Hey everyone,

I need your help in shrinking/combining my Social Skill list.
There are just too many, and it's possible to merge them in different ways.

Thanks for all your help:

Barter / Haggling
Command
Debating
Deception / Lying
Diplomacy
Empathy / Detect Lies/Motives
Etiquette (maybe as Lore-skill, instead of Social skill?)
Friendliness
Leadership
Interrogation
Interviewing / Gather Information
Intimidation
Negotiation
Oratory
Persuasion
Seduction
Teaching

I would suggest, personally

Persuasion (Mixes Persuasion, Seduction and Negotiation)

• This covers changing a person's opinion over a longish period of time

Ettiquette (Mixes Diplomacy, parts of Haggling, Ettiquette and Debating)

• This covers interaction in highly formal, ritualised circles, such as the nobility or cleregy

Socialise (Mixes Friendliness, Interviewing/Gather Information, Empathy and parts of Haggling)

• This covers interaction with mixed groups and circles, particularly those of 'lower' social standing)

Coercion (Mixes Interrogation and Intimidation)

• Hurting people, or at least the threats therof

Leadership (Mixes Oratory, Command, Leadership and Teaching)

• Covers instruction and the interaction with large groups of people

You can either keep Deception as a seperate skill, or use one of these skills, dependent on the situation the character is lying in.

does that help?

Thanks for the fast reply! Sure it helps.
And I will think about your ideas of course.

But I hope some others will post too.

Again: Thank you.

ADD (where the heck is the EDIT button?):

Maybe your skill list is a bit TOO condensed...
(?)

In Green Ronin Publishing's "Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying" there is a neat system in place tailored to Medieval politics.

Any time a social conflict arises that has a definite consequence - players enter into "intrigues"

They have these tools at hand during intrigues.

they work off of these abilities

Status (nobility Vs peasant Vs. Lord/Lady etc) this gives some pull to the higher status. a peasant offering advise to a king will suffer some penalties. ;)
Persuasion - this covers bargain, charm, convince, incite, intimidate, seduce, taunt 
Deception this covers Act, Bluff, Cheat, disguise
Knowledge which covers Education, research, streetwise
Language also plays a part but only so far as two people who don't speak the same language and an interpreter is there

So in this game (ice and fire)
you have a rank assigned to these skills (persuasion, deception etc)
then you have bonuses to the sub skills (Act, bluff, bargain etc)
[sup]ex: if you have a rank 4 in persuasion - you'll get 4 dice to roll --- if you have a bonus (1 in this example) in seduce (and you're attempting to seduce someone) you get an extra die to roll (roll 5 dice - keep the best 4)[/sup]

you could consider doing something like that.
Maybe not the ranks = dice system - depending on the rest of your system.
but having a governing social ability
and then figuring out what the others fit under.
so really your are combining them but also giving the player the freedom to "specialize" in something.

something to think about.
Hope I've helped

sidenote - could you describe the game a little. what kind of world(s) is it set in. is it Fantasy/Sci-fi/modern/a RPG based on fragglerock/Life as a fish rpg.
LOL

Hi!

First: what's your game about?

This sticky is a great place to get some ideas on how best to answer that question.

Cheers, charles

Perhaps instead of condensing the skills, you should just discard a few, and note that other skills can be used as appropriate.
Barter/haggling, a skill everyone would have, though merchants might have more skill, still, any given haggle is based on lying, sensing the motives of the buyer (do they want it, need it, or is it a passing fancy, this strongly affects the price you want to ask, and how long you want to haggle).
kill the skill, and allow diplomacy, debating, bluffing, or socializing to get the item, depending on the merchant, the buyer, and the situation.

Friendliness isn't a skill, it is an attitude, to befriend, use socialization or diplomacy, possibly empathy or etiquette.

Gather information is a good use of empathy, socialization, and possibly intimidation-can be helped by some non-social skills (someone with smithy may be able to get more from a smith after talking shop, or might have an in with any tradesman by saying he is a journeyman).

Now which ones you discard is a good question, but I would say that what you want to keep are the "tactics," and what you want to discard are the "goals."  By which I mean, bluff/lie is a way to get what you want, barter (a low price) is the goal of the lie you tell the merchant "I only have 5 gold, I can't pay 6..."
So my take on your list is:

Barter / Haggling-goal
Command-goal
Debating-tactic
Deception / Lying-tactic
Diplomacy-tactic
Empathy / Detect Lies/Motives-tactic
Etiquette (maybe as Lore-skill, instead of Social skill?)-probably tactic
Friendliness-could go either way, but I see it as a goal
Leadership-goal
Interrogation-probably tactic
Interviewing / Gather Information-goal
Intimidation-tactic
Negotiation-tactic (but how is this different from diplomacy?  If it is the goal, then this is just a goal)
Oratory-tactic?
Persuasion-persuading to do what? is anything social not persuasion?  This could be a tactic
Seduction-tactic, but probably seldom used except when you have an NPC...
Teaching-goal.

Sorting out the tactics, you get
Diplomacy/Negotiation
Oratory
Etiquette
Debating
Empathy (includes detect lies)
Deception
Interrogation
Intimidation
Seduction

This is a pretty standard set of social skills, probably only missing fast talk (for the used car salesmen out there), although that could be covered by Deception or Oratory.  I am still a little iffy on interrogation, some combination of Deception, Intimidation, and Negotiation could probably handle that skill...

@ Aaron Baker:

Thanks! That was something I thought about too - Tactics and Goals.

I will give that a couple of thoughts.

Aaron, I really like the distinction between tactics and goals.  Gonna keep that in mind while working on my own system.

also it depends on the approach you want

I prefer lying to be a penalty to social skills, not its own skill.  Lying is something you do when trying to accomplish something - so you are bartering and you lie while doing it.  Then make lying be a talent/feat or whatever - if someone is good at lying they have no penalty when doing it or get a bonus when doing it.

I think there are 3 basic tactics:
charm - getting them to like you
reasoning - presenting a logical argument
intimidation - getting them to go along with you through fear

seduction is a bonus thing you can do while charming.  I wouldn't make it a separate skill, instead a talent/feat that gives you a bonus to charm if the situation is appropriate.

It's not in general necessary to condense skill lists. It might be necessary for your game, depending on how you want things to work.

Consider The Burning Wheel by Luke Crane. It has even more social skills than yours does. Here's the thing, though. In Burning Wheel you only roll for one skill at a time, but any skills that are "Fields of Related Knowledge" (FoRKs) give you a bonus. Thus, when torturing someone for information, you could roll Interrogation and FoRK in Torture (or vice versa). When giving speeches, you roll Oratory, but things like Command, Rhetoric (debate), or Persuade might be applicable FoRKs, depending on the situation.

This kind of set up allows the designer to proliferate skills until he has enough that all differentiated profiles of character ability that he wants to be possible are possible. The trick to making it work is limiting skills to people who should have them -- for instance, Rhetoric is available to scholars, and Command to officers. You don't have to make these hard limits, though; it can just cost extra to get a skill that isn't normally available to a person of your social role.

It's a really good mechanic. You might try it on for size.
(Burning Wheel has a million and one other good mechanics, too. I recommend it highly.)

-Marshall