Cinco: New Conversation Rules

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I got new rules, I count 'em.

I liked my existing rules for conversations, being basically the same as in D&D Fifth Edition, but I felt like they lacked structure up to the final roll. I kept hearing about how intuitive the rules from Draw Steel were, but Matthew Colville is such a maximalist rules writer that my eyes glazed over the constant weighing of situational permutations on the page—most rulebooks should really be like 70% shorter, huh? So I didn’t fully get them until I watched my queen Ginny Di’s video where she boiled down Matt’s structure in a way that could be extended into principles beyond Draw Steel’s verbose mechanic framework. It’s basically like:

  1. We should have an idea of where the NPC already stands.
  2. The goal of negotiation is to shift the NPC’s perspective towards yours.
  3. At some point, you have to stop pushing the question.

So rather than having a unstructured conversation leading up to a climatic roll where the outcome is finally decided—not that being unstructured is bad per se, but that it’s possible and likely that there will be dice rolls and shifts in attitude, which we don’t want to allow indefinitely when the intent of the one big roll is for there to be one big roll—the outcome (should the players do nothing) is already decided, and they have of chances to shift that outcome before it actually takes place. So below is how I transformed the Draw Steel rules into a framework that’s less annoying for me to read and more intuitive to apply generally rather than imposing formal rules top-down on conversations. It’s copied and pasted from my game document, so forgive the lack of transition.

The Rules

Consider the NPC’s points of agreement or contention. Friendly NPCs are likely to start with 1+ points of agreement, and hostile NPCs with 1+ points of contention—though the particular situation may call for more or less either way. Think ethos, logos, and pathos: how does the request square with the NPC’s values, goals, or beliefs?

Then, subtract contention from agreement to find the NPC’s disposition, representing their present attitude towards the request. Whether it’s positive or negative indicates if the NPC will assist or oppose the crew, and its absolute distance from 0 represents how much the NPC is willing to sacrifice to that end (±1 nada, ±2 minor, ±3 major).

The player-character’s goal is to either bolster agreement or neuter contention in order to improve the NPC’s net disposition before the NPC runs out of patience, which begins at 1–3 depending on how willing they are to listen. The player checks D20 each attempt: [20+] means they just succeed; [10–19] means they succeed but the NPC loses patience; and [9–] means they fail and the NPC loses patience. When the NPC’s patience hits 0 or their disposition hits ±3, the talk ends and their disposition is final.

Commentary

I don’t have the Draw Steel rules on me (wrote this on my phone and linked them later; I just also can't be bothered in this case), so I’m going off my memory. The first thing I did was get rid of the big list of specific starting attitudes which define an NPC’s patience and initial disposition. Patience is easy enough to score from 1–3, and I’d rather think of their disposition as being decomposed into specific points for or against the request, not only because it’s more concrete but also because it gives players specific guidance on what the NPC finds problematic or what they already agree with (and thus can’t be suggested as a reason to agree, because they already agree on that point). I also remember disposition being on a weird scale, so I just did it starting from 0 and varying by 3 depending on how much the NPC is either for or against the thing.

The references to ethos, logos, and pathos were initially going to be more formal, because I use them to outline how an NPC already feels (based on their responsibilities, perceived interests, and gut feelings), but I wouldn’t necessarily impose that on others if it’s not as intuitive for them to think in those terms. You can probably come up with atomic reasons for doing or not doing something without having to refer to those categories.

It was also important to me that despite it being a slightly formal framework, it acts more like handrails and it both doesn't impose itself on the conversation and doesn't require any tracking of bullshit. It's more like a reminder for me to be like, "the conversation shouldn't last this long", or "what does this NPC actually care about?"

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