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.

No, its more just to demonstrate case-study evidence of the kind of complexities of social gaming you can do with zero social mechanics, and the proof that people who play D&D are doing this, all the time.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;670507No, its more just to demonstrate case-study evidence of the kind of complexities of social gaming you can do with zero social mechanics, and the proof that people who play D&D are doing this, all the time.

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But the initial premise is a daft one and totally pitched to get a one sided result. (ie. Have you stopped beating your wife?)

You may as well say give me some examples of great role play without roleplay mechanics and I could quote you how we role play with my daughter and her puppets, or how I role play my characters in Escape from Colditz, or car wars or someone might even site some great role play from Dungeon World (shock horror).

No one has ever denied you can do great role play and social interaction with no mechanics because 3,000 years of human theatre woudl meake them look like idiots.

The debates we have had on social mechanics are about how can you use in game mechanics that more roundly realise the traits and personality of the PCs and combine those with good role play to get the best outcome. So mechanics that guide roleplay or mechanics that develop role play or mechanics that through their interaction with the game world and the players round the table generate improved in character immersion and role play.

Merely saying 'car wars didn't have any social mechanics but listen to this example of in game social interaction where the PCs do a deal with the driver of a monster truck and pursuade him to take out the biker gang' proves nothing because there are as many or more examples where no social interaction occurs, the same is true of OD&D, AD&D, Runequest or any other game.

Quote from: jibbajibba;670533But the initial premise is a daft one and totally pitched to get a one sided result. (ie. Have you stopped beating your wife?)

You may as well say give me some examples of great role play without roleplay mechanics and I could quote you how we role play with my daughter and her puppets, or how I role play my characters in Escape from Colditz, or car wars or someone might even site some great role play from Dungeon World (shock horror).

No one has ever denied you can do great role play and social interaction with no mechanics because 3,000 years of human theatre woudl meake them look like idiots.

I would absolutely agree it does make them look like idiots; but I'm guessing you haven't seen of these arguments, then.  A great many of them start from the premise of "because D&D has only combat and no social rules, this stymies any possibility of social roleplaying".

Quote from: RPGPundit;670656I would absolutely agree it does make them look like idiots; but I'm guessing you haven't seen of these arguments, then.  A great many of them start from the premise of "because D&D has only combat and no social rules, this stymies any possibility of social roleplaying".

yeah.

I like my games now with some social skills, but that;s because I came from a D&D (etc) background with tons of great social roleplaying in those systems.

I moved because I wanted to be able to be able to give a mechanical advantage and progression to the social part of the game, not because it was impossible to roleplay without them.

Quote from: RPGPundit;670656I would absolutely agree it does make them look like idiots; but I'm guessing you haven't seen of these arguments, then.  A great many of them start from the premise of "because D&D has only combat and no social rules, this stymies any possibility of social roleplaying".

But that isn't really the final outcome you are trying to get to.
The final point you are trying to get to is that games don't need social mechanics becuase D&D managed for years etc .. therefore social mechanics are a waste of time therefore games with social mechanics are Swine/Storygame/ANOTHER bad thing.

The Aim of social mechanics is to try to encapsulate the characterists of the PC in the real world to improve immersion. If your PC needs to climb a wall the GM does not make you do 50 pushups (an approximate parallel to climbing a wall) they make you make a strength check , or an agility roll, or a climbing roll or whatever.
However when your PC needs to charm a guard you are supposed to charm them through roleplay which is the social equivalent of 50 pushups.

The challenge is to create a mechanic that isn't just "I roll fast talk", but at the same time encourages in character dialogue and role play and represents the character's not just the player's skill and you know what it's really really hard to do.

Merely saying - see you don't need social mechanics I don;t think cuts it.

I have mixed feelings on social mechanics. On the one hand, there's things like Charisma, where it's rolled simply to accent or decide the effectiveness of the player's role-playing. That's been a part of the hobby since the beginning, and I have no more issue with that than I do with an Intelligence attribute.


Some people refer to CoC's Sanity mechanic as a 'social mechanic', but I completely disagree in the se way that I don't consider'morale a social/personality mechanic. Then there's stuff like Pendragon's Passions which I'm overall nuetral about.

What I absolutely cannot stand and won't deal with is 'social combat' rules such as those in Burning Wheel.

On social mechanics, I think that stats and skills are more about guiding how you role play the character more than they are for constant dice rolls.  I'll play a guy with a CH 5 very differently than I do a guy with CH 15.  I'm not too sure of my acting abilities outside of that range.

I remember a number of awesome scenes done without rolling dice in a number of different games, and I think one of the reasons I'm on the OSR wagon is the number of scenes that were not as fun because I insisted on rolling rather than letting the players acting determine the outcomes.

I remember a scene I did when I was 13 where in a guy was on trial for being a pure strain human and was expelled from the community.  I still think it was one of my best scenes, and I have been doing rather a few.

Quote from: Chugosh;670701On social mechanics, I think that stats and skills are more about guiding how you role play the character more than they are for constant dice rolls.  I'll play a guy with a CH 5 very differently than I do a guy with CH 15.  I'm not too sure of my acting abilities outside of that range.

I remember a number of awesome scenes done without rolling dice in a number of different games, and I think one of the reasons I'm on the OSR wagon is the number of scenes that were not as fun because I insisted on rolling rather than letting the players acting determine the outcomes.

I remember a scene I did when I was 13 where in a guy was on trial for being a pure strain human and was expelled from the community.  I still think it was one of my best scenes, and I have been doing rather a few.

Which is great but relies on our social skill to interpret and if you have say 9 Charism in real life how do you role play someone with 18 Chr? What help does the game give you to achieve that roleplay objective?

I role play everything , its my nature. However , I get the players to make a social roll and I incorporate that into the roleplay into the responses of the NPCs and their reactions to the PCs.

Now without the a doubt the best social mechanics I have evr seen are in James Bond 007. The seduction rules extracted basically from genuine human courtship patterns are outstanding.
They take a part of the game key to the genre, seduction and sex, and mechanize them taking away all the ickyness of roleplayers being allowed to have sex. At the same time the process and description of those steps encourage role play and interaction with the NPC and the game world.
Without a dounb the best social mechanics.
A close second is the Amber attribute auction. This is only relegated to 2nd place because it's social function in the game world, which is to establish rivalries and competion between the PCs to set the scene for the social relationships of the group, are secondary to it's role in setting up attributes themselves and becuae it has a couple of minor machanical issues that need to be tweaked.

Now these are 2 great social mechanics. We need more rules of this quality. not less.

Jibba.....

GuildSchool mechanic.

Not saying perfect, but this is our formalized version.

I'm not saying that you can't use social mechanics. I'm saying that D&D works perfectly well for social-rp, and the idea that you MUST have social mechanics is a lie.

However, now that you put it out there, I'm willing to bet there's quite a lot of social RP that's gone on in old school games that would have been just plain IMPOSSIBLE if you were using some kind of social mechanic/social combat mechanics system, because the rules would have choked it.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;671013However, now that you put it out there, I'm willing to bet there's quite a lot of social RP that's gone on in old school games that would have been just plain IMPOSSIBLE if you were using some kind of social mechanic/social combat mechanics system, because the rules would have choked it.

For sure.  I have allowed the players to change my mind, for example, which wouldn't have been possible assuming I was in a position to set the DCs or similar.

Quote from: mcbobbo;671353For sure.  I have allowed the players to change my mind, for example, which wouldn't have been possible assuming I was in a position to set the DCs or similar.

Couldn't you just change your mind about the DCs?

Quote from: Noclue;671466Couldn't you just change your mind about the DCs?

Sure, but in a lot of these systems that would not always necessarily mean that he rules-as-written have just the right option for what the PCs actually want to do.

Not to mention that if you have codified rules for something like this, the tendency of many GMs and players is to "think within the rules", and not even consider options that would be outside the possibilities of the mechanics.

Quote from: RPGPundit;671013I'm not saying that you can't use social mechanics. I'm saying that D&D works perfectly well for social-rp, and the idea that you MUST have social mechanics is a lie.

However, now that you put it out there, I'm willing to bet there's quite a lot of social RP that's gone on in old school games that would have been just plain IMPOSSIBLE if you were using some kind of social mechanic/social combat mechanics system, because the rules would have choked it.

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Of course there have been.   Social skills are just like combat skills, in that you get better at them with use and just like different monsters get tougher in a game built for combat, like d&d, a gm has to be able to use NPC abilities against the players.

Old school games are great when you want the combat codified or the exploration to be the focus, and when social interaction is not any part of the rules balance, but an incidental.

When you want to play a game where combat takes a back seat to intrigue or politics, old school games, much though I love them, are like using an oven to make ice cubes.   Wrong tool kit.

Quote from: LordVreeg;672891When you want to play a game where combat takes a back seat to intrigue or politics, old school games, much though I love them, are like using an oven to make ice cubes.   Wrong tool kit.

I'm pretty sure this thread proves otherwise.

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