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

[GrimCo]

Yea, i played with decent amount of LARPers, both classic foam dildo weapons kind and Mind's Eye Theatre (VtM larp) and i played decent amount of both. So, for me, and people i know, social pillar and free forming it or going very rules light is the preferred way and solid gameification of that pillar with robust rules is killing the vibe. But, i'm always in camp - more options is better. Totally cool for game to have both solid and loose social skill system. Sliding scale one would be perfect, but those 2 are enough.

I played with group that handles social interactions like this. " I use my diplomacy to sway the Duke" - rolls, depending on the success or failiure, DM describes the outcome. That's it. They just say what skill they use to resolve social issue and roll away. Zero attempts to do even smidgen of in character talking. But those guys are primarily wargamers (40k), so their approach to TTRPG is more boardgame like. I wasn't really enjoying it and i left the game. They play how they like to play and good for them.

 

[mamba]

The structure remains symmetrical: IRL fights are absolutely incredibly spontaneous, constantly-evolving things, where you absolutely do NOT have this artificial structure of "initiative" to put actions in a sequence, nor any limit other than the time it takes to do something on what actions you can perform moment to moment. Real brawls are messy and unstructured, with no rhyme or reason, every man for himself kind of thing.

We accept the heavy and harsh abstractions placed on combat because we're used to those abstractions. Doing that to social stuff feels weird only because it's new, with much less testing and different sets and kinds of variables.

I’d say we have it for combat because we do not really want to fight actual monsters at our table, and it is also impossible to actually do.

Talking to each other on the other hand is something we can definitely do.

We have an abstract, rules based combat because we do not have a better option. We do not have the same for negotiations because we do have better and more natural options

 

[Voadam]

But that is just an extension of the 5e System. Instead of one skill check you make several.

Yes and no, it is very much an extension of the base skill system from 3e/4e/5e. But it adds on things explicitly beyond those base systems. One of the things I like about using a 4e skill challenge like structure is explicitly turning to each player and saying what do you do to get them actively involved instead of just focusing on the one player stating an action. I find this makes a big difference in at the table game play experience in my games.

That is still RAW

There is nothing in 5e RAW directing a DM to handle non combat challenges as individual turns like character order in a round of combat. The closest thing is the group checks mechanic which is for everybody doing the same thing and the whole group succeeding if half succeed on the check.

Another part of 4e skill challenges that I do not use is the x successes before y failures format to give a specified success condition beforehand for the overall challenge which adds a known stakes gamification element to the process.

and I would think most experienced DM would not reduce such important discussions to on skill check.

That is going to depend on specific circumstances and preference.

I can completely see reducing it to a single skill check quick resolution if the party splits up for downtime activity then gets together for main action again. Players A&B tag team work the Landsraad to get sanctions on House Harkonnen, Player C the Mentat comes up with a battle plan for a specific counterstrike, Players D&E negotiate with the Spacer Guild to get transport for the counterstrike. One skill roll for each objective, some with advantage for tag team operations, quick and done and then the party gets together for the counterstrike operation.

 

[Reynard]

with pure real time character inhabitation and expression.

These things are just not desirable to me.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

These things are just not desirable to me.

This is basically incomprehensible to me. To me that is literally the main point of RPGs. I don't think we will ever agree on this, as we ultimately play these games for completely different reasons.

 

[Reynard]

I’d say we have it for combat because we do not really want to fight actual monsters at our table, and it is also impossible to actually do.

Talking to each other on the other hand is something we can definitely do.

We have an abstract, rules based combat because we do not have a better option. We do not have the same for negotiations because we do have better and more natural options

I don't think we are any more well prepared to get inside the head of an alien creature in an alien time on an alien world than we are to have it out with boffer weapons. Mechanics in the social pillar allow us to define terms and goals and approaches in a way that makes the stakes clear. This is the game part of the RPG. I appreciate that folks often like talking in funny voices, but it isn't inherently better or more natural than using a system.

 

[Reynard]

This is basically incomprehensible to me. To me that is literally the main point of RPGs. I don't think we will ever agree on this, as we ultimately play these games for completely different reasons.

The "main point" of RPGs to me is the agency they provide that other games don't and can't.

 

[el-remmen]

At my table players rarely say "I roll an X check." Instead, they describe what they want to do and the DM tells if they need to roll and based on what skill (though the player may then suggest that another skill may also work).

So no one says "I roll stealth," they say, "I ty to sneak up to the gate without the guards seeing me."
Similarly, they don't say "I roll to persuade the guard to let us through" or even "Can I roll persuasion to get the guard to let us through?

Instead, they might say something like "I walk up nonchalantly like I am supposed to be here since I am dressed like one of the court entertainers." And then I might say, "Okay, roll a deception check." If they succeed at the DC I set then they go through (though if they encounter others they may need to roll again). Or if they fail (by less than 5 or whatever I set as the threshold), I would have the guard stop and question them. As a result of this conversation, I might call for a Persuasion check (with a higher DC b/c of the botched deception) or another deception depending on what the player has their character say and their goal. If they fail spectacularly, then the guard's demeanor might be more aggressive and suspicious in blocking the character's entry.

It is also totally possible that depending on the circumstances I might call for no roll at all. For example, the baron has given an order than everyone who tries to enter the castle must be questioned due to earlier events so it doesn't matter how deceptive you are OR the PC has already been going in an out as one of the entertainers all day and so their entering now (despite being a little late or whatever) goes unnoted.

What I like about (a little) die rolling is how it supplements improvised and freeform roleplay by providing a structure to work off of that I find easier to work with than just making up what the reactions might be whole cloth since realistically, while I am pretty good at creating a personality for "random guard" on the fly, there is a limit to my abilities to do that with enough diversity and unexpected outcomes without leaning on my own patterns too often.

So for example, I have a tendency to make all town guards into suspicious bullies (probably b/c of my own experience of police in real life) but while I can lean on that characterization when I need it, if I have every guard in every town act that way, play not only becomes repetitive, it will drive player action to always react to guards in a particular way, which is limiting to outcomes. The die rolls help me to add nuance and range to that general characterization without me having to come up with social tags or personality traits for every random NPC that the PCs might need to have a social encounter with.

So a successful die roll can help me improvise the interaction as can a failure - serving as the foundation of a longer social scene (or series of scenes) to have fun playing out - esp. if you delay the consequences a little bit.

Maybe that guards knows you're lying, but lets you in where more guards can surround you - but that might also give the PC a chance to hide or slip away or to convince another more gullible person, and so on.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But how do they look like? So far the 2e Pathfinder rules posted here I find quite overwhelming.
But I would love to see mechanics that improve the social pillar.

Well, I said it above: Skill challenges, when done correctly. That is, DO NOT do the thing several printed adventures did, where there's a fixed list of valid rolls and everything else is obstructionistically blocked, and you just force players to keep rolling until they've either failed three times or passed whatever threshold you set.

Instead, treat them...well, kind of like how one treats combat! That is, each time a player rolls, they're DOING something, acting or reacting, changing the state of play. If someone has just rolled, for good or for ill, they've changed the results. Further, the Skill Challenge format is ideal for representing degrees of success because it is no longer shackled to individual rolls, but rather to group effect. So, maybe the characters do hit three fails (and thus fail the challenge)...but they were one success away from victory, a nail-biter and no mistake. That's a great time to pull out soft failure--a bad thing still happens, but it has a silver lining, or opens a new avenue of approach/attack. Likewise, if that last roll had gone the other way, that's success by the skin of their teeth--which should have some negative consequences, even if the bulk of what happened was a good and real success.

The effort the DM puts into a skill challenge really should be commensurate with the effort they put into designing a combat--it's just that that effort takes a very different form. Instead of being about clever creature design and terrain, it's about goals and incentives, environmental considerations, plausible paths, and intentionally preparing to be surprised by what the party ends up doing, not getting overly precious about any specific result. That's how you can get AWESOME dynamic Skill Challenges, like this one from the science-fantasy 4e game I played, where we were persuading a big business magnate to come with us (to act as...sort of avatar/host for a powerful being, which would coincidentally give him a massively extended lifespan, something he's pretty on board for).

We were able to get him to agree with us very easily and quickly, in part because I got a success without rolling by my Paladin doing what he does best, speaking the truth without artifice. But it turned out he wasn't the only hurdle--his bodyguards had been paid off (or replaced) by the enemy, so now we had a firefight where the obstacle wasn't our survival (we'd wipe the floor with them if it was just us)...it was HIS survival. We had to get him out of there unscathed. When our cyber-augmented squad leader (mechanically, a Bard) vaulted across a gap to hold our position while jumping through enemy fire, it was genuinely tense, and her success was awesome as she brought down the casino awning on top of our foes.

That sort of thing, a structure that gives enough mechanics to hook into and wrestle with, but enough abstraction and flexibility to tackle nearly any situation where it makes sense that a sequence of successes need to occur before too many setbacks, is just...really really helpful for making it feel like an actual game, without sacrificing any of the actual roleplaying.

You're still naturally responding to your environment. It's just....cinematic, I guess is how I'd phrase it. When Team Avatar has to work together to put out that fire in the episode "Sokka's Master," that's absolutely the three benders doing a skill challenge. We get to see a sequence of actions from each of them that stops the fire. Of course, since that scene is prewritten and meant to only be an inciting incident, it's not a very big or profound skill challenge and nobody fails any of their rolls. But it represents the kind of thing that a good skill challenge should be: a real, tense, dynamic event that can't be solved by a single roll and doesn't really fit with a slow-walked, casual kind of situation.

You SHOULD NOT use Skill Challenges all the time. That would be very bad! But having them crop up now and then--maybe about, I dunno, a quarter of all the encounters you face per level? That makes a huge difference to me for making skills feel like actual gameplay elements, rather than a pretty perfunctory coda to "learn how to play your DM so you get what you want (if the dice let you)." Many situations should still just be resolved as individual skill checks, or as group checks for singular tasks (like the group trying to sneak past a sleeping giant, or whatever.)

 

[CreamCloud0]

I dislike being able to purely RP your way through social situations because it allows you to bypass needing any mechanical investment in that area of the game through a player’s out-of-game skill, it’s unfair to the player sitting next to you who is confined by the rules because they weren’t in the amateur dramatics club.

Social mechanics don’t prevent you from expressing your character any more than RP, what they prevent is exactly everything going your way without opposition or by ignoring your CHA stat.