Please write in this thread about awesome and memorable social scenes, adventures, or whole campaigns run using old-school games with no "social rules" or mechanics (or for that matter, new school games that don't have them too).

RPGPundit

I ran a Changeling game that ended up turning into a labyrinthine political struggle, wherein we went close to a year without combat. The games mostly consisted of investigation, rumour-mongering, subterfuge, and seductions, but it culminated into a two session long ballroom gala that transgormed into an impromptu trial as the queen was accused of infidelity, one of the characters was called on for treason and the players tried to convince the assembled nobles that there was an assassin in their midst, meanwhile trying to protect the queen (who was in fact guilty and one of the PCs was the cuckold) from her sister's underhanded bid for power and identify who exactly was behind the plot against the king.  That was perhaps the most intense 10 hours of gaming I've ever experienced, and not a single die was rolled, it was just arguments, interrogations, pleas, and bluffing between player and a host of npcs.

In one session of AD&D2e I put the party druid through a series of tests. One of which was by putting her on trial against herself. In a nutshell, the rest of the party played her playing the druid and then quizzed and cross examined the actual player/character about her motivations and actions.

I once played a dwarven war cleric.  He thought he was a real bad ass, but actually wasn't.  He had been tossed out of his local temple for being a pest, and was told that if they saw his face there again he would need a res.

He was trying to get the party to notice his combat prowess, so he picked a fight at the tavern.  His mark turned out to be the captain of the guard.  A round and a half later he was nearly dead, running for his life with the whole town guard in pursuit.

On a lark, he ducked into said temple, guards in tow, raised his weapon high in the air and yelled, "GET THEM!"

In the chaos, he slipped out the back.

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I nominate this story because nobody called for a bluff check or any roll of any sort.

Just about every campaign ran using AD&D 1st, Fantasy Hero, GURPS, and now Swords & Wizardry had some awesome social moments with no specific mechanics. The only thing needed was making sure I, the referee, roleplayed the NPCs as if the players were there and had the players respond to my roleplaying in first person rather than third person.

But of all the campaigns, I would say the most awesome bit of social roleplaying was the two hour debate sparked in a Star Trek campaign over the ethics of returning the time-line back to normal.

Basically the Klingons time-travelled back to 1962 and shot a nuclear missile into the US Fleet blockading Cuba igniting a global nuclear war. The players were investigating a unrelated space anomaly at the instant the Klingon initiated this and were protected from the changes in the time-line.

When they re-emerged they found instead of the federation they found an Andorian Star Empire, locked in a two way struggle with the Romulans and Klingons. They had a epic year long voyage back to Earth where they figured out what happened.

They dug up the slingshot profile used by the Enterprise for Time-Travel and before they were going to a initiate it, the science officer piped up with "the question Are we doing the right thing here?" and pointed out that this solution would wipe out the existence of billions in this time-line including some Andorian friends they made.

The result was prehaps one of the deepest and most passionate philosophical debates I ever seen in a RPG session.

This and other similar sessions has left me with the belief that mechanics are not necessary for this aspect of tabletop RPGs. What needed a smart referee to setup an interesting situation with players committed to roleplaying their characater as if they were there. Mind you this is not quite the same thing as acting as a different personae. One could act as a thinly disguised version of his own personality and still do this well.

Quote from: estar;669991This and other similar sessions has left me with the belief that mechanics are not necessary for this aspect of tabletop RPGs. What needed a smart referee to setup an interesting situation with players committed to roleplaying their characater as if they were there. Mind you this is not quite the same thing as acting as a different personae. One could act as a thinly disguised version of his own personality and still do this well.

Obviously, I strongly agree with all this.

RPGPundit

I am not sure I get the point of this thread.

Is it meant to show that you do not need social mechanics to have awesome social situations? Well, that is a no-brainer. The only mechanic you need is to roleplay every present character to the best of your skill, and see where it takes you.

Is it meant to say that social mechanics are inconvenient? That would be weird coming from you, given that you are a great fan of Pendragon and Pendragon has social mechanics AND THEY FUCKING ROCK. I think we can all agree that a good social mechanic can enhance roleplaying. I cannot see them as mutually exclusive.

i think atlas games published a dnd 3 module called splintered peace or something that was highly focused on social roleplay but that did not introduce new social mechanics. i could be wrong about that last bit. it has been about seven years since i played it.

Most of the RPG's I have played do indeed have social mechanics, though the best moments of role playing and social interaction I have had in my years of role playing have always been when we didn't use the dice and just got into character and tried to act and interact as we believed our characters would without dice getting in the way.

Quote from: Imperator;670225I am not sure I get the point of this thread.

Is it meant to show that you do not need social mechanics to have awesome social situations? Well, that is a no-brainer. The only mechanic you need is to roleplay every present character to the best of your skill, and see where it takes you.

Is it meant to say that social mechanics are inconvenient? That would be weird coming from you, given that you are a great fan of Pendragon and Pendragon has social mechanics AND THEY FUCKING ROCK. I think we can all agree that a good social mechanic can enhance roleplaying. I cannot see them as mutually exclusive.

+1.
sure, playing a combat-centric rpg can mean doing the social part with no mechanics.  Other RPGS are built for social interactions, and have rules for them, and maybe less combat rules.
A good GM makes it all work.

Quote from: Imperator;670225I am not sure I get the point of this thread.

Is it meant to show that you do not need social mechanics to have awesome social situations? Well, that is a no-brainer. The only mechanic you need is to roleplay every present character to the best of your skill, and see where it takes you.

Is it meant to say that social mechanics are inconvenient? That would be weird coming from you, given that you are a great fan of Pendragon and Pendragon has social mechanics AND THEY FUCKING ROCK. I think we can all agree that a good social mechanic can enhance roleplaying. I cannot see them as mutually exclusive.

I was going to ask "so what's the point of this thread, to prove that social mechanics are moot?", but decided to bite my tongue, so cheers for taking that jump.

In defence of social mechanics - as I said before, I often expect both to roleplay it AND to roll it. Because quite frankly, you don't expect your players to know real life spells to be a wizard, you don't expect them to know how to swing swords to attack people, you don't expect them to be nuclear physicists to use Physics(Nuclear) skill, so why suddenly everyone looses their minds and It's Roleplay Only Bub when it comes to social skill mechanics? Being a superb liar who can charm and bluff your way out of everything is also a skill, and pretty hard one.

It's definitely a double-edged sword, and it gets a lot worse the further from the GM it gets.

On the pro side, like Ricewind said, it can be nice to put your faith in the mechanics and not have to actually be good at it personally.  Taken to the extreme, you might ask why there are non-physical attributes at all?  Does having a high INT not make you smarter in character? Vis-a-vis CHA.

The flip side is easy to see when things get taken too far. "I convince the king to hand over his throne to me.  My Diplomacy is +40."

As a middle ground I do see the value in 'attitude points' and methods for moving that attitude in steps one direction or another.

That said, I also approach social skills like any other skill - if you have it high, and you roleplay it well, you may not need to roll. Someone with Looks 17 in Call of Cthulhu probably won't need to roll whether or not he succeeded in seducing a meek librarian.

As for the topic itself - I had quite a few of those. There was a hostage negotiations part, when party's Thief got caught trying to infiltrate mobster's tavern, and said mobster had a knife on his throad, while party had knives on the throats of his companions. Fast, tense, and no Charisma rolls called. From the same campaign, there was a moment when heroes made a mistake of telling a priest of God of Light that one of the guys is the son of God of Light, which said priest considered a heresy and started a tense dispute that ended out with players being kicked out of the temple.

And in my Call of Cthulhu games, interrogations are routinely done without rolling most of the time.

Itt: Mtp

Quote from: mcbobbo;670343The flip side is easy to see when things get taken too far. "I convince the king to hand over his throne to me.  My Diplomacy is +40."

Its easy to imagine when things get taken too far. Have you actually seen a king convinced to give up his thrown on a diplomacy roll?