So I would like to poke at the brain of the group for a bit…
How do you guys do social situations/scores? I’ve had it happen twice now where the players go and negotiate services and offers for the other factions in return for claims rather than go and kick ass and take names. I’m fairly confident and competent about combat, sneaking, and everything else but I’m not sure what rolls to make in the situation and what kind of challenges to present for such a situation.
What do you guys think? Lend me your sage advice!
Social faux pas are the keys to worse positions.
Social rebuffs are the keys to social harm.
Social counteroffers and negotiations are the keys to complications.
All are potential ways to lose an opportunity.
Complications could be middlemen, unrealistic expectations/demands, loss of patience with negotiations, problematic/insulted underlings on either side, an unprecedented third party’s interests, etc. Hope this helps a bit.
Blaze Azelski Those are good suggestions and ideas for a roll’s complications and harms that can occur. I’m more finding it difficult to see how the initial situation starts and then how to get those first rolls coming and going.
All scores are supposed to have challenges of some sort, we have that fiction in our mind. A bank robbery has the security, innocent bystanders, the vault itself, and the get away. I’m curious what you all have had been the social complications that are in the way.
I can prejudices, the crew’s history, and other things being an issue. I’m just fishing for more inspiration.
I suppose one consideration is how one gets a meeting in the first place. Is it prearranged? If so, is there anyone who might object to your presence or try to keep you from the meeting?
Are your crew hoping to get a surprise visit in during a social event? If so, how do they navigate the many distractions, how do they convince the mark to give them time or hold their attention, etc.
Oh, you mean obstacles the crew has to overcome.
1. The guards/thugs outside, that want to harrass/inspect the outsiders that are meant to meet with their boss.
2. The intuition of their target contact. They have to earn his/her trust or respect before negotiations can begin in earnest.
3. The negotiation itself. How hard is it going to be for the crew to get what they want out of this person?
And possibly:
4. The lackeys that overheard negotiations. Do they agree with what their boss agreed to? What might they do if they don’t?
5. Another party that has an interest in the deal being invalidated/compromised. Do they come with threats/violence, or do they offer better deals to your target, or do they send spies that might report your meeting to the authorities?
All just some ideas.
Trick number one is to ask “why would this person even consider giving the PCs what they want” and then make it even harder. Under no circumstances I can imagine should anyone offer a claim in exchange for services – imagine what the PCs would do if someone said “we’ll do a job for you in exchange for one of your claims” – they’d laugh them off the block. NPCs should be no more generous.
Jason Lee I think that is covered by whatever plan it is that they decide to work upon for the engagement. I can see some interesting ideas with Stealth being used to quietly go into a place to discuss terms with someone.
Blaze Azelski those are all excellent suggestions. I’ll endeavor to keep them in mind the next time that the group goes with such a method.
I generally start with setting up two clocks, a Win condition and a Fail condition. In a recent example it was something like “Bob’s Confidence” vs. “Get Out of my Pub”. This was, as in your question, for a claim. The idea was they were going to the owner/operator of a drug den to convince him to throw in with them. The object was to convince him that he could make more money working with the Underset, and that they could protect him from reprisals from the current claim-holder, the Silver Nails.
In this case the clock was primarily filled not with Sway rolls, but with Tinker, cooking up a very potent alchemical “demonstration” of the product the Underset could provide.
That’s really the key, I think. As a GM you have to know what the target wants. A Sway roll might get you in the door, but it’s not going to answer on its own when the target wants them to prove they are good with a gun and sword, or show they have good taste in wines, or have a common interest in studying pre-Cataclysm artifacts. Have some challenge in mind, some thing that the target will want them to do or prove before he’ll hear them out.
Oh and in the case of claims, I think that generally you should aim your Social plan not at the faction that holds it, but at the work-a-day people who actually run it, which might not always be the same folks. The madame of a brothel run by the Billhooks isn’t likely herself a Billhook, just someone who pays them profits as protection money.
If you’re approaching another faction/gang looking to get a claim “peacefully” it should likely go more along the lines of “Sure we’ll give you the brothel, but first you gotta get us the Jewelled Oogly-Moogly from Lord Bowmore’s manor.” No one says you can’t negotiate a claim from a claim-holder, but I think the appropriate price for that is probably doing a job for them.
Mike Pureka truth…the social situations like this are my Achilles’s Heel. My players for my one game are too cautious and aren’t willing to butt heads and stir the water; war sounds too scary. So I’m just going to have to force it upon them 😀
I’ve also been considering this question. So far, I’m trying to develop an idea of a “social landscape” or “social terrain.”
As mentioned above, it’s easy to improvise obstacles and conflicts for physical scores like robbing a bank vault. What I call “physical” scores are the ones that are primarily solved with bodies and action. You sneak, you pick locks, you shank unsuspecting guards. In physical scores, you can easily imagine the terrain that stands between you and the objective. You overcome walls, slip through windows, bypass doors, ascend high towers, explore sub-basements, and open safes or jewelry boxes.
So I’m trying to think about “social terrain.” What arrangements of social relationships and events allow the scoundrels to “stand in front of the safe,” with the safe being the target of the social Score. Right now, the solution seems to be a unique relationship map for the Score that the PCs must alter and shift.
When the PCs start the Score, there should be a small number of NPCs and relationships in play like Factions, i.e. different NPCs start from +3 to -3 with each other. One or two of these relationships must point at the target of the social Score somehow. The goal, then, is to decide what changes are needed to “unlock” the situation that will allow the PCs access to the target. They’ve got to figure out the relationships during the Score, either through direct roleplaying or via Flashbacks.
For example, let’s say that Lord Scurlock is the target of the Score at a costume ball. Only one person at the ball who knows Scurlock well enough to arrange an introduction is Canter Haig. There are a few friends and enemies of Haig at the ball. For purposes of the example, Haig’s temporary, costume-ball relationship with the Dimmer Sisters needs to go to +2 or his relationship with a particular magistrate needs to go to -1. His Dimmer Sisters micro-relationship at the commencement of the Score starts at 0 and the magistrate’s at +1. Both of those parties are represented at the ball, as are one or two other Factions.
The idea is that the PCs need to engage the different NPCs and Factions surrounding Scurlock and Haig in order to arrange the introduction. Without it, they’d be either thrown out of the ball or laughed out of society for daring to approach Scurlock on their own. So they start to Survey and Sway, trying to figure out the different social threads that tie the situation together, and how to re-arrange them.
This idea probably requires a little more GM prep than Blades traditionally demands, but satisfying social situations and conflicts are much harder to improvise than physical ones.
Mike Hoyer Those are excellent ideas and I’ll need to use those more often.
Thank you all for the great ideas, I really like them and they’ll definitely help for the future <3
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Dave Turner that is awesome! I’ll definitely try that next time I can.
Jason Lee didn’t mention this, but a current score has us trying to romantically set up the Quartermaster of the Bluecoats with one of our crew members for faction gain. Because that’s a good idea.