[X] My Assistant

[sunnyside]

Alright, so the age old problem with social skills, is the issue of role playing vs roll playing. On the one hand side steopping the conversation and just hurling the dice feels pretty lame.

But on the other hand you don't neccessarily want to make a character with strong social skills impossible to play by your charisma one player. It's not like you look across the table and tell someone they're too much of a little wuss to play a troll street sam.

I'm thinking that maybe a way to get this to work is to treat social skills a bit more like perception. On an initial roll maybe you feed the character some juicy tidbits (photo of the security guards wife is turned away on his desk, there is lipstick on his collar, and it matches the shade worn by his secretary), and then beat them with the cluebat a few times so captain oblivious can actually pull this off and feel slick the way the twippy player gets to have fun with his sammy.

Anybody tried something like this?

Think it might work well?

And perhaps more importantly, any particularly good ideas for things to feed the face? This will obviously be harder than just having the players shoot people, and it'd help to have a handy pile of ideas to pull out of my rear as they come up.

[Stalag]

Alright, so the age old problem with social skills, is the issue of role playing vs roll playing. On the one hand side steopping the conversation and just hurling the dice feels pretty lame.

But on the other hand you don't neccessarily want to make a character with strong social skills impossible to play by your charisma one player. It's not like you look across the table and tell someone they're too much of a little wuss to play a troll street sam.

I'm thinking that maybe a way to get this to work is to treat social skills a bit more like perception. On an initial roll maybe you feed the character some juicy tidbits (photo of the security guards wife is turned away on his desk, there is lipstick on his collar, and it matches the shade worn by his secretary), and then beat them with the cluebat a few times so captain oblivious can actually pull this off and feel slick the way the twippy player gets to have fun with his sammy.

Anybody tried something like this?

Think it might work well?

And perhaps more importantly, any particularly good ideas for things to feed the face? This will obviously be harder than just having the players shoot people, and it'd help to have a handy pile of ideas to pull out of my rear as they come up.

Limit the role of the Face to the player who's actually been on more than one date with the same person? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Glyph]

I think in addition to clues, the face character's charisma should affect how NPCs react to the character. The GM can also use some description to occasionally remind the other players that the character is pretty sociable and appealing.

Conversely, a character with a low Charisma and low or missing social skills should have to work a lot harder to get the same result that the charismatic character gets with no effort at all. Things like getting past a club bouncer, or having a ganger think the character is "all right for a suit".

Have you ever read the Myth series? The character of Aahz is a very good example of someone with low social skills who still tries to get by in social situations - and he really has to work at it. He intimidates people when he isn't trying to, people who have any kind of power or leverage over him tend to be real pricks about it, people don't trust him, and even getting people to act in their own self interest is a major struggle for him (note that his people skills do improve in the later books).

Contrast that to Skeeve, who is one of the most powerful characters in the series, not because of his moderate magical power, but because he knows how to deal with people and has lots and lots of loyal friends. But unlike, say, Miles Vorkosigan, I could see a socially inept player running Skeeve, because a GM playing the NPC reactions appropriately would be a big factor in making the character seem like a face.


Some general ideas:

Tell the face when someone seems to be sincere, when they seem to be hiding something, and when they are trying to hide their attraction, or revulsion, to one of the PCs. Tell them things that seem "off" about a character - like a supposed Triad posse which has one of the "bad luck" numbers of members, or a Johnson who flubs a detail about the company he supposedly works for.

[suoq]

Alright, so the age old problem with social skills, is the issue of role playing vs roll playing. On the one hand side steopping the conversation and just hurling the dice feels pretty lame.

But on the other hand you don't necessarily want to make a character with strong social skills impossible to play by your charisma one player. It's not like you look across the table and tell someone they're too much of a little wuss to play a troll street sam.

At this point, you've already lost me.

Have the dice pool of the challenge be appropriate for the dice pool of the characters involved.
Role play in any way your table feel is appropriate.
Give dice for role playing in any way your table feels is appropriate.

High dice pools do NOT prevent role play. Low dice pools do not CREATE role play. They are two separate things.

If someone has high social skills and low charisma then they've made up for their natural disadvantage through training and experience. (I can't type this and NOT think of Temple Grandin.) If you throw a pornomancer at them, they're gonna fail and the GM simply has to take that into account when creating challenges. The character may be more "Lie to Me" than Naturally Blonde and can't compete with a Natural Blonde with "Lie to Me" abilities, so the table has to accept that those sorts of challenges aren't on the table.

[Paul]

I wouldn't use this rule at my table, as we've found a good balance between just playing out various roles, and rolling the dice when we hit obstacles. But I am interested in how it works out for you!

[Draco18s]

High dice pools do NOT prevent roll play. Low dice pools do not CREATE roll play. They are two separate things.

I, as someone who is fairly socially inept (I'm an introvert and dislike interacting with people), could never role play a face. High dice pools or otherwise, therefore:

High dice pools do not CREATE role play. Low dice pools do not PREVENT role play.

Which is more the problem than the former statement, and the point of this thread.

Adendum:

roll play

Intentional misspelling?

[Mardrax]

Rollplay: the type of play that arises from the (mis)conception that roleplay is about how many dice you roll.

[suoq]

High dice pools do not CREATE role play. Low dice pools do not PREVENT role play.

Also agreed. They're just dice pools. (more below)

Intentional misspelling?

No. Just seeing it back and forth and my brain gets lazy. I think I got it corrected already before I read this but I'll re-check.

-------------------------------

Dice pools and role play. I sometimes find it frustrating knowing what parts a character is expected to role play (almost did it again). As someone with squat for social skills residing somewhere on the autism scale, role playing a face is horrible for me because I know less about social skills than the writers of Shadowrun knew about guns. It frustrates me that someone who shouldn't be allowed on a firing range without an escort can "role play" a master of weapons because the dice substitute for player experience but someone with less social skills shies away from playing a face because the player is expected to have similar knowledge to the character and should know what to say and do.

At some point the player needs to let the dice substitute for their lack of knowledge. The DM needs to tell the player that his character knows to do X, even if the player doesn't know to do X. Having an arbitrary change "dice for combat, actual behavior for negotiation" doesn't feel like role playing to me. It just feels arbitrary. Next time we'll play at the range and player's character only shoots as well as the players do that day.

[Ol' Scratch]

If a player doesn't have the personal ability to act out the social encounter, just have describe what kind of outcome he's after and reflect it with the dice rolls. Then describe the scene like you would any other. This is no different than someone playing a magician; they can't cast spells in the real world, so limiting their character actions by their own inability is pretty goofy. As long as they're trying to play their character the way that character is designed to be played, there's no reason to penalize or hamper them. You just have to go about it a little differently.

If a player does have incredible personal charm and wants to act out the scene directly, by all means let him. Just make sure he's reflecting what's happening with the dice rolls. His thuggish ork character shouldn't get a bonus just because he is a natural born charmer any more than a Formula 1 racer should get a bonus when he's playing a character who doesn't even have a piloting skill.

For some reason, a lot of GMs do exactly that, though, and I really don't get it. Having a great idea is one thing, but using personal knowledge and ability to give your character knowledge and abilities they don't possess is silly. It doesn't matter if it's social, technical, or anything else.

In other words, when an incompetent boob of a player says his Agility 9, Pistols 6 character pulls out his Predator and attempts to blow a guard away, how do you resolve that? Do exactly the same thing with the socially inept player.

[Glyph]

I wouldn't make a face character play out all of the minutia, every time, especially for things that would be simple for a face, like getting past a bouncer. On the other hand, social skills are generally more involved than "point the gun, pull the trigger". The sammie with his super-high dice pool rolls to shoot his gun - the GM doesn't have him roll the dice once to see whether he won the encounter. No more than the sneaky guy rolling infiltration and the GM telling him "Okay, you snuck in and got the prototype."

So if someone wants to be a face, they need to give me a few more pertinent details. So you're intimidating the ganger. How, exactly, is your puny Strength: 2 character doing this? Are you intimating that you have underworld connections? Staring him down with your cold, dead eyes and a wintry smile? Claiming you have some commlink footage of him doing something? Likewise, getting past the guard gate. Do you tell him you're the new hire, and they don't have your credentials yet? Tell him you're here to meet the VP, hush-hush? Tell him you're part of the cleaning crew, and they can vouch for you? You don't have to roleplay ALL of it out, but give me enough to work with.

[Whipstitch]

Whenever my players want to do something really mundane I just say to myself "We're gonna need a montage!", and a lot of social interactions fall under that category.

[sunnyside]

I think in addition to clues, the face character's charisma should affect how NPCs react to the character. The GM can also use some description to occasionally remind the other players that the character is pretty sociable and appealing.

Hee hee. That reminded me of:
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/tom-brad...gII_oYNH7gQfUpA

Maybe I should show that to the players to explain why things go down the way they do. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

At this point, you've already lost me.

I not sure. But I think you might have gotten mixed up with what I was talking about.

The CHARACTER has high social skills, charisma, and a few bonuses on the side. The PLAYER however has low social skills, low charisma, and a penalty for needing a spritzing of Febreze.

But in the same way the little twip wants to play a troll sammy they want to play a face, and I'd like to let them in a way that works out, but doesn't eliminate role playing. Actually I'd like more face action all around.

If a player doesn't have the personal ability to act out the social encounter, just have describe what kind of outcome he's after and reflect it with the dice rolls. Then describe the scene like you would any other.

So, wait, you're saying that I essentially take over their character for a little bit to get them through the conversation/encounter?

[Ol' Scratch]

So, wait, you're saying that I essentially take over their character for a little bit to get them through the conversation/encounter?

No. I'm saying you handle it like you handle everything else in the game. If you want to be overly descriptive, you're free to do so. If not, you describe the outcome like you do during a firefight or any other action a character takes. There isn't anything special about social encounters. Glyph pretty much nailed it.

[Udoshi]

I'm thinking that maybe a way to get this to work is to treat social skills a bit more like perception. On an initial roll maybe you feed the character some juicy tidbits (photo of the security guards wife is turned away on his desk, there is lipstick on his collar, and it matches the shade worn by his secretary), and then beat them with the cluebat a few times so captain oblivious can actually pull this off and feel slick the way the twippy player gets to have fun with his sammy.

Anybody tried something like this?

At my group's table, we've always used Judge Intentions as a sort of social perception roll - even against other players. We're good/mature enough to navigate the social intracies of 'my character feels like x, looks nervous, you glitched and thing she's eyeing you up'. The kind of thing that gives other players insight into what is going on and what shaping the scene, instead of just flat out giving out information.(or doing something silly, like treating an interrogation or a conversation as an Extended Test - we actually tend to play it out)

[Shortstraw]

Character ability vs player ability needs to be handled in the same way as character knowledge vs player knowledge.

[Draco18s]

Character ability vs player ability needs to be handled in the same way as character knowledge vs player knowledge.

The problem is that knowledge is knowable.

Meaning that while I, as a player, do not know the back allies of Seattle or who the Druglord Kingpin is, I am aware that such knowledge exists. I.e. I can Google it.

Skills, on the other hand, are not. Every situation is different and requires very quick thinking. In combat, the quick thinking is handled by dice rolls and situational modifiers. Social cues are far far more subtle.

Meaning that unless I, as a player, have studied swordplay, I could not give an accurate retelling of how my character with Blades 6, uses his knifey thing. I can get as far as "pointy bit goes into other man." For combat, this is enough: define "other man" and roll some dice. I don't have to know, or even decide, if I'm using a jab or a slice. Or if I'm executing a feint (kicking the guy's foot and then punching him in the face with the pommel when he looks down).*

Cue social situations.

I don't know how charismatic people act. I don't know their mannerisms, have their vocabulary, their tonal inflection. I haven't studied it as one might watch rats in a maze. So I, as a player, cannot give an accurate impression of how my Charisma 7, Smooth Talking 6 character sidles up to a bouncer, slips him a $50, and says quietly "You didn't see me." <-- that sentence took a bit of work and some Hollywood Artistic License (i.e. I saw it in a movie).

I can get as far as "I bribe the guard." For social interaction this is not enough: How much of a bribe? What do I say? Does the guy look frustrated, comfortable, inattentive, lazy? What posture am I in? Is he even the right guy to bribe!?

*I have done some karate, ages and ages ago, so I do know a little about punching people, and kicking someone's foot will distract them. Hell, do it often enough and they'll stop watching your foot giving you another opening to take advantage of (i.e. kick them in the groin with it instead).

[Ol' Scratch]

That entire post is just one huge contradiction.

Why doesn't the gunman have to know which one of his pistols to use? Why doesn't he have to know how to aim properly? Or when to pull the trigger? Or if he's in the right posture? Or whether or not his target looks scared, intimidated, or completely unconcerned that he's pointing a gun at him? Or if his target is even the right guy to shoot?! (Yes, some of those questions are stupid, but no more than the ones you posed for Mr. Smooth Talker.)

Why do minor details like this only matter in social encounters?

Players don't have to know all the little details about what their characters are capable of doing. It doesn't matter one iota whether or not it's a social encounter or any other type of encounter. Yes, supplying basic information for what you want to do is necessary ("I bribe a guard" is on par with "I shoot my gun" -- you need more input for both of those actions). But nerdy, zit-faced wallflowers have every right to play a smooth, sophisticated character as much as some tubby bastard who can barely stand up without breathing heavily has to play an acrobatic gunslinger adept.

[Midas]

I think social skills are one of the most misunderstood aspects of the game. They are not mind control and should not be treated as such, and sometimes NPCs will react to a good social roll in a way not intended by the face. For instance, an elf pornomancer who seduces a Humanis goon won't have him eating out of her hand back at his place, but instead will have him violently showing her why humans are supreme in a back alley, quite possibly with some friends along for the (pardon the pun) ride.

I always get my players to role play social skills, just as I would expect the sammie to use tactics such as cover or make decisions such as whether to go SA, FA, narrow burst or wide burst. A very brief social encounter can be roleplayed in full, but all I need from the player is the cut and thrust of how they are trying to convince the NPC. Based on what the player tells me their character is using as arguements, I will give them a positive or negative DP modifier to their dice roll.

So the CHA 1 player playing the CHA 7 face doesn't need to make loquacious rabble rousing speeches themselves, but if they are trying to convince a gang to join forces with them against a triad they will have to tell me what motivational hooks they are using to persuade the gang to help and the dice and the GM can take it from there.

[Boxymoron]

A lot of what you people are debating is what the 'right/wrong' ways to do Social skills, when it would be better to find GOOD ways to do so. Again, as mentioned, Glyph hit it pretty good. Give the DM enough to work with, (s)he's got their own plans with how they will react, hopefully, so modifiers can be adjusted from there, as stated by Midas.

[Draco18s]

Players don't have to know all the little details about what their characters are capable of doing. It doesn't matter one iota whether or not it's a social encounter or any other type of encounter. Yes, supplying basic information for what you want to do is necessary ("I bribe a guard" is on par with "I shoot my gun" -- you need more input for both of those actions). But nerdy, zit-faced wallflowers have every right to play a smooth, sophisticated character as much as some tubby bastard who can barely stand up without breathing heavily has to play an acrobatic gunslinger adept.

The difference is that, to some degree, everyone knows how firing a gun works. Sure there's a lot of minor details involved and most of us would never be able to manage it, yes.

But with social skills, those of us who are socially inept don't understand how social interaction works. Trust me when I say this, dealing with people is hard for me. I have trouble recognizing emotion (difficulty empathizing), difficulty remembering names and connecting them to faces, as well as being shy and mild mannered (i.e. I'm more likely to back away from a verbal fight than get involved).

I understand on a mechanical/logical level that charismatic people are good at what they do, but I don't know how to emulate it.

Hell, I can't even figure out how to explain this. I just spent the last five minutes staring at a blinking cursor at the end of the above line.

[sunnyside]

I wouldn't make a face character play out all of the minutia, every time, especially for things that would be simple for a face, like getting past a bouncer. On the other hand, social skills are generally more involved than "point the gun, pull the trigger". The sammie with his super-high dice pool rolls to shoot his gun - the GM doesn't have him roll the dice once to see whether he won the encounter. No more than the sneaky guy rolling infiltration and the GM telling him "Okay, you snuck in and got the prototype."

So if someone wants to be a face, they need to give me a few more pertinent details. So you're intimidating the ganger. How, exactly, is your puny Strength: 2 character doing this? Are you intimating that you have underworld connections? Staring him down with your cold, dead eyes and a wintry smile? Claiming you have some commlink footage of him doing something? Likewise, getting past the guard gate. Do you tell him you're the new hire, and they don't have your credentials yet? Tell him you're here to meet the VP, hush-hush? Tell him you're part of the cleaning crew, and they can vouch for you? You don't have to roleplay ALL of it out, but give me enough to work with.

Your post seems pretty popular.

Though again as I'd asked Ol' Scratch are you saying that you sort of take over their character a bit, or do you just go very abstract.

I think going abstract works well for fast talk. It's rather a bit like rolling dodge. You're trying to rush by the guard, but instead of doing a backflip off of his desk your character is trying to say they're late to a meeting or something. Very easy to handle abstractly, and the fluff or a tiny bit of imagination provide a host of possible excuses you could try. Intimidation can be like that too. Ditto bribes I suppose, anything fast that has a feel like a single action.

The issue however is when a situation is more complicated. The rule book devotes pages and pages to how one manages a complex firefight, and whole books to additional rules and relevant gear. And it's trivial to understand someone who is an exceptional shot, they simply shoot very accurately despite various distractions or other things going on.

I think faces often feel like a mage might if you tore all the spells out of the rulebook.

Their character has an attribute and a skill, and there's a target. They have a vague feeling that they ought to be able to do something. But without any "spells" they're drawing a blank as to what to do.

Is that what you're trying to get at Draco18s?

[Whipstitch]

I think social skills are one of the most misunderstood aspects of the game. They are not mind control and should not be treated as such, and sometimes NPCs will react to a good social roll in a way not intended by the face. For instance, an elf pornomancer who seduces a Humanis goon won't have him eating out of her hand back at his place, but instead will have him violently showing her why humans are supreme in a back alley, quite possibly with some friends along for the (pardon the pun) ride.

As a player I'd call a time out if something like that happened outside of a critical glitch--and even then this shit better be something that's cool with everyone else around the table-- and it'd probably lead to a pretty ugly argument. "It didn't occur to your social expert that things were starting to get a li'l rape-y" is the exact sort of bullshit people are talking about when they say there's a gap between character experience and player experience. You can basically end up trolling your players for playing a character whose skills exceed their own capabilities and it's not something that hits me as enjoyable.

[Draco18s]

Their character has an attribute and a skill, and there's a target. They have a vague feeling that they ought to be able to do something. But without any "spells" they're drawing a blank as to what to do.

Is that what you're trying to get at Draco18s?

Something like that, yeah.
Or at least, part of it. I think the other part is that some people don't need those rules: they are charismatic people who do that kind of thing all the time and also people who don't understand why the rest of us do need them.

[Yerameyahu]

I agree: a good way to characterize the flow of social DPs to social effects is via 'tools' (='guns', 'spells', 'weapons', whatever, as well as 'taking cover', 'flanking'…). This does hurt the socially 'unimaginative' player, but in the same way that tactically 'unimaginative' players are hurt by not taking cover, choosing the right ammo, and so on. Yes? I know I've said this before, it seemed okay then. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Basically, you have to have watched action movies to know what to do in combat/whatever; you have to have watched con movies (and/or been a human being (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) facrissake) to know what to do in social situations.

[Draco18s]

Basically, you have to have watched action movies to know what to do in combat/whatever; you have to have watched con movies (and/or been a human being (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) facrissake) to know what to do in social situations.

Doesn't mean we're good at it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
(And I have watched con movies, but I still can't quite figure out how to apply those techniques to playing a charismatic character)