Quote from: Omnifray;866530My preferred way of dealing with social encounters is that you make dice-rolls or stat-comparisons before the encounter begins, and those:-

* do not point to specific outcomes of the dialogue
* instead merely bias the GM's roleplay of NPCs, and choice of hints to give players

This is precisely how it works in ZWEIHÄNDER. The players first discuss above board what they intend to achieve and what is at risk. Next, they each pick a social tactic (based on their strongest social skill). Finally, each makes a single skill test. The result of the skill tests determine a number of personality traits/reaction temperaments the NPC will adopt during play (such as aggressiveness, untrusting, forgiving, afraid, indifference, etc...).

The "success" of the social encounter is therefore based on the role-play. However, personality traits/reaction temperaments - for good or ill - shape how the NPC reacts to such requests and how they acquiesce to their demands.

Quote from: Omnifray;866530* do not point to specific outcomes of the dialogue
* instead merely bias the GM's roleplay of NPCs, and choice of hints to give players

Exactly.  Something I've seen in a number of threads over the years (and especially where D&D players are concerned) is the premise that social skills are magical powers that compel both PCs and NPCs alike to do your bidding.  "Hey, I made my Bluff roll by a lot, so the NPC should just swallow it, right?"

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;866522How would you guys handle two PCs trying to convince an NPC to agree with one of them?

In our game each PC wanted the town mayor to accept their idea, each of which was mutually exclusive. So they took turns arguing with him and each other, and I had them rolling Persuasion checks and having the NPC respond logically. But I'd be interested how you'd break it down on a mechanical level if you were going to do that here.

Or would it all just be roleplaying?

Depends on how much random you or the players want in their session?

Combining the oration and the persuasion rolls sounds like the best mix since as noted above the PCs may be better at this stuff than the player.

5e DMG though does have the NPC interaction system for connecting to their interests and quirks as layers to peel away. Not a bad system really. Especially when drawing a blank for an NPC or just not up for, or no need to,  orating them.

Quote from: Lunamancer;866520I wanted to address these great points specifically, and how that looks following my procedure.

I was going to ask for examples, but you anticipated my need. Well done.

The five step method you outlined reminds me of the seduction rules in James Bond 007, which also used five steps, each step of increasing difficulty.

QuoteFive Steps for Seduction
Five Steps
1.   The Look (Ease Factor 10)
2.   Opening Line (Ease Factor 9)
3.   Witty Conversation (Ease Factor
4.   Beginning Intimacies (Ease Factor 5)
5.   When and Where? (Ease Factor 4)

I'll have to look at your five step method to see how to adapt it for use in my Honor+Intrigue campaign. Your five steps clearly lay out a method that the players/PCs should be using to interact with NPCs.

Quote from: Ravenswing;866561Exactly.  Something I've seen in a number of threads over the years (and especially where D&D players are concerned) is the premise that social skills are magical powers that compel both PCs and NPCs alike to do your bidding.  "Hey, I made my Bluff roll by a lot, so the NPC should just swallow it, right?"

I've usually seen this from player who are some combination of immature, unsophisticated, or very unworldly. Since the players don't at all understand how persuasion works in the real world, a magical black box approach in the game world makes as much sense to them as any other model of persuasion.

For D&D, I think that way of looking at persuasion started with WotC. I don't recall anyone in OD&D or AD&D thinking that CHA was all powerful though it tended to make NPCs like or trust the PC and was great for boosting morale or NPC loyalty, But magical mind control tended to actually be magical, e.g. Charm Person.

I have the players play out the scenario, then either auto succeed/fail or set a DC based on how it went and they roll to see if the outcome was in their favor or they made some obscure faux pas.

For example, if they get some great banter going they either succeed automatically or get a low DC to beat. Success means they get what they want or at least something in their favor. Maybe a discount, or the NPC will spread some helpful rumors about the group.

Failure means accidental offense like talking about a forbidden subject or the NPC was too difficult to persuade. The NPCs may talk shit about the characters to other NPCs, introduce some complications later on, or something similar.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;866531We were playing Lost Mines of Phandelver with Sildar as the mayor. He's the mayor of a backwater town called Phandalin that he wants to build up and bring prosperity to.

After the party helped save the town several times, he appointed one of the PCs as the vice-mayor, who gets to speak for the mayor when the mayor is busy / not around / etc. We'll call him PC A.

The other PC is one who's rich and helped fund a lot of the repairs the town was going through, responsible for a lot of the buildup they've had lately. We'll call him PC B.

So PC B decides that he wants to help build up the town's guard forces. Right now it's just a handful of guards who can handle cat burglars and drunks but that's about it. He wants to fund them and buy them equipment and train more recruits and organize them.

PC A intervenes and says that he can't let someone divide the town's loyalties, as PC B would effectively be building a private militia. PC A says that if PC B wants to help the town he should donate to the town treasury and then PC A can distribute the goods through proper government channels. PC B doesn't want the town turned into a bureaucratic morass and enjoys the free wheeling nature frontier nature it had until now.

So they both go to the mayor and argue their case between them and him.

I could ask a lot more questions, but I'm going to make a few simplifying assumptions. I'm going to assume the mayor actually does care about the town, not his own power. Because it might be that he cares about the town only insofar as when things go well for the town, the people support him, and he has power. But even if PC B improved the town vastly with his plan, it would undermine the power of the mayor. So the mayor must truly care about the town for this to even be in question. Otherwise, he definitely would not like PC B's proposal.

Here's a wrinkle I'd put in it, though. If this is even a tough choice for the mayor, it's clear he likes parts of each proposal. So I would say the mayor's priority would be to try to find a "compromise" that would allow him to have his cake and eat it, too. I'm assuming what he likes about A's proposal is it avoids the dangers of a strong, private militia. And what he likes about B's proposal is that B is footing the bill.

I assume the mayor, because of his position, has really great social skills. So here's how I'd see this playing out. The mayor indeed agrees to hear both sides. According to my procedure, each side has thus succeeded in their introduction--the mayor is willing to listen. The mayor is very agreeable to this. No check is needed on the part of the PCs.

Each side indeed presents their case (perhaps foolishly skipping the discovery phase). Any particular piece of either case that acts as a safeguard against a private militia, or that pledges private funding, will be received favorably by the mayor. (Though if PC B proposes a safeguard or PC A pledges funding as part of the overall plan, skill checks may be required for those parts of the plan because the mayor may be rightly skeptical.)

Then we continue onto the elaboration phase. At least that's how it looks from PC A and PC B's perspective. From the mayor's perspective, everything so far has been the mayor listening to discover the precise motives of the two PCs. It will seem as though he's asking important questions to more clearly understand the proposals when he's really pushing, testing how much each PC will back-peddle, how much ground they'll give in order to win the mayor's favor.

Once the mayor knows this, and the PCs are expecting his decision at, what is from their perspective the close, the mayor will present his own plan that will secure funding from B while agreeing with A that there needs some oversight. Depending on how the skill checks went for A and B earlier, this may influence the degree of oversight. But ultimately the mayor will be making a pitch to have his cake and eat it too under the guise of offering a fair and judicious compromise to satisfy both PC's.

Roll 2d6 for base attitude of the NPC, higher is better.

Then the players fucking ROLEPLAY.  If they aren't "glib talkers," tough goddam shit.  Nobody's born a master tactician either.

Learn.

You want to persuade me, be persuasive.  If you aren't persuasive, learn.

Quote from: Skarg;866527I'm so glad you posted this and shared your approach! (Might've been best to start a new thread and just link to the old thread, for clarity.)

You're not the first to suggest it, I was thinking of doing it, but it looks like we've got a bit of activity here. If it starts to go in a lot of different directions, I'll dedicate a threat to my procedure specifically. There is a lot I could write on it. After all, I've literally read dozens of books on the subject, been to over a hundred training meetings, and have years of experience. It's hard to boil all that down into a message board post while also incorporating game mechanics to boot!

QuoteWe had a thread recently about whether the best GM's seem to be well-read, or not. I would say another determination (at least for the social interactions in a campaign) is how well the GM understands human behavior, whether through psychology, literature, experience, or whatever.

Funny you should mention that. Part of the reason I signed up here and decided to chime in on this thread is to get my momentum going again for this stuff. Of the hundreds of books I've read on topics outside of persuasion, there are a few that strike me as translating well to RPGs. One of my favorites is Essai Sur La Nature Du Commerce En General by Richard Cantillon.

The opening chapters almost read like a world builders guide, where it details how human civilizations form, and the differences between villages, towns, and cities. The book itself is the world's first full-fledged economic treatise, written circa 1730, before the industrial revolution. The theory is solid and still holds in modern times. But the fact that it references pre-modern observations gives it a lot of credibility as to translating to a fantasy game world economy.

Another one that's got me lately is "A Short History of Man" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Something about it reminded me of the old World of Greyhawk box set booklet that describes the migration of the ancient (human) races, Suloise, Oerideans, etc. What's great about Hoppe's book is it doesn't just spew facts of history and science. It provides reasoning and mechanisms. If the first thing you do is draw up a world map, the second thing you should do is populate the world according to what's laid out in A Short History of Man.

QuoteThe best GM's I know were all quite sharp and broad in their understanding of how many different people might behave in different circumstances. The GM's who didn't have so much of that, or who were a bit unbalanced themselves, naturally ran worlds where everyone in them, and the social interactions, were a bit like the GM and the GM's slant or lack of social perception/skills/etc. Almost goes without saying.

Just as an aside, RPGs are basically getting together with real live people and sitting around playing a game where you put yourself into the perspective of various fictional characters. If it weren't for the nerdom attached to the hobby, I'd have to question how anyone can game for any appreciable amount of time and not become good at social situations and understanding human behavior.

QuoteThe whole thing about using some mix of dice, rules, and/or just roleplaying, seems like something good GM's just develop their own way of handling that works for them.

There are any number of ways of mixing rules, dice, and roleplay (ruleplay, rollplay, and roleplay). Not all of them appeal to me. For me, interaction is the thing. Some people are happy to roleplay it out and end it all with a single deciding skill roll, with modifiers according to how good the roleplay was. That's not much interaction there. My procedure allows for, if you, the player, make a mistake, maybe your character's skill can save your ass. Or if you botch a skill roll, maybe clever decisions as a player can compensate. The system calls on you to act and react like that.

QuoteI really like the system you've shared! It makes a lot of sense, especially for attempts to convince someone of something. I wonder if you have other systems for other types of social interactions?

Speaking of books that translate well to gaming, my procedure is very similar to the selling system found in "The Secret of Selling Anything" by Harry Browne. I've added to it the benefit of my experience and a few really great pointers from other selling systems (the "upfront contract", which I didn't get into too much but is highly potent is out of Sandler Sales training).

Now the whole way I came to hear about this book is because it was on a best seller list for a financial blog because one of the blog's followers read the book and, using its advice, went out looking for a job as a financial analyst and landed two offers from Wall Street firms within one hour. The point being, this system, has applications in other kinds of social situations.

Take education for instance. I used to take guitar lessons. I went through a few different teachers. All were graduates of the Berkeley School of Music. All of them tried to hammer home the importance of me learning to read music. But I didn't want to do that. I was a teenager, I wanted to be like Slash. He's the best. Three teachers all failed to get me to read music. They just kept telling me if I'm serious about music, I have to learn to read.

Then a fourth teacher came along. She got me to read music. She "sold" me on reading music. See, up 'til then, when the teacher told me I had to learn to read music, what I was hearing is "Slash, that's something different from what I teach, boy. I'm not going to teach you to be Slash." Which of course is what I wanted. No wonder it fell on deaf ears! But she said, "So many musicians can't read music. This would really set you apart." And you know what I heard? "Not only can I teach you to be Slash, I can teach you to be even better." No wonder I was suddenly motivated to read music!

QuoteI would add that there's also another layer of practical effect about "discovery", which is that other people will have some things in mind that they will want to communicate to you, and if you don't at least listen to those things (including reactions to what you say), then they may not listen to you.

That is absolutely 1000% correct. The whole point of asking questions in discovery is to get the ball rolling in a productive direction. It's really about listening. That's where you learn how to frame your proposition in a way that will close. And as an added psychological benefit, most people really like someone who is truly willing to listen to them talk about their problems.

Quote from: Lunamancer;866590I could ask a lot more questions, but I'm going to make a few simplifying assumptions. I'm going to assume the mayor actually does care about the town, not his own power. Because it might be that he cares about the town only insofar as when things go well for the town, the people support him, and he has power. But even if PC B improved the town vastly with his plan, it would undermine the power of the mayor. So the mayor must truly care about the town for this to even be in question. Otherwise, he definitely would not like PC B's proposal.

Here's a wrinkle I'd put in it, though. If this is even a tough choice for the mayor, it's clear he likes parts of each proposal. So I would say the mayor's priority would be to try to find a "compromise" that would allow him to have his cake and eat it, too. I'm assuming what he likes about A's proposal is it avoids the dangers of a strong, private militia. And what he likes about B's proposal is that B is footing the bill.

I assume the mayor, because of his position, has really great social skills. So here's how I'd see this playing out. The mayor indeed agrees to hear both sides. According to my procedure, each side has thus succeeded in their introduction--the mayor is willing to listen. The mayor is very agreeable to this. No check is needed on the part of the PCs.

Each side indeed presents their case (perhaps foolishly skipping the discovery phase). Any particular piece of either case that acts as a safeguard against a private militia, or that pledges private funding, will be received favorably by the mayor. (Though if PC B proposes a safeguard or PC A pledges funding as part of the overall plan, skill checks may be required for those parts of the plan because the mayor may be rightly skeptical.)

Then we continue onto the elaboration phase. At least that's how it looks from PC A and PC B's perspective. From the mayor's perspective, everything so far has been the mayor listening to discover the precise motives of the two PCs. It will seem as though he's asking important questions to more clearly understand the proposals when he's really pushing, testing how much each PC will back-peddle, how much ground they'll give in order to win the mayor's favor.

Once the mayor knows this, and the PCs are expecting his decision at, what is from their perspective the close, the mayor will present his own plan that will secure funding from B while agreeing with A that there needs some oversight. Depending on how the skill checks went for A and B earlier, this may influence the degree of oversight. But ultimately the mayor will be making a pitch to have his cake and eat it too under the guise of offering a fair and judicious compromise to satisfy both PC's.

Yeah, the mayor does care about the town, and he was the kind of mercenary adventurer type that wasn't all about strict government procedures so he doesn't really have a problem with PC B's plan.

It's more that he put PC A in charge of these things, but PC B is one of his friends and a big supporter so when they came to him with this problem he's trying to find a middle ground to make them both happy. It's like when a politician has his VP support a policy that makes a big donor get mad and dial him up asking wtf is going on.

In the end it was pretty much exactly what you said: the compromise was to have PC B buy the stuff but have PC A provide oversight. But that was achieved pretty much solely through roleplaying, not mechanical checks. I had them roll Persuasion to see if there'd be a clear winner but they each rolled high and extremely close to each other.

Charisma isn't a dump stat.

In-character roleplaying isn't rocket science.

And if the chattering takes too much time, roll for initiative. This ain't Downton Abbey.

Quote from: B.T.;465532I mean mechanically.

In my experience this doesn't work.  Because the moment you set it up with mechanics past a couple of skill checks at most, you've defined a conflict in which there needs to be a 'winner'.  And most conversations aren't a conflict.  Even negotiations are more about compromising in a way that at least benefits both parties equally, or your side better than the other, without them realizing it.

You don't 'resolve' a social situation, you let it play it out.

Again, You Mileage May Vary.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;866597In the end it was pretty much exactly what you said: the compromise was to have PC B buy the stuff but have PC A provide oversight. But that was achieved pretty much solely through roleplaying, not mechanical checks. I had them roll Persuasion to see if there'd be a clear winner but they each rolled high and extremely close to each other.

Yeah, a lot of cases are analogous to the non-magical, non-silver weapon vs a werewolf, or the blessed crossbow bolt vs the rakshasa. We know the outcome without rolling the dice. But we roll anyway because the player doesn't always know it when they're fighting a werewolf or a rakshasa. So it preserves the mystery.

I think in the procedure I outlined, if we were playing it out step by step and calling for dice rolls at key points, even if we know the outcome, when the mayor starts pushing back a little to test just how important each piece of the proposal is to the PC in question, if that player's skill check turned out badly, that might actually shake the player's confidence and make the player more willing to give a little more so as to walk away with at least SOMETHING he wanted.

In your case, though, they both rolled well, so it sounds like it was an even and fair compromise. Even though the solution was ultimately arrived at strictly through roleplay, not dice, just consider that what one player asked for--the very content of the roleplay--might have been different if that player were staring down at the die in front of them showing a '1.'

If you want to know how my procedure can influence PCs without mandating they play a certain way, there you have it.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866539This is precisely how it works in ZWEIHÄNDER.

How come the website for Zweihaender is warhammerfantasyroleplay dot com? Or is that just one of those questions where I should just not go there??

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866539The players first discuss above board what they intend to achieve and what is at risk.

There is a difference there:- in my system, whilst the ref will sometimes ask the players what they are intending to achieve from the social interaction, and whether they are intending to be dishonest, etc., primarily it's the ref who privately evaluates what people are likely to be trying to achieve and decides on the appropriate dice-rolls accordingly. That said, it is a relatively subtle difference - sometimes the ref will need to ask the players directly about these things. I don't like to slow the game down unnecessarily sorting these things out, but sometimes the players' input is indispensable.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866539Next, they each pick a social tactic (based on their strongest social skill).

My system uses two stats for this:- Persuasion and Empathy. Different rolls may be needed depending on how the ref evaluates the different parties' objectives and tactics. If you haven't made a roll that you later think you need, you substitute a stat-comparison (which gives you the median outcome of the dice-roll), so that you're not interrupting the conversation to roll dice tediously.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866539The result of the skill tests determine a number of personality traits/reaction temperaments the NPC will adopt during play (such as aggressiveness, untrusting, forgiving, afraid, indifference, etc...).

In my system the dimensions are basically gullibility versus cynicism and everything else flows from that. But it would be interesting to try Zweihaender's system some time. I don't have time right now!

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866539The "success" of the social encounter is therefore based on the role-play. However, personality traits/reaction temperaments - for good or ill - shape how the NPC reacts to such requests and how they acquiesce to their demands.

Yes, that's the same basic design goal.

Quote from: Bren;866576I was going to ask for examples, but you anticipated my need. Well done.

Good examples can get really wordy because, hey, if it's combat, we have detailed stat blocks. I can just say "ogre" though and you can go look up the stats. I would argue if you want to have truly great social interaction in your games, you need to give just as much detail to what matters to the NPCs. I suppose one great project would be to come up with some generic, stock NPC "social stats" that can be plugged in.

QuoteThe five step method you outlined reminds me of the seduction rules in James Bond 007, which also used five steps, each step of increasing difficulty.

This list, sorry to say, reminds me more of what I call the "bad salesman" approach. No discovery phase. I should point out that the "bad salesman" approach is exactly what about 95% of sales books and 99% of sales offices teach. So these seduction rules aren't really "wrong" per se.

It's like this. If someone trained in average sales technique saw someone using my system (credit where credit is due, I borrowed almost entirely from Harry Browne's system), to the average salesman, my discovery phase would look like a rapport building stage, where I'm bonding with the prospect before I go to present and ultimately close the deal.

Relating it to the James Bond system, the witty conversation is where I'd actually be doing discovery. To make it fit a James Bond seduction flavor, there might be a few direct questions, but a lot of the discovery and information gathering would be done from reading body language and innuendo.

Now I'm not fully familiar with the James Bond system. I assume the falling Ease Factor means it's getting more difficult at each stage, correct? This is also a feature of the bad salesman technique. Because if discovery were in the place of witty conversation, you would move forward armed with everything you need to know to make it something SHE wants.

The reason why this is bad technique, especially in sales, is because it means you spend more time with people you ultimately can't or are unlikely to close. Part of the purpose of the discovery phase is also to find out if there's something that would prevent you from closing the deal so you don't waste your time and can move on to the next prospect. In the case of a skilled seducer, it keeps you from getting a drink thrown in your face.

The ultimate test: Would this work if it's an NPC trying to seduce a PC? See my most recent reply to mAcular Chaotic for one example of how my procedure can effectively sway PCs.

QuoteI'll have to look at your five step method to see how to adapt it for use in my Honor+Intrigue campaign. Your five steps clearly lay out a method that the players/PCs should be using to interact with NPCs.

I would say it's just a matter of plugging in the appropriate skill checks for your system. But I think it's important--and maybe you're already doing this given the focus on intrigue--to make sure you detail NPCs motives, preferences, and priorities, just as we always are sure to detail combat stats for monsters. And remember. There are werewolves and rakshasas out there. And they may be actually fairly common in social situations.