Don't start me talking. I can talk all night.

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.

And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.

When The Face can beat the encounter by just talking at the monsters - that's compelling stuff.  It's not what you want for every encounter though - and before you think about it too much just put it in the perspective of the other people at the table.  It's easy to fall into a conversation between the Referee & some star-player.  It's easy to leave everyone out of it all & just let the PC eat up scenery.  It's quite a bit harder & quite a bit rarer in the literary canon to see a group of people involved in a social discussion (or at least in one that actually progresses matters).  

But This Thing We Do - is something that We Do Together.  It just won't do for the better part of the party to sit on their hands while the single face character talks their way out of an encounter.  Well, not all the time anyway.  When We Do This Thing Together it has the virtue of allowing everyone to have the spotlight sometimes, to shine out best & greatest among their peers at the table.  Everyone gets their moment.  But not every moment is one for the spotlight.  Sometimes the whole group needs to have a say, have something to do in a scene, even if the scene is just a conversation.

Locus & Platea are theatrical concepts that fit nicely here - an idea of people being at the center of the discussion while others act out their own roles at the edge of that focus.  At the table the concept tends to prevail, in the systems of initiative where people take turns consciously, and in the typical flow of interactive narration, where someone is always the focus of the Referee's attention.  You see this dynamic over and  over again & while I think it's useful to consider, it's also something I think worth avoiding when possible.  Everyone should be cued to know their time & turn.  Everyone should have a voice in a scene, if they can.    

Again, I'm coming up short on scenes in which the ensemble speaks in turn to get across a point or to make a specific bargain.  The best iterations you might commonly encounter are variants of Good Cop / Bad Cop - where two people on the same side try to persuade a third who is not.  So what about a scene where there are between 5-9 cops are they all different shades of good or bad?  Well...

So sometimes people can be part of the scene & be a presence without saying anything.  In the case of Good & Bad cop there's naturally the entire apparatus of the criminal justice system that is effectively a character, judges & lawyers & jailers are all in the minds of the person being interrogated as are their opposite numbers in the criminal underworld.  So - these can exist in the scene and still not speak.  How much more persuasive is the bad cop if there are heavily armed men standing at his back?  Or a torturer or executioner?  These don't need to say anything to make the bad cop's speech more terrifying - but they do have a presence.  

So let's take Jesus as the face - defeating the diabolical forces of perdition through bargaining.  This has a backdrop but let's consider it as an encounter typical of a fantasy game.  The PCs are traversing the wild roads of the frontier and they're warned away by the presence of monsters.  This is a party of 13 or so & it's no doubt difficult for the Ref to adjudicate it all.  When they decide to continue despite warnings the Face/Leader takes charge of the ensuing encounter.  Here,  making a bold demand that the devils acquiesce to.  

But the exchange isn't just between Jesus & the Devils.  There's JHVH - who's presence is on the minds of everyone in the encounter.  But as well there's Jesus' gang of 12 guys.  So we can imagine, if we are players - that this encounter is occurring with the unstated statistical advantage of having 12 guys on hand who may or may not be up to the challenge of beating up a pair of possessed guys.  But, if you're a demon - hey why take the chance?  It's easy to think of this encounter falling out a whole other way - in which Matthew relates the story of Jesus & his disciples kicking a pair of lunatics into submission...

Which is to say: "We could make this encounter go as easy or as hard as you want it to go.  You can just go over there and be in those pigs, or you can test your luck against 13 guys."  During which time of course all 13 guys are making Strength checks to flex on the demons.  That's one way of making the conversation an ensemble conversation.  

Se we can, if we want, build a mechanic around a scene where players can choose to make it a social interaction - one where they're effectively turning the tables on the Referee to talk their way out of danger or past an obstacle.  There's, again, too few examples of this outside of The Hobby for me to really grab on to any given example.  But there are counter examples - a whole counter-game in fact.  What about a combative conversation between many and one?  What about the villain trying to talk their way out of being captured?

This is difficult, to say the least.  One thing that's inevitable at the table is a bit of mega-game sensibility.  Players, no matter how good they are, hate to be told what their characters believe.  No matter how they love to use the dice to test their own believably - no amount of failed saving throws will let a player really believe that their character believes something they don't want them to.  Or - to put it more succinctly you can't rely on tricking Characters - you have to trick Players.  This line of thinking is more of an aside though - more of strategy for Running the Game than it is a system that can be used in Designing the Game.  So I'll leave it be & consider it another time.  

Really though - this whole direction lends itself beautifully to asides & discursions.  Thinking now about the example of Jesus vs. the Devils & you know - I don't know of many religionists, let alone any players playing a religionist (clerics & paladins oh my) who go into a fight with the dark forces of perdition with anything like the confidence that Jesus has.  That's a fairly intimidating display right out of the gate - just immediate certainty that Yahweh's got your back.  

So thinking of that - this construction:  There are devils who are threatening you and you threaten them back & they ask for something & you negotiate.  It's a zero sum game - someone wins & someone loses.  Zero Sum Game is the essence here - you wouldn't roll dice or make the interaction into a game if it didn't already require that there be a winner and a loser.  So let's take that as the basic framework - fundamental to our structuring of the game.  

Assumptions made so far:
1  - There's an interaction where we want to resolve matters as a conversation.  This is a Social Encounter.
2 - Someone will win the encounter & someone will lose.  
3 - Everyone who's playing needs to be able to participate.

So here I think it's worth looking at negotiating postures.  What are the tools you can bring to a negotiation.  I'm thinking, broad strokes, about the kinds of demeanor you can use & what are the end-game goals of this discussion?

Off the top of my head I'm seeing a few broad-strokes options.  Bargaining - that is pleading & requesting & offering.  



Then there's Coercion - that's straight up intimidation, arm-twisting insistence. 

After that straight up Lying - Deception.

And at last there's flattery, seduction maybe.

Are there more ways to talk to people?  Probably.  I'm going with these four using a bit of essentialism here - saying that you can have a demeanor that asks for something in 4 distinct ways.  By force, by conniving, by seduction & by obsequiousness.  So there.  Let's settle on these together shall we?  Say that they're the 4 temperaments - Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric & Melancholic.  It'll be an exercise for the reader to settle on which is which.

So given these approaches - we're down to working out what the PCs can do in a scene.  I'm thinking that the Players can have their characters approach one or another of these methods as a preference.  One of the Doormen always lies, one always flatters, one always commands & one always begs.  It's a harder logic puzzle, for sure, but it's...

Well it's an environment.  In the end the game is that - a place where there are systems that can work to create story.  I'm interested in a story where the players harangue the hobgoblin with pleading & lies & bluster into giving up their wicked ways.  At least once in a while.

So as an environment for a quasi-staged conversation I think these bases are good.  They each suggest an action.  Recall the basis of the game-within-the-game -
1 - Induction
2 - Sequence
3 - Objective
4 - Options

This foundation is holding up so far, so I'm sticking with it.  I'm not sure, but I think I can bear a few more social methodologies - or maybe fewer.  It's getting to be a matter requiring rules testing more than rules speculation.