How do I use social skills?

[Aelios]

I'm in the middle of GMing the first zero combat game I've attempted recently; we are playing Fading Suns. I'm having trouble figuring out how to resolve social rolls. The plot is "find out who assassinated the king and appoint a successor."

My problem is that with the current skill set "inquiry" and "search" rolls fail more than half the time. Obviously the game would die if all the leads ran dry because of failed rolls, and the points that were put into those skills are wasted if they are never rolled, just narated.

So how can I resolve a failed inquiry or search roll without stalling the plot?

[jdagna]

I'm not exactly familiar with that system, but there are some general possibilities.

First, you can allow retries almost indefinitely.  Thus, the players aren't denied the information permanently, they're just delayed - unless they annoy someone with their constant, tactless, nagging.

Second, you can use the failed rolls to introduce complications that still deliver the information.  For example, on a successful role, they learn what they want; on a failure, someone demands a favor of them before they'll reveal it.

Third, don't rely too much on tests.  If players come up with good ideas or offer convincing motivations to NPCs, they may get what they want automatically.  If you want to keep up the appearance of tests, you can always have players roll, and reveal info on a failure anyway (just let them think there may be more info).

Fourth, don't be afraid to throw the players a bone if it slows down.  Most mysteries do this by having someone try to kill the detective just as he's most stumped.  The attempt on his life provides a useful clue, and the story continues.  You can use other crimes, player contacts, internal strife amongst the criminal or whatever works to keep the story moving.

By the way, I'll have to admit that whenever I run a whodunit mystery like you are, it has only worked when I either gave obvious clues about the killer or didn't decide on who the killer was until about halfway through the game.  Otherwise, players often latch onto red herrings (whether I provided them intentionally or not).  If you give obvious clues, then they'll learn about the red herring eventually, but may feel cheated of their intellectual victory.  On the other hand, if you decide who the murderer is halfway through the story, you can make sure the murderer is someone they suspect (and won't they feel smart for having been "right").

[Mark Johnson]

Fading Suns has a large whiff factor if you do not modify the roll for ease/ difficulty.  Even with reasonably high attribute + skill scores of 7 & 7, you end up failing 30% of the time.  If the characters have made smart choices (reasonably taken precautions, gotten authority for their inquiry, bribed NPCs, acted generally charming or intimidating) as GM feel free to throw out huge modifiers to their roll.  Read Eric's Dice or Diceless article, specifically the D&D thief example.  If the players think in advance they should be able to get some pretty big modifiers.  Fading Suns assumes very adverse difficult situations.

[Aelios]

Thanks jdagna, I think the failed rolls = complications is probably going to work best for me. Although I still have to figure out when the best time for a roll is. The start of the interaction, when the first question is asked, or else time.

The first session of this game was entirely diceless, because none of us knew the system. I would have been satisfied with this, if we had planned it from the beginning and made house rules. But I guess then I would never learn; in the past all my social situations have been diceless and the conflicts have been difficult to resolve.
I'm disappointed with the Fading Suns system, not most because of the high wiff factor. I was excited about the game until I read the rules section.

Can you recomend some good diceless games or Narativist games with good "how to play" secions? Most of the systems I have are woefully inadequate at adressing these situations.

[Matt Wilson]

Thanks jdagna, I think the failed rolls = complications is probably going to work best for me. Although I still have to figure out when the best time for a roll is. The start of the interaction, when the first question is asked, or else time.

That, of course, is up to you, but if you're using the complications approach (which I think is pretty cool), then you might ask for a roll whenever you can think of a cool idea for a complication, and when that complication would add fun to the game.

If you read the thread on Donjon, you'll note that some of us found it an occasional burden to be prompted by the game to come up with fresh ideas. Don't let the rules force a story on you if you don't want it.

[Rob Donoghue]

Two thoughts spring to mind:

First - Roll the dice and lie.  Yes, this idea is THE DEVIL to many, but in case you think it's not, it can save you some headaches. Lots of GMs insist that perception related skills are rolled by the GM so the player has no idea if they fumbled it or whatnot.

Second - Introducing complications is really a great solution, but as noted, complicating thing son the fly can be a giant pain in the butt.  To that end I'm inclined to take a conceptual page from Pace and suggest the following.

Write up a list of complications - things that can generally go wrong and be mean to your characters.  Rivals show up, false accusations, embarassing love letters, all that sort of thing.  Now, space them out over a ladder of, say, 1 to 20, so it looks somethign like this.

1
2
3 Baron Neville nudges one of the PCs, resulting in an
  embarassing spill on Lady Cecelia
4
5
6
7 Sir Chalys challenges one of the PCs to a duel
8
9
10 One PC receives a letter for an assignation with the hosts wife.
11 etc.....

Now, whenever the PCs fail an "essential" roll, figure out how many steps (or whatever) they failed by, let them succeed, and mark off that many successes on the list.  Thus, if they blow their first roll by 2, they succeed, 1 and 2 are checked off.  When they fail the next roll and 3 gets checked off, the event listed above occurs.

Whether or not your players are aware of this mechanic is up to you. if they know about it, you may make buying successes an option for them - they can accept the failure, or risk the potential complications of buying a success.

Anyway, just a thought.

-Rob D.

[MachMoth]

Since my group is very pro-D&D, I've made some alterations to the social situations, myself.  

To start, the situation is played out diceless.  If at some point either side wants to pull the conversation their way, they can make a skill roll (opposed in our case, probably not in yours).  Success grants you the "point" in the matter, and the conversation continues on, you victorious on that fact.  Failure has no effect, the conversation continues on normally.  The difficulty of these "cheats" increase with use during a specific scene, and become less effective after the first.  So, there is strategy involved.  You only use your skill when it could mean a turning point in the debate.

[Aelios]

Good ideas all.
I really enjoy dialog, I like to get into the characters and do voices etc. Lots of fun. My problems arise when the motivations of the PCs and the NPC conflict. Then things got uncomfortable and I have a hard time resolving the conflict.  Player's don't like to lose to NPCs even in conversations.  And for some reason I thought that since the system had social skills that I had to use them. <shrug>

I like the idea of asking for an inquiry/information gathering/friendliness roll at the beginning of an interaction, to determine how cooperative the NPC is.

I can also ask for an intimidation/charm/presence roll to resolve conflicts. Perhaps the players will be more willing to accept "defeat" if they can associate it with a die roll.

[Mike Holmes]

One of the advantages to using system in cases where the PCs and NPCs have conflicting agendas, is that you can use Conflict resolution. That is, if they miss the roll, tell them that they can continue to press the NPC in dialog, but that it won't get them anywhere. Because of the roll. In Conflict resolution, once you've failed, there are no second tries. So the players can't just keep badgering the NPCs hoping for a second roll, they have to try something else.

This is fun, too, because, thought the player knows that they've failed, the character might not. So a player can continue with the dialog knowing it's not going to lead anywhere, but with all pressure being off both sides, because the outcome is known. If you make this clear to the players that this is how it works, then these sorts of situations go better, IME.

That all said, don't keep information from the PCs, unless there are lots of other options. That is, if the information is required to continue the adventure, then the players get it. Make the roll about something else, like the complication idea above. With badgering an NPC, perhaps they get the info, but the character now dislikes them and will come back to bite them in the ass later. Or the character might get some mistaken impression. Loads of possibilities.

Or go with Illusionist techniques as Rob suggests. Try the phantom target number ploy, which is a more sophsticated way to "fudge" rolls.

Mike