At the end of the last show, they answered a question about dices and/or roleplaying social encounter. I enjoyed their answer on the player’s ability to roleplay, and I wish to contribute a little bit more on another aspect of that question I would like to share with you because it's an important one for me and the whole RPGer community around me in Nancy, France.

ALL 6 CHARACTERISTICS MATTERS : The GM should consider the PCs stat during social encounter as he does during physical encounter (combat, agility challenge, etc). In a word, if GM doesn’t care about social characteristics rolls and values :
- Shy roleplayers won’t be allowed to have fun playing a charismatic characters.
- Confident roleplayers will be able to minmax their social stat and invest their XP and creation points in physical stats only.

1) A SHY PLAYER… WHEN ASKING FOR A ROLL MIGHT BE A GOOD THING.
If a shy player uncomfortable tries some poor RP while interpreting his character with a Fellowship 5, it has to be more effective than the same RP with a Fel 2 character . The GM might improvise about the character’s natural charisma, confidence…

2) A CONFIDENT PLAYER… WHEN RECALLING HIS CHARACTER’S LOW STAT MIGHT BE A GOOD THING.
If a very confident player tries some very diplomatic RP while interpreting his character with a Fellowship 2, people might ask “Do you think your Fel 2 ratcatcher dwarf might even think about telling such a nice sentence ? Where and when could he have learn that ?”.
After that point is made, this player will then focus on acting delightfully his character’s dumbness or innocence.

I tried it and recommend it to you over my 20 years experience of GMing.

Enjoy, think about it and please share your thought.

Yeah, that's how we do it. We will roleplay the encounter, and then when a critical NPC decision is required, we'll just roll and go with the result. I think WFRP3 works very well with this, coz the dice will usually throw up some clues as to why the NPC makes the decision he does, too. I don't think I'd tell a PC that his character wouldn't say that, but I might say something like 'Well, that's what it sounds like in your head.'

I typically only use the check when someone who min-maxed their character to combat expects to be able to overshadow a non-heroic character (or in the excellent instances above). For example:

Jim Bob Trollslayer with 5 ST, 5 TO and 2 int and 2 fel decides he wants to talk to "anyone!" I'm actually using a critical stress point that doesn't heal up when they get stress from failures in this area. I'm doing my best to disincentivize min-maxing (at creation at least).

jh

I'm with you willmanx. As I mentioned on the 'cast not all careers are combat oriented (but all PCs must be "danger worthy") by rolling social tests up to and including a full social encounter with FEL based initiative, you give the less combat oriented characters an ability to shine.

One of my dissapointments is I can't recall a single instance of an adventure where they specifically say, "Here's a social encounter." Combat is easy, social is hard.

I had to push my players to invest points in physical stats... said toughness of 3 was a minimum, because lower meant to easy deaths

Two chars with strength 2... oh dear, lordy lord, they suck in combat! Not spellcasters either btw...

But yes, I use the "Well, that's what it sounded like in your head..."-phrase.

Good roleplaying will add 1-2 fortune dice to the roll, not game breaking, but enough to encourage good roleplaying, while not punishing the shy players to much.

I've been using a relatively reliable method for off-the-cuff social encounters. If the NPC needs to be convinced of something, or lied to about something, or substantially distracted or made to lose his/her cool etc... I simply set up a progress tracker that has as many spaces as twice his/her Fellowship.

This usually generates a tracker from four to eight spaces long with a tracking token placed on the second space from the left. The check is then a matter of the PCs Fel vs. the NPCs WP with each successful social action, skill check, and/or good roleplay moving the tracking token one space to the right (two spaces if a sigmars comet is rolled). Failed rolls plus Banes and Chaos stars move the token one space to the left. Upon reaching furthest space to the right, the NPC is made to change his/her mind, lose their cool etc. If the token reaches the furthest space to the left the NPC wins the battle of wills.

@Will

Great expansion on the topic, and a great question to begin with. I'm looking forward to trying to implement that in our future games more.

Gitz

Thanks for your show, dude.