D&D General Social Pillar Mechanics: Where do you stand?

[MGibster]

Also, ancient DM secret: steal from other media. The group needs to do a fancy thing? The face dolls everyone else and gives them a crash etiquette lesson while the DM quietly reduces the DCs and comes up for reasons why all the noble ladies might find it charming when the barbarian drinks wine straight from the carafe and the local ruler is actually tired of courtly manners and finds the awkward nerdy wizard intriguing.

There was an epsiode of the A-Team where Murdoch was the face of the group because their mark would have spotted Face a mile away. I'm not giving up on my A-Team streak here.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'll just throw this out here.

For some people, social pillar is one where they actually role play as it leaves most room to free form. Robust mechanics for social interactions is viewed as gamefication. Combat itself is already gamefied pillar. It's pretty much all mechanics dependant with little room for free forming. Turning social pillar into social combat with robust mechanical sub system where you can settle everything via dice or character abilities, just makes it more like co operative board game. And to be honest, some old adventures are pretty much boardgames (looking at you Tomb of Horrors).

Absolutely. In-character freeform roleplay is my favourite thing about RPGs so mechanics that get on the way of that too much are really a deal breaker to me.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And what about the people for whom it isn't their favorite thing, or newbies that are self conscious or embarrassed to playact?

Why go out of the way to exclude them when you can have both mechanics and freefrom?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And what about the people for whom it isn't their favorite thing, or newbies that are self conscious or embarrassed to playact?

Being embarrasses or self conscious certainly is something one could and probably should endeavour to overcome, and make believe with one's friends is pretty safe space to do that. Now If one just doesn't like it, then that is another matter, but ultimately what people do at their own tables really isn't my problem.

Why go out of the way to exclude them when you can have both mechanics and freefrom?

We have that. We have mechanics and I already told earlier how I interlace them with the roleplay. I'm sure one could use mechanics solely, but I would never do that, as to me that would be omitting one of the most important things about RPGs to me.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Being embarrasses or self conscious certainly is something one could and probably should endeavour to overcome, and make believe with one's friends is pretty safe space to do that.

With D&D fans around you? Dear lord, no.

We have that. We have mechanics

It'd be nice to have better ones. Like intelligibly written, designed to be consistent from table to table...

 

[Lanefan]

Way late to the party on this one, but:

Where do I stand on social pillar mechanics?

On their grave, I hope, casting Death Prayer such that they'll remain good and dead.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

They are necessary.

Otherwise you have a class that it "designed" to be good at social stuff... But they don't actually HAVE any social stuff to be good at.

Now the important thing is that they don't actually dominate the gameplay, but they should be there, and you should be able to know what they actually do. (unlike in 5e)

 

[MichaelSomething]

If people have trouble running social interaction, they can take acting and improv classes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Literally nothing. That's my point.

......then why do we call it "spotlight balance"?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

With D&D fans around you? Dear lord, no.

Yeah...

D&D still has a lot of crappy things in it yet to be discharged. There is a reason it was long a dudes-only thing: women weren't welcome. I still vividly remember the misogynistic sludge spewed about how dragonborn shouldn't have breasts. Despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, that was essentially always coming from men...and the women I know who play D&D wouldn't let you take away their dragonborn massive tracts of land except over their cold, dead bodies.

It'd be nice to have better ones. Like intelligibly written, designed to be consistent from table to table...

It really would, yes. Rules so you have gameplay deeper than "DM says." Because that's the depth of gameplay we have right now. "DM says," then you roll.