I have always thought that it was odd that most rpgs have a detailed combat system, but use a one roll system for everything else.

So, I was thinking that it would be nice if on important non combat scenes that should go for more than one roll (like social or mental conflicts) you can use the degrees of success to gauge who won the conflict (similar to D&D's skill challenges, but both sides roll).

So, if it is important to convince someone to do something and it is a pretty important scene (say, trying to get someone to give up who they were working for when they tried to assassinate you), then you can make your roll (and they make one to counter it, whatever it would be). Who ever got, say 4 success first wins the conflict. Maybe even have the character say what they did or said during a good roll and if the opponent also got success then how they dodged the question.

Does any of this make sense? I though this might be good for interigation scenes.

Dustin said:

Hi Dustin. It is making sense for sure. At least, for the camp of players&GM that use the dice for important roleplaying scenes. On the other side, there is this radical camp that do away the dice and let the players play.

Actually, I am not of the later one but have a suggestion for your idea: have the players do the talking first and asign boni to the role. So, what they come up with (cunny answers/questions, great pathos, hitting the spot, etc.) is of play value. Like the decision the player of a fighter makes in combat.

If you are into PDFs, I recommend buying the WorldOfDarkness "Mirrors" at RPGDriveThru. It has a whole chapter how to make conflicts of Intelligence and Chuzpe "mechanised" with more detail. While the mechanics are not compatible to DH, the ideas are for sure.

Dustin said:

You are right about that, the only RPG I have seen that really put alot of thought into social interactions is Legend of the Five Rings, unfortunatly I am not native to eastern ways of thinking so it was difficult for me to grasp the concepts in that game. For this game I usually make use of the Difficulty table, for instance when the DA Librarian of the group petitioned the BT Watch Captain for an upgrade, I made this a -30 chance. The request was for something beyond his requisition I would not have made him roll if he had enough to purchess the upgrade outright. Of corse if he had Peer or Good reputation, some honors or ect I would have reduced the difficulty significantly or even given a bonus.

Its probably a fair comment that a lot of RPG's haven't progressed much further in terms of rules, past the "Find enemy, beat the **** out of them and take their stuff" in terms of game mechanics. But to be equally fair there are a lot of things in the DH/RT series which give a fair bit of expansion on social skills to the point they're relatively decent for what they are and the Inquisitors HB is worth it for those additional things you can do.

However, there is still some bias towards the "Bash stuff" vs "Talking and doing"

You're more likely to be impressed by someone with Unnatural Toughness x2 and Strength x2 who mechanically does and takes, twice the amount damage of of an ordianary person. As compared to someone who has Unnatural Intelligence x2 and Fellowship x2- with the rules the way they are, get their difficulties reduced by 1-step and in an Attribute Test (NB: Not an actual Skill Test... assuming they succeed) twice the degrees of success... which is a whole lot of sweet f**k all to not write home about. In fact I don't think there is any chance you'd be intellectually wrestling someone into being your ***** anytime soon as they're actual skills to do it. That and you'll find a lot more existing unnatural abilities, material & mechanical bonuses which benifit Str, Tou or Ag, or even just shooting someone in the face better, than you'll ever find in the way of bonuses to Charming people into submission

Dustin said:

I see where you're coming from with this, and think the degrees of success thing works well for prolonged encounters (rather than just one roll, on which your usually very-charming character gets 100, and turns the target against them with one misjudged comment). If you're trying to impress a noble over the course of a party, for example, to get them to let you into their confidence and tell you about that special cult they're a member of, it would be good to have a few rolls (and maybe some Scrutiny from them to oppose it, in case they become suspicious of your motivation for being so nice to them).

Regarding interrogations, I think it may be preferable to keep them as simple as possible for reasons of taste. Dark Heresy is... well... dark. It can get a little too intense, though, if you get into a lot of detail on things like torture (mental or physical).

When we have run interrogation scenes, we've kept the detail pretty vague, rolled the dice and gained the required information without too much discussion of the actual mechanics. It depends on what your group like, but I would suggest that's better for most people.

OK, just a few thoughts...

Dustin, you're right to identify that most RPGs are filled with rules on 'combat' (and other physical actions, but tend to be very 'rules light' on social and communications engagements, often in my opinion to their detriment.

This is of course because, from the first D&D set, that rules are needed to model the physical interactions (because players round a table can't stab each other with swords, or climb up a castle wall) and therefore these things need rules to resolve their outcomes. Social interations, i'd argue, are implicitely or explicitly assumed to be resolved by roleplaying, or rather talking it out around the table. Therefore interaction rules generally don't need to be very indepth.

Personally, my approach would be not to clutter up these things with more complex rules, but rather declutter combat with clearing out the uneccessary rules.

Consider that in the early D&D rules, the grand-daddy of them all, a single combat round was 1 minute long and a single dice rolle represented a minute of thrusts, strikes, feints and other combat actions resulting in one side scoring a hit (or not). Most modern games take a less abstract approach breaking it down into a few seconds and filling those second of action with a mass of complex combat rules...i suppose it depends on how you see the rules interfering with or supporting what's going on.

Being a devoted Pendragon fan, i'm not averse to mechanicalising (made up word) a PCs personality into numeric values, and using dice rolls to judge or determine social and emotional actions - indeed i've adapted the 'traits and passions' system for use in many other games because i think Greg Stafford hit on a masterful roleplaying tool. But this system (the Pendragon system) resolves most tasks with a single roll (or perhaps a few more in situations such as combat, winning a wife, impressing a lord with a speech, etc.).

I am more of a ROLEplayer than a rolePLAYER though so have my own biases towards the prevalence and purpose of stats and dice rolling...

If you want to make social interaction more mechanical, requiring more dice rolls, fair enough - but i think that might impose too much rules-load on what should probably be roleplayed?

For example, If i were GMing the interrogation scenario you put forward i'd have the single relavent opposed roll (in secret so the players aren't sure who won) and use that to judge how the roleplayed discussion resolved out.

PC won by lots of successes? The victim will spill the beans fairly early.

PC won but its close? The victim will ultimately give up the info after a decent resistance.

PC failed but its close? The victim stays tight-lipped

PC failed by loads? The victim perhaps even convinces the PC of something false!

Why impose multiple rolls on that?

Interigation would be the main use of this idea now that you mention it. Mainly because some people would rather die instead of tell you something. MKX did point out the flaws in other situations.

Even though WFRP 3rd has a method of doing this, I originally got this idea from the game Dragon Age were they have to get a certain amount of points in a extended conflict (there was an example in a adventure were you had to convince an angry mob to not kill this elf). There are other games that do this too (like Dresden, Doctor Who, Smallville), but their systems of doing this are not very compatible with the 40K rpg system.

Though I like the idea of people who come up with clever ideas and who do good roleplay, it gives the advantage to people who are naturally outgoing (remember, there are people who roleplay and then there are people who dictate what their character does and sometimes people just mix them depending on the situations). Some people might be clever, but are not good roleplayers vis versa.

My attempt is to make some other rolls as interesting as combat.... well, try at least (social conflict does not go boom). We never give bonuses to players who happen to be good at firearms in the real world (unless they are pointing them at you and then you give them any bonus they want.... and maybe your wallet too ). So, someone might be loud and outgoing as opposed to another player who is shy, but clever and sometimes people think I am the good roleplayer (when in reality, I am just more of attention hog).

BTW, even though I have run DH before, I am really a player in our gaming group for this game. Our main GM loves this game and we were brainstorming on trying to ad more depth to some of the more non-combat, but important rolls. At the same time, try to keep the system intact (I once suggested used the FATE system and he almost turned me over to the local inquisitioners for suggesting such heresy).

I will have to check out "mirrors." I like the WoD too.

Luddite said:

Yeah its a bit of a conundrum in a a way in regards to the Intellectual and Personality based stats (Intelligence, Fellowship and Willpower) have as a bearing to being played correctly, its eminently easy to play a memorably uncharismatic cretin. I work with lots of them so I'm never short of inspiration The other end of the scale where you're smart and charming is considerably more difficult for some people to get their head around if plonked in the proverbial boots of someone that has statistically twice the intelligence and fellowship of the average Joe Blogs NPC. Being humble about it, I'm not sure if I've quite figured out just what the heck I'm supposed to do there except try really **** hard to be both clever and influential... and find that is a subjective viewpoint for onlookers who might disagree, thus something of a penalty even before considering to chuck dice as a resolution.

The mechanic should be there as an aid to giving you hints from the GM on just how to think-through problems with clues when you've got very little in the way of leads (or forgot something) and influence people on what they want to hear, so they'll do what you want. From there you can look at it being down to hard decisions on information. Failure means you're probably off on a tangent (which is ok too, because even very smart people do the dumbest things by over-complicating something and being influential can also mean you're a memorable bastard!). The current mechanic as I mentioned earlier, isn't so great and as a result I've noticed with new roleplayers is they view the Int/Fel stats as simply being a dumping ground for crap rolls in character creation, statistically for those stats net worth to the game effects they have, they probably aren't entirely wrong about it either.

Luddite said:

Giving someone a multiple round scene (or multiple roll conflict) would allow people to script things a lot easier like what they do in D&D's skill challanges. As opposed to having the GM come up with a lot of the stuff as usual, it forces the player to participate. After all, most people usually don't describe their combat actions beyond "I shoot the jerk in the face with my bolter" or something like that (this is were if you come up with more description, it could give you a bonus).

Not that I am saying you are wrong for just choosing to take the numbers out of roleplaying (and turn it into a pure improv and hope people wrote down notes on their character's personality and stick to that in their roleplaying), but I always scratch my head at how people would not see how just like describing combat, it could enhance the scene. Also, there is the problem that not all roleplayers are good (see my notes above for speaking lines and dictating what your character said, which are both legit tactics at our table).

So, there is a heretic being protected by a cult who seems to be well armed. Blowing your way through them is not going to happen without great loss to the party. Convincing the cult to give up the heretic or at least letting one of the players in the temple to speak with the guy might lead to a multiple social conflict scene:

The person with the best Fellowship would nagotiate with the cultists. Having the player speak the opening line or dictate a general idea of what the character says to begin this parley. If they are more detailed or clever with something (which makes the rest of the players go "awesome" or raises the eyebrows of the GM), then give them a little bonus for that.

The NPC could roll back in the same fashion.

Say, then if the PC get's 5 successes before the NPC, then they get their way. Or if you want to play it out like D&D's skill challenges, maybe they need 5 success before they get 3 failiures or something like that (keeping the rolling down and only to the PCs).

It does not really add that much as far as rules are concerned. I think it would be worth it. I remember using that rule in Dragon Age and the player who's character did the rolling was really sceptical at first, but then it snapped into place when it showed that you can back up your lines with numbers that are relivent to the rules and dialog.

The first time I had ever seen something like this done was in a small indie game called Dogs in the Vineyard and it works a lot better in that system, but also that system is set up a lot different (which is why I thought the Dragon Age or D&D idea was better for Dark Heresy). The Dresen Files also works different because it has a stress track for social and mental conflicts (it is easier to compare that to Warhammer 3rd ed in the progress track). Doctor Who has your relivent stats go down as you are loosing conflicts (which means you get worst as you are loosing, so players would have to use up plot points in order to keep going), but it is really easy for that game because all conflicts are equil (except for combat having permanent consiqueses if you totally loose those

MKX said:

To be fair with the Unnatural FEL, FELB is usually used to decide how many targets can be influenced with the FEL talents multiplying it further. So someone with unnatural FEL can start to influence massive crowds.

Which ended up being somewhat of a face palm for me when I saw the BoM Wrath ability to simply incite massive angry crowds so god damned easy.

However I definitely do tend to just have conversation treated as roleplaying, anything massively influential can be resolved through dice to measure its impact so that the social abilities aren't flat out ignored.

This is a little off topic, but I notice that Investigation skills use degrees of success to hand out clues.

We had played a game called Trail of Cthuluh that had a rule that if you had the right skill for finding a clue and you were looking in the right place or asking the right questions to an NPC, then you automatically get the basic clue that moves the plot along. If there was more to be found, then you can spend points on that skill to get further clues (investigative skills were only used that way, while the rest of the skills were rolled for).

I like the concept of that, but not really the system (they could have really made that game better), so I am wanting to do something similar with DH were if you have the right skill and ask the right questions, you also get the basic clue. But if you want more, then have the GM roll for you to see if you learned or found more (with degrees of success giving more clues on top of that like the standard DH rules). Having the GM make the roll for you creates more mystery of not knowing if there was more (kind of like having them make the perception checks for you).

(BTW, Russell, if you are reading this, I was going to ask you if we can do that in our next game

That way, you can further the story without worrying if a bad roll will ruin their chances of finding what they need to move on (instead of modifying the adventure yourself to make up for those bad rolls, so as to were it does not look like you are leading them behind the scenes). Of course, if the players just can't figure it out, then you are back to that same problem

I need to stop talking about this game and play instead. It has been over 3 months!