Social Systems: What are they supposed to do?

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:08 am

So here on the Den we are constantly making fun of RPG social interaction systems. 5e gets mocked for having roll dice and make shit up based on that (by me no less), 3e gets mocked for being able to add bonuses to autowin combat forever, Zak S gets mocked for making nonfunctional rules that

But are there any actual goals or implementations for a social system that aren't ass?

The majority of social systems I've seen in D&D all involve some sort of die rolling to make a target "friendly", which in some way shape or form indicates that the target will help you, and maybe in some systems there's a super duper special awesome level where the target becomes your minion, or something, maybe? Which is cool thematically as a hero, but always seems to end in:

-Dominate ++. We know this is broken because mind control effects are broken as fuck, and these people think you are an Awesome Leader they will die for. This also ends in people getting dumb shit like the king making you the new king for perpetuity because you rolled a 50.

-Vague assertions of friendliness where you and the DM argue over how friendly the dude is as you try to milk your new friend for all he's worth. Maybe you can talk people down from attacking (which would be a legitimate subsystem) or you can't.

And those are really it - I have no idea how D&D style diplomacy is actually supposed to work as a game mechanic that people play with.

Now, there are some ideas that could work - Bluff as a mental attack where it's basically a suggestion, some kind of haggling skill to lower/raise sale prices, that sort of thing. But as far as a diplomacy/reaction skill goes...what exactly is this supposed to look like, and does anyone have any good examples that's better than just saying fuck it MTP?

Lokey · Post by **Lokey** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:41 am

In 3e it was a copy paste (see Frank's fail article on diplo or skill checks) added to a pretty useless skill (a skill check for negotiation and so on--but things you'd want to use it for already had their own skills like appraise, various knowledges and such) that pretty much reads you run the world if you make an easy dc, which you make at level 1 with no ranks by rolling until you make a friend who aids another you to make another friend who also aids another until you can hit dc million. Then there's another helpful table that gives instances of what being a friend means and you're the dm now

5e (if it hasn't changed) is pure what the dm wants it to mean like all 5e skill stuff.

Charm, dominate and so on is strictly be the dm at low level before you have to deal with intelligent undead, aberrations, outsiders and stuff that none of that works on outside epic magic which is another category of fail.

I don't know what you'd call good. Most suggestions I've seen either don't set much in stone or get bogged down fast with tons of modifiers. What do you want out of a social interaction system, and what level of detail and how much tolerance for tedium do you have?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:46 am

Is D&D? "Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate" even a good trinity to go with?

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:49 am

My groups always just say MTP.

When I have been a DM, I set the tables of DCs myself, and told people that they couldn't increase diplomacy beyond skill ranks and cha mod. This seems to work well enough, no one has complained yet.

In my next project of elder scrolls ttrpg, I'm making it completely MTP, but giving examples of what is difficult. As in DC 5 = persuading someone to stop unplugging your phone. DC 10 = Persuading ISIS to stop bombing your children. DC 15 = Persuade the US government to lower taxes... etc

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 5:00 am

OgreBattle wrote:Is D&D? "Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate" even a good trinity to go with?

If you house rule it like most 3.x tables seem to (knowingly or not) and just run those against ass pulled fairy tea party DCs it does well enough. By a large enough margin that if you ARE running 3.x I very strongly recommend that you use that as your "social mechanics".

I say this as someone who runs and advocates a very different formalized social combat system everyone should all know plenty about already. It's simply a matter of staying within the limitations and conventions of the system you've already chosen. 3.x isn't really compatible with anything else.

If you want to go back to the OP's question, you have the problem that he asked if there were "non-ass" goals, then criticized a bunch of things people have asserted are outcomes.

And I don't care what the hell people say about the outcomes of any social mechanic including my own, I don't even care if you actually want to claim that the outcomes cannot POSSIBLY be good, the answer to "are there non ass goals" is "Yes" and it doesn't really tell us much.

But if you want some attempt at useful elaboration. Yes, of course there are non-ass goals. The most simple of which is a desire to see SOME amount of focus on social actions and the description of social actions/traits in game and trying to find some way to mechanically support and encourage that without breaking everything. So what?

As for outcomes, I have a pretty reasonable working abstracted mostly formalized solution, everyone else has unfinished infinite sized lists of infinite sized modifiers. I know which side of that I consider to be ass.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 5:48 am

OgreBattle wrote:Is D&D? "Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate" even a good trinity to go with?

I tend to lean towards Influence/Deception rather than the trinity. Basically it boils down to "Are you lying to gain something? Deception. Are you being honest and want to gain something? Influence".

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 6:07 am

I've gone with the Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate trinity in my own writing and at my table (still playing 3rd/PF). As far as I'm concerned Social Interaction Rules should always aim to make it so that when a player socializes with a given character they have a chance at changing the narrative. So let's say a PC meets Racist Elf who doesn't want them to enter the forest to talk to the Sylphan Queen. If the PC has da skillz to pay da billz they may be able to convince mentioned elf to allow them an audience with their royal liaison. Even better if the system in question can facilitate making that elf not so damn racist over time.

I do 'not' need a SIR to determine that the Queen, who already wants to meet with that PC, wants to meet with the PC. I do not need it to determine that the Racist Elf is indeed racist and does not want to let filthy non elves pass. I do not need it to determine that mentioned elf might randomly be not racist towards this particular random character for no other reason than because both characters exist in the same place.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 6:10 am

A social system exists for the same reason as a combat system or a computer hacking system: to determine what the characters can accomplish with [Thing], where in this case [Thing] is [Social Interaction] rather than [Spaceship Piloting] or whatever the fuck. There are of course, different goals you could have. The most obvious would be to allow players who aren't necessarily good at [Thing] to play characters who are good [Thing]. Another possibility is to have a system where players who know a lot about [Thing] are encouraged to bring their out of character knowledge in and have their character do well at [Thing] while players who don't have their character's do poorly at [Thing].

Those are both defensible goals for a game to have. If you're playing Settlers of Catan or whatever, all the trading and development decisions are the player's. You don't get to have major deals done better because you are playing a crafty merchant prince. On the other hand, I have never seen a cyberpunk game that in any way benefited from asking the player to know anything at all about computer hacking.

For social systems, if you are going to have a "Charisma" stat at all, it seems to me that you're pretty committed to having a system in which the character has significantly different expected social outcomes from the player. The pimply faced autistic kid is allowed to play a character who is very charismatic and the group's social anchor is allowed to play a character who is very uncharismatic. Thus, using MTP as your social system is fine in abstract but rather implies that you shouldn't have a charisma stat - while having a charisma stat implies that your social system should give you outputs independent of what you'd get from MTP.

-Username17

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:45 pm

Frank beat me to my major point - it seems that some people want the Social Rules to reward the player for engaging with the world (and NPCs) in character. If the player gives a rousing speech about why the elves should aid in the defense of the human village, the player wants a chance to convince the elves to do something that isn't necessarily in their immediate self-interest (not dying). On the other hand, other people want the rules to reward a character for investing resources in social interaction. The Diplomancer says 'I try to convince the elves to help. I have a 93 on my Diplomacy'.

Now, in my opinion, the first option makes the game more enjoyable for the other players. The second option is more appropriate for a game where the focus is that you're able to play a character who can be completely unlike you - including your ability to influence people.

If you're looking for 'non-ass goals', I think trying to find a way to balance the two is both appropriate and cracker-jack hard.

In terms of outcomes, having a system to try to determine whether a request is 'reasonable' or not is ideal. In the real world, I could ask someone if I could cut in front of them in the line at Starbucks for [insert reason here]. It's a relatively minor request of a stranger, but it is also an inconvenience for them. I don't know whether a given stranger will say yes or no to the request - and a particular stranger might answer differently based on a host of factors such as their assessment of my character, how rushed they are, etc.

Ideally, the social system will help you identify what levels of requests you can hope to ask for from 'won't actively get in your way' to 'will give their life for you'. While it wouldn't be great to track a million details, we typically find that you can't go from strangers to best friends immediately, so there has to be a limit to how much you can improve an attitude based on a single 'interaction' - probably 1 step. As you request favors from a 'friend', their attitude should degrade, unless you also do favors for them.

Maintaining a list of NPCs and their current attitude toward each PC is one possible solution, but abstracting that is also probably good. So each time you have an interaction, you can have a roll to determine whether you succeed given their current attitude. A success on a hostile enemy might be harder than with a 'friendly' character, and it will get you less. Convincing someone not to kill you on sight might be the best you can hope for in a single interaction - you shouldn't be able to go from they're trying to kill you to worshiping you as a god immediately.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 5:18 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:you shouldn't be able to go from they're trying to kill you to worshiping you as a god immediately.

I get this strong feeling that I've seen this in source material-like things far more often than once. But when they do worship you as a god, it's usually barely less inconvenient than when they're trying to kill you.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 6:48 pm

It does happen, true. Usually with a McGuffin. You know, Scrooge McDuck shows the natives the sun-coin and it marks him as the sun-god's servant, not food.

But as far as game rules go, I think it should generally not be a standard result. Or at least, it seems to create the most objections - if you invest your resources in god-like diplomacy, being treated like a god is the only output and it doesn't seem 'realistic'.

Of course, differing expectations on realistic outcomes is another discussion that has some significant overlap but is really ancillary.

Lokey · Post by **Lokey** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 8:10 pm

At least in 3.x zealot or fanatic or whatever (epic skill use, +25 or 50 dc) is mind-affecting and has a few outs, i.e. it doesn't work on anything you need it to work on and isn't much better than friendly or helpful anyway...and probably much worse since there's no rules way to get out of being friendly or helpful if you've been diplomanced.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 8:22 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:In terms of outcomes, having a system to try to determine whether a request is 'reasonable' or not is ideal.

OK, you not only seem to fail to know the difference between ass and non-ass, you also just mistook, or at the very least muddled, your intended outcome (ie your "goal") for an outcome. But yeah, everything you described was infinite lists of infinite modifiers, a dead end failed mess that has historically been worse than fairy tea party. And as such is pretty ass as both a goal and an outcome.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 8:33 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:But yeah, everything you described was infinite lists of infinite modifiers, a dead end failed mess that has historically been worse than fairy tea party.

Remember folks, this "infinite lists of infinite modifiers" babble is the same argument that leads to the conclusion 3E's climb skill is fairy tea party.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 8:38 pm

Frank has said that whatever your game is about needs to be exemplified by your skill system. After Sundown is primarily about supernatural social politicking and so the skill system has Empathy, Expression, Intimidation and Persuasion as the core social skills (with the "interacting with animals" catchall Animal Ken, the "get through administrative structures" Bureaucracy and the "lead people" Tactics). I personally think this is rather a lot of skills for socializing, but I get why it is set up that way (and I suck at socializing so I'm biased).

Honestly, D&D is about killing things and taking their shit, so you could honestly collapse all of the social skills to Persuasion, since Bluff is persuading someone you're telling them the truth, Diplomacy is persuading someone to like you and Intimidate is persuading someone to do what you say/be scared of you. Hell, you could put UMD into it too, since you're persuading an item to work for you (I maintain this is why its key stat is Charisma). The only real problem is then Sense Motive, and honestly, if you're going for a minimalistic skill system, which you probably should with D&D, you could roll it into Search/Spot/Listen for Perception.

After that you really just need to fiddle with your granularity dials, determining how granular you want dispositions to be and how difficult each step is. I could see simplify everything down to a Diplomacy style table, though possibly allowing people a resistance roll similar to intimidate.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:55 am

You know that reminds me.

On the topic of social mechanics goals, methodologies and outcomes. Ass or not?

Another piece of vital reading generated largely by me of course, but I'm pretty much the only person actually productively working on the topic around here for the last forever.

Most of the others just declare infinite lists of infinite modifiers a totally achievable goal, ignore everything on the Rumsfeld thread "because fuck Phonelobster" and then run face first into the fundamental issues from the Rumsfeld thread or the basic insurmountable nature of formalizing infinity into a single easy to use reference table and just sorta... quietly remain in utterly preliminary wank phases forever...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:08 am

In Scholomance, I'm trying to incorporate some kind of reputation system. I'm largely going to steal After Sundown's "here's how you actually argue, here are dice pools for these sorts of arguments" thing, and then all the reputation system really needs to do is translate "you accidentally spilled Pumpkin Juice on the Slytherin prefect's dress robes last week, so Slytherins hate you right now" into an actual modifier for social interactions.

All I'm really going to do for this is add another layer to the aspect system I was already planning on stealing from FATE. Basically when something significant happens, the GM looks at the relative status of the characters, the nature of what happened and the disposition of the NPC. If you spill soup on the Hufflepuff prefect and apologize, he won't give a shit, and you don't get an aspect, but the Slytherin prefect will hound you for that for a bit, so you gain the aspect "Slytherin Enmity" and it can be compelled like a normal aspect when you're dealing with Slytherins or anyone sympathetic to the prefect, but you can also totally invoke it when dealing with Griffindors.

And that's really all that matters to me. If people can have arguments in character, and actual in game events can be brought up and feel like they affect social encounters, that's really all I care about.

Its MTP, and burgeons on PL's maligned "infinite lists" but, eh, fuck it, I really don't care that much. Perfect is the enemy of done, and I'm pretty sure that I can write up a ten item list that functions.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:19 am

Blah blah, pretty much a fairly good demonstration of ignoring the problems and just deciding to go with infinite lists for no reason, but what actually catches my eye is...

Prak wrote:...and it can be compelled like a normal aspect when you're dealing with Slytherins or anyone sympathetic to the prefect, but you can also totally invoke it when dealing with Griffindors.

... are you actually proposing to literally mechanically hard code that the enemy of your enemy IS actually your friend? Because that looks like it, and it's a problem.

And that right there is why just the sort of Rumsfeld thread type consideration of mechanical consequences needs to be done with these things.

Because "Trust me, I'm the kinda guy who runs up out of nowhere and kicks people in the nuts, including people, coincidentally, that you do not like!" is not a particularly great goal or outcome in my book. Especially not as a fundamental foundation or design balance point.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:42 am

No, I'm proposing literally mechanically hard coding "hey, the guys we hate are pissed at you. That's awesome!" into my Magic High School game.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:02 am

Prak wrote:my Magic High School game.

Sounds like it's about conspiracy conspiring to me, and conspirators conspiring in conspiracy should at times fall for "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" but in general the moral and adventure story line of that experience should be that "the enemy of my enemy is not my friend".

Turning that into a mechanical predisposition to believe that the enemy of your enemy is your friend is basically just taking 50 years of USA foreign policy disasters and inexplicably hardcoding it so your players and NPCs have to repeat them.

Which seems like an odd choice for any game, including magic high school conspiracy/clique infiltrator 5000.

Though I suppose it could work for "CIA/US Diplomacy simulator 5000 : The I Think I've Made A Terrible Mistakening".

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:22 am

Yeah, no. I have no clue how old you are PL, but apparently its old enough to forget that teenagers are idiots who are perfectly willing to think better or worse of you depending on what you've done to their friends and rivals.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:40 am

Prak wrote:Yeah, no. I have no clue how old you are PL, but apparently its old enough to forget that teenagers are idiots who are perfectly willing to think better or worse of you depending on what you've done to their friends and rivals.

I beat up plenty of deeply hated and unpopular bullies, few of the violent ones in my high school held any kind of significant popularity.

All I ever got out of it was an unfriendly introduction to a tougher opponent.

But to be fair, for me high school was basically just teen fight club with a few romantic interest sub plots that would be considered too unlikely and melodramatic for a Korean TV drama.

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:45 am

Have you considered the prospect that a +2 swing in your favor does not offset an existing penalty you might be laboring under?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:56 am

Almaz wrote:Have you considered the prospect that a +2 swing in your favor does not offset an existing penalty you might be laboring under?

Have you considered that is entirely irrelevant?

Everyone loves purple I reckon, if I give everyone a +2 for wearing purple that's totes cool if there are other modifiers right?

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 5:04 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Have you considered that is entirely irrelevant?

Everyone loves purple I reckon, if I give everyone a +2 for wearing purple that's totes cool if there are other modifiers right?

... if you want people to wear purple, sure?