Social Skills Refund

[stevie]

A new rule for Social Skills. Stones must be allocated, but will be refunded before the next turn.

This is to show that speaking itself dosnt take much energy, but speaking with style and purpose can take a degree of effort and focus. Focus is the main point.

Whatchu guys reckon?

[Ricochet]

I think that would work. Good idea.

[mako]

Finally sounds like a Social Skills change that would...

A) Reflect the fact speaking is virtually effortless
B) Reflect the fact that trying for something specific when speaking requires effort.

I've seen a couple attempts to change Social Skills that weren't as good. Such as simply making Social Skills a value that's used, but no stone use. Someone could use full force of Social Skills every time they belch that way.

[dagonex]

So this way you would still have to spend stones in Social Skills (limiting how much you could put into another Action) yet you'd receive all of them back by the next Panel in addition to your normal stone regeneration, correct?

I love it. Simple and effective.

[piratespice]

Interesting idea. As much as I want it to be, Social Skills just isn't as useful as other, similarly-priced Actions. This could very well make it worthwhile. Good idea. I'd love to hear how this playtests (and I'll try to do so, myself).

EDIT: Though I wish to add something. While I think I like the mechanic, be careful of using the justification that "speaking" takes less effort. Social Skills isn't speaking, it is social manipulation. That doesn't always involve speaking, and almost always involves a variety of other factors (e.g. body language, material enticements, setting "da mood," etc.).

I like this for the balance it brings to the mechanics. But if you justify it by saying speaking takes less effort, you open the door for refunds on a whole host of other "effortless" Actions that really don't deserve them.

'Nuff said.

[stevie]

Dagonex: Thats spot on, yehah.

Pirate Spice: It is a bit of a "thin end of the wedge" scenario. With social skills, with it being such a potentially major action that is underused due to it being a waste of energy, it needs fixing more than, say, General Knowledge or Concentration would. I guess we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.

[Kaimontfendo]

I'm not too keen on making special rules like this. If you start making too many, you end up having a bunch of different actions, each with a different set of rules to keep track of, and it makes things more complicated than they really need to be.

There are a few other ways one could deal with this problem.
1. Allow players to purchase a social skills modifier.
2. Give characters a hefty Sit. Mod. for having an appropriate specialty. (My personal favorite)
3. Give characters a Sit. Mod. based on the words they use.
4. Give them free stones up to their social skills AN, and allow them to add more from their energy reserve if they feel they need to.

Personally, I haven't found a need to reduce the cost of using social skills yet. I'm more concerned with how a character is supposed to be able to tell if someone's lying or not. (Somehow, the example of Matt Murdock as a human polygraph doesn't help much.)

[stevie]

kaimontfendo said:

I'm not too keen on making special rules like this. If you start making too many, you end up having a bunch of different actions, each with a different set of rules to keep track of, and it makes things more complicated than they really need to be.

You mean like,when they bring a supplementary rule book out?

I see your concerns though. A social skills modifier has been talked about before, but I dont think it would be a good representation. Say you had a SS mod of 5. A rule bending player would basically have unlimited scope to spoil the shots of anyone with a low intelligence, whenever they liked. Indeed, Nightcrawler is quite the charmer, but still having access to his powers of persuesion while using 2 actions to combine teleport and close combat dosnt really seem in the style of the game.
I suppose you could have a rule for the modified saying "must be combined with Social Skills [action] but that kind of negates the simplicity your trying to achieve.

Sitmoding is one of my favourite tools also, although people tend to have more control over what they say, and this isnt really reflected in relying on sitmods. On a personal note, I hate when players ask for sitmods, unless they have spent (and can show me) considerable effort to set themselves up for one.

Your 3rd point, I see no reason why that cant be done in conjunction with the refund rule, or indeed the current rules.

Your final point I dont quite follow. The refund essentially gives them free stones as is, without it being too overpowered. Are you saying that its essentially like acrobatics, in that you get your AN in resistance to falling, plus the stones you allocate?
I think that would be a nifty (but ought to be expensive) option.

I dont want to overpower SS, but I want to promote its use abit more.what I tried to do was increase its value for money without superpowering it.

Man, this is fun!

[Brainstem]

Hm, I said it in the other thread and I'll say it here... I'm more of a proponent of not using it actually as an action you place stones into, but rather judged on a situation to situation circumstance. It would require the GM to determine certain things, such as how difficult the situation would be to handle and what an acceptable rating to have the player put into it, with a maximum of the AN. To be fair, I'm a major proponent of Free Form Gaming... Basically I'm not as much into how much stones a person puts into an action as much as I'm interested in the effect of what the character does on the story. Basically... if a player doesn't put much effort into an action, it's more than likely going to fail; conversely, if a player seems to be putting a lot into an action, it's going to succeed.

~Steve~

[stevie]

I dig free form gaming too, although I get the impression that most of the games I play in stick with the stones. I dunno, yeah, your way would be easier certainally. Its a different house ruling really.

[sgingell]

stevie said:

Whatchu guys reckon?

I'm not sure I would use it, but I think it is a really clever and innovative mechanic.

I've been thinking about making everyone buy intelligence energy as well as durability energy to solve the "Can't fight, too tired from talking" problem, but that is a pretty extreme modification. You're way is pretty graceful and cool.

-Stephen

[quixoteles]

I hve plyed a game where they explain the social graces very well. One of the things they mention is that social skills are about connections. The social skills action in this game is similar to burning wheels circles. Cirlcles allow you to have authorship over the game. You as player can make up connections to thing behind the scenes, call in favors, pull strings, pierce red tape and procure services. It allows for a player to say things like, "Where in Russia? I know a guy in Russia that knows exactly how to..." All they have to do is invest the stones. The GM I suppose in this case would use the fortress part of the D/R chart to determine difficulty and resistance. Well what else would the use.