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What is a Social challenge, anyways?
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<blockquote data-quote="robus" data-source="post: 8949527" data-attributes="member: 6801558"><p>The issue is: what is the dramatic question? For a combat it’s obvious (though sometimes boring). For a social interaction to be a challenge there has to be risk and and a reward. The reward needs to be worth whatever risk there is. And that’s the root of the problem, there’s usually no risk to the PCs. An easy way to add risk is to make the opposing party be willing to fight the PCs if the social interaction goes badly, but then we’re back to combat.</p><p></p><p>But in general a social challenge would be: “can the PCs persuade this hostile NPC(s) to do what they want?”. The risk being that either a fight breaks out or they poison the relationship in some way that causes bad consequences. The difficulty of persuading can change, perhaps they just need a couple of convincing arguments, or perhaps they need to deal with a lot of misgivings first like the NPC losing face for working with the PCs, who knows? Use some kind of track to measure the PCs progress (or regress) toward the goal (and be prepared for a decent amount of talking).</p><p></p><p>But that’s the key: an NPC has something the PCs need and is not willing to hand it over (and the PCs can’t just take it by force).</p><p></p><p>Edit: I’m drinking a cocktail while posting, so caveat lector!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="robus, post: 8949527, member: 6801558"] The issue is: what is the dramatic question? For a combat it’s obvious (though sometimes boring). For a social interaction to be a challenge there has to be risk and and a reward. The reward needs to be worth whatever risk there is. And that’s the root of the problem, there’s usually no risk to the PCs. An easy way to add risk is to make the opposing party be willing to fight the PCs if the social interaction goes badly, but then we’re back to combat. But in general a social challenge would be: “can the PCs persuade this hostile NPC(s) to do what they want?”. The risk being that either a fight breaks out or they poison the relationship in some way that causes bad consequences. The difficulty of persuading can change, perhaps they just need a couple of convincing arguments, or perhaps they need to deal with a lot of misgivings first like the NPC losing face for working with the PCs, who knows? Use some kind of track to measure the PCs progress (or regress) toward the goal (and be prepared for a decent amount of talking). But that’s the key: an NPC has something the PCs need and is not willing to hand it over (and the PCs can’t just take it by force). Edit: I’m drinking a cocktail while posting, so caveat lector! [/QUOTE]
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