Social resolution mechanics for Hero

[nexus]

I'm working designing a more in depth social resolution for Hero System 5th and I thought it would be a good idea to get feedback on what makes a good social resolution system from a variety of sources. I understand that some consider social resolution systems a poor idea overall and, while I respect that opinion, it doesn't really contribute what I hope to gain from this thread.

 

That out of the way, here are some (very) basic questions.

 

1. What "sells" a social conflict system to you? What features would hook you almost immediately?

 

2 What is a deal breaker when it comes to social mechanics? Is there anything that would be an instant turn off?

 

3. What is your favorite system for social mechanics (if any)?

 

4. If you have a favorite set of social mechanics, what's your biggest complaint about it (if any)?

 

5. How would you ideal social mechanics system function? It doesn't have to practical or even realistically playable but an ideal.

[Markdoc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

1. What "sells" a social conflict system to you? What features would hook you almost immediately?

 

It needs to be applicable to social situations and readily comprehensible. There's been a fad for the idea that social conflict should be analogous to physical conflict, which leads to all sorts of strange constructs like "a social knockout" or "social hitpoints". Getting a system which encouraged interaction in an interesting way and which recognised the difference between a "cutting remark" and 12 inches of sharpened steel would interest me.

 

2 What is a deal breaker when it comes to social mechanics? Is there anything that would be an instant turn off?

 

Rules whereby players are "forced" to act/react in a certain way - with a few exceptions.

 

3. What is your favorite system for social mechanics (if any)?

 

Hero, oddly enough. It has plenty of social interaction skills, plus the ability to build and more if I need 'em, plus a PRE attack system for those cases where the interaction is more antagonistic than interactive. It has social limitation and reputation rules for enforcing consequences.

 

4. If you have a favorite set of social mechanics' date=' what's your biggest complaint about it (if any)?[/quote']

 

See comments above - I'm not sure, at this point how it could be improved.

 

5. How would you ideal social mechanics system function? It doesn't have to practical or even realistically playable but an ideal.

 

It would reward players for interacting sensibly - nothing more than that.

 

cheers, Mark

[archermoo]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

It needs to be applicable to social situations and readily comprehensible. There's been a fad for the idea that social conflict should be analogous to physical conflict, which leads to all sorts of strange constructs like "a social knockout" or "social hitpoints". Getting a system which encouraged interaction in an interesting way and which recognised the difference between a "cutting remark" and 12 inches of sharpened steel would interest me.

 

 

 

Rules whereby players are "forced" to act/react in a certain way - with a few exceptions.

 

 

 

Hero, oddly enough. It has plenty of social interaction skills, plus the ability to build and more if I need 'em, plus a PRE attack system for those cases where the interaction is more antagonistic than interactive. It has social limitation and reputation rules for enforcing consequences.

 

 

 

See comments above - I'm not sure, at this point how it could be improved.

 

 

 

It would reward players for interacting sensibly - nothing more than that.

 

cheers, Mark

 

I couldn't have put it better myself. And I'd been trying...

[nexus]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

One reason social "hit points" and similar mechanics have been become popular, IMO is the impression of "instantaneous" mind control the single or few roll social resolution creates. This isn't usually the case. There is time compression going on just like most others rolls in role playing games but the single roll combined with the fact that (usually) the participants don't role play out the entire conversations, letter writing or speech can lead to the feeling that what occurred took only a few seconds when it might be summarizing several minutes or even hours of dialog and interaction.

[Doc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

For social interactions, I would only consider adding new rules for power struggles between institutions, organisations groups or states, where things like reputation, number of followers, power of those followers, money and other ressources, legal status and the likes would give adjustments to a opposite dice roll.

 

This kind of rolls could apply to the same situations a character can encounter or try in a game (corruption, negociation, intimidation, etc), but to a larger scale between organisations.

 

I wouldn't add anything about character to character interactions. Moreover, my player group and myself are mostly political and strategical beasts and such a system integrated to Hero could make us happy till the end of times.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

As a point of comparison, Shelley Chrystal Mactyre has been working on an optional social interaction mechanic, "Reputation Points," as part of her upcoming Regency HERO sourcebook (one of those "published when it's finished" projects). Shelley has a sample of Reputation Points up on her website: http://www.mactyre.net/archives/regency/rps.html

[megaplayboy]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Well, I think the first thing to look at is, what is each social interaction skill supposed to do? Some of them actually have multiple uses/purposes. Persuasion, for example, can be used to convince someone of something that isn't true(i.e., lie more convincingly), or to urge someone towards a particular course of action, or to detect/resist such attempts. Trading can be used to get a better deal, or to know when one is being ripped off. Seduction can be used to make friends, to get someone to think you're Mr. Right, or just to think you're Mr "Right Now". Conversation can make you appear to be a more appealing dinner guest, or it can be used to get someone comfortable enough to spill their secrets.

 

The thing is, every single one of us in the real world has had these techniques used effectively on them, at least once, and many of us have used these techniques effectively on others. Many of us have been conned out of money before, or ripped off by a shady salesman.

 

The reason why players are often uncomfortable with these skills is because no one wants to feel like their characters can be manipulated in social interactions. The irony of this is that the real world experiences of people inform this sentiment--that is, most players(heck, most human beings) have been manipulated by other people in real life, didn't like the experience, and are reluctant to have such experiences happen to their characters.

 

Of course, in a game where characters can be shot, stabbed, knocked out and imprisoned, it's questionable whether the aversion to feeling manipulated should get a disproportionate deference, at least game mechanics-wise.

[Markdoc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

One reason social "hit points" and similar mechanics have been become popular' date=' IMO is the impression of "instantaneous" mind control the single or few roll social resolution creates. This isn't usually the case. There is time compression going on just like most others rolls in role playing games but the single roll combined with the fact that (usually) the participants don't role play out the entire conversations, letter writing or speech can lead to the feeling that what occurred took only a few seconds when it might be summarizing several minutes or even hours of dialog and interaction.[/quote']

 

Sure, but this is a failure of GM'ing and roleplaying, not necessarily of rules.

 

What we do in that case is simply break the action into multiple tasks/interactions. Three game sessions ago, we spent an evening roleplaying "The players impersonate a visiting noble and his entourage, are invited to dinner in the great hall and try to find what the local lord is up to - where he has imprisoned Tomas and where his magic map is - without giving away what we are up to". I didn't see any need to break that down into one roll: we used multiple rolls with the conversation ebbing back and forth and the players trying to work out when they were being lied to and what the motivations were.

 

Rules forcing every action to take a series of rolls is not very appealing. For example, from the same game, late that night, the party's sneaks surprise a guard and roll an attack that stuns him on the first phase. I don't see any need to play out the rest of the combat. I simply say "OK, you stunned him before he could cry out. Since he's at DCV 0 you have no difficulty rendering him unconscious on the next phase".

 

The mechanics are there - they simply need to be used appropriately. I could have used more rolls in one case and less in another, but that clearly wasn't appropriate/necessary.

 

Previous interactions will obviously have an effect on current (and future ones) and I guess some sort of "barometer" to mark your interaction status could be formalised (which is kind of like hitpoints,except they can go up as well as down) but social interaction runs a wide gamut - a negative impression may be converted to neutral or positive, but that's very context dependant. Sometimes, realistically it is impossible to change a person's mind or attitude on a topic. Of the various social conflict systems I've seen, I haven't encountered one that works well (ie: quasi-realistically).

 

cheers, Mark

[nexus]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Sure, but this is a failure of GM'ing and roleplaying, not necessarily of rules.

 

I'm just tossing a theory why such systems are popular or being pushed. I'm fairly neutral on the subject beyond feeling that impressions are important in role playing game rules. Anything that would reduce the seemingly inherent tendency to reject any kind of social interaction mechanics isn't innately a bad thing, IMO. I've never felt its impossible to change someone's mind on anything, just for some things it would take an unreasonable amount of time and effort to do so, at least in the context of a scenario. Also, the Hero System doesn't model realism and dramatic uses of social abilities can be cinematically effective (or should have the potential to be at least) on the same scale the physical actions can be.

 

The mechanics are "there" yes, but I'd like to develop a system of guidelines and rules for using beyond the rather loose structure in place now. Will it be complicated at physical combat? I don't think so, at least not precisely but I'd like for it to tactical and interesting enough to engross players without necessarily tracking "social Stun", though that is an option. I'm in the brainstorming stage.

 

Markdoc, you seem to have a group you're on the same page with as far as social skills and there use goes but all of us aren't so fortunate. Honestly, social skills have been a major bone of contention is most groups I've been in as player and GM. From what I've read and from talking to other gamers it's not an uncommon problem. The kind of fast and loose semi- handwaving approach that Hero has seems to work best if either your group is all on pretty much the same place and/or social abilities aren't that important in your campaign.

[Markdoc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

I'm just tossing a theory why such systems are popular or being pushed. I'm fairly neutral on the subject beyond feeling that impressions are important in role playing game rules. Anything that would reduce the seemingly inherent tendency to reject any kind of social interaction mechanics isn't innately a bad thing' date=' IMO.[/quote']

 

Oh, I'd agree with the latter sentiment - my games tend to be mostly intrigue, liberally laced with explosions of violence. I'd like rules which made social interaction/conflict a bit "meatier" - it's just that I haven't come across anything so far that I even remotely liked, and I don't have any cunning plans on how to improve on the tools I currently have.

 

IMO the "social interaction as combat analog" was an intriguing idea that didn't work. Indie games being what they are, I think that particular meme will take a while to die away, but it looks like it is slowly dying away.

 

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Proper handling of social interactions should be more along the lines of advice for the GM and less of a mechanic. Really what there needs to be is something along the lines of Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering dealing with social interaction, breaking down long social interactions (a feast, a ball, infiltrating a gang, etc) and showing when a social roll would be appropriate and what the results should be for a good and bad roll. Not in a hard and strict "these are the rules" manner, but more of a set of "this will add suspense and fun" guidelines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And judging by previous posts in this thread, Markdoc is just the guy to write it....

[nexus]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Well, I can respect that opinion but I really don't want to get into the debate of if there should be social mechanics/rules but what people that use think and prefer particularly those questions I posted.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Yeah, looking back at the original post, what I wrote wasn't too helpful, huh?

 

Well, I didn't mean to say that there should be no rules for social interactions...rules along these lines are needed...but they need to be fairly generalized. They could be more specific than they are in Hero now, but there's a point where they become too confining, given how irrational humans often are in social interactions.

 

I guess I can't get any more specific than that off the top of my head, but I could easily rate a particular rule if someone were to bring it up to me.

 

Oh yeah, some technique ("system" sounds too...systematized for what I would look for) for breaking down long social interactions into smaller bits would be awesome. Leaving a whole game session's attempts to seduce the Duchess, without the Duke noticing, to one big hero-or-zero die roll is uninteresting.

[nexus]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

That's cool. I just didn't want the thread to swerve into a different debate. I know some groups as so in synch this sort of thing isn't needed or even desired. That hasn't been my experience though (and since I do most of my gaming online now, my "group" is pretty large and shifts often though I have core group of players that I usually game with) so I want something more codified and "meaty".

[megaplayboy]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Well, I would point out that if PCs are effectively immune to the effects of interaction skills, then it's basically a waste of points to give NPCs those skills, and it also reduces the effectiveness of PCs who happen to have those skills.

 

My take: If a PC/NPC rolls really well, particularly after roleplaying the use of the skill, and then the other PC/NPC rolls poorly, then, depending on the interaction skill, the target of the skill is going to do something or believe something they normally wouldn't (equivalent of EGO+20 level of MC or MI), with a decent chance that they will realize later they were manipulated.

 

If players don't like it, just don't do it that often.

 

Heck, if we "house rule" that "the players can't be affected by interaction skills", why not "house rule" that they can't be affected by mind control or telepathy or mental illusions? I mean, players get annoyed by that too, right?

 

Hey, why don't we house rule that PCs can never be killed in combat? I'm sure that would spare a lot of disappointment.

[Markdoc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Well' date=' I would point out that if PCs are effectively immune to the effects of interaction skills, then it's basically a waste of points to give NPCs those skills, and it also reduces the effectiveness of PCs who happen to have those skills.[/quote']

 

The trick is to walk the line between making your PCs meat robots and making them immune to persuasion.

 

I do that three ways:

1) by feeding them lies mixed in with the truth, when NPCs roll appropriately. Not stuff that they can immediately verify but things like "Make an Int roll - now you think about it, that guard who gave you the information did look awfully shifty, and he was kind of heavily armored for a normal guard..." So not true - but the player has just been outpersuaded by an NPC that maybe someone is setting them up. They may not change their actions, based on the information they are fed, but often they do ... And they do it voluntarily

2) by suggesting courses of action. I do this anyway, when it seems relevant - in this weeks game, the players were involved in a pirates vs navy sea fight. One of the PCs is an experienced warrior and has tactics. So I say "Bellona - make a tactics roll. You made it? You think maybe it'd be a good idea to get your guys with bows up on the sterncastle. Oh, you made it by 5? How about detailing some guys with shields to cover them while they're firing?" So when the player meets with a seductive NPC, and gets hooked, it doesn't raise flags to say "Make an INT roll. You made it? Actually, she seems really sincere. She does seem to like you. And you realize maybe it'd be good to have an ally in town..." Again, the character is not forced, but encouraged to act appropriately. That differentiates the "hooker with a heart of larceny" from the Færie maid whose kiss compels affection (ie: seduction vs mind control).

3) Use of social limitations/reputation. At one point, the players (used, perhaps, to more antagonistic GMs) were amazed at how cooperative the local social hierarchy was being. I simply pointed out that over the course of the last few adventurers, they had helped the local temple hold a succesfsul festival, taken part in local sports events, been invited to attend a party at the local lord's house, had captured a dangerous murderer - and bought lots of drinks at local taverns. They had established a reputation as "local heroes" not "Armed foreign weirdoes" and so were treated accordingly. And the point was made, that they could still blow that by behaving badly. Social actions carry social consequences.

 

cheers, Mark

[nexus]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

I don't want the topic to drift too much from the OP if I can help it.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

I think I'd like to see a social conflict system that assigns basic capability and resistance ratings, then modifies them according to skill use, rep, situation and task difficulty. Telling a small, believable fib would be assigned a very low difficulty, then added to the resistance rating of the target. Telling a giant whopper which contradicts the evidence would obviously add quite a lot.

 

One way of making this more roleplay-relevant would be to break big social tasks into smaller stages, with the characters roleplaying through each stage of the process. If you incorporated that with Markdoc's suggestion, it could seem perfectly natural that X wound up in bed with Y, since it went through all the normal stages of courtship. ("What do you mean she seduced me? I thought I was seducing her!")

[nexus]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

I think I'd like to see a social conflict system that assigns basic capability and resistance ratings, then modifies them according to skill use, rep, situation and task difficulty. Telling a small, believable fib would be assigned a very low difficulty, then added to the resistance rating of the target. Telling a giant whopper which contradicts the evidence would obviously add quite a lot.

 

One way of making this more roleplay-relevant would be to break big social tasks into smaller stages, with the characters roleplaying through each stage of the process. If you incorporated that with Markdoc's suggestion, it could seem perfectly natural that X wound up in bed with Y, since it went through all the normal stages of courtship. ("What do you mean she seduced me? I thought I was seducing her!")

 

That's what I'd like to achieve as well as allowing for "Dramatic Realism" (The 2 minute Hook Up) and Cinematic social effects ("Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?")

[Markdoc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

I think I'd like to see a social conflict system that assigns basic capability and resistance ratings' date=' then modifies them according to skill use, rep, situation and task difficulty. Telling a small, believable fib would be assigned a very low difficulty, then added to the resistance rating of the target. Telling a giant whopper which contradicts the evidence would obviously add quite a lot.[/quote']

 

But isn't that what we have now? Basic capability (Social skill roll) and resistance ratings (target skill roll or modified PRE), then modifies them according to skill use, rep, situation and task difficulty (all fall under the heading of skill modifiers).

 

Certainly, that's how I've always played it. Where I could see some value being added is giving some actual numbers for the modifiers, but (if I understand it) that falls short of an actual system like Nexus was asking about.

 

cheers, Mark

[megaplayboy]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

But isn't that what we have now? Basic capability (Social skill roll) and resistance ratings (target skill roll or modified PRE)' date=' [i']then modifies them according to skill use, rep, situation and task difficulty [/i](all fall under the heading of skill modifiers).

 

Certainly, that's how I've always played it. Where I could see some value being added is giving some actual numbers for the modifiers, but (if I understand it) that falls short of an actual system like Nexus was asking about.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Yeah, Ultimate Skill fell a little short in that category.

 

What wasn't clear to me was whether PC vs. NPC interaction skill use was a contested roll, or just a straight roll. I mean, apparently trying to get someone to sleep with you takes 3 hours base time and is a -4 to succeed, so a guy with a 14- Seduction roll has to spend 3 hours in order to get a 50% chance to succeed with their roll, then(if the target gets a resistance roll) the target has a base roll of, say, 11-, minus whatever the seducer made the roll by. So, if the roll is made by 0-1, the chance of success for the guy with the 14- roll after 3 hours of effort against a target with average resistance is about...1 in 4. James Bond must go home alone quite a bit.

(just using seduction as an example, not fixated on it. )

Even if you crank the roll up to 16 or less(which is pretty much world-class level, if 18-19 is "best in the world" level, and 20+ is "best ever"), then the base roll is 12, and on an average roll of 10, the chance of success does go up, but only to about 45%. You have to go up to 17- in order to have a better than 50% chance of "hooking up" with an average target.

 

I know you can add favorable conditions, rep and whatnot, but it pretty much puts the "20 minute pickup artist" in the realm of legends(I assume speeding things up would add 3 to the difficulty per time increment, so that would be a mere -10 to the roll).

 

As a general rule, when game assumptions(about mundane events) directly contradict observed reality, the assumptions should probably be changed to better reflect that reality. If anything, in a cinematic realism setting, interaction skills should probably be slightly more effective than they are in the real world.

[Maur]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Well, they don't resist with an 11- unless they also have seduction or appropriate counter skill. They roll against the 8- fam with that skill

[Markdoc]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Yeah, Ultimate Skill fell a little short in that category.

 

What wasn't clear to me was whether PC vs. NPC interaction skill use was a contested roll, or just a straight roll. I mean, apparently trying to get someone to sleep with you takes 3 hours base time and is a -4 to succeed, so a guy with a 14- Seduction roll has to spend 3 hours in order to get a 50% chance to succeed with their roll, then(if the target gets a resistance roll) the target has a base roll of, say, 11-, minus whatever the seducer made the roll by. So, if the roll is made by 0-1, the chance of success for the guy with the 14- roll after 3 hours of effort against a target with average resistance is about...1 in 4. James Bond must go home alone quite a bit.

 

I know you can add favorable conditions, rep and whatnot, but it pretty much puts the "20 minute pickup artist" in the realm of legends(I assume speeding things up would add 3 to the difficulty per time increment, so that would be a mere -10 to the roll).

 

As a general rule, when game assumptions(about mundane events) directly contradict observed reality, the assumptions should probably be changed to better reflect that reality. If anything, in a cinematic realism setting, interaction skills should probably be slightly more effective than they are in the real world.

 

Well' date=' they don't resist with an 11- unless they also have seduction or appropriate counter skill. They roll against the 8- fam with that skill [/quote']

 

I agree with both these quotes. Basically, having seen real life seductions that took less time than it takes to drink a beer, I'd set a minimum of 5 minutes but you might want to choose an hour or even 3 hours, since it's very context dependant. And in my games you never get to make a skill roll at (9+CHA/5) unless you actually have the skill. It either defaults to 8- or to (6+CHA/5) - which for ordinary people is 8- (the minus 3 penalty also matches that for not having an appropriate fam: for transport or weapons familiarities).

 

So - let's say 1 hour and take a scene from Iron Man, which I saw last night. I assume speeding things up gives you a -1, since taking more time gives you a +1 - and as you say, this is cinematic, not real life.

 

Tony Stark, to reporter, somewhat abridged: "Hey, Baybee!" He has seduction 14-, chooses to take his roll after 1 min (-2) and benefits from reputation "Gazillionaire Stallion SUPREME!" (+3) for a roll of 15-. He rolls 10 and makes it by 5.

Reporter. "You? You're an evil capitalist pig!" She has no appropriate counter-skill and only 11 PRE, but has a 20 COM (and hence high self esteem: that helps in a straight pickup like this) so gets a roll of 6+20/5 or 10-. She also gets a -2 because she's antagonistic to him. She rolls 12 and makes it exactly, giving Tony a 5 point advantage FTW "But you're kind of cute..."

Tony Stark (aside) "Oh, yeah. She's going for a ride on Tony's Baloney Pony!"

 

Had she had resistance or seduction herself, Tony would still have likely won (being the Gazillionaire Stallion SUPREME! gives you a pretty big bonus) - but by a much smaller margin: meaning we wouldn't cut directly to the bedroom scene. But she would likely have lost the antagonistic multiplier - he could have continued to push his luck if he wanted to spend another 5 minutes on it. Had she had a normal (or even low) COM, she could have defaulted to using PRE instead of COM. Depending on the rolls, you can get a result anywhere from instant success, to a slower seduction that plays out over hours or even weeks ("No thanks - but call me")

 

Had Tony rolled 16 and she rolled 11 (Tony fails by 1) she would likely have become more antagonistic, making any attempts to repair the damage harder. If she rolled really well - a win of 3 or more - his Gazillionaire Stallion SUPREME! bonus might actually become a hindrance (reputation can be a double edged sword: "Just because you're rich doesn't mean you can bed any woman you like!" Reputation: arrogant, rich philanderer (-3))

 

cheers, Mark

[Tonio]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

She has no appropriate counter-skill and only 11 PRE' date=' but has a 20 COM (and hence high self esteem: that helps in a straight pickup like this)[/quote']

 

Hm, I don't agree with you on that. I think self esteem is better represented by PRE. Good looks don't always equal high self esteem. In fact, I don't think it's even that common.

[Maur]

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

 

Presence and Ego seem to be the two good counters (force of personality and one's sense of self)