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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7635635" data-attributes="member: 4937">In my experience, attempting to prop up the social interaction pillar with robust mechanical support counter-intuitively tends to decrease social interaction rather than increase it.The most functional mechanical system for adjudicating RP is simply IMO some sort of fortune test, preferably one that generates a small degree of success but a simple pass/fail will do fine if you have some means of robustly adjudicating difficulty.&nbsp;&nbsp; Beyond that, no part of the game works better with the GM just working off rulings and gut feel for the situation than social challenges, because any system that realistically models the dynamics of interaction between people will be vastly more complex than a system that realistically models combat, and the simple mechanical churn will detract from RP.Ironically, the worst thing you can do to encourage good social interaction is provide a system of &quot;moves&quot; and mimic combat mechanics exactly, and yet in my experience that is exactly what games that are attempting to support a social pillar attempt to do.&nbsp;&nbsp; I call this the &quot;banging it with a hammer&quot; approach, in that well you only have one tool in your toolbox and so you assume that it applies equally well to solving all problems.&nbsp;&nbsp; One of the few systems I've seen that looks like it has mechanical support for social combat that might work is 'Dogs in the Vineyard' and that in part because it assumes a hierarchy of conflicts were escalating stakes to a more definitive conflict trumps lower conflicts - thus breaking the symmetry that more niave designers seem to design into the system.In short, while I agree with the OP that this post shows just how bad the idea is, I'm not convinced that his minimalist approach isn't actually better than a more robust system.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7635635, member: 4937"] In my experience, attempting to prop up the social interaction pillar with robust mechanical support counter-intuitively tends to decrease social interaction rather than increase it. The most functional mechanical system for adjudicating RP is simply IMO some sort of fortune test, preferably one that generates a small degree of success but a simple pass/fail will do fine if you have some means of robustly adjudicating difficulty. Beyond that, no part of the game works better with the GM just working off rulings and gut feel for the situation than social challenges, because any system that realistically models the dynamics of interaction between people will be vastly more complex than a system that realistically models combat, and the simple mechanical churn will detract from RP. Ironically, the worst thing you can do to encourage good social interaction is provide a system of "moves" and mimic combat mechanics exactly, and yet in my experience that is exactly what games that are attempting to support a social pillar attempt to do. I call this the "banging it with a hammer" approach, in that well you only have one tool in your toolbox and so you assume that it applies equally well to solving all problems. One of the few systems I've seen that looks like it has mechanical support for social combat that might work is 'Dogs in the Vineyard' and that in part because it assumes a hierarchy of conflicts were escalating stakes to a more definitive conflict trumps lower conflicts - thus breaking the symmetry that more niave designers seem to design into the system. In short, while I agree with the OP that this post shows just how bad the idea is, I'm not convinced that his minimalist approach isn't actually better than a more robust system. [/QUOTE]

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