D&D General "I roll Persuasion."

[Maxperson]

This does seem to be a common perspective on the subject. I wonder why.

Magic can do things that cannot normally be done. That's why. Your human wizard can't fly. Unless he uses magic. Same with changing form. Controlling minds. And so on.

Have (general) you ever been pushed over the edge by an insult?

Not since I was a kid and hadn't learned self-control. Once I hit adulthood, words can no longer do that to me. Even if they could, it still wouldn't equate to the kind of mind control being discussed in this thread. Making a stranger angry is far different from making him go do your shopping for you.

Or maybe too tired to argue with someone?

Sure. I stopped arguing and left. When I'm too tired to argue with someone, I announce it and then just stop talking to that person. I don't cave in.

Or so smitten that you agree to things you know are a bad idea?

Yes and no. It really depends on whether it can be a teachable moment for that person and/or what the consequences will be. If it's simply going to be a bit of a waste of time or other really benign consequence and I can tie it back to making it a teachable moment, then sure.

No stranger has ever been able to get me to do even that much, though. I don't get smitten by random women who can then talk me into a teachable moment like that.

If so, you have lost a "social combat." And if it can happen to you, it can happen your character.

Right. It can't happen to my character.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I mean, a lot of other RPGs just let you mechanically inflict mental conditions on PCs, without any distrust that the player won't RP it, and also without the need for the play to "okay" it. It does tend to be codified though, albeit usually more simplistically than D&D.

in vampire we used to use dominate to make people forget things...and trust them to play it even though out of game they knew what the character forgot.

 

[Celebrim]

I mean, a lot of other RPGs just let you mechanically inflict mental conditions on PCs, without any distrust that the player won't RP it, and also without the need for the play to "okay" it. It does tend to be codified though, albeit usually more simplistically than D&D.

I don't want to turn this into a bashing PbtA session, but as an example of what you are talking about it works pretty well. When you say, "albeit usually more simplistically than D&D", you should be asking yourself, "Ok, so where did all that extra complexity go? How does a system get away with treating something that D&D doesn't treat with remotely enough complexity with even less complexity than D&D?"

And the answer in PbtA is that moves an enormous amount of complexity that would otherwise be in the rules of a game into the table contract of a game. Instead of the rules forming a contract between the players and the GM, PbtA asks the players to negotiate on a regular basis the contracts that govern play. This is especially true of PbtA when the Moves move away from hack and slash and toward governing social dynamics. PbtA also relies heavily on the GM improvising things on the fly, again heavily relying on table contracts to negotiate that. In other words, PbtA takes a lot of complexity out of the game and instead moves it to the metagame.

I suspect that a lot of people who take issue with the GM being able to tell them what to do by having an NPC make a skill check would also take issue with the entire premise and structure of Monsterhearts, for example.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's different with magic. Relatively few NPCs have those spells, but everyone can talk to people.

okay so make teh subsystem not open to all... make it a PC/Named NPC only, or a set of skills that are rare... I mean in theory if you play at a wizard school everyone has magic so it is still game by game.

Not to mention, if we could just talk and charm/dominate people, what's the point of those spells?

um... to magically do faster what someone can do over time... like I can have my fighter build a wall of stone, does that negate the wizard doing it?

There's also a reason why cults go after people who are of certain mindsets that are open to manipulation, and why they are generally very small(it's hard to find lots of those people).

oh god i wish that was true...

Yeah. Maybe. Think of internet scams and other ploys. There's a reason why they are mostly successful at scamming the elderly who tend not to think as clearly as those who are younger.

ah... they scam a lot of people... and not just the elderly. Just because the elderly are MORE likely to be hit by it doesn't mean me or you are not at risk.
in fact I just had this conversation with my Grandmother and Fiancée the other day and my grandmother told us her rule of thumb if someone calls saying that she owes money is to take there name the name of the company, and say she will call them back, but not take a number from them, then look up the company and call back (she means in a phone book for look up btw) so she knows who she is talking to... she doesn't often actually owe things, but she wont say it is impossible for her to forget to pay something.

So you set all of that up and the king calls his wizard advisor to confirm your story with magic and other planar information, and the cleric to verify the truth by having you all speak under a zones of truth separately and then confirm the story. Or maybe you get lucky and the king is 90 years old, not mentally all there, and he falls for it.

In any case, the king is not a PC and doesn't have agency which you are stealing via social skills. Social skills by the way, which the 5e DMG strongly implies do not work on PCs, and which Crawford confirmed don't work on PCs.

again I am NOT argueing how you and I read teh social rules... I am showing not only you COULD con a king into giving you the kingdom, it COULD be just a side thing as part of a bigger con... and that is how some people want to play a leverage style game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Nobody has yet. And people have tried.

I am really glad you are so sure and hope that doesn't hurt you ever

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Have (general) you ever been pushed over the edge by an insult? Or maybe too tired to argue with someone? Or so smitten that you agree to things you know are a bad idea? If so, you have lost a "social combat." And if it can happen to you, it can happen your character.

I have not only in real life lost my cool but on these very boards...
I have not only in real life given up because 'it's not worth it to argue' but I regularly do on these boards
between the ages of 13 and 30 more then 9 out of 10 things I did that I regret as stupid started with "I liked this girl..."

 

[Umbran]

I'm all for it, but claiming that there exists some codification of a social system that doesn't heavily rely on DM fiat requires some actual counter examples.

How about a social system that doesn't require any more fiat than the combat system of the same game?

Fate. The social system works on exactly the same mechanical basis as combat, or anything else.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

How about a social system that doesn't require any more fiat than the combat system of the same game?

Fate. The social system works on exactly the same mechanical basis as combat, or anything else.

I dont play fate/fudge but is it like how in WoD and the old west end games d6 system everything was just a skill check? do they have some way to tack your health?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Thought 1: “Social Combat” suggests to me that if you lose, you don’t just fail to get your desired outcome, but that the NPC does get theirs.* Which would mean that a PC might, for example, be forcibly persuaded to do something the player doesn’t desire, which is a big no-no for me.

Thought 2: But what if the player agrees to that beforehand, in what is essentially a bid in poker? Or raise, if you can adjust it on the fly. I.e., “I will try to deceive the guard into letting us in, and if I fail I will inadvertently let slip that we are really there to steal the royal seal.”

I could get behind something like that.

*To expand on that, if you fail to kill the dragon, it probably does not leave the game in the same state as if you hadn’t even tried. You’re possibly or probably dead. For “social combat” to be analogous, the loss state has to be worse than the state prior to the combat.

Yeah, I think your thought #2 covers most of it, once you start the "combat" you lay out the expectations. Basically "Okay, guys, we are going to engage in this like a combat, if you win you get X, but if you lose Y happens". This is actually something we fundamentally have in normal combat, it is just something so ubiquitous that we don't state the obvious consequences for failure. "Social Combat" would be different and would need us to state those consequences, because no one is used to it.

 

[Celebrim]

How about a social system that doesn't require any more fiat than the combat system of the same game?

Fate. The social system works on exactly the same mechanical basis as combat, or anything else.

I already mentioned DitV as well where the social system works on almost exactly the same mechanical basis, with the primary exception being that you can bid a physical/combat challenge to trump any social challenge bid. In other words, if negotiations aren't going well, you could always punch them in the face. Which I like because it kind of captures our intuition about the finality of physical versus social.

When you say, "The social system works on exactly the same mechanical basis as combat", how much fiat do you think FATE actually requires?

I've watched FATE played by one of it's creator, and it gives vastly more power to the GM to arbitrate outcomes arbitrarily than is generally expected of D&D. In my opinion, the whole game is Rule Zero with color, and as ran it felt adversarial to me. I have never felt more sorry for Wil Wheaton, whom I'm not generally inclined to empathize with, than watching him struggling to play FATE. And as this thread is somewhat an extension of the prior one, I have to feel that FATE made the whole game about leveraging personal charisma to influence the GM.