How to Make Friends and Influence Dice Rolls

I was, as I wrote the first draft of my RPG system, at a loss as to whether social skills should be included within the skills list. An omission would be possible though I eventually decided against it, knowing my group prefers to roll dice than spend time being verbose like a college drama class.

That said it can be argued that social skills (diplomacy, streetwise, haggle etc) do detract from the role playing element of an RPG by reducing something that could quite adequately be negotiated between a good player and GM to a random dice roll. Many systems emphasis a compromise, granting bonuses to well spoken players who enjoy getting into character and engaging with wordy banter, and this is entirely adequate for most games.

However when running a ‘role play’ I would be tempted to disregard the dice altogether, look across the table at the player and let them show me what they can do. A good group will often have a designated talker and they will come to the fore, typically I find talkers (bards usually) come to the fore naturally whilst the damage soaking fighters sit back and occasionally chirp in when the subject turns to swords and the like.

A group concerned with role playing will usually have already divided themselves up into the roles they want to serve and have chosen classes or skills appropriately, so this option becomes feasible. However if you do decide to do away with social skills be sure to reimburse the character appropriately, nobody deserves to spend levels on skills that can’t be used.