How much should an RPG have rules for social interaction?

[AttilaTheGeek]

I'm considering designing my own RPG, and I'm wondering to what extent a game should apply mechanics in the form of dice rolls to social situations.

On one hand, having lots of different social rolls would allow the rules to more accurately reflect a character who is good at some but not all aspects of conversation (e.g, being good at noticing lies but bad at telling them could be represented by a high Sense Motive and low Bluff). A system with many social rolls allows players to more accurately portray characters with different levels of social experience than themselves. For example, I may not know how to convince a guard that my sneaking around is a "surprise inspection", but my rogue's high Bluff skill shows that he sure does. The main benefit to having lots of social rolls is, in my opinion, the main benefit of more rules-heavy systems in general: it allows the details of a character to have more of a tangible, quantifiable effect on the mechanics of a game.

On the other hand, having few or no social rolls causes a character's social proficiency to be almost entirely dependent on the player's acting, for better or for worse. An impassioned and eloquent speech that is negated by an awful roll discourages putting that much effort into roleplay in the future. If my own roleplaying can make the difference between the guard believing there's a surprise inspection and my character going to jail, then I as a player am incentivized to roleplay as well as I can.

At one extreme, abstracting all socialization into dice rolls creates "conversations" where players say things like "My character tries to bribe the guard, and I rolled an 18" instead of speaking in-character. It's possible that people actually enjoy that sort of gameplay, especially less experienced players, but it's not what I'd like to promote. On the other extreme, having a character's social ability determined entirely by roleplaying makes it difficult or impossible for a character to accomplish any social task that the player couldn't accomplish themselves. In that case, it's entirely up to the GM whether or not I convince the guard based on how well I spoke.

Experienced members of the playground, is there a "sweet spot" where the amount of rolling is just right? Are there any games you can recommend that handle social interaction well?

[valadil]

I don't want autopilot either. What's worse than "I roll diplomacy to bribe the guard" is "I roll diplomacy on the guard."

But I also think you do want to give your players some social buttons to push. I think players shy away from the less well defined parts of the game, preferring the areas with solid mechanics that work in ways they can reason about. If the players actually understand how to force someone's hand, pry information from an uncooperative witness, or make threats that'll stick, I think the players will be more likely to jump through verbal hoops to make these things happen.

[draken50]

This obviously depends on how the GM tends to do things, but I tend to look at 3 different methods/possibilities.

1.Little Roleplaying, Social Roll.

2.Roleplaying with Social Roll.

3.Roleplaying Only.

1.The first is often the most disconcerting to GMs and possibly other players. I would be wary of any system without support for it though. The main reason being, the players are not the characters. I have had a player who is very honest and straight-forward attempt to play a more conniving character, and in doing so spend his skill points in more deceptive skills. The thing is, if his sorcerer has a high bluff skill, but the player is plainly unsure of a good lie fitting to the situation, should he really be punished for not being a conniving liar in real life? Alternatively, you can have a character with diplomatic abilities with a player with no experience mediating conflict, who outside of game actively avoids it. I'd rather not prevent my less socially-adept players from trying social classes and possibly developing those skills.

In my last game, one of my players had a similar situation. After rolling very very well on diplomacy, I told him the gist of the methodology his character was employing to help mediate the conflict, and he then proceeded to role-play in that manner for the rest of the encounter. This even caused a minor in-game conflict between two characters at the resolution, as another player, who knew out of character what methods were being employed, felt that her character, not would not have caught on to what occurred felt insulted, resulting in more role-playing and ultimately better party cohesion.

So the non-role-played dice roll, resulted in more rping, than requiring the player to really know what approach might be. Caused the players to better develop their characters and the bond between them, and additionally led to resolution of the conflict in a satisfying way that advanced the plot.

I do require so measure of RPing, at least a goal. Generally i ask "What are you trying to do?"

2.When the player has an idea of the approach they want to use, but may be uncomfortable, or feel unable to accurately role-play what they are trying to do. The more specific the example, the more likely they are to succeed or fail. A gross misunderstanding of one side often results in them getting information as to their motivations rather than immediate failure.

3. The player is confident in their methodology, and is role-playing it out. No dice roll is warranted, particularly if successful.

[Segev]

An RPG should have well-developed rules for anything that is intended to be a focus of that game. A game focusing on race cars should have developed rules for car design, maintenance, and driving, including risks and hazards of the hard use to which the vehicles get put in competitive racing. A game about political intrigue should have well-developed rules for social manipulation and legalistic influence. A game about kicking in the doors of dungeons and taking monsters' stuff after killing them should have well-developed combat rules and rules for destroying doors and other dungeon obstacles. A game about giant mecha needs well-developed rules for building and controlling the mecha as well as for (most likely) mecha combat. A game about stealth and spying needs well-developed rules for hiding and lurking and for investigation and information-gathering.

Well-developed rules should always have significant non-binary components. The most well-developed rules in RPGs currently tend to center around combat, as we have the most developed technology for rules modeling such things due to the heritage stemming back to OD&D and Chainmail. Combat often (but not always, anymore) involves hit points as the main non-binary resolution mechanic: you eventually run out, but your state between "full" and "dead" provides a sliding scale of how well you are doing versus how well your foes are.

[Vitruviansquid]

Segev gives good advice.

To add on, you also want a system that matches the genre, setting, and *feel* you're going for. For example, DnD is pretty combat heavy and so is Savage Worlds, but DnD has a hit points system because it's going for heroic combat so it tries to be anti-climactic as little as possible whereas Savage Worlds uses a wounds system and exploding dice so combat can be explosive and unpredictable, even though it leads to some anti-climax situations like having the big, tough elite bad guy being taken out by the weakest player in one hit.

[Esprit15]

One GM I had would have us do whatever social interaction were were going to do role played first, and after that he would grant a bonus based on how well our piece was. It encourages us to role play social interaction, but doesn't directly punish you if you're bad at that.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

My ideal situation for any mechanical element, whether it be combat, debate, information-gathering, or jumping around, is this...

Players should be able to intelligently use the mechanics to get what they want.

I think there should definitely be some player input, but I like when the mechanics come in to reflect the fiction. That's what I think mechanics are for: to constrain creativity so that you have a better story. For instance, I really like how Leverage does it: it very clearly frames things as "if you fail the roll, something came up that you didn't cover for", and you might even get an ongoing complication because unexpected variables popped up.

In fact, the idea of unexpected variables often gets forgotten. You will never be able to approach a situation with perfect information, and the human psyche is far more likely than anything else to be unpredictable. The roll of the die tells the players and GM what direction those mystery variables swing in.

[Winter_Wolf]

I'd rather it was all on the player, or at least mostly on the player to provide at least a strong framework for a success check. Then again I have heard too many "I roll a check for X" and feel like too much is lost. I'm not even a huge role player but there comes a point where I'd ask why even bother to call something a "role playing" game. Or at least make it perfectly clear that heavy die rolling for socials is Optional.

[NichG]

I can only really speak to personal preference here, since there's a wide range of design targets to shoot for. For me, the ideal thing is for an RPG to not have rules for evaluating the outcome of social interactions, but instead to have rules which allow players to use mechanics to gain access to information and assurances that they normally would not possess. That is to say, for me the function of the rules is ideally to enable the players to experience having extremes of skill and even superhuman ability in that domain, without abstracting it away to the point of determining the outcome or glossing over the details of the interaction.

I also like the idea of a separation between 'named-NPCs' and 'unnamed-NPCs'. That is to say, I like the idea that aggregate 'populations' of various sorts could be reduced to mechanics, but specific individuals are not necessarily subject to those mechanics. So you could e.g. say that 'the bulk membership of this guild has a Loyalty score, and if that drops below 50% there is a chance per month that there is internal disruption and guild services are interrupted', but that would not compel any specific member of the guild to actually be disloyal. Similarly 'this unit of troops has a Morale score, and if it drops low enough then the unit may rout' - it wouldn't compel a specific named Sergeant to flee, or a PC who is a member of the unit, but its a measure of the aggregate morale of the group as a whole.

Here's a few examples of what I'm talking about:

- Someone could have a power that lets them 'try out' a line of argument before committing to it, with the understanding that the person they're interacting with is promising to behave that way given that line of argument, but to behave as if it never happened should the user of the power choose to use a different line. E.g. a player could use the power and ask 'What would you say if I offered an alliance with Glendearg, but you have to let us into the holy sepulcher?', and the target of the power would have to answer truthfully but behave as if that was never offered if the player chose not to offer it.

- Someone could have a power that lets them enforce a promise or statement via mechanics, e.g. 'if the target of this power agrees verbally to what I'm offering, they suffer a mechanical penalty or cost of some kind if they do not go through with it'

- Someone could have a power that lets them request a piece of information of a target in an out-of-character way, where the information must be provided truthfully. E.g. 'This power lets you detect the strongest source of leverage or pressure being exerted on the target, and the type of leverage/pressure being used'

- Someone could have a power that imbues a social interaction with consequences in terms of third-parties to the interaction. For example, 'This power makes it so that if the target of the power refuses to communicate or walks away from the debate, all non-named NPC observers of the debate will lose a certain degree of respect/loyalty to the target'. Loyalty/respect for non-named NPCs would have to be quantified and have mechanical consequences

- Someone could have a power that lets them find a viable contact within a given organization which has a presence in a given place without e.g. specifically going around and having in-character discussions in taverns (but it would not preclude doing that). It enables the social encounter to happen, rather than determining the outcome.

- Someone could have a power that determines whether someone would or would not accept various deals, or forces them to rank things in order of importance and report that to the user of the power.

- Someone could have a power which allows them to be creepily informed about the target's movements or activities.

So these are all examples of things which allow for higher levels of competency than the players possess (or even that humans possess), but at the same time which allow the outcomes of social interactions to follow strictly from the resultant roleplay (which to me is the ideal situation). At the end of the day, the limitation to all of these powers is that they can never compel a specific choice on the part of either party, but they can levy mechanical rewards and penalties on making specific choices. So e.g. you can't mechanically force the king to agree, but you can mechanically punish him for disagreeing. This preserves agency both for PCs and NPCs.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Well-developed rules should always have significant non-binary components.

More specifically, there should be an option for binary or non-binary resolution, as the situation demands. A non-binary resolution is important for any situation where drama is important. You need tension, and the kind of back-and-forth action that you just can't get if you're just rolling Diplomacy. On the other hand, you shouldn't need to go through all that trouble when you're just trying to chat up a mook.

[Remmirath]

Rules and skills for social interactions are useful in a roleplaying game, but they should never reach the point where no actual roleplaying need be done. Social skills should, in my opinion, be a representation of how well the character did using the specific tactic that the player outlined. In cases where the player has no idea whatsoever what to say in a situation, but the character would, I consider it acceptable to simply role and outline the gist of what the character will say -- and there should be mechanical support for such eventualities -- but those should be rare. A Diplomacy or Bluff check should ideally be only a measure of how charmingly the character said what those around the table just heard them say, or how convincing they were in the lie.

Honestly, I think that social interaction is an area where difficulty and such things need to be directly governed by the GM, and not set in stone in the rules. Guidelines are a good idea, but you definitely don't want to end up with a system where a character can theoretically automatically convert all of their enemies just by talking to them (and not even coming up with anything resembling what they're actually saying).

I haven't come across any systems that have oustandingly good systems for social interaction. Typically the ones that leave it more alone tend to be better than those that have a lot of rules for it, because those rules often end up hampering rather than helping roleplay.

[Segev]

Be careful claiming that rules just get in the way of it. Do rules for combat get in the way of combat being fun and exciting to play? Would it be better to leave it to players acting it out?

[NichG]

Be careful claiming that rules just get in the way of it. Do rules for combat get in the way of combat being fun and exciting to play? Would it be better to leave it to players acting it out?

Often, and in many ways, yes. Often the rules force combat into very specific mechanical paths, because those are the only paths that are efficient, even if other things are conceptually permissible. In D&D 3.5 for example, grappling is a somewhat convoluted beast and its a horrible option usually unless you've very specifically optimized for it. While there might be situations where 'I grab him and try to subdue him!' makes logical sense in the story, players quickly learn 'nevermind, I'll just charge and make a full attack' is generally the better option. There's always a balance to be had, and there are lots of different ways to design rules to try to avoid that kind of result, but yes, rules can often 'just get in the way of it' if they're too aggressive in taking control of and formalizing the resolution system.

In general, if you're trying to avoid that phenomenon its better when rules say 'you can also do this' rather than 'these are the things you can do' or 'all things you try to do must pass through this bottleneck' or 'if X happens you must do Y'. That is to say, if a rule is a very modular thing that can be invoked at will by the player and doesn't interfere with other things, rather than something that demands to be invoked by the system.

[SowZ]

I designed a system. It basically has a social stat for lying/acting, for high charisma/presence, for detecting lies, and for being attractive. How they are used is pretty simple. I didn't want complex rules for it because I want people to actually say what they are going to say.

[Amphetryon]

I'd rather it was all on the player, or at least mostly on the player to provide at least a strong framework for a success check. Then again I have heard too many "I roll a check for X" and feel like too much is lost. I'm not even a huge role player but there comes a point where I'd ask why even bother to call something a "role playing" game. Or at least make it perfectly clear that heavy die rolling for socials is Optional.

Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

[NichG]

Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

I realize this isn't addressed to me, but this particular objection comes up all the time and it isn't well-founded. The thing is, we actually do this for physical things and combat too all the time, its just not as obvious. In D&D, for example, a player must choose where their character moves in a battle, how much to power attack, what spell to cast, whether to act in a way that will provoke an AoO or not, etc. These are a context that strongly determines success and failure, and are usually far more important than the baked-in abilities of the character (though dependent on them) - a player who has no idea what they're doing and is handed a wizard to play in combat will be only a fraction as effective as that same wizard in the hands of an experienced player, even if the character is exactly the same in both cases.

When doing a physical skill, a player's choices can strongly influence the difficulty of the skill as well. If there's a rainslicked smooth iron wall up to a window that someone wants to get into, with a tree growing beside it and columnar wall supports placed every 30 feet, the player can: climb the rainslick wall directly (formally DC 75, an epic use of climb), climb the corner between the supports and the wall (DC 70), climb the tree (DC 15) and jump over (DC 20-30 Jump check), etc.

For a simple skill check, the system is simply not very deep, because such checks are usually intended to be used for small sub-actions in the larger pattern of the scenario, where generally the sort of thought that goes behind them is repeated every time and doesn't need to be reinvestigated. You don't spend 30 minutes crafting a single attack roll because you expect that a fight will consist of dozens of them. You generally don't spend 30 minutes haggling the price of each item you want to buy because after the first few times, the interaction is exactly the same and it makes sense to abstract it.

However, social interaction is something that is nuanced and complex - there are many decisions to be made which are qualitative in nature and change not just the chance of 'success' at one's primary goal but also the consequences along-side. Outcomes can consist of compromises, things where you get what you want but earn the enmity or friendship of others, things where you fail to get what you want but you get information that you can use to punish the other party, things where a given interaction may have several intersecting 'long games' going on, where people are in the midst of trying to get what they want in a way that will not be immediately resolved, etc. Its like combat in that sense - you might win, but lose hitpoints (make compromises) or be forced to use up consumable items (use up favors) or suffer status conditions in the process, and you have a great degree of choice in your actions which determines which of those situations will happen in a way that is not governed strictly by the character's abilities but also by the player's ability to understand the scenario and make choices.

[magellan]

Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

To hit the dragon with the sword I need several things that aren't easily availiable: A sword (doable) and a dragon(much much harder!)
To climb the castle wall I would need an actual castle wall, also something unlikely to be found in convenient vicinity of my kitchen table.

But everything I need to convince the king that there is a traitor in his army is readily available: a mouth and an ear, and hopefully evidence. (And some general idea how likely the king is to find that evidence/arguments convincing)

I am old. I remember the first time I ran a game that had this new-fangled concept of something called "skills".
I soon realized that their main function was to make my players go through the list to see if they have a fitting skill for the problem, while earlier they would just try stuff. (And maybe we would argue a bit to which attribute that action should be tied)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I'd rather it was all on the player, or at least mostly on the player to provide at least a strong framework for a success check. Then again I have heard too many "I roll a check for X" and feel like too much is lost. I'm not even a huge role player but there comes a point where I'd ask why even bother to call something a "role playing" game. Or at least make it perfectly clear that heavy die rolling for socials is Optional.

Yes. I'd go so far to say that every roll, combat included, needs a strong framework for a check. As simple as "okay, how are you doing that?"

(Interestingly, this is required in the game Dungeon World, because the dice-rolling in DW is contextual. You use different rolls in different situations, depending on your approach.)

[Winter_Wolf]

Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

I was asked a preference, and I gave it. If you're asking would I like something more than, "I attack (it)" or "I hit it with (weapon/spell/special)" for physical skill checks and combat, then yes I'd like something a little more descriptive. Just a little flair will do. As a rule I don't play with minis outside of a grand melee type situation, so really all I have to go by is the players and GM painting pictures with words. Plus as was pointed out, all you need for socials is working ears and a mouth, or in the case of PbP, working eyes and a reliable text input method. I'm not asking for skilled oration on the level of Homer or Shakespeare, but a little more effort than "I roll diplomacy" would be nice. Let me be clear, I don't have particularly high standards and I'd give a lot of leeway for people who maybe weren't eloquent but were at least trying, but below a certain point die rolling might as well be a game of Yahtzee for me.

Also, I didn't lump mental skills with social skill checks, I was picking on social all by its lonesome.

[Amphetryon]

To hit the dragon with the sword I need several things that aren't easily availiable: A sword (doable) and a dragon(much much harder!)
To climb the castle wall I would need an actual castle wall, also something unlikely to be found in convenient vicinity of my kitchen table.

But everything I need to convince the king that there is a traitor in his army is readily available: a mouth and an ear, and hopefully evidence. (And some general idea how likely the king is to find that evidence/arguments convincing)

I am old. I remember the first time I ran a game that had this new-fangled concept of something called "skills".
I soon realized that their main function was to make my players go through the list to see if they have a fitting skill for the problem, while earlier they would just try stuff. (And maybe we would argue a bit to which attribute that action should be tied)

I am also old. I remember the joy of the 1e bard being unable to accomplish his intended goal because the speech he gave to the lord of the manor included several uses of "um" and insufficient eye-contact, by virtue of the person role-playing said bard not having as high a CHA score (room for debate on his INT and WIS, but I digress) as what was written on the sheet for his character. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by none during that painful 15 minute attempt at a 2 minute speech.

But, perhaps watching players go through the above is another's idea of fun.

[NichG]

I am also old. I remember the joy of the 1e bard being unable to accomplish his intended goal because the speech he gave to the lord of the manor included several uses of "um" and insufficient eye-contact, by virtue of the person role-playing said bard not having as high a CHA score (room for debate on his INT and WIS, but I digress) as what was written on the sheet for his character. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by none during that painful 15 minute attempt at a 2 minute speech.

But, perhaps watching players go through the above is another's idea of fun.

I don't particularly like watching people spend 5 minutes to figure out their attack sequence, or watch the game bog down when people spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how grapple works, looking up monster stat blocks for ages when summoning, or arguing minutiae of the game mechanics on a particular ruling, but these are all compromises for sake of the parts of the game where stuff doesn't bog down or break. And people will over time learn to do these things more efficiently to avoid that unpleasantness. I'm willing to sit through awkwardness if it encourages players to learn how to improve in the long run, and generally if it pays off sufficiently elsewhere in the game.

[kyoryu]

Yes. I'd go so far to say that every roll, combat included, needs a strong framework for a check. As simple as "okay, how are you doing that?"

(Interestingly, this is required in the game Dungeon World, because the dice-rolling in DW is contextual. You use different rolls in different situations, depending on your approach.)

I'd totally agree with that. In pretty much any game I run, when someone gives me a piece of game-jargon-speak ("I roll diplomacy on the guard!" "I create advantage with Notice!" "I Hack and Slash the kobold!") my response is the same - "Okay, so what are you actually *doing*?"

At that point whether it gets resolved with dice or GM fiat matters a bit less. But without that actual "what are you *doing*" thing, things just get too mechanics-first for me.

[Amphetryon]

I don't particularly like watching people spend 5 minutes to figure out their attack sequence, or watch the game bog down when people spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how grapple works, looking up monster stat blocks for ages when summoning, or arguing minutiae of the game mechanics on a particular ruling, but these are all compromises for sake of the parts of the game where stuff doesn't bog down or break. And people will over time learn to do these things more efficiently to avoid that unpleasantness. I'm willing to sit through awkwardness if it encourages players to learn how to improve in the long run, and generally if it pays off sufficiently elsewhere in the game.

That's changing the argument entirely, unless it's your contention that the delay caused by USING the rules (combat) and the delay caused by IGNORING the rules (any in-place social interaction resolution outside of improv ability) are identical and at the heart of my point on that basis. I'll give you a hint: They aren't identical.

I see no long-term (or short-term) payoff in forcing the introvert to either muddle through because the rules have been set aside, or take penalties for his innate limitations. Nor do I see any benefit in restricting certain players from certain classes or archetypes, based upon the characteristics they have personally, rather than those they'd like to imagine they have.

[Grim Portent]

I favour systems where a social encounter can be handled by things as vague as 'I try to convince the guard to let us pass, I rolled X.'

I came to this preference even though I love making speeches and using doublespeak, lies and manipulation to achieve my goals in games because I've gamed with several people who can't really do that on the fly but try anyway. I would describe the experience as being akin to having a chisel driven into each ear when they tried to engage in actual in character dialogue. Ums, ahs, errs and a dozen other imperfections in a speech from someone who's supposed to be able to win over whole worlds with a smile, a nod and a witty one liner is far more jarring to my immersion than 'I give a rousing speech,' is.

[NichG]

That's changing the argument entirely, unless it's your contention that the delay caused by USING the rules (combat) and the delay caused by IGNORING the rules (any in-place social interaction resolution outside of improv ability) are identical and at the heart of my point on that basis. I'll give you a hint: They aren't identical.

My point is, we all deal with things that are irritating in game. Often things caused by player inabilities or inefficiencies. But we deal with them because the alternative makes the game worse. 'I don't like waiting for Joe to add together his attacks - lets get rid of all the dice rolling!' is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So is 'Phil takes forever trying to decide what to say and its always awkward when he tries - lets just make what people say in character irrelevant to the actual results.'.

I see no long-term (or short-term) payoff in forcing the introvert to either muddle through because the rules have been set aside, or take penalties for his innate limitations. Nor do I see any benefit in restricting certain players from certain classes or archetypes, based upon the characteristics they have personally, rather than those they'd like to imagine they have.

Someone with a math disability is going to have a hard time keeping the numbers straight for a monk with Flurry of Blows and a bard in the party. Someone with a reading disability may have trouble playing a wizard due to having to piece through large quantities of complex rules text. Someone with a memory disability is going to have a disadvantage when it comes to the chargen minigame. Someone with an attention disability might have problems with gameplay that involves carefully keeping track of many things (such as combat on a battlemap). And yes, people with socialization disabilities may have problems with social interaction.

Its a reality that people have different strengths and weaknesses. Trying to design a game to completely level the playing field is not a good idea, because what you end up with is something like chutes and ladders or war. If you want the game to retain a rich gameplay experience, there are going to be tradeoffs and not everyone will play the game as well as everyone else. One way to proceed is to try to make sure that the game has many different parts which require the players to have many different skills - so the guy who can't put together a clear sentence is going to be kicking ass in tactical miniatures combat, and the guy who can't do math to save his life will have opportunities to solve things via the application of creativity and intuition.

Saying 'the game should always be forgiving for those who are bad at socialization, but should be unforgiving for people who are bad at interpreting and applying rules' is an arbitrary bias, and it has the unfortunate effect of polarizing the game, so if you're smarter with words than with numbers then you're just going to be doing poorly the entire time, rather than half the time.

Broadly, however, most people at a table will not be completely incapable of a task - you're more likely to play with someone socially awkward than someone who has a severe clinical disability, for example. They may suck at it at first, but they can learn. So its not so dismal as 'we must all be miserable half the time or play a game with no actualy gameplay' - rather, one needs to accept that if they want to play an archetype that does not lie along their natural abilities, they may have to work at it and actually learn something about how that archetype functions in order to do it well. If you want to play a silver-tongued charmer, it behooves you to learn something about how to manipulate people. And as a result, everyone involved gradually gets better at all sorts of different things - Joe learns to be quicker with mental math, Phil learns to think about what he wants to say ahead of time so he's not stumbling over his words.

If you are playing with people with clinical disabilities, then I'd call that a special case, and not something that is useful to build into overall pictures of game design, because the specific disabilities you'd be dealing with can vary and each require consideration on their own. If you're playing with someone who literally cannot understand social situations, then rather than demand that all game systems and all campaigns be equally approachable for him, it would make more sense to tune your system and campaign specifically to cater to that consideration - the same way you wouldn't run a game about political intrigue for a group of players who despise political maneuvering.

[valadil]

I am old. I remember the first time I ran a game that had this new-fangled concept of something called "skills".
I soon realized that their main function was to make my players go through the list to see if they have a fitting skill for the problem, while earlier they would just try stuff. (And maybe we would argue a bit to which attribute that action should be tied)

I've had that experience recently. I don't remember it being that way back when we started in the mid 90s and we definitely had games with skills.

Anyway, you've thrown me on a tangential idea. How about a system with skill rolls as a resource? Most of the time you just talk, but if you want to spend one of your game session's five die rolls to make a bluff check, go for it. Not sure how to present that without it being overly gamist, but I still find the idea intriguing.

[Vitruviansquid]

I would have a harder time playing and have a much harder time finding people to play a fantasy, sci-fi, or otherwise "nerdy" genre of RPG if it demanded in-character speech.

edit: one possible workaround for the silliness of "I made a great speech, but rolled low" problem is to interpret dice rolls as only representing the difficulty of the task, not the competence of the wielder. It doesn't matter what speech you give on a diplomacy role - if the die rolls low, it turns out that whatever you did, you weren't convincing enough. If the die rolls high, it turns out that whatever you did, you were convincing.

[huttj509]

I would have a harder time playing and have a much harder time finding people to play a fantasy, sci-fi, or otherwise "nerdy" genre of RPG if it demanded in-character speech.

edit: one possible workaround for the silliness of "I made a great speech, but rolled low" problem is to interpret dice rolls as only representing the difficulty of the task, not the competence of the wielder. It doesn't matter what speech you give on a diplomacy role - if the die rolls low, it turns out that whatever you did, you weren't convincing enough. If the die rolls high, it turns out that whatever you did, you were convincing.

Personally, I like the interpretation of "character stats represent what the character can control, dice represent what the character cannot."

I like the idea of looking down at a 2 and thinking "ok, what happened?" Then spinning something like "oh, your mother? Well, I didn't mean ALL Half-Orcs, just, um, yeah, I'll shut up now."

Maybe the target was in a bad mood, maybe you said exactly the wrong thing for that particular person, etc. I find it easier to describe what's said after the roll, so I don't run into *grand speech that would unify the planet and reduce warlords to tears*...rolled a 1, or "we wanna go in because, um, reasons" followed by a 20.

I mean, you don't say "I swing my greataxe, cleaving him in twain with a mighty blow, and following through to his friend" before rolling, do you? Maybe you describe the setup, but either you or the GM leave the results to afters.

Of course, I also don't like "calling my shots" because, well, let's just say it's REALLY easy for me to make a character more charismatic than I am. I'm much better at describing the results than quoting the speech. It's usually things like "I'm going to try to persuade the guard to let us in, pointing out how he'll get in trouble if he prevents our information from saving the king's life." Direct quoting comes out as a horrible mess.

[Segev]

It's worth noting that the counterargument about how combat has tactical depth does not justify "I demand they role play the social context before they roll." Quite the contrary. It is an argument, instead, that the social subsystem needs more mechanical depth so that the tactical decisions in how one approaches the social encounter are important enough to make the rolling feel like part of resolving a move, rather than a binary pass/fail check.

The more the mechanics require meaningful choices of the player in how his character approaches the situation, the more the die rolls exist to determine incremental success as part of individual, meaningful moves and gambits in the system, the deeper the subsystem is and the more satisfying it feels. It starts to feel like you're really role-playing that social doyenne as she maneuvers her way through the court intrigue at the ball, rather than having to act and hope you're good enough (when you know you're no more a doyenne than you are a muscle-bound barbarian swinging a battle axe) or simply rolling one skill check for passage/failure at being "social."

Mechanics should model the kind of RP actions - to whatever depth is needed for the detail desired - for systems which are meant to focus on those kinds of RP. They should not, however, get so detail-focused that they forget to keep it interesting and fast-moving.

[NichG]

It's worth noting that the counterargument about how combat has tactical depth does not justify "I demand they role play the social context before they roll." Quite the contrary. It is an argument, instead, that the social subsystem needs more mechanical depth so that the tactical decisions in how one approaches the social encounter are important enough to make the rolling feel like part of resolving a move, rather than a binary pass/fail check.

The more the mechanics require meaningful choices of the player in how his character approaches the situation, the more the die rolls exist to determine incremental success as part of individual, meaningful moves and gambits in the system, the deeper the subsystem is and the more satisfying it feels. It starts to feel like you're really role-playing that social doyenne as she maneuvers her way through the court intrigue at the ball, rather than having to act and hope you're good enough (when you know you're no more a doyenne than you are a muscle-bound barbarian swinging a battle axe) or simply rolling one skill check for passage/failure at being "social."

Mechanics should model the kind of RP actions - to whatever depth is needed for the detail desired - for systems which are meant to focus on those kinds of RP. They should not, however, get so detail-focused that they forget to keep it interesting and fast-moving.

I generally agree with the idea of adding depth, since the worst part is usually that systems that ask to mechanically model social interaction collapse it all into a single roll-off or at most a social hitpoint track.

However, I would say that the way in which different kinds of situations attain depth through mechanics needs to be different, in order to make those situations feel different. If social situations were modeled by putting tokens on a grid and having them trade 'debates' (attacks) and 'ploys' (spells), it would fail to capture social interaction in a way that feels right. Part of this is going to leave aspects of the maneuvering in the player's hands - do you choose to try to obtain leverage on someone before asking them for something, or do you want to just get buddy-buddy with them, or do you want to play two people off eachother, or do you want to suggest that you have information which someone needs and use that to get them to spill their secrets or whatever.

To really attain the complexity that actual social interaction has through a purely mechanicam model, the problem is that you're looking at a rules system that could easily take far too long to set up for each NPC and far too long to evaluate. And that's going to break up the flow of talking to NPCs and basically make that part of the game miserable for people who are more RP focused than mechanics focused. A rules system shouldn't get in the way of things that work well without one, it should augment things to help where they don't work well. For myself, a big part of what I get out of RPGs is talking to strange people and trying to see what I can get out of them - it contrasts with the part of the game where you're making highly mechanical decisions, and I appreciate that contrast since it gives the game variety. Replacing the talking part with mechanical decisions would gut half the game for me.

I think that trying to actually place a mechanic on each of these strategies is sort of silly, since that sharply limits the sort of complexity that humans innately engage in when being social with eachother. Instead, thats why I place an emphasis on having the mechanics augment the ability of the humans at the table rather than asking the mechanics to model the sort of depth that humans can just inherently produce in social interaction. That way, when the player knows what they're doing they can pass through an entire complex social encounter with roleplay alone, no dice needed. But when a player feels they need an edge, they can use distinct powers that help them know what to say or correct for errors in how they say it, and then they can get back to talking naturally. Since the abilities are only called on in times of need, they only interrupt the flow of things when that flow is already being interrupted.