[GiraffeShaman]

While I've GMed social experts before, this is my fist taste of running a game with a true social adept and the super high social skills easily attainable.

Do you have any suggestions for being able to make him sweat during social challenges like the typical attempt to get past a checkpoint/chokepoint? As it is, it appears that it's mostly a situation where he either succeeds nearly every time if a roll is allowed and the only time he fails is it's flat out impossible. I'd like some middle ground, just as I don't want the combat experts to be bored with every combat.

Do you have any suggestions for keeping extremely rare gear still difficult to obtain with the presence of the social adept in the game?

Also, any suggestions for fun situations/stories to tell around this type of character? I already used the classic scenario of him fleeing out of the condo ahead of the angry husband.

Any suggestions/tips in general about dming a social adept would be greatly appreciated.

[lord_shadow_666]

If I was GMing him I would add the odd person that is his level or slightly better on checkpoints to make him think WTF, just add someone who might have the gift of the gab but had a bad play in life so ended up as a lowly security guard who plays poker with his mates, so he can read peoples body language and is used to people feeding him BS, you could also include guards with cybernetic implants that help with their diplomacy rolls.

Even if he is able to sweet talk the devil he isnt necessarily going to have the contacts that can get him the gear, so yes he may have an arms dealer that is well connected but you can say the arms dealer cannot get you this item. I am currently making a list of items from all the books/pdf's I have been given to run my campaign and I am tweaking the availabilities of a few things I want them to struggle to get or things I think should be slightly easier to get, like the space suit I dropped to 15 on creation but a few bio/cyberwear I have ruled out and bumped up a notch or 2.

[WSN0W]

I'd just speak with the player and make sure OOC'ly expectations are managed. While you want to reward a player for having abilities that let them do X (as they aren't able to do Y or Z because they invested the points instead into X) you also don't want the magic 'I win' button. But that goes for any ability.

Being incredibly social doesn't magically make Move By Wire Alphaware Rating 3 fall off the back of a truck. If the Fixer can get it, then sure, the adept can probably sweet talk a deal (costly still) into buying it, but if the Fixer/Doc doesn' thave the MBW, then they aren't going to just 'poof' appear.

Let it be a dominions effect too. if the Adept and group work their contacts and the market for 4 Thunderstrike Gauss Rifles, high availability Ware, super vehicles, Armor, Rating 6 foci and bleeding edge Programs in a short order, well, A: they still need to pay for it. and B: The corps and cops aren't idiots. That much high end Militech moving in short time tends to draw notice. Thunderstrike gauss Rifles are stupid dangerous and if some Shadowrunning Troll has one they could really demolish a ton of normal and even SWAT level response gear. If some fixer starts moving 4 of them and some other stuff...have Knight Errant swoop in and bust the Fixer.

Just because the contacts and people agree to stuff doesn't make their choices 'a good idea' and thus can have some backlash.

Now, I wouldn't just blindly smack the player(s) noses with that. Give IC hints that the 'spotlight' might be coming on them and they might want to space out their orders or take some kind of action and make it a story.

the other reality is 'Johnny might agree to X because Johnny talked to Social Adept in Person. then Johnny went back to Boss and Boss smacked the stupid out of Johnny's mouth for agreeing to such a ridiciliously lopsided agreement.' that could be some complications there.

there are some cyber/bioware that boost your mental resistances too, so that can give some 'on par' people.

And then there is the 'if you skin the sheep, they won't want to play with you.' Look at the Fiction and how the other Jackpointers view Haze. He's basically a 'I can mind screw/flashy thing people.' and in a few instances he crossed that mythical 'line.' And Pistons want to MURDER him in part for doing so. If the adept basically matchstick man cons everyone out of everything, people wise up, realize that he might have some tech or mystic mojo and start insisting on things like 'we only do buissess in AR chat rooms where your magic/pheramones/whatever can't get me'

[Netzgeist]

Mostly, what comes to smack a Face in the face (lame pun, I know) is situational modifiers; your interlocutor is prejudiced against your metatype, you are wearing the wrong attire, the deal you are trying to strike is prejudicial to the other side, whatever... And, as a guy who really, really likes to play Face-like characters, I need to say that the best moments is not when the Face convince all the opposition with his marvellous dice pools to shoot themselves in the back of their heads, but when he can shine on difficult circunstances. The fun of playing a social enphasized character is not rolling dice, but role-playing, and when the dices roll wrong, then you just earned another opportunity to have some fun.

Edit: Also, there's always doing business on other languages, which tends to cripple most characters (or at least make them lose some precious nuyen to get those shiny linguasofts).

[Glyph]

Social skills are not mind control.  They affect people's perceptions, but they shouldn't be able to overwrite their most deeply ingrained personality traits.  For example, if they are dealing with someone who is the only source for something, and he also happens to be a curmudgeon with a sour disposition, who shopped around for the cheapest rest home to put his parents in, he is not going to suddenly bend over backwards to give the face what he wants at a bargain price.  At best, he might grudgingly get him to give him the price he gives his regular customers.  You need to set some limits on social skills, no matter how ludicrously high they can get, because otherwise you will wind up with one player making your NPCs and all of the other PCs into his puppets.  No fun for anyone (except maybe the player of the face).

Social skills can also run into hard limits that are externally imposed on the NPCs.  Maybe the fixer literally can't afford to let the item go for that price - he would be selling it for a loss.  Johnsons have a hard limit to how much they can offer the team for the job.  However - social skills, like combat skills, can be improved with tactics.  Maybe all of the smooth talking in the world won't get the boss's secretary to betray him, or get that guard to open the door; but what if you convince the secretary that you are the boss's friend and need to see him because it's an emergency, or lure the guard into the cell by feigning a medical emergency?  A street samurai with 20 dice in pistols can get some things done simply with his high dice pool, but if he knows when to run for cover, when to make called shots, and other elementary tactics, his odds of success improve dramatically.  Playing a high dice pool face should be the same way.

Finally, and this applies to usage of all skills - it needs a modicrum of plausibility to work.  The face should not be able to make a Human Nation agitator see the error of his ways in one talk, or turn a frigid lesbian straight.  And for social skills to work at all, the face needs to actually be negotiating, or intimidating someone, and so on.  If the face is being an asshat, give him that rules-mandated etiquette check to notice he is about to commit a social gaffe.  If he ignores the warning, have him suffer the consequences.  Be sure NOT to simply give him a negative modifier for things like that - he will simply roll his umpteen remaining dice, and you will have an implausible result to somehow justify.

[All4BigGuns]

When it comes to the "the contact doesn't have it" or the suggestion of "bust the Fixer for so much coming in in a short time", these are things that should be done very sparingly, otherwise it pretty much more comes down to "I don't want you to get better so you won't. Nyah!". It's another case of too much 'realism' shivving fun in the kidney if done too much.

Mostly, what comes to smack a Face in the face (lame pun, I know) is situational modifiers; your interlocutor is prejudiced against your metatype, you are wearing the wrong attire, the deal you are trying to strike is prejudicial to the other side, whatever... And, as a guy who really, really likes to play Face-like characters, I need to say that the best moments is not when the Face convince all the opposition with his marvellous dice pools to shoot themselves in the back of their heads, but when he can shine on difficult circunstances. The fun of playing a social enphasized character is not rolling dice, but role-playing, and when the dices roll wrong, then you just earned another opportunity to have some fun.

Edit: Also, there's always doing business on other languages, which tends to cripple most characters (or at least make them lose some precious nuyen to get those shiny linguasofts).

As to this one, the main part I have that much to comment on is the last sentence before the edit. While this is true, one shouldn't get too caught up in the "RP it out" mentality to the point where no one can even bother rolling the skill tests. All this does is make actually taking the skills almost pointless or just spending points basically uselessly to have an 'excuse' to be able to play up in such a way (assuming the player can fully play up very high ratings in those skills). It also serves to force players who aren't that socially adept themselves out of ever having a character in that role (which is just another form of railroading in my opinion).

[Orvich]

If the problem is that the character is just smooth talking their way into and around restricted areas due to the rolls, I find that the easiest way to curtail it is to give your grunts a certain amount of common sense. Alternatly, if your party is okay with you dragging the social 'combat' out a little, you can include 'weak points'.

Give your grunt a lot of resistance to social rolls to get past his checkpoint. However, he has two three 'weak points' that a clever social player can target to get past the checkpoint. They can either spend more time/effort trying to brute force charm the guard, or they can talk about how much they love puppies and join the guard in camaraderie about times spent at the puppy appreciation society, and how surprising it would be to find a fellow puppy lover at such a checkpoint, all the while showing them your (possibly very bad) fake id, or lamenting how your puppy ate your key card just that day.


That is a frivolous example without any mechanical backbone in it, but you would essentially pick a few topics of interest for any given social encounter and make them come up in the preliminary social interactions, depending on how hard you want it to be finding a given weak point. Anything from common interests, to plausible reasons for having access, to sources of guild/boredom would work! All you'd do is rate each one and give a situational bonus to rolls that involve a stunt based around that weakpoint appropriately.

Naturally, this won't work for all social encounters and is really geared towards truly social events, but you could just as easily give an npc an unnaturally high resistance to certain kinds of social roll, ones that don't necessarily bear themselves out in a skill score. That ork is just totally unflappable , you won't get anywhere intimidating him, but he follows orders quite blindly. Use a Con roll to establish false rank, and then Leadership to make a convincing and commanding order! (or Whatever)

[GiraffeShaman]

However - social skills, like combat skills, can be improved with tactics.  Maybe all of the smooth talking in the world won't get the boss's secretary to betray him, or get that guard to open the door; but what if you convince the secretary that you are the boss's friend and need to see him because it's an emergency, or lure the guard into the cell by feigning a medical emergency?  A street samurai with 20 dice in pistols can get some things done simply with his high dice pool, but if he knows when to run for cover, when to make called shots, and other elementary tactics, his odds of success improve dramatically.  Playing a high dice pool face should be the same way.

Lots of good suggestions, thanks people. This looks like what I need to do in regards to spicing things up with the social encounters/challenges. I should clarify that I was already placing hard limits on what social skills can do and implementing npc common sense. My big problem in regards to this was one of two things would happen: Automatic failure (Trying to turn the ultra loyal bodyguard, or the previously mentioned turning the lesbian straight example) or a roll is possible and thus will almost certainly succeed. No suspense or challenge. The tactics to overcome hard limits idea should help with this.

My other problem is the face causes nearly any equipment to be located and can do this for the entire team, thus making item rarity a thing of the past for this particular team. Now, I could do some of the things suggested, such as having the fence not have the item, or having Lonestar crack down, etc. However, I've done things fairly by the book (3rd edition) in the past and it's worked fairly well, until now. The players are going to notice if I'm going out of my way to make the face not get their items. It may just be time to have one of those "Okay congrats, you've managed to break the game, now where do we go from here" talks.

[Makki]

I'm all for talking my way in, but some situation are just unavoidable.

Smooth-talking the security guard might end like this: "Hey buddy listen. I'd let you through, because of the thing you have and I feel with you, but orders are orders. I will however call my boss for you, and if you can convince him, too, everybody wins."

Aquiring gear can end like this: "...ok ok. You want that thing, I understand. And I talked around for you. I found it. I'll even do this for free, no comission. But you have to get it yourself. The Vory do have it, but they won't talk to me anymore, due to the thing, that happend last January. I think I told you about it. Well, here's the address of a bar, but the guy you want only turns up irregularly."

[Glyph]

One suggestion if that specific thing (acquiring gear) is a problem; social skill dice pools get so sky-high because of modifiers.  For getting an item, you might consider limiting it to skill, Attribute, and relevant specializations - only the improved ability power should apply.   Don't let glamour, kinesics, tailored pheromones, and such apply to the test.  With a still high but more manageable dice pool, that part of the game will become more balanced again.

[Zilfer]

^you could always spend a little more Nuyen for extra dice and then edge no?

[Reaver]

Don't be afraid to have a fence or fixer just say a flat out "no" to gear you don't want used in your game. Just be fair about it. Meaning if the players want gauss rifles and you say no... Then NOONE has them. They are the "golden object in the briefcase".
You don't have to be rude about it, but some of the answers I have given over the years when things like this has come up were like.

Fixer: "heavy mil spec armor you say??? Hmm I doubt I can get my hands on that. It's all custom fitted and crafted to each individual solder too. Means even if I DID get some, wouldn't fit you anyways. Not like you can adjust it with a wench and hammer you know."

And when/if the players push

Fixer: "Ok, fine. I know a guy who knows a guy, who knows someone overseas. I could put you in touch with them... But it going to cost you their handling fee. A cool million. Up front, no refunds, no negotiations. I putting my ass on the line even mentioning these psychos and I'm not cacking it for your shiny new toys got me?"

If they still don't get the message, well you got the setting built to design an adventure where the players greed potentially screws them over... Like paying a million for a suit of armor... Sized for a very lean dwarf! And when they bitch, they a staring down the barrels of mil-spec weapons/gear.

If the players refuse to accept your limitations, show them WHY you didn't want that gear out there in the first place!!

[DaveDaveDaave]

I need to get some quality sleep. I was SURE i read the Subject as Re:Giraffe Social Adepts AKA Templeton Peck I was expecting AWESOME but only found REALLY DAMN INSIGHTFUL. Win Win anyway I`m off to bed before I get the sleep deprivation giggles and the idea of making Magical Trevor my ringtone sounds like a cool idea.