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

[Incenjucar]

What happens if we flip the script a bit?

I feel character builds should be a fun extra. I don't want my real life character optimization skills to overshadow someone who lacks those advantages.

It's like if I was using my system knowledge as a way to become the most effective in combat.

There are avenues for character builds to compete, but I don't enjoy those skills replacing all other kinds of skills in RPG's.

See, the point I'm getting at is that mechanics expertise - creating an effective character build - isn't any different from skill in character performance. Some folks will be better at it, some folks will be worse at it. Systems should absolutely help those who are worse at it to contribute on par with folks who have a better skill at it. But valuing one of those skill sets to the exclusion of the other is not what I'd want to see in D&D overall.

Saying that build should trump character performance in the social pillar is a little like saying performance should trump build in the combat pillar - that saying "I rip off the goblin's head!" should then mean the goblin's head is ripped off without any additional mechanics. I'd argue that it's good that D&D asks you to do both. Both are part of the fun of the game!

This would turn any game I play into the Incenjucar Show. It's hard enough not dominating every conversation during meetings at work, but as an experienced rapid-fire improv DM with an aggressively bold personality a social game without rolls would just be me struggling to not put on a five hour show for the DM.

Mechanics give shy mummbly folks with stutters who hide their faces in their hoodies a chance to be on equal footing with the chattiest loudest storytellers.

There's room in the world for a player skill-first method but I would never play it unless it was literally a competition. At the table it would be the agony of trying to not be a jerk burying the other players under my personality.

 

[mamba]

Saying that build should trump character performance in the social pillar is a little like saying performance should trump build in the combat pillar - that saying "I rip off the goblin's head!" should then mean the goblin's head is ripped off without any additional mechanics.

it’s pretty much saying the opposite, that neither should depend on how clever the player is, and both should be about the character. I happen to agree with that, it should be about the characters, not the players. If you want it to be about the players, get rid of attributes and skills for it (and mechanics in general)

Get a bigger view of "mechanic," here. A view that includes alignment as a mechanic, that includes how dwarves and elves relate as a mechanic, that includes a paladin's code of conduct as a mechanic, that includes "have advantage for making good trouble" as a mechanic.

none of this is a mechanic, certainly not currently, at best they are things the DM considers when using the actual mechanics

 

[Lanefan]

Not at all.

The points of using dice (or any other randomness) are quite obvious:

1. To create tension; until dice are rolled, players don't know for sure what will actually happen. Note "for sure."
2. To prevent stale gameplay due to overuse of reliable patterns ("Standard Operating Procedures" etc.)
3. To allow for degrees of success, not binary pass/fail (e.g. ratios of success to fails in an SC, PbtA-like success ranges, etc.)
4. Opening design space, e.g. coordination (ally buffs), rerolls (good or bad), Ad/Dis, etc. More stuff to sink your teeth into.

And here I largely agree with you; and will add one more:

5. To give some precision in the moment to the otherwise-general abstraction the rules provide (for things we cannot do ourselves at the table).

There may be more, but these are the obvious ones. If you don't want dice to make roleplaying redundant, my best advice is...don't? Like just don't do that. If someone rolls and fails, turn it into a spur to action, leverage how they roleplayed and why, turn their move against them, etc.

Or, don't; and by that I mean leave the dice in the box.

To put it in a different way: Does success not also invalidate roleplay? They could have just rolled a die and been told they get what they want. But I assume you don't do that; instead, success means they did what they set out to do, which may be a mixed bag of their plan was poor or their word choice was unwise or (etc., etc.) In the worst cases (though I would try to diegetically alert the player about this), we wind up with that delightful Windows error meme, "Task failed successfully."

Well, if what the player is attempting is for some reason doomed from the start, that's a different issue.

And I'm all about degrees of success and failure, even on what might appear to be binary die rolls in non-social parts of the game. It's just that for the social parts, we can roleplay it out; with the variability reflected in the abstracted die roll instead reflected in the variability of how good we happen to be tonight at putting forth our points of view.

I will sometimes use dice to determine an NPC's "first impression" reaction, before a word has been spoken, as that's more in the realm of abstraction; but that first impression can be negated as the conversation develops.

Attack rolls don't invalidate battle strategy, be it clever or foolish. They do reveal whether you achieved everything you set out to do in the way you hoped it would happen, but that's not the same thing, and one missed attack roll does not collapse the whole combat.

Why should a meatier social system, that goes behind "DM says", be any different?

In part because while we have to settle for "I roll to attack" as we're not swinging real swords around in the gaming room, we can avoid ever having to deal with "I roll to persuade" by simply not having those rolls in the game.

And 3e-onward experience tells us pretty clearly that "I roll to persuade" becomes a thing the moment such a roll exists in the rules.

 

[Lanefan]

The middle position is that the roleplay sets up the parameters to of the dice roll: that at can be made at all, its DC, and what the effect will be.

Until you get those inevitable players (and, occasionally, DMs) who - knowing it's going to come down to a roll in the end anyway - do whatever they can to skip the roleplay and jump straight to the roll.

 

[Reynard]

I am suspect of GMs that discount social pillar mechanics because they think they will be able to accurately and fairly adjudicate even the most complex of interactions. It suggests that either the game simply isn't going to include scenarios outside the GM's comfort zone, or it suggests the GM fails to understand their own limitations.

 

[Lanefan]

This would turn any game I play into the Incenjucar Show. It's hard enough not dominating every conversation during meetings at work, but as an experienced rapid-fire improv DM with an aggressively bold personality a social game without rolls would just be me struggling to not put on a five hour show for the DM.

Hell, if you're entertaining enough the Incenjucar Show might be worth coming to watch every week.

Mechanics give shy mummbly folks with stutters who hide their faces in their hoodies a chance to be on equal footing with the chattiest loudest storytellers.

There's room in the world for a player skill-first method but I would never play it unless it was literally a competition. At the table it would be the agony of trying to not be a jerk burying the other players under my personality.

My take there is it's on the other players to proactively and enthusiastically fight for the spotlight and thus avoid being buried.

Far better a table where 5 people are all trying to talk at once than a table where 5 people sit there waiting for someone else to talk.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Until you get those inevitable players (and, occasionally, DMs) who - knowing it's going to come down to a roll in the end anyway - do whatever they can to skip the roleplay and jump straight to the roll.

This really isn't a rule issue, it is people issue. If people don't find in-character RP fun, I am not gonna play with them in the first place.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I am suspect of GMs that discount social pillar mechanics because they think they will be able to accurately and fairly adjudicate even the most complex of interactions. It suggests that either the game simply isn't going to include scenarios outside the GM's comfort zone, or it suggests the GM fails to understand their own limitations.

Eh, I'm not sure that this is particularly valid concern. Even with rules you need to trust the GM judgement on so many things, for example setting the DC for the rolls and what impact the success or failure has.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This would turn any game I play into the Incenjucar Show. It's hard enough not dominating every conversation during meetings at work, but as an experienced rapid-fire improv DM with an aggressively bold personality a social game without rolls would just be me struggling to not put on a five hour show for the DM.

Mechanics give shy mummbly folks with stutters who hide their faces in their hoodies a chance to be on equal footing with the chattiest loudest storytellers.

We're totally agreed on this. But by "mechanics," I don't mean rolling dice and adding modifiers to achieve success. I mean things that will support other players in being better performers of their characters.

There's room in the world for a player skill-first method but I would never play it unless it was literally a competition. At the table it would be the agony of trying to not be a jerk burying the other players under my personality.

I mean, one of the mechanics could be a formalized kind of social initiative, so that everyone gets a turn to talk around the table.

 

[Corinnguard]

I mean, one of the mechanics could be a formalized kind of social initiative, so that everyone gets a turn to talk around the table.

This would make for some scripted role-playing. Social interaction is more freeform than that.