Quote from: HinterWelt;273871Lots of excellent points guys. Thanks. My thinking is coming around on this point. Let's see if I can sum up.

1. I think I will need some sort of pre-roll conditions. This is mostly about how to present the rules and works like this. I  need to say up front that the player must present his argument. The first hurdle condition is if it is at all possible. Something like sweet talking the bouncer at a club to let you in..sure. Getting the guard to shoot himself in the head....no. Then, I need to outline the middle conditions (yeah, Clash).

2. Next step would be to present the player's case. They need to present their plan, maybe include their speech or generally what they will say. The GM will evaluate and assign a bonus OR just out and out give it or deny it based on the presentation and content. No penalty for bad presentation but if the player outlines his characters, a 90 lb weakling, going up to the 200 lb marine and poking him in the chest in order to physically intimidate him...not gonna happen. However, if he comes up to the guard and presents false credentials and claims to be a superior, we have something to work with and bonuses may apply depending on how it is played.

3. Finally the roll. I see a couple of conditions. First, a simple your lie was convincing or you broke him. Let's call these passive effects. It does not force them to do something but it allows an effect. The easiest to describe is passing off a lie, effectively impersonating another person, or general deception. Second, there would be the case of impeding action. So, you could  confuse the trooper so he needs to make a check to see if these are the droids (possibly at a minus) that he would not have before. Or you might apply a minus to init, combat or an action against the character since they are so sweet and innocent or some such.

4. I am always a fan of what I call discrete mechanics. Basically, what some folks are saying about the mechanics adding to or being the tools of the player to accomplish RPing and not having the mechanics dominate the RP experience. I will think how best to accomplish this but I think a big part o fit will be presentation or getting folks to think in those terms.

Does that sound workable?

Thanks guys,
Bill

Looks good to me, Bill!

-clash

I'm puzzled by players who don't invest in social skills for their characters, yet expect to make up for it with some clever talk from their part. You shouldn't play Henry V if your character doesn't have some mad speech skills to back up your personal oratory.

Quote from: JongWK;273898I'm puzzled by players who don't invest in social skills for their characters, yet expect to make up for it with some clever talk from their part. You shouldn't play Henry V if your character doesn't have some mad speech skills to back up your personal oratory.

I tend to think of it as two different things - the argument, and how persuasively it's presented. Generally I give a modifier for the quality of the argument, and apply it to the quality of the skill use for presentation. If the argument is ass, then the presentation, no matter how slick, is probably going to fail. If the argument is coherent, reasonable, and appealing to the target, then even a poor presentation won't hurt it much.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;273814I'm with Pundit and Balbinus here. Social skills are cool, but if your character's RP argument is weak or, worse, complete bull, that is also factored in as a penalty, or bonus if it's a persuasive argument. Note I said RP argument, not roleplaying. You don't have to be a silver tongued devil, but I do need something solid in-character to base it all on. If the character's argument consists of "Because my character is a friggin' master of convincing!" then there's a problem.

-clash

That's exactly how I run things, I expect the players to make a bit of an effort, since that's in large part what I'm at the table for.  But if a socially less adept player makes an effort, I won't penalise them for being themselves less socially adept.  That would be crappy.

But yeah, if someone said "I roll my Persuade, I get a 04, that's a critical, I say something really persuasive" then I myself would be unpersuaded by their persuasion roll.

Quote from: David Johansen;273770I like them when they're used to allow the players to say "No, my character is good at this stuff and you can't just railroad us with this NPC."  That's the purpose they serve.

Does it really work that way, however? Because if a GM is going to railroad you, he or she is going to railroad you.

We were playing in a game, for example, that used percents. We were flying in a helicopter in a storm and the GM wanted us to crash. Even though the PC pilot rolled a 01, the best possible roll, and his character was a professional pilot in game, we still crashed. There were mechanics to cover the situation, but the GM ignored them.

So what's to stop that from happening with social mechanics?

Seanchai

Quote from: flyingmice;273814I'm with Pundit and Balbinus here. Social skills are cool, but if your character's RP argument is weak or, worse, complete bull, that is also factored in as a penalty, or bonus if it's a persuasive argument.

Which makes a lot of sense. But it's also subjective. Was the argument weak? Well, the GM might have thought so, but the players might have an entirely different take on the matter. And so we're right back to, basically, fiat.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;273965Does it really work that way, however? Because if a GM is going to railroad you, he or she is going to railroad you.

We were playing in a game, for example, that used percents. We were flying in a helicopter in a storm and the GM wanted us to crash. Even though the PC pilot rolled a 01, the best possible roll, and his character was a professional pilot in game, we still crashed. There were mechanics to cover the situation, but the GM ignored them.

So what's to stop that from happening with social mechanics?

Seanchai

Sadly I think they are a weak GM for blatantly steering the plot. Not to say I have not steered things. However, if a subject comes up that is completely out of player control than they don't get a roll. I don't ever want to do what was mentioned in the posting. When a player rolls a crit it should be a momentous occasion and not be disregarded for plot.

I would like to think I have never engaged in Railroading. Having said that I do freely admit to trying to bend things into my favor. For example my friend's girlfriend was playing in one of my games. She was a vacuous dingle berry but I let her play to appease my friend. Her character had a pet dog and for fun I started taking pot shots at it (mainly cause I did not want to take the shots at her). Well after the third critical failure and rolling fits of laughter it became quite apparent that I would have to keep the Rat Dog just for comedy relief.

If the copter needs to crash to get the party on the deserted island then let it crash. Mechanical failure could easily have rendered Chuck Yeager unable to save a prototype plane. The 01 super crit now means everyone gets out alive and unharmed.

Peace

Quote from: JongWK;273898I'm puzzled by players who don't invest in social skills for their characters, yet expect to make up for it with some clever talk from their part. You shouldn't play Henry V if your character doesn't have some mad speech skills to back up your personal oratory.

Well, I think one possibility that I've seen is that they have encountered a GM who would ignore the social skills of the PC to just always have NPCs react according to what they wanted for the plot.  i.e. A player buys a ton of social skills, but then the GM still has the mission-giving NPC yell and belittle them, and the surly prisoner NPC stonewall them, and so forth.  I've seen this a lot, and it doesn't take very much of this to convince players to abandon social skill spending altogether.

Quote from: Seanchai;273973Which makes a lot of sense. But it's also subjective. Was the argument weak? Well, the GM might have thought so, but the players might have an entirely different take on the matter. And so we're right back to, basically, fiat.

Seanchai

No - The fiat only influences, it doesn't dispense. The roll has a function too.

-clash

If anyone is interested, I have updated the mechanics for Zombipocalypse Social Combat now called Social Contests in the design thread.

Thanks,
Bill

Quote from: Seanchai;273965So what's to stop that from happening with social mechanics?

Seanchai

In a perfect world?  Baseball bats, ropes ,and trees.  One less bad GM wrecking the hobby by driving out good players.

Quote from: flyingmice;274078No - The fiat only influences, it doesn't dispense.

But, really, it does. Unless there are limits to what bonuses and penalties are applied and when.

To use Exalted as an example, the minimum bonus for a social stunt is zero dice. The maximum is three. If the GM is following the rules, there's only so much he or she can alter the chances of something succeeding or failing.

If the GM could add or remove as many dice as he or she saw fit, the GM could make an action a definite success or impossible.

Thus, to my mind, mechanics + fiat still = fiat.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;274208But, really, it does. Unless there are limits to what bonuses and penalties are applied and when.

Sidebar: a d20 player once argued to me that according to the rules a referee could never impose a circumstance modifier of more than +/-2.

I'm in the group that thinks players need to make an effort at being social when using social skills, for as Balbinus notes upthread, the in-character interaction around the table is part of the fun for me when I play. If social skills are reduced to a die roll, I think that part of the game is lost.

At the same time, I do like some measure of mechanical reinforcement for social interactions, even something as simple as a bonus to reaction rolls for a high ability score or skill level. If the mechanics allow players to build characters who can always get a particular reaction in social situations, then that's a system problem for me.

Quote from: Seanchai;274208But, really, it does. Unless there are limits to what bonuses and penalties are applied and when.

To use Exalted as an example, the minimum bonus for a social stunt is zero dice. The maximum is three. If the GM is following the rules, there's only so much he or she can alter the chances of something succeeding or failing.

If the GM could add or remove as many dice as he or she saw fit, the GM could make an action a definite success or impossible.

Thus, to my mind, mechanics + fiat still = fiat.

Seanchai

Whatever. I didn't know we had a system declared. A +3 limit in one system is killer, but in another might be pretty useless, thus I didn't put numbers up. But you go on telling me what I mean when I say something. It's wicked useful.

Outta here.

-clash

Quote from: Seanchai;274208Thus, to my mind, mechanics + fiat still = fiat.

The GM can set whatever difficulty they like.

Or, to be more blunt:

All roleplaying games operate by the socially accepted fiat of someone.