NPC interaction rules design: a hopeless or grand challenge?

[Tecmes]

This is an off-shoot from my OSR thread. I'll pick up with @cailano 's summary of his handling of things, 'cause it feels like a good summary

1 hour ago, cailano said:

I find that social skills are the most common skill roll that I use. I let the player abstract complex social scenes, only requiring them to tell me what they are trying to do.

"I try to convince the soldiers that the queen has gone crazy and their duty is to the crown. If they won't help us, I'll try to get them to stand aside." That's good enough for me. What would not be good enough is, "What do I need to roll to adjust the soldier's friendliness level two steps?" The difference is that one of those abstractions interacts with the game world, and the other is strictly mechanical.

I'm putting up this thread because I've been trying to write rules for years to answer my own challenge of creating detailed non-combat rules with no recourse to the Golden Shovel.

A significant such rule domain is NPC interaction.

Here's a couple observations I've reached in the first stages:

There isn't much roleplay in roleplaying games

In TTRPG we're not doing much actual "talking in voices" roleplay at all, rather usually stuff like Cailano describes: a bit of acting, but mostly description of intent. Sometimes the player is painfully making a case to deploy a specific skill, sometimes he's really letting the GM decide on "What to roll".

In fact, I'm convinced few players would appreciate a system that would actually enforce full-on roleplay: ask the *player* to come up with arguments, appropriate tone, coherent rendering of the PC's character and mannerisms, etc (except in PbP, where you have time to). Not to mention the OSR problem it would accentuate: the GM would have to fully appreciate and understand my subtle arguments and efforts, otherwise it would be frustrating.

That's the Critical Role conundrum: we're not all voice and improv actors, as it turns out. But it means creating actual rules will not put players off!

Interaction rules state of the art

There are several social encounter systems out there. E.g. BW's conflicts, tOR/AIME's Councils, various d20-based skill challenge procedures, and HERO has three full systems, including straight-on social combat in the advanced player rules II, and lots more I don't know. To qualify, a system has to involve more than a couple checks.

Those I know fail to convince me. Why, exactly, deserves thought.

When deployed in a rote, rules-based way, they're boring (and often lengthy as well!)

If players make efforts to play out interaction, after a while, it exposes roleplay vs. rules issues: if your great speech comes down to "OK, now roll Diplomacy", or even "OK, now roll Diplomacy with +2 for Good Roleplaying", that's discouraging. Why not, then, simplly say "I make a great speech".

A number-less, dice-less, interaction model

To be worth it, the *detail* of my speech needs to be taken into account and judged against the NPC's expectations. That's doable. AIME has a simple, but rare rule: if you mention a keyword or idea that is noted as important for the NPC, you get a bonus. It would be feasible to write down a list of arguments that are strong/good/passable/disastrous in a given interaction, and/or rank general approaches:

THE KING. Pleading Strong; Intimidate weak; Matter-of-fact insulting. Topics: Daughter strong; Legacy strong; Ancestors insulting.

Even if uninspired players could then boil it down to saying "I *plead* with him, mentionning the *king's daughter* and his *noble lineage*", we're still better off than in the "I make a great speech" or "I roll Diplomacy" situations, in term of depth of play.

Some would point that it is exactly how most GM proceed, though "in their head"... They judge a player's ideas against their understanding of the NPC wants, and generate a response in line. But that's not how the gameplay is presented. It makes a big difference to clearly state that it works that way and clearly describe the outcomes in those terms:

GM: "Pleading works with him; but mention of his lineage seem to anger him more than anything. He's now Upset.", rather than "The King says: 'Oh hum, do not call on my ancestors so readily, young one!'". In the latter case, you're not quite sure what the GM got from your speech and why exactly it produces that result.

Yes, this is just a hard-coded rule with the edges smoothed out by the lack of numbers or dice. Absence of said mechanics, though, helps with the flow and the feeling that spoken interaction is actually going on.

Crunchy social combat

However, crunchy combat-combat is arguably lacking in flow, and somehow we live with it. One hardly feels like a dynamic exchange of fluid attacks, parries, footwork and feints. I guess we don't need flow or immersion if we have solid gameplay; interesting gameplay. The problem with crunchy interaction is not flow: it's the simplistic, boring rules.

Burning Wheel takes a shot at this: it asks players to strategize and rock-paper-scissors the heck out of diplomacy. HERO puts forward multiple interaction maneuvers, defenses, and their interplay along metrics and gauges.

Creating a good system is quite very hard. One important issue I haven't mentionned is cooperation. While typically all heroes have combat powers, they don't all have social abilities. You don't want the Decker effect: players twiddling their thumbs while the Annoying Bard doles out social combos one-on-one with the GM for 30 minutes.

To fix this, you either have to make sure everyone has extensive social skills (why not? Earthdawn had everyone be an artist, after all), backtrack and make the social rules short and quick, or at least bake-in "aid" and "assist" rules (e.g. the non-face PCs can use actions such as Insight, posturing, advising, or just power-nodding).

[Actana]

I think PbtA games and their moves in general* are good at this. They give you a fictional trigger as to when a roll will happen, a simple check to resolve it, and then multiple options to choose from for varied and interesting results. And they also leave failures open for the GM to interpret them as best befits the fiction, but not in a way that makes it feel arbitrary.

The focus remains on the fiction and actions of the characters, and the choices you pick when performing a check highlight fictional things as well, leading right back into the fiction.

_{*regular disclaimer that each PbtA game is different and some are better than others at being, uhh, well designed.}

[Vladim]

I know that a good set of Social Combat rules is like the holy grail of RPGs, and there's tons of discussions online about it-a simple Google search will give lots of hits. But social interactions are so complicated that to me it seems impossible to come up with a good system that is both minimalist and elegant and still deep and doesn't output nonsense results at times.

Combat has the advantage of more constrained outcomes; not always binary, mind you, but essentially I can either win or lose a fight (or there can be a draw). And another big advantage is that most people don't know a lot about how fighting actually works, so there's no demand for detailed descriptions of techniques, and the threshold for suspension of disbelief regarding fighting descriptions is therefore much lower.

Social conflict, on the other hand, is inherently much more complex. Outcomes are rarely binary. Context matters a lot. The personalities involved are also hugely important. And we (the players) are much more keenly aware of what can realistically work, because social interaction (unlike combat) is part of our day-to-day lives. Trying to model all that with a system that doesn't turn into a bloated 300-page monstrosity that no-one wants to read (probably because they'd rather kill monsters anyway) seems a pretty high-effort, low-reward endeavour.

So in the end we are left with perhaps having a lite system, some good application of logic at the table, GM fiat, and a roleplay-first mentality to approaching social conflict. I've found that, for me at least, this works well enough.

[Eric]

7th Sea does a pretty good job at this. 2e is somewhat better than 1e, but 2e also has a somewhat inflated baseline of character prowess...

[cailano]

In all my years of GMing, I've only come up with one high-stakes social encounter, which boiled down to a series of D20 roles plus bonuses for good speeches by the player. It was meant to showcase the social skills of a particular Pathfinder character, which was the only one in the group to really invest in them.

The twist was that it was a series of rolls with the goal being to accumulate a certain number of victories. I explained that mechanic at the beginning and warned that once the exchange was lost, it was unrecoverable. That stopped the long scene with the other players twiddling their thumbs effect.

The PC lost but the players seemed to enjoy the exchange.

I think that's about as deep as you'd want to go for your typical D&D game but in a more political game like Vampire I can see a more nuanced system having some advantages.

 

[Tecmes]

On 11/3/2023 at 4:59 PM, Vladim said:

most people don't know a lot about how fighting actually works...

Social conflict, on the other hand, is inherently much more complex...

And we (the players) are much more keenly aware of what can realistically work,

Crucial point, but even if we understand IRL interaction better than IRL combat, it's not what matters. TTRPG interaction is a whole other thing, just like TTRPG combat is not combat at all. We can make both as simple or complex as we want - just as we arbitrarily decide to make a 300p combat system or resolve the whole battle with a single die.

I see your point, that a 300p interaction system wouldn't be appealing, but why?

Why is combat different?

Is it a matter of habit, owing to the wargaming roots, where combat would be diced-out, but negotiation between generals would be discussed?

Or is because combat is exciting, with striking outcomes; it's different from out daily life; and also fosters team play, which is cool.

Or does it run deeper?

Can interaction be exciting, anyway?

Think of an exciting diplomacy system, with interesting and tactical rules, and everyone involved.

E.g. think of a law-and-order trial-based game. Think of intricate skills, moves, and 3 hours spent on trial scenes every session!

What about an Ancient Athens Agora RPG? Show what your level 6 Dual-wielding Sophist (keep your level 6 Saphist for another game) can do along your friend's multi-class Pythagorean Cultist 4 / Democritean Atomist 2!

Bleh.

Can combat be exciting... without murder?

Let's turn about and consider combat outcomes, then. What if you build into the game the notion that most fights are not to the death at all? You fight until someone's in peril of dying; morale is down; the flag has been captured; you've crossed the bridge; the wizard is dead; you've impressed the boss, etc. Monsters give up when they're wounded and hand out the loot and let you pass. Only demons you destroy at all costs.

Similarly, you have to flee often and/or skirmish, fake out, avoid combats. (Isn't it something that OSR dungeon crawling possibly aims for, btw?)

Does combat retain its comparative appeal?

When I think coldly about it, I kind of feel like combat excitment hangs in good part on its brutal elegance: you punch the monsters' face until they're a bloody pulp. Use the diplomacy part to reload your guns. It's a distillation of what a challenge is: they die; or you die.

Then make diplomacy as sharp as a sword's edge

Note that all the above non-final fight outcomes are an issue if it's murky. If any and all fights can be interrupted and turned into an intimidation match, flight, or pleading (as would make sense IRL), then the elegance goes away. You have to be clear-cut about it: "This fight's goal is to reach the door".

Then do the same: only run interaction rules when there's a clear goal, one that matters greatly. And arm players with powers and weapons of the trade.

Archdemon Abraxas listens to your pleas. If you fail, you'll go to hell. Convince the sphinx to let you pass; otherwise you'll leave the dungeon. Impress Karkhas the Orc Lord, or surrender your loot. Placate the Solar to obtain the Arkensword.

Even then, would you not chafe at not being able to solve it by drawing your sword?

 

[Vladim]

11 minutes ago, Tecmes said:

(snip)

1. Why is combat different?

2. Can interaction be exciting, anyway?

3. Can combat be exciting... without murder?

Let me add to the points a bit (in case it helps)...

1. The reasons you said are correct, but I think we shouldn't forget the cultural milieu: combat is ubiquitous in all the media we consume, from movies and video games to books and TV shows, so that makes people want to have it in their games, too.

2. Of course! Just look at the success of shows like Game of Thrones!

3. I'd argue yes, and in fact more so. Transitioning seamlessly from a fight scene to a chase scene, a negotiation scene, or a moral dilemma is much more exciting and varied than another 'beat them to a pulp' fight.

Variety is the spice of life. Mixing up things will make for the most memorable scenes.