Social Systems

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in Social Systems:

Question: do you think it's necessarily relevant whether someone is telling the truth or a lie when it comes to convincing another character about the story they're telling?

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@apos said in Social Systems:

No. Only how sincere they seem. Someone that's telling the truth but looks nervous probably seems insincere and are thought to be lying. The actual truth doesn't matter imo. I'd just make a check on how sincere they seem in regards to how convincing the pitch is.

I concur with Apos here. L5R even has the skill "Sincerity" to reflect appearing honorable when you are actually being honest or you are attempting to deceive. In that system, you can oppose the roll with an Investigation check. It can additionally be rolled when you're trying to convincingly flatter someone or are trying to be political about pointing out how much someone is a fat ass (that's the example in the L5R 4E book, and it is hilarious).

[surreality]

@ganymede This is what I ultimately went with (in the wee hours of last night when I thinnnnnnk I have the default list in, and now it's just adding piles of weird specialty-type things and tagging them wherever they're relevant). It's 'Convince', but the writeup covers it:

The ability to tell a convincing story and be believed by others. Whether the story or explanation is completely true, partly true, or entirely false doesn't actually matter, though expertise in one of these areas may add to the character's effectiveness in the task.

...then people can basically take additional expertise in things like 'pokerface' or 'lie' or any number of other things that can apply to which direction they're trying to take it to apply when its relevant to what they're trying to achieve. (Expertises are more or less like interdisciplinary specs in WoD, apply where relevant, they can just have more than 1 level invested in them.)

I like the versatility of this in that it lets someone decide they're maybe only so-so at telling a convincing story, but damn, do they have a great pokerface whenever that's relevant (sometimes when trying to convince someone of something, sometimes when actually gambling, when trying to hide emotion, etc.), while someone else may be able to sell any story they like (focusing on the 'Convince' task) but their focus is specifically on that alone.

I'm not good at explaining things just now, but I think that is something I'm going to stick with as one of those 'tailored to this environment' things, though it's not one specific to social systems at all. Namely, it gives people different ways to really customize their characters and make them unique and versatile -- which is easy as pie when you have maybe 8 people around a table, but damn do people start doubling up at record speed on a MU* in ways that can be frustrating. Everybody likes to have something they're especially shiny at, which is totally reasonable and human. It gives people more room to have 'their thing' without nigh complete clones in abundance. I'm not super keen on indulging snowflakeyness, but I don't think it's bonkerstown or overboard for people to like being able to have a niche that the system reflects to some extent. So, in the above example... either of those people -- Ms. Pokerface or Mr. Convince -- would be good at that the same thing in one case, but would diverge from there based on where they chose to invest their points/focus.

[Ganymede]

@surreality

You may be interested in actually looking through L5R's skill descriptions, because they have things like Intimidation and Etiquette too. For a samurai game, it is deep in the social aspects.

[surreality]

@ganymede Both of those are in. Once I have more than just the weirdest scattering ever of the expertises in I'll toss you the overview link when I send it to @Seraphim73.

P.S. Will want to pick your brain for appropriate expertise categories for Law task. As in, I doubt 'Civil, Criminal, Contract, Prosecution, and Defense' would cover all the bases. (Or maybe it would? Maybe that's too fussy already? I dunno. But will be asking when I get there, as fair warning. )

[faraday]

@surreality Unless you're making Law and Order MUSH, a single skill of Law seems more than adequate (and probably unnecessary at that.)

[surreality]

@faraday It's just one task, which isn't even a full skill. Expertises are similar to specialties in WoD, which tend to be fairly specific. They're add-ons to a skill -- areas of expertise that only apply when relevant, providing a bonus to the roll. In WoD, they're freeform, which leads to twenty tons of confusion and a whole lot of people trying to get away with overly broad things sometimes or things so vague and nebulous that it's squint-bait. These essentially do the same, they just aren't freeform; there's a preset list of them.

[faraday]

@surreality It has really nothing to do with social systems so I'll refrain from rambling on about skill focus.

[Ganymede]

@surreality said in Social Systems:

P.S. Will want to pick your brain for appropriate expertise categories for Law task. As in, I doubt 'Civil, Criminal, Contract, Prosecution, and Defense' would cover all the bases. (Or maybe it would? Maybe that's too fussy already? I dunno. But will be asking when I get there, as fair warning. )

Honestly, you could probably lump those into Academics, like WoD does, or Bureaucracy, like the old World of Darkness did.

Should probably note that while Sincerity in L5R is essentially Persuasion and Subterfuge rolled into one, the "social offense" skill is Courtier and the "social defense" is Etiquette. Causing someone to misstep via your skill in Courtier can lead to a loss of Honor, whereas making the right move to save face or avoid a loss is, of course, one's knowledge of Etiquette.