Voadam
Legend
Yes.
Not all editions even have mechanical investments that can be obsoleted by RP.
The ones that do vary in the range and impact of that investment.
D&D General Social Pillar Mechanics: Where do you stand?
Not all editions even have mechanical investments that can be obsoleted by RP.
The ones that do vary in the range and impact of that investment.
CreamCloud0
One day, I hope to actually play DnD.
I admit im not educated on the rules of other editions and systems but how does a games rules ever prevent a GM from saying ‘yeah ok i think you said all the right things there I’m just going to waive making the roll/check/using whatever mechanic is meant to be used and auto succeed that one’?Yes.
Not all editions even have mechanical investments that can be obsoleted by RP.
The ones that do vary in the range and impact of that investment.
CreamCloud0
One day, I hope to actually play DnD.
Disagree
Do note that they never said charm was social mechanic rules or even that it’s what we would want from them, it’s merely just that they are one of the few examples of solidly codified mechanical rules that happen to be likely used in a social situation, IIRC the target has advantage on the save if you have taken any hostile action to the creature beforehand and immediately ends if you do after using it which makes it difficult to effectively use in any situation other than social encounters
MuhVerisimilitude
Adventurer
Of course spells are the only viable example, since there are no rules and WOTC does not believe in providing mechanics for anything that isn't magical (slight exaggeration, but only slight).
Explain to me, what does intimidate do? What happens when I intimidate someone, mechanically? What happens when I succeed? When I fail? Can I intimidate in combat? How long does a character stay intimidated? Can I attempt to intimidate multiple people?
Intimidate is actually a great example, since the most reliable intimidation technique is using the fear spell.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
No rules can do that. Period. The map is not the territory. Rules are, always, 100% of the time, going to fail to reflect the physics of the setting. Because they aren't physics. They're inherently and necessarily abstractions. Of course, just as a bad map is one that simply fails to correspond to the territory at all, a bad abstraction is one that does not bear any connection at all to the thing being abstracted. But it is genuinely 100% impossible to have the rules reflect the physics of the setting. By having game rules, you are necessarily cutting corners. (Much as, for example, how Newtonian mechanics are actually wrong and do not describe reality, but they're a very useful error most of the time.)
You literally called it "ideally." Anything that depends on ideal conditions is not practical.
Oh, that boogeyman folks love to bring up that is pretty much a total nothingburger? Yeah, okay. I've never, not once, ever seen someone make an even remotely cogent argument regarding "player entitlement."
You're just not used to having players who actually have a voice and expect to be part of the conversation.
So, you realize there is no such thing as objective, complete "better" in this context right?
It works better at what you want it to do? Fair enough. But, "It works better for me," isn't a powerful position.
The closest thing in D&D to social encounter rules is that. Not the closest thing in all of creation.
In the games that have reasonable social conflict resolution, they don't look like mind control.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
That would be a soft failure. (With the skill challenge setup, I would say that that is a plausible result from the players getting down to the wire--e.g. two failed rolls, but they only need one more success...and then they fail the last check.) The door is still open, but they failed to get what they wanted. That's a perfectly cromulent soft failure, and indeed is a great way to leverage the fact that SCs really enable this sort of stuff in a way that ordinary skill rolls are at best very poor at doing. The best you get is a vague "well...you didn't win, but you didn't lose, so..." And it's precisely that vague "guess it's left completely up to DM caprice" type stuff that this is great for addressing.
If this is what you intend to do, then it simply isn't appropriate for a skill challenge in the first place--the Duke isn't participating in earnest, so victory was never actually a possibility.
I don't think your example is anywhere near as useful as you think it is. There is an obvious win condition: the Duke agrees. There is an obvious loss condition: the Duke does not agree. Just as with the trial example, one or the other of those two states must eventually occur. In case a, the Duke fell on the "did not agree"--but non-agreement is not the same as refusal with prejudice, and thus we now have a new adventure direction, either to find a replacement for the Duke's aid, or find a more concrete way to earn or elicit his help. (E.g., perhaps if we scratch his back, he'll scratch ours.) In case b, failure is already assured--the Duke isn't negotiating in good faith to begin with--and thus there is no need to bring in skill challenge rules, for exactly the same reason that you wouldn't bring out the combat rules for dealing with "rocks fall, everyone dies." Alternatively, if success really was possible, that sort of thing would only happen in response to a very rapid failure on the players' part, because that's really obviously a failure, and not merely a soft one--the Duke is actively, but covertly, trying to break off negotiations, not just conclude them without giving the answer the PCs hoped for.
Can you think of any other situations you would say have sufficient ambiguity? I'm trying, and frankly I'm coming up pretty much empty. Everything I can think of, the "ambiguity" really just resolves as:
- Victory(/defeat) was never possible in the first place, so making a set piece of it is pointless and wasteful
- Actually a failure, but a very quick failure, such that things barely get started before they end
- Actually a failure, but a soft failure, inviting the action to flow in new directions
- Actually a success, but a weak/flawed success, inviting danger or problems that need solving
- Actually a success, but a very slow/time-consuming success, e.g. something that takes days to resolve (which is fine; just 'cause initiative might be involved does not mean 6-second rounds are!)
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Of course one should not use "just more rules." The rules should be well-crafted. Why presume that the rules would simply be a crappy assemblage thrown at the problem with no effort or thought?
We're never going to have a world where every DM is nearly perfect--we're not even going to have a world where every DM is merely "very good" in all ways. That's just not a thing that's going to happen. And, as long as the hobby is growing, there will be a never-ending stream of new DMs needing help and guidance and support, and that's exactly what good, circumspect, effective rule design does. That's one of the myriad ways that testing is so terribly important; it helps to winnow out the rules that don't contribute to an effective experience.
Like laws, rules are inherently teleological: they exist to serve a purpose. Like laws, rules can vary in how effectively they achieve the purpose for which they were designed, and the purposes for which they are designed can vary in whether, and how much, they are worthy of pursuit. Good rules effectively achieve worthy purposes. Bad rules may be ineffective at pursuing worthy purposes, or quite effective at pursuing unworthy ones. (I guess we could say most grapple rules are ineffective at pursuing unworthy purposes, but such things are generally so obviously bad they don't even happen in the first place.)
It is much more productive to ask whether rules can help, and if so, in what way, and given a particular tack, how one might go about achieveing that, than it is to simply blanket declare: "Every rule is bad. Eliminate them always. Just make a person make a decision." Human decision-making itself is made better, not worse, when we allow for some rules. (After all, is that not what we developed statistics for?)
Impatience is not a very kind way of putting it, but I think I see where you're coming from. I would call that a desire for efficiency. TTRPGs are a long, long, slow burn. Slow burn stuff can be great (I'm an FFXIV player, I'm contractually obligated to say this), but TTRPGs are an even longer, even slower burn with far less tangible proverbial "return on investment," as it were. As someone who has been rather frustrated by the realization that while no gaming is better than bad gaming, no gaming still sucks, yeah, I really would have appreciated rules and structures in place that would have forestalled or addressed a lot of the actually bad gaming I've had with 5e.
Also: Why do you structure it as the rules "covering" for them? You are importing this implication that you've already proven that it always should be the DM's responsibility for absolutely everything. I don't buy that. I think the DM is one part of the equation. A big part, to be sure! An essential part! But the rules are also part. Good rules, well-made, with focus, rules that aren't profligate nor wasteful nor unproductive, are incredibly useful. Rules are tools. We don't make better carpentry by telling carpenters to throw away every tool that isn't a basic whittling knife or bow saw. Carpentry today is better, more adroit, more productive because we have access to all sorts of new tools that didn't exist even a hundred years ago. Good rules can do exactly the same thing.
As someone who did an awful lot of effort to try to find such a thing: It's not nearly as probable as you think.
Did I say this was so? I don't recall doing so. I am instead advocating a position that rejects the extreme overreliance on DM-skill-and-absolutely-nothing-else; the extreme hostility to rules, treating them not as tools but as icky stains on the glorious purity of DM Vision; the estreme demands of near-perfection from DMs who use a system, leaving the vast majority high and dry and having to come up with answers on their own (and, as the 5e community has amply demonstrated, even an antipathy for the very idea of providing another DM useful advice).
Yes. I'm aware. I think this policy has been taken to a ridiculous extreme, due to a vocal minority loudly shouting down (often with pithy but empty arguments like "white room"s and "if you don't trust your DM, don't play with them") any and all discussion of how rules are, y'know, useful tools.
3e was a game that genuinely tried to have a rule for everything, and everything in its rule. That is, and always was, a mistake. That doesn't mean that we should thus conclude, "Don't bother having rules for anything. Just have the DM make something up." There is an extremely productive middle ground here; there are ways we can find to have our cake and eat it too, like extensible frameworks, which do not cover every situation with laser precision, but instead usefully abstract over many different situations. (After all...is that not what both HP and AC do, something literally every edition of D&D uses? If you know a target has 14 AC, you have no idea what caused it--chitinous hide, amazing dexterity, chainmail, who knows?)
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
I don't see Charm, Dominate, the various hypnotic spells, and other mind-control effects as being part of the social-mechanics sphere.
Social mechanics are things that try to influence the mind and-or actions of those who can freely think for themselves, which people under mind-control effects (to whatever extent) cannot.
Now if your intent is that these social mechanics, when successfully used, take away the target's ability to think freely as if by magic except without using magic, that then becomes mind control.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
No idea. And, as I don't have intimidate as a mechanic in my game, these are all questions I don't have to worry about.
What happens when someone tries to intimidate your PC?
I have it that Fear, Spook, and similar spells cause the target to drop everything and mindlessly flee in panic for a short-ish time; which is a big step up from just being intimidated.
It makes those spells worth using, otherwise they'd never see the light of day.Similar Threads
