OSR Skills with Special Mechanics - Social, Lore, Perception

[Malmuria]

I want to use your Convince the Guard situation as an example...

I've noticed this come up more with the Perception-ish scenarios in modern D&D (including Investigation & Insight), than with Social scenarios... but I still see it come up on rare occasion with Social scenarios too... It's the player being at a loss for what to do. "I'm not sure." "I don't know what my character would do." Any variety of that. When that moment happens in modern D&D games, I've often seen players default to "Can I make a X roll to figure it out?"

...so getting back to your example, which I think you're using a modern D&D paradigm for, you describe 3 possible outcomes:
1) The player doesn't come up with a reason (or it's flat out bad) for the guard to let them pass. No roll. The guard doesn't let them pass.
2) The player comes up with a reason that the guard might let them pass. You set a DC and they roll against it, succeed or fail.
3) The player comes up with a compelling reason for the guard to let them pass. Automatically succeeds with no roll. The guard lets them pass.

The interaction revolves exclusively around the player's intent and the outcome is binary.

The OSR approach would look very similar for #1 and #3, but in the "might let them pass" it looks different. First, you might use a reaction roll to gauge the guard's attitude toward the party (which is moving beyond just the player's intent); for example a negative reaction might lead with a "Oh, I've heard of you. You're the ones that lit the docks on fire, aren't you?" Second, the "might let them pass" probably plays out as a give/take to the conversation in OSR; this breaks away from binary outcomes to mixed (negotiated) outcomes. For instance, the guard might want them to surrender any rods, staves, wands, or fire-starting materials to the city guard for safekeeping while the PCs are in the city.

I'm still formulating my ideas, but...

One of the problematic patterns I've seen in modern D&D's social interactions is two-fold: (1) player describes cool approach, GM asks for roll, it fails, player gets a let down moment, and as this happens throughout session player describes less and less in social scenes. (2) player describes cool approach as they reach for dice, GM says it's automatically successful, player gets a let down moment that they didn't get to roll and use the high numbers on their character sheet that they built their PC to be good at, so throughout the session the player describes less realizing that less description means more rolls.

Whereas one of the problematic patterns I've seen in OSR social interactions is that when there is uncertainty (i.e. "might let them pass"), players have less control over pacing of social interactions. There's no easy-out check. I've noticed this in "is this guy being duplicitous" situations the most because in OSR the player has no recourse even when it feels like their character should. The Persuasion check (or whatever), even if it's the GM calling for it, gives a bounding box of when the scene ends, more or less. What I've seen this lead to is certain players going radio silent in many social interactions, with one or two players dominating... sometimes this is fine for the group, but other times it's not... and yet it's the same sort of subtle effect as I described above – a sense of disconnect between the player's words/description/desires and the outcome.

I apologize for the length of my post as I'm still working these ideas out, but this is why I used the word bridging before. I'm noticing issues in both OSR and Modern D&D that seem (to me) to have similar underlying mechanisms.

I think the reaction roll is different than a persuasion roll, in that it happens right at the beginning of an interaction, so as to set the mood of the encounter. It doesn't necessarily resolve the task, though I suppose it can be used that way (if you want to do that, you could say that the PC's attempts at persuasion yield them a +1 or +2 to the reaction roll, and roll again. The encounter doesn't have to end there though).

Using the persuasion roll, you can make it less binary by interpreting the die roll as a quality of success. For example, let's say they need to beat a DC 16 and they roll a 15, that could still be a partial success (there's actually overcomplicated rules in the DMG for doing this). I still think that defaults the resolution of the interaction to a die roll in uninteresting ways, however.

 

[bloodtide]

I play a very Old School game, no matter what the game is.

For the Social Stuff, I like to keep the game play very open to the pure role playing side. If the player can, for real, role play their character, for real, then they can do many social things. I utterly don't care about the plus on the character sheet if you role play.

For the players that lack the above ability....I will strongly recommend they play a character with poor social skills. And if they want help, I'm more then happy to teach them.

For the players with no ability or just 'below average' I will let them make the social roll. With modifications if they add anything...good or bad. Generic things get low numbers, more specific ones get higher numbers. So the player that just says "oh, um, my character complement the guards and stuff" gets a +1, but the player that role plays talking to the guards and says that gets a +3.

Perception is mostly the same.

I don't do rolls for knowledge at all. I'll make handouts...often one per game session. I expect players to read and use that information. Also through game play, lots of information will be given. Again players are expected to listen and/or take notes. Finally I put a lot of this on the players, so in game play find the information you might need in the future.

For the players that do what to know, I'll have them read books or articles and/or movies or TVshows. I even have a selection of books they can barrow.

Though in general, at least the first couple game sessions a typical player will start out very clueless about most things in the game world, even if their character is an expert. But if they do it right, they will quickly become "experts".

 

[cbwjm]

One of the problematic patterns I've seen in modern D&D's social interactions is two-fold: (1) player describes cool approach, GM asks for roll, it fails, player gets a let down moment, and as this happens throughout session player describes less and less in social scenes. (2) player describes cool approach as they reach for dice, GM says it's automatically successful, player gets a let down moment that they didn't get to roll and use the high numbers on their character sheet that they built their PC to be good at, so throughout the session the player describes less realizing that less description means more rolls.

I have to head off and do stuff, so just a quick response for (2) while some may be disappointed that they didn't get to use their high numbers because it's an auto pass, it also means that those with low numbers are able to make it without rolling. I've never played in our run a game where there is a party face character who always takes the lead so that might be why this all sort works.