Perception and "social perception", I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! Options

[masterofm]

Ok now perception and socially perceiving someone (as in checking someone out using your social skills.) What is the difference? Lets say you are talking to a Johnson and you have one shadowrunner at the meet is the face, and one shadowrunner who is the perception monkey. Now when both are scoping out the Johnson what would each person notice, and how would they notice it? Is most of the social perception dealing with body language, tone of voice, eye and mouth movement while perception would notice what the person is physically doing? Maybe is the person really good at noticing things like that that the Johnson has a foot tick, but be unable to pick up on the fact that it is actually the Johnson's tell if he is lying?

The problem I have is that what different forms of information do you receive when using these two different skills? Can you use team work despite the fact that they are different skills? Does a face receive penalties when socially perceiving if they can not see the other persons face, like the other person is wearing a helmet and full body suit?

[AngelisStorm]

... just to start out, I REALLY like the idea of allowing that particular skil set as a teamwork test. If you had something like subvocal mikes, the perception monster could say "his left eye is twitching, just a little. Does that mean something?"

Anyway, to the actual question. I feel much the same way about it. My solution has been to just rule that they are different types of perception. The perception monster might notice the little tells of a person, but wouldn't know they meant anything. And it probably wouldn't help if someone is trying to pull a con on you. The social monster, on the other hand, knows all about human interaction almost on a intuitive level, but wouldn't be the guy is notices little movements out of the corner of his eye.

Where they interact... if I'm trying to help my players out (everyone can't be good everything, and I don't like to seriously smite a character unless their really asking for it) if someone were intimidating them, and they rolled well on perception, I might let them notice that they aren't actually carrying a gun. Or ask them "How many bullets DID he shoot?" Or point out the little tells, but let them guesse what they might mean (is he nervous? And if so, is he lying, or just new at this?)

It doesn't work very well the other way around though. Though if it were a real social monster, I might help them out with small things like "a normal guy would probably hide something in the inside pocket of his suit coat, in the closet. That's normal behavior anyway." Or I might remind him that people suck at passwords, and let him remind the hacker to look around for pictures or post it notes.

(And I would give a penalty to social interactions, the less of the other person you can percieve. The penalty would cap at a certain point though, and probably pretty early, because people who are really good at it, like FBI profilers, don't need to see the person to be effective. Though it definitely helps.)

My 2c.

[Shiloh]

My take:

Social perception tells you attitudes and potential subtexts. Other perception isn't relevant to social interaction: having your bud tell you on the tacnet that the mark's left eye is twitching would just be a distraction. Social perception sees these things, probably without conscuiously noting them half the time, as part of a whole. A good social test will tell you that your opposing negotiator is mostly trying to keep face with his goons, and will suggest approaches you can take or things you should investigate further: was that a reaction to the name you dropped, or did they just happen to wince at a toothache?

Perception will tell you physical details like whether someone is packing, and wearing, if they're trying to physically conceal something, whether they're wounded, that they're wearing an alpha-kappa-phi fraternity ring (Soc perception would get "class or frat ring" but isn't sharp enough to note the precise design without a successful ordinary perception).

[Cheops]

I would not let Perception aid Social skills. That's what Judge Intentions is for. Also note that Judge Intentions DOES NOT involve Social Skills at all so you don't necessarily have to be a Face to be good at it.

[WeaverMount]

>having your bud tell you on the tacnet that the mark's left eye is twitching would just be a distraction

yup, if you know what info the face needed, you'd be the face.

[masterofm]

90% of what a person says is not coming out of their mouth. When you roll "judge intent" you use intuition and charisma. Oddly intuition is used in perception and you guessed it charisma is used for social skills. So in a sense if you were trying to give each other helpful hints it's not like my question is total baloney.

Do you roll judge intent when someone is lying to you or do you roll con? Are your social skills flat useless when it come to trying to find out what the other person is doing? Do you take which one is higher and use it (judge intent or the social skill involved in finding out the Johnson's motives?) Yes agreed that most information that a perception badass will give a social monkey will probably be useless, but it might give him things to look for? Then again it might not. Can you then teamwork judge intent rolls if the perception person is trying to feed the social monkey something? In a negotiation I think that there can be helpful things that a person who is great at physically perceiving can tell the person who is great at social perception. Not always, but I think there is a small case to be made. Maybe it takes a high threshold for the physical perceiving runner to actually grant a bonus to the social perceiver? Like make it a threshold 3 or 4 before you can start adding dice for the social interaction? I mean it would be good to know that when the Johnson is idly stroking his breast pocket it is not actually hiding a pistol, but some kind of detonation device. I'm not saying that all situations even warrant this, but all I'm saying is that sometimes it might actually help. Two sets of information can paint the whole picture. The social might know the Johnson is getting agitated, but the physical perception can tell what kind of weapons they might be packing.

[Siege]

"Perception" is the ability (or skill) to notice stuff.

"Social Perception" is either a specialized skill (or ability) in noticing specific stuff and/or the knowledge to interpret what you see.

Just because you can see the blood splatter doesn't mean you know how to interpret directionality and velocity and a dozen other things a trained person would know.

Just a few house rules leap to mind:

1. Social skills add as a complimentary bonus to Perception rolls (or vice versa)
2. Perception skill level cannot exceed the relevant Social skill level (Perception 12 and Social 4; no more than 4 dice for perception)
3. Substitute Social skill for Perception skill when attempting to read body language.

-Siege

[WeaverMount]

Globally I'd say that perception could let you pick up on details that could be leveraged per the social modifier table. A good dection roll can tell you the J lied when he said there were snippers on the roof, or that the bag he brought is way heavier than the 100 rounds of APDS you negotiated or that half the room is packing heat, etc. All that is invaluable info in a social "encounter". Another idea I'd roll with is supplying the data to give the Face the standard +2 AR bonus.

Locally your GMs really to use social dice. Think about how few times it's come up. Spotting situational conditions like those listed above will yeild better results. (hint hint I run your game)

[masterofm]

Yes you do, but this was more of just a question in general, and I wanted to get a feel on what other people felt, since it is not really discussed in the SR rules but I feel that it is an interesting subject that has at least some merrit.

[WeaverMount]

hence my two answers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Shiloh]

Globally I'd say that perception could let you pick up on details that could be leveraged per the social modifier table. A good dection roll can tell you the J lied when he said there were snippers on the roof, or that the bag he brought is way heavier than the 100 rounds of APDS you negotiated or that half the room is packing heat, etc. All that is invaluable info in a social "encounter". Another idea I'd roll with is supplying the data to give the Face the standard +2 AR bonus

I'd agree with that, assuming that the reason the Perception skill helped was that you saw the snipers, rather than spotting the lie-tell... And I don't think it should give dices. Having the advantage of various viewpoints and visual gear in an ARNet should, yes, give the bonus.