Social Skills, starting to bug me.

[dagger]

Something else I just though about. I police myself and my own characters when it comes to playing. I don't need skills to do that but it is what it is.

 

[DonTadow]

Having them allows you to cater both to verbose players who love to talk, and to quiet players who are not as comfortable and skilled at roleplaying, or who aren't as confident or gregarious as others at the table. Not having them caters to the former and punishes the latter.

All in all, I think it's best to have them there as an option at least, even if the DM allows good roleplaying to strongly affect or even subsitute for the statistic.

AGreed. Because we can also put swords on the table and see who swings it the best and let that person do the most damage.

Remember, that the game is based on simulation. The diplomacy roll is not a what you say roll it's how you say it. How you come off to people. How your mannerisms are. I don't give rpg bonuses, that's an inate part of the game.

 

[Hussar]

I recently dipped into this pool on another forum, so, I'll cross post my thoughts from there. If you are not using a social mechanic, you are effectively free forming social interaction.

Honestly, I have two major issues with freeforming, one from the player side and one from the DM's side.

On the player side, freeforming competes with the actual mechanical resolution systems. Because it's freeforming however, I, as a player, cannot rationally judge my odds of success at a given action.

Take the cliche example of needing to get past the guard. Ok, I've got three (well more, but, let's stick to three) options - I can sneak past, I can gank the guard, or I can talk my way past. Now, the first two options, I can gauge my chances of success - I have a rough idea how hard it's going to be to sneak past, what things I can do to mitigate the risk and how effective those things are, or, I have a rough idea how tough the guard is, and how quickly we can take him out. But, with the freeform resolution of social challenges, it becomes very difficult to judge my chances of success.

And, IME, because it's difficult to make that assessment, players don't. They will take the devil they know over the one they don't. So, they either sneak or gank the guard and only talk as an absolute last resort. The lack of mechanics actually pushes the players away from choosing these options towards choosing mechanically determined options.

On the DM's side of things, I don't like the freeform system since it makes me too visible as the DM. The players want to bluff the guard. Ok, fine. But, I, as DM, KNOW that they're lying. So, do I let them pass or not? Well, I judge their performance, but, I don't want to make it too easy do I? But, too difficult and now I'm just stonewalling. Finding that line between the gimme and the stone wall is very difficult for me. So, I'd much rather let the mechanics determine success.

Making the mechanics determine success allows me to remain as referee and facilitator which are the roles I prefer as a GM/DM.

 

[Wiseblood]

A player with a PC in combat may suck at tactics, but he can ALWAYS fall back on the roll of the die & the combat rules to help bail him out*. A player in a RPG without a system for simulating social skills has no such safety net.

I mean, I know jack all about the practice of martial arts beyond what media (movies, documentaries, books, comics, etc.) and a single day in a karate class have taught me, but I can still play a really cool martial artist in most game systems. Were combat handled the way some treat social skills, I'd be limited to playing brainy wallflowers with artistic talent.







* unless there's some RPG out there that bases combat results entirely upon what players actually know about combat.

The outcome of combat is fairly concrete. The outcome of social skills is much less so. It's a rule set that tells a partial outcome. It is fine when you come to an obstruction that is not easily resolved by rp. I don't have a huge problem with them. I just think that they could be implemented better. I would feel the same way about playing Monopoly and someone landing on my property but not having a set price that they owe.

For example: I have just intimidated someone do they run away? Do they surrender allowing me to dictate their actions for a period of time? Do they seek to run away? If the outcome were a little more fixed and anything outside of the basic set of outcomes resolved by role playing or fiat I would be happier with the rules.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The outcome of social skills is much less so.

How so?

You talk to the GM about the use of the skill in a situation. Depending on the exact social skill system used, typically, it goes like this:

1) You tell the GM what kinds of things you'd like to do, and he tells you how difficult they are, then you choose one and roll. Succeed at the DC of the task, you succeed.

2) You roll the dice, and based on the results, the GM tells you how many successes you have/how well you succeeded. Based on that, the GM then tells you what kind of results you can get with those successes.

Etc.

 

[Hussar]

For example: I have just intimidated someone do they run away? Do they surrender allowing me to dictate their actions for a period of time? Do they seek to run away? If the outcome were a little more fixed and anything outside of the basic set of outcomes resolved by role playing or fiat I would be happier with the rules.

Did you want them to run away? Then they would. After all, Intimidate has pretty concrete rules - the person who is successfully intimidated treats the intimidator as friendly with respect to whatever the intimidator wants while the intimidator is present and for some minutes afterwards.

So, if you want someone to run away, and you use intimidate successfully, then they run away. Otherwise, they don't.

 

[The Shaman]

"Ahead of you, on a curve in the stream, is a stone bridge. A carriage is overturned at the far end of the bridge, creating a barricade blocking passage to the road beyond. Behind the carriage you see the tips of a dozen pikes above an equal number of gleaming morions. To the right, across the stream, just inside the tree line, is a hastily-built stone revetment, and behind it the light through the trees glints off the barrels of a half-dozen arquebuses. Because of the curve in the stream, the revetment is at right angles to the bridge, giving the arquebusiers a clear field of fire across the open ground approaching the span."

"Uh . . . I roll for Tactics."



"The king's minister, Enfou, pulls you aside as dancers swirl to the musicians huddled in one corner of the ballroom. 'The king is desperate,' he says. 'The baron de Bauchery can raise enough mercenaries to defend the frontier, but he refuses to do so unless he the king promises him Princess Pinkflower's hand in marriage. Meanwhile the conte di Grognardo is the best commander we have, but he refuses to serve under de Bauchery, and he wants the princess' hand for his son.'"

"Uh . . . I roll for Diplomacy."



Your skills are used to resolve your attempts to accomplish a task. They don't do your thinking for you.

In the first example, you need to decide how the adventurers are going to get past the soldiers holding the bridge, and in the second you need to figure out how you're going to resolve the conflict between the courtiers in time to get the soldiers to the front. Your skills resolve how well you accomplish what you set out to do.

Moreover, social skills are not charm spells. A Helpful non-player character may be willing to take considerable risks on behalf of your highly diplomatic character, but that doesn't make the npc a thrall. The npc will still look after his interests and pursue his agenda while offering assistance to the adventurers.

I've used rolls for social interactions in every game I've ever played, from the Charisma-adjusted reaction rolls and loyalty scores for henchmen and hirelings in AD&D to the Contact rules in Top Secret to the social skills of d20, and in my experience they neither inhibit roleplaying nor do they result in the players substituting skill rolls for actually having to figure out how to best use those skills to get what they want.

 

[S'mon]

There was an analogy that Monte used in the transcripts about social skills that sounds kinda like common-sense at first, but I think falls apart upon closer scrutiny. It was something along the lines of "we don't expect players to come to the table knowing how to use a sword, so why do expect that of social skills?"

Unless the player has a severe disability, surely they are capable of talking to people?

 

[S'mon]

Hell you don't have to give the worlds most perfect lie to bluff the guard, just TRY. Effort is rewarded.

That's my approach - I run a success-oriented game, and a high CHA PC and/or one with good social skills can often get away with a lot. I do expect you to actually engage with the game environment though.

Eg running 4e 'Heathen' recently, the PCs entered the Hand of Naarash HQ and tried to bluff the cultists - there were some logical problems with their story of being emissaries from the bandit king of Llorkh while wearing cultist robes, but the Bard's good Bluff skill combined with a superficially plausible story made it work long enough to get them in. I would never have let the Bard just say "I Bluff" (roll d20) as if she were casting a spell, though.

 

[S'mon]

A player with a PC in combat may suck at tactics, but he can ALWAYS fall back on the roll of the die & the combat rules to help bail him out*. A player in a RPG without a system for simulating social skills has no such safety net.

They could fall back on magic spells, or on a high CHA stat that makes NPCs favourably inclined to them to begin with.

I have never ever seen a shy or withdrawn player have any trouble with roleplaying in-character if the DM gives them space to do so (a DM can be a dick in social encounters, but he can in combat encounters too). Players who refuse to roleplay in character, or who refuse to treat the NPCs as anything other than card-board cut-outs have other issues.