Handling social stuff in HERO

[Sean Waters]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

............

 

The extent to which social skills work on PC's should be assessed on the basis of how well they work for PC's. If social interaction will be just flavour, then it should be just flavour for everyone. If it will have significant results, that should also apply to everyone.

 

There are some occurences that social skills won't change, but there are some situations combat won't change either. Both resounding success and dismal failure should be possibilities if the skills are to have any meaning. That doesn't mean "oops - you missed your interaction skill, so you don't find out about the plot - campaign over", but it could easily mean Kakrafor easily defeats the small garrison at the mountain pass, since the players did not discover his plans, and now has an advantage to further his plans, which the characters will have to overcome. But that's OK, because all the points they didn't spend on interaction skills went to infiltration and combat skills, which will make it easier for them to take back that fortress in the mountain pass.

 

I agree that social interaction should work the same for PCs and NPCs, as much as possible. I'm not desperately keen on a social combat mechanism (well not on any of the one's I've seen previously or thought up although, to be fair, I suppose the skill system and PRE attacks are a form of social combat already): although it is true that we do not make people duke it out when they enter combat, social interaction is something we can be more invested in. I think the trick is to have a system that allows players to express their views as to how a character that they control is LIKELY to react in a given situation without making the character immune to social manipulation.

[Matt Holck]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

 

It is not that social interaction doesn't have any effect - it is that the way in which the group socially interact should and can set the flavour for future campaign points. The players are effectively setting the environment in which they play.

 

the scenery is more vivid for the players have latitude to add to it

[Sean Waters]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

the scenery is more vivid for the players have latitude to add to it

 

Wow - beautiful; and it works well as a haiku -

 

Scenery is more

Vivid if the players have

Latitude to add

 

Unfortunately I can't give you poetry rep, but keep spreading the wisdom

[Sean Waters]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

I've had a couple of thoughts on social skills. Tiny little epiphanies. Epiphanettes. The first point is nothing new, and nothing less than obvious, although it might be a slightly different perspective on things for you - it is for me.

 

Anyway:

 

1. Interaction Skills allow you to provide information to someone and give them confidence in that information.

 

This means, in terms, that all a social interaction skill roll will do is provide the target with information, and a successful social interaction skill roll will give them confidence that the information they have is true. What THEN happens is a matter of role playing. You see, I think that is what players might well resent about a GM telling them what happens to their character - if you simply say, "He tells you to jump off a cliff, and you do.", the player is going to be disgruntled. However, if you say, "He tells you that the detonator switch he holds will set off an explosion that will kill your family, and that he will push the button if you do not jump off the cliff into the raging torrent below, and almost certain death. You believe every word" THEN it is up to the player to decide what the character does. He might jump, trusting to luck that he will survive and return for round two, or he might try and wrestle the detonator off the villain (which could result in the death of his family). The point is that what the target of the Interaction Skill (and, note, I haven't said whether the information imparted was accurate or not - just that the PC believes what is said) is effectively perceiving something that the user of the Skill wants them to (if the skill use is successful). What they DO with that is then a matter for role playing.

 

In the above example, it would be good role playing to make any number of reactions - jump, attack, or use an Interaction Skill of your own. The Villain WANTS the Hero (I'm assuming it is that way around) to jump, but he is not MAKING him jump - he is providing information, and confidence in the veracity of the information, which he hopes will lead the Hero to do what he is asking, but it is never certain. This is not Mind Control.

 

The same is true of all Interaction Skills: if you use Acting you are giving the target information that you ARE a particular individual (or that you are not), and the skill roll provides an indication of the confidence that the target has in the information they are receiving. If you use Bribery you are providing information that you are willing to make an exchange of goods or information that will be worth while for the target, and giving them confidence that you can and will actually provide what you promise, and so on. What the target DOES with that information is in no way under the control of the person using the skill.

 

In the first example, even if you do a perfect impersonation of General Gethanko, if your target has just come from the General's deathbed, he will know that something dodgy is going on. In the second instance, even if you succeed with a bribery attempt, the target may have information that you do not, for example that someone else has already successfully bribed him and he is thinking about playing one off against the other. Interaction Skills never guarantee that the target will do what you want, no matter how wildly successful they are. They simply guarantee that information is passed to the target and the target is confident that the information is accurate. How the target reacts to that information is beyond your control and depends on the target's personality and knowledge.

 

Perhaps the hardest Interaction Skill to do in this way is Conversation because it involves a great deal of subtlety. The victim will sometimes not know that they have divulged information. It is very hard to do that with a PC. The Conversationalist is giving the target information that they are not a threat and that they are fascinated by what they are hearing and if you tell a player that they are going to clam up or simply avoid anything sensitive.

 

2. There are not necessarily any obvious 'opposition' skills to social interaction attempts: the fact that someone is good at conversation themselves doesn't necessarily mean that they are good at resisting someone else's attempts at conversation (perhaps the opposite!). On the other hand, some skills may (at least in some situations) obviously oppose themselves, but usually that means that both parties are using the same sort of skill for opposing reasons; for example Bureaucratics may oppose Bureacratics if someone is trying to find an important document and someone else is trying to bury it in red tape.

 

Working on the principle outlined above that an Interaction Skill provides information and confidence in that information, I would propose that the obvious 'counter-skill' would be Perception. Now it is interesting that we don't have any Perception based skills, and maybe we should. It certainly seems to me that perception has a role to play in social interaction. For example someone might be good at spotting a lie. This could be because they pick up body language cues or it could be that they simply have a very logical mind and are able to pick up inconsistencies in what is being said. Either way, some sort of Perception roll, opposed to the Interaction Skill might be appropriate. Alternatively you could build something like a talent, rather like the Resistance Talent, but based on INT rather than EGO, which acts as a -1 to the Interaction Skill when relevant.

 

For instance you could have:

 

Detect Lies: -1 to anyone using an Interaction Skill involving lies for 1 point

The character is particularly adept at spotting when someone is lying and it is harder to successfully use an Interaction Skill on the character if it is based on a lie

Socially Aware: -1 to anyone using an Interaction Skill in a social setting for 1 point

The character is particularly adept at avoiding giving out information in a casual setting by guarding their words or steering conversation in a different direction

 

Logical Mind: -1 to anyone using an Interaction Skill based on spurious logic or appeals to emotion for 1 point

The character is adept at seeing the root of an argument - and detecting when someone is trying to use an Interaction Skill based on emotional manipulation

 

There's probably lots more you could use too. Potentially the Analyze Skill could be used in a social context, although it is not a perfect fit, and a lot of Knowledge Skills will be relevant if it comes to certain types of Interaction Skill use (He sounds very convincing, but as a geologist you know that the sounds you heard couldn't be volcanic activity - this region is completely stable)

[Sean Waters]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

I just thought: I said above that Conversation was difficult to do with the paradigm I propose - and it is - but it strikes me it is difficult because it is a stealth skill - if you do it properly, no one knows what you have done. That makes some sort of Perception roll the obvious way to counter it, and means that the 'information and confidence' that you are imparting is 'everything is perfectly normal and I'm not pumping you for information for any nefarious reason'. Of course, even if the player knows that the PC believes that it may be difficult for them to simply role play giving up important information. However, perhaps that is OK - it would also mean that it would be difficult for a PC to get information from a NPC that way. Perhaps the way that Conversation should be used is to set someone at ease, and act as a complimentary skill to a more specific Interaction Skills (like Charm, or Persuasion).

 

It also strikes me that using the 'Talent build' mentioned above is better than requiring the player to make an opposed roll because making a roll is a metagame construct that warns the player that something is going on.

[GAZZA]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

OK, I can buy that for Persuasion to some extent. After all, most of the description of the skill is about telling lies. But really, telling players that they believe the lie or not based on the liar's skill roll doesn't really address anything; YMMV, but if anything I would say players hate being told what their character feels even more than they hate being told what their character does.

 

For other skills - I don't know that it really helps at all. I've never had anyone complain about doing something while Mind Controlled, but they hate being told, "Your PC is frightened and inclined to tell this guy whatever he likes" in response to (say) an Interrogation roll. I can tell them that they believe the Interrogator really means what he says ("You think he really will kill the puppy"), but so what? I mean, that's really not what the Interrogator is trying to achieve - he's trying to get the PC to tell him the location of his Dad so that the bad guys can nuke it from orbit (it is, after all, the only way to be sure). How did the Interrogator "succeed" at his roll if he totally failed in his actual objective? Interrogation uses fear and intimidation as a means to an end - it's not an end in and of itself (that would be sadism - and yes, many interrogators are sadistic, but they won't be considered successful interrogators unless they deliver useful information. That the interrogation will involve torture, for such an individual, is an added bonus - not the point of the exercise).

 

Or take Bribery. If you offer a corrupt individual money, he's going to take it. The Bribery roll determines whether or not he'll do what you want him to do - not whether or not he believes you will be upset with him if he doesn't. I'd imagine no roll was needed to convey that. If you successfully bribe someone and then the "bribee" doesn't do what the briber wants - well, good luck explaining to your players, "No really, you succeeded on the roll. He really does think you want him to overlook the regulations. He just doesn't really feel like actually overlooking them, cool?" And if we assume that this is what players expect when they bribe someone, surely logic suggests that it's what we should expect if the player is bribed? Sure, he can say he's totally opposed to the idea, such that you give the briber a -8 or so to the roll - but that's the limit that I'd allow. I think if you let the briber make a roll, let him succeed, and then have the player just decide not to act in accordance with the briber's wishes - well, I don't see that this is functionally different from "Social skills don't work on PCs" really.

 

Acting - well yes, OK, that is all about "was I convincing?" But here again - how does this help? Suppose the player thinks that something is up - he just "has a feeling". If the Acting roll is perfect, and you tell the player "You are completely convinced that it is Awesomeman - he's acting exactly how you would imagine Awesomeman to act" - then if the player says, "Well, screw that, Fireball coming online" in what way has he conveyed that he was convinced? Surely the act of being convinced here implies a restriction on the player's actions - he can't really start asking difficult questions, surreptitiously go for a DNA scan, and so on because if he did, he's acting in a way that shows he's suspicious - the opposite of convinced - and therefore again we have the equivalence to "social skills don't work on PCs".

 

In fairness, I think we're going about this the wrong way. NPCs are not fully fleshed out characters in the way that PCs are. There's no player behind them (the GM is not playing the NPC in the same sense that the players are playing their PCs). So a roll to determine whether or not they're affected is fine. But with a PC, there's a player there. The GM has total control over what the PCs see, hear, and so on. If he wants to portray someone as convincing, he can do it without ever needing to tell the player that he was affected by an Acting roll (or whatever). Make the roll for the NPC, and then if it failed drop hints - otherwise, don't. If the players are the kind of paranoids that will suspect everyone they meet, then have a lot of unfortunate misunderstandings involving the blood of kittens until you cure them of this. It won't work for all skills - it's hard to force a PC to stay bribed, and they are damn hard to interrogate sometimes as well - but it will work for many of them.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Don't assume that every attempt at an Interaction Skill involves a lie: if you time travel back to Pompeii and are trying to convince the townspeople to evacuate because the volcano is going to explode and kill them you are telling the truth - but they may well not believe you, because they have a belief that the god in the volcano will protect them.

 

The point about this approach is that you give the player information with which to role play. The interrogator wants to get information, yes, but does that by conveying a threat. If the PC believes the threat then it is up to the player to decide what he does with that information. I mean, remember Princess Leia in Star Wars was tortured for information - and she gave false information - and as a result her home planet was destroyed. Is that because the Interrogator Droid failed its interrogation roll? I think that is too simplistic an explanation. I think that, when Corruscant went boom she was STILL being interrogated - she just had more information now - that the Empire really was that ruthless. Still didn't mean that she had to cave in - but she knew then that their threats really were real, and the game changed.

 

If Interrogation Skill is just a matter of rolling and subtracting target Resistance, well, eventually you will succeed. I'd rather the players made the characters react appropriately. Fear, anger, despair, whatever - it doesn't mean they have to give up the information, and a smart character will play for time, or may even chose to die than betray their beliefs.

 

Not many NPCs will resist that far - if a 'Hero' is willing to torture someone for information, there is a good chance that they will get information - but how accurate it is is anyone's guess: if you tell someone you are going to twist the knife until they tell you some information they WILL tell you some information, even if they do not actually know it.

 

If a PC is tortured for information I would expect the player to be realistic about what they will do, as they are role playing - but if they decide they will take the information to their grave, well, perhaps you should let them. Some people do resist torture unto death, so it is a real possibility.

[GAZZA]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Don't assume that every attempt at an Interaction Skill involves a lie: if you time travel back to Pompeii and are trying to convince the townspeople to evacuate because the volcano is going to explode and kill them you are telling the truth - but they may well not believe you' date=' because they have a belief that the god in the volcano will protect them.[/quote']

Yes fair enough.

 

Is that because the Interrogator Droid failed its interrogation roll? I think that is too simplistic an explanation.

Well, two points here.

 

Firstly, "Yes, that works for me." Seriously. If we assume that Star Wars ANH is a Star Hero game, and that Princess Leia is a player character being interrogated by a droid, then I would say that the droid actually failed his interrogation roll by quite a lot. Usually, a failed roll would just mean that the subject had resisted your attempts and said nothing. A bad roll means that they lied, and you believed them. Otherwise, if you can lie even if they succeed, what's the point of the skill? Assume the reverse - you're playing the droid, trying to take out these terrorists that are trying to tear down your magnificent Empire and leaving all humanity vulnerable to some outside threat. You make your Interrogation roll at a penalty because this princess has a high willpower. Are you going to agree with the GM when he tells you that she lied, even though you made the roll? (Doesn't mean she has to be telling the truth - she may not know the truth, she may honestly believe a falsehood - but she shouldn't be able to intentionally deceive).

 

Secondly, and more importantly - using movies as inspiration for gaming is great, using them to prove mechanical points is less so. The princess lied and the droid believed her because that's what the script said would happen. There's no need for mechanics to resolve conflict in a story, so it's always going to be an imperfect match when trying to use specific elements of a story to illustrate mechanics. (But I obviously get what you mean, just being pedantic).

 

If Interrogation Skill is just a matter of rolling and subtracting target Resistance, well, eventually you will succeed.

Well, I'm not sure that's a particularly inaccurate result, really.

 

I should probably take a step back here and clarify what I mean. Aggressive interrogation, especially torture, does not always (or even often) yield reliable information. Often the victims will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, just to make the pain (or misery, if you're "only" psychologically torturing them) stop. So in the sense that interrogation doesn't always "work", you're absolutely right.

 

But in the sense that you will eventually break your opponent's resistance, I doubt anyone could hold out forever. The sorts of heroes that could never be broken would usually come with caveats like "He'd die first" or "He can't feel the pain" or whatever; the former would be easy to build in Hero (some sort of Triggered RKA would do it) while the latter is harder because of the well known issues Hero has with absolutes. Which is really the problem in a nutshell - in Hero, a 3 is always a success, an 18 is always a failure; given enough retries, you will succeed. Perhaps not even allowing a chance if, say, the adjusted roll needed is less than -5 or whatever would work.

 

Perhaps what is needed here is a consequence for failure. As you say, if the interrogator failing the roll means simply that he has to try again, he'll succeed eventually. On the other hand, if you rule that if he fails by more than 5 (say), that he is instead completely convinced of a lie, then he won't continue the process further (at least not with the intent of extracting information - he might torture you to death if the sharks with fricking laser beams aren't hungry). This works fine for an NPC. But for a PC? Again, YMMV, but I think I'd get less resistance from telling a player, "Unfortunately you can't resist any more, and you tell the sadistic villain what the launch codes are" than telling them, "You're totally terrified and in agony; you feel a desperate need to do anything it takes to make the pain and fear stop". As I say, in my experience players can deal more easily with your temporarily dictating actions for their characters than they can with dictating emotions. I tend to think a lot of PCs would just say, "Well, up yours villain, I don't care what you do to me, I'm still not telling you." Yes, that's heroic. But it's hardly what you'd expect to see from a successful interrogation roll - it seems to imply that the roll failed.

 

Essentially, I would argue that whether or not an interrogator convinces you of his threats and/or demonstrates his sadistic intentions is an entirely separate question from how good he is at extracting information. A scary dude might have you voiding your bowels within moments, but the guy that manages to make it clear to you that you're being silly about this whole thing, that he's really one of the good guys, and that in any case he's already asked your mates and they've told him what he needs to know (he's just giving you the same opportunity to cooperate that he gave them) - well, he might not scare you, but if he convinces you to tell, he's done a much better job, no? A skilled interrogator need not necessarily employ even the threat of violence. And how would you go about demonstrating this success - by telling the player that he really believes this is actually one of the good guys now? I don't know, I just don't see that as being very effective. It sounds to me as if PCs are going to get a lot of leeway with such a system that they wouldn't tolerate if the NPCs got it as well.

[Markdoc]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

I've had a couple of thoughts on social skills. Tiny little epiphanies. Epiphanettes. The first point is nothing new' date=' and nothing less than obvious, although it might be a slightly different perspective on things for you - it is for me.[/quote']

 

Good!

 

The same is true of all Interaction Skills: if you use Acting you are giving the target information that you ARE a particular individual (or that you are not)' date=' and the skill roll provides an indication of the confidence that the target has in the information they are receiving. If you use Bribery you are providing information that you are willing to make an exchange of goods or information that will be worth while for the target, and giving them confidence that you can and will actually provide what you promise, and so on. What the target DOES with that information is in no way under the control of the person using the skill.[/quote']

 

Prezacktly! This was the point I was hammering over and over again during the last great social combat debate. Interaction skills are not mind control - they simply ways of controlling information flow. And this applies to both PCs and NPCs alike. They are almost all way of delivering or evaluating information, by and large. I don't dictate how PCs "feel" but I am perfectly happy to tell them "As far as you can tell, the information is completely genuine" of "Yeah, he seems completely convinced". What they do with that information is up to them - as it is up to an NPC in the same situation.

 

An analogous non-social example: a PC is targeted by a pickpocket who makes a successful sleight of hand roll. I don't say "Some guy bumps into you" - that automatically triggers a response, because it is a discrete event. I merely mention later that the wallet is missing. Likewise, I don't say "The woman at the bar starts talking to you" - I assume that if she is looking to gain information that it will occur in the course of a normal - and thus unremarked - conversation ... and again, that applies to the PCs too. PCs can actively avoid normal interaction, of course .... but that carrie sits own inherent penalties.

 

Perhaps the hardest Interaction Skill to do in this way is Conversation because it involves a great deal of subtlety. The victim will sometimes not know that they have divulged information. It is very hard to do that with a PC. The Conversationalist is giving the target information that they are not a threat and that they are fascinated by what they are hearing and if you tell a player that they are going to clam up or simply avoid anything sensitive.

 

I've never had a problem with conversation - as a GM, I can control (via the rolls) how much information the NPC can obtain - or for that matter give out. Even on a wildly successful roll, I'm not going to assume the PC just blurts out out the address of their secret base, but the NPC may well be able to obtain - for example - the apparently harmless information that the PC is very familiar with the tunnel toll and rush hours despite living and working in Manhattan and flinches when the name "Hackensack" comes up in conversation. The same goes the other way, too. The guiding principle is always what is "reasonable" and that's going to be context and history dependant for any PC/NPC - if the PC thinks he is talking to Awesome Man, he might well give him the address of the base (though I'd pitch that as "Awesome man asks you what time you want to meet at your base" not simply assume the information is given out. Of course the PC (or NPC) can clam up and refuse to be drawn on any subject ... at the price of appearing anti-social or a wierdo. Normally, they'd need some reason for that, though.

 

As for the other suggestions, I'm reluctant to use perception as a social skill: all it would tell you in a conversation contest is that the person you were talking to was really interesting. I do like (and currently allow) players to buy "social powers" however. In the current game, for example the noble knight Lamoniak has a "detect emotion" power bought as the "acute ability to read body language". He can't necessarily tell if people are lying, but he can often tell if the person is excited, nervous, angry, scared, etc - which often lets him draw useful conclusions about how far to trust what they say. I encourage that sort of thing as adding more depth to the information exchange process.

 

cheers, Mark

[archermoo]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

That is certainly how I've always handled it. To at least some degree the PCs only have me to rely on for things like gut reactions to meeting and talking with people, since they aren't actually their characters and I'm not actually whatever NPC they are reacting with. Whether or not rolls are being made on either side, I'll frequently note things like "he seems to be telling the truth" or "he seems to be hiding something" or the like.

 

I guess it also helps that for the most part I've always gamed with people who are very much capable of separating what they and their character know, what their goals are and what their character's goals are, etc. I have for the most part always been able to depend on my players to, if handed a note saying "your character has been mind controlled to think that your teammates are bad guys" or even "your character has been replaced by a bad guy" to do a great job of role playing their part correctly. With generally no worries that the rest of the players will react with anything other than "cool, great job, you really nailed us!". I think a lot of that comes down to not only not having the "Players vs the Ref" mindset, but also the "we're here to have fun, and while our characters succeeding is fun, overcoming setbacks can be fun too" mindset.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

I guess it also helps that for the most part I've always gamed with people who are very much capable of separating what they and their character know' date=' what their goals are and what their character's goals are, etc. I have for the most part always been able to depend on my players to, if handed a note saying "your character has been mind controlled to think that your teammates are bad guys" or even "your character has been replaced by a bad guy" to do a great job of role playing their part correctly. With generally no worries that the rest of the players will react with anything other than "cool, great job, you really nailed us!". I think a lot of that comes down to not only not having the "Players vs the Ref" mindset, but also the "we're here to have fun, and while our characters succeeding is fun, overcoming setbacks can be fun too" mindset.[/quote']

Nice. Yeah, having a good group of roleplayers like that really helps. You're authoring a collaborative story, not trying to beat each other in a, "game."

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

How about this. Roleplaying up to the moment where the dice come out. Before rolling, the player(s) and/or GM negotiate what the result means. "If I succeed with this Seduction roll your character goes off with her and we fade to black. If not, you get the information out of her, and we decide what to do from there. If that's not acceptable, let's come up with something else."

 

Nice. Yeah' date=' having a good group of roleplayers like that really helps. You're authoring a collaborative story, not trying to beat each other in a, "game."[/quote']

 

True enough, but some players want their character to be the hero of the story, and some players want to see how much misery they can pile on top of their characters and how the character looks after.

 

Always remember; when there are a GM and five players around a table, that's at least six stories that people are waiting to hear.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

True enough, but some players want their character to be the hero of the story, and some players want to see how much misery they can pile on top of their characters and how the character looks after.

 

Always remember; when there are a GM and five players around a table, that's at least six stories that people are waiting to hear.

Oh, absolutely. And there should be some challenge in there, too. Not all stories have a happy ending for that matter. But despite all that it should be friends, around a table, cooperating (in an out-of-character sense) to create a story in which everyone can participate and contribute.

 

As an aside, that's why I got really, really disgusted when people at my local gaming store basically decided to make a wargame out of roleplaying. They just did round after round after round of player vs. player skirmishes with D&D 3E, with completely mechanical rules for what you could "buy" outside the arena and change on your character sheet between fights and such. It was all about power-gaming, competing, and there was zero actual "roleplaying" involved. It completely turned my stomach and made me fearful of any new "gamers" they turned out into the roleplaying community. (It also turned me off even more from the system, because I truly blame to some degree the "standardization" of magical item pricing/creation, level wealth guidelines, "challenge rating/encounter level" and all of that for encouraging that kind of crap. Taking the humanity out of adventuring and roleplaying and deciding how to put a game together is far from a good thing.)

[Wolf]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Oh, absolutely. And there should be some challenge in there, too. Not all stories have a happy ending for that matter. But despite all that it should be friends, around a table, cooperating (in an out-of-character sense) to create a story in which everyone can participate and contribute.

 

As an aside, that's why I got really, really disgusted when people at my local gaming store basically decided to make a wargame out of roleplaying. They just did round after round after round of player vs. player skirmishes with D&D 3E, with completely mechanical rules for what you could "buy" outside the arena and change on your character sheet between fights and such. It was all about power-gaming, competing, and there was zero actual "roleplaying" involved. It completely turned my stomach and made me fearful of any new "gamers" they turned out into the roleplaying community. (It also turned me off even more from the system, because I truly blame to some degree the "standardization" of magical item pricing/creation, level wealth guidelines, "challenge rating/encounter level" and all of that for encouraging that kind of crap. Taking the humanity out of adventuring and roleplaying and deciding how to put a game together is far from a good thing.)

 

The attitude you talk of here is what I was truly rallying against, though I admit I went a tad too far. I was, not too long ago, introducing some D&D players to Hero, and I asked him what he said to "the King" and he just replied something like, "I made my roll, how can I know what I said, I just made it happen." and that's the first time I even heard the argument that social elements should be controlled by the dice. Many RPG'ers I've met out here are of that mentality... you make rolls, and keep in character down to nothing, if possible (as in they assume that in character dialogue is a detraction from the game) and if you aren't rolling, then it's not your turn, and that's the entirety of the game. To me, this does not a roleplaying game make... but I guess, to each their own.

 

As a side note, it also helped in my dislike of 3.x mechanics, because it wasn't until that was the dominant system that I saw these guys popping up all over the place.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Ouch. Yeah, I feel your pain.

[Wolf]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Thanks, I actually took 3 years off of gaming because I could only find these groups... for, like, a year of searching...

[GAZZA]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

While I don't disagree that it's not "roleplaying" at all, my group pretty much abandoned D&D as anything but a wargame. I couldn't honestly say why, but it just feels like a system with levels tends to focus people's attention on getting to the next one. I have seen groups that wanted to minimise social stuff because it doesn't give XP, and they didn't want to waste time they could be using to fight something. Whatever, I guess, as long as they're having fun, but in the end our group decided that if that's all we really wanted, we might as well just play WoW or something.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Oh' date=' absolutely. And there should be some challenge in there, too. Not all stories have a happy ending for that matter. But despite all that it should be friends, around a table, cooperating (in an out-of-character sense) to create a story in which everyone can participate and contribute.[/quote']

 

Every game group has its unwritten standards. In some cases, it may be that both success and failure are possible, and the likelihood of each. Others may decide that characters don't die or get otherwise permanently damaged without player consent, and/or structure the game so the heroes will always win. There's lots of gradations in between, but everyone needs to be on board with the same expectations.

 

For me, there is little point having a mechanical system for determination of success and failure if it will not be used for that purpose. If just having certain skills, interaction or otherwise, will dictate results ("He has a half decent science skill, so he will always know the basic stuff, but not the unusual stuff" rather than "roll with modifiers for the obscureness of the issue"), the players should know that and be on board. Similarly, they should know if certain skills are going to have no actual in-game benefit and, if so, they should not be required to pay points for something that provides no benefit.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Handling social stuff in HERO

 

Oh definitely. Can't disagree with any of that. Be honest and open about your expectations, and let people know the type of game you wish to run before hand.