social mechanics

We had a small event in our RSG that threw me off a little last week. It’s left me wanting to fix it either through mechanics or social contract.

In a nutshell, one of the characters is beautiful and charming. She’s not bad with a dagger… err, large knife either, but she’s no combat monkey. For the most part she gets her way by being sneaky and charming. The mechanics for doing this are her high IQ attribute (which is the base for all social skills, your will, your awareness, your alertness, and your ability to perceive the world around you) and a few social skills like body language and fast talk. The attractiveness of the character is stuff of legends and in her wake are many broken hearts.

So then one day, a member of her country’s royalty saddles into town. He’s a legendary charmer and seems to be shaping up to be a dangerous opponent in the soft skills arena. During a moment when Celia, our stunning charmer, tried to read what this slick artiste was lying down. The player, Eric, knew that he was being lied to because he had just heard the same charm come from my mouth to Jeremy’s character Sadie. Sadie is specifically, and mechanically, naïve. So pulling the wool over her character’s eyes wasn’t a difficult task. However, Celia should have had a really good chance to meet this guy head to head.

Now understand that I wanted him to win. I rolled well on his behalf and Eric rolled poorly on Celia’s behalf. It pretty much was an open and shut case. However, Eric decided to roll again as the consequences of believing his lies grew direr. In order words Eric felt that the NPC had taken it up a notch and felt that this would prompt another roll. Now I didn’t want Eric to feel as if his poor Celia had no chance of not swallowing the tale hook line and sinker. I wanted him to help create the story of a young girl who is socially adept beyond her years and well practiced in the art of deception. So with the tension around this moment the dice flew out.

That’s when the trouble started for me. Eric critically failed his roll. A straight up 18 and a critical failure, in combat at least, means big trouble for the character. In a physical situation it could mean that the character has damaged themselves or a partner or let down their guard. But in a physical situation there are several back and forth exchanges. Character A swings an axe and Character B and so on until somebody is out of combat one way or another. In this charged environment the consequences for mistakes are decidedly deadly by the nature of the exchange. But there is no such exchange socially. In fact, 4^th Edition GURPS specifically warns against telling the players how their characters feel about an NPC. I have to say I understand the sentiment, but consider this unacceptable for my group. I feel like, as long as I have the trust of my players, I can indeed tell them that they really like or don’t like somebody. The player can think as she pleases, but the character is enough under the collective control that it’s not only possible but recommended. In a lot of ways that very thought is what has lead me to my new approach to gaming.

I know metaphors to combat in social situations are made all the time, but it just felt ham fisted in Celia’s situation. In other words I didn’t want a single bad roll to end her conflict. The party has to end at some point, but the consequences of Eric’s poor roll were pretty strong. We collaborated and decided that Celia would not only believe our exceptional liar’s tale, but would have a difficult time disbelieving him in the future. Meaning what would prompt Eric to roll on Celia’s behalf should now require much more punch. In game mechanics terms Celia is now at a -8 to all her rolls around resisting the charms of this NPC. Our decision was totally outside of the rules that GURPS provides. This was simply an unexpected turn that leads to an interesting piece of conflict for Celia’s story. As the creators of this story my players and I know that it is “not a good thing” for Celia to believe this man. He seems a little unstable and while extremely helpful isn’t somebody they want on their bad side.

So that all sounds great as a story progression, right? Well except for the part where Celia is now a master social engineer except when she is around this guy. It’s an opening for tragedy of a scale that could affect all the characters. And it all happened because Eric took a chance on the dice to try and keep Celia from buying another round of the royal bullshit. Sure it makes sense in terms of the student versus master manipulator going head to head. But what doesn’t make sense is how much she lost in terms of what was happening in the conversation. That is to say, she was just talking with the guy. She was trying to figure out if he was lying. She failed to roll as well as he did and so she couldn’t tell. So when he pushed the limits of disinformation, she pushed harder to disbelieve and the result was not only did she believe his story but somehow he ended up with a huge advantage over her. He wasn’t trying to do this. It was as if she suddenly lost her mind and decided that blindly trusting this guy was a good idea. Eric protested and checked to make sure that I wasn’t going to enforce such an arbitrary result long-term. I assured him that I wasn’t and that was the right decision I feel. But how do I ensure that such madness doesn’t happen again?

What I really want is much more of back and forth in social game situations. I want there to be a sense that there is an exchange in the conflict. I want it to feel like stakes are being raised over a series of exchanges and the longer it goes on the more that is at risk. In combat this is the loss of hit points over time. Every round you lose a little more until finally you are down below a level where you can continue. Either you are dead, dying, or unconscious. What I’m picturing is a system where you have a finite pool of social resources. You spend them, or risk them to move forward in the exchange. You know how much longer you are good for and you know how much longer your opponent is good for. In other words you can tell how the exchange is going and can choose to retreat or press on. I want there be a way to hold your ground defensively or make daring slashes into enemy territory. I want for this to be quick and easy to resolve so that gaming doesn’t bog down in a bunch of minutia. Finally I want to leave room to reward good role playing but not require it to be mandatory.

I know, I know, I’m so in love with the DitV model of conflict resolution that it’s blurring my vision. But what I wanted was for Celia to be able to shine without an all of nothing approach to socializing. I wanted her to be able to bail out before she was so far in over her head that Mr. Slippery had her partially brainwashed. Of course I expect it to be the results of a young girl (however gifted) taking on a court trained subterfugist. She should get taken behind the shed for her presumptions, but it shouldn’t be a simple dice roll that determines the results. And she should still be able to surprise both of the player and the GM.

In the past I’ve dealt with this through engaging head to head with players in role playing bouts. The cleverness and acting skills of the player would determine how well they did. Basically the level of success depended a lot on how entertained we all were by the drama that was occurring in the role playing. However, a big part of the problem was that this drama was frequently the same roles played over and over by the same people. It was fun, but it was getting a little stale. After all, just because you dress Clint Eastwood up in a Japanese school girl uniform doesn’t mean that you really believe that he’s not Clint Eastwood. No matter how many pretty ribbons you put in his hair. Also it meant that I had to be really over the top with my role playing to make the successes and failure seem plausible. After all, if I’m playing Generic Crusty Drill Sergeant #4 he should not get so flustered with a conversation that he cannot continue. But I’d have to give the entire series of Drill Sergeants Intimidation Skill at 25 to effectively play him the way I want him to be played. Instead I want to be able to say, “Sgt. Ironass is not going to be somebody you can sweet talk”. And for them to say, “I want to try and bluff my way through it”. Then we role play a little, check a few dice rolls, and BAM. We have more story told without it meaning that the character will now do whatever the Sgt wants whenever they want.

Now I’m trying to find a way for me and my players to actually reach outside of our typical characters without resorting to acting classes. For the most part the co-storied aspects of our sessions are working almost perfectly. I still like “showing” more than “telling”, but I’m finding that by doing a more conscious “telling” I’m able to give room for the players to say, “That’s not really what I would expect him to do based on what you’ve told me about him”. Then hopefully continuing with, “do you think he would actually do it like this…”.

Right now its either down to a dice roll or two and some role playing with no sense of back and forth and understanding where those dice rolls logically belong. After all, are we talking about a single contest modifier by each side’s relative merits and positioning? Are we talking about a series of volleys with modifiers carrying successes and failures from the previous round over to the current one?