Why Diplomacy/Intimidate/Bluff, and not more or less?

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OgreBattle
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Why Diplomacy/Intimidate/Bluff, and not more or less?

Post by OgreBattle »

In most games I've played social stuff is handwaved/MTP'd and the crunch is in combat, but many games still have concrete rules for it.

Looking at D&D we have "Tell lies", "Make people like you", and "Scare them".
Looking at WhiteWolf games we lave lots more stuff, and I forget how things work in Shadowrun.

What systems do you prefer for intrigue heavy games, combat heavy ones? This is something I've been mulling over as I doodle about my own Heartbreaker.
Username17
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Post by Username17 »

An RPG is a group activity, and minigames that are expected to take up a lot of time need to provide things for all or most of the characters to do. In the context of combat minigames, this means that every character needs some kind of combat action to perform. In the case of investigative minigames or scouting minigames or intrigue minigames, that still basically means exactly the same thing unless those minigames get shrunk to the point that it is acceptable for one player "just do it."

You don't need a lockpicking minigame, it's acceptable for a single character to simply handle picking each lock because the resolution can be handled quickly (Extended Tests for lockpicking are therefore terribad and shouldn't be done). Whether you need a talking minigame or not depends entirley on how much screen time the talking is going to get. If it's hardly any, it's OK for the players to shake the face at each social problem. If it's going to take up half a session, you can't have any off the players sitting the whole thing out.

It doesn't all have to be characters finishing each others' sentences. If you want to make intrigue and shit a thing, it's OK for characters to be contributing with knowledge and perception checks or acting as wingmen or whatever.

-Username17
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