7.3 KiB
Social Actions
The following is a list of social encounter actions, what they can accomplish, and what conditions must be met to retry them after they fail.
Instill
The instill action is used to change the feelings and beliefs of others. When a player takes an instill action, they declare what they want to make the target feel or believe. The GM may apply penalties to the roll if this belief is particularly implausible or hard to accept, up to a maximum penalty of -20 for truly unbelievable claims. On a successful roll, the target forms an intimacy towards that belief.
There are limits to what someone will believe when they already have strong opinions to the contrary. The character may need to lessen the existing intimacies before instilling new ones. While the instill action can always be used to create new minor intimacies, altering existing intimacies is more difficult:
- Strengthening a minor intimacy or weakening a major intimacy can only be done if the target has a different minor or better intimacy that supports the attempted influence.
- Raising a major intimacy or weakening a defining intimacy is only possible if the target has a different major or better intimacy that supports the attempted influence.
- Strengthening an existing intimacy requires that the evidence raised or argument made in favor of the strengthening be more compelling than whatever cause the intimacy to arrive at its current intensity.
Persuade
The persuade action allows you to convince other characters to perform an action or task that you give to them. The extent of the action you can compel with persuade depends on the intimacies of your target.
Without an intimacy to support your influence roll, you can only convince others to take relatively trivial and risk free actions.
Inconvenient Tasks
Characters who have an appropriate minor intimacy can be convinced to perform tasks that pose some mild danger or hinderance to them, as long as it is not severe enough to seriously disrupt their life or livelihood -- the prospect of a severe injury, an angry superior, or heavy financial loss is still more than they will allow. With this level of intimacy, you can persuade people to do things that take longer than an encounter to complete, if the amount of time needed is not so long as to disrupt the target's life.
Serious Tasks
Characters who have an appropriate major intimacy can be convinced to perform even tasks that carry the risk of extreme harm or impediment. At this level, a farmer could be convinced to join your personal militia despite the risk of dying on the battlefield, while an apothecary might provide you with poisons even though he faces imprisonment or corporal punishment for doing so. However, they will still balk if the risk of death or ruin is almost certain. Tasks that take extended amounts of time are possible at this level, even if they require a long term commitment such as joining an organization.
Life Changing Tasks
Characters who have a defining intimacy can be made to do almost anything. At this level, you could convince a devoted follower to hold off an enemy long enough to buy time for your escape, or make a wealthy noble donate the batter portion of their fortune to your personal cult. Only in cases where death or utter ruin are absolutely, unavoidably certain will they balk, and even then the GM might decide they're willing to do it despite all odds.
Bargain
Bargaining is similar to the persuade action, but doesn't depend on your target's intimacies. Instead you must offer a bribe, gift, or favor that the character you're convincing believes is worth the difficulty or the task you're asking them to perform. The GM should take into account the intimacies, wealth, and social status of the target deciding what they will consider sufficient payment.
Threaten
When all else fails, pain an intimidation are brutally effective motivators. Threaten works like a bargain: you can convince people to do things without having to appeal to their intimacies, only rather than offering something they want you present them with something they don't -- usually the threat of bodily harm, although social blackmail, economic ruin, and general intimidation will also do the job. It can also be used as an instill action which gives the target an intimacy of fear towards you, or intensifies such an intimacy they already have. For a threaten action to be effective, the target must be more afraid of the conseque3ncers of refusing you then they are of whatever you want them to do. If the target has any awe, or fear, based intimacies you're aware of, that's usually a good place to start.
Blackmail and bullying won't make you many friends. Using the threaten action on someone almost always causes them to form an immediate negative intimacy towards you, with a context chosen by the target's player, regardless of whether the attempt succeeds or fails. It can also weaken any existing positive intimacies the target might have.
Inspire
The inspire action is used to incite emotions and strong passions in the hearts of others, usually with the Performance skill, which those others then act on. When a player takes an inspire action, they choose which emotion they are attempting to inspire. On a successful inspire roll, the target is impassioned according to the emotion evoked -- but the target's player chooses what form that passion takes.
An impassioned character might form a new passion, or act upon an existing intimacy that aligns with the emotion evoked. A character doesn't have to drop everything they're doing to act upon an inspire action, but they must be genuinely resolved to action.
Inspiration doesn't automatically create or strengthen intimacies, but it's often appropriate for it to do so as characters act upon their inflamed passions. An inflamed passion may be treated as a major intimacy for the purposes of modifying passive Resolve and enabling persuade actions, for as long as the character is acting on it.
The inspiring character doesn't automatically know what passions he has inspired in their audience; they must use read intentions to find out. Because a character does not, and cannot, tailor the outcome of an inspire action to a specific target, inspire actions aren't subject to penalty for group influence.
Read Intentions
The read intentions action allows a character to discern what another character wants to achieve in an encounter or interaction. Reading someone's intentions is not an influence roll, instead it is a Awareness + Insight roll against the target's passive Composure. On a success, the GM should give a brief description of what the character wants out of some interaction.
Alternatively, this action can be used in order to determine what intimacies a character has. Before rolling for the action, the player should generally describe what kind of intimacy they want to discern. On a success, the GM chooses and reveals one of the target's intimacies that fit the criteria. If there is no intimacy that does, the GM should let the player know this.
The read intentions action is not a form of magic. The character using it is analyzing the target's words and behavior to get a better feel for their motives and intimacies, and the GM should use common sense in deciding how much information can be gleaned from a character's behavior and appearance.
Finally, a character who is unaware they are being observed suffers a -3 penalty to their passive Composure.