Shadowrun RPG Rules - Social

Social Rules Overview

• Check Result - Using the results of a social check.
• Encounter - Structure of a social encounter.
• Outcomes - Outcome solutions to aim for.
• Motivations - Motivations in Sociaal encounters.
• Other - Additional rules for Fear, Sanity, Major Revelations, Cliff-hangers, metagaming, no mere moretal and super characteristics, heat and monologue..

Shadowrun - Social - Check Results

Social Advantage or Triuph Check Result
• One Advantage or a Triump
• Recover 1 strain.
• Add a Boost (Blue) dice to the next allied characters check.
• Notice a single important point ion the ongoing encounter, such as in overly curious waiter or some drapes your character can stand behind to avoid being recognised
• Two Advantages or a Triump
• Learn the Strength or Flaw of the Targeted character.
• Add a Setback (Black) dice to the targeted characters next check.
• Add a Boost (Blue) dice to any allied character’s next check, including the active character.
• Three Advantages or a Triump
• Learn any one Motivation facet of any character in the encounter.
• Upgrade the difficulty of the targeted character’s next check.
• Upgrade the ability of any allied character’s next check, including the current active character.
• Do something vital, such as getting everyone’s attention, or distracting all the guards so your character’s friends have a chance to do something important.

Social Threat (Disadvamtage) or Despair Check Result
• One Threat or a Despair
• The active character suffers 1 strain.
• The Active character gets distracted or side-tracked momentarily. This can result in their being unable to activate an ability that requires spending a manoeuvre on their next turn, or it may just result in their being dragged into a lengthy and boring conversation.
• Two Threat or a Despair
• The active character accidentally reveals their own Strength or Flaw.
• Add a Boost (Blue) dice to the targeted character’s next check.
• The active character or an allied character suffers a Setback (Black) dice on their next check.
• Three Threat or a Despair
• The active character accidentally reveals their own Desire or Fear
• The active character accidentally reveals their true goal in the encounter.
• Despair
• The active character accidentally reveals a Motivation facet of on of their allies.
• Learn one false Motivation facet of the target character (the active character believes it to be true).
• Upgrade the difficulty of an allied character’s next check or the next check of the current active character.
• The active character becomes so embroiled in irrelevant events in the encounter that they cannot do anything important during the next round.

Shadowrun - Social - Structure of a Social Encounter

Social Encounters have a Goal, Start and End, Timing, Group Size, and Solution.

What Is The Goal - If you are the GM, the first thing you should do when building a social encounter is figure out what your party’s goal is going to be. Remember, we talked earlier in this chapter about social encounters focusing on characters trying to accomplish some sort of goal. That goal can be something simple (get the best price possible for that car) or complex (negotiate peace between two feuding crime families).

If the goal is really complex (say, negotiating peace between two warring interstellar empires), then you may want to break that goal down into several sub-goals, and make each one a separate encounter.

What Is The Start And End Of The Encounter - Once you have the goal figured out, you need to determine a start and end point for the encounter. The easiest way to do this (and thus, the one we recommend) is to start the encounter when your party first meets the character or characters whom they’re going to be interacting with. Then, end the encounter when the party has either accomplished their goal or failed so thoroughly that accomplishing the goal is no longer possible.

What Is The Timing - A lot of player characters in your party (and a lot of non-player characters) have abilities such as talents or archetype abilities that your players are going to want to use during a social encounter.

Some of these abilities are limited to being used once per encounter, or sometimes once per session. You don’t have to worry about managing the timing of these abilities, since they work within your existing timing structure (you’ve already defined when the current encounter begins and ends, and once-per-session abilities are designed to be used at any point during a session).

However, a lot of abilities simply require the character to spend an action or a manoeuvre to use them. These can prove tricky in a narrative gameplay encounter like a social encounter. Narrative gameplay doesn’t track a character’s turn or the number of actions and manoeuvres they can perform the same way structured gameplay does. This means that you, as the GM, may need to establish some limits or move to using rounds in the social encounter.

When using rounds in the social encounter, roll normally as you would with a combat encounter though use Charm or Negotiation depending on if your impersonating someone else or representing yourself.

What Is The Group Size Modifiers - The bigger the group the harder the checks to influence them. When doing so to more than a single target (which is a normal vs check) you can use the following chart. For an unreceptive audience you can add Setback (black) dice or upgrade the check using story points.

• 2 to 5 targets – Average (two purple) check
• 6 to 15 targets – Hard (three purple) check
• 16 to 50 targets – Daunting (four purple) check
• 51+ targets – Formidable (five purple) check)

What Is The Solution - While “winning” in a combat encounter is pretty straightforward (just defeat the opponents), how to “win” a social encounter can seem less clear. Obviously, characters want to accomplish their goal, but how you, the GM, can do that without making it seem like an arbitrary decision can be a bit trickier. Given that, we have three suggestions as to how you can determine if a character accomplishes their goal successfully.

Shadowrun - Social - Outcome Solutions to aim for

Proposing A Mutually Agreeable Solution - Since this is a roleplaying game, we think it should always be possible for a character to accomplish goals in a social encounter without rolling any dice at all. Therefore, one option for successfully “winning” a social encounter is for your character to offer a solution that is completely satisfactory to the other characters involved in the encounter.

A simple example of this would be your character agreeing to pay full price for an item in a store. No check is needed, because of course a shopkeeper will accept full price. This option can apply to more complicated situations as well. However, the more complex the solution, the more it relies on you, the player, to argue or explain your character’s reasoning. Your GM can always decide that the situation is complex enough that it needs to be resolved with a skill check (though they might give you a Boost (Blue) dice for good roleplaying!)

Succeeding On An Opposed Social Skill Check - This is our recommended method for resolving simple social encounters. Your character makes the appropriate social skill check, opposed by the target’s skill. If the check is successful, your character accomplishes their goal. If they fail, they do not. This resolution works best for simple goals, such as negotiating over the price of an item, attempting to charm one’s way past a guard, or lying about the whereabouts of one’s friends. For more complex social situations, we recommend the following option instead.

Targeting The Opponents Strain Threshold - In more complex social encounters, we expect that one successful check isn’t enough to accomplish your character’s goals. In such cases, your character needs to inflict strain on their target. This represents them wearing the target down over time with constant arguments, negotiations, threats, or even relentless flattery. Your goal could be to inflict enough strain on the target to convince them to reach a compromise with your character, or you could push them to exceed their strain threshold and completely capitulate.

If your target is a rival or minion group, your strain targets their wound threshold (since they don’t have a strain threshold). However, if you incapacitate them, your GM should still have the target capitulate, not mysteriously drop dead!

• Result Compromise – Strain exceed half of the targets threshold
• Result Capitulation – Strain exceeds targets strain threshold
• Result Failure – Your character exceed their strain threshold

In these situations your success inflicts 1 strain and your net successes inflict additional strain. If you fail you cause yourself 2 strain.

A critical remark can be made in these encounters where for a Triumph or a Despair you affect the appropriate target’s strain threshold by 5.

Shadowrun - Social - Motivations in Social Encounters

Motivations are a big part of anybody’s character, so we expect them to come into play throughout a game session. That’s certainly true in social encounters. These rules apply to all characters, both PC and NPC, so they matter for players and GMs.

Increase Or Decrease Your Chances - Engaging with a target’s Motivation is one of the most common ways for your character to increase their odds of success in a social encounter. Likewise, working against a target’s Motivation makes failure more likely for your character.

A simple and effective way to represent those increased odds of success or failure is through adding Boost (Blue) dice or Setback (Black) dice to a skill check. Let’s talk about adding Boost (Blue) dice to your character’s check first.

When your character is able to work with a target’s Strength or Flaw, your character adds a Boost (Blue) dice to their next social skill check targeting that character. By “working with,” we mean working some reference to that Strength or Flaw into what your character says or does, or simply choosing words or an action that plays on those Motivation facets.

If your character is able to work with the target’s Fear or Desire, the effect is the same, but amplified: add two Boost (Blue) Dice. Fears and Desires are powerful Motivation facets that govern many of a character’s choices, so playing to them can have a greater effect.

However, sometimes your character’s approach are going to work against an opponent’s Motivation. This most likely happens because your character isn’t aware of their target’s Motivations. By “working against,” we mean making some reference to the Motivation during an interaction that rubs the target the wrong way, or simply conflicts with the Motivation.

As we illustrate in our previous example, when your character works against a target’s Strength or Flaw, your character adds a Setback (Black) dice to their next social skill check against that target. When your character works against the target’s Desire or Fear, they add two Setback (Black) dice to their next social skill check against that target.

Discerning Other Characters Motivations - Discerning another character’s Motivations can give your character a major advantage in a social encounter. Generally, your character accomplishes this through spending Advantages or Triumphs on skill checks. This is the way we recommend learning Motivations, since it’s a logical way to spend these resources in a social encounter, and it encourages characters to interact with each other.

However, if you want to have your character study their target and try to discern one of the target’s Motivations that way, your GM could allow you to make an opposed Perception versus Cool check (representing the target’s ability to maintain an even tone and neutral affectation, and not let their internal thoughts tinge their words or demeanour). If you are successful, your GM can let your character learn one of the target’s Motivation facets.

Keep in mind, however, that if your character does this, they’ll be spending time in the social encounter quietly but intently studying the target character, something that probably isn’t going to escape notice. Basically, it’s not a good approach if your character is trying to be subtle. Also, the GM should only let your character attempt this once or twice per encounter, and only once per target.

Changing Motivations - During play, your character’s attitudes, emotions, and beliefs can and should evolve, especially if the GM has been challenging the character’s inner state over the course of the campaign. There may be single, dramatic moments where it makes sense for your character to change one or more facets of their Motivation, or it might be a slower process that takes place over the course of several sessions that have engaged your character’s emotions. Perhaps your character has achieved their Desire, overcome a Flaw, or gained a new Fear.

When the narrative supports it, your GM should permit you to erase an existing facet of their Motivation and replace it with a new Desire, Fear, Strength, Flaw, etc.

Characters should not be permitted to continue play without a replacement facet of their Motivation, as these facets are essential components of roleplaying and the hero’s journey. If the player is struggling to come up with a new Motivation, the GM should work with the player to invent circumstances that warrant a new Motivation. Alternatively, the struggle may be a sign that the character’s emotional arcs have been exhausted, and it is time to roll up a new replacement character who has not had a chance to fully mature yet.

Secret Motivations - You can choose to share your characters’ Motivations with your fellow players, or to keep them secret. Motivations for different characters can, at times, be in direct conflict. By keeping these secret from one another, you and your fellow players create opportunities for potentially intense roleplaying between your characters. Alternatively, by sharing their Motivations, your group can better focus on the times when their characters can collaborate

Shadowrun - Social - Additional Rules for Social Encounters

These rules from the Tones can be used with different systems, but I thought this was a good place to list them all.

• Fear – From Horror themed games
• Sanity – From Horror themed games
• Major Revelation – From Intrigue themed games
• The Cliff-hanger – From Pulp themed games
• Metagame Manoeuvring – From Romance and Drama themed games
• No Mere Mortal – From Superhero themed games
• Super-Characteristics – From Superhero themed games
• Heat – From Heist themed games
• Internal Monologue – From Noir themed games

Fear - Although the circumstances in a game may be scary to your players, they should be far more horrifying for your players’ characters. (After all, the characters don’t have the luxury of knowing that it’s all only a game!) To represent this – and also recognize that some characters are braver than others – you can add the fear rules to your game.

When characters in your game confront something that you feel may be terrifying to them, you can have them make a Discipline skill check. We sometimes call this a fear check.

As the GM, you set the difficulty of the check. You can use Table: Fear Guidelines to help figure out how difficult a check should be and what circumstances might elicit a fear check from your PCs in the first place. Typically, once a character has rolled a fear check for a specific set of circumstances, you shouldn’t require them to check again for the same circumstances during the same encounter. Remember that if the circumstances relate to the character’s Fear motivation, you’ll want to add the appropriate penalties to the check!

Table: Fear Guidelines
• Startled (Easy one purple) – Something momentarily frightening, such as someone leaping out of a closet to surprise you, or unsettling circumstances like being alone in a spooky house. These circumstances may not even elicit a check.
• Moderately Afraid (Average two purple) – Confronting something unexplainable, such as furniture that moves when you’re not looking or voices in an empty house; being stalked by a dangerous animal; danger that appears credible but not mortal.
• Very Afraid (Hard three purple) - Ghostly apparitions and other obviously supernatural occurrences, being hunted by a pack of wild animals (or malevolent humans), danger that appears eminent and could be mortal.
• Mortally Afraid (Daunting four purple) - Being actively haunted by a malevolent supernatural being, being attacked by a mythological creature, or facing a situation likely to result in your death.
• Utterly Terrified (Formidable five purple) – A hopeless and utterly terrifying situation, combat against things incomprehensible to one’s mind, being attacked by demons, fear so paralysing that sanity cracks.

Results from Threats or Despair on Fear Checks
• Threat or Despair
• Aversion – The character is unnerved and distracted, and is disoriented for the rest of the encounter. This is a good penalty for simple failure.
• Adrenaline Rush – Momentary panic gives the character a rush of adrenalin, but at a cost. The character adds Boost (Blue) dice to their next check, but suffers 3 strain. This a good penalty for success with a Threat.
• Flee in Terror – The character has to spend their next turn doing nothing but fleeing the source of the fear check (this includes downgrading their actions to manoeuvres to move farther away). This is a good penalty for failure with a small amount of Threat or a Despair.
• Frozen in Terror – The character is immobilized and staggered during their next turn. This is a good penalty for failure with a lot of Threat or Despair.

Results from Advantage or Triumph on Fear Checks
• Advantage or Triumph
• Steady Nerves – The character keeps their nerve and suffers no ill effects. Obviously, this is a good result for passing their fear check.
• Stand with Me – The character’s steadfast response emboldens their allies. Any allied characters forced to make a fear check from the same source add a Boost (Blue) dice to their check. This is a good result for passing a fear check with Advantage.
• Fearless – The character faces the source of fear and finds that it no longer has a hold on them. They automatically pass any further fear checks from that source. This is a good result for succeeding with a Triumph, but you should not apply these results if the source is the character’s Fear motivation.

Sanity - Just as fear is an integral part of horror, failure to overcome fear leads to insanity – especially given the types of fearsome threats characters face. These new rules can be used when a character fails a fear check particularly badly, to represent the ongoing effects of mental trauma that hinder the ability to act in rational manner. Note that all of the normal effects from fear checks still apply, but are now just the tip of the iceberg as sanity slips away…

Whenever a PC fails a fear check with a Despair or five Threat, they also suffer a mental trauma. The trauma’s severity should be the same as the difficulty of the fear check, although you may select a different trauma or modify the description of the trauma based on the actual fear-causing event. At your discretion, you can also apply a trauma when a character undergoes a particularly stressful encounter that results in them exceeding their strain threshold and falling unconscious. In this case, the exact trauma is up to you, but it should relate in some way to what caused the strain and to the intensity of the encounter. A near-lethal combat encounter, for example, might lead to a Phobia linked to bloodshed. Should a character gain the same trauma as one they already possess, they gain a trauma one severity level higher instead.

A Triumph on a successful fear check can be spent to remove one mental trauma that has an associated severity level that is the same as or less than the difficulty of the fear check. (For example, a successful Hard [three purple] fear check with a Triumph could be used to remove a single Delusion, Phobia, or Obsession.) With your permission, traumas might also be removed (perhaps temporarily) via other methods such as intense meditation, therapy, medication, or similar means.

You and the player should determine the specifics concerning the character’s trauma based on the encounter that created the trauma, and work this into the character’s behaviour. After all, these traumas should be as much roleplaying prompts as they are mechanical effects. In addition, while a character suffers from one of these traumas, you can spend Threat and Despair from any checks they make to add additional effects to their growing insanity. You can also invent similar effects based off the ones described here.

Table: Trauma and their Effects
• Obsession (Easy one purple) – You can spend Thread and Despair the character generates to represent their obsession affecting their ability to interact with others. Two Threat to add a Setback (Black) dice to their social skills check till the end of the encounter. Despair to increase the difficulty of all the characters social skill checks till the end of the encounter.
• Phobia (Average two purple) – The character gains a new Fear motivation relating to the circumstances that led to the fear check.
• Delusion (Hard three purple) – You can spend Threat and Despair the character generates to represent their delusion affecting their ability to interact with others. Two Threat to add a Setback (Black) dice to the character’s Perception and all Willpower based checks for the remainder for the encounter.
• Neurosis (Daunting four purple) - Whenever the character gains strain for any reason (voluntary or involuntary), they gain 1 additional strain.
• Broken Mind (Formidable five purple) - The character’s train threshold is halved (rounded up)

Major Revelation - Major revelations are key moments. Plan them like you would a major combat or critical social encounter. While you can’t control what the PCs reveal, you can set up what they learn. Given that the players might not immediately put two and two together in the midst of the game, consider having a few notes prepared ahead of time. You can hand them out, pointing out connections that they may not immediately think of, but that their characters would. Overuse of this method takes away some of the fun of working things out for themselves.

One PC should make an Average (two purple) Knowledge, Negotiation, or Perception check, depending on what best fits the situation. If this check is successful, the PC sees a way to use the revelation to their advantage, and the group upgrades the ability of checks related to that revelation until the end of the session. If they fail, they misread the situation and upgrade the difficulty of those checks instead.

The Cliff-Hanger - The cliff-hanger is a classic trope used to leave the end of a story unresolved and the main characters in immediate danger. You may use this rule at the end of a game session that is not the end of the adventure, or at a major encounter important to the story. At the end of the session or encounter, the PCs are left in immediate peril. At the beginning of the next session (or encounter), place all Story Points in the player pool. The PCs may use these points in one of the following ways:

• As normal while trying to escape the situation.
• By spending all of the points immediately to narratively describe escaping the situation. The players should describe the desired actions of their characters and reactions by the NPCs. You must approve of the events and the outcome, altering only what is necessary to preserve important story or plot elements.
• By spending all of the points to immediately restore one or more dead or incapacitated characters, indicating a miraculous recovery or narrow escape. These characters heal half of their wounds and all of their strain. The PCs then play out the scene.

Metagame Manoeuvring - In games with lots of drama and romance, your players are probably going to know more than their characters about a situation. Why not take advantage of that? If a player character believes a lie or takes harmful actions directly due to the manipulations of others (in other words, if the player knows the action is against their PC’s best interests), you should remove one Story Point from the GM pool and add it to the player pool.

No Mere Mortal - Superhero-themed games assume that the PCs are stronger, faster, and better than average people right from character creation. To represent this, during character creation, increase each PC’s starting XP by 50 (this can be spent on characteristics) and allow them to increase skills to rank 3. In addition, since superheroes traditionally fight with their fists, you should allow PCs and supervillains to deal base damage equal to twice their Brawn when making unarmed attacks. This rules is intended for selected NPCs in the storyline.

Super-Characteristics - Super-characteristics represent your characters having attributes that are more than human. Even superheroes who are nominally “normal” people tend to display superior Cunning, Intellect, or other characteristics in a superhero-themed game, so this applies to any superhero.

During character creation, your players should select two of their character’s six characteristics. These are their character’s super-characteristics – super strength, super speed or agility, or super intelligence, for example. You should also do this whenever you create a nemesis NPC that you intend to be a supervillain.

When a character makes a check based on one of their super-characteristics, if the check generates a Triumph, immediately roll an additional Skill (Yellow) dice into the pool. If that Skill (Yellow) dice generates another Triumph, then roll an additional Skill (Yellow) dice into the pool again. The player still gets to resolve all of the Triumphs as usual.

This can lead to some impressive results with lots of Triumphs, which you should interpret as appropriately “super.” Brawl checks punch opponents into the stratosphere, Coordination checks catch civilians falling hundreds of feet, and Perception checks hear what’s going on miles away. This rules is intended for selected NPCs in the storyline.

Heat - Heat is the wanted level a character has achieved with the authorities because of their actions. Heat can be generated with governments and organisations.

Generating Heat - Characters generate heat from rolling a Despair on a skill check when committing a crime. Heat can be spent in two ways, Getting Burned or Gaining a Heat Level.

Getting Burned - When a character is burned and has a Burn Notice (rating) applied to their character, they gain upgrades to appropriate checks where their reputation is known equal to the amount/rating they were burned.

Gaining a Heat Level - When you gain a heat level, you have a gained attention based on the severity of your heat rating.

• Heat Rating 1 – Two cops is a squad car cruise by to check for suspicious behaviour, or the characters credit gets flagged for suspicious activity.
• Heat Rating 2 – A private detective ask questions, or someone sends the character a oblique message.
• Heat Rating 3 – The cops are actively looking for the character, credit and id are frozen, character receives a direct or threatening message.
• Heat Rating 4 – There is a warrant our for the characters arrest, bounty hunters are hired, a loved one is kidnapped, or someone tries to kill the character via boobytraps.
• Heat Rating 5 – The feds are called in, a corporate assassin team is on their trail, the characters assets are seized, their face is plastered over the media.

Cooling Off and Removing Heat or a Burn Notice - Removing heat requires a way to appease those who set it, in most cases this is calling in a favour for the character, either using up one they have been saving, or obliging them into a future request.

Internal Monologue - A character can choose to take over a scene once per session by flipping a story point and using an internal monologue, going over what their character is thinking, and how they perceive how events are going to turn out with links to their past, present and future. Doing this regains them three strain.