@zombiegenesis said in Social Systems:
@Thenomain Most of the systems I use (Savage Worlds and A Song of Ice and Fire) actually have you set a social objective before you enter into the social conflict.
This is the negotiation I mentioned. I can think of quite a few systems that have tried this, and have considered how this would be done outside a social situation and each time I run it through my head, the social situation takes far longer to get into.
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A Practical Example
Back in the oWoD days, the rules were pretty much written as "this sounded good at the time" and Rule Zero always gave people the chance to ignore rules.
In action in a situation where there is no GM oversight—i.e., online—this meant that everyone could negotiate what the rule really meant. In action, combat scenes of 4 people could take more than eight hours.
More than eight hours. For combat. And why? Because people could argue their case.
It has been said and repeated that stricter rules keeps this from happening, and people can either agree to play a game with that rule or not, or informally ask people to ignore the rules, but they couldn't make a case for each roll of the dice and therefore things go far faster.
This is what most social systems lack.
Fix this.
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edit: I have seen @SunnyJ's attempts at fixing this. They're pretty bad-ass.