In RPGs, free-will ruins games IMHO. The way that it works is this: If a player would be socially influenced by another character, the player can just disregard it and ignore it and do whatever he wants.

For example: if the prostitute uses her "FLIRT" ability, the player can just say that her character ignores the effect using "Player Free Will." Without making the PC a puppet of the GM, I've always found it ironic that you can suffer a wound and not ignore that, but heaven forbid that a social action be a 'real' effect.

Now, I don't really know which way wfrp pushes it, but now that I've really familiarized myself with the Lure of Power stuff, I'm planning on creating a random chart of social actions. I'm creating two charts. One for influence and one for the other stuff. I"m looking forward to using bribe, flirt, Bad witch hunter, Belittle, etc.

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Emirikol said:

Isn't this exactly the point of Duel of Wits / Shame Threshold mechanics from Lure of Power are all about? It's basically Social Hit Points, so that you can give your NPCs some teeth in the social arena, without having "Flirt" be equivalent to "Mind Control". It's been a while since I've read it closely, but that was how I interpreted it.

Having character fall down to wounds evokes less reaction than saying " you can't resist playing a few rounds of the friendly dice game for a few shillings " because the mountebank made a successful Charm check against your Discipline etc. I'm lucky that I have "mature" players who mostly go along with that sort of thing. I used to give alternatives (haven't had to for a while) of things like an automatic negative condition if choosing not to "go along" (e.g., you must be depressed and drinking heavily then, intoxicated instead)

That's how I rule it: not mind control, but a player should be heavily encouraged to roleplay it. If they get seduced and lose a couple of times against the person's influence checks, I'd encourage them to roll with the story. The same is true for wounds, only that's a bit more hard line. My guess is there aren't a lot of players whose GMs allow them to ignore wounds just because they don't feel like roleplaying that so I lean towards these social things (special action cards) having actual consequences. Again, not mind control, but seduction is seduction afterall.

jh

I agree with Emirikol here. Players and player characters are a different thing, and this has to be clear to players and GMs alike. The same as a player character gets wounded even if the player does not want it, a player character can be terrorized by a dragon and forced to flee, or can be "influenced" (using warhammer 3 terms) by a noble and forced to accept the deal. The player has to be mature enough and deal with it and role play the situation. At the end of the day, this is a role play game.

Indeed, some rpgs which are more mature in its audience deal directly with this fact, and clearly state that under this situations the player has to accept the reuslt dicted by the dice and role play it. That is the wayI like to do it. Although, I have to confess that we haven't play like this always. In py opinion this is a more mature approach on how to play an rpg and it took us some years to embrace this style of playing.

Cheers,

Yepes

My group has been playing RPGs for years and years (17 now?) and some time ago we arrived at smiliar conclusions as Yepesnopes. In combat situations it's clear that you get wounds when you got hit and no-one complains about it. But very often in social situations the character skills in talking etc are pushed away if the player is quite suave etc. Which works both ways - GM (or rather, NPCs) is not always able to convince/intimidate the players. So we try to remember about dice rolls and roleplaying accordingly.

And yes, it works both ways - so NPCs can influence player characters. This has worked in L5R, Song of Ice and Fire and seems to be working in WFRP3 as well, whether the situation is a small social encounter (haggling) or a longer one (seducing or a formal dinner).

This is less a system/game problem and more a "don't play with dicks" issue. If you game with people who don't roleplay, then you are going to end up with situations like this.

Emirikol said:

… this isn't a Cardinal Rule. Some people feel the need to play this way, but it's not some intrinsic law of roleplaying. It's purely a social contract thing.

I just had a nice, lively discussion about this on the Pen and Paper chat.

Here are some thoughts on the matter:

The players aren't expected to be able to roleplay a character with a 6 Fellowship. They can just roll to Influence an NPC.

Is the GM expected to /not/ be able to influence a player character if he is unable to ROLEPLAY a 6 fellowship?

Are player characters just pawns on a table or are they an extension of you with the threat of free will being taken away if your character failed a roll to reduce seduction? How far does that free will extend? Does it extend to a player denying a combat wound?

Is social influence the same as mind control? What is the limit of influence from a skill check and why is it such a big deal to fight over when its perfectly ok for magical spells to influence someone?

Some people really took offense that I indicated that perhaps we are just playing a game and characters may not be an extension of ourselves, but perhaps just pawns on a table and that social influence is the equivalent as combat (is the equivalent of any other skill check).

Opinions?

jh

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r_b_bergstrom said:

Yes. LoP's Shame mechanic was used (at least during our playtesting) as essentially social wounds. It gave structure and reasoning for players to understand when their social behavior falls out of their control.

Shame seems to have a very specialized use.

Essentially we have the following:

1. General skill check (e.g. Charm-gossip)

2. Perform stunt check (e.g. Charm-convince someone to do something/ i.e. basic influence)

3. Special Action check (e.g. honeyed words/ basic influence or complex, multi-round influence)

4. Duel of Wits/Shame: (e.g. Twist the Knife: multi-round influence most likely)

jh

I think you have to play to the cards otherwise it can become very boring very quickly, even if that puts a PC in an awkward position. Obviously you have to tailor the difficulty to the PC. For instance in the case of a human ***** trying to seduce a normal dwarf there might be significant difficulty involved whereas a Trollslayer might be more easily seduced as they can no longer be shamed. In the case of one of our PC's, Otto the Magnificent, we wouldn't have allowed the player to roll as his character was always bedding as many whores as he could afford. It depends on the character!

The shame rules in LoP can be used just as well in situations that don't involve Nobility and High Society. Shame and the social action cards can work just as well in criminal gangs and mercenary companies as in polite society, it just takes a little bit of thought. Status in high society can be replaced by status in a gang etc.

Emirikol said:

I think this is spot in. It's a shame (pun intended), but I found the Social Combat section of Lure of Power to be inadequate compared to systems included in games like Burning Wheel and A Song of Ice & Fire or even that in Torg / Masterbook (not that those systems are perfect by any means, but they're better, that's all I'm saying!)

Lure of Power should have had a lot more that discusses and codifies social interactions on something like that 4 point scale above, explains better what Influence is (and how many Influences are needed to get particular results), whereas Shame is an extremely specific mechanic with limited use.

And on the title of the thread: this hasn't been a cardinal RPG rule for many many years. The first time I saw social mechanics affecting characters was with Torg, back in 1992. That may not have been the first. But assuming RPGs began c. 1975, the rule has been broken for more years than it has been true!

phild said:

The designers of Warhammer 3 decided at some point to go for a game with very vague rules. Whether the goal was to create a very "free to interprete game" or not I don't know. But in my opinion they have gone too far, and we ended up with a game which is not fleshed out enough (indeed, not by far).

A scale of interaction with NPC/PC: (food for thought in social encounters). A person could be anywhere on this scale "at last they met."

Reaction Table (From Lankhmar boxed set)

Hostile/Flight

Threatening

Cautious
Indifferent
Sociable
Friendly

Faithful

Very nice subject and some very nice replies, you people here at the forum sure are an intelligent bunch.

I think it's more than fair to dictate how pc's feel during social encounters. But remember that even though we are sometimes influenced during a social encounter, it doesn't always mean we will act on it.

A pc meeting a flirty woman can be influenced by her looks and charm but this doesn't necessarily mean he will end up in bed with her.

Just like you and me. If we meet a flirty woman in a bar then it doesn't mean that we will take her home (especially if we are in a relationship).

Therefore I think it's more than fair to tell a pc that he's attracted to the flirty girl, but let him decide how he will react.

If a pc acts too much out of character and basically ignores a social encounter I simply exaggerate and narrate the scene the way he perceives, but not the way it really is.

Example: A character meets a bully who succeeds in an intimidation check. If the player completely chooses to disregard this and act his pc without fear, I begin exaggerating. I'll tell him he notices that the guy is really an ogre crossbreed, or something that looks like a witch hunter's hat on his back, or that he has four friends standing around the corner, or basically anything I know will make the player (not the pc) afraid. It is not something that is real but the player doesn't know this so he will play his character accordingly.

Another example could be a conversation with a noble (gold tier). If the player doesn't show fear/respect, I tell him he hears a sound from the cellars beneath where they are sitting. He's not sure but it sounds just like the screams that would come from the wife and kids of a silver tier commoner who didn't show enough respect.

It usually works quite well and tends to give us all quite a few laughs. Of course all my players are aware of this technique so they constantly ask me "is this real or is it what my player imagines". I just smile and tell them that they should just play their character according to the scene and they'll find out later.

I took some ideas from The Warhammer MMO: To represent "tanking" pcs, there are abilities that get others to hit you because they do less damage to others when those abilities are used. So I took that over to pen&paper roleplaying: If you are influenced at some level, you are still free to ignore it, but it gives you penalties. Like stress. So to be seduced by the prostitute means, unless you pay her and engage in some kissing with her, you suffer 1 stress per (insert time appropriate to situation) you are aware of her.

In FATE games the player has to Roleplay it or spend fate point to ignore an effect like that. In Star Wars EotE I run they can either Roleplay or that stress damage to resist or has to use a force point.

In RPGs, free-will ruins games IMHO. The way that it works is this: If a player would be socially influenced by another character, the player can just disregard it and ignore it and do whatever he wants.

For example: if the prostitute uses her "FLIRT" ability, the player can just say that her character ignores the effect using "Player Free Will." Without making the PC a puppet of the GM, I've always found it ironic that you can suffer a wound and not ignore that, but heaven forbid that a social action be a 'real' effect.

Now, I don't really know which way wfrp pushes it, but now that I've really familiarized myself with the Lure of Power stuff, I'm planning on creating a random chart of social actions. I'm creating two charts. One for influence and one for the other stuff. I"m looking forward to using bribe, flirt, Bad witch hunter, Belittle, etc.

Hyper Convenient List of Social Actions

Basic: Perform Stunt (social): Card difficulty is one purple, plus whatever the opposed check is (if applicable) Green/Red and recharge time are coded.

(highlighted are influencers)

CORE/Player's Guide (p274+) (Green/Red) Purple/black

1. Big City Bravado (G/R)b-red social bonus white

2. Conundrum (G/R)-delay one ability one round

3. Devious Manoeuvre (G/R)-target gains one bonus or penalty

4. Exploit Opening (G/R)b-ally gets a free maneuver

5. Fake Ou t (G)-®b-influence

6. Fear Me! (G/R)bb-influence and fear1

7. Fluster (G/R)bb-green white bonus to social

8. Formal Diplomacy/Informal Carousing (G)bb®P-influence

9. Honeyed Words (G/R)--influence

10. I Thought We Were Friends (G/R)b-green gets penalty to social

11. Inspiring Words (G/R)bb-inspired and influence

12. Scrutinize (G/R)b-learn fact

13. Staring Contest (G/R)-influence

14. Steely Gaze (G/R)-influence

15. Trivial Knowledge (G/R)-bonus white

16. Twisting Words (G/R)-bonus white and penalty black

17. Winning Smile (G/R)-influence and being attacked delayed by one round

Lure of Power

18. Bad/Good Witch Hunter–LoP- (R/G)-influence

19. Berate/Belittle –LoP- ® bb- (G)b- stress + influence or reckless

20. Blather –LoP- ®Pb (G)P-add 1p to opponent

21. Bolster –LoP- (R/G)Pb –target increases shame threshold

22. Bribery–LoP- (R/G) b- Influence on bribe

23. Compose Yourself –LoP- (both)PP-Recover shame

24. Crack a Joke –LoP- (R/G) b-modify stealth/skullduggery

25. Don't you know who I work for? –LoP- (R/G)b-influence

26. Feel for the Moment –LoP- (R/G)PPb-recharge other card & roleplay

27. Flirt –LoP- ®bb(G)b-influence

28. Impersonate-LoP ®PP-Guile(G)guile or social

29. Incite / Calm down –LoP-®P-target reckless(G)target conservative

30. Intuit Intention –LoP- (R/Gb-opponent gets penalty to guile

31. Me First (R/G) Reaction interrupt

32. Obfuscate/Elucidate –LoP- (R/G)P-influence

33. Perfect Gift –LoP- (R/G)PP-influence

34. Quip –LoP- (R/G)-reaction add 1 white to social

35. Sage Advice –LoP- (R/G)-Add 1 white to social for target

36. Sermon –LoP- (R/G)PP-Influence

37. Skeleton in the Closet –LoP- ®P(G)-Influence

38. Style and Grace –LoP- ®PP(G)Pb-bonus white to social

39. Twist the Knife –LoP- (R/G)-target’s shame turns one to insanity

40. Teller of Tales –LoP- (R/G)PP-influence

Black Fire Pass

41. Litany of Grudges -BFP- Dwarf only- (G)PP(R4)-Influence on 1+

42. Social Drinking –BFP- (G !) PP-influence on 3+-(R5)P-Influence on 1+

43. Dwarf Stubbornness -BFP- Dwarf only (G4/R4)-/- =-Reaction bonus

Liber Fanatica #8 (pull-out section)

44. Solemn Glance / Indignant Glare –LF8- (G)Pb®Pbb-Fel 2 white or purple

45. Putting it As it Is/Verbal Fireworks–LF8- (G)PP®P-influence

46. Debater / Trained Voice –LF8- (G/R)--enhance

47. Look At'em Mommy's Boys! –LF8- (G)Pb®Pbb-Inspired

48. Pulling the Plug / Tongue Lashing –LF8- (G/R)P-target move more neutral

49. Scrimshank / Not Bothered –LF8- (G)P®Pb-guile or ignore

50. Reading the Crowd / Chat'em up! –LF8- (G)bb®P-white to social

DLSS/Creature Guide

I’ll Make You Such A Deal-DLSS-move target one back to neutral add recharge

How Dare You Talk To Me Like That!-DLSS-bonus Fel and target penalty

Imperious manner-stress or cow

Pronouncements of doom-demoralize

Resist the lure **defense

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This is a great post.

If a PC haggles over the price with a NPC merhant and he ends up paying more, then he simply want to pay that price as his PC genuinely believe it's a fair deal. That's how I run it.

Absolutely, re "price haggled up that's what you pay". Anyone who says that's not realistic has obviouisly not seen a good salesperspon at work.

Plus it adds tension to social conflicts when you can't just take a success and disregard a failure. It would be like disregarding getting hit in combat when you use an active defence. Even among players I expect them to honour the outcome of a check. If two players duke it out in some sort of social contest to settle a dispute, they have to honour the result. Of course checks among players should be accepted at the table in the first place and common sense should be applied by the GM. Just like you can't convince the emperor to stand down and give you his seat, you shouldn't be able to convince another PC to do something against his nature.

The general idea of this thread is a very important one to rpg's imho. It's not talked about nearly enough except in cases of groups that have played games with explicit rules for it (a minority).

From my experience the average joe, that plays d&d/pathfinder finds these ideas absolutely heretical. You could play a very high charisma character but if you dont roleplay like the best thespian in the world it might as well be a below average stat....and vice versa. An extremely good actor/roleplayer can go for a low stat because he'll just rp out of anything.

It bothers me to no end. I want the shy player to be able to play the most expert diplomat you've ever seen.

I'm still searching for the best system to codify some of this however. Cheers to the posters in this thread.

That's why it is important for d20 players to step out of that fog and try game systems with hard core social systems. Typically, social anything gets dismissed in the D&D/pathfinder realm simply because it is focused on killing monsters in a dungeon with NPCs just being there to either:

a) sell stuff to you and tell you to go kill something in a dungeon, b) give you a quest to go kill something in a dungeon

The experience point systems for D&D/PF are specifically written so that you ONLY get x.p. for killing monsters. ANything else is listed as "optional." It is "optional." The encounter system is designed to facilitate combat and nothing else. All challenges are based on hit points and damage. The class systems are developed (especially 4e) towards 100% combat orientation. The skill systems are pass/fail, developed as a token-remnant to AD&D1e Thief skills with no consequences for failure (except HIT POINT DAMAGE).

The simplicity of WFRP3's "influence" system is that it isn't hardcore (although some of the autistic socially-spaztic' players try to play it like a hardcore RULE like it's flakkn' D&D or something designed to be maximized, optimized, abused and twinked). It allows you to use the outcomes to "influence" rather than having to argue the D&D-retards' arguments that it is MIND-CONTROL to have a social influence or 'shame' used upon you. Oh gods it is personal to the D&D crowd, as if their rights have been infringed upon.

This moronic paralysis that players here even get about the social rules not being perfect, and hence unusable, makes me want to commit a few of us to an asylum to relax a little..and stop acting like the cliche socially-inept, rigid grognard, math-elite D&D crowd.

[edit: people interested in something that's still in print might want to check out FATE: "

Every PC has two different stress tracks . The physical stress track deals with physical harm, and the mental stress track mitigates mental harm. The more boxes in a stress track, the more resilient the character is in that regard. By default, a character has two boxes in each stress track."

.

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I tend to try make my players take the influence as a given - although my group are usually really good at taking it on the chin -(barring one event where a haggle failed - I don't think he bought the item. But it was a ridiculous price - conversely the other PC in the same session bought a Superior Sling for 1 1/2 gold...)
I don't have Lure of Power (yet- it's been put away as an xmas gift >.<), but when it comes to social encounters I will tend to allow the group one roll to avoid the influence.
So I'd roll it, tell them how the story unfolds and how they're likely to be influenced. IF they don't like it - they can roll a "Resist X" check at greater difficulty.
This way, if they still fail it's not an edict from on high, but their own rolls that caused the situation. I tend to try avoid rolling too much outside of combat as I feel the narrative benefits more from having the players roll.

The general idea of this thread is a very important one to rpg's imho. It's not talked about nearly enough except in cases of groups that have played games with explicit rules for it (a minority).

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I'm still searching for the best system to codify some of this however. Cheers to the posters in this thread.

In a Wicked Age is a great simple low-prep game that focuses on shared creative authority and narration and makes absolutely clear, it's now you roleplay and how you roll that counts - you can get just as far with biting words as with a knife, it's a fiction and it's all about what kind of character and action you want to see in it, knife fights or social actions so stinging suicide results. I've seen games where daring a treasonous power grabber to kill you in front of witnesses during a time of truce and thus discredit themselves was a winning move and others where slaughtering foes in a carefully laid trap was the winning move. The choice was in the style of play and whether the dice supported success.