Quote from: J Arcane;465531Conversation and roleplaying?

That plus Dice Rolling! IMO, there's always a Random chance that needs to be thrown in there. Of course Conversation and Roleplaying factor into bonuses/penalties to the die roll.

Personally, lately, I'm in favor of competing die rolls, i.e. d20 or d100 plus whatever social skill of the characters involved(and NPCs), plus a modifier for the Player depending on Roleplay/What was said...

Quote from: greylond;465652That plus Dice Rolling! IMO, there's always a Random chance that needs to be thrown in there. Of course Conversation and Roleplaying factor into bonuses/penalties to the die roll.

Personally, lately, I'm in favor of competing die rolls, i.e. d20 or d100 plus whatever social skill of the characters involved(and NPCs), plus a modifier for the Player depending on Roleplay/What was said...

I like to try to make my social rules strengthening roleplaying.  

I also admit that I very rarely have my NPCs start the use of social skills, except in areas I have predesigned this way or if it is completely obvious.  I think we spoke about this in one of Pundit's threads.  

But we have a ton of social skills
4-6 acting skills,
a ton of ustoms skills,
leadership skills
relationship skills.
persuasion skills

Hell, we have a parent skill called, "Basic Carnal"

And generally, the better players try to pick and choose the one that helps.
Then we use the 'declare-roleplay-roll-recover' system.  

Makes for a good time.  Not saying it is better or worse, just that is has worked for my games for decades.

I follow the rules of the game if they're fun, but sometimes they're not, like all other rules.

We use a combination of roleplaying and dice-rolling.

Not everyone is very good at putting things into words - a shy roleplayer won't necessarily make a good Don Juan, for example, but his character might have very high seduction and people skills. Also, some people are very good at talking and can be very persuasive even though their PC doesn't have the same skills. So, we don;t rely on either roleplaying or dice rolling on their own.

So, we play out the encounter and see how it goes. Where a decision is needed then we roll dice to find out how well an attempt worked out. Sometimes the PC will get a bonus for a clever or passionate piece of roleplaying, depending on the encounter.

Normally, I play RuneQuest, Basic Roleplaying or HeroQuest, each of which has fairly good mechanisms for handling social encounters as they have social skills.

As to how to do it in D&D, I haven't played it for a very long time and, unfortunately, wouldn't have a clue, I'm afraid.

Role-playing and, if necessary, reaction rolls.  IF necessary.

Depends on the game.

My preference is always to give the players room to show some ingenuity, without necessarily punishing the stutterers, the timid and other folks who have every right to play a silver-tongued devil of a character.

More often than not I use dice rolls, but always modified by the player's actual roleplayed discourse (weighing both delivery and content) and by the circumstances (e.g. it's easy to fool the Imperial Navy when you're wearing an officers' uniform and barking authoritatively; harder when you look, and dress, and talk, like a space hobo with no documents).

I do require players to think up of something to say. "I try to fast-talk the guard" by itself is not a valid declaration of action; I wish to know exactly what their characters have in mind. More timid players are free to forgo roleplay and flatly state what they intend to say (e.g. "I tell the soldier these are not the droids he's looking for"), but this deprives them of the useful roleplaying bonus.

I like to think that, while this penalizes less articulate players playing glib characters, it does not entirely gimp them, while still rewarding players who come up with clever speeches and deliver good performances.  The way I see it, it's no different from allowing ad-hoc modifiers for clever tactics in combat.

Quote from: Windjammer;465632On the whole though I mostly ignore any rules implementation whatsoever. And that's not based on my folders being on, but on having slouched through several Burning Wheel "duel of wits" scenarios. It's literally Rock, papers, scissors with social interaction names tagged on the individual social combat maneuvers, and arbitrarily so.

Here's a quick summary of the problems social conflict systems have--

(1) If you allow the PCs to be affected by the social conflict mechanics, then you're removing the player's ability to make choices as their character (since those choices are being artificially overridden by the system). But since the entire heart of a roleplaying system is making choices as your character, this is heavily problematic. It's like a game of Chess where every so often the mechanics step in and prevent you from making otherwise legal moves.

The solution? Don't let PCs be affected by the social conflict mechanics.

(2) But if you don't allow the PCs to be affected by the social conflict mechanics, then the system becomes incredibly difficult to balance. It gives the PCs access to a whole range of tactical options which basically cannot be responded to by the NPCs.

As a result, you typically you either end up with a system which is a completely broken "win button" (by-the-book 3E Diplomacy skill) or you end up with a system which makes any successful social interaction virtually impossible.

(3) Realistic personality simulation is ridiculously difficult. Advanced supercomputers don't do a very good job of it. Expecting simplistic mechanics that can be executed using paper, pencil, and maybe some dice at a dining room table is completely ridiculous.

This problem is partially alleviated because you have human players at the table who can attempt to smooth over the absurdities of the system. But there's a pretty thin line between "smoothing over the absurdities of the system" and "we're just ignoring the rules anyway". These sorts of fixes also generally require people to enter into a very dissociated relationship with the mechanics -- to stop making decisions as their characters and to start making decisions as improv storytellers trying to explain the decisions the mechanics are making for their characters.

Which basically means, to sum up, that social conflict mechanics tend to work well in storytelling games. They tend to be shitty for roleplaying games.

With that being said, I have had success using social-based skills to resolve the outcome of very specific social interactions in RPGs. (Does he believe that lie? Does he have a favorable first impression of the PC? Et cetera.) I don't let the mechanics interfere with the actual roleplaying of the players (i.e., making decisions as their characters), but I am less precious with my NPCs (since GMing already requires a fairly dissociated mindset, this is not particularly disruptive).

In storytelling games? Sure. Whatever. Most storytelling games work better with a conflict-based resolution mechanic anyway, and social interactions just become another tactic within the conflict-resolution toolbag at that point.

Duel of Wits affects the situation, not the character, though.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;465724Here's a quick summary of the problems social conflict systems have--

(1) If you allow the PCs to be affected by the social conflict mechanics, then you're removing the player's ability to make choices as their character (since those choices are being artificially overridden by the system). But since the entire heart of a roleplaying system is making choices as your character, this is heavily problematic. It's like a game of Chess where every so often the mechanics step in and prevent you from making otherwise legal moves.

The solution? Don't let PCs be affected by the social conflict mechanics.

(2) But if you don't allow the PCs to be affected by the social conflict mechanics, then the system becomes incredibly difficult to balance. It gives the PCs access to a whole range of tactical options which basically cannot be responded to by the NPCs.

As a result, you typically you either end up with a system which is a completely broken "win button" (by-the-book 3E Diplomacy skill) or you end up with a system which makes any successful social interaction virtually impossible.

(3) Realistic personality simulation is ridiculously difficult. Advanced supercomputers don't do a very good job of it. Expecting simplistic mechanics that can be executed using paper, pencil, and maybe some dice at a dining room table is completely ridiculous.

This problem is partially alleviated because you have human players at the table who can attempt to smooth over the absurdities of the system. But there's a pretty thin line between "smoothing over the absurdities of the system" and "we're just ignoring the rules anyway". These sorts of fixes also generally require people to enter into a very dissociated relationship with the mechanics -- to stop making decisions as their characters and to start making decisions as improv storytellers trying to explain the decisions the mechanics are making for their characters.

Which basically means, to sum up, that social conflict mechanics tend to work well in storytelling games. They tend to be shitty for roleplaying games.

With that being said, I have had success using social-based skills to resolve the outcome of very specific social interactions in RPGs. (Does he believe that lie? Does he have a favorable first impression of the PC? Et cetera.) I don't let the mechanics interfere with the actual roleplaying of the players (i.e., making decisions as their characters), but I am less precious with my NPCs (since GMing already requires a fairly dissociated mindset, this is not particularly disruptive).

In storytelling games? Sure. Whatever. Most storytelling games work better with a conflict-based resolution mechanic anyway, and social interactions just become another tactic within the conflict-resolution toolbag at that point.

I am normally on the same side of the fence with Justin, But I think your basic premise is false; or at best very incomplete.  NPCs using social skills on the player, at least in the hands of a good GM, is merely an enviromental descriptor that the players add into their Roleplay.  
The GM does not need to be heavy-handed.  Describing the effects of most social mechanics used by NPCs should be done 'in-game'.  One does not tell the players that they have to trust everything the Gate Captain says; One informs the players that, "The Gate Captain is perfectly relaxed as he speaks, and to your experienced ears, his words have the ring of truth."

However, I am in agreement that I allow the PCS to have more effect on the NPCs.

Q: How do you resolve social encounters?

A: Ultimately? With a knife.

RPGPundit

Quote from: LordVreeg;465756I am normally on the same side of the fence with Justin, But I think your basic premise is false; or at best very incomplete.  NPCs using social skills on the player, at least in the hands of a good GM, is merely an enviromental descriptor that the players add into their Roleplay.  
The GM does not need to be heavy-handed.  Describing the effects of most social mechanics used by NPCs should be done 'in-game'.  One does not tell the players that they have to trust everything the Gate Captain says; One informs the players that, "The Gate Captain is perfectly relaxed as he speaks, and to your experienced ears, his words have the ring of truth."

I think you missed me second-to-last paragraph. That's exactly the sort of specific social action which I said does work because it doesn't make a decision for the character.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;465891I think you missed me second-to-last paragraph. That's exactly the sort of specific social action which I said does work because it doesn't make a decision for the character.

Yeah, but I use them for nearly every social encounter, and my games are VERY social heavy by nature.  Over 40 skills that can be used easily in social situations, and we average compabt every other session.  So since you used the term, 'Very-specific' in that paragraph for something I use dozens of times per session, there is still a disconnect.

Come to the dark side.  We have cookies.

 (and basic cooking, basic hospitality, create recipe, mass cooking, camp cooking, baking, chef as cooking skills...)

Negotiation, occasionally followed by a Charisma check if the results have a large degree of uncertainty.

Social skills and player interaction both have appropriate places in making the game fun. Imo, if you are discarding one or the other, you are discarding opportunities for enjoyable play.

But it's possible to do both very wrong.

A few points/principles I live by:
1) some discussion is boring and don't deserve a lot of table talk; abstract these away with a roll if important.
2) pcs may be immune to diplomacy results, but you can use the skill roll to describe and impression to the players.
3) like jump rolls depend on the chasm, social rolls depend on the npc. You can't expect a high impress* to give you the world on a silver platter.
3a) ...but it should give you something

*- that's the Spycraft/Fantasy craft equivalent of diplomacy, for you d&d/pathfinder players.

It's often in the set-up. Writing up or prepping the social encounter is no different than writing up a combat encounter/dungeon room. The NPCs have their starting positions, there may be a couple of traps set, and the GM knows/has a note of what the NPC's walkaway position is in a negotiation - as well as any specific personal prejudices or weaknesses.

If that stuff is in place, then there are skill checks required to navigate through the various obstacles - and if the players says something really clever or comes up with a winning tactic, they may get a bonus (and vice versa in the more frequent occasions when they say something dumb and offensive). Just like in a combat encounter, there should not be a single way, or a single dice roll, to get through it and achieve what you want, and the GM should have a good idea of what the various win/lose/draw outcomes are.

If on the fly it comes down to judgement, ie "OK, if you want to get away with that you better make a decent Fast Talk roll, otherwise this guy is going to either brain you himself or call for the cops".

But then I quite recently spent rather a lot of time fleshing out RuneQuest/Legend social interaction rules for my Age of Treason book so it covers bribery, corruption, oratory and courtroom battles...so I am biased to a rules solution to social interaction.