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<blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8450576" data-attributes="member: 70468">Which makes the investigation and social challenges sections all the more disappointing. For social challenges in particular, it could use some advice on designing factions in the adventure (versus those that are part of the faction mini-game) and how to make their presence interesting. That can include the usual factions in the dungeon setup in OSR games, but it should also extend to the peoples and groups that are created while rolling up tags and synthesizing them into e.g., court intrigue. All it really gives is some questions to ask yourself when designing NPCs. The investigation stuff is a pure railroad, which I feel has no place in an otherwise sandbox-oriented game.I’d also argue that social skills should always be rolled against the reaction table (or the PbtA result ladder of 6−, 7–9, 10+) and never against a fixed difficulty. That gives the GM easily guidelines for how to respond. If your advice is, “The difficulty is privately set by you based on the quality of their offering versus the magnitude of their demand,” but then you go on to say, “A failed social negotiation should almost never end in a simple flat refusal. There should always be some way forward for the PCs, and some evident means of improving their case,” then making the roll is almost pointless. It’s framed as task resolution, but it’s not. At least with rolling against the reaction table, you’re transparently treating it as a prompt.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="kenada, post: 8450576, member: 70468"] Which makes the investigation and social challenges sections all the more disappointing. For social challenges in particular, it could use some advice on designing factions [I]in the adventure[/I] (versus those that are part of the faction mini-game) and how to make their presence interesting. That can include the usual factions in the dungeon setup in OSR games, but it should also extend to the peoples and groups that are created while rolling up tags and synthesizing them into e.g., court intrigue. All it really gives is some questions to ask yourself when designing NPCs. The investigation stuff is a pure railroad, which I feel has no place in an otherwise sandbox-oriented game. I’d also argue that social skills should always be rolled against the reaction table (or the PbtA result ladder of 6−, 7–9, 10+) and never against a fixed difficulty. That gives the GM easily guidelines for how to respond. If your advice is, “The difficulty is privately set by you based on the quality of their offering versus the magnitude of their demand,” but then you go on to say, “A failed social negotiation should almost never end in a simple flat refusal. There should always be some way forward for the PCs, and some evident means of improving their case,” then making the roll is almost pointless. It’s framed as task resolution, but it’s not. At least with rolling against the reaction table, you’re transparently treating it as a prompt. [/QUOTE]

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