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Alright let me start by going down your list.

Ludanto wrote:

Social systems are fun. Just like combat systems.

Hard to say, until I've actually played in the system. Thus far I've never played in a fun social system yet. Of course, that doesn't mean there can't be a fun one, so I can't comment much on that one.

Social systems give you another way to overcome obstacles, just like combat systems.

I'll get back to this one in a moment with your next quote after the list.

Social systems keep things fair when the results are important, just like combat systems.

Fair in this case is relative. It's more numerically fair, but also it's not participation fair. The guy who participates and talks more gets shafted if his character doesn't have high social skills. Basically it rewards the min/maxer and screws over the guy who just role-plays his character.

Social systems encourage players to engage in social scenes, because their own personal social skills aren't a handicap.

Here's the flaw in that thinking. First, shy people are likely not to play social characters. So they won't take diplomacy because they don't want to be put under the spotlight. Shy people tend to contribute stuff here and there, but sometimes it's important stuff. By having a social system be die roll reliant, you're basically shafting the shy person who does that. I mean, he might as well not bother contributing that little bit he might of otherwise said, because his social skills suck and the DM will just ignore whatever he says.

I think it's bad form for the game to ignore any player during a role-playing scene.

Social systems provide a "safety zone" between player emotions and character emotions.

Still don't really understand this fully.

Social systems allow the game to go in exciting directions that the players and DM might not have explored if they just "came to an agreement".

Don't understand this one either. If you're talking about the NPC doing something weird the DM hadn't planned on, this may not be a good thing if it completely mucks up the plot because suddenly the evil necromancer turned good.

Social systems encourage creativity through stucture and limitation, much like a combat with walls and pits and traps requires more creativity and thought than one where you can just move wherever you want to.

I'm not sure I'd say creativity. It's more like system mastery. If social situations create a mini-game that you play, then it's really just a matter of mastering that mini-game, similar to how people master combat. So you're not as worried about the actual thing you're arguing for in game, as much as you are worried about your best mini-game style move.

In the social encounter, the DM should just give in if your argument is good enough to convince the NPC.

Right, so you can basically overcome an obstacle with straight RP if your argument is good enough. But, then, what's the point of the social system?

Basically you're saying that it's an auto-win if you say the right stuff, therefore the social system is there so you can win while saying the wrong stuff?

Why do we even want people to win by saying the wrong stuff? Why not just make that an auto-lose.

But of course, that's not your CHARACTER making those deductions and picking up those clues. That's YOU, the PLAYER. Why are the DM's NPCs locked into some rigid thought process, unaffected by metagame elements, while your character benefits (or fails to do so) due to your OOC mental faculties?

Because it's a game, and player choice is paramount to a game. I mean if you can't make choices for your characters, then you're just running a simulation. And at that point, where's the fun? I see a big monster, maybe I fight it, or maybe I retreat. Now we could just give every PC a "courage roll" to see if they flee or if they fight, but that'd be stupid. The fun of the game is making your own decisions and choosing your own destiny.

And again, it's not just "luck". If there's enough reason to roll, that means that the NPC is on the fence enough to be persuaded, and what he can be persuaded to do is limited to what the DM decides is "right" for the character. There will never be, "out of character" NPC moments, because the reaction, win or lose, is what the character would do.

Your character personality is something you describe prior to the scene. So if you describe someone as a "religious fanatic, believing in the ideals of the Sun God to the core" and you win a social contest against him that causes him to go directly against the ideals of the Sun God, then you've got him to act out of character.

Now, I mean I suppose you could try to bound social contests with auto-fail and auto-win scenarios, but at that point I say, why even bother? I mean if half the game is just DM adjudication as to what automatically works and what never works and there's this narrow range of stuff that "might work on a lucky coin flip", why not just eliminate the coin flip range entirely?

On the contrary. What you're calling "decisions" is actually just "choice of words", which are just reflections of the actual decision to "intimidate" or "bluff" or "seduce" or whatever. And those decisions matter.

Yes, but they're particularly easy decisions. Pick your biggest number. That's it. Doesn't take much creativity or decision-making skills to see that your intimidate number is bigger than your bluff or diplomacy.

kadeton wrote:

Example: The bard makes a heartfelt, impassioned plea to the king to send aid to an embattled border town. The player rolls a one and the check fails. At this point, I have to decide why that happened: Is the political situation more complex than it appears? Is someone blackmailing, threatening or magically influencing the king? Is he simply making a public statement to mislead his political opponents, and will contact the party later in secret? Or is it something more sinister, like the king secretly ordering the attacks himself? The very fact of the failure opens up many possibilities for further social interactions, many of which can become adventure hooks in their own right, and I think that's fantastic.

For freeform DMing, this isn't a bad idea, but this is rather tough to pull off in standard games, because a lot of DMs come in with a plot pre-established. So walking into the throne room, generally the DM knows who the bad guys and the good guys are. And in this case, you basically know how your NPCs are supposed to react based on political plots. To make your system work, your NPCs need to exist in some kind of quantum state where their loyalties aren't known (even to the DM) until they're actually tested.

The problem with this scenario is that social skills represent luck more than anything else. If a failure means that you run into some nefarious political plot, then that means that diplomacy skill is simply "being lucky enough not to run into nefarious political plots."

The low diplomacy guy is constantly wondering why every innkeeper, blacksmith and lesser noble is embroidered in some crazy conspiracy against what he happens to be wanting to do, while the high diplomacy guy never seems to run into any political plots at all.

That could work I guess, though it'd make the entire campaign seem a bit random, since the king wasn't actually your enemy until you specifically tried to talk to him.

That doesn't make much sense to me, though it does fit in rather well with the DoW style "diplomacy stakes", since quite literally you "create" a new enemy by failing your diplomacy check. The king becomes part of the conspiracy simply because you went to talk to him and rolled poorly.

Also the problem arises when the quantum state is tested twice. What happens if one PC fails and then another PC tries again later once the king has already been defined as being part of the conspiracy? If the second PC succeeds has it been decided that the king has backed out of the conspiracy, or is the second roll an auto-fail since the king is now a defined element?

I don't really know if many PCs would like the system once they realize what it is. Most PCs like a mystery that makes sense from the beginning. It's a bit hard to have a free-floating mystery that actually changes as the adventure progresses.

Problem-solving time!

"Archtyrant Terevoth"]The guy who participates and talks more gets shafted if his character doesn't have high social skills. Basically it rewards the min/maxer and screws over the guy who just role-plays his character.

SOLUTION: Constructing characters who are good or bad at various things should be obvious. A player who wants to play a character who is good at social discourse should be able to make such a character without navigating the pitfalls and difficulties presented by previous editions that (in some cases purposefully) murked the process with "fake" weaker options and bad choices.

The guy who participates and talks more gets shafted if his character doesn't have high social skills. Basically it rewards the min/maxer and screws over the guy who just role-plays his character.[/quote]
SOLUTION: Constructing characters who are good or bad at various things should be obvious. A player who wants to play a character who is good at social discourse should be able to make such a character without navigating the pitfalls and difficulties presented by previous editions that (in some cases purposefully) murked the process with "fake" weaker options and bad choices.

First, shy people are likely not to play social characters. So they won't take diplomacy because they don't want to be put under the spotlight.

SOLUTION: Do not put shy people in the spotlight. Let them declare what their character is doing and roll their dice. If you have a playstyle conflict where your method actors find this immersion-breaking, solve that outside the game.

If social situations create a mini-game that you play, then it's really just a matter of mastering that mini-game, similar to how people master combat.

SOLUTION: Conflict resolution systems should "fit" into the overall game structure well enough that they don't feel like minigames. 3rd Edition was full of this nonsense, from Turn Undead to Grapple and all over the place with spells. If it feels like you're stopping playing one game and starting to play another, then something's wrong with the system structures; they're too different from each other.

The core d20 mechanic was a strong step in this direction; D&D needs a few more leaps and bounds that way.

Basically you're saying that it's an auto-win if you say the right stuff, therefore the social system is there so you can win while saying the wrong stuff?

I don't need to enter into the combat system if I cast a spell that incinerates someone instantly when they don't even know I'm there. Thus:

SOLUTION: Enter the conflict resolution system when the result is not pre-ordained. For lengthy arguments, enter the conflict resolution system immediately; even if you have a good argument, the NPC may interrupt your character with superior force of personality (read: Charisma), preventing you from getting through the argument.

If the NPC is friendly and open to being convinced, you don't really need the conflict resolution system. However, if you are competing with an evil advisor to convince the king which of you is right, then you need a social conflict resolution system.

Because it's a game, and player choice is paramount to a game. I mean if you can't make choices for your characters, then you're just running a simulation. And at that point, where's the fun?

SOLUTION: Make sure the player has interesting choices to make within the conflict resolution system. These choices should be analogous to decisions you'd make personally in the situation, but rely on decision-making as opposed to character presence, personality, etc.

So if you describe someone as a "religious fanatic, believing in the ideals of the Sun God to the core" and you win a social contest against him that causes him to go directly against the ideals of the Sun God, then you've got him to act out of character.

SOLUTION: Do not use a social conflict resolution system as "mind control." Trying to get a fanatic follower of the Sun God to knowingly violate the Sun God's ideals for reasons that don't make sense to that character should at the very least be comparable to a first-level party trying to defeat a group of Balors. The DM would simply tell such a party "You lose."

If the party has a compelling reason that the follower may be interested in (appeals to something else he values, an argument that doing this thing is actually in the Sun God's best interest, etc), then it could be worth entering the resolution system. The challenge here is quantifying the difficulties of tasks as clearly as possible to reduce arbitrary DM decisions. I leave this as an exercise to the talented developer readers.

Yes, but they're particularly easy decisions. Pick your biggest number. That's it. Doesn't take much creativity or decision-making skills to see that your intimidate number is bigger than your bluff or diplomacy.

SOLUTION: Craft a system that isn't so elementary that it can be won by picking and repeating your biggest number. I leave this as an exercise to any reader that isn't suffering from severe brain damage.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Hard to say, until I've actually played in the system. Thus far I've never played in a fun social system yet. Of course, that doesn't mean there can't be a fun one, so I can't comment much on that one.

Fun can be subjective, of course. My point is that social conflict mechanics can be fun for the same reasons that combat is fun, whatever reasons those may be.

Fair in this case is relative. It's more numerically fair, but also it's not participation fair. The guy who participates and talks more gets shafted if his character doesn't have high social skills. Basically it rewards the min/maxer and screws over the guy who just role-plays his character.

Ok, imagine a social conflict rules system. Is it unfair or unfun? Then that's not the system I'm talking about. And your argument here amounts to the same thing as saying that the guy who participates in combat and fights more gets shafted if his character doesn't have high combat stats, rewarding the min/maxer and screwing the guy who just describes what his character would do in combat. I'm really not sure what your point is with this one.

Here's the flaw in that thinking. First, shy people are likely not to play social characters. So they won't take diplomacy because they don't want to be put under the spotlight. Shy people tend to contribute stuff here and there, but sometimes it's important stuff. By having a social system be die roll reliant, you're basically shafting the shy person who does that. I mean, he might as well not bother contributing that little bit he might of otherwise said, because his social skills suck and the DM will just ignore whatever he says.

I think it's bad form for the game to ignore any player during a role-playing scene.

Remember that rules system you thought up? Does it make the contributions of players with low scores meaningless? Then that's not the system I'm talking about. It is quite possible for players with low scores to contribute meaningfully to the group.

Don't understand this one either. If you're talking about the NPC doing something weird the DM hadn't planned on, this may not be a good thing if it completely mucks up the plot because suddenly the evil necromancer turned good.

Depends on the game. If by "plot" you mean "this is what the DM wants to happen regardless of what the PCs do", then yes, an unexpected result might mess with that. However, for what it's worth, I said "unexpected", not "surprise". If the players suddenly decide to turn the necromancer "good", and the DM thinks that it wouldn't suck, he can allow the attempt. It wouldn't be a "surprise", but it would certainly not be what the DM had originally "expected".

I'm not sure I'd say creativity. It's more like system mastery. If social situations create a mini-game that you play, then it's really just a matter of mastering that mini-game, similar to how people master combat. So you're not as worried about the actual thing you're arguing for in game, as much as you are worried about your best mini-game style move.

There's always a "system", whether it's the rules or the DM. Learning to manipulate the rules to my advantage seems healthier than learning to manipulate the DM to my advantage.

Right, so you can basically overcome an obstacle with straight RP if your argument is good enough. But, then, what's the point of the social system?

Basically you're saying that it's an auto-win if you say the right stuff, therefore the social system is there so you can win while saying the wrong stuff?

Why do we even want people to win by saying the wrong stuff? Why not just make that an auto-lose.

It's like getting into a fight with some guards, and then part-way through they realize that you bear the Imperial Seal. Then they say, "Oops! Sorry sirs, go right ahead." There wasn't a conflict after all. Basically, it's the fail-safe, the thing that keeps you from getting stupid results. It's unlikely that anybody is going to convince me to quit my job, but if partway through his argument he offers me 10 million dollars, then I'll be like, "Why didn't you say that in the first place?!" Basically, there wasn't really a conflict at all. The game isn't totally devoid of skill or creativity just because there are dice involved. Just like some players are better at combat than others, despite using the same rules. It's still a game, after all.

Because it's a game, and player choice is paramount to a game. I mean if you can't make choices for your characters, then you're just running a simulation. And at that point, where's the fun? I see a big monster, maybe I fight it, or maybe I retreat. Now we could just give every PC a "courage roll" to see if they flee or if they fight, but that'd be stupid. The fun of the game is making your own decisions and choosing your own destiny.

I'm not going to use the "S" word, but I never said anywhere that players couldn't make choices. Just like they can choose to fight a monster or not, flank or not, power-attack or not. The same applies to the social arena. There are plenty of choices.

Your character personality is something you describe prior to the scene. So if you describe someone as a "religious fanatic, believing in the ideals of the Sun God to the core" and you win a social contest against him that causes him to go directly against the ideals of the Sun God, then you've got him to act out of character.

Irrelevant. I already covered this above. If going against the ideals of the Sun God isn't an option for the character, then it isn't an option. It's just that easy.

Now, I mean I suppose you could try to bound social contests with auto-fail and auto-win scenarios, but at that point I say, why even bother? I mean if half the game is just DM adjudication as to what automatically works and what never works and there's this narrow range of stuff that "might work on a lucky coin flip", why not just eliminate the coin flip range entirely?

Because it's boring? Because it's the DM job to set up fun challenges? Because it's a game? You might as well say that combats should all be against either the Tarrasque or sickly kobolds, because automatically winning or losing is much better.

Yes, but they're particularly easy decisions. Pick your biggest number. That's it. Doesn't take much creativity or decision-making skills to see that your intimidate number is bigger than your bluff or diplomacy.

Remember that system you thought of? That's right. Wrong one. This would be a system where spamming your highest skill would not be optimal.

Archtyrant Terevoth:
[indent][list=1]

No, because physical action is abstracted. There are some RPG systems (live-action) where you actually go fight with padded swords. D&D isn't one of those though, because it's made to be a tabletop game. Anything you can't do at a table must be abstracted.

Is who I'm speaking to not abstracted? The whole experience of this game is an abstraction.

Now, you very well can talk, and you can think, so those things really don't need to be abstracted at all. In fact, you lose game immersion by abstracting these things to a boring dice roll. I don't know about you, but I want to know how I convinced the king, and why he's doing what he's doing. If the answer is just "I got lucky", that strains suspension of disbelief for me. Is the king some moron who flips a coin to choose what action he's going to take. Is he so easy to influence that you don't need any facts?

If you want to ask an NPC for help, or whatever you better have a good reason why they should help you. As a DM, I have to play those NPCs so I need to know thier motivations, and "the king flipped a coin and it came up heads." just kills it for me as far as well thought-out NPCs.

You are taking my points out of context. I've never stated that there is no consideration given to the applicable facts, nor do a propose a game where every interaction is reduced to a fifty-fifty coin toss. You are again being much too radical with your argument.

Numbers represent character capability, and dice represent attempted character action. The story is as colorful and vivid as you desire it to be, though the fact remains that the story is a description of the dice and numbers.[/indent]


DGunther:
[indent][list=1]

So, if a player has a character that has low social skills comes up with a clever argument or solution for a 'difficult' social encounter, a simple +2 or +4 circumstance bonus, then roll the die and presto chango - success or failure!

Simply put, yes.

A player should be limited by the capabilities of his character when taking action in-game. Application of player knowledge/capability is meta-gaming, and that's disallowed by the rules.

I don't buy that. Player cleverness should rewarded, not left to random chance to determine success or failure. Maybe that's just me. Apparently, you feel as though it should.

Player cleverness is rewarded, as characterized by the granted +X modifier. The player's effect is tempered by his character's capability; logical and fair.

And they don't if a roll of the die IS NOT made?

They don't if they as a player are less charismatic/vocal/influential/clever/social than their character.

Smooth running game? Yes, in that less thinking is needed, just roll the die. Very enjoyable? Not from my perspective. But on this we will have to agree to disagree, as it appears we have very different gaming experiences and play style.

A quote from Babylon 5 character Londo Mollari: "Truth is a three edged sword. There's your side, there's my side, and then's there is the truth." I'm not sure if that was taken from somebody else, B5 was where I first heard it. Anyway, the point is, you seem to be interested in everything being basically a flip of the coin, or in this case a roll of the die. Seldom, if at all, is any social situation simply black and white, yes or no. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.

I am in no way interested in reducing my game experience to the flip of a coin. I am, however, interested in having an objective official to consult in order to assist in adjudication.[/indent]

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

For freeform DMing, this isn't a bad idea, but this is rather tough to pull off in standard games, because a lot of DMs come in with a plot pre-established. So walking into the throne room, generally the DM knows who the bad guys and the good guys are. And in this case, you basically know how your NPCs are supposed to react based on political plots.

Absolutely. I'm certainly not saying it's for everyone, just giving an example of how I make the existing social system work in my games.

To make your system work, your NPCs need to exist in some kind of quantum state where their loyalties aren't known (even to the DM) until they're actually tested.

Indeed. That tends to be how my games work. Elements are introduced as they become relevant to the plot (though I do obviously keep some long-term arcs running in the background as well) or simply thrown in to shake things up, but I try to keep the story as open as possible - the more control I give to the players, the more they surprise me, which keeps the game new and exciting for everyone.

The problem with this scenario is that social skills represent luck more than anything else. If a failure means that you run into some nefarious political plot, then that means that diplomacy skill is simply "being lucky enough not to run into nefarious political plots."

Hmm, no. I think you need to shift your paradigm a bit. In my example, the dice roll has no bearing on the characters or how lucky they are. It's simply a way of introducing unexpected elements into the story. It's not that they 'ran into' the plot, it's that the plot didn't exist until it was necessary for the story.

The low diplomacy guy is constantly wondering why every innkeeper, blacksmith and lesser noble is embroidered in some crazy conspiracy against what he happens to be wanting to do, while the high diplomacy guy never seems to run into any political plots at all.

Haha, I can see how it might have come across that way. The example was more to demonstrate a different approach to having an expert diplomat with a powerful argument (acted out by the player) nonetheless fail in his goal. I certainly wouldn't want to be using it in every situation, and characters with low Diplomacy and Charisma would generally simply fail: their delivery might be off, they put things the wrong way, someone inadvertently got insulted, or they just couldn't get their point across.

Also, this is by no means the only way that I introduce new elements into the plot. I might have already decided that the king was involved in such a plot... in that case, both low and high Diplomacy checks would probably be met with refusal, but the high check could cause the king to reconsider his involvement and attempt to make things right. It's all about taking the story in a new direction.

That could work I guess, though it'd make the entire campaign seem a bit random, since the king wasn't actually your enemy until you specifically tried to talk to him.

Well... the king was neither your friend or your enemy; he wasn't even a character before the PCs tried to talk to him, just a placeholder. It's not like there's a whole functional world and the characters are just walking around in it meeting people... as DM, you create the world to be centred around the characters. It makes no difference to the players if the king wasn't really their enemy before they tried to talk to him - they weren't privy to that information. All they know is that they tried talking to him, and now they know he's their enemy. For all they know, you could have had that planned out months in advance.

That doesn't make much sense to me, though it does fit in rather well with the DoW style "diplomacy stakes", since quite literally you "create" a new enemy by failing your diplomacy check. The king becomes part of the conspiracy simply because you went to talk to him and rolled poorly.

The important difference is that the players don't know that. They don't see this decision-making process, it's completely opaque to them. They don't know that they 'caused' the king's involvement (unless you tell them). I think there's a distinction between the game and the meta-game that you're missing, or possibly you don't make the same distinction in your own games.

Also the problem arises when the quantum state is tested twice. What happens if one PC fails and then another PC tries again later once the king has already been defined as being part of the conspiracy? If the second PC succeeds has it been decided that the king has backed out of the conspiracy, or is the second roll an auto-fail since the king is now a defined element?

Heh. Sorry I didn't make myself clear enough. I use this for situations where I don't have a clearly-defined, well-established story element already in place (which, given my DMing style, is quite often). Like I said above, if I already knew the king's motivations for refusing the request, I'd consider having the high Diplomacy check mean that he was having second thoughts, and indeed, he might back out of the conspiracy (or try to... hello, regicide).

I don't really know if many PCs would like the system once they realize what it is. Most PCs like a mystery that makes sense from the beginning. It's a bit hard to have a free-floating mystery that actually changes as the adventure progresses.

Well, part of the beauty of the system is that your players never have to find out if you don't want them to... you just have to stay one step ahead of them, which is easy, since you have privileged information. I don't like to plan out my mysteries from the beginning, because I find that my players tend to discover ways to short-circuit them (damn clever players!), leaving my adventure much shorter than I anticipated. Since the players often discuss their theories on what's happening while sitting around the table, I just steal their best ideas and add a few twists of my own to keep them on their toes. This has resulted in some adventure arcs that I never would have been able to come up with on my own in a million years. I'm not saying it's easy, but when it works, it's fantastic.

So, to answer your thought, I haven't had any complaints so far.

I'll just put in a quick comment like other people have put in before. Social Rolls have been a key-part of WoD and the Storyteller/Storytelling system since day one and with dialogue and social interaction being a key-part of WoD I think it shows that they can be done properly and help the game.

If a game like WoD can benefit from Social Rolls I see no reason why a generally more relaxed social-game like D&D can't also benefit.

Ludanto wrote:

Fun can be subjective, of course. My point is that social conflict mechanics can be fun for the same reasons that combat is fun, whatever reasons those may be.

Well, combat is fun because it's actually a mini-game that resembles a fight reasonably well.

The problem with most social system is they tend to be mini-games that don't resemble conversations well. So you get the feeling you're just playing a game of checkers to try to win an argument and it's so abstract, you've lost the concept of what you're fighting for.

And your argument here amounts to the same thing as saying that the guy who participates in combat and fights more gets shafted if his character doesn't have high combat stats, rewarding the min/maxer and screwing the guy who just describes what his character would do in combat. I'm really not sure what your point is with this one.

Well, keep in mind that a basic precept of D&D is that all characters have combat ability. It doesn't always mean doing damage, but it can be buffing, healing, battlefield control. In a combat you roll initiative and give everyone a turn, because everyone is doing something.

Social situations aren't like that. It's not just one giant cacophony of people yelling stuff at each other, and everyone isn't guaranteed to get a turn. Also, some characters are just better all around at social stuff than others, unlike the combat system where everyone gets their various uses.

Remember that rules system you thought up? Does it make the contributions of players with low scores meaningless? Then that's not the system I'm talking about. It is quite possible for players with low scores to contribute meaningfully to the group.

The problem isn't so much low scores, it's diversity. There's more to do in combat than just swinging away and trying to do damage. And as far as social systems go, you need that too. Unfortunately, because it's not a fight and it's a social scene, you don't want it to just turn into a war of pure numbers either with everyone shouting at each other. I mean everyone can picture people getting their turns in a combat encounter, because it's all happening simultaneously in the heat of combat. In a social setting, that sort of structure doesn't really make sense, unless it's a formalized debate or something where everyone gets a turn to speak. You can have a bunch of lawyers with you, but only one of em gets to give the opening statement at your trial. Social situations are rarely a group effort.

There's always a "system", whether it's the rules or the DM. Learning to manipulate the rules to my advantage seems healthier than learning to manipulate the DM to my advantage.

It's not really manipulating the DM, it's trying to figure out the NPCs. There's much more game immersion to freeform RP than there is to winning a game of checkers and suddenly changing the NPC's mind.

I'm not going to use the "S" word, but I never said anywhere that players couldn't make choices. Just like they can choose to fight a monster or not, flank or not, power-attack or not. The same applies to the social arena. There are plenty of choices.

The problem is making a social system that allows a lot of choices while still retaining the feel of a conversation. Thus far I've never seen it done. A simple social system is like a coin flip, a complex one tends to be more like a game of checkers, but either way there's a disconnect between the NPC and the PC doing the talking.

Irrelevant. I already covered this above. If going against the ideals of the Sun God isn't an option for the character, then it isn't an option. It's just that easy.

The problem is that your system only gets used in that narrow window between auto-fail and auto-succeed.

kadeton wrote:

Hmm, no. I think you need to shift your paradigm a bit. In my example, the dice roll has no bearing on the characters or how lucky they are. It's simply a way of introducing unexpected elements into the story. It's not that they 'ran into' the plot, it's that the plot didn't exist until it was necessary for the story.

Well, here's how i think of it.

I ask "what mechanically does having a high diplomacy score do in this campaign?"

Quite simply if you succeed on your checks NPCs agree with you, and due to the idea that they're agreeing for good reasons that are as of yet undefined prior to being tested, a good diplomacy check shifts the quantum state of an NPC to something favorable to you. A low diplomacy therefore does the opposite, shifting the quantum state to something unfavorable to you.

Now because it works such that their agreement fits with their undefined personality and backstory, it means that a high diplomacy shifts people's backstories and allegiances such that they are helpful to the party. This means that in the course of an adventure, high diplomacy scores are in effect, stocking your adventure path with people on your side. So instead of meeting the scheming king who wants to secretly loot the ruin for treasure for himself, you encounter the helpful king who wishes to see his people saved and is willing to pay adventurers to do it.

Now looking at this from a very basic simple perspective, diplomacy skill is a kind "luck" attribute that make sit so you are more likely to encounter helpful people.

Well, part of the beauty of the system is that your players never have to find out if you don't want them to... you just have to stay one step ahead of them, which is easy, since you have privileged information. I don't like to plan out my mysteries from the beginning, because I find that my players tend to discover ways to short-circuit them (damn clever players!), leaving my adventure much shorter than I anticipated.

Yeah, I suppose that could work, assuming you could maintain the illusion. The only problem becomes if the PCs try to use diplomacy on everything.

though what do you do if someone leads out with sense motive and tries to feel an NPC out before using diplomacy?

I'm fuzzy right now in my reccolection, but 3.5 has no disposition rules, does it? The simple Hostile to Friendly system where skill checks influence NPC disposition. Could this fantastic system siply be an elaborate version of that?

The problem with most social system is they tend to be mini-games that don't resemble conversations well.

You've admitted that you haven't played games with deep social conflict systems... so you don't have any real proof for this statement.

I've found that good social conflict systems model "real" conversations better than people roleplaying stuff out does... players have a degree of detatchment from what's going on that their characters don't, and it tends to make a lot of things that work very well in real conversation not work when used in acted-out conversation.

Trailfoot wrote:

I've found that good social conflict systems model "real" conversations better than people roleplaying stuff out does... players have a degree of detatchment from what's going on that their characters don't, and it tends to make a lot of things that work very well in real conversation not work when used in acted-out conversation.

Poor players haev that problem either through inexperience or because they aren't good players.

It's a GMs responsibility to steer that player off "player knowledge" and keep them aware of, and acting on, "character knowledge" alone.

It's not the responsibility of a system to do that, because no system can cover all bases, and since social interaction is the whole point of Role Playing is social interaction, no system ever should take the place of actually role playing out conversations and social encounters.

I'd also have to say that WoD social encounters opperate differently to 4e on a crucial point: Social is an group of skills which is separated into multiple subsequent and more specific types of interaction, which are further split into sub-skills for very specific desired outcomes of those interactions. 4e will not have skills. Also, WoD involves different attributes plus those skills and sub-skills. That, and you have to get five (5) times the goal number in order to totally shift attitudes. Most nominal skill check successes will merely cause "opponents" to see your point of view, but they probably still won't agree with you. You gotta roll HUGE to swing someone 180 degrees.

However, all that aside, no RPG should rely on a mechanical system to determine what role playing can. I'd rather look at my stats and role play my character and succeed than just slap a die down and hope for a 20 so my CHA 6 Barbarian gets free entrance into the Kings annual masked ball. (lol)

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well, combat is fun because it's actually a mini-game that resembles a fight reasonably well.

The problem with most social system is they tend to be mini-games that don't resemble conversations well. So you get the feeling you're just playing a game of checkers to try to win an argument and it's so abstract, you've lost the concept of what you're fighting for.

Again, if the system you're imagining "doesn't resemble conversation well" then it's not the system I'm talking about. It can and has been done.

Well, keep in mind that a basic precept of D&D is that all characters have combat ability. It doesn't always mean doing damage, but it can be buffing, healing, battlefield control. In a combat you roll initiative and give everyone a turn, because everyone is doing something.

Social situations aren't like that. It's not just one giant cacophony of people yelling stuff at each other, and everyone isn't guaranteed to get a turn. Also, some characters are just better all around at social stuff than others, unlike the combat system where everyone gets their various uses.

Is the system you're imagining one that doesn't give people things to do and tactical choices and a turn every round? Then you're thinking of the wrong system. And as I've pointed out before, not being as good doesn't mean you can't contribute meaningfully. I've seen it. (And for the record, "trained" diplomats will only have a slight advantage over the "untrained" in 4e, if we assume a SWSE design).

The problem isn't so much low scores, it's diversity. There's more to do in combat than just swinging away and trying to do damage. And as far as social systems go, you need that too. Unfortunately, because it's not a fight and it's a social scene, you don't want it to just turn into a war of pure numbers either with everyone shouting at each other. I mean everyone can picture people getting their turns in a combat encounter, because it's all happening simultaneously in the heat of combat. In a social setting, that sort of structure doesn't really make sense, unless it's a formalized debate or something where everyone gets a turn to speak. You can have a bunch of lawyers with you, but only one of em gets to give the opening statement at your trial. Social situations are rarely a group effort.

And they don't have to be group efforts. But they CAN be. And they can offer you an array of choices as diverse as combat. It exists.

It's not really manipulating the DM, it's trying to figure out the NPCs. There's much more game immersion to freeform RP than there is to winning a game of checkers and suddenly changing the NPC's mind.

And who controls the NPCs? The DM. Who decides if an NPC is moved or convinced by a PC? The DM. And how many deep personalities do you really think that the DM can maintain at one time? Still, it's a valid way to play. However, that doesn't make social mechanics any less valid.

The problem is making a social system that allows a lot of choices while still retaining the feel of a conversation. Thus far I've never seen it done. A simple social system is like a coin flip, a complex one tends to be more like a game of checkers, but either way there's a disconnect between the NPC and the PC doing the talking.

You know that system where there's a disconnect between the NPC and the PC doing the talking? Wrong system. You keep pointing out flaws in an imaginary system. I'm going to go ahead and call strawman.

The problem is that your system only gets used in that narrow window between auto-fail and auto-succeed.

If your straw-system only applies to a narrow window between auto-fail and auto-succeed, then it's still the wrong system. Besides, we've already covered this. It's analogous to "combat systems are only used in the narrow window between TPK and a single sickly kobold", which is just silly.

Ludanto, it sounds like you're referring tosome specific system, but to this point havent let on what it is. I've played RPGs for decades and haven't found a social system that has the scope you're suggesting without being totally unwieldy (meaning a series of charts and circular results, often requiring eventual fudging).

I say the social encounter "system" isn't possible the way you describe it.

Social combat systems actually work really well. Especially when you have a player that is a good talker and therefore gives his character an 8 Charisma thinking that he can just use his metagaming to get him out of any social situations.

Really, though, look at the social combat systems in games like Exalted. It makes diplomatic solutions just as exciting as "agrressive negotiations" and really rewards players that invest in the social skills, feats, and talents.

Ludanto wrote:

Is the system you're imagining one that doesn't give people things to do and tactical choices and a turn every round? Then you're thinking of the wrong system. And as I've pointed out before, not being as good doesn't mean you can't contribute meaningfully. I've seen it. (And for the record, "trained" diplomats will only have a slight advantage over the "untrained" in 4e, if we assume a SWSE design).

I'm not sure why people think that SWSE is all that much better. The gap isn't 20 points, but it's still pretty significant. +5 for trained, and likely about a 3 or 4 point difference based on charisma scores (the bard will likely have a very high cha). So that's a +8 or +9 difference. That means the best you can possibly do is what the diplomacy expert does on average. That's pretty big and while better, it's still not good.

And who controls the NPCs? The DM. Who decides if an NPC is moved or convinced by a PC? The DM. And how many deep personalities do you really think that the DM can maintain at one time? Still, it's a valid way to play. However, that doesn't make social mechanics any less valid.

I guess I just fail to see how putting NPC reactions in the hands of random chance helps any.

You know that system where there's a disconnect between the NPC and the PC doing the talking? Wrong system. You keep pointing out flaws in an imaginary system. I'm going to go ahead and call strawman.

Well honestly, you are doing a reverse strawman, you keep pointing to some "ideal" system and since you don't explain much about it other than how awesome it is, I can't debate against it. I can just debate stuff that I know. Now earlier there was enough said about DoW to the point where I can say some stuff about it. So if you want to talk about that, fine, because already I found some definite holes with it.

What system are you talking about anyway that's so perfect? I've heard you mention a few, but lets pick one in particular.

If your straw-system only applies to a narrow window between auto-fail and auto-succeed, then it's still the wrong system. Besides, we've already covered this. It's analogous to "combat systems are only used in the narrow window between TPK and a single sickly kobold", which is just silly.

Well, heres the thing. Combat systems don't have auto-fail and auto-succeed. If a group of level 1s want to take on a great wyrm, you can let them, and they'll fail miserably, but it's not auto-fail. That is, you don't have to insulate the game against a bad result by declaring that they can't enter combat at all. You let them enter combat and you play that combat out.

The only reason you'd ever declare an auto-fail or auto-success for the combat system is simply in the name of expediency, because you don't want to waste time dealing with epic characters slaughtering orcs.

Social systems are a different scenario. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you're declaring auto-fail or auto-successes not in the name of expediency, but rather because it's possible the social system may give you a result that's contrary to auto-fail or auto-success, and the way to prevent such a result is to declare an automatic failure or automatic success, because the chaos introduced by the social system could make an NPC potentially reject the million dollar bribe, or accept a bribe of a piece of worthless string.

Archtyrant Terevoth:
[indent]

I guess I just fail to see how putting NPC reactions in the hands of random chance helps any.

You keep insinuating that the implementation of a social system results in the abandonment of character. The reactions of NPCs do not become randomized. You do not roll the dice for every NPC interaction, only those in which a PC imposes himself on an NPC in some way. Random chance decides only outcome of conflict, as is true in every other aspect of the game.[/indent]

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

I'm not sure why people think that SWSE is all that much better. The gap isn't 20 points, but it's still pretty significant. +5 for trained, and likely about a 3 or 4 point difference based on charisma scores (the bard will likely have a very high cha). So that's a +8 or +9 difference. That means the best you can possibly do is what the diplomacy expert does on average. That's pretty big and while better, it's still not good.

Fair enough, but while that makes the bard-guy "great" at diplomacy, that still leaves the other characters at "very good". And since you're not competing with the bard-guy (he's on your side), "very good" still lets you in on the action to have some fun. Of course, we don't know how 4e will handle things, but knowing that the skills will be closer together should alleviate that particular concern somewhat.

I guess I just fail to see how putting NPC reactions in the hands of random chance helps any.

Well, first of all "random" chance is misleading. It's more of a calculated chance.

Beyond that, well, here's the list again.

Spoiler: Show

If any ONE of these happens, the rules have "helped". Note, however, the... 7th item on the list. Not every group needs to use social encounter rules. Of course, not every group needs combat rules, either, but they're there.

Well honestly, you are doing a reverse strawman, you keep pointing to some "ideal" system and since you don't explain much about it other than how awesome it is, I can't debate against it. I can just debate stuff that I know. Now earlier there was enough said about DoW to the point where I can say some stuff about it. So if you want to talk about that, fine, because already I found some definite holes with it.

What system are you talking about anyway that's so perfect? I've heard you mention a few, but lets pick one in particular.

Well, you're just on that side of the argument. You're essentially saying that good social rules can't exist and here's why. I'm saying good social rules CAN exist, because they do. I'm not talking about some "ideal" system. I'm simply pointing out reasons why "good social rules can't exist because of THIS" is wrong.

I'm reluctant to choose a specific social system, because that requires a lot of typing and because you probably won't like it, not becaus it's a bad system, but because apparently having to touch dice or consider resources while playing a game just ruins it for you. And that's fine. Not everybody has to like or use social systems. Use what works for you.

Unfortunately, "perfect" is a relative term. Your perfect system seems to be "Just say stuff that I think my character would say and let the DM decide (however he does) what actually happens". That can be fun. I did that last night in C&C and had a blast. Of course, that was just haggling over the price of gems and providing a little fun sniping between some nobles. If it had been something truely important, something "core" to my character, then that simply would not have cut it (for me). Again, if that system (because it IS a vague and fluffy system) works for you, then great, you don't have any need for clearly defined rules or dice.

But just for kicks, I'll give it a go. "The Shadow of Yesterday" is great, and "Dogs in the Vineyard" is super-awesome, but they pretty much don't differentiate physical combat from social conflict or skill use, often mixing the three, and while that might be more to your liking, I'm going to guess not. That leaves me with "Spirit of the Century" and "Burning Wheel", but I haven't read "Spirit of the Century" in a while and it's "20's pulp adventure" rather than fantasy, so I'll stick with "Burning Wheel"'s Duel of Wits.

Well, heres the thing. Combat systems don't have auto-fail and auto-succeed. If a group of level 1s want to take on a great wyrm, you can let them, and they'll fail miserably, but it's not auto-fail. That is, you don't have to insulate the game against a bad result by declaring that they can't enter combat at all. You let them enter combat and you play that combat out.

The only reason you'd ever declare an auto-fail or auto-success for the combat system is simply in the name of expediency, because you don't want to waste time dealing with epic characters slaughtering orcs.

Social systems are a different scenario. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you're declaring auto-fail or auto-successes not in the name of expediency, but rather because it's possible the social system may give you a result that's contrary to auto-fail or auto-success, and the way to prevent such a result is to declare an automatic failure or automatic success, because the chaos introduced by the social system could make an NPC potentially reject the million dollar bribe, or accept a bribe of a piece of worthless string.

Correcting you because you're wrong.

In social conflicts, it's also in the name of expediency. If the PCs offer a million gold to the sickly kobold, they automatically win (well, really there wasn't a conflict to begin with, but whatever), so you just describe the outcome or have the players talk it out. If a PC tries to convince the Tarrasque (or an army of orcs) to give up their daughters, you just describe the refusal or let the players talk it out until it feels right (but they still know that they can't win). You wouldn't engage the system because it would be boring and pointless, much like the mismatched fights.

A player should be limited by the capabilities of his character when taking action in-game. Application of player knowledge/capability is meta-gaming, and that's disallowed by the rules.

Player knowledge is meta-gaming, player capability is not.
For the most part, I agree with this. However, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in while. One may take the stance that this is determined by a modifier and a good roll of the die, something I have recently heard from the younger gamers (2 to 3 years gaming experience) that I've been DMing with recently. I'll explain my stance under the next quote.

Player cleverness is rewarded, as characterized by the granted +X modifier. The player's effect is tempered by his character's capability; logical and fair.

Not entirely. As I said above, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in while. A +X modifier and a chance roll of the die is insufficient to reflect that. As a DM, have you ever 'fudged' die rolls? Something that every DM I've ever played with over the course of my own gaming experience has done, myself included. Or, are your purely and totally mechanical and objective - result of the die roll is it?

I am in no way interested in reducing my game experience to the flip of a coin. I am, however, interested in having an objective official to consult in order to assist in adjudication.

From everything you've said, the stance you've been taking and supporting is the objectiveness of a roll of the die (thus a coin flip - pure luck, random chance) with an appropriate modifier and DC is sufficient for adjudication, or rather being the sole adjudicating determinant. At this point it's not a DM adjudicating the encounter, it's simple mechanical description based on the numbers. Some things, from my perspective, need that sort of numbers based adjudication - combat and saves, and certain skill rolls, all of the time. However, I see a less random approach as being required for others - the aforementioned clever player idea.

Player cleverness is rewarded, as characterized by the granted +X modifier. The player's effect is tempered by his character's capability; logical and fair.

Fair? Yes and no. Logical? In that it comes down to a number.

DGunther wrote:

From everything you've said, the stance you've been taking and supporting is the objectiveness of a roll of the die (thus a coin flip - pure luck, random chance) with an appropriate modifier and DC is sufficient for adjudication, or rather being the sole adjudicating determinant. At this point it's not a DM adjudicating the encounter, it's simple mechanical description based on the numbers. Some things, from my perspective, need that sort of numbers based adjudication - combat and saves, and certain skill rolls, all of the time. However, I see a less random approach as being required for others - the aforementioned clever player idea.

It would be wrong to fail to comprehend the difference between statistical uncertainty over biased concatenated samples, and a single coin flip.

-vk

Actually... after about twelve years as a GM, two years ago, I stopped fudging die rolls. EVER.

My games got better, and I became a better GM. I was forced to gain more mastery over the rules, since I couldn't fake a roll to pull myself out of a mistake. But now? I run with no screen and make all rolls publicly. My players know that everything is fair, and that they're succeeding or failing on their own merits, not because I faked a roll to pull their fat out of the fryer or to screw them over.

You might want to try running without fudging for a bit. It's really awesome.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well, here's how i think of it.

I ask "what mechanically does having a high diplomacy score do in this campaign?"

Quite simply if you succeed on your checks NPCs agree with you, and due to the idea that they're agreeing for good reasons that are as of yet undefined prior to being tested, a good diplomacy check shifts the quantum state of an NPC to something favorable to you. A low diplomacy therefore does the opposite, shifting the quantum state to something unfavorable to you.

Now because it works such that their agreement fits with their undefined personality and backstory, it means that a high diplomacy shifts people's backstories and allegiances such that they are helpful to the party. This means that in the course of an adventure, high diplomacy scores are in effect, stocking your adventure path with people on your side. So instead of meeting the scheming king who wants to secretly loot the ruin for treasure for himself, you encounter the helpful king who wishes to see his people saved and is willing to pay adventurers to do it.

Now looking at this from a very basic simple perspective, diplomacy skill is a kind "luck" attribute that make sit so you are more likely to encounter helpful people.

Having a high Diplomacy skill means that, at the end of the day, you will get more help from people you encounter than a character with low Diplomacy. I think that's pretty self-evident from the description of the skill. However, that doesn't mean that even the greatest Diplomancer will succeed every time.

The relevant decision, from the DM, is how to represent that in-game. The player who has invested a lot of points in Diplomacy will want to feel like his character is actually a great diplomat. That means that saying "Oh, you failed, I guess you muffed your speech" is very unsatisfying to that player, not to mention immersion-breaking.

From my perspective, it is most important that the dice dictate the course of events - after all, if they don't affect anything, why roll them? If you don't want random influence, a diceless system like Amber would be better. Therefore, if the dice say the character failed, then he failed... but the dice never, ever say why he failed. That's totally up to the players (especially the DM, but I often let the other players have input when appropriate). This gives me the freedom to create new plot elements on the fly (my preferred style), with the dice still determining the results of character actions.

I still don't understand your association of Diplomacy as 'luck'. Diplomacy does make people more likely to help you, but that's obvious.

I think you might not be understanding the structure of my campaigns. I make them very player-driven - by that, I mean that the characters' strengths and weaknesses actually drive the events of the story. The narrative is essentially created around them, on the fly, according to what plot elements will best suit the characters. A high-Diplomacy character should be accumulating lots of allies in his travels - if everyone he met was automatically and unchangeably hostile, the story wouldn't be appropriate for the character. Hence, allowing the character to 'create' allies wherever he goes gives the player a greater sense of satisfaction... and creating the occasional diplomatic enemy (determined by dice rolls, unless I choose otherwise) serves to keep things interesting, create new plot hooks and enhance immersion.

Yeah, I suppose that could work, assuming you could maintain the illusion. The only problem becomes if the PCs try to use diplomacy on everything.

though what do you do if someone leads out with sense motive and tries to feel an NPC out before using diplomacy?

If the PCs try to use Diplomacy on everything, there will still be some established elements who are resistant to their advances; Diplomacy can't force people to act against their nature. It is only on the undefined plot elements (what you call 'quantum' characters) that the players can help define the result (in your 'quantum' analogy, an undefined character is a wave function; when the characters test that function with Diplomacy or any other social skill, it collapses into a character with at least some defined elements).

Thus, if they try to assess a character's motivations with Sense Motive first, that will force me to establish them. They are then subject to influence from the characters, but not definition. However, this very rarely happens... my players almost always lead with one of the 'active' social skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate) and use the 'reactive' Sense Motive to determine why everything went haywire.

Anyway, I think you might be approaching this idea from a somewhat rules-lawyery perspective (no offense intended, it's just a handy descriptor). You seem to want a consistent set of rules telling how things should work (the same way) across all situations. I don't use the above techniques in every single case... just wherever I feel it would be interesting or fun. I'm not a gamist DM - to be honest, I don't really care what the rules state (though I always try to make them fit what I want to happen if possible), I'm more interested in what would make a good story. The way I DM helps me do that.

I'm really surprised that the discussion go so long!
There are some issue that I think are very important

1) If you do not use a rule system that let the "dices" help you in social interaction, peoples with not strong personality or not good at acting and talking, could never play an high charisma character... That can be at least rude
2) There are things that "diplomacy" cannot change. You cannot convince a king to give you all his kingdom, his wife and suicide, no matter how high you roll
3) Good/bad ideas can result in positive/negative bonus to rolls. If you tell me "I say to the king he will be a stupid do to that XXX things", it will probably end in a bad negative modifier (at least) or in an automatic bad failure (probably)
4) A charisma 4 character with no diplomacy skill points MUST fail most of the time. Good IDEAS can give you some bonuses, but your character will use that ideas in a BAD WAY because it is very bad in social interaction
5) If we let player resolve all social interaction ignoring their character charsima and social skill points, player will be enforced to ignore those characteristic and skills

Role playing is in the hands of the players and the DM. No social combat system can ruin it, because it can be no more than a set of rules that can help the DM to adjudicate.

You can convince a king to give you everything and then kill himself. Obviously you've never been married:P

This thread title makes me want to say 'Good! Die! Die! Die DEad!' Because most people who talk about 'role-playing' are incredibly insufferable.

People keep saying that social combat end up on a random chance like the flip of a coin. It seems like people really arn't even aware of how it works in 3.5 at this point. Even now, the social abilities cannot do what you are talking about.

Diplomacy changes the other's attitude toward you. It doesn't mean they become your willing slave all of a sudden. Yes, you can make the king now like you and feel you are trustworthy and deserving of his aid. That doesn't mean he is going to suddenly abandon his principles. (though the Epic level rules do allow for you to move them to a fanatical follower, but that is EPIC level after all). You can be as diplomatic as you want, and the guard might think you are an absolutely great guy, but, if he is an honest and dedicated guard, truely sworn to his duty, he wont leave his post because he likes you.

Bluff can make someone belive what you are saying is true. They may react accordingly, but that doens't mean you suddenly have mind control. If you have a high enough success on a bluff check, the guard might leave his post when you tell him that your his replacement. Why did he leave his post? Because he belived you. Thats it. No other reason. Its a measure of how convincing you are in your statements, either trying to prove you are correct or when trying to pull the woll over someone's eyes.

Intimidate is about scaring someone to the point they will obey. It's temporary and will eventually leave someone disliking you. And it has the chance of failing while still leaving the subject scared silly. You can intimidate the guard into running away, and he may be scared or cowering for a little bit, but he will eventually get his act together enough and now openly be against you(and likely sound the alarm once you are inside)

None of these skills forces changes on the NPC's like people are implying. None of the "bard convinces king to give him his kingdom" bits, or "rogue convinces lich to become a hari krishna" nonsense. The NPC's will still have their own beliefs, own motivations, own personalities that the DM gave them. They may now like the PC's more, or belive what they are telling them, or be scared to disobey them, but what they actually do is still up to the DM and his ability to roleplay with the characters.

How does any of the above remove rollplaying? It's simply a method to measure how much the CHARACTER is charming, conving or scary in any given situation.

DGunther:
[indent][list=1]

Player knowledge is meta-gaming, player capability is not.

Player knowledge translates as player capability as it applies to social interaction.

Not entirely. As I said above, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in while. A +X modifier and a chance roll of the die is insufficient to reflect that. As a DM, have you ever 'fudged' die rolls? Something that every DM I've ever played with over the course of my own gaming experience has done, myself included. Or, are your purely and totally mechanical and objective - result of the die roll is it?

I agree with your assertion that even a doomed someone is capable of the improbable. This truth is best addressed by opposed rolls, which is already assumed by the mechanic during social interaction, in contrast to rolling against a static number. Statistically, the modifier associated with one's roll maintains him ahead, behind, or on the curve. A character with a high modifier will generally maintain the upper-hand in a diplomatic negotiation with an NPC who has a low modifier. Characters and NPCs with comparable modifiers will have their interaction tempered by the randomness of the dice, which maintains the DM as facilitator as opposed to puppet-master.

My years of 2E saw many a fudged die-roll, though this practice came to a quick halt with the advent of 3E. Given the well-thought mechanic (in most regards), and a drastic change in desired player play-style, the dice assumed the role of official arbiter. Reliance on the dice as ultimate authority completely avoids any and all debate at the table in regard to adjudication; numbers cannot be denied. Numbers are tangible things for players to understand, as well as accept, when things begin to look gloomy for their characters. DM fiat is flawed in the sense that a line must be drawn between whom you let die and whom you let live, whom you let get ahead in the conversation and whom you hold back, whom you allow to overcome an obstacle and whom you deny, etc. The dice have no investment in what is taking place, they are indiscriminate, and they are not subject to the same issue of trust/integrity that is often brought to question between player and DM. What I enjoy most about completely relying on the dice is that there is a constant sense of danger for the players, which reflects itself well in how the characters interact with their world. Being mechanically objective goes a long way toward maintaining a DM's role as a referee and story-teller in which the players have perfect trust.

From everything you've said, the stance you've been taking and supporting is the objectiveness of a roll of the die (thus a coin flip - pure luck, random chance) with an appropriate modifier and DC is sufficient for adjudication, or rather being the sole adjudicating determinant. At this point it's not a DM adjudicating the encounter, it's simple mechanical description based on the numbers. Some things, from my perspective, need that sort of numbers based adjudication - combat and saves, and certain skill rolls, all of the time. However, I see a less random approach as being required for others - the aforementioned clever player idea.

The outcome of a die-roll in this game is less randomized due to the considered modifier. The outcome is essentially randomized, though the applied modifier maintains the numbers on a curve. Your analogy would have to include a coin that is heavier on one side, which evidences the modifier. More often than not the coin will flip in the favor of the tosser with a positive modifier, and in the favor of the challenger of the tosser with a negative modifier. This displays weighted outcome, which is less random than you would have me believe. Two characters with equal investment in capability would have equally weighted coins, which equally randomizes their toss; undesired only by a DM who wishes to railroad the story or manipulate outcome via fiat.

Fair? Yes and no. Logical? In that it comes down to a number.

Logical in that the player's effect is applied to the game through the statistical strength/weakness of his character, which is true in all aspects of the game.[/indent]

Trailfoot wrote:

Actually... after about twelve years as a GM, two years ago, I stopped fudging die rolls. EVER.

My games got better, and I became a better GM. I was forced to gain more mastery over the rules, since I couldn't fake a roll to pull myself out of a mistake. But now? I run with no screen and make all rolls publicly. My players know that everything is fair, and that they're succeeding or failing on their own merits, not because I faked a roll to pull their fat out of the fryer or to screw them over.

You might want to try running without fudging for a bit. It's really awesome.

I've had far too many experiences as a DM with encounters, that purely from a numbers perspective, should have been well within the capabilities of my player's characters. What went wrong? A string of a low die rolling. I've never fudged a roll to screw the group over, but have had to fudge rolls to prevent TPK.

As far as mastery of the rules - what takes more effort on the part of a DM, an understanding of the rules to handle a pregenerated adventure, such as one of the many modules that were released for the game? Or, an understanding of the rules that to handle a fly by the seat of your pants, as you run the game adventure? Both have challenges that require a strong understanding of the rules. Having done both, I find the latter requires a stronger understanding than the first. However, I digress, as this isn't the forum for discussion of mastering the rules.

Being mechanically objective goes a long way toward maintaining a DM's role as a referee and story-teller in which the players have perfect trust.

For me, and quite possibly (at least on this message board) just me, that makes the game feel like a CRPG, not a tabletop RPG. Everything becomes static, no player freedom to alter the direction of the story, follow the script that has been set. No player control other than the illusion of free will. No story telling other than that which is indicated by the roll of the die.

The outcome of a die-roll in this game is less randomized due to the considered modifier. The outcome is essentially randomized, though the applied modifier maintains the numbers on a curve. Your analogy would have to include a coin that is heavier on one side, which evidences the modifier. More often than not the coin will flip in the favor of the tosser with a positive modifier, and in the favor of the challenger of the tosser with a negative modifier. This displays weighted outcome, which is less random than you would have me believe. Two characters with equal investment in capability would have equally weighted coins, which equally randomizes their toss; undesired only by a DM who wishes to railroad the story or manipulate outcome via fiat.

It's pointless for me to continue championing a more free formed method, or DM fiat or story railroading method (as you seem to view it as), compared to a more statistically mechanical method, roll of the die or CRPG-follow the script (the view I see it as), social encounter resolution. Both methods have their pros and cons. Neither is better than the other, just different.

DGunther wrote:

For me, and quite possibly (at least on this message board) just me, that makes the game feel like a CRPG, not a tabletop RPG. Everything becomes static, no player freedom to alter the direction of the story, follow the script that has been set. No player control other than the illusion of free will. No story telling other than that which is indicated by the roll of the die.

I've asked this before, but no-one seems to want to address it. What exactly are you doing that every social encounter is reliant on one and only one die roll? The current 3.5 rules for social encounters (aka diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate) can either make someone feel better about you, belive what your telling them, or scare them into being obediant.

None of that means roleplaying is gone. I don't see how your getting otherwise. The DM still has to roleplay the NPC's reaction. And the Players should still be roleplaying how their PC's react. Where are you getting otherwise? How do you think it actually works even now?

DGunther wrote:

For me, and quite possibly (at least on this message board) just me, that makes the game feel like a CRPG, not a tabletop RPG. Everything becomes static, no player freedom to alter the direction of the story, follow the script that has been set. No player control other than the illusion of free will. No story telling other than that which is indicated by the roll of the die.



It's pointless for me to continue championing a more free formed method, or DM fiat or story railroading method (as you seem to view it as), compared to a more statistically mechanical method, roll of the die or CRPG-follow the script (the view I see it as), social encounter resolution. Both methods have their pros and cons. Neither is better than the other, just different.

I'm surprised to find myself disagreeing with this. If the PC was correctly built, then the PC is strong (from a mathematical perspective) in all the ways that he should be and weak (from a mathematical perspective) in all the ways that he should be when it comes to influencing NPCs socially.
That being the case, the only way I can see that you might have a point is if you were trying to do something (through your own strength of personality) that your character wouldn't be able to do (you are more charismatic than your character). But that's not really a problem.
OR I see your concern being one of letting people get away with reducing things to a die roll when they should be acting it out. But the choice of acting it out or just die rolling is going to be up to the GM - who often has to balance stuff like wrapping up the game session so that everyone can leave on time with making the game exciting. In other words, its an option that the GM can choose to exercise or ignore. That's a good thing.

DGunther wrote:

I've had far too many experiences as a DM with encounters, that purely from a numbers perspective, should have been well within the capabilities of my player's characters. What went wrong? A string of a low die rolling. I've never fudged a roll to screw the group over, but have had to fudge rolls to prevent TPK.

As far as mastery of the rules - what takes more effort on the part of a DM, an understanding of the rules to handle a pregenerated adventure, such as one of the many modules that were released for the game? Or, an understanding of the rules that to handle a fly by the seat of your pants, as you run the game adventure? Both have challenges that require a strong understanding of the rules. Having done both, I find the latter requires a stronger understanding than the first. However, I digress, as this isn't the forum for discussion of mastering the rules.

Eh, I hardly ever use modules. I think the only one I ever ran in 3.x was one that I converted out of 1e.

The best system I've ever seen comes from my current DM. Summed up briefly, it goes like this: "You can just roll dice if you like, but if you can describe it in a way that sounds awesome, you get a circumstance bonus to pull it off." That applies to all checks.

So far, I've used that rule to:

1. Attempt to run up a skeletal dragon's spine with my axe in hand and smash it into his skull.

2. Regale a bartender with a tale of a half-orc bard in order to befriend him and get needed info out of him.

3. Baseball slide through a giant's legs to get behind him and sneak attack his hamstring.

The fun thing is, when you put a rule in like that, players respond, and the game becomes much more awesome. Our druid, for instance, has come up with rhyming couplets to recite whenever he casts a spell (I cast Flaming Sphere: "Fiery ball, come when I call!"). Our fighter, not so much so, he's mostly in the "I roll dice" camp, but his talents are more artistic (being a professional graphic designer), so instead he'll draw sketches of memorable situations and characters to help us all visualize it. It's the most fun in a D&D group I've had in a long time.

On the downside, you also have to accept bad die rolls when they come. For instance, I regularly roll wisdom checks on myself to consider whether my hot-headed bard would be sensible enough to do the reasonable thing instead of charging into battle teeth-first (she usually fails). Then there was the time that she entered a beauty contest, and I rolled a 1 on her charisma check and decided she'd tripped on a loose floorboard and face-planted in front of all the judges. Everyone got a good laugh out of it and fun was maintained.

In short: I fully endorse the idea of a social interaction system, and look forward to even more chances to describe awesome things and gain even more bonuses to an even wider spread of die rolls.

Ah, yes, the Iron Heroes approach to things.

Truly a way of doing things that promotes awesomeness at the table.

DGunther wrote:

It's pointless for me to continue championing a more free formed method, or DM fiat or story railroading method (as you seem to view it as), compared to a more statistically mechanical method, roll of the die or CRPG-follow the script (the view I see it as), social encounter resolution. Both methods have their pros and cons. Neither is better than the other, just different.

I use all of these methods situationally, actually. It's not that hard to intuitively decide whether a given situation should be:

* Entirely decided by what you say

* Influenced by whether or not you have a higher modifier, but still heavily influenced by what you say

*A D20 roll with your modifier added

*A D10 roll with no modifiers.

For example:

You're invited to a fancy party in Sharn but have lost your invitation. You approach the Warforged doorman and attempt to convince him you're suppose to be there. Your strange, human social skills are completely lost on him, and only the players words affect the situation. The player shows him her I.D. papers which clearly indicate she is reputable, and the Warforged let's her in.

Once inside, she encounters the ambassador from Aundair the group had met earlier and engages him in a rather public political debate. This is an important conversation, so her modifiers are taken into account but what is primarily considered are the players words. The player proves a good match for the DM, yet the ambassador has a much better modifier and they both agree he should talk her into contradicting herself.

She's actually a spy, and later on someone who is suspicious confronts her. She tries to explain away the inconsistencies and rolls a 14 on her bluff check and adds +13 for a total of 27. The suspicious man rolls a 19 but has only a +5 sense motive modifier, for a total of 24. She lies quite convincingly, not giving away any telltale sings of it. He still has reason to be suspicious, but begins to doubt his theory due to her great perceived sincerity.

Later on she's asked to make a speech, but neither the players nor the DM really want to act it out, so she simply rolls a D20 and adds per perform (oratory) modifier. The DM also has her roll a knowledge (nobility and royalty) check. She gets a 31 on the first and a 23 on the second. The DM decides her speech was brilliant and she was able to weave her political knowledge into it nicely, gaining the respect of many of the guests.

On the way out she runs into a Duke from the country and two of his bodyguards. One of his men knew her previous identity, so the DM decides to roll a D10 with a 20% chance that that particular bodyguard was with the Duke today. The result was a 4, so the guards did not recognize her.

I suppose it's possible the first and second methods to unfairly penalize players who themselves have poor social skills, but it hasn't been an issue so far and serves to really draw people into the story. If one of my players expresses frustration with it then I suppose I'll have to reconsider.

Subedei wrote:

I suppose it's possible the first and second methods to unfairly penalize players who themselves have poor social skills, but it hasn't been an issue so far and serves to really draw people into the story. If one of my players expresses frustration with it then I suppose I'll have to reconsider.

Here I agree very much!
No "social dice rules" can ruin any game if used properly, accurately and with a permanent spot on realism and with care to mantain things belivables
A detailed "social combat rule set" can "help DM to adjudicate" results in social interaction situation...
The key part is "can help"... not "will say". The DM use the dice results as an HELP to be "fair" and always use the same "hand" in all situation and with all players.

DGunther:
[indent][list=1]

For me, and quite possibly (at least on this message board) just me, that makes the game feel like a CRPG, not a tabletop RPG. Everything becomes static, no player freedom to alter the direction of the story, follow the script that has been set. No player control other than the illusion of free will. No story telling other than that which is indicated by the roll of the die.

I don't understand your logic.

You pointedly accuse the dice of adding an undesired "randomness" to adjudication, yet the use of dice somehow imposes a "static" quality to the story?

It's pointless for me to continue championing a more free formed method, or DM fiat or story railroading method (as you seem to view it as), compared to a more statistically mechanical method, roll of the die or CRPG-follow the script (the view I see it as), social encounter resolution. Both methods have their pros and cons. Neither is better than the other, just different.

Again, this counterintuitive logic.

In what way are randomly determined numbers scripted? If anything, it is the DM fiat/story-railroading method that is scripted. You would have me believe that you champion a free-form technique, but you adhere to more script than anyone who relies on dice to determine the direction of their story. Weighted chaos defines my game, whereas yours is propelled by desired outcome. Anything is possible/impossible with numerical adjudication, which contrasts with DM whim adjudication since DM whim adjudication is just that; adjudication subject to the whims of a single-someone playing god.[/indent]

The books are just guidelines. They can't force you to play exactly per the rules. If you don't like something, simply houserule it out.

You pointedly accuse the dice of adding an undesired "randomness" to adjudication, yet the use of dice somehow imposes a "static" quality to the story?

Leaving adjudication strictly to numbers comes across as being computer logic. CRPGs have a programmed script with a limited number of choices that a player may direct their character. Everything in a CRPG, other than the art and overall story, comes down to numbers, a stastical calculation.

In what way are randomly determined numbers scripted? If anything, it is the DM fiat/story-railroading method that is scripted. You would have me believe that you champion a free-form technique, but you adhere to more script than anyone who relies on dice to determine the direction of their story.

The 'scripting' that I am supposed to be doing as a DM is based upon the decisions and actions player's in my game make with their characters. The 'scripting' changes or adjusts with every character decision and action. So much, that I have had hole campaigns that I actually sat down and outlined, were scrapped because of character action and decision. The dice don't determine the direction of the story, to an extent, yes I as a DM have some influence the direction of the story will take, only in that I adjudicate how the actions and decisions the player's make with their characters have immediate or long-term consequences based upon the setting being in which the game is set. Quite honestly, my player's control the direction of the story more so than I do. A pre-prepped adventure doesn't allow for completely stepping outside of the story, just like a CRPG.

Weighted chaos defines my game, whereas yours is propelled by desired outcome. Anything is possible/impossible with numerical adjudication, which contrasts with DM whim adjudication since DM whim adjudication is just that; adjudication subject to the whims of a single-someone playing god.

If chaos is weighted, then it is not really chaos. As for running a game with a desired outcome - absolutely, that my players have an enjoyable evening trying to overcome obstacles. The DMs key responsibility is to run a game that is fun and challenging for their players. Adjudication is next in importance. Mind you, this is how I was introduced to the game almost 20 years ago by DMs who had played a lot longer than I. IF that is 'playing god', then I'm guilty, as are the players who've DMed for me. Like I said in a previous post, using the roll of the die style is no better or worse than on the fly. They're just different styles of gaming. Apparently, the former is more what newer gamers (those that began gaming around the time of the goofy
2e Player's Option revamp) are looking to experience.

After having gone back over my own stated perspective here in this forum, admittedly, there are a lot of holes. Essentially, what this comes down to for me, with a rumored social combat system or whatever it's supposed to be, the worst thing that can be added to the game are social BABs to beat down WILL defense, feats for social armor classes, and everything else that goes along with a social combat system. I guess then, the fear, or witch hunt for me, is having every social situation come down to die rolling the way combat does. If that is direction the game is going, something I can't say with any kind of certainty, then the game has been reduced to resemble more of a hard logic CRPG.

Another individual asked how are the social skills determining outcomes in social encounters? Although I haven't spoken to support this (quite the contrary in fact), they don't. They're just meant to bump reactions one way or another. My concern is stated above.

Bubblehead wrote:

The books are just guidelines. They can't force you to play exactly per the rules. If you don't like something, simply houserule it out.

I agree. However, I've been running into more and more strictly by the PHB rules players, less open to houserules. I try to run a game suited to what my players want. However, I'm not fond fo the rules oriented player I've been experiencing recently. Combats need to be set up with miniatures. Everything has to have a DC. Feels like no imagination is involved. I don't like it one bit, bu that's what the player's want. I used to enjoy running the game. Now it's become work.

DGunther wrote:

I agree. However, I've been running into more and more strictly by the PHB rules players, less open to houserules. I try to run a game suited to what my players want. However, I'm not fond fo the rules oriented player I've been experiencing recently. Combats need to be set up with miniatures. Everything has to have a DC. Feels like no imagination is involved. I don't like it one bit, bu that's what the player's want. I used to enjoy running the game. Now it's become work.

That because there wasn't a clear common field with your players
You wanted to play a game... they prefer another game... Actually those game are both called D&D, but they're different.
I've seen a lot of people falling in this mistake. BEFORE you start a campaing you have to CLARIFY why and how you want to play; wich rules, how many power in the DM hands and so on
If there isn't a common field BEFORE starting someone will be sad... or pheraps upset

DGunther wrote:

Another individual asked how are the social skills determining outcomes in social encounters? Although I haven't spoken to support this (quite the contrary in fact), they don't. They're just meant to bump reactions one way or another. My concern is stated above.

Thank you for finally responding, if albeit, briefly. I think what alot of people are saying is that you seem to remove anything like the social skills from the encounter, going strickly on what the PLAYER is saying and doing, and not taking into the mechanical abilities of the CHARACTER. This is currently represented by the skill checks that influance reactions, etc... And yes, they require dice. Do you use these skill checks(such as for diplomacy to change a NPC's attitude) or do you solely go with what the PLAYER does?

sparrowhawk4 wrote:

Thank you for finally responding, if albeit, briefly. I think what alot of people are saying is that you seem to remove anything like the social skills from the encounter, going strickly on what the PLAYER is saying and doing, and not taking into the mechanical abilities of the CHARACTER. This is currently represented by the skill checks that influance reactions, etc... And yes, they require dice. Do you use these skill checks(such as for diplomacy to change a NPC's attitude) or do you solely go with what the PLAYER does?

I keep skill checks to a minimum. I don't remove the social skills from the encounter, I remove a lot of the die rolling. I keep an at a glance sheet with key information about the PCs - HP, TAB, Saves, AC, Attributes, and Skill Ranks. In social encounters, the skill total is taken into account, and applied to an acted out conversation. This isn't done for every social encounter. There are some instances, generally similar to the example someone gave about giving a speech, that a roll of the die is made to determine how well or poorly the listeners are swayed by the message of the speech. Other than that, there is not much in the way of die rolling. Yes, it is a bit more controlling and less random than using the die, I've found it lends itself to a more fluid game. I guess a more direct way to answer your question, I use a combination of character skill and player input together in order to handle social encounters in order to minimize die rolling. I've found this especially useful when skills start getting into the 10 or more ranks area. The long-time players (people I've gamed with since I started gaming) passionately enjoy this method, while newer gamers I DM for prefer to see more die rolling, no matter how many times I explain how I run. I will always run a game that suits the desires of my players, because ultimately I want them to enjoy themselves and want to keep coming back for more.

Leilond wrote:

That because there wasn't a clear common field with your players
You wanted to play a game... they prefer another game... Actually those game are both called D&D, but they're different.
I've seen a lot of people falling in this mistake. BEFORE you start a campaing you have to CLARIFY why and how you want to play; wich rules, how many power in the DM hands and so on
If there isn't a common field BEFORE starting someone will be sad... or pheraps upset

Before any characters are ever generated, I sit down and have a BS session with the players in order to determine what style of play the group enjoys overall. If the style of play I enjoy as a DM doesn't fall into the group consensus, I still run understanding it doesn't suit my tastes. However, being a DM, yes I'm there to have fun too, however, it's the overall enjoyment of the players that take precedence. It's only recently that I've begun to feel like DMing is work, and it took this forum to understand why that is.

DGunther wrote:

Essentially, what this comes down to for me, with a rumored social combat system or whatever it's supposed to be, the worst thing that can be added to the game are social BABs to beat down WILL defense, feats for social armor classes, and everything else that goes along with a social combat system. I guess then, the fear, or witch hunt for me, is having every social situation come down to die rolling the way combat does. If that is direction the game is going, something I can't say with any kind of certainty, then the game has been reduced to resemble more of a hard logic CRPG.

Finally, a clearly-stated, valid concern.

I can understand your apprehension of a social combat system that removes the fun conversational aspect of social encounters in the game in favour of flavourless die rolling to determine the outcome.

However, what I think you need to understand is that what you've described is simply your impression of what the social system might be. You've basically invented a bogeyman to be afraid of.

So far, I haven't seen anything to suggest that the new system will be all about the dice rolling. I'm sure there will be more dice rolling involved than in 3.5E, where a single dice roll determined the outcome according to the RAW, but every playtest or design column where I've seen the system described suggests that it will be just as easy, if not easier, to play conversationally alongside the dice, and that everyone will be involved.

Again, that's my impression. Where you've invented a bogeyman, I've invented a shiny paradise to look forward to. I'd say that neither of us will be entirely accurate.

The one thing that I cannot help but feel must be true is that the 4E system will be better than the 3.5E system (as written). It might not necessarily be better for you in your games, because (this is important) you are not playing using the rules as written. Your existing system, as you have described it, downplays the importance of game mechanics. There's nothing wrong with that, I think it's great that you've managed to change the rules to a system that works better for you.

However, the important point is that you're not following the rules anyway. If the 4E rules aren't to your liking, you don't have to follow them either! Hopefully you'll find that the game has improved in other areas that do suit your style of play.

For me, a system that allows all players to contribute in meaningful ways and creates longer, more involved social encounters for the players to engage in sounds fantastic. I'm looking forward to what they come up with. If I'm not happy with it, I'll steal the best bits, scrap the rest and, like you, play with whatever rules suit my play style and my group best.

kadeton wrote:

However, what I think you need to understand is that what you've described is simply your impression of what the social system might be. You've basically invented a bogeyman to be afraid of...

...Where you've invented a bogeyman, I've invented a shiny paradise to look forward to. I'd say that neither of us will be entirely accurate...

The one thing that I cannot help but feel must be true is that the 4E system will be better than the 3.5E system (as written)...

This struck a chord with me.

Intensive crafting has been done on simulating combat in direct lineage over at least 50 years; leading to our present ubiquitous BAB-HP-Damage system, with minor variation such as damage-ablation vs. AC vs. armour-save, and with major co-systems such as snares.

Social rules have enjoyed minimal work over that time. Over the last 20 years there have been some minor attempts, and over the last 10 years there have been some - a very few - serious assaults on it.

Today's goal is to pave the way forward. We can't expect to see the final mechanic - the one that becomes ubiquitous - just yet.


-vk

Ludanto wrote:

Fair enough, but while that makes the bard-guy "great" at diplomacy, that still leaves the other characters at "very good". And since you're not competing with the bard-guy (he's on your side), "very good" still lets you in on the action to have some fun.

An 8 point deficit isn't great versus very good. It's not even close.

Let me use an example we can all relate to. Attack bonuses. One guy has a +11, the other guy has a +3. There's an 8 point difference. The guy with the +3 is crap, plain and simple, and he really can't contribute meaningfully to attack rolls unless he has some special ability that goes along with his +3, like his attacks are touch attacks or he does way more damage if he hits.

Well, first of all "random" chance is misleading. It's more of a calculated chance.

Ultimately the die roll is random, and thus the NPCs actions are random. They may be weighted, but still random stuff tends to happen.

If any ONE of these happens, the rules have "helped".

It's helped if it has made the game more fun overall. Really, when it's all said and done the other things on the list besides "fun" are secondary. If the system isn't more fun than just role-playing it out then it's rather pointless.

I'm reluctant to choose a specific social system, because that requires a lot of typing and because you probably won't like it, not becaus it's a bad system, but because apparently having to touch dice or consider resources while playing a game just ruins it for you. And that's fine. Not everybody has to like or use social systems. Use what works for you.

Unfortunately, "perfect" is a relative term. Your perfect system seems to be "Just say stuff that I think my character would say and let the DM decide (however he does) what actually happens".

Well I wouldn't say perfect system. I admit it has some flaws. It's more of a "best fit" system because I can't think of anything better. There are some things I don't like about it, namely that there's no way to easily represent the benefit of a character's charisma. And that's mostly why I discuss social systems on message boards, because I don't feel like I have the perfect solution. If I did, then I wouldn't even bother discussing it, because it would be an automatic house rule regardless of the social system in 4E.

But just for kicks, I'll give it a go. "The Shadow of Yesterday" is great, and "Dogs in the Vineyard" is super-awesome, but they pretty much don't differentiate physical combat from social conflict or skill use, often mixing the three, and while that might be more to your liking, I'm going to guess not. That leaves me with "Spirit of the Century" and "Burning Wheel", but I haven't read "Spirit of the Century" in a while and it's "20's pulp adventure" rather than fantasy, so I'll stick with "Burning Wheel"'s Duel of Wits.

I'm partially familiar with Spirit of the Century, and at the very least it has an SRD to reference. Dogs in the vineyard or Spirit of Yesterday I'm really not familiar with at all. And DoW was explained earlier, so I think I'm at least reasonably familiar with the concepts.

In social conflicts, it's also in the name of expediency. If the PCs offer a million gold to the sickly kobold, they automatically win (well, really there wasn't a conflict to begin with, but whatever), so you just describe the outcome or have the players talk it out. If a PC tries to convince the Tarrasque (or an army of orcs) to give up their daughters, you just describe the refusal or let the players talk it out until it feels right (but they still know that they can't win). You wouldn't engage the system because it would be boring and pointless, much like the mismatched fights.

Ok, maybe then you can enlighten me here.

Lets just say for fun that we did decide to use the social system. How would it work out? Obviously, there is going to be some bonuses either way. Are these just arbitrary modifiers the DM comes up with or is there some fixed way of figuring out what bonus a million dollar bribe gives you? Also, is it possible to be so good at diplomacy you can succeed on unreasonable requests anyway? I mean, that may not be an issue for some of the games, I know SotC has all skills cap out at +7 or something, but in D&D you may deal with huge values for modified skills, so it may be important for the social system to be able to handle these things.

And if unreasonable things are eventually possible, it leads to the problem of how to deal with them without the game completely breaking.

Archie! You're back!

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

An 8 point deficit isn't great versus very good. It's not even close.

Let me use an example we can all relate to. Attack bonuses. One guy has a +11, the other guy has a +3. There's an 8 point difference. The guy with the +3 is crap, plain and simple, and he really can't contribute meaningfully to attack rolls unless he has some special ability that goes along with his +3, like his attacks are touch attacks or he does way more damage if he hits.

Yes, one guy is better. That doesn't mean that there aren't useful things that mister +3 can do, from helping to flanking to blocking or healing or just attacking less efficiently (or the social equivelants). All of those are meaningful and don't necessarily require you to have exactly the same skills or skill levels as mister +8. Of course, we don't know how this will work, so we really should drop it as an example. My point is simply that it's possible to make it work, and that it isn't an inherent impossibility.

Ultimately the die roll is random, and thus the NPCs actions are random. They may be weighted, but still random stuff tends to happen.

Not really. Think of a football game. The results are effectively "random" (enough for people to place wagers on the results at least), but you don't have to worry about Team A winning a game in the middle of the night while drinking in a bar. Nor is there concern that some fan in the stands will win the game instead of one of the teams. The contest has to be set up, and the "stakes" established. Thus, no matter how the "dice" land, the results are reasonable. It may be that the underdog unexpectedly wins in the end, but it's not like people will think that they've lost their minds if they see it happen.

It's helped if it has made the game more fun overall. Really, when it's all said and done the other things on the list besides "fun" are secondary. If the system isn't more fun than just role-playing it out then it's rather pointless.

That would be number 7 again. If it's not "fun", then obviously it wasn't needed for this encounter, and possibly it's not needed for this group. My point, as it has always been, isn't "if you're not using social rules then you're not having fun", but "social rules are a useful tool, much like combat, that CAN make games more fun".

Ok, maybe then you can enlighten me here.

Bah! I've totally got to go to work. I'll be back to talk about this one later, though.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

An 8 point deficit isn't great versus very good. It's not even close.

Let me use an example we can all relate to. Attack bonuses. One guy has a +11, the other guy has a +3. There's an 8 point difference. The guy with the +3 is crap, plain and simple, and he really can't contribute meaningfully to attack rolls unless he has some special ability that goes along with his +3, like his attacks are touch attacks or he does way more damage if he hits.

Is your point that characters with different skill levels should have the same chance to do stuff? Or is it that you're not comfortable with characters having divergent competency with social skills in particular?

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Ultimately the die roll is random, and thus the NPCs actions are random. They may be weighted, but still random stuff tends to happen.

Is your point here that chance is okay in combat, but not elsewhere? Or are you drawing attention to the gross error in earlier iterations of D&D social rules of bringing it down to just one die roll? If the latter then that is an acute perception. We can see that the reason HP emerged as a ubiquitous system is that it forces multiple die rolls at chances players can influence, which moves the system into statistical space. That makes it feel more real, and makes it more fun at the same time because of the excitement of not knowing the outcome in advance. Dice rolling offers high simulatory compression of more complex dynamics.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

It's helped if it has made the game more fun overall. Really, when it's all said and done the other things on the list besides "fun" are secondary. If the system isn't more fun than just role-playing it out then it's rather pointless.

Dice rolling is more fun than just role-playing it out.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

I'm partially familiar with Spirit of the Century, and at the very least it has an SRD to reference. Dogs in the vineyard or Spirit of Yesterday I'm really not familiar with at all. And DoW was explained earlier, so I think I'm at least reasonably familiar with the concepts.

I've been looking at DOW, and while it's great that it enters the design space, it really isn't that fab a system. The whole idea of exchanges where you set up your gambits in advance feels stilted - I do get that it's an attempt to inject some play into it - and rolling for your social HP (body of argument) is just specious. It does hit some key notes: multiple point resolution, dice-rolling and choices, and so on, but overall I was disappointed.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Lets just say for fun that we did decide to use the social system. How would it work out? Obviously, there is going to be some bonuses either way. Are these just arbitrary modifiers the DM comes up with or is there some fixed way of figuring out what bonus a million dollar bribe gives you? Also, is it possible to be so good at diplomacy you can succeed on unreasonable requests anyway? I mean, that may not be an issue for some of the games, I know SotC has all skills cap out at +7 or something, but in D&D you may deal with huge values for modified skills, so it may be important for the social system to be able to handle these things.

And if unreasonable things are eventually possible, it leads to the problem of how to deal with them without the game completely breaking.

The first thing is to accept that the system will be an abstraction, otherwise we can raise the self-same questions about combat. Why can't I aim for his gamey leg? What if I just run around the guy in armour for awhile, won't he get tired?' 'What is the effect of 20lbs of armour on his swing?' 'Can he see okay through that little slot in his helm?' and so on.

But okay, you asked for a system. Here is what I propose (from another thread):

The mechanic works around convictions. Social skills can instil, strengthen, or weaken them. Our Guard, for example, has a conviction that he mustn't let anyone past.

Convictions have a 'body' that you test against to ignore them. Quite often the first step is to weaken the conviction, before you will have any chance of overcoming it. Characters can have a range of skills bearing on convictions, and while in theory you could need a vast list of convictions, in practice you will only need those that come up in your game.

Imagine:

DM : Wendy makes her Seduce check against Joe's Will and instils in him a conviction strength 14 that she is hot. If you want to do anything that ignores that, you need to overcome a 14.

Samantha : That tart?! Right, I want to weaken that conviction. Let's see, I have Upbraid pretty high: I remind Joe about that night in the Barn. Didn't that mean anything? .

DM: Okay, Sam's reminder weakens Joe's conviction by 3 points. Now it's only strength 11.

Joe: Uh, girls. You don't need to fight over me...

Wendy and Sam: You're right!

DM: Joe, remember that you're convinced Wendy is hot. Roll that conviction.

Joe : Damn, I'm so weak-willed. Uh, I know, I'll grab a bottle of wine and trail after them hopefully.

Obviously the mechanics here aren't baked, but you can see that high conviction isn't always bad or always good - sometimes it helps to be stubborn, but other times you'll wish you could be more flexible. Players might be able to give themselves convictions at the start of or during play. A kind of refined version of alignment. Wendy's hot, but she's a Warlock, and Joe's decided at character creation that he is convinced Warlocks are bad (he gave himself a conviction). Opposing convictions should inspire some nice RP

Strengthening and weakening convictions escapes from the swinginess of a single roll. It means that a Charm spell would instil a conviction that X is your friend. Once you have that conviction, you can imagine a range of ways to act on or change it that should stimulate play. The mechanic is nuanced enough to incorporate basing attributes, skills and feats, equipment and context.

The system will need a few other things that I don't want to get into yet. Here I just want to raise 'convictions' for argument.

-vk

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Ok, maybe then you can enlighten me here.

Lets just say for fun that we did decide to use the social system. How would it work out? Obviously, there is going to be some bonuses either way. Are these just arbitrary modifiers the DM comes up with or is there some fixed way of figuring out what bonus a million dollar bribe gives you? Also, is it possible to be so good at diplomacy you can succeed on unreasonable requests anyway? I mean, that may not be an issue for some of the games, I know SotC has all skills cap out at +7 or something, but in D&D you may deal with huge values for modified skills, so it may be important for the social system to be able to handle these things.

And if unreasonable things are eventually possible, it leads to the problem of how to deal with them without the game completely breaking.

Ok, I'm back. Let's see...

We decide to engage the social system, the Duel of Wits.

How would it work out?
Well, each side would state his case in brief, then determine their Body of Argument ("hit points"), then agree to terms ("if you win, if I win"). The terms should be reasonable and achievable. At this point, either player may decide not to participate.

Both sides secretly plan three "manuevers", based on the kinds of things they plan to say. Then they are revealed one at a time. Each manuever interacts with the opponent's manuevers in different ways. Then there are some skill rolls and the results are applied. Except when an opposing manuever "interrupts" yours or stuns you into silence, the opponent's manuevers don't effect your control of what you actually say, though you'll probably let what he says affect what you say, as the argument flows organically. Each "volley" of manuevers might remove points from your Body of Argument (HPs). At the end of the round, plan three new manuevers and repeat. Last man standing wins, though if the winner lost any points from his Body of Argument, the loser gets a minor, legitimate or major concession.

Again, this isn't mind control, and while the loser is forced to agree to some point or course of action (for now), it doesn't change the way he feels about the subject (though it could if he wanted it to).

What about bonuses?
No, the DM doesn't dole out bonuses in this situation. The players can petition him for a bonus die (it's a die pool system) for some bit of cleverness, but it's never more than a single die. All difficulties come from the rules, the chosen manuevers, and the PC's and NPC's stats. Also, as a die pool system, even a big bonus isn't a guarantee of anything.

If the opponent doesn't just give up and accept a million-dollar bribe, it would probably just be a bonus die. That may not sound like much, but keep in mind that if the opponent didn't just take it, it must not be worth as much as you'd think.

What about super-diplomacy?
You can be a diplomacy monster, but if the opponent manages to pop you for even one point, you'll have to give him something for his trouble, so there's still an element of risk. As for unreasonable requests, no. Unless of course the opponent agrees to "unreasonable" stakes to begin with, but why would he do that? There's nothing that says he has to agree to ANY stakes that he's not interested in.

What about huge skill values?
Well, the chosen example is Burning Wheel, and it doesn't really have "huge skill values and bonuses", as a rule. But even if it did, you can't make something "unreasonable" happen, unless the opponent agrees to risk that.

D&D is different in a variety of ways, of course, but you wanted me to pick an existing system, so there you go.

Ludanto wrote:

We decide to engage the social system, the Duel of Wits...

...this isn't mind control, and while the loser is forced to agree to some point or course of action (for now), it doesn't change the way he feels about the subject (though it could if he wanted it to).

It is mind control to the extent that participating players must abide by the terms they agreed if they lose the duel. That could easily include being forced to take certain acts, or refrain from acts, and would override volition at that point.

All this tip-toeing around mind control is weak TBH. We have perfectly reasonable rules already in the game that take volition away from players in regulated ways. By the rules, DMs constantly limit player actions: that is part of what makes the game fun! Is it 'mind control' when I can't run as fast as I want because I'm entangled? What about Ghoul paralysis, is that mind control?

If social rules are to have worth they will limit player choices in regulated ways. Players should no more chafe at those limitations than they would at being subject to a Vampire's domination.

Why is there a weird blindness to the possibility of nuance here? Just as a first level warrior has limited ability to hit high armour classes and deals only minor, mundane, damage, so equally should we expect first level diplomancers to have a limited degree of power and range of effects. If a 20th level Queen can intimidate both of those first level characters and make them leave her throne room out of plain fear, what has she done that a Dragon cannot already do?

Of course, views are already entrenched on this, against vaguely imagined strawman systems that, gasp!, take volition away from the player. It's clearly going to come as a big surprise to some that when they are plain ordinary dead, their DM won't let them 'role-play' getting up and walking around with the party just because they want to.

-vk

Holy CRAP People! 10 pages of the same old BLAH! 1st off, to the people who think roleplaying and acting are two different things are out of their minds. When a therapist has clients roleplay, they ask them to act out what they feel the character would do. The ACTOR, Wayne Brady, PLAYS out ROLES given to him at random. Much the way anyone interested in playing a ROLEplaying game should be willing to attempt to do. If you are uncomfortable speaking in front of four or five other people, maybe you should stick to online RPGs where you don't have to interact with others face to face and can avoid self-perceived embarrasment for immulating a FICTIONAL character doing something that you yourself would not normally do. Does anyone think that Sarah Michelle Gellar was really the same nympho her ROLE as Buffy required her to ACT out on the TV show?

When I first started playing D&D in 2nd ed (I'd played werewolf and vampire predominately prior), it was a solo adventure with a DM I'd never met before. I played a dwarf fighter, very straight forward and had very little social interaction with any NPCs. The following week with the rest of his regular group, who were all theatre majors, I was a little shy and felt a very inadequate, so I barely interacted at all. I just kinda sat back and watched them interact. It was amazing seeing good actors play their characters. That was what got me hooked. I think there was one actual battle in that 8 hour game session. And at the end of the session the DM handed out roleplaying XP, I didn't get any since I was a wallflower. By the next game, I was a little more comfortable with the group, interacted more, even if it was just a snipppy comment here and there, and this time I too got XP. So, it comes down to this, if you want shy players to act out characters more, offer XP rewards because the one thing ROLEplayers and ROLLplayers have in common is they are both XP, for lack of a better uneditted word, wenches.

I miss that gaming group. We would play for 16 hours, sleep for 4, then game another 16. My group now is a lot of newbies who have little to no desire to give their characters depth through true roleplay. They rely too heavily on their social stats and dice and it makes game very dry and dull. "A Bards Tale" is more interactive and socially rewarding. Most nights, whether I'm playing or DMing, I usually end up falling asleep after only a few hours. In one recent game, my DM wanted my roguish character with a 20 cha to role a bluff check when she was telling the truth! She wasn't trying to bluff anything, she wholeheartedly believed what she was saying. So, I used his reliance on rolls to my advantage. (When I get bored, I metagame) I bluffed a 20th level fighter into believing that I, a 4'7" 80# female elf 5th level rogue could beat him in single combat. He gave me his money pouch, and I went up a level from the XP I received for overcoming the challenge he presented. So on that note, yeah social encounter rules! Gaming with people who have the social skills of logs may be boring, but leveling a character is always fun, especially when you're the only one who's doing it twice a game.:evillaugh

This caught my eye.

vonklaude wrote:

Dice rolling is more fun than just role-playing it out.

Truly it depends on the person.

krieg_69 wrote:

If you are uncomfortable speaking in front of four or five other people, maybe you should stick to online RPGs where you don't have to interact with others face to face

Has it occurred to you that generosity of spirit is a noble human trait yet?

krieg_69 wrote:

So, I used his reliance on rolls to my advantage. (When I get bored, I metagame) I bluffed a 20th level fighter into believing that I, a 4'7" 80# female elf 5th level rogue could beat him in single combat. He gave me his money pouch, and I went up a level from the XP I received for overcoming the challenge he presented.

Which is exactly why DMs will benefit from better rules to guide social interactions. As the terrific RPer you clearly are, I take it you also meta-game earning XP from overcoming combat challenges by rolling successful hits that your tiny Elf is transparently incapable of?

-vk

vonklaude wrote:

It is mind control to the extent that participating players must abide by the terms they agreed if they lose the duel. That could easily include being forced to take certain acts, or refrain from acts, and would override volition at that point.

All this tip-toeing around mind control is weak TBH. We have perfectly reasonable rules already in the game that take volition away from players in regulated ways. By the rules, DMs constantly limit player actions: that is part of what makes the game fun! Is it 'mind control' when I can't run as fast as I want because I'm entangled? What about Ghoul paralysis, is that mind control?

If social rules are to have worth they will limit player choices in regulated ways. Players should no more chafe at those limitations than they would at being subject to a Vampire's domination.

Why is there a weird blindness to the possibility of nuance here? Just as a first level warrior has limited ability to hit high armour classes and deals only minor, mundane, damage, so equally should we expect first level diplomancers to have a limited degree of power and range of effects. If a 20th level Queen can intimidate both of those first level characters and make them leave her throne room out of plain fear, what has she done that a Dragon cannot already do?

Of course, views are already entrenched on this, against vaguely imagined strawman systems that, gasp!, take volition away from the player. It's clearly going to come as a big surprise to some that when they are plain ordinary dead, their DM won't let them 'role-play' getting up and walking around with the party just because they want to.

-vk

I'm going to have to disagree (to a point) on this one. Playing a PC is all about "volition", unless you're just playing D&D like a board game. There's a story being told, and every choice the PC makes says something about that PC. Yes, being mind-controlled sucks, but the story says that you didn't have a choice, so it's not saying anything about your character (other than perhaps a susceptability to mind magics).

On the other hand, having a non-magical compulsion enforced upon you, while game-mechanically the same, is different because the story says that you chose whatever action. Even if you were bullied or seduced, or bribed, you chose to do whatever it is they wanted rather than face the alternative (a beating, no sex, no money), and that does say something about your character as far as the story is concerned.

I like social mechanics. I think that PCs should be susceptable to them. But it has to make sense to the story and the character. Yes, sometimes characters change, or do things that they regret after a social encounter, but it should be because the player wanted to, and was ready to, explore that element of his character.

(Then I say some more stuff about stories and character exploration and theme and blah blah blah...)

calronmoonflower wrote:

This caught my eye.

Quoting vonklaude: Dice rolling is more fun than just role-playing it out.

Truly it depends on the person.

Setting aside that it has been shown to a moral certainty that humans respond with greater interest to chance governed outcomes than otherwise, I feel safe in arguing that it's more thrilling for the vast majority of players that when the Frost Giantess swings at them, they don't know for sure she's going to miss.

Actually, let me apply an edit here. You might have missed some nuance to my argument. Dice play an important role in the fun of D&D. I'm not saying that RPG is better with everything submitted to dice, but I believe that it is worse with nothing submitted to dice. As for where to draw the line YMMV

-vk

vonklaude wrote:

Setting aside that it has been shown to a moral certainty that humans respond with greater interest to chance governed outcomes than otherwise, I feel safe in arguing that it's more thrilling for the vast majority of players that when the Frost Giantess swings at them, they don't know for sure she's going to miss.

YMMV

-vk

Bolded the awesome irony.

Posting twice in succession because, by God, I'll prove I'm right if it's the last thing I do

Ludanto wrote:

sometimes characters change, or do things that they regret after a social encounter, but it should be because the player wanted to, and was ready to, explore that element of his character.

(Then I say some more stuff about stories and character exploration and theme and blah blah blah...)

Actually I think we see eye-to-eye here. What surprises me are the RPers that seem afraid of the challenge of going with a quirk of the story. Like that guy about Buffy. He made a point quite opposite to that which he intended. SMG is a good actress to the degree that she can RP a character handed to her as fiat. Maybe he doesn't realise she acts to a script?

(Then I give examples about fun games I've had where the unexpected happened and my players went with it... )

vonklaude wrote:

Posting twice in succession because, by God, I'll prove I'm right if it's the last thing I do




Actually I think we see eye-to-eye here. What surprises me are the RPers that seem afraid of the challenge of going with a quirk of the story. Like that guy about Buffy. He made a point quite opposite to that which he intended. SMG is a good actress to the degree that she can RP a character handed to her as fiat. Maybe he doesn't realise she acts to a script?

(Then I give examples about fun games I've had where the unexpected happened and my players went with it... )

Yeah, I don't get out much.

But yes, we're probably on the same wavelength. I'm just trying not to freak people out too much. There are a great deal of "other wavelengths" in this particular location.

vonklaude wrote:

Posting twice in succession because, by God, I'll prove I'm right if it's the last thing I do

kadeton wrote:

You won the thread

kadeton wrote:

DOT

I've seen this one on so many forums the last days. Clearly one of the great highlights in the history of the internet. :D

vonklaude wrote:

Which is exactly why DMs will benefit from better rules to guide social interactions. As the terrific RPer you clearly are, I take it you also meta-game earning XP from overcoming combat challenges by rolling successful hits that your tiny Elf is transparently incapable of?

-vk

The whole point of playing a charismatic socially adept character is to overcome encounters without engaging in combat challenges if you can at all help it. I have +12 bluff at 4th level vs. a 20th lvl ftr +2 sense motive, why would I ever engage his +30bab and 30ac vs. my +7bab and 17ac? I'll stick with the odds of by-the-book-rules bluffing a stupid fighter any day. The whole point of my rant was that writing mechanical rules to social interaction can be exploited beyond hope. At best they should be used as guidelines, but not totally relied upon. And to be totally honest, I can't remember the last time I had a character with a high bab. I tend to stick to more supportive roles. I've had my time in the limelight on the frontlines, I don't care for the hack n slash so much anymore. I'd rather be a CG priest, or bard, the stuff the newbies in my group shy away from.

krieg_69 wrote:

The whole point of playing a charismatic socially adept character is to overcome encounters without engaging in combat challenges if you can at all help it. I have +12 bluff at 4th level vs. a 20th lvl ftr +2 sense motive, why would I ever engage his +30bab and 30ac vs. my +7bab and 17ac? I'll stick with the odds of by-the-book-rules bluffing a stupid fighter any day.

And therefore you don't want better constructed social rules? I'm sure I don't follow you here: is your argument that you so enjoy exploiting the present rules that you'd hate to see anything more robust?

krieg_69 wrote:

The whole point of my rant was that writing mechanical rules to social interaction can be exploited beyond hope.

I agree that we want well-conceived social rules, or is your contention that you know to a moral certainty that it is impossible to devise them? If so, how do you know that?

krieg_69 wrote:

At best they should be used as guidelines, but not totally relied upon. And to be totally honest, I can't remember the last time I had a character with a high bab. I tend to stick to more supportive roles. I've had my time in the limelight on the frontlines, I don't care for the hack n slash so much anymore. I'd rather be a CG priest, or bard, the stuff the newbies in my group shy away from.

Indeed, I feel the same way myself. If I was suiting myself, combat rules would be swift and deadly and social rules would be elaborate and highly nuanced. I would be able to develop my character through ten levels of play without touching a sword, should I like, and there would be rich mechanics fleshing out my progression arc.

Now, I'm going to take a bold step here and guess that your reluctance has nothing to do with how exploitable social rules may be, since it's lucidly obvious that combat rules can be just as exploitable, and it seems to me to be a safe bet that if they were you wouldn't jump ship to a fighter so as to exploit them.

You simply like social play that lets you have fun with role-play. Okay, fine, but are you also saying you like your combat to be all roll-play? I sense not. In fact, I doubt very much you are that special kind of schizophrenic who demands role-play with social interaction and roll-play with combat. Either you prefer role-play with both, or you just haven't seen social rules you liked very much.

-vk

Wel, I can understand where the fear of eliminating Role playing is coming from, as well as the cries of Elitist Role Players.

What you need is to find the middle ground.

I can only speak form experience, so, here goes...

My group consistes of 8 players, covering the gamut of styles. We got 1 definite rules lawyer, 4 role players, 1 hack n slasher, and 2 people who are alittle of everything. The role players are of varying degrees of skill. However, we do not penalize the hack n slasher or rules lawyer in social situations because their RP skills are not equal to the RPers. What we do is this. You can fully resort to the Charismatic skills (Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff) or combine it with Role Playing. Usually, we RP the encounter out, then roll the dice. The die roll is used as a guid to determine the outcome. If the RP was bad and the roll good and the character is charismaic in origin, its still a good encounter. If the RP was good and the roll bad, the RP weighs in the characters favor. Helps to RP because it can compensate for a bad roll, but those who are not such good RPers can still do good in social situations.

By George I think vk's got it! I starteed in 2nd ed where there wasn't really any rules to govern social situations and there was rarely an issue. 3rd ed comes along and voila big XP with little danger. It reminded me of the old Skills and Powers from 2nd ed, which sucked BTW. Some of the skills in 3.x do have some advantage over non-weapon profs, but taking away from creative description of scenes, social and battle, I feel takes away some of what made d&d great in the first place. The 3.x combat rules are nearly as hideous as the social rules when compared to 2nd ed. I miss telling my DM, "I run up the fallen tree, do a flip over the orc and do a backward thrust with my longsword" and he replies, "the orc is completely surprised by your tactics, great description BTW, and ah, roll to hit" instead of "ok, first you need to roll a balance check to run up the log, followed by a jump check to get over him, then a tumble check to land it, oh you've moved through his threat range so he gets an attack of opportunity, and you've moved to much, so now it's the orcs turn." And if Star Wars is anything like 4th ed, it isn't going to change much for a player thats like to add a little pinache to his actions.

Ludanto wrote:

Not really. Think of a football game. The results are effectively "random" (enough for people to place wagers on the results at least), but you don't have to worry about Team A winning a game in the middle of the night while drinking in a bar. Nor is there concern that some fan in the stands will win the game instead of one of the teams. The contest has to be set up, and the "stakes" established. Thus, no matter how the "dice" land, the results are reasonable. It may be that the underdog unexpectedly wins in the end, but it's not like people will think that they've lost their minds if they see it happen.

Well, no. football isn't random in the same sense as something like roulette. There may be luck now and then, but mostly it has to do wtih a player's skill. A single player can make a great catch or fumble the ball that can change the course of the game. So at the end you feel as though as a player, you've failed. You weren't just screwed because you got unlucky.

That would be number 7 again. If it's not "fun", then obviously it wasn't needed for this encounter, and possibly it's not needed for this group. My point, as it has always been, isn't "if you're not using social rules then you're not having fun", but "social rules are a useful tool, much like combat, that CAN make games more fun".

I guess I've yet to see how they make games more fun.

The system will need a few other things that I don't want to get into yet. Here I just want to raise 'convictions' for argument.

The conviction system may work if you set it up correctly. But thus far given I've never actually seen a fully written up social system that I like, I'm not sure if it can be pulled off to the point that it works. But at the very least it takes into account the character's personality, so that's good.

On the other hand, having a non-magical compulsion enforced upon you, while game-mechanically the same, is different because the story says that you chose whatever action. Even if you were bullied or seduced, or bribed, you chose to do whatever it is they wanted rather than face the alternative (a beating, no sex, no money), and that does say something about your character as far as the story is concerned.

I like social mechanics. I think that PCs should be susceptable to them. But it has to make sense to the story and the character. Yes, sometimes characters change, or do things that they regret after a social encounter, but it should be because the player wanted to, and was ready to, explore that element of his character.

Yeah, this is pretty much one of the issues with social systems that I have. You basically are caught in two conflicting sides:

a) You want social systems to be able to change people's minds and get them to do stuff they wouldn't normally do.

b) You don't want social systems to mind-control PCs.

Those two things are in direct conflict.

As for unreasonable requests, no. Unless of course the opponent agrees to "unreasonable" stakes to begin with, but why would he do that? There's nothing that says he has to agree to ANY stakes that he's not interested in.

This part of the system I think is where it displays its flaws. I mean, really social systems are going to be so subjective from game to game, because some DMs may just have the NPCs reject all your offers. In fact, if you suck at social skills, you might as well just not get in a DoW at all. It's as though part of the movement and combat system just let creatures teleport away at will and escape any combat if they wanted to.

It's going to be odd, because social duels are more fought between people with social ability. So it's like impossible for the snake oil salesman to con some random schmuck, because the random guy just refuses to enter a DoW.

Also, the whole stakes thing still feels odd to me. In a lot of instances, there may not be anything to be gained by the other side. When you're trying to seduce someone who doesn't want to be seduced, there's really nothing in it for them to get into the DoW with you. The stakes system is extremely limiting.

Really, most of the time it seems you'd need to force the other side into a conflict, otherwise, they'll probably refuse, unless it's a situation of two social characters going at it. It sounds more like a mini-game that your characters use to settle disputes or something. Kind of like if two rival kings decided to play a game of chess to determine who the rules a territory. But both sides have to agree to come to the table and play for it to work out.

It also means that you've got some people playing high-stakes diplomacy, where you get two rival clerics, both socially skilled, trying to convert each other to their religion. And this duel is likely to achieve a greater effect than if the clerics were preaching to a crowd for new followers, simply because most of the crowd won't even agree to DoW them, since there's nothing for them to gain from it.

Well, each side would state his case in brief, then determine their Body of Argument ("hit points"), then agree to terms ("if you win, if I win"). The terms should be reasonable and achievable. At this point, either player may decide not to participate.

How are HP determined? If you've got a stronger argument, does that make your HP greater? Or is the guy making baseless claims with no evidence on the same footing as the guy with a good case of evidence?

I mean what I'm trying to determine is that say you've got a court case, with two arguing lawyers. If lawyer A has a mountain of evidence and lawyer B has basically no case, then lawyer A only gets a single bonus die and that's it?

That doesn't sound like a really big advantage.

The whole point of playing a charismatic socially adept character is to overcome encounters without engaging in combat challenges if you can at all help it. I have +12 bluff at 4th level vs. a 20th lvl ftr +2 sense motive, why would I ever engage his +30bab and 30ac vs. my +7bab and 17ac? I'll stick with the odds of by-the-book-rules bluffing a stupid fighter any day.

This example is the problem with the 3e/3.5 system. If the skills system is going to be similar to Star Wars Saga (a pretty decent one at that), then the above, while still being possible, will be highly unlikely. Now, said 4th level character will get +5 to bluff for being trained in the skill, say another +5 for having the skill emphasis feat (or whatever it's called), +2 (1/2 your character level), and let's say a +4 due to high charisma = +16 for bluff or deception or whatever it will be called. Now, said stupid 20th level fighter will have +10 added to his Sense Motive (1/2 his character level), and let's say he's a little wise having a 14 wisdom, granting a +2 modifier = +12 to sense motive. While it's still possible for said 4th level character to outsmart the dumb 20th level fighter, it's not as likely. From my stand point, and you may not agree, this makes a good of sense.

I like the Star Wars Saga skill system, as it has a mechanic to reflect something that occurs in real life...the inadvertant acquisition of useless trivia knowledge.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well, no. football isn't random in the same sense as something like roulette. There may be luck now and then, but mostly it has to do wtih a player's skill. A single player can make a great catch or fumble the ball that can change the course of the game. So at the end you feel as though as a player, you've failed. You weren't just screwed because you got unlucky.

Well, nothing is ever really random, even a die roll. There are just more factors going on than we can track. A football game is as effectively random as a properly weighted die roll. But if you prefer the analogy, I could also say that you will never get a result of BLUE 112 in roulette. The possible outcomes are limited to what makes sense in context.

I guess I've yet to see how they make games more fun.

Noting the fact that it may indeed not be more fun for you, I don't see why this is such a cognative leap. Do you see how a dice-based combat system can make combat fun? It works exactly the same way. Options, conflict, dice, tactics, resources, etc. Again, though, not "always more fun", but "fun for the same reasons".

Yeah, this is pretty much one of the issues with social systems that I have. You basically are caught in two conflicting sides:

a) You want social systems to be able to change people's minds and get them to do stuff they wouldn't normally do.

b) You don't want social systems to mind-control PCs.

Those two things are in direct conflict.

I'd say more indirect conflict, but yes, it's something you need to consider when designing such a system.

This part of the system I think is where it displays its flaws. I mean, really social systems are going to be so subjective from game to game, because some DMs may just have the NPCs reject all your offers. In fact, if you suck at social skills, you might as well just not get in a DoW at all. It's as though part of the movement and combat system just let creatures teleport away at will and escape any combat if they wanted to.

That's not a flaw, it's a feature. The "random inappropriate reactions don't happen" feature that everybody says social conflicts need. And yes, NPCs can just refuse to talk to you. Not everything can be solved by talking just like not everything can be solved by combat. But, just like the DM doesn't have to present you with combat challenges, he doesn't have to present you with social ones. However, he should, and usually does, because that's fun and what everyone is there for.

As for never entering a DoW, I should point out that a DoW is usually about something, and not engaging is effectively a loss. Think about it as refusing to engage the foes trying to empty the chest you're guarding. Sure, you don't get killed, but you don't hurt them either, and they still get the chest. The idea here being, if you're going to lose anyway, you might as well try to get a concession out of them. Also of importance, in Burning Wheel, you have to (with limited exception) actually use skills to improve them. Also, if you fight (verbally) and lose (or win) for something important to your character, you still get the equivelant of XP and Action Points as a reward. So there are plenty of reasons to go for it.

It's going to be odd, because social duels are more fought between people with social ability. So it's like impossible for the snake oil salesman to con some random schmuck, because the random guy just refuses to enter a DoW.

If it's just some random schmuck, why is the DM fighting it? As a matter of fact, that would probably just be a straight die roll. No point wasting time arguing with a schmuck.

Also, the whole stakes thing still feels odd to me. In a lot of instances, there may not be anything to be gained by the other side. When you're trying to seduce someone who doesn't want to be seduced, there's really nothing in it for them to get into the DoW with you. The stakes system is extremely limiting.

If the other side has nothing to gain, then it simply wouldn't be a DoW. It's like somebody saying "Meet me in the parking lot tomorrow so we can fight". I just won't show up. There's no reason to do so.

Really, most of the time it seems you'd need to force the other side into a conflict, otherwise, they'll probably refuse, unless it's a situation of two social characters going at it. It sounds more like a mini-game that your characters use to settle disputes or something. Kind of like if two rival kings decided to play a game of chess to determine who the rules a territory. But both sides have to agree to come to the table and play for it to work out.

YES! That's the trick! There has to be a conflict. Why don't those two kings just go to war? Obviously they don't want to, so they talk it out. They could easily chess for it, but that would, within the story, seem arbitrary (of course, it might be in character for those kings, so who knows?) Also, violence would, in the end, solve their problem. On the other hand, trying to get past a guard who is willing to fight you isn't a conflict (socially) because he doesn't care what you have to say. He'd just as soon stab you.

The consequences of not talking have to be worse than (or as bad as) talking, or the rewards have to be worth the risk (or both). If the kings don't talk, then it's war. If the guard doesn't talk, there's a fight (but that's fine with him). Of course, if the guard stands to gain a fat bribe out of the DoW, win or lose, then he might consider it.

It also means that you've got some people playing high-stakes diplomacy, where you get two rival clerics, both socially skilled, trying to convert each other to their religion. And this duel is likely to achieve a greater effect than if the clerics were preaching to a crowd for new followers, simply because most of the crowd won't even agree to DoW them, since there's nothing for them to gain from it.

The crowd isn't likely to warrant a DoW. It's just a crowd. It's more of an obstacle than a true interaction. The cleric makes his speeck and rolls Oratory or something, and it works or doesn't (perhaps scaled to the roll).

How are HP determined? If you've got a stronger argument, does that make your HP greater? Or is the guy making baseless claims with no evidence on the same footing as the guy with a good case of evidence?

I mean what I'm trying to determine is that say you've got a court case, with two arguing lawyers. If lawyer A has a mountain of evidence and lawyer B has basically no case, then lawyer A only gets a single bonus die and that's it?

That doesn't sound like a really big advantage.

HP are equal to your Will stat plus the results of a skill roll. That's it. And evidence is only worthwhile if people accept it. It can be marginalized, dismissed or even lied about. However, BW does allow for effective prep-work to make a serious difference by way of linked rolls or "fields of related knowledge".

The rules of the whole game interact quite a bit, so there are nuances here and there that tie into how the game works and the reward system, etc.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

This part of the system I think is where it displays its flaws. I mean, really social systems are going to be so subjective from game to game, because some DMs may just have the NPCs reject all your offers. In fact, if you suck at social skills, you might as well just not get in a DoW at all. It's as though part of the movement and combat system just let creatures teleport away at will and escape any combat if they wanted to.

It's going to be odd, because social duels are more fought between people with social ability. So it's like impossible for the snake oil salesman to con some random schmuck, because the random guy just refuses to enter a DoW.

Look at it this way, if the social character doesn't have something that the person who sucks at social skills wants, be it a favor, item, or concession, what reason do they have to listen in the first place? Unless you want to give your social characters a magical ability to force people to listen to them, they need a bargaining chip to gain their target's attention. Some people are stubborn so-and-so's who won't change their minds unless you find a way to put pressure on them.

The snake oil salesman is a con artist, and con artists need a lure to get their marks to participate, usually a promise of easy money, sex, or even the idea that they are doing a good deed ("My son desperately needs a cure disease spell, can you spare 25 gold, oh noble hero?"). In this case, the snake oil salesman is offering a miracle remedy, and some people want to believe that they can make a quick buck/get laid/help someone out/solve all their health problems with a single potion, and so they leave themselves open to fall into the trap. Other people are born skeptics or have been fooled before and know better than to fall for that kind of trick again (and then again, some people never learn).

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Also, the whole stakes thing still feels odd to me. In a lot of instances, there may not be anything to be gained by the other side. When you're trying to seduce someone who doesn't want to be seduced, there's really nothing in it for them to get into the DoW with you. The stakes system is extremely limiting.

Like I said, if one side has absolutely nothing to gain then of course there shouldn't be a social conflict. You can't seduce a eunuch. Take the Three Musketeers, at one point Milady's brother takes her captive. Now, he knows that she's an evil, deceitful person, so the well is poisoned to begin with. Furthermore, he knows that she's tried to have him killed so she can take the entire inheritance, so there's nothing she can offer him that's worth the risk of letting an evil master manipulator who wants him dead loose. "...he knows me, he fears me, and knows what he has to expect of me if I ever escape from his hands. It is useless, then, to attempt anything with him." Instead she works on Lieutenant Felton, not with seduction or coin, because she quickly sees that these are not enough to overpower his loyalty to Lord deWinter, but by feigning religious martyrdom, since he is a religious man who values God more than any loyalty to mortal powers. It works so well that by the end of the week he's fanatically devoted to her and becomes accomplise to her escape and an assassin.

Or, to take another literary example, look at Sam, Frodo, and Gollum. Gollum never really fools Sam, because Sam has already made up his mind about what Gollum is and is too loyal to Frodo to let his guard down. Frodo on the other hand, needs to believe that Gollum can be redeemed and pities him, which gives Gollum ample stakes to manipulate.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

It also means that you've got some people playing high-stakes diplomacy, where you get two rival clerics, both socially skilled, trying to convert each other to their religion. And this duel is likely to achieve a greater effect than if the clerics were preaching to a crowd for new followers, simply because most of the crowd won't even agree to DoW them, since there's nothing for them to gain from it.

Unless they're looking for spiritual illumination or have doubts about their current faith. In that case, they have the potential to find new meaning in their lives, which would be plenty to draw them in. Now, people who are thoroughly satisfied with their current faith (or lack thereof) really aren't going to be swayed by a cleric's attempts to convert them unless the cleric can challenge their satisfaction with the status quo first.

I'm not entirely sold on all the aspects of the Duel of Wits system (although we're still working with an incomplete picture, so I'm withholding judgement), but I like the stakes system because it allows for the dramatic situation where the silver-tongued manipulator finally gets cornered in a situation he can't talk his way out of. Otherwise you have the strange "mind control" situations you worry about where Thulsa Doon talks Conan into not killing him after all, or the Musketeers decide to let Milady go despite all of the people close to them she's killed. If you think about situations in the "play it out, DM decides" mode where there's no chance of one side being convinced, it's generally because one side or the other has no stake in the argument, and so the stakes system prevents those from ever reaching the portion affected by random chance and opening things up to weird effects.

Ludanto wrote:

Well, nothing is ever really random, even a die roll. There are just more factors going on than we can track. A football game is as effectively random as a properly weighted die roll.

Well, while there is physics involved in both, you're not supposed to be rolling the die in such a way that you're trying to load the outcome. Die rolling is a means to achieve randomness, where as in football, it's a result of player skill.

Noting the fact that it may indeed not be more fun for you, I don't see why this is such a cognative leap. Do you see how a dice-based combat system can make combat fun? It works exactly the same way. Options, conflict, dice, tactics, resources, etc. Again, though, not "always more fun", but "fun for the same reasons".

Well, the main difference is that most social systems cause you to lose out on options as opposed to getting options. See in combat or any physical test for that matter, the goals are simple and the situation is hard to describe. Regardless of how awesome a DM storyteller you are, it's going to be hard to offer the PCs any real description that's going to give them meaningful RP choices in a combat. It ends up boiling down to "I swing my sword at him." Now, you may choose to attack low or attack the guy's head or whatever, but there's no easy way to adjudicate that from a no rules standpoint. You either end up giving your PCs are a no-brainer decision "You see an opening in his lower defenses." "Ok, I attack his right leg." Or an arbitrary guessing game between DM and PC that amounts to rock/paper/scissors, which is no better than rolling a dice.

Now, social situations on the other hand are a bit different. You can slip subtle clues into the speech and such and set up social puzzles so that your characters can make meaningful decisions that aren't pitifully obvious or turn into blatant guessing games. It may require some detective work in terms of the PCs of course, but it's possible. Because your options matter. Unlike in combat, it doesn't all boil down to "I swing a sword at my foe." You have numerous approaches.

Lets say you feel that the Duke is a traitor to the king and want to uncover his treachery. Here are some choices you've got:

• Pose as mercenaries asking to be hired for the Duke's fighting regimen, and subtly try to extract clues as to his plans.
  
• Claim you're rebels to the king and want his help in overthrowing the king.
  
• Go to the duke bringing word of a possible rebellion forming against the king to gauge his reactions.
  
• Directly confront him on the matter.
  
• Subtly infer that you might be against the king, seeing if you can draw information out without putting yourself at risk.
  
• Have a female PC try to seduce the duke and posssibly get information out of him.
  
• Merely eavesdrop the Duke's conversations with others to try to glean information before making your approach.
  

The list goes on and on, and I could keep out listing things right there.

And all those options are going to have real story advantages and drawbacks that are going to matter on not just how well you did at what you're trying but also what you did. Now the stakes system is about as close to what I've seen as trying to emulate all of these, but the problem is that in creating the stakes you effectively give out information to your PCs.

If your stakes are "If I win, the duke drops the ball and gives out some slip into his plans and if I lose, the duke has me thrown in the dungeon.", the PCs tend to know that the duke is a traitor simply from the stakes. Which sucks for a political intrigue game where you should constantly be guessing what the duke's real motives are.

That's not a flaw, it's a feature. The "random inappropriate reactions don't happen" feature that everybody says social conflicts need. And yes, NPCs can just refuse to talk to you. Not everything can be solved by talking just like not everything can be solved by combat. But, just like the DM doesn't have to present you with combat challenges, he doesn't have to present you with social ones. However, he should, and usually does, because that's fun and what everyone is there for.

Yeah, I can see that. And a part of me agrees, but I constantly find myself wondering, why have a system at all? I mean, basically the only reason you're able to start a social conflict at all is because the DM gave you the green light, so if your request is reasonable, why not just okay it from the start?

As for never entering a DoW, I should point out that a DoW is usually about something, and not engaging is effectively a loss. Think about it as refusing to engage the foes trying to empty the chest you're guarding. Sure, you don't get killed, but you don't hurt them either, and they still get the chest. The idea here being, if you're going to lose anyway, you might as well try to get a concession out of them.

Maybe I don't fully understand. I got the impression that you could just deny the DoW and not even care. Like if PCs went up to a guard and offered him stakes of "If I win, you let me through, if I lose, we leave." The guard could just decline it and he basically doesn't let you through, so the guard hasn't lost anything. Maybe I'm missing something there, but that's the way I interpreted it.

Also what happens if two sides want to get in a DoW but neither can agree to common stakes? Who is considered the loser there? It seems almost like you could run into Cops and Robbers style stakes setting.

"If I win, I get all his money and items, and if I lose, he gets this piece of string."
"Screw that. How about if he wins, he get all your money and if you win, you get that rusty dagger on his belt."

If both sides are unreasonable it seems like it could be rather difficult.

If it's just some random schmuck, why is the DM fighting it? As a matter of fact, that would probably just be a straight die roll. No point wasting time arguing with a schmuck.

Well, because a lot of times you may want to argue with random schmucks. The fighter trying to raise an army to defend the village, the cleric looking for converts and the like. A lot of times in social situations, it's the random schmucks you care about influencing. You intimidate the random bandits into leaving without a fight for instance.

If the other side has nothing to gain, then it simply wouldn't be a DoW. It's like somebody saying "Meet me in the parking lot tomorrow so we can fight". I just won't show up. There's no reason to do so.

The problem is that so many social situations don't have anything to gain on one side.

Seduction: If the seducer wins he/she gets sex and some favors, if he loses, both sides just walk away with nothing.

Bluff: If you win, you convince someone of something, if you lose, you may lose credibility, but the other guy doesn't really gain anything.

Intimidate: Same deal. You choose between getting scared off or being unaffected. Why would you agree to that at all?

Begging for free equipment, healing, whatever: Again nothing to be gained, best thing that happens is that you just refuse the request.

Trying to resolve a misunderstanding: Paladin rushes around and finds your band of adventurers, thinking you're evil mercs under the service of the lich, he attacks. You try to convince him otherwise. If you win, he doesn't attack you and he doesnt' have to live with the guilt of attacking you. If he wins the DoW, he actually loses, in that he's slaughtering innocents.

Bribery: If you win the DoW against the bribe, you don't take it, but you're no better off than you were.

Now the problem is that all these things are important things to resolve. DoW works well it seems for opposed things in front of a crowd, but for the kind of social situations that come up all the time in D&D. It's not so great.

On the other hand, trying to get past a guard who is willing to fight you isn't a conflict (socially) because he doesn't care what you have to say. He'd just as soon stab you.

Well presumably the guard lets some people in, so the goal is tricking the guard, and the guard is trying not to be tricked. If I'm trying to sneak illegal drugs by US customs, the customs guy cares what I'm saying, because it's his job to analyze my story and see if he should let me in or not. He doesn't necessarily want to just have me arrested without reason.

The thing is that he doesn't really know in this case that he's engaging in a DoW. It's where I said that you may actually give up information by announcing stakes or announcing there is a DoW, since for the most part.

The consequences of not talking have to be worse than (or as bad as) talking, or the rewards have to be worth the risk (or both). If the kings don't talk, then it's war. If the guard doesn't talk, there's a fight (but that's fine with him). Of course, if the guard stands to gain a fat bribe out of the DoW, win or lose, then he might consider it.

Well giving him the bribe when he won the DoW seems really stupid. "I'll give you this 100 gp, and you let me through." Somehow the guard ends up with the gold and the PCs are walking away from the castle wondering what happened. That doesn't even make any sense from a storytelling point of view.

Now I mean, I guess it could be where the bartender just pockets your bribe and then doens't tell you anything, but would he have to even do a DoW to do that? Couldn't he just take the bribe and decide not to let you in? Or does the system prevent him from doing that?

The crowd isn't likely to warrant a DoW. It's just a crowd. It's more of an obstacle than a true interaction. The cleric makes his speeck and rolls Oratory or something, and it works or doesn't (perhaps scaled to the roll).

Ok I suppose that can work. Though at this point, it's just kind of an arbitrary DM decision as to what roll means what.

Nelyo wrote:

The snake oil salesman is a con artist, and con artists need a lure to get their marks to participate, usually a promise of easy money, sex, or even the idea that they are doing a good deed ("My son desperately needs a cure disease spell, can you spare 25 gold, oh noble hero?"). In this case, the snake oil salesman is offering a miracle remedy, and some people want to believe that they can make a quick buck/get laid/help someone out/solve all their health problems with a single potion, and so they leave themselves open to fall into the trap. Other people are born skeptics or have been fooled before and know better than to fall for that kind of trick again (and then again, some people never learn).

The problem is that in the case of a bluff, the "lure" is illusory, such that even if you win the social contest, you merely dispel his bluff, and gain nothing. You're not dueling for a cure to a disease or to really save someone, you're just dueling to not be conned and if you win, you don't get anything besides defending against a con, which you could do by simply ignoring the other guy.

Instead she works on Lieutenant Felton, not with seduction or coin, because she quickly sees that these are not enough to overpower his loyalty to Lord deWinter, but by feigning religious martyrdom, since he is a religious man who values God more than any loyalty to mortal powers.

See I want a social system that takes this stuff into account, because that's cool if you as PCs have to find out what makes an NPC tick so to speak and the way you can manipulate him.

Or, to take another literary example, look at Sam, Frodo, and Gollum. Gollum never really fools Sam, because Sam has already made up his mind about what Gollum is and is too loyal to Frodo to let his guard down. Frodo on the other hand, needs to believe that Gollum can be redeemed and pities him, which gives Gollum ample stakes to manipulate.

Here's the problem. See, in a social system, the fact that Frodo believes Gollum is because Gollum succeeded on his bluff check against him, but not against Sam. Nobody really goes into a situation wanting to be conned. Certainly Frodo's personality makes him more susceptible to being tricked, but on a mechanical level, it isn't Frodo's players choice to get into a social contest with Gollum, because again, he has nothing to gain. Win and you're not tricked, lose and you're tricked.

If you think about situations in the "play it out, DM decides" mode where there's no chance of one side being convinced, it's generally because one side or the other has no stake in the argument, and so the stakes system prevents those from ever reaching the portion affected by random chance and opening things up to weird effects.

As I said before, this system just doesn't work well for most social situations that are likely to come up in D&D.

In fact the scope of stuff it works on is very limited. It sounds like a nice system for an RPG like vampire: the masquerade, and I might consider adopting it or something like it there, but for a heroic fantasy game, it just doesn't seem like you'd be using it much.

DGunther wrote:

This example is the problem with the 3e/3.5 system. If the skills system is going to be similar to Star Wars Saga (a pretty decent one at that), then the above, while still being possible, will be highly unlikely. Now, said 4th level character will get +5 to bluff for being trained in the skill, say another +5 for having the skill emphasis feat (or whatever it's called), +2 (1/2 your character level), and let's say a +4 due to high charisma = +16 for bluff or deception or whatever it will be called. Now, said stupid 20th level fighter will have +10 added to his Sense Motive (1/2 his character level), and let's say he's a little wise having a 14 wisdom, granting a +2 modifier = +12 to sense motive. While it's still possible for said 4th level character to outsmart the dumb 20th level fighter, it's not as likely. From my stand point, and you may not agree, this makes a good of sense.

I like the Star Wars Saga skill system, as it has a mechanic to reflect something that occurs in real life...the inadvertant acquisition of useless trivia knowledge.

A very good point indeed. I agree fully (I just recently found out about the adding 1/2 lvl thing). And the fact that you get more of a choice of your skills in every class is kinda cool to help with that. I still think I'm going to grudgingly pick over 4th ed and adapt it to 3.5. I'm ok with the skills for the most part, especially the picking some your skills thing, just not sold on some of the other ideas, races/classes mostly. Why isn't there elf wizards, and dwarf druids? That was the best thing about 3rd vs. 2nd, now they are back to restriction rules. Can you guess my first house rule if I was to play 4th?

I'm still in the mind set that most of the time, social battle with dice comes down to players who don't ever want anything to work against them -- ever.
I have a very inexperienced group right now, and have a hard time dealing with them using OOG knowledge and they force me to revert to dice rolls to keep them in check when it comes to me wanting to bluff there characters, or often times even reason with them as to why they have to pay full price to this merchant who is more stubborn (higher diplomacy and profession) than the last merchant. Tell them something is over book value, and watch out. Now that merchants will be classless (if I'm understanding the rumors right) and the players get bonuses the higher levels they go, you can see where this could be a problem in my case. House rule 2, NPC nobodies still have lvls...and lots of HPs (I've had too many merchants die and stores burglarized).

It's things like that when I'd rather be in control of my story because I'm the one telling it, and not even leaving to chance that my players could get something for less when I have a legitimate storyline reason for making social encounters the way I want them. Perhaps I want them to see the shady merchant down in the back alley for a flavorful plot line, that won't happen if they start throwing out rules as to why they can argue down the price, and the dumb fighter can win them.

Why couldn't they make the social engagement rules optional, or suggestive guidelines so we old timers could avoid the rule lawyers. My bad knees make it hard to dodge them a-holes these days.

It is a mark of a good gamer when you can let something potentially bad happen to your character for the sake of storyline and good roleplaying. Once gave a dwarf pointy ears for making fun of elves, he didn't even bother to roll a WILL, just laughed and added it to the description of his character. Then griped and moaned in character every game after. I wish I could rolled an intimidate to make him stop whining. Even though I won by concession, my sanity was the loser on that exchange.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well, while there is physics involved in both, you're not supposed to be rolling the die in such a way that you're trying to load the outcome. Die rolling is a means to achieve randomness, where as in football, it's a result of player skill.

If you knew and took into account every single factor down to the smallest detail, neither the ballgame nor the die roll would be "random". But the point that I was making before was that "random" isn't bad for a game system if the possible results are all acceptable within context.

Well, the main difference is that most social systems cause you to lose out on options as opposed to getting options. See in combat or any physical test for that matter, the goals are simple and the situation is hard to describe. Regardless of how awesome a DM storyteller you are, it's going to be hard to offer the PCs any real description that's going to give them meaningful RP choices in a combat. It ends up boiling down to "I swing my sword at him." Now, you may choose to attack low or attack the guy's head or whatever, but there's no easy way to adjudicate that from a no rules standpoint. You either end up giving your PCs are a no-brainer decision "You see an opening in his lower defenses." "Ok, I attack his right leg." Or an arbitrary guessing game between DM and PC that amounts to rock/paper/scissors, which is no better than rolling a dice.

Now, social situations on the other hand are a bit different. You can slip subtle clues into the speech and such and set up social puzzles so that your characters can make meaningful decisions that aren't pitifully obvious or turn into blatant guessing games. It may require some detective work in terms of the PCs of course, but it's possible. Because your options matter. Unlike in combat, it doesn't all boil down to "I swing a sword at my foe." You have numerous approaches.

Lets say you feel that the Duke is a traitor to the king and want to uncover his treachery. Here are some choices you've got:

• Pose as mercenaries asking to be hired for the Duke's fighting regimen, and subtly try to extract clues as to his plans.
  
• Claim you're rebels to the king and want his help in overthrowing the king.
  
• Go to the duke bringing word of a possible rebellion forming against the king to gauge his reactions.
  
• Directly confront him on the matter.
  
• Subtly infer that you might be against the king, seeing if you can draw information out without putting yourself at risk.
  
• Have a female PC try to seduce the duke and posssibly get information out of him.
  
• Merely eavesdrop the Duke's conversations with others to try to glean information before making your approach.
  

The list goes on and on, and I could keep out listing things right there.

I think you're underestimating the complexity of human social interactions and overestimating the complexity of the goals that they might be used to achieve. There are whole fields of study on the subject, and they're still half voodoo. As for clues and puzzles, those bypass the PCs and go straight to the players. Also, if they catch the clues, you're just giving the game away, and if they don't catch the clues, the PCs have no chance.

All of those things you listed can be done in a game with social systems. However, other than "Directly confront him", none of those options would use the Duel of Wits. They might, however, lead to a Duel of Wits.

And all those options are going to have real story advantages and drawbacks that are going to matter on not just how well you did at what you're trying but also what you did. Now the stakes system is about as close to what I've seen as trying to emulate all of these, but the problem is that in creating the stakes you effectively give out information to your PCs.

If your stakes are "If I win, the duke drops the ball and gives out some slip into his plans and if I lose, the duke has me thrown in the dungeon.", the PCs tend to know that the duke is a traitor simply from the stakes. Which sucks for a political intrigue game where you should constantly be guessing what the duke's real motives are.

This isn't inherently a bad thing. Just because the players know doesn't mean that the PCs do. The players are the "audience" as well as the actors, and much like the audience in a movie, they can know who the bad guy is and that just makes things all the more tense. And just because the players know doesn't mean that the PCs can do anything about it.

Still, if you want the kind of play where the players don't know, then the stakes can simply be "the king gives us a solid hint to the truth vs. the king throws us in the dungeon".

Yeah, I can see that. And a part of me agrees, but I constantly find myself wondering, why have a system at all? I mean, basically the only reason you're able to start a social conflict at all is because the DM gave you the green light, so if your request is reasonable, why not just okay it from the start?

Intellectual acknowledgement is all that I can ask. Can't make you like it. But the answer is the same as "Why have combat?" or "Why have traps?" They're only there if the DM gives you the green light and introduces it as an option.

Maybe I don't fully understand. I got the impression that you could just deny the DoW and not even care. Like if PCs went up to a guard and offered him stakes of "If I win, you let me through, if I lose, we leave." The guard could just decline it and he basically doesn't let you through, so the guard hasn't lost anything. Maybe I'm missing something there, but that's the way I interpreted it.

That could happen. The guard doesn't have to care. That's kind of boring, though, and the DM's job is to make things interesting. Of course the PCs can give the guard somethting to lose, be it a bribe he might not get, or a beating he might get, or threats to his family that might happen. The guard can still just refuse, but then he must not care about his family much. And that's ok.

Also what happens if two sides want to get in a DoW but neither can agree to common stakes? Who is considered the loser there? It seems almost like you could run into Cops and Robbers style stakes setting.

"If I win, I get all his money and items, and if I lose, he gets this piece of string."
"Screw that. How about if he wins, he get all your money and if you win, you get that rusty dagger on his belt."

If both sides are unreasonable it seems like it could be rather difficult.

It entirely depends on the circumstances. If one side wants to fight (or whatever the consequence) and the other doesn't, than the one that doesn't want to fight loses. If neither side wants to go to war, then they both lose. It's entirely contextual, and even "loss" is a relative term, since there technically wasn't a contest.

As for a stakes deadlock, the DM's job is to keep things moving. He can moderate things to get to an agreement. If that doesn't happen, then that means any DoW wouldn't work anyway, so there's just no DoW.

Well, because a lot of times you may want to argue with random schmucks. The fighter trying to raise an army to defend the village, the cleric looking for converts and the like. A lot of times in social situations, it's the random schmucks you care about influencing. You intimidate the random bandits into leaving without a fight for instance.

The problem is that so many social situations don't have anything to gain on one side.

Seduction: If the seducer wins he/she gets sex and some favors, if he loses, both sides just walk away with nothing.

Bluff: If you win, you convince someone of something, if you lose, you may lose credibility, but the other guy doesn't really gain anything.

Intimidate: Same deal. You choose between getting scared off or being unaffected. Why would you agree to that at all?

Begging for free equipment, healing, whatever: Again nothing to be gained, best thing that happens is that you just refuse the request.

Trying to resolve a misunderstanding: Paladin rushes around and finds your band of adventurers, thinking you're evil mercs under the service of the lich, he attacks. You try to convince him otherwise. If you win, he doesn't attack you and he doesnt' have to live with the guilt of attacking you. If he wins the DoW, he actually loses, in that he's slaughtering innocents.

Bribery: If you win the DoW against the bribe, you don't take it, but you're no better off than you were.

Now the problem is that all these things are important things to resolve. DoW works well it seems for opposed things in front of a crowd, but for the kind of social situations that come up all the time in D&D. It's not so great.

Well, if those "schmucks" are important to the character's goals, they aren't really all that "random". But either way, a straight skill roll would cover it. And it would cover all of those situations. And none of those are proper DoWs anyway, with the exception of the paladin and the beggar, and unless the beggar has something to offer (even just "leave you alone") there wouldn't be a point to a DoW.

Well presumably the guard lets some people in, so the goal is tricking the guard, and the guard is trying not to be tricked. If I'm trying to sneak illegal drugs by US customs, the customs guy cares what I'm saying, because it's his job to analyze my story and see if he should let me in or not. He doesn't necessarily want to just have me arrested without reason.

The thing is that he doesn't really know in this case that he's engaging in a DoW. It's where I said that you may actually give up information by announcing stakes or announcing there is a DoW, since for the most part.

DoW isn't about "tricking" anybody. It's about convincing, or at least "out-arguing" somebody. That's an important distinction. Otherwise it's probably just a Bluff roll (or the equivelent).

Well giving him the bribe when he won the DoW seems really stupid. "I'll give you this 100 gp, and you let me through." Somehow the guard ends up with the gold and the PCs are walking away from the castle wondering what happened. That doesn't even make any sense from a storytelling point of view.

Now I mean, I guess it could be where the bartender just pockets your bribe and then doens't tell you anything, but would he have to even do a DoW to do that? Couldn't he just take the bribe and decide not to let you in? Or does the system prevent him from doing that?

The bartender can do what he wants, but if he loses a DoW, he has to do what he said, whatever that may be. As for the guard, the stakes could be "We give you 100gp and you let us through" vs. "You give me that 100gp and leave and I won't have the watch bust heads for bribing an officer". If it didn't make sense to begin with, the players shouldn't have agreed to those stakes.

Ok I suppose that can work. Though at this point, it's just kind of an arbitrary DM decision as to what roll means what.

Sure. The rules are pretty clear as a rule, but the DM is still the DM. That's his job. Remember, the rules aren't meant to stop the DM from being a jerk, they just keep him from hiding it.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

See I want a social system that takes this stuff into account, because that's cool if you as PCs have to find out what makes an NPC tick so to speak and the way you can manipulate him.

And I think the best way to handle this is through a social system, because dropping hints as a DM and relying on the players to pick up on it is a metagame challenge, not a PC challenge. It's the same as using a riddling contest or making them solve a puzzle to progress through a dungeon. It's very hard to make it an interesting character challenge without requiring them to use player knowledge (or going the other way and having it resolved by a simple Intelligence/Knowledge check).

In the Felton example, Milady realized the significance of two words ("Your Mass") and had to put that together with her knowledge of religious groups in England immediately in order to create the necessary opening. You'd need some very canny players to pick up and capitalize on that in the crucial moment in the "play it out" model, and it's anti-climactic in the "just roll" model using 3.5 rules because it just boils down to a Sense Motive roll that gives you a circumstance bonus to your Bluff check, so the ideal situation would be to have a social system that makes finding and exploiting those openings interesting, without relying heavily on player (as opposed to character) abilities.

Nelyo wrote:

And I think the best way to handle this is through a social system, because dropping hints as a DM and relying on the players to pick up on it is a metagame challenge, not a PC challenge. It's the same as using a riddling contest or making them solve a puzzle to progress through a dungeon. It's very hard to make it an interesting character challenge without requiring them to use player knowledge (or going the other way and having it resolved by a simple Intelligence/Knowledge check).

I dont' see a problem with that. I like to challenge my players and get them involved in the story. There will always be player skill required and player decisions. That's the whole point of a game. It's not a role-playing simulation, it's a role-playing game. Games are all about making choices.

You'd need some very canny players to pick up and capitalize on that in the crucial moment in the "play it out" model, and it's anti-climactic in the "just roll" model using 3.5 rules because it just boils down to a Sense Motive roll that gives you a circumstance bonus to your Bluff check, so the ideal situation would be to have a social system that makes finding and exploiting those openings interesting, without relying heavily on player (as opposed to character) abilities.

Really, I like having PCs be able to solve the puzzle with player ability. It keeps them interested in the game when they know they have to do something. Otherwise social situations are pretty boring where you just listen to the NPC talk and can't really learn anything.

Ludanto wrote:

As for clues and puzzles, those bypass the PCs and go straight to the players. Also, if they catch the clues, you're just giving the game away, and if they don't catch the clues, the PCs have no chance.

Well, yes, if they detect the clues, they do better. Player choice matters and the players stay interested in what NPCs are saying.

All of those things you listed can be done in a game with social systems. However, other than "Directly confront him", none of those options would use the Duel of Wits. They might, however, lead to a Duel of Wits.

I guess I'm not really seeing why the social system is that great if it can't handle all those situations.

This isn't inherently a bad thing. Just because the players know doesn't mean that the PCs do. The players are the "audience" as well as the actors, and much like the audience in a movie, they can know who the bad guy is and that just makes things all the more tense. And just because the players know doesn't mean that the PCs can do anything about it.

Well, it sorta sucks to constantly force players to try to pretend like they don't know stuff, because it's still a game and players are trying to "win". Now some role-players are good enough such that they can let their metagame knowledge not get in the way. Others on the otherhand just can't do that and there's no easy way to prevent it, aside from the DM telling them "you can't do that."

And that sorta sucks, because now the PCs can't even get hunches or anything, because you suspect the hunch is metagame knowledge based. It's a lot more fluid when you just trick the players as well as the characters, that way players are free to make decisions based on their entire knowledge base. Otherwise, they know the right decision, they're just relying on getting sufficient evidence to be able to allow the DM to let them make that decision.

Intellectual acknowledgement is all that I can ask. Can't make you like it. But the answer is the same as "Why have combat?" or "Why have traps?" They're only there if the DM gives you the green light and introduces it as an option.

Well no, I mean sooner or later you'll encounter some kind of NPC and combat is always an option. It may be a particularly bad option, but it's still there. Anytime you go see the Duke or buy a drink at a local tavernkeeper, there's always the option of sticking your sword into the barkeep. There's big consequences, but you can easily do that and the DM can't tell you that your character can't.

It entirely depends on the circumstances. If one side wants to fight (or whatever the consequence) and the other doesn't, than the one that doesn't want to fight loses.

But they don't. I mean not really. The guard who ignores your attempt to get in instead of starting a DoW doesn't lose. He's just basically doing his job.

Well, if those "schmucks" are important to the character's goals, they aren't really all that "random". But either way, a straight skill roll would cover it. And it would cover all of those situations. And none of those are proper DoWs anyway, with the exception of the paladin and the beggar, and unless the beggar has something to offer (even just "leave you alone") there wouldn't be a point to a DoW.

I guess I feel that DoW is too limiting then, since most of the situations I care about in D&D aren't DoWs. So the actual social system isn't DoW, it's just making skill rolls to bluff/seduce/etc. DoW is some random thing that happens in select circumstances.

DoW isn't about "tricking" anybody. It's about convincing, or at least "out-arguing" somebody. That's an important distinction. Otherwise it's probably just a Bluff roll (or the equivelent).

A bluff is about convincing people. That's the whole point. You're convincing them you're telling the truth.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well, it sorta sucks to constantly force players to try to pretend like they don't know stuff, because it's still a game and players are trying to "win". Now some role-players are good enough such that they can let their metagame knowledge not get in the way. Others on the otherhand just can't do that and there's no easy way to prevent it, aside from the DM telling them "you can't do that."

And that sorta sucks, because now the PCs can't even get hunches or anything, because you suspect the hunch is metagame knowledge based. It's a lot more fluid when you just trick the players as well as the characters, that way players are free to make decisions based on their entire knowledge base. Otherwise, they know the right decision, they're just relying on getting sufficient evidence to be able to allow the DM to let them make that decision.

I totally agree. I find myself doing it a lot when I'm the only experienced player in a party. I hate to do it, but sometimes I get so dang frustrated when I'm trying to play a backseat character and the players with little game knowledge, but a 16+INT just sit there with their mouth agape doing nothing.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well no, I mean sooner or later you'll encounter some kind of NPC and combat is always an option. It may be a particularly bad option, but it's still there. Anytime you go see the Duke or buy a drink at a local tavernkeeper, there's always the option of sticking your sword into the barkeep. There's big consequences, but you can easily do that and the DM can't tell you that your character can't.

Situations like that is why I love the alignment system and don't feel it should ever be taken out. I don't let just anyone play evil characters because I don't want to sit there while they run around town killing all the 1/2 HD inhabitents. It's nice to look at that good aligned character and ask the player, "are you SURE that is what you are doing?"

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well, yes, if they detect the clues, they do better. Player choice matters and the players stay interested in what NPCs are saying.

It's not really about "player choice", though. Either the player picks up on the DM's clues, or he doesn't, and the character isn't really involved. But that's neither here nor there, and is a perfectly valid play style for those that like that sort of thing.

I guess I'm not really seeing why the social system is that great if it can't handle all those situations.

That's like saying that the combat system isn't so great because it doesn't cover sneaking into the castle and stabbing the guy in the throat while he sleeps, or pretending to be his friend and then leading him into an ambush, or other such things. Those things you listed are clever tactics and preparation, but most of them aren't actually a conflict, or at least not a social conflict. Instead they'd be clever uses of disguise, bluff, acting, seduction, perception, etc that would give the character some kind of advantage. Unless the target character knows that he's "in a conflict", there's no need for the elaborate conflict mechanics. There'd be no reason for him to "fight back".

Well, it sorta sucks to constantly force players to try to pretend like they don't know stuff, because it's still a game and players are trying to "win". Now some role-players are good enough such that they can let their metagame knowledge not get in the way. Others on the otherhand just can't do that and there's no easy way to prevent it, aside from the DM telling them "you can't do that."

And that sorta sucks, because now the PCs can't even get hunches or anything, because you suspect the hunch is metagame knowledge based. It's a lot more fluid when you just trick the players as well as the characters, that way players are free to make decisions based on their entire knowledge base. Otherwise, they know the right decision, they're just relying on getting sufficient evidence to be able to allow the DM to let them make that decision.

Well, like I said, that's doable. Of course that actually makes "tricking" the players more important than tricking the PCs, which again bypasses the characters. But trying to "trick" the players isn't necessary for fun, at least not witha well designed system. So what if the players know? Let them get hunches. Let them pull rationalizations out of their backsides as to why they're suddenly so focused on Mr. HiddenBadGuy. A well designed system isn't broken by metagaming. Now the question becomes no "who's the bad guy", but "what do we do about it?" Even if they just up and decide to kill said NPC (and manage to do so), how are they going to explain their actions (which appear to be murderous). How do they feel about playing characters that would murder a person on a "hunch"? What are they going to do now that their NPC relations are afraid of them?

Well no, I mean sooner or later you'll encounter some kind of NPC and combat is always an option. It may be a particularly bad option, but it's still there. Anytime you go see the Duke or buy a drink at a local tavernkeeper, there's always the option of sticking your sword into the barkeep. There's big consequences, but you can easily do that and the DM can't tell you that your character can't.

But the DM knew that. If he didn't want it to be an option, he should have prepared for that by not meeting the characters in person, or by having appropriate precautions prepared, or by not letting the characters/players know who it is that needs killing. Combat is only an option if the DM allows for it.

But they don't. I mean not really. The guard who ignores your attempt to get in instead of starting a DoW doesn't lose. He's just basically doing his job.

Context. If the guard doesn't want to fight 7 armed maniacs, then by not entering a DoW, he "loses" because he's going to have to fight them. If he had DoW-ed them, he might have at least gotten a bribe out of it. If those same 7 maniacs also don't want to draw attention to themselves, then if the guard refuses, then they both "lose". If the guard's duty is his life, and yon 7 maniacs still don't want to create a scene, then said maniacs "lose", because they're going to have to get noisy killing the guard. It's all context. As I say occasionally, the rules don't exist in a vacuum.

I guess I feel that DoW is too limiting then, since most of the situations I care about in D&D aren't DoWs. So the actual social system isn't DoW, it's just making skill rolls to bluff/seduce/etc. DoW is some random thing that happens in select circumstances.

A bluff is about convincing people. That's the whole point. You're convincing them you're telling the truth.

Hm. Duel of Wits is what it is. It's an argument or debate. There's no debate in intimidation or seduction or lying. There's nothing for the target to "counterattack". There's no "fight". The target is essentially just "reacting", making a "save". And even if you believe a lie or become seduced or feeling intimidated, that doesn't force the character to do anything (at least in BW).

That's not to say that DoW can't come into play, though. So he's seduced. Now can you convince him to come up to your place? So he believes your lie, can you convince him to act on it? So he's intimidated. Can you convince him that your threats are worse than the consequences of going along with you?

As for bluffing, there's a couple of ways to look at it. There's falsehood, simply being untruthful convincingly. Either you are or you aren't. There's no argument involved. You are believed or you aren't. A bluff can be used as a tool in a debate/conflict/DoW, but it doesn't require one by itself.

The other way to look at it is as the stakes of a DoW. "You believe me vs. You don't believe me". Of course, then the content of that DoW isn't the lie, but why you should be believed.

And this is, of course, just Burning Wheel. Other games do things differently.

krieg_69 wrote:

I totally agree. I find myself doing it a lot when I'm the only experienced player in a party. I hate to do it, but sometimes I get so dang frustrated when I'm trying to play a backseat character and the players with little game knowledge, but a 16+INT just sit there with their mouth agape doing nothing.

Yeah, it's actually one reason that I don't like intelligence as a character score. I'd prefer it just be "knowledge" or something, so it reflects how many skills your character knows and helps his spellcasting and such, but it doesn't really factor into his decision making skills. Since this is a game, I always felt the whole point was that the player makes the choices.

Alignment tangent thing Show

Ludanto]It's not really about "player choice", though. Either the player picks up on the DM's clues, or he doesn't, and the character isn't really involved. But that's neither here nor there, and is a perfectly valid play style for those that like that sort of thing.

Well, perception is a part of strategy. In chess, you've got to figure out what your opponent's attack plan is to make a good counter-move. If you can't figure it out, then your choices suffer, but figuring it out is part of skill. The fact that you have to figure things out helps to keep you concentrating on the game.

It's not really about "player choice", though. Either the player picks up on the DM's clues, or he doesn't, and the character isn't really involved. But that's neither here nor there, and is a perfectly valid play style for those that like that sort of thing.[/quote]
Well, perception is a part of strategy. In chess, you've got to figure out what your opponent's attack plan is to make a good counter-move. If you can't figure it out, then your choices suffer, but figuring it out is part of skill. The fact that you have to figure things out helps to keep you concentrating on the game.

That's like saying that the combat system isn't so great because it doesn't cover sneaking into the castle and stabbing the guy in the throat while he sleeps, or pretending to be his friend and then leading him into an ambush, or other such things. Those things you listed are clever tactics and preparation, but most of them aren't actually a conflict, or at least not a social conflict. Instead they'd be clever uses of disguise, bluff, acting, seduction, perception, etc that would give the character some kind of advantage. Unless the target character knows that he's "in a conflict", there's no need for the elaborate conflict mechanics. There'd be no reason for him to "fight back".

I've always felt a social system should handle social actions. As a matter of fact, the combat system does handle stabbing someone in their sleep, it's called a Coup de Grace. There's an entire section on helpless defenders. Now there are some weird edge cases where the combat system like if a guy does a flying charge while hanging onto a chandelier.

Now, this is because the combat system handles the most common combat actions people are like to take. A social system, by extension, should handle the most common social actions someone is likely to take.

Well, like I said, that's doable. Of course that actually makes "tricking" the players more important than tricking the PCs, which again bypasses the characters. But trying to "trick" the players isn't necessary for fun, at least not witha well designed system. So what if the players know? Let them get hunches. Let them pull rationalizations out of their backsides as to why they're suddenly so focused on Mr. HiddenBadGuy.

Well, I suppose that bothers me, both as a player and a DM. As a player, if I'm supposed to be tricked, then I want to role-play that out, and using metgame knowledge makes me feel dirty. If I'm a DM, it feels cheesy when players use metagame knowledge to justify their decisions. Almost like they went through the pages of the module and just read them.

A well designed system isn't broken by metagaming. Now the question becomes no "who's the bad guy", but "what do we do about it?" Even if they just up and decide to kill said NPC (and manage to do so), how are they going to explain their actions (which appear to be murderous). How do they feel about playing characters that would murder a person on a "hunch"? What are they going to do now that their NPC relations are afraid of them?

Well, you assume a civilized world, which D&D almost certainly isn't. Like I said, the system may be okay for something like Vampire: the Masquerade, where you can't just run around killing people (at least not other vampires), without serious retribution. But this is D&D, the game where you can pretty much run around stabbing people.

But the DM knew that. If he didn't want it to be an option, he should have prepared for that by not meeting the characters in person, or by having appropriate precautions prepared, or by not letting the characters/players know who it is that needs killing. Combat is only an option if the DM allows for it.

Well, of course, but every group of PCs can throw the DM a curveball now and then when they do something entirely unexpected. The point is that you can't have your NPC stand there and say "Nope. not getting into a fight with you" and then walk away. I mean sure, he can try to escape, but he has to roll initiative and all that.

As for bluffing, there's a couple of ways to look at it. There's falsehood, simply being untruthful convincingly. Either you are or you aren't. There's no argument involved. You are believed or you aren't. A bluff can be used as a tool in a debate/conflict/DoW, but it doesn't require one by itself.

Well I'm going to focus on this one because it's probably the most important.

Just getting someone to believe a lie can pretty much win you a debate if the lie is damning enough. Also no need to convince the king's brother is a traitor when you can just lie about it and get him to believe you with a single roll. Sure, you can't set stakes or anything, but so what? Bluffs are likely to get you what you want more so than anything else, because your target doesn't get a chance to refuse.

So if you tell the guard protecting the gate that you're really an important messenger and that the king is expecting you, he's pretty much going to let you in if he believes you.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

I've always felt a social system should handle social actions. As a matter of fact, the combat system does handle stabbing someone in their sleep, it's called a Coup de Grace. There's an entire section on helpless defenders. Now there are some weird edge cases where the combat system like if a guy does a flying charge while hanging onto a chandelier.

Now, this is because the combat system handles the most common combat actions people are like to take. A social system, by extension, should handle the most common social actions someone is likely to take.

Coup de Grace isn't combat anymore than a bluff roll is a debate. You don't even have to be in combat to Coup de Grace somebody, and if it's successful, you won't enter combat at all. You roll and he saves and either he's dead or he's not. If not, then everybody rolls for initiative. BW does handle all social situations, and DoW handles all social conflicts. The clever tactics you describe are just good planning. They aren't social conflicts anymore than a Stealth roll to hide in ambush is a combat.

If it helps, consider that in most systems that have social conflict rules, it tends to permeate the entire system. Just because nobody called for a DoW, doesn't mean there's nothing social going on.

Well, I suppose that bothers me, both as a player and a DM. As a player, if I'm supposed to be tricked, then I want to role-play that out, and using metgame knowledge makes me feel dirty. If I'm a DM, it feels cheesy when players use metagame knowledge to justify their decisions. Almost like they went through the pages of the module and just read them.

Great! Then metagame knowledge won't hurt your game because you and your players won't want to make decsions without an "in-game" reason because you think that's lame. That's how it works.

Well, you assume a civilized world, which D&D almost certainly isn't. Like I said, the system may be okay for something like Vampire: the Masquerade, where you can't just run around killing people (at least not other vampires), without serious retribution. But this is D&D, the game where you can pretty much run around stabbing people.

Even in an "uncivilized" world there are people in charge and people who know people and relationships and dependencies.

Besides, the point still stands. If your players are fine with playing characters that will murder somebody on a "hunch", then they're having fun. Good for them.

Well, of course, but every group of PCs can throw the DM a curveball now and then when they do something entirely unexpected. The point is that you can't have your NPC stand there and say "Nope. not getting into a fight with you" and then walk away. I mean sure, he can try to escape, but he has to roll initiative and all that.

Yes, that's the nature of physicality. In a social situation, you can just hide inside your head and not let anybody in. That's one of the benefits of physical conflict. Social conflict is different. I thought we knew that.

Well I'm going to focus on this one because it's probably the most important.

Just getting someone to believe a lie can pretty much win you a debate if the lie is damning enough. Also no need to convince the king's brother is a traitor when you can just lie about it and get him to believe you with a single roll. Sure, you can't set stakes or anything, but so what? Bluffs are likely to get you what you want more so than anything else, because your target doesn't get a chance to refuse.

So if you tell the guard protecting the gate that you're really an important messenger and that the king is expecting you, he's pretty much going to let you in if he believes you.

A bluff only gets you one thing: the target believes you're speaking truthfully. How he handles that is something else entirely. Just because the king belives you doesn't mean that he has to acknowledge that, or do anything to his brother. It doesn't even mean that he actually believes you, just that he believes you aren't lying. A few minutes of talking to his brother later and he knows he's been duped and will be mighty ****** at you.

And again, this is just one system. You might prefer others.

Here is my philosphy.

1. If a character puts points into something, it should be more useful to them than someone who doesn't.

2. Nothing should end an encounter in a single die roll. Not save or die, not a bluff or social check, not an attack. Nothing.

3. If you make it sound cool, you should do better than someone who doesn't bother to make sound cool.

Take those three philosophies and apply them as you will to encounters, whether combat, social, or research.

well think about it. Only so many people can roleplay. Everyone can play a boardgame. Its all about marketability friend.

Hey, I resent that. As someone who works with people of varying degrees of mental capability in a pile of different areas, I know people who can roleplay and can't play board games.

Ludanto wrote:

Great! Then metagame knowledge won't hurt your game because you and your players won't want to make decsions without an "in-game" reason because you think that's lame. That's how it works.

Well some of the people I play with would use metagame information. They're just not good enough roleplayers to adequately separate the two. And even if you can, I feel it kinda screws you over, because then it takes away your ability to get a legitimate "hunch" about something. But once you know, you can't even try to guess the mystery because you already know the answer. If you're doing pure improv acting, doing that is fine, but in a game environment, where you're making plot choices, it's hard to make a choice, especially one relating to a mystery plot, when you already know the answer.

Yes, that's the nature of physicality. In a social situation, you can just hide inside your head and not let anybody in. That's one of the benefits of physical conflict. Social conflict is different. I thought we knew that.

Well, it happens to be problematic, because most of the things that happen in D&D require you to be able to try to convince people who may be unwilling to hear you out, or are looking for evidence. I mean, say you're running into the kings chamber trying to convince him his kingdom is in danger. Maybe it's the truth, maybe it's a lie... whatever. The king probably doesn't care about getting in a DoW with you, he just wants to hear your proof and rule on it.

I guess I can't see too many instances when there would be a DoW in a D&D style game. About all I can see is a court case like there where the party is vouching for either themselves or someone else against another person in front of some kind of judge or audience.

A bluff only gets you one thing: the target believes you're speaking truthfully. How he handles that is something else entirely. Just because the king belives you doesn't mean that he has to acknowledge that, or do anything to his brother. It doesn't even mean that he actually believes you, just that he believes you aren't lying. A few minutes of talking to his brother later and he knows he's been duped and will be mighty ****** at you.

Ok, yeah bluff can work that way and it'd be okay. I thought you were going based on the D&D bluff, where the guy automatically believes your bluff is true, as opposed to believing that you're telling the truth.

Really I've always felt bluff should just be a skill that prevents people from using sense motive on you. So that if you lie, they can't detect it as easily. But it shouldn't really make them believe anything.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

Well some of the people I play with would use metagame information. They're just not good enough roleplayers to adequately separate the two. And even if you can, I feel it kinda screws you over, because then it takes away your ability to get a legitimate "hunch" about something. But once you know, you can't even try to guess the mystery because you already know the answer. If you're doing pure improv acting, doing that is fine, but in a game environment, where you're making plot choices, it's hard to make a choice, especially one relating to a mystery plot, when you already know the answer.

It all depends on what your game is about. If it's about a mystery that happens to have PCs investigating it, then you'd want to couch things in a way that doesn't give away OOC information. If it's about characters that happen to be investigating a mystery, then what the players do and don't know doesn't matter. But really, this is a whole different argument, and doesn't matter, because social rules can work in either mode.

Well, it happens to be problematic, because most of the things that happen in D&D require you to be able to try to convince people who may be unwilling to hear you out, or are looking for evidence. I mean, say you're running into the kings chamber trying to convince him his kingdom is in danger. Maybe it's the truth, maybe it's a lie... whatever. The king probably doesn't care about getting in a DoW with you, he just wants to hear your proof and rule on it.

I guess I can't see too many instances when there would be a DoW in a D&D style game. About all I can see is a court case like there where the party is vouching for either themselves or someone else against another person in front of some kind of judge or audience.

You're looking at that too narrowly. In the example with the king, why doesn't the king want to do anything about this potential danger? He doesn't care if they might be right? That it will be known that he could have saved the kingdom and didn't? But of course, maybe he needs evidence. So now it becomes "Send out troops to the marches vs. Bring me proof of your claims". Fun! And besides, the king is an NPC. He exist SOLEY as a tool for entertaining the players. You don't have to try too hard to figure out (or completely fabricate) a reason for him to be open to a DoW. On top of that, the stakes can be changed. If sending an army to the marches just isn't an option for the king without evidence, maybe he can be convinced to send his fastest scout to confirm the PCs' tale. That kind of thing.

And really, if the way you like to play means that a DoW never comes up and everybody is fine with that, then that's not a problem either, much like combat. Technically, DoW is a semi-optional system anyway, as are the Fight!, Range & Cover, Resources, Circles and a bunch of the others. Use what you need when and if you need it.

Ludanto wrote:

It all depends on what your game is about. If it's about a mystery that happens to have PCs investigating it, then you'd want to couch things in a way that doesn't give away OOC information. If it's about characters that happen to be investigating a mystery, then what the players do and don't know doesn't matter. But really, this is a whole different argument, and doesn't matter, because social rules can work in either mode.

True, I would just hate a social system that forced metagame knowledge on players.

You're looking at that too narrowly. In the example with the king, why doesn't the king want to do anything about this potential danger? He doesn't care if they might be right?

Well of course he cares. The question is more if he believes them or not. He may have heard a lot of doomsayers in his time, or there could be other motivations towards what the PCs want him to do.

And really, if the way you like to play means that a DoW never comes up and everybody is fine with that, then that's not a problem either, much like combat. Technically, DoW is a semi-optional system anyway, as are the Fight!, Range & Cover, Resources, Circles and a bunch of the others. Use what you need when and if you need it.

Well, I was more worried about the fact that you're left with a lot of social situations without any rules for handling them.

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

True, I would just hate a social system that forced metagame knowledge on players.

That's entirely understandable. That said, I encourage players (and DMs) to embrace the metagame. It isn't always appropriate, but many times it can make a game better. Metagame is not a dirty word. Just wanted to do a little public service announcement.

Well of course he cares. The question is more if he believes them or not. He may have heard a lot of doomsayers in his time, or there could be other motivations towards what the PCs want him to do.

That's fine. Let that play out. As people (often those against social rules) will often point out, social interaction is a complex beastie. Mostly you just ride it where it takes you. But if it happens to line up with the social rules, then you can use them. If it doesn't quite line up, and the participants think that a social conflict would be fun, then they (especially the DM) can massage things a little until everything fits and then go at it.

Well, I was more worried about the fact that you're left with a lot of social situations without any rules for handling them.

Social situations don't need rules. Social conflicts do, and there are plenty of rules for them in Burning Wheel if you need them.