Quote from: Omnifray;866622How come the website for Zweihaender is warhammerfantasyroleplay dot com? Or is that just one of those questions where I should just not go there??

SEO rankings. They let this domain lapse a long time ago, and I claimed it for my own.

Quote from: Omnifray;866622There 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.

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.

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!

Yes, that's the same basic design goal.

It sounds like you have a pretty robust, yet simple, social system. I'd love to take a look at it sometime. Can you link me?

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.

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.

Quote from: Lunamancer;866621Yeah, 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.

I was just thinking "wouldn't this force the PCs to act against their will" as I was reading this. Then I realized you were talking about shaking the PLAYER's confidence and not the player character.

What if they just ignore the 1 and ask for the moon anyway?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;866634I was just thinking "wouldn't this force the PCs to act against their will" as I was reading this. Then I realized you were talking about shaking the PLAYER's confidence and not the player character.

What if they just ignore the 1 and ask for the moon anyway?

That's their choice. Maybe the 1 means nothing, and maybe it does. I guess you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky? LOL

But seriously, in some situations, the player is simply not willing to give an inch. If I were PC B, my attitude as a player might be that I wasn't willing to foot the bill if I wasn't going to have it my way. It might be that I preferred to see no town guard built up at all rather than see it run by a political system. And if that's the case, then I'm kind of like a werewolf in that situation. No matter how good your skill roll was (or how bad mine was), no matter how good your skill is (or how bad mine is), you just don't have the right weapon to harm me.

Now the ultimate outcome--the compromise to allow B to build it but to give oversight to A (being that they're both PCs, I'm assuming B trusts A quite a bit), that just might be something I can live with. Maybe that's silver dagger that gets me to give up my money.

That's a key point to my procedure. You DO need to have the right weapon in order to succeed. The function of the skills is to help you get the right weapon, and to use it effectively.

Let me just add to my last post for the sake of being clear.

Let's say my attitude as a player is not what I described in the previous post. Let's say instead my preferences were as follows:

1 - Built up town guard under my control
2 - Built up town guard under the government's control
3 - No built up town guard at all.

(Of course there are possibilities in between 1 and 2. Like option 1.5, they're under PC A's control.)

When I'm in that meeting trying to make my case and I, as player, sees the 1 come up on my die roll, I know I'm probably going to "lose" this. So I can take the safe route and give in, knowing option 2 is at least better than option 3. Or I can press my luck and stand my ground. I may end up getting option 1 after all if I'm stubborn enough. But the risk is that we end up with option 3.

Isn't making choices and taking risks for your character is what RPGs are all about?

So I did write a reply to Bren's post about the James Bond seduction system. I kept getting a message that it was invisible pending moderator approval. I'm still really new here and really have no idea why it would have been flagged. Maybe referring to "bad salesmen" was considered a personal attack? LOL Or maybe the topic of seduction was just too risque!

Quote from: Lunamancer;866641But seriously, in some situations, the player is simply not willing to give an inch. If I were PC B, my attitude as a player might be that I wasn't willing to foot the bill if I wasn't going to have it my way. It might be that I preferred to see no town guard built up at all rather than see it run by a political system. And if that's the case, then I'm kind of like a werewolf in that situation. No matter how good your skill roll was (or how bad mine was), no matter how good your skill is (or how bad mine is), you just don't have the right weapon to harm me.

Nice example.

This is the sort of situation where people who think a good Bluff roll (or whatever) should always get what they want just fail to consider.

Unless the king really doesn't want the throne, it is unlikely to matter how well you roll when asking the king to give you (an unknown wanderer) his crown for free. As you say, there are situations where if you don't have the silver dagger or know the magic word you just aren't going to succeed.

Bren, I did try to write a reply to your James Bond example, but I must be using some key word that gets my post flagged. Maybe it will eventually be approved.

Quote from: Lunamancer;866595Funny 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.

As chance would have it, I've been working on game designs that include pre-industrial economies, with the intention of contrasting to industrial thinking, so: sold! Would you recommend a particular English translation?

QuoteAnother 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.

I'm doing that too... sold. Man, you're good. ;-)

Quote from: Lunamancer;866647Bren, I did try to write a reply to your James Bond example, but I must be using some key word that gets my post flagged. Maybe it will eventually be approved.

Impressive! I wonder what it takes to get flagged on this site! :hatsoff:

Quote from: Bren;866646Nice example.

This is the sort of situation where people who think a good Bluff roll (or whatever) should always get what they want just fail to consider.

Unless the king really doesn't want the throne, it is unlikely to matter how well you roll when asking the king to give you (an unknown wanderer) his crown for free. As you say, there are situations where if you don't have the silver dagger or know the magic word you just aren't going to succeed.

I think this is a teachable moment that's probably worth expanding on. One thing I left out that is ultra important, almost like the keystone of why the system works in real life sales situations, is to understand the nature of exchange.

Suppose I to the favorite local burger joint and buy a hamburger for $5. Is the hamburger worth $5?

I suppose a lot of people would say, "Yes, that's why it's priced at $5."

But think about it. Would you get up off your couch, put on your shoes, drive downtown in traffic, just to exchange a 5-dollar bill for five 1's?

No. I'm going to buy that burger because to me it's worth more than $5. Maybe to me it's worth even $8. In a sense, I'm profiting to the tune of $3 worth of happiness units by buying that burger.

What about the burger joint? Is the burger worth $5 to them? Of course not. How could a business stay profitable unless the $5 it was receiving on each burger was worth more than the burgers they were giving away? Maybe to the burger joint, they were only worth $2 each.

The point is, there is a spread, a whole range of negotiable terms that are mutually beneficial to all parties involved in the trade that everyone could agree to voluntarily (voluntarily means without the GM taking control of your PC because someone made a good skill roll against that PC). Now skill can help you come to an agreement within that range. It's not going to get you outside of it.

And what I didn't really mention (except briefly in the lost James Bond post) is that skill also helps you determine early on when the range between you and the other person is so narrow or non-existent as to make persuasion fruitless. We become so obsessed over our definition of "success" we often forget there are always implicit costs to the very attempt, even if the only cost is time. And so sometimes success means minimizing those costs.

Quote from: Skarg;866650As chance would have it, I've been working on game designs that include pre-industrial economies, with the intention of contrasting to industrial thinking, so: sold! Would you recommend a particular English translation?

The more recent one, edited by Mark Thornton (he's an economist) is aimed at preserving Cantillon's ideas, whereas the translation from the 30's was more history-minded, so opted to try to accurately translate out-dated French into out-dated English, so it's less readable and probably less accurate in terms of translating the economic ideas.

QuoteI'm doing that too... sold. Man, you're good. ;-)

Heh, I actually got that one free on .pdf before it was released. My brother had contacted the publisher in hopes of obtaining permission to do an audiobook. He was kind enough to forward me a copy.

QuoteImpressive! I wonder what it takes to get flagged on this site! :hatsoff:

I have a couple of guesses as to what it might have been, but I can't say what they are without getting this post flagged as well, lol!

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866627SEO rankings. They let this domain lapse a long time ago, and I claimed it for my own.

Well, fortune favours the brave...

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;866627It sounds like you have a pretty robust, yet simple, social system. I'd love to take a look at it sometime. Can you link me?

It's not that simple, and unfortunately it's not available online at the moment. I'm currently going through the painful tedium of incorporating a few hundred edits from playtesting etc. When it's done I'll certainly be making a song and dance about it as much as I can. That may take some time.

There is an ashcan version that you could buy in hard copy from Lulu if you wanted (Soul's Calling Core Guide) but to be honest it's not as polished as I want it to be ("several hundred edits" speaks for itself) and it doesn't entirely represent my latest thinking. If you are interested though, there's a cheap paperback "value" edition whereas the hardback copy is quite expensive.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!;465701Role-playing and, if necessary, reaction rolls.  IF necessary.

Same here. I find adding more of a board-game kind of element just a distraction from the reasons I'm playing an RPG instead of a board game.

"IF necessary" is a key point. What someone is going to do -- or at least a big domain of things he or she is NOT going to do -- can be close enough to certain given the incentives presented.

There are lots of low-probability possibilities for which we don't test in an RPG because either that's more bother than it's worth or the random events themselves would detract from our fun. ("You're eating? Roll for salmonella poisoning!")

"Where is the game?" is I think an important question to which different people may have different answers. I find it in the choices I make while engaging the imagined world from the perspective of my role. Others prefer to downplay that in favor of a statistical walk testing their "character build" choices.

I find the latter boring, just as I find casino games such as Roulette boring. Obviously, plenty of other people get a kick out of those. Again, though, it seems a bit odd to me to choose an RPG for that; and odder still when the expectation is brought to the aspect least like such abstract contests.

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

I do such things if and when I have a question calling for such an answer. Sometimes those arise before (or just when) someone comes along: "In what mood is Arevik Darbinyan, given the imponderables of how his day has been so far?" At other times they arise in the course of conversation.

Quoteand 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

Since the nature of the answers being sorted depends on the particular questions being asked, I make no such blanket limitation on their scope.

QuoteWhat then happens is that conversation flows naturally...

but I let the posing of questions to 'mechanics' flow along with it, rather than being forced at the outset.

Quote from: Phillip;866664but I let the posing of questions to 'mechanics' flow along with it, rather than being forced at the outset.

As I say, in my system there are always stat-comparisons to fall back on, to avoid interrupting the conversation for dice-rolls.