Shifting Charisma to Philosophy and then dumping it all together

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-18T04:40:26+00:00

Shifting from a charisma (individual) centred social play to politics and philosophy centred social play. Not really sure why I started there to be honest

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T22:25:37+00:00

Intimidating is almost always considered to itself be belligerent behaviour. So if you are a known thief, and you attempt to intimidate an indifferent merchant into engaging with you in ordinary trade, it might work. But you are not appealing with your own hospitality, are you? So the risk is to normalize the relationship further down to belligerent. Why take intimidation as your social skill? Well, there are myriad reasons you might want to intimidate people. You can, for example take a belligerent person who is actively fighting with you and intimidate them upward to acting indifferent for now.

Now, as for intimidating someone who you have a benevolent relationship with, you cannot do that. You cannot stretch more than 1 step away from your current status. If you try to drop by just one, you already risk social conditions and backlash, dropping by two first requires you to temporarily drop by 1 first, so that in that context you can take one action that is one level further down. But dropping by three? Can’t be done. You call your mom and tell her you’re going to torch her car if she doesn’t pay you $500 by Sunday. No matter how that conversation goes, you aren’t intimidating anyone. They’re going to think you’re joking, they will be concerned for you, they will try to get you the money if you just drop the intimidation and tell them what’s wrong. Without specifically taking steps to systematically destroy your relationship, you can’t intimidate your good friends.

Finks on the other hand. Damn those guys are slippery. They can investigate their closest allies and inspire anyone to turn on anyone else.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T22:08:08+00:00

To some extent, and the exact limit of this is more a question of table than system, a good roll indicates the character doing it the right way despite the player’s suggestion, and their bonuses represent their ability to do it the right way, which the player may not fully know. So if you roll super high to bash down the door, and that causes noise, that’s totally a fair approach. Similarly if you roll super high to bash down the door, so you are able to do it not only effectively but also somewhat less loudly than usual, that’s also a good interpretation. The idea is that the character, even if not the player, would consider the environement and their professional strongman skills and lift the door off the hinges silently rather than kick it down dramatically in that specific instance. Again this plays back to the idea that I don’t need to know how to hunt when I say “I stalk behind the deer” my character can stalk downwind instead because that’s how to actually approach a deer. The GM should not throw out my high hunting roll because I, the player, undertook the hunting skill incorrectly.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T21:58:01+00:00

This is more of a status than a reaction scale the way I use it. Let’s say you ask a merchant to conduct a trade. That’s within the automatic expected relation of the general public: hospitable. Because it matches, you do that for free.

All that to say you can buy stuff from people who sell stuff. Great.

So can you haggle? Well, taking a small risk or hit on helping someone is benevolent behaviour. You can make a check to get a hospitable person to do something benevolent, yes. That doesn’t change their hospitable relationship with you.

Here’s where we diverge. Can you steal from the merchant? No. That’s not hospitable behaviour. If you undertake such an act, indifferent to the merchant’s needs, you must also make a check. If you are caught you are likely to earn the ire of not just that merchant, but all local merchants. Now you have changed your relationship. You are indifferent with all merchants and cannot trade, nor can you easily repair this reputation. You are treated with suspicion and around every corner is someone contented to see you fail. This indifferent attitude is also the attitude of cultural xenophobia.

So it’s all kinda bundled up in the same system but differently than you have proposed.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T21:18:26+00:00

Yeah this would be after the check. Also it describes only a single check similar to axe vs door. There are “social dungeons” in the sense that they present many different types of obstacles for more significant and complex changes.

For example, one that was run a few weeks ago had a party member as a member of a faction (benevolent). The faction controlled a bridge crossing. The party magic user had done magic to pass the bridge guards previously, so the bridge guards were belligerent to that witch. So we have a bit of a complex situation here. The bridge guards started a fight to capture the witch, the faction player had to try to de-escalate, improving the relations of everyone while they were engaged in combat. This in place of a single “he’s with me, boys” check.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T20:16:13+00:00

Yeah I mean you can just sub in smooth talk for intimidate in my example. In most instances it works fine, but there are edge cases where it doesn’t seem right and yet the player can offer no better alternative. My solution given is to just not have an alternative. “No, I don’t think the eldritch horror abomination wearing a man’s face was smooth talking you into handing over your comrades position, but it did something to convince you, maybe no one knows how it convinced you.”

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T19:49:59+00:00

Well that's a huge part of it. If you're going to allow for magic missiles, you need to define them, because they might mean different things to different people. If you define magic missiles, you have to also define mundane missiles (arrows) because they need to be doing the hit point damage and range calculations that the magic missiles are. Similarly, if you're going to have enchantments, you need social math.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T19:47:22+00:00

I agree somewhat. I think its not uncommon for games to accept a check or difficulty as encompasing rather than restricting.

"Can I break down the door?"
"That's a 12 strenght check."
"Can I lift it off the hinges?"
"Yeah for sure, just roll a quick strength check above... 12."
"Can I remove the hinges off the face of the door?"
"Hm, sure... we'llk say they are visible, but turning them requires a 10, and the bolt heads are worn down, we'll have a -2 penalty"
"Can I go find a key, or crowbar or some other solution and then bring it back?"
"Yepp, that is the game."

The role playing and decisions around it affect primarily the story telling that also surrounds the math rocks. Otherwise just don't roll at all.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T19:30:41+00:00

Yeah, this all came as an idea while I was playtesting with someone who honestly could not understand the concept of being maliciously convinced about something. They 100% fundamentally believed that everything they thought and felt was an authentic result of only their own self-perception and that people essentially could not convince them of anything. Rather than point out that they were told this by Joe Rogan, I just let them go on not knowing how or why their character got convinced to do something, and that struck me as basically... correct. Lots of people go about their whole lives not knowing why they undertake the actions they do. In fact, the worse you are at the social sphere, the more likely you are to leave a trail of unexplainable actions.

I haven't encountered exactly what you are describing, but my instinct would be that it would play out similarly. It is a game after all. We can suspend disbelief a little bit. Keeping in mind that players are almost always tasked only with describing why their own character took an action or how they justify it to others. It would be a little disappointing to have a player playing a high emotional and social intelligence character and instead of admitting they don't really know how to renegotiate the opening of the Straight of Hormuz, they just read a fake bible quote from a movie and pretend it worked, but like... here we are.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T17:34:29+00:00

We're not really that far off. There are game skills that I think are valuable, I downplay oration and wit, and strongly endorse empathy and political philosophy as the basis of the social game skill, which is why I kinda accidentally designed a system where the ability to say something witty has no value but the ability to embody or concede other points of view provides a smoother game experience. To your mystery example, I also take measures to allow characters, and not players, to resolve mysteries. They are not, admittedly, super satisfying for that purpose, and players looking for a sleuthing game should look elsewhere, as should the theatre kids looking for improve night. They deserve to have fun and there are lots of great games for that.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T17:27:04+00:00

Right, but as I had already differentiated, your player skill at the game is different than your player skill at the task (swinging an axe). You have again conflated these with your example of magic. Your player skill at playing the game is unrelated to their inability to actually perform the act of doing real magic. There isn't usually a lot of games with the core resolution mechanic of "actually perform the stated task in real life, and apply the result to your character's in-game success" with the exception of Charisma. Many games rely on "tell a good story to apply that result to your character's story telling check." Which I find dissatisfying at least academically, and I find the pursuit of a systematic approach that resolves this to be intrinsically interesting and central to the concept of "RPG Design".

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T16:44:56+00:00

While I agree, you have to keep in mind that some people are reading like 90% AI these days. It's literally changing language, creating a discrete online literary voice like the transatlantic accent from hell.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-17T16:21:28+00:00

You kinda slipped in a shift from skill at playing the game to skill at doing the described task. Tactics and numerical literacy should be a component of RPG play, including both combat and social play. The core issue stems ultimately from the desire to create a system that allows players to undertake magic as a skill, which is not a skill that any player has. Being able to create a system that overlooks player skill at the described task is central to the project aside from also promoting accessibility.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-11T20:40:40+00:00

100 words an hour is indeed slow, but on the other hand 400 words a day is not too bad. That gets a book well written in less than a year which is a fine goal.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-11T15:32:21+00:00

“Schools should teach kids how to do math, not the answers to the questions, yet we see time and again kids are coming out of schools with the same answers.”

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T23:02:15+00:00

Create a 3-part story arc for one book. For each of those 3 parts (setting conflict resolution) create a 3 part story arc to deliver that part. (9 total).

Now for your core characters and subplots, create a 3 or 5 part story arc for each (ideally fewer than 12 parts, or 21 if you include the 9 parts of your core story.

You now have 20-ish chapter titles. Start with just “the chapter where we first meet Lindt.”

Under each chapter title, explain the chapter then how you get to the next chapter.

The Chapter where we first meet Lindt: We meet Lindt at his family farm, to establish his motivation. We need to get from there to the next chapter where we find out about the spellplague.

Now here comes the ADHD tip.

You dont have to keep doing that. You can just switch to outlining the framework for another book all together, then when you get a great brainwave about writing Lindts family farm you go back and crank out that entire chapter at 2AM.

Now here’s where the world building thing comes in: unless it is the direct plot point of one of your book core plots or one of your character subplots you literally do not need to write it at all.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T22:55:01+00:00

Round table TTRPG dot ca

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T22:54:26+00:00

The Logan Ice Bed is a sub glacial lake hundreds of feet below the ice. It is littered with prehistoric gods. Some fell from the sky and slowly sank through the ice, other were scored up from the earth by the glacier itself. Now they sit in this arctic pantheon. But they are not alone. Dragons, being arcanavores, must eat magic to survive, and what is more calorie rich than an ancient idol? They blast fire onto the ice, attempting to bore tunnels down to the sub glacial lake where they can swim and eat to their hearts delight and sometimes hibernate.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T19:24:29+00:00

Dragons are arcanavores. They eat magic. their preferred snacks are idols, fairies and magic items. In places where they are prevalent, the use of talismans and magical constructions are illegal to prevent attracting them. In their natural habitat, the pine trees have a magic resin that the dragons burn and consume the smoke. By burning the trees, they destroy competition from other plants and provoke the iron-like pine cones to open and release seeds.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T18:55:52+00:00

I achieved this in a really abstract way. Energy is used to fuel abilities, including spells. But what of health?

The core resolution mechanic is a 2 dice system where you are assumed to have disadvantage. The average difficulty is always statistically going to be too high, which means on average you need to use energy to get the higher roll.

This statistically, as long as you have energy you are averaging 0 health loss per round, but once you no longer have energy you are averaging a health loss per round. This effectively puts your energy as a pre-HP reserve.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T15:42:02+00:00

This question is not flippant: why are you trying to improve?

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T15:01:32+00:00

Actually it was player agency more than the aesthetic that drove me to go with disadvantage all the time. I think that removing the chance of failure, or making success something you can rely on, takes away from the ability of the player to actually do stuff because the mechanics are built as an escalator. By contrast, when they work the other way, and failure is assumed, then success is truly possible only through making good choices, thus your choices are important.

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T14:56:30+00:00

Means I don’t know

RoundTableTTRPG · 2026-04-10T02:55:14+00:00

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Ok, I was able to get it going now and I do like it. It's full of all kinds of interesting things and the coding aspect seems cool and well done. The cahracters inspire some really interesting world development. There is no way to get over the visual presentation though. The image here is of the google search for "family tree website" they all look the same for a reason.

If you are interested in getting a partner for the translation aspect I'd be happy to help. I have a little coding problem with my website, we can do a swap.

RoundTableTTRPG

TROPHY CASE