I love your thinking on this - I have wanted to add effective "non-combat" rolls into my games for years, and have been struggling to state clearly what I mean. You are stating this clearly.
I completely agree, a player that actually a chemist couldn't make his "fighter" build canons and explosive just because the player knows how to. The same apply to my character that would actually have less combat knowledge than I have as a martial arts teacher. So far I really like how your game is evolving. I had plenty of things that were rubbing me the wrong way at first that have mostly been taken care of. Bringing me to the idea that we look forward to a similar game experience.
I love this approach. The more I view and read media on ttrpgs, the more I have been seeing the same ideas repeated. This system is a fresh one for me.
An inspiring speech doesn't have to be "we can do it guys", a light in the darkness kinda thing. It can be just saying what failure means plainly. A reminder of stakes.
I love the sounds of this! I'll have to pick up your system for this and for the GM guide. I'm a new/aspiring GM using a BRP-driven system in a historical setting. The interest there is more in exploring and shaping the world than fighting monsters, so I need ways to make social encounters fun ways to employ their character's skills and bringing in the stakes of die rolls. Your example about seeking passage was so compelling! Looking forward to the book.
Have to share..I (creatively) adapted your idea for my DCC campaign and used it for the first time last night. Long story short, it was AMAZING and worked like a charm. My players LOVED it. Can't wait for Broken Empires!
This sounds great. It means a group could have one or more players who don’t enjoy combat but love roleplaying and get to use the social mechanics as the party’s social specialist, and they’d get to advance their character by doing it.
Love your system already now more and more. I had to introduce in my homebrew rules "social mechanics" eraly on (means over 30 years ago) as one of my best players wasn't a great rhetoric speaker but played a Bard in the celtic tradition (not DnD and other RPG-traditions!). As living memory of the celts with no written tradition he had to tell all the tales of old and new, his magic was bound to his poems, songs and he is also an authoritative figure as the bard is the last step to become a Druid (once again in the celtic tradition). So when in a hall or even at court of a mighty righ (King), he needed to be able to use his social skills, and more often than not very high stakes were at play. We all were very satisfied with these "social mechanics" who work all the same as every other test in my system.
Fully agree with the fundamental underlying philosophy you seem to have behind this, and very glad to see formal systemic support for that philosophy. I don't care if Susan can convince me, the GM, to let her pass through the sacred grove as we would discover if we were to freeform the encounter. I want to know if Merellien, can convince the guard. Which is what the dice will tell us. Any more than I care if Bob can shoot a target from 100 feet with a bow. I care if Erimoud can shoot a giant hornet with a bow. Obviously I adjust my style of running when I'm playing a system that's opposing that style, but when a system gives me the option to run social stuff that way? I do.
I've always been of two minds when it comes to social mechanics. On the one hand, I do think player skill should and already does matter for many other pillars of a typical rpg. In combat, it doesn't matter how well I can swing a sword, but it does matter how well I strategize, where I place my character and who I pick a fight with. In exploration, it doesn't matter how good I am at scavenging food, but it very often matters how well I plan out the journey, and how I prepare my supplies beforehand. And above that all, how well I build and play my character determines how much I can bring the idea I have of him in my head to the table. That layer of player skill to me is necessary, as otherwise the character becomes something completely divorced from myself, someone I am not roleplaying as but rather just talking about. On the other, I do want that mechanical support for who the character is. Something to reinforce where his skills lie, and perhaps even differ from my own. It helps me ground myself in the character, and the world they inhabit. Ideally, it guides my roleplay without restricting it too firmly. And on the GM side, it helps me adjudicate relevant situations fairly and excitingly. The less arbitrary I need to be during a scene, the easier it becomes to place genuine stakes. To those ends, I really like what you've shown so far in the current season. The mechanics are looking like they hit a good sweet spot for what I like.
The more of a marriage there is between mechanics and roleplay…the better! I Love councils in the one ring. I’m SO glad you’re putting in social mechanics. It will be wonderful for groups AND solo players. I really like these videos focused on “arenas of conflict”. I get the feeling that layout for this system is going to be great for a semi simulationist game.
The players say something and then the GM demands (proposes?) a roll for what the player's character tries to achieve. It's outright mind blowing °O° !
For many players rolling the dice is playing the game. On the rare ocassions I still run a game, I introduced Mercers 'How do you want to do it?' First time i only got blank stares. Now most are used to it and know what I want from them it's either some bland action or an exaggeration or they even pass. It's not that they don't like it, they just can't com up with something. When I describe what they did most grin satisfied. When I'm a player and decribe an action that is just a 'melee attack' and it's like 'I run towards the headless Horseman and slide along on my knees under the horse to run my blade across its underbelly." The gamemaster, even though he seems do acknowledge the story telling, does not modify my roll as i would expect him to do. Gives me no dis-/advanteges and what bugs me most: the other players don't get it because there is no special talent for this. It's just a melee attack, why don't I just roll the dice? I could have said that I do an aggrassive attack on the horse. THAT's an attack option! That gives you a bonus on attacks and damage and makes you an easier target. That's something they understand. That's bland. But what can I do? These are my friends for over 30 years. And I can't find another gaming group.
The thing you are missing is you’ll need to say you “try” to do it and failure would mean you experience greater than and or opposite reactions as consequences for succeeding when the dice miss. However, success means you get a reward equal to what was attempted with ought having to pay the price. So when going a step deeper into your narration and making things more cinematic, you need to have a great group dynamic at the table (with trust) that people are happy to retcon and add new context to the action based on what the dice decide. Imagine playing dnd with yes/no tables instead of DC/AC. You say the horse attack and the GM would say it’s “nearly impossible” you could do that without consequences, so you need to roll >90 on a d100 (setting the dc). If you miss you can still do the action but your now in a bad spot and are going to be vulnerable to the next attack they do and you may not have damaged the horse as much as you expected. So in this game, I believe he is trying to meet in the middle where you narrate a realistic action, envision what your character could do, then you roll to find out if you make progress towards your goal or you need to pay a price to get what you want.
this sounds like a really fun way to run social interactions, i love the idea of the character being weighed into the action by how they are played rather than just straight rolling.
Really love you are taking inspiration from The One Ring 1e. I've been running a mega campaign mashup of Tales of the Wilderland, Laughter of Dragons, and Darkening of Mirkwood and the (Social) 'Encounters' my players have said have felt far more tense than even the combats. Really curious how your game develops!
Wow this is really awesome! At first glance was super unsure (having tried and fumbled with less thought out or effective ‘social’ mechanics in other games as well). But the way it’s set up in this is the perfect balance of complete, inclusive, and simple/direct. I don’t think it’s clunky now at all because with just the way you explained it in this video (and in the book I presume) ‘how well player x describes there attack doesn’t mean they hit. When you were saying Kelsi said something super intimidating but her CHARACTER isn’t very intimidating… WOW that’s amazing, so simple but amazing. Never thought of it like that for straight up conversation and RPing. Great job! Can’t wait to dive in!
This is excellent GM advice - essentially PC actions are required to trigger the roll. Looking forward to seeing the mechanics themselves. What you’ve described could be applied to 5e social mechanics. It’s also hard coded into all PbtA systems. Sounds like you will have a fantastic GM advice section - rules are rules are rules - the use of those rules is what makes the game.
I've been advocating this approach for years, and honestly it's the most logical approach.A really dumb character, played by a super smart player, shouldn't act like a genius (even though they may have the occasional spark of brightness), and definitely shouldn't perform like a genius. And vice-versa. You should always consider the character's capabilities over the player's. But personally, I like to give good players a little edge, a little bonus, if they were clever, fun, or played accordingly to their character's motivations, personal history, etc.
The system, as I think you’ve mentioned, appears to take elements from the Council rules from TOR. Which I do thinks adds that little bit of needed rules to important social encounters. Speaking of TOR, I recall you’ve changed the names of certain skills throughout development, and have landed on Protocol as one of them, but have you considered Courtesy (taken from TOR) as a possibility? I feel Protocol sounds kinda sci-fi to me, but that’s just me. Cheers!
Yes, ToR was a big influence, as I’ve said elsewhere. As for Courtesy, I feel it’s too specific to what ToR was evoking, compared to what I want the skill to be about. But nomenclature is always evolving, so we’ll see.
Sounds very similar to the new Negotiation mechanics in “Draw Steel”, which is very good. I like those mechanics and it is cool seeing you do a similar thing :) Didn’t support the Kickstarter, but I will definitely be interested in picking up your game sometime in the future after I’ve gone through non-fantasy TTRPG systems.
Hopefully my social rules are somewhat more intuitive. From what I remember, that system was a little hard to use. It's been a long time since I've looked at it, though.
To those uncertain on the benefits of the system, I have similarly adapted the Councils concept to my own game, and this is an excerpt of a blog post about it that is coming up in a few weeks (just happened to have written it today, scheduled for 10/6/24. Anyway, I think this displays pretty well how it works, although Trevor and I diverge a bit on the implementation, for what I can tell. The greater context is specific to Glorantha, and the character here is taking part in the Great Hunt, a yearly ritual in which the greatest hunters in the region get together in a friendly competition. Extra points are earned for bringing the beast in alive. "At this point, however, Andivarth showed his creativity, casting Talk with Animals. He then declared he was going to reason with the bear and try and get him to come back willingly. This was an awesome moment, and a perfect time to pull out the Negotiation mechanic in the system. If you are familiar with Councils in The One Ring, then this is a more robust version of that concept, but for those that aren't, the idea is that in a Negotiation, the target NPC has a Tolerance which describes how long they are willing to listen before ending the talks (in this case, violently) and a Resistance which measures how much the NPC is against the proposal. There are lots of little details, but essentially each round of the Negotiation reduces the Tolerance by one, while the degrees of success on the character's rolls reduce the Resistance. First one to zero ends the Negotiation, for good or ill. Andivarth sucks at social skills, and the bear was not particularly interested in talking as it had just been woken up by a human obviously up to no good. Andivarth offered to hunt for the bear, it wasn't interested. He offered to spread the word that the bear's hunting grounds were off limits, very limited response. The bear kept inching closer, preparing to pounce once this foolish human was done, but then Andivarth said he would honor the bear and make a shrine for them. This was an Exceptional Success (like a critical) and was almost enough to convince the bear, so it sat back on its haunches to think. Seeing he'd made headway and with his player knowing he only had one more turn to succeed, he then promised to make a song regarding the bear and its power and majesty, and that he would spread it around the clan so the bear would be remembered for generations to come. I liked this so much I have him a bonus, and it was enough to seal the deal, to the cheering at the table."
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG yeah, we each seemed to take a lot of the same inspirations but in different directions, lol. At first I was upset, because I'd already been working for a couple of months on my system and then you announced yours and I was like "crap! What do I do now?" But then I watched this newest season and was like "whew! We have almost exactly the same influences, but I doubt anyone will even connect the two I the end, lol" Can't wait to get my hands on your system :D
So... This is basically how I run 5e with my friends, I guess it just made so much sense to me that i never asked for rolls in the "correct way". I'd make them roll for the thing they did, not for the thing they intended to do. If someone's character is being an a-hole, they roll intimidation not persuasion (or the other way around depending on the situation). If you are tired and walking on the rain, you roll Dex with disadvantage to not fall, etc. If their character has good Dex modifiers great, but they still have to roll for it and see the consequences of their choices; and this applies to good choices too that some people say are """metagaming""", when they are really just common sense even in a fantastical world.
the lore in the elder scrolls, since skyrim anyways, is that the shouts, or the thu’um, seen in skyrim were words in the dragon language, and that when dragons are battling each other, it’s really a “debate” of sorts, the two of them arguing over whatever reason, but i like the idea of that’s how social encounters should feel in ttrpgs,so not bottlenecking the options available to the characters in anyway, but giving weight like consequences/rewards to every encounter the group runs into
Enjoy the ethos and looking forward to the GM section. From watching Legacy, I have a nebulous question. In Legacy, you have used a characteristic matrix inspired by Pendragon for Veil. Is this a tool you are using in Legacy as an aid(like mythic) or will this be developed as a part of Broken Empires. And if so, is there a feedback (or enhancement or stacking etc) between characteristics and skills? Or would they be specifically separate for their own purposes.
The Personality rules are part of the core, but optional: you can get rewarded for using them, but suffer no penalty if you don't. They are only a player aid to help roleplay according to what the character would do. Once per personality Trait pairing per session, if you choose to roll the trait and be bound by its outcome, you can get a +10 to the next roll that is affected by the personality trait. As I said, completely optional.
I love Social systems where the Roleplay triggers the Skill used, however I also like to reward the Roleplay through mechanics like Advantage. An example would be: Player doesn't even bother to put in effort, or says/does something outrageous given the context = Disadvantage. The Player puts in effort to Roleplay their Character = Straight Roll. The Player comes up with something clever, or witty, or is extra menacing, etc. = Advantage. I know some people don't like that, because they feel it rewards/punishes Player Skill rather than Character skill, but for me, a Roleplaying Game is all about that merger/fusion of me and my Character... also, we already reward/punish Characters based on Player knowledge and skill in virtually every other area of the game, so why not in the one area that really gets to the heart of what it means to Roleplay?
A Broken Empires GM always has the ability to award a +20/-20 bonus to any roll based on the given circumstances. There's nothing stopping you from doing just that to reflect your interpretation of the situation :)
I remember those times where I had to roll because of what I just said... In a TORG game I played I was attacked by priest with guns in place of a right arm. I looked at the leader and asked him : "Wow! did your mom get !@#$%@#$ by a tank?!?" and the GM went : Ok roll for taunt... I almost made a glorious roll on that one, rolling well above 50 on a D20 (it's an explosive D20 system)
This was a fascinating run-down on your clever "social mechanics" system, but I'm still a bit unclear on how multiple characters would be able to effectively "tag team" one another in a social setting to achieve a synergistic effect. For example, if the party's trying to convince the Baron to allow them to pass through his lands, does each individual character make a separate roll for success, or does the party as a whole make a single combined roll where individual advantages (e.g. the party cleric being the same religion as the Baron, the bard having performed the Baron's favorite song at the banquet last night, and the party leader being the daughter of another well-known noble family) are all totaled up and used as a cumulative die-roll modifier?
That's a perfect example of something that could be a great social encounter in TBE! The process is actually very fluid. Characters speak as they would normally, and as soon as they say something of consequence, the GM decides on the skill involved, and the player rolls. The group's goal is to accumulate as many successes as they can before they exceed the NPC's Tolerance, which in some cases is represented by a Timer Die, creating the random tension that a die does ;) Everyone takes part as they choose, hopefully only triggering skills their characters are actually good at!
I have two major concerns with social mechanics done in this way. 1 - It doesn't separate character and player ability. You say you don't have to act, you don't have to speak in the first person, you don't have to be inspiring, you just have to pick the right words. However, for some people, picking the right words IS acting, and they can't do it - therefore they can't play an inspiring paladin, or a seductive bard, or a deceiving spy. They would have to say "my character lies to them about the nature of their mission.". 2 - The real-time aspect of a GM deciding the roll based on what is said. No-one has an issue with someone being in combat and saying "I'm going to move to that tree line, and then... hmm, no actually, I'll go to the rock," but in this social mechanics system suddenly our first response is taken as the roll? Shouldn't combat be the same? Secondly, it also interferes with roleplay as in point 1. If a hot-headed player wants to play a cool tactician or a silent assassin, suddenly they literally need to put duct tape over their mouth while theyre playing?
I get where you're coming from, it's something I struggle with in modern games, and really RPGs throughout their history, where we have combat as a sort of minigame BECAUSE it is a contest where each side wants to be victorious, but then we have other human endeavors where the same sort of thing happens, but it doesn't necessarily involve drawing blood or zero sum lethality. So yeah, social resolution wouldn't fit every situation, but could it fit something complicated where it was a tug of war with minds. It does come down to what characters ARE, are they just avatars for the players' wills or do they have some life of their own. You're aiming at the latter. I'm curious to learn more about it. I do hope that GMs allow for players' interpretations of their characters to have some flexibility, since I know some GMs might imagine all fighters as less than erudite, perhaps, when obviously there are as many types of fighters as you could imagine. So would a roll be connected to attributes or skills, with maybe modifiers that the GM applies based on circumstance? I imagine adding travel mechanic exhaustion where people are dirty and tired and trying to debate with some farmers to allow passage over their land to get to the inn before sunset :)
There are no classes, only skills. A "fighter" might be incredibly skilled at Inspire, Persuade, or Wit! Skills have specific meanings, but flexibility and interpretation are KEY to this game's experience. A GM always has the option to add circumstantial modifiers to a roll; that comes down to personal style. (And the example of negotiating with a farmer for a place to rest for the night is pretty much exactly what happened in my own game last week...!)
Your system remind me a lot of PbtA games. You have a conversation and narrate what your character does in the fiction, and if that triggers a move, you roll the dice. It cuts out that nasty "I roll perception" problem. Describe how your character looks for traps or clues, and then we'll see what happens. A similar thing recently came up in my scum and villainy game. Our Mystic wanted to soothe and comfort a crewmate, and he wanted to roll Sway because he had 2 points in it. I had to tell him what he was trying to do in the fiction of the scene wasn't the Sway action.
As a player in a TOR2E game I sometimes find myself frustrated in councils because my character does not have the skills to support what I want to say, but of our 4 players I am (in my opinion) one of 2 players that are skilled at/enjoy role playing (speaking in first person, using descriptive language, etc.) I feel like if I don't contribute it becomes more like a series of rolls, and less like a scene. Still love the game, and looking forward to this one, just an observation
The system I’ve designed (and the one in ToR) is not for every type of gamer, that’s true. If you’ve made a character that hamstrings your own personal abilities, you can always develop your skills in another direction. But there are always ways to participate. (Standing back from the proceedings and rolling Insight to help your comrades is one option).
I know he has taken these ideas from other games, but it sounds like a great and pretty robust way of dealing with these encounters. Making social encounters have 'stakes' really is wht RPG's should be about. I need to reconsider how these things are handled in my other games. Not all of them deal with it this well. [some are pretty poor to be honest]
As an example, what’s to stop a mousy player who likes being gruff and intimidating from simply saying, “I intimidate them”? I like the ideas here and use them, I’m just looking for more detail.
Ask them how they intimidate them. They can describe it in 3rd person rather than speak in 1st person, but they should be able to explain what their character says in some fashion, even if it is descriptive.
Interesting comparison to Burning Wheel! I agree that the three-action volleys can be clunky at times but I can't help but love it anyway (though I much prefer the less complex Mouseguard version). BW does a lot of 'pause the narrative to do some meta heavy lifting then use that to resolve the story' in its chase to create memorable narrative and their conflict system is a great example. I don't think it was designed with the primary intent of being in-the-moment or reactionary. Looking forward to seeing how you've moulded that idea for your own!
I’m glad you love BW! I so desperately want to ;) Seriously, it’s kind of a miracle of design, even if it seems to work for me only on paper. Very inspirational nonetheless.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG If you ever get a chance, check out Mouseguard. It takes the BW core and makes it a lot less oppressively complicated and more game-y with its delineated GM and player turns. One of my favourites!
When it comes to the declare, dice, and describe phases of roleplaying, I've always considered the words coming out of my character's mouth to be the describe phase. It sounds like you are making them the declare phase. What do you do when a character is skilled in persuading makes an emotionally moving argument, but the dice disagree? Do you ignore the beautiful roleplaying or the dice result? You can incorporate the failed roll into the roleplay by waiting until after the dice are rolled to do the speaking. So, how would I combat thinking in terms of just the mechanics? The player would say what they want to accomplish without mentioning the skill name unless it's just the natural verb for the activity. "I want to appeal to his workethic" instead of "I want to roll a persuade." Then, the GM would say what skill to roll. Then, if the roll fails, we decide whether it was a failure on the character's part or something that didn't stir the NPC. Then, roleplay out the results.
We’re saying much the same thing as far as I can tell. The player RPs the moment, which triggers a specific skill decided by the GM (and often by the table as it’s quite often obvious), the dice are rolled, and the outcome of that roll determined and abided by (“the dice always tell the story”). “Beautiful roleplaying” determines the triggered skill, and is its own reward; that’s why we do this in the first place, isn’t it? :) And understand, these rolls aren’t binary: failing one roll doesn’t normally end the whole encounter. The goal is to accumulate many success levels before the tolerance is reached.
HOW do they appeal to his work ethic? If they say "I have always admired how hard you work" is persuasion, whereas "Just wait until your subjects hear of your laziness" is intimidation. It actually requires some degree of roleplaying in not just what qualities the opponent has, but how your character approaches that, and the skill with which they are able to make their appeal.
I am glad you brought up burning wheel, as it was my first thought when social mechanics was mentioned and whilst I love some of the ideas in burning wheel, I find the mechanics a bit overbearing
So the Player "projects" their Character's approach to the social interaction through roleplaying at the table, that projection is evaluated and determins what Character skill will be used for the rolls. It's not the quality of the roleplaying that's important, just the category it falls into.
Roleplaying is its own reward. Isn’t that why we do this in the first place? :) But the GM always has the ability to give a circumstantial bonus to any roll, if they want to reward “good roleplaying”.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG "Roleplaying is its own reward" Absolutely. I wasn't arguing that the rules were demeaning it in any way. A discretionary reward for good roleplaying is a good idea. To be applied to the relevant roll, or kept like a bennie for later use?
I feel the issue with this approach (which while more granular than 5E, is still replicating the fundamental structure of delineating social skills along lines of approach, I.e. wit vs intimidate vs inspire) is that it encourages players to ignore context and twist themselves to use their best skill as often as possible. You say context is critical, but to my ear, this system doesn’t account for context. Maybe Kelsey’s character acting intimidating in this moment IS a good idea, even if it normally wouldn’t be. But if she always has that 10% chance to succeed, that just means she should avoid it all the time, and always prioritize her good skills, thereby flattening the character. Do you have systems in place to avoid these problems and reward contextual awareness on a mechanical level?
Contextual awareness is about reading the situation, understanding what your PC is good at in that situation, and taking an appropriate action. No one is good at everything, and we play to our strengths to get what we want. That's human nature. That said, there are 9 social skills in the game. These are 9 fundamentally different approaches to dealing with NPCs. That's hardly a "flattening" of the character. Some skills just won't work in certain circumstances. There are elements in the system called Preferred and Disliked skills; these are approaches that work either better or worse with that particular NPC. If your best skill is Intimidate, and you try to twist the conversation in order to "spam" an encounter with Beorn (say), you will just outright fail (in his case, anyone even attempting that skill just outright fails, that's just who he is). If you used Inspire with Beorn, it might turn out to be his Preferred skill, and it would be easier to use on him. Certain targets will react differently to different approaches. Understand your own strengths, understand your target, take appropriate action. If Kelsey triggered the Intimidate skill through her roleplaying, and the character she was speaking to was particularly susceptible to Intimidate, then she'd get a big bonus. But if the player knows that their Intimidate skill is no good, the onus is on them to pick the better approach that the *character* is good at. And might I say, if you're playing this game with people who are "ignoring context" to spam "their best skill as often as possible"... I would recommend a different system. They're clearly not the intended audience. Luckily for them, there are innumerable games out there that will cater to their particular desires.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Good to know there are methods in the system to account for this! As you’ve said in other comments, I’m only responding to the vertical slice in this video. If you do a follow-up, I’d mention this Preferred and Disliked mechanic; it helps to differentiate this system from 5E and its ilk. As for the hypothetical I was posing above, that’s not based on personal experience (good players are helpful here), but if I’ve learned anything as a professional DM, not all players can be counted on to maintain such nuance. Some folks, if you give them a raw “best option” mechanically, that’s it for them! It’s good to know your system has mechanics to encourage these players to think in context and not behave like robots
while systems can certainly influence this kind of behavior, i honestly think this is something the players themselves have to learn to let go of. getting comfortable with the idea that 'most optimal' is often (though not always) antithetical to good drama, and TTRPGs are blending both gameplay and drama. having things your character truly shines at is great for drama so they can have the spotlight in a scene, but that needs to be contrasted against things they are NOT good at to really pop (similar to how color works - a bright red or pink is much more striking when against a black background). it also what often leads to moments of just roaring comedy or utter amazement when someone is rolling a check for a skill they are bad at a game can address this to some extent, but really there is no amount of game design that will teach the player how much fun it can be to not min-max all of the time in all situations. that's something you have to discover on your own (imho)
I'm a GM who has been against charisma and rolling for social checks for a long time... But I've come to accept it as an incorrigible 😂 part of gaming culture so long as I can hold to a few concessions. First, just as the players would never be expected to succumb to a persuasion check, I reserve the right for certain NPCs to be immune to social checks. This is especially for villains, rivals, or other major personalities that I, as the GM, have taken time to flesh out and therefore know how they would react sans a roll to intimidate. Second, I tell my players that the more they roll during social encounters the less motivation I have to bring those NPCs to life. So, if you're going to barter with the shopkeeper using dice, we'll just run that out of character... No need to do the funny voices etc.
1) There are rules for that in TBE too. They’re called Preferred and Disliked skills, and Special Reactions. 2) You don’t bust out the social encounter rules unless there’s something at stake for the characters. Many things can be resolved with a simple roll of an appropriate skill, or an opposed roll, or with no roll at all. Context is king, and you’re still the GM.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Interestingly, my instinct is the opposite of yours. Haha! I would prefer that rolling for social encounters be the provenance of the less important and require in-character role-play with diegetic resolution for the more crucial scenes. But I do indeed know I'm in the minority on this opinion.
Those details will be in the book, of course. In the meantime, you can see many aspects of it in action throughout various episodes of Season 4 here on the channel.
@leonlegender I think a good example of the social encounters is in MMD S4 Legacy Eps 5: "Allies and Enemies" , starting at 13:27, Veil is trying to ask for help to General Dahrion Bengarrah.
Good topic for a video. I'm sure the book will cover this (as you've quoted some of it) but having this video as a reference as well will only help us out!
I would like to talk to you if you have the time. I am the Ambassador for the upcoming film/documentary "50 Years of Fantasy" the 50th anniversary of D&D and looking for Creators and Influencers in our community.
I've taken this approach in the past and it hasn't worked well at all. Players rapidly become unwilling to do anything other than what's written on the character sheet, forcing themselves into narrow caricatures. A character with high Deception would lie constantly -- immersion-breaking in many scenarios -- because it gave them better chances. In reality, skilled liars tell the truth in many situations. Likewise with Persuade, Diplomacy, and Inspire. It also caused the social interactions to *lose* tactical depth, because now everyone's just looking at the highest number they have and playing around that rather than thinking about the specifics of the situation at hand.
Nice, nice. I am not an autist so I have social mechanics up the wazoo. Now do exploration. That's the pillar that's not been codified mechanically that I need help with.
The system seems fun, but I'd be very limited on what characters I can play as when not playing via text, lol. I'm very quiet in real life, not great at coming off as intimidating when I want to, nor am I good at sounding persuasive when I want to - chances are high that, were I to open my mouth, assuming the other players even heard me, my words would never get interpreted the way I mean for them to. This has a lot to do with mental conditions of mine, which drastically affect how I view social situations - a statement that one person views as intimidating, and offensive, I could very well view as normal conversation, or even as flirty. So I'd basically need to play by text for most characters, since I'd need to spend something around half an hour coming up with each statement in such a way that it matches my intentions.
You can always speak in third person as well, like "my character warns him that there will be consequences if he refuses" to intimidate or "my character points out that he actually benefits from the deal because..." to persuade. Roleplaying isn't the same thing as acting.
Yes, exactly. The system is actually designed with people like you in mind. It's the character's skill that determines the outcome; the player's words trigger that skill. Also - and this is key to *many* parts in this book - the game assumes good faith and reasonableness among its players and GM. It assumes that the players are able to have a mature discussion if there's ever a discrepancy. It is, in so many words, a game for grown ups :)
You've said a lot about how social encounters should work - in your opinion - but not a whole lot about how your system accomplishes that. From what I am hearing, you have a set of social skills, and if the player roleplays to their character's strengths, they have a better chance of outcome. The higher the stakes, the more likely you are to choose the more complex system to adjudicate. Finally, as you said, it doesn't matter how good the player is at the roleplay, but how the tone of their statements triggers the system. The big thing you stressed is that this is still a game, not just an act of throwing dice. So... How is this different from other systems? Because if the only difference is which dice I roll and which modifiers I use, I don't see a difference. I get the distinct impression that I could accomplish everything you're talking about at any table with any set of game rules that have at least a handful of on-paper social skills. It just seems to me like you have an idea of how social conflicts should be resolved at your table, and you have misled yourself into thinking that your mechanics are uniquely executing on that idea when it's actually your DMing style.
That's... an interesting take. I've been using these social mechanics for over 10 years, and GMing in general for over 40. Pretty sure I'm not "misleading" myself. How is it different from other systems? For one thing, it *is* a system. Most games have historically avoided social systems entirely. You are also leaving out the details (which to be fair, you couldn't have known about purely from this teaser video): the goal is to gain as many SLs as you can before the Tolerance runs out. There are specific mechanics that govern that and maintain the tension. What can I say? You'll have to see it for yourself in the book. (Also, check out Season 4 of the main show on this channel; the protagonist engages in several social encounters which help explain how the system works.)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG That's fair. I apologize for my offense language. I didn't mean to imply you're inexperienced, but instead point out the possibility that your specific style might be doing the heavy lifting in social encounters at your tables, regardless of the underlying mechanics. I've actually heard it said that to run a game well around a particular style of play, exclude that element from the number side of your system entirely, and I think there's merit to that. When I play stealth games, there are dozens of skills to perfect, but they all exist to support the stealth. There's no actual stealth skill, because it would be inherently deterministic. Achieve target number; succeed check. Removes the player's own skill from the equation. When you remarked that your player's own intimidating language wouldn't actually matter to the outcome, I grew concerned about your system. My biggest peave with social systems, when they exist, is that they often come down to one check. Depending on the system - like a D20 based one - this creates a very swingy outcome. I'd rather have NO social skills. But then, why am I coming to a video about making them crunchierm, with more than one check? Well, seeing your title made me insanely curious about it! Maybe you've cracked the code. I'm eager to see. But based on the above discussion regarding player skill vs character skill, your goals may be the opposite of mine, and I would be an unfair judge.
The player's intimidating language absolutely matters to the outcome - it *determines the skill to be rolled*. A swingy, binary social system sucks, we're in agreement there! "Roll Persuade to win the debate" and the like is mindless, unengaging pap. TBE's social system is absolutely NOT down to one check - it's about accumulating as many successes as you can before the NPC's unknown tolerance is breached. It's entirely about making the choice between going for more SLs, knowing that more SLs equal a better outcome, and taking the chance that your next social roll may be your last, as you go over the NPC's tolerance. The very purpose of this system is to meld player and character skill, but like everything else in our hobby, it will entirely depend on the tastes of the group. I never claimed to have cracked any code, nor would I. I'm only providing here what has worked so well for me over the many years of running games.
You state your opinion as a fact. But it just an opinion, based on your experience. In *my* experience, the opposite of what you said is true. Ah, the variety of life!
I disagree. I usually choose the best of two world. Trying to convince a King to do something might be pure rp, but trying to get something for a lower price from a vendor, might be just a simple die roll.
To each their own but I feel highly discouraged in a social encounter in "the world's most popular role-playing game" (and it's adjacents) that doesn't have mechanics to support social interaction.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG In my experience, having a poor talk stat discourages me from engaging with the characters in a setting because I am made to feel like I have low chances to accomplish anything, so I agree that a conservative use of talk stats is better that casual use, or as you put it context is king. That said, I also feel that if I made a beautiful argument for something, that if the GM called for a dice roll because it's supposed to be a special case, then that would feel like being cockblocked by the dice.
This is the first time I've thought that social mechanics can actually enhance the roleplaying, rather than undermine it. I can't wait to try it.
It's kind of a game-changer (literally) ;)
I love your thinking on this - I have wanted to add effective "non-combat" rolls into my games for years, and have been struggling to state clearly what I mean. You are stating this clearly.
I completely agree, a player that actually a chemist couldn't make his "fighter" build canons and explosive just because the player knows how to. The same apply to my character that would actually have less combat knowledge than I have as a martial arts teacher. So far I really like how your game is evolving. I had plenty of things that were rubbing me the wrong way at first that have mostly been taken care of. Bringing me to the idea that we look forward to a similar game experience.
I love this approach. The more I view and read media on ttrpgs, the more I have been seeing the same ideas repeated. This system is a fresh one for me.
An inspiring speech doesn't have to be "we can do it guys", a light in the darkness kinda thing. It can be just saying what failure means plainly. A reminder of stakes.
And that would be a call a GM can make.
I love the sounds of this! I'll have to pick up your system for this and for the GM guide. I'm a new/aspiring GM using a BRP-driven system in a historical setting. The interest there is more in exploring and shaping the world than fighting monsters, so I need ways to make social encounters fun ways to employ their character's skills and bringing in the stakes of die rolls. Your example about seeking passage was so compelling! Looking forward to the book.
Have to share..I (creatively) adapted your idea for my DCC campaign and used it for the first time last night. Long story short, it was AMAZING and worked like a charm. My players LOVED it. Can't wait for Broken Empires!
This sounds great. It means a group could have one or more players who don’t enjoy combat but love roleplaying and get to use the social mechanics as the party’s social specialist, and they’d get to advance their character by doing it.
This is hands down the most well-designed rules for social interactions I’ve ever seen.
This is spectacular. It helps players immerse themselves into their "character". Excellent work, I cannot wait for the kickstarter. Thank you sir.
Love your system already now more and more. I had to introduce in my homebrew rules "social mechanics" eraly on (means over 30 years ago) as one of my best players wasn't a great rhetoric speaker but played a Bard in the celtic tradition (not DnD and other RPG-traditions!). As living memory of the celts with no written tradition he had to tell all the tales of old and new, his magic was bound to his poems, songs and he is also an authoritative figure as the bard is the last step to become a Druid (once again in the celtic tradition).
So when in a hall or even at court of a mighty righ (King), he needed to be able to use his social skills, and more often than not very high stakes were at play. We all were very satisfied with these "social mechanics" who work all the same as every other test in my system.
Fully agree with the fundamental underlying philosophy you seem to have behind this, and very glad to see formal systemic support for that philosophy.
I don't care if Susan can convince me, the GM, to let her pass through the sacred grove as we would discover if we were to freeform the encounter. I want to know if Merellien, can convince the guard. Which is what the dice will tell us. Any more than I care if Bob can shoot a target from 100 feet with a bow. I care if Erimoud can shoot a giant hornet with a bow. Obviously I adjust my style of running when I'm playing a system that's opposing that style, but when a system gives me the option to run social stuff that way? I do.
I've always been of two minds when it comes to social mechanics.
On the one hand, I do think player skill should and already does matter for many other pillars of a typical rpg. In combat, it doesn't matter how well I can swing a sword, but it does matter how well I strategize, where I place my character and who I pick a fight with. In exploration, it doesn't matter how good I am at scavenging food, but it very often matters how well I plan out the journey, and how I prepare my supplies beforehand. And above that all, how well I build and play my character determines how much I can bring the idea I have of him in my head to the table. That layer of player skill to me is necessary, as otherwise the character becomes something completely divorced from myself, someone I am not roleplaying as but rather just talking about.
On the other, I do want that mechanical support for who the character is. Something to reinforce where his skills lie, and perhaps even differ from my own. It helps me ground myself in the character, and the world they inhabit. Ideally, it guides my roleplay without restricting it too firmly. And on the GM side, it helps me adjudicate relevant situations fairly and excitingly. The less arbitrary I need to be during a scene, the easier it becomes to place genuine stakes.
To those ends, I really like what you've shown so far in the current season. The mechanics are looking like they hit a good sweet spot for what I like.
The more of a marriage there is between mechanics and roleplay…the better! I Love councils in the one ring. I’m SO glad you’re putting in social mechanics. It will be wonderful for groups AND solo players. I really like these videos focused on “arenas of conflict”. I get the feeling that layout for this system is going to be great for a semi simulationist game.
The players say something and then the GM demands (proposes?) a roll for what the player's character tries to achieve.
It's outright mind blowing °O° !
I love how this game is looking. Very impressed Trevor!
I love the language you use in the book, if to judge by what you read out loud. I can't wait for October 1st to back this system!
For many players rolling the dice is playing the game. On the rare ocassions I still run a game, I introduced Mercers 'How do you want to do it?' First time i only got blank stares. Now most are used to it and know what I want from them it's either some bland action or an exaggeration or they even pass. It's not that they don't like it, they just can't com up with something. When I describe what they did most grin satisfied.
When I'm a player and decribe an action that is just a 'melee attack' and it's like 'I run towards the headless Horseman and slide along on my knees under the horse to run my blade across its underbelly." The gamemaster, even though he seems do acknowledge the story telling, does not modify my roll as i would expect him to do. Gives me no dis-/advanteges and what bugs me most: the other players don't get it because there is no special talent for this. It's just a melee attack, why don't I just roll the dice? I could have said that I do an aggrassive attack on the horse. THAT's an attack option! That gives you a bonus on attacks and damage and makes you an easier target. That's something they understand. That's bland. But what can I do? These are my friends for over 30 years. And I can't find another gaming group.
The thing you are missing is you’ll need to say you “try” to do it and failure would mean you experience greater than and or opposite reactions as consequences for succeeding when the dice miss. However, success means you get a reward equal to what was attempted with ought having to pay the price.
So when going a step deeper into your narration and making things more cinematic, you need to have a great group dynamic at the table (with trust) that people are happy to retcon and add new context to the action based on what the dice decide.
Imagine playing dnd with yes/no tables instead of DC/AC. You say the horse attack and the GM would say it’s “nearly impossible” you could do that without consequences, so you need to roll >90 on a d100 (setting the dc). If you miss you can still do the action but your now in a bad spot and are going to be vulnerable to the next attack they do and you may not have damaged the horse as much as you expected.
So in this game, I believe he is trying to meet in the middle where you narrate a realistic action, envision what your character could do, then you roll to find out if you make progress towards your goal or you need to pay a price to get what you want.
this sounds like a really fun way to run social interactions, i love the idea of the character being weighed into the action by how they are played rather than just straight rolling.
Really love you are taking inspiration from The One Ring 1e. I've been running a mega campaign mashup of Tales of the Wilderland, Laughter of Dragons, and Darkening of Mirkwood and the (Social) 'Encounters' my players have said have felt far more tense than even the combats. Really curious how your game develops!
Wow this is really awesome! At first glance was super unsure (having tried and fumbled with less thought out or effective ‘social’ mechanics in other games as well). But the way it’s set up in this is the perfect balance of complete, inclusive, and simple/direct. I don’t think it’s clunky now at all because with just the way you explained it in this video (and in the book I presume) ‘how well player x describes there attack doesn’t mean they hit. When you were saying Kelsi said something super intimidating but her CHARACTER isn’t very intimidating… WOW that’s amazing, so simple but amazing. Never thought of it like that for straight up conversation and RPing. Great job! Can’t wait to dive in!
I love this! It is sooo inspiring! I want to adopt these ideas into the game I am making, and my house rules for old school d&d!😃
Your too humble dude. You know how to have fun in a roleplaying game.
This is excellent GM advice - essentially PC actions are required to trigger the roll. Looking forward to seeing the mechanics themselves. What you’ve described could be applied to 5e social mechanics. It’s also hard coded into all PbtA systems. Sounds like you will have a fantastic GM advice section - rules are rules are rules - the use of those rules is what makes the game.
Love your thought process on this!
This is one of the parts that made me consider getting into Exalted, but without the rest of Exalted being in the way
I've been advocating this approach for years, and honestly it's the most logical approach.A really dumb character, played by a super smart player, shouldn't act like a genius (even though they may have the occasional spark of brightness), and definitely shouldn't perform like a genius. And vice-versa. You should always consider the character's capabilities over the player's. But personally, I like to give good players a little edge, a little bonus, if they were clever, fun, or played accordingly to their character's motivations, personal history, etc.
The system, as I think you’ve mentioned, appears to take elements from the Council rules from TOR. Which I do thinks adds that little bit of needed rules to important social encounters. Speaking of TOR, I recall you’ve changed the names of certain skills throughout development, and have landed on Protocol as one of them, but have you considered Courtesy (taken from TOR) as a possibility? I feel Protocol sounds kinda sci-fi to me, but that’s just me. Cheers!
Yes, ToR was a big influence, as I’ve said elsewhere. As for Courtesy, I feel it’s too specific to what ToR was evoking, compared to what I want the skill to be about. But nomenclature is always evolving, so we’ll see.
I think Etiquette could also be a good fit, but it's all good either way, lol
@@jasonGamesMaster Yea, that's a good fit too, but it's not super important
Sounds very similar to the new Negotiation mechanics in “Draw Steel”, which is very good. I like those mechanics and it is cool seeing you do a similar thing :)
Didn’t support the Kickstarter, but I will definitely be interested in picking up your game sometime in the future after I’ve gone through non-fantasy TTRPG systems.
Loving this!
This makes me think of the Song of Ice and Fire RPG. In that game, Intrigue is basically verbal combat.
Hopefully my social rules are somewhat more intuitive. From what I remember, that system was a little hard to use. It's been a long time since I've looked at it, though.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG well, yes. But like everything, you get used to it after a while.
Indeed!
I love this mechanic, I can not wait to play this game
To those uncertain on the benefits of the system, I have similarly adapted the Councils concept to my own game, and this is an excerpt of a blog post about it that is coming up in a few weeks (just happened to have written it today, scheduled for 10/6/24. Anyway, I think this displays pretty well how it works, although Trevor and I diverge a bit on the implementation, for what I can tell. The greater context is specific to Glorantha, and the character here is taking part in the Great Hunt, a yearly ritual in which the greatest hunters in the region get together in a friendly competition. Extra points are earned for bringing the beast in alive.
"At this point, however, Andivarth showed his creativity, casting Talk with Animals. He then declared he was going to reason with the bear and try and get him to come back willingly. This was an awesome moment, and a perfect time to pull out the Negotiation mechanic in the system.
If you are familiar with Councils in The One Ring, then this is a more robust version of that concept, but for those that aren't, the idea is that in a Negotiation, the target NPC has a Tolerance which describes how long they are willing to listen before ending the talks (in this case, violently) and a Resistance which measures how much the NPC is against the proposal. There are lots of little details, but essentially each round of the Negotiation reduces the Tolerance by one, while the degrees of success on the character's rolls reduce the Resistance. First one to zero ends the Negotiation, for good or ill.
Andivarth sucks at social skills, and the bear was not particularly interested in talking as it had just been woken up by a human obviously up to no good. Andivarth offered to hunt for the bear, it wasn't interested. He offered to spread the word that the bear's hunting grounds were off limits, very limited response. The bear kept inching closer, preparing to pounce once this foolish human was done, but then Andivarth said he would honor the bear and make a shrine for them.
This was an Exceptional Success (like a critical) and was almost enough to convince the bear, so it sat back on its haunches to think. Seeing he'd made headway and with his player knowing he only had one more turn to succeed, he then promised to make a song regarding the bear and its power and majesty, and that he would spread it around the clan so the bear would be remembered for generations to come. I liked this so much I have him a bonus, and it was enough to seal the deal, to the cheering at the table."
This is an excellent example of how my system works as well.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG yeah, we each seemed to take a lot of the same inspirations but in different directions, lol. At first I was upset, because I'd already been working for a couple of months on my system and then you announced yours and I was like "crap! What do I do now?" But then I watched this newest season and was like "whew! We have almost exactly the same influences, but I doubt anyone will even connect the two I the end, lol"
Can't wait to get my hands on your system :D
So... This is basically how I run 5e with my friends, I guess it just made so much sense to me that i never asked for rolls in the "correct way". I'd make them roll for the thing they did, not for the thing they intended to do. If someone's character is being an a-hole, they roll intimidation not persuasion (or the other way around depending on the situation). If you are tired and walking on the rain, you roll Dex with disadvantage to not fall, etc. If their character has good Dex modifiers great, but they still have to roll for it and see the consequences of their choices; and this applies to good choices too that some people say are """metagaming""", when they are really just common sense even in a fantastical world.
How is the difficulty of the rolls determined? Do the players get some kind of bonus if they use particularly fitting arguments for the situation?
Duel of Wits!
A lot of inspiration from the Burning Wheel
the lore in the elder scrolls, since skyrim anyways, is that the shouts, or the thu’um, seen in skyrim were words in the dragon language, and that when dragons are battling each other, it’s really a “debate” of sorts, the two of them arguing over whatever reason, but i like the idea of that’s how social encounters should feel in ttrpgs,so not bottlenecking the options available to the characters in anyway, but giving weight like consequences/rewards to every encounter the group runs into
Will you do a video on the magic system? The threads thing seems really interesting.
Yes!
Lets do this!
Leeeeerooooyyyy Jeeeeeeeeeenkiiins…
Enjoy the ethos and looking forward to the GM section.
From watching Legacy, I have a nebulous question.
In Legacy, you have used a characteristic matrix inspired by Pendragon for Veil. Is this a tool you are using in Legacy as an aid(like mythic) or will this be developed as a part of Broken Empires.
And if so, is there a feedback (or enhancement or stacking etc) between characteristics and skills? Or would they be specifically separate for their own purposes.
The Personality rules are part of the core, but optional: you can get rewarded for using them, but suffer no penalty if you don't. They are only a player aid to help roleplay according to what the character would do. Once per personality Trait pairing per session, if you choose to roll the trait and be bound by its outcome, you can get a +10 to the next roll that is affected by the personality trait. As I said, completely optional.
Sounds good but I wish the video went more into how the tolerance system works!
I love Social systems where the Roleplay triggers the Skill used, however I also like to reward the Roleplay through mechanics like Advantage. An example would be:
Player doesn't even bother to put in effort, or says/does something outrageous given the context = Disadvantage.
The Player puts in effort to Roleplay their Character = Straight Roll.
The Player comes up with something clever, or witty, or is extra menacing, etc. = Advantage.
I know some people don't like that, because they feel it rewards/punishes Player Skill rather than Character skill, but for me, a Roleplaying Game is all about that merger/fusion of me and my Character... also, we already reward/punish Characters based on Player knowledge and skill in virtually every other area of the game, so why not in the one area that really gets to the heart of what it means to Roleplay?
A Broken Empires GM always has the ability to award a +20/-20 bonus to any roll based on the given circumstances. There's nothing stopping you from doing just that to reflect your interpretation of the situation :)
I remember those times where I had to roll because of what I just said... In a TORG game I played I was attacked by priest with guns in place of a right arm. I looked at the leader and asked him : "Wow! did your mom get !@#$%@#$ by a tank?!?" and the GM went : Ok roll for taunt... I almost made a glorious roll on that one, rolling well above 50 on a D20 (it's an explosive D20 system)
This was a fascinating run-down on your clever "social mechanics" system, but I'm still a bit unclear on how multiple characters would be able to effectively "tag team" one another in a social setting to achieve a synergistic effect. For example, if the party's trying to convince the Baron to allow them to pass through his lands, does each individual character make a separate roll for success, or does the party as a whole make a single combined roll where individual advantages (e.g. the party cleric being the same religion as the Baron, the bard having performed the Baron's favorite song at the banquet last night, and the party leader being the daughter of another well-known noble family) are all totaled up and used as a cumulative die-roll modifier?
That's a perfect example of something that could be a great social encounter in TBE! The process is actually very fluid. Characters speak as they would normally, and as soon as they say something of consequence, the GM decides on the skill involved, and the player rolls. The group's goal is to accumulate as many successes as they can before they exceed the NPC's Tolerance, which in some cases is represented by a Timer Die, creating the random tension that a die does ;) Everyone takes part as they choose, hopefully only triggering skills their characters are actually good at!
I have two major concerns with social mechanics done in this way.
1 - It doesn't separate character and player ability. You say you don't have to act, you don't have to speak in the first person, you don't have to be inspiring, you just have to pick the right words. However, for some people, picking the right words IS acting, and they can't do it - therefore they can't play an inspiring paladin, or a seductive bard, or a deceiving spy. They would have to say "my character lies to them about the nature of their mission.".
2 - The real-time aspect of a GM deciding the roll based on what is said. No-one has an issue with someone being in combat and saying "I'm going to move to that tree line, and then... hmm, no actually, I'll go to the rock," but in this social mechanics system suddenly our first response is taken as the roll? Shouldn't combat be the same? Secondly, it also interferes with roleplay as in point 1. If a hot-headed player wants to play a cool tactician or a silent assassin, suddenly they literally need to put duct tape over their mouth while theyre playing?
I get where you're coming from, it's something I struggle with in modern games, and really RPGs throughout their history, where we have combat as a sort of minigame BECAUSE it is a contest where each side wants to be victorious, but then we have other human endeavors where the same sort of thing happens, but it doesn't necessarily involve drawing blood or zero sum lethality. So yeah, social resolution wouldn't fit every situation, but could it fit something complicated where it was a tug of war with minds. It does come down to what characters ARE, are they just avatars for the players' wills or do they have some life of their own. You're aiming at the latter. I'm curious to learn more about it. I do hope that GMs allow for players' interpretations of their characters to have some flexibility, since I know some GMs might imagine all fighters as less than erudite, perhaps, when obviously there are as many types of fighters as you could imagine. So would a roll be connected to attributes or skills, with maybe modifiers that the GM applies based on circumstance?
I imagine adding travel mechanic exhaustion where people are dirty and tired and trying to debate with some farmers to allow passage over their land to get to the inn before sunset :)
There are no classes, only skills. A "fighter" might be incredibly skilled at Inspire, Persuade, or Wit! Skills have specific meanings, but flexibility and interpretation are KEY to this game's experience. A GM always has the option to add circumstantial modifiers to a roll; that comes down to personal style. (And the example of negotiating with a farmer for a place to rest for the night is pretty much exactly what happened in my own game last week...!)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG I'm not one of your players, I swear :) Have a soft spot for classless systems, good to hear :)
Your system remind me a lot of PbtA games. You have a conversation and narrate what your character does in the fiction, and if that triggers a move, you roll the dice. It cuts out that nasty "I roll perception" problem. Describe how your character looks for traps or clues, and then we'll see what happens.
A similar thing recently came up in my scum and villainy game. Our Mystic wanted to soothe and comfort a crewmate, and he wanted to roll Sway because he had 2 points in it. I had to tell him what he was trying to do in the fiction of the scene wasn't the Sway action.
PbtA is an influence, yes :)
As a player in a TOR2E game I sometimes find myself frustrated in councils because my character does not have the skills to support what I want to say, but of our 4 players I am (in my opinion) one of 2 players that are skilled at/enjoy role playing (speaking in first person, using descriptive language, etc.) I feel like if I don't contribute it becomes more like a series of rolls, and less like a scene. Still love the game, and looking forward to this one, just an observation
The system I’ve designed (and the one in ToR) is not for every type of gamer, that’s true. If you’ve made a character that hamstrings your own personal abilities, you can always develop your skills in another direction. But there are always ways to participate. (Standing back from the proceedings and rolling Insight to help your comrades is one option).
I know he has taken these ideas from other games, but it sounds like a great and pretty robust way of dealing with these encounters. Making social encounters have 'stakes' really is wht RPG's should be about. I need to reconsider how these things are handled in my other games. Not all of them deal with it this well. [some are pretty poor to be honest]
As an example, what’s to stop a mousy player who likes being gruff and intimidating from simply saying, “I intimidate them”? I like the ideas here and use them, I’m just looking for more detail.
Ask them how they intimidate them. They can describe it in 3rd person rather than speak in 1st person, but they should be able to explain what their character says in some fashion, even if it is descriptive.
Yup.
“How? What do you say?”
Interesting comparison to Burning Wheel! I agree that the three-action volleys can be clunky at times but I can't help but love it anyway (though I much prefer the less complex Mouseguard version). BW does a lot of 'pause the narrative to do some meta heavy lifting then use that to resolve the story' in its chase to create memorable narrative and their conflict system is a great example. I don't think it was designed with the primary intent of being in-the-moment or reactionary. Looking forward to seeing how you've moulded that idea for your own!
I’m glad you love BW! I so desperately want to ;) Seriously, it’s kind of a miracle of design, even if it seems to work for me only on paper. Very inspirational nonetheless.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG If you ever get a chance, check out Mouseguard. It takes the BW core and makes it a lot less oppressively complicated and more game-y with its delineated GM and player turns. One of my favourites!
I have it :)
When it comes to the declare, dice, and describe phases of roleplaying, I've always considered the words coming out of my character's mouth to be the describe phase. It sounds like you are making them the declare phase. What do you do when a character is skilled in persuading makes an emotionally moving argument, but the dice disagree? Do you ignore the beautiful roleplaying or the dice result? You can incorporate the failed roll into the roleplay by waiting until after the dice are rolled to do the speaking. So, how would I combat thinking in terms of just the mechanics? The player would say what they want to accomplish without mentioning the skill name unless it's just the natural verb for the activity. "I want to appeal to his workethic" instead of "I want to roll a persuade." Then, the GM would say what skill to roll. Then, if the roll fails, we decide whether it was a failure on the character's part or something that didn't stir the NPC. Then, roleplay out the results.
We’re saying much the same thing as far as I can tell. The player RPs the moment, which triggers a specific skill decided by the GM (and often by the table as it’s quite often obvious), the dice are rolled, and the outcome of that roll determined and abided by (“the dice always tell the story”). “Beautiful roleplaying” determines the triggered skill, and is its own reward; that’s why we do this in the first place, isn’t it? :)
And understand, these rolls aren’t binary: failing one roll doesn’t normally end the whole encounter. The goal is to accumulate many success levels before the tolerance is reached.
HOW do they appeal to his work ethic? If they say "I have always admired how hard you work" is persuasion, whereas "Just wait until your subjects hear of your laziness" is intimidation. It actually requires some degree of roleplaying in not just what qualities the opponent has, but how your character approaches that, and the skill with which they are able to make their appeal.
I am glad you brought up burning wheel, as it was my first thought when social mechanics was mentioned and whilst I love some of the ideas in burning wheel, I find the mechanics a bit overbearing
So the Player "projects" their Character's approach to the social interaction through roleplaying at the table, that projection is evaluated and determins what Character skill will be used for the rolls. It's not the quality of the roleplaying that's important, just the category it falls into.
Roleplaying is its own reward. Isn’t that why we do this in the first place? :) But the GM always has the ability to give a circumstantial bonus to any roll, if they want to reward “good roleplaying”.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG "Roleplaying is its own reward" Absolutely. I wasn't arguing that the rules were demeaning it in any way. A discretionary reward for good roleplaying is a good idea. To be applied to the relevant roll, or kept like a bennie for later use?
To the roll. And the character’s Personality Traits can also be brought into play in such situations.
I guess i really need a group, lmao i dont think i can wait for the solo stuff
What skills can be used in social encounters in BE?
There's 9 of them to give players a variety of tactics.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG I think in season 4 we've seen (so far) deceive, persuade, inspire, intimidate, seduce, ... any other?
I feel the issue with this approach (which while more granular than 5E, is still replicating the fundamental structure of delineating social skills along lines of approach, I.e. wit vs intimidate vs inspire) is that it encourages players to ignore context and twist themselves to use their best skill as often as possible. You say context is critical, but to my ear, this system doesn’t account for context. Maybe Kelsey’s character acting intimidating in this moment IS a good idea, even if it normally wouldn’t be. But if she always has that 10% chance to succeed, that just means she should avoid it all the time, and always prioritize her good skills, thereby flattening the character. Do you have systems in place to avoid these problems and reward contextual awareness on a mechanical level?
Contextual awareness is about reading the situation, understanding what your PC is good at in that situation, and taking an appropriate action. No one is good at everything, and we play to our strengths to get what we want. That's human nature. That said, there are 9 social skills in the game. These are 9 fundamentally different approaches to dealing with NPCs. That's hardly a "flattening" of the character.
Some skills just won't work in certain circumstances. There are elements in the system called Preferred and Disliked skills; these are approaches that work either better or worse with that particular NPC. If your best skill is Intimidate, and you try to twist the conversation in order to "spam" an encounter with Beorn (say), you will just outright fail (in his case, anyone even attempting that skill just outright fails, that's just who he is). If you used Inspire with Beorn, it might turn out to be his Preferred skill, and it would be easier to use on him. Certain targets will react differently to different approaches. Understand your own strengths, understand your target, take appropriate action.
If Kelsey triggered the Intimidate skill through her roleplaying, and the character she was speaking to was particularly susceptible to Intimidate, then she'd get a big bonus. But if the player knows that their Intimidate skill is no good, the onus is on them to pick the better approach that the *character* is good at.
And might I say, if you're playing this game with people who are "ignoring context" to spam "their best skill as often as possible"... I would recommend a different system. They're clearly not the intended audience. Luckily for them, there are innumerable games out there that will cater to their particular desires.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Good to know there are methods in the system to account for this! As you’ve said in other comments, I’m only responding to the vertical slice in this video. If you do a follow-up, I’d mention this Preferred and Disliked mechanic; it helps to differentiate this system from 5E and its ilk. As for the hypothetical I was posing above, that’s not based on personal experience (good players are helpful here), but if I’ve learned anything as a professional DM, not all players can be counted on to maintain such nuance. Some folks, if you give them a raw “best option” mechanically, that’s it for them! It’s good to know your system has mechanics to encourage these players to think in context and not behave like robots
Yes, that's the whole point - to encourage players to think *outside* their comfort zones, so they get a different (and hopefully deeper) experience.
while systems can certainly influence this kind of behavior, i honestly think this is something the players themselves have to learn to let go of. getting comfortable with the idea that 'most optimal' is often (though not always) antithetical to good drama, and TTRPGs are blending both gameplay and drama. having things your character truly shines at is great for drama so they can have the spotlight in a scene, but that needs to be contrasted against things they are NOT good at to really pop (similar to how color works - a bright red or pink is much more striking when against a black background). it also what often leads to moments of just roaring comedy or utter amazement when someone is rolling a check for a skill they are bad at
a game can address this to some extent, but really there is no amount of game design that will teach the player how much fun it can be to not min-max all of the time in all situations. that's something you have to discover on your own (imho)
I'm a GM who has been against charisma and rolling for social checks for a long time... But I've come to accept it as an incorrigible 😂 part of gaming culture so long as I can hold to a few concessions.
First, just as the players would never be expected to succumb to a persuasion check, I reserve the right for certain NPCs to be immune to social checks. This is especially for villains, rivals, or other major personalities that I, as the GM, have taken time to flesh out and therefore know how they would react sans a roll to intimidate.
Second, I tell my players that the more they roll during social encounters the less motivation I have to bring those NPCs to life. So, if you're going to barter with the shopkeeper using dice, we'll just run that out of character... No need to do the funny voices etc.
1) There are rules for that in TBE too. They’re called Preferred and Disliked skills, and Special Reactions. 2) You don’t bust out the social encounter rules unless there’s something at stake for the characters. Many things can be resolved with a simple roll of an appropriate skill, or an opposed roll, or with no roll at all. Context is king, and you’re still the GM.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Interestingly, my instinct is the opposite of yours. Haha!
I would prefer that rolling for social encounters be the provenance of the less important and require in-character role-play with diegetic resolution for the more crucial scenes. But I do indeed know I'm in the minority on this opinion.
Ok and how do we use this in practice, where's the actual guidelines of the system
Those details will be in the book, of course. In the meantime, you can see many aspects of it in action throughout various episodes of Season 4 here on the channel.
@leonlegender I think a good example of the social encounters is in MMD S4 Legacy Eps 5: "Allies and Enemies" , starting at 13:27, Veil is trying to ask for help to General Dahrion Bengarrah.
Good topic for a video. I'm sure the book will cover this (as you've quoted some of it) but having this video as a reference as well will only help us out!
For the algo :)
I would like to talk to you if you have the time. I am the Ambassador for the upcoming film/documentary "50 Years of Fantasy" the 50th anniversary of D&D and looking for Creators and Influencers in our community.
My contact email can be found on the channel homepage.
I've taken this approach in the past and it hasn't worked well at all. Players rapidly become unwilling to do anything other than what's written on the character sheet, forcing themselves into narrow caricatures. A character with high Deception would lie constantly -- immersion-breaking in many scenarios -- because it gave them better chances. In reality, skilled liars tell the truth in many situations. Likewise with Persuade, Diplomacy, and Inspire.
It also caused the social interactions to *lose* tactical depth, because now everyone's just looking at the highest number they have and playing around that rather than thinking about the specifics of the situation at hand.
There are rules built in the system to discourage such things, but in the end, no ruleset is universally satisfying to every group.
Nice, nice. I am not an autist so I have social mechanics up the wazoo. Now do exploration. That's the pillar that's not been codified mechanically that I need help with.
The system seems fun, but I'd be very limited on what characters I can play as when not playing via text, lol.
I'm very quiet in real life, not great at coming off as intimidating when I want to, nor am I good at sounding persuasive when I want to - chances are high that, were I to open my mouth, assuming the other players even heard me, my words would never get interpreted the way I mean for them to.
This has a lot to do with mental conditions of mine, which drastically affect how I view social situations - a statement that one person views as intimidating, and offensive, I could very well view as normal conversation, or even as flirty.
So I'd basically need to play by text for most characters, since I'd need to spend something around half an hour coming up with each statement in such a way that it matches my intentions.
You can always speak in third person as well, like "my character warns him that there will be consequences if he refuses" to intimidate or "my character points out that he actually benefits from the deal because..." to persuade. Roleplaying isn't the same thing as acting.
Yes, exactly. The system is actually designed with people like you in mind. It's the character's skill that determines the outcome; the player's words trigger that skill. Also - and this is key to *many* parts in this book - the game assumes good faith and reasonableness among its players and GM. It assumes that the players are able to have a mature discussion if there's ever a discrepancy. It is, in so many words, a game for grown ups :)
You've said a lot about how social encounters should work - in your opinion - but not a whole lot about how your system accomplishes that.
From what I am hearing, you have a set of social skills, and if the player roleplays to their character's strengths, they have a better chance of outcome. The higher the stakes, the more likely you are to choose the more complex system to adjudicate. Finally, as you said, it doesn't matter how good the player is at the roleplay, but how the tone of their statements triggers the system. The big thing you stressed is that this is still a game, not just an act of throwing dice.
So... How is this different from other systems? Because if the only difference is which dice I roll and which modifiers I use, I don't see a difference. I get the distinct impression that I could accomplish everything you're talking about at any table with any set of game rules that have at least a handful of on-paper social skills.
It just seems to me like you have an idea of how social conflicts should be resolved at your table, and you have misled yourself into thinking that your mechanics are uniquely executing on that idea when it's actually your DMing style.
That's... an interesting take. I've been using these social mechanics for over 10 years, and GMing in general for over 40. Pretty sure I'm not "misleading" myself.
How is it different from other systems? For one thing, it *is* a system. Most games have historically avoided social systems entirely. You are also leaving out the details (which to be fair, you couldn't have known about purely from this teaser video): the goal is to gain as many SLs as you can before the Tolerance runs out. There are specific mechanics that govern that and maintain the tension. What can I say? You'll have to see it for yourself in the book. (Also, check out Season 4 of the main show on this channel; the protagonist engages in several social encounters which help explain how the system works.)
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG That's fair. I apologize for my offense language. I didn't mean to imply you're inexperienced, but instead point out the possibility that your specific style might be doing the heavy lifting in social encounters at your tables, regardless of the underlying mechanics.
I've actually heard it said that to run a game well around a particular style of play, exclude that element from the number side of your system entirely, and I think there's merit to that. When I play stealth games, there are dozens of skills to perfect, but they all exist to support the stealth. There's no actual stealth skill, because it would be inherently deterministic. Achieve target number; succeed check. Removes the player's own skill from the equation. When you remarked that your player's own intimidating language wouldn't actually matter to the outcome, I grew concerned about your system.
My biggest peave with social systems, when they exist, is that they often come down to one check. Depending on the system - like a D20 based one - this creates a very swingy outcome. I'd rather have NO social skills.
But then, why am I coming to a video about making them crunchierm, with more than one check? Well, seeing your title made me insanely curious about it! Maybe you've cracked the code. I'm eager to see. But based on the above discussion regarding player skill vs character skill, your goals may be the opposite of mine, and I would be an unfair judge.
The player's intimidating language absolutely matters to the outcome - it *determines the skill to be rolled*.
A swingy, binary social system sucks, we're in agreement there! "Roll Persuade to win the debate" and the like is mindless, unengaging pap. TBE's social system is absolutely NOT down to one check - it's about accumulating as many successes as you can before the NPC's unknown tolerance is breached. It's entirely about making the choice between going for more SLs, knowing that more SLs equal a better outcome, and taking the chance that your next social roll may be your last, as you go over the NPC's tolerance.
The very purpose of this system is to meld player and character skill, but like everything else in our hobby, it will entirely depend on the tastes of the group. I never claimed to have cracked any code, nor would I. I'm only providing here what has worked so well for me over the many years of running games.
Talk stats are for video games. Game mechanics are simulating things we can't do. Talk stats discourage player engagement.
You state your opinion as a fact. But it just an opinion, based on your experience. In *my* experience, the opposite of what you said is true. Ah, the variety of life!
I disagree. I usually choose the best of two world. Trying to convince a King to do something might be pure rp, but trying to get something for a lower price from a vendor, might be just a simple die roll.
To each their own but I feel highly discouraged in a social encounter in "the world's most popular role-playing game" (and it's adjacents) that doesn't have mechanics to support social interaction.
@RiktigaFimpen This is how it works in this game. You don’t bust out the Social Encounter rules for every interaction. Context is always king.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG In my experience, having a poor talk stat discourages me from engaging with the characters in a setting because I am made to feel like I have low chances to accomplish anything, so I agree that a conservative use of talk stats is better that casual use, or as you put it context is king. That said, I also feel that if I made a beautiful argument for something, that if the GM called for a dice roll because it's supposed to be a special case, then that would feel like being cockblocked by the dice.
As soon as I opened your video my first thought was of the "Dallas" and similar soap opera TTRPG systems
I never played those, although I constantly saw them advertised in Dragon magazine back in the day.