Social interaction is one of the facets of play that has long been somewhat contentious. There are those who maintain that all social interaction should be left up to the people at the table and completely free of any mechanical consideration. There are those who recognize that player capabilities vary greatly and without mechanics, it would be impossible for a socially inept player to pull off a charismatic character. And there are all of the people who wish for something that doesn’t mechanize the whole interaction yet want the rules to provide *something* to help sort it out.
I’m in that last group. I want there to be rules providing structure and resolution while allowing the interaction at the table to guide it to that resolution. I recognize that the players and the characters are *not* identical in capabilities of any sort, so the way in which we don’t make players pick up weapons and physically act out fights should also be reflected in not expecting players to physically play out social interactions. Let the players be players and the characters be separate entities that the players aren’t expected to imitate perfectly.
The best of the systems I’ve seen that address social interactions in play involve using the venerable Reaction Table from early D&D. That makes a good deal of sense, as the Reaction Table is all about PCs interacting with others and what type of reaction they receive while doing so. I can see using that table as the basis of a social interaction system while understanding that it needs a lot of tweaking to offer greater nuance in adjudicating situations in play. The possibility of a hostile reaction resulting in a physical attack when a PC hails a merchant group along the road should be much slighter than the basic Table results would indicate, for example, prima facie.
I expect a base line level of regard the NPC has for the PC. Then PC actions can adjust the reactions of the NPC for better or worse, leading to success — the NPC acquiescing to the PC’s wishes — or failure — usually, the NPC simply walking away from the discussion. That general approach, I think, allows for a lot of nuance in execution and lots of ways to hand additional processes on it to add to the flavor.
This approach also supports all manner of player expression of PC action equally, that is, there’s no inherent preference for third person statements of action, first person statements, or improv theater expressions. This rests on the assumption that interactions are structured by procedure that inputs discrete information for a time unit and generates output for that, with limited time units available during the interaction. A player acting out a PC soliloquy can stretch on as long as the GM allows and it still involves one discrete turn in play, the same as the next player stating their PC statement in a couple of short sentences.
As with many activities, I’m also a fan of the uncertainly regarding the time required or time available to the PCs. That uncertainty drives a basic sense of urgency, as players understand they don’t necessarily have as much time as they want to sweet talk the mayor into helping them and they can’t be sure how much time they actually have to do so. Poor reactions can shorten an interaction session. The length of the session can be subject to randomization from the outset, too, which can be limiting.
I just recently spent some time chasing the rabbits of Reknown and Reputation down their respective holes, and those certainly have bearing on resolving social interactions. They also have bearing on what interactions happen in the first place, too, so should probably get their own post or posts.