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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7622210" data-attributes="member: 4937">Doing this in a concrete way requires a bit of preparation of the sort people generally don't do.You have to define the Duke as a social character.&nbsp; The 'Seven Sentence NPC' article in Dragon #184 is still in my opinion the definitive starting place for this.&nbsp;&nbsp; You then need to define the basics of the social challenge, essentially setting the Difficulty, the various obvious modifiers that might result from doing or saying things the Duke likes or dislikes, and defining before hand what partial success or success with complications looks like and under what circumstances such outcomes apply.&nbsp;&nbsp; These sort of challenges if well constructed have the sort of details we might otherwise lavish on traps or monsters.&nbsp;&nbsp; Social focused challenges can be really cool, if you have the right group of players, but they do take a bit of work and/or some experience to run them well.&nbsp;&nbsp; You don't necessarily need a ton of complicated mechanics and most systems - even 1e AD&amp;D with its loyalty checks or a modified version of a common ruling like 'roll below an ability score' - usually have enough of a system to adopt to this sort of thing, but you do need some sort of tangible social reality you are describing.I'm really not a fan of FATE, and the only part of FATE that I'd ever advise anyone to borrow is less its system than the description it provides for outlining in some concrete way the elements of the game and challenges.&nbsp; The system itself leaves me cold for a ton of reasons, but it does in its advice to the GM push you toward good preparation to play.&nbsp; Unfortunately, I really think too often this good foundation is ignored and at most people attempting to play the game do no more than a rough draft and build nothing on it, thinking that they can get away with little or no preparation.&nbsp;&nbsp; Based on what I've seen from play run by even the designer of the system, this is not a great idea.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7622210, member: 4937"] Doing this in a concrete way requires a bit of preparation of the sort people generally don't do. You have to define the Duke as a social character. The 'Seven Sentence NPC' article in Dragon #184 is still in my opinion the definitive starting place for this. You then need to define the basics of the social challenge, essentially setting the Difficulty, the various obvious modifiers that might result from doing or saying things the Duke likes or dislikes, and defining before hand what partial success or success with complications looks like and under what circumstances such outcomes apply. These sort of challenges if well constructed have the sort of details we might otherwise lavish on traps or monsters. Social focused challenges can be really cool, if you have the right group of players, but they do take a bit of work and/or some experience to run them well. You don't necessarily need a ton of complicated mechanics and most systems - even 1e AD&D with its loyalty checks or a modified version of a common ruling like 'roll below an ability score' - usually have enough of a system to adopt to this sort of thing, but you do need some sort of tangible social reality you are describing. I'm really not a fan of FATE, and the only part of FATE that I'd ever advise anyone to borrow is less its system than the description it provides for outlining in some concrete way the elements of the game and challenges. The system itself leaves me cold for a ton of reasons, but it does in its advice to the GM push you toward good preparation to play. Unfortunately, I really think too often this good foundation is ignored and at most people attempting to play the game do no more than a rough draft and build nothing on it, thinking that they can get away with little or no preparation. Based on what I've seen from play run by even the designer of the system, this is not a great idea. [/QUOTE]

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