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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 6734118" data-attributes="member: 23240">The simplest way of handling social rolls is setting (and negotiating, if necessary) clear stakes before the roll is made. This way, the player buy-in for whatever the result is guaranteed first and then the situation is resolved mechanically. Of course, this means that rolls are only made when each side has something to win."Ok. If you want to make sure that he's honest, you may roll Insight against his Bluff. But if you fail, you're gonna buy his story with no second thoughts. Is that fine?"There are also other ways, but they depend more on system specifics.For example, in Fate Core, if an NPC successfully intimidates a PC, it probably creates an aspect like "shaken" and the NPC gets a free invocation of this aspect. It may then be used to hinder a PC's action, giving +2 to the NPC's roll. The GM may also compel the aspect - offer the player a fate point for following a specific course of action in line with the aspect ("You're deeply shaken by her words. It seems natural that in this state you wouldn't like to face her in combat. I''ll give you a fate point if you just flee."). The player may then accept the compel or pay one of his fate points to refuse it.Of course, the player will run out of fate points sooner or later if they keep refusing. But if they really want their character to conquer fear in the given scene, they are free to do it.In Urban Shadows, the MC never rolls. If an NPC wants to intimidate a PC and has means to do it (is armed, has friends, knows the PC's dangerous secret etc.), they just do. If the player wants their PC to keep their cool instead of being scared, there is a roll for it. Depending on the result, they may succeed (which means not only that they aren't acting scared, but they also avoid the problem the NPC wanted to get them in), they may succeed with a cost (the MC sets the cost and the player either accepts or refuses) or they may fail.The failure gives the MC a lot of freedom in declaring the consequences, as long as they are in line with the fiction. So if the NPC intimidated my character with a gun, I tried to play it cool and failed, my character is probably getting shot. But the MC may as well raise the stakes by revealing that the NPC has also kidnapped my father (as long as it doesn't contradict something that happened earlier in play), or something like that.</blockquote>

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