Idea for social encounters in RPGs

I have for sometime been thinking of how to make the abilities and advantages of the character benefit the player at the table. I'm not too fond of the old roll die and roleplay according to the result, or even roleplay well to get a bonus to the roll, which seems to be the two systems people use in D&D.

There are other ways of course. In Vampire LARP the players can use handsignals to show that they are using a social ability for example. Others just roleplay away and aren't bothered by what the character sheets say.

This idea is not tied to any particular game, it's just a concept. Without any further ado, here goes:

SOCIAL CARDS

The GM keeps a stack of cards and at the beginning of any social encounter the GM draws one card. The card drawn sometimes singles out a character and gives the corresponding player special attention during the encounter. The special attention given is dependent on the abilities of the character. The frequency of special attention is tied to the level of charisma and social skills of the character in question.

Each player contributes 10 cards to the GM's deck. An unskilled character contributes 10 cards of the Indifferent variety. A social expert of the highest degree contributes 10 cards with various reasons for special attention.

In a five player game the GM should thus have fifty cards, of which most will show Indifferent. -Meaning most of the time NPC encountered will behave indifferently toward the party.

Now for the fun part. Characters should have qualities based on how social they are. Let's say for arguments sake every character gets one quality for each point of CHA bonus the character has. I.e a charisma 13 dude should have one quality. In this case charisma 13 dude might be a rogue tagged with Trader. A card reading Rogue Trader is then hidden somewhere in the GM's deck. Once drawn the NPC is urged to somehow try to trade with the rogue character.

Examples:

Beautiful: NPC is fascinated by the PC's look.
Mean Streak: NPC shows weakness toward PC.
Trader: NPC tries to strike a bargain with PC.
Diplomat: NPC weighs his words as he addresses the PC first.
Network: NPC recognizes the PC from a previous encounter.
Fame: NPC has heard of PC in a favorable way.
Entertainer: NPC wishes to be entertained.
Empathy: The PC picks up on the motives of the NPC.

And so on.

This means as the character gain more social skills the more often he will be singled out somehow in social encounters and given special attention. It also means a social expert will receive more attention than characters with skills in other areas.

What do you think?

I am not sure I am getting the entire concept yet, but the concept might be a little too random - if among 50 cards, only one is trader, and the rest is "indifferent", your specialty comes into play too seldom - how often do you expect these cards to be drawn?
(Damnit, again I am reminded of Torg, this time its Drama Deck ).

I would probably prefer an approach with more player control.
For example, each player gets "social powers" they can use for one adventure. During a social encounter, they can "play" one of these powers and get a benefit (maybe a reroll in a skill challenge, or automatically negating one failure).

So, maybe one character has the "Diplomat" power - while negotiating with the Mayor, the Fighter makes the mistake of trying to Intimidate the mayor, resulting in an automatic failure - the PC intervenes, spending his Diplomat power to negate that failure.
In the social encounter with a Annis Hag, the Rogue fails his Bluff check trying to compliment the Annis Hag on her good looks - he decides to spend his "Beautiful" power for a reroll, as the Hag wants him to like her, so she is more open to a compliment from him.

Its an interesting concept, but the Archchancellor was correct about the "too random" and "not coming up often enough" problems with this method. Some players simply do not enjoy taking extensive part in social encounters and might not like being put on the spot. No game mechanic is going to make an introverted player into a social butterfly, that takes real time and (professional) effort if it happens at all.

I am working on a skill resolution system ( for all skills including social) for OD&D/Basic D&D that represents character skill without reducing player input to a die roll.

The resolution system should:
1) Not limit the player's opportunity to try anything that they can think of.

2) Allow the player to choose talents and skills based on background/ player interest and not be dictated by class.

3) make those choices meaningful by having talent and skill use important to success in adventuring.

4) Not use skill points or something similar to track and assign, yet make character level and experience relevant to determining success.

5) Still require the player to describe what is being done without using the character sheet as a "menu" to choose options.

The project is still in the design process. I had not considered the use of cards. It seems that something making use of cards could be workable if the random factor were toned down a bit.

The parameters are irrelevant. "1 in 50" could just as well be "1 in 2". It's only a matter of tuning.

Besides 1 in 50 is the odds of something happening if there is only 1 social quality among the members of the entire party.

That risks being a little too arbitrary and unresponsive.

I mean, imagine your rogue's face when you just draw "indifferent" all through a giant bustling metropolis, and then drawing Rogue Trader when you're at some dirt farm in the sticks.

My initial instinct goes something like this, but unfortunately it's pretty 4E specific. I call it the BINDS system. Prep a pack of 21 cards for each player, with different qualities on each card. Duplicates are OK. Give them three to start with, and three more every time they train in a "social skill" at character creation, or take Skill Training or Skill Mastery in a social skill.

For purposes of the system, social skills are Bluff, Insight, iNtimidate, Diplomacy, and Streetwise. Every role card is marked by which of the skills are applicable to it. About 12 cards total should apply to Insight, Diplomacy, and Streetwise, with maybe 9 cards total for Bluff and iNtimidate, since they also have combat uses.

When you get into a large-scale social situation, everybody picks a skill, draws 4 cards, and makes an open-ended check. If they meet an easy DC (per page 42 DMG) they can keep 1 card, a medium keeps 2, and a hard keeps 3. The cards they keep have to have a matching skill on them - if there aren't enough, too bad. You can use the cards to drive open-ended interaction or as "negate 1 failure" in a social skill challenge. Yes, even if the skill autofails in the first place! You may not be able to iNtimidate the Duke, but if you have an Old War Buddy card you got with iNtimidate, you can frown meaningfully at the Duke's minister -- who used to be an aide-de-camp you saved -- and he can say "Duke Brogan, these people may seem rough but underneath their intentions are good" or somesuch.

Hmm, thinking about that a little more, if you use that for social skill challenges, take out the ability of 1 player to make a "doesn't count for failures" check to give someone else +2, and let anybody spend a card marked with Insight, even if they didn't get it that way, to get a picture of the "desired skills" for the encounter instead of getting them with an Insight check.

Any cards you don't keep go back in the deck, any cards you use go in a discard pile, which you shuffle back into the deck when you take an extended rest. Really big social encounters like a grand ball or a giant marketplace, or chained skill challenges like a series of meetings with the various ministers of a castle, can have multiple opportunities to draw from the deck, using (if you want) a different skill each time.

Maybe there can be a paragon-tier feat that lets you redraw one card that doesn't match the skill you're using, or somesuch, and a heroic tier feat that lets you spend an action point to make another draw in the middle of an encounter. Maybe an epic-tier one to let you spend an action point to shuffle the discards into the deck.

I mean, imagine your rogue's face when you just draw "indifferent" all through a giant bustling metropolis, and then drawing Rogue Trader when you're at some dirt farm in the sticks.

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Point taken.

Your idea is pretty good. However, I'm looking for something less gamey. I want the players to have free reign in social encounters yet benefit from their character's talents. I preferably wouldn't want anything to interfere with the incharacter dialogue between GM and players.

Frostmarrow said:

The parameters are irrelevant. "1 in 50" could just as well be "1 in 2". It's only a matter of tuning.

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While there is some truth to that, changing the odds does not mean non-random and it still points attention at player who may not be comfortable with it. Some players like to participate in social encounters more than others and those who are intimidated by it often choose skills for thier character that focus on other areas. For NPC's without fully developed motivations, I could see using a deck of cards to determine thier interests and what qualities they react to.

ExploderWizard said:

While there is some truth to that, changing the odds does not mean non-random and it still points attention at player who may not be comfortable with it. Some players like to participate in social encounters more than others and those who are intimidated by it often choose skills for thier character that focus on other areas. For NPC's without fully developed motivations, I could see using a deck of cards to determine thier interests and what qualities they react to.

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Indeed, if you keep your charisma low you'll just contribute 10 (or whatever) Indifferent cards to the deck and not risk any special attention at all. The card system is just there to remind everybody that Ms Belucci is beautiful and that Mr Bear knows some people. Moreover, since it would be used in social situations the GM is free to tweak whatever card he draws to suit the current encounter. Medusa is not going to start bidding on the rogue trader's canteen but just might offer to trade for the rogue's life.

You can eliminate the deck aspects and as DM just look over the character's attributes/skills/etc. and base NPC roleplay/interaction off of that. I try to do this based off of character concept (i.e. an upper class brandy seller's son has NPCs interested in him because of his family connections, treats him as upper class, etc. while the down and out sellsword drunk knows more underworld/pub/pawnbroker type NPCs who don't really treat him well)

NPC interactions are very flexible and you can change your approach to interacting with PCs in character to accentuate their mechanics or background or character concept fairly easily.

For instance a high intimidation character can be treated with careful respect or fear while NPCs naturally gravitate to the high charisma PCs or take things the low charisma PC says poorly.

Frostmarrow said:

Point taken.

Your idea is pretty good. However, I'm looking for something less gamey. I want the players to have free reign in social encounters yet benefit from their character's talents. I preferably wouldn't want anything to interfere with the incharacter dialogue between GM and players.

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Well, there's free reign and then there's analysis paralysis. Social skill challenges are already gamey, but if you want to paint some sim on top of the original skill roll, you could say something like:

"The skill you choose represents your posture, or your initial approach to a large-scale social encounter. The draw gives you character archetypes that might respond to that posture. You don't have to only use that skill when interacting with those characters, and you're free not to use any of them if you had another idea in mind. The social skills reflect five different approaches:

Canny and manipulative (bluff)
Cordial but reserved (diplomacy)
Contemplative and reactive (insight)
Confrontational and aggressive (intimidation)
CGregarious and proactive (streetwise)"

The idea of the cards is to give you some seeds for social interaction in the first place, right? So a rogue at the annual palace ball who rolls bluff to get his cards and pulls, say, a "Patsy" card, would just flash it to you and say "I walk over to the ale kegs, looking for someone who's a bit in his cups". What you want this system to do is provide both DM and player with a little information beforehand to help them play the role, right? As the DM you create the cards, so you know what your players could pull out, and players can freely look over their cards as well. I'm assuming the rogue wants to accomplish something at the ball, and you want to be able to gen up an appropriate NPC; so, with the card, the rogue can start thinking up a con to get what he wants, and you have a seed personality. If he'd pulled, say, "Baron Munchausen" he'd instead think of a way to get what he wants with a pompous blowhard: impressing him with a series of outrageous counterboasts, say, or forcibly inserting himself into the tales of grandeur and then, in a quiet corner, threatening to expose him as a fraud.

This doesn't mean you can't freeform it the way you would have done without it, it just makes the process quicker to get into if you use the cards, like that casserole Alton Brown prepares ahead of time because the real one needs to bake for an hour.

Also they could feed into combat in a really interesting way if you use that feat or just allow an action point to try and get a social seed going in the middle of a fight or just prior, with a -5 to -10 "having your torso punctured often offends" penalty on the roll. Bluff or Intimidate would give you an automatic success on their in-combat uses, while the rest could be used in more interesting ways. Imagine a paladin rolling Insight and drawing a "Sob Story" card. You point to the medusa in the back and the paladin gets over there, grabs a handful of snakes that are trying to bite him, and says "look, don't insult me. I can tell you're not really trying. What's going on here?"

If you're feeling very adventurous you wouldn't even need to disallow them during what would ordinarily be a boss fight. The red dragon commanding an army of salamanders is really just a patsy for... ???