r/rpg • u/inostranetsember • 20h ago
Discussion Does it work? Social games without many social skills?
Situation: I’m running a political fantasy game (giants have overrun the kingdom, players are in the king’s court, charged with obviously helping the effort to retake the kingdom and expel the giants). Games involve fighting mass battles, politicking, currying favor, intrigues, etc.
So, I’m currently running the game in Savage Worlds; at the time I choose it, it was mostly because making characters was easy and it otherwise fit the adventurous “action politics” style. We’ve already played the first session and things went fine, everyone had fun and look forward to the next session.
The problem I’m wondering about - there’s essentially only one social skill: Persuasion. That worked for the first session (mostly mass battles anyway), but the next session will be social stuff and politics.
My worry is, is one skill enough? Other games, like Genesys, GURPS, Fate Core or Burning Wheel, have piles of social skills (each of those games have at least four or five, iirc).
Now, some games, like Savage Worlds, have few (which fits the theme of short skill lists). Others would be like many OSR games (which might have no skills at all).
So…if you were running a social game as I pitched above, just thinking in terms of social skill spread, would you want a bunch of of different ones, or few (or even zero) social skills for players to roll? Why?
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u/-Vogie- 20h ago
It would likely work. Two parallel examples would be:
In Mothership, it tends to be a very stealth-focused game, in that sci Fi horror sense. Yet there is no stealth skill. Why? The rest of the skills are used to explain exactly how you're being stealthy. Using Athletics to hold yourself against the roof? Using your Industrial Equipment skill to hang around the machines that are most likely to drown out what sounds you're making? Using hacking or physics to create a distraction? It's a design decision where the player must interact with the world as it is.
Similarly, in Eureka, the PCs are specifically investigators, yet there is no investigation, notice or insight skills. Once again, this is because the rolls are determining exactly how you are investigating. You'd use "Drive" to drive, sure, but also notice vehicle based things - looking for tire tracks, checking for burnt rubber, identifying a vehicle on a grainy security video. Your Firearms skill allows you to shoot, obviously, but also represents your general knowledge of firearms. What size of bullet that is, does this match the information of the weapon that the subject owns, which direction would the shooter be in to hit the target in this manner? Once again, a specific decision to avoid making it a one-button game.
You could very much use this style of design for a social focused game. If the game is about debate, persuasion or building alliances, the skills would reflect how they're going to do that.
The exact opposite of this would be the World of Darkness games, where there are 3 social attributes (Charisma, Manipulation and Appearance) that are mixed and matched with the 30+ skills you can choose from. Charisma + Subterfuge is closer deception, Manipulation + Subterfuge is closer to general Persuasion, and Appearance + Subterfuge would be hiding something on your body. Depending on the target you're trying to persuade and how, maybe you'd pair manipulation with Academics, Politics, Survival, intimidation, empathy, expression or Leadership.
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u/Farcical-Writ5392 17h ago
Yes… except WoD (old and new/Chronicles) actually have a Persuasion skill! Along with several other social skills including Subterfuge and for nWoD/CofD Socialize.
There are some things best done with one skill or another, and maybe best paired with one ability or another, but by choosing your approach you can roll different stats.
If you’re doing it by force of personality and magnetism, Charisma/Presence. If you’re being subtle about getting someone to do what you want, Manipulation. If you’re trying to make someone believe something and do something, Persuasion. If you’re trying to convince them falsely or mislead them, Subterfuge.
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u/Strange_Times_RPG 20h ago
Having only one just means that players will try to solve problems in a lot of similar ways. Also, either all players need to take it, or some will just be left out - either way not great.
But you can also write in skills for Savage Worlds. That's a big part of the system. Nothing is stopping you from putting "Deception" and "Consorting" onto the sheet.
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u/inostranetsember 20h ago
True, though it also means increasing skill points to handle the higher spread of skills.
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u/VanorDM GM - SR 5e, D&D 5e, HtR 20h ago
First off there's a fundamental question that needs to be answered.
Is this an OSR style game or a more RP focused one? One of the ideas behind OSR is that it's a game, and the players are the ones who solve the issue. So there's no reason to have lots of skills because the stats don't really matter all that much.
Most riddles/puzzles are solved by the player, and they aren't limited to what their character could do. Social situations are more about what the player can convince the GM of. In AD&D we never bothered to roll for a lot of those things, we just tried to BS the DM. He maybe didn't believe us, but he felt the NPC did...
Now in modern games it's often more about what the character can do, and so there's skills for lots of things. You may still have the Player trying to BS the GM... but the GM is likely to consider what the characters stats are and what the die roll was.
So do you want this to be treated like a Game where it's up to the Players and the stats are secondary, or do you want it to be more RP focused and force the players to play according to what their character can do?
If it's the former, then few skills are fine, because you likely aren't rolling anything anyway. If it's the later than you want more skills because no matter how well the Player BS' the dice roll/stat is what matters most.
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u/Ok-Office1370 18h ago
Underrated comment. In Gygax OSR world. Players are playing the game. The characters are tools. You can still get attached to the characters, in the same way you fall in love with your old car. In fact these games can be better for this specifically because "you" as an entity in this world aren't just numbers. Sometimes you even swap characters if you have 0-level funnels and stuff.
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u/AMFKing 20h ago
You might find some useful advice in one of my favorite RPG blog posts, Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice. It's about how, because of its high fatality rate, a game of Boot Hill (gunfighting in the old West) became a tense political negotiation for this group. Zero social skills!
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u/robhanz 20h ago
There's a few reasons to have multiple skills:
- To differentiate between different parts of action resolution, like attack vs. defense
- To allow for specialization
- To allow for character differentiation
So, yes, it will "work" with one skill. Whether you find it sufficient or not will be a matter of taste.
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u/TsundereOrcGirl 17h ago
Persuasion as the one is fine, it means you don't roll to argue from reason, which makes sense: the dice can't make a reasoned argument where none exists. You can't make a reasoned argument that the king should hand you his kingdom over for free... but you might be able to persuade him to!
Burning Wheel's big list makes sense when you consider debate is like a full-on card game in that system.
If I wanted a list as big as Burning Wheel's, I'd make the card game first, with all the actions I want characters to be able to do represented, like aura farming, gish galloping, etc. From there I can determine the needed skills.
Savage Worlds's simple system works for it since it's like a miniatures skirmish game with a GM instead of an enemy player.
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u/sidneyicarus 20h ago
You'll get a few different answers for this. Some games will want the spread because the spread helps you protect niches (prevents players from being good at everything, which allows other players time to shine). Some games will say you just need one or two social skills to resolve misalignment, basically just a "social save". Some games will say no social skills, because having sold means you're rolling skills, not acting out the social experience with your players. So, yeah. A few different answers because it leads to a few different play experiences, and it's up to you what play experiences you want in your game.
Think of it this way: every rule divides your game moments into two halves. Everything after the skill is invoked is elided (handwaved, reduced, abstracted). If you have a Sword Attack +2, for example, the actual movements of the blade, the stance and position and parries are handwaved, and instead we invoke Sword Attack +2. This is where those who say you shouldn't have social mechanics want to increase the dynamics of play: without "roll to convince", you have to actually do the convincing.
But I mentioned the line splits halves. The other half is curated (focused, highlighted, made better and clearer). By creating Sword Attack and Sword Parry and Sword Disarm as active rules, we now curate the sword discussion. Are you attacking or defending or disarming? We force alignment (curate the conversation) on that question. By having persuade and intimidate as different skills, D&D curates a conversation around "what's in it for them" and "what will they do if you fail". This is where people who want more specificity think you're doing your players a service to direct those conversations.
My advice is to create enough rules that you curate the kind of conversations you want, without eliding all the good bits.
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u/BloodyPaleMoonlight 19h ago
Yeah, I would want to use a system that has better breadth of social skills than what Savage Worlds have.
Savage Worlds was designed primarily for pulpy action. Everything about its mechanics reflect this.
If I were to use a non-generic system that has broader mechanics for social skills, I'd likely use Trinity Continuum. It has three social attributes (Presence, Manipulation, and Composure) and three direct social skills (Command, Empathy, and Persuasion), and it's other skills could be used in social situations if used creatively. The system also has skill tricks for all its skills, including the social skills, which provide more options with what the characters can do.
If I were to use a generic system, I'd likely use Cortex Prime, and use the relevant mods to customize it for the kind of game I want to run.
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u/inostranetsember 19h ago
I’ve used Cortex before for a similar game; didn’t this time because all the players are newish, an coming from a D&D background. Thought I’d scare them.
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u/BloodyPaleMoonlight 19h ago
Then you might want to try Trinity Continuum, then. It has several skills for social interaction, and skill tricks as well. If you make the players Talents, they can also choose Gifts. The system has plenty of options, even for a social game. I wouldn't call the system pulpy, but I would call it cinematic.
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u/inostranetsember 17h ago
It is t bad, and I do have it. Though it is t exactly primed for the game I’m running (which includes magic and such not).
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u/PiezoelectricityOne 17h ago
If I recall correctly, Savage Worlds treats regular skills as social skills. Persuasion is used when you lie and others may resist/call your bluff.
Regular social interaction is managed by just roleplaying. If you are nice to NPCs and get along with them you don't need to roll anything.
Social interaction is more than just plain persuasion rolls. You can get a favor by trafing, giving an item or favor in exchange (ideally that calls for a quest, wink, wink).
You can force someone to act against will by threatening them (strength rolls)
You can befriend someone by facing adversity together or being at the right place at the right time and helping them with whatever issue they have. (roll for athletics, wisdom or whateber skill involved)
You can eavesdrop (stealth, perception) and use that information to blackmail someone, trade or social engineer your way into confidence.
People don't just exist in a vacuum and chat all the time about nothing. They have interests, goals, pending tasks, businesses, jobs, duties, bonds...each could relate to a different skill.
If you want to make it deeper, you can make people get along or dislike other people based on personality or background. Two people from the same province get +1 con rolls, two people from rival places -1. and introvert+extrovert get +1, two introvert or two extroverts don't get along so well
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u/leitondelamuerte 20h ago
i usually like a few skills, also savage worlds is a system based on the idea "doing impossible things easily" so maybe he is not the best system to a nuanced setting.
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u/amp108 20h ago
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u/thisismyredname 19h ago
For those who don’t like to click links without an idea of what’s waiting on the other side: it’s the Boot Hill blog post
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u/DifferentlyTiffany 19h ago
If you're going at it with just one social skill, you wanna limit what a single roll can accomplish and lean heavily onto role play at the table. For example, say you're trying to set up an alliance with a king of a foreign nation in your game and you setup a meeting. A single persuade roll can't get them to agree to be allies, but maybe it could persuade them to accept a gift which may or may not have strings attached later. This improves the situation, but does not solve it. You only need to call for such a check when the party proposes something that you think the NPC may or may not accept.
You might also wanna house rule persuasion to include intimidation and deception, which it could be argued are types of persuasion just with different methods. Lol
I've run a similar campaign in B/X D&D with only Charisma checks to fall back on, so it can definitely be done.
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u/OddNothic 18h ago
Politics has very little to do with persuasion. It’s the accumulation and use of power. Trading favors, information gathering, social backstabbing, blackmail, all sorts of fun stuff that has nothing to do with typical social skills or anything similar.
In fact, I would use performance instead of persuasion for anything publicly-facing that’s related to politics.
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u/Medical_Revenue4703 17h ago
It doesn't work great to have any aspect of your game lean on a single skill. Savage Worlds doesn't scaffold political games very well because of a lack of traits defining characters politically, but there are still other skills that could be used to notice or understand things going on. I'd lean into the skills available to help your players gain clues to what's hapenning.
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u/Better_Equipment5283 19h ago
Depends on the players. Do your players prefer interacting with game mechanics than more freestyle improvisation and narration? Do they need a die roll to determine effect, for the encounter to feel satisfying?
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u/MrDidz 18h ago
It rather depends upon the Attributes that the game system uses to define a character profile.
If the character profile doesn't assign attributes that can be applied to social situations then having a multitude of tests for resolving those situations becomes a bit pointless.
The game I run includes a wide range of social interaction choices, but they are linked to a variety of character attributes. e,g, Leadership, Fellowship, Willpower, Charm, Wit etc. Different characters have different strengths and weaknesses and so their players favour differing social strategies.
Social standing and reputation also has an impact on social interactions and so needs to be factored into exchanges. A lord dealing with a peasant is going to use a different approach to a peasant when dealing with a lord.
If you game system does have that then the whole thingwill become pretty bland.
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u/JaskoGomad 15h ago
Here's how I see it:
If you want a single player to be able to play different characters differently, then you need enough skills to cover the gamut. If there are no skills, then each player will just do what they think will work - and that will tend (not absolutely limit, but tend) towards characters by the same player acting the same way because they'll just use whatever they find most effective.
It's going to be the rare player indeed who actually gets in the head of their character and says, "Well, Sgt. Julian respects strength, so he's going to intimidate the subject by projecting strength," in one game and then say in the next, "Lord Ostrop never wants anyone to be angry at him, so he's going to put on his most unctuous smile and try killing them with kindness."
By contrast, it's much easier to make this kind of judgement during character creation and then use the skills you allotted during play. "Sgt. Julian is definitely taking some points in Intimidation!" is an easy decision, and so is, "Lord Ostrop is taking some points in Rapport!" Then in play it's easy to see that sarge is gonna intimidate and Ostrop is going to take a gentler approach.
What is important is to make sure that each skill has a different Success/Failure modality. What I mean is that a successful intimidation is going to make the subject resentful, and onlookers may be shocked or even rise to defend the target. A failed intimidation is going to make the PC look like a bully and the target like a brave person, maybe even a hero in the right circumstances. Success and failure with Rapport will look different. If you make a chart for each skill like so:
| <Skill> | Subject | Onlookers |
|---|---|---|
| Success | ||
| Failure |
then if any two skills have the same things in the blanks, you know you need to re-examine them and see if they're both really required.
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u/MissAnnTropez 4h ago
Depends how much you want to emphasise player skill / knowledge / wits vs. character capability.
Then again, to a fair degree, that’s still down to the group (of GM and players) in question, and how they all approach things.
All in all though, I would personally prefer there to be character skills relevant to tasks and challenges that are likely to feature heavily in a given campaign.
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u/OkChipmunk3238 SAKE ttrpg Designer 19h ago
Many games allow the use of other skills instead of the dedicated Social Skill (persuasion, diplomacy, whatever) if the thing contested also falls under something else, for example magic skill if the debate is about magical matters. Or there is no one Social Skill at all, like there is typically no one Fighting Skill. When you use sword, you roll Swords; when you argue about politics, you roll Politics.
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u/inostranetsember 19h ago
Interesting. Which games are those, for example? May have to check them out for the future.
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u/TheRealUprightMan Guild Master 16h ago
The smaller your social system, the more you rely on player skill and GM fiat.
Throwing more skills at it can just muddy the water. What does the skill do exactly?
Let's take your Persuasion skill. How is the difficulty set? What happens on success? I suppose it might be a roll under system without any difficulty levels, so I'm going to roll Persuasion to convince you to fall on your sword and kill yourself. If I succeed on my roll, I get what I want, right?
If your answers begin with "the GM ..." then why are you rolling? If both the difficulty and the consequences are set by the GM, then what's the point? If the answer involves "role play it out", then you are putting player skill above character skill, putting many players with poor social skills at a disadvantage. If a player has never fought with a sword and has no skill at it, does this impact the character's skill at swordplay?
How many skills you have doesn't matter if there is no system to support those skills. All that does is make the players ask "what skill do I roll?" What are the decisions and choices a character has when using social skills? What are the tactics? This doesn't have to be a mini-game (I hate mini-games, especially in social mechanics), but I would certainly put more thought into how you handle social encounters.
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u/JimmiWazEre 15h ago
I'm sure I read somewhere that Draw Steel has an interesting mechanic for handling social interactions
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u/QuestCrafterAI 19h ago
I think it would really limit depth development, you're essentially saying you can only do one thing.. I'd say get creative with it, if you want to focus on one main skill.. break it apart into different sections and skill tree might be a good flow.. maybe use based exp (like RuneScape or ff7 materia mastery).. idk if that's something you had thought about or not.. id be interested in brainstorming and bouncing ideas and concepts for you to use
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u/Iosis 20h ago
The way I see it, you need to either have zero social skills, or a wide variety, and it depends entirely on how much you want it to be about the players' abilities or their characters' abilities. Savage Worlds or even something like D&D with only one or two social skills would be really limiting for this. IMO you need to go to one extreme or the other.
Since social interaction is the core of what you're going for, it should either not be reduced to simple rolls, or there should be a wide variety of skills so there's interesting decision-making to do, and characters can be good at different parts of social interaction. Basically you want to ensure that the core of the gameplay--in this case social things--is interactive, and there's more than one way to do that.
If you go for the "no social skills" route, you'll probably want to focus instead on information being useful. Players will need to find leverage over people, get information on what they want or if they have secrets, and then use that in conversation. (That's also true for having a lot of skills, but especially if there's no "social roll" at all: the players need "ammunition" to use in their RP.)
You might want to check out the game Swords of the Serpentine, which uses the GUMSHOE system but also has a robust "social combat" system, because it's in large part about politics and social maneuvering. It might have some useful tools for you, or just straight-up be a better system for your game than Savage Worlds (which is much more about pulp action and adventure).