Social Skills, starting to bug me.

[S'mon]

. I prefer rules-based backing on social tasks to hoping that the referee liked the pizza I fed him before my attempt.

If the DM is influenced by out-of-game events, he's DMing badly. But that is equally true for whether his monsters target your PC in combat as whether or not your PC succeeds in social interaction.

 

[S'mon]

In OD&D, Charisma received more ink that any of the other attribute scores. It quite easily had the most concrete effect on game play. Heck, STR, INT, and WIS solely gave xp bonuses to certain classes and had no other stated in-game effect. By the time 2e came out, the relative importance of attributes had been completely inverted and CHA was considered a "dump stat."

In my 1e AD&D Yggsburgh campaign a couple PCs dump-statted Charisma and have really lived to regret it IMO. I'm not sure exactly what they were thinking, given that any city-centred campaign likely involves a lot of PC-NPC interaction, but maybe they were trained by prior GMs ignoring CHA. The Ranger admittedly had a tough road to hoe given all the minimum stat prereqs he had to meet, but for the Cleric to put his 6 in CHA (-10% Reaction adjustment!) I thought was a strange choice.
The rest of the players all put 12s and 13s in CHA, making their PCs reasonably charismatic, and in the case of the 13s getting +5% reaction adjustment. Two of those PCs have had considerable social success.

 

[S'mon]

My IQ measures just over the qualifying mark for "Genius"...

And your modesty knows no bounds!

 

[Mark CMG]

My IQ measures just over the qualifying mark for "Genius"

Dude, get to a hospital. That's a thermometer.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is NOTHING WRONG with challenging the players' abilities. That's what GAMES are about.

The interesting thing about challenging te player rather than the character is it can really put the player in his pcs shoes. I find it much more immersive to adress the duke directly and question him abut his brother's murder than simply making a roll for it (even if you rp the results of that roll). Personally i am not opposed to social skills. I use them in my own games. But i find, for me, they usually dampen rp and immersion a bit unless used prudently.

It is personal preference of course. Try playing an edition without social skills for a few sessions and see how it goes. I dont think everyone will be swayed, but i am sure some folks will be surprised how differently the game runs and feels (in some positive ways).

In my own campaigns, i have struck a bit of a compromise. Social skill rolls are made when the player isnt roleplaying his character effectively (his character has 18 chr and ranks in diplomacy but the player struggles to speak with npcs), when the player overperforms (he has chr 3 but is acting like bill clinton), etc. So if a player walks up to an npc and ass uf he knows where the duke's brother went last night in 1st person dialogue, i dont usually roll for that. I decide how the npc responds based on what the playerr actualky said and the npcs motives.

 

[S'mon]

The interesting thing about challenging te player rather than the character is it can really put the player in his pcs shoes. I find it much more immersive to adress the duke directly and question him abut his brother's murder than simply making a roll for it...

Yes, I agree strongly. It's a big failure in (eg) GNS theory, they completely fail to understand that challenging the player supports immersion (actually they don't seem to value immersion at all AFAICT). I really don't like games like Heroquest where I'm setting meta-stakes and rolling dice to see how social interaction resolves, and some approaches to D&D Diplomacy etc aren't much better.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There is NOTHING WRONG with challenging the players' abilities. That's what GAMES are about.

Given that a PC has no actual intelligence, wisdom or charisma, when you have an in-game challenge to one of those stats (or a skill based on one of them), you are perforce challenging the players abilities.

If the group's polymath is playing a moron who occasionally spouts a bit of knowledge, that's cool. Everyone I know has some bit of info you'd think they have no business knowing.

However, if that same PC routinely solves the puzzles, the player is not playing within the strictures he set himself when he made Int his PC's dump stat. He's having his cake and eating it too.

The flip side is equally true- if you have a superintelligent Wizard being played by the dullest knife in the cutlery drawer, he should not have his attempts to use knowledge skills gimped by the fact of his Blutarsky-esque GPA.

So, I reiterate: it should be the PC's (not player) abilities that are the primary (not sole) source of the PC's successes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And your modesty knows no bounds!

Tellin' the truth ain't braggin!

I've said it before in RL: had I not had a good night's sleep, I'd have scored much lower. A few different problems, and I'd have scored lower. Just because of higher stress levels. Instead, I was well-rested, and they gave me problems I was able to answer with little difficulty.

(And I went to a high school where I wasn't even in my class' top 50% GPA...but was one of the higher SAT scores in which 75% of us were National Merit finalists.)

Lack of sleep cost me a perfect score on my LSATS: they mail you the results with the correct answers and what yours were- the 3 multiple choice answers I missed, I had the correct answers marked as my second choices in the test booklet. OTOH, I stressed out taking the Texas Bar exam, and had to retake it...more than once.*

I was trying to get into a certain graduate program. To do so, I had to take a particular test. They called me to notify me of my admission- they had never seen scores that high.

But in the end, standardized tests like that are just a snapshot, and I don't put much credence in their overall accuracy. (They did, however, ensure I haven't had to pay 1/10th of the cost of my education.)












* none of my stress outs were as bad as some of the ones I witnessed, though. One guy passed out at a table near me, and another started laughing hysterically and turned in his test after 5 minutes. Which still doesn't compare to some of the stories out of California...

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, I reiterate: it should be the PC's (not player) abilities that are the primary (not sole) source of the PC's successes.

Therevis nothing wrong with this approach but s'mon's style is also perfectly viable. It sounds like character simiulation is important to you. So i can see why social skills would matter. But S'mon seems to be emphasizing immersion. He wants to feel like he is in the character's shoes. To him it is going to be a better option for the player rather than the characte to be challenged.

I run and play investigative adventures all the time. In those instances unraveling tye mystery by finding leads, chatting with npcs and putting the pieces together is the fun. I would much rather deal with these elements through my characters eyes than make a bunch of rolls.

Also, there are other ways to handle this aside from rolls.

 

[S'mon]

I was trying to get into a certain graduate program. To do so, I had to take a particular test. They called me to notify me of my admission- they had never seen scores that high.

Given the AA goals in most US institutions of higher learning, yes I'd think they were quite keen to have you.
This is horribly OT, but I'm in higher ed and fascinated by this stuff: am I right your experiences in Texas higher education predated the era when they went from Affirmative Action admission to 'top 10% of graduates from every high school' admission for State Universities? The latter seems a lot fairer to me. Maybe PM me if you'd like to discuss it.