Will be running a paranoia heavy Cold War style campaign we're talking to the wrong person, saying the wrong thing, or not knowing the right thing is more dangerous than Stormtroopers and pirates.

my group does well with the narrative dice and our skill checks are handled better than just a roll, but with the importance of intrigue and espionage in our current game I want some more back and forth and stringing successes together / building success like you do in combat encounters.

I have a grid based mini game for chases where squares do special things and represent narrative things happening.

thinking about implementing a mental endurance / deception threshold type of number akin to mental hp, and exceeding that gets or loses info/cover.

Dont have many ideas for skill checks other than maybe making them complexes with multiple actions needed to pass. Rather than disarm a trap, find the mechanism, learn something about the mechanism, disable the mechanism.

thanks for any ideas. I don't like simulation (crunchy dnd stuff) very much into gamey abstraction effects, just looking to get more decision points and interaction.

If you get a chance, pick up Far Horizons and Desperate Allies sourcebooks. Both have great (but different) sections on running social encounters. One simple method is to use Strain in social contexts...those who go over their strain thresholds lose the scene just like combat. I'm a partial fan of this, but I don't like how it could bleed over from a social scene to a combat scene.

One other very useful resource:

https://theangrygm.com/systematic-interaction/

If you don't like his style, skip down to "Keeping Social Score", it's a pretty good framework for handling these kinds of situations.

I know it's not on brand, but you may want to check out the social combat rules in the Genesys core. It's the same system, you just have to translate the symbols on the dice. They've got a pretty neat table for using advantages/threats.

I'm honestly surprised they haven't ported them back into the Star Wars system yet. (Unless they have. I have Far Horizons but not Desperate Allies)

I second these suggestions. Genesys actually elaborates quite a bit on what's in Desperate Allies and Far Horizons . For simple social checks, you stick to the one-and-done roll. Threatening a Hutt's lackey so he doesn't tell his boss he saw you. Lying to a drunk mechanic to make him think you're a fellow grease monkey. These are standard, one-off rolls versus the target's opposing skill.

But Genesys allows for more fully fleshed-out social encounters during plot-critical moments. In these more elaborate encounters, the PCs and NPCs take turns targeting one another with social skill checks; each character gets one action and one maneuver. There's no initiative order, but instead, narrative logic governs when any one character can act. All social skills are fair game, and they are opposed as in Star Wars , except that Deception is resisted by Vigilance rather than Discipline. Failed attempts at influence cause 2 Strain to the person making the attempt.

Genesys pairs these changes with a more elaborate Motivation system. Characters have four facets to Motivation: Strength and Weakness, Desire and Fear. Appealing to these facets of a rival character grants you boost dice against them. There's a chart of suggestions for spending Advantages, Triumphs, Threats, and Despairs in these social scenes. One of the big things you can do with advantages is discover one of your antagonists' Motivations. In a spy game, that might also indicate uncovering their true motivations.

In these more elaborate social encounters, the goal is to whittle away at your opponent's Strain Threshold while they target yours. Getting them to half Strain means they may be open to compromise on whatever is being debated, while 0 Strain means they capitulate completely. You can come up with a "Critical Remark" for a Triumph or 4 Advantage; this does 5 Strain to the target.

I agree that this can be problematic if your social encounter falls apart and leads to combat, especially if everyone is down to only a handful of Strain. It might be worth allowing a quick Cool or Discipline check before combat breaks out to at least let them regain some of their lost Strain.

Thanks all. I am going with something similar to Gynesis and have decided to include a standard 52 card deck mechanic.

the cards represent info, influence, and evidence. The players collect them and can turn them in as poker hands to accomplish things. At the low end they can escape encounters to bypass encounters with the benefits to major narrative shift like building an alliance or influencing a policy or getting someone punished.

the thing I like best about this, is social encounters present a game mechanic threat bc they can lose these cards to the GM who can also use them just slightly different scope.

57 minutes ago, Rebelarch86 said:

Thanks all. I am going with something similar to Gynesis and have decided to include a standard 52 card deck mechanic.

So you're using something like the "woman process" for resolution? That could be... something.

(Spelling matters. 😜 )

There's always the Verbal Combat rules in the Witcher TRPG (if anyone else dove into that beautiful, complicated mess of a game). Effectively, both sides make checks as they discuss/negotiate/threaten and each role generates a certain amount of "damage" or counters a certain amount based on what paths both sides choose in the conversation.

So, if A is negotiating a price on a blaster being sold by B for 300C, A will roll a negotiation (against discipline or cool) to try and bring the price down to 200C. He passes with disadvantage, so B makes a Discipline (or cool) check against the negotiation with advantage. He passes with advantage, making the next attempt to talk down the price have disadvantage. This round would generate "damage" equal to the amount of success rolled plus... (we'll say plus the relevant stat). So damage would be 3 success rolled + 2 negotiation skill so a total of 5 Damage. Once either party runs out of "hit points" they either no longer wish to talk, or simply have nothing left to say on the subject, and so the result stays with no further rolls.

It makes more sense in the Witcher core book, but I tried to change it a bit for this system.