[X] My Assistant

[Paul]

Alright then, how does someone like myself, who isn't terribly well versed in how to persuade people to do what I want them to, be "an effective character" for social interactions?

Two separate issues. You're saying how do I as a player effectively play out someone who is drastically more social than I am. To which my answer is, just like you play a guy who can run as fast as a locomotive and can bench press a Chevy. I don't think I'm disagreeing with the majority opinion here-a Player should be able to get guidance from the GM here, and the other players. I don't expect Shakespearean drama at my table.

My statement was about a separate issue. To me too many of these discussions come down to mechanical solutions. I get Dice Pools are one possible way to measure effectiveness-but to me it fails to take into account a lot of other factors. (So I don't think you, me and Sunny are totally in disagreement.) Does any of that make sense? (I hope so, because I'm not sure I'm making sense damn it.)

[Paul]

Nobodies doing that, we haven't mentioned a "rule" yet.

Fair enough.

[Yerameyahu]

Draco18s: Ding ding, what is 'having a high dice pool in it?', Alex? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) You were already right.

By the way, mentioned that DPs exist is neither rules lawyering nor power gaming. It's rules-following and RPG-gaming.

[Paul]

Ding ding, what is 'having a high dice pool in it?', Alex? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) By the way, mentioned that DPs exist is neither rules lawyering nor power gaming. It's rules-following and RPG-gaming.

I get what you're saying, but maybe I'm not making my point clear. (Or maybe my point doesn't make sense. I swear it makes sense to me.) I'm going to take some time and think over what I have to say and come back to this.

[Yerameyahu]

I also apologize for being a little nutty this morning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Try to ignore me. Certainly those things *are* problems in gaming. But it's important not to overreact; *particularly* in this topic, a social DP should really help a novice understand how 'social' a given PC is, even if they're not sure about the details.

[Whipstitch]

I don't think 9 dice makes you a face.

It's not a modern primary dice pool, I would agree. But remember that at one point Arsenal, Augmentation and Runner's Companion weren't around yet. At release a Shaman with 9 dice, Influence and Mind Probe didn't have Face in the job title but could cover a lot of the same ground in a pinch even if they were no match for an elf bio adept with stacked pheromones and kinesics. As such I still think it's fair to say that I've never been in a group that got by without having a few Face level social tricks up their sleeve.

[Yerameyahu]

sunnyside, I don't agree. You're not 'doing nothing' when you can't think of a clever Face tactic. You're doing 'lame': you're the girl who bats her eyelashes at the cop and says, 'how about an exception?'… and gets shot down. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) You're still doing something, just like in combat if you're shooting the Citymaster with your holdout. Ping, ping, but you're not doing *nothing*.

[Paul]

I also apologize for being a little nutty this morning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Try to ignore me. Certainly those things *are* problems in gaming. But it's important not to overreact; *particularly* in this topic, a social DP should really help a novice understand how 'social' a given PC is, even if they're not sure about the details.

Nah, this gives me a reason to pause and reexamine my POV. That's not a bad thing!

[thorya]

So sunnyside and Draco18s, I'm not sure if this will help you, but it's a start to defining social actions. I could probably add actions like Flattery, Insults, Feigning Interest, etc. and make the flow chart more complicated, but I don't have the time right now. I have always preferred Social Interactions to be extended tests that involve several rolls if you're going to roll for them, because it's always possible to have one bad roll (1 success out of 16) on a negotiation check with the Mr. Johnson and you end up making almost nothing for the run. Anyway, I hope this is helpful for you guys in handling social situations.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45448342/Social%20Flow%20Chart.docx

[Paul]

Thorya thanks! I'll be looking through that this weekend!

[Draco18s]

Thorya thanks! I'll be looking through that this weekend!

Ditto

[sunnyside]

It's not a modern primary dice pool, I would agree. But remember that at one point Arsenal, Augmentation and Runner's Companion weren't around yet. At release a Shaman with 9 dice, Influence and Mind Probe didn't have Face in the job title but could cover a lot of the same ground in a pinch even if they were no match for an elf bio adept with stacked pheromones and kinesics. As such I still think it's fair to say that I've never been in a group that got by without having a few Face level social tricks up their sleeve.

Well, yes, and if anything that's sort of the problem. The Shaman maybe allocated ~30BP to facish stuff. So if it doesn't come up one session null sweat, and if it does in some minor but fun way, or they get some extra money from the J than great. That's why I'm a fan of such characters, and why they work well with most GMs.

Elfy bio adept, however, is putting their soul into this social thing...but they really aren't covering much ground the shaman doesn't have covered if the elf's player isn't super charismatic themselves. Actually, they probably wouldn't be able to do as much as the shaman if the shaman picks up some other relevant spells.

They've seen shows where people who were less capable than their character is supposed to be come up with elaborate stuff to get past a guard.

But if all they've got is "we're with maintenence" than the dice, the abilities, none of it matters.

sunnyside, I don't agree. You're not 'doing nothing' when you can't think of a clever Face tactic. You're doing 'lame':

Somehow "doing lame" sounds even worse (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Actually come to think of it I've seen some players "doing lame" instead of doing nothing, and it has meant that the situation has gotten toxic, their frustration has boiled over, and it's about to get ugly. Thankfully I haven't had one of my players do that since middle school. But I've seen it occasionally with other DM/GMs.

...and I suppose myself once in college ( I'd figured Vampire the Masquerade was really the sort of setting where a face type character would do well so I made one, only to find that the GM couldn't come up with anything but combat encounters with things that couldn't or didn't talk handed down by somebody entirely immune to social abilities. So eventually my character started going invisible and then drinking, doing crossword puzzles, or maybe a little solitare during the fights. )

you're the girl who bats her eyelashes at the cop and says, 'how about an exception?'… and gets shot down. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) You're still doing something, just like in combat if you're shooting the Citymaster with your holdout. Ping, ping, but you're not doing *nothing*.

You have a problem with your samies only buying holdout pistols and going after citymasters?

Actually, that probably is rather how the faces can feel.

The difference is that you can inform the sammy about the dozens of weapons availible for purchase that can punch a citymaster, some special ammo types that could help, and go through various missile and other anti vehicle rules at length.

What do you have for the face that can't get out of a speeding ticket?

Thorya thanks! I'll be looking through that this weekend!

Yup.

[Yerameyahu]

… You tell him the many ways you can imagine him getting out of the speeding ticket. This isn't rocket surgery. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Again, look at the multiple social tables in the book. Every modifier is a giant neon hint about the kinds of things you can do. No, it's not an exhaustive list of specific social tactics. Sorry?

Again, it's the same as *any* other skill: you can do stupid things, you can do smart things, some of those things are suggested or implied in the books, and it all takes imagination + world knowledge. Be clumsy in *any* activity can be frustrating and unfun (or *not*), but it's not a special feature of social. Beginners don't have to stay beginners, and there's ample help for them. Why are you 'informing' the sammy and not the face?

[Whipstitch]

Well, yes, and if anything that's sort of the problem. The Shaman maybe allocated ~30BP to facish stuff.

They spent more than that, actually, particularly if you feel that at least some of the charisma spending counts as investing in social skills. Personally, I'd argue for at least partial credit since with the right spell selection Magicians who only have a drain resistance pool of 8 or so are actually pretty playable, so it's not like taking 5 or 6 Charisma is a no brainer if you genuinely do not value the linked skills. Personally, I'd really have to be quite fixated on playing a particular tradition before I'd ever rock high Charisma as my drain stat without also being at least a little interested in being socially competent.

Anyway, I'd also point out that prior to Augmentation and Unwired role protection was pretty weak in general aside from the magically active since some expensive but powerful options simply weren't around yet. In fact, for one shots and groups smaller than 4 players I actually prefer to leave those books out of the equation--and yes, that means NPCs won't have Encephalons either-- since players generally respond by diversifying a bit rather than just throw points at being a more expensive metatype or paying the hardcap premium. I'm willing to call the sheer cost effectiveness of Tailored Pheromones and the low price of being a Face a feature rather than a bug if when it comes to a small group scrambling to cover many bases.

[Glyph]

I think what interested me most about the original topic (social skills as perception) is that, to me, one of the biggest flaws of social skills is the implementation - they compel action in the other character. This is what leads to high dice pools being unbalanced, to arguments about dice pool modifiers and what is or is not a plausible reaction from a character, sometimes to the point that players walk from the game. There was a thread a while back when that happened, due to the glamour power coming into play.

It can be very frustrating when you are a player, and you feel like you are unable to play the character that you brought to the table. It can be frustrating as a GM, too. You can always bring in an NPC pornomancer for a grind-off, but wouldn't it be nice to occasionally have a normal NPC who doesn't like the face, or won't sleep with the face, or whatever, instead of the face tac-nuking any hapless ordinary person he encounters? Even Miles Vorkosigan, a facey face who faced, occasionally ran into a dude with Logic and Willpower of 1, who was completely impervious to his manipulations.

I think social skills work much better, still remaining useful but not overriding other people's roleplaying, if, instead of compelling action, they do two things - one, they affect how well you "read" people - whether their smile is sincere or not, whether they are nervous or self-assured, and so on. Two, they affect how well the character presents himself - looking calm, or empathetic, or looking, to the local gang, like he belongs on the street, even wearing that corporate suit. And you can still use opposed rolls for simple tasks, or legwork, or getting some contraband from your connections. But other players, and the GM, while still being affected by the face, will still have autonomy of action (although everyone should still keep the character's ability in mind, and the GM should remind them about it with his flavor text).

[Yerameyahu]

I agree with that; there's the smell of mind control, and that's bad enough right there. And the trick *is* the metagaming side. People are socially complex, so the level of social abstraction 'feels' more wrong than, say, the combat system abstraction (though real-combat people clearly do find issues).

Perception is definitely an aspect of social skills, but it doesn't really cut it. You have to bite the bullet and deal with the 'dice are how we play fair' issue. (Or, alternatively, use a diceless system for social, and dice for everything else.)

For me, it comes down to trusting the GM to play it fair, and trusting the players to do the same. If you *should* be over-awed, act like it. If you believe in your heart that your PC is immune to a specific person's charms, then that's probably okay. Lots of trust, so don't abuse it.

[sunnyside]

I feel like we're sort of talking past each other. Which in and of itself has been informative. I'm going to take a run at re-articulating the OP in light of what I've been reading in this thread. Sorry that it gets a bit long.

So, I'll divide social skill using characters into three rough regimes.

The first two deal with characters that are faces second. They primarily fill some other role, but they have availed themselves of the synergies and affordable options availible to Shamen, adepts, all cybernetics users, and even technomancers, and then put some points into socials skills and/or charisma, maybe an advantage, and a toy. These days I suppose such a character would tend to have a dice pool in the mid/low teens or lower.

Due to the relatively low emotional and game resources invested into social skills, these characters are still highly functional outside of social situations, and it's not that big a deal if social stuff doesn't really come up in some sessions.

The first regime is if the player has sufficient social skills ( as knowledge skills if not active ones (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ) . This works very well, and very easily, because the character might generally say the same things the player would come up with for them, the character just does them better, and with phermones, good looks, etc. The character fits.

The second regime is where the player lacks such skills. However since the character's skills aren't so high, a round of GM assistance and OOCing from the other players can usually come up with something that fits. This is clunky, slow, awkward, and it can be problematic for the player to be proactive, but it can certainly work. And players doing this usually start getting better over time, which I enjoy seeing. Ways to make it smoother would be good though.

The third regime is a problem. That's when you have a real face, where those social roles are the character's focus, and their skills and abilities far exceed anything found at the gaming table. The heavy emotional and game resources spent mean they aren't so good at other stuff and the player won't be happy if they can't use the skills their character was meant for. I suppose I'd expect dice pools to be in the twenties or maybe thirties these days.

Now, it seems if you treated things RAW, in the same way virtually every other specialist operates, they just do the same thing they did before, you just have the ability to do it better or especially to shrug off big modifiers.

So your face could go up and say, "hey there, I'm the courier to take the prototype to the secure location, could you load it up in the van?" or inform the GM that they're lying and want the prototype.

And the GM looks up the modifiers, and tallies up the lack of any supporting evidence, that it would be disasterous for these guys, the max modifier for a group of people, the modifier for having time availible etc etc, but with their massive pool the player still wins the roll and heads off with the prototype.

However I think few GMs would let that fly.

So what to do with such a character? There is a feeling that all those abilities and such should mean something, but without knowing what someone with those skills would do, the group can't have them do it. A problem that doesn't really exist for any of the other types of common active skills.

Now I suppose one option would be to just not let people make such a character. Have them be something else primarily and a face on the side. Or if they really want to be a face go for moderate abilities and then sink points in powerful high loyalty contacts or maybe knowledge of wines and sports teams.

My thought was that maybe one could provide hooks, like the lipstick thing, the create avenues toward success that they might perceive. This could also be useful in general and particularily for smoothing out the second regime.

[Midas]

Alright then, how does someone like myself, who isn't terribly well versed in how to persuade people to do what I want them to, be "an effective character" for social interactions?

As has been mentioned several times by myself and other posters, you as a player DO NOT NEED TO make those rabble rousing speeches, those jokes to charm a mark, or whatever. All you need to do is say "My character makes a rabble rousing speech, telling the gang that if they don't help us drive the Vory out of the neigbourhood now, the Vory will grow stronger and in a few months drive them out of the neigbourhood.", or "I act charming around the mark, making jokes and stuff.". Savvy?

[Yerameyahu]

sunnyside: Yes, that's the 'mind control' threshold. Traditionally, there's *hard* cap on what you can get a character to do, period. If it's within the realm of possibility for the drivers to be deceived, then *yes*, that should work. However, that's rarely the case in the game world, and it's the GM's job to fairly decide where those limits are. You *can't* get the Johnson to give you all his money, and take off his clothes in the bar, no matter how many hits. Alas. But there is plenty of room for variation within the hard limits. On the PC side, the players can *reasonably* set up their PC hard limits (sticky trust situation, alas). But within those limits, the dice determine fair results.

I honestly feel like you're hyperbolizing, though. If people literally don't know what Con, Intimidate, etc. *mean*… yup, they're gonna have a hard time. If they don't possess an exhaustive understanding of the specific variations of intimidation… no, they can still play that character. Their RP won't be as vivid, sadly, but they can still roll the dice and say, 'I'm trying to intimidate him so he does X'. That's totally fine. (Right, Midas.)

[Glyph]

The biggest problem with social skills is that they affect the other players and the NPCs, and thus they can really drag the verisimilitude of the game down. If the face gets umpteen successes, that still doesn't explain why the corporate receptionist violates company rules and risks his job over a flimsy as straw fib from a total stranger. It doesn't tell player why his hard-bitten merc is suddenly deferring to someone who demonstrably knows absolutely nothing about ops planning.

If someone rolls 20 dice for pistols, everyone can picture it, and no one has a problem if the gunslinger in question is played by someone who barely knows one end of a pistol from the other. But it's a different story when some sweaty geek says "Huh huh huh, 12 successes. I guess the hacker is sleeping with my character tonight." Yeah, it's nice to let someone without a ton of real life social skills play someone more savvy and successful in that area. But how much of everyone else's immersion in the game needs to be sacrificed for this?

This is why I think social skills work better as something that gives you a lot of information about other people, and lets you mask your own intentions from them.

Here's how you can make them meaningful and preserve a bit more player autonomy - instead of letting the dice roll roughshod over everyone else's backstory, have a good social skill roll tell the player whether an avenue of social attack is a good idea or not. And suggest better avenues that can be exploited. For example, the face is trying to scam a tight-fisted dwarf. She will see that trying to get him to pay for dinner is a losing cause, but his greed would make him more vulnerable to any kind of get-rich-quick scheme. With the aforementioned merc, maybe she will see that he will butt heads with her if she meddles with the operations planning, but if she takes his "suggestions" she will be able to remain the group's leader and keep the lion's share of the credit.

This does require work from the GM and support from the other players, but let's face it, any implementation of social skills needs that. Personally, I would rather help the face player out - my character might still be succumbing to those high skills, but at least it will be in a way that makes sense, rather than dice being rolled and me being told some unlikely thing that my character does.

[Draco18s]

As has been mentioned several times by myself and other posters, you as a player DO NOT NEED TO make those rabble rousing speeches, those jokes to charm a mark, or whatever. All you need to do is say "My character makes a rabble rousing speech, telling the gang that if they don't help us drive the Vory out of the neigbourhood now, the Vory will grow stronger and in a few months drive them out of the neigbourhood.", or "I act charming around the mark, making jokes and stuff.". Savvy?

"My character makes a rabble rousing speech, telling the gang that if they don't help us drive the Vory out of the neigbourhood now, the Vory will grow stronger and in a few months drive them out of the neigbourhood."

Whoah dude. Back up a step. I'd get as far as "I want them to help us." That underlined section is precisely the stuff I can't come up with.

[Yerameyahu]

So leave it out. It's optional; he was giving a slightly more advanced example. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It's better RP (though obviously not 'best' RP), but it's not a different social test.

[Draco18s]

So leave it out. It's optional; he was giving a slightly more advanced example. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It's better RP (though obviously not 'best' RP), but it's not a different social test.

Oh sure, it's still the same test. It's just weak.

[Yerameyahu]

Weak *RP*, though. Just like 'I power attack for full' is weak RP, or 'I take 10 and pick the lock' is weak RP. RP is 'optional', and you can work your way up. Or, hell, you can stay terrible at RP forever… that's not a sin, as long as it's not ruining the game for everyone (see Glyph's good point about immersion). You're still playing your face character.

If this were just about you, and you were at my table, my main advice would be to have less shame. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Just give it a shot and roll with it. Doing lame things because they sounded okay in your head is what RPGs are all about. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Draco18s]

Weak *RP*, though. Just like 'I power attack for full' is weak RP

Wasn't that the reason I stopped playing D&D?

Oh yes, yes it was.