D&D General Social Pillar Mechanics: Where do you stand?

[EzekielRaiden]

I’d say we have it for combat because we do not really want to fight actual monsters at our table, and it is also impossible to actually do.

Talking to each other on the other hand is something we can definitely do.

We have an abstract, rules based combat because we do not have a better option. We do not have the same for negotiations because we do have better and more natural options

Do you persuade duchesses to lend you their military aid while their scheming or ignorant advisors resist? Arguments in royal court are dramatically different from casual conversations at a table.

Do you have to wend your way through the byzantine regulations of a nation's trial court to defend your buddy, who stands accused of a murder you know she didn't commit? There's a very good reason people say things like "the man who represents himself has a fool for a client." Legal proceedings are difficult, complex, challenging tasks that emphatically do not allow the natural, free conversation you and I could engage in.

Do you have to wrangle a gaggle of dispossessed children, suffering from fear and sleep deprivation and hunger, in order to keep them stable and together enough to get them out of a warzone?

Etc., etc., etc.

Real people get into low-stakes, basic, minimal fisticuffs far more often than you might think. It is, in fact, quite natural for humans to put effort into defending themselves when attacked, and to try to retaliate. But you know not to confuse that basic, pretty trivial "combat" with the actual rigors of a real battlefield, where trained warriors are fighting with intent to kill.

This same logic applies here. Ordinary, casual, everyday conversation is simply not the same kind of thing as the above serious, complex, difficult, time-sensitive social interaction.

I am not--emphatically, absolutely not--saying that ABSOLUTELY EVERY social interaction should suddenly become a drawn-out, complex affair. Instead, consider how you might have a Paladin roll an attack roll to see if he can throw his shield accurately at a distant target. That isn't what attack rolls are really "for," but it's a clear and obvious use of that rule, despite not invoking the whole massive complex affair that a combat would be. Likewise, you can and should still have characters roll skills for basic one-off stuff and relatively casual or basic conversations where there's not that much in the way of stakes nor interesting ways that the situation can dynamically change as players take actions. Instead, when it is appropriate, giving real mechanics with actual weight can be a huge breath of fresh air. It makes the Big Time Serious Stuff actually feel like it matters, like you can't just BS your way out of anything that happens, because order matters, and each success or failure matters, and the overall result matters, as opposed to just...completely winging it from one skill roll to the next until the DM finally decides that enough hurdles have been jumped over (or crashed through).

Perhaps one final analogy may help, here. Ordinary people challenge one another to "races" of various kinds all the time, with minimal rules and loosey-goosey structure. But I want you to imagine a world where EVERY official race--I mean genuinely absolutely all of them--was not decided by the obvious thing we do IRL (where we have professional, third-party people there to monitor the race for cheating and to observe who crossed the line first). Instead, every official race is purely decided by a given "Distance Monitor" who observes and records contestant performance...and this Distance Monitor is not required to even pick how long the race needs to be until the moment she announces the winner!

Do you think people would still find professional races interesting, if all of them (NASCAR, Tour de France, Olympic track and field, everything) were decided by professional Distance Monitors who independently, and sometimes arbitrarily, decide how long the race should be while it is being run? Because I don't. And the reason it wouldn't be interesting is that we wouldn't have any sense for what qualifies as victory or defeat. We wouldn't have any ability to see, or feel, how successful any given participant was. We wouldn't know just how CLOSE American Pharaoh was to beating Secretariat--beaten by a nose!

That sort of thing is only possible when you start adding in some degree of mechanics. That doesn't mean we should flip things to the reverse state, where absolutely every race under the sun has to have a full observer team and official timekeepers and (etc.), but rather that we should try to find ways to make use of both techniques in the places they're most useful.

 

[el-remmen]

I have a player who prefaces nearly every one of her social encounters with "This is the part of the game I am not good at." I think she just has trouble coming up with the right thing to say on the fly and probably feels a little self-conscious despite playing with a table of friends who include her husband (I sometimes wonder if playing with total strangers might ironically make it easier for her). As such, while I appreciate her few attempts at first-person role play and try to get out of the way when she unconsciously slips into that mode of play, I totally accept that the vast of majority of the time she will more likely say something like, "I try to convince the merchant to give me the information by explaining that if we succeed at defeating the bandits, he will have an easier time importing goods to sell."

During our last session that involved a very long combat that also involved attempts at negotiations to cease hostilities or at least figure out what the enemies were even doing there, she struggled knowing how to best phrase her character (a druid) calling out to the enemy druid in Druidic Cant in attempts to learn something about what was going on. Part of the issue was figuring out how to ask something without revealing too much about her own group and their goals. . . I suggested she poll the group out of character for what to say and how to word it.

Would I like for her to do more 1st person RP and be quicker on her feet with it? Sure.
Is it fair of me to expect it from her? No, I don't think it is.
Is it okay for me to encourage it and give positive reinforcement when she does? I think so.
But would it be fair of me to penalize her for her "3rd person" stance when she doesn't? Absolutely not.

Then again, this feeling is influenced by a memory of my being a jerky DM to a new (to us) player who joined our group like 25 years ago who was not into doing first person RP and ended up ghosting the game and that I regret to this day and am mortified whenever I recall it (and wish I still had that person's contact info, so I could apologize).

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

I dislike being able to purely RP your way through social situations because it allows you to bypass needing any mechanical investment in that area of the game through a player’s out-of-game skill, it’s unfair to the player sitting next to you who is confined by the rules because they weren’t in the amateur dramatics club.

Social mechanics don’t prevent you from expressing your character any more than RP, what they prevent is exactly everything going your way without opposition or by ignoring your CHA stat.

Yes, agreed. I think the missing part for me is that for Combat you have some strategic player actions that matters (part of the game of many rpgs) and some character skill that matters, with the character skill being more heavily weighted to reflect that we are playing a fictional character that has abilities we do not need to have in real life. Not many social resolution systems have as good a balance however.

Combat:
Player skill -- where to move, which ability to use and when
Character skill -- what the abilities and capability are, resolution of everything picked out by player based on character skill (+ luck)

Social resolution often lacks the equivalent player "game"/choices like positioning and picking between options.

I would like some player tactical choices but want the capabilities themselves and the resolution to be on the character like combat.

Fate Diaspora had a pretty cool example of creating abstract social encounter maps where you could for instance try to influence factions toward certain positions, depicted by forced movement on the map after relevant checks, or you could set up obstacles to prevent others from moving those factions, or you could try to take out the factions entirely (discredit them or what not). Also after X rounds, there was a default condition so time pressure.

So, it was an extended skill check situation like skill challenges but you had multiple options for the player strategy/skill portion:
1) "move" closer to a faction (had to have some relationship with them to influence)
2) influence a faction toward a position
3) set up blocks to make it harder for the opposition to move factions
4) try to take out factions

And multiple end states --- maybe you get what you want but maybe neither party does

IMO, it's fair game to test some "strategy game skill of the player" in a meaningful social encounter if that is already being demanded in other parts of the game (usually combat)

Edit: this in no way prevents describing what you are doing vs just rolling dice, being invested in scenes, talking voices if you want, etc.

 

[Corinnguard]

I saw a lot of dudes screeching about how utterly stupid it is for dragonborn to have mammary glands due to laying eggs

This is a minor gripe for me, but what bothered me about the Dragonborn at first was their lack of a tail. Not the fact that for a time the female dragonborn had breasts. Then I learned that their lack of tail had to do something with distinguishing them from Half-Dragons.

 

[el-remmen]

I know this is a tangent, but. . .

My homebrew setting does not have dragonborn, but we do have lizardfolk as a potential PC choice, and the fact that as lizards they don't have secondary sexual characteristics that are obvious to non-lizardfolk (not being able to detect their pheromones and usually not being intimate enough to carefully examine the pores that secrete those pheromones on the bottom side of their legs) makes that part of their social interactions with those non-lizardfolk - who tend to care more about gender outside of sexual relationships than lizardfolk do.

In that same setting, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears are all different gender expressions of a species with a high degree of sexual dimorphism.

I know many people don't care about that kind of stuff in their D&D games - but I like playing with expectations in worldbuilding and in how the characters play at the world.

 

[Reynard]

I know this is a tangent, but. . .

My homebrew setting does not have dragonborn, but we do have lizardfolk as a potential PC choice, and the fact that as lizards they don't have secondary sexual characteristics that are obvious to non-lizardfolk (not being able to detect their pheromones and usually not being intimate enough to carefully examine the pores that secrete those pheromones on the bottom side of their legs) makes that part of their social interactions with those non-lizardfolk - who tend to care more about gender outside of sexual relationships than lizardfolk do.

In that same setting, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears are all different gender expressions of a species with a high degree of sexual dimorphism.

I know many people don't care about that kind of stuff in their D&D games - but I like playing with expectations in worldbuilding and in how the characters play at the world.

I think it is relevant at least from the perspective of talking about who mechanics can help bridge that alien interaction. Players don't have to figure out what "sexy talk" for lizardfolk would be when their elf tries to seduce the frilled guard, or whatever. We have skills and modifiers for that stuff.

 

[el-remmen]

Now I want to start an actual play stream called "Lizardfolk Sexy Talk"

 

[Crimson Longinus]

As such, while I appreciate her few attempts at first-person role play and try to get out of the way when she unconsciously slips into that mode of play, I totally accept that the vast of majority of the time she will more likely say something like, "I try to convince the merchant to give me the information by explaining that if we succeed at defeating the bandits, he will have an easier time importing goods to sell."

Whilst I certainly prefer in-character speech, it is fine at least sometimes summarise things in this way for simple expediency. If the scene isn't particularly dramatic to begin with then it might not be a huge loss. I also like this example, as it actually provides the important elements for adjudicating the DC: what the PC wants and the reason why the NPC should do it.

I also get that this might just be more comfortable to the player. I realised that in my game the party rogue seducing random women often gets abstracted this way. It might feel embarrassing to roleplay this extensively in front of others (though that has been done too) besides, given the frequency she does it, it might just get repetitive.

That being said, when there are several players at the same scene, I think they should endeavour to do it in the same way. It is weird if some speak in-character whilst others do not.

 

[Umbran]

Opposite to that is the social pillar. Speaking in character at the table is the most natural thing to do. Human brains are usually wired to be able to.follow conservations. The speech is not abstract, the interactions between NPCs and PCs can flow naturally and normally without overwhelming anybody, because we are usually used to that kind of interaction.
The social pillar of the game is the least abstract part of the game and that's why it needs the least set of rules and mechanics ...

Sure, speaking is a pretty natural thing to do. But speaking at the table as our character is, in effect, an action declaration.

Mechanics are not primarily there to determine our action declarations. They are there to determine the effects of declared actions. Sentient minds are terribly complicated things, so we can use an abstraction there to help determine their reaction to information.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is a minor gripe for me, but what bothered me about the Dragonborn at first was their lack of a tail. Not the fact that for a time the female dragonborn had breasts. Then I learned that their lack of tail had to do something with distinguishing them from Half-Dragons.

The irony here is, that's still true. Dragonborn officially don't have tails. Larian just recognized that the instant dragonborn came on the scene, people were giving them tails.

I'm personally on the fence. Tails are actually a lot of headache in many ways. But they can also be cool. Depends on how it's drawn, I suppose.