Personally, I wouldn't let them make a roll if they don't have enough proof to at least make the King think about this. I would leave it to roleplaying, mostly.

But probably I would initiate a Dramatic Sequence, with the players trying to get some support from other nobles, or maybe use the raises instead to conquer the noblewoman's heart, or get closer to the King, getting on his good side...

After reading the DS rules, I thought that they would have been great to have when I run the ActII from the Quickstart... the kind of things they are good for...

Danger Pool + Villain Pressure + Consequences

It shouldn't guarantee failure, but it will make the heroes sweat a bit.

edit: Oh, plus the villain and his/her lackeys spending raises to do their own convincing.  I think you are doing it right, but in a straight fight the villain will win every time.  MUHAHAHAHA!

Do the heroes have proof that the count is a murderer? If they have no proof, the king won't listen. No roll needed, it's an impossible task. The PCs need proof, they need allies in court, they need to avoid being next on the count's hit-list. It's some great fodder for Action and Dramatic scenes!

It boils down to this: if the king has no reason to believe the PCs, they can't convince him of anything. Sure, they're the heroes of the story, but they're nobodies to the king. But if you really want to have them roll and make it a super-difficult task, the count should be rolling, too, and spending raises to counter-point what the PCs are saying. It could be a great scene to showcase the power of this new Villain (rolling 12+ dice vs the PCs meager 6). Oh, and spend a Danger Point so the PCs need 15 per raise while the count only needs 10. It's a great way to show his homecourt advantage.

Lech Górski, it's not only convince. It's all task. That's one of the bigest problem of the system for the "crunch" or "old school".

For my games, it only worked with:

a) Make a backgroun of fear. Fear it's now the friend of the GM. Each point of fear it's one Raise more.

b) Set the difficulties with more Raises. Ex: Really Difficult? 7 Raises.(Homeruling, and for the moment it work REALLY well, like a "normal" game out of combats)

c) Like ⚡️Christopher said, use a Villain or the same king to counter.

I'd just have the player roll an opposed Convince check with the Villain and determine the outcome by the results. If the player loses by only a raise or two, the King might suspect/doubt the Count a bit. If the player wins by only a raise or two the King would put the Count under house arrest until things could be "sorted out."

I would have the players role play the scene and based upon their roleplaying I would have the King respond. No rolls, just pure improv.

This is a thing that depends on the group, but my group is a roleplay heavy one already. If need be, I will ask what their [trait]+[skill] (again, without a roll) is, and use that as a guide for how to evaluate their roleplaying and how the king responds, high rankings means I will be more lenient in the player's roleplaying. Low rankings means that I will need the player to give a very good performance to sway the king.

It's pretty much a matter of just following the Mechanics. The King should have a pool ( or the villian's pool for the scene) to bid against it. With the one bidding the most wins. Or if the sequence has no opposing rule, amount of raises bid determines strength of the argument. If the player bids one, it may place a seed of doubt, bids two: maybe things get looked inti, bid three: someone gets summoned to make a formal inquiry, bid 6: the count gets summoned to answer these allegations.

There are many ways to resolve this and I do like what Salamanca did as even with the high bid the Count is not exposed he just has to "answer to these allegations".

As long as we do not allow social skills to be used like some kind of "magic" I doubt they will prove too much of a problem. 

If someone tries to use a straight Convince roll to inform the King that his oldest and closest friend is in fact a murderer without any evidence apart from "i saw him do it", then yes make it hard. Use danger points and I would even think this is the type of thing you could say "yes fine, but it is going to take 2 raises for you to convince the King not 1" and then add on some Consequences, "the count spies will lay a trap for you later, the counts people knew you followed him and have planted evidence that it could easily have been you who did the deed. This allows the hero to succeed and MOST importantly the player to choose the type of victory they wish to head for.

After all this is what the game is about to me. It is not about whether the hero convinces the King that the Count is a villain and therefore save his realm. It is about how the heroes convince the King.

It is going to take you a few more games than you regularly expect to get a handle on it. Having run it at Origins, I can say the learning curve is a bit higher than most games for both players and GMs. I had a good 20 minute one on one chat with John after and I will start a thread about what I picked up on and learned in a couple days. ( when I am on a comp that will allow me to make paragraphs)

I think one of the biggest divergences between this system and others is in the thought process and this convincing thing is a key example of needing a change in thought process, especially on the player side.

This system is not about winning or losing. It is about having a structure for telling stories. So long as you are enjoying the story being told, all is good, regardless of what the rules say you should be doing. If you want a more realistic game, then tell a more realistic story, even in the face of unrealistic mechanics.

Hello, 

I will give my 10 eurocents on this. First, and foremost, GM is free to ask player more raises if the task is more difficult. I think it was mentioned somewhere. Unless you want to do this, there is simple examples: 

King does already know the "best friend" is crook and murderer. He just have to maintain his pose due political allegatiosn. Thus convincing the king is just nothing. He would promise to investigate, or look into matter with one success. The consequences in this are qutie easily vast. Following examples: the villain gets aware of players, and tries to get blackmail tool for them (action scene to save the npc). The accusation and convincing the court and king that the heir of am important famly is murdere and gets convinced gets you powerful enemy, unless you can do it with very carefully (around 3 to 5 raises to prevent this). King agrees to character he knows this, but has to throw htem into jail for such accusation against important noble family (2 to 5 raises to prevent)

King does not know his best friend is crook. This single success just raises his suspicions. Unless extra raises are spent, or really important person or evidence is shown, king cannot do much. He has kindom to think first. He just moves to case 1.