In any game that has social skills, rather than roleplaying, you can run a game without roleplaying more easily than one that has no social skills, unless you run the latter purely as a miniatures skirmish.

That's because in any situation that demands roleplay, in the game with social skills, you can just say "i try to charm/seduce/enchant/intimidate/impress/honor person x" and then roll a die and the die roll can tell you whether you did it or not.
In a game with no social skills, you actually have to roleplay.

The great rebuttal people try to offer to this point is that if you have explicit social-skill rules in a game, that means that it's somehow encouraging people to do more social scenes, whereas D&D with no social skills is just encouraging combat somehow.  This is a bit like saying that giving people a ton of tofu will encourage them to eat more meat, while not having tofu on the table means people will forget all about bacon.

In my experience most of the time "the system encourages it" mentality actually causes LESS reliance on roleplaying (and more reliance on 'story points' or having "five dots in diplomacy" or whatever).  That's not the sort of encouragement you need or want.  Any "encouragement" that makes how well you roleplay the character irrelevant if you roll the wrong die result is not actually encouragement, it's discouragement.  It's telling you "don't worry about trying to portray the character, just put your points in the right skills".

RPGPundit

(21 September, 2015)

What about someone who wants to play a socially adept person but has limited social skills in person?

Not a criticism, just wondering how you deal with that.  It's one of the cited reasons for having social skills.

Quote from: Headless;921629What about someone who wants to play a socially adept person but has limited social skills in person?

Not a criticism, just wondering how you deal with that.  It's one of the cited reasons for having social skills.

My solution is to give an A for effort. All I care about is people are trying to get into character and make some effort at conveying that. There are limits though. If someone can't come up with a clever plan because they are not clever enough, then there isn't a whole lot you can do (except maybe give them ideas). If a person is obviously struggling, not having fun, and this is making them miserable, then I see no issue making an exception for them or trying to help them out. I don't understand warping the whole system and approach in anticipation of that. If someone isn't terribly charismatic, but their character is, and they botch a big speech, in that case I might use a roll to add in their character's natural charisma somehow (maybe it looks bad on paper, maybe it sounds bizarre, but they still might radiate leadership and personality that attracts people to what they say).

What I find happens though is over time people start to improve. If you replace social interaction with a roll, then people never improve because there is no need. If a person is expected to talk in character and interact socially with NPCs, like anything else in the game, their skill will tend to increase with use.

I have social skills in most of my games and the way I use them is when there is some doubt about who people react. I don't have the player roll, then role play. I don't have the player roll in place of role play. I have them role play, then if I can't decide how that pans out i say something like "Give me a command roll". Or something else I might do is ask for a roll if there is a huge discrepancy between what the player said and what their character sheet indicates.

What do we do about a player who is playing a masterful tactician character, but constantly makes poor choices on the battlefield?
Or a super sleuth character who just can't put two-and-two together out of the clues that the GM plants?

Quote from: RPGPundit;921577In any game that has social skills, rather than roleplaying, you can run a game without roleplaying more easily than one that has no social skills, unless you run the latter purely as a miniatures skirmish.

Or more succinctly, you can run any game without roleplaying if you run it without roleplaying. In other news: rain wet, nighttime dark. :rolleyes:

The 'guy with no social skills wanting to be a social master' will largely depend on HOW their social retardation manifests.  If it's that they're terminally shy or something along those lines, then they'll probably be able to get away with it with a bit of encouragement.

On the other hand, if it's a mouth-breathing mental-defective whose brain literally doesn't work right and he can never understand how people "work" socially, then he's probably fucked.  That's because the former example is someone normal but anxious about expressing themsleves, but they KNOW how you're supposed to interact with people, they'll understand things like rhetoric, how to lie properly, how to negotiate, how to intimidate, etc. So they can work it out.  
But the true social retard doesn't understand any of that, so his problem won't be about HOW he rps his social interactions but literally WHAT he says and chooses to do/approach the situation. He will not just be bad at convincing someone, but be mentally incapable of understanding how to convince someone.  If his character rolls up a massively good charisma, he might be able to mitigate the total fuckup choices he makes in that people will see his character as a more likable rather than disgusting social retard, but such a player literally CANNOT play a master of social manipulation, no matter how much they want to.

And frankly, I think that any game where they could do such a thing would not be a real RPG.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;921659What do we do about a player who is playing a masterful tactician character, but constantly makes poor choices on the battlefield?
Or a super sleuth character who just can't put two-and-two together out of the clues that the GM plants?

Or a player playing a knight but with no skill in medieval armed combat who can't properly guard in quarte?  Or, heaven forfend, playing a wizard and the player can't even cast a proper spell??

This whole argument is just Gygax's old (flawed) "Books are Books, Games are Games" rant all over again. The rules are there to cover the stuff players can't handle or don't want to be bothered to handle with their own skills.  If you don't want to get up from the table and fight the GM with boffer spears to see if you defeat the goblin horde, then don't pick a game that has no combat rules.

Quote from: Headless;921629What about someone who wants to play a socially adept person but has limited social skills in person?

Not a criticism, just wondering how you deal with that.  It's one of the cited reasons for having social skills.

As a DM with good social skills, I regularly have to present NPCs with even better social skills.

You just do the best you can, and preface it (OOC) as necessary.

Rules (i.e. rolls, basically) for social interaction outcomes do have their uses, but actually using them as protection from that kind of imbalance is a low priority for me. Speeding the story along is more important to me (especially as I will go into full talky-LARP mode if left unchecked. ).

Player-declared action determines content.

Character skill determines delivery.

Dice roll determines outcome, considering both content (good content gets a bonus, bad content gets a penalty) and delivery (the quality of which is measured by the skill level).

At the very least I ask people to narrate what their character wants to say and how they say it. If they just say: "I attempt to charm him" or "I convince the guards to let us through" I ask for more. What is their angle? What are they using/doing to get things going?

If they say "I dunno" or "I can't think of anything" then they roll with disadvantage or a higher difficulty. I mean, c'mon.

EDIT: on the flip-side, if they role play really well, or at least in a very clever, interesting or funny way, I'll either give them an advantage/bonus to their roll or wave off rolling completely.

Quote from: daniel_ream;921674Or a player playing a knight but with no skill in medieval armed combat who can't properly guard in quarte?  Or, heaven forfend, playing a wizard and the player can't even cast a proper spell??

This whole argument is just Gygax's old (flawed) "Books are Books, Games are Games" rant all over again. The rules are there to cover the stuff players can't handle or don't want to be bothered to handle with their own skills.  If you don't want to get up from the table and fight the GM with boffer spears to see if you defeat the goblin horde, then don't pick a game that has no combat rules.

This, pretty much.

Again, I don't see the big controversy. Pick games with social skills if you like them. Even some of the good old classic games like Runequest, Rolemaster, and Pendragon have social skills.

Quote from: The Butcher;921689Player-declared action determines content. Character skill determines delivery. Dice roll determines outcome, considering both content (good content gets a bonus, bad content gets a penalty) and delivery (the quality of which is measured by the skill level).

Quote from: Necrozius;921701If they say "I dunno" or "I can't think of anything" then they roll with disadvantage or a higher difficulty. I mean, c'mon. EDIT: on the flip-side, if they role play really well, or at least in a very clever, interesting or funny way, I'll either give them an advantage/bonus to their roll or wave off rolling completely.

Serious question: in a game with abstracted combat like most versions of D&D, do you give players a bonus to hit or to damage for clever tactics, feints, leveraging the environment in ways not already covered by the mechanics?  If the player just says "I hit it with my axe" round after round, do you penalize his attack or damage rolls?

Quote from: daniel_ream;921720Serious question: in a game with abstracted combat like most versions of D&D, do you give players a bonus to hit or to damage for clever tactics, feints, leveraging the environment in ways not already covered by the mechanics?  If the player just says "I hit it with my axe" round after round, do you penalize his attack or damage rolls?

Yes. I actively encourage out of the box thinking. Great tactics or problem solving grant advantage.  I even let players spend Inspiration to apply really clever uses of existing abilities.

No i do not impose penalties for being dull or monotonous.

Edit: i get the point that you're making. The double standard of combat vs social. I was exagerating about penalties on dull, uninspired social rolls. What i meant was that the effects of failure/success are a bit different if they make no effort. Good ideas, even if not roleplayed fully, do just fine, i dont expect thespians and i respect the choices in skill investment. Im fair to players who want to be a character who is better than they are at social skills. I disagree with the Pundit, mostly, on this issue.

Quote from: The Butcher;921689Player-declared action determines content.

Character skill determines delivery.

Dice roll determines outcome, considering both content (good content gets a bonus, bad content gets a penalty) and delivery (the quality of which is measured by the skill level).

This nails it for me.

Why? The Diplomancer Syndrome. I have seen too many skill and buff powered rolls that were counter-acted by stupid, stupid roleplay.

Quote from: Necrozius;921736Edit: i get the point that you're making. The double standard of combat vs social.

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to score points and I don't consider that a double standard.  Every table decides on its own which player skills to focus on and which to pass off to the game engine.  I'm just curious how many people who create house rules with tight interaction between the social interaction mechanics and player skill generalize that to other parts of the game engine, or if it's a sharp divide.