Game rules for social interaction

[makeshiftwings]

Hi, this is my first time on these boards, and I just want to say I'm amazed to find such a resource of great information on RPGs.  Anyway, on to the topic at hand.

I'm a computer game developer, and I'm currently in the design phase of an CRPG that I will hopefully one day finish.  It will be a single player, offline, single-character game, similar to Morrowind.  One of the main differences in this game from similar computer RPGs is that I'm trying to make most of the gameplay and action revolve around social situations rather than combat.  For example, elections for the city council are coming up, there is a lot of political infighting, the player must side with different guilds and churches and perform espionage, try to sway people to their side, use disguise and seduction, spy on enemy parties for information, etc.

But I'm having trouble coming up with rules to deal with social situations without a GM present.  I've played pnp and GM'd a few times (mostly d&d), and in all those games, combat generally had the most "rules" attention, and social interactions were instead played out by actually talking to eachother, with an occasional Diplomacy roll or something similar, but the actual social skill rolls were far less important than the actual conversation, as opposed to combat, where the rolls and rules were far more important than any descriptive description of what action the character was trying to take.  In the games I've played, d&d and Vampire, the social rules always seemed very vague or completely unusable if used as presented (in the rules as written, any d&d character with a half decent charisma and a few ranks in persuade can convince every single hostile encounter, no matter how demonic or mindless, to leave the party alone and eventually become a trustworthy ally in a matter of minutes).

So... I was wondering if any of you could share some ideas or point me to some other RPG systems that have really "crunchy" and workable rules for dealing with social interaction, enough that they could be used in a computer game without too much tinkering.  I'm mostly looking for things that will allow me to go beyond the simple Dialogue Tree system that most computer games use, where in every conversation you are presented a list of responses to choose from, occassionally with some responses popping up only if your skill/stat is high enough.  I'd ideally like to have a system where by using certain social skills you can cause certain responses in categories of NPCs, without needing to prewrite a bunch of canned responses for specific ones; for example, rather than me (the developer) deciding beforehand that one of the conversation options with the gate guard is to have him be seduced if your Cha is high enough and leave his post so you can sneak by, the player instead has a Seduction skill where she can click on the guard and then click for him to leave, and the game has a table like "Stop performing sworn duty - Difficulty 5, NPC's honor score - 3, NPCs Lustfullness - 5, Chance of getting in severe trouble - 2" and calculates based on that.  This will hopefully lead to emergent gameplay and the ability to have many more choices for social conflict resolution than a bunch of prewritten dialogue trees could provide.

So... I hope some of that made sense.  Anyone have any advice?

[Walt Freitag]

What you're describing is, for various reasons, extraordinarily difficult. Combat as modeled in CRPGs generally has a single objective: to injure or destroy the enemy. Though there usually are many different choices of "how," it's fairly straightforward to model the effect of each choice in advancing that objective, using e.g. hit points.

Social interactions have a much greater variety of objectives. Luring a guard away from his post; convincing a financier to invest in your business scheme; making a positive impression on a peer group at a fancy ball; blending into a group without attracting attention; gaining power through court intrigue; bargaining for a good price; negotiating a surrender -- these all fall under the category of "social interactions" but they collectively involve a far greater variety of variables and possible maneuvers than any combat system is designed to handle.

I strongly suggest you take a look at Chris Crawford's Erasmatron system. A good fast (but dense) intro to Erasmatron is at this site. It's a system that allows authors to create computer-executable models of how characters react to actions of other characters, with emphasis on social interactions supported by detailed personality models. The bad news is that the thing's a monster. He's been working on it for over 15 years now.

What you might want to consider is focusing on specific situations within the "social interactions" universe that are of particular importance for your game. So, if you want a system for "distracting guards," it's a lot easier to develop just that than to make it part of a universal "social interactions system." Then, if you also want a system for business deals in the marketplace, think of it again as a separate problem with separate variables. After all, distracting guards and haggling prices are no more similar to one another than either one is to melee fighting.

That doesn't mean you can't have common elements between all these systems, such as shared requisites and similar probability curves. So you can think of it as all one larger system if you wish. But internally, each type of goal has, in some form or another, its own specific rules of cause and effect. Wearing the latest fashion has a likely positive effect on making a good impression at a ball, but a likely negative one on getting a good price on barley at a farmer's market.

Tabletop RPG systems that are well-designed for social interactions generally get around this problem by generalizing the rules and relying on the players and/or GM to interpret the relevance of the rules in any given situation (such as, whether wearing the latest fashion should be worth a bonus or a penalty). A CRPG doesn't have that option.

- Walt

[makeshiftwings]

Thanks for the response!  I'm actually familiar with Chris Crawford's work, but what he's doing is far more advanced than what I'm looking for.  I don't necessarily need two AI's acting with eachother meaningfully - just player interacting with NPC.  And I'm not looking for a complete accurate model of human social interaction; rather, something simple and fun, like most RPG combat systems.

My original post may have been vague.  What I'd like is a social system that works similarly to a combat system.  A social system that allows strategy and tactics, and which generally takes as long as a battle, instead of one click and a random roll and you're done.  Combat has advanced pretty far in computer games, and though I don't think anything like Crawford's work will be available for quite a while, I think we can definitely do better than the current "NPC talks; you pick one of three canned responses."  I'm not sure if there's anything like that in the realms of p&p RPGs, since p&p is supposed to be social and would generally try not to bog down the actual social interaction parts with lots of rules, but since there are so many rulesets out there, I was hoping someone had seen something.  An example I've found on my own is this revamp of the incredibly vague D&D Diplomacy skill:  http://www.giantitp.com/Func0010.html
Also, if you've played The Sims, I think they do a pretty good job of emulating social interaction, and they don't even use any actual words.

So, that's what I'm looking for... nothing as advanced as a fully automated world of AIs roaming around having intelligent conversations; just a fun and strategic ruleset for different types of social interaction.

[The Horror]

The upcoming second edition of Burning Wheel comes to mind as being exactly what you want.  In the new edition, the social system will be very much similar to the combat system.



The Horror

[Sven Seeland]

Wow, my first Forge post in what seems to be half an eternity... I hope I don't look too newbie-ish. Please do also keep in mind that I'm not a native English speaker and that this is only a rough draft for you to expand on and by no means a finished system.

I would suggest extending the system that has been used by Morrowind. Morrowind has a stat for every NPC, indicating their "favor" or whatever it was called. Basically, how much they like you.

I believe it would work if you take a system where you have several variables and build a formular for that.
Basically all factors add up to form a target number or something. For ease of implementation the variables should always be the same but the factors for these variables should depend on the attempted action. And then you can still add some numbers based on the action itself like a risk-reward model or something.
Since I tend to write in ways that only I can understand (and even that only at the time I write it) I will try to give an example.

THe general formula could look like this (af stands for action factor here):
ChanceToSucceed = (af * sympathy) + (af * trust) + (af * loyalty) + (af * respect) + (af * fear) + RiskOfAction
(of course you can make this as compex as you like, this is just off the top of my head).

A concrete example might look like the following. Let's take the example of leading a guard away from the tower (notice I said "leading")
ChanceToSucceed = (0.7 * sympathy) + (1.8 * trust) + (3.2 * loyalty) + (0.8 * respect) + (1.2 * fear) + 15

Explanation: It doesn't matter two much if the guard likes you if you want him to leave his post but it does matter if he trusts you. If you can make him believe that it's the rigt thing to do, he will follow ("Trust me, this is absolutely allright!"). Loyalty plays a big role. If you were, say, that guard's commander,  he would likely do whatever you say. Respect doesn't help much. Even though you may be a respected member of high-society this doesn't state anything about your competence to decide what is to be done here. Fear is always a great factor. If the guard fears you he will be more likely to do what  you say.

You can make this even more complex by adding the NPC's personalty into this:
ChanceToSucceed = (af * sympathy) + (af * trust * GeneralScepticism) + (af * loyalty * RebellishTendencies) + (af * respect) + (af * fear) + (RiskOfAction * AventureLust) + Motivation

The tactical part is that prior to this final test for success you can sway the guard into different directions. Raise your trust score by convincing them. Raise your sympathy score by charming or seducing them or simply by socialising. Make them fear you by intimidating and threatening them.  You get the idea.
The way these scores are influenced can and should be pretty complex and there should be various ways of doing things. Raising sympathy can e done through sweettalk, through seduction, through bribes, through favors (side-quests) or other things. Fear can be caused by blackmailing, by direct or indirect threatening, etc. You can earn respect by climbing the social ladder (getting into city council or whatnot). Loyalty can be gained in a similar manner. There should be several ways to affect each of these scores and they should be different in effectiveness as well. Balancing this would be pretty tough but playing it would be neat.

Just imagine:
You need to gain entrance to a tower so you examine the guard cycles. You pick the guard of your choosing, either because he has the right shifts or because he seems easy to manipulate and then you start campaigning. Give him some money here and there, help him out with a few things, get a new toy for his kid, whatever. You can even go so far as to make friends with his family, which should also raise the sympathy and trust score. Then, when you feel the time is right, you try get him to let you in and hope your efforts where sufficient.
I could imagine the typical heartbreaker-type of character. Charm the guard, make friends with the family, start a relationship with the guard and once you have what you want, drop him like a hot potatoe. Which would drastically change some scores ;)
You could even go so far as to hide the scores from the player and allow an "Assess Position" test, which more or less accurately (based on their empathy score) tells the player what position this NPC has towards them.

As I said, this is only a rough draft and it may be too long-term for you (it could take days of in-game time to reach a goal) but to me it sounds like tons of fun and it makes social interaction really what the game is about.

Hope it helped,
Sven

Edited for clarity, form and completeness.