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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9630043" data-attributes="member: 75787">Well, like everything it depends on the game you are running. I have been running THE GREAT PENDRAGOIN CAMPAIGN for 2+ years now, and this kind of thing is a major part of the game and has solid backing both mechanically and in the fictional setting.As an example, when you first see Guinevere, each player rolls to see if the knight falls in love with her. Because that is the game we are playing; one where people can fall in love, go mad from longing, give in to temptation or kill people out of a sudden burst of hate. These things happen all the time both in real life and (more importantly) in fiction. To me, it's a more natural way to play than one where nothing ever happens to a character that the player does not explicitly want to happen.However, Pendragon has mechanisms for modifying the chances of this happening. If a player's character is continuously greedy, so their selfish trait goes up, that makes it significantly more likely that they will be required by dice rolls to be greedy again. If you haven't developed a love for anyone else, it makes it more likely that you'll fall in love with random fey woman who turns up in your bed one night.As an example, a player in my game has a knight, Hwyel, who started behaving callously to others, and their cruel trait increased to 15. This means that if they test cruel against its opposite, they are 75% likely to succeed on cruel, and only 25% likely to succeed on being kind -- if they succeed on one and fail on the other, then they really should react in the indicated way. However, if your trait is <16, the GM cannot force you to roll except for unusual circumstances (like the almost supernatural beauty of Guinevere). So it's only when Hywel hit 16 that he became known as "Hywel the Cruel" and and as a famously cruel knight, it is now very hard for him not to be cruel. But it took about 6 months of play to get to that state.This is a long-winded way of saying that I don't think social systems can be bolted onto a game which is otherwise mostly about combat and skills. In D&D, for example, there is essentially no way to portray a character becoming more cruel (The closest might be an old-school type alignment chart, but I've ever actually seen anyone do that), so if a roll result causes the GM to say "and so you beat the merchant to death" it feels very wrong, very arbitrary. Doe we need social X systems in a game? Not if you don't want to play that style of game. But more importantly, if you DO want to play that style of game, pick a system that deeply supports it, as otherwise it just won't sit well with many people.</blockquote>

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