Fantasy RPGs with good social systems

#21

Yeah, I’ve played Blades a few times.

The Towerlands setting I am building needs a system that can handle fantasy adventure, interpersonal interaction, small factions, and even kingdom building. I am still looking for a system that does all that.

I’m not sure that “roll dice; tick a clock” has the mechanical complexity I want. Characters should be able to learn how to be good at different kinds of political techniques. There should be political and social “stunts” or “feats” or whatever.

When I talk about the complexity of D&D combat (even, like, Basic D&D, but more like 5e), I’m not just talking about whittling down hit points, and I think reducing D&D combat to just hit-point accretion either does it a disservice or badly misunderstands its complexity. I assume that anyone in this thread who has played D&D will understand what I mean after a bit of thought, but I’ll break it down for anyone who genuinely doesn’t understand.

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#22

Sounds you maybe want to “steal” from Hearts of Wulin

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#23

I like the Encounter rules from The One Ring. They’re simple, don’t cover all of your bullet points and are kind of specific to the setting, but I feel they might still help with what you’re trying to do.

The two features that make them stand out to me are Introductions and Tolerance.

The former simply says that whoever wants to participate in a social situation has to introduce themself first. NPCs have a (usually secret, might be inferred though) preference of whether they wish to interact with a single spokesperson for the adventuring party or whether they’d like everyone to introduce themself.

Tolerance is either a number of rolls that the party may collectively fail until they’ve overstaid their welcome and the encounter ends. Or the number of rolls they are allowed to make/points they may raise (that’s a house rule variant I like). Calculating Tolerance counts in social standing, customs, the immediate situation and so on. There is another house rule variant, where the manner in which the encounter ends when the party runs out of Tolerance is cleverly tied to the lands they’re in. In Free Lands for example, there will be a polite close to conversations while in Shadow Lands you will be threatened with violence and essentially never talked to again.

[House rules by Ralph Mazza, Paul Beakley, Ara Winter. They’re probably still available from them.]

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#24

Or moves?

Blades is, of course specifically about scoundrels and would take some adapting to be what you want. Still, these moves are more than “roll dice, tick a clock”. The clock is to obstacles in Blades as hit points are to combat in D&D – the baseline that is changed by abilities. Instead of Sleep and Bless spells, we gotta look to the moves.

Here’s a few moves that do that, taken from the Blades online SRD:

Like looking into a mirror

You can always tell when someone is lying to you.

Leader

When you Command a cohort in combat, they continue to fight when they would otherwise break (they’re not taken out when they suffer level 3 harm). They gain +1 effect and 1 armor .

Mesmerism

When you Sway someone, you may cause them to forget that it’s happened until they next interact with you.

Subterfuge

You may expend your special armor to resist a consequence from suspicion or persuasion, or to push yourself for subterfuge.

Trust in me

You get +1d vs. a target with whom you have an intimate relationship.

Weaving the web

You gain +1d to Consort when you gather information on a target for a score. You get +1d to the engagement roll for that operation.

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#25

@Thomas_Junk I’ll peek at that!

@Julian That’s a very cool mechanic. Worth stealing and reusing for when I inevitably write my own game to do what I want.

@William_Nichols:

Yeah, that stuff is all cool, and I can see that it’s definitely more complicated than “one and done” systems for interpersonal interactions, but I don’t see how it handles any of the larger scale stuff I want to do.

I have a setting based on 1300 AD Hungary, which faced a ten-year interregnum during which time “Baron Palatines” (oligarchs) ruled giant swaths of the country and jockeyed to place their choice of dude on the throne. At least four different people made some claim to the throne, with the Pope backing one and a bunch of barons backing one other.

So I have to figure out how PCs can play kingmaker. Some of it may be by sword or by spell, but I think a lot of it can come down to influence peddling, and I want to model that fairly strongly. I could turn it into a series of a hundred NPC interactions but that’s probably not optimal.

I also have this idea of growing (PC) fame that I’d like to model somehow. Because of their deeds, PCs are literally impressing spirits into bonding with them, giving them power. If they can awe spirits, they’re probably gobsmacking villagers. I’d like to know how PCs can use their fame to sway crowds or organizations. The Leader move looks cool to make a cohort fight, but it doesn’t make them elect the 13-year-old girl as Queen of Junnia.

Make sense?

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#26

Okay, dude, this is awesome. The first page of the Moves document already addresses some of my “not psychopathic” social interaction concerns. Its heart is in the right place but it still treats NPCs as objects to be manipulated, but it’s a lot softer than a lot of mechanics.

(There seems to be this belief among game designers that you can just wield personal charisma as a sharp sword to make people do what you want, without consequence. Building rapport really doesn’t work that way.)

I do love the idea of essentially marking stress (“elements” in the text) when you won’t do what people are pressuring you to do, and then an Inner Conflict move that forces you to deal with the stress you’ve let build up.

I think there are some great ideas in Hearts of Wulin to mine for my inevitable game design quest.

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#27

hey Adam –

Nice. Agreed, you’re going to need new moves to fit the specific theme and scope you’re looking for. Regarding scope; that’s what tier is for, basically. The Faction game is all about what you’re thinking about, namely:
– It’s not wielded like a sword: If you don’t honor your commitments to other factions, they like you less. That is, if you treat an Ally like you don’t care about them, they will do the same.
– As Tier increases, so does your sway. A Tier 0 faction has gangs of a couple of people with crappy equipment and nobody knows them, while a Tier 4 faction has large gangs and a lot of sway.

Hearts of Wulin is likely also your jam! There’s a lot of good design out there to steal from.

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