The princess is wearing the same dress as your barbarian (female) at the ball you were all magically compelled to attend

>the princess is wearing the same dress as your barbarian (female) at the ball you were all magically compelled to attend

What are some games with good social combat rules?

>What are some games with good social combat rules?

Honestly I think they're all terrible. They're all weird, goofy abstractions that don't really feel anything like having a conversation or an argument. As far as I'm concerned the best system is good old fashioned roleplay, using skill checks when trying to convince someone to do or believe something they are otherwise not inclined towards, and the difficulty of the check and any bonuses to the player all depending on the specifics of the NPC's personality and the merits of the PC's argument/lie/pick-up line.

I'm a firm believer in that "social combat" is best left with only a few, simple rules, and for most of the focus to be on actually playing the roles.

My players typically engage in social combat without rolling any dice, or referencing or even utilizing any mechanics outside of the occasional magical/psychic/special ability, and they seem to prefer valuing their own abilities to lie and persuade or see through falsehoods.

Personally, I think they should be rolling dice at least a little more often, but I run games to their preferences, and they seem to have fun getting into that "the dice would only be a distraction" mood.

Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits is pretty entertaining.

Legends of the Wulin.

In that courtiers can use social-fu in combat time with just as much effectiveness as punches and fireballs.

It also has a pretty awesome set of rules for out of combat stuff, too.

LotW is built around Chi Conditions, narrative clauses tied to mechanical bonuses or penalties.

Courtiers (and other kinds of Secret Artist, but you're talking about social) can make use of Passion and Inspiration conditions, drawing upon someones base emotions or their higher ideals to manipulate them.

While it's possibly to directly create Conditions by influencing people, the easier and more efficient way is Discovery. The Courtier has to give the GM a compelling argument or evidence for why a condition of a certain type should exist, the more tenuous the evidence, the higher the DC. It encourages thoughtful observation and clever argument, but it still lets you try for something that seems outlandish.

The other awesome thing about this? Chi Conditions are never binding. No matter how much someone messes with you socially, you always retain complete control of your character. It's your choice whether you obey the narrative clauses imposed on you or accept the mechanical penalty.

It creates a really great dynamic for this kind of thing, where having a condition imposed on you is limiting but doesn't remove your agency as a player, while also giving you a way of influencing NPCs which is effective but also isn't flat persuasion based mind control.

Burning Wheel is definitely the go-to option here. You only use Duel of Wits for the really important stuff (everything else is done with simple checks and roleplay)

It lends itself well to scenes where two people are trying to convince a third party or where there's an audience that is trying to be won over. So you can use it for 'cowardly courtier and PC each try to convince the king to go to war/not go to war', or 'countess vs barbarian' each trying to convince the partygoers that the other person is a knuckle-dragging moron/uptight product of generations of incest.

FATE, hands down. The social arena rules are fantastic.

Could you elaborate? I've only played FATE once and it was a short session.

on the note of female barbarian does anyone have a picture of the ork girl getting laughed out of the ball by the humans? I need it

She's clearly an orc, not an ork, but you're in luck, I remembered a bit of the opening post of the last thread I saw it in and punched that into the archive search, and presto, here we go.

And as an extra pack-in bonus, I'm shipping you the sequel image, for no extra charge!

Hmm i couldnt find in the archives thanks for searching tho
God dammit the 40k is seeping into the rest of fantasy to me.

I use social stats just as a quantifier of how much information I provide to a player.

One of my only lengthy campaigns involved a cute gala on Mechanus. My character finally had a chance to wear her best, fanciest dress to try and impress the busty necromancer in the party, who she had been sweet on all along. Unfortunately, ruffians invaded the gala, though that did give my character a chance to show off the full power of her mighty Ring of Arming, which cued her transformation sequence into Pretty Guardian Abjurant Champion Paladin of Wee Jas.

Is this where half-half-orcs come from? I just can't endorse orc-breeding, though. They're terrible, unethical monster-people. It's very unfortunate.

And that's how the alliance of Modrengran and Clan Shatter-Tusk was formed.

My god, I have never seen this before and it is fantastic

Had no idea there was a sequel to that pic. Not the one who asked for it but thanks!

Piss off, snooty elf girl. Nobody likes you.

>HUMAN'ED

Hey, I'm just speaking truth here. Nothing wrong with the color green or being physically fit, but Orcs are just too immoral.

How can they be fixed?

GURPS uses social skills as a way to get a good first impression, and as a guideline for the GM to see how their gruff, cynical NPC should act when they encounter a bombshell blonde with high Sex Appeal skill.

so are uthgart, it works somehow.

One of the worst things I every had to play through was social combat.

>Okay guys, roll social initiative!
>'but GM I just want to-'
>The Lords son goes first. He cuts a witty remark and now you are at a -2 emotional disadvantage (or some nonsense).

Maybe it can be done well, but I never played the Dragon Age game again.

The jungle fever is strong in that guy

Social combat is for people who don't have the charisma and wit their character is supposed to display.

I've had plenty of players who couldn't act their way out of a wet paper bag, barely able to string together a coherent sentence while trying to describe their character's supposedly unerring wit.

On the flip side, I've had people who could easily make a living as a con man talking rings around people, while playing a character who's supposed to be half illiterate. When these guys start throwing around fifty cent words, I have had to stop them mid sentence, and pushed a dice into their hands.

Good roleplaying will give players a bonus to their rolls, while a lack of will cause penalties. I'm not looking for your rousing speak to be written down word for word, but I do expect some highlights, or a tone for it.

Plenty of minor social encounters I don't bother to ask for dice, but I'll leave it up to RNGesus to help decide the big important things. How well did your lie with the king go over? How rousing was that speech to the hungry horde before you? Lets see what the dice gods decide.

>the princess is wearing the same dress as your barbarian (female) at the ball you were all magically compelled to attend
>Princess
>Same Dress
>The Princess buys her clothes off the rack.

Thread/

4e DnD skill challenge works great in difficult social challenge or interrogation where the idea is to involve everyone, not just the party face or the skill monkey.
You can fail a few times and you need to roleplay or/and roll successfully a few times before it is over and everyone move on with the result.

I have had a great deal of fun going on quests to make the snazziest outfits possible for characters.

Made from exotic, sometimes unique fabrics, studded with more gems than an entire dwarf clan worth of beard jewelry, enchanted with mostly useless but incredibly shiny magic, like flowing around them like they were underwater, or matching the color of the sky perfectly at all times of day.

If a princess is wearing the exact same dress as I am, I'm going to be very curious how she ripped the wings off a white dragon to make her corset, or used to teeth from a megalodon for scrimshaw jewelry.

That sounds terribly designed.

>Dragon Age
>a tie-in RPG

Well, there's your problem.

>What are some games with good social combat rules?
Social combat is a meme, you're better off just roleplaying and using the dice in extreme circumstances, like an elf trying to negotiate with a racist against elves or trying to convince a hitman not to kill them.

From personal experience, the only people who would object to this are the sort of rollplayers who you wouldn't want sitting at your table in the first place.

>the "X is a meme" meme

I should start doing this.

It's a long-standing idea that has persisted through the decades because of morons who got fed the wrong information yet is being repeated anyways because people don't know any better, sounds like a meme to me.

>people disagree with me
>they must be "morons who got fed the wrong information"

You must be fun a parties.

>Dropping facts is edgy
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "rapier wit" I suppose.

>calling hot opinions "facts"

Well if it was an opinion then you wouldn't be that upset by it right? You'd just file it away and go about your business.

The reality is that I'm right and you're too chickenshit to admit it.

Your debate skills are downright pathetic.

Yet here you, still replying.

What can I say, I'm bored, and your doucheyness is kind of entertaining.

Unlike yours. Not him, you're a faggot and also he's right.

> Barbarian
> Social combat

Grappling rules. Suplex that bitch through the floor.

I've always been a fan of Monsterheart's system, the way strings and conditions work, it means that if the PCs want a good chance of influencing an NPC then they have to engage with the subject matter of the game, which should be the entire point of mechanics.

Barbarian loudly points out the fact, declares they can be dress-sisters and attempts to high five the princess.

From a narrative perspective, moving away from the Tolkein version where they're literally created by torture and dark magic. Most of the Warcraft (or certain disappointing webcomics) conceit of "poor misunderstood non-human races" comes from other settings removing the "I took an elf and corrupted it until I got THIS" backstory but still writing orcs as being inherently immoral with no logic behind it. If you remove the evil backstory, then you can and should remove the evil everything else.

You can still have them be the antagonist race if they're not evil. It's not like people never fight people when both sides think they're the good guys.

From an in-setting perspective, destroy the metaphysical root of the evil and the culture that has been built around it. The Roman Empire was great at assimilating groups and destroying cultures. You lose the battle, you get enslaved, but then we use our polytheistic religion to say "yes, your gods do exist, but clearly your war god doesn't have shit on Mars, so here's some literature on our stronger and better pantheon", and we use our law to say that if you work your way out of slavery then your kids will be full Roman citizens.

A fantasy Rome would have orcish citizens within three orcish generations of encountering the orcish lands. They'd be wearing togas and looking down on the next group of barbarians to be brought into the empire. Orcs, fixed.

Or the orcs would kick their asses. Rome doesn't have a great record vs hordes.

>You will forever live in a timeline where Rome has fallen and all attempts to revive it have failed

I like this idea, especially if the princess is one of the rebellious tomboy ones.

I blame Christianity. A polytheistic society says "I'm right, you're right, but I'm stronger so we're doing it my way", which is not great for the weaker guy but then nothing is.

A monotheistic society says "I'm right, you're wrong". It's inherently divisive. Even given how good Abrahamic religion is at spreading, it's even better at being divisive at itself, which it doesn't really have an answer for in the same way that polytheism has.

Romans also had the ridiculous trick of saying "Well look here your god is actually part of our pantheon and there's a temple planned for him (three minutes ago after we won the battle) so just come on in".
Also Abrahamic religions were different because of their exclusivity but also because of being some of the first religions where spreading was a goal in and of itself.

>Barbarians hate this! One weird trick to integrate disparate pantheons!

kek

You can throw in some dice rolls as well for a bit of uncertainty, but I find it works well with most players, whether they be new or experienced.

Does it matter if they are wearing the same dress?

It's a pretty big social faux pas.

Whenever your players want to roll for information, and you know what information you want to give them, it's very easy to ignore the roll.

>You rolled high! You learn [the thing I was going to tell you].
>Oh, you rolled low. You only learn [the thing I was going to tell you].

Never leave critical information to chance. Any more than usual, I mean. Players will still ignore or forget that stuff.

Even a sexless autist knows that that's a giant no-no for women.

Oh, not for giving information, just for when a social interaction would result in uncertainty you can roll instead of doing it all by GM fiat.

>the best system is good old fashioned roleplay
Finally someone that kno-
>using skill checks when trying to convince someone to do or believe something they are otherwise not inclined towards, and the difficulty of the check and any bonuses to the player all depending on the specifics of the NPC's personality and the merits of the PC's argument/lie/pick-up line.
God damn it.

Absolutely huge problem

He knows it, but he doesn't understand it. Women are generally not on speaking terms with logic.

It's pretty logical user, especially in the case of a princess and a stinking (possibly literally) barbarian, as it implies that princess is equivalent in some form, any form, to a barbarian. It's also because the princess, being the princess, is legitimately special.

>People are generally not on speaking terms with logic
FTFY
Daily reminder that when arguing, the human mind is primarily attuned to convince, not reason.

Why is it a big social mistake?

See Also just customs in general
Like for example, did you know that in Asia, tipping a waiter is insulting because it implies that he's some sort of dirty beggar, and the same goes for AA'ing when eating with friends?

Hey, fuck you. Barbarians can be diplomatic. I played one a while back who was a well-dressed, well-mannered warrior-poet.

>AA'ing
?
YOU DIDN'T EXPLAIN SHIT

Grappling is plenty diplomatic.

>?
Splitting the bill, you're supposed to let them pay for the entire meal then return the favor next time.

>it implies that princess is equivalent in some form, any form, to a barbarian.
Not that user, but come on!

Women(everyone) want to be and feel unique and special. Being in the same dress as another woman, especially at a big event they spent who knows how long preparing for, strikes at the heart of that.

You did explain. Nice dubs.

It has less to do with wanting to be special on its own and more to do with the fact that a princess is royalty, so a literal nobody and presumably shit-covered barbarian who can't even read or speak a proper language like Latin being in the same dress is a huge insult
Like, if a archduchess did it it'd be a faux pas anyway, but wouldn't be quite as insulting because it just means the princess isn't being that special. It's not the same as what amounts to a monkey wearing a royal tiara.

>Also just customs in general
>Like for example, did you know that in Asia, tipping a waiter is insulting because it implies that he's some sort of dirty beggar?
You just explained the logical reasoning behind it though.
>Only beggars get hand-outs
>You're giving me a hand-out
>Therefore you're calling me a beggar
It wouldn't surprise me if this same kind of thinking leads Asians to hate welfare.

Right but the thing is, those customs don't carry over to the west, where if you DON'T give a tip it implies you're either a huge miser or you're some sort of filthy beggar yourself who can't afford an extra ten bucksfor the guy who's been serving you. That's why I mentioned customs, because even though they have logic, the exact same action could mean something else under different customs.

>Women(everyone) want to be and feel unique and special.
While I don't want to dispute importance of uniqueness in social wear, there's certain comfort in uniformity of an uniform as a symbol of allegiance and togetherness.

>west = 'murrica
sensible chuckle

to be honest I haven't had time to travel to Europe yet so yeah

We need to do a variant of this with an Imperial and an actual ork.

I'm not so sure this is a custom thing as much as practical issue. In places where people expect tips, they are paid less and tips are assumed to be part of the wage. Europe doesn't do tipping nearly to the same extent as America, even for the same jobs in similar economic levels.

But the fact that they're paid less is actually a custom in and of itself, is it not?

Well, to be honest I have no idea what Quran says about tipping either, but custom of the old denizens is usually "round up to nearest 1" or "round up to nearest paper".

> Implying she isn't a barbarian princess

Yes, but it is not some profound eastern vs western mind things. It is just a thing.

So, 'splitting the bill' or 'going dutch' instead of some term nobody outside of your family knows.

Yeah but like...it's still a custom. Customs aren't profound to begin with, they're literally "so people decided to do this for no reason other than they had to decide to do something so their kids decided to do it too and so on".

It's a term widely used in Asia, excuse me.

>implying barbarian "princesses" exist
>implying barbarian "princesses" are anything but glorified monkeys
*ohohoho's at you*

I'll assume that barbarian is in D&D terms.
Rage can be fluffed as rage, battle trance, spirits of ancestors/nature helping out, anything. The barbarian in question might be well-civilised, just really good at fighting.

Well sure you can fluff them however you like. Pretty sure the default fluff (hurr) for the D&D barbarian makes them be essentially mudhut germans though.

You don't need mud huts when you have Leomuld's Tiny Hut

To be honest I'd rather Barbarian be some sort of social class or roleplaying subclass, and Barbarian just renamed Berserker.

By making half-orc babies.

But orcs live in swamps!

>he needs mind-control railroading just to get PCs to attend a party

What kind of murderhobo sandbox are you running

More of a "this is an easy way to kekblock the 'inteligent' posters who would otherwise fill up the thread explaining why their characters would never find themselves in the situation described in the OP".

>But orcs live in swamps!
No, that's ogres.

Orcs, at least in my settings, dwell in plains and deserts, and whatever more fertile lands they can wrest from the humans and elves.
They don't usually bother dwarven lands. Mountains have no inherent value to them, and they'd rather let the dwarves extract the valuable metals and turn them into things, THEN steal the things.

The dwarves, seeing their metalwork as an extension of the mountainhome, take offence to this and wipe out any orcs they come across.

I doubt the princess has the strength score for that.

Don't ogres generally live whereever the hell they want

Yes, which is mostly swamps. They get very angry if you try and use said swamp as containment, though.

It's Veeky Forums, silly, being upset is part of the course.

Besides, the two examples you use are confrontations; a.k.a exactly the kind of things people mean by social combat. Nobody is gonna roll for saying hello to his family.

Ogres are plains creatures because hungary is just one big plain and nothing else except maybe a lake here and there.