shut down or walk away after a failure against them but that basically kicks them out of being convinced of anything. So even if its used on PCs they can always just walk off with fingers in ears or suck like. Your amount of effect needed restores... mod amount on a short rest and fully on a long rest? Run out of effect and the target is demoralized/charmed, believes you're a friend, or goes aling with what you want.

Eh, might work for yelling arguments, slow seduction, or multi-attempt persuasions. Probably not a frame for one-offs exceot you can use the DC & ideal/bond giving adv/disadv. It does sort of look like "social hp & ac" which will bring on screamies from some corners. I think it starts to capture a bit of the "yeah, whatever, I don't care enough and I want to have some mental energy left for later" result that you can get.Yeah, it's almost always going to take time to instill new interests, win him over on an opinion, etc., even if he's never heard of something before and had no opinion. Making this flexible enough for stuff to also work for persuasion mid-combat is tricky, though a nice goal if you're able to make it work.

I think just getting it for non-combat timescales would be sufficient, though, for a starting point.

[Hytheter]

Hey Segev, I just want to say I like where your heads at on this topic. You might want to take a look at FATE, as it has rules in a similar design space.

To summarise: The game uses a metacurrency called Fate points that are analogous to Inspiration but more thoroughly integrated into the game. You can gain Fate points by accepting 'compels' on your aspects (player-defined character traits, basically) or otherwise letting them get your character into trouble. Conversely you can spend points to resist a compel or to gain a bonus on actions leaning into your aspects.

For example, a bardly kind of character might have the aspect "Shameless womaniser." If he's trying to seduce an NPC to extract valuable information, they could invoke that aspect to get a bonus on the roll. On the other hand, when the GM brings in a dangerous femme fatale that the bard definitely shouldn't get involved with, they can compel the aspect to force the player to take the bait. If he obeys, there's a fate point in it for him - and he might well need it for whatever trouble he gets into as a result! He can resist if he wants, but then he'll be down a fate point instead.

Not a perfect system but might provide some food for thought.

[greenstone]

It makes me think someone doesn't understand encounters, probably because I don't think the authors of the rule books understand encounters.

What's an encounter? A situation where there is something between you and what you want to achieve.

Need to get in to the palace and a guarde is stopping you? You could bribe them, threaten them, kill them, or sneak around the back. The first two are often described as "social pillar", the third as "combat pillar" and the last as "exploration pillar" but really all four options are just "ways to overcome the obstruction."

The game mechanics should support lots of options without any judgements or preferences. I feel that D&D 5E fails at this since there seems to be 200 pages of combat stuff for every 1 page of non-combat stuff. :-)

[KorvinStarmast]

But I'm firmly in the camp of the 3 pillars not being silos but that most gameplay/encounters will have elements of multiple pillars at the same time. My tent is next to yours near the fire. And we brought marshmellows! :smallsmile:

And there are rewards that aren't mechanical. For example, having fun. :smallsmile:

I mean, for starters, how much time is needed talking to an NPC before I can start to sway them? How can I discover secrets, clues, etc., about an NPC? How much time does that take? How can the NPC (or their retainers) detect me? What ability checks are needed / recommended? Under what circumstances am I required to disclose a secret to an NPC?

None of these are rules, necessarily, Because it depends on the situation, but I agree that Charisma isn't needed by default.

That's my response because ever since the AD&D reaction rolls went away every iteration social anything in D&D has gotten more vague and handwavy every time a paid rules goon has gotten their gribby mitts on them. Dirty little secret that I have shared on this forum many times. I still used the 2d6 reaction roll table from Men and Magic if I need a tip on how an NPC will react. And, there's that lovely little chart in the DMG around pg 247...well hidden, I must say. It's similar.

For example, a bardly kind of character might have the aspect "Shameless womaniser." If he's trying to seduce an NPC to extract valuable information, they could invoke that aspect to get a bonus on the roll. On the other hand, when the GM brings in a dangerous femme fatale that the bard definitely shouldn't get involved with, they can compel the aspect to force the player to take the bait. If he obeys, there's a fate point in it for him - and he might well need it for whatever trouble he gets into as a result! He can resist if he wants, but then he'll be down a fate point instead.

Not a perfect system but might provide some food for thought. My D&D Lore bard was all about shameless self promotion. I don't remember if she got any inspiration for that, might have been a few, but I had a blast simply embracing that personality trait. The Fate set up looks interesting, but I have yet to play that game. Too many neat ideas, too little time.

[Telok]

Dirty little secret that I have shared on this forum many times. I still used the 2d6 reaction roll table from Men and Magic if I need a tip on how an NPC will react. And, there's that lovely little chart in the DMG around pg 247...well hidden, I must say.

And if I were DMing D&D then I'd be doing something like that, but it does nothing for the current crop of DMs in my town that never even saw a TSR book and consider the current DMG as mainly optional unbalanced rules & world building stuff. Nobody can even agree what a "hard" deception check is, less what it should do.

[KorvinStarmast]

And if I were DMing D&D then I'd be doing something like that, but it does nothing for the current crop of DMs in my town that never even saw a TSR book and consider the current DMG as mainly optional unbalanced rules & world building stuff. Nobody can even agree what a "hard" deception check is, less what it should do. Have you brought that table to their attention? Or is it too soft around the edges for them?
For a deception check, I mostly handle those as Deception versus Insight. That way it's an opposed roll and there's not need to establish a DC. I have often offered the Insight roll advantage when the approach by the deceiver isn't very well thought through/presented.

[Telok]

Have you brought that table to their attention? Or is it too soft around the edges for them?
For a deception check, I mostly handle those as Deception versus Insight. That way it's an opposed roll and there's not need to establish a DC. I have often offered the Insight roll advantage when the approach by the deceiver isn't very well thought through/presented.
Yeah, bad reactions, too gameable & predictable like 3e diplo was one complaint, too fiddly and time waste was another, and "this variant rule chart solves what?" was a third. Not everyone reads the same stuff in the 5e DMG & walks away with the same understandings of it.

Vs Insight doesn't tell me what deception does or what a hard check is. Opposed just turns into "target thinks you think you're telling the truth as you know it" is the usual result and does diddly squat. Insight use generally gets "you think they aren't telling you everything". Its as bloody useful as "humanoid in full plate & face concealing helm, with a sword", so generic and devoid of details that its become meaningless. Someone will say "fix your DM/dump the game", but this has persisted across DMs & and games & has not happened when some of those same DMs ran Shadowrun, Champions, or AD&D.

The opening post asked what people's reactions were to "social pillar" in D&D, and I responded to that. Everything else has been mostly explanation of the why of my initial response. I think D&D has weak rules and/or bad teaching & advice on how to use it's "social pillar" based on my experiences with it. Telling me it works perfectly for some other DMs doesn't do anything.

[greenstone]

I think D&D has weak rules and/or bad teaching & advice on how to use it's "social pillar" based on my experiences with it.
Yep, I agree, it is weak on this.

Here's how I do it, in case that's useful to you.

If the party are trying to get past someone using a social approach then I set the DC the same as I would for any other obstacle - I base it on how important the target is.

The house of a rich merchant? Maybe DC 15. That is, DC 15 to pick the locks, DC 15 to avoid the traps, DC 15 to persuade the guards, DC 15 to climb the walls, and so on.

The god-emperor's palace? DC 30. DC 30 locks, DC 30 traps, DC 30 guards, DC 30 walls, etc.

When the players come up with an approach that might work, I ask for an ability check and discuss with them what skill or skills might apply. Then they roll and we narrate the results, costs, and consequences.

It's all just obstacles, methods for overcoming those obstacles, and costs and consequences of the chosen methods.

[animorte]

The next time I introduce somebody to D&D:

It's all just obstacles, methods for overcoming those obstacles, and costs and consequences of the chosen methods.

[Frogreaver]

It makes me think someone doesn't understand encounters, probably because I don't think the authors of the rule books understand encounters.

What's an encounter? A situation where there is something between you and what you want to achieve.

Need to get in to the palace and a guarde is stopping you? You could bribe them, threaten them, kill them, or sneak around the back. The first two are often described as "social pillar", the third as "combat pillar" and the last as "exploration pillar" but really all four options are just "ways to overcome the obstruction."

The game mechanics should support lots of options without any judgements or preferences. I feel that D&D 5E fails at this since there seems to be 200 pages of combat stuff for every 1 page of non-combat stuff. :-)

Some would call that a feature, not a bug.

[Sorinth]

Yep, I agree, it is weak on this.

Here's how I do it, in case that's useful to you.

If the party are trying to get past someone using a social approach then I set the DC the same as I would for any other obstacle - I base it on how important the target is.

The house of a rich merchant? Maybe DC 15. That is, DC 15 to pick the locks, DC 15 to avoid the traps, DC 15 to persuade the guards, DC 15 to climb the walls, and so on.

The god-emperor's palace? DC 30. DC 30 locks, DC 30 traps, DC 30 guards, DC 30 walls, etc.

When the players come up with an approach that might work, I ask for an ability check and discuss with them what skill or skills might apply. Then they roll and we narrate the results, costs, and consequences.

It's all just obstacles, methods for overcoming those obstacles, and costs and consequences of the chosen methods.

Obviously play the way you and your table find the most fun but to me this approach would seem to remove a large part of the fun. There's basically no reason to investigate and plan anything since it's all the same and you should just go with whoever has the biggest bonus to whatever skill and then use that approach for every situation.

If the goal was to infiltrate the rich merchant's house then I'd personally find it more fun/immersive if it was something like the guards run a tight ship with regular patrols making a stealth-centric approach DC 20, but there are regular deliveries so if we dressed up correctly we could talk are way in using a deception based approach which would be DC 15, and that the guard captain is corrupt and so it would be a DC 10 check to bribe them into just letting us in. All of this would potentially be learnable by the players based on whatever prep/investigation/information gathering they do beforehand.

[Psyren]

Obviously play the way you and your table find the most fun but to me this approach would seem to remove a large part of the fun. There's basically no reason to investigate and plan anything since it's all the same and you should just go with whoever has the biggest bonus to whatever skill and then use that approach for every situation.

If the goal was to infiltrate the rich merchant's house then I'd personally find it more fun/immersive if it was something like the guards run a tight ship with regular patrols making a stealth-centric approach DC 20, but there are regular deliveries so if we dressed up correctly we could talk are way in using a deception based approach which would be DC 15, and that the guard captain is corrupt and so it would be a DC 10 check to bribe them into just letting us in. All of this would potentially be learnable by the players based on whatever prep/investigation/information gathering they do beforehand.

Based on this and other threads I think I would enjoy playing at your table.

[animorte]

All of this would potentially be learnable by the players based on whatever prep/investigation/information gathering they do beforehand.
Boom, social pillar defined. That’s exactly what I’ve been getting at.

Based on this and other threads I think I would enjoy playing at your table.
High marks, indeed.

[Tanarii]

It's all just obstacles, methods for overcoming those obstacles, and costs and consequences of the chosen methods.


The next time I introduce somebody to D&D:

And that's ultimately why I posted this thread. Half the time, the examples being given for social pillar and/or social checks don't actually seem to have anything to do with obstacles. :smallamused:

As such, I wanted to get an understanding of what folks first thought of for social pillar, to try and understand why.

From what I can see in this thread, it does seem to be fairly common to first think of it in very broad terms, in some cases to think of it definitionally in broad terms. And that would certainly explain it. Where-as I generally think of the pillars first in terms of examples, not definitionally, and those examples are obstacle oriented.

This also holds true for the exploration pillar. I first think of PCs exploring an adventuring site, trying to avoid enemies and falling into traps, usually with poor info on what they're getting in to, and very often underground and in the dark. Not some broad definition.

[Pex]

Social pillar - talky talky
Exploration pillar - looky looky
Combat pillar - stabby stabby

All three are important. It is a mistake of all those people who laud "roleplaying not rollplaying" who think only talky talky counts as roleplaying and has any value. All aspects of the game is roleplaying. Only having social pillar is just sitting around the table "playing house". Only having Exploration pillar is listening to the DM talk about whatever he feels like about the scenery of his world. Only having Combat pillar is a glorified Chess game of fighting simulation. People can have fun playing those, but that's not what playing an RPG, and D&D in particular, is about.

[animorte]

All three are important. It is a mistake of all those people who laud "roleplaying not rollplaying" who think only talky talky counts as roleplaying and has any value. All aspects of the game is roleplaying. Only having social pillar is just sitting around the table "playing house". Only having Exploration pillar is listening to the DM talk about whatever he feels like about the scenery of his world. Only having Combat pillar is a glorified Chess game of fighting simulation. People can have fun playing those, but that's not what playing an RPG, and D&D in particular, is about.
Yes, I agree that role-playing applies to every aspect of the game. Your character’s motivation doesn’t just pause when everybody rolls initiative. They don’t need to stop existing just because they don’t have the perfect skill or spell for the job at that time.

I’ve been in situations where some pillars are strictly preferred over others. That’s one great thing about this game, that you can focus on any of them over others depending on what is most fun for the whole group.

[Jathaan]

I’ve been invoked by Segev and meant to reply a few times before now; just haven’t had the time and the spoons at the same time.

5e HAS rules for the Social Pillar, sort of. There’s the whole section in the DMG Chapter 8, “Social Interaction,” that gives guidance and limits on what can and cannot be accomplished with Deception/Persuasion/Intimidation.

I want to like that section; it gives (GM-facing) rules for social interaction without being too gamified, and it keeps the high-Charisma characters in check so they cannot re-write reality with a 40 Persuasion roll.

In practice, though, at least in the homebrew sandbox game(s) I run, it’s a lot less helpful than it sounds. For one thing, it’s not player-facing; unlike combat where everyone expects you to refer to the monster’s AC and hit points, you have no reminder as a GM to bring out the Chapter 8 table when a social encounter starts.

More importantly, it’s wholly dependent on having fleshed-out NPCs with Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws. That happens in areas you expected the party to be in, or an area that has been well-written in an adventure module; but coming up with well-rounded NPCs on the fly, or at all, is hard.

I think you can see where this is going.

Last Saturday, the party headed out of the charted areas of the world. My map said there was a village in that direction, but I had absolutely nothing written about it. A five-minute break later, it was an Ork trading village sitting on a rock I had come up with for a different (unvisited) region. The NPCs were still cardboard cut-outs named “Insertnamehere,” and their ideals were vague. Chapter 8 was not much help. We made it up as we went along, and it all worked; but few game mechanics were referenced in the encounter.

We play jazz, not symphonies.

————
To the OP: For me. the social pillar is basically the whole game. The PCs have goals, ideals, flaws, baggage; and they’re trying to get by in a world that is largely indifferent to them, mostly by talking to other people. Perception, Persuasion, Intimidation, Investigation, History, and Religion are rolled at my table all the time, far more often than Initiative. Combat basically only happens when there’s no other option; irrationally hostile NPCs that cannot be reasoned with; hungry animals; implacably malevolent spirits. Everyone else is bargained with.

There are game systems that are better suited to the type of game I run, I think; two examples from my want-to-run list would be Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish Granting Engine and Wanderhome. Both are as close to entirely social as I think possible; combat isn’t even possible in Wanderhome. This isn’t the forum to go into them in detail, and I haven’t yet spent the time to graft mechanics from them into 5e, but they have robust character-development and social interaction mechanics that I find admirable.

[Corran]

From what I can see in this thread, it does seem to be fairly common to first think of it in very broad terms, in some cases to think of it definitionally in broad terms. And that would certainly explain it. Where-as I generally think of the pillars first in terms of examples, not definitionally, and those examples are obstacle oriented.
The social pillar does not have to be obstacle oriented. Having it be obstacle oriented is very good because it gives additional incentive to your players to engage. Let's think of examples.

A white dragon has made its lair in a mountain near a remote barbarian tribe's village. Several years ago the dragon killed the barbarian leader and most of their best warriors and enslaved the rest. Nowadays they are hunting game fot it and they have recently started a bit of raiding and looting to get shinies for the dragon too. The party is tasked with removing the dragon from that area, and somehow they have been granted a safe meeting with the barbarian leaders so to speak, to negotiate the dragon problem. The meeting is taking place in secret inside the barbarians' village and unless they dont push their luck too much, the pc's know that they will have safe passage out of there regardless of the outcome of the negotiation.

In order for it to be a negotition, let's create three prevalent points of view in the barbarian population regarding the removal of their dragon overlord. There are those who want the dragon gone so they can be free again. There are those who embrace the dragon's rule over them and consider it as part of their tradition (eg the strongest should rule) and are maybe even eager to get more serious about their recent raiding activities. And lastly there are those in the middle, the undecided, or the ones that want the dragon gone but fear what will happen to them should the pc's fail.

Now, let's assume that the pc's are not powerful, reputable, or cunning enough to talk or trick the dragon out of the area, either permanently or for the forseeable future. The dragon will stand and fight. There may be some talk, but if the pc's insist on removing the dragon, they will have to use force.

Lastly, let's remove all the things that would make the negotiation with the barbarians a meaningful factor in the scaling of the difficulty of the fight against the dragon, not because there is any value in doing so, but just to see if there's anything of value left in keeping the negotiation as part of the session instead of skipping it entirely.

Depending on how the negotiation goes, you may end up with something like this:
Very poor: You now have a fight in your hands with the barbarians inside their village. This will weaken you and possibly alert the dragon to your presence.
Poor: The barbarians wont help you, but they wont stop you from leaving. In secret they send someone to alert the dragon that you are coming for it.
Average: The barbarians stay neutral.
Good: The barbarians agree to help you. They will disguise you as part of a group that will go inside the dragon's den to make one of their usual offerings, thus hopefully allowing you to reach the dragon without fighting any of its other minions and maybe even taking it by surprise.
Very good: The barbarians will go all in. They will claim indipendence in the hope of angering the dragon enough so that it makes a reckless move. Luring the dragon out of its cave and possibly into some kind of trap is the game.

Let's assume that unless you start attacking the barbarians, they will remain neutral despite whatever ends up being said in your conversation with them.

Let's assume that there are no additional dragon minions guarding the way to the dragon's lair. Let's assume no traps inside the lair, no secret entrances or other local knowledge of the area that will give you some advantage. Just a straightforward march with a solo boss fight at the end of it.

Let's assume that there are no additional exploitable rewards from the barbarians waiting for you if you defeat the dragons. No magical ancestral axe to be offered as a thank you, no friendships you can call upon for future favors or grudges that will follow you and haunt you.

Finally, let's assume that the course of this barbarian tribe in the world will also be of no sigificance. It doesn't matter even if you turned them into a force for good or evil. Their actions will either be non consequencial or a problem or boon for other adventurers to deal with or benefit from. Either way, you wont ever hear from them again.

With all that gone, is there anything of value left in having the negotiation with the barbarians? There is something left. Whether it counts as a lot or as barely anything, depends on the player and in some cases it depends more specifically on the character that the player is using.

Firstly, the meaningless negotiation can serve well as a change of pace sometimes. In a campaign where the pc's are used to going from one touble inflicted place to another, talk to npc's desperate of help from heroes, dealing with the issue and then claiming a big thank you along with whatever other tangible reward, it will most likely be very interesting to throw them a curveball by having the victims be conflicted about if they want any help.

A special mention here goes to having NPCs doubt the pcs' abilities. Amidst all the talking, it just takes one passing phrase to do the job: "Look at them. They stand no chance against the dragon. They will die, and the the dragon will hold us responsible for the attack and we will pay a heavy price. I say we better send them away. This way we are doing both them and us a favor". I've seen too many player (characters), that if they heard that, they would take it very personally. This statement would challenge them. It would challenge them so much, that if they did not (want to) take it out on the poor NPC who dared to speak it, they would take it out on the poor dragon. They would hate that dragon, and they may even hunt it down to the other side of the world in order to kill it, and then drag its head or something all the way back, in order to prove their worth to the ones who doubted them. And that's good, because you want your players to be motivated. And for some player characters something as dirty and cheap like that is enough. And while the change of pace above is probably a good thing as a passing phase, because I assume it wont take too long for players and DMs to start figuring out that you do need the consequences to make things actually interesting, the challenge to the characters' reputation or abilities is something that takes a lot longer to get old (assuming of course you dont spam it) for the player who enjoys it.

But the greatest benefit of having the meaningless negotiation, is that you allow room for your players to roleplay what they had in mind when they created their characters. Or to explore and develop their characters at the spot by roleplaying what pops into their minds at that very moment. The antihero will be eager to abandom the reluctant and seemingly ungrateful victims to their fate, probably claiming that from the start this quest was a bad idea. The naive hero will be eager to contradict and insist on the importance of their quest. The wise hero may focus on the need of securing the barbarians with a means of either escaping or fighting back against the dragon, should they fail to defeat it (because even though this is not so much of an actual consequence, it is easier for players to roleplay that instead of roleplaying their characters' fear of death). The sadistic evil member of the group may cling on in the barbarians' fear of reprisals from the dragon and start thinking of a way to have the dragon attack the barbarians before the party gets to it. And most bards would try to get lucky.

And these are just character tropes. You can get to a lot more possibilities if you replace the tropes with actual characters you've played or seen played in the past. For example, my very misguided zealot paladin of Erathis would probably use the fact that they defeated the dragon to scold the uncivilized tribe about their way of life. Failing to see them as a beacon of civilization, and quite likely failing to provide any actual improvement to their way of life, he would probably resort to bullying (or even going further should the party or the npcs collectivelly not push back) the naysayer barbarians during the negotiation. My barbarian would likely develop a hatred towards chromatic dragons by seeing how one of them brought a once proud barbarian tribe to tjeir knees, and he would probably want to get to know the npcs better so that he gets an idea about which one of them would make for a good leader, after which he would try to use any influence he may have due to the dragon slaying to install that npc as one. Because just leaving the barbarian village would not be enough, he would want to know that he is leaving it in good hands. My conquest paladin would annoounce how she slayed the dragon almost singlehandedly and she would declare herself the leader/queen/goddess of the barbarians (same title the dragon held), and I would probably end up retiring her (cause I find it hard to believe that she would be leaving willingly, also cause I find conquest boring to rp for more than a few sessions). My trickery cleric would risk more than usual in stealing anything of value, because of how the characters' good status would most likely allow them to get away with things they might not without. Also because a dragon's horde is definitely not enough to give pause to his greed. My teenager confrontational arcane cleric would enter the barbarian village after defeating the dragon with both hands raised up and with his middle finger extended, trying to rub every NPC's nose in how foolish they are for not believing in them that they could do it (and literally my goal here would be to keep that going and become so annoying after perhaps a few initial laughs, to see how long it would take for the party to shut my character up). I can go on but you get the point. Every character would have their own unique way of roleplaying out the before or the aftermath of the encounter with the dragon.

So yes, while consequences are needed to make things glue together nicely, I would say that you can have games without putting too much emphasis in them and still have a rewarding social pillar (which will therefore not be obstacle oriented in the abense of consequence). These games wont be for everyone and I definitely agree that the social pillar is most rewarding when it's obstacle oriented, but obstacle-free social pillar is not without value, and in some cases it might even be needed if the player cannot stop strategizing in favor of bringing some character flaws into the spotlight that they would otherwise might not if it meant making things more difficult for the pc's down the line. Sometimes you need to experience the joy of the absurd roleplay that the interaction of a character flaw/ideal/bond/whatever can have with a more open ended situation that is consequence free, in order to learn to commit to such roleplaying opportunities later on during obstacle oriented social pillar.

[Tanarii]

The social pillar does not have to be obstacle oriented. For the most part, I take the view that if it's not obstacle oriented, it's a waste of my players table time. Anything non-obstacle oriented can be handled out of session if required and if it's a campaign where it matters for some reason.

[Sparky McDibben]

This is a really interesting thread. So if decide that social mechanics should exclude PCs (we'll leave that problem for another day), what kinds of mechanics can engage the social pillar? I know we have ability checks, and those are great, but what can we build onto from there?

This isn't entirely theoretical - I'm setting up an urban campaign, and I want to see if anyone has good systems / procedures / structures for social and intrigue-based play.

(Tanarii - let me know if I'm overstepping here and this should get moved to another thread)