By Nathan Dowdell, 2d20 System Developer
Art by Paolo Puggioni
In last week’s blog post, we delved into the social conflict rules found in the second edition core rulebook (page 279) and provided additional guidelines and suggestions for how to use them for protracted, intense, or high-stakes diplomatic actions, negotiations, and similar situations. This week, let’s go into more detail on structuring a social conflict and on using challenges as part of a social conflict.
The social conflict section in the core rulebook provides information about the tools characters can use during social conflict, but it falls to the gamemaster to create the problems those tools are designed to solve. This requires a degree of thought or planning from the gamemaster, and a similar degree of improvisational skill.
In their simplest form, a social conflict can be boiled down to a goal or request for one party which another party can prevent or permit. The Persuade task is how this is resolved: can one party convince the other to accede to the request, or not? Everything else—deception, intimidation, negotiation, and evidence—exists to support that basis, by shaping the context of the Persuade task. A Klingon captain may not pay you the proper respect until you prove you’re worthy of it, while a Ferengi trader is far easier to deal with when there’s profit to be made.
But a single Persuade task isn’t sufficient to handle more involved situations. It is at this point the gamemaster may wish to add some additional structure.
Challenges in Social Conflict
The simplest way to expand a social conflict is to use the rules for challenges (pages 332–333 of the core rulebook), with the situation requiring multiple Persuade tasks, and each Persuade task serving as a single key task for the challenge. The use of the social tools is, as always, supplementary to this: they exist solely to influence the Difficulty and possibility of Persuade tasks.
In these situations, the overall challenge breaks the social conflict down into several important points that all need to be resolved to persuade the subject. This can be a useful way to model negotiations for diplomacy or trade: there may be several clear points that need to be discussed separately, or certain things the subject needs to be persuaded on before they’ll even start considering others.
Alternatively, a social challenge might involve talking to and persuading several different people—each their own key task—to achieve a larger goal. This might come up in political scenarios, where you need to win over several councilors to secure the support of an organization.
For those of an unscrupulous bent, a heist or confidence game might also be a challenge: early key tasks can be used to convince your target—called a mark in con artist parlance—of small things first, gaining their trust and confidence to begin with before you ask them to believe more and more. Similar techniques are used by undercover operatives and intelligence agents.
Each key task is largely independent from the others, requiring their own approaches, activities, and use of social tools and other methods to influence each Persuade task. However, as they’re all part of a larger social conflict, the social tools used might have repercussions beyond an individual key task: lying to or threatening your opponent might help with one part of the challenge, but might make other parts more difficult. Clever use of those tools, however, can allow the different key tasks to build on one another.
As with any challenges, this could be used to structure an individual scene, or it could be used to provide a structure for several scenes over a protracted period, depending on what the social conflict represents—an intense negotiation may have several distinct key tasks to overcome all within a single scene, while infiltrating an enemy might spread key tasks over several scenes. In many cases, there may be a challenge that includes social conflict, but also other actions.
EXAMPLE: Captain Christopher Pike, Lieutenant Spock, and Lieutenant La’An Noonien-Singh have beamed down to Kiley 279 to rescue a missing crew from the pre-warp culture that captured them. The gamemaster decides this is a challenge: the crew needs to disguise themselves, locate the captives, obtain access, and reach the captives, and this will involve some social conflict.
They disguise themselves as Kiley natives using epigenetic treatments provided by Nurse Chapel, and beam down in appropriate clothing, giving them the Disguised as Kiley trait. When on the surface, La’An uses her tricorder to determine where the captive crew is being held: a secure building nearby; this completes the Locate the Captives step. Closer observation reveals the building is too shielded to simply transport in, but La’An spots a pair of uniformed researchers passing nearby.
Acting quickly, she steps forwards and feigns being in pain: she attempts a Presence + Command task opposed by their Insight + Security, and successfully creates the trait Damsel in Distress; with this, she tries to draw them toward where Pike and Spock are waiting, and the gamemaster rules that this is so simple the Persuade task is Difficulty 0. They follow La’An, and Spock incapacitates them with quick nerve pinches while they’re distracted. The unconscious researchers are beamed up to the Enterprise and copies of their uniforms and security badges are replicated.
Now with Uniforms and Security Badges (equipment traits with an opportunity cost of 1, which also serve as evidence), the trio attempts to enter the building. This would be impossible normally, but between being Disguised as Kiley and having Uniforms and Security Badges, Pike and La’An get through without difficulty. However, there was a complication earlier when Spock was receiving the epigenetic treatments, which the gamemaster banked. The gamemaster chooses now to spend 2 Threat and cause a problem: due to his genetic makeup, Spock’s disguise is Unstable, and starts to fail just as he’s at the retinal scanner. He needs to make a Persuade task—which the gamemaster rules as Difficulty 2—to stall so a solution can be found.
Spock succeeds, stalling just long enough for Transporter Chief Kyle to beam a salve directly onto Spock’s eye so he can pass the retinal scan. The landing party enters the building, and they have now completed the Obtain Access step. Only one more step remains, but Spock’s disguise is still unstable, and could fail at any moment…
Next week we’ll wrap up the deep dive into social conflict and discuss using extended tasks as part of social conflicts. In the meantime, how are you using the social conflict rules in your missions and campaigns? Share your insights with fellow players on Modiphius’s Discord server!
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