More on Social Conflict

[jburneko]

Hello,

This thread was sparked by the Trollbabe thread on Social Injury.  I admit that my grasp of Social Conflict as it applies to Trollbabe and Sorcerer wavers in and out of clearity.  So here's a bunch of situations and how I've been handling them lately.

1) Straight-up tight lipped NPCs.  I don't plan uncoperative NPCs anymore.  If they don't want to answer a question, they lie.  BUT I still run into cases where I have trouble believing that they'd just be chatting away with a stranger, especially a scary looking stranger, like a Trollbabe.  I mean if I lived in a little village and this scary looking stranger (Trollbabe OR Sorcerer) walked up to me and started asking question I sure as hell wouldn't give them any answers until I was damn sure of their agenda.  Recently, I've just been squelching this instinct and answering questions if there aren't any other factors involved.  Note: Sometimes I use die rolls to determine if the the NPC lies or tells the truth.

2) NPCs that fear retribution from other sources.  This is sometimes abstracted in the sense that a police officer isn't allowed to discuss case details with civillians and sometimes more specific in that NPC A will somehow harm NPC B if NPC B tells PC X something or other about NPC B.  In these cases I've been allowing die rolls to extract the information usually with the NPC making some kind of plea not to tell so-and-so that I told you this.

3) PCs directly trying to influence the behavior or feelings of NPCs.  Again I've been allowing social rolls for this but it sometimes feels really awkward.  Especially in Sorcerer where it's a big deal that any Sorcerer can order any Demon to do anything with a Will vs. Will roll.  But the way, I've been running it that's true with ANY NPC and that doesn't feel right.

Insights?

Jesse

[Dav]

Jesse:

I've always seen social rolling as insanity at its core.  Social rolls, to me, are largely similar to someone saying: "t.v. replaced books!"  urk.

However, in some games, a social roll does not, in fact, REPLACE the social interaction, instead it resolves some fortune-based aspect of a social interaction, which, sometimes, I can buy.  For instance, Trollbabe.

In Trollbabe, largely, I have to seek a conflict, rather than having a conflict thrust upon me.  I am free to wheedle and whine, plead, cajole, threaten, and what-not until the cows come home, but all of that is set-up for the eventual roll.  

The outcome is the result of NPC interaction: meaning that THIS is when the personality and reaction of an NPC would come to bear.  This means that no NPC is tight-lipped or not, informationally, until we drop the die (or dice).  

But, looking to other games, it would be perfectly acceptable to play a tight-lipped or avoidant NPC.  I do it all the time.  In these cases, the only thing that you, as a GM, have to prepare is "why".  Maybe they want a bribe, maybe they fear retribution (a nice way to move things to a more active scene for players and characters), who knows?  But in the end, the tight-lipped NPC will have to be loose enough to let (subtly or not) players know what it is that will loosen those jaws.  You can make an entire campaign out of that.

Generally, and those that have played a Dav game will realize this, I have no fucking clue what is happening.  I've presented a problem (or eight) and looked at the players with a "so, what's up?" gaze and let them loose.  Eventually, once I see how players are reacting to various NPC's, locales, and personal motives, I may be able to figure out what is happening before the players do, but usually it happens about the same time.

I think that this is largely why I think social interaction should be played out: because it allows me, as a GM or player, to figure out what the hell is happening.  

But to your thing:

With Sorcerer, the Will vs. Will is a Big Deal.  But everything has repercussions.  For instance, a demon says "how about we go back out of this dark tunnel, call the cops, and let them find the missing girl?"  the sorcerer replies, "and explain how?  By saying, oh yes, we tried to use her as a focus for a summoning, because it just so happens that the spirit from the netherworld that I needed in order to find out if Julia loves me has a thing for young girls... oh, and officer, don't take this the wrong way, but the child is Julia's, because I thought using someone of her bloodline might make the summoning more meaningful; but I forgot to chalk my containment circle, a slight whoopsie on my part, and I lost control of the spell and the netherspirit loosed itself upon the world by using Julia's kid as its host.  So, would you mind terribly popping on into this storm drain and finding her for me... and if you could see your way clear to not, you know, arrest me, that would be keen."

Now to me, if that were a Will vs. Will roll, the Sorcerer might get a bonus die for delivering that nifty, wry recap with a straight face.

But that's not the point.

The point is that the demon has a fear of the dark.  A distinct aversion to being alone in the dark.  Likes lights.  Admires them, finds them soothing.  So getting it to crawl into a filthy hole that is dark and being used as a lair for a netherspirit that is possessing an innocent child (and doing Dav knows what to that sweet kid's mind while it concocts its revenge upon the family that banished its demonic line to the Cold Beyond one thousand years ago (and whoops, that would be our Sorcerer's family... but he doesn't know that yet)), whom the demon can't harm because, well, it's a kid, and it's the kid of the mother that the master is sweet on.  Yeah, that might take some persuasion.

So, the roll.  But our Sorcerer is all Will, no meats, which is why the demon needs to go in the hole.  The Sorcerer has chosen the physical descriptor of "big-boned and a bit to the out-of-shape side", thus the GM said, "fat boy no fit in hole".  Well, the demon loses, and has to go in the hole.

The result is that the demon is unhappy.  And perhaps will be seeing things its own way for awhile, at least until the sorcerer feeds the need and kowtows to the pleasure.  Until then, the demon does the standard "demonly" thing of perverting the word of the master, serving its own ends by obeying only the letter and not the spirit, and what-have-you.  Maybe this is simply childish tantrum, or slightly amusing pranks, or similar harmless but annoying badgering for a bit, but eventually gets quite cruel if the commanding is repeated without the biscuit at the end of the maze.

But on the average NPC, the sorcerer had better have some sort of supernatural ability to affect minds before I'd allow social influence to be determined by a Will to Will roll in Sorcerer.  At best, do a quick comparison (Will 5 vs. Will 2), no roll, and figure that the average NPC will let the difference between the two Will scores plus one, in hints slip.  These hints don't have to be related to the immediate problem, but could be hints on how to mkae this guy a friend, fit him nicely onto the relationship map.  Or maybe they are hints to the plot, maybe you never want this guy to enter your game again, so he just drops his info and skeedattles.  That's up to you.  But if you feel an absolute NEED to systemize your social boundaries as a GM, then I would use a quick karma-compare system to determine hint numbers.  For minor NPCs, the hints can be directly info-dumping, for major NPCs, it may not be directly plotline related, it may be related to how to "grease the jaw-hinge" of that NPC.

Hope some of this late-night/early morning rambling made some sense.

Dav

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

For Sorcerer, I tend to let person-to-person Will/influence rolls to do exactly what the system says they do: affect this conflict, and possibly roll dice into a subsequent roll.

So you can't Will-roll someone into changing their religion or simply abandoning their FBI job to leave you alone. But you can get them to blurt out something they didn't intend, or to back off from bugging you this particular time, or anything like that. At the very least, you can rattle them enough to give you another couple dice on your defensive roll against their gunshot.

Does that help a little?

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Yes, it does.  I think intellecutally I understand it all but I'm still finding the creative "gut level" balance point between letting the dice resolve social conflict and totally breaking the behavior profile of an NPC as I see it.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse,

I think the issue goes all the way back to what a "conflict" is - by definition, it's an opportunity for the currently-perceived situation to change. Therefore, whatever that NPC's behavioral profile is, because it's engaged in a conflict, it's subject to being altered, even if it's only for a moment.

Best,
Ron