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AttilaTheGeek
2014-07-14, 01:47 PM
I'm considering designing my own RPG, and I'm wondering to what extent a game should apply mechanics in the form of dice rolls to social situations.

On one hand, having lots of different social rolls would allow the rules to more accurately reflect a character who is good at some but not all aspects of conversation (e.g, being good at noticing lies but bad at telling them could be represented by a high Sense Motive and low Bluff). A system with many social rolls allows players to more accurately portray characters with different levels of social experience than themselves. For example, I may not know how to convince a guard that my sneaking around is a "surprise inspection", but my rogue's high Bluff skill shows that he sure does. The main benefit to having lots of social rolls is, in my opinion, the main benefit of more rules-heavy systems in general: it allows the details of a character to have more of a tangible, quantifiable effect on the mechanics of a game.

On the other hand, having few or no social rolls causes a character's social proficiency to be almost entirely dependent on the player's acting, for better or for worse. An impassioned and eloquent speech that is negated by an awful roll discourages putting that much effort into roleplay in the future. If my own roleplaying can make the difference between the guard believing there's a surprise inspection and my character going to jail, then I as a player am incentivized to roleplay as well as I can.

At one extreme, abstracting all socialization into dice rolls creates "conversations" where players say things like "My character tries to bribe the guard, and I rolled an 18" instead of speaking in-character. It's possible that people actually enjoy that sort of gameplay, especially less experienced players, but it's not what I'd like to promote. On the other extreme, having a character's social ability determined entirely by roleplaying makes it difficult or impossible for a character to accomplish any social task that the player couldn't accomplish themselves. In that case, it's entirely up to the GM whether or not I convince the guard based on how well I spoke.

Experienced members of the playground, is there a "sweet spot" where the amount of rolling is just right? Are there any games you can recommend that handle social interaction well?

valadil
2014-07-14, 01:59 PM
I don't want autopilot either. What's worse than "I roll diplomacy to bribe the guard" is "I roll diplomacy on the guard."

But I also think you do want to give your players some social buttons to push. I think players shy away from the less well defined parts of the game, preferring the areas with solid mechanics that work in ways they can reason about. If the players actually understand how to force someone's hand, pry information from an uncooperative witness, or make threats that'll stick, I think the players will be more likely to jump through verbal hoops to make these things happen.

draken50
2014-07-14, 03:10 PM
This obviously depends on how the GM tends to do things, but I tend to look at 3 different methods/possibilities.

1.Little Roleplaying, Social Roll.

2.Roleplaying with Social Roll.

3.Roleplaying Only.

1.The first is often the most disconcerting to GMs and possibly other players. I would be wary of any system without support for it though. The main reason being, the players are not the characters. I have had a player who is very honest and straight-forward attempt to play a more conniving character, and in doing so spend his skill points in more deceptive skills. The thing is, if his sorcerer has a high bluff skill, but the player is plainly unsure of a good lie fitting to the situation, should he really be punished for not being a conniving liar in real life? Alternatively, you can have a character with diplomatic abilities with a player with no experience mediating conflict, who outside of game actively avoids it. I'd rather not prevent my less socially-adept players from trying social classes and possibly developing those skills.

In my last game, one of my players had a similar situation. After rolling very very well on diplomacy, I told him the gist of the methodology his character was employing to help mediate the conflict, and he then proceeded to role-play in that manner for the rest of the encounter. This even caused a minor in-game conflict between two characters at the resolution, as another player, who knew out of character what methods were being employed, felt that her character, not would not have caught on to what occurred felt insulted, resulting in more role-playing and ultimately better party cohesion.

So the non-role-played dice roll, resulted in more rping, than requiring the player to really know what approach might be. Caused the players to better develop their characters and the bond between them, and additionally led to resolution of the conflict in a satisfying way that advanced the plot.

I do require so measure of RPing, at least a goal. Generally i ask "What are you trying to do?"

2.When the player has an idea of the approach they want to use, but may be uncomfortable, or feel unable to accurately role-play what they are trying to do. The more specific the example, the more likely they are to succeed or fail. A gross misunderstanding of one side often results in them getting information as to their motivations rather than immediate failure.

3. The player is confident in their methodology, and is role-playing it out. No dice roll is warranted, particularly if successful.

Segev
2014-07-14, 03:12 PM
An RPG should have well-developed rules for anything that is intended to be a focus of that game. A game focusing on race cars should have developed rules for car design, maintenance, and driving, including risks and hazards of the hard use to which the vehicles get put in competitive racing. A game about political intrigue should have well-developed rules for social manipulation and legalistic influence. A game about kicking in the doors of dungeons and taking monsters' stuff after killing them should have well-developed combat rules and rules for destroying doors and other dungeon obstacles. A game about giant mecha needs well-developed rules for building and controlling the mecha as well as for (most likely) mecha combat. A game about stealth and spying needs well-developed rules for hiding and lurking and for investigation and information-gathering.

Well-developed rules should always have significant non-binary components. The most well-developed rules in RPGs currently tend to center around combat, as we have the most developed technology for rules modeling such things due to the heritage stemming back to OD&D and Chainmail. Combat often (but not always, anymore) involves hit points as the main non-binary resolution mechanic: you eventually run out, but your state between "full" and "dead" provides a sliding scale of how well you are doing versus how well your foes are.

Vitruviansquid
2014-07-14, 04:00 PM
Segev gives good advice.

To add on, you also want a system that matches the genre, setting, and *feel* you're going for. For example, DnD is pretty combat heavy and so is Savage Worlds, but DnD has a hit points system because it's going for heroic combat so it tries to be anti-climactic as little as possible whereas Savage Worlds uses a wounds system and exploding dice so combat can be explosive and unpredictable, even though it leads to some anti-climax situations like having the big, tough elite bad guy being taken out by the weakest player in one hit.

Esprit15
2014-07-14, 05:31 PM
One GM I had would have us do whatever social interaction were were going to do role played first, and after that he would grant a bonus based on how well our piece was. It encourages us to role play social interaction, but doesn't directly punish you if you're bad at that.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-14, 06:21 PM
My ideal situation for any mechanical element, whether it be combat, debate, information-gathering, or jumping around, is this...

Players should be able to intelligently use the mechanics to get what they want.

I think there should definitely be some player input, but I like when the mechanics come in to reflect the fiction. That's what I think mechanics are for: to constrain creativity so that you have a better story. For instance, I really like how Leverage does it: it very clearly frames things as "if you fail the roll, something came up that you didn't cover for", and you might even get an ongoing complication because unexpected variables popped up.

In fact, the idea of unexpected variables often gets forgotten. You will never be able to approach a situation with perfect information, and the human psyche is far more likely than anything else to be unpredictable. The roll of the die tells the players and GM what direction those mystery variables swing in.

Winter_Wolf
2014-07-14, 07:02 PM
I'd rather it was all on the player, or at least mostly on the player to provide at least a strong framework for a success check. Then again I have heard too many "I roll a check for X" and feel like too much is lost. I'm not even a huge role player but there comes a point where I'd ask why even bother to call something a "role playing" game. Or at least make it perfectly clear that heavy die rolling for socials is Optional.

NichG
2014-07-14, 07:11 PM
I can only really speak to personal preference here, since there's a wide range of design targets to shoot for. For me, the ideal thing is for an RPG to not have rules for evaluating the outcome of social interactions, but instead to have rules which allow players to use mechanics to gain access to information and assurances that they normally would not possess. That is to say, for me the function of the rules is ideally to enable the players to experience having extremes of skill and even superhuman ability in that domain, without abstracting it away to the point of determining the outcome or glossing over the details of the interaction.

I also like the idea of a separation between 'named-NPCs' and 'unnamed-NPCs'. That is to say, I like the idea that aggregate 'populations' of various sorts could be reduced to mechanics, but specific individuals are not necessarily subject to those mechanics. So you could e.g. say that 'the bulk membership of this guild has a Loyalty score, and if that drops below 50% there is a chance per month that there is internal disruption and guild services are interrupted', but that would not compel any specific member of the guild to actually be disloyal. Similarly 'this unit of troops has a Morale score, and if it drops low enough then the unit may rout' - it wouldn't compel a specific named Sergeant to flee, or a PC who is a member of the unit, but its a measure of the aggregate morale of the group as a whole.

Here's a few examples of what I'm talking about:

- Someone could have a power that lets them 'try out' a line of argument before committing to it, with the understanding that the person they're interacting with is promising to behave that way given that line of argument, but to behave as if it never happened should the user of the power choose to use a different line. E.g. a player could use the power and ask 'What would you say if I offered an alliance with Glendearg, but you have to let us into the holy sepulcher?', and the target of the power would have to answer truthfully but behave as if that was never offered if the player chose not to offer it.

- Someone could have a power that lets them enforce a promise or statement via mechanics, e.g. 'if the target of this power agrees verbally to what I'm offering, they suffer a mechanical penalty or cost of some kind if they do not go through with it'

- Someone could have a power that lets them request a piece of information of a target in an out-of-character way, where the information must be provided truthfully. E.g. 'This power lets you detect the strongest source of leverage or pressure being exerted on the target, and the type of leverage/pressure being used'

- Someone could have a power that imbues a social interaction with consequences in terms of third-parties to the interaction. For example, 'This power makes it so that if the target of the power refuses to communicate or walks away from the debate, all non-named NPC observers of the debate will lose a certain degree of respect/loyalty to the target'. Loyalty/respect for non-named NPCs would have to be quantified and have mechanical consequences

- Someone could have a power that lets them find a viable contact within a given organization which has a presence in a given place without e.g. specifically going around and having in-character discussions in taverns (but it would not preclude doing that). It enables the social encounter to happen, rather than determining the outcome.

- Someone could have a power that determines whether someone would or would not accept various deals, or forces them to rank things in order of importance and report that to the user of the power.

- Someone could have a power which allows them to be creepily informed about the target's movements or activities.

So these are all examples of things which allow for higher levels of competency than the players possess (or even that humans possess), but at the same time which allow the outcomes of social interactions to follow strictly from the resultant roleplay (which to me is the ideal situation). At the end of the day, the limitation to all of these powers is that they can never compel a specific choice on the part of either party, but they can levy mechanical rewards and penalties on making specific choices. So e.g. you can't mechanically force the king to agree, but you can mechanically punish him for disagreeing. This preserves agency both for PCs and NPCs.

Grod_The_Giant
2014-07-14, 07:27 PM
Well-developed rules should always have significant non-binary components.
More specifically, there should be an option for binary or non-binary resolution, as the situation demands. A non-binary resolution is important for any situation where drama is important. You need tension, and the kind of back-and-forth action that you just can't get if you're just rolling Diplomacy. On the other hand, you shouldn't need to go through all that trouble when you're just trying to chat up a mook.

Remmirath
2014-07-14, 10:25 PM
Rules and skills for social interactions are useful in a roleplaying game, but they should never reach the point where no actual roleplaying need be done. Social skills should, in my opinion, be a representation of how well the character did using the specific tactic that the player outlined. In cases where the player has no idea whatsoever what to say in a situation, but the character would, I consider it acceptable to simply role and outline the gist of what the character will say -- and there should be mechanical support for such eventualities -- but those should be rare. A Diplomacy or Bluff check should ideally be only a measure of how charmingly the character said what those around the table just heard them say, or how convincing they were in the lie.

Honestly, I think that social interaction is an area where difficulty and such things need to be directly governed by the GM, and not set in stone in the rules. Guidelines are a good idea, but you definitely don't want to end up with a system where a character can theoretically automatically convert all of their enemies just by talking to them (and not even coming up with anything resembling what they're actually saying).

I haven't come across any systems that have oustandingly good systems for social interaction. Typically the ones that leave it more alone tend to be better than those that have a lot of rules for it, because those rules often end up hampering rather than helping roleplay.

Segev
2014-07-14, 10:33 PM
Be careful claiming that rules just get in the way of it. Do rules for combat get in the way of combat being fun and exciting to play? Would it be better to leave it to players acting it out?

NichG
2014-07-14, 11:46 PM
Be careful claiming that rules just get in the way of it. Do rules for combat get in the way of combat being fun and exciting to play? Would it be better to leave it to players acting it out?

Often, and in many ways, yes. Often the rules force combat into very specific mechanical paths, because those are the only paths that are efficient, even if other things are conceptually permissible. In D&D 3.5 for example, grappling is a somewhat convoluted beast and its a horrible option usually unless you've very specifically optimized for it. While there might be situations where 'I grab him and try to subdue him!' makes logical sense in the story, players quickly learn 'nevermind, I'll just charge and make a full attack' is generally the better option. There's always a balance to be had, and there are lots of different ways to design rules to try to avoid that kind of result, but yes, rules can often 'just get in the way of it' if they're too aggressive in taking control of and formalizing the resolution system.

In general, if you're trying to avoid that phenomenon its better when rules say 'you can also do this' rather than 'these are the things you can do' or 'all things you try to do must pass through this bottleneck' or 'if X happens you must do Y'. That is to say, if a rule is a very modular thing that can be invoked at will by the player and doesn't interfere with other things, rather than something that demands to be invoked by the system.

SowZ
2014-07-15, 02:00 PM
I designed a system. It basically has a social stat for lying/acting, for high charisma/presence, for detecting lies, and for being attractive. How they are used is pretty simple. I didn't want complex rules for it because I want people to actually say what they are going to say.

Amphetryon
2014-07-16, 01:23 PM
I'd rather it was all on the player, or at least mostly on the player to provide at least a strong framework for a success check. Then again I have heard too many "I roll a check for X" and feel like too much is lost. I'm not even a huge role player but there comes a point where I'd ask why even bother to call something a "role playing" game. Or at least make it perfectly clear that heavy die rolling for socials is Optional.

Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

NichG
2014-07-16, 01:54 PM
Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

I realize this isn't addressed to me, but this particular objection comes up all the time and it isn't well-founded. The thing is, we actually do this for physical things and combat too all the time, its just not as obvious. In D&D, for example, a player must choose where their character moves in a battle, how much to power attack, what spell to cast, whether to act in a way that will provoke an AoO or not, etc. These are a context that strongly determines success and failure, and are usually far more important than the baked-in abilities of the character (though dependent on them) - a player who has no idea what they're doing and is handed a wizard to play in combat will be only a fraction as effective as that same wizard in the hands of an experienced player, even if the character is exactly the same in both cases.

When doing a physical skill, a player's choices can strongly influence the difficulty of the skill as well. If there's a rainslicked smooth iron wall up to a window that someone wants to get into, with a tree growing beside it and columnar wall supports placed every 30 feet, the player can: climb the rainslick wall directly (formally DC 75, an epic use of climb), climb the corner between the supports and the wall (DC 70), climb the tree (DC 15) and jump over (DC 20-30 Jump check), etc.

For a simple skill check, the system is simply not very deep, because such checks are usually intended to be used for small sub-actions in the larger pattern of the scenario, where generally the sort of thought that goes behind them is repeated every time and doesn't need to be reinvestigated. You don't spend 30 minutes crafting a single attack roll because you expect that a fight will consist of dozens of them. You generally don't spend 30 minutes haggling the price of each item you want to buy because after the first few times, the interaction is exactly the same and it makes sense to abstract it.

However, social interaction is something that is nuanced and complex - there are many decisions to be made which are qualitative in nature and change not just the chance of 'success' at one's primary goal but also the consequences along-side. Outcomes can consist of compromises, things where you get what you want but earn the enmity or friendship of others, things where you fail to get what you want but you get information that you can use to punish the other party, things where a given interaction may have several intersecting 'long games' going on, where people are in the midst of trying to get what they want in a way that will not be immediately resolved, etc. Its like combat in that sense - you might win, but lose hitpoints (make compromises) or be forced to use up consumable items (use up favors) or suffer status conditions in the process, and you have a great degree of choice in your actions which determines which of those situations will happen in a way that is not governed strictly by the character's abilities but also by the player's ability to understand the scenario and make choices.

magellan
2014-07-16, 02:15 PM
Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

To hit the dragon with the sword I need several things that aren't easily availiable: A sword (doable) and a dragon(much much harder!)
To climb the castle wall I would need an actual castle wall, also something unlikely to be found in convenient vicinity of my kitchen table.

But everything I need to convince the king that there is a traitor in his army is readily available: a mouth and an ear, and hopefully evidence. (And some general idea how likely the king is to find that evidence/arguments convincing)

I am old. I remember the first time I ran a game that had this new-fangled concept of something called "skills".
I soon realized that their main function was to make my players go through the list to see if they have a fitting skill for the problem, while earlier they would just try stuff. (And maybe we would argue a bit to which attribute that action should be tied)

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-16, 02:44 PM
I'd rather it was all on the player, or at least mostly on the player to provide at least a strong framework for a success check. Then again I have heard too many "I roll a check for X" and feel like too much is lost. I'm not even a huge role player but there comes a point where I'd ask why even bother to call something a "role playing" game. Or at least make it perfectly clear that heavy die rolling for socials is Optional.
Yes. I'd go so far to say that every roll, combat included, needs a strong framework for a check. As simple as "okay, how are you doing that?"

(Interestingly, this is required in the game Dungeon World, because the dice-rolling in DW is contextual. You use different rolls in different situations, depending on your approach.)

Winter_Wolf
2014-07-16, 02:52 PM
Do you feel the same way about physical skill checks? If so, how do you adjudicate combat? If not, why do you differentiate physical tasks from social and/or mental ones from a game design perspective?

I was asked a preference, and I gave it. If you're asking would I like something more than, "I attack (it)" or "I hit it with (weapon/spell/special)" for physical skill checks and combat, then yes I'd like something a little more descriptive. Just a little flair will do. As a rule I don't play with minis outside of a grand melee type situation, so really all I have to go by is the players and GM painting pictures with words. Plus as was pointed out, all you need for socials is working ears and a mouth, or in the case of PbP, working eyes and a reliable text input method. I'm not asking for skilled oration on the level of Homer or Shakespeare, but a little more effort than "I roll diplomacy" would be nice. Let me be clear, I don't have particularly high standards and I'd give a lot of leeway for people who maybe weren't eloquent but were at least trying, but below a certain point die rolling might as well be a game of Yahtzee for me.

Also, I didn't lump mental skills with social skill checks, I was picking on social all by its lonesome.

Amphetryon
2014-07-16, 03:35 PM
To hit the dragon with the sword I need several things that aren't easily availiable: A sword (doable) and a dragon(much much harder!)
To climb the castle wall I would need an actual castle wall, also something unlikely to be found in convenient vicinity of my kitchen table.

But everything I need to convince the king that there is a traitor in his army is readily available: a mouth and an ear, and hopefully evidence. (And some general idea how likely the king is to find that evidence/arguments convincing)

I am old. I remember the first time I ran a game that had this new-fangled concept of something called "skills".
I soon realized that their main function was to make my players go through the list to see if they have a fitting skill for the problem, while earlier they would just try stuff. (And maybe we would argue a bit to which attribute that action should be tied)

I am also old. I remember the joy of the 1e bard being unable to accomplish his intended goal because the speech he gave to the lord of the manor included several uses of "um" and insufficient eye-contact, by virtue of the person role-playing said bard not having as high a CHA score (room for debate on his INT and WIS, but I digress) as what was written on the sheet for his character. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by none during that painful 15 minute attempt at a 2 minute speech.

But, perhaps watching players go through the above is another's idea of fun.

NichG
2014-07-16, 04:03 PM
I am also old. I remember the joy of the 1e bard being unable to accomplish his intended goal because the speech he gave to the lord of the manor included several uses of "um" and insufficient eye-contact, by virtue of the person role-playing said bard not having as high a CHA score (room for debate on his INT and WIS, but I digress) as what was written on the sheet for his character. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by none during that painful 15 minute attempt at a 2 minute speech.

But, perhaps watching players go through the above is another's idea of fun.

I don't particularly like watching people spend 5 minutes to figure out their attack sequence, or watch the game bog down when people spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how grapple works, looking up monster stat blocks for ages when summoning, or arguing minutiae of the game mechanics on a particular ruling, but these are all compromises for sake of the parts of the game where stuff doesn't bog down or break. And people will over time learn to do these things more efficiently to avoid that unpleasantness. I'm willing to sit through awkwardness if it encourages players to learn how to improve in the long run, and generally if it pays off sufficiently elsewhere in the game.

kyoryu
2014-07-16, 04:56 PM
Yes. I'd go so far to say that every roll, combat included, needs a strong framework for a check. As simple as "okay, how are you doing that?"

(Interestingly, this is required in the game Dungeon World, because the dice-rolling in DW is contextual. You use different rolls in different situations, depending on your approach.)

I'd totally agree with that. In pretty much any game I run, when someone gives me a piece of game-jargon-speak ("I roll diplomacy on the guard!" "I create advantage with Notice!" "I Hack and Slash the kobold!") my response is the same - "Okay, so what are you actually *doing*?"

At that point whether it gets resolved with dice or GM fiat matters a bit less. But without that actual "what are you *doing*" thing, things just get too mechanics-first for me.

Amphetryon
2014-07-16, 05:07 PM
I don't particularly like watching people spend 5 minutes to figure out their attack sequence, or watch the game bog down when people spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how grapple works, looking up monster stat blocks for ages when summoning, or arguing minutiae of the game mechanics on a particular ruling, but these are all compromises for sake of the parts of the game where stuff doesn't bog down or break. And people will over time learn to do these things more efficiently to avoid that unpleasantness. I'm willing to sit through awkwardness if it encourages players to learn how to improve in the long run, and generally if it pays off sufficiently elsewhere in the game.

That's changing the argument entirely, unless it's your contention that the delay caused by USING the rules (combat) and the delay caused by IGNORING the rules (any in-place social interaction resolution outside of improv ability) are identical and at the heart of my point on that basis. I'll give you a hint: They aren't identical.

I see no long-term (or short-term) payoff in forcing the introvert to either muddle through because the rules have been set aside, or take penalties for his innate limitations. Nor do I see any benefit in restricting certain players from certain classes or archetypes, based upon the characteristics they have personally, rather than those they'd like to imagine they have.

Grim Portent
2014-07-16, 06:44 PM
I favour systems where a social encounter can be handled by things as vague as 'I try to convince the guard to let us pass, I rolled X.'

I came to this preference even though I love making speeches and using doublespeak, lies and manipulation to achieve my goals in games because I've gamed with several people who can't really do that on the fly but try anyway. I would describe the experience as being akin to having a chisel driven into each ear when they tried to engage in actual in character dialogue. Ums, ahs, errs and a dozen other imperfections in a speech from someone who's supposed to be able to win over whole worlds with a smile, a nod and a witty one liner is far more jarring to my immersion than 'I give a rousing speech,' is.

NichG
2014-07-16, 07:35 PM
That's changing the argument entirely, unless it's your contention that the delay caused by USING the rules (combat) and the delay caused by IGNORING the rules (any in-place social interaction resolution outside of improv ability) are identical and at the heart of my point on that basis. I'll give you a hint: They aren't identical.

My point is, we all deal with things that are irritating in game. Often things caused by player inabilities or inefficiencies. But we deal with them because the alternative makes the game worse. 'I don't like waiting for Joe to add together his attacks - lets get rid of all the dice rolling!' is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So is 'Phil takes forever trying to decide what to say and its always awkward when he tries - lets just make what people say in character irrelevant to the actual results.'.



I see no long-term (or short-term) payoff in forcing the introvert to either muddle through because the rules have been set aside, or take penalties for his innate limitations. Nor do I see any benefit in restricting certain players from certain classes or archetypes, based upon the characteristics they have personally, rather than those they'd like to imagine they have.

Someone with a math disability is going to have a hard time keeping the numbers straight for a monk with Flurry of Blows and a bard in the party. Someone with a reading disability may have trouble playing a wizard due to having to piece through large quantities of complex rules text. Someone with a memory disability is going to have a disadvantage when it comes to the chargen minigame. Someone with an attention disability might have problems with gameplay that involves carefully keeping track of many things (such as combat on a battlemap). And yes, people with socialization disabilities may have problems with social interaction.

Its a reality that people have different strengths and weaknesses. Trying to design a game to completely level the playing field is not a good idea, because what you end up with is something like chutes and ladders or war. If you want the game to retain a rich gameplay experience, there are going to be tradeoffs and not everyone will play the game as well as everyone else. One way to proceed is to try to make sure that the game has many different parts which require the players to have many different skills - so the guy who can't put together a clear sentence is going to be kicking ass in tactical miniatures combat, and the guy who can't do math to save his life will have opportunities to solve things via the application of creativity and intuition.

Saying 'the game should always be forgiving for those who are bad at socialization, but should be unforgiving for people who are bad at interpreting and applying rules' is an arbitrary bias, and it has the unfortunate effect of polarizing the game, so if you're smarter with words than with numbers then you're just going to be doing poorly the entire time, rather than half the time.

Broadly, however, most people at a table will not be completely incapable of a task - you're more likely to play with someone socially awkward than someone who has a severe clinical disability, for example. They may suck at it at first, but they can learn. So its not so dismal as 'we must all be miserable half the time or play a game with no actualy gameplay' - rather, one needs to accept that if they want to play an archetype that does not lie along their natural abilities, they may have to work at it and actually learn something about how that archetype functions in order to do it well. If you want to play a silver-tongued charmer, it behooves you to learn something about how to manipulate people. And as a result, everyone involved gradually gets better at all sorts of different things - Joe learns to be quicker with mental math, Phil learns to think about what he wants to say ahead of time so he's not stumbling over his words.

If you are playing with people with clinical disabilities, then I'd call that a special case, and not something that is useful to build into overall pictures of game design, because the specific disabilities you'd be dealing with can vary and each require consideration on their own. If you're playing with someone who literally cannot understand social situations, then rather than demand that all game systems and all campaigns be equally approachable for him, it would make more sense to tune your system and campaign specifically to cater to that consideration - the same way you wouldn't run a game about political intrigue for a group of players who despise political maneuvering.

valadil
2014-07-16, 09:16 PM
I am old. I remember the first time I ran a game that had this new-fangled concept of something called "skills".
I soon realized that their main function was to make my players go through the list to see if they have a fitting skill for the problem, while earlier they would just try stuff. (And maybe we would argue a bit to which attribute that action should be tied)

I've had that experience recently. I don't remember it being that way back when we started in the mid 90s and we definitely had games with skills.

Anyway, you've thrown me on a tangential idea. How about a system with skill rolls as a resource? Most of the time you just talk, but if you want to spend one of your game session's five die rolls to make a bluff check, go for it. Not sure how to present that without it being overly gamist, but I still find the idea intriguing.

Vitruviansquid
2014-07-16, 10:10 PM
I would have a harder time playing and have a much harder time finding people to play a fantasy, sci-fi, or otherwise "nerdy" genre of RPG if it demanded in-character speech.

edit: one possible workaround for the silliness of "I made a great speech, but rolled low" problem is to interpret dice rolls as only representing the difficulty of the task, not the competence of the wielder. It doesn't matter what speech you give on a diplomacy role - if the die rolls low, it turns out that whatever you did, you weren't convincing enough. If the die rolls high, it turns out that whatever you did, you were convincing.

huttj509
2014-07-17, 12:08 AM
I would have a harder time playing and have a much harder time finding people to play a fantasy, sci-fi, or otherwise "nerdy" genre of RPG if it demanded in-character speech.

edit: one possible workaround for the silliness of "I made a great speech, but rolled low" problem is to interpret dice rolls as only representing the difficulty of the task, not the competence of the wielder. It doesn't matter what speech you give on a diplomacy role - if the die rolls low, it turns out that whatever you did, you weren't convincing enough. If the die rolls high, it turns out that whatever you did, you were convincing.

Personally, I like the interpretation of "character stats represent what the character can control, dice represent what the character cannot."

I like the idea of looking down at a 2 and thinking "ok, what happened?" Then spinning something like "oh, your mother? Well, I didn't mean ALL Half-Orcs, just, um, yeah, I'll shut up now."

Maybe the target was in a bad mood, maybe you said exactly the wrong thing for that particular person, etc. I find it easier to describe what's said after the roll, so I don't run into *grand speech that would unify the planet and reduce warlords to tears*...rolled a 1, or "we wanna go in because, um, reasons" followed by a 20.

I mean, you don't say "I swing my greataxe, cleaving him in twain with a mighty blow, and following through to his friend" before rolling, do you? Maybe you describe the setup, but either you or the GM leave the results to afters.

Of course, I also don't like "calling my shots" because, well, let's just say it's REALLY easy for me to make a character more charismatic than I am. I'm much better at describing the results than quoting the speech. It's usually things like "I'm going to try to persuade the guard to let us in, pointing out how he'll get in trouble if he prevents our information from saving the king's life." Direct quoting comes out as a horrible mess.

Segev
2014-07-17, 01:15 PM
It's worth noting that the counterargument about how combat has tactical depth does not justify "I demand they role play the social context before they roll." Quite the contrary. It is an argument, instead, that the social subsystem needs more mechanical depth so that the tactical decisions in how one approaches the social encounter are important enough to make the rolling feel like part of resolving a move, rather than a binary pass/fail check.

The more the mechanics require meaningful choices of the player in how his character approaches the situation, the more the die rolls exist to determine incremental success as part of individual, meaningful moves and gambits in the system, the deeper the subsystem is and the more satisfying it feels. It starts to feel like you're really role-playing that social doyenne as she maneuvers her way through the court intrigue at the ball, rather than having to act and hope you're good enough (when you know you're no more a doyenne than you are a muscle-bound barbarian swinging a battle axe) or simply rolling one skill check for passage/failure at being "social."

Mechanics should model the kind of RP actions - to whatever depth is needed for the detail desired - for systems which are meant to focus on those kinds of RP. They should not, however, get so detail-focused that they forget to keep it interesting and fast-moving.

NichG
2014-07-17, 02:36 PM
It's worth noting that the counterargument about how combat has tactical depth does not justify "I demand they role play the social context before they roll." Quite the contrary. It is an argument, instead, that the social subsystem needs more mechanical depth so that the tactical decisions in how one approaches the social encounter are important enough to make the rolling feel like part of resolving a move, rather than a binary pass/fail check.

The more the mechanics require meaningful choices of the player in how his character approaches the situation, the more the die rolls exist to determine incremental success as part of individual, meaningful moves and gambits in the system, the deeper the subsystem is and the more satisfying it feels. It starts to feel like you're really role-playing that social doyenne as she maneuvers her way through the court intrigue at the ball, rather than having to act and hope you're good enough (when you know you're no more a doyenne than you are a muscle-bound barbarian swinging a battle axe) or simply rolling one skill check for passage/failure at being "social."

Mechanics should model the kind of RP actions - to whatever depth is needed for the detail desired - for systems which are meant to focus on those kinds of RP. They should not, however, get so detail-focused that they forget to keep it interesting and fast-moving.

I generally agree with the idea of adding depth, since the worst part is usually that systems that ask to mechanically model social interaction collapse it all into a single roll-off or at most a social hitpoint track.

However, I would say that the way in which different kinds of situations attain depth through mechanics needs to be different, in order to make those situations feel different. If social situations were modeled by putting tokens on a grid and having them trade 'debates' (attacks) and 'ploys' (spells), it would fail to capture social interaction in a way that feels right. Part of this is going to leave aspects of the maneuvering in the player's hands - do you choose to try to obtain leverage on someone before asking them for something, or do you want to just get buddy-buddy with them, or do you want to play two people off eachother, or do you want to suggest that you have information which someone needs and use that to get them to spill their secrets or whatever.

To really attain the complexity that actual social interaction has through a purely mechanicam model, the problem is that you're looking at a rules system that could easily take far too long to set up for each NPC and far too long to evaluate. And that's going to break up the flow of talking to NPCs and basically make that part of the game miserable for people who are more RP focused than mechanics focused. A rules system shouldn't get in the way of things that work well without one, it should augment things to help where they don't work well. For myself, a big part of what I get out of RPGs is talking to strange people and trying to see what I can get out of them - it contrasts with the part of the game where you're making highly mechanical decisions, and I appreciate that contrast since it gives the game variety. Replacing the talking part with mechanical decisions would gut half the game for me.

I think that trying to actually place a mechanic on each of these strategies is sort of silly, since that sharply limits the sort of complexity that humans innately engage in when being social with eachother. Instead, thats why I place an emphasis on having the mechanics augment the ability of the humans at the table rather than asking the mechanics to model the sort of depth that humans can just inherently produce in social interaction. That way, when the player knows what they're doing they can pass through an entire complex social encounter with roleplay alone, no dice needed. But when a player feels they need an edge, they can use distinct powers that help them know what to say or correct for errors in how they say it, and then they can get back to talking naturally. Since the abilities are only called on in times of need, they only interrupt the flow of things when that flow is already being interrupted.

Segev
2014-07-17, 02:56 PM
While there are tremendous flaws with how it ultimately works, Exalted 2e made a serious effort at a social combat system. Moreover, it had some solid ideas for it.

The Virtues and Intimacies of a character are the elements most directly utilized, in theory. (In practice, it became "can you beat past their willpower stat?" but that was because it was, as I said, tremendously flawed in actual implementation.)

Supposedly, Exalted 3e has a much more nuanced and deeper system, but only the playtesters and designers know what that is at the moment.


Still, I would suggest that you don't need to model every NPC as a unique individual; just as "generic Guard A" has the same stats as "generic Guards B, C, D, E, and F," they can have the same general social stats. Their goals are primarily to keep people from going where they're not supposed to, they are going to have a fairly uniform level of loyalty to the job, etc.

Now, you can argue that this should vary, but we're talking about generiguards, here. In theory, their combat stats should vary, too.

A good, deep social combat system probably should involve the ability to find out vices, virtues, weaknesses, preferences, etc. of the individuals. Tactically, you might chat up a few of them until you found one with a foible you wanted (represented, perhaps, by some sort of "attack" that is fueled by your investigation skills; the result of success is finding a guard with that foible). Having found that foible, now you can attempt to exploit it.

When you're dealing not with generics but specifics, then it does need a bit more fleshing out. Rather than "I look for a guard who accepts bribes," you KNOW that the two guards with which you must deal are the ones in front of the king's office. So, instead, you might do investigation to find out their weakness(es). There may or may not be a table of a few common options to make it easy to have each guard be a little different in a useful fashion. Or it could just be that every guard here has a lechery vice, so the hot paladin babe can use that in her social attack to get them to let her by.

Social mechanics should be about finding, discovering, and exploiting social foibles, as well as creating new ones (e.g. getting somebody to have a soft spot for you by chatting them up and being likable before using that soft spot to get them to do something for you).

NichG
2014-07-17, 06:05 PM
While there are tremendous flaws with how it ultimately works, Exalted 2e made a serious effort at a social combat system. Moreover, it had some solid ideas for it.

The Virtues and Intimacies of a character are the elements most directly utilized, in theory. (In practice, it became "can you beat past their willpower stat?" but that was because it was, as I said, tremendously flawed in actual implementation.)

I'd say Exalted was heading in the wrong direction. Too much 'social encounters are like combat but with words instead of swords', rather than trying to look at social interaction as its own thing. I don't just mean 'beat past their willpower', I mean the focus on 'I want to force them to yield' sorts of interactions. In a skillfully handled social encounter, the target of some plot might not even know that they're in a conflict at all. Furthermore, in social encounters unlike most combats, you can have a situation where everyone wins but different people win in different ways/by different amounts.

If pushed to make mechanics, I'd try to center around three fundamental units of social encounters in particular:

- Information is a central resource, and the obtaining/exchange of information is a fundamental 'move' in the system. Information can also be obfuscated or falsified. Types of interactions: shifting blame to someone else, discovering what someone values, discovering something that someone is afraid of, discovering how things are likely to influence a person's emotional state.

- 'Exchange' centered around a shared view of the situation is a core type of action - if I value obtaining A at 5 points and B at 8 points, but the person I'm talking to values them as 8 and 5, then I can give up A to obtain B. Part of what makes this tricky is also the understanding of to what degree a person. Part of the 'exchange' action is the concept of 'value' - a person values this or that to different degrees, which can result in compromise. Value is not linear and additive - it can be synergistic due to the interactions between terms of exchange, and partial fulfillment can also have value in some cases but not others. Modelling this with a giant table of values would be mechanically disastrous.

- Emotion is a central concept and can be an overriding factor. Many if not most social decisions and interactions are not fundamentally 'rational' exchanges of value. A person's emotional state with regard to themselves and to the people they're talking to can be a dominant driver. Even if you provide information to someone to try to induce action, if they don't trust you then that information will have no effect. Emotions can serve to modify and create 'values' that were not there before - if someone hates you, they put some value on things that are harmful to you, and may just refuse to deal.

I still think this is awfully cumbersome and trying to do it mechanistically as a determiner of outcome (rather than as a way to know how to adjust what you say and do) is a mistake. When I go talk to the eldest of dragons, the Wanderer from Afar, I don't want to go look at tables of numbers and figure out whether or not I can make a combination of offers that lets me get some of his hoard without being eaten, I want to talk to him, ask questions, hear stories, figure out what his situation is, figure out if there's anything that can be influenced, create an alliance, earn friendship, etc. Its the surprising emotional and intellectual twists, turns, and connections that make the experience worthwhile and more importantly distinct from the part of the game that is focused on tactical puzzles. I'm fine with there being a few props and powers that help me achieve that, but I don't want the interaction to be governed by a mechanical minigame.



Still, I would suggest that you don't need to model every NPC as a unique individual; just as "generic Guard A" has the same stats as "generic Guards B, C, D, E, and F," they can have the same general social stats. Their goals are primarily to keep people from going where they're not supposed to, they are going to have a fairly uniform level of loyalty to the job, etc.

Now, you can argue that this should vary, but we're talking about generiguards, here. In theory, their combat stats should vary, too.

Modelling variance isn't really that important to me. But what is important is that the game focus more on interesting interactions than generic ones. Talking to a generic guard isn't actually all that interesting. Talking to a particular guard with a particular personality, disposition, and behavior could be interesting and worth spending game time on.



A good, deep social combat system probably should involve the ability to find out vices, virtues, weaknesses, preferences, etc. of the individuals. Tactically, you might chat up a few of them until you found one with a foible you wanted (represented, perhaps, by some sort of "attack" that is fueled by your investigation skills; the result of success is finding a guard with that foible). Having found that foible, now you can attempt to exploit it.

When you're dealing not with generics but specifics, then it does need a bit more fleshing out. Rather than "I look for a guard who accepts bribes," you KNOW that the two guards with which you must deal are the ones in front of the king's office. So, instead, you might do investigation to find out their weakness(es). There may or may not be a table of a few common options to make it easy to have each guard be a little different in a useful fashion. Or it could just be that every guard here has a lechery vice, so the hot paladin babe can use that in her social attack to get them to let her by.

Social mechanics should be about finding, discovering, and exploiting social foibles, as well as creating new ones (e.g. getting somebody to have a soft spot for you by chatting them up and being likable before using that soft spot to get them to do something for you).

I agree with the idea of how to go about things, if not the need for there to be a mechanical side of it. Basically the thought process you've described is 'enough' for me in a game I'm DMing. If a player goes and presents a plan like 'I will go research this guard and find his weaknesses' and then performs the necessary actions to do that investigation then they've succeeded - no mechanics or rolls needed beyond that point, because that is the well-thought-out context for the actions. That's already orders of magnitude better than 'I roll Bluff vs the guard to get him to let me in'.

If you go and find that the guard is sleeping with a nobleman's daughter and that's a hanging offense, as a DM I don't really care if you say 'um' when you present that threat to him. At that point, you've earned the victory because you actually thought through how to manipulate the guy in a non-generic way and followed through on the plan (and also a bit sadly because if this were my table the other players have probably been arguing with you for 45 minutes trying to pick apart the plan, and I really want to send the strong message 'yes this stuff works, don't second guess yourselves so much')

Amphetryon
2014-07-17, 06:54 PM
Saying 'the game should always be forgiving for those who are bad at socialization, but should be unforgiving for people who are bad at interpreting and applying rules' is an arbitrary biasFavoring resolving things in game via the rules in place in the game over resolving them via free-form and improvisation is an arbitrary bias? Really?

Jay R
2014-07-17, 08:32 PM
I'm considering designing my own RPG, and I'm wondering to what extent a game should apply mechanics in the form of dice rolls to social situations.

First, I'd like to disagree with the question itself, which assumes that there is a single answer that applies to all games, and for all gaming groups. I don't think this is true, for almost any question about the rules.


Experienced members of the playground, is there a "sweet spot" where the amount of rolling is just right? Are there any games you can recommend that handle social interaction well?

A single "sweet spot"? No, probably not. I suspect that it will serve us better to discuss preferences.

I prefer a situation in which what I do and say has at least as much influence as how I roll. I consider rolling for a social interaction without a bit of roleplay to be the equivalent of rolling for damage with your longsword without actually having a longsword. Of course, the difference is that I can buy a longsword within the game, and I can't spend gold to buy a competent argument. But that is correct simulation. A PC can buy a sword and can't buy a socially viable discussion.

Fundamentally, you are deciding what the character does, and reducing that to a roll is like having the dice decide whether or not you attack.

I prefer for the mental stats to only represent those parts of the character that can't be role-played. INT should be magical ability and knowledge of the world. WIS should be clerical ability and the extent to which the PC pays attention (Spot and Listen). Charisma should only influence reputation, performing ability, and how many people will follow.

If you are rolling for social interaction, you should also roll for every tactical decision as well. Roll on your intelligence to decide which enemy to attack, or whether to trip, attack, or retreat.

Many of the decisions your character will make will in fact be based on yoru INT, not the PC's, unless you give up on making any decisions at all.

As I said, this is my preference. I know that other people disagree, which gets back to my initial, and final point:

There is no single right answer for all games and all gaming groups.

NichG
2014-07-17, 10:51 PM
Favoring resolving things in game via the rules in place in the game over resolving them via free-form and improvisation is an arbitrary bias? Really?

The rules exist to serve the game experience, not for their own sake. If you can run a better game free-form, then you should run a better game free-form.

Sartharina
2014-07-17, 11:06 PM
First, I'd like to disagree with the question itself, which assumes that there is a single answer that applies to all games, and for all gaming groups. I don't think this is true, for almost any question about the rules.



A single "sweet spot"? No, probably not. I suspect that it will serve us better to discuss preferences.

I prefer a situation in which what I do and say has at least as much influence as how I roll. I consider rolling for a social interaction without a bit of roleplay to be the equivalent of rolling for damage with your longsword without actually having a longsword. Of course, the difference is that I can buy a longsword within the game, and I can't spend gold to buy a competent argument. But that is correct simulation. A PC can buy a sword and can't buy a socially viable discussion.

Fundamentally, you are deciding what the character does, and reducing that to a roll is like having the dice decide whether or not you attack.I might be misreading you here, but I think I disagree with your overall premise.

In this case, you handle it not unlike combat - have your character outline the objectives, not necessarily the method. "I try to convince the guard to let me see the king" *Roll* works. "I diplomacy the guard *Roll*" doesn't, and "I go up to the guard *insert long conversation* and to see if it works... *roll* is too complex, and possibly nonsensical.

Your argument amounts to saying that someone should LARP to resolve combat, when rolling it is more objective-oriented.

In a more complex situation, you opt to use more precise, short-term objectives phrased to utilize different skills or bring up different issues and break the overall objective into several smaller ones that draw upon different skill checks... and possibly other players, using the late 4e skill challenge framework. (Which might even work in a system like Ironclaw, which has a lot more different types of social skills - but the skill challenge framework is still good. No, not the DMG skill challenge framework)

But it's still "Invoke skill in a valid manner to achieve objective", not "Sit around Improv Acting for 20 minutes"

Endarire
2014-07-17, 11:34 PM
Attila: How important to you as a person is it that this RPG have rules governing social interaction? If the answer is "High" and the rest of your system accomodates it, add more rules.

Jay R
2014-07-18, 07:17 AM
I might be misreading you here, but I think I disagree with your overall premise.

Both, actually. You are misreading me, and you disagree with my overall premise.

I’ll try to explain myself better.


In this case, you handle it not unlike combat - have your character outline the objectives, not necessarily the method. "I try to convince the guard to let me see the king" *Roll* works. "I diplomacy the guard *Roll*" doesn't, and "I go up to the guard *insert long conversation* and to see if it works... *roll* is too complex, and possibly nonsensical.

Our biggest disagreement seems to be that you believe there are social situations that aren't too complex to be handled by a single roll. (Combined with a disagreement about whether role-playing includes playing a role.)

You are equating everything that happens after deciding “I will try to convince the guard” with everything that happens after deciding “I will move ten feet and hit that orc with my sword this round.” Therefore you conclude that it should be handled by a roll.

I equate everything that happens after deciding “I will try to convince the guard” with everything that happens after I decide “I will fight the orcs.” At that point, there are lots of little decisions to make, and reducing the 10,000 possibilities in the social situation to a single roll is like reducing the 10,000 possibilities in the tactical situation to a single roll.

When the party faces a horde of orcs, sure, we could roll a single die for success and failure, and the DM could consult the table and say, “OK, you’ve beaten them, and you’re down to about half your hit points,” without going through the details of the fight. And in the same way, when we are trying to convince the guard to help us, we could roll a single Diplomacy roll, without going through all the details of the conversation.

And in both cases, that’s a quick, clever way to avoid the fun part of the encounter.


Your argument amounts to saying that someone should LARP to resolve combat, when rolling it is more objective-oriented.

No. I specifically referred to the mental stats alone. When you extend that to the physical stats, you are misreading me.


In a more complex situation, you opt to use more precise, short-term objectives phrased to utilize different skills or bring up different issues and break the overall objective into several smaller ones that draw upon different skill checks... and possibly other players, using the late 4e skill challenge framework. (Which might even work in a system like Ironclaw, which has a lot more different types of social skills - but the skill challenge framework is still good. No, not the DMG skill challenge framework)

But it's still "Invoke skill in a valid manner to achieve objective", not "Sit around Improv Acting for 20 minutes"

You're missing (or avoiding) the actual disagreement. Does"Invoke skill in a valid manner to achieve objective" only mean rolling dice, or can it mean actually playing out the scenario?

Almost always, a Spot check is not needed. If you look north, you saw the orcs. , If you say, "I'm looking for an exit," you don't need to roll to find a door.

And in almost all cases, a Diplomacy check is not needed. If you talk to the guard and find out that his promotion was denied recently, you can hire him away with a decent offer.

It’s OK that you disagree with me. Lots of people do. As I said, “There is no single right answer for all games and all gaming groups.”

But I prefer a role-playing game in which we don’t skip the role-playing. You can call it “improv acting” if you like, but that still means “playing a role”. Rolling dice is for situations that can’t be handled by role-playing.

Segev
2014-07-18, 08:53 AM
I'd say Exalted was heading in the wrong direction. Too much 'social encounters are like combat but with words instead of swords', rather than trying to look at social interaction as its own thing. I don't just mean 'beat past their willpower', I mean the focus on 'I want to force them to yield' sorts of interactions. In a skillfully handled social encounter, the target of some plot might not even know that they're in a conflict at all. Furthermore, in social encounters unlike most combats, you can have a situation where everyone wins but different people win in different ways/by different amounts. Sure, but it was a step in the right direction in that it recognized that combat is the most-developed subsystem as a whole in RPGs, and that it has the sort of non-binary resolution that a deep sub-system requires. So it tried that out. It found flaws in it through the edition's course; it remains to be seen if 3e learned good lessons from it or not, but I think it safe to say that the experiment successfully gave us some data from which to move on to the next efforts.



I still think this is awfully cumbersome and trying to do it mechanistically as a determiner of outcome (rather than as a way to know how to adjust what you say and do) is a mistake. I think you're making a fundamental false dichotomy mistake, here. There is room for both a sound mechanical resolution system to see, ultimately, whether your PC's presentation of information/coersion/emotional ploys worked while still having a lot of it be determining WHAT information to present or WHAT emotions to play upon and how.

And don't forget the crucial component of social interaction that is actually changing people's perceptions of things. To borrow from Exalted 2e, "building an Intimacy" (or eroding one) as you make a friend or turn somebody against a cause.


When I go talk to the eldest of dragons, the Wanderer from Afar, I don't want to go look at tables of numbers and figure out whether or not I can make a combination of offers that lets me get some of his hoard without being eaten, I want to talk to him, ask questions, hear stories, figure out what his situation is, figure out if there's anything that can be influenced, create an alliance, earn friendship, etc. Its the surprising emotional and intellectual twists, turns, and connections that make the experience worthwhile and more importantly distinct from the part of the game that is focused on tactical puzzles. I'm fine with there being a few props and powers that help me achieve that, but I don't want the interaction to be governed by a mechanical minigame. That's fine. I do ask why you want, if talks break down or the Wanderer turns out to be a murderous jerk, the resulting combat to be governed by a mechanical minigame, though. And, if you don't want that, how do you propose to resolve it?

Are not the dramatic twists and turns, the clever uses of environment combined with impressively-described combat techniques what make the experience worthwhile and more importantly distinct from the part of the game that focuses on crafting items?

The point I'm trying to make here is that mechanics are there to enable decision-making to be "fair" rather than to be "DM fiat." When you don't have rules to model the emotional state and desires and such of NPCs, it all boils down to "can I, the player, convince the DM that this creature should agree with me?" Imagine if combat boiled down to, "can I, the player, convince the DM that this creature should be vulnerable to my attacks?"


Modelling variance isn't really that important to me. But what is important is that the game focus more on interesting interactions than generic ones. Talking to a generic guard isn't actually all that interesting. Talking to a particular guard with a particular personality, disposition, and behavior could be interesting and worth spending game time on.The reason I bring up "generic" guards is that a social character is going to want to use his social skills to get past faceless NPC obstacles. NPCs which may not be worth the DM's time to write up individually.

Yes, finding out that the guard is sleeping with the king's wife is great and all, but you either have to have the DM come up with these secrets "personally" for each guard you come across, or you have to empower the player to use "social attacks" of the investigative sort to "discover" things of the player's choosing. While a valid way to handle it, it can become somewhat repetitive to the point that the player eventually just wants to do the equivalent of "I roll to hit." Said equivalent being, "I roll to discover his social vulnerability. I use that against him."

It may even be desirable to fast-track things. But the point of the "generic" NPC-of-such-and-such-sort is for when it's not really worth it to develop a fully fleshed out personality and character. It's the social equivalent of a combat mook.


I agree with the idea of how to go about things, if not the need for there to be a mechanical side of it. Basically the thought process you've described is 'enough' for me in a game I'm DMing. If a player goes and presents a plan like 'I will go research this guard and find his weaknesses' and then performs the necessary actions to do that investigation then they've succeeded - no mechanics or rolls needed beyond that point, because that is the well-thought-out context for the actions. That's already orders of magnitude better than 'I roll Bluff vs the guard to get him to let me in'. Sure. But what weaknesses does this guard have? Does he necessarily have any this PC can exploit? (Perhaps he's motivated strictly by his loyalty to his king and country, possibly because his personal life includes the king as a personal friend, and no he's NOT going to risk letting strangers in. No, he's not accepting a bribe. He's really very good as a guard because he knows and trusts his king and the king knows and trusts him.)

More importantly, though, you have to be careful here not to allow the guy who invested all his resources in making the awesome combat monster and deliberately neglected his social mechanics to be the highly-successful Party Face because the PLAYER can "role play" a highly skilled Face.

Too often, systems have a "social mechanics" area to spend resources, and then hand-wave it as "well, the DM should let them succeed socially more often than those who don't spend resources here" as the only real mechanics. How much more often? How much leeway should it buy the guy who is the social equivalent of the 90-pound weakling playing the 20 strength barbarian?

Giving tactically crunchy mechanics for him to select will inspire him with ideas of what sorts of things to try in social situations. It will also make sure that the guy who is the brilliant socialite in real life can only go so far in saying "well, I do this and say that and use this moving speech to convince him" before the DM says, "okay, here are the mechanics that model those moves; roll for them."

They might well be good moves. Just as the guy who really knows his tactics in a fight might know the right ways to play the combat. But if the combat-guy doesn't have his PC built to succeed at those tactics, he is more likely to fail in execution. Same with social-guy whose PC is not built to succeed at social situations.


The construction of social mechanics is not an easy thing. Combat mechanics have been in development for longer than most gamers have been alive, and still are being refined and explored and tweaked on every level of the model. Social mechanics are still in their infancy by comparison. Even WHAT to model and how doesn't have a solid "fallback" the way combat does. (Combat has "hit points" and "to hit" and "damage" as a fairly standard core modeling scheme; there are models that try to move away from this, but that's the core. Social interaction doesn't have even that agreed-upon starting point, yet.)

Raimun
2014-07-18, 11:58 AM
There should be rules for social interaction. They should be very basic but their main function is to map out how your character fares in social situations.

Remember, you are not your character, so social skills are as needed to portray the abilities of the character. Just like the ability to undestand magical theory or pick a lock. Imagine if the GM demanded that you roleplay and describe in detail how you are picking the lock.

I prefer that you do the talking in-character (taking account the social capabilities of the character) or at least describe what is the topic for the interaction and the desired outcome. Then you roll the dice.

Also remember that in social situations what you say is not the only thing that counts. It also matters how you say it. Your character may or may not be able to get the "how" down, even if you have a good idea what you should say.

Amphetryon
2014-07-18, 12:12 PM
There should be rules for social interaction. They should be very basic but their main function is to map out how your character fares in social situations.

Remember, you are not your character, so social skills are as needed to portray the abilities of the character. Just like the ability to undestand magical theory or pick a lock. Imagine if the GM demanded that you roleplay and describe in detail how you are picking the lock.

I prefer that you do the talking in-character (taking account the social capabilities of the character) or at least describe what is the topic for the interaction and the desired outcome. Then you roll the dice.

Also remember that in social situations what you say is not the only thing that counts. It also matters how you say it. Your character may or may not be able to get the "how" down, even if you have a good idea what you should say.

As far as I can tell, some folks want social skills to be distinct from any other skills in the game, because "roll the dice; roleplay and describe the result" is deeply deeply unsatisfying and immersion-breaking, but only on this particular subset of skills. . . because. . . .

NichG
2014-07-18, 01:26 PM
I think you're making a fundamental false dichotomy mistake, here. There is room for both a sound mechanical resolution system to see, ultimately, whether your PC's presentation of information/coersion/emotional ploys worked while still having a lot of it be determining WHAT information to present or WHAT emotions to play upon and how.

And don't forget the crucial component of social interaction that is actually changing people's perceptions of things. To borrow from Exalted 2e, "building an Intimacy" (or eroding one) as you make a friend or turn somebody against a cause.

Generally I think that asking 'did it work' is a bit of a dead end in terms of game design. It forces you into the binary success/failure mindset that tends to make all these attempts at social mechanics so flat. This is why I prefer to start with a model that basically guarantees complete agency for all actors, and then ask 'how can you perturb that agency while still making the players behind the actors able to have the final say?'.

Compare: 'if you succeed on this, the target becomes friendly' with 'if you succeed on this, then whenever the target helps you out at disadvantage to themselves during a game they gain an extra fate point/whatever'. In the former, the mechanics are saying 'you must hew to the results of this ploy in your roleplay, regardless of how you envision the character' - basically, they're overriding the underlying roleplay and forcing themselves to be used to govern the interaction. In the latter case, all parties in the exchange have full ability to decide how to react, but there are incentives that are levied for acting in particular ways - a stubborn character could ignore those incentives and continue to hold to the things they care about more, and a greedy character could jump on them, but its all up to the interpretation of the people playing those characters.

Again though, just having these kinds of mechanics for the sake of having them doesn't strike me as sensible. I'd prefer to leave such things to overt 'powers' associated with superhuman levels of skill or ability or 'magical stuff' or whatever and have them be something rare-ish to be used at need and remarked on rather than part of every conversation you have at a bar.



That's fine. I do ask why you want, if talks break down or the Wanderer turns out to be a murderous jerk, the resulting combat to be governed by a mechanical minigame, though. And, if you don't want that, how do you propose to resolve it?

Are not the dramatic twists and turns, the clever uses of environment combined with impressively-described combat techniques what make the experience worthwhile and more importantly distinct from the part of the game that focuses on crafting items?


There's a lot of answers to this. I think probably the most general answer is 'I like mechanical minigames, and I also like actually talking to people in character and having them respond in the same way, so I would like to have both in my RPGs please'. A game is a complex experience made out of several parts in different balances. Just because I enjoy talking to the dragon without mechanics doesn't mean I don't enjoy a bit of tactical minigame, character-creation puzzle, solving mysteries in the setting with my own brain rather than my character's abilities, etc.

But you could ask 'why should combat have the minigame and socialization be the one without the minigame?' The answer there is basically, people are inherently very good at portraying and understanding people's reactions to things and their behaviors in a consistent way, but tend to be very bad at creating exterior models of those things. Even people who think they're bad at it are much better at it than e.g. the best computer programs the world knows how to write right now.

Combat, on the other hand, is something that people are not inherently particularly good at evaluating or emulating in a consistent way. The process itself is also generally more chaotic than a social situation, in the sense that there are a number of actions taken which have very wide distributions of outcomes, and those depend on state variables that we do not naturally keep in mind very easily (whereas with social interactions, a person can use their brain's internal state to a large degree to track those things). The result is that you get a much more severe 'cowboys and indians' effect if you free-form combat, which means that it benefits more from a mechanical system than the talking bits of the game.

Basically, humans are very good human-emulators but very bad physics engines.



The point I'm trying to make here is that mechanics are there to enable decision-making to be "fair" rather than to be "DM fiat." When you don't have rules to model the emotional state and desires and such of NPCs, it all boils down to "can I, the player, convince the DM that this creature should agree with me?" Imagine if combat boiled down to, "can I, the player, convince the DM that this creature should be vulnerable to my attacks?"


I don't see a need to try to enforce DM fairness, because its fighting a losing battle. If you need this kind of thing, you've already lost, because the DM can always be unfair and you're just tricking yourself. So, we have combat rules - if the DM wants to, they throw a CR+10 encounter at the party and TPKs them. Or creates an environment thats hard to deal with. Or just uber-optimizes things.

The difference between the two is, even as a DM, I don't want to be put in the position of deciding 'was that blow a hit or a miss?' because I have no basis with which to resolve that decision. I know that it will be completely arbitrary whatever I decide, because I don't have a mental model of sword swings and armor and wind and footing and morale and breath timing and tiredness that will let me determine what that decision should be. For an NPC, I absolutely would have the things I need to decide how they act, just as a player has the things they need to decide how their character acts, because I and the player are both machines built for 'acting like people'.

And as far as combat boiling down to convincing the DM, there are cases in which that's appropriate. I've had games where I've killed shadow creatures by cleverly placed flashes of light - game mechanically, the light doesn't do that (and at the time I didn't expect it to), but the DM had an internal logic for how the shadow creatures worked and when he said 'yeah, you basically just removed all places in the room that could have shadows, so it dissolves' I thought that was particularly awesome. And it encouraged me to try to think of stuff like that in future combats, which overall made the experience of the campaign all the more awesome. It has its particular place though - for a given sword stroke, there's no clever trick or no mental model, so it makes sense to go to the dice.

I see this as the part of the game that hinges on having a good DM. I don't really have an interest in playing with crappy DMs no matter how good the rules may be, so I want the rules to get out of the way and let good DMs shine, even if it means that mediocre DMs run a game that's slightly worse. I'm going to enter into any gaming situation with the assumption that I can trust the DM to try to make the game awesome and not be a jerk about things, because when that trust is reciprocated then the gaming experience is really on a whole other level, and the alternative just isn't worth playing when you compare the two.



The reason I bring up "generic" guards is that a social character is going to want to use his social skills to get past faceless NPC obstacles. NPCs which may not be worth the DM's time to write up individually.

Yes, finding out that the guard is sleeping with the king's wife is great and all, but you either have to have the DM come up with these secrets "personally" for each guard you come across, or you have to empower the player to use "social attacks" of the investigative sort to "discover" things of the player's choosing. While a valid way to handle it, it can become somewhat repetitive to the point that the player eventually just wants to do the equivalent of "I roll to hit." Said equivalent being, "I roll to discover his social vulnerability. I use that against him."

It may even be desirable to fast-track things. But the point of the "generic" NPC-of-such-and-such-sort is for when it's not really worth it to develop a fully fleshed out personality and character. It's the social equivalent of a combat mook.

I see this as sort of the equivalent of having a Lv15 party fight a group of four goblins. Once you've done the 'get past the guards thing' once, do something else with the game and have new challenges. I also think its useful to firmly establish the precendent of 'to leverage things, you need to know things', so I'd be strongly against this sort of 'roll to hit' approach because it encourages bad habits later on when the situation is more complex. Once the player of the social character starts thinking of their social skills as a self-contained Dominate Person ability, they're going to stop trying to actually find dirt on people before diving into social situations, which means that they're going to come up short when dealing with someone who the 'roll-to-hit' approach isn't appropriate for.

Better to give a consistent experience - if you want to get someone to do something they really don't want to do, you need information about them first no matter how silver-tongued you are. That way there's no feeling of betrayed expectations.



Sure. But what weaknesses does this guard have? Does he necessarily have any this PC can exploit? (Perhaps he's motivated strictly by his loyalty to his king and country, possibly because his personal life includes the king as a personal friend, and no he's NOT going to risk letting strangers in. No, he's not accepting a bribe. He's really very good as a guard because he knows and trusts his king and the king knows and trusts him.)


Sure, this could be the case, and in some situations it may be. But generally speaking, if that's the case, then no matter what your social ability you shouldn't be able to get in that way. Once I've decided 'this guard is a paragon of guardianship' its like I've said 'this door is guarded by a Lv20 fighter'. So the idea that you can somehow use social mechanics to 'make this fair' is an illusion. If I as DM decide 'no one is getting past this guard' then, well, I can enforce that no matter what the game system says. So in general, I shouldn't do this, and if I do it I should give very clear cues like 'you see the king's personal bodyguard and guardsman standing at this doorway' to avoid wasting time and again to establish expectation.



More importantly, though, you have to be careful here not to allow the guy who invested all his resources in making the awesome combat monster and deliberately neglected his social mechanics to be the highly-successful Party Face because the PLAYER can "role play" a highly skilled Face.

Too often, systems have a "social mechanics" area to spend resources, and then hand-wave it as "well, the DM should let them succeed socially more often than those who don't spend resources here" as the only real mechanics. How much more often? How much leeway should it buy the guy who is the social equivalent of the 90-pound weakling playing the 20 strength barbarian?


Not an issue if you avoid having social mechanics in the game, or have very specific 'power'-like mechanics which are up to the player to call out and use. This feeling of 'I can't let Joe be good because John sunk a lot of points into it' is poisonous for a game, because it means that people are going to be subconsciously sabotaging eachother to maintain their mental image of who is entitled to be good at what. I generally try to avoid clear 'mental stats' in game design as well for similar reasons.

What works better is to have a benny system that is focused more on helping those who have fallen behind rather than punishing those who are ahead. If someone wants to try to play a social character and says so but does poorly, give them more personalized opportunities for social interaction over the course of the campaign. Make those things start easy and have obvious buttons to push, and use that to slowly let them learn how to actually be better at social manipulation out of character. So the one guy has a silver tongue in character and is talking his way past guards whenever he's of a mind to, but the guy who has declared 'I'm a silver-tongued spy' has people spontaneously come to him with opportunities, questions about what to do about people, etc - things that try to draw him into the role he's declared for himself.

Edit: And yes, this benny system isn't just for social stuff. If someone wants to be a warrior but can't figure out how to play the tactical game to save their life, then their character might find themselves in situations which both give them a boost and also help them learn tactics step by step, similar to the way things like Portal present one game mechanic at a time until its clear the player has understood that mechanic thoroughly.



Giving tactically crunchy mechanics for him to select will inspire him with ideas of what sorts of things to try in social situations. It will also make sure that the guy who is the brilliant socialite in real life can only go so far in saying "well, I do this and say that and use this moving speech to convince him" before the DM says, "okay, here are the mechanics that model those moves; roll for them."


The thing is, I want the guy who is a brilliant socialite in real life to bring that brilliance to the game. That's a bit of real awesome that can shine through if allowed, and it improves the game experience all around. I want the guy who is a tactical genius to bring that to the combat minigame, the skilled optimizer to be able to dig in to the rules and find great combos without the game falling apart, and the guy with a great memory and the ability to put things together to be using those full abilities towards figuring out the plot and getting ahead of it, and the natural leader to take charge of the party and provide forward momentum. Quashing those natural abilities is directly counter-productive for me, because those things improve the quality of the gaming experience.

LudicSavant
2014-07-18, 07:50 PM
I'm considering designing my own RPG, and I'm wondering to what extent a game should apply mechanics in the form of dice rolls to social situations.

The answer can vary quite a bit, and as a game designer I'd say that this is because you are not asking the right question.

Let's get this out of the way, shall we? The issue is not about whether or not mechanics are applied. It's about what the mechanics do and the purpose they serve. If the mechanics replace social interaction, that's a problem, because they're actually eliminating core gameplay in a fashion similar to if you had a "combat" skill that you could simply roll to resolve a combat.

On the other hand, you could have something incredibly mechanics-heavy that would not actually interfere with social interaction gameplay occurring, but complement it. To give a very simple example, consider the value of a variety of spells in social situations, such as having access to Detect Thoughts or Zone of Truth. These things don't prevent social interactions from happening, but they change up the formula and keep things interesting. There are dozens of these spells, and they don't create any of the issues that, say, Diplomacy does.

That is really the tip of the iceberg though. A talented designer could make a fantastic and enriching social system, so long as they understand what it means to create social gameplay... a bit of game design philosophy that I fear is lost on most tabletop RPG designers.

-----------

Key points to keep in mind:

- Your mechanics must in at least some aspects be superior to the "Magic Tea Party." If they aren't, then I don't want to take the time to read your rules, let alone pay for them. If you can't come up with mechanics superior to magic tea party (e.g. freeform), then don't have any mechanics for governing social situations. This is totally a valid option: No mechanics is far better than bad mechanics, because MTP is actually a pretty sweet game on its own. If someone asks you "why does using this rule improve my game over freeform" you should have an actual answer clear in your mind, or the rule shouldn't exist. I can guarantee you that more than half of the tabletop designers out there don't actually remember to do this.

- To do this, your mechanics need to create gameplay depth. A single roll to resolve a negotiation does not do this. A series of rolls doesn't do this either. These solutions create something called "defaulting" where you don't actually make meaningful player decisions. Instead, consider adding abilities that create interesting choices, or change the shape or nature of social situations in interesting ways. Again, Detect Thoughts is a decent example of changing the social interaction dynamic without removing conversation from play.

- Some examples of creating gameplay depth in social encounters include Deus Ex: Human Revolution (for which many reviewers noted that the "real" boss battles were actually the social encounters). Keep in mind, what works in one medium doesn't work in another... you need to create something that works in the context of tabletop gaming. Examples in D&D specifically would include information-gathering abilities (such as telepathy, detect thoughts, speak with dead, zone of truth, and so forth. Even Bluff and Sense Motive work here, including skill functions like "innuendo" or "read lips" or "hunch") or abilities that introduce new roleplaying imperatives (even something as hamhanded as a "helm of opposite alignment," though there are more elegant examples). Examples in other RPGs might include some "Key" systems, or abilities that allow you to manipulate or trap enemies without actually dictating their actions, such as being able to read incentives or play cues (and then take advantage of them to steer the conversation).

- It is not a question of how much or how little mechanics you should have. It is entirely feasible to create an entire RPG system that is nothing but social interaction mechanics which would not eclipse conversation and roleplaying. It is also feasible to have an RPG system that has only one simple, obtuse mechanic which ruins it. The amount of mechanics involved is not a key variable here.


At one extreme, abstracting all socialization into dice rolls creates "conversations" where players say things like "My character tries to bribe the guard, and I rolled an 18" instead of speaking in-character. It's possible that people actually enjoy that sort of gameplay, especially less experienced players, but it's not what I'd like to promote. On the other extreme, having a character's social ability determined entirely by roleplaying makes it difficult or impossible for a character to accomplish any social task that the player couldn't accomplish themselves. In that case, it's entirely up to the GM whether or not I convince the guard based on how well I spoke.

I find this to be a false dilemma. When people talk like this, I can only imagine that they're not experienced with much besides D&D (which has one of the worst Diplomacy rules ever. It's even listed on the CharOp campaign smasher thread next to Pun-Pun). You're imagining a sliding scale between two extremes, when in fact there are branching paths to a hundred completely different solutions. As I've said, you can in fact have a rules heavy system where players are actually constantly speaking in character.

The number or size or complexity of the mechanics has no bearing on that. The specific nature and purpose of the mechanics do. The question should not be "where is my ideal place on this sliding scale between D&D diplomacy and freeform" but instead "what mechanics could I create in order to accomplish my design goals?"

Eric Tolle
2014-07-19, 03:22 PM
It's worth noting that the counterargument about how combat has tactical depth does not justify "I demand they role play the social context before they roll." Quite the contrary. It is an argument, instead, that the social subsystem needs more mechanical depth so that the tactical decisions in how one approaches the social encounter are important enough to make the rolling feel like part of resolving a move, rather than a binary pass/fail check.

This is why I kind of like the social combat system in Diasporia, which involves moving characters into different zones to represent success or failure. So for example, if the intent is to be the spy who seduces an important person in a party, the goal could be to get your character and hers in the "success" zone, and avoid being put in the "permanent acquaintance" zone. The zone movement system means that people can use actions to move themselves or the woman, set up blocks, force someone else to move- basically all the tactical actions one can take in combat. t would be really useful for something like tense negotiations with multiple groups, searching for information, etc..

AS quick analysis of social combat maps is here (http://rpggeek.com/thread/478803/social-combat-maps), using a Firefly episode as an example.

Segev
2014-07-20, 12:36 PM
But you could ask 'why should combat have the minigame and socialization be the one without the minigame?' The answer there is basically, people are inherently very good at portraying and understanding people's reactions to things and their behaviors in a consistent way, but tend to be very bad at creating exterior models of those things. Even people who think they're bad at it are much better at it than e.g. the best computer programs the world knows how to write right now.You say that, but I can promise you that there are people far better at simulating a physics engine than simulating human reactions other than their own.

Separating yourself from your character - especially as a GM - is not always easy, and is (again, especially as a GM) rather essential. RP lack-of-mechanics relying on "can I convince the GM that my social arguments are something my character could convey convincingly even if I cannot" really boils down to the Magic Tea Party. And it leads to characters only being as good at social interaction as their players are, because it all boils down to the players convincing the GM. You preclude the shy wallflower from ever attempting to play the bold and seductive ladies-man, or the awkward geek from ever playing the femme fatale. They don't know how to do it, and you probably don't want them TRYING to act it as it would be awkward at the gaming table. Give them a subsystem with mechanical depth so they can frame their charismatic natures in game terms, and the stunts they come up with to justify the mechanics will be far richer than forcing them to "wing it." Especially if the GM is the sole arbiter of whether their idea is "good enough" to constitute clever role play.


I don't see a need to try to enforce DM fairness, because its fighting a losing battle. If you need this kind of thing, you've already lost, because the DM can always be unfair and you're just tricking yourself. So, we have combat rules - if the DM wants to, they throw a CR+10 encounter at the party and TPKs them. Or creates an environment thats hard to deal with. Or just uber-optimizes things.

The difference between the two is, even as a DM, I don't want to be put in the position of deciding 'was that blow a hit or a miss?' because I have no basis with which to resolve that decision. I know that it will be completely arbitrary whatever I decide, because I don't have a mental model of sword swings and armor and wind and footing and morale and breath timing and tiredness that will let me determine what that decision should be. For an NPC, I absolutely would have the things I need to decide how they act, just as a player has the things they need to decide how their character acts, because I and the player are both machines built for 'acting like people'.By the same argument, a DM could say that he absolutely would know that Zorro the NPC is a better swordfighter than Robin Hood the PC is an archer, so obviously Zorro can cut the arrows out of the air. He knows the capabilities and behaviors of his NPCs that well.

You're again really just running a Magic Tea Party of social mechanics. The players who are good at socially manipulating YOU are able to play good social characters. Those who are not...can't.


I see this as the part of the game that hinges on having a good DM. I don't really have an interest in playing with crappy DMs no matter how good the rules may be, so I want the rules to get out of the way and let good DMs shine, even if it means that mediocre DMs run a game that's slightly worse. I'm going to enter into any gaming situation with the assumption that I can trust the DM to try to make the game awesome and not be a jerk about things, because when that trust is reciprocated then the gaming experience is really on a whole other level, and the alternative just isn't worth playing when you compare the two.Again, this isn't about the DM being a jerk. If you trust the DM this much, why DON'T you trust him not to be a jerk about combat and just let him free-form it based on awesome descriptions? This is about allowing the DM to take the resolution somewhat out of his hands so that there is a GAME here, rather than just the DM deciding if he likes this version of the story or not right this second.



Sure, this could be the case, and in some situations it may be. But generally speaking, if that's the case, then no matter what your social ability you shouldn't be able to get in that way. Once I've decided 'this guard is a paragon of guardianship' its like I've said 'this door is guarded by a Lv20 fighter'. So the idea that you can somehow use social mechanics to 'make this fair' is an illusion. If I as DM decide 'no one is getting past this guard' then, well, I can enforce that no matter what the game system says. So in general, I shouldn't do this, and if I do it I should give very clear cues like 'you see the king's personal bodyguard and guardsman standing at this doorway' to avoid wasting time and again to establish expectation.Yes, but how do you decide what THIS guard's weaknesses are? A table? Do you write up EVERY guard in detail with specific weaknesses to exploit? Do you have a generic "most guards have a bribery threshold of N gp?" Do you let the players say, "I investigate to inflict the dark secret that he has been sleeping with a nobleman's daughter on him?"

That last IS a viable way to go about it, if your players are willing to accept that level of PLAYER-based narrative control without it being immersion-breaking. Though it does get tiresome if the players are not creative enough (or care to be creative enough) to come up with something other than "this guard also is sleeping with a nobleman's daughter" every time. Tables for randomized weaknesses to discover come in handy here. Again, though, if all it is is "leverage" and it has the same mechanical effect, then it doesn't really matter. The fluff is just disguising the same boring action-choice each time. A system with more depth would have different KINDS of leverage that require (or enable!) different social tactics to exploit. Just as differing build capabilities and environments enable (or require) different tactics and choices in combat.


This feeling of 'I can't let Joe be good because John sunk a lot of points into it' is poisonous for a game

What works better is to have a benny system that is focused more on helping those who have fallen behind rather than punishing those who are ahead.

The thing is, I want the guy who is a brilliant socialite in real life to bring that brilliance to the game.
Quashing those natural abilities is directly counter-productive for me, because those things improve the quality of the gaming experience.

What I wrote is that too many game systems have "social stats" to sink things into, then encourage this kind of behavior on the part of the GM to "empower" the social-character because the game systems lack the subsystem to support those stats being useful investments. I was not, in any way, advocating this as a good thing. It is a horrible design flaw. And again, it's just the Magic Tea Party, but with the advice for the GM that he should be more likely to decide in favor of somebody who threw points over here.

The point of rules - of subsystems - is to allow players to substitute system mastery and gameplay capability for real-world skills and talents that they simply do not have (or that they have in different capacities than their characters). It allows gameplay to empower players to play something they couldn't go out in the real world and do.


If someone wants to try to play a social character and says so but does poorly, give them more personalized opportunities for social interaction over the course of the campaign. Make those things start easy and have obvious buttons to push, and use that to slowly let them learn how to actually be better at social manipulation out of character. So the one guy has a silver tongue in character and is talking his way past guards whenever he's of a mind to, but the guy who has declared 'I'm a silver-tongued spy' has people spontaneously come to him with opportunities, questions about what to do about people, etc - things that try to draw him into the role he's declared for himself.So you play a magic tea party based on where he threw stat points, despite the fact that there are not, in fact, any actual mechanics that are supported by his investment of character-building resources.

What do you do when Social McGee in real life swoops in to offer brilliant, silver-tongued speeches which you cannot in good conscience say would NOT sway the hearts and minds of the contacts you put in for the "silver-tongued PC" to work with? Ater all, it's poisonous to have Social McGee's character with totally dumped social stats not be able to be as socially awesome as Social McGee role-plays him, despite his mechanics.


And yes, this benny system isn't just for social stuff. If someone wants to be a warrior but can't figure out how to play the tactical game to save their life, then their character might find themselves in situations which both give them a boost and also help them learn tactics step by step, similar to the way things like Portal present one game mechanic at a time until its clear the player has understood that mechanic thoroughly.
I want the guy who is a tactical genius to bring that to the combat minigame, the skilled optimizer to be able to dig in to the rules and find great combos without the game falling apart, and the guy with a great memory and the ability to put things together to be using those full abilities towards figuring out the plot and getting ahead of it, and the natural leader to take charge of the party and provide forward momentum. That's all well and good, but note how your use of it here does NOT preclude a deep and crunchy minigame for combat. It, in fact, has as its goal to help the PLAYER learn to use the SYSTEM. Not to be able to be a general in a real-life army, nor a soldier on a real-life battlefield; how to be a better tactical player of the game.

The same should be done in a social "minigame" sub-system. But you need a good subsystem, first, where such choices MATTER more than convincing the GM that you're sufficiently socially clever today.

NichG
2014-07-20, 04:17 PM
You say that, but I can promise you that there are people far better at simulating a physics engine than simulating human reactions other than their own.

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with this completely. This is just factually incorrect. Even someone assuming 'everyone else is identical to me' is getting a lot closer to a reasonable emulation of human reactions than we're capable of doing with a computer or any specific ruleset, because they're at least emulating 'some' human. As far as people being able to simulate physics engines, I'm highly doubtful but the statement is so vague as is that it might be hard to debate in any sort of productive way.

Overall, I think this is a case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, combined with a difference in standards. People expect a lot more out of other people as far as human emulation than they expect as far as physics emulation. Its easy to just classify someone as 'bad at social stuff' without realizing how amazing the things they do completely unconsciously actually are. Just someone reflexively feeling hurt on hearing someone else say something snide has already performed an incredibly complex integrative evaluation of the social context, the meaning of the statement, the relationship between them and the other person, etc.



Separating yourself from your character - especially as a GM - is not always easy, and is (again, especially as a GM) rather essential. RP lack-of-mechanics relying on "can I convince the GM that my social arguments are something my character could convey convincingly even if I cannot" really boils down to the Magic Tea Party. And it leads to characters only being as good at social interaction as their players are, because it all boils down to the players convincing the GM. You preclude the shy wallflower from ever attempting to play the bold and seductive ladies-man, or the awkward geek from ever playing the femme fatale. They don't know how to do it, and you probably don't want them TRYING to act it as it would be awkward at the gaming table. Give them a subsystem with mechanical depth so they can frame their charismatic natures in game terms, and the stunts they come up with to justify the mechanics will be far richer than forcing them to "wing it." Especially if the GM is the sole arbiter of whether their idea is "good enough" to constitute clever role play.

By the same argument, a DM could say that he absolutely would know that Zorro the NPC is a better swordfighter than Robin Hood the PC is an archer, so obviously Zorro can cut the arrows out of the air. He knows the capabilities and behaviors of his NPCs that well.

You're again really just running a Magic Tea Party of social mechanics. The players who are good at socially manipulating YOU are able to play good social characters. Those who are not...can't.


Actually I do want them trying, because that is how they will learn to improve, and the core point is that I want a game where the social interaction is social interaction and not tactical minigame. I also want to reward people for using the skills they have to their utmost. Its like playing with people who are bad at optimization and tactics. If I follow your logic, then I must replace every encounter with what you keep calling 'Magic Tea Party' in order to make this 'fair' - to allow tactically dumb players to be able to play the brilliant warrior and so on. But then I lose the actual gameplay that I am trying to experience. Instead, I can create a series of encounters that gradually increase the tactical difficulty in order to teach the players tactics, and I can give the tactically weaker players 'bennies' like the ability to play stronger units, so that they can still participate within their ability in the core gameplay that I am seeking.

The social equivalent is something like, 'socially brilliant player: you're a commoner and everyone knows it; socially inept player: you're a noble from a family everyone fears'. The socially brilliant player is facing a much harder game to achieve the same things, but the 'benny' helps equalize the difference in skills without throwing out the actual gameplay desired (social interaction).



Again, this isn't about the DM being a jerk. If you trust the DM this much, why DON'T you trust him not to be a jerk about combat and just let him free-form it based on awesome descriptions? This is about allowing the DM to take the resolution somewhat out of his hands so that there is a GAME here, rather than just the DM deciding if he likes this version of the story or not right this second.

I like chocolate and I like vanilla. Is this hard to understand? I don't hate mechanics. I like mechanics for combat, and I like RP for social interaction. I want my game to have both, because I enjoy both. A game without any mechanics would be dull, because there wouldn't be things to crunch on when the spotlight is on someone else, and the parameters of my interaction with the world would be very ill-defined making it hard for me to figure out what I can and cannot do beyond the human norm. A game without meaningful RP would be pointless, because then there's no engagement of that part of myself with the game world - its too hands-off, like playing a god-game on the computer, and it wastes one of the main strong points of the tabletop medium - that you're interacting with other people in a flexible manner where anything can happen.



Yes, but how do you decide what THIS guard's weaknesses are? A table? Do you write up EVERY guard in detail with specific weaknesses to exploit? Do you have a generic "most guards have a bribery threshold of N gp?" Do you let the players say, "I investigate to inflict the dark secret that he has been sleeping with a nobleman's daughter on him?"


In practice? I don't decide until the player goes looking. I know there will be an exploitable weakness unless there's a particular reason for the guard to be superman, but all I've decided is that 'weakness exists'. I then take cues from the players and combine that with whatever my own fancy at the time is, and as they investigate then the story they are causing me to write about the guard becomes exposed in the way that makes the most sense. The fact that PCs look at a particular part of the world causes it to be rendered in higher detail than it existed before, which is a necessity in any truly open game since you cannot detail everything ahead of time.

So at first it might be 'there's a guard'. If a PC says 'I look at him closely' then thats a cue to me that whatever his weakness is should have a physical cue: 'he's standing there... oh wait, he seems to keep fidgeting his feet back and forth' - he's been on duty too long and has a small bladder, weakness discovered! If a PC says 'Okay, who is this guy? I wait till he's off duty and follow him' then its going to be a social weakness. So the guard goes to a bar to drink with his buddies, but aha, they have gambling and he's getting sour about it - maybe he's in debt to someone in the criminal underworld!

I'm setting up the puzzle this way, and I'm taking cues from the PCs as far as what kind of puzzle they feel most confident in dealing with. The puzzle is, given that the guard is in debt, how do you use that to get past him? Or, given that the guard really needs to use the bathroom, how do you use that to get past him?

If there's nothing, I'll quickly make that clear OOC to avoid wasted time. 'This man has been indoctrinated since youth to follow orders given in a very specific fashion in a specific place unto death. You've heard stories of the Red Guard standing in place as buildings burn down around them, even as they themselves burn to ash. Unless an order is given by the three people they recognize as their immediate superiors, in one of their Briefing Chambers, they will not waver.' But that should be rare, and remarkable when it happens (in the sense that in the future I can say 'they have a Red Guard' and the players should know precisely what that means, the same way if I said 'you're being attacked by a golem' its a cue that Diplomacy isn't going to work).



What I wrote is that too many game systems have "social stats" to sink things into, then encourage this kind of behavior on the part of the GM to "empower" the social-character because the game systems lack the subsystem to support those stats being useful investments. I was not, in any way, advocating this as a good thing. It is a horrible design flaw. And again, it's just the Magic Tea Party, but with the advice for the GM that he should be more likely to decide in favor of somebody who threw points over here.

The point of rules - of subsystems - is to allow players to substitute system mastery and gameplay capability for real-world skills and talents that they simply do not have (or that they have in different capacities than their characters). It allows gameplay to empower players to play something they couldn't go out in the real world and do.

So you play a magic tea party based on where he threw stat points, despite the fact that there are not, in fact, any actual mechanics that are supported by his investment of character-building resources.

As I said, I tend to design systems to not have mental stats or social skills unless I have something distinct and power-based for them to do, in which case they do only that. For example, I have an Etiquette skill in a system I recently designed - what it does is that you can use it very specifically to do a few different things, based on your investment:

- You can automatically give the impression of being someone of a different social rank than you actually possess. If you make a faux paus on protocol, they'll assume you're a boorish noble rather than a commoner pretending to be a noble.
- You can 'take back' something that you (or at higher levels, another PC) has just said, after seeing what the consequences were. The difficulty goes up each time you do this.
- You can apply a modifier to an in-character insult so that it would be seen as socially unacceptable to display offense to it.
- At very high levels you can use it to send hidden messages via peculiar choices in situations where etiquette is expected (e.g. send a message by seating two guests next to eachother)
- You can ask the GM about specific questions of etiquette in various situations.

So if you have that skill, it doesn't mean that you will never offend someone by screwing up etiquette. But it gives you specific tools that can help you not offend people, or to get people offended at eachother. The skill does a specific thing, even a game-mechanical thing, but it doesn't cover the span of 'all possible consequences of being very good at etiquette' and it doesn't replace the RP component of the social interaction at all.

Really, LudicSavant's post covers all this exceptionally well, and explains quite clearly how this is not the same as 'magical tea party'.



What do you do when Social McGee in real life swoops in to offer brilliant, silver-tongued speeches which you cannot in good conscience say would NOT sway the hearts and minds of the contacts you put in for the "silver-tongued PC" to work with? Ater all, it's poisonous to have Social McGee's character with totally dumped social stats not be able to be as socially awesome as Social McGee role-plays him, despite his mechanics.


Uh, this is the complete reverse of what I said. This kind of attitude is why insisting that investment = ability is poisonous. How do I handle it? I don't insist that investment = ability. If Social McGee is that good, his speech sways the hearts and minds of the contacts of the silver-tongue PC. And that's fine. But there's a deeper question - why is Social McGee engaging in thinly veiled PVP here? If Social McGee is not just being his usual engaging self (which doesn't stop the contacts from being Mr. Silvertongue's contacts, it just makes them like him, which is perfectly fine) but is actively trying to steal Mr. Silvertongue's contacts away from him, then there's something wrong out-of-character between the players and it needs to be dealt with OOC.

If the game is PVP-driven, and the players know that, then there's the expectation of competition - at that point its all about player skill, not what's on the sheets, and to the victor go the spoils. But I rarely wish to run such games.



That's all well and good, but note how your use of it here does NOT preclude a deep and crunchy minigame for combat. It, in fact, has as its goal to help the PLAYER learn to use the SYSTEM. Not to be able to be a general in a real-life army, nor a soldier on a real-life battlefield; how to be a better tactical player of the game.

The same should be done in a social "minigame" sub-system. But you need a good subsystem, first, where such choices MATTER more than convincing the GM that you're sufficiently socially clever today.

The crunchy minigame exposes people's brilliance at manipulating mechanics. Which is good - I want that! But I don't want that to be all there is to the game. It exists in the combat tactical minigame, and there's plenty of opportunity there where it is best suited to be. However, I want social brilliance, brilliance at solving puzzles, brilliance at figuring out mysteries to also have their place at the table, and for that they each have a part of the game that engages them. And that means that that part of the game has to be susceptible to that form of cleverness - it has to be possible for 'Social McGee' to shine just based on his own ability, or I'm saying that the only kind of brilliance I think improves the game is the 'manipulating mechanics' kind. And that is not the case.

If you have some sort of brilliance in real life and you come into my game, then I want it to be the kind of game where that brilliance can be fully engaged. So e.g., if I had a singer in the group I would probably spend a lot of effort to design the system to somehow make use of that fact, though that one seems to be a fairly difficult design challenge. But at the same time, I would want to design the game to have its place for singing OOC but not be only about singing OOC - once it hits tactical combat, they would need to engage with that; once it hits socialization, they would need to engage with that.

Segev
2014-07-20, 06:38 PM
I feel like we're arguing past each other, here, because you keep saying "no, you're wrong, exactly what you said is bad is bad. And therefore we should free-form all social encounters."

You don't see how Social McGee's sweeping in and stealing the scene from Silvertongue's player because Silvertongue's player can't talk his way out of a paper bag without sounding awkward is making this into a magic tea party?

Moreover, you comment that I am ASKING you to make it a magic tea party by having mechanics? I literally cannot follow that logic. Mechanics are the exact opposite of a magic tea party. Freeform, run by a single GM who arbitrates whether things succeed or fail based on whether he thinks the RP was "good enough," is the definition of the magic tea party.


You also, in "fundamentally disagreeing" at the start of your last post, demonstrate that you are not actually hearing what I'm saying. I can, with great reliability, determine how physical actions will impact things. I cannot so easily separate myself from NPCs or even my own PCs.

You will, under your social system, NEVER convince my PC to do something I decide is not what I want him to do. Never mind that, in real life, people are convinced to act against their best interests or to act in petty, selfish ways. Never mind that I, personally, have done things of which I've later been ashamed because I knew better but was in the throes of an emotion that clouded my judgment and convinced me to justify my actions. In the throes of the emotional state of playing a game with a character who has convictions regarding something, he will never screw up and never be tempted in a meaningful sense, because I'm playing him and I know that's not the kind of thing he'd give in to. I "know" this because, in the throes of the emotional state of playing the game, I recognize that as a lose condition. It's something I know he'd regret later, and I am not able to get into his head and his own emotional state enough to really tell if his emotions would overwhelm his reason and he'd justify things that way.

Therefore, mechanics help me to determine if he is, in fact, steadfast in his actions or if he falters and is tempted.

This is ESPECIALLY true when dealing with NPCs (or other PCs) trying to change my character's mind about something. Even more so when I know, OOC, that the NPC is actually trying to convince my PC to do something foolish. The ur-example would be the femme fatale's seduction to get blackmail or to distract. Obviously, my PC is too virtuous to give in, or too savvy to fall for it. Since I, the player, know better. No way his hormones are interfering with his reason, nor his base nature getting in the way of his rational self-interest.

Can you not see why this is a problem? The combat analog would be me determining that my PC is just that good a swordsman. There's no way anybody could feint against him, let alone get a blow past his impeccable defenses.

It gets even worse when one is the DM. Now, the DM is basically deciding arbitrarily whether social situations work or not. Did he want the femme fatale's player to be able to seduce the guard away while the thief steals the crown jewels? Then it works! Did he not want her to? Then it doesn't! There's no game there. It's just a matter of whether the femme fatale's player can convince the GM that she's sexy enough and acting desirable enough to pull the guard's attention away.

Is the guard even in to women? If so, does that mean auto-failure? Or can the femme fatale be so good at her job that she's distracting anyway? That IS a trope of many stories RPGs can attempt to emulate, whether you think it "realistic" or not. But it really, under your "system," comes down to whether you like the player's idea of a story today or not. Because if not, "obviously" the guard would never be distracted. But you didn't do the social equivalent of putting a20th level fighter there. No, no. You just have unclever players who didn't go with the script in your head.

Segev
2014-07-20, 07:18 PM
My apologies if my last post came off as vitriolic. One of my personal peeves is when it seems communication is not happening.

The crux of the issue, as I see it, is that I view mechanics (properly executed) as enhancing and enabling RP of social situations, while the NichG seems to feel that mechanics inhibit social situations. My argument centers around the fact that NichG's suggesting, almost by definition, that a magic tea party is the best way to handle social situations. If that is not the case, I think a good place to start to try to unravel this disagreement would be in demonstrating how NichG's conception of RPing social situations is NOT a magic tea party.

kyoryu
2014-07-20, 08:56 PM
If you're interested in conversing, I recommend *not* using the term Magic Tea Party as much as you do.

Some people find it incredibly dismissive and borderline insulting.

Knaight
2014-07-20, 10:56 PM
Coming back to the whole "I roll an 18 for Diplomacy" - that's the sort of thing that only occurs in really shallow systems which resolve everything with one die roll in all cases, and don't even need an approach. Even then, there's the matter of Diplomacy being chosen over something like Bluff or Intimidate. More sophisticated systems tend to at least require one to establish how the character is approaching things, and one of the ways to do that is to use in character speech.

So, lets take the guard situation again. A character wants to get into a party of aristocrats (maybe they need to deliver a warning to someone there quickly), and there's a guard checking a list. There are already a number of obvious social approaches here. One could just flatly lie, say that they should be on the list, maybe show off some sort of forged or appropriated invitation, etc. One could attempt to bribe the guard. One could attempt to convince the guard that while they aren't on the list an exception should be made. Regardless though, it will probably be a multiple step process, and which process is advisable depends both on what the character is good at an the guard.

For instance, let's say that the guard is clearly of a low rank, and appears to have some genuine deference for the high ranking people at the party. In that case, the strategy might be:

Deliberately play up the pomp to accentuate the rank. Arrive on the scene in fancy clothing, with escorts.
With that done, talk to the guard. Come off as genuinely concerned and likable. Perhaps come with some sort of bribe that looks less like a bribe than a bag of money. A hot drink in a canteen along with a statement of remembering guard duty back in the military would be a good approach, for example.
Explain that you are sorry to put the guard in the position you have to put them in, but that you need to get into that party for something of importance. While doing this, highlight that breaking the invitation list for someone of your rank is a comparatively minor favor, and the host is sure to understand.


That can be done in entirely in character speech. It could be outlined as above. It could also easily be mixed. Regardless, plenty of systems (Chronica Feudalis, Burning Wheel, etc.) have enough to handle that easily. It's a bare bones plan, and one that is going to acquire wrinkles and need adaptation as soon as the guard's plan and motivations start getting in the way. It's also pretty far from "I rolled 18 for diplomacy".

Avilan the Grey
2014-07-21, 02:38 AM
I have never understood the "Roleplay Only" approach to this. To me, there is no difference between forcing a player to roleplay (with no dice roll) a social interaction and to force him or her to actually lift a piece of furniture of equal weight as the ogre corpse they have to move. You can have ropleplay to add flavor, but the stats are there for a reason: To enable the character to do something the player is not able to do.

Amphetryon
2014-07-21, 06:23 AM
If you're interested in conversing, I recommend *not* using the term Magic Tea Party as much as you do.

Some people find it incredibly dismissive and borderline insulting.

And some people find it to be both descriptive, and neutral in tone. Making an argument using language that pleases everyone is quite the daunting task.

AMFV
2014-07-21, 06:38 AM
And some people find it to be both descriptive, and neutral in tone. Making an argument using language that pleases everyone is quite the daunting task.

It's not neutral in tone. Not even a little bit. I doubt you could find many people (I'm not even sure if you could find any) who would believe that describing any activity in an adult activity as a "Magical Tea Party" as being a positive descriptor.

Amphetryon
2014-07-21, 06:41 AM
It's not neutral in tone. Not even a little bit. I doubt you could find many people (I'm not even sure if you could find any) who would believe that describing any activity in an adult activity as a "Magical Tea Party" as being a positive descriptor.

Because "positive descriptor" isn't terminology I used, I'm curious as to why you think that it's either relevant or an example of 'neutral' in tone.

AMFV
2014-07-21, 06:46 AM
Because "positive descriptor" isn't terminology I used, I'm curious as to why you think that it's either relevant or an example of 'neutral' in tone.

Something that is neutral in tone is something that isn't excessively sarcastic. I'll change my terms a little, if you can find anybody that believes that describing an adult activity as "a magical teaparty" is not sarcastic and belittling I'd be shocked. And if you can then find an adult that would describe a sarcastic and belittling statement as being "neutral" in tone, I'd be equally shocked.

It's not wrong to use that sort of language, but it doesn't really facilitate dialog, it pushes people into battle lines. At which point what you get is argument not discussion.

Amphetryon
2014-07-21, 06:51 AM
Something that is neutral in tone is something that isn't excessively sarcastic. I'll change my terms a little, if you can find anybody that believes that describing an adult activity as "a magical teaparty" is not sarcastic and belittling I'd be shocked. And if you can then find an adult that would describe a sarcastic and belittling statement as being "neutral" in tone, I'd be equally shocked.

It's not wrong to use that sort of language, but it doesn't really facilitate dialog, it pushes people into battle lines. At which point what you get is argument not discussion.

"Magic Tea Party" is simply shorthand for 'the mini-game that occurs whenever the action or narrative of the role-playing game takes things to a place where the rules are no longer relevant or being referenced to determine the action.' Can you explain, clearly, why using the former description (perhaps in the interest of saving space) is negative, rather than neutral, in tone?

AMFV
2014-07-21, 06:55 AM
"Magic Tea Party" is simply shorthand for 'the mini-game that occurs whenever the action or narrative of the role-playing game takes things to a place where the rules are no longer relevant or being referenced to determine the action.' Can you explain, clearly, why using the former description (perhaps in the interest of saving space) is negative, rather than neutral, in tone?

It just is... Why is referring to a woman as a female dog an insult? Dogs are loyal, hardworking, and dedicated. Why is calling a person short-sighted, insulting rather than descriptive. Why can some descriptive words be used to describe a person's skin and not others. Language has connotations as well as denotations, and "Magical Tea Party" has negative connotations. After all you'd just use the word "Mini-Game", since it's shorter, if you weren't looking to describe it in some way, and describing it as a Magical Tea Party compares it to a children's game, which is generally negative, referring to something as childish is in our culture almost exclusively negative. And a Magical Tea Party cannot be described as anything other than childish.

NichG
2014-07-21, 07:02 AM
I feel like we're arguing past each other, here, because you keep saying "no, you're wrong, exactly what you said is bad is bad. And therefore we should free-form all social encounters."

You don't see how Social McGee's sweeping in and stealing the scene from Silvertongue's player because Silvertongue's player can't talk his way out of a paper bag without sounding awkward is making this into a magic tea party?

I'm rejecting your definition of 'magic tea party' (not only is it a dismissive term, but it commits the greater sin of being so ill-defined as to mean whatever you want it to when you want it to and stretching its boundaries at a whim). It simply isn't a useful term for discussion.

What the example you give is is quite simple - a game in which the mechanics do not determine the resolution of social situations. That does not prohibit the existence of modulatory mechanics, an example of which I gave in my post.



Moreover, you comment that I am ASKING you to make it a magic tea party by having mechanics? I literally cannot follow that logic. Mechanics are the exact opposite of a magic tea party. Freeform, run by a single GM who arbitrates whether things succeed or fail based on whether he thinks the RP was "good enough," is the definition of the magic tea party.

I am saying that from the point of view of taking 'players can play anything they want without being at a disadvantage', then the mechanics have to go too. If you insist that everyone be on a level playing field, then you must do so fairly - the aspects of the game that people who are socially awkward have trouble with must go, as must the aspects of the game that people who are mechanically awkward with. You're pushing a double standard here - 'we want to defend the ability of the socially awkward to play what they want, but those who suck at math/mechanics/legalese/rules manipulation/tactics just have to live with it because that's what the game is about'.

My response is 'My game is about social interaction too. That is part of what my game is about, and it is equally important as the part that is about mechanics and rules.'



You also, in "fundamentally disagreeing" at the start of your last post, demonstrate that you are not actually hearing what I'm saying. I can, with great reliability, determine how physical actions will impact things. I cannot so easily separate myself from NPCs or even my own PCs.


You can't do what you claim, but it isn't a productive area of discussion because its unprovable and unarguable either way. You can continue to claim 'yes I can' and I can continue to say 'no you can't'. Lets just move on with the understanding that I do not accept your anecdotal evidence, rather than fixate on this.



You will, under your social system, NEVER convince my PC to do something I decide is not what I want him to do. Never mind that, in real life, people are convinced to act against their best interests or to act in petty, selfish ways.


Correct. My job, should this be my goal as DM, is to convince you to decide you want him to do something against his best interest or act in petty, selfish ways. Given that I've done (the equivalent of) this many times in the past for various players, its certainly within the scope of things that can happen. And I don't even consider myself particularly good at it compared to some of the players in my group.

Probably the most extreme example I can think back to was a player who convinced the other players, who were hearing the same things OOC from me as DM, that the way that things were in the situation was 'X' when really he had figured out that it actually was 'Y', and used that specific deception to cause the campaign to take a particular turn in the final game that fulfilled his character's esoteric agenda. Even though I as DM basically laid out strong evidence that 'its Y', he was able to convince the other players both in and out of character that that was false and misleading. Even though the players had been almost directly told OOC. It was incredible and wonderful.



Never mind that I, personally, have done things of which I've later been ashamed because I knew better but was in the throes of an emotion that clouded my judgment and convinced me to justify my actions. In the throes of the emotional state of playing a game with a character who has convictions regarding something, he will never screw up and never be tempted in a meaningful sense, because I'm playing him and I know that's not the kind of thing he'd give in to. I "know" this because, in the throes of the emotional state of playing the game, I recognize that as a lose condition. It's something I know he'd regret later, and I am not able to get into his head and his own emotional state enough to really tell if his emotions would overwhelm his reason and he'd justify things that way.

Yes, and that's a valid character for you to play. If I'm playing Mephistopheles trying to tempt you, my job is to be recognize that a head-on attack won't work but something subtle might. I need to get you to not realize what it is that you're doing until it has already been done and is too late. If you have strong convictions, the correct counter is deception, not 'a stronger argument'. If you have to handle the RP in character, then you will always have vulnerabilities. Often they won't be things you're aware of or even consider to be vulnerabilities.

If your character is so afraid of being ashamed or being caught in the throes of emotion, that is a vulnerability that can be exploited as much as it's a strength. Your character will have trouble emotionally connecting to people or exposing emotional vulnerability. The result is that even if my Mephistopheles couldn't break you head on, he could easily poison your relationships with others, causing them to see you as callous rather than cautious, unfeeling rather than overly sensitive. There's also the ploy of trying to set up situations where being emotionally cautious is a disadvantage, and you're forced to choose between keeping distance and allowing some harm to occur.

That'd be enough to start with, and Mephistopheles would go from there based on how you reacted.



This is ESPECIALLY true when dealing with NPCs (or other PCs) trying to change my character's mind about something. Even more so when I know, OOC, that the NPC is actually trying to convince my PC to do something foolish. The ur-example would be the femme fatale's seduction to get blackmail or to distract. Obviously, my PC is too virtuous to give in, or too savvy to fall for it. Since I, the player, know better. No way his hormones are interfering with his reason, nor his base nature getting in the way of his rational self-interest.

Can you not see why this is a problem? The combat analog would be me determining that my PC is just that good a swordsman. There's no way anybody could feint against him, let alone get a blow past his impeccable defenses.


The difference is that socially you can't say 'I win'. You can at best say 'I refuse to play'. Sure, you can be the paragon of virtue, the perfect rational actor (inasmuch as you're personally able to be either), but the most extreme extent of this is that you refuse to engage in any socialization of significance where things are at stake because of an inability to compromise. Which can hurt you just as much as getting struck with a blade (more-so in a system where you can heal easily, since the lost opportunities may be crippling for games to come).

When it comes down to it, its not hard to find ways to give players hard choices. I don't need mechanics to force them to make dumb ones, I can just present situations in which the solution is honestly murky and there isn't a clear right or perfect answer.

Amphetryon
2014-07-21, 07:03 AM
It just is... Why is referring to a woman as a female dog an insult? Dogs are loyal, hardworking, and dedicated. Why is calling a person short-sighted, insulting rather than descriptive. Why can some descriptive words be used to describe a person's skin and not others. Language has connotations as well as denotations, and "Magical Tea Party" has negative connotations. After all you'd just use the word "Mini-Game", since it's shorter, if you weren't looking to describe it in some way, and describing it as a Magical Tea Party compares it to a children's game, which is generally negative, referring to something as childish is in our culture almost exclusively negative. And a Magical Tea Party cannot be described as anything other than childish.

So, by that logic, the description "the mini-game that occurs whenever the action or narrative of the role-playing game takes things to a place where the rules are no longer relevant or being referenced to determine the action" is childish. Because that's how I described MTP, and you've said it cannot be described as anything other than childish. Ergo, I'm being childish.

AMFV
2014-07-21, 07:13 AM
So, by that logic, the description "the mini-game that occurs whenever the action or narrative of the role-playing game takes things to a place where the rules are no longer relevant or being referenced to determine the action" is childish. Because that's how I described MTP, and you've said it cannot be described as anything other than childish. Ergo, I'm being childish.

No, that's the opposite of my logic, describing a woman as "Trustworthy, Loyal, and Dedicated" isn't a negative thing even if those are characteristics of dogs. Or saying that somebody has gratitude, even if that's a disease of dogs, but calling somebody the term used for a female dog is exclusively negative. Because that is how language works, you don't get to ignore negative connotations just because you try to redefine things. Saying "the mini-game that occurs whenever the action or narrative of the role-playing game takes things to a place where the rules are no longer relevant or being referenced to determine the action" is fine, saying "Magical Tea Party" is insulting.

Edit: For example if I said "Roleplaying games are a crap stained sack filled to overflowing with total crap, and not the good crap the really smelly kind." I couldn't then say "It's okay I defined "crap stained sack filled to overflowing with total crap, and not the good crap the really smelly kind" as a 'good time with friends.'"

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-21, 07:41 AM
What exactly does "Magic Tea Party" mean? Because you keep describing social encounters like that, and all I can think of is that you use sparkling saucers and biscuits as a resolution mechanic.

Care to elucidate?

LudicSavant
2014-07-21, 07:49 AM
What exactly does "Magic Tea Party" mean? Because you keep describing social encounters like that, and all I can think of is that you use sparkling saucers and biscuits as a resolution mechanic.

Care to elucidate?

At the risk of stepping in the line of fire of the flamers in this thread, I believe this is a simple matter to clear up:

MTP is a common term for what is sometimes referred to as "freeform RP." Also known as "cops and robbers." It's the game you play when rules aren't there. It's a pretty fun game, it's free, and everyone knows how to play. It's a game that has been around as long as imagination. Magic Tea Party is not a bad thing. Magic Tea Party is awesome.

Magic Tea Party could perhaps be seen as the basic measuring stick for rules quality. If you ask "does this have something to add over Magic Tea Party" and the answer is "not really" then your rules aren't worth reading, because all rules are in competition with MTP. This is because, as mentioned, the MTP system is free, already known by everyone, and pretty fun.

This is often used as a (quite justified) criticism for designers, who sometimes excuse themselves from writing quality rules on the basis of "Rule Zero." The issue is plain: if everyone is expected to Rule Zero up their own solutions, why are they paying for your book? We already own that game. It's a nice game and all, but obviously if we're buying books (or even just investing the time to read a free system) we want another one too. This attitude of being dismissive of the value of their own rules seems to be almost exclusive to the tabletop RPG design community... every other game designer community I've been a part of would not allow such a notion to fly.

This is sometimes confused by people who don't read too closely with a "negative connotation," even though this use does not actually say that Magic Tea Party is a bad thing. It's saying that pretending people want to pay for packaged Magic Tea Party (a product they already own) is a bad thing. Others confuse it as having a "negative connotation" because they think that tea parties are for girls and girl things are bad, then talk about "offending" people without realizing that they've offended half the people in the room. It's all a very ugly business and I consider the attitude of getting offended by common shorthand to be extremely counterproductive to useful, rational conversation. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gux/dont_get_offended/) The fact that the offending posters have been going on for half the thread insisting on receiving a mea culpa for an alleged implied faux pas far past the point that it's been established that the person they're talking to intended no negative context should provide ample evidence of this.

Given that the very person who coined the term in the first place held the position that MTP was awesome and used it in a positive light, I don't really see how the idea that it carries negative connotations could be taken seriously.

AMFV
2014-07-21, 08:34 AM
Given that the very person who coined the term in the first place held the position that MTP was awesome and used it in a positive light, I don't really see how the idea that it carries negative connotations could be taken seriously.

Well the fact that several people with no experience with the the term immediately attached negative connotations to it, is a pretty good sign that it's not the right term to be using if you want it to be seen in a positive light. Furthermore if that's the baseline to be improved on it can't be seen in that positive a way.

Edit: And getting offended by common shorthand is a little bit poor conversationalism. But I'm quite familiar with RPGs and I didn't know that term. Inventing a term that is slightly obscure and which sounds offensive, and then claiming to be offended yourself when people ascribe a meaning to it that is offensive isn't good conversationalism either. It's like my "Sack of Crap" analogy, it doesn't matter if I like sacks of crap, I have to understand that most people are going to assume that I am speaking offensively, or intending to belittle or insult something. If it's not extremely well known shorthand it is not unreasonable to assume that people will ascribe common use connotations to things. Furthermore shorthand usually takes the form of comparing something to something else as far as connotations go.

The author like Magical Teaparty as a term because it reminds him of a time when the world was full of whimsy, and that's fine, but it only takes a little bit of searching to reveal that the term Magical Teaparty might easily be read differently by other folks, and in a very negative light, and posting this on a roleplaying forum, where several people who regularly read roleplaying forums (NichG and myself) immediately ascribed it a negative meaning, or assumed that it came with one, is enough to indicate that it's probably not the best choice of term, and one should use a different term.

LudicSavant
2014-07-21, 08:35 AM
Furthermore if that's the baseline to be improved on it can't be seen in that positive a way.

Another term for "baseline to be improved on" is "golden standard." :smallconfused:

When people are in the mental habit of getting offended, they subconsciously try to look for reasons to get offended. The solution is this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gux/dont_get_offended/

Arguing about getting offended is almost never productive. Indeed, it tends to simply cause more people to be offended.


or assumed that it came with one, is enough to indicate that it's probably not the best choice of term, and one should use a different term. Surely you must see how this is an off-topic discussion.

In the interest of not contributing to it further, I think 2 posts is more than enough from me on the subject.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-21, 08:45 AM
At the risk of stepping in the line of fire of the flamers in this thread, I believe this is a simple matter to clear up:

MTP is a common term for what is sometimes referred to as "freeform RP." Also known as "cops and robbers." It's the game you play when rules aren't there. It's a pretty fun game, it's free, and everyone knows how to play. It's a game that has been around as long as imagination. Magic Tea Party is not a bad thing. Magic Tea Party is awesome.

Huh. So what's the etymology of the term?

AMFV
2014-07-21, 08:48 AM
Another term for "baseline to be improved on" is "golden standard." :smallconfused:

The "Golden Standard" is something to be reached, not something to be improved on.

And I'm not arguing about getting offended, I was arguing that it was unreasonable to assume when you were using a term that sounds inflammatory that people won't.

LudicSavant
2014-07-21, 08:54 AM
Huh. So what's the etymology of the term?

At their core, tabletop roleplaying games are a more organized form of the classic children's game of playing a role with your imagination, archetypically represented by Magic Tea Party or Cops and Robbers.

If I remember correctly, Magic Tea Party was the term one poster (I think it was FrankTrollman) used to describe why D&D evolved from a large-squad wargame to a 'one character per player' game. People liked roleplaying and storytelling with their individual units and found out that focusing more on one unit led to more satisfying roleplay than splitting it out. Add some more players at the table at the same time, and Chainmail becomes D&D.

The contrast between the generic image of Magic Tea Party (which brings to mind princesses and teddy bears sitting around in a castle garden and having brunch) and the gritty heroic fantasy protagonist participating in it was so vivid and funny (and appropriate, too, with the whole you all meet in a tavern roleplay) that it stuck. So, people started using it to refer to freeform RP because the term caused people to smile and laugh at themselves a bit, perhaps becoming that bit more self-aware.

NichG
2014-07-21, 08:54 AM
To clarify, my problem with the term here is mostly that the way its being used is a shorthand for 'any of a class of gameplay styles I don't like' rather than any well-defined thing that one could actually meaningfully address. In the thread so far it has been used for both cases in which there are no mechanics, and for cases in which there are mechanics but ones which are not used for direct resolution of the outcome of social conflict.

This isn't a case where the term is meaningful but I'm objecting to its connotations - this is a case where the term is being used in a way that renders its meaning unclear, which makes it impossible to address in debate because the goalposts can constantly be moved.

And yes, it's been given an emotional charge because of the way it was used immediately after LudicSavant's introduction of the term to the thread - specifically, it was repeatedly phrased 'just a magical tea party', which is where the dismissive feel is originating from. I could equivalently render something like 'tactical minigame' offensive if I always paired it in a similar way like 'silly tactical minigame' every time I used it. Even though the phrase 'tactical minigame' would still be neutral, in that thread it would take on a negative meaning.

To try to bring this back on topic, put that way, its actually a good example of a clever social manipulation one can do.

LudicSavant
2014-07-21, 09:30 AM
In an effort to return to the topic:

MTP, or freeform if that term is preferred, is better than a lot of rules are. When a rule doesn't accomplish something well, the default is for people to revert back to freeform. People reverting to freeform is generally seen as a black mark on the value of the rules themselves, because rules need to add value to a product, and freeform is the quintessential "free to play" RPG that everyone already knows the rules for.

This isn't to say that freeform is bad. Freeform is a good game, to the point that it is actually difficult for many designers to compete with, which might explain why some invent rather odd excuses for failing to do so. That said, it's okay not to compete with it if you feel you can't. The core principle I am suggesting here is that it is better to have no rules than rules that aren't competitive with freeform. If you make a rule, you should have a clear idea in your mind what that rule does that is competitive with freeform. There should be a list of pros as well as cons in the comparison. I should hope that this notion is not contentious.

That said, there are rules that can add something to social gameplay over freeform. Often, these rules take the form of things that augment or drive conversations rather than simply replace them (I gave a few examples in my first post in this thread). Alternatively, rules that replace conversations could be considered beneficial if at least some types of conversations are something that you want to gloss over, relegating it to a smaller portion of the larger challenge of "the bank heist" encounter, similar to skill checks like scaling the walls or opening a door. It depends on your design goals and the shape you want your gameplay to take. Either way, just keep in mind the core principle: Your rule needs to add value, or it should be cut from the game.

Consider also that you could frame the "resolution roll" style of handling diplomacy as providing a roleplaying imperative. You are given the shape of a scene, but free dispensation to RP how it plays out. This is yet another gameplay style option. To add a bit of a twist on this, you could use the resolution roll to set guidelines for how difficult the conversation will be from the roleplaying perspective. For instance, consider Bluff: You might roll bluff ahead of time and see that you must tell a lie that is something the enemy wants to hear if you are going to be successful. You then are required to come up with a lie that the DM judges the enemy wants to hear... or fail the conversation.

There are really endless ways of going at this problem, as diverse as games themselves. The main thing I wanted to get across in my first post was that one should not be asking the question of "how many mechanics should I use" as if there were a single sliding scale between freeform and D&D Diplomacy Rolls. It is a branching path with a thousand solutions that support different kinds of games and different sets of design goals.

AMFV
2014-07-21, 09:40 AM
At their core, tabletop roleplaying games are a more organized form of the classic children's game of playing a role with your imagination, archetypically represented by Magic Tea Party or Cops and Robbers.

If I remember correctly, Magic Tea Party was the term one poster (I think it was FrankTrollman) used to describe why D&D evolved from a large-squad wargame to a 'one character per player' game. People liked roleplaying and storytelling with their individual units and found out that focusing more on one unit led to more satisfying roleplay than splitting it out. Add some more players at the table at the same time, and Chainmail becomes D&D.

The contrast between the generic image of Magic Tea Party (which brings to mind princesses and teddy bears sitting around in a castle garden and having brunch) and the gritty heroic fantasy protagonist participating in it was so vivid and funny (and appropriate, too, with the whole you all meet in a tavern roleplay) that it stuck. So, people started using it to refer to freeform RP because the term caused people to smile and laugh at themselves a bit, perhaps becoming that bit more self-aware.


In an effort to return to the topic:

MTP, or freeform if that term is preferred, is better than a lot of rules are. When a rule doesn't accomplish something well, the default is for people to revert back to freeform. People reverting to freeform is generally seen as a black mark on the value of the rules themselves, because rules need to add value to a product, and freeform is the quintessential "free to play" RPG that everyone already knows the rules for.

This isn't to say that freeform is bad. Freeform is a good game, to the point that it is actually difficult for many designers to compete with, which might explain why some invent rather odd excuses for failing to do so. That said, it's okay not to compete with it if you feel you can't. The core principle I am suggesting here is that it is better to have no rules than rules that aren't competitive with freeform. If you make a rule, you should have a clear idea in your mind what that rule does that is competitive with freeform. There should be a list of pros as well as cons in the comparison. I should hope that this notion is not contentious.

That said, there are rules that can add something to social gameplay over freeform. Usually, these rules take the form of things that augment or drive conversations rather than simply replace them. Alternatively, rules that replace conversations could be considered beneficial if conversation is something that you want to skip, relegating it to a smaller portion of the larger challenge of "the bank heist" encounter.

The notion isn't contentious in and of itself. Saying "something I pay for should be better than nothing" is certainly an accepted notion. In fact it's one I heartily espouse. However I know people who have paid money to go running in the mud, something they had to pay me to do. The point being that different people will prefer vastly different rulesets as far as social encounters are concerned. We have some people who prefer almost freeform, and some people who prefer regimented rules, and some people who prefer rules that create randomness or unnecessary complexity. All of this complexity is increased exponentially based on the fact that roleplaying is already a form of social engagement.

So while that statement is easy to make, it may vary very heavily from person to person what actually qualifies as being "better" than freeform. For example I tend to like my social stuff fairly rules light, similar to older style D&D or a certain application of newer school D&D. But some people like WoD type social rules which are myriad and diverse and complex.

LudicSavant
2014-07-21, 09:51 AM
In general, whenever I say a rule is "better" or "superior" it's generally safe to assume that you should add the stipulation "for your design goals" or "for the target audience's enjoyment." Generally speaking, I define "good" as "better fulfilling the design goals" and/or "better appealing to the target audience."

Just as there is not a simple sliding scale between "rules light" and "rules heavy" solutions, there is not a simple sliding scale between "good" and "bad" game design. Instead, the map of quality games would look more like a 3D landscape graph, with peaks and valleys, including a plethora of solutions that appeal to different tastes and demographics or even moods... as well as things that just frustrate everyone.

It is possible to have a very well designed game that does not appeal to a wide variety of people, for instance. It is also possible to make a poorly designed game that just kinda fails at what it was designed to do. It's not really possible to have one solution that is optimal for everyone for all time, which is why we have lots of games. :smallsmile:

kyoryu
2014-07-21, 12:22 PM
Because "positive descriptor" isn't terminology I used, I'm curious as to why you think that it's either relevant or an example of 'neutral' in tone.

It's not positive, and that's fine. But it's not neutral.

"GM judgement" would be a neutral term. It does not imply childishness. It also has the benefit that it's pretty obvious what it actually means to an observer unfamiliar with the term.

Amphetryon
2014-07-21, 12:26 PM
It's not positive, and that's fine. But it's not neutral.

"GM judgement" would be a neutral term. It does not imply childishness. It also has the benefit that it's pretty obvious what it actually means to an observer unfamiliar with the term.

Your opinion on the terminology is duly noted.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-21, 12:44 PM
I do wish the "cops and robbers" terminology would take the next train to the end of the line. Every time I see that cliché pop up in the intro section to an RPG, I immediately put the game under suspicion, because to me it indicates that the game doesn't have a strong understanding of what goes into good game design.

If "resolving differences of opinion" was the only purpose of a game system, we should just gut all RPGs and fall back on Rock-Paper-Scissors. :smallwink:

The main point of a game system is to provide an interesting means of continuing the fiction in ways that nobody anticipates. It's why we glory in unexpected critical hits and laugh about hilarious fumbles: things that nobody planned for. A good game system acts as an extra "mind" contributing to the story, one that can't be relied upon to do any particular thing, one that can't be exactly predicted.

That's my philosophy, anyhow. But it does tie back into why you would include a social system. It's for the same reason that we have a combat system: because it takes player actions and gives back something interesting. Admittedly, some systems do it better than others. (For instance, Dungeon World does a lot more to add to the fiction on a single attack roll than D&D does.) It's still a core design goal, however.

So, when you build a system like that, make "resolving disputes" an absolute minimum, not a design goal. I think that's the first thing that an RPG designer needs to bust past, the conception that the one and only goal is "decide whose opinion wins out".

Sartharina
2014-07-21, 12:47 PM
In general, whenever I say a rule is "better" or "superior" it's generally safe to assume that you should add the stipulation "for your design goals" or "for the target audience's preferred playstyle." Generally speaking, I define "good" as "better fulfilling the design goals" and/or "better appealing to the target audience."

Just as there is not a simple sliding scale between "rules light" and "rules heavy" solutions, there is not a simple sliding scale between "good" and "bad" game design. Instead, the map of quality games would look more like a 3D landscape graph, with peaks and valleys, including a plethora of solutions that appeal to different tastes and demographics or even moods... as well as things that just frustrate everyone.

It is possible to have a very well designed game that does not appeal to a wide variety of people, for instance. It is also possible to make a poorly designed game that just kinda fails at what it was designed to do. It's not really possible to have one solution that is optimal for everyone for all time, which is why we have lots of games. :smallsmile:
It's also possible to make a poorly designed game that just kinda fails at what it was supposed to do, but is excellent at doing something the designers never intended. :smallbiggrin:

Segev
2014-07-21, 01:24 PM
Ultimately, the core assumption of an RPG is that it is a role-playing game. Yes, it should be, first and foremost, the ability to play the game that is the requisite skill expected from the player.

Those who are neither good at this nor enjoy doing it should, in fact, seek other forms of entertainment. There are plenty of places for improv. Heck, if you want to run a free-form game, more power to you. I'm sure you and such people will enjoy it. But don't insist that it's somehow more in-depth and a better model of things. It's improv acting and collaborative storytelling. These are fine hobbies and activities, but they are not a game.

It's wonderful if the mechanics model the thing they're trying to enable characters to do so well that knowledge and skill in the real-world area can enable you to use the tactics of the game system better/more effectively, but the mechanics exist to separate you from your character on several levels. To empower your character where you might not be personally empowered, and to ensure that your personal prowess does not translate directly to the same prowess in your character.

My problem with your proposal for how social lack-of-mechanics should work is quite simply that it's not a game. It might be role-playing, but it still is either everybody agreeing that the character makes a mistake the player wouldn't, an actual social combat between GM and player as they try to manipulate each other in the name of manipulating the characters, or a fiat setup where the GM dictates what happens and decides who succeeds and who fails based on his own idea of what is "a good story."


If I'm playing Mephistopheles trying to tempt you, my job is to be recognize that a head-on attack won't work but something subtle might. I need to get you to not realize what it is that you're doing until it has already been done and is too late. If you have strong convictions, the correct counter is deception, not 'a stronger argument'. If you have to handle the RP in character, then you will always have vulnerabilities. Often they won't be things you're aware of or even consider to be vulnerabilities.And here, right here, is the problem. Now, not only must the player be every bit as good at social stuff as his character (and no better), but the DM must be every bit as good at manipulating the player as the NPCs must be of the character.

It's no longer "Mephistopheles, the supreme, supernaturally skilled manipulator versus Sven the Barbarian with a heart of gold and a will of swiss cheese." It's "NichG, the GM, versus Segev, the player." You can comment how that kind of adversarial relationship is bad for a game all you want. I'll happily agree with you. You can claim it's bad RP on my part not to simply choose to fall for Mephistopheles's blandishments, since Sven shouldn't be that clever. But I can turn right around and claim it's totally in character because Sven is too good-hearted to fall for it, no matter how clever the manipulation.

Conversely, it's no longer "Faust, the clever lawyer versus Galahad the Noble Paladin," but "the DM versus Segev," and if you, NichG, are really that much more clever than I as a player, you could very well trick ME into not realizing what was happening...even though Galahad, who is intended to be (and, if the mechanics were available, have invested resources in being) unmovable by the tricks of evil.

"But," you might say, "that's just because Faust is so clever he can fool even Galahad." Well, why? It's no different than suggesting that we resolve the arm wrestling match between Sven the Barbarian - intended by design to be one of the strongest men alive - and Conan the Barbarian - meant to be also quite strong, but perhaps better known for his stealth - by having Segev and NichG arm wrestle. That NichG is actually stronger than Segev and thus wins the arm wrestling match just shows how strong Conan is, right?

Segev just isn't allowed to play a really strong character because he isn't really strong in real life. Similarly, Segev wouldn't be allowed to play a morally upright character whose righteousness sees through the blandishments and clever lies of evil because Segev is not so strong nor wise.

The alternatives, under your system, are you arbitrarily deciding that Sven is stronger than Conan, that Mephistopheles actually CAN outwit Sven, or that Faust maybe can't trick Galahad (perhaps because you tip off Segev that something should be smelling "off" about Faust's arguments and proposals).

Both ways, it DENIES the role-playing opportunity and turns it into either "your PC is only as good as you are" or "you succeed or fail at the whim of the GM."

If you find "magic tea party" dismissive, my apologies. If you find it insulting, well, it's not meant to be PERSONALLY, so, but it IS meant to be derisive. If I want to hear somebody else's story, I'll ask them to tell me a story rather than trying to pretend I have agency. If I want to engage in collaborative fiction-writing, I'd rather do so honestly and up front rather than pretending there's a game going on.

Would you prefer "cops and robbers" to "magical tea party?"


If your character is so afraid of being ashamed or being caught in the throes of emotion, that is a vulnerability that can be exploited as much as it's a strength. Your character will have trouble emotionally connecting to people or exposing emotional vulnerability. The result is that even if my Mephistopheles couldn't break you head on, he could easily poison your relationships with others, causing them to see you as callous rather than cautious, unfeeling rather than overly sensitive. There's also the ploy of trying to set up situations where being emotionally cautious is a disadvantage, and you're forced to choose between keeping distance and allowing some harm to occur.And here you illustrate the problem with your way of doing this in an entirely unintentional fashion. You speak of my CHARACTER being afraid of these things, when I was speaking of MYSELF and MY inability to separate myself from the emotional drive to "win." Or, at least, not to "lose." I am constitutionally unable to willfully choose the "losing" play when it is purely my unguided choice whether to do the rational and smart thing from a gameplay perspective or to willfully choose to do the stupid thing that might be "in character." I say "might be" because I can, in such situations, justify either course of action. I like to have mechanics in place to help me determine what my character is actually feeling when I, the player, cannot tell. To help me determine if my character is emotionally invested when I, personally, am not.

That, under your system, you seem to have to be able to manipulate ME makes for a very poisonous relationship at the table. Under a good system, the player and the GM could both be perfectly well aware that what is being proposed is bad for the PC or NPC in question, and that the goal is to trick and manipulate him into making a bad choice. Perhaps one that he thinks is a good one, but which objectively the humans playing the game know is bad.

Under your system, you would have to trick ME into making a bad choice. I may or may not have to trick you, as well, depending on how much I trust that you would decide to let me "win" by deciding the NPC is fooled (even though you, the GM, are obviously not).

But you phrase it as if it's my character who's guarded and cautious and doesn't fall for it. So you manipulate him. You already are unable to tell me and my character apart. This wouldn't be a problem if there were mechanics in place to help make these determinations. Is my character fooled, despite the fact that I am not?


When it comes down to it, its not hard to find ways to give players hard choices. I don't need mechanics to force them to make dumb ones, I can just present situations in which the solution is honestly murky and there isn't a clear right or perfect answer.Again, you're saying you have to manipulate them, rather than their characters. And if the player is smarter in social situations than you are, you either allow them to beat your situation because the PLAYER, rather than the character, is good at it, or you have to arbitrarily decide that they fail today because you want the NPC to be the more clever one.

This is not a game, at that point. At least, not in the sense of an RPG. It's a mind-game between you and your players. I'm glad you and your players enjoy it. I get very tired of always having to rely on skills I don't have to play a character who I specifically wished to be good at things I'm bad at as a form of escapism.

Segev
2014-07-21, 01:35 PM
If "resolving differences of opinion" was the only purpose of a game system, we should just gut all RPGs and fall back on Rock-Paper-Scissors. :smallwink:

The main point of a game system is to provide an interesting means of continuing the fiction in ways that nobody anticipates.

I don't entirely agree. I agree that the point of mechanics goes far beyond resolving differences of opinion, but they do so in more nuanced ways than a simple even-odds test. They enable you, if done well, to determine the kinds of things a character CAN do, and how well, and with what likelihood and degree of success.

They also, if done right for social mechanics, enable you to determine what a character thinks on a subject and why. How he responds to please, manipulations, charisma, beauty, lies, truths, friendship, and enmity.

It doesn't need to and should not be a full-fledged action-behavior state machine, but it should give indications of what he believes, what he despises, whether he likes somebody against his will or can't stand somebody despite really wanting to like them. It should help determine if he's falling for a trick that is known, OOC, to all at the table.

Mechanics, done well, help players separate their IC and OOC knowledge in part by helping the players make decisions about what their characters know, want, and do. Again, it doesn't absolutely dictate, but it changes the details on the ground and keeps the player's will distinct from that of the character. I, the player, know that the GM is lying through the NPC's mouth, but there's no reason for my character to know that strictly based on the knowledge base I'm using. (Perhaps the NPC claims my friend has been executed, when I know that the other half of the party is currently talking to him, because we just switched scenes from dealing with that.) Without mechanics, I must decide if my character believes this or not. And, if not, if it's out of some sort of denial instinct, out of a faith that my friends would save him, or because I think there's something shifty about the NPC.

With mechanics, we can compare some stats on ability to lie, on observational skills on the part of my character, and maybe roll some dice. If it's a particularly in-depth system, I might even have some mechanics for determining my reaction to realizing the NPC isn't lying (whether because the NPC believes what he's saying or is a better liar than I am lie detector) - whether my character still denies it out of denial or faith, or accepts it as true.

Mechanics help make decisions that should be separate from "what the players/GM would like to happen." Obviously, if everybody agrees on what they'd like to happen and thinks anything else would be a lame story...just go with that and screw the mechanics. But if there's ambivalence and some lack of clarity about what "would" happen, that's where mechanics step in to help resolve the ambiguity.

Segev
2014-07-21, 01:44 PM
To clarify, my problem with the term here is mostly that the way its being used is a shorthand for 'any of a class of gameplay styles I don't like' rather than any well-defined thing that one could actually meaningfully address. In the thread so far it has been used for both cases in which there are no mechanics, and for cases in which there are mechanics but ones which are not used for direct resolution of the outcome of social conflict.

I use the term very precisely: it refers to a brand of mechanics where the outcome is determined solely by the fiat of the GM. Regardless of whether there are other mechanics surrounding you getting to the point where the GM has to decide if the person was "socially persuasive" enough or not (for example), the fact that ultimately the success or failure of the ability to persuade is solely determined by GM fiat makes it a "magic tea party."

I would further stipulate that "cops and robbers" occurs when, instead of one GM who gets to fiat everything, both sides get to fiat the success and failure of either their own, the others', or both sides' success and failure. This will tend to, at some point, degenerate into argument of "it worked/no it didn't." The social mechanical situation where the player of the character (whether a player and his PC or the GM and an NPC) determines whether something works is more in this camp, if only because it will eventually lead to somebody saying, "Really? You're still going to just claim the bullet didn't hit you? Why can't you ever let anything happen to your perfect mary sue?" Whether that's fair or not, it is an inevitable perception.

"Cops and robbers" becomes real-life social combat, as players and GMs try to manipulate each other into interpreting things their way.

"Magic tea party" bypasses that by just letting the GM decide who succeeds and who fails and by how much.

NichG
2014-07-21, 04:25 PM
Ultimately, the core assumption of an RPG is that it is a role-playing game. Yes, it should be, first and foremost, the ability to play the game that is the requisite skill expected from the player.

Those who are neither good at this nor enjoy doing it should, in fact, seek other forms of entertainment. There are plenty of places for improv. Heck, if you want to run a free-form game, more power to you. I'm sure you and such people will enjoy it. But don't insist that it's somehow more in-depth and a better model of things. It's improv acting and collaborative storytelling. These are fine hobbies and activities, but they are not a game.

This opinion is basically the reason that we may never reach agreement. I find this to be far too narrow a view of what a 'game' can be.

A 'game', for me, is any set of circumstances in which some skill of the players is being tested. You can have a 'typing speed' game or a 'weightlifting game' or a 'singing game' or, yes, even a 'social maneuvering game'. A game does not require there to be mathematically-based resolution rules, it just requires there to be some kind of way in which the outcome is decided. That way can in fact hinge completely on the subjective decision of a judge or set of judges.

Take something like Iron Chef. It's effectively a 'cooking game' between chefs. The outcome is not decided by specific mechanical rules which are manipulated by the contestants, its decided by the aggregate opinion of a panel of judges. It's still a game, its just not a game whose basis is solely stemming from a mathematical model. Similarly, something like Jenga is a game where the method of resolution is physical reality instead of a table of rules outcomes. If the tower falls, through being nudged or through a breeze in the room or whatever, that is how the outcome arises.

The problem we're having here is that you're refusing to accept that it is possible for a DM to run a game which is internally self consistent and structured without having a specific set of rules to tell them how things go. This is like saying that the judgements of the Iron Chef judges are just going to be random and have nothing to do with the quality of the food unless they have specific quantitative rules that they must use to objectively evaluate each dish. But its nowhere near that arbitrary in reality - the DM, if they are doing their job, should have some model of the NPCs and the scenario in mind when they make the decision for how an NPC responds to things.



And here, right here, is the problem. Now, not only must the player be every bit as good at social stuff as his character (and no better), but the DM must be every bit as good at manipulating the player as the NPCs must be of the character.


To me, this is the point, not a problem. This is what actually makes it a 'game'. It is a 'game' because it tests a specific ability of the player and DM (namely, their ability at social stuff). You can do better or worse than other players. If ability didn't matter, then it would be collaborative story-telling. The fact that ability is being tested is an important distinction.



It's no longer "Mephistopheles, the supreme, supernaturally skilled manipulator versus Sven the Barbarian with a heart of gold and a will of swiss cheese." It's "NichG, the GM, versus Segev, the player." You can comment how that kind of adversarial relationship is bad for a game all you want. I'll happily agree with you. You can claim it's bad RP on my part not to simply choose to fall for Mephistopheles's blandishments, since Sven shouldn't be that clever. But I can turn right around and claim it's totally in character because Sven is too good-hearted to fall for it, no matter how clever the manipulation.


What you're missing is that I have no desire to claim that something you do is 'bad RP', no more than I have any desire to claim that the guy who takes some combo of feats to optimize his character is doing 'bad RP' or the person with the 8 Int character who becomes a tactical genius when the minis come out. These are all part of the 'game' aspect of 'roleplaying game'.

Part of my job as DM is to present differing levels of challenge in order to create the illusion that it is Mephistopheles and not NichG that you're facing off against. When I play Mephistopheles I'm supposed to turn the dial to 10 and basically be a complete bastard. When I'm playing the spymaster of a kingdom, I might want them to do a lot of clever things but they'll be stuck in a rut of how nobles act and may not be prepared for adventurers. If I'm playing the head of a mercenary company, he might be a little overly fond of intimidation tactics without much awareness of subtler things. If I'm a good DM, I'll be able to present all of these people as being so distinct that you can tell who is moving against you by the way in which they act.

As a player, you don't have the responsibility to do the same - your job at the table is different. You can choose to do this kind of thing and modulate your own ability, and if you do then often it can make the game more interesting, but if you want to go full bore and use the full force of your OOC ability then not only is that okay, its encouraged at my table. Because this is as much part of the 'gameplay' as picking feats or choosing what squares to move to in combat.

The key point here is that this is far more important to me than any concerns about 'playing a character accurately'. I'm not interested one bit in passing judgement about whether a player is playing their sheet 'accurately'. So the various problems you list in this regard are not actually problems to me, they're neutral or even plusses.



Conversely, it's no longer "Faust, the clever lawyer versus Galahad the Noble Paladin," but "the DM versus Segev," and if you, NichG, are really that much more clever than I as a player, you could very well trick ME into not realizing what was happening...even though Galahad, who is intended to be (and, if the mechanics were available, have invested resources in being) unmovable by the tricks of evil.

"But," you might say, "that's just because Faust is so clever he can fool even Galahad." Well, why? It's no different than suggesting that we resolve the arm wrestling match between Sven the Barbarian - intended by design to be one of the strongest men alive - and Conan the Barbarian - meant to be also quite strong, but perhaps better known for his stealth - by having Segev and NichG arm wrestle. That NichG is actually stronger than Segev and thus wins the arm wrestling match just shows how strong Conan is, right?


I can do this for any thing that's actually a game. Putting aside arm wrestling, Conan is supposed to be a savvy warrior. But a GM who is pulling out all the stops and who puts Conan through a Tucker's Kobolds situation could easily end up crushing him using characters with far less intrinsic ability than Conan has on his sheet, because of a better understanding of the game mechanics and the tactical gameplay than whomever is playing Conan.

Whenever there is a 'game', the fiction that each person has in mind for their character is risked and must be defended with OOC skills. That skill could be the ability to optimize a character, choose intelligent tactics, interact socially, or even arm wrestle OOC. Those are all examples of things that can be 'games'. The choice that must be made by the participants is, what kind of game would they like to play?

If I'm a participant, my choice is 'optimization, tactics, and social interaction please - I want it all'. I'll skip the arm wrestling though.

It may be that you have no interest in games that test social ability. That's fine, and if true then its important that you keep that in mind when you are looking at what table to play at. But you don't have call to insist that all tabletop games cater to your tastes, just as I have no call to insist that people shouldn't make a tabletop RPG that uses arm wrestling as the core resolution mechanic. Its a part of the design space that I wouldn't care to play, but that doesn't make it inherently a bad or problematic game, just one that doesn't match my tastes.



If you find "magic tea party" dismissive, my apologies. If you find it insulting, well, it's not meant to be PERSONALLY, so, but it IS meant to be derisive. If I want to hear somebody else's story, I'll ask them to tell me a story rather than trying to pretend I have agency. If I want to engage in collaborative fiction-writing, I'd rather do so honestly and up front rather than pretending there's a game going on.

When you're intentionally derisive to the viewpoints of those you debate with, you're contributing to the breakdown of communication that you were complaining about. As far as the hierarchy of disagreement (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html) goes, this is essentially a form of name-calling and is the lowest form of debate. You don't need to be derisive to communicate that you don't like this style of gameplay - its pretty clear from the rest of your post. The question is (and the implicit question that is asked when you use derisive speech) is whether you actually have any interest in understanding why other people do like it or debating the finer points that lie at the possible intersection of tastes, or if you just wish to try to publically berate them for having different tastes than your own.

From a point of view of debate, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that there actually is some point involved in this that you feel is not understood but which can be made clear, and that your intent is deeper than just getting a rise out of people. But I do want it to be clear about the impression you give as well, so that you can understand why it's causing some breakdown in communication.



And here you illustrate the problem with your way of doing this in an entirely unintentional fashion. You speak of my CHARACTER being afraid of these things, when I was speaking of MYSELF and MY inability to separate myself from the emotional drive to "win." Or, at least, not to "lose." I am constitutionally unable to willfully choose the "losing" play when it is purely my unguided choice whether to do the rational and smart thing from a gameplay perspective or to willfully choose to do the stupid thing that might be "in character." I say "might be" because I can, in such situations, justify either course of action. I like to have mechanics in place to help me determine what my character is actually feeling when I, the player, cannot tell. To help me determine if my character is emotionally invested when I, personally, am not.

That, under your system, you seem to have to be able to manipulate ME makes for a very poisonous relationship at the table. Under a good system, the player and the GM could both be perfectly well aware that what is being proposed is bad for the PC or NPC in question, and that the goal is to trick and manipulate him into making a bad choice. Perhaps one that he thinks is a good one, but which objectively the humans playing the game know is bad.

Under your system, you would have to trick ME into making a bad choice. I may or may not have to trick you, as well, depending on how much I trust that you would decide to let me "win" by deciding the NPC is fooled (even though you, the GM, are obviously not).

This is a risk, and it needs to be very carefully handled. I've found that there is one absolutely central necessity to making sure that this kind of thing does not become poisonous. And that is to recognize that, as DM, you must both expect and be willing to have NPCs who lose to the PCs. I could play every NPC with my full ability and give them advantages that PCs don't have by making the universe itself perfectly tuned towards their plots, but this would lead to exactly the kind of poisonous relationship you're talking about. As a DM, one must not become so invested in the NPCs that their particular schemes and stories become more important than the health of the game.

Once its clear that NPCs can and do often lose, then you can take a few more risks at having NPCs who might not lose so easily. You can use the contrast to build up apparent distinction between the party's various rivals. Save the really intense stuff for Mephistopheles, so that you have some room to make the king of tempters feel far above and beyond the other NPCs that the party has dealt with.

So this is two parts: one is managing expectations, making sure that the players have a good feel for their chances and don't feel betrayed by the DM pushing with more strength than the situation seems to require. The other is maintaining impartiality and not getting so attached to NPCs that you manipulate things in their favor.

Does this require more skill than DMing something like D&D? Well, maybe. But I think its something that DMs can learn to do, and I'm willing to go out of my way to play with the DMs who have the skill to do this well because overall I've found that the need to do these things makes DMs more self-reflective and thoughtful about the game as a whole, and the gameplay experience is just better all around.



But you phrase it as if it's my character who's guarded and cautious and doesn't fall for it. So you manipulate him. You already are unable to tell me and my character apart. This wouldn't be a problem if there were mechanics in place to help make these determinations. Is my character fooled, despite the fact that I am not?

That's up to you and what you want to get out of the game. It can, and does, go either way. When a player brings a certain character to the table, they're basically performing a kind of mental experiment - 'what if I thought this way?', 'what if I had these abilities?', etc. Whatever we play has aspects of ourselves in it, along with whatever we choose to do differently. So I've had players who wanted to ask the question 'what if I thought this way?', something that would change their reactions and whether or not they'd be fooled. I've also had players whose implicit questions were different, or who just wanted to stretch their mental muscles in certain directions. All of this is good - they're different ways of approaching and enjoying the game.

Sometimes we push ourselves too far, and the experiment fails. We want to try playing a social manipulator but just can't make it happen for whatever reason. That's okay too - it provides the information we need to make the next attempt better. I've certainly had that happen to me - it was frustrating at the time, but my next attempts were much better (particularly, I had to learn that 'being a clever manipulator' and 'being an obvious jerk' are actually mutually counterproductive to each-other - the easiest way to be a master manipulator is to be the good guy).



Again, you're saying you have to manipulate them, rather than their characters. And if the player is smarter in social situations than you are, you either allow them to beat your situation because the PLAYER, rather than the character, is good at it, or you have to arbitrarily decide that they fail today because you want the NPC to be the more clever one.

Its the former, not the latter. If they're good at it, they succeed. Because that is the 'gameplay' of the game. The details of the scenario are something I can use as a lever to modulate the difficulty if I need to, so even if I have a player who is much better than me I can still use that to challenge them. Additionally, my experience is that players who are that good will seek out ways to challenge themselves as well, so it isn't usually a problem.

Players without the confidence to try are more of a problem, honestly. That's a situation that requires fairly careful handling if you want to get them to open up.



This is not a game, at that point. At least, not in the sense of an RPG. It's a mind-game between you and your players. I'm glad you and your players enjoy it. I get very tired of always having to rely on skills I don't have to play a character who I specifically wished to be good at things I'm bad at as a form of escapism.

Yes, this is clearly the primary difference in our tastes. When I play a game, I want the game to teach me to be good at it. Over years of gaming there are clear things where playing games that allowed me to engage skills has markedly improved my skill in those areas. I also don't tend to go in to a game saying 'I want my character to succeed at X', but rather I go with the mindset of 'I'm going to try to focus on X on this campaign'.

My favorite example is a character who started the campaign claiming the title 'the Wise' but basically acting in pretty brash ways to the extent where it was a running joke, but by the end of the campaign had really grown into that title. I had the mindset 'I want to see if I can understand and explore the ideas of wisdom and intuition as separate from intellect and rationality this game', so I tried to play a character who operated primarily on instinct, gut feelings, and the like without direct recourse to logic. At first, this went as you might expect, but as the campaign went on I got better at it, and the result was that the character ended up having a lot of growth, including some directions that I would not have initially thought of (since my ideas of how it was going to work also shifted as I learned).

LudicSavant
2014-07-21, 04:26 PM
It's also possible to make a poorly designed game that just kinda fails at what it was supposed to do, but is excellent at doing something the designers never intended. :smallbiggrin:

This is true. Some bugs are features :smallsmile:

Segev
2014-07-23, 09:53 AM
Ultimately, I find that playing a game where I have to rely on my own wit and social skills to play somebody who is supposed to be better than I am at these things is as futile as trying to play a game where I have to rely on my own stamina and swordsmanship to play a character who is much better at these things than I am. I don't actually get any better; I just fail in increasinly frustrating ways and, whether I'm called out for "playing poorly" or not, I know that I am not able to play the game and therefore will never be able to succeed.

I play games to explore mechanisms, not to demonstrate yet again why I'm bad at something. And, frankly, I do not expect learning to cater to a particular GM's storytelling whim - however well-intentioned - to teach me general social skills. I am already capable of functioning with people I know.

As evidenced by this conversation, my persuasive skills are somewhat lacking, not the least because I rely mostly on logic and building arguments from a premise and am thus very bad at persuading people to accept my premises. Rhetoric is not a strong suit, and no amount of trying-and-failing to play a silver-tongued devil will make it one, because the GM is always the one who decides whether my speech was "good enough."

Moreover, that you feel it is a game between players and GM to determine whose PC is most skilled, socially, based solely on the skills of the players means you are, basically, telling people they can only play social characters if they are, themselves, socially adept. Don't bother, otherwise. Or, rather, you seem to encourage them to...and then expect them to fail because they just aren't good enough.

"Well, they should play to learn to be that good." Maybe, but maybe they're playing a sports star in a game because they aren't having fun trying to play baseball on their neighborhood team and being a dead weight due to their lack of skill.

If you and your players like not bothering with mechanics, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that a game without mechanics is going to be better than one with, nor that adding mechanics somehow inhibits RP. Mechanics, well-executed, enhance RP by enabling it and taking the resolution out of the entirely subjective hands of one person deciding "is this player good enough at what he wants his character to do?"

Cronocke
2014-07-24, 03:37 AM
Ultimately, I find that playing a game where I have to rely on my own wit and social skills to play somebody who is supposed to be better than I am at these things is as futile as trying to play a game where I have to rely on my own stamina and swordsmanship to play a character who is much better at these things than I am. I don't actually get any better; I just fail in increasinly frustrating ways and, whether I'm called out for "playing poorly" or not, I know that I am not able to play the game and therefore will never be able to succeed.

I play games to explore mechanisms, not to demonstrate yet again why I'm bad at something. And, frankly, I do not expect learning to cater to a particular GM's storytelling whim - however well-intentioned - to teach me general social skills. I am already capable of functioning with people I know.

As evidenced by this conversation, my persuasive skills are somewhat lacking, not the least because I rely mostly on logic and building arguments from a premise and am thus very bad at persuading people to accept my premises. Rhetoric is not a strong suit, and no amount of trying-and-failing to play a silver-tongued devil will make it one, because the GM is always the one who decides whether my speech was "good enough."

Moreover, that you feel it is a game between players and GM to determine whose PC is most skilled, socially, based solely on the skills of the players means you are, basically, telling people they can only play social characters if they are, themselves, socially adept. Don't bother, otherwise. Or, rather, you seem to encourage them to...and then expect them to fail because they just aren't good enough.

"Well, they should play to learn to be that good." Maybe, but maybe they're playing a sports star in a game because they aren't having fun trying to play baseball on their neighborhood team and being a dead weight due to their lack of skill.

If you and your players like not bothering with mechanics, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that a game without mechanics is going to be better than one with, nor that adding mechanics somehow inhibits RP. Mechanics, well-executed, enhance RP by enabling it and taking the resolution out of the entirely subjective hands of one person deciding "is this player good enough at what he wants his character to do?"

I think the disconnect here boils down to this. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

One side feels that people who have no inclination, talent, or interest in roleplaying out the social aspects of the game should still be allowed to play a social character without feeling ill-equipped or stigmatized for their choice.

The other side argues that people who hate making character sheets and keeping a running tally of Points Spent when making or advancing a character, whether this is skill points or experience points, and don't feel comfortable adding a large number of situational modifiers on the fly as each turn changes the playing field, should still be allowed to play whatever character they want as well.

I think ultimately this is a matter of finding your own personal balance point. You could, for example, have a lot of really specific social skills, from Bluff to Banter to Taunt, and encourage detailed descriptions of actions being performed, with bonuses for saying something particularly well, and penalties only for committing some serious faux-pas. Alternately, you could just have a small number of skills, even all the way down to Speaking as a skill, and have the players just roll that after saying what they want to accomplish with it, no in-character chatter required.

Both are valid ways of handling it. It really depends on the preferences of the GM and the group of players.

Yora
2014-07-24, 07:50 AM
I think the best way to handle social interactions in an RPG is to not use any rules or dice at all. Especially when social interactions are a major aspect of the game.
As GM, I decide what the NPCs know, how they feel about certain things, and what they want. If it's a random NPC with no agenda in the story, I make a single reaction roll to see if he starts out friendly or hostile. If the players want to convince the NPC or want to lie to him, they have to come up with arguments and tell them. Then I decide if the NPC is convinced or not. A high or low Charisma score for the PC, or a high or low Wisdom score for the NPC affects how lenient or strict I am going to be when judging the players words. But there are no numbers or dice rolls involved.

NichG
2014-07-24, 10:16 AM
Moreover, that you feel it is a game between players and GM to determine whose PC is most skilled, socially, based solely on the skills of the players means you are, basically, telling people they can only play social characters if they are, themselves, socially adept. Don't bother, otherwise.

By default, games like D&D say 'you can only play competent characters if you are yourself skilled at manipulating the ruleset, don't bother otherwise'. Games evoke the application of player skill. You are simply arguing that a particular skill should have privileged status over others in being the only thing that 'tabletop games' evoke (presumably based on your post because you yourself feel confident in your abilities in that skill, but not in the other skill in question). However, there are people who are the reverse - skilled at socialization, unskilled at mechanics. You are not inherently any more deserving of a game that plays to your strengths than they are.

Now, I think it has been crystal clear that we want something different from our games. Not all games are for all people, and in general they cannot be. What confuses me is why this seems to still be a sticking point, as it seems like you're taking my tastes personally here. I'm not asking you to play at my table or DM a game for me. Rather, I'm asking you to recognize the reasoning behind the choices that I make as far as my desired gameplay, so that if you do want to try to design social mechanics as a bridge you can evaluate whether or not they would actually be something that I (and I suppose the other groups that use RP-mediated resolution) would consider using.


If you and your players like not bothering with mechanics, that's fine. But that doesn't mean that a game without mechanics is going to be better than one with, nor that adding mechanics somehow inhibits RP. Mechanics, well-executed, enhance RP by enabling it and taking the resolution out of the entirely subjective hands of one person deciding "is this player good enough at what he wants his character to do?"

Whether or not the resolution part of this is enhancement is a matter of what the players and DM want out of the game. Subjectivity is not objectively bad. For certain design goals, leaving resolution in the hand of mechanics is going to be directly counter-productive. Without specifying particular design goals as context, this matter is ill-defined. Disagreement on the design goals effectively means we're arguing from mutually inconsistent axioms.

BWR
2014-07-24, 10:28 AM
I think the best way to handle social interactions in an RPG is to not use any rules or dice at all. Especially when social interactions are a major aspect of the game.
As GM, I decide what the NPCs know, how they feel about certain things, and what they want.

The traditional response to this opinion is: what happens to those who want to play a character who is good at that stuff but aren't that good IRL? If you insist on real life proficiency at something before allowing it in game and mechanics be damned, the same should hold true for combat - if you can't actually beat the GM in a sword fight your character can't win either. Or to go even farther, no magic users can use magic unless their player can as well.
Courtiers in Rokugan are a perfect example. They are supposed to be good at social stuff but you have to be well-versed in the setting and have lots of practise with the arcane and convoluted social norms to actually play this. Remove any mechanical support for this and you remove one character class group entirely from the game.
You have mechanics to allow your character to do stuff you yourself cannot. Punishing players for not being personally proficient in everything their characters are is ridiculous. Mechanics should not entirely replace roleplaying. They are there to support the game, by allowing characters to succeed at things.

Yora
2014-07-24, 10:45 AM
I don't judge eloquence, my descision is based on how reasonable the players arguments are. And players who give their character a high charisma score have to meet a lower standard than those with low charisma, who will have to do much better.

Using a dice roll to determine the outcome of a social interaction does not help at all. Instead, it pretty much removes the whole idea of social interaction from the game. What you get is a character with the ability to roll a die to make an NPC do what the party wants. That's neither an interaction, nor is there much social about it.
Few people would argue that GMs should tell the solution to puzzles to players who have a character with a high inteligence score. Or tell them the facts behind a mystery because of a high wisdom score, and the character should be amazing at guessing such things.

Fighting with weapons and armor and casting spells is something that can't be done at the table, so it has to be done by dice. Thinking should not be moved from the players to dice.

AMFV
2014-07-24, 11:10 AM
The traditional response to this opinion is: what happens to those who want to play a character who is good at that stuff but aren't that good IRL? If you insist on real life proficiency at something before allowing it in game and mechanics be damned, the same should hold true for combat - if you can't actually beat the GM in a sword fight your character can't win either. Or to go even farther, no magic users can use magic unless their player can as well.
Courtiers in Rokugan are a perfect example. They are supposed to be good at social stuff but you have to be well-versed in the setting and have lots of practise with the arcane and convoluted social norms to actually play this. Remove any mechanical support for this and you remove one character class group entirely from the game.
You have mechanics to allow your character to do stuff you yourself cannot. Punishing players for not being personally proficient in everything their characters are is ridiculous. Mechanics should not entirely replace roleplaying. They are there to support the game, by allowing characters to succeed at things.

However as a counterpoint, certain forms of LARPing do require that you have the skills in the weapon systems to support your character's skills. So that's not necessarily absurd or ridiculous, it's just a different game preference.

Amphetryon
2014-07-24, 11:34 AM
I don't judge eloquence, my descision is based on how reasonable the players arguments are. And players who give their character a high charisma score have to meet a lower standard than those with low charisma, who will have to do much better.

Using a dice roll to determine the outcome of a social interaction does not help at all. Instead, it pretty much removes the whole idea of social interaction from the game. What you get is a character with the ability to roll a die to make an NPC do what the party wants. That's neither an interaction, nor is there much social about it.
Few people would argue that GMs should tell the solution to puzzles to players who have a character with a high inteligence score. Or tell them the facts behind a mystery because of a high wisdom score, and the character should be amazing at guessing such things.

Fighting with weapons and armor and casting spells is something that can't be done at the table, so it has to be done by dice. Thinking should not be moved from the players to dice.

So, you prefer to restrict people to their own inherent mental and social capabilities, rather than encouraging them to play someone more intelligent, wise, or charismatic than they are. . . but don't restrict folks similarly based on how strong, how dexterous, or hearty they are?

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-24, 12:02 PM
Using a dice roll to determine the outcome of a social interaction does not help at all. Instead, it pretty much removes the whole idea of social interaction from the game. What you get is a character with the ability to roll a die to make an NPC do what the party wants. That's neither an interaction, nor is there much social about it.
I feel as though I ought to point out that not all social interaction rules are "a dice roll". Burning Wheel comes most easily to mind, where a social conflict is a dramatic and tactical affair. Your character has a variety of social weapons at their disposal (making a Point, sending off a Rebuttal, even insulting the other side), but they're more effective at some of them than at other ones. The same goes for your opponent.

Social conflict becomes a matter of understanding your opponent's strengths, weaknesses, and even ideology.

But it still uses dice.

Actually, this brings to mind a question: out of everyone on the thread, who has experience with social mechanics other than a single skill check? It's generally better to rely on actual play for evidence rather than theorycraft.

Sartharina
2014-07-24, 12:28 PM
I don't judge eloquence, my descision is based on how reasonable the players arguments are. And players who give their character a high charisma score have to meet a lower standard than those with low charisma, who will have to do much better.I don't have a problem with this - but this isn't usually where I think the instances come out. The problem is when the person trying to SocialPlay a character is sabotaged by their body language, hesitance in speech, poor word choice, failing to pick up verbal cues their character wouldn't miss, phrasing, missed ettiquete, etc.

The difference between "Okay, I go up to the king, greet him warmly and cordially and offer our services as heroes-for-hire."
And:
DM: "Okay, you're standing before the king, he says, "Hi, Bold Adventurers. Wherefore is the purpose of this audience."
Player: "Huh? Oh, oh, right. Hi King! We're adventurers. Need anyone killed?"

Avilan the Grey
2014-07-24, 12:48 PM
I think the best way to handle social interactions in an RPG is to not use any rules or dice at all. Especially when social interactions are a major aspect of the game.
As GM, I decide what the NPCs know, how they feel about certain things, and what they want. If it's a random NPC with no agenda in the story, I make a single reaction roll to see if he starts out friendly or hostile. If the players want to convince the NPC or want to lie to him, they have to come up with arguments and tell them. Then I decide if the NPC is convinced or not. A high or low Charisma score for the PC, or a high or low Wisdom score for the NPC affects how lenient or strict I am going to be when judging the players words. But there are no numbers or dice rolls involved.

I definitely disagree with this. It is better than fully free-form, but it still handicaps players who are not good at this sort of thing severely. Again, you might as well ask to measure how well a spell works with having the players actually perform magic IRL.


Using a dice roll to determine the outcome of a social interaction does not help at all. Instead, it pretty much removes the whole idea of social interaction from the game.

Sorry but what?
I don't know what kind of people you play with, but if you don't think players who use dice for "Persuade" and "Lie" etc actually talk with each other you are very very misinformed.

Yora
2014-07-24, 02:43 PM
But it's too easy to slip into a pattern where one doesn't even even really try to make a big effort. I've been playing with lots of different groups and almost all players where seriously interested in getting deeply invested in interactions with and investigations of the environment. It's not that the players didn't care, but having an ability on your character sheet sends a very strong unconscious message that you should use the mechanical ability at every opportunity you can get.
Players saying "I search for traps" or "I make a disarm trap check" is something that happens all the time, and which I've heard also from many other people. And the same incentive is there when you have mechanical character abilities to persuade NPCs.
And maybe even worse is that it creates the assumption that any character who does not have a special ability to deal with a situation doesn't even have to try and let the expert have the field. It makes sense with such things as disarming traps or stuying magic runes. But talking isn't something that needs highly specialized training to do. Anyone can do it. And if you have a bard with Charisma 17 and 8 ranks in Diplomacy, why should a fighter with 12 charisma even try? Always send the bard.

Also, my experience with how people actually play the game is that people who are not good at arguing and haggling don't even want to play a character who does all the talking for the group. Even with a game mechanic to support them, they still would have to argue with the other players about what the PC is going to ask of the NPCs. Which is something for which you have to be assertive and enjoy getting into hot arguments, even among perfectly polite and good friends. If you even get the situation where such a player would make a character with high persuasion skills, the reality would most likely be that the other players are having their lively debate about how the party should progress, which NPC to approach, and what demands to make. And at the very end of the process the player with the diplomacy character is asked to do what they have just agreed upon. I just can't see a situation in which such a player would do anything but say "Okay, I am going to tell him what we just agreed" and a die is rolled.
And I have played with social interaction skills for over 10 years. Having such skills didn't change anything.

Amphetryon
2014-07-24, 02:59 PM
And maybe even worse is that it creates the assumption that any character who does not have a special ability to deal with a situation doesn't even have to try and let the expert have the field. It makes sense with such things as disarming traps or stuying magic runes. But talking isn't something that needs highly specialized training to do. Anyone can do it. And if you have a bard with Charisma 17 and 8 ranks in Diplomacy, why should a fighter with 12 charisma even try? Always send the bard.

Also, my experience with how people actually play the game is that people who are not good at arguing and haggling don't even want to play a character who does all the talking for the group. Even with a game mechanic to support them, they still would have to argue with the other players about what the PC is going to ask of the NPCs. Which is something for which you have to be assertive and enjoy getting into hot arguments, even among perfectly polite and good friends. If you even get the situation where such a player would make a character with high persuasion skills, the reality would most likely be that the other players are having their lively debate about how the party should progress, which NPC to approach, and what demands to make. And at the very end of the process the player with the diplomacy character is asked to do what they have just agreed upon. I just can't see a situation in which such a player would do anything but say "Okay, I am going to tell him what we just agreed" and a die is rolled.
And I have played with social interaction skills for over 10 years. Having such skills didn't change anything.
I snipped the first part, because I've already argued the inverse of it a bunch. If you'd like another version of my response to it, please say so. For the "CHA 17 Bard with 8 Diplomacy ranks vs 12 CHA Fighter" example - setting aside that both characters have a positive modifier - the scores and skills exist to indicate which person SHOULD be trying in the social situations. If you would prefer the Rogue with a 17 DEX and 8 ranks in Disable Device to be the one playing with the box that's going 'tick-tick-tick' over the Druid with the 12 DEX, why? Because he's better equipped, according to the rules, to handle that device than the Druid is - even though the Druid is played by a bomb tech guy with a better actual understanding of how the ticking box is likely to be defused. . . .

Which leads to my second point: My experience with how people actually play the game is that people often (not always, often) gravitate toward archetypes that are escapes from their real-world skill set. That's why the bomb tech chooses the Druid, why the skinny guy who's getting a PhD in Theoretical Mathematics chooses to cut loose with a Barbarian, and why the guy with Asperger's Syndrome wants to try out a Bard - because the rules in place let them pretend to be good at something that's different than their real-life area of expertise. When you tie portions of their fictional characters' successes to how well the players, without using the game's mechanics, can mimic the behaviors they're describing, you're most likely cutting off that option. If this is your traditional approach, it may be a clue as to why folks in your games who aren't good at haggling and such avoid even attempting characters who are, in fact, good at these things.

Airk
2014-07-24, 03:48 PM
As far as I am concerned, the best rule for social interactions in an RPG is that you are NOT ALLOWED to roleplay it until AFTER the dice are rolled.

Think about it. You don't describe any OTHER actions in the game beyond a statement of intent until you roll the dice. You never say "I leap forwards, past the useless intervention of his guards, hew through his shield and split him in half at the waist with my vorpal greatsword!" and THEN see if you roll a 20. You say "I'm going to try to cut him down with my vorpal greatsword." so that when you roll a 2, you don't wonder how to reconcile that with your awesome description.

So you say "I attempt to persuade His Lordship to give us the supplies we need, and imply that we know about his involvement with the red blades." and THEN you use whatever resolution mechanic the game gives you for resolving the situation to determine whether you roleplay giving a great speech or roleplay putting your foot in your mouth.

Note that this becomes practically enforced by things like Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits, which break an argument down into smaller components, but it's just as true in a game like D&D where it's just a single die roll.

If you have problems with your players not "getting into it" then there's something bigger wrong with your game - because your players should be "into it" ALL THE TIME, not just when they get a chance to make a speech.

Cronocke
2014-07-24, 04:17 PM
As far as I am concerned, the best rule for social interactions in an RPG is that you are NOT ALLOWED to roleplay it until AFTER the dice are rolled.

Think about it. You don't describe any OTHER actions in the game beyond a statement of intent until you roll the dice. You never say "I leap forwards, past the useless intervention of his guards, hew through his shield and split him in half at the waist with my vorpal greatsword!" and THEN see if you roll a 20. You say "I'm going to try to cut him down with my vorpal greatsword." so that when you roll a 2, you don't wonder how to reconcile that with your awesome description.

So you say "I attempt to persuade His Lordship to give us the supplies we need, and imply that we know about his involvement with the red blades." and THEN you use whatever resolution mechanic the game gives you for resolving the situation to determine whether you roleplay giving a great speech or roleplay putting your foot in your mouth.

Note that this becomes practically enforced by things like Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits, which break an argument down into smaller components, but it's just as true in a game like D&D where it's just a single die roll.

If you have problems with your players not "getting into it" then there's something bigger wrong with your game - because your players should be "into it" ALL THE TIME, not just when they get a chance to make a speech.

I love Legends of the Wulin for this reason. You roll the dice, then decide what you're going to do with them, rather than declaring you want to do something cool and then coming up with an awful roll.

Segev
2014-07-24, 04:54 PM
I think the disconnect here boils down to this. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

One side feels that people who have no inclination, talent, or interest in roleplaying out the social aspects of the game should still be allowed to play a social character without feeling ill-equipped or stigmatized for their choice.

I wouldn't say "no inclination" to roleplay "out the social aspects of the game," but rather "who are not talented socialites."

I am in no way advocating "I roll to hit him in the socialize" as the way to run this, any more than I advocate "I roll to hit him with my sword" as the way to roleplay combat.

I am advocating having something other than "can you persuade the GM with your eloquence?" as the resolution mechanic, just as I advocate having something other than "can you hit the GM with a foam sword?" as a resolution mechanic for attempting to hit the monster with your character's sword.

Even more importantly, I am advocating having there be something more than "I roll Diplomacy" just as there's something more than "I roll Combat to see if I win the whole fight." But I want it to be a number of rolls or other mechanical gameplay choices which make up the success/failure, while at the same time offering opportunities to roleplay what those choices represent in terms of your persuasive efforts.

NichG
2014-07-24, 05:26 PM
Actually, this brings to mind a question: out of everyone on the thread, who has experience with social mechanics other than a single skill check? It's generally better to rely on actual play for evidence rather than theorycraft.

The closest I've gotten to this in terms of resolution mechanics was probably Exalted. However, generally speaking even when such mechanics were available the tables I've played tended to avoid using them in play, so it may not be a completely fair comparison. Similarly, I've played 7th Sea which has a repartee system of sorts, but the table quickly decided not to make use of it. I've also played L5R, but iirc there I think the resolution was more single check driven (also, our courtier was extremely shy in real life and despite having full access to the mechanics for this kind of thing still didn't really engage in any social interaction)

As far as mechanics which modify social interactions but do not provide resolution, however, even something like D&D has them (as LudicSavant pointed out with respect to things like Detect Thoughts) and in those cases they do get frequently used at the tables I play at. Information-gathering powers in particular tend to get a lot of use, as do abilities that give the players a degree of narrative control (e.g. the arcana from 7th Sea that lets you find a friendly contact wherever you are, things like that).


I don't have a problem with this - but this isn't usually where I think the instances come out. The problem is when the person trying to SocialPlay a character is sabotaged by their body language, hesitance in speech, poor word choice, failing to pick up verbal cues their character wouldn't miss, phrasing, missed ettiquete, etc.

The difference between "Okay, I go up to the king, greet him warmly and cordially and offer our services as heroes-for-hire."
And:
DM: "Okay, you're standing before the king, he says, "Hi, Bold Adventurers. Wherefore is the purpose of this audience."
Player: "Huh? Oh, oh, right. Hi King! We're adventurers. Need anyone killed?"

The problem with the second example isn't actually the lack of eloquence though. Its easy enough to ignore the 'Huh? Oh, oh, right. Hi King!' bit because its essentially content-free (one should be a little careful, because a very socially savvy player could be intentionally trying to display a particular degree of irreverence rather than just being unable to do otherwise).

But when the player says 'Need anyone killed?' that is communicating a very specific thing - if I took the first sentence and made the content the same, it'd be something like: "Okay, I go up to the king, greet him warmly and cordially and offer to kill people for him"

It starts to go beyond a matter of 'word choice' and is really a matter of distinct decisions. If you say 'I rent a room at the nearest inn' then its odd to later complain 'actually, I just wanted a place to sleep, my character would know someone in town where they could crash for free, so the DM should have had him do that instead of paying for the inn' because you specifically said you wanted to room at the nearest inn, not that you wanted a place to sleep.

Which, I think just goes to show that you can't escape the need for clear communication no matter what you do. Even as a pure interaction between player and DM, if you have problems expressing your intent then you're going to have problems playing the game all the time, not just when having a character socialize.

Segev
2014-07-25, 12:07 AM
I've also played using Exalted's system. As I've said (or at least alluded to), it's...flawed. Still, it does dig into the mechanics a bit more than "make a diplomacy roll." Unfortunately, it doesn't dig too much further.

In theory, you can build Intimacies over the course of several Scenes of social interaction, and change people's opinions that way. You can also use those Intimacies to gain bonuses on rolls to persuade people to act a specific way for the duration of a scene. Unfortunately, there isn't enough "positioning" to be done, and it amounts to one or two rolls under most circumstances because characters can spend Willpower to ignore successful social influence. After spending 2 in a scene, they're immune for the rest of it. Still, it is closer to playing like a combat where at least there are hit points to wear down, even if it's one hp per attack.

It's a step in the right direction in that it at least explores some options. It found more "what not to do" than "what to do," I think, but Exalted 2e still provides some solid points on which to try to build a better system in the next iteration.

Cronocke
2014-07-25, 12:14 AM
I wouldn't say "no inclination" to roleplay "out the social aspects of the game," but rather "who are not talented socialites."
And I said that.

One side feels that people who have no inclination, talent, or interest in roleplaying out the social aspects of the game should still be allowed to play a social character without feeling ill-equipped or stigmatized for their choice.
So I was basically right, I just covered extra bases that didn't need to be covered, apparently.



I am in no way advocating "I roll to hit him in the socialize" as the way to run this, any more than I advocate "I roll to hit him with my sword" as the way to roleplay combat.
And I didn't say you did.



I am advocating having something other than "can you persuade the GM with your eloquence?" as the resolution mechanic, just as I advocate having something other than "can you hit the GM with a foam sword?" as a resolution mechanic for attempting to hit the monster with your character's sword.
You know, LARPers love hitting each other with foam swords to resolve combat. So there is a subset of the community that likes what you're talking about.



Even more importantly, I am advocating having there be something more than "I roll Diplomacy" just as there's something more than "I roll Combat to see if I win the whole fight." But I want it to be a number of rolls or other mechanical gameplay choices which make up the success/failure, while at the same time offering opportunities to roleplay what those choices represent in terms of your persuasive efforts.
And my response to this was and is that there are some people for whom any number of rolls is inadequate, or even contrary to their desires. Allow me to quote myself:

The other side argues that people who hate making character sheets and keeping a running tally of Points Spent when making or advancing a character, whether this is skill points or experience points, and don't feel comfortable adding a large number of situational modifiers on the fly as each turn changes the playing field, should still be allowed to play whatever character they want as well.
There are two schools of thought here, and they're not necessarily contrary to one another.
The person who has no social presence or skills should still be allowed to play a charming or witty character without being penalized for their real-life weaknesses in that field.
The person who is superb at public speaking and debate shouldn't feel like his real-world skills are useless at the table and he should just be quiet and do the math already.
There is a way to satisfy both these conditions, and it would involve something similar to the stunting mechanic in Exalted, or the description mechanic in Legends of the Wulin.

Airk
2014-07-25, 08:10 AM
There are two schools of thought here, and they're not necessarily contrary to one another.
The person who has no social presence or skills should still be allowed to play a charming or witty character without being penalized for their real-life weaknesses in that field.
The person who is superb at public speaking and debate shouldn't feel like his real-world skills are useless at the table and he should just be quiet and do the math already.
There is a way to satisfy both these conditions, and it would involve something similar to the stunting mechanic in Exalted, or the description mechanic in Legends of the Wulin.

Why not? If I spend a bunch of time learning how to fight with a sword, should that improve my chances in combat? No it should not. The player is not doing these things, the character is. I don't CARE how eloquent you are, if you're playing a rube with 6 charisma and roll a 4 on your diplomacy check, your eloquent speech means nothing.

This is why you DON'T GIVE the eloquent speech until after you find out of it's appropriate. I don't understand why this isn't the standard. Doesn't ever RPG teach you the difference between "intent" and "stating results"? Giving an eloquent speech is stating results.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-25, 08:55 AM
As far as I am concerned, the best rule for social interactions in an RPG is that you are NOT ALLOWED to roleplay it until AFTER the dice are rolled.

Think about it. You don't describe any OTHER actions in the game beyond a statement of intent until you roll the dice. You never say "I leap forwards, past the useless intervention of his guards, hew through his shield and split him in half at the waist with my vorpal greatsword!" and THEN see if you roll a 20. You say "I'm going to try to cut him down with my vorpal greatsword." so that when you roll a 2, you don't wonder how to reconcile that with your awesome description.

There's another way you could look at it, too, where it's a bit of an abstraction. (Related to the fact that you could describe a combat approach that doesn't realistically make sense.) You could set up a social encounter where the social interaction sets up what your roll is going to be. (This makes the most sense in something like Burning Wheel, where there's multiple social skills representing different approaches.)

Here's how it works: you conduct the engagement until you get to a tipping point. This requires a good bit of awareness. What I mean by a "tipping point" is the bit where you've made your case (by threatening, bargaining, or buttering-up), but now it's time to see how it's received. And you roll the dice in order to see how all of the other random factors fall: the things you can't account for, the things you can't properly convey at the table. Body language, contextual responses, and the backstory and experiences of the other party.

You accept that you can't perfectly account for it, so you leave it to the dice to figure out what happens.

The game that I like the best for this is Leverage. When you roll a Face action, the GM pulls in dice for a number of factors...and nobody knows how much those factors will influence the difficulty of your roll. The GM rolls, then you roll. You do the same thing: pulling in a bunch of factors (like your ability to charm someone, a character trait, any advantages you've established so far). Then you see what happens. And sometimes, the roll generates complications: your persuasion attempt goes in an unexpected direction because of something that the people at the table didn't realize.

Basically: the less you get worked up over the specific details, and the more okay you are with letting randomness deliver a judgement, the better things are. I've found that the best justification period is "You did a pretty good job, but there's something you didn't realize about your target, and you totally put them off through no fault of your own." So you appealed to the value of family ties in your speech. How were you to know that the Duke's siblings were cruel to him in the past?

Dimers
2014-07-25, 09:03 AM
The person who is superb at public speaking and debate shouldn't feel like his real-world skills are useless at the table and he should just be quiet and do the math already.

Nobody should be told to "just be quiet and do the math already", certainly. But neither should someone be rewarded or penalized in-game for out-of-game things. Financiers don't expect extra money in Monopoly, soldiers don't get an accuracy bonus for their troops in Warhammer, swimmers can't have their robot move faster in Don't Get Bit, occultists don't know special lore in Call Of Chthulhu -- there's no reason someone good at talking should get to ignore the rules for social interaction in D&D.

EDIT: Games should certainly exist in which players can apply/test their own social skills. Many do, in fact, though far fewer say so explicitly. When I play ... say ... Cosmic Encounter, I'm quite aware that I'm using my social skill in persuading other players to join my side in a battle or bluffing my opponent about what kind of card I'm going to play to resolve it. Since I kinda suck at that kind of manipulation IRL, I avoid that sort of game once I realize how much social skill it involves. I don't think Cosmic Encounter shouldn't exist, I just think I shouldn't play it. For TTRPGs, my default assumption is that my character can be good at whatever the character sheet says, so if there are social attributes listed, I expect to succeed or fail based on that attribute rather than my own expression. And if I may be so bold -- I have yet to see a RPG that doesn't have social attributes on the sheet.

Airk
2014-07-25, 09:08 AM
<snip>

Interesting idea, but I think it would rub people the wrong way even more, AND it doesn't clear up the whole "Why didn't I get a bonus for good roleplaying?" whine.

AMFV
2014-07-25, 09:14 AM
Why not? If I spend a bunch of time learning how to fight with a sword, should that improve my chances in combat? No it should not. The player is not doing these things, the character is. I don't CARE how eloquent you are, if you're playing a rube with 6 charisma and roll a 4 on your diplomacy check, your eloquent speech means nothing.

This is why you DON'T GIVE the eloquent speech until after you find out of it's appropriate. I don't understand why this isn't the standard. Doesn't ever RPG teach you the difference between "intent" and "stating results"? Giving an eloquent speech is stating results.

I really like this. I'm probably going to start using this in my games from now on. Thank you!

Segev
2014-07-25, 09:31 AM
I still object to the "no inclination" line because I don't think anybody here IS arguing for that. It's a straw man that distracts from the more important objections by being easily demolished and pretending to be a support equal to the others.

And you're missing the point when you focus on "number of rolls." The point is mechanical depth. "It takes 10 rolls" is not really any better than "it takes 1 roll." The choices between rolls are still not meaningful, mechanically. There's a reason few people run combat as "okay, roll your attack, now your damage" without even considering tactical positioning. And even THEN, 3.5 offers such choices as how much to power attack and the like. Not to mention spells, sneak attack, etc.


The position I advocate is one of having mechanical depth with meaningful choices. Ideally, it will be "shaped" like a social interaction such that RP of the actions represented by the mechanics will naturally follow if the players do have the inclination.

If players don't have the inclination, that's a different matter entirely, and really isn't what I'm discussing nor for what I'm advocating.


Also, while I'm aware LARP can include boffers, that's hardly a form of resolution germaine to the typical discussion of RPGs. Usually, LARPing is considered different enough to be called out as the topic. I'm not denigrating it, and if you want to do boffer-style LARPing combined with "your character is no more or less persuasive than you are," that's fine and dandy. My problem is that people don't seem to recognize that "your personal eloquence determine's your PC's" is basically taking boffer-style LARPing to the tabletop game.

AMFV
2014-07-25, 09:39 AM
I still object to the "no inclination" line because I don't think anybody here IS arguing for that. It's a straw man that distracts from the more important objections by being easily demolished and pretending to be a support equal to the others.

And you're missing the point when you focus on "number of rolls." The point is mechanical depth. "It takes 10 rolls" is not really any better than "it takes 1 roll." The choices between rolls are still not meaningful, mechanically. There's a reason few people run combat as "okay, roll your attack, now your damage" without even considering tactical positioning. And even THEN, 3.5 offers such choices as how much to power attack and the like. Not to mention spells, sneak attack, etc.


The position I advocate is one of having mechanical depth with meaningful choices. Ideally, it will be "shaped" like a social interaction such that RP of the actions represented by the mechanics will naturally follow if the players do have the inclination.

If players don't have the inclination, that's a different matter entirely, and really isn't what I'm discussing nor for what I'm advocating.


Also, while I'm aware LARP can include boffers, that's hardly a form of resolution germaine to the typical discussion of RPGs. Usually, LARPing is considered different enough to be called out as the topic. I'm not denigrating it, and if you want to do boffer-style LARPing combined with "your character is no more or less persuasive than you are," that's fine and dandy. My problem is that people don't seem to recognize that "your personal eloquence determine's your PC's" is basically taking boffer-style LARPing to the tabletop game.

They do realize that, that's why the comparison was made. Otherwise making that comparison would make no sense.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-25, 09:45 AM
Also, while I'm aware LARP can include boffers, that's hardly a form of resolution germaine to the typical discussion of RPGs. Usually, LARPing is considered different enough to be called out as the topic. I'm not denigrating it, and if you want to do boffer-style LARPing combined with "your character is no more or less persuasive than you are," that's fine and dandy. My problem is that people don't seem to recognize that "your personal eloquence determine's your PC's" is basically taking boffer-style LARPing to the tabletop game.
Boffer combat is also rather different from actual combat. :smallwink:

NichG
2014-07-25, 10:26 AM
And if I may be so bold -- I have yet to see a RPG that doesn't have social attributes on the sheet.

'Last Stand' doesn't really. It has four attributes, which are more or less interchangeable except when explicitly called out by a special ability: Disruptor, Operative, Tactics, Leadership. You can in fact kill a giant robot with Leadership, or maim a monstrous crab with Operative, or whatever you like. While the game does have some verbiage about 'social conflicts' being able to make use of those stats as well, the stats themselves are not social attributes.

Nobilis doesn't either. While there's the possibility of creating socially powerful mechanical effects, they're more along the 'Detect Thoughts' line of things than the 'roll Diplomacy' line of things.

Airk
2014-07-25, 11:42 AM
I really like this. I'm probably going to start using this in my games from now on. Thank you!

My favorite part about it is actually the fact that it makes how you handle things MORE consistent, because with everything else, you say "I try to climb the wall!" or whatever and then roll to see how well you do and then describe it.

I can't actually take credit for this idea though, I read it somewhere relatively recently. I can't remember where though. =/

Dimers
2014-07-25, 12:31 PM
I can't actually take credit for this idea though, I read it somewhere relatively recently. I can't remember where though. =/

*cough*severalofmypostsinotherthreads*cough* :smallwink: Probably not the only place you've seen it, and you said it better than I do, but yeah ... I've been espousing that for a good long while.


'Last Stand' doesn't really. It has four attributes, which are more or less interchangeable except when explicitly called out by a special ability: Disruptor, Operative, Tactics, Leadership. You can in fact kill a giant robot with Leadership, or maim a monstrous crab with Operative, or whatever you like. While the game does have some verbiage about 'social conflicts' being able to make use of those stats as well, the stats themselves are not social attributes.

Nobilis doesn't either. While there's the possibility of creating socially powerful mechanical effects, they're more along the 'Detect Thoughts' line of things than the 'roll Diplomacy' line of things.

Coo'. Been meaning to check out Nobilis anyway. I guess I'll move that up to the top of my list.

Avilan the Grey
2014-07-25, 01:48 PM
The person who is superb at public speaking and debate shouldn't feel like his real-world skills are useless at the table and he should just be quiet and do the math already.
There is a way to satisfy both these conditions, and it would involve something similar to the stunting mechanic in Exalted, or the description mechanic in Legends of the Wulin.

So you are saying that the olympic class fencer should be allowed to demonstrate his skill instead of rolling?
Edit: Never mind, point have already been made.

Sartharina
2014-07-25, 02:01 PM
Interesting idea, but I think it would rub people the wrong way even more, AND it doesn't clear up the whole "Why didn't I get a bonus for good roleplaying?" whine.

Actually, his discussion of the Leverage System did seem to do so, by apparently giving bonus die or the like because your "Good Roleplaying" would imply you found advantages to bring up in the conversation - and the DM also gets advantages for Good Roleplaying by fleshing out the NPCs with their motivations and previous experiences.

I like it when good roleplaying carries mechanical clout behind it, so that a bad-at-diplomacy character can still have his bad-at-diplomacy-ness sabotage well-meaning and otherwise-effective behaviors (Sorry Igor, but while your arguments were sound and tailored to your target, your inability to go two sentences without slobbering and stuttering made you come across as a buffoon and hinder your case.), and a good-at-diplomacy character can have that mechanics salvage or carry otherwise bad or weak roleplaying (Despite the bard's inability to keep her foot out of her mouth, her enthusiasm and grace won over the crowd despite her broken logic and clueless arguments.) But, those are edge cases, and they allow people who are "meh" mechanically in diplomacy to still pull their weight.

Airk
2014-07-25, 02:25 PM
Actually, his discussion of the Leverage System did seem to do so, by apparently giving bonus die or the like because your "Good Roleplaying" would imply you found advantages to bring up in the conversation - and the DM also gets advantages for Good Roleplaying by fleshing out the NPCs with their motivations and previous experiences.

I don't count that as "good roleplaying" - indeed, I would give those same bonuses for the sort of thing I mentioned in my original post: "I attempt to persuade His Lordship to give us the supplies we need, and imply that we know about his involvement with the red blades." - the bolded part indicates that you've found an advantage to use in the conversation. But that's not roleplaying. That's just knowing how to prod your "opponent".



I like it when good roleplaying carries mechanical clout behind it, so that a bad-at-diplomacy character can still have his bad-at-diplomacy-ness sabotage well-meaning and otherwise-effective behaviors (Sorry Igor, but while your arguments were sound and tailored to your target, your inability to go two sentences without slobbering and stuttering made you come across as a buffoon and hinder your case.), and a good-at-diplomacy character can have that mechanics salvage or carry otherwise bad or weak roleplaying (Despite the bard's inability to keep her foot out of her mouth, her enthusiasm and grace won over the crowd despite her broken logic and clueless arguments.) But, those are edge cases, and they allow people who are "meh" mechanically in diplomacy to still pull their weight.

I don't understand what you are saying here. You lead off saying essentially "I think good roleplaying should impact the results of social skills" and then go on to give some examples of how that would...not happen?

Sartharina
2014-07-25, 02:38 PM
I don't count that as "good roleplaying" - indeed, I would give those same bonuses for the sort of thing I mentioned in my original post: "I attempt to persuade His Lordship to give us the supplies we need, and imply that we know about his involvement with the red blades." - the bolded part indicates that you've found an advantage to use in the conversation. But that's not roleplaying. That's just knowing how to prod your "opponent".Which requires investment in the world and understanding of what's going on, and is integral to roleplaying. I consider Roleplaying to be more about making and presenting decisions and context for those decisions than merely acting.




I don't understand what you are saying here. You lead off saying essentially "I think good roleplaying should impact the results of social skills" and then go on to give some examples of how that would...not happen?The converse of that is that someone who's good at roleplaying is actually getting the option to roll those dice at all by provoking the situation.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-25, 03:00 PM
Actually, his discussion of the Leverage System did seem to do so, by apparently giving bonus die or the like because your "Good Roleplaying" would imply you found advantages to bring up in the conversation - and the DM also gets advantages for Good Roleplaying by fleshing out the NPCs with their motivations and previous experiences.

An important note: Leverage doesn't reward "good roleplaying" in the sense of "I'm good at giving a social performance", but in the sense of "I'm good at engaging the fiction of the game and looking for advantages that I can use". You gain those advantages by succeeding at other rolls, which means you're leveraging things that you've already discovered in the game. Like, maybe in a prior scene you discovered some dirt on a politician. If you bring it into your attempt to intimidate the politician, it acts as an advantage for you (you roll an extra die into your pool).

Of course, doing something like that comes with its own consequences: you've defined the terms of this social dialogue, and cut off other avenues. And if it goes wrong...

Short version: not a big fan of mechanical benefits for your skill at roleplaying, but it's great when mechanics engage with the content of roleplaying--i.e., doing stuff to parts of the fiction and making choices about what to do.

Cronocke
2014-07-25, 03:21 PM
Why not? If I spend a bunch of time learning how to fight with a sword, should that improve my chances in combat? No it should not. The player is not doing these things, the character is. I don't CARE how eloquent you are, if you're playing a rube with 6 charisma and roll a 4 on your diplomacy check, your eloquent speech means nothing.

This is why you DON'T GIVE the eloquent speech until after you find out of it's appropriate. I don't understand why this isn't the standard. Doesn't ever RPG teach you the difference between "intent" and "stating results"? Giving an eloquent speech is stating results.

I would love for more systems to involve rolling the dice first and deciding what you do with them after the fact. But the current paradigm for the vast majority of systems is "I say what I'm doing, then I roll the dice to see how it works." As a direct result, they favor one type of player - the guy who knows how to minmax his character sheet. You can invoke house rules and player preference to try to mitigate that, but it's still the way the system works. Your ability to do whatever-the-Hell in real life doesn't matter, as you state. And not everyone considers this something to be emulated.


Nobody should be told to "just be quiet and do the math already", certainly. But neither should someone be rewarded or penalized in-game for out-of-game things. Financiers don't expect extra money in Monopoly, soldiers don't get an accuracy bonus for their troops in Warhammer, swimmers can't have their robot move faster in Don't Get Bit, occultists don't know special lore in Call Of Chthulhu -- there's no reason someone good at talking should get to ignore the rules for social interaction in D&D.

But we're not talking about Monopoly, Warhammer, Don't Get Bit, Call of Cthulhu, or D&D. We're talking about what the rules should be for a hypothetical game system.

I get it - the easiest resolution mechanic to use for an RPG is dice. Gamers tend to have dice, so games should use dice. Gamers tend to have paper, so use character sheets. But how hard is it for a new player to make a character sheet on their own for your typical D&D clone? If they're good at math they'll have a leg up, to be sure, but those with different talents will have a hard time - and if everyone else is optimizing even slightly, it's going to be even harder for them to stay relevant.

Why is it such a thoughtcrime to want to throw them a bone, and give them numeric bonuses for using the talents they do have?

And actually, I'm pretty sure Monopoly favors those who are good at handling their finances - it was originally made as a subtle jab at capitalism.


So you are saying that the olympic class fencer should be allowed to demonstrate his skill instead of rolling?
No. Nobody is saying that you should do anything instead of rolling. I'm saying that the guy who minmaxes all his characters to high heaven, and the girl who has only ever played one or two games before but really, earnestly wants to prove she's willing and able to play and be effective, should not be wildly different on the power scale.

As you all seemed so eager to say - it should be about how the dice fall, and not where your real life skills lie.

Airk
2014-07-25, 03:46 PM
I would love for more systems to involve rolling the dice first and deciding what you do with them after the fact. But the current paradigm for the vast majority of systems is "I say what I'm doing, then I roll the dice to see how it works."

No, you are incorrect. You do not say "what you are doing"; You say what you are TRYING to do. There is an important distinction.


As a direct result, they favor one type of player - the guy who knows how to minmax his character sheet.

SOME games favor this. I think it is completely unreasonable, however, to assert that a game that has one stat and 1-2 skills for "talking to people" somehow favors people who min-max. It's just not a great leap to understand that if you want to be good at talking people into things, that you might want to have good numbers in the talking skills and stat.

It's only when you get into games with elaborate point buys and feats and blahblahstuff that you are seriously rewarding minmaxing in any meaningful sort of way. Otherwise, you are just rewarding characters for being good at something (and less good at other things).

Also, let's be honest. Who the hell "minmaxes" for optimal social skills?


You can invoke house rules and player preference to try to mitigate that, but it's still the way the system works.

It's the way bad systems work, maybe.



Your ability to do whatever-the-Hell in real life doesn't matter, as you state. And not everyone considers this something to be emulated.

Actually, everyone I know would like to be able to do things in the game that they can't do in real life. The pretty much necessary counterpoint to this is that you might not be able to do something that you CAN do in real life. If I am an olympic swimmer, and my character has no points in Swim, my character CAN'T SWIM. There is no reason that my character should be an excellent orator with zero points there just because I've been training in public speaking. I'm sorry, there just isn't. Skills need to be handled uniformly.


I get it - the easiest resolution mechanic to use for an RPG is dice. Gamers tend to have dice, so games should use dice. Gamers tend to have paper, so use character sheets.

You are off base. This has nothing to do with "resolution mechanisms"; This has to do with WHO is performing the action. It is not the player. Therefore, yes, we use a "game" to decide how well the character does things. The game might just say "Your character is awesome at persuading people, so he can totally talk someone into giving him free supplies because he has the "Silver Tongue" aspect" or whatever. Dice and character sheets don't actually need to be involved.



But how hard is it for a new player to make a character sheet on their own for your typical D&D clone?

While YOU appear to be fixated on D&D and games that offer lots of minmaxing options (though not so many as you imply for social skills), I think WE in this thread are more interested in discussing RPGs as a whole. Certainly, I am.



If they're good at math they'll have a leg up, to be sure, but those with different talents will have a hard time - and if everyone else is optimizing even slightly, it's going to be even harder for them to stay relevant.

Actually, I consider this to be pretty much a blatant falsehood. Games have tradeoffs. If someone puts points in Empathy/Charisma/Whatever, there is going to be a corresponding lack of points elsewhere. Similarly, if someone buys a "feat" that makes them good at persuading people to do stuff, that's a feat they didn't spend on Cleave, or whatever. If someone takes the aspect "Texas Snake Oil Salesman" then that has clearly defined benefits - but it also means they might not have room for "Fastest gun this side of the Pecos".



Why is it such a thoughtcrime to want to throw them a bone, and give them numeric bonuses for using the talents they do have?

Because you're not throwing bones to anyone else? What about the guy who is bad at math AND bad at social skills, but happens to be a gifted athlete? Why don't you throw HIM a bone? C'mon. The most fair way to approach this is the one that DOESN'T involve arbitrary handouts.



No. Nobody is saying that you should do anything instead of rolling. I'm saying that the guy who minmaxes all his characters to high heaven, and the girl who has only ever played one or two games before but really, earnestly wants to prove she's willing and able to play and be effective, should not be wildly different on the power scale.

And I'm saying that in a game that's not awful, the girl WILL have a chance to show off what she can do, so long as it's what she decided her character 'should' be good at... or if the dice do her a favor. After all, these games are about interesting stories, not about always succeeding. And at the end of the day, in most game systems, is not possible to be dominant in all areas, even with minmaxing. If it is, it's your own fault for playing such an awful game.



As you all seemed so eager to say - it should be about how the dice fall, and not where your real life skills lie.

Which is why games that reward system mastery suck, yes, but that's unrelated to this discussion, because it includes ALL aspects of the game, not just social skills.

Cronocke
2014-07-25, 04:01 PM
Which is why games that reward system mastery suck, yes, but that's unrelated to this discussion, because it includes ALL aspects of the game, not just social skills.

I think that is the discussion, actually, but alright. If that's your stance, I agree wholeheartedly and concede.

AMFV
2014-07-25, 04:28 PM
No, you are incorrect. You do not say "what you are doing"; You say what you are TRYING to do. There is an important distinction.


Well this varies from system to system. Sometimes rolling the dice is an absolute commitment to attempting something, sometimes it's not. Particularly in social situations, where a diplomacy fail might mean that you fall silent when you should have spoken.



SOME games favor this. I think it is completely unreasonable, however, to assert that a game that has one stat and 1-2 skills for "talking to people" somehow favors people who min-max. It's just not a great leap to understand that if you want to be good at talking people into things, that you might want to have good numbers in the talking skills and stat.

It's only when you get into games with elaborate point buys and feats and blahblahstuff that you are seriously rewarding minmaxing in any meaningful sort of way. Otherwise, you are just rewarding characters for being good at something (and less good at other things).

Also, let's be honest. Who the hell "minmaxes" for optimal social skills?


Well that depends, complex games reward the ability to understand and implement complex systems. Simple games typically reward different things. All games require skill. ALL games require skill of some kind, whether it's social skill (for the most freeform games, and I'm talking completely freeform) or the ability to organize complex systems and understand implications of combing elements of the systems (for the most complex games, like HERO System.) D&D actually falls middle ground here, there is a high degree of system mastery, but it is not enough that the DM needs to supervise all elements of character creation as in Mutants and Masterminds or HERO system, where it is very to unbalance the system with smaller degree of effort than D&D.

I Minmax for social skills, I've created characters that are built for that. If you were familiar with D&D, instead of deriding you'd realize that one of the most broken builds (and one of the earliest to come online) is focused entirely on diplomacy and being good at it.



It's the way bad systems work, maybe.


Bad systems, in your opinion. I enjoy complexity of systems, it's fun for me. I can understand that it wouldn't be fun for everybody, but it's fun for me.



Actually, everyone I know would like to be able to do things in the game that they can't do in real life. The pretty much necessary counterpoint to this is that you might not be able to do something that you CAN do in real life. If I am an olympic swimmer, and my character has no points in Swim, my character CAN'T SWIM. There is no reason that my character should be an excellent orator with zero points there just because I've been training in public speaking. I'm sorry, there just isn't. Skills need to be handled uniformly.


Well it depends, on how skills resolution is handled. Typically people are rewarded for being socially adept in almost all games. In the example of not giving real estate moguls bonus money in Monopoly we've ignored the fact that they'd be better at monopoly. The same as a military veteran could be better at W40K (Don't quote me on that I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if that's true or not.) But it is impossible to create a game that does not use real world skills to some degree.



You are off base. This has nothing to do with "resolution mechanisms"; This has to do with WHO is performing the action. It is not the player. Therefore, yes, we use a "game" to decide how well the character does things. The game might just say "Your character is awesome at persuading people, so he can totally talk someone into giving him free supplies because he has the "Silver Tongue" aspect" or whatever. Dice and character sheets don't actually need to be involved.


This is true, but knowing which aspects will be useful is certainly a skill, or CONVINCING somebody that an aspect is useful in a particular situation certainly involves social skills.



While YOU appear to be fixated on D&D and games that offer lots of minmaxing options (though not so many as you imply for social skills), I think WE in this thread are more interested in discussing RPGs as a whole. Certainly, I am.


I think WoD has a much more focused social skills system. There are also other games that involve complex mechanical systems that are not D&D, it is a little bit disingenuous to imply that D&D is the worst offender or even the most focused on mechanical optimization, I promise it's not.



Actually, I consider this to be pretty much a blatant falsehood. Games have tradeoffs. If someone puts points in Empathy/Charisma/Whatever, there is going to be a corresponding lack of points elsewhere. Similarly, if someone buys a "feat" that makes them good at persuading people to do stuff, that's a feat they didn't spend on Cleave, or whatever. If someone takes the aspect "Texas Snake Oil Salesman" then that has clearly defined benefits - but it also means they might not have room for "Fastest gun this side of the Pecos".


Not all games have tradeoffs. Sometimes some options are simply better. Or options are randomly decided as in Older D&D or Rolemaster. Now if the game has character customization to that degree then there could be tradeoffs. But you could have a certain number of social feats or whatever, that you couldn't spend on other things, you don't necessarily have to have tradeoffs between social ability and combat ability. In fact in D&D (3.5 and Pathfinder) the majority of social ability comes from skills, and spending points on social skills generally does not jeopardize your combat potential since there are very few skills that can be used in combat.



Because you're not throwing bones to anyone else? What about the guy who is bad at math AND bad at social skills, but happens to be a gifted athlete? Why don't you throw HIM a bone? C'mon. The most fair way to approach this is the one that DOESN'T involve arbitrary handouts.


Well he can play LARP and get to hit people with foam swords. That's a chance to utilize his abilities. He could do some kind of outdoor adventure LARP, involving hiking and climbing or aerobics.




Which is why games that reward system mastery suck, yes, but that's unrelated to this discussion, because it includes ALL aspects of the game, not just social skills.

Well some people enjoy system mastery. Furthermore I posit that there is no such thing as a game that does not reward you for being good at the game. Provide me with one example of a game that can be played as well by somebody whose never played it and somebody who has.

Dimers
2014-07-25, 04:50 PM
those with different talents will have a hard time - and if everyone else is optimizing even slightly, it's going to be even harder for them to stay relevant. Why is it such a thoughtcrime to want to throw them a bone, and give them numeric bonuses for using the talents they do have?

What I'm saying is, for those players -- new or very experienced -- who DON'T have social skills, why not throw THEM a bone and not force them to be socially awkward in the game?

Also, in the games I've been part of, the experienced players help the newbies make the characters that the newbies envision, so that they don't have to miss out on the mechanics side of things.

AMFV
2014-07-25, 04:51 PM
What I'm saying is, for those players -- new or very experienced -- who DON'T have social skills, why not throw THEM a bone and not force them to be socially awkward in the game?

Also, in the games I've been part of, the experienced players help the newbies make the characters that the newbies envision, so that they don't have to miss out on the mechanics side of things.

Well some games do. There are games that don't require social skills to be good at, and some games do or don't require dexterity. The problem is that all of the sides here are arguing as absolutes what are entirely matters of taste.

Avilan the Grey
2014-07-25, 05:04 PM
No. Nobody is saying that you should do anything instead of rolling. I'm saying that the guy who minmaxes all his characters to high heaven, and the girl who has only ever played one or two games before but really, earnestly wants to prove she's willing and able to play and be effective, should not be wildly different on the power scale.

As you all seemed so eager to say - it should be about how the dice fall, and not where your real life skills lie.

OF COURSE they should be different. Seriously. That's the POINT of determining your character's traits and skills.
Also, of course, the DM / GM / ST should block min-maxed characters that are too extreme, alternatively play up what they have sacrificed.


Well some people enjoy system mastery. Furthermore I posit that there is no such thing as a game that does not reward you for being good at the game. Provide me with one example of a game that can be played as well by somebody whose never played it and somebody who has.

You must have had a really bad experience with a DM / GM at some point. Seriously, I have NEVER noticed a newbie player being at a disadvantage. The game as such might be SLOWER, to allow for explanations and whatever. Also, note that players normally aren't competing against each other anyway.


Well he can play LARP and get to hit people with foam swords. That's a chance to utilize his abilities. He could do some kind of outdoor adventure LARP, involving hiking and climbing or aerobics.

So... um... not sure how to respond to this. It really seems you DO think only charismatic people should have the right to play RPGs.

Airk
2014-07-25, 05:22 PM
Well this varies from system to system. Sometimes rolling the dice is an absolute commitment to attempting something, sometimes it's not. Particularly in social situations, where a diplomacy fail might mean that you fall silent when you should have spoken.

I'm not aware of very many systems where you can change what you TRIED after you rolled the dice; In fact, I can't actually name ANY, unless you count games with full scene resolution, where this rule is already sortof prebaked in.



I Minmax for social skills, I've created characters that are built for that. If you were familiar with D&D, instead of deriding you'd realize that one of the most broken builds (and one of the earliest to come online) is focused entirely on diplomacy and being good at it.

That sounds bizarre, as D&D doesn't have very many 'hard rules' for diplomacy, so it seems like it would be easy for the GM to invalidate. Of course "D&D" is actually a pretty meaningless term because it encompasses way too many rulesets.



Bad systems, in your opinion. I enjoy complexity of systems, it's fun for me. I can understand that it wouldn't be fun for everybody, but it's fun for me.

If you are "invoking house rules and trying to mitigate the effects" it's a bad system. :) Or at least, a bad CHOICE of system.



Well it depends, on how skills resolution is handled. Typically people are rewarded for being socially adept in almost all games. In the example of not giving real estate moguls bonus money in Monopoly we've ignored the fact that they'd be better at monopoly. The same as a military veteran could be better at W40K (Don't quote me on that I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if that's true or not.) But it is impossible to create a game that does not use real world skills to some degree.

I disagree with your first point - people with POOR social skills (and I mean REALLY POOR) are penalized in most games, because games, but I don't think "almost all" games afford a bonus to the "Socially adept" beyond that threshold. I also completely disagree with the rest of your examples. Monopoly has nothing to do with real estate, really, and while there may be games in while being a military veteran gives a strategic advantage, I don't think it's broadly true.

Also, you will observe that in none of the other games you cite are the players attempting to pretend to be someone else. Which is really the point here - the player isn't the one performing this action, which is why their skill should not be relevant.



I think WoD has a much more focused social skills system. There are also other games that involve complex mechanical systems that are not D&D, it is a little bit disingenuous to imply that D&D is the worst offender or even the most focused on mechanical optimization, I promise it's not.

No, but it's also not an example of how things work in RPGs in general.



Not all games have tradeoffs. Sometimes some options are simply better. Or options are randomly decided as in Older D&D or Rolemaster. Now if the game has character customization to that degree then there could be tradeoffs.

If there is no customization, there is no minmaxing, however. Games with flat-out-better options fall into the "Bad games" category for me.



But you could have a certain number of social feats or whatever, that you couldn't spend on other things, you don't necessarily have to have tradeoffs between social ability and combat ability. In fact in D&D (3.5 and Pathfinder) the majority of social ability comes from skills, and spending points on social skills generally does not jeopardize your combat potential since there are very few skills that can be used in combat.

Sure, but there's still a tradeoff. You might suck at swimming or jumping instead.



Well some people enjoy system mastery. Furthermore I posit that there is no such thing as a game that does not reward you for being good at the game. Provide me with one example of a game that can be played as well by somebody whose never played it and somebody who has.

Risus. :) Tenra Bansho Zero. Golden Sky Stories. Dungeon World. In fact, many games. The closer you get to "A game in which you do things in the world and let the system resolve the results" instead of "Use the rules the manipulate the world the way you want to" the less system mastery is rewarded. And I tend to favor the former type, now that I know it exists.

Cronocke
2014-07-25, 05:28 PM
OF COURSE they should be different. Seriously. That's the POINT of determining your character's traits and skills.
Also, of course, the DM / GM / ST should block min-maxed characters that are too extreme, alternatively play up what they have sacrificed.

Yeah, that doesn't happen. "I've made a social ninja who can convince everyone of everything, and all this means is that I'm weak in melee combat!" never then leads to that character getting swarmed by a million spiders, it instead leads to them plinking away with a bow from half a mile away. Any downsides are minimized - that's literally the point of minmaxing.

Conversely, the newbie, who spent a week just making their character without any help, shows up and is of little use, because the role she chose is overshadowed by said minmaxer, or really, by anyone else with more system mastery than her.


You must have had a really bad experience with a DM / GM at some point. Seriously, I have NEVER noticed a newbie player being at a disadvantage. The game as such might be SLOWER, to allow for explanations and whatever. Also, note that players normally aren't competing against each other anyway.

They're not competing against each other in-character, no, but they're usually trying to all get equal importance and effectiveness. Having the disadvantage of "I'm new" typically means that unless someone else makes your character for you, you're gonna end up being upstaged by everyone else in every other field.

And if they had someone else make their character, welp, now you're saying system mastery isn't important after all!

EDIT:

I'm not aware of very many systems where you can change what you TRIED after you rolled the dice; In fact, I can't actually name ANY, unless you count games with full scene resolution, where this rule is already sortof prebaked in.

Legends of the Wulin. You roll your dice pool first, then declare what you want to do with it. It actually works really well, and I wish more games used that order of operations.

AMFV
2014-07-25, 05:39 PM
I'm not aware of very many systems where you can change what you TRIED after you rolled the dice; In fact, I can't actually name ANY, unless you count games with full scene resolution, where this rule is already sortof prebaked in.


D&D has luck rules, certain games have edge rules that allow you to shift after you've rolled. Generally this sort of thing tends to be wrapped up in luck or edge or hero point rules. So it's prevalent in the systems that has those rules.



That sounds bizarre, as D&D doesn't have very many 'hard rules' for diplomacy, so it seems like it would be easy for the GM to invalidate. Of course "D&D" is actually a pretty meaningless term because it encompasses way too many rulesets.

3.5 is the version I was speaking of, that's the one that has Diplomacy as one of the most powerful tricks in the game.



If you are "invoking house rules and trying to mitigate the effects" it's a bad system. :) Or at least, a bad CHOICE of system.

Not necessarily, maybe I like aspects of the system enough that having to change other aspects is worth it to me. To be fair I very rarely houserule things in any of the systems I use. But some people really enjoy that particular creative aspect.



I disagree with your first point - people with POOR social skills (and I mean REALLY POOR) are penalized in most games, because games, but I don't think "almost all" games afford a bonus to the "Socially adept" beyond that threshold. I also completely disagree with the rest of your examples. Monopoly has nothing to do with real estate, really, and while there may be games in while being a military veteran gives a strategic advantage, I don't think it's broadly true.


Knowing economic theory does help when playing monopoly, you can understand what risks are worth it and which risks are not. I'm not saying it's broadly true that being a military vet helps with strategy games. But what I'm saying is that is impossible to create a game that is completely separate from your real life skills unless it is entirely random (and then still luck plays a factor, if you believe in that sort of thing).



Also, you will observe that in none of the other games you cite are the players attempting to pretend to be someone else. Which is really the point here - the player isn't the one performing this action, which is why their skill should not be relevant.


But their skills are relevant, you're just trading social skills for computational mathematics, or the ability to socialize for the ability to argue persistently enough, or be annoying enough that other people relent. There is no game that has no aspect of skill. And you can't become your character, some games have a deeper level of immersion and others have less. And you can't use one brush and claim to get all of them



No, but it's also not an example of how things work in RPGs in general.

It's an example of how a certain style works, and is by far the most popular game, or was at one time, and is therefore worth discussing. But I'd say that there are as many examples of games that introduce complicated min-maxing at a level far more intense than D&D as there are freeform games.



If there is no customization, there is no minmaxing, however. Games with flat-out-better options fall into the "Bad games" category for me.

So you want a game where I have no choices and cannot control any aspect of my character? That seems impossible, and with all due respect, I'd hate that. So basically you want a game where there is no player agency. The only way to avoid "better options" is to have no options at all.

Furthermore, even in FATE systems where one has aspects, certain aspects will be more useful depending on personal social skills (the ability to effectively argue that something is in any given situation useful) and cleverness (the ability to grasp unorthodox usefulness for thing. System mastery isn't just character creation, it's the whole system.



Sure, but there's still a tradeoff. You might suck at swimming or jumping instead.


True, but sucking at swimming is actually negligible, in 3.5 or Pathfinder at least. And it's a worthwhile tradeoff depending on your game, social skills could be more or less useful than swimming or jumping or even equally useful.



Risus. :) Tenra Bansho Zero. Golden Sky Stories. Dungeon World. In fact, many games. The closer you get to "A game in which you do things in the world and let the system resolve the results" instead of "Use the rules the manipulate the world the way you want to" the less system mastery is rewarded. And I tend to favor the former type, now that I know it exists.

Dungeon World definitely DEFINITELY involves system mastery as it contains non-random aspects and there is a possibility of losing. Although it might be less system mastery at this point you're quibbling between Vegas rules solitaire and standard rules solitaire. The only way that there could be zero system mastery present is if what you do has no effect on the game. Slots for example has zero system master involved. Even collaborative storytelling has system mastery, in that the person who can edge their way in, and come up with things that better fit the group will be regaled more and enjoyed. There is no way outside of total randomness to remove skill from the game.

NichG
2014-07-25, 06:34 PM
That sounds bizarre, as D&D doesn't have very many 'hard rules' for diplomacy, so it seems like it would be easy for the GM to invalidate. Of course "D&D" is actually a pretty meaningless term because it encompasses way too many rulesets.

I realize we don't really want the discussion to center around D&D, but this seems like a significant hole in your knowledge of D&D that may help explain why so many people coming from D&D are resisting these other roll-to-resolve types of systems. I'll explain this in detail for sake of clarity, not to argue that all social resolution systems are anywhere as bad as this one.

In D&D, the Diplomacy skill has flat, fixed DCs for achieving particular changes in behavioral state in an NPC, regardless of the details of the NPC. Convincing Baldric the Beggar to become fanatical to your cause is exactly the same difficulty as convincing Pelor or Ao to become fanatical to your cause (it can depend only on how they initially regard you). The behavioral states are defined with respect to what the NPC will or will not do, and so are relatively clear and can be exploited if a player doesn't overreach. For example, Helpful is defined as 'Will take risks to help you; protect, back up, heal, aid'. If you push that to try to get the king to give you a castle, the DM can shut it down saying 'it doesn't say that they'll give away their own possessions', but if you use it to get someone to stop attacking you then its pretty hard to argue that the DM is still actually using the rules of Diplomacy if the person doesn't actually stop attacking you.

Turning someone completely hostile and out for your blood into someone Helpful is DC 50. If you want to do it in a single action, its DC 60. Which can be achieved, via min-maxing, by a Lv3 or so character. The method to doing so is a lot more complex than just 'putting all your points in Diplomacy' as it requires exploiting synergies, classes that let you give bonuses to arbitrary skills, spells, magic items, etc. The result is that at Lv3 you can have a character who basically can walk into any place in the game universe and immediately be best buds with everyone there.

If you can push it further, you can create the Fanatical status, which is defined as 'Will give their life to serve you; fight to the death against overwhelming odds'. The number is a bit higher here if you want to go straight to Fanatical from Helpful in one round (DC 160), so it 'comes online' later. However, someone who is already Helpful, say from a previous check, is only DC 50 to raise to Fanatical.

So the Lv3 best-buds-with-everyone character can also make almost anyone willing to sacrifice their life in his cause. (Edit: Mind-affecting immunity does block Fanatical, but not Helpful, so you can't get Pelor to throw himself in front of a train for you, but its still very broad).

This is why people min-max social skills in D&D.

Airk
2014-07-25, 08:38 PM
D&D has luck rules, certain games have edge rules that allow you to shift after you've rolled. Generally this sort of thing tends to be wrapped up in luck or edge or hero point rules. So it's prevalent in the systems that has those rules.

That's not the same thing though; Even spending "luck" or "edge" or whatever only changes the outcome of the roll. You can't say "Okay, I'm going to try to climb the wall.' and then spend some points and end up sneaking past the guards instead. The Declare Intent > Roll (> Modify Roll)> Play out results is present in the vast majority of games; Apparently Legends of Wulin does it differently, but that's the only one I know of.



Not necessarily, maybe I like aspects of the system enough that having to change other aspects is worth it to me. To be fair I very rarely houserule things in any of the systems I use. But some people really enjoy that particular creative aspect.

If you are doing it as a creative outlet, that's one thing, but if you're really trying to FIX the game, you're playing the wrong game.



Knowing economic theory does help when playing monopoly, you can understand what risks are worth it and which risks are not.

I call BS; Let's get some economists in here. :P The thing about monopoly is that your decisions matter only a tiny bit compared to luck, so the "skill" involved is minimal at best and mostly draws on the 'playing monopoly' skill.


But their skills are relevant, you're just trading social skills for computational mathematics, or the ability to socialize for the ability to argue persistently enough, or be annoying enough that other people relent. There is no game that has no aspect of skill.

There are games in which the element of skill is functionally irrelevant.


And you can't become your character, some games have a deeper level of immersion and others have less. And you can't use one brush and claim to get all of them

Immersion, to me, doesn't really enter into it.



It's an example of how a certain style works, and is by far the most popular game, or was at one time, and is therefore worth discussing. But I'd say that there are as many examples of games that introduce complicated min-maxing at a level far more intense than D&D as there are freeform games.

That.... seems quite unlikely to me. Well, okay, it's actually super likely if you ACTUALLY MEAN "freeform games' but you probably don't.



So you want a game where I have no choices and cannot control any aspect of my character? That seems impossible, and with all due respect, I'd hate that. So basically you want a game where there is no player agency. The only way to avoid "better options" is to have no options at all.

YOU were the one that brought up original D&D and "roll 3d6 six times in order"; That's zero customization, and therefore, zero minmaxing. The only thing you get to choose about your character is their class, maybe their spells, and how to spend their starting cash, which basically boils down to "The best armor and weapon I can afford and some other random stuff". I think it's absurd to state that you have no agency in that game, however. Customization has NOTHING to do with agency. Players can still have agency in a one shot with pregens even though in that case there is LITERALLY zero customization. You are connecting two things that are not at all equivalent.



Furthermore, even in FATE systems where one has aspects, certain aspects will be more useful depending on personal social skills (the ability to effectively argue that something is in any given situation useful) and cleverness (the ability to grasp unorthodox usefulness for thing. System mastery isn't just character creation, it's the whole system.

And I wouldn't consider either of those system mastery, since, at the end of the day, they don't involve knowing the system.



True, but sucking at swimming is actually negligible, in 3.5 or Pathfinder at least. And it's a worthwhile tradeoff depending on your game, social skills could be more or less useful than swimming or jumping or even equally useful.

Really depends on the game and the GM, don't you think? If you spend a ton of time in the wilderness, your diplomacy skill is worth crap and your ability to climb might be extremely relevant.




Dungeon World definitely DEFINITELY involves system mastery as it contains non-random aspects and there is a possibility of losing. Although it might be less system mastery at this point you're quibbling between Vegas rules solitaire and standard rules solitaire. The only way that there could be zero system mastery present is if what you do has no effect on the game. Slots for example has zero system master involved. Even collaborative storytelling has system mastery, in that the person who can edge their way in, and come up with things that better fit the group will be regaled more and enjoyed. There is no way outside of total randomness to remove skill from the game.

That's not system mastery. Coming up with a clever way to solve a problem in the game fiction is NOT system mastery. It's just being clever. Anyone can be clever. Only people with past experience with a game can have system mastery.

Edit: Re D&D diplomacy - you're right, I remember reading about that and thinking it was the dumbest thing imaginable. Another reason to not play that game, I guess.

AMFV
2014-07-25, 09:06 PM
That's not the same thing though; Even spending "luck" or "edge" or whatever only changes the outcome of the roll. You can't say "Okay, I'm going to try to climb the wall.' and then spend some points and end up sneaking past the guards instead. The Declare Intent > Roll (> Modify Roll)> Play out results is present in the vast majority of games; Apparently Legends of Wulin does it differently, but that's the only one I know of.

Well normally the luck type things allow you to retract things that you'd have done. Like premonitions or whatnot.



If you are doing it as a creative outlet, that's one thing, but if you're really trying to FIX the game, you're playing the wrong game.

Maybe, or maybe not. Some people have fixer-upper cars, some people have fixer upper houses. But they don't want new ones, they love the old ones, and the fixing is part of the fun for them, that's part of why they love the things.



I call BS; Let's get some economists in here. :P The thing about monopoly is that your decisions matter only a tiny bit compared to luck, so the "skill" involved is minimal at best and mostly draws on the 'playing monopoly' skill.

Clearly, you've never played Monopoly with some of the same folks I have, I've had games of monopoly that included selling things back for percentages of rent, and such. Negotiations with alliances and such.



There are games in which the element of skill is functionally irrelevant.


Other than games that are entirely luck, no there aren't.



Immersion, to me, doesn't really enter into it.

But for other people it does.



That.... seems quite unlikely to me. Well, okay, it's actually super likely if you ACTUALLY MEAN "freeform games' but you probably don't.

I was speaking of true freeform, as in collaborative storytelling stuff.



YOU were the one that brought up original D&D and "roll 3d6 six times in order"; That's zero customization, and therefore, zero minmaxing. The only thing you get to choose about your character is their class, maybe their spells, and how to spend their starting cash, which basically boils down to "The best armor and weapon I can afford and some other random stuff". I think it's absurd to state that you have no agency in that game, however. Customization has NOTHING to do with agency. Players can still have agency in a one shot with pregens even though in that case there is LITERALLY zero customization. You are connecting two things that are not at all equivalent.

Race, Class, Nonweapon Proficiencies (if those are in effect), Weapon Proficiencies. Multi-Classing, Dual-Classing. That seems like an awful lot of customization. Furthermore you are STILL arguing that skill and systems mastery only applies to character creation and not playing the game.



And I wouldn't consider either of those system mastery, since, at the end of the day, they don't involve knowing the system.


It absolutely is system mastery, it involves learning the phrases that are most likely to convince others. The things that people are most likely to discuss or be convinced by, not all system mastery is knowing the game, sometimes it's knowing what works best in the game.



Really depends on the game and the GM, don't you think? If you spend a ton of time in the wilderness, your diplomacy skill is worth crap and your ability to climb might be extremely relevant.


Exactly as I said.



That's not system mastery. Coming up with a clever way to solve a problem in the game fiction is NOT system mastery. It's just being clever. Anyone can be clever. Only people with past experience with a game can have system mastery.

Edit: Re D&D diplomacy - you're right, I remember reading about that and thinking it was the dumbest thing imaginable. Another reason to not play that game, I guess.

Knowing that undead cause ability damage is system mastery. Knowing that dungeons are full of traps (when in the real world they aren't) is system mastery. Knowing that dragons are greedy is system mastery. Knowing how to be clever in a particular situation is system mastery.

Edit: Look you clearly are convinced that your preferences are the only acceptable ones, and that's fine. But you should know that there are people with other preferences, and those are also valid. Just because you can't understand why somebody else likes something or why it's fun for them doesn't mean it's not genuinely fun for them.

Segev
2014-07-25, 11:06 PM
Generally speaking, people play RPGs to try something they can't or wouldn't do in real life. If they could do it in real life, they probably WOULD.

Decrying system mastery as if it's some sort of exclusionary thing is a bit silly, since RPGs are usually rife with people more than happy to help you build for whatever you want your character to do. You need not have complete mastery, yourself, merely understand the game well enough to play with the tools others show you how to put together.

AMFV
2014-07-26, 12:25 AM
Generally speaking, people play RPGs to try something they can't or wouldn't do in real life. If they could do it in real life, they probably WOULD.


I'm not going to disagree that this is sometimes the case, but I don't know if I'd be willing to say that it's a general rule. For me roleplaying games aren't about exploring something I'm not, but looking into different aspects of what I am. I expect that you'll find a lot of people, who play the game as escapism as you posit here. But I doubt it is a clear enough majority to state that it is the general case.

Segev
2014-07-26, 01:10 AM
I admit I never understood the need to role-play to explore facets of myself. I can, again, do that in real life.

Sartharina
2014-07-26, 03:38 AM
I think that is the discussion, actually, but alright. If that's your stance, I agree wholeheartedly and concede.

Not all games with mechanics require system mastery. FATE, Ironclaw, Savage Worlds, and the newest edition of D&D come to mind (Until the munchkins/rudisplorkers break the latter) - Making the rules intuitive is all that's needed.

NichG
2014-07-26, 04:05 AM
You can take risks in RPGs that would be dangerous or foolish in real life. You can also do things which would be horrible to do in real life. That doesn't just mean getting into life or death combats, it can also mean particular forms of social interaction. Plotting a scheme that will get someone to lose their status and become destitute, thereby destroying their life, is a horrible thing to do in real life that can easily backfire as well. In a tabletop RPG, its an interesting thought exercise.

Amphetryon
2014-07-26, 06:36 AM
<snip> For me roleplaying games aren't about exploring something I'm not, but looking into different aspects of what I am. I expect that you'll find a lot of people, who play the game as escapism as you posit here. But I doubt it is a clear enough majority to state that it is the general case.

Does this mean that - should you play a thief-type character - folks should take it as an indication that you're considering committing a crime? Should those you play with be concerned that your interest in playing a necromancer-type might be because you've a particularly grisly hobby pertaining to the local morgue? Do you simply avoid any archetypes that don't mimic your real-world interests? Or, perhaps, do you actually play archetypes you wouldn't consider approaching from the real world?

AMFV
2014-07-26, 08:21 AM
Does this mean that - should you play a thief-type character - folks should take it as an indication that you're considering committing a crime? Should those you play with be concerned that your interest in playing a necromancer-type might be because you've a particularly grisly hobby pertaining to the local morgue? Do you simply avoid any archetypes that don't mimic your real-world interests? Or, perhaps, do you actually play archetypes you wouldn't consider approaching from the real world?

Not exactly. For example when I play a thief type character I look for the part of myself that would involve stealing, what would motivate me to steal, what would motivate me to raise the dead. What I would be if I were under different circumstances. I don't know if I would steal or raise the dead in real life, on is literally impossible, and one is unlikely, but exploring that side of me is why I play roleplaying games. Although it's worth noting that it is emotionally and morally exhausting when I play evil characters, since exploring your unpleasant side, can be not pleasant.

But no I don't play any archetype that I don't believe I might under the wrong circumstances or if I was brought up differently. I don't play any archetype I can't understand. So no I don't look for escapism in that way. If I play a necromancer, I'm not saying I'd like to imagine something that could never be. But I'm saying what if I got myself so miserable and so desperate that I would be willing to do that, what would make me that way.

I'm not sure if that's a good explanation. My personal motivations are complex, but I can say that I don't play archetypes I would never consider, it's not fun for me. And frankly I have nothing against people that do. In fact, when I'm teaching somebody to play usually the first the thing I ask them is if they'd rather play as somebody like them or somebody that's not, it helps to figure what they would enjoy most. From what I would say that's actually the most distinction in deciding what kind of character to play.

Does that help at all? I'm not sure if it was a coherent explanation or not.


Not all games with mechanics require system mastery. FATE, Ironclaw, Savage Worlds, and the newest edition of D&D come to mind (Until the munchkins/rudisplorkers break the latter) - Making the rules intuitive is all that's needed.

And D&D doesn't require it, but any game with mechanics HAS system mastery. Because if choices are meaningful then there must be worse and better choices, and being able to choose the good things is something people are good at figuring out and it is system mastery. And there's nothing wrong with having a system that requires skill, again the only way to have no skill in a game is to have no meaningful choices.


I admit I never understood the need to role-play to explore facets of myself. I can, again, do that in real life.

And to be fair I can't understand why people would be able to or want to play something completely different from themselves. I do understand that people enjoy it though, NichG did say it better than I probably could though:


You can take risks in RPGs that would be dangerous or foolish in real life. You can also do things which would be horrible to do in real life. That doesn't just mean getting into life or death combats, it can also mean particular forms of social interaction. Plotting a scheme that will get someone to lose their status and become destitute, thereby destroying their life, is a horrible thing to do in real life that can easily backfire as well. In a tabletop RPG, its an interesting thought exercise.

WarKitty
2014-07-28, 12:24 PM
As far as I am concerned, the best rule for social interactions in an RPG is that you are NOT ALLOWED to roleplay it until AFTER the dice are rolled.

Think about it. You don't describe any OTHER actions in the game beyond a statement of intent until you roll the dice. You never say "I leap forwards, past the useless intervention of his guards, hew through his shield and split him in half at the waist with my vorpal greatsword!" and THEN see if you roll a 20. You say "I'm going to try to cut him down with my vorpal greatsword." so that when you roll a 2, you don't wonder how to reconcile that with your awesome description.

So you say "I attempt to persuade His Lordship to give us the supplies we need, and imply that we know about his involvement with the red blades." and THEN you use whatever resolution mechanic the game gives you for resolving the situation to determine whether you roleplay giving a great speech or roleplay putting your foot in your mouth.

This. I'm playing with a crossbow shooter. Player rolls to hit and asks for the results, I tell them roll for cover and it fails. "The crossbow bolt thunks into the bush, never reaching its target." Later they hit the target and it falls down. "The crossbow bolt sinks into the kobold's neck, and he falls over bleeding."


I would love for more systems to involve rolling the dice first and deciding what you do with them after the fact. But the current paradigm for the vast majority of systems is "I say what I'm doing, then I roll the dice to see how it works." As a direct result, they favor one type of player - the guy who knows how to minmax his character sheet. You can invoke house rules and player preference to try to mitigate that, but it's still the way the system works. Your ability to do whatever-the-Hell in real life doesn't matter, as you state. And not everyone considers this something to be emulated.

Actually a lot of us do try to avoid that. We tell the person who's minmaxing to tone it down. We tell the new player you probably don't want to take toughness, maybe try improved initiative? Even in game we try to make things matter. So for example, the player who hasn't really played D&D before but has 18 intelligence gets prodded to make knowledge rolls where appropriate, or has a chokepoint pointed out to them.

I have to say one more thing - some diplomacy rules often make it easier on the DM when the players do something unexpected. They run off wanting a long interaction with random beggar 43 because he must know something about the thieve's guild. They decide that the priest who's just there to provide plots and do some healing is suspicious and trying to get them killed. It's helpful to have some quick and easy rules for how such things go.

the OOD
2014-07-31, 10:02 AM
One cookie for the first person who links to the Giant's "this old rule - diplomacy" article.
It does a great job of making persuasion/interaction feel responsive without adding unnecessary complexity.

the cookie is waiting. (::)

Segev
2014-07-31, 10:10 AM
And to be fair I can't understand why people would be able to or want to play something completely different from themselves. I do understand that people enjoy it though, NichG did say it better than I probably could though

It doesn't have to be completely different, but...well, NichG's explanation reveals a difference in how we look at it, too: I don't consider something I wouldn't do IRL because it's dangerous/immoral/unethical/unpleasant to be "exploring a facet of myself" when I do it in an RPG. The very reason I do it only in an RPG is that I would never do it, myself, IRL. That doesn't mean that everything a character I play does is antithetical or even alien to how I would do things, but the point of an RPG character, to me, is to be doing something primarily that I would or could not do IRL.

Hence, I don't consider it "exploring facets of myself," since what my characters do that are like what I would do is not exploration, while what they do that is not what I would do is not a facet of myself.


Anyway, I value good, deep mechanics for whatever the game is intended to model, because if I'm playing a game, I want to be able to play towards what it's modeling without having that be a talent of mine IRL. If I thought I could do it based on simple improv/acting talent, I'd probably write a story or just run it free-form/as an improv play with buddies. No need for a system, then.

kyoryu
2014-07-31, 02:33 PM
Well it depends, on how skills resolution is handled. Typically people are rewarded for being socially adept in almost all games. In the example of not giving real estate moguls bonus money in Monopoly we've ignored the fact that they'd be better at monopoly. The same as a military veteran could be better at W40K (Don't quote me on that I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if that's true or not.) But it is impossible to create a game that does not use real world skills to some degree.

Correct - or even more generalized, any game will reward certain skills that may be possessed by players. The question is *which* skills do you want to reward, and which do you want to not reward?

That's a very interesting and deep question, with *no right answer*. But the answer that's chosen for a specific game will have a huge impact on who the audience of the game ends up being.

Personally, I prefer games that minimize the "system mastery" type skills (particular in regards to character optimization) but reward skills related to engaging in the fictional world. That's me. Other people will *hate* that type of game, but love system mastery games.

Cronocke
2014-07-31, 03:04 PM
Correct - or even more generalized, any game will reward certain skills that may be possessed by players. The question is *which* skills do you want to reward, and which do you want to not reward?

That's a very interesting and deep question, with *no right answer*. But the answer that's chosen for a specific game will have a huge impact on who the audience of the game ends up being.

Personally, I prefer games that minimize the "system mastery" type skills (particular in regards to character optimization) but reward skills related to engaging in the fictional world. That's me. Other people will *hate* that type of game, but love system mastery games.

I want to game with more people like you. :smallsigh:

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-07-31, 03:06 PM
Correct - or even more generalized, any game will reward certain skills that may be possessed by players. The question is *which* skills do you want to reward, and which do you want to not reward?

That's a very interesting and deep question, with *no right answer*. But the answer that's chosen for a specific game will have a huge impact on who the audience of the game ends up being.

Personally, I prefer games that minimize the "system mastery" type skills (particular in regards to character optimization) but reward skills related to engaging in the fictional world. That's me. Other people will *hate* that type of game, but love system mastery games.
Well-put. It ultimately comes down to design decisions, which are a sort of art in themselves. When you make a game, you're saying quite a lot of things by the choices you make.

AMFV
2014-07-31, 08:47 PM
It doesn't have to be completely different, but...well, NichG's explanation reveals a difference in how we look at it, too: I don't consider something I wouldn't do IRL because it's dangerous/immoral/unethical/unpleasant to be "exploring a facet of myself" when I do it in an RPG. The very reason I do it only in an RPG is that I would never do it, myself, IRL. That doesn't mean that everything a character I play does is antithetical or even alien to how I would do things, but the point of an RPG character, to me, is to be doing something primarily that I would or could not do IRL.

Hence, I don't consider it "exploring facets of myself," since what my characters do that are like what I would do is not exploration, while what they do that is not what I would do is not a facet of myself.

And designers generally need to appeal to both groups. For me, the character is a representation of myself, and I think that's a very different way to look at it.


Correct - or even more generalized, any game will reward certain skills that may be possessed by players. The question is *which* skills do you want to reward, and which do you want to not reward?

That's a very interesting and deep question, with *no right answer*. But the answer that's chosen for a specific game will have a huge impact on who the audience of the game ends up being.

Personally, I prefer games that minimize the "system mastery" type skills (particular in regards to character optimization) but reward skills related to engaging in the fictional world. That's me. Other people will *hate* that type of game, but love system mastery games.

Well it's worth noting that rewarding system mastery skills and reward engagement aren't necessarily oppositional. I'm not sure if you mean "System Mastery" skills that's all encompassing, that's knowing which choices are mildly better than others, the only to remove it is randomness. Am I to understand that what you want to remove is mathy building decisions based on extensive rulebook study? Because that can be removed, but system mastery is very difficult to.

Amphetryon
2014-07-31, 08:50 PM
Personally, I prefer games that minimize the "system mastery" type skills (particular in regards to character optimization) but reward skills related to engaging in the fictional world. That's me. Other people will *hate* that type of game, but love system mastery games.

A game that rewards skills relating to engaging in the fictional world is rewarding mastery of its particular system, and other games like it.

Airk
2014-08-01, 09:50 AM
A game that rewards skills relating to engaging in the fictional world is rewarding mastery of its particular system, and other games like it.

I don't really agree with this; Even if it's "true" it's not a USEFUL true, because the knowledge/mastery involved in engaging with one fictional world may or may not map in any way to the knowledge involved in engaging in another. Knowing that trolls are susceptable to fire is "system mastery" in some fictional worlds, and false in others. Even in "games like" the first one.

I guess what I'm saying here is that, at some super high level "Being able to figure out how the fictional world works" is a skill, but it's not "system mastery", because it's not specific to any particular system. Using this as a definition of "system mastery" makes the term fundamentally useless.

Segev
2014-08-01, 11:14 AM
Ultimately, what I expect in a system built for a game which is meant to have a lot of social interaction - and to enable you to play characters with varying skills in different aspects of such interactions - is enough depth that my choices in how I build my character impact how he achieves his goals in-game. I'd also like it to be deep enough that I can try different social tactics. And most importantly, I'd like to know that I influenced the NPC or PC with my character's capabilities; I do not want it to be "Segev influenced NichG into agreeing that this NPC would be influenced."

There's a certain element of that, to be sure, but it should be on smaller things. My ability to give a speech should not directly translate to my PC's ability to do the same, any more than my ability to program in Matlab directly translates to my PC's ability to code a neural network.

Amphetryon
2014-08-01, 12:51 PM
I don't really agree with this; Even if it's "true" it's not a USEFUL true, because the knowledge/mastery involved in engaging with one fictional world may or may not map in any way to the knowledge involved in engaging in another. Knowing that trolls are susceptable to fire is "system mastery" in some fictional worlds, and false in others. Even in "games like" the first one.

I guess what I'm saying here is that, at some super high level "Being able to figure out how the fictional world works" is a skill, but it's not "system mastery", because it's not specific to any particular system. Using this as a definition of "system mastery" makes the term fundamentally useless.

The fictional world is part of the system, is it not? Ability to figure out how to use (at least) part of the system to your best advantage is system mastery, is it not? If the game the GM is running cares not a whit about social skills that are recorded on a player's character sheet, then that player's ability to actually portray accurately the social skills attempted in-character becomes a highly useful skill for that system. If the game the GM is running cares not a whit about how socially adept a given player is, and instead cares only about how much investiture the character has in the social skills as represented on that player's character sheet, then the ability to actually portray those social skills accurately doesn't matter, just as a LARPers ability to convincingly wield a sword, or make serviceable chainmail, doesn't matter in traditional TTRPGs.

AMFV
2014-08-01, 03:23 PM
There's a certain element of that, to be sure, but it should be on smaller things. My ability to give a speech should not directly translate to my PC's ability to do the same, any more than my ability to program in Matlab directly translates to my PC's ability to code a neural network.

But your ability to program into MatLab could help you optimize your character into the best character possible, and achieve the highest degree of success in coding a neural network.

Segev
2014-08-01, 05:19 PM
But your ability to program into MatLab could help you optimize your character into the best character possible, and achieve the highest degree of success in coding a neural network.

Possibly. And somebody else's ability to sweet/fast-talk the GM might convince him to have circumstnaces set up to best take advantage of their mechanical abilities.

Note that in neither case is the character's ability being bypassed by the player's; the player's is just helping him get the most out of the character's stats and powers.

My mechanical optimization skills enable me to ensure I have a character who is mechanically capable in the kind of thing I want him to be doing in the story of the game.
The silver-tongued player is able to get more narrative choices to go his way so that the things his character is built to handle come up often and in advantageous ways.

In both cases, the character's mechanics are ultimately important to actual success of the character.

AMFV
2014-08-01, 05:40 PM
Possibly. And somebody else's ability to sweet/fast-talk the GM might convince him to have circumstnaces set up to best take advantage of their mechanical abilities.

Note that in neither case is the character's ability being bypassed by the player's; the player's is just helping him get the most out of the character's stats and powers.

My mechanical optimization skills enable me to ensure I have a character who is mechanically capable in the kind of thing I want him to be doing in the story of the game.
The silver-tongued player is able to get more narrative choices to go his way so that the things his character is built to handle come up often and in advantageous ways.

In both cases, the character's mechanics are ultimately important to actual success of the character.

True, but the point I was trying to make is that different systems have different standards and different people have different preferences as to how that interaction should function.

Segev
2014-08-01, 05:48 PM
True, but the point I was trying to make is that different systems have different standards and different people have different preferences as to how that interaction should function.

I've no problem with that. I only object to "this game will focus on this aspect of your characters' activities, and as such the mechanics will be 'how well can you, the player, do these activities?'"

This can happen with supposedly-rules-light resolution systems as much as with genuine free-form. To me, a game system's mechanics should have significant depth (which doesn't necessarily imply a lack of simplicity, nor does complexity necessarily imply depth) in the areas where the majority of player character activities are to take place.

AMFV
2014-08-01, 05:55 PM
I've no problem with that. I only object to "this game will focus on this aspect of your characters' activities, and as such the mechanics will be 'how well can you, the player, do these activities?'"

This can happen with supposedly-rules-light resolution systems as much as with genuine free-form. To me, a game system's mechanics should have significant depth (which doesn't necessarily imply a lack of simplicity, nor does complexity necessarily imply depth) in the areas where the majority of player character activities are to take place.

I personally like involved rules systems, although I suspect that's because learning systems is fun for me, I suspect that it's fun for you as well. In fact that's something I tend to really enjoy in roleplaying games, but I understand that some people don't like that, and for some people it's really irrelevant.

Segev
2014-08-01, 06:53 PM
I personally like involved rules systems, although I suspect that's because learning systems is fun for me, I suspect that it's fun for you as well. In fact that's something I tend to really enjoy in roleplaying games, but I understand that some people don't like that, and for some people it's really irrelevant.

Agreed. Though I would not hold up rules-lite systems as examples of specifically doing any particular aspect of a game well, unless those simple rules had surprising depth when applied to those situations.

Knaight
2014-08-01, 09:20 PM
The fictional world is part of the system, is it not? Ability to figure out how to use (at least) part of the system to your best advantage is system mastery, is it not? If the game the GM is running cares not a whit about social skills that are recorded on a player's character sheet, then that player's ability to actually portray accurately the social skills attempted in-character becomes a highly useful skill for that system. If the game the GM is running cares not a whit about how socially adept a given player is, and instead cares only about how much investiture the character has in the social skills as represented on that player's character sheet, then the ability to actually portray those social skills accurately doesn't matter, just as a LARPers ability to convincingly wield a sword, or make serviceable chainmail, doesn't matter in traditional TTRPGs.

The fictional world isn't necessarily part of the system. Moreover, even if it did, there's a fundamentally different set of skills involved in interacting with a setting at a narrative level than with interacting with the math of the mechanics (usually largely in character creation at that). Folding them both under system mastery dilutes the term. Keeping system mastery to the latter scenario keeps it useful.

Amphetryon
2014-08-01, 10:00 PM
The fictional world isn't necessarily part of the system. Moreover, even if it did, there's a fundamentally different set of skills involved in interacting with a setting at a narrative level than with interacting with the math of the mechanics (usually largely in character creation at that). Folding them both under system mastery dilutes the term. Keeping system mastery to the latter scenario keeps it useful.
Is it your contention that the 'fundamentally different set of skills' are not useful in approaching the game successfully? Because, if they are, then they are most definitely an aspect of system mastery, or you're defining both words via such non-standard method that I'll have to ask what you think those terms actually mean.

Knaight
2014-08-01, 10:44 PM
Is it your contention that the 'fundamentally different set of skills' are not useful in approaching the game successfully? Because, if they are, then they are most definitely an aspect of system mastery, or you're defining both words via such non-standard method that I'll have to ask what you think those terms actually mean.

I'm not saying that they aren't useful in approaching the game successfully. I'm saying that they are useful in approaching the setting aspect of the game and not the system aspect of the game.

NichG
2014-08-02, 02:59 AM
Possibly. And somebody else's ability to sweet/fast-talk the GM might convince him to have circumstnaces set up to best take advantage of their mechanical abilities.

Note that in neither case is the character's ability being bypassed by the player's; the player's is just helping him get the most out of the character's stats and powers.

My mechanical optimization skills enable me to ensure I have a character who is mechanically capable in the kind of thing I want him to be doing in the story of the game.
The silver-tongued player is able to get more narrative choices to go his way so that the things his character is built to handle come up often and in advantageous ways.

In both cases, the character's mechanics are ultimately important to actual success of the character.

Out of curiosity, what would be your read of the following situation - completely unrelated to social skills, but related to the way you're breaking down player and character ability.

There is an RPG which centers - for whatever reason - around chess. Chess comprises the major conflicts of the game, and players must play chess with the DM in order to determine the outcome of those conflicts. However, players can make characters with various chess-related special abilities, fed by the minutes left on the game clock. For example: "Mind Reading - spend 1 minute to ask the DM what his response to a given move would be (he must answer truthfully)", "Clever Distraction - spend 1 minute to decrease the DM's game clock by 4 minutes", "Battle of Wills - Choose one of the DM's pieces other than the King, and he chooses one of your pieces. For the next two moves, neither of you can move those pieces", "Blinding Brilliance - when an NPC challenges you, spend 15 minutes; the DM must play blind chess; you however can see the board normally" etc.

The resolution is driven by the chess game and player ability rather than the character's mechanics, but the character mechanics are certainly 'ultimately important to the actual success of the character' (forcing the DM to play blind chess, for example, is likely to win you the match even if the DM is much better than you at chess). So where does something like that fall on your hierarchy of systems (putting aside that it'd be a very tedious and somewhat ridiculous RPG to play).

Cronocke
2014-08-02, 04:29 AM
There is an RPG which centers - for whatever reason - around chess. [snip]

That's a very interesting game you've described there. What do you call a game like that?

*jazz hands* "The Aristocrats!"

Amphetryon
2014-08-02, 05:40 AM
I'm not saying that they aren't useful in approaching the game successfully. I'm saying that they are useful in approaching the setting aspect of the game and not the system aspect of the game.

Please provide an example of a game with setting and narrative that is entirely divorced from the from the system. This would mean that none of the encounters within the game, social or otherwise, interact at all with the setting or narrative, by the way.

NichG
2014-08-02, 09:13 AM
Please provide an example of a game with setting and narrative that is entirely divorced from the from the system. This would mean that none of the encounters within the game, social or otherwise, interact at all with the setting or narrative, by the way.

That condition is more stringent than anything he's claiming depends on. To say that the game can be meaningfully separated into distinct aspects doesn't require that the game have no interaction between those aspects, just that the separation into aspects introduces some clarity into understanding player performance. A given classifier isn't necessarily going to work on 100% of the data, but if it covers more data than the alternatives then it can still be a useful tool towards understanding.

Ravian
2014-08-02, 09:16 AM
I generally prefer to have roleplaying commence beforehand with choice of words acting as a bonus or penalty to the eventual diplomacy check that follows. To me the check conveys more how the player says it than what he says. The reason I dislike having the dice occur beforehand is that I've seen a nasty habit of players rolling natural 20's and then making a ludicrous list of demands from the NPCs, with the reasoning that a critical success would mean they've retroactively convinced them of this. Similarly a dice roll beforehand discourages roleplaying itself in my experience, if the characters negotiate I want to hear talking, not just "I rolled for a total of 30, is that enough to convince them?"

A bonus or a penalty gives people reasons not only to utilize charismatic characters (since success is still determined by modifiers) but also to role-play themselves (to get the highest bonus possible). Also I on occasion will scrap the actual roll results (unless they are particularly high or low) if they manage to use just the right or wrong words in negotiating with an NPC.

Amphetryon
2014-08-02, 10:49 AM
That condition is more stringent than anything he's claiming depends on. To say that the game can be meaningfully separated into distinct aspects doesn't require that the game have no interaction between those aspects, just that the separation into aspects introduces some clarity into understanding player performance. A given classifier isn't necessarily going to work on 100% of the data, but if it covers more data than the alternatives then it can still be a useful tool towards understanding.

So in other words, the skills in question are useful for mastering at least part of any given game's system.

Knaight
2014-08-02, 01:32 PM
So in other words, the skills in question are useful for mastering at least part of any given game's system.

Understanding probability in general is useful for mastering part of a games system, does that mean that we're calling mathematical knowledge system mastery now? If the interacting with the system part is some tangential application of a skill, calling it system mastery is disingenuous. Moreover, the term "system mastery" arose in optimization discussions of particularly rules heavy games. It's a distinct term in RPG jargon, and it gets diluted if it starts being applied willy-nilly to things like the set of skills for interacting at a narrative level in a fictional world, even if that does provide character experience or something.

Basically, it's practically a compound word at this point. Arguing that anything that involves mastering part of a system is system mastery is like arguing that this (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W_nFl__cXC4/TdbO0flCdSI/AAAAAAAABlQ/1YxAxnM155E/s640/UpsideDownCakeFryingPan.JPG) is a pancake.

Airk
2014-08-02, 03:35 PM
So in other words, the skills in question are useful for mastering at least part of any given game's system.

You ability to oversimplify things so they support your cause is impressive.

The ability to persuade the GM, which people are going on and on about here, is not mastering the system at all.

The ability to figure out that you can drop a chandelier on the bad guy is not "mastering the system" unless the system contains special abilities that give you bonuses when dropping chandeliers.

Doing things that make sense the fiction is not system mastery - because the fiction is constantly in flux. If I realize that the opponent is standing with his back to a passageway and sneak around to attack him from said passageway, I am not utilizing system mastery. System mastery would be "Is it dark? No? But it's dim? Okay, I get +1 die, but I'm a grey elf, and they get bonuses in twilight. Dim is like twilight, right? So +1 more die. Then I take off my shoes. That's +1 die. And my character has "Silent feet" which gives him +2 dice to sneak whenever he's inside. Of course, I am wearing grey, so that's +1 die. And then I will use a smoke bomb for +2 dice! Even though it makes no sense that a smoke bomb would work in these circumstances, the rules say they give +2 dice to stealth!"

To define system mastery as "anything you do in the game" is basically to redefine it to a useless definition that suits only your argument.

AMFV
2014-08-02, 07:03 PM
You ability to oversimplify things so they support your cause is impressive.

The ability to persuade the GM, which people are going on and on about here, is not mastering the system at all.

The ability to figure out that you can drop a chandelier on the bad guy is not "mastering the system" unless the system contains special abilities that give you bonuses when dropping chandeliers.

Doing things that make sense the fiction is not system mastery - because the fiction is constantly in flux. If I realize that the opponent is standing with his back to a passageway and sneak around to attack him from said passageway, I am not utilizing system mastery. System mastery would be "Is it dark? No? But it's dim? Okay, I get +1 die, but I'm a grey elf, and they get bonuses in twilight. Dim is like twilight, right? So +1 more die. Then I take off my shoes. That's +1 die. And my character has "Silent feet" which gives him +2 dice to sneak whenever he's inside. Of course, I am wearing grey, so that's +1 die. And then I will use a smoke bomb for +2 dice! Even though it makes no sense that a smoke bomb would work in these circumstances, the rules say they give +2 dice to stealth!"

To define system mastery as "anything you do in the game" is basically to redefine it to a useless definition that suits only your argument.

The problem is that "system mastery" is not a well-defined term and is pretty open to a wide range of interpretations.

For example your previous example could be written as "I'm a grey Elf, my people are known for stalking their enemies in dim light, I've removed my shoes, so that he won't hear my foot falls, I've trained to walk softly in buildings like the rickity house I grew up in, I'm wearing dark colors. Lastly as I sneak in I will pop and release a smoke bomb so as to release a small amount of smoke, obscuring his vision enough that he won't realize what it is till it's too late".

Mechanics are not replacement for the narrative, they're ways to construct and improve the narrative. And a good narrative will be able to account for almost any ludicrous mechanics, although I may be biased as I read comics and am used to ludicrous things.

I agree that Amphetron's definition is pretty much useless, but he does bring up a good point, it is very nearly impossible to determine where the mechanics end and the plot begins, since the mechanics are only there to support the plot, and the two are interrelated. I've never seen a good demonstration that could completely separate the two, to where mechanics existed completely in a vacuum, or narrative exists completely in a vacuum. The only thing I can think of where there would be no resolution mechanic is single player freeform (and that's even arguable since you have your own since of verisimilitude). The second you have two players the relationship between them, even without rules, becomes a resolution system. And that is fundamentally a system, so then it could theoretically be mastered.

I think however what people are looking for is a system where mechanical mastery of the system is not rewarded. For example we could say "Rules Mastery" since I suspect that comes closer, although it doesn't strictly explain the concept. Or we could talk about the difference between soft system (things like discussion, narrative, plot, and character), which are soft and negotiable (ergo: they may be ruled differently by different people) and hard system (which are solid rules that are always ruled the same way), which would include things like bonuses, wrote tactics and actions, and would provide for a more evenhanded if sometimes less reasonable (to some people) interpretation. So I imagine what you are saying is that you prefer games with "Soft System Mastery" over games with "Hard System Mastery"

Segev
2014-08-03, 10:33 PM
Out of curiosity, what would be your read of the following situation - completely unrelated to social skills, but related to the way you're breaking down player and character ability.

There is an RPG which centers - for whatever reason - around chess. Chess comprises the major conflicts of the game, and players must play chess with the DM in order to determine the outcome of those conflicts. However, players can make characters with various chess-related special abilities, fed by the minutes left on the game clock. For example: "Mind Reading - spend 1 minute to ask the DM what his response to a given move would be (he must answer truthfully)", "Clever Distraction - spend 1 minute to decrease the DM's game clock by 4 minutes", "Battle of Wills - Choose one of the DM's pieces other than the King, and he chooses one of your pieces. For the next two moves, neither of you can move those pieces", "Blinding Brilliance - when an NPC challenges you, spend 15 minutes; the DM must play blind chess; you however can see the board normally" etc.

The resolution is driven by the chess game and player ability rather than the character's mechanics, but the character mechanics are certainly 'ultimately important to the actual success of the character' (forcing the DM to play blind chess, for example, is likely to win you the match even if the DM is much better than you at chess). So where does something like that fall on your hierarchy of systems (putting aside that it'd be a very tedious and somewhat ridiculous RPG to play).

It would really depend. It certainly seems thematic, but I question the ability to design the game such that resolution of non-chess events is adequately achieved in such a system. Because of that, unless I was surprised by the facility of this system in anything other than its area of focus, I start to question whether it's really an RPG so much as a weird game of chess.

I assume, for example, that, as an RPG, you make PCs, and that they role play through events larger than a single or even a series of IC chess games. Chess obviously is a major focus, much as the game of Go was in Hikaru no Go (a manga about the game in question). So let's pretend for a moment that there's a chess-equivalent setting. This isn't unreasonable; chess tournaments exist, and if plotlines can be created around children's card games taken way too seriously in-setting, the same could be done with chess.

However, there is presumably something other than the chess games which require resolution. So "playing chess" would need to be used far more deeply to create resolution structures.

I would say that the primary issue with this is that it makes one's ability with chess actually how well one can do ANYTHING in the game.

So, insofar as the game proposed would achieve allowing non-chess players to participate, no, I think it's a failure. If its audience is people already good at chess who want to use the chess-based resolution system to be good at other aspects of intrigue and plot-driven storylines surrounding the chess games which crop up frequently, perhaps having the results of the IC chess games being far more important IC than they generally would be IRL, it would be an interesting game.

Done particularly well, it might have a simple enough resolution system that your strategy with chess moves is less important than your choice of what resources to expend on setting up or exploiting your board with the GM for certain events. The more it made direct skill with the full game of chess less important, the better it would do as an RPG which utilized chess as a resolution mechanic.

But if you actually had to play chess with the DM to resolve chess games, and the only nod to your character playing at a different skill level than would you is how many "cheats" your character gets, it would ultimately fail because it relies too heavily on how good you are to begin with. If your DM is not as good as you, for example, your cheats make you enormously overpowered. If he's significantly better than you, they might not even keep you up with where your character is supposed to be.

The concept is interesting, but you don't ever want the resolution of a game-centric skill to rely directly on the skill of the player in that area. Indirectly is okay, but the final resolution mechanic needs to have more to do with the character's abilities than the player's. Which means success/failure needs to be determined by how good the character is supposed to be, not by how good the player is.

NichG
2014-08-04, 04:20 AM
It would really depend. It certainly seems thematic, but I question the ability to design the game such that resolution of non-chess events is adequately achieved in such a system. Because of that, unless I was surprised by the facility of this system in anything other than its area of focus, I start to question whether it's really an RPG so much as a weird game of chess.

This is primarily a semantic distinction that I think is best to put aside, because converging on a definition of RPG is not really related to the game design issues, which are IMO much more interesting than the debate on semantics. In other words, if you just want us to use the terminology 'game' for this instead of 'RPG', I'm fine with that if it enables us to move on.


I would say that the primary issue with this is that it makes one's ability with chess actually how well one can do ANYTHING in the game.

So, insofar as the game proposed would achieve allowing non-chess players to participate, no, I think it's a failure. If its audience is people already good at chess who want to use the chess-based resolution system to be good at other aspects of intrigue and plot-driven storylines surrounding the chess games which crop up frequently, perhaps having the results of the IC chess games being far more important IC than they generally would be IRL, it would be an interesting game.

Yes, I think there is a bit of a necessary presumption here that the people who are playing this game are doing so because they're interested at least partially in playing chess. Essentially, the 'intended audience' is people who are willing and desirous of engaging with the game's primary resolution mechanic (which, in this particular case, happens to be chess).

Maybe I should spin it out a little bit to clarify certain distinctions. Lets split this into Game A, which is the Hikaru no Go-alike except with chess, and Game B. For Game B, lets say for the sake of argument that actual chess is only tangentially relevant to what's going on in game (this game gets weirder and weirder when you do this, but for the sake of argument). The conceit is now that the characters are 'playing chess with fate' in order to bias the outcomes of major decision points in their lives - similar to the semi-modern mythology of playing chess with Death for your life.

Thus, player performance at Game A is related to the in-game fluff (characters playing chess), but player performance at Game B is nearly completely arbitrary and unrelated to the in-game fluff, it just so happens that 'chess' is the game's equivalent of a d20.


But if you actually had to play chess with the DM to resolve chess games, and the only nod to your character playing at a different skill level than would you is how many "cheats" your character gets, it would ultimately fail because it relies too heavily on how good you are to begin with. If your DM is not as good as you, for example, your cheats make you enormously overpowered. If he's significantly better than you, they might not even keep you up with where your character is supposed to be.

Yes, the game works substantially better when the DM is better than all the players (though, I often feel this is equally true of D&D). If that is not the case, in chess (and Go) there is the concept of player rankings and handicaps which could be used to adjust the scenario for skill differences. The character abilities themselves can also achieve this, to some degree.



The concept is interesting, but you don't ever want the resolution of a game-centric skill to rely directly on the skill of the player in that area. Indirectly is okay, but the final resolution mechanic needs to have more to do with the character's abilities than the player's. Which means success/failure needs to be determined by how good the character is supposed to be, not by how good the player is.

This is the central point of difference I think, but maybe it can be sharpened down by comparing the cases of Game A and Game B that I mentioned above. The only difference between the two is that Game A is about chess - both internally and externally - whereas Game B is not actually about chess but uses it as a weird resolution mechanic. I would argue personally that Game A is the better game because it is less incoherent, despite the choice of making the actual game about chess being something which more directly implies an equivalency between the player and their character's ability (which, in your particular standard, is strictly negative).

D&D is largely a case of 'Game B' - the induced player skill is the comprehension and understanding of the interactions between passages in a large body of rules text, but the game is not really about that in character. The 'Game A' equivalent of D&D would be if all the characters in D&D were literally reality-warping lawyers who, in-character, read the great books of the cosmos and looked for loopholes, interactions, and the like in order to gain and apply power. Would that actually be a worse game?

I'd say I'm on the fence about it for myself - there's enough facepalmingly ridiculous stuff in D&D that adding the direct connection would explain away many of the incoherencies and allow the events of the game to seem much more logical (if very meta). The fact that the true character ability (reading rule-books and exploiting loopholes) and the out-of-character ability (reading rule-books and exploiting loopholes) align doesn't change much for me, any more than I'm bothered by having to be able to aim when playing an archer in Skyrim or things like that.

Jay R
2014-08-04, 03:13 PM
Please provide an example of a game with setting and narrative that is entirely divorced from the from the system.

The rules of GURPS are divorced from the setting. You can learn the rules first, and then apply them to any setting.

By contrast, Bushido is a set of rules for feudal Japan. To play it well involves gaining some knowledge of the code of Bushido.

Flashing Blades is a set of rules for 17th century France as portrayed in movies and novels. Knowing Dumas and Errol Flynn is a positive help to understanding what the game rules mean. I've had good players make mistakes because they simply don't get that commoners don't talk back to the Cardinal.

TOON is a game of cartoon characters. A serious role-player has to re-learn how to role-play.

The rules of Call of Cthulhu are specifically worked around the sort of world that contains the Elder Gods.

Using Flashing Blades rules in Feudal Japan would lead to a very awkward, surreal game. Playing a Cthulhu game under TOON rules would lead to utter chaos.


This would mean that none of the encounters within the game, social or otherwise, interact at all with the setting or narrative, by the way.

No it doesn't. This is clearly not what anyone meant.

Segev
2014-08-04, 03:21 PM
The main reason I think Game A is not the best idea is that the idea behind an RPG which a specific focus on particular kinds of tales (e.g. Hikaru no Chess, the game about characters who want to be chess grandmasters) is to allow players to try to play characters who are talented to varying degrees within the area of the game's focus.

Let me go full on into Hikaru no Go, here.

Hikaru no Go is a manga (and an anime based on the manga) wherein the central characters live and breathe the world of semi-professional and professional Go. The reader doesn't need to know particularly much about the game, and will get at least the very basics explained as he reads. But the reader only gets "genius bonus" out of it if he knows particularly much about it. People of low skill in Go (or even no skill) can read the manga or watch the anime and enjoy watching these (at least supposedly) high-skill players facing off against each other, and get immersed in the story about this game and the world surrounding it.

If somebody came out with "Hikaru no Go, the RPG," it would presumably be seeking to allow those readers to enter this setting and play characters who participate in various ways in the world surrounding professional Go.

Not all such players are going to be avid Go-players, themselves. Many may have no more than a highly rudimentary understanding of the game. Still, these players likely wish to play characters who have levels of skill that place them within the competitive range of professional Go, at the very least. Perhaps some are better at multiple games, others are good at "teaching-go," and still others are known for specific play styles, but they all want to be "good at Go" in some way that makes their character relevant to the central aspect of the game. (This is why it's generally expected that all characters in D&D have combat capability, incidentally; combat IS going to happen and is often considered the central focus of the game.)

The Hikaru no Go: the RPG system needs, therefore, to have resolution mechanics that abstract away a lot of the importance of how well (and with what style!) the players understand and play Go, the game, itself. If it can use Go motifs in its resolution, that's great, but it needs to not rely on direct Go-playing skill, because the more it does, the less it allows for the best Go-player at the table to play something that might be other than the best Go-player in the setting, and the less it allows for the beginners to even try to play Go-playing prodigies.

kyoryu
2014-08-04, 03:50 PM
The Hikaru no Go: the RPG system needs, therefore, to have resolution mechanics that abstract away a lot of the importance of how well (and with what style!) the players understand and play Go, the game, itself. If it can use Go motifs in its resolution, that's great, but it needs to not rely on direct Go-playing skill, because the more it does, the less it allows for the best Go-player at the table to play something that might be other than the best Go-player in the setting, and the less it allows for the beginners to even try to play Go-playing prodigies.

"Needs" is a strong word, and implies a certain level of objectivity.

Why should the ability to master the systems of an arbitrary RPG be more important than actual Go-playing skill in determining the outcome of a Go match in the RPG?

For that matter, why wouldn't Go be a reasonable resolution mechanic? Why is it inherently better for someone good at "RPGs" to be able to play a Go master regardless of actual Go skill, but bad for a Go master to do the same because they're bad at "RPGs"?

A lot of this, realistically, boils down to intended audience. If the goal of the game is to appeal to non-Go-playing people, then requiring Go skills is obviously a bad idea. And, presuming that you're not a Go expert, it would seem likely that you'd prefer the non-Go-skill version of the game (for the record, so would I).

But there's a far cry between that and making a blanket statement about what the game *needs*. If the game was partially intended for people learning Go, as a way to encourage learning the game better, requiring actual Go skill would be a *positive* thing.

Or, to put it simply: Your preferences are not objective criteria.

NichG
2014-08-04, 06:59 PM
To put the above point in another way, it seems that the disconnect is in what the implied purpose of the game is to you, versus to others here. Specifically, you're focusing on the part of the game that tries to model differing levels of skill between player and character at some set of tasks. However, if the purpose of a given game is not that, then there's a disconnect when that is assumed to be the game designer's purpose (but when in reality, it wasn't actually a design parameter at all, or not in the same way).

E.g. one can say that D&D is an engine for modelling how good different heroes are at the tasks of battle. One can also say that D&D is a framework that provides concrete anomalous abilities to integrate the supernatural in storytelling in a constrained way (e.g. the core is the list of spells, class abilities, etc which define specific 'supernatural things people can do' as types of 'moves' that can be used to play the game). One can also say that D&D is a battlegaming system, much like chess, but much more complex and which allows players to add a degree of customization to their move-list. The game has likely been shaped by designers who sought different things out of it, given its long history, so its hard to say that D&D's purpose is any single one thing. Add to that, at each table, the DM and their house-rules may be bending it to a distinct purpose as well.

Segev
2014-08-05, 10:56 AM
I actually don't disagree with the post responding to my last one. I was running on an assumption that the audience being targeted was "non-Go-enthusiasts," or at least included such a vast number of non-Go-enthusiasts that making it revolve around Go-playing ability would be a bad idea.


However, I will venture to say that, if the goal is to play characters who are at different levels of skill at Go than the players, having Go-based mechanics may still be a bad idea. There's a reason dice are the most common form of final determining mechanism in RPGs: the goal of the game is to allow for modeling skills the players do not have with something objective, and not directly dependent on the skill of the players at...well, anything other than the game itself.

"The game itself" being an acknowledgement that, yes, building your character to do exactly what you want as well as you want him to is its own skill.

To put it in perspective, I could create a game system whose resolution is simply achieved by arm wrestling. The player arm wrestles the GM and whoever wins the arm wrestling match wins the contested event (whether against an NPC or a flat DC).

This would tend to make the strongest player simply always have the best character at doing anything, but it's possible.

kyoryu
2014-08-05, 11:19 AM
However, I will venture to say that, if the goal is to play characters who are at different levels of skill at Go than the players, having Go-based mechanics may still be a bad idea.

Clearly. In such a system, the abilities of the character and the abilities of the player would generally align Sure, you could have things in there to handicap players, but there'd still be that alignment.

That's kind of my point, really. When designing a game you need to figure out what skills you want to be important to the game. And there's really no right answer, it's just a matter of what effect you're trying to have, and what you're trying to control for.

And, surprise surprise, most people argue vehemently that the things they're good at *should* matter, and the things that they're not good at *shouldn't* matter.

And that takes us back to social aspects of games. You can mechanize them, or not. Either way works. Some people will argue for non-mechanized versions, either because they're good at social negotiation or enjoy that type of play, and some people will argue for mechanizing them, either because they're good at game mechanics stuff or just enjoy the feel.

There's no right, no wrong. It's just a matter of what audience you're trying to reach, what experience you're trying to give, and what skills you're trying to control for.

Dimers
2014-08-05, 12:25 PM
And, surprise surprise, most people argue vehemently that the things they're good at *should* matter, and the things that they're not good at *shouldn't* matter.

I can't say I agree. I want uncreative, non-smart players to be able to use high-intelligence characters who come up with ideas constantly. I want fools to be able to play sages; I want grating people to be allowed characters with grace. I'm pretty adept at getting an idea across in writing, but even when I PbP, I prefer to have and use social mechanics instead of basing results on *my* word choice.

I mean, all of us here have enough social skill to make these points to each other (within the forum's restrictions, yet!), and half of us are arguing that our social skill shouldn't make any or much difference in a game.

kyoryu
2014-08-05, 12:36 PM
I can't say I agree. I want uncreative, non-smart players to be able to use high-intelligence characters who come up with ideas constantly. I want fools to be able to play sages; I want grating people to be allowed characters with grace. I'm pretty adept at getting an idea across in writing, but even when I PbP, I prefer to have and use social mechanics instead of basing results on *my* word choice.

I mean, all of us here have enough social skill to make these points to each other (within the forum's restrictions, yet!), and half of us are arguing that our social skill shouldn't make any or much difference in a game.

Most != all

And *very few* people will argue for a skill they don't have (or are very weak in) to be dominant. In the case of social skills vs. game skills, you're essentially choosing between two skills that you have, which isn't *quite* the same thing.

NichG
2014-08-05, 05:25 PM
I actually don't disagree with the post responding to my last one. I was running on an assumption that the audience being targeted was "non-Go-enthusiasts," or at least included such a vast number of non-Go-enthusiasts that making it revolve around Go-playing ability would be a bad idea.

However, I will venture to say that, if the goal is to play characters who are at different levels of skill at Go than the players, having Go-based mechanics may still be a bad idea. There's a reason dice are the most common form of final determining mechanism in RPGs: the goal of the game is to allow for modeling skills the players do not have with something objective, and not directly dependent on the skill of the players at...well, anything other than the game itself.

This is sort of what I've been trying to deconstruct in my own approaches to game design, for reasons that go beyond this particular discussion.

Basically, there's been a shift from games in which the primary 'gaming' is done at the table to games in which the primary 'gaming' is done away from the table. In D&D, the character-building minigame has become increasingly important compared to the actual decision of what the character does in-game in determining success, and part of the reason for that is a focus on binary, dice-based resolution coupled to strong driving forces from the character sheet. There's a number of design motifs that basically exacerbate this problem by abstracting out details which are hard to compute, leaving the determination of the game outcome more and more in the hands of 'who has the higher modifier'. I generally don't like this direction because it makes it harder to actually make the time spent at the table engaging, to create tension, etc. It also encourages some very extreme behaviors (like players having a 'build' ready before they even know the details of the campaign, which then creates conflict when that build doesn't mesh well with the fluff of the campaign, constraints/house-rules set by the DM, etc)

At the same time, I want the character building minigame to remain important because it is a part of the game that many people enjoy deeply. So the question becomes, how does one preserve the importance of character-construction while at the same time forbidding it from determining success in a player-independent way? Well, the way to do it seems to be the way it was done in things like fighting games - you give the player a large number of distinct sub-mechanics to choose from which each involve a different style of problem-solving in employing them efficiently. You make sure (this is the hard part) that each one is, when wielded by a master of using it, able to be the equal of each of the others. So the character-building minigame centers around the player constructing an ability set that optimally matches their own mental abilities and predilections for when it comes time to make use of them in-game, and the in-game challenges center around deploying and chaining those abilities in varying situations.

However, this means moving away from the design philosophy of 'aggregate modifiers and compare numbers with random variance', because once you do that then you drastically compress the tactical space you have access to. In general, anything that directly influences resolution will have this problem - compare influences, and one will almost always be 'better' than another, either immediately or statistically averaged over situations that you are likely to encounter (this is why e.g. Favored Enemy Humanoid in D&D is better than Favored Enemy Abberation). Instead, character design decisions need to center around 'incomparables' which have only an indirect effect on resolution.

This means that resolution itself will depend on a skill other than character-building, and picking that skill is an important design decision in determining the feel of the game. In general, I think its best to target things which feel inherently rich/complex already even before you merge them into the game world (this is why e.g. spatial reasoning ends up contributing to the richness of map-based combat). Its also good to target things that aren't so specific that only a small subset of the population is likely to have the skill (so this would be a mark against the Go-based resolution mechanic - you can do it, but you really need to have the exact right set of players for it). There's a certain set of very deeply ingrained abilities that everyone has to variable extent, and they map onto various types of games that have been invented: reflexes, hand-eye coordination, spatial reasoning, logical reasoning, emotional reasoning, pattern recognition, memory, timing, long-term planning, imagination, prediction, collaboration/teamwork, and socialization. There are probably others I've missed, and some of these are strongly related to each other. Not everyone will be equally competent in all of these things, but in general everyone will have encountered situations in their life that have called for each of those skills (whereas most people would never have picked up a Go stone).

So in that sense, they're all skills that in general permit you to have a wide audience, even if they each will exclude a subset of people who don't like exercising that skill (e.g. I'm not one for twitch gaming, so I'll bow out of a game that makes heavy use of it; someone else may want to bow out of games that involve heavy degrees of socialization; someone else may not like games that involve a lot of math)

However, since these are 'universal human abilities' of a sort, it means that the character will have them too. That's unavoidable, and it leaves you with one of two directions. The first choice is, explicitly separate the player's involvement in the game as much as possible, so that the player is effectively playing a different game than the character is encountering, so that both parties can fully engage their representative skills in the level of the game's reality they're interacting with. This is sort of the 'the player plays chess with Fate to determine what happens to the character' model. Personally, I don't care for it that much, because it really prevents deep engagement with the character's scenario. The player is making decisions at a distance, and this tends to manifest in terms of a lack of connection with the character or what's going on in the game-world. Aside from just being a more distant experience, this can also expose and amplify sociopathic behaviors due to the lack of an emotional feedback associated with choices the player makes about the character (e.g. murder-hoboism).

The second choice is to pick one or a handful of skills and say 'the player replaces the character for these things in particular, but not other things'. This can be done in a soft way by simply not having those things be present on the character sheet. If you don't put an 'Intelligence' score then you're saying 'intelligence is the domain of the player and is what this game is testing; everything else is the set of abilities belonging to the character'. Generally this is the direction I prefer.

Segev
2014-08-06, 11:23 AM
Most != all

And *very few* people will argue for a skill they don't have (or are very weak in) to be dominant. In the case of social skills vs. game skills, you're essentially choosing between two skills that you have, which isn't *quite* the same thing.

I venture that it is safe to say that most people who are seeking out RPG forums are going to have some passing skill at playing RPGs and working with RPG mechanics. Those that do not are likely seeking help to improve.

If we were on a Go forum, I would expect all present to either be good at or at least trying to get good at Go when discussing their playing of the game.

Therefore, expecting people to put effort into understanding and using the rules and mechanics of an RPG to make their characters capable is not unreasonable. Especially when outside help can contribute greatly to the final build of a character, whereas it's a lot harder to get outside help to (say) formulate your IC argument right there on the spot.

kyoryu
2014-08-06, 11:56 AM
I venture that it is safe to say that most people who are seeking out RPG forums are going to have some passing skill at playing RPGs and working with RPG mechanics. Those that do not are likely seeking help to improve.

If we were on a Go forum, I would expect all present to either be good at or at least trying to get good at Go when discussing their playing of the game.

Therefore, expecting people to put effort into understanding and using the rules and mechanics of an RPG to make their characters capable is not unreasonable. Especially when outside help can contribute greatly to the final build of a character, whereas it's a lot harder to get outside help to (say) formulate your IC argument right there on the spot.

You still seem to be trying to say that one method is unilaterally better than the other.

They're not.

Heavy-mechanics social interactions in an RPG are great. For some people.

Social-focused social interactions in an RPG are great. For some people.

Find, and play, a game that matches your preferences.

(To be clear, I'm perfectly fine in playing games either with or without mechanics-oriented social interactions. Either way works, and both can be fun. To me.)

Segev
2014-08-06, 12:41 PM
The second choice is to pick one or a handful of skills and say 'the player replaces the character for these things in particular, but not other things'. This can be done in a soft way by simply not having those things be present on the character sheet. If you don't put an 'Intelligence' score then you're saying 'intelligence is the domain of the player and is what this game is testing; everything else is the set of abilities belonging to the character'. Generally this is the direction I prefer.

If I'm understanding you correctly, what I'm adovcating is in line with this. The areas in which you want games to mainly focus using XYZ system should be those where the character most thoroughly replaces the player in terms of skills used. Because it is those areas of the game which are where the most "action" happens, and where it is most crucial that the PC's abilities and disabilities show up realistically to portray the character the player wants to be playing.

Segev
2014-08-06, 12:43 PM
You still seem to be trying to say that one method is unilaterally better than the other.

They're not.

Heavy-mechanics social interactions in an RPG are great. For some people.

Social-focused social interactions in an RPG are great. For some people.

Find, and play, a game that matches your preferences.

(To be clear, I'm perfectly fine in playing games either with or without mechanics-oriented social interactions. Either way works, and both can be fun. To me.)All I'm saying is that the choice of mechanics-heavy vs. "rely on the player's skill" has consequences, and that consequence will be directly related to the ability to have people actually role-play somebody of differing capabilities than themselves.

Amphetryon
2014-08-06, 12:46 PM
All I'm saying is that the choice of mechanics-heavy vs. "rely on the player's skill" has consequences, and that consequence will be directly related to the ability to have people actually role-play somebody of differing capabilities than themselves.

You also said 'most.' Perhaps I'm being generous in my reading, but I read 'most' as quite different from 'unilaterally better.'

kyoryu
2014-08-06, 01:00 PM
All I'm saying is that the choice of mechanics-heavy vs. "rely on the player's skill" has consequences, and that consequence will be directly related to the ability to have people actually role-play somebody of differing capabilities than themselves.

Sort of agreed. The skills that are dominant in a game will impact how successful people are at that game. Mechanics that rely upon mechanical optimization will allow people good at that to be effective at whatever type of character they want to make. People that are bad at mechanical optimization will find themselves unable to be very effective at anything.

Essentially, for a hypothetical "you" that may or may not align with the real "you", if you're good at charop but bad at social skills, then a game where social skills are governed by charop will let you play a warrior or a bard with equal ease, while if the same game used actual social skills, then only people who had social skills would be effective in a social role. That's a valid observation.

*However*, a game where charop is the dominant factor will *also* mean that anybody that's not good at charop will not be able to make a character that's effective at *anything*. A mixed system (where "real" social skills are used for social aspects of the game) would allow a social player that had little charop skill to be useful as a social character, even as they're barred from making an effective warrior.

Any game design will have certain player skills that are dominant. Any. The skills that any game design makes dominant will impact which players will be successful at it, and potentially in which capacities.

For instance, at the other extreme end, you could have a game where *all* resolution is a matter of social skill (you could probably argue that Amber Diceless comes close). Such a game would render you (again, the hypothetical you) incapable of playing *anything* effectively, while the socially-skilled player could play *anything* effectively, regardless of whether or not the social player actually had those skills.

If we go back to the "Go game" example, let's say that character skill impacted handicap and other things. It would be entirely possible for a great Go player to have a character that's awesome at combat, but actually suck at playing Go (because their handicap was so high). However, the game as a whole will favor people with decent-to-good skills at playing Go.

Even within the mechanics side, there's also a question of whether pre-game (aka build) decisions/skills are dominant, or whether in-game decisions/skills are dominant.

None of these are bad. They're just different. Some of them may be bad *for you*. Some of them are bad *for me*. There's no universal rule or truth here, only tradeoffs and design goals.

Segev
2014-08-06, 01:45 PM
Sort of agreed. The skills that are dominant in a game will impact how successful people are at that game. Mechanics that rely upon mechanical optimization will allow people good at that to be effective at whatever type of character they want to make. People that are bad at mechanical optimization will find themselves unable to be very effective at anything.

Potentially, but I still contend that it is easier to say, "I am bad at building characters in the Social System; hey, GitP boards, you have a hypothetical forum devoted to this. Help me build a polite and charming fellow who gets the ladies' knees weak when he speaks and whose nobility and humility help him be an honest but successful social butterfly," than to say, "I am bad at socializing. Hey, GitP boards, I'm in a game where my personal RP of what my character says and does determines how good he is. Help me come up with an exhaustive list of things to do and say and how to say them so I can be persuasive as my character should be."

The latter, at best, will have advice for particular social situations, and the more specific the information on what is going on in-game, the better the advice. But it will all be tailored and only marginally re-usable. The former, on the other hand, provides a character who is capable in that area of gameplay for the player, regardless of the player's overt skill in that particular area OR in character-building.

kyoryu
2014-08-06, 02:52 PM
Potentially, but I still contend that it is easier to say, "I am bad at building characters in the Social System; hey, GitP boards, you have a hypothetical forum devoted to this. Help me build a polite and charming fellow who gets the ladies' knees weak when he speaks and whose nobility and humility help him be an honest but successful social butterfly," than to say, "I am bad at socializing. Hey, GitP boards, I'm in a game where my personal RP of what my character says and does determines how good he is. Help me come up with an exhaustive list of things to do and say and how to say them so I can be persuasive as my character should be."

The latter, at best, will have advice for particular social situations, and the more specific the information on what is going on in-game, the better the advice. But it will all be tailored and only marginally re-usable. The former, on the other hand, provides a character who is capable in that area of gameplay for the player, regardless of the player's overt skill in that particular area OR in character-building.

You're also assuming there that the skills are primarily charop skills, and not at-table "mechanic" skills.

And even if they can get an optimized character, some people just don't want to play that game.

And that's okay.

Look, Dread uses a Jenga tower for resolution. That means that people with low manual dexterity are not gonna do well with it. That's okay. It evokes a particular experience, and that's what the game designer intended.

Does a game that uses actual social skills have a potentially smaller audience than one that uses mechanics? Maybe. If you consider marketing primarily to RPG players, then probably. Is that something you should be aware of and consider when designing such a game? Absolutely. Will such a game turn some people off? Undoubtedly. Will it provide a different experience than one using mechanics? Yup. Will some people prefer that experience? Absolutely.

Same with the "Go-as-mechanics" game. Is it likely to be a hit with "most" RPG players? Probably not, as the majority of RPGs target a specific set of skills that are pretty unrelated to Go. But that doesn't make it a bad game.

I mean, the core of role-playing games is (and I hope this isn't really in dispute) putting yourself in the position of a character in an imaginary situation. It's not character optimization, or tactics, or dice-rolling, or strategic positioning, or anything else. That doesn't mean that those things aren't valuable, or course, and it doesn't mean that some individuals might find one or more of those things to be the thing that they enjoy most. But I see no reason to limit the core idea of "roleplaying games" to people that like the kind of dice-and-math manipulation that most RPGs today focus on.

To be clear, that doesn't mean that those things are bad, either.

Amphetryon
2014-08-06, 04:34 PM
You're also assuming there that the skills are primarily charop skills, and not at-table "mechanic" skillsPlease clarify how you're differentiating these two things.

kyoryu
2014-08-06, 04:42 PM
Please clarify how you're differentiating these two things.

Charop: My character sheet has bigger numbers.

"At-Table": I'm better at manipulating the environment to increase my odds of success.

An example of "at-table" skill might involve skillful positioning of a character to maximize bonuses while minimizing the number of ways that they can be attacked. An example of charop would be knowing what feats/classes/etc to combine to get the best AC.

AMFV
2014-08-06, 06:03 PM
Please clarify how you're differentiating these two things.

CharOP is generally the ability to construct a character with great potential power, it typically involves primarily the ability to see unexpected synergies between abilities and an understanding of how to best optimize to get abilities at their level of maximum usefulness.

Tabletop Skill generally involves what might be called tactical skill, the ability to quickly think how to utilize your abilities (before the rest of the table becomes frustrated with you), the ability to recognize into what pattern of encounters your enemies are falling so that you can best deal with them.

So one is more long term planning and optimization skill, the other is more quick thinking and pattern recognition. Also Tabletop skill involves a certain degree of social skill because convincing somebody that your hairbrained scheme will or should work (in this case the DM) involves a certain ability to talk quickly.

NichG
2014-08-06, 08:32 PM
If I'm understanding you correctly, what I'm adovcating is in line with this. The areas in which you want games to mainly focus using XYZ system should be those where the character most thoroughly replaces the player in terms of skills used. Because it is those areas of the game which are where the most "action" happens, and where it is most crucial that the PC's abilities and disabilities show up realistically to portray the character the player wants to be playing.

No, I don't think we've quite converged. I'm saying that there isn't a particular correct choice that is independent of the kind of gameplay you want to experience. To be clear, I put very little value on 'realistically portraying the character' for my own games, because that is not the game design target of those gameplay experiences.

Segev
2014-08-07, 07:54 AM
You're also assuming there that the skills are primarily charop skills, and not at-table "mechanic" skills.
(...)

Dread uses a Jenga tower for resolution. That means that people with low manual dexterity are not gonna do well with it. That's okay. It evokes a particular experience, and that's what the game designer intended.

Does a game that uses actual social skills have a potentially smaller audience than one that uses mechanics? Maybe.

(...)

Same with the "Go-as-mechanics" game.

(...)
I mean, the core of role-playing games is (and I hope this isn't really in dispute) putting yourself in the position of a character in an imaginary situation.All true. I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't make those games. I'm saying that, if your goal is to evoke a particular kind of story or role to play, rather than to evoke a particular kind of GAME play, you ironically want to have a more solid suite of mechanics that have an abstracted enough "required skill" that most people can likely learn and/or master it. Better when they needn't master it but just understand what they can do with a provided stat page.


It's not character optimization, or tactics, or dice-rolling, or strategic positioning, or anything else. That doesn't mean that those things aren't valuable, or course, and it doesn't mean that some individuals might find one or more of those things to be the thing that they enjoy most. But I see no reason to limit the core idea of "roleplaying games" to people that like the kind of dice-and-math manipulation that most RPGs today focus on.You're missing my point. My point is that the "dice-and-math" method is not as important as having solid, deep gameplay mechanics which utilize values not derived from players' at-the-table skills. Particularly important is that whatever skills are required be more generally learnable and accessible than the IC talents and skills being modeled.

That is, if you want the game to allow people to slip into a role and pretend to do activities they can't do IRL. If you want to reward a particular kind of skill, fine, that's your design goal. But it is critical to recognize what your design goals are, and if you're building an RPG which is to center around a particular kind of activity and you want it accessible to people who aren't already good at it, you need to pick something that is either a relatively easy skill to learn (such as "choosing actions based on your character's abilities") or a skill that you expect all of your players to already have.

NichG
2014-08-07, 09:04 AM
Evoking a particular story or role is an interesting aside here. Its a very deep meta-level question - because sometimes, to successfully evoke a particular story or role, you have to create not only the events within the game but also engineer the player's psychological state. Dread was mentioned, which I think is a good example.

One way to think about generalizing the gimmick in dread is to say that as the situation becomes more dire, the skills of the character give way to the skills of the player in things which one could not reasonably expect one's players to possess skill in - specifically to make them uncomfortable and uncertain. Obviously if these are fairly common skills there's a chance that a player just breezes right through on their own ability, but you could customize the game to some degree to avoid that. In Dread, the assumption is that at some point, everyone's manual dexterity will hit a limit, and the point at which that limit is reached is hard to predict ahead of time, and so it works for this.

So on top of this, we could imagine various other sorts of player experiences - positive and negative - that crop up during normal play due to quirks and accidents of various systems, and then figure out which of those experiences can be exploited to evoke a particular sense of being immersed in the situation and role. The feeling of being railroaded can be used to communicate an oppressive system in which the characters live; the feeling of everything being a cakewalk could be used to evoke a sort of existential uncertainty and a thinning of the meaningfulness of events; etc.

Segev
2014-08-07, 09:17 AM
Okay, that's not quite where I was going, and so I don't entirely disagree there.

I'm talking about something like the topic for this very thread: if a game is meant to center around social interactions (possibly high court politics?), then the system for resolving social interactions should be both mechanically deep and should rely on a skill reasonably expected of or relatively easy to learn to use reasonably well to play.

It should be abstracted enough from actual player skill in social situations that it's not basically throwing the concept of having a system out the window, because if it does that, you've basically abrogated the idea that you have a system for the RPG at all.


Again, it's for the same reason that we don't expect LARP-based boffer play as the primary combat resolution mechanic.

But my point revolves around the idea that anything that is the focus of an RPG should have deep mechanics surrounding it in order to enable characters to do interesting things without relying on nor being tied directly to the players' skill in that area.

kyoryu
2014-08-07, 12:35 PM
You're missing my point. My point is that the "dice-and-math" method is not as important as having solid, deep gameplay mechanics which utilize values not derived from players' at-the-table skills. Particularly important is that whatever skills are required be more generally learnable and accessible than the IC talents and skills being modeled.

That is, if you want the game to allow people to slip into a role and pretend to do activities they can't do IRL. If you want to reward a particular kind of skill, fine, that's your design goal. But it is critical to recognize what your design goals are, and if you're building an RPG which is to center around a particular kind of activity and you want it accessible to people who aren't already good at it, you need to pick something that is either a relatively easy skill to learn (such as "choosing actions based on your character's abilities") or a skill that you expect all of your players to already have.

No, you're missing the point.

The point is that some people prefer games that focus on the at-table decisions and skills, whatever those are. Some people prefer games where social interactions are based upon what actually happens, and not based on the character sheet. This is objectively true. Those people exist.

That is not your preference. And that's fine. I'm not trying to argue that games that focus on charop/before-play decisions are bad or wrong. But your preference is not universal, and is not objective.

Other people prefer games where success is primarily governed by mechanics, and at-table decisions. Those people objectively exist. Other people prefer games where social skills are primarily based on how big the numbers on their character sheet are. Those people objectively exist.

None of these people are wrong. None of these games are better or worse than the others. All of these games are more or less suitable for some people.

And *all* games will rely on some part of the players' skills. All. If not, there's really not much game there, and you may as well just roll on a random table to see what happens. I mean, the fundamental point of a *game* is that differing decisions will lead to better or worse outcomes, right?


Okay, that's not quite where I was going, and so I don't entirely disagree there.

I'm talking about something like the topic for this very thread: if a game is meant to center around social interactions (possibly high court politics?), then the system for resolving social interactions should be both mechanically deep and should rely on a skill reasonably expected of or relatively easy to learn to use reasonably well to play.

That is *your preference*. Yours. It is not universal. It is not objective fact.

There's nothing *wrong* with your preference, and it's a fine way to design such a game. There are other ways to design games, that other people may enjoy more. You may not enjoy them as much. And that's okay.


Again, it's for the same reason that we don't expect LARP-based boffer play as the primary combat resolution mechanic.

And yet, lots of people enjoy LARPs. THere is nothing wrong with boffer play as a resolution mechanic, if that's what people enjoy. You may not like it, and might prefer something where character build is the determining factor. That's great. It is not objective or universal.


But my point revolves around the idea that anything that is the focus of an RPG should have deep mechanics surrounding it in order to enable characters to do interesting things without relying on nor being tied directly to the players' skill in that area.

The only question ever is which player skills success is tied to. It is quite clear what your preference is. Your preference is not a statement of objective fact. It is a very good statement of what games appeal to you.

There is nothing wrong with your preference. It is a fine one, and one shared by many people. I do not mean to denigrate it in any way, or imply in any way that your preference is inferior or that it says anything negative about you.

But neither does any other preference (except, perhaps, for FATAL. That's just wrong). Different people look for different things in RPGs, and will prefer systems than handle things in different ways.

Segev
2014-08-07, 01:25 PM
The point is that some people prefer games that focus on the at-table decisions and skills, whatever those are. Some people prefer games where social interactions are based upon what actually happens, and not based on the character sheet. This is objectively true. Those people exist. Sure.

your preference is not universal, and is not objective.You're mistaking me, still. I'm not describing my preference as a preference. I am describing what is required if you want a game that is going to allow people who are not already good at what their characters are meant to do in the game to be able to play characters that are good at the primary focus of the game.

You're right; it's perfectly fine to have a game that has no rules at all save "do what your character does, and he's as good as you are," just as it's perfectly fine to have any degree of game mechanical rigor between that and complete abstraction. It is a matter of taste.

That doesn't change that the consequences of designing a game are that a game will or will not allow players to play something other than themselves-in-a-funny-hat. If you're just looking for improv, that's fine. If you're looking for improv with some esoteric rules that transform the skill required to some other skill (Go, manual dexterity/Jenga, scuba-assisted underwater basket weaving, whatever), that's fine (albeit possibly impractical). I'm not making value judgments.

I'm discussing what the consequences of your design choices are. And if you design a game wherein, for example, to play a skilled socialite you must be at least a skilled enough socialite to convince your GM to let your arguments have sway IC, you're excluding those who are not good at social interaction from playing skilled socialites.


Other people prefer games where success is primarily governed by mechanics, and at-table decisions. Those people objectively exist. Other people prefer games where social skills are primarily based on how big the numbers on their character sheet are. Those people objectively exist.I'm...not sure what you're arguing, here.

In fact, these are generally the combination of things which DO impact a game and a character's success: at-table decisions, numerical values on stat pages, and mechanics governing how these interact.


None of these people are wrong. None of these games are better or worse than the others. All of these games are more or less suitable for some people.Sure. Never disputed that. Which is how I know you're not getting what I am saying: that which kind of approach you take to designing the rules for your game determines whether or not your game will be inviting to the fans of a hypothetical fictional work within that setting, or only to those who are already good at the kind of thing you expect characters to do.


And *all* games will rely on some part of the players' skills. All. If not, there's really not much game there, and you may as well just roll on a random table to see what happens. I mean, the fundamental point of a *game* is that differing decisions will lead to better or worse outcomes, right?Again, not in dispute; I have been discussing the consequences of having the relied-upon skill be exactly the skill the character is trying to use, versus an abstracted skill, versus a substitute skill that is easier for a player to learn.


That is *your preference*. Yours. It is not universal. It is not objective fact.

There's nothing *wrong* with your preference, and it's a fine way to design such a game. There are other ways to design games, that other people may enjoy more. You may not enjoy them as much. And that's okay.You keep harping in this. I don't really care whether it's "okay" or not. I want people to appreciate that the way they design their game matters in terms of who can and cannot play it - in terms of what kind of player is able to portray what kind of character.

If you want nearly anybody to be able to play nearly any kind of character, or nearly everybody to be able to play the kind of character that centers around what the game is built to handle (e.g. social interaction in a courtly intrigue game), you need to have the skill be something easily learned and not directly related to the skill(s) being performed by the characters.

If you're less interested in maximizing the kinds of people who can play your game successfully, you're free to design it closer to requiring LARP-like skills, or to even decide you want chess-playing-based resolution for your courtly intrigue because chess pieces are a royal court. But in that latter case, you HAVE determined that people who play chess are the ones who can do the best in your game. And you've excluded those who are poor at it from being able to play your game well. I doubt anybody disagrees with this; I am simply trying to highlight it in general so that people understand what kind of mechanics are necessary to have the audience you want.




And yet, lots of people enjoy LARPs. THere is nothing wrong with boffer play as a resolution mechanic, if that's what people enjoy. You may not like it, and might prefer something where character build is the determining factor. That's great. It is not objective or universal.You seem to be reading derision into what I'm saying; you shouldn't be. There is nothing wrong with LARPing or boffer play. But the reason why many games don't use it is precisely so that you can have your PC be far more capable with a sword or bow or whatever than you are.

Why do you assume I'm saying anything you're trying to defend is "bad?" I'm pointing out consequences of design choices and reasons for design choices. If you want to LARP, more power to you. Just recognize that you're restricting the options of players' characters to being what the players themselves can do. The more the skill required of the player for character action resolution mirrors the skill the character is performing, the less somebody is able to play a character with different skills than their own.




The only question ever is which player skills success is tied to. It is quite clear what your preference is. Your preference is not a statement of objective fact. It is a very good statement of what games appeal to you.No, the objective statement is that there are consequences involved in whatever the chosen skill is. The less universal, the more demanding it is of immediate skill at the time of resolution, the less players are able to play characters good at things they, themselves, are not. Or, in the case of "chess-based resolution" type systems, the less good players are capable of having their characters be at ANYTHING if they're not good at chess (or whatever).

If that's fine with you, then go right ahead. All I want is to be certain that nobody is conflating "it's fine to design a game like this" with "a game designed like this will work just as well for a given target audience as a game designed in some other way."

That last is not a true statement. If, for some reason, we knew that every trekkie was a grand master chess player, we could design a Star Trek RPG with chess-based resolution and be certain that, whatever they were trying to build their characters to be, our target audience could build characters good at it. We've replaced most of their skills with skill at chess, and we know trekkies are all chess grand masters.

If, however, we knew that all Game of Thrones fans are about half-and-half between being rather lousy at chess and being quite good at it, designing our Game of Thrones RPG to use the same chess-based core system as our Star Trek RPG would largely exclude half our Game of Thrones audience. They would not be able to build characters that were very good at much of anything. Half would be fine; the other half would never really have their characters be good at much of anything.

The consequence of having no real mechanics - of effectively LARPing - is that the player of the big, strong warrior had best be a skilled boffer, and the player of the socialite had better be good at social maneuvering. There's no way the overweight gamer-boy is going to be able to play the femme fatale; the kinds of characters meant to be seduced by her wiles would be largely put off by the chubby dude hitting on them while dressed in a slinky black dress. Similarly, the 90-lb. weakling court jester played by the 270-lb. linebacker is going to beat the "brave knight, champion of 1000 duels" who's played by the 15-year-old girl that can barely lift her boffer sword when it comes time to sword-fight.

This means that, in those kinds of games, people will need to play something that is close to their real-world talents and skills. As you've said, there's nothing wrong with that if that's the kind of game you want. But you need to be aware of this when you design your game.


Different people look for different things in RPGs, and will prefer systems than handle things in different ways.
Absolutely true. But this topic asked a specific question. The answer depends on what kind of game you want to run. If you want a game heavy in social situations, and you don't want only socially-adept people to be able to play it (or only chess grandmasters to be able to play it, as the case may be), then you need to design it so that the skill required of the player at the table as the game plays out is one that is either generally universal to your target audience, or is one that's quite easily learned (far more so than the delicate and intricate social mechanics of real human interaction).

kyoryu
2014-08-07, 02:24 PM
That doesn't change that the consequences of designing a game are that a game will or will not allow players to play something other than themselves-in-a-funny-hat.

Clearly, game design involves consequences. That's why it's *design*.

I disagree with "themselves in a funny-looking hat".


If you're just looking for improv, that's fine. If you're looking for improv with some esoteric rules that transform the skill required to some other skill (Go, manual dexterity/Jenga, scuba-assisted underwater basket weaving, whatever), that's fine (albeit possibly impractical). I'm not making value judgments.

Actually, when you say "a game *should* do <xyz>", then yes, you are making value judgments.


I'm discussing what the consequences of your design choices are. And if you design a game wherein, for example, to play a skilled socialite you must be at least a skilled enough socialite to convince your GM to let your arguments have sway IC, you're excluding those who are not good at social interaction from playing skilled socialites.

The interesting thing here is that you're focusing on social skills, while not recognizing that *charop is not a universal skill*, and furthermore, *character optimization may be utterly uninteresting to some people*.

If you predicate your game on having social skills there are consequences. If you predicate your game on charop skills (or at-table skills, or Jenga skills, or...) then *there are consequences*.

It appears that you're kind of arguing your point from the POV that your preferred playstyle (character build is the prime determinant of what you can do) is the null hypothesis. I'm not.


In fact, these are generally the combination of things which DO impact a game and a character's success: at-table decisions, numerical values on stat pages, and mechanics governing how these interact.

Absolutely. And how you emphasize each of them has consequences. I think we agree on that.


Sure. Never disputed that. Which is how I know you're not getting what I am saying: that which kind of approach you take to designing the rules for your game determines whether or not your game will be inviting to the fans of a hypothetical fictional work within that setting, or only to those who are already good at the kind of thing you expect characters to do.

And here's where I disagree. You seem to be implying that the primary determinant of (at a system level) whether someone will enjoy a game is "will they be good at it". I disagree. There are many games that I could be good at that I, personally, have *zero interest in playing* because I find them dull.

I *want* hard decisions in my games. Personally, I prefer dilemmas to challenges, but that's secondary. I want a focus on at-table decisions. De-emphasizing those things turns me off of a game.

So your hypothetical "everyone can play" game will probably not interest me *in the least*, because it doesn't do the things I'm looking for in a game.


You keep harping in this. I don't really care whether it's "okay" or not. I want people to appreciate that the way they design their game matters in terms of who can and cannot play it - in terms of what kind of player is able to portray what kind of character.

I'm less interested in who *can* play than I am in who *wants to* play. The fact that someone *can* play a game and be successful at it is utterly uninteresting to me if they have no desire to play that game whatsoever, especially if they have an active aversion to the game.

For me, personally, a game which is heavy on char-op and minimizes at-table decisions is a game I am not interested in. It excludes me as neatly as if it required knowledge of astrophysics to play.

If the goal is to build audience, *accessibility is not the only factor*. It is *a* factor, to be certain. But sometimes people even enjoy games they're bad at, so the audience for a game isn't even necessarily a pure subset of the people that can be "successful" at it! (Besides, we have to remember that "success" at a game will mean different things to different people).


If you want nearly anybody to be able to play nearly any kind of character, or nearly everybody to be able to play the kind of character that centers around what the game is built to handle (e.g. social interaction in a courtly intrigue game), you need to have the skill be something easily learned and not directly related to the skill(s) being performed by the characters.

But that's not the case. People bad at charop will be ineffective at playing *anything* in a charop heavy game.


If you're less interested in maximizing the kinds of people who can play your game successfully, you're free to design it closer to requiring LARP-like skills, or to even decide you want chess-playing-based resolution for your courtly intrigue because chess pieces are a royal court. But in that latter case, you HAVE determined that people who play chess are the ones who can do the best in your game. And you've excluded those who are poor at it from being able to play your game well. I doubt anybody disagrees with this; I am simply trying to highlight it in general so that people understand what kind of mechanics are necessary to have the audience you want.

Here again, I think our core differences come through.

1) You assume that charop and "RPG game skills" are a kind of null hypothesis, and should be assumed. I don't. (Though, if you're targeting traditional RPG players, it's a good assumption).
2) You assume that accessibility is the major factor in audience. I don't.

Again, I can *do* charop (depending on the system, I've never gotten into D&D3.5 to care, for instance). I *hate it*. A game that is primarily based on character optimization and that minimizes at-table decisions is something I *could* play and play successfully. But it's something that I *won't* play because I dislike that style of gameplay.

Such a game excludes me, just as much as a game where social skills are required to be a social character excludes you.


You seem to be reading derision into what I'm saying; you shouldn't be. There is nothing wrong with LARPing or boffer play. But the reason why many games don't use it is precisely so that you can have your PC be far more capable with a sword or bow or whatever than you are.

Sure, and in so doing, they trade one set of skills required for success for another.

And some people are bad at boffer combat and *still enjoy LARPs*. The ability to be super-successful is *not* the universal standard of enjoyment.


Why do you assume I'm saying anything you're trying to defend is "bad?"

Because you keep using phrases similar to "games should do xyz".


I'm pointing out consequences of design choices and reasons for design choices. If you want to LARP, more power to you. Just recognize that you're restricting the options of players' characters to being what the players themselves can do. The more the skill required of the player for character action resolution mirrors the skill the character is performing, the less somebody is able to play a character with different skills than their own.

This is certainly true in the case of LARPs, though the traditional RPG elements that get added in there usually mitigate that somewhat.


No, the objective statement is that there are consequences involved in whatever the chosen skill is. The less universal, the more demanding it is of immediate skill at the time of resolution, the less players are able to play characters good at things they, themselves, are not. Or, in the case of "chess-based resolution" type systems, the less good players are capable of having their characters be at ANYTHING if they're not good at chess (or whatever).

Absolutely.


If that's fine with you, then go right ahead. All I want is to be certain that nobody is conflating "it's fine to design a game like this" with "a game designed like this will work just as well for a given target audience as a game designed in some other way."

Of course I'm not. That would be a stupid statement.

But what I am also saying is that accessibility is not the only factor for audience.

For instance, we could "design" a game where every resolution was a simple coin toss. Anybody could play this game. I doubt that anybody would.


If, however, we knew that all Game of Thrones fans are about half-and-half between being rather lousy at chess and being quite good at it, designing our Game of Thrones RPG to use the same chess-based core system as our Star Trek RPG would largely exclude half our Game of Thrones audience. They would not be able to build characters that were very good at much of anything. Half would be fine; the other half would never really have their characters be good at much of anything.

Absolutely. However, there are consequences of *any design decision*. Every decision fragments your audience. There are very few, if any "universal" goodness design decisions in games. If you have a strong tactical game for combat, you'll attract people that like that, and select against people that don't. If you have a total lack of tactical combat, the people that are uninterested in tactical combat will enjoy your game - but the tactical fans will probably avoid it.


This means that, in those kinds of games, people will need to play something that is close to their real-world talents and skills. As you've said, there's nothing wrong with that if that's the kind of game you want. But you need to be aware of this when you design your game.

Obviously. But what you keep missing is the fact that what you're doing is swapping the actual skills for a substitute skill and a certain style of game play, and that some people *aren't good at* those substitute skills or *don't care for* that style of gameplay, and may be totally okay with having their choice of what they can play be restricted.

These are obviously things that are important to you. They are not universal preferences. Following them will not be guaranteed to increase your *actual* audience size, if that's the criteria you're using.


Absolutely true. But this topic asked a specific question. The answer depends on what kind of game you want to run. If you want a game heavy in social situations, and you don't want only socially-adept people to be able to play it (or only chess grandmasters to be able to play it, as the case may be), then you need to design it so that the skill required of the player at the table as the game plays out is one that is either generally universal to your target audience, or is one that's quite easily learned (far more so than the delicate and intricate social mechanics of real human interaction).

And yet people that don't like heavily mechanized social games will *still avoid* your game.

Let's look at two hypothetical resolution mechanisms.

For the first resolution mechanism, 100% of people can effectively engage with it.
For the second mechanism, 50% of people can effectively engage with it.

HOWEVER, only 33% of people will actually be interested in playing the first one, while 100% of the people that *can* engage with the second one will enjoy it.

Which one gets the bigger audience?

To get back on track, you can have handwavey social resolution, or mechanical resolution. Arguably more people *can* engage with the mechanical resolution (though it's just substituting one skill for another). However, there are people that *despise* mechanical social resolution systems. While a mechanical resolution system will (potentially) gain the people that couldn't interact effectively with the "social" resolution system, it will also exclude those people that hate mechanical resolution for social conflicts.

Does this result in a net increase, or a net decrease in your overall player base? Without a lot more market research, you can't really tell. Personally, I'd be okay with both. You'd only want the mechanical one. I know plenty of people that'd only want the social one. Any choice includes some people and excludes some people, based upon their skills *and preferences*.

Your position is pretty clear. "Having social mechanics means I can play social characters, and that makes me want to play the game. Without that, I can't play social characters, and therefore I won't play the game." That's great, and from *your view* it looks like a pure win.

However, some people will *not* play a game with (strong) social mechanics, and so by adding those, you *exclude* them. From their POV, it's a loss.

If you design purely for the lowest common denominator of abilities, then you will exclude people that actually *want* a game that requires a higher level of skill.

*Any* decision you make has tradeoffs. Any game will attract some potential players and repel others.

Segev
2014-08-07, 03:09 PM
Responding only to a couple things without quoting in an effort to reduce post length.

WE could resolve with coin-flipping, but that would fail the "mechanical depth" requirement for actually having a game involved in playing out whatever central kind of scene for which the game is designed.

I get that you're fine with not actually having your character able to participate successfully in the central aspects of a game if you, yourself, are not capable of it. I would contend that most people are not. Player frustration over "sucking" at a game with their character is a common theme in many posts about problems playing games.

If you think I'm not addressing what you've said, then I need you to more fully explain how you see a game where the resolution mechanic is (effectively) LARPing will still enable your character to be talented at something you yourself have no skill nor talent in. Or do you simply prefer never to play the big, burly fighter-type if you are not, yourself, big, strong, and able to wield multiple weapons in melee combat with great proficiency?


Finally, back to depth of game-play; I do not know why you think having charop as a required skill makes the decisions at the table meaningless. What it does is allows you to have a character with DIFFERENT capabilities than your own. It also permits you to have help in the time between games to make sure your character is as good at what you want him to do as you want him to be. When you sit at the gaming table, it's still on you to decide when and how to use his skills.

Just because somebody helped you build the whirling frenzy pounce barbarian doesn't mean you don't have choices to make in how you engage in combat. It just means your character is actually good at this "combat" thing that you wanted him to be good at, regardless of whether you yourself could properly wield a greatsword or could charge 80 ft. and attack 3 creatures 4 times each in six seconds. Also regardless of whether your system mastery/charop skills are good enough to have come up with the build on your own.

But you still have choices to make and your decisions at the table matter.


I half-way get the feeling that you are the one putting down the game style you think you dislike in order to justify saying "but it's not the best!" I'm not saying its' the best. I AM saying that it IS accessible more than your proposed alternatives, because it demonstrably is. There may well be people who'd do better LARPing in a boffer game, and thus would be more likely to play the latter. That's fine, but the majority of gamers, I think, will find the skills required of playing a whirling frenzy Barbarian in D&D to be more accessible than those required to LARP it in boffer-style games.

kyoryu
2014-08-07, 04:31 PM
Let me make my position super-clear and simple here.

1) Any game design decision will make the game more attractive to some people, and less attractive to others.
2) That's totally cool.
3) Good game design is about understanding what you're trying to accomplish with the game, and making those decisions intelligently.

Having social interactions governed by mechanics will appeal to some people. It will not appeal to others. That's okay.

Having combat governed by charop, or boffer fighting, or playing poker, or tactical positioning are all cool. Each will appeal to some players, and not appeal to others.

There's really no escape from this. There's no mechanics that are *universally* better. (You could argue that some are just generally broken, but that's really an edge case, and I don't think is relevant to any of the examples we've covered). Anything that will make a game better for some people will almost certainly make it worse for others.

There are no *objective* 'requirements' for mechanics, only *subjective* ones. And that's totally cool.

You have a style of game you like. That's awesome. I might really, really dislike that style. That's cool too. You might dislike games I love. Perfectly awesome. That just means that a game designer targeting either of us might totally miss the other, and *that's the nature of the thing*.

When you talk about a "requirement" for sufficient mechanical depth/complexity (and the difference between the two is a whole other subject), that's great. That's *your* requirement. It's not necessarily mine. It's not universal. My requirements for a game might leave you running in terror from the sheer badness. That's fine too. It doesn't mean that either of us is wrong, or that we're deficient. We just have different tastes.

NichG
2014-08-07, 08:41 PM
If you think I'm not addressing what you've said, then I need you to more fully explain how you see a game where the resolution mechanic is (effectively) LARPing will still enable your character to be talented at something you yourself have no skill nor talent in. Or do you simply prefer never to play the big, burly fighter-type if you are not, yourself, big, strong, and able to wield multiple weapons in melee combat with great proficiency?


This is what augmentation mechanics are for, which I've been trying to make a point about for this entire thread. One way to enhance a player's ability to succeed is to directly replace the resolution stage. The other way is to give them some sort of better position from which to apply their base level of skill. In terms of something like a first-person shooter, the former would be some kind of auto-aim system whereas the latter would be a better weapon choice (or even having an array of different weapons that cater to different styles of play, so that the player can choose the one that best suits their ability). There seems to be this narrow-minded view that the only design choices that are meaningful center around how to perform resolution, but that is very much not the case!

In the boffer combat example, both players have to fight it out, but the character with more combat skills is given a longer weapon, or a shield, or loses after 3 touches whereas their opponent loses after 2 touches, or they can choose the ground for the fight, or they get to make the initial blow, or other such possibilities. Rather than replace the player skill in resolution, the mechanics provide various degrees and directions of modification of the rules to make the game asymmetric.

In the social gameplay example, Detect Thoughts was mentioned up-thread as an example of something like this. It doesn't replace player skill, but obviously a character who can read the minds of the people he's socializing with will have an advantage over a character who cannot.


I half-way get the feeling that you are the one putting down the game style you think you dislike in order to justify saying "but it's not the best!" I'm not saying its' the best. I AM saying that it IS accessible more than your proposed alternatives, because it demonstrably is. There may well be people who'd do better LARPing in a boffer game, and thus would be more likely to play the latter. That's fine, but the majority of gamers, I think, will find the skills required of playing a whirling frenzy Barbarian in D&D to be more accessible than those required to LARP it in boffer-style games.

Universal accessibility is not actually a very efficient thing to aim for with game design at the level of DMs/players, because in practice you are always going to play with a specific group of people. The way you're pushing this idea makes it seem like you think we should feel guilty for excluding a population of hypothetical players, and that's what's creating all this feeling of pushing for your particular view. Especially because in the population at average, social interaction is a much easier skill for people to learn than mathematics and especially than char-op.

Segev
2014-08-08, 09:17 AM
No guilt is expected of anybody. You build a game for your audience; it's up to those who encounter it to decide if it's for them.

All I'm saying is that you should be aware of how broad or narrow the appeal is likely to be, and that there ARE objective consequences for choices in game design.

I think we've come to at least some level of agreement on that, and if not, I don't think continuing to discuss it will be fruitful, as we're as likely to talk past each other as to make any points we haven't already made.

Avilan the Grey
2014-08-09, 05:03 PM
I still can't really understand players and GMs that insist on roleplaying social interactions, and not other things. This is my main beef, I think. I am all for outlining a general plan ("I tell the guard I am from the pest control service!") (but then we might adjust that outline according to the character's INT score, if such exists), but an outright stage performance is just not appropriate, unless the GM also insists players to climb mountains for real, swim for real and actually drink 7 gallons of mead if their dwarven paladin does it.

NichG
2014-08-09, 09:14 PM
I still can't really understand players and GMs that insist on roleplaying social interactions, and not other things. This is my main beef, I think. I am all for outlining a general plan ("I tell the guard I am from the pest control service!") (but then we might adjust that outline according to the character's INT score, if such exists), but an outright stage performance is just not appropriate, unless the GM also insists players to climb mountains for real, swim for real and actually drink 7 gallons of mead if their dwarven paladin does it.

It is because there is a handful of things which are chosen to be the player skills with which the game engages. That handful of things includes, for me:

- Making tactical decisions in a fight
- Figuring out mysteries
- Verbal/social interaction (e.g. designing manipulations, figuring out people's personalities and exploiting them, etc)
- Grand strategy (e.g. analyzing and determining how the overall scenario will respond to character actions)
- Character design/optimization of the interaction of the game mechanics

For each of those things, because the point is for the game to test the player's skill in them, character abilities are not allowed to limit or replace a player's performance in that task (but augmentation is possible by providing additional tools). I do not ask players to climb a mountain because that is not the skill set that I'm running a tabletop game to engage with. I am however running a tabletop game to engage with all of the player skills that are primarily driven by mental ability, because that's a natural fit for game which is made of a group of people sitting around a table talking to each-other. A mountain-climbing game is in theory possible, but its a bad fit for what I and my players are interested in, and its a bad fit for the medium (in that 1. We want to engage in the idea of life threatening situations without actually having our lives threatened and 2. It would be a very slow game, and would require us to buy plane tickets, lodgings, etc)

The thing you seem to not get is that someone might want a game that actually engages and actively challenges a player's social abilities. Once you understand that there are players and DMs who want that, the rest should make sense on the same basis that you probably wouldn't want to play a game where e.g. there's no character generation and all characters are identical, because you enjoy and wish to explore the character-generation minigame.

kyoryu
2014-08-10, 07:13 PM
The thing you seem to not get is that someone might want a game that actually engages and actively challenges a player's social abilities. Once you understand that there are players and DMs who want that, the rest should make sense on the same basis that you probably wouldn't want to play a game where e.g. there's no character generation and all characters are identical, because you enjoy and wish to explore the character-generation minigame.

This. Exactly this.

Other people like different things, *and that's okay*. You don't need to somehow make your preferences "objectively good", or prove that others' are "objectively bad". You like what you like, they like what they like. It's all good.

It just means that not all games or game systems are for all people, and that's perfectly fine.

Segev
2014-08-11, 10:54 AM
I think it might be worthwhile to remember the topic of this thread. That would be why people are discussing,well, how much an RPG should have rules for social interaction.

The correct answer really is that it depends on what you want out of the RPG's social scenes.

If you want only the players' social skills to matter and for it to be basically pretending you're somebody else but still just having the conversation yourself, then that's fine. If you want a broad spectrum of players in terms of social skill to be able to all participate in the social scenes in ways that make their characters relevant based on who the CHARACTER is, rather than who the PLAYER is, then that's fine, too.

But clearly, the latter will require more in-depth mechanics than the former.

Avilan the Grey
2014-08-11, 01:16 PM
The thing you seem to not get is that someone might want a game that actually engages and actively challenges a player's social abilities. Once you understand that there are players and DMs who want that, the rest should make sense on the same basis that you probably wouldn't want to play a game where e.g. there's no character generation and all characters are identical, because you enjoy and wish to explore the character-generation minigame.

But this is also something I do not understand, because it sounds on you, and a few others in this thread, that without this, there would be no social interaction between the players.
I can't fathom a game play session without talk in character, out of character, lengthy discussions about the situation at hand, how the chips I am sharing around the table tastes like (new taste!), where we will order dinner from, the collective sense of awe when our 4 lvl 1 players manages to kill 3 hobgoblins without taking a single hit, etc.

Basically, a normal playing session trains your social skill on the same level as a conference meeting or a work presentation combined with a dinner. At least for all players in all the player groups I have been involved in. Ever.

If your players sit quiet and stares right in front of them (I am exaggerating! I know!) without being pushed and prodded, somebody is doing something wrong, I feel.

AMFV
2014-08-11, 11:13 PM
I think it might be worthwhile to remember the topic of this thread. That would be why people are discussing,well, how much an RPG should have rules for social interaction.

The correct answer really is that it depends on what you want out of the RPG's social scenes.

If you want only the players' social skills to matter and for it to be basically pretending you're somebody else but still just having the conversation yourself, then that's fine. If you want a broad spectrum of players in terms of social skill to be able to all participate in the social scenes in ways that make their characters relevant based on who the CHARACTER is, rather than who the PLAYER is, then that's fine, too.

But clearly, the latter will require more in-depth mechanics than the former.

Well it's worth noting that neither extreme is really attainable. Without developing complex and immersive characters and including cultural nuances, we can't really simulate what talking to the Elf king is going to be like and we can't completely remove social interaction since it's a social game.

NichG
2014-08-11, 11:24 PM
But this is also something I do not understand, because it sounds on you, and a few others in this thread, that without this, there would be no social interaction between the players.
I can't fathom a game play session without talk in character, out of character, lengthy discussions about the situation at hand, how the chips I am sharing around the table tastes like (new taste!), where we will order dinner from, the collective sense of awe when our 4 lvl 1 players manages to kill 3 hobgoblins without taking a single hit, etc.

Basically, a normal playing session trains your social skill on the same level as a conference meeting or a work presentation combined with a dinner. At least for all players in all the player groups I have been involved in. Ever.

That's just 'socialization', not 'social challenges'. They're different things, as different as having theory-craft discussion about character builds is from actually playing that character in a game. Social challenges are scenarios in which some sort of conflict driven by situation, personality, or emotion is set up within the game and can be manipulated - those scenarios can and will be very different than the players discussing where to order dinner from (well, unless its a very meta campaign).

The social maneuvering used to get your hated rival stuck in an loveless arranged marriage with someone they hate should you die as insurance to protect yourself against their attempts to kill you is very different than the social maneuvering of 'I'm sick of pizza, lets get chinese food this time'.

Segev
2014-08-13, 02:34 PM
Well it's worth noting that neither extreme is really attainable. Without developing complex and immersive characters and including cultural nuances, we can't really simulate what talking to the Elf king is going to be like and we can't completely remove social interaction since it's a social game.

Sure. But I never said "remove all social interaction." I said it should have mechanically deep rules which determine the outcome of your character's social efforts.

I also never said it was easy. The only reason combat rules seem "easy" to come up with, such as they are, is that RPGs have nearly half a century of history on which to draw, now, wherein combat mechanics technology has been developed, explored, and refined in intricate detail through many variants.

Social mechanics are explored far less richly if at all, so far.

Avilan the Grey
2014-08-14, 08:03 AM
That's just 'socialization', not 'social challenges'. They're different things, as different as having theory-craft discussion about character builds is from actually playing that character in a game. Social challenges are scenarios in which some sort of conflict driven by situation, personality, or emotion is set up within the game and can be manipulated - those scenarios can and will be very different than the players discussing where to order dinner from (well, unless its a very meta campaign).

The social maneuvering used to get your hated rival stuck in an loveless arranged marriage with someone they hate should you die as insurance to protect yourself against their attempts to kill you is very different than the social maneuvering of 'I'm sick of pizza, lets get chinese food this time'.

I don't see the distinction. At all. The first example sounds like acting, not a "social challenge", and the other is just intrigue.

NichG
2014-08-14, 09:56 AM
I don't see the distinction. At all. The first example sounds like acting, not a "social challenge", and the other is just intrigue.

I'm confused, I only gave one example, which I'm taking to be the one that you're calling 'intrigue'. In any event, 'intrigue' is exactly what I mean by social challenges - specifically, intrigue as generated by and defended against by player skill rather than character skill. It's a 'challenge' in the sense that the player needs to design their intrigues in a way that are consistent with the scenario and based on their own understanding and cleverness. Its social because, well, its intrigue; intrigue is fundamentally a social thing. Therefore 'social challenge'.

Anyhow, what is the example that sounds like 'acting' to you?

Avilan the Grey
2014-08-16, 03:22 PM
I'm confused, I only gave one example, which I'm taking to be the one that you're calling 'intrigue'. In any event, 'intrigue' is exactly what I mean by social challenges -specifically, intrigue as generated by and defended against by player skill rather than character skill.

---

Anyhow, what is the example that sounds like 'acting' to you?

Emphasis mine.
And that is the problem. Because it stops you from playing a character different than yourself.

And your first paragraph, the one starting with "That's just 'socialization', not 'social challenges'. They're different things..."

NichG
2014-08-16, 08:23 PM
Emphasis mine.
And that is the problem. Because it stops you from playing a character different than yourself.

That's not true though. It stops you from playing a character who has significantly more social ability than you do yourself. That's not the same as always playing yourself, because personality and skill are orthogonal directions. I can play an assassin who uses my level of social ability to get close to his marks, or a king who uses my level of social ability to control his rowdy noblemen, or a warrior who uses my level of social ability to brag about his accomplishments and get them turned into a legend.

But more to the point, this originates from your comment that you don't understand people who value social challenges in the game. Does it make it clearer if I say 'all players being able to play any type of character they choose is not a primary goal of the game for me'? E.g. yes, some players will be awful at playing courtiers, just like some players will be awful at playing wizards since they can't keep the spells straight or moderate their resource use, and that's okay, or even 'the intended behavior'.


And your first paragraph, the one starting with "That's just 'socialization', not 'social challenges'. They're different things..."

Personality, emotion, and situation are not really a matter of acting. If you want to fill an NPC with righteous indignation to get them to pursue a cause you define for them, there's a practical decision to be made as to what direction to take which depends on their personality, emotion, and situation. A sheltered NPC nobleman who surrounds himself with prized animals may be more strongly influenced by the suggestion that your enemies are destroying natural habitats of woodland creatures than they would be by the suggestion that your enemies drive entire towns of villagers to flee the area. The opposite would be true of a local militiaman, who identifies with the villagers who are being driven out - he is more likely to understand the difficulties of having to abandon your home than the nobleman would.

So thats not just a matter of acting, its a matter of observing the person you're trying to influence and then choosing what you say and also how you say it to achieve maximum effect. Recognizing that e.g. the nobleman's wife may be easier to convince and that she will put pressure on him is analogous to recognizing that the lich is likely to have a low Fort save that you can take advantage of, if you can figure out a spell with a Fort save that affects undead.

Angelalex242
2014-08-16, 10:08 PM
There are many people who play D&D who are antisocial, or even just have a bad case of Asperger's Syndrome. They play D&D in part because they're getting interactions they can't do in real life.

So when those antisocial types put an 18 in charisma and max ranks in diplomacy and sense motive, they're likely to rely on the dice to simulate skills they simply don't have.

In short, if the player's got an 18 charisma, max diplomacy, but has never gotten laid or even had a date in real life, you need to understand he's likely going to let the dice do the talking, since he cannot.

NichG
2014-08-16, 11:58 PM
There are many people who play D&D who are antisocial, or even just have a bad case of Asperger's Syndrome. They play D&D in part because they're getting interactions they can't do in real life.

So when those antisocial types put an 18 in charisma and max ranks in diplomacy and sense motive, they're likely to rely on the dice to simulate skills they simply don't have.

In short, if the player's got an 18 charisma, max diplomacy, but has never gotten laid or even had a date in real life, you need to understand he's likely going to let the dice do the talking, since he cannot.

There are all sorts of games and all sorts of abilities/disabilities/variances in skill. Asperger's Syndrome isn't the only thing out there - you can just as well find people who have problems reading (so rules-heavy systems would put them at a great disadvantage), doing math, paying attention, deferring rewards, or handling visualizing spatial relationships. But they won't all be at the same table.

People vary, but that doesn't mean that one needs to customize their game for who might play at their table; one just needs to customize one's game for who is playing at their table (or for the kind of player one wants to attract to their table). This is the kind of thing that being clear when advertising your game can help with: just say 'In this game, social interaction is based on player ability rather than character ability'.

If I make an advertisement like that, its because I want players who are interested in playing a game where the primary mode of interaction is socialization. If I advertise for a game like 'this will be a high-op meat-grinder dungeon focused on tactical grid-based combat' then I am similarly selecting a subset of players out of the whole pool that I want the game to appeal to - people with strong optimization abilities. This naturally excludes some players as well. But the upside is that the players who do join in either case are ostensibly on the same page as to what the point of the game is.

Obviously this is different than just saying 'lets play D&D' or something and then springing it on the players.