[RPG] How to solve a player feeling like their socially-focused PC isn’t useful

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I have a player (I'll call him Jeff) whose PC is a peaceful diplomat. He invested most of his points in Charisma and charisma-based skills. He also has minor telepathy (able to read and influence emotions). He also has great Wisdom and is a fair shot with a pistol. The game is three players and myself as GM, so making sure his PC is useful counts for 33% of the players feeling like they're participating.

They're both enjoying the game a lot! They both feel like they fit into their roles very well. So this one flaw of Jeff feeling useless a lot of the time is something that would make the game that much better.

Roughly a third to a quarter of adventures do or will take place in space. Jeff hasn't felt like his PC has been useful in non-social situations, particularly starship combat. He likes talking with the captains of other ships and stuff, but not so much starship combat, navigation, and space adventures in general.

He doesn't feel useful in ground-based combat situations unless there's a social angle he can work. (He once tried to avoid being shot by a bandit leader by literally offering to kill the others — once he stopped bleeding. This may or may not have been a ruse.)

How do I get him to feel useful in non-social situations, particularly during starship sequences? I feel like I could meld social encounters with other types, but I'm not sure how to go about that.

Best Answer

There are really two problems here: the player/character isn't suitable for some scenes, and some scenes aren't well-suited to one of your PC's. You need to meet in the middle. (I think all sci-fi RPGs, and stories generally, have to deal with this problem to an extent; I'll be basing my answer on experience GMing a homebrew GURPS Star Wars game and playing in D20 Star Wars.)

The PC

First, ask your player - does he categorically not enjoy non-social roleplaying situations himself, in general, or is the frustration only coming from the fact that his particular character is a bit useless? If it's the former, your job is a lot harder, and it's all on you (see below). If it's the character, however, you've got some options.

  1. Make the character more useful. The difficulty of a "re-spec" is higher in DND than GURPS, but you could let him re-allocate a skill or two so he has something to do.
  2. Give him opportunities to be useful. D20 Star Wars includes a number of crew stations - you can be flying the ship, shooting, recharging the shields, at the comm begging for mercy, etc. The details will depend on your universe, but I suggest being both creative and generous.
  3. Become okay with not being useful. Have the player watch their favorite sci-fi TV show again. What do the talky characters do while space encounters are happening? Troi, Simon, Trance, whoever - they all do something to get screen time, even if it's just asking for updates and fretting about the outcome. If the player put all their points into Charisma and Charisma-based skills, they probably have a storytelling bent - make it up to them to put it to use and figure out what's going on with their characters while the ship is falling apart around them, and roleplay it!

The Story

If the player really doesn't enjoy non-social scenes, at the end of the day it's most likely that you'll all have to accept either a certain amount of rotating between activities you tolerate and ones you enjoy, or not playing together. But there are still some mitigations you can apply.

  1. Rethink your "combat encounters". The Angry DM asserts (in his classic angry, vulgar, and compelling style) that there is no such thing as a combat encounter, only encounters where different parties have different goals that could result in one or more parties choosing to resolve the conflict with violence. If you keep that in mind, your social PC has the potential to be meaningfully involved in every single encounter. Even if many of them end up in violence - either despite his best efforts, or because of them, as Surreal points out - that stil gives him some satisfying agency in the situation. (Of course, don't give him all of the agency - let the other players affect the course of events as well.)
  2. Think about the ratio. Sure, your story takes place in a sci-fi setting that involves space travel. But how much real-world play time has to take place in space? If everyone enjoys ground encounters, and one player really doesn't enjoy space encounters, it's totally fine to use narrative time compression. "OK, a week later, you arrive at the Himinbjorg system. As you're about to touch down, you receive an urgent communication..."
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