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Weimann
2012-05-21, 05:21 PM
So, diplomacy checks, social combat, mind-affecting effects, what have you. From my experience, RPGs have a hard time modelling them.

There are many potential problems with these systems (as with all systems) but one problem that any attempt at mechanical models will run into is that the game has PCs. Which are played by your friends, or at least people you know. And who will not appreciate some NPC deciding what their character will be doing in the near future.

There are some ways to tackle this, and it varies greatly between systems. Some systems simply does not make social interaction mechanics apply to PCs, but only to NPCs. Some make social demands affect your character but be easy to resist or dispel. Some model it as making your character gain something from following the social influence. There are probably a thousand other ways to do it, too.

I wanted to put this question out for discussion. What do you think is a good way of modelling a system for social interactions, with respect to the PC/NPC divide? What makes that choice the one you'd pick? What particular benefit is there to that one in particular?

Edit: To clarify, I'm not really expecting hard and fast suggestions for mechanics and modifiers. This is a hypothetical, system-agnostic design philosophy question above all else.

Quellian-dyrae
2012-05-21, 06:12 PM
I've thought on this sort of thing a few times. Generally speaking, I feel that "special" effects (magic/super powers/super-tech/whatever) that provides mind control is generally okay, as long as you have a reasonable opportunity to defend against it. It's a powerful status effect, probably about the worst status effect that you can take for its duration, since it not only functionally incapacitates your character but also allows the enemy to use its powers against your party/goals. So, it needs to be treated as such, but I don't really feel like there's a big meta-game problem with it.

Now, mundane social actions are a bit more troublesome, largely, I think, because they carry the connotation of actually changing the character's mind. When you get magically controlled, the enemy is forcing you to act a certain way. Even if you can't stop it, your character doesn't want or agree with it. With the mundane stuff though, there's no strict mental influence. It's basically, "Okay, he rolled high, so you agree with him/are afraid of him/believe him/whatever". Even if, based on your character's personality and the person's argument, you don't see any reason why you should.

One solution I kinda like for this is making it so that characters can choose certain motivations/deep beliefs/things important to them/etc. Any sort of influence that forces them to act against these things (natural or special) is much easier to resist and throw off. Further, mundane influence can only be attempted in a way that supports such a motivation. So for example, if a character has Patriot as a motivation, it becomes more resistant to any attempt to influence it to act against its country, natural or magical. However, it also becomes possible to naturally influence the character to do things that are or appear to be in support of its country. This at least ensures that characters can't be manipulated into doing things that are out of character for them, and a character can basically cut off all possible mundane influence by not taking motivations, but it becomes more vulnerable to special influence.

The other option I like is making it so that mundane influence doesn't strictly exert control or alter beliefs, but it lets you kind of give the person a certain impression, either actively or as a "defense" against them trying to get an impression with a Sense Motive type mechanic. When a social action succeeds, the target basically picks up the insight you want it to have. When a defensive social action fails, the target picks up the truth of the matter (which may be what you are trying to convey). When an active social action fails, the target misreads your intent.

The important thing here is that there isn't, like, Bluff and Diplomacy, where lies and truth are separate actions. When someone tries to convince you of something, it may very well be the truth, or it may not. If your "Sense Motive" check succeeds, you get the truth. If not, you get what they want you to get. In any event, how a character reacts is still its choice, and this doesn't change or contradict the character's existing knowledge or beliefs, just gives them an instinctive sense. Trying to convince a high-level and confident adventurer that you have both the intent and capability to do them harm is more likely to provoke aggression than submission, for example, although the adept manipulator can use that. This system works best when combined with rules for anticipating how a character will react to certain things, making proper manipulation require both social and mental skills.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-21, 08:05 PM
Well, an obvious way to model this is status effects: A social condition applied to a PC never forces them to act a certain way, but it does prevent them from making certain kinds of actions. Like how silence prevents you from casting spells with verbal components. It might require the PC to get creative and find an alternative course of action, but it never outright takes control away from them.

Crow
2012-05-21, 09:24 PM
Well, ask yourself this question:

If NPC's are not allowed to tell the player what to think (I.e. change their mind), why should the pc be allowed to tell the npc what to think?

Wherever your answer is, it will hold the key to what kind of system will be best for you.

Madeiner
2012-05-21, 09:45 PM
How about things like dominate are harder to save against, but can always be "suppressed" for a while by making a sacrifice?
Say, each time you are dominated, you can, at every "defining" moment of the domination (should happen 3-4 times a day) you can sacrifice some amount of HP as nonlethal damage, representing your will to overcome the effects.
Say, you can expend 1/6 of your maximum HP, but you are temporarily immune (or get a large bonus) to the dominitation until the next defining moment comes.

A defining moment might be taking a decision you wouldn't have wanted to, attacking people, following a specified course of action that you don't agree with.

The HP damage cannot be healed while the domination lasts, but whenever you are out of HP, all nonlethal damage for this effect is canceled, and you cannot resist the domination anymore in this manner.


This achives a few things: one, you can "opt out" a few times when your character would do something you really don't like; two, you get to roleplay the "they are getting into my mind" bit, knowing that eventually they will get you; three, a domination is actually a reduction of HP, as in you cannot get hit too much in combat or risk falling "to the other side", so it's also not a binary save or suck.

Kalirren
2012-05-21, 10:25 PM
TL; DR version: You can have a good system for social combat and mental influence if you give up the presumption that a player has the ultimate word on what their character does, and instead model the character's behavioral inertia. A good mental influence/social combat ruleset has to explicitly write the abridgment of player agency into the system itself. Then you can write rules for such situations that abridge player agency without going outside system.

Long version:

The RPG system Synapse has what I feel is a good way of dealing with this.

Characters are defined by their motivations in Synapse. Synapse makes this very explicit, each character having ratings in some 20 or 25-ish categories of Motivations (Dominance, Security, Cooperation, Play, etc...). I have found that these motivations model a person's behavioral inertia very well.

Whenever a player wants to have their character do something that would be against one of their character's motivations, they have to make a Motivation Suppression roll. When you make a Motivation Suppression roll, you name another motivation that the character is using to rationalize the distasteful action. The stronger the motivation behind the proposed rationalization, the easier the roll is to make. Failing the roll means that their character doesn't act as the player wants them to act. (This is the key idea - the abridgment of player agency is written into the system itself. There is no presumption that a player has ultimate authority/authorship over their own character. There is system for this instead.)

Mental influence is modelled simply as the player using the power forcing the target character to make a Motivation Suppression roll. Different levels of mental influence can even be modeled; for instance, a low-level power might require the magic to be supplemented with actual argumentation, explicitly and verbally appealing to a named motivation of the target, whereas higher-level powers might not require argumentation and appeal directly to the motivation itself, or might even automatically arouse the target's strongest contending motivation. All of this falls neatly within the boundaries of typical player-character interaction, and presents very little trouble at all. It also simulates very well the need for a mental-manipulator type to be skillful in their work, which is one of the things that most mental-influence systems struggle very hard to accomplish.

Weimann
2012-05-22, 09:14 AM
I've thought on this sort of thing a few times. Generally speaking, I feel that "special" effects (magic/super powers/super-tech/whatever) that provides mind control is generally okay, as long as you have a reasonable opportunity to defend against it. It's a powerful status effect, probably about the worst status effect that you can take for its duration, since it not only functionally incapacitates your character but also allows the enemy to use its powers against your party/goals. So, it needs to be treated as such, but I don't really feel like there's a big meta-game problem with it.Interesting. I personally think the big "I control you now" things are one of the things that people have a hard time with out of personal enjoyment reasons. They come here to play with their character, not watch others play with it.


Now, mundane social actions are a bit more troublesome, largely, I think, because they carry the connotation of actually changing the character's mind. When you get magically controlled, the enemy is forcing you to act a certain way. Even if you can't stop it, your character doesn't want or agree with it. With the mundane stuff though, there's no strict mental influence. It's basically, "Okay, he rolled high, so you agree with him/are afraid of him/believe him/whatever". Even if, based on your character's personality and the person's argument, you don't see any reason why you should.This is another kind of problem, but equally valid. It's rooted in the players vision of the character, and is arguably harder to come to terms with.


One solution I kinda like for this is making it so that characters can choose certain motivations/deep beliefs/things important to them/etc. Any sort of influence that forces them to act against these things (natural or special) is much easier to resist and throw off. Further, mundane influence can only be attempted in a way that supports such a motivation. So for example, if a character has Patriot as a motivation, it becomes more resistant to any attempt to influence it to act against its country, natural or magical. However, it also becomes possible to naturally influence the character to do things that are or appear to be in support of its country. This at least ensures that characters can't be manipulated into doing things that are out of character for them, and a character can basically cut off all possible mundane influence by not taking motivations, but it becomes more vulnerable to special influence.I approve of the concept, it does sound interesting.


The other option I like is making it so that mundane influence doesn't strictly exert control or alter beliefs, but it lets you kind of give the person a certain impression, either actively or as a "defense" against them trying to get an impression with a Sense Motive type mechanic. When a social action succeeds, the target basically picks up the insight you want it to have. When a defensive social action fails, the target picks up the truth of the matter (which may be what you are trying to convey). When an active social action fails, the target misreads your intent.

The important thing here is that there isn't, like, Bluff and Diplomacy, where lies and truth are separate actions. When someone tries to convince you of something, it may very well be the truth, or it may not. If your "Sense Motive" check succeeds, you get the truth. If not, you get what they want you to get. In any event, how a character reacts is still its choice, and this doesn't change or contradict the character's existing knowledge or beliefs, just gives them an instinctive sense. Trying to convince a high-level and confident adventurer that you have both the intent and capability to do them harm is more likely to provoke aggression than submission, for example, although the adept manipulator can use that. This system works best when combined with rules for anticipating how a character will react to certain things, making proper manipulation require both social and mental skills.I'm not sure I follow this one. Care to elaborate?


Well, an obvious way to model this is status effects: A social condition applied to a PC never forces them to act a certain way, but it does prevent them from making certain kinds of actions. Like how silence prevents you from casting spells with verbal components. It might require the PC to get creative and find an alternative course of action, but it never outright takes control away from them.Hm, so you mean a successful social attack would inflict a ban on a certain kind of action? True, it doesn't take control away, but I wonder how well it actually models social interactions. The negative element seems hard to utilize in a lot of common situations without making it so broad as to essentially become a restriction.

For example, if I had made a social attack to convince a king to give me an army, and I succeeded, how would that condition look? I'm having problems stating it in terms of a negative.


Well, ask yourself this question:

If NPC's are not allowed to tell the player what to think (I.e. change their mind), why should the pc be allowed to tell the npc what to think?

Wherever your answer is, it will hold the key to what kind of system will be best for you.An interesting question!

It's not so much that the influence can't go both ways as it is that the mechanics that fit to model one direction might not fit to model the other. The challenge is to find a solution that works both ways.

The problem is that NPCs are there for PCs to utilize and interact with, and PCs are there to cause the interaction. They're not on equal ground in terms of dramatic purpose.

To answer your question, however, PCs will influence NPCs. Even if there's no mechanics for it and it's just the GM deciding how she thinks the NPC should react to what the player decides that his character says. Trying to find a way to mechanize it is the tricky part.


How about things like dominate are harder to save against, but can always be "suppressed" for a while by making a sacrifice?Spending some kind of resource to suppress or negate mental influence is an option, certainly. I'd rather not it was so binary, though. Even if, as you say, it's not a case of "save or suck", it becomes a case of "spend resources or suck", which isn't so bad until you run out of resources.

I'm not entirely sure the "suck" part has to be there at all, though.


TL; DR version: You can have a good system for social combat and mental influence if you give up the presumption that a player has the ultimate word on what their character does, and instead model the character's behavioral inertia. A good mental influence/social combat ruleset has to explicitly write the abridgment of player agency into the system itself. Then you can write rules for such situations that abridge player agency without going outside system.Mmm, I see where you're coming from here. I'm definitely of the opinion that it might be a quantitative problem; it's okay to impose behaviours on a PC as long as it's not too restricting.

Totally Guy
2012-05-22, 04:47 PM
I'm a fan of this particular model which is described in Burning Wheel.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v44/macdonnell/Argument.gif

The Duel of Wits is the Burning Wheel mini-game that can be played at the "both players roll something" stage but really that's just a cog in the above machine. It's not as important as the overall machine.

Sometimes "a character leaves" is actually "Guards! Take him out of my sight!"

Quellian-dyrae
2012-05-22, 05:44 PM
I'm not sure I follow this one. Care to elaborate?

I don't really have the system fully thought-out, but basically, the point is that the social system works alongside a mental system that is used to get clues, hints, and other information. Like a detective in a police procedural just "knows in its gut" that the suspect did it or Dr. House can figure out intimate details of peoples' lives based on some off-hand comment or Sherlock Holmes can look at a smudge on the wall, a slightly shifted dresser, and a dead fly and give you a physical description of a murderer. Or whatever.

This mental system is used by PCs to get extra clues and hints from the DM. It's used by NPCs to help the DM figure out what they know and therefor how they should react. The social system, then, lets characters block, misdirect, rephrase, or create such hunches, whether true or false. They can also use the mental system to figure out how characters might respond to learning certain things.

So in this way, social manipulation doesn't involve active compulsion. You're just controlling the flow of information. Players still choose whether or not they give credence to these hunches (although they should), and exactly how their characters will react (although a mentally-skilled character can anticipate such reactions and use that to decide exactly what social tactics to use).

Driderman
2012-05-23, 07:09 AM
Where I come from, we roleplay stuff like this rather than use mechanics for it and the DM simply takes the characters social skillset into account when its about convincing NPCs.
When its the other way around, the players in question simply decide for themselves whether or not their characters are swayed by the arguments presented during the roleplaying. Much like in real life, actually :smallwink:

Dice rolls are last resort, if the scene needs to pick up the pace or its a quick roll for an unimportant on-the-fly situation, but unless we're talking supernatural influences players never have dice rolled against them in social "encounters".

valadil
2012-05-23, 08:28 AM
I'm going to keep it vague. I think the PCs need to be influencable. Saying they're not because it makes the game more fun for the players is a copout. You can't just insert a being into the game world who is immune to social skills.

But I think the players need a way to veto the influence. Give them a limited resource so they can say no, my character really doesn't believe that! Screw you, dice!

IMO, that little bit of control goes a long way to convincing the player they have some say in what happens to the character. Even if it only happens once, the player got to choose which social interaction to apply that veto to.

I don't really care how this is implemented. It doesn't even have to be specific to social skills. WoD's willpower is a perfect example of a limited resources that players can spend to have a little more control over any roll. If I wanted to play with a mechanic like this in 4e, I'd probably just say that action points can be expended as described above.

navar100
2012-05-23, 08:51 AM
Well, ask yourself this question:

If NPC's are not allowed to tell the player what to think (I.e. change their mind), why should the pc be allowed to tell the npc what to think?

Wherever your answer is, it will hold the key to what kind of system will be best for you.

Because the PC is different. He is superior, not equal, to the NPC in terms of metagame by identity. The point of the game is for the player to make the decisions for his character. The DM controls everything else. NPC behavior is influenced by dice rolls because that's the game part of the game. Otherwise, it's just the DM telling a story and the players just watch. Some NPCs are important enough to the campaign that the DM can make their decisions by fiat as necessary for the game to function with importance meaning overall campaign plot, not rank or titles of military, nobility, etc. Those are special cases players recognize in the metagame, but even those fiats cannot/should not dictate players' decisions or else DM takes his ball and go home.

For an NPC to force a PC to do something takes a power. That is also part of the game. The PC is given a chance to resist it as per the rules to govern powers. Failing this roll, however annoying, is accepted as part of the game play.

Arbane
2012-05-23, 12:04 PM
I like the way Weapons of the Gods handles it: A successful persuasion attempt gives you a condition that gives you a bonus when you go along with it (a dice bonus, or possibly even extra XP!) and a penalty to hinder you when you resist it. (The same system also applies to curses, prognostication, and medical conditions.)

Totally Guy
2012-05-23, 12:42 PM
I like the way Weapons of the Gods handles it:

It sounds similar to how it works in Apocalypse World. I'd agree that it's a pretty good way of doing it.

Weimann
2012-05-23, 04:09 PM
Yes, I've heard about it and I like the idea: don't force the PCs to behave a certain way, make them choose to. The philosophy behind that approach appeals to me.

Hm, I actually think I have Weapons of the Gods in some folder on my laptop. I should check that out.

Crow
2012-05-23, 04:39 PM
Because the PC is different. He is superior, not equal, to the NPC in terms of metagame by identity. The point of the game is for the player to make the decisions for his character. The DM controls everything else. NPC behavior is influenced by dice rolls because that's the game part of the game. Otherwise, it's just the DM telling a story and the players just watch. Some NPCs are important enough to the campaign that the DM can make their decisions by fiat as necessary for the game to function with importance meaning overall campaign plot, not rank or titles of military, nobility, etc. Those are special cases players recognize in the metagame, but even those fiats cannot/should not dictate players' decisions or else DM takes his ball and go home.

For an NPC to force a PC to do something takes a power. That is also part of the game. The PC is given a chance to resist it as per the rules to govern powers. Failing this roll, however annoying, is accepted as part of the game play.

You are absolutely wrong. Or absolutely right. It depends on who you ask. But as I pointed out in my previous post, your answer pretty much sums up what the ideal social interaction system in an rpg would be for you.

In other words, everything you said is completely subjective. There is no ''correct'' way to model this sort of thing. It will depend heavily upon the group, and probably the style of game the system is made for.

Geostationary
2012-05-23, 05:18 PM
I like the way Weapons of the Gods handles it

Similarly, another game by the same author (Jenna Moran), Nobilis 3e, has a good way of modeling mental influence/social pressure/whatever. In Nobilis, you use a wound track that more or less measures a player's agency rather than any given model of health; any action taken against them that they find objectionable can be taken as a wound. There are three levels of severity, and each level does different things. The least severe inflicts a Bond, which you can ignore to some extent but can also give you bonuses to actions that help reinforce that Bond. More severe effects inflict Afflictions of varying strength on your character. Afflictions are different in that they enforce their truth on you, but you can work around them by either finding logical loopholes- "I've been forced to only speak the truth- time to break out the technically true half-truth statements!" or by mustering up a resource called Strike equal to or greater than the Affliction's rating (1-5). Strike comes from Bonds or by spending a limited resource, Miracle Points (MPs).

Granted, this system is based in the metaphysics of the Nobilis setting which can be very different from traditional systems, but I find that it makes sense and can work well. You can resist effects that you don't find desirable, and powerful ones can be resisted, but only at larger costs and/or cunning on the player's part. This system is also fun in that it covers any sort of undesirable effect ranging from physical combat, mental influence, and keeping secrets to things like being turned into instant noodles, but that's a different topic.