Bonded Skills Through Flashbacks to Scenes of Bonding

I previously wrote about the disconnect that occurs in RPGs when the player doing most of the talking isn’t controlling the character with the best social interaction skill or ability modifier. I proposed several solutions to this source of dissonance. Here’s another. I have not (yet) tested this in a game.

When the PC doing the talking rolls to determine their success in a social scenario, they can use another PC’s superior modifier (or applicable skill, or die size, or whatever, depending on the system). In exchange, the two players must either collaboratively describe or act out a brief flashback between their characters.

The flashback should be short – five minutes is good. It should be something new; it can’t just rehash already-known events. It should have at least some indirect connection to the current social interaction. It doesn’t have to be direct and explicit; it could be indirect, or even metaphorical. But the two PCs need to establish some kind of connection between their characters, and explain how that past bond helps the character acting in the present exceed their solitary skillset.

An easy example is mentoring. Picture a scenario where the crude barbarian has to make a speech to the frog parliament. The charismatic bard would normally speak for the party, but the frogs want to hear the barbarian speak in their own words. The barbarian’s player would like to take advantage of that bard’s modifier on this roll. So the two players collaborate on a flashback to a month previous, when the barbarian reluctantly sought out the bard for speaking advice on some completely unrelated matter. That advice and mentoring now comes through in unexpected ways as the barbarian makes a still-crude – but surprisingly effective – argument to the assembled notables.

That’s a pretty direct example, but players could absolutely run with less literal ones. A flashback to an inconsequential chat during a quiet moment of downtime or the long boredom of travel could prove surprisingly relevant to an unanticipated scenario in the present. Players could put the focus on events that are certainly important to their characters, but rarely come up “on camera” in session; eating a meal together, for example. A flashback could also do double duty and resolve a loose thread, e.g., dealing with a minor antagonist from the characters’ early days.

Flashbacks like these are done best in small doses. Too many flashbacks can drain urgency and focus from the present scenario. Once per session, or less, is probably good for most games. Or, alternately, include a rule that each PC must do a flashback with each party member once before clearing their tally and having the option to “bond” with anyone once again. That would ensure that players don’t strictly conduct flashbacks just with the one character with the most desirable skills.

This idea could be applied to various kinds of skill and ability checks, with enough creative imagination. But social interaction is the space where I see players struggling with this player/character disconnect the most.

Turning the Wizard Question Around to Better Understand Our World

Last Week: Ignoring the Real World to Instead Learn to Cast Ninth Level Spells to Impress a Bunch of Wizards on an Internet Forum Whose Opinions’ Are Now Very Important to You for Some Reason

So if these wizards are not concerned with what the common people think, whose values and opinions would they care about? The Discord conversation concerned, in part, how humans naturally seek the attention and approval of their fellow people. Certainly this motivates real-world humans, and plays into many of the things they seek to accomplish in the real world. But I don’t think high-level characters necessarily see the broad population of other humans (or other sapient humanoids, more generally) as their peers. I believe wizards would care about status as measured by beings whose power equals or exceeds theirs; gods, extraplanar immortals, and, of course, other high-level wizards.

Following the logic of these ideas can take us back to the basic concept of domain play in classic and old-school D&D. Fighters rule land, clerics gather followers, wizards research knowledge. There is some overlap between those ideas, and exceptions, to be sure; a world should have an occasional witch-king or Merlin-style advisor. But in my conception, those are rare exceptions even among the already very small population of high-level adventurers.

So that’s my take – but I concede it is limited to certain assumptions about the metaphysical workings of a D&D world, how rare NPCs with class levels are, and the prevalence of magic. The approach of many high fantasy worlds – where NPC wizards and clerics in the double-digit level range seem happy to serve as government administrators, small business owners, and local troubleshooters – is not my approach. But it’s not a wrong approach, and it may suit certain styles of play. “It depends” wins another argument.

But it’s also interesting to turn this question around, and try to draw a more universal conclusion about the real world. Why do people seek status and power within nations and other organizations in the real world? Precisely because they cannot “level up” and access magic and supernatural power. Real-world historical rulers surely aspired to be like the 20th-level PC of their mythologies – Hercules or Gilgamesh or Merlin. But they were ultimately just mundane, mortal humans. They could not harness magical power or superhuman mastery of weapons. They had no choice but to build powerful societies because there was no other way to extend their influence and power far beyond themselves. 

In a fantasy world where magic and supernatural power exists, people would have that choice. That’s why I believe governments in medium- or high-magic worlds would be weaker, smaller, shorter-lived, and with less state capacity, simply because some percentage of the most talented potential rulers would instead be gaining power through magical means instead of building social and political power. 

We seek status because we lack the power to act so unilaterally as individuals in the way that the fantasy of fantasy RPGs allow us to do.