What skill/social systems work?

[Man_Over_Game]

I've played a lot of DnD, but it seems that one thing it's always flopped on is its support of social and skill mechanics.

In its most recent edition, the advice for the DM is effectively "Make up a DC between 10 and 25", and have the player roll once to determine a Success or Failure. They tried to keep things open-ended...by not giving you any guidance. And it just feels disappointing whenever it comes up.



I'm interested in finding out more about systems that utilized good skill and social systems. Things that encouraged reaction and decision-making from the players. Something that is structured enough to clearly show how the players can define their success and failures, but also loose enough to not inhibit the roleplaying aspects of the game.


Does anyone know of a skill or social system that they're impressed by?

[JoeJ]

I haven't played it yet, but from reading the rules it looks like the system in Firefly (Cortex Plus system) would be really useful as well as fun to play. The conflict system handles all forms of conflict (including physical combat). It uses opposed rolls, with the loser suffering various penalties until they are "taken out," which ends their ability to contribute meaningfully to the rest of the scene. Depending on the method employed, that could mean anything from being mortally embarrassed to being unable to think of a counter to your argument to bleeding on the floor. And opposing sides don't have to be using the same methods; you can, for example, talk somebody down while they're trying to stab you.

[SimonMoon6]

One of my biggest disappointments about the D&D social skills system is that the difficulty of using diplomacy does not increase with the threat level of the opponent. So, once you get to high levels, your Diplomacy skill becomes more and more powerful (imagine if monsters didn't gain hit points as you gained extra damage-dealing capabilities). Intimidate increases the difficulty though they can only resist with their HD and Wisdom really, while Bluff can be opposed by Sense Motive skill (which means some enemies will be great at resisting and others will be absolutely pathetic).

To balance this, Diplomacy doesn't really do much, it just makes the enemies like you more (and it can't be used on PCs, meaning you have a way to tell the difference between PCs and NPCs within the game).

Obviously, what is needed is a way for Diplomacy (and the other skills) to have a defense be something that will typically increase as opponents increase in power level (like saving throws do), while also spelling out more what can and can't be done.

I like the system in Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG. In that game, there are three social skills to use: Persuasion, Intimidation, and Interrogation. If you're trying to get someone to tell you information, you use interrogation. If you are trying to scare someone, use Intimidation. If you want someone to do something for you, use Persuasion. You don't need to try to make someone friendlier (no need for D&D's silly Diplomacy skill). And in this system, you use your skills (or Charisma statistics (there are three)) to attack your opponent's Charisma statistics (as if in normal combat since all actions use the same action resolution system).

Persuasion has added modifiers (based on how well the target likes you.)

And if you still think it's too easy for the Batman to persuade the Joker to just surrender, you can use the generic modifiers built into the game system, depending on whether or not you think this would be a "Herculean" effort (a whopping +7 modifier) or something a bit less severe.

[Azuresun]

Social systems tend to run into two problems. One is that it can make roleplaying feel more stilted and unnatural, especially if it's highly detailed ("hold on, hold on, let me get the dice and determine his Persuasion Resistance...."), and another is the "stop playing my character" situation. If this can be used against PC's, it's often going to disconnect players to hear "Okay, he got a natural 20, you've been persauded to abandon your quest of vengeance."

One innovation I did like was Exalted 3e's Intimacy system, where to persuade someone beyond "inspire a certain emotion", you need to know what they care about, and the degree to which you can influence someone will depend on the strength of the Intimacy you're playing on. So if you find out someone has a strong intimacy of "I love my family.", you could trick them into believing the governor is going to conscript their sons, and persuade them to join your rebel army.

[Man_Over_Game]

Social systems tend to run into two problems. One is that it can make roleplaying feel more stilted and unnatural, especially if it's highly detailed ("hold on, hold on, let me get the dice and determine his Persuasion Resistance...."), and another is the "stop playing my character" situation. If this can be used against PC's, it's often going to disconnect players to hear "Okay, he got a natural 20, you've been persauded to abandon your quest of vengeance."

Out of curiosity, how would people feel about these concepts?:

1. Roll Diplomacy first, then Role your Roll. Roleplay your form of success or failure, before it happens.
   
   
2. Persuading someone influences their actions, but doesn't define them. Person A gives up an advantage (a resource, stats, experience, whatever) to attempt to persuade Person B:
   
   • Person A "Succeeds", but Person B refuses: Person B gets penalized greater than Person A's loss.
   • Any other scenario: No change.

I've heard of something akin to Bullet #2 in a TTRPG. I think it was "A Song of Ice and Fire", but I'm not 100% sure that was the name that was recommended to me as having something similar t o that.

[Telok]

The White Wolf systems of 20 years ago were decent they're dice pool & count successes. I'n not up on the current versions.

Shadowrun (all versions) work ok, that system's issues stem more from combat, magic, and tech. But it's skills and socials work fine at the base level.

CoC/BRP works, percentile roll under, can have +/- mods or x2 or x0.5 multipliers.

Most supers systems deal with it decently. Because you need to at least intimidate mooks and drive cars.

Paranioa works. The edition I have is skill from 4 to 19, roll 1d20 equal or under skill and higher than any opposition. Includes boot licking and chutzpah as social skills. Gives result spreads similar to D&D 5e but with better defined skills and effects.

[Anonymouswizard]

First off, I want to say that there's nothing wrong with D&D 5e'd skill system. It's just that with all the focus on combat, combat special abilities, and so on, to the point where incredibly world changing noncombat abilities are 'ribbons' that aren't considered a proper thing to get at that level, the entire presence of a skill system seems like an after thought. The game needed stats or skills, not both.

Anyway, onto skill systems. I am going to ignore social systems, because a) other people are covering them, and b) they never really work that well. I think the best I've seen is nWoD2e/CofD, where you have to do things to get NPCs to be willing to do something for you, represented by 'doors'.

Anyway, a good skill system should be a key element of the characters, either in the GURPS way of 'if you try to go anywhere without your skills you'll fail fast' or having them be a key aspect of the character in and of themselves. One I like is Paleomythic, a recently released game where the base number of dice you roll for a test is how many Traits you currently have (although those are closer to stats). In Paleomythic you have Traits, Flaws (negative Traits), and Talents (think feats), which when put together describe your character.

Honestly, D&D's problems with the skill system only started after it was added in Oriental Adventures, the game worked perfectly fine without it back then and it stopped the wizard from just bypassing the skill you'd invested points in with a spell. But that partially stems from D&D's magic being a hot mess, in D&D hacks with reworked or absent spellcasting skill proficency can be far more important .

Heck, I want to go back to Paleomythic, because I think it's a pretty good game. Depending on which Talents you have you can have various kinds of magic from a small chance to avoid injury, to a small number of rerolls per in-game day, cast a small number of spells by spending hours doing rituals (hope you weren't needed to forage today), to divination via thrown objects, to inflicting dread, to reanimating corpses, to summoning spirits via painting, to cursing people with your magic stick, to summoning and controlling ghosts, to gaining the abilities of the dead. It's all thematic, and in the right games other Talents might be considered magic, like the power to tame beasts, and notably the talent of 'has followers' is grouped in with several of the explicitly magical talents. The magical abilities use the exact same rules as other special abilities except for a couple of talents which tend towards the more impractical (hello hours long rituals!*). But this is a bit more of a discussion on what makes a good magic system.

Anyway, for a good skill system, skills should be important to a character, and that character should be able to focus on areas other than combat without being a detriment to the group under RAW. You should also consider both breadth and depth of success when rolling, but unless you're playing ORE that's probably a GMing thing over a system thing.

* I mean, other players can be doing things like foraging for food and crafting items while you're doing them, but don't expect to be pulling out a solution at the drop of a hat unless it can wait for a day.

[Quertus]

Out of curiosity, how would people feel about these concepts?:

1. Roll Diplomacy first, then Role your Roll. Roleplay your form of success or failure, before it happens.
   
   
2. Persuading someone influences their actions, but doesn't define them. Person A gives up an advantage (a resource, stats, experience, whatever) to attempt to persuade Person B:
   
   • Person A "Succeeds", but Person B refuses: Person B gets penalized greater than Person A's loss.
   • Any other scenario: No change.

I've heard of something akin to Bullet #2 in a TTRPG. I think it was "A Song of Ice and Fire", but I'm not 100% sure that was the name that was recommended to me as having something similar t o that.

I was avoiding replying to this thread, but… personally, I would totally hate it.

From my "Why the Hate for Win Buttons" thread, the answer that really resonated with me, that my senile mind still remembers is, "because it removes a minigame that people were looking forward to".

But it's even worse here. There's hidden information at work. Suppose you try to offer a vegetarian a steak dinner. It's not going to have the effect you expect, and you may not know why. To flip that, you cannot roleplay why your role failed if you lack the knowledge to understand why it failed in the first place.

As far as I am concerned, the only system that can even pretend to handle social interactions at the level I desire is the human brain. Everything else I've tried to use is trash, as far as I'm concerned. They in no way map with sufficient fidelity for my taste to any remotely reasonable interactions. See also "I need to take a 20 on character creation to produce a personality that i will enjoy running". I'm… picky.

[SimonMoon6]

Social systems tend to run into two problems. One is that it can make roleplaying feel more stilted and unnatural, especially if it's highly detailed ("hold on, hold on, let me get the dice and determine his Persuasion Resistance...."), and another is the "stop playing my character" situation. If this can be used against PC's, it's often going to disconnect players to hear "Okay, he got a natural 20, you've been persauded to abandon your quest of vengeance."

And yet, it's perfectly okay if a magical spell does the exact same thing. Because mundanes can't have nice things.

Obviously, any competent social system would have massive penalties to a roll that tries to make someone do something that is very much not in character. Even some magical spells in D&D give bonuses to saves (and maybe an additional saving throw) if the spellcaster tries to make someone do something against their belief system. If that's NOT incorporated into a social skill system, then yeah, the social skill system is an absolute failure.

And honestly, I feel like social skills should be *exactly* as complicated or not-complicated as a given combat system. There are similar risks and rewards. In the same way that you probably wouldn't succeed in a combat against a dragon with a single attack with a sword, you probably should have a social skill system that doesn't hang everything on a single die roll, so that you don't persuade the dragon to give up with a single line of dialogue. On the other hand, in a game system where combats can be quick and easy, then the social skill system should be equally quick and easy. Yeah, you have to look up stats and stuff, but that seems to break the immersion no more than when you have to look up armor class and stuff. "Why is it so complicated? All I want to do is kill the dragon. Just tell me if I killed him already. Why are you making me wait? Come on, come on, come on. I said I was swinging my sword, that means I killed him right?" People aren't really that impatient with combat, so why are they with social skills? It's like people feel like social skills aren't "real" role-playing, only combat is. But that's just... Dumb & Dumb.

[Arbane]

I like the way Legends of the Wulin handles social effects: You try to discover/create a passion your mark has, then intensify it or modify it. Mechanically, a strong social influence can give someone penalties OR BONUSES to act in a certain way - if an NPC seduces a PC (for example), the player might want to play along for the extra dice bonuses they get for it!

[Azuresun]

And yet, it's perfectly okay if a magical spell does the exact same thing. Because mundanes can't have nice things.

Yes--at least in the minds of players. Being Charmed is a magical effect--it hasn't altered who you are and what you think, it's overriden it temporarily, with clear conditions for how you can break out of it. Telling someone "your opinions have been authentically changed, this is what you now believe" is a good way to sever attachment to a character, more than "the incubus has cast a spell on you, your mind has been temporarily warped so that you regard him as a friend".

Obviously, any competent social system would have massive penalties to a roll that tries to make someone do something that is very much not in character. Even some magical spells in D&D give bonuses to saves (and maybe an additional saving throw) if the spellcaster tries to make someone do something against their belief system. If that's NOT incorporated into a social skill system, then yeah, the social skill system is an absolute failure.

And honestly, I feel like social skills should be *exactly* as complicated or not-complicated as a given combat system. There are similar risks and rewards. In the same way that you probably wouldn't succeed in a combat against a dragon with a single attack with a sword, you probably should have a social skill system that doesn't hang everything on a single die roll, so that you don't persuade the dragon to give up with a single line of dialogue. On the other hand, in a game system where combats can be quick and easy, then the social skill system should be equally quick and easy. Yeah, you have to look up stats and stuff, but that seems to break the immersion no more than when you have to look up armor class and stuff. "Why is it so complicated? All I want to do is kill the dragon. Just tell me if I killed him already. Why are you making me wait? Come on, come on, come on. I said I was swinging my sword, that means I killed him right?" People aren't really that impatient with combat, so why are they with social skills? It's like people feel like social skills aren't "real" role-playing, only combat is. But that's just... Dumb & Dumb.

I think the difference is familiarity. Few of us have fought for our lives, fewer still have fought for our lives against a dragon. So detailed rules for fantasy combat are acceptable, and give us a framework for how this is meant to go. But all of us know (or think we do) how we talk to and interact with each other, so odd abstractions, perverse incentives and broken results become far more jarring. Especially since many of us underestimate how easy we are to persuade or manipulate.

(Going back to Exalted, the 2e system was badly imbalanced in favour of an "attacker" who'd made even a basic investment into "persuasion" and once they'd "persuaded" you, you could only avoid it by spending willpower. So the optimal way of getting someone to grant a request for you was to bombard them with requests you know they'd never agree to to sap their willpower, and then make the actual request once they were too psychologically broken to say no to you.)

And just as importantly, combat is something obviously dangerous, where you expect to win or lose. But when every conversation with an NPC becomes a possible means of "attack", the optimal strategy is not to interact with NPC's, or to stuff wax in your ears as soon as the dice come out. And that's before you get into the utter minefield of PC's using social skills on other PC's. That's why I think the best mechanics are ones that give players a bribe for letting themselves be persuaded. I remember Weapons of the Gods had "conditions" that gave you an advantage and disadvantage when one was imposed on you--so if Snake Tongue Yu taunts you into a towering rage, you fight better, but become worse at non-violent tasks while affected.


(Edit: I found a thread on the 2e Exalted system, and how hilariously a detailed social system can go wrong.)

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Out of curiosity, how would people feel about these concepts?:

1. Roll Diplomacy first, then Role your Roll. Roleplay your form of success or failure, before it happens.
   
   
2. Persuading someone influences their actions, but doesn't define them. Person A gives up an advantage (a resource, stats, experience, whatever) to attempt to persuade Person B:
   
   • Person A "Succeeds", but Person B refuses: Person B gets penalized greater than Person A's loss.
   • Any other scenario: No change.

I've heard of something akin to Bullet #2 in a TTRPG. I think it was "A Song of Ice and Fire", but I'm not 100% sure that was the name that was recommended to me as having something similar t o that.

Roll, then role-play is a system I've tried to use in the past, with varied results. As you can see from Quertus's reply, some people hate it. I posted it as an idea here once before, and got a few people being so vehemently against it that it got pretty ugly fast - really turned into one of those "you're having fun wrong" arguments.

In my experiences, even a group that wants to use the system will find it hard to implement.
If it's going to work at your table, it works when you have players who are third person role-players - the type who say "Marodock tries to persuade the prince," or even "I try to persuade the prince," - rather than "But your Highness, the people need your aid so deparately! It is your royal duty to give aid!" as if they actually were Marodock, their PC (i.e. spekaing in first person style).

Most people are a bit of a mix of styles. Sometimes you're immersed in the character and you speak whole conversations that way. Sometimes you're a little less engaged, or you're shy of "acting out" scenes even with your mates.

But asking for a die roll before making your in-character speech is a little tough to remember. It breaks the flow of a conversation. It's natual to talk together in a flow, we do it all the time.
We want to get in there with our actions, and characters' speech at a table where talking effectively is the medium - that's the fastest way to act in the game. When you say "But your Highness..." your chartacter is immediately acting and the GM can respond straight away, whereas when you say "I try to stab the prince in the kidneys," you have to resolve the action with die rolls, and there's a necessary delay between your spoken act and the result.

The middle ground that I try to work on is that once I see that someone is starting a diplomacy-style attempt to persuade an NPC, I quietly roll their check for them (or even just remember how good or bad that PC's Charisma stat (or equivalent) is), and then have the NPC react accordingly - interrupting them with a dismissive gesture if it's bad, or asking them kindly to explain further if it's going well. So I use the NPC's reaction to what the PC is saying as the result of the check.

The PC may be making good points, but there might be something about the NPC that makes them less receptive. I've had a lot of training in communication in my job as a technical trainer and public speaker - there's a hell of a lot of ways you can fail that have very little to do with the things you are saying, and far more to do with how you're saying it, or the mood of the audience, or your accent grating on the predjudices of the audience, or whatever. In the UK, the strong Midlands accent (you might know it from Peaky Blinders) is generally seen by people from the rest of the country as "dumb" - not a good accent to deliver technical training (this is pretty much where I live, by the way - for public speaking, I try to use a neutral standardised English accent).

So as blunt and ungarnished as it is, the D&D 5e system of "guess a DC wing it from there" isn't a very bad system, because it allows flexibility - but yeah, it could totally do with having some guidance notes around it.

[gkathellar]

I won't comment on social systems in particular - enough ink has been spilled there already - but skill systems in general tend to work better when the game is built around their use from the ground up in order to emphasize a degree of player agency.

5E suffers because most of its rules are about miniatures combat, which means (a) skill use isn't the primary medium of interaction with game world, and (b) the game's core mechanic uses a binary success/failure metric that is well-suited to tactical gameplay and poorly suited to narrative gameplay.

Compare that with a game like Blades in the Dark, where everything is mediated by skills, the entire core mechanic is focused on adjudicating the mix of positive and negative consequences that arise out of player skill use, and the game has built-in rules for tracking progress towards desired and undesired outcomes.

That doesn't mean binary success/failure rules can't be improved upon with best practices, though. "Roll, then roleplay," has been mentioned, and as has been mentioned, some people hate it - but if you and your players have strong improv skills and prefer a more collective style of storytelling, it can work very well. "Fail forward," or assuming that most failures on skill rolls still advance the story, often by treating them as successes with undesired consequences, is extremely well-suited to the d20 roll's intrinsic unpredictability. (Note that you probably shouldn't use both of these concepts simultaneously.)

[Quertus]

And yet, it's perfectly okay if a magical spell does the exact same thing. Because mundanes can't have nice things.

Yes--at least in the minds of players. Being Charmed is a magical effect--it hasn't altered who you are and what you think, it's overriden it temporarily, with clear conditions for how you can break out of it. Telling someone "your opinions have been authentically changed, this is what you now believe" is a good way to sever attachment to a character, more than "the incubus has cast a spell on you, your mind has been temporarily warped so that you regard him as a friend".

Yup. 100% agreed. When, IRL, through purely muggle means, I succeed in walking up to someone, and telling them, "you like tasty food. Your friend would be really yummy - you should kill and eat them", and having it succeed, we can talk about muggles having the nice things that magic does.

I think the difference is familiarity. Few of us have fought for our lives, fewer still have fought for our lives against a dragon. So detailed rules for fantasy combat are acceptable, and give us a framework for how this is meant to go. But all of us know (or think we do) how we talk to and interact with each other, so odd abstractions, perverse incentives and broken results become far more jarring. Especially since many of us underestimate how easy we are to persuade or manipulate.

This certainly figures into it. I mean, some people find the combat simulator insufficiently detailed for their taste (and, on occasion, have the experience to back it up). Heck, even "I swing from the chandeliers" represents people wanting the system to do things it doesn't handle well, in many cases.

And just as importantly, combat is something obviously dangerous, where you expect to win or lose. But when every conversation with an NPC becomes a possible means of "attack", the optimal strategy is not to interact with NPC's, or to stuff wax in your ears as soon as the dice come out. And that's before you get into the utter minefield of PC's using social skills on other PC's. That's why I think the best mechanics are ones that give players a bribe for letting themselves be persuaded. I remember Weapons of the Gods had "conditions" that gave you an advantage and disadvantage when one was imposed on you--so if Snake Tongue Yu taunts you into a towering rage, you fight better, but become worse at non-violent tasks while affected.

So, social skills are used to affect your… mood? Which is handled much like changing your combat stance? Hmmm… I'd be willing to try that.

(Edit: I found a thread on the 2e Exalted system, and how hilariously a detailed social system can go wrong.)

(Added to my ”to read" pile…)

Roll, then role-play is a system I've tried to use in the past, with varied results. As you can see from Quertus's reply, some people hate it. I posted it as an idea here once before, and got a few people being so vehemently against it that it got pretty ugly fast - really turned into one of those "you're having fun wrong" arguments.

In my experiences, even a group that wants to use the system will find it hard to implement.
If it's going to work at your table, it works when you have players who are third person role-players - the type who say "Marodock tries to persuade the prince," or even "I try to persuade the prince," - rather than "But your Highness, the people need your aid so deparately! It is your royal duty to give aid!" as if they actually were Marodock, their PC (i.e. spekaing in first person style).

Most people are a bit of a mix of styles. Sometimes you're immersed in the character and you speak whole conversations that way. Sometimes you're a little less engaged, or you're shy of "acting out" scenes even with your mates.

But asking for a die roll before making your in-character speech is a little tough to remember. It breaks the flow of a conversation. It's natual to talk together in a flow, we do it all the time.
We want to get in there with our actions, and characters' speech at a table where talking effectively is the medium - that's the fastest way to act in the game. When you say "But your Highness..." your chartacter is immediately acting and the GM can respond straight away, whereas when you say "I try to stab the prince in the kidneys," you have to resolve the action with die rolls, and there's a necessary delay between your spoken act and the result.

I'll do both 1st and 3rd person style. And, as a GM, I'll generally accept both, but occasionally ask for more details from high-level 3rd person descriptions.

It's complicated, but… which I use depends on many more factors, including my mood, how much spotlight time the action will take, and how jarring either form might be.

I've honestly never evaluated social systems in the context of only one style.

The middle ground that I try to work on is that once I see that someone is starting a diplomacy-style attempt to persuade an NPC, I quietly roll their check for them (or even just remember how good or bad that PC's Charisma stat (or equivalent) is), and then have the NPC react accordingly - interrupting them with a dismissive gesture if it's bad, or asking them kindly to explain further if it's going well. So I use the NPC's reaction to what the PC is saying as the result of the check.

The PC may be making good points, but there might be something about the NPC that makes them less receptive. I've had a lot of training in communication in my job as a technical trainer and public speaker - there's a hell of a lot of ways you can fail that have very little to do with the things you are saying, and far more to do with how you're saying it, or the mood of the audience, or your accent grating on the predjudices of the audience, or whatever. In the UK, the strong Midlands accent (you might know it from Peaky Blinders) is generally seen by people from the rest of the country as "dumb" - not a good accent to deliver technical training (this is pretty much where I live, by the way - for public speaking, I try to use a neutral standardised English accent).

So as blunt and ungarnished as it is, the D&D 5e system of "guess a DC wing it from there" isn't a very bad system, because it allows flexibility - but yeah, it could totally do with having some guidance notes around it.

I believe 2e D&D is best social system. You just roll for how receptive the NPC is. I then use that to color how they evaluate your words: if they weren't receptive / didn't like you, they'd hear your accent, then tune you out; if they liked you, but found your accent really grating, they'd ask for a quick summation, and try to make a decision that would get you to stop talking (agreeing with you, agreeing to investigate, handing you off to a specialist & saying "if you can convince them, then you have my blessing", etc).

[Morty]

One innovation I did like was Exalted 3e's Intimacy system, where to persuade someone beyond "inspire a certain emotion", you need to know what they care about, and the degree to which you can influence someone will depend on the strength of the Intimacy you're playing on. So if you find out someone has a strong intimacy of "I love my family.", you could trick them into believing the governor is going to conscript their sons, and persuade them to join your rebel army.

Exalted 3E's social interaction system might be the best I've ever run into, specifically because it's built to prevent convincing people of something insane because you rolled well. It's also not adversarial or built like combat, which is a common pitfall.

[Friv]

In general, my preferred social interaction systems do three things:

1. They give a couple widgets for persuading people based on leveraging things those people care about, rather than just being "very persuasive." These widgets are usually very slim for most NPCs, and more robust for major NPCs or players.

2. They give incentives if used on players, rather than creating absolutes - you get XP for following along with a manipulation, or you get a small bonus to actions if you're persuaded and a penalty if you act against the persuasion, but if you really want to do a thing you can still do it.

3. They don't try to model social interaction as full-scale combat with HP and armor and tactics and whatnot.

[Jakinbandw]

Yup. 100% agreed. When, IRL, through purely muggle means, I succeed in walking up to someone, and telling them, "you like tasty food. Your friend would be really yummy - you should kill and eat them", and having it succeed, we can talk about muggles having the nice things that magic does.

So I suppose you can reload and shoot a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while crossing a room at the same time as a bunch of people are trying to stab you while wearing full plate IRL purely through muggle means. Characters in DnD are far superior to characters IRL. Monks can run across water using any form of magic for example.

[Dimers]

1. Roll Diplomacy first, then Role your Roll. Roleplay your form of success or failure, before it happens.
2. Persuading someone influences their actions, but doesn't define them. Person A gives up an advantage (a resource, stats, experience, whatever) to attempt to persuade Person B:
   
   • Person A "Succeeds", but Person B refuses: Person B gets penalized greater than Person A's loss.
   • Any other scenario: No change.

I'm strongly in favor of roll-before-role -- it plays by the rules, it makes the action align with the result, and it allows other skills to affect the social skill's success. It probably works better in PbP than live and it does have other flaws. To me, the biggest problem is that a player isn't going to know all the NPC's relevant secret motivations, so sometimes they can't play it out appropriately.

I also favor the second item in your list, but only theoretically; I haven't personally played in a game where it was used, but it looks like it should work well.

[gkathellar]

So I suppose you can reload and shoot a crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds while crossing a room at the same time as a bunch of people are trying to stab you while wearing full plate IRL purely through muggle means. Characters in DnD are far superior to characters IRL. Monks can run across water using any form of magic for example.

Sure, but what actually matters is that an RPG is emotionally convincing, and persuasion that works like mind control comes across as distinctly surreal for a lot of people. This is especially true when there's an expectation that we'll play out social interactions down to the individual words said, and we happen to know that we weren't actually that convincing. Social interaction isn't like action movie shenanigans - it's too familiar, it's verbal rather than visual, and we tend to duplicate it in game exactly rather than through layers of abstraction.

[Xuc Xac]

Yup. 100% agreed. When, IRL, through purely muggle means, I succeed in walking up to someone, and telling them, "you like tasty food. Your friend would be really yummy - you should kill and eat them", and having it succeed, we can talk about muggles having the nice things that magic does.

That's a strawman argument. Muggles have gone from the Earth to the moon in real life, but a jump spell won't get you there in D&D. That doesn't mean wizards "can't have nice things".

[Mechalich]

Part of the problem with social systems are issues of time scale.

Combat tends to be relatively quick, whether in real life or fantasy, lasting a few minutes at most. Consequently its not a particularly big stretch to place effectively all combat-related abilities on a uniform timescale.

Social interaction, by contrast, is much more malleable in terms of how long things take, and persuasion effects need to be modeled over both the very short term, ex. 'how to I get this guard to move so my buddies can sneak past.' to the extremely long term, ex. 'I will trap the heir in a web of corruption so he becomes forced to obey my every command.' And you also have a whole bunch of scales in between, often even for the same activity. A seduction, for example, could unfold over anything from hours to months, even though a character might be taking the same in-game 'actions' in each case.

Systems that have greater flexibility about time scale seem to handle social conflicts better because they can work within the inherent malleability of actual interpersonal interactions. Games with mind control, by contrast, tend to work against this because regardless of efficacy, mind control always seems to be unreasonably fast.

[jjordan]

Part of the problem with social systems are issues of time scale.

Combat tends to be relatively quick, whether in real life or fantasy, lasting a few minutes at most. Consequently its not a particularly big stretch to place effectively all combat-related abilities on a uniform timescale.

Social interaction, by contrast, is much more malleable in terms of how long things take, and persuasion effects need to be modeled over both the very short term, ex. 'how to I get this guard to move so my buddies can sneak past.' to the extremely long term, ex. 'I will trap the heir in a web of corruption so he becomes forced to obey my every command.' And you also have a whole bunch of scales in between, often even for the same activity. A seduction, for example, could unfold over anything from hours to months, even though a character might be taking the same in-game 'actions' in each case.

Systems that have greater flexibility about time scale seem to handle social conflicts better because they can work within the inherent malleability of actual interpersonal interactions. Games with mind control, by contrast, tend to work against this because regardless of efficacy, mind control always seems to be unreasonably fast.

I've been pondering this for a while. I regret I've got nothing concrete to add but I'll toss in my unorganized thoughts. I liked the idea of a player being able to devote more time to a social task and thereby increase their chances of success. I've toyed with various ways to represent this mechanically.

-Player declares their plan and how long they plan to take to accomplish it. DM assigns a DC to the task and the player starts working to accomplish their plan. E.G. Ingratiate themself with the local master of the tanner's guild. DM decides the plan is good (actually demonstrates some knowledge of the NPC) and determines that because the player is devoting a week to this effort this reduces the difficulty of the task. I feel this is pretty much in keeping with the RAW.
-Alternately the DM could set a DC of something like 50 for the task. Which would be impossible with a single roll. But the DM is going to let the player roll once each day for the seven days of the week and take the sum total. Which works out pretty well because, on average, the player ought to be able to roll about a 70 over the seven days. This format allows for setbacks along the way (Player rolled a natural 1 on Wednesday? What happened and how are they going to respond?) and for contested scenarios (a rival is attempting to prevent the character from accomplishing his task).

[KineticDiplomat]

Burning Empires.

1) Essentially it has a “social conflict” system that plays out as a combination of player skill and character ability. You pre-select moves in sequences of threes and reveal them as you go. So you might decide if you were, say, defending against an accusation in court to play “obfuscate, point, ad hominem” while your opponent (the NPC) played “point, pander (to the crowd), ad hominem.” Certain plays are stronger versus others, and have different effects on the outcome when won.

2) Each social conflict starts as a wager. Basically “If I win, the accuser is shames in front of the King and my request for support against the Great Enemy gains royal support”, to which the GM might reply “ok, but if you lose then you will be banished from court and might be open to accusations of treason”. Which means you aren’t rolling for each line, but the overall flow of your attempt to persuade/seduce/con/whatever is more than one random “roll higher than 11”.

[gkathellar]

Part of the problem with social systems are issues of time scale.

Combat tends to be relatively quick, whether in real life or fantasy, lasting a few minutes at most. Consequently its not a particularly big stretch to place effectively all combat-related abilities on a uniform timescale.

Social interaction, by contrast, is much more malleable in terms of how long things take, and persuasion effects need to be modeled over both the very short term, ex. 'how to I get this guard to move so my buddies can sneak past.' to the extremely long term, ex. 'I will trap the heir in a web of corruption so he becomes forced to obey my every command.' And you also have a whole bunch of scales in between, often even for the same activity. A seduction, for example, could unfold over anything from hours to months, even though a character might be taking the same in-game 'actions' in each case.

Systems that have greater flexibility about time scale seem to handle social conflicts better because they can work within the inherent malleability of actual interpersonal interactions. Games with mind control, by contrast, tend to work against this because regardless of efficacy, mind control always seems to be unreasonably fast.

Excellent point.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Exalted 3E's social interaction system might be the best I've ever run into, specifically because it's built to prevent convincing people of something insane because you rolled well. It's also not adversarial or built like combat, which is a common pitfall.

Agreed. I mean, it's overcomplicated in places (because it's Exalted), but it hits a really good balance of being fluid enough to work with standard roleplay, structured enough that it doesn't feel cheap, and multi-layered enough that it doesn't turn into mind control.

In "brief,"

Spoiler: Ex3 Social Combat

Show

Social combat revolves around Intimacies—the things that matter to your character. It’s hard to convince anyone of anything without appealing to something that they value.

When you’re trying to resist a social action, Intimacies can both help and hurt. An Intimacy gives a bonus to your social Defense (Resolve) if the influence violates it, but it also inflicts a penalty if the influence backs it up. For example, a character with the Intimacy “Loyal Subject” would gain a bonus when you try to persuade them to look the other way when you rob their ruler, but a penalty if you want to persuade them to inform on their treacherous neighbor. If multiple Intimacies apply, only take the highest bonus… but if one would provide a bonus and the other a penalty, your Resolve is affected by both.

Intimacies come in three different levels. You can add or remove Minor Intimacies, or strengthen or weaken existing Intimacies, at the end of a scene with the GM’s agreement.

• Minor Intimacies are firm beliefs, but don’t have a tremendous impact on your day-to-day life. They provide a +2 bonus or inflict a -1 penalty.
• Major Intimacies are major aspects of your personal belief system, shaping almost everything in your life to a greater or lesser degree. They provide a +3 bonus or inflict a -2 penalty.
• Defining Intimacies are the most important people and principles to you—the points on which you will not compromise, and which you’ll die to uphold. They provide a +4 bonus or inflict a -3 penalty.

If you’re trying not to be Influenced, your first line of defense is your social defense, Resolve (One half your [Wits + Integrity + Specialties], rounded up). If your attacker’s roll doesn’t beat your Resolve, it’s going to fail.

Instill
An Instill action inflicts the target with a new Minor Intimacy… or more. If you can draw on existing Intimacies, you can push them much farther.

• A Minor Intimacy allows you to strengthen another Minor to Major, or weaken a Major Intimacy to Minor.
• A Major Intimacy allows you to strengthen another Major to Defining, or weaken a Defining Intimacy to Major.

A target can resist an Instill action by spending a point of Willpower. If you fail to Instill your target, you can’t try again without accumulating new and greater evidence to support your position.

Persuade
The whole point of social combat, ultimately, is to persuade someone to do something for you. When you try to Persuade someone, you have to draw on one of your target’s existing Intimacies; the stronger the Intimacy, the more they’ll risk.

• Minor Intimacies will let you persuade people to do somewhat inconvenient or mildly dangerous errands, so long as they’re not too disruptive. You could get someone to deliver a package to a shady location across town, let you enter a performance without a ticket, and so on.
• Major Intimacies will let you persuade people to change their lives or risk life and limb, though they won’t risk certain ruin. You could persuade a a farmer to join your army, or a guard to release a violent prisoner.
• Defining Intimacies will let you persuade people to do pretty much anything, even if it means almost certain death—play your cards right, and you can get a mortal soldier to fight a rearguard action against an army of demons.

If you can’t find an Intimacy to work off, you can always try using a gift (Bargaining). Bargaining works just like Persuade, but instead of appealing to an Intimacy of sufficient strength, you have to provide a bribe of sufficient magnitude. Negative Intimacies can be used too (Threatening)-- if someone has a Major Intimacy of fear towards you, that's just as effective at getting them to follow your orders as an equally-strong Intimacy of love.

A target can attempt to resist a Persuade action by spending Willpower, but it’s harder—you also have to point to a second Intimacy of equal or greater strength that supports your refusal. One you haven’t already applied to your Resolve; after all, the attacker already overcame that particular objection. This is known as a Decision Point.

If you want to Persuade someone to stop doing something they’ve already been Persuaded to do, it’s harder. You have to spend a point of Willpower before making the attempt, and the target gets a +3 bonus too their Resolve. If you succeed, they enter a Decision Point. They may cite an Intimacy supporting their current course of action to refuse the influence for no cost, or pay a point of Willpower and point to an Intimacy that supports your persuasion.

If you fail to Persuade your target, you can’t try again without pointing to a different Intimacy, or strengthening the previously-used one, for the rest of the story arc.

Inspiration
Inspiration doesn’t exactly ask someone to do something, and it doesn’t exactly create or strengthen Intimacies, but it has elements of both. A successful roll—usually Performance—can create emotions in your target or targets, but they choose how that manifests. You can’t force a specific action, but you can sort of subtly encourage them to act on their existing Intimacies. On the plus side, you don’t take a penalty for trying to Inspire multiple people at once.

A target can resist an Inspire action by spending a point of Willpower. If you fail to Inspire your targets, you can’t try again until the next scene.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm strongly in favor of roll-before-role -- it plays by the rules, it makes the action align with the result, and it allows other skills to affect the social skill's success. It probably works better in PbP than live and it does have other flaws. To me, the biggest problem is that a player isn't going to know all the NPC's relevant secret motivations, so sometimes they can't play it out appropriately.

I have a hard time understanding that part.

Most systems have your roll-for-success and your threshold-for-success as two separate things.

That is, you can roll well...and still fail. Your good roll (speech) may be independent from the difficulty to succeed (NPC secrets).

You say you rolled a 20 and I say you still fail, and now all the players look at me suspiciously. But if you rolled a 20, roled a good speech, and I say you fail, the players might think it was something specific that was said in that speech, and so focus on the interaction between the speech-giver and the recipient. The 20 is still the defining factor for the conversation, so the player knows how confident their character is, and know the character has reasons to pry.

Otherwise, players are just investigating into random stuff because of "hunches" based off of meta information

Why doesn't Roll Before Role work?

[GentlemanVoodoo]

The best game systems I have played to handle what your talking about would be either any White Wolf game and Fantasy Flight's take on Legend of the 5 Rings.

[farothel]

The main reason I prefer to have a social system is because some players are better at social interaction and their characters aren't necesseraly.

One systems I like is the new 7th Sea system with risks and rewards. It basically works the same for combat and social and I think that's what you need. A system that works the same no matter what you are trying to do, fight the guards or talk your way past them (time lines might differ of course, but that's okay). Wolsung also has a system that works in a similar way.

[Dimers]

You say you rolled a 20 and I say you still fail, and now all the players look at me suspiciously. But if you rolled a 20, roled a good speech, and I say you fail, the players might think it was something specific that was said in that speech, and so focus on the interaction between the speech-giver and the recipient. The 20 is still the defining factor for the conversation, so the player knows how confident their character is, and know the character has reasons to pry.

When I said my piece above, I was assuming the DM announces Pass/Fail before the player RPs. If I understand what you're saying, what you advocate is:

1. player rolls
2. player uses that raw number to RP what they think is a good or bad attempt
3. DM applies modifiers for the combination of the PC's roleplayed tactic and the NPC's motivation
4. DM announces whether it worked

Right? The way physical skills work -- and in most D&D, the way social skills currently work -- the DM can say "You succeed" or "You fail" BEFORE any flavortext arrives. That's what people expect. I think what you're describing is better, but I guarantee some people will misunderstand how it's supposed to operate. (Me, for instance. ) It also asks for a little more trust between DM and player, because for all the player knows, the DM could be making up problems on the spot just to make the roll fail.

[farothel]

you can turn it around. Player says what the character has to say, then rolls and the GM can assign penalties or bonusses depending on circumstances (as usual), but also on what the player said.
It's like we do with L5R, where we get a free raise on our poetry roll if we can make a haiku on the spot. It's a small bonus, but it can help.

And the players have to know up front that there are things they can't do with social rolls, no matter how skilled they are. The same goes in combat. If you're a party of lvl 1 characters, you're not going to win from an ancient red dragon, no matter how many 20s you roll. That's also something the players should realise.