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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4809298" data-attributes="member: 710">Considering mechanical approaches that still describe what is going on in the game narrative: That shouldn't be that hard. It actually happens in combat a lot.1) The combat grid. It tells us where everyone is. So if you want to beat someone with your pointy stick, you have to go over there. 2) Descriptors. If you cast a fireball, you deal fire damage. The descriptors imply what's going on.I am not necessarily saying that you'll find 1:1 equivalents for each. But I think the "descriptor" idea might work.I posted a fake "The Sims" inspired social system in a previous post. One skill used was "Chatting" and I added "(Weather)" as descriptor. The implication of the game rules was: - "Chatting" is a skill that you use to make conversation. It's just go get to know each other, spend some time, being friendly, without a particular goal (unlike for example talking about which restaurant to go to or whether the king lends you his 30 soldiers against the orc raiders). - "Weather" was a descriptor describing the topic of the talk.In this scenario, the NPC wasn't really interested into chatter (especially about something as shallow as weather), but since the PC was pretty good at chatting, he still listened and wasn't annoyed or disappointed. Whether "Chat" needs o be a skill in 5E D&D or (weather) is actually a good descriptor for anything (I think in The Sims it works fine.), I can see a system working with such concepts. An NPC might have an ability like "conversation Resistance: Weather -2" or "Conversation Vulnerability: "Politics": +2 if used to enrage" In the context of a more "reaonsable" game scenario, you might not want a laundry lists of such stuff on an NPC, and keep it focused on what makes sense for the encounter at hand. Different approaches on how to deal with the courting rival might describe this encounter.Putting hand on shoulder: "Intimidate (Physical)"Exposing the fact that the guy is married: "Intimidate (Social)" Maybe the character has a bonus on Intimidate (Physical) thanks to his high strength. Maybe the target has a weakness to "Intimidate (Social)" in courtship situations (Vulnerability 5 against intimidation (social) since he's married.)Maybe there woulld not just be Monster Manual, but also a "Social Manual" where the different social archetypes are described. The real questions are: 1) How complex do you want it to make? Should there really be a second subsystem as complex as combat? 2) Does this really capture the target audience? What if non-gamers are non-gamers because they don't like gaming? It's not just about fighting in combat, it's about using any rule system to resolve a conflict?</blockquote>

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