Looking for Role playing games with interesting social mechanics

Question

Hopefully this produces some interesting sources for inspiration for my own designs: does anyone know of a system with an interesting take on handling social and similar situations, such as a debate or an attempt to seduce a foe to the dark side[1]? A few specifications to help narrow this down:

1. Rolling a die and mind control (D&D 3.5 I'm looking at you) isn't interesting.
2. It cannot be simply "Social Combat", and especially not social combat you can arbitrarily op out of to completely ignore (Exalted...)
3. Rules that essentially are "DM makes things up" are not interesting.

[1] - I suppose this could be redeeming a fallen foe. I guess. Doesn't seem like typical player behaviour.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Song of Ice and Fire RPG have a curious intrigue system, that covers from simple social interactions (seduction attempt, for instance) to complex conspirations, following ten steps:

1. Type: determine if the intrigue is simple, standard or complex and assign a number of victory points needed.
2. Scene: describe the location and the participants.
3. Objective: determine the intrigue objective (friendship, information, deceit,...). Each side can have its own objective (character A is trying to convince character B about a plan, while character B try to obtain as much information about character A as he can).
4. Disposition: assign each NPC an adjective describing the disposition toward the intriguer (friendly, indifferent, dislike,...). Each one modifies the intrigue general difficulty and the difficulties or persuasion and deceit.
5. Initiative: determine who rolls first.
6. Technique: determine which approach would take the involved characters (bargain, charm, intimidate). Each technique uses a different skill and has different modifiers depending on the target disposition.
7. Roleplay: (at last). Good roleplay can modify the chances.
8. Action and tests: characters perform a series of actions (fast talk, manipulate, read target,...)
9. Repeat: If there is still no winner, go to step 2.
10. Resolution: Determine the winner and the consequences.

Answer 2

First, a note on Social Combat. While Exalted's system has many flaws (including allowing you to stick your fingers in your ears and not listen), there are still hints there that can help you with your system.

First, social conflict is aggressive and proactive. The participants must have goals.

Second, the system must encourage small changes. As you note, D&D's one roll method for Diplomacy is dull. Exalted's Social Combat covers this with Intimacies. Forcing participants to slowly adjust another character's Intimacies over time to persuade them creates opportunities for thrust and counter-thrust.

FATE Core

FATE Core is an excellent system that takes a step back from the granular details that games like D&D and Exalted focus on. It unifies conflict under a simple model that can be used to represent all kinds of conflict, including economic, social, physical and more.

A conflict consists of using skills to Create Advantage, Harm and Defend. The goal is inflict enough stress (aka damage) on your opponent that they opt to concede (and they will have some control over the result of the conflict) or Take Them Out (so you have full control over the results). During the conflict itself, you can protect yourself from being taken out by accepting semi-permanent consequences that are related to the current situation.

This means that you can play out a scene where you and other characters who disagree on something can manuever around each other and hash out your agreements while also possibly taking some fallout from it.

Answer 3

Pendragon (I am referring to the older editions here, I own 2nd or 3rd edition but it's in storage now, so can't check - there is a new edition available though) had a set of psychological traits along with the physical ones, based on the system of "virtues" that a proper Arthurian knight should possess. For every positive trait you had a corresponding vice - and the two values were complementary (on a 1-20 scale).

So for example:

Chaste:  17  - Lustful:  3
...
Valorous:11  - Cowardly: 9  

(Wikipedia has a complete list under Personal Traits)

So whenever the PC (or NPC) was forced to confront something that required Courage, he would have to roll a D20 and get 11 or less. Whenever someone tried to seduce him, he would roll Chastity to resist (the "negative" traits could also be used when trying to elicit a specific response, like someone who is prone to get angry could be provoked in acting violently and so on - using for example the "Reckless" value).

While some players may find these traits "limiting", at least at the start, they actually help (imho) to avoid the tendency to always play an idealized version of yourself, and were also pretty handy in creating complex psychological traps and gambits.

I found this useful to model NPC behaviour, too, and ported this to a Call of Cthulhu game - I personally believe a similar system may help modeling someone who has a self-consistent personality (be it PC or NPC) and may be the starting point for more complex/nuanced social interactions in a game.

Answer 4

Dungeon World has Bonds, which are between party members. Characters get XP when bonds are resolved, then they get new bonds. They have basic moves and class moves triggered by some interactions with NPCs. Social moves cannot coerce PCs but offer XP as incentive. It takes very few XP to level in DW, so the incentive can be quite strong and creates interesting choices for the players to face.

Another game that uses the same underlying engine, Monsterhearts, uses Strings. I haven't played it yet, so I can't go into it, but I've heard tons of good stuff about strings. What I know is that they represent some sort emotional leverage or currency. From everything I've heard, I'd recommend Monsterhearts.

Answer 5

Hillfolk

From the successfully-kickstarted-but-not-out-yet collection comes Hillfolk.

This RPG doesn't just feature social mechanics, it's built almost entirely on them. Taking the theory of Hamlet's Hit Points and turning it into RPG practice, Hillfolk is a game by gaming visionary Robin D. Laws that focuses entirely on dramatic resolution - and that doesn't mean the (excellent) way that, say, fate aims at dramatic resolution.

Each conflict is boiled down to one person wanting something from another. Whether to give the wanter what he wants is largely up to the want-ee. But whether to give it or not is a decision that will be based on what the potential granter wants in the future, and how giving the wanter what he wants now or not will impact those future plans.

I can't explain it better than the links. See above. Go check out the kickstarter, too, there's a ton of stuff there.

My limited experience with this game (I backed it, so I have a draft already) is excellent. I think it finally takes the episodic-TV-drama-gaming crown from Primetime Adventures.

Answer 6

Monsterhearts

Monsterhearts is an apocalypse-world-powered game of supernatural teen romance. I've never cared about any supernatural teen romance except for Buffy the Vampire Slayer so I can't tell you how it works for the genre as a whole. But as a storygaming Buffy fix, it's made of awesome, wrapped in bacon.

For the Apocalypse World-unaware among us, here's the scoop on Moves: In-fiction character actions in Apocalypse World games can trigger Moves. Moves are chunks of game mechanics that tell the players what to roll and how to interpret the results of those rolls. They are a key component of AW and every AW-powered game I've seen is built on them.

Monsterhearts has many moves that are related to the getting and spending of a social currency called strings. A string is an emotional hold you have on someone else - It can be a secret you can leverage, a favor they owe you, a desire you can stoke, affection you can encourage, or whatever else you can think of that's about making them do what you want instead of what they want. An important thing to know about strings is that they aren't defined until they are used. So when you spend a string, you can always make it fit the story at that moment.

Monsterhearts does a great job of making the characters' actions with regard to other characters' emotions mechanically meaningful. It also does a great job letting you play in the high-school-with-vampires melodrama part of BtVS (as opposed to the every-week-we-beat-up-someone-in-a-latex-mask part) with low prep and a high fun factor.