D&D 5E What is a Social challenge, anyways?

[Hriston]

if I had a nickel for everytime my PCs turned a combat encounter into a social, or a social into a combat, I would not be rich, but I could go to a fast food place and get a full meal deal and have change...

remember there is no I in team, but there are 5 I s in "F it I don't care the size of the room I cast fireball"

I think, as long as the encountered creature(s) at least speak(s)/understand(s) a language, that most encounters have the potential to be engaged with socially. Whether such engagement rises to the level of a challenge depends on how it goes, what’s at stake, what sort of actions are declared, etc. For example, in one of my games, a character’s encounter with a tribal chief became a social challenge for that character when he tried to get information from the chief about his missing wife whom he thought had been kidnapped. Failure of that challenge resulted in the revelation that not only had the chief seen the character’s wife, but that she had abandoned her husband willingly and had expressed a desire to never return. Also, the character was refused passage through the chief’s village which meant he had to take the long way back to the party’s camp and risk suffering exhaustion.

 

[HammerMan]

That isn't a SC, that is a series of sessions (I would imagine.... maybe it was just one...).

No not A skill challenge no A social encounter but 5-6 months worth of sessions into a campaign where social challenges were important in question and campaign defining without being life/death

 

[DND_Reborn]

No not A skill challenge no A social encounter but 5-6 months worth of sessions into a campaign where social challenges were important in question and campaign defining without being life/death

So you say, but you still haven't shown me a social challenge where the stakes are as important as the life/death of combat.

I've seen nothing so far which is really anything but normal role-play and social mechanics.

 

[James Gasik]

So you say, but you still haven't shown me a social challenge where the stakes are as important as the life/death of combat.

I've seen nothing so far which is really anything but normal role-play and social mechanics.

L5R actually has these; for example, you are attending court at the Emperor's Palace of Otosan Uchi when your fiendish Scorpion rival accuses you of treason and produces witnesses as evidence.

Can you successfully convince the Emperor that you are innocent, or at least should be afforded a chance to prove your innocence, or will you be asked to commit seppuku on the spot to avoid dishonoring your Daimyo?

 

[HammerMan]

So you say, but you still haven't shown me a social challenge where the stakes are as important as the life/death of combat.

I've seen nothing so far which is really anything but normal role-play and social mechanics.

Okay so you don’t think that having to talk to multi landed nobles (some greater some lesser) trying to find who is loyal and who is a traitor to be just that.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Listen folks, I dropped out of this thread a while ago. I could continue to demonstrate how none of this is a "skill challenge" IMO, but I find this back-and-forth fruitless.

 

[HammerMan]

Listen folks, I dropped out of this thread a while ago. I could continue to demonstrate how none of this is a "skill challenge" IMO, but I find this back-and-forth fruitless.

Yeah. If you don’t except that the people in the game had tense moments that mattered as much or more then combat, and they were challenged with skills I don’t know what else there is to say

 

[clearstream]

L5R actually has these; for example, you are attending court at the Emperor's Palace of Otosan Uchi when your fiendish Scorpion rival accuses you of treason and produces witnesses as evidence.

Can you successfully convince the Emperor that you are innocent, or at least should be afforded a chance to prove your innocence, or will you be asked to commit seppuku on the spot to avoid dishonoring your Daimyo?

I've been mulling over another viewpoint on skill challenges, which is to see the relevant mechanics less in terms of controlling what other creatures will do (i.e. forcing them to believe you are innocent, which feels in some respects like controlling the Emperor's mind via the skill) and more in terms of revealing the direction to take your fiction.

In the "mind control" model (I know the term isn't ideal, I just mean that successfully using the skill makes the creature change its mind) we picture that the Emperor is disposed to skepticism or perhaps pre-judgement - that is their mental state. The player character by using the skill and rolling well changes that mental state to one of trust or at least acceptance. If they had rolled badly, we might picture that the character had exercised their skill poorly, presenting weak arguments etc. So what is pictured in the character employing the skill, is a test of that character's ability to express their skillfulness.

In the "direction to take your fiction" model, the use of the skill doesn't change anything about the Emperor, rather it reveals what we should add to our fiction. This isn't about the character's ability to express their skillfulness. What is pictured in the player invoking the skill is a the situation itself and which way it is likely to twist.

The reason this matters is that it changes how a DM views calling for checks and setting difficulty classes. What the difficulty represents in the second case is our predisposition - as co-creators of a common fiction - toward our world being that one in which Emperors are truculent, or that one in which Emperors are sagacious. The character's skill is not called into doubt: they may be described exercising it adroitly even if the result is failure.

 

[James Gasik]

Isn't the "mind control" model how things actually work a lot of the time though? Like, say you tell me you're running some errands and I ask you to pick up some snacks for me at the store. It may not seem like it, but I totally just manipulated you into doing something you weren't going to do originally, likely for some vaguely defined "favor" you might be able to call in later.

I've never understood the reluctance of gamers to admit that master manipulators are a thing in real life; they're always worried about their NPC's giving away vast amounts of wealth or whatnot, usually saying "no one would really do that" or "such tricks don't really work IRL".

I mean, sure, it's part of our psychology, we don't like to be tricked, or to think that we could be, but you don't have to look very far to find examples of people who have conned millions of dollars from others.

Even the most hidebound individuals can be led to believe, truly, madly, deeply from within their heart of hearts in something that simply isn't true, as long as it conforms to their particular worldview. So I would think part of a social challenge would involve trying to find that weak point and use it to your advantage, not unlike noticing a gambler's "tell" in a high-stakes poker game.

 

[Aldarc]

Listen folks, I dropped out of this thread a while ago. I could continue to demonstrate how none of this is a "skill challenge" IMO, but I find this back-and-forth fruitless.

Honestly, having read through this thread, I have found that your persistent handwaving away of examples of skill challenges that various posters are giving you to be far more fruitless than anything you claim that you could do. At times it comes across as pretty disrespectful of other posters and their play experiences. When you deny the play experiences of others and that their skill challenges are meaningful, then is it any surprise that you get pushback and fruitless debate? I suspect that you could have more fruitful discussion if you changed your tact.