Social Interaction Mechanics that I want

I'm busy lately, but my thoughts keep returning to social interactions and my current ideals of their design. I've written it multiple times in various chats, so I'm thinking instead of repeating myself, I'll make a blog post on this that I can link to in the future.

Art for the Ghosts in the Saltmarsh, by Zoltan Boros.

"Social Combat?"

When I mention that I want my game to have "social interaction mechanics", people normally assume that what I seek is to turn a conversation into a minigame, into what I call "social combat". In combat, participants have AC that needs to be overcome with attack rolls in order to reduce the participant's HP to 0, eliminating them from the combat. Swap the labels out, and you get a debate minigame, right? Well... that's what they assume, which is why their responses boil down to two categories:

• The (insert name) TTRPG does this,
• Players prefer social interaction to be freeform.

I tried the "social combat" rules before, and personally, I didn't like them. Maybe I was running them wrong, but it felt too stilted and unnatural.

So, no. I don't want Social Combat per se. You can keep your Duels of Wits in the Burning Wheel and other types of social combat. I'm not saying they are bad, they are just not what I seek.

Perhaps the mistake I made while running social combat was that I required players to say something with every argument. Welp, hindsight is 20/20.
Argument in the Council, by Concept-Art-House

"D&D is fine with no social interaction mechanics."

I'm sorry, but I feel tired when I hear this. The conversation in this case usually goes something like this:

"D&D is fine with no social interaction mechanics."

"But it does have social interaction mechanics."

"... yeah, I guess Charisma checks count."

"No, even beyond that."

"Like... the Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws?"

"No, like detect thoughts, telepathy, zone of truth, speak with dead, and so on."

My recent conversation on the topic with Cael was rather illuminating. His labels might not be what people universally use, but they do feel accurate to my experience discussing social interaction mechanics. The big distinction I was ignoring so far was what he labeled "mechanics" and "content". The way I understood his explanation, "content" is game mechanics that aren't shared by all the players. AC, saving throws, rules for hiding and grappling and moving around, ... all these are accepted by the players as "mechanics", whereas class features, racial/species features, backgrounds, spells, and other things that only some have are all considered something separate by the players, distinct from that, "content". I find the distinction silly, but it does line up with the conversations I had on the topic so far.

I don't want to make it a separate article section, so I'll say it here. I love and hate detect thoughts, and suggestion the same way I love and hate rogues in 5e. Each of these is too good not to take. Mind reading is a solution to 90% of Insight checks and/or interrogations, suggestions a swiss army knife of solutions for social interactions unless the target has an immunity to the charmed condition and Rogue... look, does rolling 20+ on (insert skill here) get you anywhere? Of course it does!

Information Management

Here's my hypothesis: the two main sources of drama are managing who knows what, and seeing what will they do about it. This is a formula I figured out a year ago when I wrote my first entry for the One Page RPG Jam 2023, though I don't remember if I spelled the formula out the same way I did here. Skimming some of the article, it seems I was thinking the same things back then too, though my experiment arrived at a different conclusion there.

So, what do I want? I want to give the players the tools for guiding social interaction, tipping the favors, and so on. Mechanizing what the players will do about information is pointless - that's already part of the game unless they are on a strict railroad. What the players need a lot more to generate drama and interesting social interactions are mechanics for information management - manipulation of what information is known to which people, and who knows about these people knowing this information. Some categories for these include:

• Information gathering without others knowing (eavesdropping*, hiding*, scrying/clairvoyance, invisibility, seeing through another's senses, hidden cameras/microphones/drones/familiars, hacking, analysis of online activity, ...)
• Information transfer without others knowing (whispers*, written messages, codes, hand signs, invisible ink, telepathy, lie detection, ...)
• Information gathering prevention (distraction*, darkness, making a person enter/leave a room, illusions, holograms, simple lies, forged evidence or documents, ...)
• Information transfer prevention (silence, shut down a device, ...)
• Mass information transfer (shouting*, online broadcasts, speakers/megaphones, mass telepathy, rumors, displaying something on the sky or somewhere else very visible, ...)

* I know these (and some others that aren't marked) are things people could do normally, but I knew these categories are broad enough to warrant listing, and it'd feel weird if they weren't listed there.

I'm not sure if these categories are sufficient or not, but so far it's looking quite promising. Of course, I could explore more, but I'm not sure if it's all that worth it. If I were to make the exact opposites of all categories, I would get: information gathering with others knowing (watching/listening without hiding it), information transfer with others knowing (openly stating something), allowing information gathering (so... not preventing someone from listening?), allowing information transfer (letting two characters talk?), and information transfer to a small number of people (talking). All of these are something people can already do, no special game mechanics are needed there.

That being said, how about we add some universal guidelines to social interaction? I tried to make up mechanics for the volume of sounds a couple months back for my own game, but I'm afraid they are too complicated. Time to come up with something simpler.

Earshot Rules

Sometimes it's unclear which of the PCs' words can be heard by which NPCs, so let's work on that. As a starting point, how about the baseline rule that I want to be true?

You can hear a conversation that takes place in a small room that you are in. You can hear whispers only if you are right next ot the whisperer.

In my systems, the room is a couple of areas, so "room" is more along the lines of theatre of mind. If the room is too big, you won't be able to hear a conversation that happens on the other side of it. Let's establish three types of environments, and how far away can sounds be heard depending on their volume in the environment:

Environment	Quiet	Moderate	Loud
Quiet sound	1	0	0
Moderate sound	3	2	1
Loud sound	5	4	3

The distance is measured in areas, which I've been using for my games for a while now. If the distance is 0, you need to be physically close to the source of the sound to register it, and actively listen to it to understand it. Decrease the distance by 1 for a Tiny source of sound, and increase the distance by 1 for a Large source of sound. I don't think I've posted formal definitions for those on the blog yet, so let's say for now that a Tiny thing can be easily held in a hand by a human, and a Large thing is one that multiple humans could fit into. Of course, at GM's discretion, exceptions can apply.

A simple way to turn the table into an equation is to start with a 2 (assuming both the environment and the sound are Moderate), and then apply the following:

• +1 if the environment is Quiet, -1 if the environment is loud,
• -2 if the sound is Quiet, +2 if the sound is loud,
• -1 if the sound source is Tiny, +1 if the sound source is Large,
• apply exceptions at GM's discretion,
• 0 if the final distance is less than 0.

Examples of sounds and environments based on the volume categories

• Quiet: silent room, whispers, footsteps, ...
• Moderate: a conversation in a casual volume, rainfall, ...
• Loud: shouting, speakers/megaphones, heavy machinery, ...

Let's see a couple of examples.

• A ball is happening at the king's palace (Moderately loud environment, +0), and your character is trying to eavesdrop on a conversation that the lords are having (Moderate sound, +0). One of the lords is Tiny in size though (-1), so to get the full conversation, you need to be (2+0+0-1=) 1 area away.
• At night, you break into a building that's closed for the night and empty (Quiet environment, +1). The cops are onto you though, so they are outside, using a megaphone to get your attention (Loud sound, +2). Despite it being Tiny, let's say the GM makes an exception and says it gets a +1 bonus instead because the device is literally made to be loud (+1). You can hear the cops (2+1+2+1=) 6 areas away.

Are the new rules simple? Somewhat. Are they easy? Certainly easier than what I originally wrote, the original rules would have you measure the volume of everything, comparing them and seeing which one is the loudest. Though I'll have to test this in practice and see if it's actually simpler or not and if it feels accurate. A speaker that can only be heard 6 areas away sounds rather mediocre for now, so we'll see. Maybe Loud sounds could spread without a limit in a Quiet environment, or maybe I could come up with a new category for loud sounds that would have no distance limit.

Social interaction is rooted in drama. Drama is about managing who knows what, and what they do about it. Players already have ways of deciding what to do about things, which is why I believe the social interaction pillar should be primarily about information management. Charisma could be neat for skipping unnecessary conversations, but then again it also decides the conclusion of an important conversation, so I want to drop it and give players tools instead. You may think you need to convince the guards to let you into the palace, but maybe they'll let you in if you feign a common hatred for (insert fantasy creature here). Maybe a merchant trying to blackmail you could be silenced somehow.

That's about it for my opinions on social interaction mechanics. I want them, and I've struggled for a while with coming up with them, but I feel like I have a decent framework right now. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!