Ok... but my preferences apparently don't matter in the slightest? Where is the player agency? I'd rather choose and possibly fail than let dice decide what my character wants to do. It seems like the only possible way to have any agency at all in this game is to pick 0 or 100 for every single slider. This makes it completely impossible to choose to be a submissive businessman.
Ahh! Seems to be a misunderstanding here
Your preferences absolutely do matter. the dice doesn't determine what your character wants to do, that's entirely up to you. based on choices made. If you are on a date you can absolutely choose whether to be submissive, dominate, or somewhere in between (as in let the dice fall where they may)
what you CANT control is how the NPC is feeling at the time. Their social roll determine it. If you choose to be submissive (or maternal) in the date, thats your choice regardless what the dice would have rolled. There might be a roll to see how well you pulled that off though, and the date would have to be in a Paternal state of mind to be receptive to it.
Lets again use the dominating foxy business woman. There may be a romantic reason for being on the date, or a story driven reason.
You want to give the date as much of a success as you want, and you are certain that the business woman likes to be dominate.
you may have these choices.
-- Lean forward and attempt to give her a kiss
-- Lock eyes with her
-- Start to reach for her hand, but pull back.
-- Give her a warm smile (Neutral)
The first option would lock you into the Paternal roll, and your chances will be purely if the date rolls being in a Maternal state of mind
Where as the third option would be more submissive in nature. Second one will allow random chance (and has best chance of overall success), where as last would be if you going for the Friendship route
Now, Social is the ONLY slider that affects whether a date is successful or not. The other slides will help determine if an NPC would be interested in you in a romantic way, because the NPCS have their OWN preferences.
This wont be a game where every single NPC wants to get in your pants. Some will have romantic potential, others friendship potential, based on those sliders.
you are right, i need to find a better term for Paternal and Maternal.
And Submissive/Dominate doesn't apply much either. open to suggestions!
The idea with the Social is about hierarchy. Dominate and Submissive play a role, but its more than that. Maybe using Socially Dominate and Socially Submissive may be the right way to go, but even that doesnt cover the full array. After all, you can have a successful businessman who tends to be submissive in relationships
This is why there will be a skill based system added in as well, to help cover that.
To answer your question , id put a submissive businessman at near 50 Social. That allows them to be dominating in the boardroom, submissive in the bedroom.
Identity would depend on how the character sees themselves internally. Everyone has a mix of masculine and feminine mental traits. score of 0 would be a person who is so mentally male they cant even fathom anything else. Same with 100 being so mentally female. Those extremes I see as being more in the "Toxic" territory. I am not going to disallow such numbers, but there may be in game issues with having toxic masculinity or toxic femininity. For your businessman, maybe somewhere between 25-40 if they identify as male, depending on how comfortable you think they would be if they were suddenly female as an example. 50 would be someone who would be comfortable as either gender. Again, in game to remove the idea of binary labels, it goes between Apollonian and Aphrotitian
Physical? I would probably put around a 30. A 0 physical would be your professional weight lifters (both male and female)
What other kinds of rolls will there be, besides rolls for dates? That seems to be the only one described. Maybe that's where all my confusion is coming from. I was imagining rolls for everything. Like, do I need to have a low Society score in order to successfully conduct business a large percentage of the time?