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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5605070" data-attributes="member: 54877">This made me think of Burning Wheel. In BW, the safety net is there for social skills! However, the safety net is there the same way that it is for combat. If you are good at tactically manipulating your options in the BW "Duel of Wits", or perhaps good at the poker element of blind scripting of your moves against another person, then you can compensate somewhat for mediocre skills and other resources or relatively poor roleplaying ability. But note that this also means that you can be the smoothest of smooth talkers with your roleplaying AND have the stats to back up this character, but then turn around and get owned--if you lack those tactical skills and go up against another person that has them. It won't happen every time, but it can definitely happen. So maybe the irritation of picking between player social skills and character resources is heavily compounded because in so many system those are the only elements that really matter. Maybe introducing additional ways to manipulate the results would make people more comfortable with the results. Yet, when you do so, you also provide new ways for someone to come up short.  In effect, several people have been indirectly referring to a third point of manipulation since the subject was broached: If your knowledge/attentiveness to the game world is sufficient to allow you to marshall in-game elements in your favor, then those can become the critical factors for winning/losing the social challenge--where player social skill and character mechanical social skill are thresholds where you need whatever minimum is required by system and table habits.</blockquote>

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