The Mezzanine

That sounds excellent!


I've been looking into social mechanics recently. One system I liked was a single roll for convincing someone - but broke down into three possibilities:
- failure: you don't persuade them (for a reason) or you do persude them, but something goes wrong
- success: they do what you're asking if you've provided them with a reasonable motivation
- partial success: they give you some indication of what would motivate them

So, for instance, you're trying to convince the school jock to beat up a gang of bullies for you.
- failure: either he's a member of the gang, and you've just let them know what you're planning, or he agrees to beat them up but turns out to be crap at it and gets beaten up himself
- success: you offer to do his homework, which is sufficiently motivating (whereas if you had rolled high but offered him something he didn't want, it'd be treated as a partial success, just like if you hadn't rolled quite as high)
- partial success: you offer to do his homework, and he declines. But he says "I'm actually pretty brainy. Not so good at talking to girls, though. Wish I had the guts to ask for Sarah's number." and you now know that you can offer to help him ask Sarah out and then he'll help you with the bullies.