The Problem with Social Skills

There are many problems with translating social encounters into roleplaying game rules. Among the most commonly discussed is whether a player should roleplay the scene or just roll the dice; this article is not about that debate. The problem presented here is that of diversification. Quite simply, there are too many social skills.

Variety is Not Always the Spice of Life

In games such as GURPS or Shadowrun, every action is covered by a skill. If you want to run, you roll your running skill; if you want to attack something, you roll your weapon skill; and if you want to talk at something, you roll your social skill. Or you would, if there weren't a wide variety of social skills for every situation.

Let's say you want to talk your way past a guard. How do you accomplish this? You can puff yourself up, make threatening gestures, and try to scare him into fleeing his post and leaving you free to stroll casually past; that would be Intimidation. You can bat your eyelashes, run your tongue along your upper lip, and try to make sure the blood is flowing away from the “remember not to let people past” part of his brain; this would be Seduction. You can begin jabbering, throwing in big words, and try to convince him to let you past before his brain catches up with your mouth; that would be Fast Talk. You can Bluff, Persuade, Con, Impersonate, Perform, Negotiate, or a variety of others.

Some games go even further. In Burning Wheel, for instance, if you want to convince someone to help you, that's Persuasion. If you want to convince that person to give you money, that's Begging, instead. If you're trying to convince multiple people at once, that's Oratory. Unless you're in a formalized setting, in which case you'd use Rhetoric. Except when that formalized setting is religious, in which case you'd need the Suasion skill.

Are you using blackmail to help you persuade the person? Because that requires the Extortion skill. If you're using threats, that's Intimidation, but the moment you make good on those threats you need the Torture skill. There's even a skill for telling the truth! Is it any wonder the game has almost two dozen social skills?

So What's the Problem?

In our above example, where you need to convince a guard to let you pass, the problem isn't readily apparent. What if, instead, you were attending a formal event when suddenly, gasp, you find yourself face-to-face with the evil Duke Malfaisant! You need to convince him to let your kidnapped cousin go, but he's surrounded by his guards and, further, there are countless witnesses watching, eagerly awaiting your humiliation. You can't use Intimidation, likely won't be able to Bluff, and probably shouldn't try Seduction. As your options dwindle, the chances that you've put resources into the correct skill decrease along with them. Did you take Etiquette, or Negotiation? If not, you might just be out of luck.

Now, let's say you're in the slums of Cityville meeting with a drug lord in an effort to convince him to leave Cityville for greener pastures. Etiquette won't do you any good this time. After trying Intimidation, and inevitably failing, you try to convince his second-in-command to betray him. He's more scared of the boss than of you, so you'll need to try something else entirely. Seduction? Well, now his wife is irate and you need to placate her, possibly with Fast Talk.

Compare all of this to combat. Are you trained in the Sword skill? That'll cover you in just about any situation: it's amazing how useful a pointy bit of metal is when trying to kill things. You might also need a ranged weapon, such as Archery. Now you can handle 99% of all combat scenarios for the low, low price of two skills.

In games like D&D this isn't a problem, as it is assumed that every character will be equally good at combat, and the variation comes in what's happening when things aren't trying to murder-kill you. But in a game where some characters specialize in talking while others specialize in fighting, the inherent imbalance begins to show through. If you're playing a social character in Burning Wheel, you'll need half a dozen social skills, taking up the vast majority of your limited resources; the fighter just takes Appropriate Weapon, likely at a much higher rating, and still has plenty of skill points to throw around.

You're Right! What do I do?

The bad news is, this is a problem of game design. There is very little a GM or player at the table can do to ameliorate it. The good news is, very little doesn't mean “nothing”.

If this imbalance doesn't bother you, you can just ignore it. As long as everyone at the table is having fun, you're playing the game correctly. Maybe you don't ever roll social skills, maybe nobody is playing a social character, or maybe the person playing the party's Face doesn't mind having a different social skill for every day of the week. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If the player with the talkative character is frequently frustrated by her comparative ineffectiveness, measures must be taken. Here are three possible solutions to the problem, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

The Walking Armory

The first possible solution is to design your campaign in such a way that the fighter types can't get away with having just one or two weapon skills. It's up to you whether you do this by throwing in enemies with specific resistances (the skeleton's resistance to cutting weapons, for example), by situations requiring more concealable weapons intermixed with situations which require the big guns, or any other way you can imagine. It brings the fighter type up to the same level as the social type in terms of how many skills are required to be good at her job.

The advantage is that it's relatively easy to execute; you can even do so in the middle of a campaign. However, there are two big problems with this approach.

The first is that it increases the complexity of the game. Combat is already typically the most rules-heavy portion of a roleplaying game, and requiring the players to determine which weapon to use at any given time just adds to that. It can also bog down character creation, requiring a mental checklist to ensure that every possible circumstance is accounted for with an appropriate weapon. And if you introduce the change after character creation, expect a lot of complaints about how it's not fair to require so many new skills without warning.

The second problem is that, unlike social skills, each weapon skill comes attached to a physical representation: a weapon. While it's easy to carry around a variety of social skills in your head, it's not so easy to tow around a greatsword, longbow, warhammer, sling, spear, knife and bullwhip. Even if you're not using encumbrance rules, it really strains the verisimilitude of the game.

Ten Points in the Talking Skill

The second solution goes in the opposite direction. Rather than increasing the variety of weapon skills required to be a fighter, you can reduce the number of social skills required to be effective at talking to things.

This is the approach taken by most games. Savage Worlds has just four social skills: Intimidation, Persuasion, Streetwise, and Taunt. FATE has Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, and Rapport. Few, if any, actually go to the extreme of reducing the number of social skills to just one or two; it just wouldn't be satisfying to have a “Talking” skill that covers everything.

The advantage is that it simplifies things, making it easier on the players and GM both. It's also easy to implement after the game has already started: simply reduce the number of skills and refund the player however many skill points were spent on skills which no longer exist.

The problem is that it's hard to go far enough to truly balance the disparity. You can still get away with taking just one combat skill, but there are multiple social skills that may be required. This solution simply closes the gap.

Furthermore, it may be disappointing to limit social skills. If seduction, bluffing, fast-talking, bribery, and more are all covered by one Persuasion skill, it gets harder to differentiate one character from another.

When All You Have is a Hammer...

The third simple solution is to keep the variety of social skills but allow each one to be applied to almost any situation. This is the easiest solution of all, because it doesn't require a change of rules or in how the GM prepares for each session. It allows each social character to feel very different, while still retaining their effectiveness at what they do.

The problem is that it strains believability. Will a character really be able to always Seduce or Intimidate his way out of any situation? If using this approach, yes he will, provided he rolls high enough.

What about consequences? If the GM penalizes you for using one social skill instead of another, you're right back to needing to spend points on multiple skills to be effective; if she doesn't introduce consequences, your choice to use Intimidation instead of the nicer Persuasion doesn't really matter in the end.

Advanced Talking

There are other potential solutions, such as introducing ways (and requirements) for other skills to apply in combat, or changing the way social mechanics work entirely. These would require rolling up your sleeves and getting into the very guts of your game system of choice. At the end of the day, there is no easy way to fix this problem.

Unless you can think of one.