I'm going to try and translate.

Using a gun, in Shadowrun, is easy. It really doesn't matter what kind of gun you choose because they've all been dumbed down beyond belief and the first thing a player does is limit his choices anyway by only purchasing a small set of guns and ammo. Even the most serious of street sams only needs 3 types of ammo anyway, Lethal, non-lethal, and armor piecing. (And that last is definitely optional).

Using social skills, in Shadowrun, can be much more difficult. A socially unaware player may not even know all the options available to them. The repercussions for choosing a bad option may be confusing to them. (The repercussions for a bad choice in combat is pretty straightforward.)

Infiltration is a good one to compare it to, as player knowledge in infiltration is a definite plus. A player who knows nothing about infiltration in an urban environment at a table with people who do understand the challenges is at a severe disadvantage. They don't even know what they don't know.

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Edit: Part 2

Now at your table, and at many tables this may not be an issue. But at a table with people who use the words "roll play" to look down on others who aren't adding enough "flavor" it stands a large chance of being an issue. These people tend care about the representation of social skills and personality and may look down on any player who wants to substitute dice for a lack of knowledge.

I could, perhaps put it this way. For skills such as social and infiltration, there are TWO sets of rules. The things in the book and the things you know about from life, training, experience, TV shows, etc. and the action at the table reflects the intersection of those rules. For combat, there is no such intersection because the rules are blatantly unrealistic. Shadowrun is to combat what Kendo is to Bushido and Fencing is to Swashbuckling.

Very good point.

Still, my point is merely that all skills are the same *kind* of thing w.r.t. player/character knowledge mis-matches. There's a whole table of social modifiers, just like there's one for combat modifiers. Ignorance of the combat ones is a big problem, so you'd want to study that table; ignorance of the social ones is a big problem, so you'd want to study *that* table (actually, 2 whole tables). Doing so would teach even a space alien that 'having the right look' is a tool for Etiquette (or Con), while 'wielding an obvious weapon' is a tool for Intimidation, right? (Cf. combat, where the various tables would tell them that being prone is a defensive tool, while aiming is an offensive tool.)

So, they are the same thing. Studying the rules can at least partially tell the player how to use *a* character, even lacking all world knowledge.

*Runs through list of possible responses* "Frag You, Hoophole."

Generally, if the player doesn't look comfortable with roleplaying a scene out, I probably won't try to do the equivalent of a non-interactive cutscene where I tell him what his character does. I will elicit enough information to have a general idea what he is attempting (is he getting by the bouncer by giving him the evil eye, dropping the name of a VIP that he doesn't actually know, slipping him a certified credstick, etc.). Then I will describe the scene briefly, with little or no dialogue.

The movie comparison is good. Just like Eddie Murphy can shoot improbably well in the Beverly Hills Cop movies, he can also bully or bluff people with tirades that would just get a shrug or an eyeroll in real life. A face with high social skills functions in that action movie zone where his pedestrian attempts at quips or badassery will actually impress the NPCs.


Social skill-wise, I am somewhere between the RAW and Midas. I wouldn't surprise a seducing face by having an encounter suddenly turn violent - there would be plenty of warning signs beforehand. But on the other hand, the hot elf won't magically get the gay humanis thug to suddenly turn straight, and non-bigoted, for her, either. That's where I agree with Midas - social skills should not be mind control, but relatively subtle manipulations.

For player vs. player, I prefer playing it out, since rolling the dice can become a minefield of what different people think the threshold is for a character would do something, what the modifiers are, and so on. And can be a case of high dice pools killing roleplaying, because players can feel that their background has gotten trashed in favor of an implausible event orchestrated by the almighty dice. Or they can feel that their character has been taken from out of their control - and if they can't play the character they brought to the game, why show up?

The social skills have so many mechanical problems, to boot, that they are really only good for resolving fairly simple situations, such as the aforementioned getting past a bouncer (or a gate guard, or a checkpoint), or interrogating someone for information. Things like that. They break down when you try to resolve more complicated interactions with them.

I'll second this one. I used to always make characters with a faceish side in college after just bashing things in high school. Rifts, Vampire, Earthdawn, Shadowrun, GURPS, D&D, deadlands. Many (most? virtually all?) GMs are just pretty horrid when it comes to dealing with a face. I remember some BS like that where the GM did treat social skills like a magical mind attack, which worked well enough when that's the sort of result I was shooting for. But if others were around, they'd sometimes react like I'd whipped out cupids bow and shot their friend in the chest. I think, fundamentally, he did not grasp the concept of a social situation, and that it involves people, multiple people even and it is not a discrete attack, but instead an exchange with both sides feeling the other out.

Hmmmm. I always make up my own stuff for sessions, but for fun I've read a lot of the adventures and missions. It occurs to me that if a group didn't have a mage, hacker/decker, or rigger(or at least somebody with the right vehicle) sometimes they'd just be forced to call up their fixer and add an NPC to the group for a while. And of course a lack of combat skills would be a problem in virtually all of them.

But I don't think you ever need a face.

How many people really actually have one in their group, and find it works out well?



However tactical concerns are covered in page after page after page and in great detail. A lack of knowledge about what is realistic might actually help you in game, at the least it might make the game system easier to swallow.



Since it entered the computing realm I think we've probably all heard of social engineering, and that might capture a big part of the issue.

And I think this actually plays in with the GM pushback stuff.

The whole "Hey, we're with maintenence" *roll dice* bit wears on most GMs really fast. I'm actually curuious if it really always works with even the people advocating that method. Or can your face pretty well walk right past any guard anywhere that doesn't have high social skills?

With most GMs, probably even me, you can roll all the successes you want and they're either not letting you in or at least will check up on you immediately, because that's what they'd do with that line. I doubt the hotest Russian spy could get past even the light front desk security where I work with that one.

But that doesn't mean the high social skill is worthless, it just needs to be molded by something much more plausable, which is where troubles start setting in.

Perhaps I overstated my case a little. In all fairness, if an elf face tried to seduce a Humanis goon, I would probably roll a secret Judge Intentions on their behalf to see if they realized something wasn't quite right/picked up a hostile vibe before they left for the fateful alley. The point I was trying to make was that social skills are not mind control, and I don't care how many successes you get, a pornomancer ain't gonna change someone's core beliefs in a 30 minute conversation ... although they might be able to over time (and here I mean weeks rather than hours).

Also in my defence. my players fully understand how I treat social skills, so they would probably rule out the elf pornomancer seduction tactic if the target was Humanis in the first place.

Would something like this help you? Obviously your GM would have to use it too, but I've got a flow chart and 7 pages of different types of social interactions if you want it. I set it up so that you could have a social encounter that would have between 3-8 social skill rolls to capture interactions and different social "moves" or "spells" like Pushing Someone on an Issue or Threats. It's still a bit simplistic right now and I plan on expanding it, but it might help changes things from "I lie to the guard" roll dice, to roll dice, "You weren't able to hide that you find the Guard intimidating and he's makes a racist comment. What do you do? . . . Threaten him. Bribe him. Confront him about the racism. Walk away?"


FIRST IMPRESSION
First Impressions- 2 rolls. First your impression on them- Etiquette or Intimidation vs. their Etiquette. (If the situation is hostile intimidation is appropriate, if you choose intimidation in a none hostile situation it may have consequences later).
Second your impression of them- Etiquette vs. their Etiquette or Intimidation.
Bonuses/Penalties for First Impression Quality, Prejudices, Cool Entrances, etc.
Explanation- This is the initial sizing up of an opponent and the impression they make on you. Are they nervous, upset, confident? It is also how well you project your own person and level of confidence (or hide your nerves). If you are familiar with the individual, then this is mostly to see how they are feeling and to tell if something is "off" about them. This usually encompasses small talk and introductions, etc.
Results-
First Roll (your impression on them)-
+2 or more successes- They are greatly impressed or intimidated by you and only got what you wanted them to. They lose 1 to their dp for every net success above 1 for the rest of the encounter (after they roll their first impression).
+1- You make a good impression and they only get what you want them to.
0- You make a fair impression, but they are not impressed.
-1- You make a poor impression and they get a good read on them you. If you were hiding something or nervous they suspect it strongly.
-2 or more successes- The read you like a book and are not impressed. They gain 1 to their dp for every net success above 1 that they beat you by for the rest of the encounter. If you were intimidating, they are not scared of you.

Second roll (your impression of them)
+2- You read them easily and they do not seem particularly impressive, confident or scary. You gain 1 to your dice pool for every net success above 1 for the rest of the encounter. If they are nervous or hiding something, you know, even if you don't know exactly what or why.
+1- They don't seem like anything special. The GM should provide a hit towards their motivations and feelings about you.
0- You feel neutral towards them.
-1- The either seem scary or likeable (intimidation or etiquette). You can't really figure out exactly what their true goals are.
-2- They seem like a sociopath that is not to be messed with and you better just walk on egg shells or they are the life of the party and you're glad to have met them. You lose 1 to your dice pool every net success below -1.

I second that emotion. It is a different story if the hacker has introduced a bogus "pest control inspection" into the company logs and the PC's are kitted out in pest control overalls and not looking like armed-to-the-teeth shadowrunners. Without such legwork I wouldn't care how many successes were rolled despite the "highly suspicious" negative DP modifier, the security guard is at best going to check company records at most a minute after he leaves the PCs, and raise the alert if he doesn't find it logged into the company schedule, and that is only if the PCs look the part. Plausibility is the key, negative repercussions for the NPC if he/she doesn't accede to the social check the icing on the cake.

OK, let's look at social skills compared to combat.

If you decide to attack an NPC, you have to decide whether to use Pistols, Automatics, Longarms, or one of the close combat skills. If you want to use social skills, you need to decide whether to use Negotiation, Con, Intimidation or Leadership.

Next up in combat, you choose your tactics. Do you draw your weapon, duck for cover and then draw your weapon, charge the guy or release a thermographic smoke grenade? Admittedly, in the case of combat most players will instinclively know which tactic to select.

You also need to choose your tactics with social skills. Negotiation would usually involve a bribe when appropriate, most face characters should know roughly how much a standard bribe for the thing you want is, so you should be able to consult your GM OC on this character knowledge. Leadership (at least in my game) only works if you have already established your credentials with the NPC, but could work off the cuff if you have a power suit, an company ID with a management level rank that passes rudimentary inspection.

Intimidation is the Clint Eastwood "Go ahead punk, make my day" approach, although you should modify your tactics depending on whether or not you are in the superior position or not (outnumbered? which side has their guns ready?). If you are, a Dirty Harry or "I really wouldn't try that if I were you." tactic should be fine. If they are, you might need to get a bit more imaginative - "I'm a made man, you really want the mob on your arse for the fence price of a commlink and a predator" should be good against gangers, "Raise the alert and you're a dead man." might work against a security guard who values his life.

Con is the probably the most difficult social skill to use as, at least in my game, you do need props and a hook to pull it off. All I can suggest is you look to movies and books for inspiration, and try and plan ahead for the "if we get caught red-handed by security" type situation. As Glyph and others have suggested, a good GM should accept character knowledge and be able to give you OC suggestions at least in the beginning, although you might miss out on that bonus karma for a well-executed plan.

If you do want to play a social character, consult your GM about how ready he/she is to give you OC advice, and good luck!

"Hmm. I seem to only have one gun here in my pocket....I guess I'll use that."

It's a metaphor, not an exact comparison. There are occasions when you have fewer social options (because of who you are, where you are, etc.), but it is indeed easier to bring all your social 'weapons' with you. Still, that guy also has fists, or could use the gun as a club, and so on.

We always have a Face at the table, though they are never in the range of a Pornomancer. Generally 10-15 Dice in the Social Skills are about the norm. Our Facing tends to work pretty well. Only a issue or two, on occasion. But for the most part, they work out pretty well.

It depends on what you mean. Facing is the most fundamental aspect of SR4 and basically all RP-RPGs (exceptional niche settings can avoid social interaction, yes). That doesn't mean every group needs 'the Face', the one specialist who's allowed to talk to people.

I missed this. I can't think of a group that we've run in twenty years that didn't have a "Face". Obviously some were more effective than others, but we love them. But then we all love caper movies, and crime drama and thrillers. We like the interaction. I think Yerameyahu is correct in saying that often the Face isn't just "The Face"-a character that's useless outside of social situations. Just like not all Street Samurai are only useful in combat scenarios. Characters can and should be more than just one dimensional.

Still though, I'm getting the vibe here that most GMs do treat social skills as mind control. Just a crappier version than what the magic users have.



I'd at least be interested in giving it a look to see your take on things. Could you post it soemwhere?



See but then it's the hacker getting you in. The face is pretty much superfluous.



Hmmm you'd probably remember your last two sessions pretty well. I'm curuous, what facey things did your face do in the last two sessions?



I'd differentiate between facing and RPing. The crazy charisma 1 troll can be a fun character to have RP wise, even if you never let them do any "facing".



Same question about what they did in the last two sessions.

I fully agree that characters with social skills as a tertiary focus can be a lot of fun without having expended much "power". But that's a different subject.

I'm not sure I've ever been in an SR4 group that didn't have someone throwing at least 9-12 dice in the Influence group sans emotitoy. You don't need to go all master of intrigue on everyone but being able to grab some supporting evidence and convince someone that you mean what you say or are genuinely interested in cutting a deal has some serious bennies.

"Facey"? That's the technical term? Heh. At any rate to be serious the Face always has something to bring to the table-in the last game he was able to deescalate a situation between an armed PC and angry gangers; he was able to convince the target of their extraction that fighting them was a bad idea. This is in addition to all the "routine" stuff-making use of contacts, negotiations, etc...

In the game prior to that he was useful in gaining a great deal of information on their target and the area of operations ith out arousing suspicion.

It's all a personal preference thing. We like the role of the Face.

In other games-as this is a new campaign and we're only three games into it-the Face has played major roles. We almost always have one-but again we don't see it as role that's one dimensional. Being a useful Face is more than just "talk".

And that's just the character we think of as the "face". Everyone makes use of social mechanics at our table at one point or another.

Again I think that's part of the core issue here.

Not only is it pretty clear instinctively, but the rule book spells out the pluses and minuses in great detail. And if they pick "wrong" it might not even be a big deal anyway, they just aren't slinging an optimal number of dice for their shot.

When "we're with maintenence" isn't enough, I think a lot of would be faces hit a wall and have no idea what to do.



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

As above I agree that it's fun and to some degree useful to have a character that picks up some social skills on the side, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Quite.

I'm not sure I can seriously look at "Dice Pool" as an effective measure of a character. If that's the core of the discussion, count me out. Rules lawyering and power gaming just makes me want to barf.

I didn't say that RPing was facing. I said that facing is fundamental to games that have RP, because social interaction is all but required. Facing means 'winning' at social interaction.

What are you on about, Paul? The dice reflect the character realities (along with other crunch aspects, like contacts, etc.). You can't be a good face with crappy dice, unless you're metagaming (cheating). That's what this thread is about. You can't be a master strategist if you character is a moron.

Again, it's true that combat is a little less open-ended (from one POV) than social interaction, but there *are* big tables full of ideas for social tactics. You do have to be imaginative; it's an RPG. If you're being unimaginative in combat, in strategy, in gearing up, in legwork… you're doing those all just as badly.

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?

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

I just meant it in terms of a sign that the character wasn't meant as a "face" but had thrown in some social skills on top. The sort of character where they aren't going to be disapointed if they only use their social skills for a situation during a mission where they weren't really needed but it was fun, and then flirting with someone during downtime. Which, again, is fun, but not what I'm asking about.



However "badly" in those things means you could have thrown a couple more dice.

Badly when "we're with maintenence" isn't enough means doing nothing.

And in my opinion when you've got a player doing nothing, it's time for the GM to do something. Hence this thread.

I've worked to make sure things were fun for graceless faces, but I thought maybe I could get some insights to improving (and maybe make it less work on myself).

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.)

Fair enough.

Draco18s: Ding ding, what is 'having a high dice pool in it?', Alex? 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.

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.

I also apologize for being a little nutty this morning. 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.

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.

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. 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*.

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

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

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

Ditto

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.



Somehow "doing lame" sounds even worse

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 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?



Yup.

… You tell him the many ways you can imagine him getting out of the speeding ticket. This isn't rocket surgery. 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?

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.

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).

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.

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 ) . 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.

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?

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.)

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.

"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.

So leave it out. It's optional; he was giving a slightly more advanced example. 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.

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. 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.

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

Oh yes, yes it was.