Bertolac said:

This is my approach as well.

Well that was sort of implied

With these social mechanics it feels like there is really a light side vs dark side.

I'm not one to say which side is which, but it is clear there are people who favour a more mechanical social system versus people who prefer a more natural approach.

Neat. In my small world that never occurred to me.

people are so different. Its amazing. And inspiring ^^

Bertolac said:

That sounds very good to me. For me, that would also be a time to do opposing social encounter checks ( secretly, behind the GM screen ).

I am sure that all those GMs who talk about the free form social encounter are able to produce compelling dialog on a minutes notice that is both fresh and original every time no matter in which direction the PCs drag the story threads. And I am sure that their NPCs have the character depth of a John Grisham novel, but I have to outline my encounters so I can guard against trivializing the dialogs. For me it is hard to keep it from becoming a contest between me the GM and the player. I have my own built in biases. I find it hard to have multiple conversations at the same time. I find it hard to bring depth to my NPC without some prep work before hand. It is hard to make the dialog feel like it is coming from point of view other then my own. Writers use outlines and story forms and I think it can help GMs to produce better social encounters.

I wrote this in a different thread, but it should have been here.

Resolving the social part of the adventure with a simple dice roll is limiting and a little boring. A good GM can make a story mode encounter come to life, but we are not all that talented. This new systems allows us an opportunity to step beyond the old standards. The new social encounters can be more. They can have suspense, timing , and tempo without being a master story teller. The tracks, actions, and other adventure specific effects can expand an encounter into more then just a few die rolls.

In my effort to explore the possibilities of the new system, I have been experimenting with what information is required to expand a social encounter beyond a simple dice roll. Using the adventure in the box set, I believe I have come up with categories of information necessary for expansion. For given social encounter, you need to know who is there for the PCs to enter act with during the encounter. You need to know what the NPCs know or what they could share with the PCs that is relevant to the adventure that you are running. You must decide what kind of actions or skill tests that the NPCs will respond to which will produce the relevant information. You can also have a category for special rules related to this location that make it different. Then you need to have a influence track with the location of the starting token for the NPCs and PCs.

In the example social encounter above, you have the following information:

Who: Herbort Klemper (obnoxious merchant) and 3 other commoners

What they know: Coming and going for the night before of some of the passengers and Crew

What they respond to: Friendly gestures (Charm Tests), Conversations about the local area or the weather (Folklore or Nature lore Tests), and Direct questions (Charm or Interrogate Test depending on the tone)

Special Rules: For this example there were no special rules, but you could have added a bonus [W] for Social Actions for PCs that are trained Folklore or Nature lore.

Influence Track:

[The progress tracker for this table has 4 space, an event, 4 space, and then another event. There is another progress tracker for the length of the dinner and for other tables. Chaos Stack moves the tracker 2 spaces, 2 banes for the player or 2 boons for the NPC move the tracker 1 space. The players start on the first space of the track and the NPC token starts on the second space.]

With a few sentences you have a expanded social encounter.

Here is a another example of a social encounter in outline form

Back story: The PCs are trying to get the city watch/militia to send some troops to a small outlining town to help prevent a massacre by goblins. On the trip from the village to the big city they also encounters beastmen and coach full of undead. It was a bad couple of days. They have been ushered in to tell their story to a sleepy Watch Sergeant. Just when the sergeant is convinced to write the report a young noble burst in and demands the sergeant handle his problem of a missing cousin personally. The PCs may have seen the cousin's dead body on the road and the coach they saw had the marking of her family.

Who is involved: City Watch Sergeant, young minor noble named Otto Von Weilig

What does the NPC know: This encounter is slightly different then your fact finding social encounter. The City watch Sergeant knows how to fill out the form to get aid sent to the village. He also can get an introduction for the PCs to the Watch Captain. Otto knows that his cousin was suppose to be arriving by coach today. He knows that he is more important then the PCs.

What do the NPCs want: The Sergeant of the guard wants to go back to sleep. The PC's story seems far fetched and he would rather forget this whole mess. Otto the young noble wants the Sergeant to personally take his case to the Watch Captain.

What do the NPCs respond too: The Sergeant responds to calls of duty, honor or patriotism (WP, Intimidate, or Leadership tests), He responds to clear concise believable descriptions of the events (folk lore, Nature lore, Guile, Education, or Charm tests). Otto the young noble responds to information related to his missing cousin, who may have been one of the bodies on the road (Charm, Observation, or Guile tests).

Note: if the PCs come up with a different test that fits the NPCs motivation then run with it.

[The progress tracker for this Encounter has 4 space, an event, 2 space, and then another event. Two banes for the player or 2 boons for the NPC move the tracker 1 space. The players start on the first space of the track and the NPC token starts on the second space. ]

At the first PC event space the Sergeant is convinced by the PCs to write the report, but at the same time Otto bursts in with his own problems that need solving NOW. At the second PC event space the sergeant gives the finished report to the PCs and has a runner take the PCs to the Captain of the Watch.

After the first NPC event space is reached all social actions by the players add [bB] to any roll. The second NPC event space ends the social encounter.

I like all of these, especially yours, morganj. That was pretty much the kind of use I was thinking.

Maybe I missed this in the wealth of info above, but what do you guys do about the PCs walking away from a social encounter? I think they should be allowed to do it if both sides are getting frustrated and nothing's getting done, but it also strikes me that there should be a penalty for walking away from a tense situation without bringing it to a conclusion that would satisfy both parties. I was thinking of having a roll: the number of failures would determine whether the PCs left the NPC feeling irritated or feeling angry enough to attack. The difficulty of that roll would be determined by how far along the progress tracker they had gone; if they pull out of the combat without having moved more than once space (nobody really cares yet) or having moved within 1 space of the 'goal,' then the check isn't that hard, but if they're deep in the middle of conversation without having made their points but after riling up the listener, then they get hammered with purple dice (depending on how tense the conversation has gone.)

Does that make sense to anyone else?