Social Encounters (Genesys)

Just like in every other aspect of our game, your characters and your players’ characters make skill checks to resolve the success or failure of their actions. In social encounters, those character’s actions are likely to be some sort of discourse or dialog, so the skills they’ll use are most likely social skills.
Often, your character is going to try to charm, coerce, deceive, lead, or negotiate with a single individual. This means your character is going to be making opposed skill checks against the target's abilities. Other times, your character may try to influence a group of people, which requires skill checks with a set difficulty.

Winning Social Encounters

While “winning” in a combat encounter is pretty straightforward (just defeat the opponents), how to “win” a social encounter can seem less clear. All parties involved must place a demand of what they want the character to do at the start of the Encounter. Obviously, characters want to accomplish their goal, but how the GM, can do that without making it seem like an arbitrary decision can be a bit trickier. Given that, there are three suggestions as to how you can determine if a character accomplishes their goal successfully:

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 com- plicated 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 +b for good roleplaying!)

Succeeding On An Opposed Skill Check

If the check is successful, your character accomplishes their goal. If they fail, they do not. Easy.
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, the following option is recommended instead.

Targeting The Opponent’s Strain Threshold

In more complex social encounters, one successful check isn’t enough to accomplish the character’s goals. In such cases, the 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.

Rewards for Succeeding

At certain stages of the Encounter, rewards are offered. Generally speaking, if a character succeeds in exceeding their target's Strain Threshold, they completely agree to your character’s demands. In a series of delicate negotiations, they may agree to your character’s terms instead of theirs. If your character was threatening to exterminate their homeworld, they may completely surrender to avoid destruction. If your character was trying to ingratiate themself into the target’s good graces, your character convinces the target that they’re a true and loyal friend and ally. Generally, capitulation means that the target gives in completely. However, capitulation doesn’t mean you get to completely dictate the target’s actions, nor is it mind control. The GM may determine that some goals are just too extreme for anyone to agree to (although you probably should have realized that before your character chose that goal in the first place).

Compromise

When Strain Exceeds Half Strain Threshold

Often in complex social encounters, you don’t need someone to completely capitulate to your character’s demands. A compromise where your character gets the most important elements of what they want while giving up as little as possible in return can be just as rewarding, and far easier and quicker to obtain.
To force a target to reach a compromise with your character, your character must inflict Strain on the target greater than half of their Strain Threshold. At this point, the target becomes willing to offer a compromise with regard to your character’s goals.
The exact nature of the compromise is up to you and your GM. Your GM should know what your character is trying to achieve and have the target offer to agree to some portion of those goals. In return, your character has to offer something to the target as well.
Generally, what the target is willing to agree to shouldn’t be at odds with their core principles or completely against their own interests. For that reason, your GM has final say as to what the target is willing to offer. No matter what, though, it should be more than what the target would be willing to offer normally.
Example

If your character is negotiating the surrender of an alien species, the alien negotiator may agree to a cease-fire and favorable trade concessions but require that the species retain its sovereignty. If your character is trying to get on good terms with a target, the target may ask them to perform a minor favour to prove their good intentions.

Capitulation

When Strain Completely Exceeds The Target's Threshold

If your character wants to push for complete capitulation instead of compromise, they can try to inflict enough Strain to exceed the target’s Strain Threshold. Once a target exceeds their Strain Threshold, they agree to your character’s goal or goals. In a series of delicate negotiations, they may agree to your character’s terms instead of theirs.
Generally, capitulation means that the target gives in completely. However, capitulation doesn’t mean you get to completely dictate the target’s actions, nor is it mind control. Your GM can determine that some goals are just too extreme for anyone to agree to (although you probably should have realized that before your character chose that goal in the first place).
Example

E.g. If your character was threatening to exterminate their homeworld, they may completely surrender to avoid destruction. If your character was trying to ingratiate themself into the target’s good graces, your character convinces the target that they’re a true and loyal friend and ally.

Failure

If A Character Exceeds Their Own Strain Threshold

If your (or any) character exceeds their Strain Threshold, then they fail to accomplish their goals. They may just give up trying to interact with their opponent and leave. However, your GM could decide that, depending on the circumstances, your character is forced to concede to one of your target’s goals, instead. Since your character is a PC, and not a non-player character, you can choose whether your character would be open to compromise if their Strain exceeds half of their Strain Threshold. This can be a good roleplaying cue to follow, but since PCs are the protagonists of an adventure, they get more freedom in their choices than NPCs.

Using Skills To Inflict Strain

Many characters have special Talents or abilities that allow them to inflict Strain on a target. However, everyone can default to making a social skill check as an Action in order to inflict Strain.
If they succeed, they inflict +1 Strain, +1 additional Strain per uncanceled s.
If they fail, they suffer +2 Strain.
Remember, the social skill check your character uses needs to be appropriate to the situation and their goals. Your character can’t use Coercion when they’re trying to charm and flatter someone, for example. Also, it’s never enough to just roll some dice: you always need to explain what your character is doing and why the check makes sense. It can be enough to say “my character is complimenting the target’s appearance, so I’m going to make a Charm check,” but you do have to explain your character’s actions.
Further, and this should go without saying, you can’t use weapons or combat checks to inflict Strain in a social encounter. Once your character starts throwing punches, the time for talk is over.

Motivations

Motivations are a big part of anybody’s character, so we expect them to come into play throughout a 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 b or b to a skill check. Let’s talk about adding b to your character’s check first. When your character is able to work with a target’s Strength or Flaw, your character adds b 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: +bb. Fears and Desires are powerful Motivation facets that govern many of a character’s choices, so playing to them can have a greater effect.
Strengths and Flaws example

For example, let’s take Katrina’s character Akiko, the renegade clone. Akiko’s Strength is independence, and her Flaw is intolerance (in this case, of other clones).

Akiko is at a fancy dinner party when she’s approached by the host (an NPC controlled by the GM). The host wants to get on Akiko’s good side so that he can ask her for a favor later. If he wants to play to Akiko’s Strength, he might compliment her on her wealth and financial independence. If, instead, he wants to play to the clone’s Flaw, he might make some disparaging comment about how dull and uninteresting most other clones are. Both of these are attempts to use the Charm skill to influence Akiko (and both add b to the subsequent skill check). However, narratively, both are very different approaches.

Desires and Fears example

Going back to the example above, let’s say the host tries to play on Akiko’s Desire for knowledge, specifically any information about her creation. He suggests that he has purchased some top-secret data concerning the cloning process. Or perhaps the host wants to play on Akiko’s Fear of isolation. He makes some conciliatory comments about how hard it must be to be an individual who shares the same face as countless other clones, and on the effort Akiko makes to look visually distinct. Again, these are different narrative approaches, but they result in the same Charm skill check (adding bb to the pool).

Working against motivations example

Revisiting the above example, let’s say that when our host approaches Akiko, he suggests that she really needs his help to escape the authorities. This conflicts with Akiko’s Strength of independence, and she won’t react well to the idea that she needs anyone’s help. Or perhaps he wants to hire Akiko for a job posing as an “ordinary” clone again. He doesn’t realize it, but this is going to play against Akiko’s Fear of being lost in the “sea of sameness.” In the first case, the host must add b to his Charm check. In the second, he adds bb.

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

Discerning Other Character's Motivations

Discerning another character’s Motivations can give your character a major advantage in a social encounter. Generally, your character accomplishes this through spending a or t 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.

Spending a, t, h and d in Social Encounters

Cost	Result options
a or t	-1 Strain +b to the next allied character's check. Notice a single important point in the ongoing Encounter, e.g. an overly curious waiter or some curtains that could be hidden behind.
aa or t	Learn the Strength or Flaw of the targeted character. +b to the targeted character's next check. +b to any allied character's next check.
aaa or t	Learn any one Motivation facet of any character in the Encounter (with the GM's approval). Upgrade the Difficulty of the targeted character's next check. Upgrade the ability of any allied character's next check. Do something vital, e.g. getting everyone's attention, distracting all the guards so your allies can do something.
aaaa or t	Critical Remark: See panel below.
h or d	+1 Strain. -1 Maneuver: The character gets distracted or sidetracked momentarily. This can result in their being dragged into a lengthy and boring conversation.
hh or d	The character accidentally reveals their own Strength or Flaw. +b to the targeted character's next check. The active character receives +b to their next check.
hhh or d	The active character accidentally reveals their own Desire or Fear. The active character accidentally reveals their/the group's true goal in the Encounter.
d	The active character accidentally reveals a Motivation facet of one 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. Staggered: The active character becomes so embroiled in irrelevant events in the encounter that they cannot do anything important during the next round.

"Critical Remarks" in Social Encounters

In combat, your character can inflict and suffer Critical Injuries from particularly powerful or lucky blows. In social encounters, the same thing can happen when someone makes a particularly good point, powerful argument, or painful insult.
One way we represent this is by allowing all characters to inflict “Critical Remarks” in a social encounter. They do this the same way they inflict a Critical Injury in combat: by spending a and t. In this case, when a character makes a social check, they can spend t or aaaa to inflict +5 Strain on the target.
The player controlling the PC or NPC (you or the GM) also has to come up with some idea of what the remark, argument, or insult was and why it had such a powerful effect.