Social Influence

Social influence revolves around discovering, building, or weakening Intimacies in others in order to convince them to do what you want them to do. Unlike combat, social influence usually isn’t resolved using strict ordering or timing. If there’s a question about who should go first, it’s the winner of an opposed (Wits + Socialize) roll.

Intimacies come in three intensities, each of which has a number associated with it: Minor (1), Major (2), and Defining (3).

Minor Intimacies are relationships or beliefs that are notable and affect some part of a character’s life, but don’t hold any sway over the rest of it.

Major Intimacies are relationships or beliefs that affect all of a character’s life in some way.

Defining Intimacies are relationships or beliefs that affect all of a character’s life in a major way and have an overriding influence on the character’s behavior.

An Intimacy is a Tie if it’s about real people, places, or things, or a Principle if it’s about more abstract convictions or ideals.

Using Social Influence

Most social actions use an influence roll, which is ([Charisma, Manipulation, or Appearance] + [Presence or Socialize]) against a difficulty of the target’s Resolve. If the influence roll is for an Instill or Persuade action and your Appearance is higher than the target’s base Resolve, you get a +X bonus on the roll, where X is (your Manipulation - target’s Resolve).

With Groups

If you’re targeting more than one character with an influence roll, the roll gets -3. You use the same roll for all targets, but success or failure is separate for each target.

If the target is a group being treated like a single character by the GM, use their average Resolve (usually 2 or 3 for average people). You still get the -3 penalty.1

Nonverbal

You can communicate short, simple statements using mime, facial expressions, body language, or so on. This can be useful if you don’t share a language with someone, or for silent seduction, coordination of a stealth infiltration team, or so on. This gives your target +2 to Resolve for any affected influence rolls, except for the Inspire action.

Written

You can attempt social influence through a written work, taking an amount of time determined by the GM. If you do, you use Linguistics instead of any other Ability on the influence roll. You choose when you make the attempt whether to have the social influence apply against a specific intended target or against all readers.

Opposing Social Influence

You have two main defenses against social influence.

Your Guile is the difficulty for Read Intentions rolls against you. It’s ([Manipulation + Socialize] ÷ 2). You don’t have to apply your Guile if you want to allow a Read Intentions action to succeed, though some characters may assume that a seeming lack of Guile is actually a masterful display of it.

Your Resolve is the difficulty for social influence rolls against you. It’s ([Wits + Integrity] ÷ 2). You don’t have to apply your Resolve if you want to accept social influence.

You can increase your Resolve against an influence roll by using an Intimacy that would resist the influence. You can’t use the same Intimacy again to resist the same issue from the same character in a story.

If one of your Intimacies would oppose an influence roll, it increases your Resolve by (intensity + 1) against the roll. On the other hand, if one of your Intimacies would support the influence roll, it reduces your Resolve by (intensity) against the roll. If more than one Intimacy would oppose the roll, or more than one Intimacy would support the roll, apply the most relevant Intimacy based on the situation. If Intimacies both oppose and support the roll, apply both of their modifiers cumulatively.

If social influence succeeds against your Resolve and you still want to reject it, you can spend 1wp to:

Decision Points

You can spend 1wp to reject a successful Bargain, Persuade, or Threaten action, with what’s called a Decision Point, but only if:

If you use a Decision Point to reject social influence, keep track of the Intimacy (if any) that boosted your Resolve against the influence roll that prompted the Decision Point. For the rest of the story, each Intimacy that was used in this way:

Contradictory Arguments

If you’ve already been convinced during this story into a particular course of action by a Bargain, Persuade, or Threaten action, you can refuse Bargain, Persuade, or Threaten actions to the contrary unless the character attempting to convince you pays 1wp. Even if they do, your Resolve gets +3 against their roll. If they still convince you, you can resist it with a Decision Point without paying 1wp, but if you want to accept it you have to pay 1wp and cite an appropriate Intimacy.

Unacceptable Influence

Social influence attempts that would cause what a character knows to be his certain death, that would cause a character to abandon a Defining Intimacy outright, or that would attempt to seduce a character contrary to his sexual orientation (as defined by his player), are unacceptable influence and fail automatically. A character can still go along with unacceptable influence, but only of his own choice.

Social Actions

Social influence actions are usually used on a dramatic timescale, but are listed in the combat action format in case of use in combat.

If you fail a social influence action against a target, you have to satisfy a retry condition before you can attempt the same kind of influence against the same target. The GM should apply common sense to these retry conditions, such as not allowing another party member to be a proxy for retrying the same argument and ignoring the retry condition.

The social influence actions2 are:

Bargain

Defense Mod -1; Flurry yes
Action Simple or Dramatic; Duration Instant

This action works like the Persuade action, except that instead of using the target’s Intimacies, you offer the target something they want enough to balance your argument. What sort of offer is suitable will depend on the target.

Retry: Make a new offer that’s substantially greater than the previous try.

Inspire

Defense Mod -1; Flurry yes
Action Simple or Dramatic; Duration Instant

Choose an emotion, and make an influence roll against a target. If your influence roll is successful, the target is impassioned in a manner of their choice according to the emotion you chose. This drives the target to action, but you have no control over what kind of action that is, and you don’t know without using a Read Intentions action to find out.

An impassioned target is treated as having a Major Intimacy appropriate to the circumstances for the purposes of Resolve and Persuade actions.

Retry: Wait until the next scene.

Instill

Defense Mod -1; Flurry yes
Action Simple or Dramatic; Duration Instant

Choose a belief, and make an influence roll against a target. Particularly unlikely beliefs give your influence roll a penalty of up to -5.

Creating a new Minor Intimacy has no requirements.

Strengthening an Intimacy requires presenting evidence or argument more compelling than whatever made the Intimacy arrive at its current level of intensity.

If you’re strengthening a Minor Intimacy or weakening a Major Intimacy, the target must have a different Minor or greater Intimacy that supports the attempt.

If you’re strengthening a Major Intimacy or weakening a Defining Intimacy, the target must have a different Major or greater Intimacy that supports the attempt.

If your influence roll is successful and the conditions are satisfied, the target believes in that belief.

Retry: Wait until the next story; or, present evidence that’s substantially greater than the previous try.

Persuade

Defense Mod -1; Flurry yes
Action Simple or Dramatic; Duration Instant

Choose an action or task you want to persuade your target to attempt, and make an influence roll against the target.

To persuade a target to do anything more trivial than handing over some spare change, the target must have an appropriate Intimacy for the kind of task.

An inconvenient task that might pose some mild danger or hindrance, up to a few scenes’ worth of effort, requires a Minor Intimacy.

A serious task that might pose extreme harm or impediment, including extended time commitments, requires a Major Intimacy.

A task that might cause death or total ruin or a life-changing impediment requires a Defining Intimacy.

If your persuade roll is successful and the conditions are satisfied, the target undertakes the task.

Retry: Wait until the next story; or, wait until the Intimacy you invoked has been strengthened to a higher level of intensity; or, make a different argument that invokes a different Intimacy of equal or greater strength.

Read Intentions

Defense Mod -1; Flurry yes
Action Simple or Dramatic; Duration Instant

Choose one:

If the target is unaware of you, treat their Guile as if it was 2 lower against rolls from this action.

Retry: Wait until the next scene.

Threaten

Defense Mod -1; Flurry yes
Action Simple or Dramatic; Duration Instant

This action works like the Bargain action, except that instead of offering the target something they want, you threaten the target with something they don’t want. For this to work, the target has to fear your threat more than your argument.

You can also instead use this action like the Instill action, to give the target a Tie of fear towards you or intensify a Tie of fear towards you they already have.

Using this action gives the target a negative Tie of their choice towards you, and at their choice may weaken any positive Ties they have towards you.

Retry: Make a new threat that’s substantially greater than the previous try.

Social Influence in Combat

You can use social influence in combat, and social influence actions can be flurried with other Simple actions.

However, you should keep in mind the practical limitations involved. Since each round in combat only covers a few seconds worth of time, a single social influence action can’t convey very much information. Trying to communicate complicated deals or concepts takes the use of the same social influence action on multiple turns in a row, with the number of turns depending on the GM’s discretion. Rolls and effects only happen on the last action—the others before it are just “placeholders” to represent the time it takes.3

The most common use of social influence in combat is to surrender to a more powerful enemy, or to demand the surrender of a nearly defeated or obviously weaker enemy. In cases where it would make sense, this doesn’t require any Intimacy to exploit. For example, there’s not much in harm in accepting the surrender of a group of drunken street toughs who poorly decided to pick a fight with a supernatural opponent, and in formal combat or organized war there are often rules or customs about accepting the surrender of an opponent.

  1. This is unclear in the original source, but is included here as a best-guess interpretation. ↩

  2. These actions have been collected and formalized for a more compact presentation and to better work with the combat system. ↩

  3. This rule doesn’t exist in the original text. It’s added here as a common-sense guideline for social actions that take more than a single turn. ↩