Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7954669" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't see CHA and social mechanics primarily as a way of allowing shy players to play extrovert PCs (though sometimes that might be a happy side-effect).I see it as playing the same role as any other mechanic - a device for working out what happens in the game.When there are two players whose PCs are sitting in a tavern drinking and boasting and arguing about who will win the favour of the lovely Violette, how is this to be resolved? We're not going to actually go to a pub, drink and boast - that would be ending the session and taking up a different social activity. I'm not interested in adjudicating which rival has won over the other. But a contest on Fellowship, factoring in Brawn or Presence as appropriate (is this roll about the drinking, or about the boasting?) is fun, and gives us an outcome that flows from the fiction much as combat mechanics do when they come into play.Is this based on actual play with DitV, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Cortex+ Heroic, Prince Valiant, and similar systems? Or D&amp;D 4e skill challenges? Or even Classic Traveller, which has a reaction roll system for resolving many social interactionsIt's very different from my experience of play in those systems. An action declaration in social interaction resolution involves a player saying what his/her PC is saying - either directly as performance, or via indirect speech. An action declaration in combat resolution generally involves a player saying who the PC is fighting with, and how.These are different things: different framings, different considerations factoring into the resoution, different resulting fictions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7954669, member: 42582"] I don't see CHA and social mechanics primarily as a way of allowing shy players to play extrovert PCs (though sometimes that might be a happy side-effect). I see it as playing the same role as any other mechanic - a device for working out what happens in the game. When there are two players whose PCs are sitting in a tavern drinking and boasting and arguing about who will win the favour of the lovely Violette, how is this to be resolved? We're not going to actually go to a pub, drink and boast - that would be ending the session and taking up a different social activity. I'm not interested in adjudicating which rival has won over the other. But a contest on Fellowship, factoring in Brawn or Presence as appropriate (is this roll about the [I]drinking[/I], or about the [I]boasting[/I]?) is fun, and gives us an outcome that flows from the fiction much as combat mechanics do when they come into play. Is this based on actual play with DitV, Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Cortex+ Heroic, Prince Valiant, and similar systems? Or D&D 4e skill challenges? Or even Classic Traveller, which has a reaction roll system for resolving many social interactions It's very different from my experience of play in those systems. An action declaration in social interaction resolution involves a player saying what his/her PC is saying - either directly as performance, or via indirect speech. An action declaration in combat resolution generally involves a player saying who the PC is fighting with, and how. These are different things: different framings, different considerations factoring into the resoution, different resulting fictions. [/QUOTE]

Verification