# Any RPGs that focus on roleplaying instead of combat?



## MrHemlocks (Oct 10, 2013)

I have played many RPGs and notice that most revolve around combat. With roleplaying coming in a distant 2nd. Now I have players that love to roleplay and do so...often. I understand that it is up to the DM and players to create the roleplaying experience no matter what game but are there certain games that REALLY push for active roleplaying? 

I heard there was a new Hobbit game, not sure if it is a RPG, that is all about roleplaying.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 10, 2013)

Fiasco, The Window, GUMSHOE, Everyone is John, Call of Cthulhu, Prime Time Adventures, and Dread off the top of my head focus less on combat or combat is not the preferred method of dealing with problems.

For example, in The Window a fight is resolved the same way as searching a room. 

FATE has built in mechanics to "push" roleplaying your character, and it isn't necessarily combat focused, but my FATE games tend to have a lot of combat as well.

What's that RPG where you make up outlandish stories? For the life of me, I cannot remember its name! Driving me crazy...


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## fifty (Oct 10, 2013)

Yep Call of Cthulu has to be top of the list of "don't go in shooting!".. 

and thirdWizard do you mean The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen by any chance?


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 10, 2013)

That's the one! I don't own it personally so I can never remember the name.


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## fifty (Oct 10, 2013)

Yeah, I've played it a couple of times and remember it because it is silliness of epic (and good) proportions! Not sure I'd want to play it for a long time though!.

The Dying Earth RPG (Jack Vance books) is also a game that particularly encourages avoiding fights at (almost) any cost "Killing, how uncivilised" to quote the rulebook!


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## Bagpuss (Oct 10, 2013)

ThirdWizard said:


> What's that RPG where you make up outlandish stories? For the life of me, I cannot remember its name! Driving me crazy...




The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen although it is more a drinking game than an RPG. How do you forget a name like that?

I'd add "Don't Rest Your Head" to list on more roleplay than combat games.


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## Bagpuss (Oct 10, 2013)

MrHemlocks said:


> I have played many RPGs and notice that most revolve around combat.




I'd disagree with that statement, many of them have detailed combat rules, but that doesn't mean they revolve around combat. That usually has more to do with the group and what story players are trying to tell with those rules.

Most roleplaying games revolve around conflict of some form, and more often that means combat.


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## fifty (Oct 10, 2013)

Still, many games offer a large amount of combat oriented characters, skills and powers and so in such games it is more likely that combat will be used as a means to overcoming obstacles. 

I do take your point though Bagpus, I had a great time playing shadowrun where we were all tech-types running the net rather than shooting guns off all over the place


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## Bagpuss (Oct 10, 2013)

On the flip side I've found many games that don't have a extensive set of combat rules can often fall apart when combat starts or at least require a lot of DM fiat to resolve. Dread for example has real problems I find if players turn on players.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 10, 2013)

Bagpuss said:


> Dread for example has real problems I find if players turn on players.




Eep! That boils down to a game of Russian Roulette. Take turns pulling until the tower falls or until somebody chickens out.


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## Evenglare (Oct 10, 2013)

Gotta throw in my lot for Dungeon World. There is no "combat" or out of combat sections. Dungeon World is truly the only game I personally know of that plays like reading a novel. That is to say, it begins and ends with the fiction, not with the mechanics. It's hard to explain.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 11, 2013)

As all the others posters mentioned, you want a storygame then not something like D&D. Look for games advertising character portrayal and relationships to characters in social situations. There are other games that attempt to emulate the plot of novels, but that isn't actually going to support performing a fictional personality. You want game rules that support that, if that kind of role playing is your focus.

Fiasco isn't a bad suggestion, but it doesn't allow much depth into character in my experience. It's more like an action movie without the physical action. Instead social tensions are designed to red line in most every scene. 

Dogs in the Vineyards presents moral quandaries that can be mulled over, but it is more about questioning the player's own moral understandings than exploring a character's make up. 

The thing is, either of those could work great for you. Getting players to play a game while using a fictional persona instead of their own is sort of a game rule. You tell people to do it ...and it could be done in any game. Or at any moment for that matter.  I think you should come up with more about what you mean by role playing and then folks might be able to help you better.


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## Razjah (Oct 11, 2013)

Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard are both RPGs that don't focus on combat. They have combat rules, but talking your way out of something is very much preferred. Especially in Burning Wheel where a single good hit can end the fight.


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## Celebrim (Oct 11, 2013)

MrHemlocks said:


> I have played many RPGs and notice that most revolve around combat. With roleplaying coming in a distant 2nd.




I'm currently playing 3.X inspired D&D.   In the past 5 sessions (20 hours) we've spent 15 minutes on combat.

There is exactly as much RP in an RPG as you have.



> Now I have players that love to roleplay and do so...often. I understand that it is up to the DM and players to create the roleplaying experience no matter what game but are there certain games that REALLY push for active roleplaying?




There are games that push you away from combat and toward intellectual experiences, but nothing can make you actually role play.   

Some RPGs that are heavily theatrical that I'd like to be a player in with a good storyteller are: Dogs in the Vineyard, Dread, My Life with Master, and Monsters and Other Childish Things


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## Jhaelen (Oct 11, 2013)

Bagpuss said:


> I'd disagree with that statement, many of them have detailed combat rules, but that doesn't mean they revolve around combat.



Agreed. I'd actually say that most rpgs focus on roleplaying instead of combat - with the obvious exception of D&D, _if_ you are playing in a 'classical' campaign revolving around 'killing monsters and taking their stuff'. In many games combat is strongly discouraged simply because it is extremely lethal.

I think the best roleplaying experiences I've had were in Ars Magica. The suggested troupe-style of playing the game means you get to roleplay different characters, depending on the kind of story you're in, i.e. Magi, Companions or Grogs. Since it also features the 'meta-character' of the players' covenant it's also one of the few rpgs with excellent rules for campaign covering hundreds of years.


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## fifty (Oct 11, 2013)

When I ran Amber Diceless we were also surprisingly combat light, and even when we did the lack of dice rolls meant fights were entirely narrative and thus felt like a smooth part of the ongoing story rather than a sudden interruption as can sometimes be the case.

...and yep, I had forgotten about ars Magica.. good game, not played it for years... hmm... now where is my copy?


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## Umbran (Oct 11, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> There are games that push you away from combat and toward intellectual experiences, but nothing can make you actually role play.




But nothing actually makes you engage in the tactical combat portion of the game, either, so I'm not sure what the statement gets you.  

While individuals vary, I think it is reasonable to say that, when looking for what they can/will attempt to do in-game, players will usually look to their character sheets (or the game's equivalent) to see what their options may be. 

If the sheet is mostly about their combat options, the players will naturally drawn to those options.  Most games have a whole lot of combat options, which means the players can pick and choose from a variety of things that they feel improve their chances.  If "talking" is one skill of many, and there are few or no solid options for making that skill more effective, it is apt to get short shrift in the player's attentions.

Thus, while you cannot *make* players do anything, it likely pays to pick a game that has more options for the play activities you want to see.

Some games are odd birds in this - FATE being an example.  Depending on which FATE-derivative your playing, the same basic rules apply to physical combat, social conflicts, and mental challenges.  The things most prevalent on the sheet are probably the character's Aspects, which can in theory be applied to any and all of these conflicts.


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## Razjah (Oct 11, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Some games are odd birds in this - FATE being an example.  Depending on which FATE-derivative your playing, the same basic rules apply to physical combat, social conflicts, and mental challenges.  The things most prevalent on the sheet are probably the character's Aspects, which can in theory be applied to any and all of these conflicts.




Group dynamics matter a lot too. I'm currently playing in a Dresden Files game, and while my cowardly demonologist and occult bookstore owner is lacking in great social skills, he is very willing to try to talk his way out of stuff because fighting scares him. The one truly social character was built by the player who often runs a fighter/barbarian/paladin who charges the first enemy seen (a lot of the group is like this). That character has been slowly moving from diplomancer to amazon.

With this group, it rarely matters what the character sheet says- they grab weapons and fight their way out.


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## Celebrim (Oct 11, 2013)

Umbran said:


> But nothing actually makes you engage in the tactical combat portion of the game, either, so I'm not sure what the statement gets you.




The same thing you are getting at from the opposite direction.

Ironically, games that have extremely detailed combat rules are notorious for pushing players (in the long run) away from combat.   Combat resolution in such games may be so lengthy, tedious, fiddly, and often lethal, that players are discouraged from running games with frequent combats and instead may spend a lot of time on melodrama to make the few times they do engage in combat more worth while.   Conversely, rules light systems with simple fast combat rules may in fact end up being mostly about combat, since there is no great burden on the players in resolving many such small combats.



> If the sheet is mostly about their combat options, the players will naturally drawn to those options.




I guess that's where I'm disagreeing then.  I've played 8 hour sessions of 1e AD&D where no dice where thrown the entire session.   Yet, arguably in 1e AD&D there is nothing on the average character sheet that isn't a combat option.  So what happened?   Why were we playing a game not supported by the rules?   Arguably, because it wasn't supported by the rules.

RPing isn't really about the rules.  RPing is generally a improvisational theater game that seldom and usually doesn't intersect with the wargaming inspired tactical combat game that is the modern RPG's other parent.  RPing is about acting out in character in a natural manner.   It's about a fantasy dialog.  In fact, arguably, systems that provide heavy support for social interaction end up undermining their own intention to encourage role playing, because the resolution mechanics for the social interaction can then effectively replace the role playing.   If there are detailed social interaction rules, the tendency is for the player to make a rules proposition rather than role play: "I make a Cutting Remark social attack on Sir Badwell.... 17...  And that's a hit, so you temporarily reduce his reputation by 5.  The Young Admirers titter in delight and now move closer to you.   Sir Badwell tries respond with Cool Indifference in order to avoid improve his reputation save."   That sort of rules resolution tends to turn opportunities for role play into just another sort of tactical war game.  

Now, it certainly doesn't make the characters not role play.  But it gives them to the option to not do so should they want to.   But players and DMs that expect theatrics are going to do them regardless of what the rules support for them is.  

It's funny, but the last 20 hours of my campaign the most common dice roll by far has been 'Sense Motive'.   The players regularly throw Sense Motive checks to get some insight about the NPCs they are speaking to.   We've spent probably 16 of the last 20 hours in theatrical RP and only 15 minutes in combat (the rest in exploration).  But I've been chuckling about the fact that 95% of the time, they don't actually need to make the checks - the answers they are getting are just validating what's obvious to them from the role play.   They only ask for checks when it's obvious to the player that I'm role playing the NPC as lying, and so of course, the cleric asks, "Sense Motive, is he lying?", and the answer come back, "Yes.", and the response is, "I knew it!"   So they did.


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## Umbran (Oct 11, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> I guess that's where I'm disagreeing then.  I've played 8 hour sessions of 1e AD&D where no dice where thrown the entire session.   Yet, arguably in 1e AD&D there is nothing on the average character sheet that isn't a combat option.  So what happened?   Why were we playing a game not supported by the rules?   Arguably, because it wasn't supported by the rules.




Yes.  Of course, YMMV.  There will be groups and times that differ in just about any aspect of gameplay.  For every time you can raise for your group not playing by the supported rules, I can raise an anecdote about how I saw a player staring at their sheet or flipping through a rulebook to find out what relevant action they could take in the situation.  The anecdote-game takes us nowhere, mighty fast.



> RPing isn't really about the rules.  RPing is generally a improvisational theater game that seldom and usually doesn't intersect with the wargaming inspired tactical combat game that is the modern RPG's other parent.




Except, of course, when it does.  My FATE example comes up here - in the Spirit of the Century game I played in Tuesday, I was performing miserably in a combat, specifically because I was playing against type - I had a character whose personality and concept were about taking support actions.  That's who he was.  I was busy trying to directly harm the foe, and did poorly.  As soon as I stopped, and started setting up other PCs for big strikes, I did swimmingly.  In game terms, I started playing to my aspects, which help define the role you are playing.

It is only in games where the role and the combat options are separated can you say that combat and role-playing don't intersect.  But even in D&D - if you build a sneaky rogue type, he's going to do poorly if you just walk up and go toe-to-toe with a big brute.  The system enforces the role.



> RPing is about acting out in character in a natural manner.   It's about a fantasy dialog.




RPing is not limited to dialog.  It is about the sum total of activity - it is about how the character approaches the world.  The impatient barbarian who gets tired of all the talky-talk and starts the fight when he feels insulted is still role-playing.  The steampunk mechanic who solves all problems with a gizmo, and doesn't talk for fight, is still role-playing.

If we want to talk about dialog alone, that's fine.  But then the title of the thread should be "RPGs that focus on verbal interaction or social interaction between characters instead of combat".


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## Derren (Oct 11, 2013)

Pretty much any game with a well developed skill system are easy to role play with if the group wants it. The combat system not overshadowing everything and being levelless is a bonus.


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## Celebrim (Oct 11, 2013)

Umbran said:


> Yes.  Of course, YMMV.  There will be groups and times that differ in just about any aspect of gameplay.  For every time you can raise for your group not playing by the supported rules, I can raise an anecdote about how I saw a player staring at their sheet or flipping through a rulebook to find out what relevant action they could take in the situation.  The anecdote-game takes us nowhere, mighty fast.




I must disagree.  Where the anecdote-game take is the expectation that there is not one true way, one true result, and one true expectation.  Different groups will approach the same game from entirely different directions.  This is a fact that isn't entirely obvious without the anecdote game, and without the anecdote game you are likely to believe something that sounds good on the surface but is in fact ridiculous - like the system is singularly important in determining how a group plays a game.

So I don't disagree with your anecdote and the fact that you have an entirely different experience is entirely the point.  If you feel that some aspect of role playing is missing from your game, changing systems in and of itself probably won't fix the problem.   By Celebrim's Second Law of RPGs, what you must change is how you prepare to play and how you think about about playing.  Sometimes system changes can induce that shift, and other times it requires the storyteller lead by example.



> Except, of course, when it does.  My FATE example comes up here - in the Spirit of the Century game I played in Tuesday, I was performing miserably in a combat, specifically because I was playing against type - I had a character whose personality and concept were about taking support actions.  That's who he was.  I was busy trying to directly harm the foe, and did poorly.  As soon as I stopped, and started setting up other PCs for big strikes, I did swimmingly.  In game terms, I started playing to my aspects, which help define the role you are playing.




Well, sure, broadly speaking any IC action you take while playing a RPG is 'role-playing', and rules can facilitate the experience of being in that role.   But I think you are going to head for a contradiction here.



> RPing is not limited to dialog.  It is about the sum total of activity - it is about how the character approaches the world.  The impatient barbarian who gets tired of all the talky-talk and starts the fight when he feels insulted is still role-playing.  The steampunk mechanic who solves all problems with a gizmo, and doesn't talk for fight, is still role-playing.
> 
> If we want to talk about dialog alone, that's fine.  But then the title of the thread should be "RPGs that focus on verbal interaction or social interaction between characters instead of combat".




Yes, but from the perspective that the impatient barbarian when he solves problems with combat is role-playing, and from the perspective that any in character action we take is also role-playing, then surely the OP should have titled the thread as you say without any irony, since otherwise the proper retort is "But combat is role-playing."   I think we can understand the "role-playing instead of combat" in context to mean "IC dialog and social interaction instead of combat", because in the context of a RP game (and even outside of it) that's what 'role-playing' usually means. 

By saying that the RPing is separate from the tactical combat game, I don't mean that the actions you choose to take in combat are unaffected by your character's personality much less your character's role.   That at some level is ridiculous, since having more BAB as a fighter than a wizard would by that standard 'encourage playing your role' and 'encourage role playing'.  At some level that is true, but then we could have a game that was exclusively tactical combat and claim it 'pushes the game toward role-playing' despite the only actions occurring being the management of the tactical combat game.  What I mean by saying RPing is separate from the tactical combat game is that if I roll a d20 and say "I grip my battle axe in two hands and yell, "Taste my steel, green skinned vermin!", what I have said and communicated IC probably doesn't determine or influence the mechanical outcome of the attack proposition on the orc.  I'm not more or less likely to hit the orc because I've imagined the action in IC terms.  Simply saying, "I attack with my battle axe.  17, is that a hit?" is the same proposition.   There are of course some exceptions where the designers were trying to push you to role play out that combat scene, but we can recognize that 'role-playing' is the something missing in that second naked metagame proposition and know that a rule is pushing toward 'role-playing' precisely because we generally equate role-playing with IC dialogue and interaction.


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## Stormonu (Oct 11, 2013)

When I started playing RPGs other than D&D, I had some real problems with understanding that in a lot of those games going for your weapons first was often a bad idea.

Some of the games that I enjoy that I feel encourage RP more than D&D include Vampire, Legend of the Five Rings and Call of Cthulhu.  In Vampire and Five Rings, it is fairly easy to build combat machines, but such characters tend to die very gruesomely as well.  Especially in Five Rings, where anyone who takes even one hit is probably dead by the next round.  Our group had often explained it as, "if you have to draw your sword, you've failed" kind of game.

In Cthulhu, combat just gets you dead - the monster is probably immune or will act before you do.  Either use your brain or avoid the situation in the first place - which the latter is often the smarter thing to do in the first place.


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## am181d (Oct 11, 2013)

I've talked about this on other threads, but as someone who's mostly played D&D and mostly played in RP-heavy, combat-light campaigns, I'm always a bit leery of games that claim to emphasize role-playing, as I find that they tend to add rules that take role-playing decisions out of the hands of the players. (In situation X, your character must do Z.) One of the joys of role-playing in D&D is that (aside from the occasional spell or skill check) it's relatively free form.

I do work with my players on assembling story hooks (goals/motivations, background elements, important NPCs and locations, etc.) but I find that it works best (for me) if these don't have direct mechanical significance.


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## Celebrim (Oct 11, 2013)

am181d said:


> I've talked about this on other threads, but as someone who's mostly played D&D and mostly played in RP-heavy, combat-light campaigns, I'm always a bit leery of games that claim to emphasize role-playing, as I find that they tend to add rules that take role-playing decisions out of the hands of the players.




Or even, just as bad in my opinion, they tend to interrupt the flow of natural RP with a bunch of fiddly rules and resolution mechanics so that on average players are no more in character than they are in combat.



> I do work with my players on assembling story hooks (goals/motivations, background elements, important NPCs's and locations, etc.) but I find that it works best (for me) if these don't have direct mechanical significance.




If a player wants their background to provide a specific advantage or disadvantage, I have rules that provide for that.   This accomplishes two things.  First, it allows players to create PC's that I would never otherwise approve, because they've spent character building resources to acquire those advantages.   Secondly, it means that if a player does suggest that their background should result in X material advantage, that I can point at the rules and say, "Did you take the Mentor Trait?   If you wanted your wealthy father to materially support you and give you gifts, you should have taken the appropriate traits."    Conversely, if the player does take the trait, then they know that it isn't up to my judgment really whether they get the advantage.

So, for example, this has allowed players to enter my campaign as true royal princesses, by taking 'High Noble Rank' as a starting trait, something I would have never dreamed of allowing or approving as a background without rules explicitly outlining what the benefits and drawbacks of that would be rather than the player having nebulous ideas of virtually unlimited political power, influence, and wealth.


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## Evenglare (Oct 12, 2013)

I came in here expecting arguments about what roleplaying is and what games emphasize them or combat and people disagreeing about what games do what and how to play these games and how anecdotal evidence is not evidence. I was not disappointed.


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## questkick (Oct 12, 2013)

Not to sound like a broken record, but Shadows of Esteren is focused on role-playing.  Their character ability system focuses more on who the character is, not what they can do.


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## Argyle King (Oct 13, 2013)

I feel that Star Wars: Edge of The Empire is built in such a way to encourage roleplaying and setting the scene.  Part of character creation is figuring out what motivates your character and what responsibilities they have.

I've never played Fate, but it appears to encourage roleplaying based upon what little knowledge I have of it.

I've had pretty good luck with GURPS 4th Edition.  Many if the advantages and disadvantage which can be chosen during character creation act like built in plot hooks and scene setters for a particular character.  Also, I believe that the system places combat options and non-combat options on even footing; to me, that allows for both to be on par with each other when it comes to problem solving.  Obviously, as a modular system, this is going to vary with both group and game style, but I feel it encourages rp right out of the box more than most D&D editions I'm familiar with.


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## MatthewJHanson (Oct 13, 2013)

Evenglare said:


> Gotta throw in my lot for Dungeon World. There is no "combat" or out of combat sections. Dungeon World is truly the only game I personally know of that plays like reading a novel. That is to say, it begins and ends with the fiction, not with the mechanics. It's hard to explain.




The whole "world" system of books encourage roleplaying pretty well. It started with Apocalypse Word, and more games like Dungeon World, Monster Hearts, and Monster of the Week. I'm playing in a game of Monster Hearts right now, and it's the most emotionally involved I've been in a character to date.


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## Balesir (Oct 15, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> What I mean by saying RPing is separate from the tactical combat game is that if I roll a d20 and say "I grip my battle axe in two hands and yell, "Taste my steel, green skinned vermin!", what I have said and communicated IC probably doesn't determine or influence the mechanical outcome of the attack proposition on the orc.  I'm not more or less likely to hit the orc because I've imagined the action in IC terms.  Simply saying, "I attack with my battle axe.  17, is that a hit?" is the same proposition.   There are of course some exceptions where the designers were trying to push you to role play out that combat scene, but we can recognize that 'role-playing' is the something missing in that second naked metagame proposition and know that a rule is pushing toward 'role-playing' precisely because we generally equate role-playing with IC dialogue and interaction.



So, your conception of "roleplaying" is that the resolution system determines success or failure based on the GM's subjective judgement of the "quality" of the player's action description or IC conversation? Is that the substance of the suggestion, here?


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## Celebrim (Oct 15, 2013)

Balesir said:


> So, your conception of "roleplaying" is that the resolution system determines success or failure based on the GM's subjective judgement of the "quality" of the player's action description or IC conversation? Is that the substance of the suggestion, here?




What?  

I'm reading back through what I wrote trying to figure out where you got that from, and I just don't see it.

The substance of my "suggestion" is that roleplaying and the resolution system for determining success or failure of a proposition are independent.   This is pretty much explicitly stated in the first sentence of the quoted paragraph when I say: "what I have said and communicated IC probably doesn't determine or influence the mechanical outcome of the proposition on the orc."   And before you attack the qualifier "probably", what I meant by that is that some systems - say Exalted - reward the player mechanically for describing combat actions in role-playing terms.   In practice, I find such systems unsatisfying.

I would also note that "quality" that you put in quotes is not a word that is found in the piece you are quoting; you are the one that has introduced the notion of quality, so why are you putting scare quotes around your own idea?  

But the quoted passage isn't even really about my conception of role-playing.  It is in fact about the exact opposite of what you construe it to be about, and that is in my opinion plainly stated.    How you go off on a tangent,  I don't understand.


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## Razjah (Oct 16, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I've never played Fate, but it appears to encourage roleplaying based upon what little knowledge I have of it.




It does in my experience. Any game that mechanically rewards building a character and using that character's traits to accomplish goals tends to encourage more roleplaying- at least from what I have seen. FATE does this with the aspects. Your high concept, trouble, and other aspects details things about your character and how he or she typically reacts to situations. Getting compelled by those aspects earns Fate Points to later spend on rolls.

So playing a brash, charge first type guy can be rewarded allowing more charging and strike-first type actions. While building a occult bookstore owning cowardly demonologist who gets "hired" by God to fight demons can earn lots of Fate Points from freaking out in situations, fighting demons while terrified, and being an occult know-it-all and playing to those roles can earn more FP to spend fighting demons and researching arcane lore [this is not at all based on my current character... nope... not one bit].


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 16, 2013)

Doctor Who. Actively builds a non-violent theme into it's initiative rules.


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## Bagpuss (Oct 16, 2013)

Derren said:


> Pretty much any game with a well developed skill system are easy to role play with if the group wants it. The combat system not overshadowing everything and being levelless is a bonus.




FATE Accelerate has no skill system to speak of, but I would say it is easier to roleplay with than many other other games I could think of, including FATE Core itself.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 16, 2013)

Razjah said:


> It does in my experience. Any game that mechanically rewards building a character and using that character's traits to accomplish goals tends to encourage more roleplaying- at least from what I have seen. FATE does this with the aspects. Your high concept, trouble, and other aspects details things about your character and how he or she typically reacts to situations. Getting compelled by those aspects earns Fate Points to later spend on rolls.




This is the best thing about FATE. It actively rewards you for playing to character, whether its using a Fate Point to get a bonus because it falls in line with your character or getting a Fate Point when something bad happens to your character that fits the character. The give and take of what you're good at and what your problems are really helps to create a well rounded character. Other games might have "flaws" or whatever chosen at character generation, but the Fate Point economy pushes you to really want your Trouble to come into play as often as possible.

Aspects also make scenes really pop. You can use anything around you to interact with your environment in both an expected way while handling pretty much anything that the group can conceive. This leads to highly varied and easily adaptive situations that the players can really take advantage of for roleplaying purposes, both in combat and out of it.


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## Derren (Oct 16, 2013)

Bagpuss said:


> FATE Accelerate has no skill system to speak of, but I would say it is easier to roleplay with than many other other games I could think of, including FATE Core itself.




You can also argue that it is even more easy to roleplay when you freeform with no rules at all.
But we are not talking about children playing make believe, but a RPG system. And a system which supports the characters doing pretty much anything they want through robust skills allows for a lot more role playing than a system which focuses only on combat for example. Because then the system does not offer much at all to support role playing and instead you have to go outside of the system.


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## Mishihari Lord (Oct 16, 2013)

This is kind of a tough question.  Even "roleplaying" can be a fuzzy term in this context.  I'm going to assume you mean social interaction, but exploration and even combat can certainly include a lot of roleplay.

On the one hand, you probably need mechanics that focus on social interaction.  Players use the mechanical tools in front of them, so if they bought 6 combat abilities which are detailed on their character sheet and no explicitly social abilities, guess what's going to happen?  If all you have is a hammer, then everything is a nail.

On the other hand, I've seen games where the social interaction mechanics suck the actual social interaction and the fun right out of the game.  "The guard stops you at the gate, 'Gates are closed for the night'"  "I roll intimidate"  "Okay, you're through"  BOOOORING.

So I'd recommend a somewhat rules light game with mechanical support for social interaction that's more complex than "roll a check" and where the social interaction between players has mechanical consequences.  Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any games that exactly fit those criteria.


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## GrahamWills (Oct 16, 2013)

I am running a FATE campaign currently with a group that has a strong tactical history (D&D, RoleMaster) and I absolutely feel it strongly encourages roleplaying. My players do not first think "what powers / actions / skills will I use?" They think "what's in the area I can use" and "what aspects of the situation / personalities can I use".

Example:

In our first session, the players fought some wild dogs. They used terrain for cover, growled at the animals and did a few RP things, but mostly it was "roll fight / shoot" -- mostly tactical play, but definitely more RP than in other systems. However, that was not the big fight. Oh no; the big fight was a social combat that started entirely by accident ...

So, Hunter is not a good rider, and so fails his riding check, so I state that the horse is slightly injured and will need walking for a while [GM is trying to slow them down so they get caught out at night ...]. Jemima complains at him and I, as GM, notice she has an aspect "Kids nowadays don't know s**t", which I compel and she starts provoking and insulting Hunter. Hunter I also compel ("Chip on his shoulder; no-one thinks he's good enough") and they start fighting, doing some nice stress damage to each other (more than the dogs ever managed). Our Mechanic stays out of it, just watching the fight, but then the Scrounger, looking at his own aspect "Your stuff is my stuff" decides to "borrow" our mechanic's pistol, and only JUST succeeds in evading notice, so I rule that in examining it he drops one of their only three bullets into the grass. He fails to find it. So when the first two stop fighting, the next thing he has to do is be diplomatic and ask for help finding the lost bullet ...

I also find that creatures are more interesting; the use of aspects makes every combat different. I'm running a "post-zombie-apocalypse" game, and so far they've run into two types of Zees:

YER BASIC ZEE:
   * Fight +3, Notice +2, Everything else +1
   * Can move real fast when it has to
   * Not the brightest
   * A two point stress box, and a mild consequence slot

ZEE THAT USED TO BE A HUNTER
   * Fight +4, Sneak +4. Everything else +1
   * Better to be safe than eat
   * Sneaky SOB
   * Brighter than a dog, but just as fast
   * 3 and 4 point stress boxes, mild and medium consequence boxes

Against a mob of the first type, the players could depend on keeping out of close range (I'd have to spend a fate point to invoke their speed) and 2 decent hits takes one down, so one player distracted them and lured a group off, while the others shot them from range.

The second zee (a solo attacker) ran away from them after first contact, then stalked them and when a single player was alone-ish, attacked. I might have had a hand in the being alone thing, as I compelled her to go out wandering to get some parts for a repair job she was doing ("I can make it better than it was before!"). It ripped her up well (new consequence "missing bits of yer belly") and was driven off, but not killed by the others when they ran over. Very nasty encounter. Later it tried to sneak up on them at night, but they had managed to find its entry point, were waiting, and fired at it. Even when I invoked the "Sneaky SOB" AND the situational "dark night" aspect, the party's sharpshooter, with the help of one round of aiming, his shooting stunt and some good dice rolling did some serious damage, shooting half its head off.  It ran off and there was a tense moment as the shooter decided whether to use his last rifle bullet on the fleeing Zee. He did, rolled well, and with the penalty for missing half its head counteracting the Sneaky and Dark aspects (I invoked them both again as it tried to escape) he took it out. Much rejoicing. 

The use of aspects is a critical feature -- they have three uses:

 * They define fact: Yer Basic Zee is stupid. That is a straight roleplaying thing. Will they keep following a target when others are shooting at them? Yes, because they are "not the brightest" 
 * They can be invoked for game effects. Is the ex-Hunter Zee sneaking poorly? Well, I have a limited number of times I can boost that result because he is a "Sneaky SOB"
 * They can be invoked to influence narrative. That's most usually done TO players (e.g. the social conflict) but can also be used BY players. If the players were losing to a group of bandits, I'd allow them to invoke the campaign's aspect "There are Zombies everywhere" to have a gang of zombies turn up just then and make the combat a three way fight. 

I think that multi-facted use is the genius of FATE -- lots of systems do one or the other of the above three uses. But in FATE, all I have write on my character sheet is "I am tougher than anyone" and I have a roleplaying description, an advantage I can invoke when needed and a hook for the GM to get me into exciting situations. 

It really works.


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## GrahamWills (Oct 16, 2013)

Mishihari Lord said:


> On the other hand, I've seen games where the social interaction mechanics suck the actual social interaction and the fun right out of the game.  "The guard stops you at the gate, 'Gates are closed for the night'"  "I roll intimidate"  "Okay, you're through"  BOOOORING.
> 
> So I'd recommend a somewhat rules light game with mechanical support for social interaction that's more complex than "roll a check" and where the social interaction between players has mechanical consequences.  Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any games that exactly fit those criteria.




In FATE, for my current set of characters:

Jack, the Hunter "needs to protect his new family" so might plead (using Rapport skill) and invoke that aspect if he needs to. 
Trixie, the mechanic is "always mouthing". I might compel her into insulting the guard and starting a social conflict that would end in either a browbeaten guard or the party getting a mild "bunch of weenies" consequence
Jemima doesn't have anything special, so she'd just use Rapport or Provoke as per your example
Milton, the scrounger will "survive at all costs" so I might compel him to offer some party loot as a bribe to the guard.

Of course, I might also have given the guard some some aspects, but likely not.


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## Bagpuss (Oct 16, 2013)

Derren said:


> And a system which supports the characters doing pretty much anything they want through robust skills allows for a lot more role playing than a system which focuses only on combat for example. Because then the system does not offer much at all to support role playing and instead you have to go outside of the system.




I disagree, if the robust skill system introduces skills like diplomacy, bluff, etiquette or fast talk for example players can reduce roleplaying to a simple dice roll, that's hardly supporting roleplaying. Where as actually having to step outside the system and really convince the DM by actually being diplomatic or bluffing them, that encourages roleplaying more.


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## Derren (Oct 16, 2013)

Bagpuss said:


> Where as actually having to step outside the system and really convince the DM by actually being diplomatic or bluffing them, that encourages roleplaying more.




And imo that hinders role playing as you can't play a role, you can only play yourself.
In such a system the shy introvert can never play the "ladies man" swashbuckler as he simply can't talk so freely and flamboyant as his role would require it. He has to depend on the DM to take pity on him and let the NPCs react differently than what they normally would considering what he said. All the while he is overshadowed by the gruff and technically uncharismatic mercenary because he is played by a veteran RPG player who has no trouble and inhibitions to speak like he is in his role.

You seem to think that having a skill system would prevent people who want to role play from role playing. I disagree. Someone who wants to role play would still role play. Just that the skill system now allows him to play someone he isn't. The same way a combat system allows us fat nerds play highly athletic and trained fighters.


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## Balesir (Oct 17, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> What?
> 
> I'm reading back through what I wrote trying to figure out where you got that from, and I just don't see it.



My apologies - looking over your post again it's clear to me I took from it more than you intended or wrote. I now see what you were getting at - thanks for explaining it again.



Bagpuss said:


> I disagree, if the robust skill system introduces skills like diplomacy, bluff, etiquette or fast talk for example players can reduce roleplaying to a simple dice roll, that's hardly supporting roleplaying. Where as actually having to step outside the system and really convince the DM by actually being diplomatic or bluffing them, that encourages roleplaying more.



Does making the system "convincing the DM" really make players "step outside the system"? I don't think so - I think it just gets them to concentrate on the system - which is persuading the GM.

I think, to identify a system that "supports roleplaying" one needs to do two things:

1) Identify what exactly one means by "roleplaying", and

2) Consider what system elements would support that.

The first of these is probably the most tricky. My own answer - and there is no need it should be yours, necessarily - is as follows:

1) Roleplaying is the process of making decisions in the place of the character. The description you give of the actions that result from the decision might (or might not) have some colour description added to them - but that's not really the core of roleplaying - the core is making the decision in someone else's shoes.

2) Given (1), I find the system that best supports what I'm calling "roleplaying" (yes, those are quotes around "my idea" - I really don't think there's a grammatical problem with that) is one that (a) predicates success probabilities largely on the _character's_ capabilities, not the players' and (b) allows some clear stakes and resources that can be spent on behalf of the character to improve or decrease the chances of success.

As already noted, FATE seems to do this very well. I think Burning Wheel would probably do so, as well, but I haven't had a chance to play it, yet. PrimeTime Adventures does, also, and I think Pendragon does in a fairly light and "traditional" way. HeroQuest is another "lite" version of this sort of thing, too.

I think one reason I get a little touchy around this topic - and I see that others do, too - is that the questions/assertions about "roleplaying" seem not infrequently to be used as a kind of cipher. What the coded message means is "I want to have a system where success is determined by persuading the GM I succeed, because I'm confident I can persuade my GM to let me have my way". I have come across this "system" in use from time to time, and I find it to be a deceptive and dysfunctional version of gamism that I don't like at all. Of course, this gives the potential for friction with (1) those who actually _like_ this form of play - who I would ask to be plain in their preferences and politely disagree with - and (2) those who are trying to get a handle on this "roleplaying" business without meaning to get tripped up by such unfortunate double-meanings as I outline here - with whom I sympathise, but I still suggest that they need to be very clear about their thoughts and meanings in this area.

In other words, to discuss this topic I think one needs to (a) reflect deeply on ones own motivations, and (b) be as honest and *clear* as possible about what you're trying to find/achieve.


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## Balesir (Oct 17, 2013)

Derren said:


> And imo that hinders role playing as you can't play a role, you can only play yourself.
> In such a system the shy introvert can never play the "ladies man" swashbuckler as he simply can't talk so freely and flamboyant as his role would require it. He has to depend on the DM to take pity on him and let the NPCs react differently than what they normally would considering what he said. All the while he is overshadowed by the gruff and technically uncharismatic mercenary because he is played by a veteran RPG player who has no trouble and inhibitions to speak like he is in his role.



OK, now I see what you were driving at, too - but I think you are missing by a small amount. Take a look at PrimeTime Adventures, sometime. It doesn't really have a skill system at all - certainly not a robust one - and yet it has clear, hard and fast rules for a character's capabilities in a situation and a nuanced and somewhat democratic system of resources that can be applied to any conflict. It absolutely supports roleplaying, in my experience.

The "resources" bit is key - it allows for the concept of what situations are meaningful to a character. With skills alone you just roll the same skill number every time the "diplomacy" (or whatever) situation comes up - it says nothing about what the character would sacrifice for success. The GM can add an element of that with ad hoc systems, of course - but having such considerations hard-wired into the system itself is what I mean by "supporting roleplaying". As others have noted, nothing _stops_ you roleplaying in, say, monopoly or risk, but _supporting_ roleplaying means going beyond the basic, it seems to me.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 17, 2013)

I like to think of roleplaying as the fiction of the game. Roleplaying rules are, thus, those that deal with the fiction instead of being strictly action resolution rules or descriptive rules. Obviously there can be a lot of overlap and gray areas between the two, but that's what makes sense to me. For example, FATE's aspects are rules that benefit roleplaying because they reward creating and utilizing fiction rather than specific tasks. 

Fate's character aspects mean something about how the character and others around him or her act in the game fiction as well as having both a dramatic influence on the direction that the story takes as well as be used for in game bonuses when it means the character is acting appropriate to their defined character. They're probably the best designed rule I can think of for this purpose.

But, what I don't like about the title, and I think is one of the biggest problems with how roleplaying is often approached, is this idea that roleplaying and combat are somehow opposites. Like you're roleplaying, and then suddenly you enter a Final Fantasy style encounter and suddenly its a fundamentally different game taking place. That's not true. My theory is that in many systems combat is handled so repetitively that after the third round of the fifth combat of the day you lose sight of the fiction. After months or years of this, as soon as its time to start hurting things, it becomes "I attack" _roll_ "12 damage - next" because of this.

But, take something like Dungeon World. Classic dungeon crawling, lots of combat, very little rules for talking (which is what some people think of when they say "roleplaying"). However one of the most roleplaying intensive games I know of because of the fiction-first gameplay. In Dungeon World, you describe your in character action and moves trigger off of what you describe. So saying "I hack and slash" the monster doesn't work. You instead have to describe what you're doing and that might trigger one of several moves. Or it might not trigger a move at all. Or it might trigger a move you didn't expect. It's all dependent on the fiction of the game as it evolves. That's built into the rules of gameplay.


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## Mishihari Lord (Oct 17, 2013)

Derren said:


> And imo that hinders role playing as you can't play a role, you can only play yourself.




Totally false.  Method-acting as roleplaying is very common.




Derren said:


> In such a system the shy introvert can never play the "ladies man" swashbuckler as he simply can't talk so freely and flamboyant as his role would require it. He has to depend on the DM to take pity on him and let the NPCs react differently than what they normally would considering what he said. All the while he is overshadowed by the gruff and technically uncharismatic mercenary because he is played by a veteran RPG player who has no trouble and inhibitions to speak like he is in his role.




That's the argument that usually gets made, but I've always thought it's a lousy one.  I find satisfaction in doing first-person social interaction roleplaying well.  It's one of my main sources of enjoyment in RPGs.  Persuading an NPC because I rolled well is empty.  I get the objective but I lose the fun.  RPGs are a social activity - I have no problem with folks who are good at social interaction doing well as a result.  As an analogy, I'm pretty awful at basketball.  When I play I don't expect the other players to give me an advantage to even things up.  The onus is on me.  If I want to do better I need to get better.



Derren said:


> You seem to think that having a skill system would prevent people who want to role play from role playing. I disagree. Someone who wants to role play would still role play. Just that the skill system now allows him to play someone he isn't. The same way a combat system allows us fat nerds play highly athletic and trained fighters.




Theoretically you can have a system that substitutes for actual social interaction and still have the players talk it out.  In practice I've never seen that happen.  If players can get what they want just by rolling dice, there's no compelling reason to go to the effort of first-person roleplay.

When I play we usually just use DM judgement for NPC reactions.  Works great.  I'm interested in hybrid systems that use both interaction and mechanical element for resolution, but strictly mechanical resolution leaves me cold.  

(Here's an example of a hybrid system, in case it's not clear what that might be.  I've yet to find one I really like, but this would be about the shape of it)

DM picks a target number for difficulty
First-person social interaction roleplay
Dm evaluates persuasiveness and assigns a score 1-10
Player rolls d10 and DM adds result to score
DM adds PC skill to score
DM compares total score ro target.  Margin of success or failure determines resolution


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## Mishihari Lord (Oct 17, 2013)

Balesir said:


> OK, now I see what you were driving at, too - but I think you are missing by a small amount. Take a look at PrimeTime Adventures, sometime. It doesn't really have a skill system at all - certainly not a robust one - and yet it has clear, hard and fast rules for a character's capabilities in a situation and a nuanced and somewhat democratic system of resources that can be applied to any conflict. It absolutely supports roleplaying, in my experience.
> 
> The "resources" bit is key - it allows for the concept of what situations are meaningful to a character. With skills alone you just roll the same skill number every time the "diplomacy" (or whatever) situation comes up - it says nothing about what the character would sacrifice for success. The GM can add an element of that with ad hoc systems, of course - but having such considerations hard-wired into the system itself is what I mean by "supporting roleplaying". As others have noted, nothing _stops_ you roleplaying in, say, monopoly or risk, but _supporting_ roleplaying means going beyond the basic, it seems to me.




Thanks, I'm going to have to check that out.  Most of the mechanical social systems I've seen are awfully shallow, and I've been wanting to find something better.


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## Mishihari Lord (Oct 17, 2013)

Balesir said:


> I think one reason I get a little touchy around this topic - and I see that others do, too - is that the questions/assertions about "roleplaying" seem not infrequently to be used as a kind of cipher. What the coded message means is "I want to have a system where success is determined by persuading the GM I succeed, because I'm confident I can persuade my GM to let me have my way". I have come across this "system" in use from time to time, and I find it to be a deceptive and dysfunctional version of gamism that I don't like at all. Of course, this gives the potential for friction with (1) those who actually _like_ this form of play - who I would ask to be plain in their preferences and politely disagree with - and (2) those who are trying to get a handle on this "roleplaying" business without meaning to get tripped up by such unfortunate double-meanings as I outline here - with whom I sympathise, but I still suggest that they need to be very clear about their thoughts and meanings in this area.




Agree that this is an area where one needs to be very clear to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings, but the bit about "because I'm confident I can persuade my GM to let me have my way" is very unfair.  I prefer the "GM decides" system because I really enjoy trying to persuade the GM through first-person social interaction with both of us method-acting.  Rolling the dice is just boring, by comparison.


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## Bagpuss (Oct 17, 2013)

Derren said:


> And imo that hinders role playing as you can't play a role, you can only play yourself.




The acting profession is screwed then. 

In a more complete response....

Of course you can play a role, these are called roleplaying games after all, original D&D didn't have a skill system to deal with social interactions. If you wanted to act as a gruff dwarf then you acted  (to the best of your ability) like a gruff dwarf, if you wanted to play a charismatic swashbuckler you acted (to the best of your ability) as a charismatic swashbuckler.



Derren said:


> And imo that hinders role playing as you can't play a role, you can only play yourself.




You can play a role within your own abilities to act one.



> In such a system the shy introvert can never play the "ladies man" swashbuckler as he simply can't talk so freely and flamboyant as his role would require it.




Yet in many introverts in real life, actually managed to be less so when playing the role of someone else as because they are being a character and not themselves they feel less self conscious.



> He has to depend on the DM to take pity on him and let the NPCs react differently than what they normally would considering what he said.




I wouldn't say "take pity", more have the people skills to know when someone is making an effort, and reward that.



> All the while he is overshadowed by the gruff and technically uncharismatic mercenary because he is played by a veteran RPG player who has no trouble and inhibitions to speak like he is in his role.




If the socially skilled player is actually playing a uncharismatic role correctly then really they should be making efforts to be antisocial. Otherwise they aren't playing the role, they are playing themselves.



> You seem to think that having a skill system would prevent people who want to role play from role playing.




There are two ways it can do this.

1) It becomes a crutch, it is quicker and easier to say "I roll 15 with +5 diplomacy that has to be a success."
2) It be counter to how the player acts, say you have a charismatic player, playing a diplomatic character who spends 5 minutes trying to persuade his way pass the guards, but then the DM asks for a check and he rolls a 1. If the DM listens to the system, then all his roleplaying was pointless, and how often does that need to happen before the player recognizes that what they do doesn't matter only the dice do.



> I disagree. Someone who wants to role play would still role play.




But it is discouraged by a skill system that replaces actual social interaction with the results of dice rolls.


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## fifty (Oct 17, 2013)

I'm sort of with you Mishihari, I've always thought that players should at least attempt to do the talky bit themselves first before going to dice rolls in any system. If they are particularly convincing then the GM can give them a bonus to any dice rolls, and if they're not just let the characters skills do the talking.

My point would be this, speaking in character as your character is for me a huge part of what RP is, and whilst I agree with some of the statements above about not penalising a shy player who wants to play a eloquent character I personally think such players should be encouraged to have a go anyway. 

Role players are in my experience the most tolerant and encouraging folk you could meet, and practice makes perfect.. you never know after a bit of successful banter that shy player might just find he can be talkey after all and even translate those skills to RL.


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## Balesir (Oct 17, 2013)

Mishihari Lord said:


> Agree that this is an area where one needs to be very clear to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings, but the bit about "because I'm confident I can persuade my GM to let me have my way" is very unfair.



Yeah, that's probably a shred of my bias showing through 

How about "...because I prefer trying to get what I want through persuasion to trying to manipulate a mechanical system or gambling on random outcomes"?



Mishihari Lord said:


> I prefer the "GM decides" system because I really enjoy trying to persuade the GM through first-person social interaction with both of us method-acting.  Rolling the dice is just boring, by comparison.



I can see that - for a limited time, at least. I used to engage in this style of play, but when I started to see it as plays and ploys and gambits being finagled instead of as proxy-character conversation it got to be as boring as simple skill checks pretty quickly. It just came down to a player skill check instead of a character one - yawn.

I agree that a simple die roll is boring. I was hoping that 4E might at some point get a system for social challenges that did what I saw the combat system as doing for combat - taking out all the "bad" uncertainties while leaving in all the "good" ones. What I mean here is that, when a player considers what their character's actions will be they have a proxy in their head for what the character knows about the world they grew up in. A resolution system forms a substantial part of that world model. As a result I think the resolution system should give the player roughly as much information about their chances of success as the character would have in the game world, and the knowledge should have similar or analogous limitations. The "single roll" paradigm I think is "bad" because:

- It makes the main uncertainty "will my character screw up", which is often one of the least uncertain things out there.

- It makes no allowance for the fact that one of the biggest advantages of being highly skilled is what I've seen called "locus of control". What this means is the degree to which the actor (as in person taking action, not thespian) can control the outcome of either success or failure mid-action.

This latter one is really interesting. Theatrix was a system predicated on the idea that success or failure were determined by whatever would make the story "more interesting" (this has flaws of its own, but it's not the interesting part), but what skill did was give players more "locus of control". Example: the character is driving a car at speed approaching a bend in the road on a cold night. Then...

1) The player of an unskilled character is told _(success)_ "Whoa - that bend was slick with ice! You sure hope that guy coming the other way got back off the verge OK, 'cos he was only on it because you were technically in his lane..." OR _(failure)_ "Yikes! There's ice on the bend! You clip the guy coming the other way as you spin onto the verge and flip onto the roof..."

2) The player of the skilled character is told _(success)_ "Whoa - the bend ahead is slick with ice! You can see the tell-tale glimmer and, what's more, there's a car coming the other way. You can slow down a little, and you're confident you can get round OK, or you can slow right down in case the guy coming the other way goes out of control - what do you want to do?" OR _(failure)_ "Yikes! There's ice on the bend ahead! At this speed you're pretty sure you won't make it, and there's another car coming the other way. You could try to cut inside the other guy, and probably stay on the road but also probably hit him, or you can head for the grass verge and risk flipping onto the roof - what do you want to do?"

Basically, skilled characters give the player options to choose how they succeed or fail but most of the factors that determine actual success or failure are beyond the character's control. I don't think it fits all situations, and alone it's not enough, but it's an interesting angle to add to a resolution system. It lets highly skilled characters show priorities and character traits through choices *in play* rather than through random determination - which is where I think the crux of roleplaying lies.


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## Crusadius (Oct 17, 2013)

Bagpuss said:


> I disagree, if the robust skill system introduces skills like diplomacy, bluff, etiquette or fast talk for example players can reduce roleplaying to a simple dice roll, that's hardly supporting roleplaying. Where as actually having to step outside the system and really convince the DM by actually being diplomatic or bluffing them, that encourages roleplaying more.




If the "robust skill system" was as complete and detailed as a combat system then I think it could go far to support role-playing.

I mean, what would you think of a role-playing game where combat was reduced to "a simple dice roll" in the same way role-playing games (games that we would now consider "traditional") treated any non-combat action? Why must people think that a robust skill system can only mean "simple dice rolls" for actions such as diplomacy, etiquette or fast talk instead of a more complicated system?

I think the growing criticism people have with regards to games that had a few pages on how to adjudicate non-combat actions (i.e. a single roll of the dice) but many pages detailing the intricacies of combat has led to games introducing better systems for handling those types of actions, bringing those rules to be on par with combat.


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## Libertad (Oct 18, 2013)

Has Golden Sky Stories been mentioned?  It's a Japanese indie RPG (translated into English) where you play as animal spirits who go around helping people:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118784/Golden-Sky-Stories


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## kobold (Oct 18, 2013)

*You wan tto check out Robin Laws Hillfolk*

I'd been following this game for awhile but when Robin Laws explained to my high school sons that the game was designed to mimic Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad they where sold.

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?cat=222

I'm not sure there is even a combat system in the rules, although it definitely allows for lots of bloodshed.


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## Derren (Oct 19, 2013)

Bagpuss said:


> You can play a role within your own abilities to act one.
> Yet in many introverts in real life, actually managed to be less so when playing the role of someone else as because they are being a character and not themselves they feel less self conscious.
> I wouldn't say "take pity", more have the people skills to know when someone is making an effort, and reward that.
> If the socially skilled player is actually playing a uncharismatic role correctly then really they should be making efforts to be antisocial. Otherwise they aren't playing the role, they are playing themselves.
> ...








Mishihari Lord said:


> That's the argument that usually gets made, but I've always thought it's a lousy one.  I find satisfaction in doing first-person social interaction roleplaying well.  It's one of my main sources of enjoyment in RPGs.  Persuading an NPC because I rolled well is empty.  I get the objective but I lose the fun.  RPGs are a social activity - I have no problem with folks who are good at social interaction doing well as a result.  As an analogy, I'm pretty awful at basketball.  When I play I don't expect the other players to give me an advantage to even things up.  The onus is on me.  If I want to do better I need to get better.
> 
> Theoretically you can have a system that substitutes for actual social interaction and still have the players talk it out.  In practice I've never seen that happen.  If players can get what they want just by rolling dice, there's no compelling reason to go to the effort of first-person roleplay.
> 
> ...




You both are somehow thinking that having a skill system prevents roleplaying which is totally false. It allows people who do not want to rp to also play the game by using dice rolls without any effort to play the scene out, but in a rules less game like you propose they simply would not play at all. Likewise, the RP players are still able to talk in character all the time. The only limitation is that to some extend what they say should match the die roll.

And "rewarding someone for making an effort" is still taking pity in him. This also leads to the player not knowing what his character can do as for many interactions only the mood of the DM matters and his personal skill.
I still think that when it comes to role play a robust skill system allows for a vastly better role play experience than a skill less/rules light system, provided the players want to RP, something you automatically assume in your examples of your rules light systems, as it opens up a lot more roles a player can play without always having to hope the DM is in a good mood and allows the character to work despite the players own shortcomings. And that doesn't only apply to social skills but also knowledge, etc.
It also lets the player play a character much more consistently as he knows what his character can reliably do. In a rules light/skill less system a player, especially when he has to depend on the DMs generosity to play his role never knows if the DM is in a good mood and lets you succeed despite your below average performance, even when your character actually should have failed (because the DM is a nice guy) or if the DM suddenly critically judges your performance.

I ask you the next time you play such a system, apply this sort of reasoning to every check, including physicals. Want to do a feat of strength? Arm wrestling with the DM (or his bodybuilder brother depending on the difficulty). Want to hit with a ranged attack? Throw a dart at a dart board.
Thats the kind of situation such system put people into when they do not provide skills. They limit the roles playable by a person by his personal, real world abilities and the generosity of the DM. And that is certainly not supporting role playing, at least not compared to a system with skills where everyone can play anything no matter who he are and what he is good at in real life.


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## Zhaleskra (Oct 19, 2013)

While there are systems that encourage socialization over combat, whether through rewarding non-violent solutions, punishing violent solutions, or both, ultimately it's really up to the group.


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## GrimGent (Oct 22, 2013)

Libertad said:


> Has Golden Sky Stories been mentioned? It's a Japanese indie RPG (translated into English) where you play as animal spirits who go around helping people:
> 
> http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118784/Golden-Sky-Stories




The publisher has a demo download available at http://starlinepublishing.com/golden-sky-stories-tabletop-day-2013-demo/

Violence explicitly doesn't solve anything in _GSS_. In fact, engaging in any serious fighting will reset the character's connection to the local town, which (aside from any potential repercussions for reputation) may well limit their magical powers since those are fueled by points of Wonder earned by developing such social relationships. The system doesn't track damage at all, because while someone might be knocked over or sent running away, the game's simply isn't about the kind of scenarios where anyone ever ends up seriously injured.

Instead, it's about animals that have learned to take on human form helping out with little everyday problems. Even the monster supplement (which hasn't been published in English yet) introduces different friendly creatures to play, not opponents to battle.


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## Celebrim (Oct 22, 2013)

Derren said:


> You both are somehow thinking that having a skill system prevents roleplaying which is totally false.




No, it's not, because....



> It allows people who do not want to rp to also play the game by using dice rolls without any effort to play the scene out...




So it's not 'totally false' then.  It is apparently not a bug but a feature?



> , but in a rules less game like you propose they simply would not play at all.




That's not a given.



> Likewise, the RP players are still able to talk in character all the time.




That's not a given either.



> The only limitation is that to some extend what they say should match the die roll.




What???  So I'm now letting the dice dictate what I say?   That doesn't really sound like freedom to play.  The way I integrate free form role play with mechanical resolution is exactly the opposite of that.   I let the player determine what they say, and the content of their ideas, and to a limited extent the presentation of those ideas - deceptive, appealing, threatening, etc.   Then I let the dice decide how the NPC responds to that content.

But there is something HUGE that is missing from your analysis and an area you are seemingly completely blind to.

The skill system does nothing at all for the most critical aspect of really good role play - intraparty play.  If you don't have good intraparty play, you really don't have good RP at all.  So your guy who is now playing because solely because he doesn't have to RP because he's got lovely dice resolution is still not really integrated in to the group, and is still missing basic skills that the mechanical resolution system is not going to be able to replace.

Moreover, your entire argument is predicated on the idea that the DM is an SOB and just wants to screw you over and is entirely biased and unpredictable and apparently also illogical.   If that is the case, then your mechanical system is unlikely to help, since its the DM that sets the opportunities, the stakes, and the difficulties in most systems.   You are still going to be reliant on the DM's judgment 95% of the time. 

Moreover, your entire argument seems to be predicted on the idea that the reason your role play is to get NPCs to do what you want them to do.   The reason you role play is that this is a role-playing game.   That you get the NPCs to behave in a particular way some of the time is sorta irrelevant.  Role play is the primary window into the world of the shared imagination, and particularly on to the most important things within that world - the NPCs.   If all RP did was let you tell who the players on the stage where, and what their role was, it would be sufficiently worthy in and of itself.  "See I smile and smile, but am a villain.", "a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave", "Before my body, I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"   Role playing is there to make you really care about your defeats and triumphs.  It's not some mere skill challenge to overcome.

There is a fundamental difference between physical and mental skills in an RPG - one that cannot be mitigated merely by providing mental skills.   The body of the player may not be present within the game world so that they can use it in the game, but the mind of the game is unavoidably present in the game whether we like it or not.   You focus on having the skill system provide skills to the character that the player doesn't have, but to a large extent it cannot do that.  Even more so, the skill system is there to ensure that the character does not receive skills that the player has, but to a large extent it cannot prevent that.   The problem with a stupid character in the hands of a smart player is regardless of what the numbers on the paper say, you can't remove the players judgment and problem solving skills completely.  The problem with a high social skill character in the hands of a socially inept player is that you can't remove the poor social judgment from the play entirely.  

If you were to try to do that, then you really would end up with a system where it didn't matter what the player said or did - the dice was dictating what the character did and the player was just acting out the will of the dice like some complex computer function receiving input.  

Player: "I want to listen at the door."
DM: Make an intelligence check to see if you are smart enough to do that.

Player: "I slap the king."
DM: Make diplomacy check to see if he likes it.

Social and mental skills are inherently different than physical skills.  Sorry to break it to you.


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## FickleGM (Oct 22, 2013)

Actually, Derren's first statement is correct. It is a totally false claim that having skills prevents roleplaying.


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## Celebrim (Oct 22, 2013)

FickleGM said:


> Actually, Derren's first statement is correct. It is a totally false claim that having skills prevents roleplaying.




Be as that may, the provided evidence:



> It allows people who do not want to rp to also play the game by using dice rolls *without any effort to play the scene out*...




Not only doesn't support that claim it flat out undermines it.  Moreover, since it was provided as evidence, it very much makes the poster sound like he's saying 'not playing the scene out' is a good thing.  Considering that he spends the rest of the essay arguing for the superiority of not playing things out, I find it hard to believe he's really advocating for role playing.  

Exactly what I actually think can be teased out of my response, but never expect me to accept even a good thesis on the basis of poor evidence and bad logic.   The poster I'm responding to filled almost his entire essay with evidence that supported in every detail the claims of the people he was supposedly contradicting.


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## FickleGM (Oct 22, 2013)

Oh, I have no doubt that skills can, and in some cases do, facilitate the circumvention of roleplaying, but that does not equate to the prevention of roleplaying.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 22, 2013)

Character constraints are incredibly important to many roleplaying games, whether it be social, mental, or physical constraints. How much of a constraint is present upon the character is a matter of taste, but saying that a character's ability to aim a gun is fundamentally a different thing than a character's ability to woo a barmaid is not a hard fact but a matter of taste, seeing as many RPGs equate the two. Lots of people like to use those constraints in order to create a role for themselves, mechanically, that they can follow.


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## Derren (Oct 25, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> No, it's not, because....




As FickleGM already pointed out you are wrong here and the rest of your post isn't much better. Your "examples" are downright silly.
So I do not think any further discussion with you about this is necessary or sensible.

You think a skill system turns people who want to role play into roll players who suddenly stop to role play and I think a skill system allows those role players to play more roles as they do not need to match their social skills while also allowing roll players to play the game as a side effect.
Thats the end of it.


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 25, 2013)

Zhaleskra said:


> While there are systems that encourage socialization over combat, whether through rewarding non-violent solutions, punishing violent solutions, or both, ultimately it's really up to the group.




DING!  Fries are done. 

The reward system can be a big influence after group preference of course. GURPS is completely roleplaying focused because character points are awarded solely on how well you roleplayed your character. It doesn't matter how much combat or action your preferred style includes.


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## bert1000 (Oct 27, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> What??? So I'm now letting the dice dictate what I say? That doesn't really sound like freedom to play. The way I integrate free form role play with mechanical resolution is exactly the opposite of that. I let the player determine what they say, and the content of their ideas, and to a limited extent the presentation of those ideas - deceptive, appealing, threatening, etc. Then I let the dice decide how the NPC responds to that content.




Assuming the dice roll (modified by skills, etc.) is the mechanism that determines the reality of the in game fiction, then I actually prefer to let the dice influence what I say.      I find this actually supports good roleplaying.  Roleplaying defined as “making decisions, taking actions, saying things, etc. as if I had the characters abilities, personality, experience, history, etc.” 

It certainly cuts down on your “freedom to play”, but in a good way I would argue.   If you are playing a role, it’s nice to have some guidance that helps model that role (in this case the social skill check).

I generally prefer:

1) State intent  (“I’d like to convince the landowner that the goblin threat is real and he should let us march through his lands”)
2) Roll to determine outcome (Failure)
3) DM / player jointly role-play description of outcome and dialogue (Player: “You have a wonderful heard of cattle, Lord Abernathy”  DM:  “I hate kiss ups.   My cattle are the same cattle as my neighbors.  Why are you here?  Etc.”

This has several advantages.   It rewards resources spent on character traits/abilities, it avoids awkward retcons after the roll is made, it removes Player and DM personal ability and preferences from the outcome (a feature in this case), and it allows the player and DM to create a description of the result together, which is fun and easier.   If the player rolls a failure he has all kinds of creative leeway in figuring out how it ends of being a failure and the DM can help.   Same with a success.   In groups that enjoy roleplaying for roleplaying’s sake, I think this method works well.  Not sure this would “incentive” those who don’t want to do so.

To me, this is more fun as well.   I get to figure out how to lead the conversation, etc. toward the determined outcome and I get a partner to do so (the DM).

It’s not my favorite but I don’t hate a more player ability influenced game like you are describing, but I do want it to be spelled out clearly upfront that that is the way things work.  And I don’t want any options for character resources to be spent on the mental/social etc. abilities that get overridden by player skill.


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## Celebrim (Oct 27, 2013)

bert1000 said:


> I generally prefer:
> 
> 1) State intent  (“I’d like to convince the landowner that the goblin threat is real and he should let us march through his lands”)
> 2) Roll to determine outcome (Failure)
> 3) DM / player jointly role-play description of outcome and dialogue (Player: “You have a wonderful heard of cattle, Lord Abernathy”  DM:  “I hate kiss ups.   My cattle are the same cattle as my neighbors.  Why are you here?  Etc.”




I generally prefer:

1) Engage in dialogue.  
2) If a debatable point arises, roll to determine outcome.
3) NPC becomes resolved to a position based on the outcome.

This has several advantages.   First, it makes dialogue the natural means of interaction and not something that only occurs as a result of a fortune roll.  After all, we never really know what sort of debatable propositions might arise spontaneously in a conversation.  A player could naturalistically attempt to bluff, persuade, or bully an NPC without a lot of premeditation.  This can be fun itself, like player realizing what he's just said comes off as a threat.  Ooops.   Secondly, humans are linear creatures.  We don't like to know the outcome, and once we do know the outcome we often lose interest in the process.  This is why most sporting events are live, and watching reruns of sporting events is a fairly rare activity.  By placing the fortune as late as possible in the process, we increase interest in the process and make it as engrossing as possible.  Thirdly, it means that role-playing dialogue is obligatory (a feature in this case).  Under your construction, you can do away with step #3 altogether, and the DM can simply affirm or deny the proposition.  Under my construction, it's necessary to at least attempt the dialogue.  This ultimately results in more skillful and enjoyable play.



> It’s not my favorite but I don’t hate a more player ability influenced game like you are describing, but I do want it to be spelled out clearly upfront that that is the way things work.  And I don’t want any options for character resources to be spent on the mental/social etc. abilities that get overridden by player skill.




I don't entirely want that either, but I do want to cultivate player skill.   I have a player who is very awkward and introverted and lacks self-confidence.  As it happens his character has become the party leader (through a series of circumstances), and his character is also supposed to be fairly charismatic and diplomatic.   He stammers and stutters his way through scenes, and is sometimes embarrassed.   But that doesn't stop his character from succeeding socially because well, +9 diplomacy check.   As a DM I really only care about the content of his words.  The dice determine the polish, magnetism, and nuance of the presentation.   Sometimes the player in a fit of self-doubt apologizes to me after the session for role-playing so badly, and I tell him that the character is automatically better at these things than he is, or probably anyone at the table is.   In the novelization of the game, his words get transformed into graceful and forceful phrases.   The important thing is that he convey the content of the message and that he's getting better and better at this all the time, so that there are more and more moments where the character's dialogue is itself a shining moment of awesomeness.

The player gets a bonus or penalty if his content is especially appropriate or inappropriate, but these modifiers are generally small (normally -3 to +3) and knowledge of what content is appropriate is something that the players are expected to learn - for example, another NPC might tell them that this NPC is partial to fish and will look favorably on fish as a present, or they may learn that the NPC cares more about his daughter than anything in the world and may make the appeal on the basis of his concern for her, or that the NPC once committed a great crime and if the players deduce that offering him explicitly a chance to make restitution will make their case more strongly I will reward that with a bonus.   Other bonuses can apply based on the NPCs biases.  Most of the time the respected cleric of the sun deity is a better choice of negotiator than the hobgoblin outcast, but if you are negotiating with a goblin the playing field is more level.   It's actually in my opinion unfair not to apply modifiers in these circumstances because the player - even if he's barely able to articulate - is behaving skillfully.   Again, it's not possible to totally remove player skill from the equation - ultimately it the character is brought to life by an intelligence - and really, I don't see why you'd want to.

To me, this is more fun.  

I was 12 when I was taught this, and I have been profoundly grateful on many levels ever since.  I had been DMing since about 10 for other school kids, and we would say things like, "I introduce myself to the guard." and "The guard asks you what your business is in the town."   We 'borrowed' an older DM for a game, and I role-played in my usual manner, "I introduce myself to the king." (or whatever NPC it was), and the DM said, "Yeah, but what do you _say_."  I was immediately embarrassed, because suddenly my normal fear of social situations kicked in.  But, also I was immediately thrilled, because I sensed a whole new level of possibilities.   It is the level were an RPG begins to become an art form.


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## Crusadius (Oct 27, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> What???  So I'm now letting the dice dictate what I say?   That doesn't really sound like freedom to play.  The way I integrate free form role play with mechanical resolution is exactly the opposite of that.   I let the player determine what they say, and the content of their ideas, and to a limited extent the presentation of those ideas - deceptive, appealing, threatening, etc.   Then I let the dice decide how the NPC responds to that content.




I think its actually the dice determines the effectiveness of what you say.

A social encounter is still determined by what a character says. If a character (Player) is talking to the King and says "I want to kill you" instead of "Your majesty's wisdom has no match in the kingdom", rolling the dice is not going to turn the former into the latter and endear the character to the King (in the same manner a Player who says that their character swings their sword at the wall instead of a foe will not strike the foe).

The reason for social skills is the same reason why combat skills exist - they shape/limit the character's ability in those areas. If a Player is naturally capable at public speaking but creates a character who has no public speaking skills at all then their (the Player's) own natural talent should not translate into an advantage for the character.

I am not opposed to "free-form" role-play but ultimately, like combat, it is my opinion that rolling the dice should be the deciding factor regarding how well the character does (and not a determination by the Game Master that could be based on anything from how well the Player narrates to the fact that the Player chose to wear a blue shirt today).

Else a Game Master should advise Players that social skills are a waste of time for the game they are running and just to focus on skills/abilities/attributes that help characters to kill things.


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## Celebrim (Oct 27, 2013)

Crusadius said:


> I think its actually the dice determines the effectiveness of what you say...The reason for social skills is the same reason why combat skills exist - they shape/limit the character's ability in those areas. If a Player is naturally capable at public speaking but creates a character who has no public speaking skills at all then their (the Player's) own natural talent should not translate into an advantage for the character.




Well, I outlined my own take on this extensively in the post just prior to yours, but the question of whether a player's "own natural talent should not translate into an advantage for the character" depends on what you mean by that, precisely because of what you have just said:



> A social encounter is still determined by what a character says.




Precisely.  Any problem solving encounter - how to climb a slippery flowstone, how to open a trapped chest, who to navigate a mazelike dungeon - is ultimately dependent on what actions the character takes.  Talking through a social dialogue is simply another series of choices.  And what the character says is determined by what the player animates the character to say.   Consider your example:



> If a character (Player) is talking to the King and says "I want to kill you" instead of "Your majesty's wisdom has no match in the kingdom", rolling the dice is not going to turn the former into the latter and endear the character to the King (in the same manner a Player who says that their character swings their sword at the wall instead of a foe will not strike the foe).




Exactly.  This is the heart of the matter.   You will have players that are so socially ineffectual that they continually say things like, "I want to kill you." to the king and who are abrasive, offensive, and insulting when they mean to be otherwise.   Such players will have difficulty running socially effective characters not because of their own lack of charisma, but because of their own anti-social choices they are making when they animate their character.   Likewise, you could have a player whose character is on paper a tremendous combatant, but I can't stop such a player from making massively ineffectual and rash tactical decisions, or simply from being tactically passive.  I've had players who repeatedly essentially skip combat rounds, taking no action or no action of consequence because they are too afraid of making a mistake.   On paper the character is effective.  In practice the character is not nearly as effective as it could be.  If the player lacks tactical skill, and charges into ambushes, allows himself to become surrounded, is passive when he should be active and active when he should be passive, hides when he should attack and attacks when he should flee, what am I the DM to do - point out that his character is supposed to be a great tactician and play the character for him?  Or make an intelligence check before each combat round and give advice on the results of that, which amounts to much the same thing?  No amount of on paper intelligence and wisdom can turn a character into an intelligent and wise character if the player animating the character makes foolish decisions.   It can make a character knowledgeable and perceptive despite the player's lack of knowledge and perceptiveness, but it can't keep the player from doing entirely stupid things.   High combat skills can allow a character to succeed despite tactical understanding by the player, but it can't replace it.

In the same manner, no amount of diplomacy or savoir-faire skill on a character sheet can make a tactless, aggressive player who prefers to solve problems with a battle axe diplomatic.  

So, when we say that a character's charisma can replace a player's charisma, it depends entirely on what you mean by that.  A character can be magnetic, attractive, and desirable even if the player is unattractive and has odious personal habits.  A character can be smooth, confident, and to some extent glib even if the player panics, is awkward and stutters.   Diplomacy skill on the character sheet can do all these things.   But it can't make the character make good choices.  To a certain extent, a character's high social skills and likeability can mitigate the effect of those bad choices - an NPC may tolerate frankness, nosiness, rudeness, and tactlessness from a high charisma PC in a way they never would from a low charisma PC.   But at some point, the player's decisions simply overrule any thing that is on the character sheet.

The reverse is also true.   While a highly intelligent and perceptive individual may have an easier time playing someone clueless and stupid than the reverse, it's still ultimately impossible for a smart player to play a truly stupid character because that awareness is always there biasing the choices.


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## Bedrockgames (Oct 27, 2013)

I think folks are raising some interesting points here. This is something i have been thinking about an awful lot lately, and been having pretty extensive discussions with my group about. I see a few different positions emerging here, and i really do think the whole social skill thin and their impact upon is very much a matter of personal experience and taste. I get where the folks are coming from who see social skills as enabling roleplay and making for more accurate characterizations of pCsand i would concede those things can be true for many. But it also depends on what roleplaying means to to you. For me, roleplaying isnt about simulating a character or portraying it accuratey like an actor might. For me roleplay is really just speaking in character, feeling like i am making decisions that matter, etc. So i do find social skills can interefere with that for me. I do realize social skills are widley used, i use them in my own games because players like them, but i have always had this tension with them. I really like puzzle solving and mystery adventures, so i tend to feel their intrusion there. I want to feel like i am the one solving the mystery, or solving the puzzle, not like i made a bunch of rolls to find clues and ask the right questions. Again,  good gm can wield a skill system and still give me that feeling, but alot of times social skills make me feel like i am a step removed from what is going on in the game world.


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## Derren (Oct 28, 2013)

Bedrockgames said:


> I want to feel like *i* am the one solving the mystery, or solving the puzzle, not like i made a bunch of rolls to find clues and ask the right questions




So when *you* want to solve the puzzles instead of your character why are you playing a role playing game and not a puzzle game?


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## Bedrockgames (Oct 28, 2013)

Derren said:


> So when *you* want to solve the puzzles instead of your character why are you playing a role playing game and not a puzzle game?



Because I like roleplaying games more than puzzles. I enjoy acting through my PC in a fictional world. I just prefer to interface with things like puzzle solving, socializing, etc directly, rather than through a skill system. I am not saying this is the only way to do it, or that people who like social skills in games are wrong. I am just saying what I find fun. And for me, social skills sometimes get in the way of the parts of the game I enjoy (for instance questioning an NPC during an investigation, or tracking down clues). If I am rolling for these things, it just feels less immersive to me. YMMV. If you like social skills, that is great. I am not here to knock them, or say they everyone will have the same experience with them as I do (and as I stated before I do use them in games, I just find them a bit frustrating). Nor am I trying to define roleplaying for everyone. I am just pointing out, that it isn't necessarily about characterization for everyone. For some people its more like playing a character but also playing yourself a bit, in that the goal is to just feel like you are in the character's shoes and not worry so much about how the PCs problem solving or socializing skills differ from your own.


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## Crusadius (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Exactly.  This is the heart of the matter.   You will have players that are so socially ineffectual that they continually say things like, "I want to kill you." to the king and who are abrasive, offensive, and insulting when they mean to be otherwise.




The thing is that the rules cannot deal with such Players. Neither can real life.

If a Player says "I want to kill you" to a king when they really mean "forsooth, for thou art a king most wise" then until we develop telepathic powers to be able to distinguish the true meaning of a Player's utterances the best a Game Master can do is ask "do you really mean to say that?" before continuing.

And this really is now getting beyond discussion of using dice rolls to determine social conflicts into managing problem Players (because a Player who is so socially ineffectual in the management of their character either is really being disruptive for the lulz or also has problems socializing with other people).


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## Argyle King (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Social and mental skills are inherently different than physical skills.  Sorry to break it to you.




I disagree.

I understand your point of view from your previous post, but I very much disagree.  You seem to be of the opinion that a player cannot play the mentality of a character separately from the mentality of the player.  That is something I very much disagree with because I've done it.  

I do agree with some of your underlying points.  It is difficult to separate player from character for many people.  I likewise agree with player/character actions having an impact on dice rolls.  However, I disagree that social and mental skills are inherently different than physical skills.

I likewise disagree that skill systems get in the way of roleplaying.  I disagree because one of the rpgs I play the most (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/) has a skill system which is fairly in depth, but I do not feel it gets in the way of roleplaying at all.  In fact, for me personally, I find the system as a whole (not just skills) helps roleplaying more so than some of the d20 games I also have sitting on my shelf.


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## Balesir (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> You will have players that are so socially ineffectual that they continually say things like, "I want to kill you." to the king and who are abrasive, offensive, and insulting when they mean to be otherwise.   Such players will have difficulty running socially effective characters not because of their own lack of charisma, but because of their own anti-social choices they are making when they animate their character.   Likewise, you could have a player whose character is on paper a tremendous combatant, but I can't stop such a player from making massively ineffectual and rash tactical decisions, or simply from being tactically passive.  I've had players who repeatedly essentially skip combat rounds, taking no action or no action of consequence because they are too afraid of making a mistake.   On paper the character is effective.  In practice the character is not nearly as effective as it could be.  If the player lacks tactical skill, and charges into ambushes, allows himself to become surrounded, is passive when he should be active and active when he should be passive, hides when he should attack and attacks when he should flee, what am I the DM to do - point out that his character is supposed to be a great tactician and play the character for him?  Or make an intelligence check before each combat round and give advice on the results of that, which amounts to much the same thing?  No amount of on paper intelligence and wisdom can turn a character into an intelligent and wise character if the player animating the character makes foolish decisions.   It can make a character knowledgeable and perceptive despite the player's lack of knowledge and perceptiveness, but it can't keep the player from doing entirely stupid things.   High combat skills can allow a character to succeed despite tactical understanding by the player, but it can't replace it.



I can see what you are driving at, here, but have one unresolved problem with it. It seems that, given all the dialogue and player specification of wording and so on, that the effects of the tactics chosen are made up on the spot by the DM. The problem with that is that the player has no way of knowing what those effects will be - they are really just trying what they think the GM will consider "cool" and hoping for the best. I don't really consider that application of player skill - it's the social equivalent of "spray and pray" tactics.

I would much prefer a set of rules that has specific tactics and effects for social interactions that involve some "tension". I draw a distinction between two types of "unknown":

Type 1) Attributes, conditions and keywords are "owned" by the NPCs but the players don't necessarily know what they are (although in principle they could discover them); these determine the outcome of the social encounter.

Type 2) There isn't really any "system" for the interchange determined up-front, so the GM makes up modifiers, reactions and implications on the fly. A natural implication of this is that players have no real way to know what the implications of their choices will be except by guesswork based on their knowledge of the GM's belief structures, biases and preferences.

Of these I don't mind type 1 at all - they are the very stuff of dramatic play, I think - but I much prefer to minimise type 2 as far as possible. Type 1 I think allows for "tactical" play and the application of player skill and reason; type 2 allows only for "GM reading" and "GM playing" IMV.


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## Celebrim (Oct 28, 2013)

Johnny3D3D said:


> You seem to be of the opinion that a player cannot play the mentality of a character separately from the mentality of the player.  That is something I very much disagree with because I've done it.




No, I am of the opinion that a player cannot perfectly play the mentality of a character separate from the mentality of the player, especially when it comes to matters of intelligence and insight.  It's easier for example for an intelligent person to adequately play an intelligent person with a different belief and ethical outlook than their own, than it is for them to play someone who is always clueless.  And it's easier for a DM to do this with respect to an NPC, than it is for a player to do with a PC, because the player invests his ego in the PC and is generally emotionally committed to the PC's health and success.   When it becomes a matter of victory or survival, it's easy to convince yourself to fudge and pull a Forest Gump trope - where the 'stupid' character you play has an intelligent person's insight but is by convention of the story unaware of his own insights and understanding.



> It is difficult to separate player from character for many people.




No, it's difficult for everyone all the time and impossible for everyone at least some of the time.  



> However, I disagree that social and mental skills are inherently different than physical skills.




You should provide some evidence or argument for this belief then.



> I likewise disagree that skill systems get in the way of roleplaying.




Well, if you'll back up to the beginning of my interaction in this thread you'll see my actual belief is that mechanical resolution systems are independent of whether role playing takes place.  Ultimately, whether role-playing takes place is a decision of the group, and not a decision of the rules.   Nonetheless, I agree with some other posters in this thread that mechanical resolution systems for social conflict are often in practice used to eliminate the need for and utility of role-playing, and that highly detailed mechanical systems tend reduce social interaction to just another tactical war game and thereby produce a game that often has a character very much the opposite of the designers intentions.


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## Celebrim (Oct 28, 2013)

Balesir said:


> It seems that, given all the dialogue and player specification of wording and so on, that the effects of the tactics chosen are made up on the spot by the DM.




If you've been around EnWorld at all, you should be familiar with the derision with which I hold purely improvisational DMing.  If you are saying it is impossible for a DM that is engaged in improvisation to be perfectly fair, then I agree with you - though I would extend that to every feature of the game world from whether a trap exists on the door to how many monsters arrive as reinforcements.   There is nothing special about a social challenge in this sense.   We could equally complain that the DC to do anything depends on the DM's mood and whim if he doesn't hold himself to a design.   Secret doors that come into being when an NPC needs an escape route similarly can't be planned for by the PC's.  Magical defenses that only come into being when the PC's reveal a particular plan of action to the DM are a similar problem.



> The problem with that is that the player has no way of knowing what those effects will be - they are really just trying what they think the GM will consider "cool" and hoping for the best. I don't really consider that application of player skill - it's the social equivalent of "spray and pray" tactics.




To the extent that this is true, it is true of any 'fog of war' type situation and not social interactions only.  Yes, I know many gamers get frustrated when they can't make choices based on perfect and reliable information - they are the sort that in 1e felt it cheating by the DM to not identify the monster by its monster manual entry or to use a stat block other than the official one in the monster manual.  



> I would much prefer a set of rules that has specific tactics and effects for social interactions that involve some "tension".




I don't necessarily have a problem with that.  But I will say that the PC's might not always know what tension is present and important any more than they would know enough to choose between the left fork and right fork in a dungeon. 



> Type 1) Attributes, conditions and keywords are "owned" by the NPCs but the players don't necessarily know what they are (although in principle they could discover them); these determine the outcome of the social encounter.
> 
> Type 2) There isn't really any "system" for the interchange determined up-front, so the GM makes up modifiers, reactions and implications on the fly. A natural implication of this is that players have no real way to know what the implications of their choices will be except by guesswork based on their knowledge of the GM's belief structures, biases and preferences.
> 
> Of these I don't mind type 1 at all - they are the very stuff of dramatic play, I think - but I much prefer to minimise type 2 as far as possible. Type 1 I think allows for "tactical" play and the application of player skill and reason; type 2 allows only for "GM reading" and "GM playing" IMV.




In general I agree with you.   In practice however, a certain amount of 'type 2' occurs whenever the DM improvises - whether it's a map of the social interactions or a map of the dungeon - and since no DM can perfectly prepare up front for everything, a certain amount of improvisation always occurs.   However, it's something the DM should attempt to minimize, and in general the DM should endeavor to be generous toward player proposals rather than playing a game of 'gotcha'.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> You should provide some evidence or argument for this belief then.




As a point of clarity, are you saying that social skills are different than physical skills mechanically/in-gameplay or philosophically?


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## Celebrim (Oct 28, 2013)

In general, let me address everyone that denies mental skills are of a different character than physical skills.

Suppose you wanted to run Tomb of Horrors for your group.  And, upon floating this idea, you learned that one player had prior to your suggestion bought a copy of the module and memorized the text.   However, the player says, "Don't worry.  I'll just role-play my character and pretend that I don't actually know anything about the module."

Would you agree that the player could do this so perfectly that his play during the game was exactly the same as the play and experience the player would have had he not already known every detail of the module?   That is to say, the successes and revelations the player (and therefore the character) has would be simply and exactly the same set of insights the player would have had they never encountered the text, and any failures would be exactly the same failures that the player would have had made in ignorance?   

Because the only way you can argue that mental skills and physical skills are exactly the same, is if you can sustain the belief that metagame information never informs a player's choices.   A character's intelligence is different than a character's strength because the character's intelligence - unlike his strength - is supposed to inform the choices that the character makes.  But the character is in fact only an avatar of the player, and it is always the player that makes those choices.   You can therefore dissociate completely a character's physical skills from the physical skills of the players, because these are pure action resolution, but you can never completely dissociate a character's mental skills from the mental skill of the player.   A player's physical body does not extend into the game world, but the player's volition and insight does because ultimately the game world is a shared mental space.


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## Balesir (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> In practice however, a certain amount of 'type 2' occurs whenever the DM improvises - whether it's a map of the social interactions or a map of the dungeon - and since no DM can perfectly prepare up front for everything, a certain amount of improvisation always occurs.   However, it's something the DM should attempt to minimize, and in general the DM should endeavor to be generous toward player proposals rather than playing a game of 'gotcha'.



OK, I think we are pretty much in agreement - thanks for the clarification. I accept this last comment entirely - I wrote "minimise type 2 as far as possible" instead of "eliminate type 2" precisely because I don't think it is possible to eliminate such uncertainty entirely. I do think moving away from "process sim" rules can help, here, though - _vide_ such things as FATE points.


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## Derren (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> In general, let me address everyone that denies mental skills are of a different character than physical skills.




And what has this to do with social skills which were until now the focus of this discussion?


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## Celebrim (Oct 28, 2013)

Derren said:


> And what has this to do with social skills which were until now the focus of this discussion?




*sigh*

Because social skills are also another type of mental skill.  Charisma and Social Skills represent fitness within and control over a social environment.   As such, the actions of the character depend intimately on the choices of the player.  

Consider the iconic case of being caught by the guards sneaking in the Baron's house, and deciding to bluff your way past the guards.

Scenario #1:
Player: "I'm going to bluff the guards.  I have a +9 in the bluff skill.... 17 with modifiers that's a 26."
DM: "That's a really good bluff, the guards decide to let you go."

That's 'role-playing' in the sense that a cRPG is 'role-playing'.  But it's missing well pretty much all the things that make role playing interesting.   Even more importantly, we don't know what the guards believe now.  We don't really understand from this where the story goes.  We could have the DM decide what the guards believe, but that would be indirectly roleplaying the PC since the DM has decided what the PC said.   We could have the DM and the PC negotiate over what the PC said, fortune at the beginning, but this still relies on the DM deciding what works and probably involves (as the next example will demonstrate) passing meta-game information to the player.  True roleplaying, in the sense we'd want to make social skills match the decision to attack something with a sword, open the door on the left, or climb the north wall involves greater specificity over the player's actual choice.

Scenario #2:
Player: "I'm going to bluff the guards.  I have a +9 in the bluff skill."
DM: "But what do you say."
Player: "I'm gong to imply that I'm the Baron's new mistress, and I was sneaking around to be discrete."
DM: Ok... roll the dice.
Player: 17... and with modifiers a 26.

With a choice, the mental judgment call from the player, however comes a problem.  We can assume that the character projects absolute sincerity even the player lacks this skill, but the particular lie may or may not be suited to the situation - just as charging into a particular square in combat may or may not be suited to the situation.  

Consider the information that the player might not have, which the DM at the time may have already written into the scenario:

a) The Baron is a renowned lecher, and young women come and go all the time.  This is a highly believable bluff that probably shouldn't require much skill to make, and which is unlikely to cause much comment.  Is the DM wrong to make the DC low?
b) The Baron is a 80 year old man renowned for devotion to his wife.  So even if this unlikely bluff succeeds despite high assigned DC ("I'd sooner believe it is going to snow at the midsummer festival!"), the PC's bluff may create a scandal that causes the lie to unravel spectacularly.  Is the DM wrong to make the DC high? 
c) The Baron is known by the guards to only be attracted to men/young boys/goblins/merfolk/etc.  
d) The current mistress of the Baron is well known to the guards, who are used to arranging all such trysts.
e) The Baron has just instructed the guards to murder his new mistress, whom they've never seen before, and a case of mistaken identity has just occurred.  

Each of these cases requires the DM to make some judgment about the suitability of the lie and its consequences (whether it is believed or not).   It's clear that different choices by the player influence the outcome of the social challenge.   Now consider that the player may have learned IC one of the above facts (which ever is true), and at the time he's asked, "What do you say?", he recalls the fact and realizes its importance in the situation so that it informs the choice he makes.  A less perceptive player, might not recall that information or its suitability or even attempted to research such facts before deciding to go house breaking - despite the fact that the character ostensibly is intelligent and we'd expect them to behave differently.  What are we to do though, make the choices for the player, depriving them of agency?

In this way, we can show that social skills are not of the same category as say the ability of the character to jump.  A physical skill like 'jump' says the character can jump, but not when to jump or over what obstacle.  Nonetheless the chance of success isn't really dependent on a player choice.  A social skill however says the character can bluff, but the chance of success is still dependent on a player choice and understanding. 

Now, if the DM knows nothing about the Baron, and he decides things on the fly, then the DM is railroading in some fashion or another, even if he's ruling favorably - ei, DM now jots down that the Baron is a lecher to make the bluff work.


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## Argyle King (Oct 28, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> No, I am of the opinion that a player cannot perfectly play the mentality of a character separate from the mentality of the player, especially when it comes to matters of intelligence and insight.  It's easier for example for an intelligent person to adequately play an intelligent person with a different belief and ethical outlook than their own, than it is for them to play someone who is always clueless.  And it's easier for a DM to do this with respect to an NPC, than it is for a player to do with a PC, because the player invests his ego in the PC and is generally emotionally committed to the PC's health and success.   When it becomes a matter of victory or survival, it's easy to convince yourself to fudge and pull a Forest Gump trope - where the 'stupid' character you play has an intelligent person's insight but is by convention of the story unaware of his own insights and understanding.




All I can really do in response to this is to try giving an example.  

As a player, I have a very good grasp of tactics when it comes to combat.  That is due to having a military background in a combat arms MOS, and due to having used those skills in action.  Likewise, one of my big interests is historical warfare and tactics.  When it comes to that sort of thing, I would dare say I'm rather skilled.  

In contrast, one of the characters I currently play has very little in the way of experience when it comes to combat.  In fact, the character started the campaign as an escaped slave who had never even gone on an adventure.  There have been times when his (the character's) decision making progress was very different from what mine would have been given the same situation.  A big reason for that difference is because of my view that the character would not have some of the knowledge available to him which is available to me; as such, there were things I did not think about or consider when viewing the game world from his point of view.

I do recognize that I'm possibly an outlier when it comes to being able to do that.  All I can say is that I've never had a problem separating myself from the mind of a character when I've really wanted to.  It's not something I always do, but it's certainly something I can do.  I've done it both as a player playing a PC, and as a GM playing the part of a NPC.


As far as your Forest Gump example, sure that happens.  However, how easily that can happen might depend upon the system.  There are systems which have mechanics to prevent a player from choosing actions opposed by the mentality of their character.  In such a system, I might choose a disadvantage such as Honesty during character creation which makes it difficult for me to lie.  In that same hypothetical game, there may come a time when I want to lie to the town guard about something my adventuring companions are doing; depending on the severity of the lie, I may be required to make some sort of roll to overcome my character's usual personality.  



Celebrim said:


> In general, let me address everyone that denies  mental skills are of a different character than physical skills.
> 
> Suppose you wanted to run Tomb of Horrors for your group.  And, upon  floating this idea, you learned that one player had prior to your  suggestion bought a copy of the module and memorized the text.    However, the player says, "Don't worry.  I'll just role-play my  character and pretend that I don't actually know anything about the  module."
> 
> ...





I do not believe metagaming proves much of anything about mental  character skills being different.  It's just as possible for me to metagame my  character's physical skills.  For example, I know that in D&D 4E I  can survive falls which would likely kill me (or at least cripple me) in  real life.  As such, the metagame informs me that I am willing to take  physical risks that I otherwise wouldn't in a different system or in  reality.  As such, those are times when metagame information has changed how I used physical skills.  

To answer your question, I do suspect many people  would be tempted to use knowledge they have.  However, it's very easy  for a GM to work around that by simply changing parts of an adventure;  even trivial changes can lead to a world of woe for someone who relies  too heavily on metagame information.  

Now, I would agree that it is difficult for a GM to enforce mental stats and skills on a player.  It is difficult because such things are not strictly measured in the same way a physical score measures encumbrance thresholds and things of that nature.  However, I do not believe it is impossible.  One of the ways I believe it is very possible is by training your players to expect that relying too heavily on metagaming can lead to bad consequences.  A second way is by doing what many game systems do; that is to reward roleplaying rather than encounter solving.  There are systems which reward roleplaying with character points and character advancement rather than strictly equating success with XP.


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## Balesir (Oct 29, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> We could have the DM and the PC negotiate over what the PC said, fortune at the beginning, but this still relies on the DM deciding what works and probably involves (as the next example will demonstrate) passing meta-game information to the player.  True roleplaying, in the sense we'd want to make social skills match the decision to attack something with a sword, open the door on the left, or climb the north wall involves greater specificity over the player's actual choice.



If a skilled swordsman character's player rolls a "1", what happens? There will be some reason why the attack failed here, too, but we don't typically decide it beforehand. I don't see why a range of unknowns cannot be subsumed into the die roll in social encounters in exactly the same way.

In other words, there is a "third way" in addition to those you outlined, and it works like this:

- game setup determines DC from situation. level of encounter, or whatever

- player decides what will happen if the roll succeeds (possibly by stating what the character says, or just by describing the story that the character tries to sell)

- GM decides what failure vectors might exist, which might include any of the above

- roll the dice; on a success the guards buy the story described by the player (possibly, on a "partial success", with some twist or complication added by the GM)

- on a failure the GM describes why the attempt fails using one of the "vectors" selected earlier (and, possibly, on a partial failure the player gets to add a twist or mitigation)

If pertinent facts are known by both GM and player beforehand these may modify the DC, but unknown complications generally don't need to. The direction of the modification can be pretty moot, actually, since knowing the Baron likes young goblins (for instance) can either mean the story just won't be tried or may allow a bonus for a disguise kit...

Universalis has, perhaps, the most comprehensive system like this. Successes and failures both earn story coins that can be spent to define/describe consequences by both the winner and the loser players (there is no "GM" in Universalis). It works pretty well once the players get used to the paradigm.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 29, 2013)

The jump example is an interesting one. "Jumping" is a description of the fiction. When you say you're jumping, what you're saying is that in the fiction you're going to attempt to jump. That just happens to also be represented by a very specific skill in D&D 3e that only pertains to the fiction of jumping. Look at some other RPGs, perhaps FATE. In that system, you have the Athletics skill that encompasses most physical maneuvers. Suddenly, the fiction of jumping is separate from the mechanics of task resolution. 

You can't just say "I athletics my way past the obstacle." _How_ are you using athletics to get past the obstacle? Are you climbing down and back up? Are you trying to move across the wall? Are you jumping? You don't know unless you describe the fiction. Each different application of the fiction onto the world will lead to a different outcome. Are there dangers at the bottom of the pit? What are the walls made out of? Is this dungeon known for illusions? Traps? All of these will help the player determine how they should approach the situation.

Moving on to a different system that handles things fairly differently is Apocalypse World. In AW, you describe the fiction, and that fiction is what triggers a move. The thing being here that a move might be or might not be triggered, or a different move than expected might be triggered. It will be determined by the fiction of what is going on around you. And, as the game continues, the fiction described will affect how you have to act and react.

So in AW you have moves like Act Under Fire and Go Aggro. You can never just say you're acting under fire. That doesn't mean anything without the context of the fiction and an explanation of what you're doing. If a you're pinned down by a bunch of knuckleheads with full autos, Jimmy's lying in a pool of his own blood out in the open, and your pickup's tire has been blown out, then shooting back, pulling Jimmy to safety, or patching up the rubber might all be acting under fire. The fiction's the thing.

To take it to a more familiar milieu, take Dungeon World as another example. Lets say you're sneaking up on a goblin to try and take him out. Depending on the fiction of what's going on, maybe the GM declares you just kill him. Maybe you get to roll for damage. Maybe you have to roll Hack & Slash. Maybe you have to Defy Danger to get to him. You state what it is you are trying to do, and the fiction as set up by the group determines what rolls are going to be needed to accomplish the task.

The same holds for attacking a roaring dragon. If you say you're attacking the dragon, the GM is well within his rights to ask how! How are you going to reach it? How are you going to get through its hide armor? Describe what you're doing, because in Dungeon World there isn't really an "attack" action like in D&D. You don't move your mini adjacent, roll to hit and damage, and call it a day. The GM might just say that your sword isn't enough to pierce the dragon's scales. He might say you have to perform some tasks to get into place, or maybe you can get where you're going fine. All based on the fiction.

So, I think looking at roleplaying itself from a broader perspective helps establish how physical and social skills are not that dissimilar to each other, and how fiction and how we think of it is inextricably tied to the rules of the game. It's kind of like how our thought process is influenced by language, even though you don't need language to think, and learning a new language can help you think in other ways sometimes. In other words, this is why I think the way I do.


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## Bedrockgames (Oct 29, 2013)

I can certainly see how some folks wouldnt find any difference between combat skills and social skills. I think you need to play the game in a way that makes sense for you, so if these things feel similar to you, then that is your experience and how play functions at your table. I guess for me, i don't want combat and social skills (or mental skills) to function the same. I am okay letting random rolls determine some of the stuff that goes on in combat (though I would still like my descriptions of what i am eying to do to factor in) but for conversations with NPCs, interactions with the environmeent, etc I want to handle those details directly and avoid abstracting them as much as possible. I dont think my way is better than others, or the only way to play an rpg, but it is the way that works best for me. That doesnt mean no rolling for non-combat situations, just that there are times where i find skills like diplomacy and evn detect intrudig on my interaction with the setting and its people. As I said before, i really tend to notice it during things like investigation adventures or puzzles, where the fun for me is figuring those things out, not having the system simulate my character figuring them out.


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## Celebrim (Oct 29, 2013)

Good post ThirdWizard.  The whole thing is worth reading.



ThirdWizard said:


> You can't just say "I athletics my way past the obstacle."...Depending on the fiction of what's going on, maybe the GM declares you just kill him. Maybe you get to roll for damage. Maybe you have to roll Hack & Slash. Maybe you have to Defy Danger to get to him. You state what it is you are trying to do, and the fiction as set up by the group determines what rolls are going to be needed to accomplish the task...The same holds for attacking a roaring dragon. If you say you're attacking the dragon, the GM is well within his rights to ask how! How are you going to reach it? How are you going to get through its hide armor? Describe what you're doing, because in Dungeon World there isn't really an "attack" action like in D&D. You don't move your mini adjacent, roll to hit and damage, and call it a day. The GM might just say that your sword isn't enough to pierce the dragon's scales. He might say you have to perform some tasks to get into place, or maybe you can get where you're going fine. All based on the fiction.
> 
> So, I think looking at roleplaying itself from a broader perspective helps establish how physical and social skills are not that dissimilar to each other, and how fiction and how we think of it is inextricably tied to the rules of the game.




Ok, you've established a very key point, which is one of the ways that physical and mental skills in the game are similar to each other in depending on the fiction.  In that sense, I've agreed from the start of this thread that you can't simply say, "I use diplomacy to get past the obstacle."  You have to engage in and with the fiction of the world.  If a player does say, "I want to use savoire faire to get past the obstacle.", the DM is in his rights to say, "Yes, but _what do you say._" because the player is engaged not in the fiction but with the rules.  And even as a rules proposition, "I use combat to defeat my opponent." is only a vague declaration of intention, and not an actual action.

But while I agree that in this sense the mental and physical traits of a character are similar, there is another sense in which they are very dissimilar and its also pointed out by your examination of the interaction between rules and fiction.  

Suppose my character has within the fiction the trait of being 'strong' - however the rules implement this trait.  There is nothing I need do as a player to create this trait within the fiction.  He's either strong or he isn't.   If I am strong in real life, my ability to bench press 400lb doesn't add to the fiction of the character's strength.  If I am not strong in real life, my inability to brench press 400lb doesn't subtract from the character ability to lift things and shove people around.   The character's capabilities are completely separate in that regard from the player's abilities.

But, in PnP games player character's are avatars of their players.  Regardless of whether you play pawn stance or actor stance or author stance or anything else, the character's choices and actions are based on your decisions as a player.  Now suppose you state that your character has within the fiction the trait of 'makes good choices'.  Like 'extraordinarily strong', this is a common trait of protagonists in heroic fiction.  Does it follow that it is as easy to create in the fiction the trait of 'makes good choices' as it is the trait of 'extraordinarily strong'?   

No, because regardless of the skill being used or the system being used, engaging with the fiction requires making choices and the player can still make bad choices.   Having mental skills might make the character more perceptive and knowing, and the DM might be able to convey that additional knowledge to the player, but unless the player is capable of putting that knowledge together, coming to the right conclusion, and making a good decision based on that knowledge no amount of on paper skills will realize the fiction of a character that makes good choices if the player doesn't.  In this sense, any trait that depends on the character's mental ability differs in character from traits based on the character's physical ability because unlike the player's body, the player's mind intrudes into the fiction.   After all, the fiction is occurring inside the player's mind.  The character isn't external to the player's mind, and can't act independently of their choices.

So while a trait like 'smashes things' doesn't require a player actually skilled at smashing things to the extent that a quadriplegic or an invalid player is perfectly good at smashing things, 'negotiates peaceful settlements between ancient enemies' or 'quickly produces brilliant tactical plans' does require the player to have some minimum amount of mental capacity.   I mean, if mental ability didn't matter at all, then surely six year olds could successfully play characters whose actions, maturity, and cunning matched those of adult players in every way?   Or four year olds.   Or two year olds.   

There are ways to say, "Your own strength, speed, and health don't matter to the game."  You can't really also say, "Your own wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and planning ability don't matter to the game."   The player's body isn't in the game, but their mind is.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 29, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> No, because regardless of the skill being used or the system being used, engaging with the fiction requires making choices and the player can still make bad choices.   Having mental skills might make the character more perceptive and knowing, and the DM might be able to convey that additional knowledge to the player, but unless the player is capable of putting that knowledge together, coming to the right conclusion, and making a good decision based on that knowledge no amount of on paper skills will realize the fiction of a character that makes good choices if the player doesn't.  In this sense, any trait that depends on the character's mental ability differs in character from traits based on the character's physical ability because unlike the player's body, the character's body intrudes into the fiction.   After all, the fiction is occurring inside the player's mind.  The character isn't external to the player's mind, and can't act independently of their choices.




I think this sums up what you're saying pretty well.

In the end, what happens in the game is a result of, and constrained by, the ideas, imaginations, and experiences of the people playing the game. I think the big reason for social skills have been added to games has been to attempt to curtail this reliance on a player's own ability, whether that be mental or social. That's why in modules you see everything from "Make an Int check to solve the puzzle" to "Make an Int check to get a clue" to "Perform a skill challenge to solve the puzzle." There's been a sort of resistance to the idea that our character should be limited by us, the players of the game. Maybe social skills being added is because gamers are thought of as anti-social creatures, and designers are trying to build a better system for introverts. Well, I'll leave the theorizing as to why for another day. Suffice to say that I see where you're coming from in this regard.

I would definitely point out that deciding what to do can be just as crippling for someone who is not tactically minded when dealt a tactical situation as someone not socially minded when dealt a social situation. If you someone isn't good at wargames, I have to admit that as much as I love it, you won't be "good" at D&D 4e (fuzzy quotes because good is a relative term). It's just not as obvious that your mental skills aren't up to snuff when you forget to use your minor action in a clinch situation than when the DM looks at you and says "The pirate captain looks at you expectantly after finding you stowed away on his ship, a deep growl starting to form in his throat. 'Why are ye on my ship? Give me one reason I shouldn't keel haul the lot o' ya!'"

There's, I think, also a tendency when a player isn't sure what to do to look to their character sheet for ideas or answers. It's sort of the spoken 'um' that comes out, where without a fully formed thought, they reach for something. So, they might see that they have a high diplomacy and want to _use it!_ "Aha," they think, "I bet this high skill can get me out of this mess!" After all they sunk a lot of points into it, as opposed to all those other skills like Use Magic Device or Jump. They know they can use those skills. But, they don't know they can use Diplomacy.

All this is to say that I think its easier to answer the question "What should I do now" when it pertains to a physical situation, because physical problems usually have straightforward answers, whereas mental/social problems are usually far more open ended. I don't think this is a problem strictly for physicality, and I still don't think it social aspects of the game are a wholly different animal than physical aspects, but I wholeheartedly agree that the two aren't on equal footing, mostly based on the nature of available options for a given situation.


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## Celebrim (Oct 29, 2013)

ThirdWizard said:


> There's been a sort of resistance to the idea that our character should be limited by us, the players of the game.




I definitely can understand that, but as a guy whose spent 95% of his career as a DM, the realization that the world is limited by my understanding talents and capabilities is something that impressed itself on me in a hurry.

You can't just have an NPC with Perform(Jokes) +20 or Wit +20, and say, "He tells a joke. *roll* It's very funny, and you involuntarily begin laughing", if what you want to achieve is the effect of the player finding the NPC funny.  Or at least, you might, but they'd not be laughing at what you wanted them to laugh at, and the joke would get tired fast.  If you want NPC's to have magnetic personalities, you can't rely on a roll of a die to achieve the effect, because by convention PC's usually aren't subject to behavior change by mundane charisma interaction and in any event forcing the PC to behave in some way against the player's will is a very different result than convincing the player to behave in some way of their own accord.   One put's the player very much on their guard, and the other - almost by definition - doesn't.   

So it's very very obvious to a DM that social skills aren't the same as physical skills.  Your NPC's can easily tumble through the air and jump over small buildings in a single bound, even though you can't.   But your NPC's can't be witty, entertaining, impressive, or even knowledgeable if you can't pull that off in your play.  This isn't the result of the players being unfair to you.  This is just the way it is.  It's very obvious as the DM you can't blame the players for the failure of your NPC's to be what you imagined them to be. 

There are limits to what you can pull off as a role-player.  It's a learning process increasing your skills as a player so that you can pull off more and more sorts of improvisation and more and more different sorts of roles.  You have to except that to some extent, RPG's are like other games - you get better at them through practice.  It's a big skill set.  I've been playing for 30 years and I've still got lots to learn.



> Maybe social skills being added is because gamers are thought of as anti-social creatures, and designers are trying to build a better system for introverts.




Speaking as an introvert, the best system for introverts is learning to role play.  Once I learned to do it in game, I started putting it into practice outside of the game.  In fact, the name I go by in real life was very consciously created as a persona of a person who wasn't introverted, and began life with very conscious efforts to imagine what a non-introverted person would do and how they would behave.  

Being who I am, this involved library research.



> I would definitely point out that deciding what to do can be just as crippling for someone who is not tactically minded when dealt a tactical situation as someone not socially minded when dealt a social situation.




Definitely.  I've had those players.  But equally, it's very hard to address as a systems issue, because what do you really want as a player - the game to tell you what to do?  To become an observer of your own character?  To sit there while the DM fills in all the blanks for you, like the experience of a cRPG where when you select 'talk to the character' the game decides what you say and what you are allowed to say?  

It's certainly tempting as a DM.  There are times I can't resist going, "Are you really sure you want to do that?"  There are even times when it's appropriate (the player is acting with a lack of information about the setting that the character wouldn't have).  But if you stop the game for a 'wisdom check' or 'intelligence check' often enough, you might as well tell the story solo.

I've also had players that 'ego game' (seeking self-validation through the success they achieve in the fiction) who in every scene want desperately to pull off that shining moment of awesomeness, and so instead of waiting to let it happen try to push the issue, resulting in repeated spectacular failures because of the rash and unnecessarily complicated plans they try to implement.  This leads to a lot of them getting frustrated, especially since their character often ends up becoming a figure of fun and comic relief, or jealous if another more relaxed player keeps getting moment's of awesome without apparently trying (which in turn can lead to accusations of favoritism).  

Dealing with players who are frustrated because they can't be the character they see in their mind is always challenging.  Some don't want to accept that they need to learn anything at all as if - just because there are no winners or losers - it is just intuitive being good at tactics, theatrics, investigation, dungeoneering, and systems mastery.  You've got to be encouraging, understanding, and you have to mentor.  It's fun watching the _player_ level up though.



> There's, I think, also a tendency when a player isn't sure what to do to look to their character sheet for ideas or answers. It's sort of the spoken 'um' that comes out, where without a fully formed thought, they reach for something. So, they might see that they have a high diplomacy and want to _use it!_ "Aha," they think, "I bet this high skill can get me out of this mess!" After all they sunk a lot of points into it, as opposed to all those other skills like Use Magic Device or Jump. They know they can use those skills. But, they don't know they can use Diplomacy.
> 
> All this is to say that I think its easier to answer the question "What should I do now" when it pertains to a physical situation, because physical problems usually have straightforward answers, whereas mental/social problems are usually far more open ended.




Hitting something with a stick is intuitive even to a two year old. 

It would be possible to design a social system which would be on par with a combat system.  Some well meaning designers intending to encourage role play as a focus of play, and to empower players who were uncomfortable with social interaction to be able to live out the fiction of a high charisma character have tried just that.  The problem with it is social challenges would then in turn tend to have game play that resembles combat, which means that they effectively are just more combat, and the entire goal of encouraging role play fails.  I think the more pragmatic solution to this problem tends to be to make combat resolution more resemble social interaction resolution, emphasizing that this game really isn't supposed to be about combat at all.


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## Mishihari Lord (Oct 30, 2013)

Bedrockgames said:


> I can certainly see how some folks wouldnt find any difference between combat skills and social skills. I think you need to play the game in a way that makes sense for you, so if these things feel similar to you, then that is your experience and how play functions at your table. I guess for me, i don't want combat and social skills (or mental skills) to function the same. I am okay letting random rolls determine some of the stuff that goes on in combat (though I would still like my descriptions of what i am eying to do to factor in) but for conversations with NPCs, interactions with the environmeent, etc *I want to handle those details directly and avoid abstracting them as much as possible.* I dont think my way is better than others, or the only way to play an rpg, but it is the way that works best for me. That doesnt mean no rolling for non-combat situations, just that there are times where i find skills like diplomacy and evn detect intrudig on my interaction with the setting and its people. As I said before, i really tend to notice it during things like investigation adventures or puzzles, where the fun for me is figuring those things out, not having the system simulate my character figuring them out.




I thought the highlighted point was pretty important.  I most enjoy games where task mechanic  are abstracted enough to be workable in the game, but no more than that.  With combat, a high degree of abstraction is necessary because modeling it with high fidelity would take an inordinate amount of time and effort.  With social interaction, that's just not so.  We're quite capable of taking our characters' mindset and the other character's words and deciding what our character would do and say in great detail without abstracting anything.

Since abstracting mechanics aren't necessary for social resolution, I would need a compelling reason to include them, since additional mechanics always require additional effort.  I really haven't seen such a reason.  I'm intrigued by the idea of social mechanics and am interested in finding some that make the game more fun, but I haven't seen a set of such rules yet.


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## Celebrim (Oct 30, 2013)

Mishihari Lord said:


> I thought the highlighted point was pretty important.  I most enjoy games where task mechanic  are abstracted enough to be workable in the game, but no more than that.  With combat, a high degree of abstraction is necessary because modeling it with high fidelity would take an inordinate amount of time and effort.  With social interaction, that's just not so.  We're quite capable of taking our characters' mindset and the other character's words and deciding what our character would do and say in great detail without abstracting anything.




That's a really important observation, and I think it explains fully my own preferences in a rules set.  I tend to like rules that are really crunchy when it comes to combat resolution, but really light when it comes to social resolution.  

The reason is that the more crunchy you have in your combat resolution, the less abstract your combat tends to be.  There gets to be a tighter and tighter coupling between the propositions made by the players, and the mechanics of proposition resolution and what you imagine in your head - what I call the game being 'cinematic' (though perhaps 'choreographic' might be a better phrase, given the many uses 'cinematic' is put to), in that the act of making propositions and resolving tends to encourage the player to make a movie in their head of what is happening.   The only real limit here is a practical one - does the system resolve fast enough to maintain the emotional intensity and interest in the combat.  A system that is so crunchy that it drags, tends to leave little time for or interest in imagining the scene.  It becomes a series of dull still panels, rather that something dynamic and exciting.

But the opposite tends to be true of social conflict resolution.  The more crunchy your rules, the more abstractly it tends to treat social interaction.  This is because the crunchy rules are replacing the very concrete and not abstract process of role playing out the scene theatrically.   Naturalistic role-play at the table is the highest degree of concreteness you can possibly have for choreographing dialogue.  The movie of the game is being created right there at the table, without the need to substitute imagined dialogue for the abstract mechanics.   The only limitation here is a practical one - do the rules help me as a DM adjudicate the NPC's actions in a way that is neutral, without bias, and fair to the players (and their character's abilities).  So some social interaction rules are desirable, otherwise I must accept the large burden of refereeing social interaction without any guidance at all, but the sort of rules I want tend to be only minimal 'fork in the scene' sorts of rules that give me a 'yes/no' answer to questions like, "Does the NPC become more helpful or more hostile?", when the role play reaches a point where I have to choose which way to take the NPC's further interactions.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 30, 2013)

Celebrim said:


> Definitely.  I've had those players.  But equally, it's very hard to address as a systems issue, because what do you really want as a player - the game to tell you what to do?  To become an observer of your own character?  To sit there while the DM fills in all the blanks for you, like the experience of a cRPG where when you select 'talk to the character' the game decides what you say and what you are allowed to say?
> 
> ...Dealing with players who are frustrated because they can't be the character they see in their mind is always challenging. Some don't want to accept that they need to learn anything at all as if - just because there are no winners or losers - it is just intuitive being good at tactics, theatrics, investigation, dungeoneering, and systems mastery. You've got to be encouraging, understanding, and you have to mentor. It's fun watching the _player_ level up though.




To a degree, this is something that caused some disillusionment with D&D post-2000 for me in the past few years, and what has me interested in the indie scene. I don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers, but I used to be of the mind of constraining the GM to give the players more power. That, to me, seems to be a philosophy that showed up around the time that D&D 3e came out. Reign in the powers of the DM. Limit the GM's power to alleviate some of the problems of bad DMing. It wasn't exactly present in the rules, perhaps, so much as an idea. I remember a lot of talk in the early ENWorld days of this, so I'll peg it around that time frame, though it could have started earlier and I just wasn't exposed to it. But, I don't think influence over the game is a zero sum game anymore. A GM can have full control, and should be encouraged and learn their craft. A good GM with an open system should be the end goal, after all. 

The same should apply to players in my mind. Don't constrain them. Don't hand hold them. Let them learn the craft of roleplaying through experience, and trust that they'll figure it out. Trust the other players to help open up the socially awkward and the non-tactically minded. There's no set standard that they need to hit. There's no this high to ride. If you're muddling through, then you muddle through, and hopefully after years and years you get into a stride. That's the way I see it at least, and I agree with most of what you're saying here.



> It would be possible to design a social system which would be on par with a combat system.  Some well meaning designers intending to encourage role play as a focus of play, and to empower players who were uncomfortable with social interaction to be able to live out the fiction of a high charisma character have tried just that.  The problem with it is social challenges would then in turn tend to have game play that resembles combat, which means that they effectively are just more combat, and the entire goal of encouraging role play fails.  I think the more pragmatic solution to this problem tends to be to make combat resolution more resemble social interaction resolution, emphasizing that this game really isn't supposed to be about combat at all.




FATE actually has a social combat system that I really like. But, then, compared to something like D&D 3e/4e, FATE has fairly light gameplay. You're either attacking (dealing stress/consequences) or creating an advantage (creating a helpful aspect). And, in FATE when you're entering social combat, you're looking to create social repercussions. So you don't use social combat for something like convincing the king that you're right. You use social combat to create doubt in others about the king's decision to stay out of the Plague Wars, for example. So, your attack may be stating a fact about how the war is going poorly that the audience didn't know and seeing if the king can respond without losing face. Creating an aspect might bringing up something that might compromise his judgement, then making an attack by saying how that compromised judgement might hurt the kingdom. Of course, beware of petty kings who might throw you in the dungeon. But, if he takes a consequence from the social combat, maybe a young duke will decide to follow you.

All of that can happen freeform of course. But, in my opinion, the dice add a certain expectancy that I like as both a player and a GM. As GM I like not knowing where the story will go. I'm very much the kind of GM who loves to see the game unfold in front of me and thrives on unexpected twists. I guess I'm being somewhat selfish here in a way with social combat. It lets me see how things will play out, much as the players get to have that sense of the unknown, I get that as well. Will the king's aides in the above example be swayed against him? Will people start to whisper about the war behind the king's back? I don't know. The dice will let me know. And, I enjoy that. I love to roll the dice and see what happens instead of using my own judgement sometimes, because that moment where the players want to do something crazy and dice hit the table is why I play the game.

That isn't to say I want social combat in all my games or in everything I play. I love Dungeon World, as an example, and social combat would be _terrible_ for that game. Absolutely horrid. It's all about context, expectations, and style.



Mishihari Lord said:


> I thought the highlighted point was pretty important. I most enjoy games where task mechanic are abstracted enough to be workable in the game, but no more than that. With combat, a high degree of abstraction is necessary because modeling it with high fidelity would take an inordinate amount of time and effort. With social interaction, that's just not so. We're quite capable of taking our characters' mindset and the other character's words and deciding what our character would do and say in great detail without abstracting anything.
> 
> Since abstracting mechanics aren't necessary for social resolution, I would need a compelling reason to include them, since additional mechanics always require additional effort. I really haven't seen such a reason. I'm intrigued by the idea of social mechanics and am interested in finding some that make the game more fun, but I haven't seen a set of such rules yet.




At his heart, "combat" is just a contest between parties with a winner and a loser. It doesn't have to be high fidelity. Generally, people are going to expect whittling away at some kind of resource until someone beats the other. In D&D 4e a social conflict would just be a skill challenge where that resource is failures. In FATE this is inflicting consequences on the enemy until they concede. Like I said above, social combat isn't about what the characters say - that comes through the roleplaying - but instead about the fallout of the conversation. It's about determining who gets what they want and who has to make compromises. Most social interactions, thus, wouldn't be social combat.

But what I really want to talk about is abstraction. Abstract mechanics don't mean you have to abstract the fiction itself. Quite the opposite sometimes. The more granular the rules system, the easier it is to let the rules do the heavy lifting for describing the fiction. When you've abstracted away the mechanics from the actions, you are forced to start describing the actions themselves, because the rules don't describe them anymore. The rules aren't a shorthand for what's going on.

For example, take D&D 4e, because I think I've picked on 3e enough for today. Say my rogue has the 1st level Encounter Power _Impact Shot_ that lets him shoot someone with his crossbow and push them back. The power itself is descriptive in what happens, so its not that important to the game itself for me to have to describe what's going on in the fiction. The power itself conveys a lot of information within it. I shoot a crossbow. I deal damage. The target moves backward, away from me. It's all right there on the power. If I use it and the guy is on the edge of a cliff, he goes off the side (if he fails a saving throw!). _"AEEEEEeeeee" splat_ 

Then go look at Dungeon World. You're a rogue. You've got a crossbow. If you want to do the same thing, you have to describe why it happens. What did you do to knock him off the cliff. You might say "I lower my crossbow from his chest to his leg. I want to hit him so that he stumbles backward off the cliff." Or you might say "I'm going to shoot my crossbow so that I startle him, sending him confused off the cliff." Or maybe "I'm shooting him straight in the chest. The force should make him stumble backward just enough to push him off the edge and down." And, then the actual task resolution comes into play, which is going to be one of several abstract moves that the GM can decide between, depending on the circumstances. In this case the GM says the rogue si Defying Danger (getting rid of a dangerous opponent) and he rolls +DEX. _"AEEEEEeeeee" splat_ 

[Note: Not saying one way is better or worse. They're just different, and they emphasize different things. You're perfectly within your rights to not _like_ how Dungeon World handles this situation. I'm using it to describe abstraction of mechanics and fiction. That's all.]

So, you can probably see where I'm going with this. If you abstract away the task resolution for social combat, you end up with something similar. You have to describe the fiction in order to figure out what the task is you're trying to resolve. In this case, the fiction is the dialogue. Without roleplaying the scene out, you have no basis for what you're going to roll or how you're going to resolve anything or what's even happening in game. There is no there there. It doesn't exist. And so, you roleplay the dialogue to create the task to resolve, full circle.

So back to Celebrim, I think we have some insight into our differences.



Celebrim said:


> That's a really important observation, and I think it explains fully my own preferences in a rules set. I tend to like rules that are really crunchy when it comes to combat resolution, but really light when it comes to social resolution.




I'm the opposite. I don't like crunchy rules text. I like Dungeon World, where the fiction is described by the participants as if it is being played out in a movie or in a book. It goes something like this:

Player: Ragnar charges the orc leader lifting his heavy axe blade and slams it into the enemy's shield, yelling out a warcry! I want to break through his shield and cracking some bones.
GM: What's important to you here? Destroying the shield or dealing damage?
Player: Definitely damage. If I end up having to choose between the two, he's going to feel the pain.
GM: Okay, in that case, roll Hack & Slash.
Player: _rolls_ 11! I deal 7 damage with my smash! Ragnar smiles coldly into the enemy's eyes.
GM: The blow is devastating and the orc's shield is shattered under Ragnar's might! It's just then that you notice four goblins sneaking up behind you. They obviously don't care about honorable one on one combat. What do you do?

The distinction being here that you can obviously and most assuredly play like this in D&D. It's just that in Dungeon World its the rules of the game to play fiction-first and task-resolution second. To me, that's what makes for cinematic combat and high action, which are two things that I want in my high fantasy experience. In effect, high fidelity is the opposite of what I want out of a system. I just want a system that resolves things quickly with a lot of leeway for the players and DM to interpret and improvise off of situations as they develop in game.So, when I say social combat, I'm not talking about creating feats that mimic various debate tactics and such. Because I don't want that in my physical combat either. I just want a way to create exciting, randomly resolving, conflicts.

So, perhaps that explains a bit why we see physical and social task resolution (and the differences between them) differently.


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## Bedrockgames (Oct 30, 2013)

Just a minor point, i mentioned abstraction in passing and was not trying to draw a firm line in the sand around that point (what is or is not possible when the mechanics are abstracted). My point was just that i tend not to enjoy myself as much when social interaction uses mechanics similar to combat, because for me, that impedes my direct experience and connection to the interaction and the setting. I think expanding on that personal observation to set up a rule or theory of gaming is a mistake. If it helps explain why you think you have difficulty with social mechanics great, but i find people often get lost in debating the reasons they dont like something and confuse defending the explanation with defending their dislike. You see this all the time in these debates where each side seems convinced that if it can prove mechanic A isn't X, or mechanic A really is Y, or mechanics A and B actually do operate on the same principle, then the other side must relinquish its position that mechanic A isn't fun but B is. At its core, I am simply saying i do not find social combat fun, and i find social mechanics can be intrusive. The truth is it is sometimes very hard to know why you dont like a particular rule (i myself have really tried to understand my own dislike of things like diplomacy for years). So far this is my best explanation, but it is simply an attempt to explain...not sure how well it will hold up under scrutiny.


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## ThirdWizard (Oct 30, 2013)

EDIT: Nothing here to see.


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## Bedrockgames (Oct 30, 2013)

Thirdwizard, I wasn't responding to you or addressing your points, I was responding to the two posters who agreed with me.


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## booga69 (Feb 21, 2014)

I'd definitely recommend Shadows of Esteren


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## Rechan (Feb 23, 2014)

Oh man, so many.

Paranoia. Paranoia is... I actually don't know if there are straight up rules to Paranoia.

Hillfolk is Robin Laws' new RPG. The way I've had it explained is that it's sort of like improvising dramatic TV shows, like _The Sopronos, House of Cards, Carnivale_ etc, which are about character relationships and drama and such.

Prime Time Adventures is an RPG about, well, creating TV shows. The mechanics are more about scenes focusing on characters and having dice to make dramatic changes/actions. Those don't have to be combat - one of the examples used is actually a comedy show. 

Monsterhearts is a paranormal romance rpg - its focus is teenage monsters in love. The only violent move possible is "lash out physically". 

I would wager GUMSHOE, because its primary focus is investigations.

Penny For My Thoughts is more of an improv/question game than an RPG. 

I figure most of your Horror RPGs are because in general, in most horror RPGs, if you fight you get dead.


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## Rechan (Feb 23, 2014)

Also the discussion of roleplay/mechanics/whatnots:

If I'm a  skinny guy, I can pretend to be a beefy barbarian and have rules to let  me beat people up. All that I need is the dice. I should also be able to  pretend to be a clever-tongued scoundrel even if I, the player, am  socially awkward. The dice should let me talk my way out of it because  even though _I_ can't, my character should be able to because  that's what his training is in. 

All mechanics are, at their  heart, are a device to do the following: "I want to do x. Do I succeed,  y/n?" It's all variations on a coin flip. So there's not a whole lot of  difference between "I slap the king" and "I lie to the king". It  succeeds or it doesn't, and something should probably help determine  success beyond pure conjecture.


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## steenan (Feb 23, 2014)

While I fully agree with your first paragraph, I disagree with the second.

The mechanics being only about deciding on success and failure is a very limited view and it is a source of many problems with D&D.

There are many games where mechanics decide whether an intention was realized, not whether a task was successful. There are games where bad rolls still allow for success, but with a cost or complication. There are games where mechanics dictate things that don't causally depend on characters' actions. There are games where mechanics form a groundwork for negotiation between players or distribute narrative rights.

None of these can be reduced to success/failure.


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## sabrinathecat (Mar 1, 2014)

Bagpuss said:


> I'd disagree with that statement, many of them have detailed combat rules, but that doesn't mean they revolve around combat. That usually has more to do with the group and what story players are trying to tell with those rules.
> 
> Most roleplaying games revolve around conflict of some form, and more often that means combat.




THIS.
The biggest argument I hear about 4e D&D is that it's all combat and there's no way to Role Play. B S!!!!
It is entirely possible to Role Play, no matter what the system. That is up to the GM and the Players.
Why are combat rules so complicated and detailed? Because combat is complicated and detailed. Imagine having to detail the rules of conversation, including grammar. The Chicago Manual of Style is 3.5 inches thick!

RPGs have a certain level of escapism, and are based around conflict resolution (D&D was based on classic miniatures war-gaming). When the discussion devolves to violence, you can surrender or deal with it. The players are supposed to be heroes.

I played a Champions game with a total pacifist. While fun in some ways, he was largely useless in others. When it came to combat, he would apply first aid and healing powers to anyone who was down, to make sure the murderous member of the group didn't get to outright kill anyone.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Mar 3, 2014)

steenan said:


> While I fully agree with your first paragraph, I disagree with the second.
> 
> The mechanics being only about deciding on success and failure is a very limited view and it is a source of many problems with D&D.
> 
> ...




Sounds like you're describing Hillfolk, which I just started reading.

I really like how Robin Laws gets one of the fundamental problems in most social conflict scenes. When a PC is in an argument with an NPC, or finds someone trying to persuade them to concede a point, the natural reaction of the player is to never give in. And that makes for poor drama - in TV shows and plays, characters make concessions and compromises all the time. Instead of basing it on how high your dice roll, the Dramasystem in Hillfolk provides a currency of points that can be traded and saved up, so that you can pace when you lose in dramatic scenes, and when you get to make a difference and win. And it's an entirely different mechanic from the procedural scenes, like combat and chase scenes and stuff that doesn't involve character drama.

It's such a refreshing way to look at dramatic conflict. I love it.


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## RedGalaxy00 (Mar 3, 2014)

A common game overlooked for it's powerful roleplaying capabilities is the Smallville Roleplaying Game. Probably because it's called "The Smallville Roleplaying Game". However, a quick look through the rulebook shows that it can be used for any setting, with 1001 different outcomes. Honestly, it's highly underrated, and is quite fun. (It was built off of the Cortex rule system, by Margret Wies, I think is how her name is spelt. They also did Supernatural, Serenity, Leverage, and others... but Smallville is probably my favorite.)


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## MasterTrancer (Mar 5, 2014)

Back to OP (didn't see it mentioned) I'd suggest also Numenera as a system which (at least) doesn't actively encourages combats; on the contrary, the rules mention esplicitly that



> Defeating opponents in battle is the core way you earn XP in many games. But not in Numenera.




But I'm just reading through the manual, so I can't yet point to any actual gameplay situation.


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## pickin_grinnin (Mar 12, 2014)

You can roleplay any game if you put some effort into it.  Even chess and Monopoly.

To me, the more interesting thing is games where combat isn't even an option.  There are very, very few of those out there.


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## Balesir (Mar 12, 2014)

pickin_grinnin said:


> You can roleplay any game if you put some effort into it.  Even chess and Monopoly.
> 
> To me, the more interesting thing is games where combat isn't even an option.  There are very, very few of those out there.



Primetime Adventures can be one. As long as you don't pick a violent genre, making any conflict a fight would be pretty forced.

Another way to de-emphasise combat is to make it rather hazardous (read: downright bloody deadly) as HârnMaster does. If you don't have arcane backup (and sometimes even if you do!), wounds can prove deadly even if you _won_ the fight... This tends to make folks steer clear of combat if they can.


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