Are Rules for Resolving Social Interaction Necessary?

Today’s late post is brought to you by the fact that I needed to go get my eye examined. After the laser surgery I underwent last year, it seemed that my left eye still retained a few anomalies that needed a bit of observation and eventually another operation to fix. It’s tentatively scheduled for next month, March 17th. Hopefully that would mean that I would finally get my full 20/20 vision in both eyes.

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With that out of the way let’s proceed to today’s topic:

RPGs are traditionally very detailed when it comes to combat. Pacing, maneuvers, combat distances, cover, concealment, visibility and weapon stats that border on fetishism litter most rpgs. While I have nothing against this kind of detail since combat seems to be the most dominant and common mean of creating conflict in a game, there is some concern with regards to the use of rules when it comes to resolving a different kind of conflict.

There are usually two camps with regards to the implementation of Social Rules in an RPG. One side says that it’s unnecessary, and that social situations are resolved purely by roleplay. Another camp insists that social situations should not be divorced from the system, instead relying on dice and skills to dictate just how a given character should respond to social stimulus.

The disadvantage of the first is it discriminates against players who don’t have the social aptitude to play their characters. A shy, or otherwise not quite so adroit individual may have issues with coming up with a snappy comeback, or a stellar means to outwit his opponent even when his character may be designed to be wittier than the entire cast of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

The disadvantage of the second is that it may eventually become a crutch to players who are unwilling to roleplay at all, instead preferring to skip over the “boring talk” and get to the fight already. When prompted by the GM, these guys just look up the stat, roll the dice and then go “There. I bluff to make him think we’re ordinary citizens. Okay?”

Once again I think this particular issue falls towards group dynamics. Depending on the players involved, those who have issues articulating themselves should be allowed to use the roll option to augment their arguments, however ineloquent. Meanwhile, players who prefer to just roll the dice could be encouraged even just a little bit to roleplay their characters if you associate any attempt to speak in character with a bonus to their die rolls, or even free experience for a particularly impressive comeback. This way, you retain the advantages of both schools of thought, without the need to fall into one side or the other.

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There is however an interesting manifestation of social rulesets I’ve seen in Exalted 2nd Edition, known as Social Combat. From what I understand, Social Combat is conducted like regular combat, except with the use of social stats, and the odd bit of roleplay to simulate stunts to add dice. While it looks nice, I’m still wondering if this is something I can actually use. I applaud the fact that by adding this mechanic, Exalted sort of evens the playing field between the Invincible Sword Princess types to the Crafty Social Butterfly types… but something still bothers me.

The fact that it is resolved in a similar fashion to regular combat tends to take the tempo and organic nature of conversation. Instead, both parties are seemingly reduced to taking turns making statements and arguments and rolling dice, not quite unlike formal debates. Perhaps I will need to read more into it and perhaps conduct a game or two to see how it works in play, but I suspect I will probably retain the Social Combat Mechanics.