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[Hapchazzard]

Attention; you can only have so much of it, and your empathy skills should determine how well you can read a crowd (which needs to be its own entity)

Obviously. Social skills should be a huge factor in conversations, and how they play out. Currently, social skills are almost all the same and have an exceedingly minor role in the game. I imagine they could be improved in a way like this:

1) Conversationalist: determines mainly your capacity for small-talk, but also has a slight effect on other types of conversations. A high conversationalist skill lets you make small-talk that is actually interesting to the second person, opening the way for things like making a friend, getting someone's guard down, making someone more likely to divulge information that they're not normally supposed to, etc. Capped by your empathy level.

2) Comedian: determines the quality of your insults, and how likable you are in general. While conversationalist is meant to have a greater effect on long-term relationships, comedian can be used to gain a temporary, but significant, relationship boost with someone(if the context is valid, of course). High-quality insults could also be used to make someone lose their temper, potentially making them make rash and irrational decisions. Capped by creativity.

3) Judge of intent: how effectively you can judge other's emotions and detect lies during a conversation. A high level in this skill lets you get accurate info on what the other person is feeling, how interested they are in the conversation, how believable they are finding your story, etc. while also letting you see through otherwise highly believable lies. Capped by the your empathy or intuition, whichever is higher.

4) Liar: how good your lies are, obviously. For simple lies, like answering 'yes/no' questions dishonestly, only this skill is used, but for more elaborate lies(including made-up stories like the one I made above) it is used in conjunction with the persuasion skill. Capped by your creativity.

5) Intimidator: how legitimate your threats come across, obviously.

6) Persuader: used when trying to convince someone to do a particular action, or trying to change their values. Also used when making long, elaborate lies. Capped by your empathy.

7) Negotiator: used mainly when haggling or making some kind of contract/deal. Capped by your patience(?).

[Scoops Novel]

Persuader and negotiater are iffy. You want the player to feel like they said the right thing, not their skills. With those 2, you should choose how you want to deliver your argument, based on your own perceptions.

[GoblinCookie]

I think you should presents each characters vocal quirks the first time you hear them, and then in a separate window to keep it from being too information dense. We already have things like "he has a scratchy voice", you just need to add stuff like accents, "he talks ponderously", slang, etc. There's also physicality; are they waving their hands around, getting in your face, pacing?

You need to be able to dial in on particular people if you're talking to crowds, see their emotion, pay attention to them in particular. Attention; you can only have so much of it, and your empathy skills should determine how well you can read a crowd (which needs to be its own entity). You shouldn't be able to "look" at everyone before you reply (not smoothly anyway); you could glance at everyone or stare at someone but not both.

The problem is the 'crowd needs to be it's own entity' bit.  Are we proposing to round up everybody within the hearing range when we begin the performance, but people move about the place, into and out of the area in question. 

[Scoops Novel]

That's "street preacher" mode, with a lot of disinterested observers. Usually you'd specify who you're talking to fairly naturalistically- start talking to someone while looking at them, pointing, specifying "you guys!" etc.

[GoblinCookie]

That's "street preacher" mode, with a lot of disinterested observers. Usually you'd specify who you're talking to fairly naturalistically- start talking to someone while looking at them, pointing, specifying "you guys!" etc.

So you are saying we have to manually select every member of the potential audience?  That sounds to be an interface nightmare.

[Starver]

Select an individual in the middle of the crowd, and some ability or other is used to work out the size/fall-off of the groupspeaking 'footprint'. The act of choosing something like "...and I'm talking to you, Sir/Madam..." creates this coverage, which lasts for a few game-minutes. A larger crowd might need to be 'grabbed' by several "You, there...  And you over there... And I'm talking about an issue that you off to the side are also quite concerned about, though you may not yet know it..." actions, which you need to pepper in again (at the cost of actual persuasion/whatever) to keep up the interest factor across the assembly.

Perhaps targeting bored individuals who start shuffling out of the crowd and wandering off at the edges, with either a direct appeal or a crowd-turning put-down to consolidate the rest (if you do it correctly).

[Scoops Novel]

The game needs a way to form and recognize groups. If 3 buddies go to the pub, they should be automatically considered a group and react together when i address one of them.

[GoblinCookie]

Select an individual in the middle of the crowd, and some ability or other is used to work out the size/fall-off of the groupspeaking 'footprint'. The act of choosing something like "...and I'm talking to you, Sir/Madam..." creates this coverage, which lasts for a few game-minutes. A larger crowd might need to be 'grabbed' by several "You, there...  And you over there... And I'm talking about an issue that you off to the side are also quite concerned about, though you may not yet know it..." actions, which you need to pepper in again (at the cost of actual persuasion/whatever) to keep up the interest factor across the assembly.

Perhaps targeting bored individuals who start shuffling out of the crowd and wandering off at the edges, with either a direct appeal or a crowd-turning put-down to consolidate the rest (if you do it correctly).

Why would I ever want to talk to the whole crowd?  If you tell a member of the crowd something he will soon enough pass it to all the other folks nearby.  We already have the shout out function to speak to everyone in earshot at the same time but I don't think I have ever used it except to control companions in battle. 

[Starver]

Why would I ever want to talk to the whole crowd?

You wouldn't have to. It's just my view of how that "street preacher" thing might work.

And "Hey, mac... you know I'm the guy who killed that roc, right?" (whether or not you, or indeed anybody, did this) is a strange way to start off your runaway popularity in a town, trusting on your confident to rush off to a friend of theirs, point you out unsubtly while muttering excitedly, then them both rushing off to tell others, who tell others...  "Citizens, rejoice! The roc is dead by my hand! Fear no more and live your lives!" whilst surrounded by a gaggle of villagers seems much more the way to get yourself lauded.

Or "There's some goblins on the way, would you care to join me in the defence of your town, sir?" multiple times, compared to "Who among you stout yeoman will join me in repelling this force of vile bandits?", to the masses...

[GoblinCookie]

And "Hey, mac... you know I'm the guy who killed that roc, right?" (whether or not you, or indeed anybody, did this) is a strange way to start off your runaway popularity in a town, trusting on your confident to rush off to a friend of theirs, point you out unsubtly while muttering excitedly, then them both rushing off to tell others, who tell others...  "Citizens, rejoice! The roc is dead by my hand! Fear no more and live your lives!" whilst surrounded by a gaggle of villagers seems much more the way to get yourself lauded.

Or "There's some goblins on the way, would you care to join me in the defence of your town, sir?" multiple times, compared to "Who among you stout yeoman will join me in repelling this force of vile bandits?", to the masses...

If you tell somebody something interesting than they will tell all the other people around them that information.  What we seem to be calling for here is the ability to decide how loudly we are going to be speaking to our target and having folks able to overhear what we are saying.  It seems to work better to be able to select (Shout at PersonX) which increases people's ability to overhear what we are saying but also starts a normal conversion than to have to enter a custom list of all the folks that we are trying to speak to.  It also allows us the player to eavesdrop, especially if people involuntarily raise their forces according to their personality+mood.

The only reason situation where we would need to actually convey information to a lot of people directly is if time is a premium, which is generally very much is not at the moment. 

[Starver]

Yes, it's a different thing from the only way that it works now (which is different from the omniscient "you tell one person, you've told the world" thing, for reputation at least, back in the earlier versions).

I just feel that it is a viable option. 'Twas in response to "we have to manually select every member of the potential audience?" (I think, it was a while ago) in saying that, no, we don't have to. But various options along the way might yet work well in maintaining the immersion in some circumstances...

[Scoops Novel]

It isn't manually selecting a custom list. It would be more like setting a cone if you're pointing at 6 people together in a room, or establishing line of sight if you're talking to someone directly opposite you. People have got to know they're being talked to, which is why i'm suggesting that you make it clear in a naturalistic way. Otherwise you'll say "lovely weather today!" to thin air, for all intents and porpoises.

It's important to be able to cut out your audience from a larger group, as much as to address everyone.

[GoblinCookie]

It isn't manually selecting a custom list. It would be more like setting a cone if you're pointing at 6 people together in a room, or establishing line of sight if you're talking to someone directly opposite you. People have got to know they're being talked to, which is why i'm suggesting that you make it clear in a naturalistic way. Otherwise you'll say "lovely weather today!" to thin air, for all intents and porpoises.

It's important to be able to cut out your audience from a larger group, as much as to address everyone.

While that works as a mechanic, it still does not make sense realistically if we are using sound.  A sound will travel freely for some distance so that it is not really possible to direct what you are saying in a focused way at a particular group of people. 

Again I fail to see the utility of this concept, why would you want to speak to a group of people out of a larger group anyway?

[Starver]

I think we're just talking at cross purposes. (Ironically.  )

[Scoops Novel]

When Aragorn talks to the hobbits, does he yell out to the whole pub about making for rivendell or does he quietly take them aside for a chat?