We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.
I’ve been working on coming up with mechanics for social rolls in Q3E. Let me know what you think.
Fast Talking
This is the “Is that a rabbit over there?” type of persuasion: The character wants to elicit a somewhat specific, immediate response with a simple statement. Distractions, misdirections, and taunts would all fall into this category, and a basic resisted roll works fine here.
Haggling
Like fast talking, smooth talking is an attempt to achieve a specific result: to get the best price for something, to intimidate a mark into handing over their cash, or to convince someone to sleep with you. The main difference between haggling and fast talking is that haggling takes longer. Characters haggle by making a series of claims about whatever they’re arguing about.
A claim is anything that advances the argument of the person making the claim; A claim can consist of purportedly factual information (“this sword was forged from the sacred steel of the skystone”), a question (“doesn’t skystone steel normally have a bluish color?”), a compliment (“I’m only here because of your reputation as the finest smith in the city”) or anything else that the character thinks will help lead to their desired outcome. Players only roll when a new claim (including a significant adjustment to a previous claim) is made. If the GM feels that a claim is the same as one that’s already been made, no roll is made an no counters are earned.
- Someone makes the first claim. In most cases this will arise naturally from role-playing, but if there’s a question about who should start, the GM can make the call or have the players roll for it.
- The people involved make a resisted roll. The GM should impose situational modifiers if the claim being made is especially effective or weak. The player who wins the roll gets a token or counter, plus an additional token for each success.
- The character who didn’t make the claim responds. If they won the roll, they get to use their response to reject, downplay, or question the claim. If they lost the roll, they have to concede the claim (they admit that the sword looks like it’s made of skystone, admit that the sword isn’t the right color to be skystone, or appreciate the compliment of being called the best smith in the city).
- The character who won the roll gets to either make the next claim or pass. When multiple parties are involved, the winner chooses whom to pass to. If they have at least 3 more counters than the nearest competitor, they can declare the conversation over with the status quo maintained (no sale, the mark refused to hand over their wallet, or nobody gets laid).
- If the haggling is to continue, the winner of the roll (or the loser, if the winner passed) makes the next claim (or passes to another character, if more than two people are involved. Go back to #2 and repeat the process until someone ends the conversation or everyone passes.
- Once the haggling is complete, everyone counts up their tokens, and the GM uses the difference to determine the outcome: the more tokens the winner has compared to the losers, the better the outcome for them.
Negotiations
Negotiations are used for more complex situations when multiple issues must be resolved: a court case, a treaty, or a trade deal, for example. Negotiations use a tracker for each issue to be resolved. Since using a set of check boxes on paper would require constant marking, erasing, and re-marking, we suggest writing each issue on a note or index card and adding or removing counters to indicate the state of the tracker.
Setting up the trackers
To set up the tracker, the GM broadly defines several possible outcomes. In most cases, about 5 outcomes per issue works, but some issues may require more or less (if one of the issues is which character gets a magic ring, there are only 3 possible outcomes). The GM then connects each outcome to a specific tracker position: If there are 3 counters on the issue when negotiations end, this happens; if there are 5 counters, that happens. To keep things simple, make sure that the same characters benefit from more or fewer trackers on all issues. For example, if 5 counters on the “reparations” issue represents the maximum fine for the defendant, then 5 counters on the “sentence” issue should represent the maximum prison term as well. If there are 3 or more parties involved, choose one side to benefit from high tracker counts and one side to benefit from low tracker counts and put the best results for the other parties in the middle based on how favorable they are for the party at the high end.
When setting up the trackers, the GM should include a “status quo” result that represents what happens if negotiations go nowhere. The placement of this result depends on who benefits from the status quo. Sometimes it’s a full tracker, sometimes it’s an empty tracker, often it’s somewhere in the middle.
You can skip numbers when setting up the tracker results if it makes sense. For example, if the best result is significantly better than the second-best result, you can set the number of counters for the best result at 10 and the second best at 5. If there are 5-9 counters on the tracker when negotiations end, the second-best result happens.
[Since the example takes up a lot of real estate with Patreon’s formatting, I’ve stuck it at the bottom of the article]
The Negotiation
- Each issue starts with a number of trackers equal to the status quo result.
- Use the rules for haggling, but instead of adding counters to their own pile, the character who wins each roll may add a counter to or remove a tracker from any issue relevant to the current claim. Also, any player may choose to end the negotiation at any time and preserve the status quo whether they’re in the lead or not.
- Negotiations end when everyone agrees to the current terms, breaks off negotiations, or if there are no claims left to make. If there are more than two parties and one bows out, the remaining parties may continue to negotiate.
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is used for broader poltics, and is ultimately resolved using the negotiation rules. The difference is that the issue trackers are active and can be influenced before the parties involved meet to hash things out. Whenever one side does something that will help them in the upcoming negotiation, the GM decides whether the action moves a tracker or gives an advantage. In the first case, the tracker is moved one step toward the desired outcome of the person taking the action. In the latter case, the character gets 1 point of Leverage. During the negotiation, Leverage can be used exactly like Yum Yums.
Tracker Setup Example
Three gang leaders meet to hash out some business between their crews. There are several issues to be resolved:
- The Dagger Hill Boys want a bigger cut from the Pick & Lantern Gang for moving their drugs.
- The Chicken Hoppers want the Dagger Hill Boys to stop dealing on their turf (Toad’s Corner).
- The Dagger Hill Boys want the Chicken Hoppers to give them a cut of a heist that they were planning. The Chicken Hoppers got wind of the scheme and beat the Dagger Hill Boys to it.
- The Pick & Lantern wants the Chicken Hoppers to use their inside men in the caravan ward to help smuggle spite bat venom into the city.
The GM decides to let the Dagger Hill Boys benefit from high trackers and the Chicken Hoppers benefit from low trackers. The trackers look like this:
Dagger Hill Boys’ cut of profits:
- 4 counters: 20% increase
- 3 counters: 10% increase
- 2 counters: No change (status quo result)
- 1 counters: 10% decrease (This is the best result for the Pick & Lantern Gang)
- 0 counters: The Pick & Lantern Gang cuts the Dagger Hill Boys off entirely.
Dagger Hill Boys dealing on Chicken Hopper turf:
- 4 counters: Business as usual. (status quo result; this is also the Pick & Lantern Gang’s desired outcome, since it’s their drugs the Dagger Hill Boys are selling)
- 3 counters: Dagger Hill Boys agree to minor limits on their activities (no dealing on festival days).
- 2 counters: Dagger Hill Boys agree to major limits on their activities (they will still sell to existing customers, but will not attempt to mint new ones).
- 1 counter: Dagger Hill Boys agree not to sell in Toad’s Corner, but will continue to sell to people from the neighborhood if they come to the Dagger Hill Boys.
- 0 counters: Dagger Hill Boys agree not to sell in Toad’s Corner or to any Toad’s Corner resident.
Heist Reparations
- 5 counters: The Chicken Hoppers and The Dagger Hill Boys split the loot 50/50.
- 3-4 trackers: The Chicken Hoppers give the Dagger Hill Boys 25% of the loot.
- 1-2 counters: The Chicken Hoppers give the Dagger Hill Boys a 10% finder’s fee.
- 0 counters: The Chicken Hoppers give the Dagger Hill Boys nothing (status quo result)
The Pick & Lantern Gang really doesn’t have a dog in this fight.
Chicken Hoppers Smuggling Venom for Pick & Lantern Gang
- 4-5 counters: Chicken Hoppers agree to smuggle venom. The Dagger Hill Boys are contracted to act as couriers between Caravan Ward to Little Hegyembi.
- 2-3 counters: Chicken Hoppers agree to smuggle the venom, but the Dagger Hill Boys have no part in the deal. (Best result for the Pick & Lantern Gang–they can still use the Dagger Hill Boys to transport the venom, but aren’t obligated to do so).
- 0-1 counters: The Chicken Hoppers refuse to work for the Pick & Lantern Gang (status quo result)
