My experiences with different systems
Abkajud:
Bargaining seems the way to go to actually describe the process of amicable parties arriving at a conclusion. Seduce or Manipulate in Apocalypse World seems to do something along these lines, in that if you get a 7-9 (a middling success), you genuinely end up with a little give and take; it's neat and kind of lends a texture or extra-realness to NPCs when they get what they want, in my opinion.
It might be worthwhile devising a mechanic based on the "bargaining" in Polaris between the Heart and the Mistaken, but have the activity be from the perspectives of the characters, not the players, if that makes sense.
David Berg:
Hi Drach,
In many of the games you've mentioned, I've successfully employed two approaches:
1) Character stats as back-up, not as limit. If you can roleplay a convincing argument, you succeed, and it doesn't matter what your Diplomacy score is. If you come up with a good plan to ambush the guards, you ambush them, and it doesn't matter what your Tactics score is. This utterly wrecks the fairness of a point-buy system and incentivizes players to only buy character skills that they can't roleplay, so it's not for everyone.
2) Supporting roles to the leader's roll. The player whose character has the highest Diplomacy or Tactics score rolls the die (and probably delivers the final bit of narration before the roll), but everyone else contributes (either in-fiction or just by giving advice directly to the roller) to the characters' collective endeavor. In systems where such help is mechanically irrelevant, players focus on giving advice and adding color. In systems with situational bonuses, in-fiction action can create such situations ("I play soothing music, +2 to Diplomacy for opponent in a relaxed state!"). And still other systems give Helping bonuses (e.g. "roll a success on your Music skill and give a bonus die to the other player's Diplomacy roll"). If I recall correctly, none of the games you listed do Helping, but most do Situational bonuses.
So, that's how I've gotten around "some character is trying to achieve something cool here, but my character's useless".
As for social conflict via mechanics:
One way to avoid an artificial-feeling "I rolled well so you are now Manipulated" situation is to track disposition, and work the changes into the fiction so each new development is easier to imagine. For example, "Something about the argument seems reasonable; roleplay that," as a segue between "you don't want to do what he wants" and "you do what he wants".
One way to resolve a negotiation is to look at cost rather than success/failure. Don't roll to see whether the two parties can form an allegiance; roll to see who gets how much of their way in the specifics of the terms. Abkajud (Zac, that's you, right?) gives one example of this, in the distinction between the middling success (where one party gives the other a concrete benefit now) and total success (where the benefit is merely promised now, to be delivered later).
Abkajud:
David, yep it's me! :)
I've encountered the work-arounds you've mentioned here; personally, I think it's a little unfair (from a designer perspective) to put social skills and abilities into the game if they aren't going to be used. If you're using a point-buy mechanic, players who put points in social abilities are going to get screwed over. If you're using any character-creation mechanic in which one player might excel in one area over another (like random stat-roll, for example), saying that social ability scores don't matter is depriving them of the chance to shine, potentially.
I guess what I'm saying is, ignoring character stats or skills requires negotiation at the social level, and likely some mechanical work-arounds to "compensate" players whose characters are/could be really good at fields of activity that you don't want to enumerate (in the literal sense of assigning numerical value). This isn't necessarily a chore, but it's something to address, to be sure.
Another possible workaround: the player gets to portray the wording, demeanor, and so forth employed by the character when attempting to sway, manipulate, or intimidate another character, but the dice dictate how successful the character actually is, based on mojo, charisma, etc. Sorcerer calls for modifiers to dice rolls when the players wax descriptive (heh, I really don't have examples in front of me. Anyone who can add some detail here, please do!). Obv, that could be used for social contests/conflicts just the same as it could for physical ones, and it seems to take a "middle road" between dice-only and description-only.
Lastly, Swords & Wizardry takes an interesting route: stats have no function in the fiction per se, only tweaking a player-character's capabilities rather than describing how they fit into the fictional world. Charisma, in this instance, is purely a measure of how many hirelings or henchmen the character can employ at once. You never make a Charisma check or anything like that (unless the GM comes up with a house rule or an individual ruling along those lines), so Charisma is something measured only once, with a static, ongoing effect.
David Berg:
Oh yeah, I totally agree that ignoring stats is a group-dependent work-around, and that including stats that are best ignored is no way to design a game.
Good call on mentioning bonus dice for charismatic portrayal. Sorcerer is a neat example:
- Bonuses can be given as situational mods (as I described above).
- Bonuses can also be given as fanmail, that is, as a reward for making an action more engaging for the group.
- Does this mean you don't get bang for your buck when buying stats? No, because the stat used for social stuff (Will) is used for tons of other stuff.
So, hey, there's one alternative to simply excising stats that could just be roleplayed: fold them into broader stats.
Ron Edwards:
Let's all hold off on posting again to this thread until Drach does so. I'm interested in his views on the points raised so far.
Daughter threads are perfectly welcome for those who want to continue the specific exchanges begun here.
Best, Ron
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