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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8161134" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Want to start off responding to the OP before I read too much of the thread. I don't know a lot of these systems, but there was one event in particular that made me really appreciate them in theory. I was running a demo game for a friend's system at a convention. Part of the one-shot was that the players had been trying to solve the mystery of who had been using forbidden magic. They solved the mystery, they knew they had the right guy, but they had no evidence. What they needed was a confession. However, when they went and confronted him, they rolled poorly. In a system like what I was used to, that would have been the end of it. I can't let them just keep trying, they rolled, they failed. However, instead this system allowed us to activate a "mental combat". It worked fairly simply. The players kept trying different tactics, intimidating, persuading, deceiving, and the person had a "defense" roll to rebuff their arguments. In a lot of ways, it was exactly like they just kept trying, but there was a key difference. As the "mental health" ran out, they would get forced by the system to drop the argument. Basically, by making this a "combat" like encounter with a boss, it gave them the chance to not simply lose, but since it was a "combat" if they did lose, they knew that they couldn't just keep retrying. They would be out of "health" and defeated. In the end, they succeeded. They flustered him into confessing before the authorities, and succeeded, and everyone felt AWESOME about it. I do think it is unneccesary for 90% of social encounters. But in those moments where you have the party against a stubborn social challenge, I think it is very useful to put a thin layer of mechanics on it, just to track progress. Just so that it isn't "Well jon rolled a 23, so we succeeded and no one else needs to roll" or "Jerry rolled a 5, guess we fail guys" instead it is "well, I got a 13, that chipped away at his defense, but he's still being slippery, maybe now is when we bring up that journal we found, shake him up." (I will now start reading the rest of the thread)</blockquote>

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