Arise, Ye Wretched (Settingpost Pt. I)

 The year is 9984 AD (After Deluge). The clock reads two minutes to midnight. The guns of the Western Phalanx and the Symbiocombinist Intermarium bristle at one another across the steaming gulf of the Mesonesian Sea. Serried rows of Azimuti cataphracts crowd the hardstand of staging grounds and forward operating bases on the Damascene-Orthox border, waiting for the call to action - Radic ekranoplans churn up milky spindrift contrails as they carve up the blue waters in endless military exercises, noctilucent cores ticking away in their sleek ceramometallic bellies. Proxy wars in Cthonia, terrorist actionism in the Argolith, coups and color revolutions in the Aeonics, endless political violence in the Interdark—all the armaments of this bloody hundredth century lie poised to go off, annihilating the known world in an orgy of noctilucent destruction. How did we get here? 

The Big Fucking Mappe

The Short War & the Long War

The current international order was forged in the crucible of the Solar War of 9923-9944, sometimes referred to as the Panpelagic Conflict in stuffy academic texts, which saw the last of the Sun Kings fall after four-hundred years of divine righteous kingship. The four initial antagonists were Great Azimut and the Crown Entente powers of the Grand Principality of Ormillión, the Divine Sybilline Empire, and the Oblas Mandate. The former represented the waxing power of bourgeois æquital fructism, the latter three the waning strength of the old solar monarchies. 

 

The flags of the initial Solar War combatants - Azimut, Ormillión, Sybilline, Oblas

 

Over the twenty-year course, these alliances were tested, reorganized, calcified, and broken. The Radical Revolution of '27 tore open a new front as the fructists and coronists alike fought to stamp out the dual scourge of combinism and symbionism and retake their maritime colonies from the Free Radas; Sybilline underwent a fructist-democratic reform and shifted loyalties, forming the nucleus of the Western Phalanx; Ormillión's spine was broken in the three-day Battle of Ballistree, the largest and most costly cataphract battle in history which saw the Ormilláis chivalric class ultimately decimated at the hands of the endless waves of Azimuti conscript-catanachs. Ultimately, the two great victors of the battle were capital and international symbiocombinism—after the Unconquerable Sun had been bombed out of Oblast airspace and the noctilucent blackout had settled, a bipolar world had emerged, split between the old superpower of Great Azimut and the rising new beast of the Free Radas.   

It might fill you with foreboding to know that this twenty-year convulsion is colloquially referred to as "the Short War." 

 

Azimuti & Radic flags

Fructism is broadly what we would understand as "capitalism," the mode of production associated with the dominance of the commodity-form, the transfer of surplus labor-value from the proletariat to the bourgeois capitalist class via the mechanism of commodified wage labor, &c. It derives its name from the principle of fructus, one of the three rights constituting private ownership of property (this is real, go look it up), and was first coined by æquite philosopher and economist Balane Nouvelle, writing under the pen-name Adam Cadmon in the declining age of the Orthosybilline Empire. It was adopted most eagerly in the lands that would become Great Azimut, where a weak aristocracy and swelling class of æquite burghers took up the torch of free commerce and splintered the thousand-year empire in the War of Continental Independence. 

 

Symbiocombinism is a portmanteau of symbionism and combinism, two major antifructist Shakyist ideologies which have somehow managed to not explode into pointless and cataclysmic infighting (this is the most idealistic element of the setting by far). 

• Symbionism broadly constitutes the "peasant movement," an agrarian revolutionary ideology based on land reform, environmentalism, and maintaining traditional treaty obligations to the spirits of the land. It's something like Maoism, something like Georgism, something like animism. 
• Combinism broadly constitutes the "proletarian movement," an industrial revolutionary ideology based on workplace democracy, vanguardism, and forge-cultism; the name comes from the famous, doomed Navis Combine. These guys are kind of like fairly orthodox Marxist-Leninists if Bukharin had won the post-Lenin power struggle—you might also compare the dominant strain to Dengism.

 Along with militant antifructism, the main thing that unites these two philosophies is a shared intellectual tradition; both have their roots in the socioalchemical writings of 99th-century concretic philosopher Shakya bint Petram, whose landmark treatise on the fructist mode of production, The Book of the Tree of Life and Death, formed the basis of all later Shakyan political economics and also ushered in a concretic methodological revolution in the field of socioalchemy. Her work, in turn, was based on the New Law movement of the early 99th century, and the late 98th-century works of Isambard de Jing.

 

These two clashing ideologies form the opposing poles of the postbellum world, the dynamo for the forty-year arrested conflict known as the "Long War." 

The Shape of the World

It's like this:

It's a hexagonal plate. Azimut, the Radas, the Sun Kings - this is all the upper world, the world of blue sea and blue sky, with a hot sun and hemmed in by ice-walls. There's a whole other land on the underside, past the separating layer of the Interdark, referred to as Cthonia by the topsiders—this land has a gelid shadowcasting antisun, a blazing firewall at its borders, and a flat white daytime sky. Gravity "flips" at the median line, at the dead center of the Interdark. Above the Sun and below the Anti-Sun are "Heaven" and "Hell," inhabited by modron-angels and slaad-devils, respectively. Around the suns, created by their corkscrewing ontoaetheric emanations, are the gyres, which keep things whirling ever round. Finally, at the very top and bottom of the world are the star-studded black firmament and white atrament; nobody knows all that much about them, since the stars shoot lasers at anything that gets too close.

 

Modern science is now acutely aware that the hex is only a small part of the larger world - gyronautic probes have observed an fathomless tesselated honeycomb-grid of hexes beyond the wall. Extramural exploration is still in its infancy—building a vessel capable of escaping the vortex of the gyres is inordinately difficult and expensive, and tunneling through the walls comes with its own host of hazards.

 

In theory, you could "escape" the hex via the Interdark, which is open on the sides—indeed, many creatures have—but this is no less hazardous. Many of the most dangerous creatures and intelligences of the universe are drawn to dwell in this no-man's-land, supping on the enormous ergogradient that transfers heat from the cold icewalls to the burning firewall. This is the kind of place where the average wandering encounter HD is, like, 15.

 

Great Azimut

The wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Something like America by way of France by way of bubble-era Japan. She was born in the harsh Orthosybilline hinterlands during the War of Continental Independence in 9706 AD, and it was her gallowglasses that saw the Emperor executed by scaphism and the Winter Sun permanently extinguished. She emerged from the Solar War triumphant and hungry, having lost her overseas colonies but gained massive swathes of the wealthy, temperate Eostrelands from Ormillíon. 

 

Incomplete land of Great Azimut, exclusing the Antemuralian Territory. Cities, roads, etc... not exhaustively filled in.

 

 

Her capital is rainy Navis, where the President and the Sidereal Assembly sit; her largest city is the ex-Ormilláis capital of Réalta, something which causes the Navigates (the demonym for Navis-dwellers) no shortage of ill-feelings. So total was her defeat of her erstwhile neighbor that the Ormilláis monarchy resides in Réalta instead of the diminished Oestrelands rump-state, enthroned within the prison-palace at the mouth of the Peregrin River, kept alive solely to keep the Midnight Sun burning over the City That Never Sleeps. Other major world cities within her borders include Les Séraphins, Ballistree, Sanktierre, and Kuronevre. 

 

Azimut is the de-facto leader of the Western Phalanx (WestPhal), a NATO-esque collective defense organization comprised of signatories to the Treaty of Sankt-Guianne. Major signatories include: Jenieve, Ysja, Damaskos, Rûnya, the Argolith, Sybilline, Karsht, Altioc, Kyrn, Niban, Bisr (Republic of), Uncari, Vipasse, Hith, Eblis, Deme, Vraso, Iqiru, Hazido, Yrn, and South Nyava. 

Rough map of allegiances - WestPhal in green, Intermarium in orange.

As an economic power, many of the world's most powerful corporations and commensalities are headquartered in Azimut, including Black Snow, the public-private contractor that serves as the Azimuti intelligence service, having won a state-issued monopoly in the Contract Wars after the infamous "Bloody Boardroom" massacres in the Ventôse of '63. As a cultural power, much of the world's music, film, theater, and drugs flow from within its borders. As a military power, she boasts the most well-trained and well-funded cataphract corps in the world, is heavily invested in the intermediate-range missile leg of the noctilucent triangle, and is behind cutting-edge experiments into applied fulminance, dracoweapons, and translocative magecraft, thanks to her large strategic reserves of red mercury. 

 

Angels & Demons

It is necessary to note that "angel" and "demon" are (topsider) human appellations - the preferred internal nomenclature is Modron and Slaad. The Cthonians refer to them as "daevas" and "asuras," and have a generally pessimistic approach to the moral quality of the whole lot of them. 

 

The Modrons are geometric mechanical beings who claim to have been constructed from prima materia by the godhead itself. They reside within an icosahedral megastructure hovering in the eye of the gyres above the Sun, and descend to the Earth for missions of varying scrutability. 

Behold: a Planetar

 These range in body-plan from small cylindrical courierforms to octahedral aetherocrystalline Planetar warforms which route beams of furious plasma through transdimensional conduits to the heart of the sun to cubic seraphs with thrusters inset in each face to massive Dyson-spheroid Solars studded with esoteric theotechnological immanentizer devices. The Modron were those who handed down the divine right of kings to the solar monarchies, who kindled five new suns and granted them to five human kingdoms to shine evermore on their domains so long as their dynasty yet sat the throne. They are still fairly pissed about the development of æquitism, and will routinely beam intrusive techno-coronist thoughts into random peoples' brains in the hope that one of them will become ardentized and commit a terrorist bombing.

The slaad are anurid creatures who are awfully cagey about their origins. They live in exile beneath the gelid antisun and are consummate shapers of flesh and bone—though, ironically, they are completely unable to alter the ugliness of their own forms. They hatch broods from their back, squirt pressurized beams of boiling alkahest from their eyes, and tempt mortals to sin for their own amusement.

 The Modron and the Slaad have an ancient rivalry of cataclysmic proportions. The scars of their antediluvian battles are literally carved into the shape of the world. Their turboweapons remain buried in sunken vaults. Their one joint project, the protomen, are the cause of all there is to come. 

Magique

Magic is divided into two categories - Gnostic and Occult. Gnostic magic is the coherent realm of gramarye and goety, the sorceries that are broadly compatible with a rational-scientific epistemology. Occult magic literally runs on secrecy—the fewer people know a particular spell or working, the more powerful it becomes. The former is taught in academies and madrassas, the latter is the subject of conspiracy theories.

 

Both branches of magic have a defined Goal, in the same way that alchemists have the general goal of attaining the Magnum Opus. 

• Gnostics seek, naturally, Gnosis—they believe that, would someone attain perfect knowledge of all phenomena, they would also have perfect understanding of all sensuous quality attached to existence, in essence attaining the subjective perspective of God and allowing for Henosis: unity with the godhead.
•  Occultists seek the total erasure of the perceiving self, essentially attempting to turn themselves into philosophical liches—if awareness interferes with the occult, then the greatest occultist of all must not even be aware of her own spells as she casts them. 
  

The Four Fuels

Modern day alchemy has identified four major fuel sources:

1. Black naphtha, which has the property of combustion - this works more or less exactly the way gasoline works in our world, and is of similar extraction. 
2. White powder, which is cooked up from a mixture of phosphor and saltpeter and has the property of fusillance. When ignited, white powder goes up in a small green-white flash and a big bang of pure kinetic force. White powder is the dominant fusillant used in thunderarms and bombs; white powder guns have minimal muzzle flashes (mostly a blur of displaced air) but extremely loud reports. While muzzle heating is not a major limiter on fire rate, vibratory resonance can shake guns and bones to pieces if allowed to build up unchecked. Also, since this is the 80s, it can of course be snorted for a wicked high.
3. Yellow gold, which has the property of noctilucence. When refined into heavy gold and subjected to N-ray bombardment, gold is debased into depleted gold (or "pyrite," in proper scientific parlance) and releases enormous quantities of noctilucent energy. A noctilucent detonation looks like an immense gold-white flash, like firelight glinting off a coin magnified to unimaginable proportions. As the blast subsides it gradually tarnishes into that purple-green-white-blue-pink octarine color you see when you press on your closed eyelids, except it's not an artefact of vision damage, it's the world that sees it that way. Finally, the octarine fades away leaving dense clouds of fuligin blackout, which disperse according to wind, blanketing the land in darkness and making the nights longer, the days colder, the shadows deeper, and the faces of strangers subtly more menacing.
4. Red mercury, which has the property of fulminance. When correctly triggered, red mercury erupts into jagged-edged arcs and filaments of bloodred lightning that leave behind splinters and faults in space as they flicker in and out of existence. These discharges are enormously energetic, and degrade the fabric of the local metric as the redout builds up. This is the rarest and most potent of fuels, only used in cutting-edge technology and weapons research, and the most powerful of sorcerous rites. 

I'm Getting Bored of Writing

I'll post another one of these sometime. I have no idea how to write a fucking settingpost—this is deeply ennervating compared to just thinking about things or riffing with friends about fantasy bullshit. Shoutout to Loch, Purplecthulhu, PriestessofSpiders, Eos, Louis, Archon, and probably at least one other person I'm forgetting right now for chatting about this setting with me in DMs.

 

There is No Peace but the Sword (GLOG Sword-Saint Wizard School)

This is the season of not letting the Perfect be the enemy of the Good. Nearly two full years ago I wrote this variant on the Sword-Saint as a magic school, in the standard GLOG format. I never ended up posting it for reasons that I can't quite remember, but it was a perfectly serviceable piece of work, so here it is now.

Judith and Holofernes, Goya.

Sword-Saint (Again)

Perk: By the sword alone may you be slain. Other forces can conspire to bring you to 1 HP, but only a sword can put you down for good.
Drawback: You cannot own anything but swords. Tools of peace fall from trembling, insensate fingers.

Cantrips:

1. Swallow a sword whole, to be regurgitated at will. You may carry any number of swords like this.

2. Cause a held sword to reflect sunlight as if you were standing in an open field. Produces lighting roughly equivalent to a candle.

3. Whistle a tone on the edge of human hearing. As long as you hold the note, unsheathed swords in earshot will resonate and produce a clearly audible hum. You can tell their size and shape by the tone and volume.

Spell List:

1. Smite
   R: A sword's length, T: A Man, D: 0
   Deal [Sum]+[Dice] damage to a single man—if she is holding a sword, she may Save to avoid damage. On a successful Save, your blades lock together with a bassy, stomach-churning thunderclap; earth splinters, grass flattens, horsemen are unseated, and peasants look on in awe. 

2. Rite of Contest
   R: [Dice]x10', T: —, D: See description
   Draw a ring of blood and corpses up to [Dice]x10' in diameter. Standing in one spot in a pitched melee and killing everyone around you for a while will probably do the trick. When a worthy foe enters the circle, you may invoke the Rite of Contest. Neither you nor she may leave the ring until one is dead or [Sum] blows have been exchanged. Nothing from outside may harm anyone in the ring while the Rite is ongoing. If you and your opponent both survive the Rite, take +1 on Reaction Rolls with each other.

3. Kusanagi
   R: Arm's reach, T: ∞, D: [Dice] combat rounds
   For up to [Dice] combat rounds, you can strike anything and everything within arm's reach once every round with your sword. This includes people, arrows, insects, droplets of liquid, germs—so long as it's in the macroscopic regime, it's fair game.

4. The Rule of Beasts
   R: 0, T: Yourself, D: However long you can hold a cool stance
   Allow up to [Dice] blows to strike you unopposed; if you still stand at the end, you will return them [Dice]fold. All will know the terrible bargain you offer.

5. Sword Glare
   R: 60', T: Up to [Dice] men standing within 10' of each other, D: [Sum] combat rounds
   When standing within the light of a source at least as bright as the full moon, catch the light with the edge of your blade and cast it into your foes' eyes. They take 1d6+[Dice] damage and must Save or be blinded for [Sum] combat rounds.

6. Absolute Territory
   R: [Dice]x50', T: —, D: [Sum] days
   Plant up to [Dice]+1 swords firmly into the earth, with no two blades separated by more than [Dice]x50'. Anyone passing between them who has reasont o fear the blade (e.g. peasants, archers, gods) must Save or be overcome with a crushing sense of foreboding that forestalls their passage. The swords cannot be removed without significant effort, and require a Save at -4 each to simply approach close enough to try.

7. Flying Sword
   R: 0, T: A trusted sword, D: [Dice] exploration turns
   Imbue a sword with the ability to soar like a bird—standing on it permits rapid aerial transport. At 1D, it flies like a vulture; at 2D, like a falcon; at 3D, like a biplane; at 4D, like a supermaneuverable fighter jet. Save to keep your footing when pulling high-gee maneuvers.

8. World Splitter
   R: See description, T: Spacetime, D: See description
   Cut the span between worlds. With a sharp blade, open a wound in the world that allows instantaneous transit between spatially separated locales. At 1D, the rent can link to a point up to [Sum]x100' away for [Sum] combat rounds; at 2D, a point up to [Sum] miles away for [Sum] exploration turns; at 3D, anywhere you're familiar with within the same world for [Sum] days; at 4D, at any point in any world, forever.
   Each time you use this ability, add +[Dice] to a running sum, then roll 1d20. If you roll equal to or under that number, your transgressions against reality provoke some sort of hostile response—reduce the sum by an amount equal to the rolled value. The GM will afflict you with some sort of monster or calumny; the higher the roll, the more dangerous.

9. Blade-Turning Mantle
   R: 60', T: [Sum] HD of enemies, D: 0
   Turn [Sum] HD of swords as an exorcist turns undead. Swords with [Dice] HD or fewer fly away as if struck, or turn heavy and leaden in their wielders' hands. If cast with 4 MD, this spell destroys swords of 1 HD—they rust, shatter, or dissolve into a sharp, fine dust. Mundane swords (can there truly be such a thing?) have the HD of their wielder. Ancestral or spell-worked swords have their own HD to be determined at the GM's discretion.

10. Caladbolg
    R: As far as the eye can see, T: —, D: 0
    A stroke of your sword that can strike anything you can clearly see. Deals +[Sum] damage to inanimate objects, and splits them cleanly.

11. Sovereignty
    R: ∞, T: A sword, D: 0
    Call a sword's name to summon it to your hand. At 1D, it flies with the speed of a swallow; at 2D, a galloping horse, and tears through fabric walls; at 3D, like an arrow, and bursts through wooden and thin stone walls; at 4D, like a bullet, and can crack and rend through the living earth itself.
    If an enemy has a sword in hand, they can Save at a penalty of -[Dice] to keep a hold of it. If they do not know their sword's name, they automatically fail this save.
    The most famous swords will have hidden true names. 

12. Kintsugi
    R: 0, T: [Dice] broken swords, D: See description
    Take the shards of [Dice]+1 sundered blades and marry them, restoring their majesty. The resultant sword has the combined size and properties of all the swords and shatters on a hit roll of [Dice] or less.
    Alternatively, repair a single blade of up to +[Dice] quality.

 

Deep Roots are Not Reached by the Frost (GLOG Ranger)

 

You are first and foremost a scribe. Before teaching you the bow and the gun, the sword and the knife and the hunting spear, medicine and woodcraft, the secret ways to smell and hear and taste, before any of those things, your master taught you to write. You crouch in the hollows of thorny black woods, listening to the terrorbirds screech and the stirges buzz, and scribble down your observations with ink-stained fingers. You analyze, dissect, and taxonomize, in service of your God, your king, your order, your employer, or just your own quixotic obsession. 

 

You are a Ranger, and your field of study is the hunting, capturing, and killing of living things. 

 

The Message, Roman Kupriianov

Ranger 

 

Starting Equipment: A heavy jezzail, a pair of twinned oxtail machetes (can be wielded together as a medium sword or unlocked into two light swords), a thick woolen chokha and bashlyk, eight bullets—seven leaden, one silver—stored in goblin-bone gazyrs, a red-tinted candle lantern, a tinderbox, a bag of saddle jerky, a tea-brick, a writing kit, and a battered tin kettle and mug.

 

A: Monster Manual, Strider

B: Situational Awareness, +1 Attack/Round

C: Dogged Pursuit

D: Monster Master

A: Monster Manual

You have possession of a Monster Manual, a folio of yellowed vellum bound in the hide of a forest demigod, passed down to you by your predecessor. It is a (mostly) true and honest copy of the bestiary that the GM is using. It is weatherproof, waterproof, fireproof, acid-proof, even stab-proof enough to be used as an improvised shield. You are sworn on pain of death to never allow a non-Ranger to read it, nor to reveal its secrets to the uninitiated.

It isn't perfectly accurate—when encountering a new monster, the GM is allowed to change one thing. If you can successfully correct the monster entry, you gain a permanent +[Templates] to Hit against it and its ilk.

A: Strider

You can free-climb any natural surface as fast as you can crawl, or make an assisted climb as fast as you can walk. You can move silently while outdoors, and leave as much trace in mud, gravel, or deep snow as you do on bare stone. So long as you can see the sun or stars you always know what direction you're facing, and can travel at twice the ordinary rate while alone or in the company of fellow Rangers.

 

(Hint: the hides of colossal beasts count as "natural surfaces")

B: Situational Awareness

By tasting the soil, putting your ear to the ground, etc... you can tell if the hex or room you're standing in would be classified as Monster, Empty, Trap, or Special. If you attain a commanding position from which to survey, you can make this determination for adjacent areas as well.

C: Dogged Pursuit

If you make eye contact with someone or something, you can place your hunter's mark on them. They will experience this as paranoia, chills, and bouts of night terrors—eventually, a black spot will develop on their palm, growing as you approach, a literal mark of your pursuit. So long as they're marked, you always know exactly where they are.

You can only have one person marked at a time, and the only way to lift the mark is to kill the target. If you die while you have someone marked, you will return as a revenant, to continue your pursuit 'till the end of time.

D: Monster Master

Upon amending your Monster Manual, you are allowed to make one additional change of your own choice. The change must be reasonable, reflecting a weakness or property that could be discovered from studying it during and after your encounter. This change is now true, and the GM must update their own bestiary to reflect it.

 

OSR Social Resolution Procedures

 In the "OSR" space and related environments, social skill rolls are generally viewed with distaste. This isn't without reason—resorting to simple d20 skill rolls to resolve all social interactions is stultifying, and verbal conversation is one of the few in-game activities where the events of the fiction and the actual experience of play can align near-perfectly. I'm generally in agreement with this orthodoxy, but I don't think it's fully accurate.

I contend that there's an invisible social resolution mechanic often used in OSR games—the use of the Reaction Roll outside of the context of immediate first impressions—and that, while it's a perfectly serviceable solution, I think some improvements could be made by dragging this invisible system out into the light and dressing it up into a proper procedure.

 

Today's clickbait thumbnail image is from J.G Cornelius

 

 The simulation of conversation can never be fully perfect because the GM is being asked to take on the role of many different sentient creatures, each with their own complex inner lives, and to accurately determine how they would behave in unusual and challenging situations. This is an impossibly complex task. We rely on heuristics to get us partway—you write down that this NPC has a mien of "grumpy" or that this Ogre is "food-motivated," and sometimes that's enough to resolve a whole encounter—but at the end of the day every GM is going to eventually reach a point where they just don't know how a fictional person will react to a particular proposition. While I imagine there's a wide range of responses here, in my experience the most common solution is to look to a trusty old pal, the Reaction Roll, as an oracle. 

The problem here is that the Reaction Roll, at least in B/X and its derivatives, is clearly designed for a fairly specific purpose: to determine how a potentially-hostile monster will react when encountered in the depths of a gloomy labyrinth or expanses of a rugged wilderness. 

 

 Since you're presumed to have no preexisting relationship with the monster you're encountering, there's no real provisions for any modifications except from Charisma, and even that presents the thorny problem of whose Reaction modifier ought to be used. The only explicitly affirmative result is a 12, which is only a 1-in-36 chance; if you try to use this as-written to resolve a proposition you'll probably end up in a loop where most positive outcomes are "considers offers" and you go back to square one. Usually a Reaction Roll of this sort will mostly just give the GM a 2-12 number which they will then interpret based on vibes alone, which isn't a terrible system (OD&D does it that way, afaik) but can definitely be refined.

Now, there is another Reaction system recorded in B/X: the Retainer Reaction system.

This is certainly a better fit for the purposes discussed. It doesn't presume hostility or unfamiliarity, it contains provisions for your offer actually being accepted on something other than a maximum result, and it doesn't assume that they will violently attack you if you flub the roll. On the flip side, it also gives pretty much any proposal a base 50/50 chance of passing (assuming you read "roll again" literally and not "come up with a better offer and then roll again," which would also be perfectly reasonable) and it leaves all the bonuses and penalties up to the GM, which ends up in the same place as the original "roll 2d6 and eyeball the results" territory.

I propose a new procedure, intended to give a consistent way to adjudicate these kinds of situations without removing the benefits of skillful play.

 Persuasion

When attempting to convince somebody to commit to a certain plan of action and their response isn't already known, roll 2d6 attempting to score equal to or better than their Morale score, as the score measures not only their hardiness in combat but also their commitment and single-mindedness. Adjust the roll as follows...

• ...add or subtract any Reaction adjustments that you already have with that NPC.
• ...+1 if you present a coherent case for why cooperating is in their best interest.
• ...+1 if you present a coherent case for why cooperating will screw over someone they dislike.
• ...+1 if you present them with a substantial piece of new information that changes the situation.
• ...+1 if you present them with a substantial bribe or gift. 
• ...+1 if you present them with a credible threat (be it physical or reputational).
• ...-3 if going along with the plan is personally risky to them.
• ...invert the above modifiers if you try to invoke one of them but get it totally wrong (i.e. telling somebody "you should go along w/ this plan because it'll make your boss look like a chump," not knowing that this person is actually their boss's secret gay lover).

As always the GM's discretion should be employed to add or subtract additional modifiers, or to decide that one more elements are dealbreakers regardless of the roll obtained. This can either be used as a purely 'behind-the-screen' procedure, with the GM tallying up modifiers privately, or as an open procedure to give the players clear guidelines for what sorts of social play will be rewarded.

 

Deception

Conviction doesn't necessarily correlate to gullibility very well. Somebody too narrow-minded to convince might instead be misled. If a lie is good enough to have a chance to work, but not so good that anyone would buy it without a second thought, use this procedure.

 

Lies are much swingier and less reliable—rather than rolling 2d6, roll 1d12, attempting to score a 11 or 12. Keen-eyed probability-knowers will detect that this is the same chance as 1-in-6, but the wider numerical range allows for more bonuses to factor in without turning it into a foregone conclusion. Add...

• ...+1 if you have a reason for them to want the lie to be true.
• ...+1 if you have a reason for them to fear the lie being true and them not acting on it.
• ...+1 if you have a sense of urgency.
• ...+1 if you have the imprimatur of authority.
• ...+2 if the person is especially gullible.
• ...+2 if you are a Thief-type of considerable talents, or some other gifted liar.
• ...invert the above modifiers if the opposite is true in some exceptional way—if the mark is particularly sharp, if they have some strong reason to want to disbelieve the lie, &c.
  

As with the previous procedure, the GM should be given wide discretion to increase or decrease adjustments and the roll can be either hidden or open. The math on this works out such that if every bonus is attained the roll will succeed on a 3+, which maps to a 5-in-6 chance—still room for surprises!

 

Intimidation

Just roll a normal Morale check.