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Cluedrew
2016-06-10, 09:39 PM
Well, here it is, over in Things that make you go NOPE in a game? a bit of a debate has built up around the issue of taking control of a character away from a player in response to social rolls. (Yes I do mean rolls.)

If you want to catch up on some of the background try starting here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?489409-Things-that-make-you-go-NOPE-in-a-game/page9#254). Read on down and to the next page, you should be able to stop when you get to the post where I announce that I made this thread. It is about 20 posts all told. Which is almost an entire page on something that does not really relate to the main topic. So we decided it should be taken out in case it takes us multiple pages to resolve. It may not.

So now about the topic itself. There are three points I would like to reply to from before.

First is Max_Killjoy's comment: "Comparing the game to reality for a moment... in reality, one person can force a sword to hit another. A person cannot truly force another to believe what they're saying."

I would like to point out that if one is a notably better with swords (or at least, a faster runner) they might be able to keep the swords from hitting. But your main point (as I read it) that social interactions don't have those hard edges still stands. But I think we can still represent the soft edges, if I am a sufficiently good liar than there is a chance that I can present some information to someone else in a way that they will believe it, even if it is completely untrue. A chance that might well be represented by a die roll.

Next is JAL_1138's comment about my metaphor. Yes internal/external is a difference, but that is not the point. The point was for the game aspect you actually have to loose some control of your character, that is where the challenge comes in. Now maybe you are more into the story-telling side of it but even there passing control to randomness has some value for adding the unexpected.

JAL's second point: "Their character concept only goes until it affects mine." It is a good point but the lines are not quite that clear. Very few character concepts are entirely about the internals of the character. More often it includes how the world reacts to them, and how they act on the world. As an extreme example consider the paranoid who believes no one and the sliver liar who can convince anyone. Which one treads on the other's concept? Really they both do, so some balance must be found, and I don't think it should simply give it to the paranoid.

ClintACK
2016-06-10, 10:01 PM
PvP should only happen when both players consent.

And a social skill contest (like persuasion or deception vs. insight) can be PvP, just as much as casting suggestion or charm person, depending on how the skill is used.

Faily
2016-06-10, 10:18 PM
A lot of it I consider a matter of separating IC and OOC knowledge.

Like trusting the words of an NPC. Out of Character, my insight in narrative storytelling is telling me that this person is probably shady has hell, or I might know from a scene I wasn't present in that he is actually an enemy. In Character, I have no reason to disbelieve this person and considering I already trusted random strangers (the way most adventuring parties join up), why stop now, unless I actually win the contested roll to discern their true nature?

Usually, Diplomacy cannot be used on Player Characters, but sometimes it can be used as a tool between PCs to help out some situations. In my personal experience, if it actually came down to Diplomacy (or its equalent in other systems), I've never had a problem with going along with it if I ended up losing the contested roll.

When people get too much into "but my character wouldn't be scared of an Intimidate check/believe what anyone says because they're paranoid", it just brings back bad memories of god-modding players in play-by-post and chat-based roleplaying. :smalltongue: Being a part of engaging storytelling is to allow yourself to be carried away by the circumstances from time to time, and to let go of "my character is my character and no one can touch it but me!"-attitudes.


My 2 copper pieces.

goto124
2016-06-10, 10:27 PM
I suspect moving away from DnD's poor social skills system may be helpful...

AMFV
2016-06-10, 11:24 PM
If it were impossible to make somebody believe something by having a silvery enough tongue. Con-artists would be out of work. It's certainly possible to lie or obfuscate what's true to make somebody believe something they didn't before. I mean in the real world we have many professions that consist entirely of trying to convince people of things (far more than revolve around athletics or hitting things with sword). Lobbyists, sales people, advertisers, politicians, mediators, lawyers. All of those people have jobs that revolve around convincing people of something.

If we represent skill in one area with rolls (such as swordplay), it is not impossible or a poor idea to represent other ideas in similar fashion. Although that isn't necessarily a requirement, I don't see why it's a problem. If somebody makes their Convince Others roll, then your character would believe them, so then it's just a matter of separating character knowledge from player knowledge. There are several other factors to this particular case: First, a person can convince you of something, they can't necessarily predict with perfect accuracy how somebody will react to that particular bit of knowledge, secondly, they then have to maintain the facade, which is increasingly difficult.

We also have the use of magic, which can directly impair faculties, the same way as alcohol and drugs can in the real world. I find that finding real world analogues to game mechanics can help immersion. If somebody casts a spell on you that affects how you act, think of it like alcohol. I mean in many versions of many games (3.5 for example), it's incredibly easy to see when somebody is mind-controlled, so you can assume that the affects are as obvious as those of many drugs. For other more subtle things, you'd have to figure out how it makes your character change, to make a more subtle representation.

The chief problem you have here is that it runs into a character/player separation problem. The player knows that his character is being lied to, so it is more difficult for them to have that separation.

JAL_1138
2016-06-10, 11:29 PM
A lot of it I consider a matter of separating IC and OOC knowledge.

Like trusting the words of an NPC. Out of Character, my insight in narrative storytelling is telling me that this person is probably shady has hell, or I might know from a scene I wasn't present in that he is actually an enemy. In Character, I have no reason to disbelieve this person and considering I already trusted random strangers (the way most adventuring parties join up), why stop now, unless I actually win the contested roll to discern their true nature?

Usually, Diplomacy cannot be used on Player Characters, but sometimes it can be used as a tool between PCs to help out some situations. In my personal experience, if it actually came down to Diplomacy (or its equalent in other systems), I've never had a problem with going along with it if I ended up losing the contested roll.

When people get too much into "but my character wouldn't be scared of an Intimidate check/believe what anyone says because they're paranoid", it just brings back bad memories of god-modding players in play-by-post and chat-based roleplaying. :smalltongue: Being a part of engaging storytelling is to allow yourself to be carried away by the circumstances from time to time, and to let go of "my character is my character and no one can touch it but me!"-attitudes.


My 2 copper pieces.

I suppose I see the other side of godmodding in it--"Your character now likes this person / trusts this person / believes this person, regardless of your objections, however plausible or logical they may be or how well-established a contrary character trait might be." Suppose I've made a character deeply resentful of Drow because of past history, and someone rolls up a Drow character as a replacement or new addition to the group, or the DM introduces their pet-NPC Drow character, and makes them "extremely charming and persuasive" (or, in tabletop, makes some good social-check rolls) in order to force my character to trust them or like them.

(Sorry my replies will be a bit poorly edited /poorly organized and/or sparse for now; I only have access to a cell phone I can post from for a few days, until I can get back to my non-work PC. Also, I don't wish to give the impression I think systems with social checks that work on PCs in ways that affect them internally with mechanical requirement (as opposed to providing information that can be acted upon or not) are inherently/objectively bad, just that they're something I don't personally enjoy. And I'm not even consistent on it, since I don't mind SAN loss in CoC or Madness checks in 5e, so long as there's a good reason for them.)

JAL_1138
2016-06-10, 11:48 PM
If it were impossible to make somebody believe something by having a silvery enough tongue. Con-artists would be out of work. It's certainly possible to lie or obfuscate what's true to make somebody believe something they didn't before. I mean in the real world we have many professions that consist entirely of trying to convince people of things (far more than revolve around athletics or hitting things with sword). Lobbyists, sales people, advertisers, politicians, mediators, lawyers. All of those people have jobs that revolve around convincing people of something.

If we represent skill in one area with rolls (such as swordplay), it is not impossible or a poor idea to represent other ideas in similar fashion. Although that isn't necessarily a requirement, I don't see why it's a problem. If somebody makes their Convince Others roll, then your character would believe them, so then it's just a matter of separating character knowledge from player knowledge. There are several other factors to this particular case: First, a person can convince you of something, they can't necessarily predict with perfect accuracy how somebody will react to that particular bit of knowledge, secondly, they then have to maintain the facade, which is increasingly difficult.

We also have the use of magic, which can directly impair faculties, the same way as alcohol and drugs can in the real world. I find that finding real world analogues to game mechanics can help immersion. If somebody casts a spell on you that affects how you act, think of it like alcohol. I mean in many versions of many games (3.5 for example), it's incredibly easy to see when somebody is mind-controlled, so you can assume that the affects are as obvious as those of many drugs. For other more subtle things, you'd have to figure out how it makes your character change, to make a more subtle representation.

The chief problem you have here is that it runs into a character/player separation problem. The player knows that his character is being lied to, so it is more difficult for them to have that separation.

I'm a lawyer, as it happens, so I think I can comment on your first paragraph a bit. I can never force a juror or judge who's made up their mind to believe me, no matter how well I present my argument. I can present information in a way that conveys sincerity, honesty, legal support, and factual accuracy...and they may still decide against me due to personal beliefs or biases. They may have an irrational dislike of my client, they may dislike the law in question, they may resent the fact that they're on jury duty at all and just take it out on me, regardless of how well I present my case. I've seen badly-presented cases succeed and well-presented cases fail for reasons completely unrelated to the argumentative skills of the attorneys. A huge part of trial success is finding the right jurors in the first place during voir dire, because you simply will not be able to persuade some people (nor will opposing counsel be able to persuade some people to their side).

AMFV
2016-06-10, 11:51 PM
I suppose I see the other side of godmodding in it--"Your character now likes this person / trusts this person / believes this person, regardless of your objections, however plausible or logical they may be or how well-established a contrary character trait might be." Suppose I've made a character deeply resentful of Drow because of past history, and someone rolls up a Drow character as a replacement or new addition to the group, or the DM introduces their pet-NPC Drow character, and makes them "extremely charming and persuasive" (or, in tabletop, makes some good social-check rolls) in order to force my character to trust them or like them.

Well in a system that was designed well, then there'd be a modifier to any check made to convince your character based on how deep set your prejudice was. So that would be taken into account, it wouldn't remove the logical objections of your character, it would just mean that the character was that much more persuasive.


I'm a lawyer, as it happens, so I think I can comment on your first paragraph a bit. I can never force a juror or judge who's made up their mind to believe me, no matter how well I present my argument. I can present information in a way that conveys sincerity, honesty, legal support, and factual accuracy...and they may still decide against me due to personal beliefs or biases. They may have an irrational dislike of my client, they may dislike the law in question, they may resent the fact that they're on jury duty at all and just take it out on me, regardless of how well I present my case. I've seen badly-presented cases succeed and well-presented cases fail for reasons completely unrelated to the argumentative skills of the attorneys. A huge part of trial success is finding the right jurors in the first place during voir dire, because you simply will not be able to persuade some (nor will opposing counsel).

But you can present the information in a way that causes them to believe a certain way. Again, what you're talking about would be reflected by modifiers that would make a persuasion check that much more difficult. It isn't insurmountable, particularly not in a game where other incredible feats are incredibly commonplace.

ClintACK
2016-06-11, 12:04 AM
If we represent skill in one area with rolls (such as swordplay), it is not impossible or a poor idea to represent other ideas in similar fashion. Although that isn't necessarily a requirement, I don't see why it's a problem. If somebody makes their Convince Others roll, then your character would believe them...

Sure. Mechanically, another player's character can trick you, enchant you, grapple you to the floor, or stab you in the back.

But they *shouldn't* in most games, outside of certain bounds, unless both players are into it.

AMFV
2016-06-11, 12:11 AM
Sure. Mechanically, another player's character can trick you, enchant you, grapple you to the floor, or stab you in the back.

But they *shouldn't* in most games, outside of certain bounds, unless both players are into it.

I wouldn't say most games. Some of them certainly. But this discussion was also including DM rolls to manipulate character perceptions not just PvP. Which is why I gave the answer I did.

Fortuna
2016-06-11, 12:16 AM
I suppose I see the other side of godmodding in it--"Your character now likes this person / trusts this person / believes this person, regardless of your objections, however plausible or logical they may be or how well-established a contrary character trait might be." Suppose I've made a character deeply resentful of Drow because of past history, and someone rolls up a Drow character as a replacement or new addition to the group, or the DM introduces their pet-NPC Drow character, and makes them "extremely charming and persuasive" (or, in tabletop, makes some good social-check rolls) in order to force my character to trust them or like them.

Whatever its other flaws - and they are many and many - I think Exalted has a good idea here in the form of Willpower. See, when someone makes a good social check - effectively 'wins' a bout of social conflict - you have two options. You can accept the influence, and react appropriately, or you can spend some of your limited reserve of Willpower to say "No, for whatever reason my character doesn't find your argument compelling".

If you like, you can think of it as rather like hit points in a way - when someone stabs you, you 'spend' some of your limited reserve of hit points to say "No, I'm not bleeding out on the ground". Some systems actually do give you the option of accepting a wound rather than 'spending' hit points when someone hits you with an attack. I think this kind of model, where both players have agency, is a good approach.

JAL_1138
2016-06-11, 12:23 AM
Well in a system that was designed well, then there'd be a modifier to any check made to convince your character based on how deep set your prejudice was. So that would be taken into account, it wouldn't remove the logical objections of your character, it would just mean that the character was that much more persuasive.



But you can present the information in a way that causes them to believe a certain way. Again, what you're talking about would be reflected by modifiers that would make a persuasion check that much more difficult. It isn't insurmountable, particularly not in a game where other incredible feats are incredibly commonplace.

It doesn't cause them to believe a certain way beyond their control. It can give no indication of falsehood and every indication of sincerity and/or legal and factual accuracy, but it can't force them to agree with me / rule in my favor. All that the greatest legal argument in the history of law (not that I'm ever going to make the best legal argument in the history of law, but hypothetically speaking) can get me is the best possible chance I can get that they'll do so. That best chance might still be zero.

This is why I personally prefer to present social checks as giving information rather than mechanically requiring belief. For example, a successful Deception check would mean body language, facial expression, attitude, tone of voice, etc. don't betray any detectable indication of deliberate falsehood or ulterior motive. Thus, disbelieving it is still possible, but is the result of either having other information or irrationality of some kind, or some combination thereof.

NichG
2016-06-11, 12:30 AM
Putting aside any sort of arguments about modelling some sort of in-game reality or about the quality of one system's social mechanics compared to another, there's a fundamental difference in the play experience from the player side of things between being hit by a sword and being convinced to believe something.

If my character can't avoid being hit by swords well enough, they die. Then I, the player, can go home or make a new character or something like that. But if my character can't avoid being affected by social rolls well enough, I'm still expected to sit there and play. That is to say, its not just over and done with and we move on with the game, it lingers around.

I wonder what people would think about a social interaction system where literally if you lose the interaction, your character NPCs out and you must bring in a new one? That is to say, losing a battle to decide what your character truly believes in is just as lethal as losing a battle with swords and spells - you aren't even allowed to keep playing under the new belief if you wanted to, your character is just 'dead' and the DM takes them over.

JAL_1138
2016-06-11, 01:34 AM
Whatever its other flaws - and they are many and many - I think Exalted has a good idea here in the form of Willpower. See, when someone makes a good social check - effectively 'wins' a bout of social conflict - you have two options. You can accept the influence, and react appropriately, or you can spend some of your limited reserve of Willpower to say "No, for whatever reason my character doesn't find your argument compelling".

If you like, you can think of it as rather like hit points in a way - when someone stabs you, you 'spend' some of your limited reserve of hit points to say "No, I'm not bleeding out on the ground". Some systems actually do give you the option of accepting a wound rather than 'spending' hit points when someone hits you with an attack. I think this kind of model, where both players have agency, is a good approach.

This sounds a fair bit like spending Fate Points to resist Compelling an Aspect, I think. A bit different, because they have to spend a Fate point of their own to do it too. I'm not keen on it in FATE either--but I'm completely not sure I'd mind it as bad or at all if the system were such that I could spend a point to resist until I ran out, but once I was out, couldn't be compelled, and they wouldn't be able to spend points on further attempts. The proverbial carrot would still be there--you can gain a Fate point by accepting a Compel--but the stick isn't quite the same, because the worst you can do is run out, rather than having to accept the Compel.

I still personally dislike the default method in Fate, Nd the Exalted method you describe, as you can run out of willpower (or fate points) and be required to go along with them. It's not so much a question of how well the system handles the requirement, for my personal preference; it's that the requirement is there. I simply personally dislike the notion that I can be mechanically required to like/believe someone else in such a manner. I may not be able to detect an attempt to deceive, or I may observe that they seem to be sincere, but if I can be required to like them / believe them / agree with them by the system, absent some form of supernatural or otherwise-external compulsion (e.g., getting drugged to the gills), I don't like that mechanic.

(I can be a stubborn git sometimes when someone tells me I have to do something).

It is just a matter of personal preference for me, though--it's not inherently or objectively bad just because I don't enjoy the notion. I'm never going to enjoy a game with a subject-matter I don't like, either, e.g., a high-school harem game, no matter how competently the rules are executed.



Putting aside any sort of arguments about modelling some sort of in-game reality or about the quality of one system's social mechanics compared to another, there's a fundamental difference in the play experience from the player side of things between being hit by a sword and being convinced to believe something.

If my character can't avoid being hit by swords well enough, they die. Then I, the player, can go home or make a new character or something like that. But if my character can't avoid being affected by social rolls well enough, I'm still expected to sit there and play. That is to say, its not just over and done with and we move on with the game, it lingers around.


I think that's a part of it. I'm now required to sit there and say "Yes, I trust/agree with/like you" if I want to keep playing. That irks me, because I didn't want to do that thing or play it out that way in the first place, but now I've got to go through the motions if I want to stay in the game. (As a tangent, I can see a situation where the whatevever-it-is might have been something I'd have been keen on, like a plan I would have agreed with, until the system required my character to agree with it because the other player rolled high immediately after suggesting it. Like I said, I'm a stubborn git sometimes :smalltongue: )



I wonder what people would think about a social interaction system where literally if you lose the interaction, your character NPCs out and you must bring in a new one? That is to say, losing a battle to decide what your character truly believes in is just as lethal as losing a battle with swords and spells - you aren't even allowed to keep playing under the new belief if you wanted to, your character is just 'dead' and the DM takes them over.

I still would probably dislike on one level it due to not really being of the personal opinion that non-magical persuasion can work that way...but I kinda think I'd mind it a heck of a lot less, possibly to enough of a degree to put it in non-NOPE territory if the rules for "social combat" were decent, because I'm not required to be the one playing it out if I lose.

ClintACK
2016-06-11, 02:36 AM
I wouldn't say most games. Some of them certainly. But this discussion was also including DM rolls to manipulate character perceptions not just PvP. Which is why I gave the answer I did.

I totally agree with rolls to determine what *information* characters get. I'm iffier about rolls to determine what a character wants to do. (At least when the big bad casts Dominate Person, you get a saving throw -- and get to consider it a violent attack when it wears off.)

"Woo! The vizier rolled a natural 20. Your character agrees with him..." is different from "The vizier seems like a decent man who earnestly believes this is the only option."

ClintACK
2016-06-11, 02:46 AM
Re: Social Combat...

The Dresden Files RPG (and maybe all FATE, I'm not sure) has three kinds of combat: physical (like D&D combat), mental (like possession and mind control), and social (like intimidation or tarnishing someone's reputation).

It's significantly more involved than a single skill check, though. More like a full combat.

Lacco
2016-06-11, 02:53 AM
And from the other thread...:


When I DM, social checks aren't guarantees of success, in the sense of getting what you want out of a Persuasion deal or convincing someone to do something with a Deception. For example, if the guard was told "No one is allowed entry without credentials," they might believe you "forgot" yours, or "got mugged," or whatever... and still not let you pass, because they could be fined/fired/executed/whatever if they're caught bending the rules. (Not terribly likely--a good bluff in that situation would probably convince them you're legit, and if the chance of discovery or the penalty is low, get you in without a problem--but it's possible.) A raging berserker barbarian who's already decided to attack you probably doesn't care if you're intimidating or if you're trying to talk them down with reasoning.

They usually do result in success for plausible attempts, because NPCs more often than not are going to behave/believe rationally when presented with information that such a check tells, unless there's a really good reason not to, as above. They're not going to accomplish outlandish things, though--you don't get to roll great on Persuasion for "give me your entire inventory and the contents of the cash register" and get it because you Persuaded the merchant.

Against PCs, the only check I use is Deception. PCs will be persuaded or intimidated based on their players' analysis of the situation, not on a die roll. But my NPCs can roll to lie or conceal their intentions. All this gives the PCs is no evidence they're lying and/or the appearance of genuineness.

My original question was mostly due to the imbalance - if PCs can use diplomacy to do all strange stuff and NPCs can not, it's not really workable for me.

And basically I think we agree - success shouldn't force a GM-decided action from PC. PC is still under control of player. What I do as GM in games is - manipulation of perception. If there are no "mechanical" results (e.g. losing dice from combat pool due to intimidation check), then I change description based on the rolls.

E.g. if a vizier with a goatee (=automatically the traitor) is defending himself with a rousing speech in front of whole court and PC - with sword in hand - is approaching him, and he rolls really well, I'll just state "His words ring of truth - he seems really like he cared about the old king. His hands shake, and a single tear rolls down from his eye, when he speaks about the man who seemed like a father to him. On the other hand, the crown prince stands near the throne, as if he was already waiting to be crowned, looking...strangely smug, his eyes jumping from you to the vizier..."

Does the PC have any clues that the vizier was the one who killed the king? Then they don't believe automatically - but the members of the court may. Did they even see him? No chance it works... but if they are deciding between the prince & the vizier, because there are no clues... they won't like the vizier, they will just perceive him differently due to his speech.

EDIT: In RoS there is "Ridicule" skill, which allows you to "provoke your opponent into overextending his attack" - basically, you make fun of him until he's raging and attacks full-on.
This can be used on the player - but I never tell the player how he should do it. I just tell him that he'll have to add x additional dice to his attack due to the ridicule check - it's up to him to tell how & why he attacks... :smallsmile:

goto124
2016-06-11, 03:03 AM
E.g. if a vizier with a goatee (=automatically the traitor)

Why much evil viziers have goatees if the GM wants to hide the fact that the vizier is evil? Reverse psychology?

NichG
2016-06-11, 05:56 AM
I still would probably dislike on one level it due to not really being of the personal opinion that non-magical persuasion can work that way...but I kinda think I'd mind it a heck of a lot less, possibly to enough of a degree to put it in non-NOPE territory if the rules for "social combat" were decent, because I'm not required to be the one playing it out if I lose.

Well the other thing I was trying to get at is, if you attack a character with lethal force, that's taken pretty seriously and its likely that one side or the other of the conflict will end up completely wiped out. But people will throw around Diplomacy checks or whatever without thinking that way about them, because 'its just words'. If throwing around a Bluff check to mess with the new guy ends up forcing him to roll up a new character, I think it wouldn't be done so casually (and, similarly, in such a world, it would be entirely reasonable to escalate to lethal force once you detect that social combat is being used against you).

I feel like that may stretch the fiction of what people are hoping to represent with binding social rolls and social combat, but I bring it up to point out that if you view the consequences of the action with an eye towards player agency, this is sort where it can end up. This is why I strongly prefer negotiation models for social interaction rather than opposed rolls or other direct adversarial comparisons of ability - you end up with a consistent fiction, where a player might lose some freedom in one regard because they decided it was worth the loss in that direction for a gain of something elsewhere. Rather than lose agency by interacting with others, the interaction with others gives them more freedom to make choices, but all such choices have a trade-off which is beneficial to the one offering it.

dysike
2016-06-11, 06:56 AM
There are two games I've played which give explicit rules in this regard; fantasy game Burning Wheel, and teen drama game MonsterHearts.

Burning Wheel has the duel of wits which can explicitly be used for PvP arguments, at the start of the duel both players decide on their concession (if I win this will happen, if you win this will happen), when the match is over the player who won gets their decided on victory thing. The rules for this explicitly say that the winner gets their thing even if the other character still disagrees, e.g. if the group is arguing about whether to kill a prisoner or not and the person who wants to kill them wins, then the group kills the prisoner, the player who wanted to keep them alive is allowed to have his character feel and react to that however they like but the result still stands.

MonsterHearts goes the other way and essentially says 'you are not in full control of your character's feelings'. The game has a move called Turn Someone On, it does what it says on the tin, if someone makes that roll against your character and succeeds then you were, however briefly, attracted to them, whether you like it or not.

Having played both I find that these both work well.

Quertus
2016-06-11, 07:28 AM
Here's my opening bid:

Think of the most horrific act you can imagine, the thing in all the world most abhorrent to you.

Got it?

For myself... let's pretend it's eating a live baby.

Now imagine that there's someone who can, with a few words, convince you to perform this act. Not force you, not out of necessity, no, they make you believe that you honestly want to do this.

Difficult to imagine?

Similarly, from the above examples, imagine if a lawyer could convince the entire courtroom that they all need to chow down on the live babies that have been provided in order to properly understand the case. Can you conceptualize a world in which that level of persuasion was not just possible, but commonplace? And, did you honestly build your character based on and internally consistent with such a world?

-----

For me, when I roleplay, I like to understand the how's and the why's of the character. Tell me that I'm magically compelled to certain actions - or even beliefs - and I'll RP the character as correctly as possible within those parameters, happily slaying former friends or chowing down on babies.

Tell me that someone can convince me to do so with a few words, however, and, to put it in grognard terms, I roll to disbelieve.

EDIT: and, although it's probably obvious at this point, I should explicitly state that, no, the complexity of the system, or the length of the argument does not change my opinion on whether such actions should be possible. Now, ritual magic a proper brainwashing, with months of indoctrination, malnutrition, and perhaps even drugs, probably could convince me to accept a drow party member of my own free will.

Fortuna
2016-06-11, 07:34 AM
Here's my opening bid:

Think of the most horrific act you can imagine, the thing in all the world most abhorrent to you.

Got it?

For myself... let's pretend it's eating a live baby.

Now imagine that there's someone who can, with a few words, convince you to perform this act. Not force you, not out of necessity, no, they make you believe that you honestly want to do this.

Difficult to imagine?

Similarly, from the above examples, imagine if a lawyer could convince the entire courtroom that they all need to chow down on the live babies that have been provided in order to properly understand the case. Can you conceptualize a world in which that level of persuasion was not just possible, but commonplace? And, did you honestly build your character based on and internally consistent with such a world?

-----

For me, when I roleplay, I like to understand the how's and the why's of the character. Tell me that I'm magically compelled to certain actions - or even beliefs - and I'll RP the character as correctly as possible within those parameters, happily slaying former friends or chowing down on babies.

Tell me that someone can convince me to do so with a few words, however, and, to put it in grognard terms, I roll to disbelieve.

I mean, this makes sense as far as it goes, but when my buddy Thews McManly over there is cleaving dragons in twain with a single blow and my friend Sneaky the Weasel can ghost across an open field under the eyes of thirty sentinels, I feel like possibly I'm due converting a baby-eater or seven with a few well-chosen words?

goto124
2016-06-11, 08:00 AM
I mean, this makes sense as far as it goes, but when my buddy Thews McManly over there is cleaving dragons in twain with a single blow and my friend Sneaky the Weasel can ghost across an open field under the eyes of thirty sentinels, I feel like possibly I'm due converting a baby-eater or seven with a few well-chosen words?

In a setting where mind-control (or persuasion as good as mind-control) is so commonplace and has that little restriction... what would plots look like?

Besides, I'd thought one-shotting dragons and sneaking past thirty people are pretty much impossible...

Quertus
2016-06-11, 08:49 AM
Act 2 - proper role-playing

Now, let's say that the thing my character hates most, the most deeply ingrained thing in his entire, distributing persona, is a racist hatred of drow.

Let's say the party encounters a drow (let's ignore the circumstances, whether it's a PC, etc) who happens to have a 30 charisma, +30 to bluff and diplomacy, etc. If my character reacts exactly the same to this drow as to any other drow - if I don't at least give a nod to the effect of these stats - IMO that's bad role-playing.

Now, admittedly, the character's first reaction might be to trust the drow less, viewing him as some scary fast-talker who may have tricked the rest of these gullible fools, but you're on to them.

But, for proper role-playing, your ability to believe them over time should be affected by their social stats. Kinda like the whole social combat idea, with each piece of evidence dealing more damage to your social HP.

So, over time, after the drow has saved your life and the lives of your companions several times, has undergone multiple sessions of truth serum zone if truth / ring of truth / divination / etc, underwent the entire council of elders aiding another on sense motive checks, and passed a credit check, well, I guess maybe not all drow are equally bad, and maybe this is one of the good ones. Maybe.

And while you smiled in grim satisfaction the first time a kobald ran him through, and even spat on his unconscious body when the griffin mauled him, you did wince when the balor took off his ear, and even helped him to his feet when the cleric raised him after he sacrificed himself to hold off the ancient dragon, just for a round. Ah, good times. If he hadn't been so likable, you probably would have killed him in his sleep the first night, or have "tended his wounds" after the griffin, or sold him to those slavers when most of the party was disabled. It's almost a pity you're about to betray him, along with the rest of your party, to the BBEG, but them's the breaks.

Fortuna
2016-06-11, 08:53 AM
In a setting where mind-control (or persuasion as good as mind-control) is so commonplace and has that little restriction... what would plots look like?

Besides, I'd thought one-shotting dragons and sneaking past thirty people are pretty much impossible...

Neither of those feats would be particularly out of line for a mid-level D&D character. So yes, pretty much impossible, but an impossibility of a sort that the game already includes - which means that it's reasonable to want social impossibilities to be included as well.


Act 2 - proper role-playing

Now, let's say that the thing my character hates most, the most deeply ingrained thing in his entire, distributing persona, is a racist hatred of drow.

Let's say the party encounters a drow (let's ignore the circumstances, whether it's a PC, etc) who happens to have a 30 charisma, +30 to bluff and diplomacy, etc. If my character reacts exactly the same to this drow as to any other drow - if I don't at least give a nod to the effect of these stats - IMO that's bad role-playing.

Now, admittedly, the character's first reaction might be to trust the drow less, viewing him as some scary fast-talker who may have tricked the rest of these gullible fools, but you're on to them.

But, for proper role-playing, your ability to believe them over time should be affected by their social stats. Kinda like the whole social combat idea, with each piece of evidence dealing more damage to your social HP.

So, over time, after the drow has saved your life and the lives of your companions several times, has undergone multiple sessions of truth serum zone if truth / ring of truth / divination / etc, underwent the entire council of elders aiding another on sense motive checks, and passed a credit check, well, I guess maybe not all drow are equally bad, and maybe this is one of the good ones. Maybe.

And while you smiled in grim satisfaction the first time a kobald ran him through, and even spat on his unconscious body when the griffin mauled him, you did wince when the balor took off his ear, and even helped him to his feet when the cleric raised him after he sacrificed himself to hold off the ancient dragon, just for a round. Ah, good times. If he hadn't been so likable, you probably would have killed him in his sleep the first night, or have "tended his wounds" after the griffin, or sold him to those slavers when most of the party was disabled. It's almost a pity you're about to betray him, along with the rest of your party, to the BBEG, but them's the breaks.

This is great, and a good social system should absolutely contribute to mechanizing this story rather than stomp all over it.

SirBellias
2016-06-11, 09:32 AM
MonsterHearts goes the other way and essentially says 'you are not in full control of your character's feelings'. The game has a move called Turn Someone On, it does what it says on the tin, if someone makes that roll against your character and succeeds then you were, however briefly, attracted to them, whether you like it or not.


I think the system Monsterhearts uses is fairly realistic when you think about it. When you're a teenager, most of the time you can't control who you're attracted to, or how spurned you feel, or anything of the sort. People can and certainly do try to wreck each other emotionally, and it even feels like they have power over each other. All this is mechanically represented in Monsterhearts, and it works.

Truth be told, your actual reactions to the emotional impulses aren't determined by the roll, but you still grant them some power over you whether you like it or not. You could be embarrassed, angry, or indifferent, but the hold the characters have over each other has definitely shifted.

Edit: The same mechanic probably wouldn't work as well when trying to model adults behavior, which means it won't work well for a large portion of games, but it works for the genre. I think that when running games with more rational age groups in mind, it makes more sense to represent the information quality/sincerity based on the dice, as opposed to representing the outcome. In most cases, it would have the same outcome, but if someone wants to behave irrationally, then that has its own social issues outside of the one person.

With the vizier example, sure, you could still believe it was the vizier, you may have even seen him. But if you cut him down in front of the court, and don't present your own case well, what will they think? You can irrationally believe whatever you want, other people (NPCs, Characters) will probably view you as irrational or plain crazy if you act on it.

Jay R
2016-06-11, 09:41 AM
If mind control bothers you that much, tell the DM you don't want to play in such a game.

My wife and I were in a game in which a sexual assault occurred. The two women in the game wanted to stop playing, until the DM agreed not to do it again.

SirBellias
2016-06-11, 09:48 AM
If mind control bothers you that much, tell the DM you don't want to play in such a game.


I think the argument being presented is more that magical mind control and actual brain washing and what not were perfectly alright. It's just that random people with silver tongues shouldn't be able to force you to believe them just by talking for a minute or two. That's how I interpreted it, anyways.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-11, 09:52 AM
There's a difference between "this character has given you no reason to not believe what he's telling you" and "you believe this character because the dice / the rules / I said so".

Keltest
2016-06-11, 10:27 AM
There's a difference between "this character has given you no reason to not believe what he's telling you" and "you believe this character because the dice / the rules / I said so".

Agreed, and I think that's where the problems arise. A lot of DMs will play diplomacy the latter way, but in general the rules do not allow for that. You can be charismatic and likable and lie as if it were your job (which it probably is), but that doesn't mean you can convince the paranoid contrarian who automatically assumes everyone is lying without evidence to do or believe anything. Personally, I try to play it the former way whenever possible, which, admittedly, tends to end up with my players being paranoid as heck because I DONT specifically come out and say he is telling the truth.

goto124
2016-06-11, 10:40 AM
Personally, I try to play it the former way whenever possible, which, admittedly, tends to end up with my players being paranoid as heck because I DONT specifically come out and say he is telling the truth.

To be fair, the players are playing adventurers right? And adventurers are paranoid! Duh :smalltongue:

Keltest
2016-06-11, 10:43 AM
To be fair, the players are playing adventurers right? And adventurers are paranoid! Duh :smalltongue:

This is true. But they haven't even had a ceiling try to eat them yet.

Jay R
2016-06-11, 11:11 AM
Agreed, and I think that's where the problems arise. A lot of DMs will play diplomacy the latter way, but in general the rules do not allow for that. You can be charismatic and likable and lie as if it were your job (which it probably is), but that doesn't mean you can convince the paranoid contrarian who automatically assumes everyone is lying without evidence to do or believe anything. Personally, I try to play it the former way whenever possible, which, admittedly, tends to end up with my players being paranoid as heck because I DONT specifically come out and say he is telling the truth.

The (successful) paranoid contrarian is defined as somebody with a high Sense Motive skill. You can't claim the right to a high skill in that field any more than you can claim to be a great tracker or a great blacksmith, separate from the skills on your character sheet.

This is no different from playing a character who's never seen trolls before, when you've memorized the Monster Manual.

Keltest
2016-06-11, 11:14 AM
The (successful) paranoid contrarian is defined as somebody with a high Sense Motive skill. You can't claim the right to a high skill in that field any more than you can claim to be a great tracker or a great blacksmith, separate from the skills on your character sheet.

This is no different from playing a character who's never seen trolls before, when you've memorized the Monster Manual.

That's just it. They don't have a high sense motive skill, they don't believe you even if youre telling the truth. You can reverse psychology them, I guess, but whatever you tell them they wont believe you.

NichG
2016-06-11, 11:14 AM
Someone killing a dragon with a sword is still an example of the archetypal relationship between an attacker and their target. A human can kill a rat with rock in real life, or kill an elephant with a gun, or whatever.

If you make high-end social interaction about effective one-sided mind control though, you're changing type. You're implicitly saying something like 'really at its core, social interaction is about attackers killing their target'. That's why its so unsatisfying - it changes the essence of social interaction to make it feel less, well, social.

Darth Ultron
2016-06-11, 11:49 AM
Social things effect the game play as much as the action, so you need rules for the game to work. The same way the action is not left vague, the social stuff can't be left vague either.

And ''taking control of a character'' is just a beyond silly statement. Anything a GM does in a game can be spun to say they are ''taking control of the character''.

And the same way you can't expect a player to ''act like their character is wounded'', you can't ask them to ''act like your character is afraid''.

But all that being said, I really don't like the boring social mechanics of most games. Where it's like ''oh your character is sacred, take a -2 to rolls'' or ''roll to see if you detect a lie''. I think this is better left to role playing.

If the DM wants to have the character feel something, then they need to make the player feel it an act it out.

Quertus
2016-06-11, 12:29 PM
The (successful) paranoid contrarian is defined as somebody with a high Sense Motive skill. You can't claim the right to a high skill in that field any more than you can claim to be a great tracker or a great blacksmith, separate from the skills on your character sheet.

This is no different from playing a character who's never seen trolls before, when you've memorized the Monster Manual.


That's just it. They don't have a high sense motive skill, they don't believe you even if youre telling the truth. You can reverse psychology them, I guess, but whatever you tell them they wont believe you.

Someone with high sense motive is probably not a paranoid contrarian. That is, It's not paranoia if it's only properly directed - that's just prudence.

One could even argue that the paranoid contrarian archetype should be required not to have a high sense motive, although I don't agree with that idea.

To oversimplify, the true paranoid has two modes: I believe you're lying, and I know you're lying. Their level of sense motive just determines how often they get that positive reinforcement proving that everything really is out to get them.

Paranoia has nothing to do with skill, and likening role-playing the paranoid it to bad role-playing... or likening playing the paranoid character to metagaming... Is a good indication that any social system that has trouble with the paranoid needs to be fixed.

Jay R
2016-06-11, 12:57 PM
Someone with high sense motive is probably not a paranoid contrarian. That is, It's not paranoia if it's only properly directed - that's just prudence.


Red herring noted. I will drop the unfortunate word "paranoid" I picked up from an earlier poster, and repeat my post without it:

The (successful) disbeliever is defined as somebody with a high Sense Motive skill. You can't claim the right to a high skill in that field any more than you can claim to be a great tracker or a great blacksmith, separate from the skills on your character sheet.

This is no different from playing a character who's never seen trolls before, when you've memorized the Monster Manual.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-11, 01:10 PM
Eh. I mostly play pathfinder, so no social combat systems for me. But I think it's just a trust issue. I need to trust my players they won't go full murderhobo and kill everyone with a goatee and immerse themselves. My players need to be able to trust me that I'll take their skills and concept to heart and let the world react to them as they are. If its a game of Big Damn Heroes, then yes, you get to convert the evil people.

If someone wants to pull a con on a player, then that's between them. I probably would be leery of it unless I knew the players had experience with one another or had made an arrangement. But I don't see why I need to interfere because usually in such cases the players have worked things out for themselves. I should mention that I don't allow PvP, and PvP includes mind control and certain forms of mucking about with the other character's goals. (So you can't moon the Queen when another player is attempting to talk to her for a basic example.)

So basically, I usually just let the players roll and let them decide from there. For NPCs, I let them roll Sense Motive to determine a con or motives, and tell them what they determine. Also helps that I like to sprinkle in NPCs who are oddly helpful or trying to use the PCs for their own ends but not necessarily to their disadvantage.

Quertus
2016-06-11, 04:00 PM
Red herring noted. I will drop the unfortunate word "paranoid" I picked up from an earlier poster, and repeat my post without it:

The (successful) disbeliever is defined as somebody with a high Sense Motive skill. You can't claim the right to a high skill in that field any more than you can claim to be a great tracker or a great blacksmith, separate from the skills on your character sheet.

This is no different from playing a character who's never seen trolls before, when you've memorized the Monster Manual.

Ok, that sounds a lot more believable. :smallsmile:

I do still have a small quibble, though. To take a page from my life...

I have always enjoyed watching people lie and make the best arguments they can for something I know to be false. For example, I once took a necklace out of my pocket, dropped it on the ground, and then pointed it out to a neighbor girl. No matter how good her argument, no "bluff" was going to convince me that this necklace that I "found" was hers. This experiment simply let me know what the girl in question sounded like when she was lying, what her tells were, how far she was willing to take the lie, and how she responded when confronted with the truth.

I have a difficult time imagining any... hmmm... fully functional sentient being... reproducing that experiment, and somehow being convinced that the necklace belonged to the test subject. No matter how convincing a subject they experimented on.

There is a lot more to belief than just how convincing an argument is. If that wasn't the case, I'd have worked to max out my bluff, and convinced everyone I was the ruler of the known universe - in the game and IRL.

I also know a boy who will miss the most obvious social clues, and the most obvious of lies. He clearly has, in game terms, a low (probably negative) sense motive. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, he tends to (successfully) disbelieve a great many things - including things which are patently true.

So I feel that any game that has, "X was said with Y level of social skill, therefore Z believes it" is missing part of the equation. But I think I otherwise agree.

Cluedrew
2016-06-11, 04:18 PM
So much text. Anyways I have made up some points from reading:
There are actually three separate "lines" of social influence to consider: PC->PC, PC->NPC & NPC->PC. OK four: NPC->NPC, but that one should happen off stage most of the time. I bring this up being I think PC->NPC is being ignored. There are a lot of diplomatic characters who depend on their ability to lie, persuade or charm. Should we get rid of those as well? Should your ability to talk your way past dumb guard #24 be dependant on the GM's mood instead of how good your character is at this? I say no on both accounts.
Social rules should represent one's social abilities not cause things to happen in spite of them. This may sound obvious but there are some systems, I'm not naming any names, that fall into the latter category. So you need to take into account the characters involved and what they are trying to accomplish. What exactly a system that covers all that would look like... I don't know.
Social vs. physical combat: There are some parallels to be made, mostly around the general concept of challenge and influence, but they are different and I don't think they should be treated as such. The rules around them should be different. In fact if we are going to compare making an argument to physical combat I think we should compare it to a battle, not a single blow.

Jay R
2016-06-11, 04:22 PM
Ok, that sounds a lot more believable. :smallsmile:

I do still have a small quibble, though. To take a page from my life...

That's always dangerous. D&D rules are less complicated than life, and I can find a real-life example to any D&D rule.


I have always enjoyed watching people lie and make the best arguments they can for something I know to be false. For example, I once took a necklace out of my pocket, dropped it on the ground, and then pointed it out to a neighbor girl. No matter how good her argument, no "bluff" was going to convince me that this necklace that I "found" was hers. This experiment simply let me know what the girl in question sounded like when she was lying, what her tells were, how far she was willing to take the lie, and how she responded when confronted with the truth.

I have a difficult time imagining any... hmmm... fully functional sentient being... reproducing that experiment, and somehow being convinced that the necklace belonged to the test subject. No matter how convincing a subject they experimented on.

I believe that a competent DM will not roll in that case. Similarly, I've had players upset at me because their extremely high roll did not convince the lord to attack the BBEG's castle. I knew, and they did not, that he was an ally of the BBEG.


There is a lot more to belief than just how convincing an argument is. If that wasn't the case, I'd have worked to max out my bluff, and convinced everyone I was the ruler of the known universe - in the game and IRL.

I also know a boy who will miss the most obvious social clues, and the most obvious of lies. He clearly has, in game terms, a low (probably negative) sense motive. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, he tends to (successfully) disbelieve a great many things - including things which are patently true.

Yup. Most simulations of some skill or another fail to model it as it actually works in the real world.


So I feel that any game that has, "X was said with Y level of social skill, therefore Z believes it" is missing part of the equation. But I think I otherwise agree.

Agreed. The part of the equation missing is the fact that people very low on most skills can be extremely high in one or two. That's an area in which D&D (3e+) is simply wrong. It's not true that a "first level" can't have more than 4 ranks in any skill.

But if we agreed to play by those rules, then those are the rules we will play by. [That's one of the reasons I prefer earlier versions. While my abilities are certainly limited by the character's intelligence, wisdom and charisma, in the earlier games, I still get to make my own decisions.]

I know (and somewhat agree with) the explanation for replacing that kind of player decision with a roll based on the character's abilities, but what we are discussing is a direct and consequence of that choice in game design.

I think we're in complete agreement on everything except the degree of suspension of disbelief required to play the games at all. I know the simulation is wildly inaccurate. Let's play anyway.

Themrys
2016-06-11, 05:51 PM
If mind control bothers you that much, tell the DM you don't want to play in such a game.

My wife and I were in a game in which a sexual assault occurred. The two women in the game wanted to stop playing, until the DM agreed not to do it again.

Interestingly, that is what controlling characters is sometimes used for - sexual assualt.

I once read a thread started by a girl who asked how to construct a character that would resist all seduction attempts - because there was a player in her group who wanted to force her to roleplay sex with his character.

The best thing is to just not play with that kind of person.

With things like lying, I'd just expect the players to separate what they know and what their characters know.

Most problems can be solved by everyone behaving like adults. Or, well, like my idealized idea of how an adult should act. :smalltongue:

2D8HP
2016-06-11, 08:27 PM
Interestingly, that is what controlling characters is sometimes used for - sexual assualt.

I once read a thread started by a girl who asked how to construct a character that would resist all seduction attempts - because there was a player in her group who wanted to force her to roleplay sex with his character.
Ewww..:smallyuk: Sounds like something for the Things that make you go NOPE in a game? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?489409-Things-that-make-you-go-NOPE-in-a-game) thread, lord I hope that's much more rare than I fear it is.
Not related to that but still related to the thread;
One game I've long wanted to try (I bought 4 editions of it!) Was "(King Arthur) Pendragon". A good description is here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...Game/Pendragon
One aspect of it is that the PC's have personality "traits", that you sometimes roll against for "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" like temptations etc.
I never got to play the game, but in that context I think a "Roll Controlling my Character", is a welcome drama and suspense adding element, unlike in most D&D scenario's were a "wisdom' roll would bother me.
EDIT:
I can actually imagine a Pendragon like "roll against personality traits" system being used in unwelcome PC against PC actions like Themrys described. I just hope everyone else at the table would go "Dude, just NO! CUT IT OUT!" and stop that mess. :smallfrown:

Thrudd
2016-06-11, 08:30 PM
I am of the mind that players should always be in control of what their characters think and feel (with the exception of the odd and temporary magical control/fear effect). Rolls and skills are not to tell the player how their character is supposed to act, but to tell the GM what information to give the player. The player can react to that information however they want. This is why most rolls which affect what information the character gets about the world should be made by the GM in secret. NPC's don't get to roll to influence PC's the same way PC's get to roll to influence NPC's. And PC's don't get to roll to influence each other, either. If an NPC is lying and a player asks to sense motive, DM rolls the contested bluff vs sense motive in secret, and then tells them what their character perceives. "He seems trustworthy" or "You feel he is hiding something". If the player wants to ignore what the DM tells them, that is their prerogative.

If the DM has established a world where almost everyone lies to the PC's and everything they tell the players about what their characters see and hear is a lie or a trap, then they have dug their own grave regarding the players metagaming. The players will mistrust and ignore everything you tell them and expect everything to be a lie/illusion/trap. It's a losing battle trying to enforce adherence to the results of skill checks to determine the characters' knowledge.

You need to develop trust, where most of the time the information you give the players about the world is accurate. Then, when you tell the players their characters sense no duplicity they generally won't have immediate cause to distrust you. If a player detects that something is likely a lie without benefit of the dice then either they are a good player that has seen the signs and figured stuff out (yay, they're paying attention), or your set-up is too obvious. The aloof vizier with the silky voice and squinty eyes who whispers in the king's ear will automatically be assumed to be a shady character that likely is manipulating the king to his own ends. You can expect almost anyone to see that before any dice are rolled. Unless you're planning for them to make that assumption, and the vizier is actually working for good and it is the innocent-seeming princess that is the bad guy, don't use such cliché and obvious characters and set-ups. If you're using the cliché straight, then just accept that your players will likely guess a lot of things right away and don't try to force them to pretend they don't know. That adventure should not be about figuring out who the bad guy is, but things that happen when they try to stop the bad guy.

If a player wants to roll dice to decide how their character acts and feels, then I wouldn't generally stop them. But I certainly don't expect them or want them to play that way. I tell them what their character perceives, they decide what to do with that. They shouldn't need the dice to force them to role play their character.

Cluedrew
2016-06-11, 08:43 PM
You know I don't quite understand why so many people are find handing control over to a mind control effect, but resist the idea of a character even being influenced by the dozens of very real influences that effect us in real life. Sure they are not as strong, but they actually work without adding and special rules, such as magic, to the occasion.

Quertus
2016-06-11, 10:02 PM
You know I don't quite understand why so many people are find handing control over to a mind control effect, but resist the idea of a character even being influenced by the dozens of very real influences that effect us in real life. Sure they are not as strong, but they actually work without adding and special rules, such as magic, to the occasion.

For me, it's a matter of internal consistency.

I can understand how mind control could make me believe it's all fine and dandy to eat a baby; I am, however, incapable of comprehending any uninfluenced state in which that is possible. I can't make the logical leap from here to there.

Similarly, for any given character I run, there are many paths of growth that are internally consistent, and other trains of thought that, while they may make sense for someone, somewhere, they would not make sense for this particular character.

With mind control, it doesn't have to be internally consistent, it's an override. When said override is pushed to where the character consciously notices how it conflicts with some part of / the rest of their personality, well, that's a good time for them to get a chance to break free of the enchantment.

On the other hand, I'm all about role-playing believing things that others say convincingly when my character has no built in reason to disbelieve (no knowledge of contradicting facts, no detect lie / sense motive / spider sense going off, no prejudice against believing them, etc) - even when I know for a fact OOC that they are lying.

As to your specific issue... do you believe it is realistic for the lawyer to convince the whole courtroom to eat babies? Or for someone to convince you of the righteousness of you performing whatever act is most horrific to you? Or do you believe, as I do, that each individual only had certain paths that they will go down, and that the route to these paths may vary from person to person?

Who knows a character better than its player? Who, then, is in a better position than the player to determine the result of any given stimulus?

Thrudd
2016-06-11, 10:05 PM
You know I don't quite understand why so many people are find handing control over to a mind control effect, but resist the idea of a character even being influenced by the dozens of very real influences that effect us in real life. Sure they are not as strong, but they actually work without adding and special rules, such as magic, to the occasion.

Because there's a line between role playing a character, and simulating a character. To use mechanics to decide not only the results of a character's actions but also decide what they think and feel, you are running a simulation of a person. Yes, it might be more "realistic", as real people can be tricked, convinced, influenced, etc., but it is less immersive for the player. If the player is convinced, then they are convinced. If they aren't, then they aren't. Asking them to pretend to be convinced when they aren't immediately breaks whatever connection to the character they had.

There can be a point where it is glaring to the players that their characters are being fooled, lied to, manipulated, etc, but the DM is still asking/expecting them to act as though they aren't, possibly to the detriment of their characters' lives and success in their plans. This is a bad situation for a group to be in, the struggle to resist meta-gaming should not be this difficult.

A part of this is different philosophy about what the purpose of the game is, in a general sense. If they game is about acting a part, as in a play or an improv scene, then using the dice and GM's ruling to tell you what your character thinks and feels is ok, maybe even preferable. It's like getting input from the director about your character's motivation in a scene, so you can play it out correctly. "What should my character be feeling in this situation? Is he smart enough to figure out this guy is lying to him?" "Nope, he is clueless. Play it straight, like you completely trust and believe him." Then you proceed to improvise the scene between the liar and the trusting character. The players know that this is all part of a narrative and that they won't be punished for acting in a way that seems detrimental to their characters.

In a game that is about the players being challenged and pursuing some type of objective, the players should have no such assurances. Part of their challenge is keeping their characters alive, and it is the players' own problem solving skills that are being tested. In this type of game, asking the players to act in ways they know are going to be detrimental to their characters is unfair and defeats the purpose of the game. It's hard enough to survive and succeed without shooting yourself in the foot by making bad choices on purpose.

NichG
2016-06-11, 10:29 PM
Even with the improv thing, there's a difference between something like playing a part on a stage or for a movie, and playing a part at a gaming table. The goal in playing a part to an audience is to communicate that character to the audience, to make them understand the character. But when you're playing a roleplaying game, you're the audience of your own acting. Your own ability to feel like you're in tune with the character, that you get into character so much that you don't have to step back and do a meta-analysis of what they would do or think, is much more important. Being told 'okay, now think this' is destructive to that process.

Cluedrew
2016-06-12, 06:11 PM
In a game that is about the players being challenged and pursuing some type of objective, the players should have no such assurances. Part of their challenge is keeping their characters alive, and it is the players' own problem solving skills that are being tested. In this type of game, asking the players to act in ways they know are going to be detrimental to their characters is unfair and defeats the purpose of the game. It's hard enough to survive and succeed without shooting yourself in the foot by making bad choices on purpose.I kept turning this over and over in my head and eventually I think I figured why I kept coming back to it. What about games where the social challenges and influences around the characters is the challenge? Social dramas pop to mind.

I mean you can make this work by really getting into your character's head. But you can't really encode role-playing skill in a system, so while it is in a personal solution, it isn't really a system solution.

SirBellias
2016-06-12, 09:20 PM
One game I've long wanted to try (I bought 4 editions of it!) Was "(King Arthur) Pendragon". A good description is here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...Game/Pendragon
One aspect of it is that the PC's have personality "traits", that you sometimes roll against for "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" like temptations etc.
I never got to play the game, but in that context I think a "Roll Controlling my Character", is a welcome drama and suspense adding element, unlike in most D&D scenario's were a "wisdom' roll would bother me.


I actually played a session or two of Pendragon a while back. Usually you'd only roll against traits that your character is strongly tied to, and when you want them to (or are provoked into) doing the contrary.

The example I can remember is after I, Sir Bellias, had slain a man eating bear, Sir Bairwyn the Boisterous began to tell the village the story with much more exaggeration than truth. Due to my character having a defining trait of Modest (and it being at 16 or so), I'd naturally talk down my exploits. Or GM or whatever it's called had me roll against my Modesty just in case his boasting pulled me out of my element enough for my Pride to show through, but I rolled low.

It could work well in a game where characters are defined by one or two strong traits, and sticking to those ideals is where the fun happens, and it works brilliantly for a game made to emulate Arthurian Knights. I am prepared to hand control over my character to a mechanical system that is an integral part of the game.

Edit: What my DM recently houseruled for PC on PC social checks and what not is that regardless of the roll, the character can still believe whatever they want. But if the bluffing player would have succeeded on an opposed check, then if the character DOES believe them, they get a +2 to their next roll. That way you incentivize their character interactions being based on respective skills, while not really limited their expression of their characters. The odd +2 doesn't really add up to much in 5e anyways. Pretty good, but not to be missed.

Jay R
2016-06-13, 06:58 AM
It is difficult to roleplay a situation in which what would be affecting the character is purely physical. I have (twice) been in a situation in which I could not make myself enter the spot because of the intense stench. I agine the equivalent in a game.

DM. The room smells worse than anything you've ever smelled. You cannot make yourself go in.
Player: I just steel my resolve and go in.
DM: You stop at the door, repelled by the stench.
Player: Hey! This is my character! I decide what he does!

Or the character is being tortured to reveal information. The torture has no effect, because the player doesn't feel it.

That's the difficult situation.

NichG
2016-06-13, 07:16 AM
It is difficult to roleplay a situation in which what would be affecting the character is purely physical. I have (twice) been in a situation in which I could not make myself enter the spot because of the intense stench. I agine the equivalent in a game.

DM. The room smells worse than anything you've ever smelled. You cannot make yourself go in.
Player: I just steel my resolve and go in.
DM: You stop at the door, repelled by the stench.
Player: Hey! This is my character! I decide what he does!


Player: I just steel my resolve and go in.
DM: As you enter, you're inflicted with the 'nauseated' status condition, which prevents you from doing anything but moving and uncontrollably vomitting on your turn. This persists for as long as you're exposed to the smell in the room.

For torture, if you really have to go down this route, first render the player uncertain as to the actual situation in the game world, then attack psychologically. Probably best to avoid this line in general though.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-06-13, 08:04 AM
The key thing behind social combat is the idea of player buy-in. The players should talk before anyone even thinks about getting dice out. Agree what's at stake. "If this roll succeeds then X will happen.", and it's important that both players agree on that result beforehand. And that result should influence behaviour, not be a form of mind control. You probably flat out can't persuade someone to eat a baby, but you might be able to temporarily persuade someone to keep a baby eater in the party because the group really really needs him for something.

It's important that people be able to say "There just isn't any way you could convince my character of this", but it also behooves the player of that character to be as accommodating as possible towards efforts to persuade his character of something, because that's more fun, and also more fair.

Cluedrew
2016-06-13, 08:08 AM
There is another way of looking at it: the difference between what you intend to do and what you actually do.

In both examples the character probably intended to walk around the room despite the smell, but they couldn't do that in either case. Just because you want to be able to do something doesn't mean you can do it. This is why we use dice to see if attacks hit.

Or put a different way "this is my character, I decide what s/he tries."

Quertus
2016-06-13, 10:27 AM
Or the character is being tortured to reveal information. The torture has no effect, because the player doesn't feel it.

That's the difficult situation.

That one's tough (at least for me!).

There are things I know I could easily be tortured to reveal (heck, I'd reveal them at the threat of torture, who am I kidding), and others I'd happily die before revealing (although I am regretfully certain a proper regimen of malnutrition, brainwashing, and drugs could pry such information out of me without undue difficulty, if I didn't find a way to kill myself first). And I have a difficult time comprehending the middle ground. "Lefty" Scaevola has always been something of a hero of mine.

I've been faced with gun-to-the-head, life-or-death threats multiple times... several times before puberty, even. So... I have a bit of a different perspective on this kind of thing.

So... I recognize that there is a definite, gaping hole in my ability to roleplay this kind of situation in my usual "simulation of internal state" style. I guess this is a good example of a scenario where, no matter what I do, it won't be particularly internally consistent with the rest of the character, so I'll just go along with the system and the dice for pretty much anything that isn't me roleplaying myself (or someone similar). I guess in this kind of scenario, I like having rolls control my character.

Themrys
2016-06-13, 11:31 AM
It is difficult to roleplay a situation in which what would be affecting the character is purely physical. I have (twice) been in a situation in which I could not make myself enter the spot because of the intense stench. I agine the equivalent in a game.

DM. The room smells worse than anything you've ever smelled. You cannot make yourself go in.
Player: I just steel my resolve and go in.
DM: You stop at the door, repelled by the stench.
Player: Hey! This is my character! I decide what he does!

Or the character is being tortured to reveal information. The torture has no effect, because the player doesn't feel it.

That's the difficult situation.

Not really.

But perhaps that's my playing style. I like roleplaying-heavy games, and if the DM says there's a bad stench, then I'd see that as opportunity to find creative ways around it. (That means I have to trust the DM that they're not just trying to railroad me. I don't play with people I suspect have ulterior motives.) It can be expected the GM wants me to enter the room eventually.

And with torture, well, I don't think badly of people who spill secrets under torture, so I wouldn't have a big problem with my character doing it. I don't think I want there to be torture in a game I play, though.

The game I have experience with; The Dark Eye, has rules on negative character traits. Like curiosity. You roll on curiosity to determine whether your character will do something stupid to find out things. As you have previously decided what character traits your PC has, that might result in getting the PC into trouble, but not in having to do something you think is completely against the PC's personality. (Unless you have an ******* DM who decides you are curious to see what the inside of a human skull looks like, in which case you just kick him out of the group.)

If you can count on the DM wanting your character to survive and solve the plot, then the temptation to just insist your character can do this or that, is almost zero. If the DM sees it as competition that he wins when all PCs are dead, well ...

No amount of rules can fix human idiocy, so of course all rule sets only work with decent people who want everyone to have fun.

SirBellias
2016-06-13, 12:37 PM
If you can count on the DM wanting your character to survive and solve the plot, then the temptation to just insist your character can do this or that, is almost zero. If the DM sees it as competition that he wins when all PCs are dead, well ...

No amount of rules can fix human idiocy, so of course all rule sets only work with decent people who want everyone to have fun.

Off topic, but I'd like to point out that the DM wanting your character to survive and solve the plot is entirely unnecessary in some game styles. The game mine runs is incredibly lethal, with (what is supposed to be) a rotating player base, and a consistently dark world. He tells all the players these things beforehand, and they agree that they can accept these things, and it's incredibly fun.

We have a decent group of players, too, so they don't really see it as a battle against the DM, so they never insist on anything. Then again, they never have to, since there isn't any discrepancy between what they think their character can do and what the DM knows they can do. It's never a competition, we just like seeing adventurers put themselves into incredibly dangerous situations, and returning changed or not at all. It's all in good fun, and we don't find any points of contention.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-13, 12:44 PM
The game I have experience with; The Dark Eye, has rules on negative character traits. Like curiosity. You roll on curiosity to determine whether your character will do something stupid to find out things.

Why is this even a roll? I can't get my players to stop doing that in real life. Nah, I kid, they're actually good on not setting things on fire too much.

As for the torture, few people really enjoy that. So I don't really do it to the PCs (why do it to them when you probably have non-combatants unused to pain who probably know the logistics better behind the PCs?), and will try to move the plot in directions to avoid it. I have not had many issues in doing so, but others might.

If someone wants to have their PC break, I consider it a compliment. They are so immersed in the world they are willing to give up their player to keep their immersion or the immersion of the party. But I acknowledge that as roleplay heavy as these groups are, there is a degree of hero fantasy and wish fulfillment at play. So I just assume that some scenarios are off-limits a majority of the time, namely torture in most forms and that PCs will heroically try to resist. It is also immensely difficult for people to put themselves in that mindset, and it is very difficult to overcome that jarring tone.

I guess what I am trying to say in my rambling is that sometimes, it is a good thing or a necessary thing to have players dictate what happens in spite of the rolls.

Thrudd
2016-06-13, 01:00 PM
There is another way of looking at it: the difference between what you intend to do and what you actually do.

In both examples the character probably intended to walk around the room despite the smell, but they couldn't do that in either case. Just because you want to be able to do something doesn't mean you can do it. This is why we use dice to see if attacks hit.

Or put a different way "this is my character, I decide what s/he tries."

That is true for situations where the player is trying to do something, and that is what the game mechanics are for. They try to convince an NPC of something, roll to see if they succeed. But going in the reverse direction, the player is not trying anything. An NPC is talking to them. If the NPC attempt to convince succeeds, the player is now obliged to modify or limit their actions. It isn't like a physical challenge which can be worked around with problem solving, like the nauseating room or a pit you can't jump over. There's a fundamental difference, because the social roll dictates what your character is supposed to know and perceive. You can't problem solve or work around the barrier because your character isn't supposed to know that there is a barrier. You have no reason, outside of metagaming, to investigate that NPC's claims any further if their bluff check was successful and you're supposed to believe them. Even if, as a player, you don't believe them and want to press the issue.

This is why the GM's use of social skills on the part of NPCs should be more for informational purposes rather than enforcing them mechanically on the players. An NPC with a good bluff roll tells a good lie, which you think of and deliver to the players, first person. The players will be convinced or not, and your secret sense motive checks on their behalf tell you if the PCs perceive anything that the players don't know and whether you should mention that the guy seems shady or seems like holding something back, or whatever.

Yes, this relies a lot on GM skill, fast thinking, and detailed knowledge of the setting. If these are not strong areas for you, as a GM, you should probably rethink trying to run a social heavy/intrigue/drama game. Start with practicing those things as non-essential occasional elements of your campaign, and only make it more important and prominent if/when you get comfortable bantering and bluffing your players.

Airk
2016-06-13, 01:15 PM
It doesn't cause them to believe a certain way beyond their control. It can give no indication of falsehood and every indication of sincerity and/or legal and factual accuracy, but it can't force them to agree with me / rule in my favor. All that the greatest legal argument in the history of law (not that I'm ever going to make the best legal argument in the history of law, but hypothetically speaking) can get me is the best possible chance I can get that they'll do so. That best chance might still be zero.

This is a bizarre argument; By this metric, no one can ever DO ANYTHING, they can just "make it as likely as possible that that thing would happen." No one can ever hit anyone with a sword, they can just make it as hard as possible for the other person to avoid being hit. Your chance of hitting might still be zero.



This is why I personally prefer to present social checks as giving information rather than mechanically requiring belief. For example, a successful Deception check would mean body language, facial expression, attitude, tone of voice, etc. don't betray any detectable indication of deliberate falsehood or ulterior motive. Thus, disbelieving it is still possible, but is the result of either having other information or irrationality of some kind, or some combination thereof.

See, I think we're approaching this fundamentally wrong. Social skills are not, in fact, about changing minds and attitudes. Social skills are about GETTING OTHER PEOPLE TO DO THINGS. They don't have to BELIEVE that you are the president's son and you left your ID in your other pants, they just have to let you into the room because there is some combination of laziness, not wanting to deal with it, and plausibly deniability.

Lacco
2016-06-13, 01:30 PM
I agree. I have been part of several (and once even instigated one) bavarian fire drills during my time in university. Most of these were successful - and in some cases people just followed the loudest, most self-confident-looking guy.

If we assume they were NPCs and the "leader" was a PC, it's ok. But it's not when it's the other way around?

I agree - if you have lots of time to think about things, are sitting safely around a table - it's one thing. You can think about your responses and answer calmly, confidently, and logically. But people can be swayed to do strangest things when not having enough time, and someone confident takes charge. Many con-men have built their trade around that.

So yes, I agree that while it's up to the players to select how their PCs feel and act, there are situations - mostly social - where they won't be able to act in some way, or it will get them into trouble (mechanically or narratively - the vomiting from the stench is a great example of the former, guards hunting them for killing the good-yet-goateed-visier the latter).

Thrudd
2016-06-13, 01:54 PM
I agree. I have been part of several (and once even instigated one) bavarian fire drills during my time in university. Most of these were successful - and in some cases people just followed the loudest, most self-confident-looking guy.

If we assume they were NPCs and the "leader" was a PC, it's ok. But it's not when it's the other way around?

I agree - if you have lots of time to think about things, are sitting safely around a table - it's one thing. You can think about your responses and answer calmly, confidently, and logically. But people can be swayed to do strangest things when not having enough time, and someone confident takes charge. Many con-men have built their trade around that.

So yes, I agree that while it's up to the players to select how their PCs feel and act, there are situations - mostly social - where they won't be able to act in some way, or it will get them into trouble (mechanically or narratively - the vomiting from the stench is a great example of the former, guards hunting them for killing the good-yet-goateed-visier the latter).

Yes, I agree it is a more realistic simulation to allow the PCs behavior be dictated by social skills of NPCs. However, I am arguing that, in this case, faithful simulation may have a negative impact on game expectations (players solving problems and making choices vs simulating/acting).

Players gauge a situation, based on how you describe it to them, and make decisions about what to do. I don't think it's much of a game when dice regularly tell them how to act and how they should interact with people in addition to resolving the outcome of their own actions.

Gameplay and player agency trumps simulation in this situation, for me.

NichG
2016-06-13, 02:12 PM
One case where I do think social mechanics can work well with the game is if you make a separation between individual interactions between people and interactions between a person and a crowd or other large nonspecific group. For instance, using a roll or mechanic to abstract away the process of going door to door and trying to gather votes for a candidate or recruit for an army or whatever can save a lot of time. The point there is, the roll can't make any particular person join up or vote as you say - if its really 'I want this guy and just this guy', it falls back to direct roleplay. So there's never an issue of losing agency. But at the same time, it still lets social mechanics be potent in a campaign with a lot of that kind of interaction. You don't smash your Diplomacy sword against the king to make him do what you want, you smash it against the king's subjects and armies and so on; then, when you've got a nice potential insurrection going, that's when you step into the throne room and say 'give me what I want, or this is what happens'.

Cluedrew
2016-06-13, 05:19 PM
Yes, I agree it is a more realistic simulation to allow the PCs behavior be dictated by social skills of NPCs. However, I am arguing that, in this case, faithful simulation may have a negative impact on game expectations (players solving problems and making choices vs simulating/acting).But to me you are assuming that the first one is correct and one should choose that one. Or maybe you are speaking of only your play style and never meant for some things to be taken to the general case. {Shrugs}

But I'm not as interested in playing that sort of role-playing game because I feel other types of games do it better. You want a game about problem solving, try a game with a 50/50 shot at you losing; a war-game, card game, fighter video game and so on. For me role-playing games have some of that but aren't really about that.

Of course all this is assuming that social influences aren't problems that you can play with and solve in there own right. In systems where they are implemented like save-or-dies they really aren't because you role and either win or lose right there. That's not interesting, but they can be done better than that. Actually finding better ways to do it is a good part of the reason I'm in this conversation.

What makes a good solution? I'm not sure but I'm looking. I've got some ideas like giving the target some deciding power (simple example: You are struck with terror. Do you fight or do you flight?). ... Yeah that is the only one I can word right now. I'm working on it.

Thrudd
2016-06-13, 06:50 PM
But to me you are assuming that the first one is correct and one should choose that one. Or maybe you are speaking of only your play style and never meant for some things to be taken to the general case. {Shrugs}

But I'm not as interested in playing that sort of role-playing game because I feel other types of games do it better. You want a game about problem solving, try a game with a 50/50 shot at you losing; a war-game, card game, fighter video game and so on. For me role-playing games have some of that but aren't really about that.

Of course all this is assuming that social influences aren't problems that you can play with and solve in there own right. In systems where they are implemented like save-or-dies they really aren't because you role and either win or lose right there. That's not interesting, but they can be done better than that. Actually finding better ways to do it is a good part of the reason I'm in this conversation.

What makes a good solution? I'm not sure but I'm looking. I've got some ideas like giving the target some deciding power (simple example: You are struck with terror. Do you fight or do you flight?). ... Yeah that is the only one I can word right now. I'm working on it.

No, I recognize some people want/expect the game which is more acting or simulation and less problem solving.
Yes, there are ways that the rules can place a limit on the player, like fear effects. Fail a saving throw, your character is terrified and your options of action are limited, you can't bring yourself to go closer or fight his turn. This is temporary and usually has a chance to wear off each turn.
The situation I'm mostly talking about is specifically social interaction using skills like 3e D&D. The DM makes a diplomacy roll for an NPC, and tells the players their characters have been convinced of whatever the NPC is saying or have accepted his demands. You've now agreed to go on a quest for the payment of 100gp, or are convinced to leave his organization alone.

A mechanic that makes social interaction interesting, IMO, would be like the Giant's take on the 3e diplomacy skill. This, of course, still is a skill used by the PC's in the interest of negotiating with and altering the outlook of NPC's. It uses a graduated system of shifting favorability which skill rolls alter, rather than binary win or lose. This doesn't change my opinion that use of this skill doesn't go both ways. The DM doesn't get to tell the players what their characters need to think or agree to about an NPC. The game is about the players pursuing their objectives by gauging the situation and making strategic use of their skills to achieve their ends, which in some cases might be socializing with NPC's, seducing and negotiating and bluffing and manipulating the right people. The DM may manipulate the PC's right back, by feeding them incorrect or incomplete information when their perception skills fail or by using convincing first-person arguments on behalf of the NPC's, or by having other NPCs work against them by shifting favorability of others against the PC's.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-06-13, 07:52 PM
In Burning Wheel there's an extended social combat mechanic called Duel of Wits that works like a conversational fight with different moves, skills, etc. Both sides have a statement that they're trying to push on the other person. A big part of it is that both players agree to the Duel of Wits, and the terms that the winner achieves.

But another cool part is that the loser still scores a compromise if they dealt any damage to the winner at all, with the compromise being bigger the more damage they dealt. And the rules involved mean that doing as least some damage is very likely, so the loser usually gets something for his efforts.

Forcing a compromise is a nice way to make social conflict feel less one-sided. You don't get the thing you wanted, but you do get another lesser thing you wanted as a consolation prize.

Cluedrew
2016-06-14, 07:52 AM
To Thudd: I agree that there are problems with D&D's social mechanics. In fact I would say most of them are terrible and serve as a shining example of how not to do it. What I am saying is I think there are other better ways to do it and those should be explored rather than just throwing out social mechanics all together.

Take Koo Rehtorb's Burning Wheel example. I've never played that game so I don't know if it is fun or not, but it sounds much more promising then D&D's way of handling it.

goto124
2016-06-14, 09:40 AM
Which social mechanics should be added into DnD, if such a thing should be done at all?

Thrudd
2016-06-14, 10:02 AM
To Thudd: I agree that there are problems with D&D's social mechanics. In fact I would say most of them are terrible and serve as a shining example of how not to do it. What I am saying is I think there are other better ways to do it and those should be explored rather than just throwing out social mechanics all together.

Take Koo Rehtorb's Burning Wheel example. I've never played that game so I don't know if it is fun or not, but it sounds much more promising then D&D's way of handling it.

I wouldn't throw out social mechanics, either. I just wouldn't allow mechanics (or myself) to dictate the players' decision making process, in a game where that decision making process is essential to the ongoing success and survival of their characters. The mechanics are for when the players interact with NPC's: for me to find out what the NPC's think of the players and whether the players can influence the NPCs.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-06-14, 03:30 PM
Again, I think consent is the biggest thing you need to start with when you start talking about social pvp. Both people need to agree on something that their characters could potentially be convinced of beforehand, and they need to retain the right to just outright refuse social combat entirely. The other thing is there needs to be a carrot to tempt both people into wanting to participate. That is to say, it shouldn't be one person rolling at the other person. Both people should have something to gain.

I guess, again using the example of Burning Wheel. First the players have identified the conflict, probably through RP. Taking a half remembered example of a game, the conflict is the king is missing, the kingdom is in chaos, and the princess and high ranking official of the government are debating over what to do.

Once the conflict is clear both people will make statements of intent, the thing they're trying to persuade the other person of. Both players need to agree that the other person's statement of intent is something that their character could be persuaded of at all. In this case:

Princess: "You will find my father and return him to his kingdom."
Agent: "In all likelihood, your father will never return. You will claim the throne and rule the kingdom."

Once that's done, there's the big conversational fight, the mechanics of which aren't important. In this example the princess wins the argument, but takes a lot of damage in the process. Say she has 1/10 "hit points" remaining. That means she gets what she was after, but owes the agent a major compromise. The players discuss again what this compromise could reasonably be and settle on "The princess will act as regent until the agent finds and returns her father to the kingdom."

Both sides are then bound to follow these terms in good faith, because their characters have genuinely been persuaded of these things.

RazorChain
2016-06-14, 09:34 PM
I never take control from the players. If I am going to dictate how they feel or how they react then I might as well be playing with myself (no pun intended).

Therefore I only use social rolls on players when they are trying to use skills like detect lies, body language etc. If a NPC is a bad liar then I roleplay it with implausible lies.

The players themselves are free to use their characters social skills as they like. This allows socially awkward players to rely on their character skills rather on their gift for gab.

I'm not going to tell a player that his character has been persuaded by a servant to let him into the kings quarters.

My role of the GM is not to take control of PC's unless they have been mind controlled. Even when PC's have been influenced by some magic like charm or such things then I still let them control their character and it's all right as long they play along.

In my experience players don't want the GM to take away their agency or dictate what they do or what they feel.

RazorChain
2016-06-14, 09:48 PM
See, I think we're approaching this fundamentally wrong. Social skills are not, in fact, about changing minds and attitudes. Social skills are about GETTING OTHER PEOPLE TO DO THINGS. They don't have to BELIEVE that you are the president's son and you left your ID in your other pants, they just have to let you into the room because there is some combination of laziness, not wanting to deal with it, and plausibly deniability.

As someone who has worked security for a long time at bigger and smaller events and even guarded royalty the easiest way to deal with people who forgot their ID in their other pants is to tell them to ¤&## off and come back when they have their ID. Yeah you might get some lame threats but they aren't the ones holding an assault rifle.

I might have slipped in some cute chicks ahead of the line while I was bouncing but they were old enough and so it didn't get me into trouble.

People very rarely help out other people if it gets them into trouble, unless they have something to gain from it.

But for the PC's it's not fun when you tell them that the NPC has persuaded them to go hunting for an artifact for him. If the GM allows NPC's to make the PC's do things because they rolled high enough on influence rolls then it becomes a GM's railroad heaven.

Lacco
2016-06-15, 01:37 AM
People very rarely help out other people if it gets them into trouble, unless they have something to gain from it.

As one security professional to the other, I have only two words: social engineering.

Segev
2016-06-15, 07:52 AM
The big problem with "nah, you should just let me decide if it actually persuades my character" is that it basically turns it into less of a game, and more of a question as to whether the GM/player can successfully act like a social manipulator IRL to persuade the player of the target character (PC or NPC) that his character should be acting/believing/feeling a certain way.

It's essentially the same argument to say, "Okay, to convince Bob that you're telling the truth, you have to convince Bob's player that Bob should believe you're telling the truth," as it is to say, "Okay, to hit Bob with that attack, you have to be able to hit Bob's player with this nerf simulation weapon."

It makes it so that the only people who can play socially adept characters are those who have the skills of those characters.

This isn't to say that "okay, he rolled a higher Diplomacy check than you rolled Sense Motive, so now you're in love with him and want to do everything he says" is good game design! It's not, any more than "okay, he rolled higher on his attack roll than you did on your defense, so now you're dead" is good design. (Yes, this does mean that "save or die" effects are probably not good design, either.) It means you should have mechanisms for influencing PC actions which may eventually allow the PC's actions to be less than totally in the player's control.

How many of you reading this post have ever known, for a fact, that you really should get up out of bed, but you're SO TIRED and it's SO COMFY and you just DO NOT WANT TO...so you roll over and go back to sleep, even knowing you'll regret it later (or convincing yourself "just 5 more minutes")? You may have told yourself, "No, tomorrow morning, I'm getting up and moving." You may, later that day, say, "I really should have gotten up and moved." But forcing yourself to do the smart thing just didn't happen.

Or how about the supposedly-common example of peer pressure, particularly in high school? Or forcing yourself to exercise when you know you should but UGH it just doesn't sound pleasant?

Or that friend (or not-such-a-friend) who you just can't say "no" to?

All of these things, you might say, are just bad RP on the part of the player if the PC never gives in and indulges them. But the thing is, when you make a statement about what you should do and even what you WILL do without being in the heat of the moment, you can be a lot more staunch about your refusal or determination to do something than when it's right there on top of you, and you're tired or hungry or aroused or angry or just really really want to indulge. Sure, it's all under your control. You CAN say "nope," or "I'm doing this, and nothing's stopping me." But...you don't.

This is what persuasion type effects are meant to simulate. They tell the player that his character just doesn't have the willpower, determination, staunch refusal, or desire to resist temptation or force himself to do what's right right this minute. It's easy to say, "I'm going to do all my homework, and not watch TV until it's done." But when you're bored, and your favorite show is on, "just one half-hour" can be very persuasive.

I've never been in such a situation, but I imagine that that's how seduction, particularly as portrayed in fiction (to manipulate others) works: the target KNOWS it's a bad idea to heed the seductor, knows that the seductor is asking for actions that should be refused...but the seductor is so HOT, and their promises so...well, seductive...that doing it in hopes of receiving the rewards promised is just too good to pass up. Whether all the seductor wants is "in your pants," or is asking you to do them a favor in return for satiation.

That said, it is also possible to have certain things you just won't do, and won't give in on. I know, for instance, that no matter how "seduced" I might get, I can probably keep saying "no," because I long ago made a decision that I would wait 'til I'm married. Similarly, I do'nt drink or do drugs. My response is just a flat "no" to such things. I don't think I could be persuaded without a great deal of coercion (as opposed to simple "but you'll enjoy it!"). I could be wrong, having never been truly tempted on those fronts, but I do think one can make "I don't do X" a part of their personality. But there are only so many things this is true of for any one person. And it has to be ingrained as a true habit, as a bit of their nature. It can't just be "in this circumstance, I wouldn't."

So it's not easy to model. And I wouldn't put it past a sufficiently skilled corruptor to undermine the "Nope, I just don't do that" character, too. But it would take a campaign of undermining that character's personality in those areas. I'm not even sure where one would begin in most circumstances, if the boundaries are set far enough out there. Eroding a "no drugs" boundary, for instance, would be difficult without some reason to lift it that was more than "just this once." (It's why prescription narcotics are so carefully monitored, though; it's not (just) that they can be subverted by dealers, but that even those who would never get into them normally can have the "I need it now; the doctor said so" become "I can manage it; I don't have to stop yet" and...well, you see where it goes from there.)

In all, persuasion has to be something mechanics can enforce for it to be a role-playing game when you engage in persuasion of characters. But it is hard to design well, because it needs to be at least as complex as normal combat, and probably a lot more so to adequately simulate the levels of what one will or won't do, and how "heat of the moment" persuades them.


For instance, I knew I should have been getting ready for work this morning, but typing this post was just more fun. So now I must rush off and shower and get to work in a rush rather than relaxing and knowing I'll be there a little early. Adios!

NichG
2016-06-15, 08:26 AM
The big problem with "nah, you should just let me decide if it actually persuades my character" is that it basically turns it into less of a game, and more of a question as to whether the GM/player can successfully act like a social manipulator IRL to persuade the player of the target character (PC or NPC) that his character should be acting/believing/feeling a certain way.

As a counter-example, there are several games that very much center on the social abilities of the players. Party games like 'mafia', for example, are entirely about this and work just fine without any kind of attempt to abstract away the IRL social interaction elements. There's also things like 'Diplomacy' (the game, not the skill), where a big part of the game is inter-player dealing, deception, and betrayal. So going this route does not in any way make things 'less of a game'. If anything, it makes the game more predominantly about those things.



How many of you reading this post have ever known, for a fact, that you really should get up out of bed, but you're SO TIRED and it's SO COMFY and you just DO NOT WANT TO...so you roll over and go back to sleep, even knowing you'll regret it later (or convincing yourself "just 5 more minutes")? You may have told yourself, "No, tomorrow morning, I'm getting up and moving." You may, later that day, say, "I really should have gotten up and moved." But forcing yourself to do the smart thing just didn't happen.

Or how about the supposedly-common example of peer pressure, particularly in high school? Or forcing yourself to exercise when you know you should but UGH it just doesn't sound pleasant?

Or that friend (or not-such-a-friend) who you just can't say "no" to?

All of these things, you might say, are just bad RP on the part of the player if the PC never gives in and indulges them. But the thing is, when you make a statement about what you should do and even what you WILL do without being in the heat of the moment, you can be a lot more staunch about your refusal or determination to do something than when it's right there on top of you, and you're tired or hungry or aroused or angry or just really really want to indulge. Sure, it's all under your control. You CAN say "nope," or "I'm doing this, and nothing's stopping me." But...you don't.

This is what persuasion type effects are meant to simulate. They tell the player that his character just doesn't have the willpower, determination, staunch refusal, or desire to resist temptation or force himself to do what's right right this minute. It's easy to say, "I'm going to do all my homework, and not watch TV until it's done." But when you're bored, and your favorite show is on, "just one half-hour" can be very persuasive.

You can have most of this kind of thing without removing agency on either side. When you convince yourself to stay in bed rather than go to work, there are two things which you're weighing in your mind - how good it would feel to go back to sleep, versus how bad the consequences will be for being late to work. If you decide to go back to sleep you may explain that as a failure of willpower, but its actually an expression of agency on your part - you decided you'd rather sleep than go to work. You didn't do it against your will - that was your will, at that moment.

What that means is, the way to cover this with game mechanics is not to use the concept of compulsion or force, but to use the concept of enticement and sanction. Rather than set a condition in which the player's choice of action is externally determined, you can create a situation where the player receives an incentive for agreeing to act the way they're requested to, but can still refuse that incentive. Or, if the player chooses to act differently, they might suffer some cost. But that way, either way, the player can always say 'no, I refuse the incentive and stand my ground'. By doing so, they're able to express something about their character - how much that thing was worth to them - that a system which works by force would totally blot out and suppress.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-06-15, 08:41 AM
And here's another concrete example, because I feel like it's helpful to point out ways various systems handle this that have put more thought into it than D&D.

In Apocalypse World there's a basic move, available to every "class", called Seduce or Manipulate. This ability works differently on NPCs and PCs.

Vs NPCs, if you succeed, they ask you for a promise of something they want and if you promise it to them, they do what you want. Whether you keep that promise later or not is up to you. On a partial success they demand some concrete assurance of what they want, right now, before they do anything. For example "I'll pay you later, I'm good for it" vs "Money up front".

Vs PCs, however, it works differently. On a partial success you can choose to give them xp if they do it OR you can choose to penalize their next roll if they don't do it (they're distracted by your offer or something and can't focus on what they're doing). On a full success you offer them both xp AND threaten them with the rolling penalty. The players aren't forced to do something against their character's motivations, but they're incentivized to play along.

Amaril
2016-06-15, 10:49 AM
And here's another concrete example, because I feel like it's helpful to point out ways various systems handle this that have put more thought into it than D&D.

In Apocalypse World there's a basic move, available to every "class", called Seduce or Manipulate. This ability works differently on NPCs and PCs.

Vs NPCs, if you succeed, they ask you for a promise of something they want and if you promise it to them, they do what you want. Whether you keep that promise later or not is up to you. On a partial success they demand some concrete assurance of what they want, right now, before they do anything. For example "I'll pay you later, I'm good for it" vs "Money up front".

Vs PCs, however, it works differently. On a partial success you can choose to give them xp if they do it OR you can choose to penalize their next roll if they don't do it (they're distracted by your offer or something and can't focus on what they're doing). On a full success you offer them both xp AND threaten them with the rolling penalty. The players aren't forced to do something against their character's motivations, but they're incentivized to play along.

I was literally just about to post this. It's one of the better social manipulation mechanics I've seen, though to be fair, its function relies on the Powered by the Apocalypse premise that the GM never rolls dice, so all the agency in social manipulation necessarily rests with the players, since NPCs have no equivalent method of influencing them.

The other side of this coin that I think also bears mention is the Apocalypse World equivalent of D&D's Intimidate skill: Going Aggro. When you try to get someone to obey you specifically by threatening violence, you roll for this move. On a full success, they have to either cave and do what you want, or they can force your hand and suffer the consequences, accepting whatever violence you've threatened to do to them. On a partial success, they have a few more ways to weasel out of it, like just dropping their weapons and getting the hell out of your way without necessarily doing exactly what you told them to. The important thing being that they never have to give in to your threat, no matter how well you roll, but if their character insists on being defiant, the consequences are on them.

Thrudd
2016-06-15, 11:07 AM
This is what persuasion type effects are meant to simulate. They tell the player that his character just doesn't have the willpower, determination, staunch refusal, or desire to resist temptation or force himself to do what's right right this minute.
...

So it's not easy to model. And I wouldn't put it past a sufficiently skilled corruptor to undermine the "Nope, I just don't do that" character, too. But it would take a campaign of undermining that character's personality in those areas. I'm not even sure where one would begin in most circumstances, if the boundaries are set far enough out there. Eroding a "no drugs" boundary, for instance, would be difficult without some reason to lift it that was more than "just this once." (It's
...
In all, persuasion has to be something mechanics can enforce for it to be a role-playing game when you engage in persuasion of characters. But it is hard to design well, because it needs to be at least as complex as normal combat, and probably a lot more so to adequately simulate the levels of what one will or won't do, and how "heat of the moment" persuades them.

It's clear what is being simulated. The problem is that simulating this for a PC takes away a part of the game for the player. Or turns it into a different kind of game, where the player makes meta-game choices in pursuit of a story featuring the simulated character they partially control, and act out the scenes according to how the simulation presents them. This immersion is the sort an actor has for their character in a movie. They can make some decisions about their character's mannerisms and motivation and get in the character's head, but only where the script and the director don't overrule them. Their goal is telling the story convincingly. The challenge for a player in this kind of game is to convincingly act out the scenes the game and GM present them with.

However, that is not the only way, or the original way, role playing games worked. Another kind is where the players are expected to be immersed in the fictional world of the game and they make decisions as though they are the character, based on the information they are given by the GM. They have strategic and tactical and logistic problems to solve in pursuit of their character's objectives, and are expected to make full use of their wits to reach those objectives. Mechanics of the game determine the outcome of their actions and simulate the world around them. In this game, you don't want to simulate the PC's thoughts and feelings, because it interferes with the player's ability to solve the problems they are presented with.

Airk
2016-06-15, 12:33 PM
As someone who has worked security for a long time at bigger and smaller events and even guarded royalty the easiest way to deal with people who forgot their ID in their other pants is to tell them to ¤&## off and come back when they have their ID. Yeah you might get some lame threats but they aren't the ones holding an assault rifle.

I might have slipped in some cute chicks ahead of the line while I was bouncing but they were old enough and so it didn't get me into trouble.

And all characters are going to be just like you, with your reasoned approach to the situation, never under any external pressure, never dealing with a situation they don't like, and holy ***** there are so many factors we're not accounting for.


People very rarely help out other people if it gets them into trouble, unless they have something to gain from it.

And who's to say they don't?



But for the PC's it's not fun when you tell them that the NPC has persuaded them to go hunting for an artifact for him. If the GM allows NPC's to make the PC's do things because they rolled high enough on influence rolls then it becomes a GM's railroad heaven.

Boy, you play some interesting games. :)

First rule of roll club! Do not roll if there should be no possibility of success. So if the situation is, "I want you to go fetch me the Skull of Mar'lan, which will slowly rot your flesh as you carry it back to me, and for this service, I will give you a wooden nickle." the NPC doesn't get to roll any more than a PC would in the same situation, and **** how high his modifier is. You can't jump to the moon with Athletics +35 either.

But if the NPC is offering a huge pile of gold? Or some similar leverage? Sure, you can totally roll that. But you probably won't have to, because most PCs are suckers anyway. These skills exist for arbitrating the fairly narrow space between "Of course I'll do it!" and "F*** off!" They should not be used outside of that, because that presents the same sort of dumb results you would get by allowing a Nat20 to succeed on ANY task for any other skill.

Basically, you are arguing against a problem that doesn't exist in a properly run game. Cutting social rolls against PCs because of that would be throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-15, 12:41 PM
I've seen so many games -- too many -- in which the rules and rolls become not a way to model or adjudicate the "reality" of the game, but rather the determiners of that reality.

That is, the players (including GM) insist that if the roll is high enough, they can succeed at anything, because they are operating from the starting point that the roll is what determines what is possible, rather than modelling/adjudicating within the boundaries of what has been determined to be possible within that "reality".

To use one of your examples -- they would insist that a high enough Athletics roll does let them jump to the moon, even though they're playing in a setting in which that is clearly nonsense.

Segev
2016-06-15, 04:40 PM
Indeed, I think modeling social/mental influence with incentives in the meta-game that entice the PLAYER are essential. Make it cost the PLAYER some perceived game-related difficulty to turn it down, or give the PLAYER some perceived game-related reward to "give in."

It helps put the player in the character's frame of mind.

Cluedrew
2016-06-16, 07:53 AM
I actually wrote this last night but the post seems to have been lost.


The big problem with "nah, you should just let me decide if it actually persuades my character" is that it basically turns it into less of a game, ...I agree with almost everything in your post except this bit. I agree with NichG's point that that is still a game. Just a different type of game. In fact all the games he mentioned (and all the ones I could add to the list, from Coup to Battle Star Galactica: The Board Game) generally would not be called RPGs. Now just about any RPG could be a player-level intrigue game, but I think that takes away some of the role-playing aspect of it. Because it about how you lie, trust and tell the truth, not about how the character does it. That might be a worthwhile trade off for some people, but its not for me.

So I actually agree with you here too, there are just a few other steps to go through.


The other side of this coin that I think also bears mention is the Apocalypse World equivalent of D&D's Intimidate skill: Going Aggro. When you try to get someone to obey you specifically by threatening violence, you roll for this move. On a full success, they have to either cave and do what you want, or they can force your hand and suffer the consequences, accepting whatever violence you've threatened to do to them. On a partial success, they have a few more ways to weasel out of it, like just dropping their weapons and getting the hell out of your way without necessarily doing exactly what you told them to. The important thing being that they never have to give in to your threat, no matter how well you roll, but if their character insists on being defiant, the consequences are on them.You know when I read this rule it confused me. I think I have it now and I would like to focus on the opportunity for character expression with this move. Now the aggressor gets to say the are aggressive, or possibly desperate enough to resort to violence, but that is about it. The defender gets to choose if they live or die. I don't even care about what the aggro is over, I can't think of any situation where you will look at the character the same way regardless of what they choose.

I also had something about aligning character and player motivations, but I forget exactly what that was.

Segev
2016-06-16, 09:59 AM
I'm not sure I follow this "Going Aggro" rule's logic.

Full success, they either cave or suffer the consequences of your violence.

Partial success, they can give in to your threat but choose to do it differently than you expressly ordered...or suffer the consequences of your violence.

What happens if you fail? They can refuse your order... what prevents you from just engaging in violence against them anyway?

Heck, on a partial success, what prevents you from saying, "No, dropping their weapons wasn't sufficient; I beat them up anyway?"

How are any of these three results functionally different? They all seem to be, "They give in, or you do violence."

NichG
2016-06-16, 10:10 AM
I guess the point is, if you initiate the roll, you commit to not using violence if you fail the roll.

AMFV
2016-06-16, 10:13 AM
I guess the point is, if you initiate the roll, you commit to not using violence if you fail the roll.

Isn't that the game rules controlling the character as well though? I mean also you'd have to factor into "how long do I commit to that?" What if the character misinterpreted the circumstances, how long are they prevented from doing the violence? That seems like a rule that would be far more restrictive on character agency than one that simply makes somebody believe you or think you are being honest.

NichG
2016-06-16, 10:42 AM
Isn't that the game rules controlling the character as well though? I mean also you'd have to factor into "how long do I commit to that?" What if the character misinterpreted the circumstances, how long are they prevented from doing the violence? That seems like a rule that would be far more restrictive on character agency than one that simply makes somebody believe you or think you are being honest.

Well, I'd personally be disinclined to make use of such a move, but at least its a voluntary thing.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-06-16, 11:17 AM
So, more explanation of the system in general. If you fail the roll, or any roll, the GM can do a thing. It might be that suddenly this showdown doesn't matter because while you were bickering a dozen raiders snuck up you both. Or, alternatively, the person you're pointing a gun at smacks it out of your hands and disables you.

More explanation, though, you can only roll to Go Aggro when you are in actually in a position to be able to carry out the threatened violence. IE, you have a gun on the guy, you're the baddest dude around talking to some random villager, etc. And if you roll to Go Aggro, you are committing to following through on that violence if they don't back down.

kyoryu
2016-06-16, 11:22 AM
I guess the point is, if you initiate the roll, you commit to not using violence if you fail the roll.

More accurately, if you fail, they've stared you down or the like.

Also, the MC can use a hard move on you any time you fail a roll outright, so they might end up doing violence *to you*.

Quertus
2016-06-16, 12:17 PM
The big problem with "nah, you should just let me decide if it actually persuades my character" is that it basically turns it into less of a game,


I agree with almost everything in your post except this bit. I agree with NichG's point that that is still a game. Just a different type of game. In fact all the games he mentioned (and all the ones I could add to the list, from Coup to Battle Star Galactica: The Board Game) generally would not be called RPGs. Now just about any RPG could be a player-level intrigue game, but I think that takes away some of the role-playing aspect of it. Because it about how you lie, trust and tell the truth, not about how the character does it. That might be a worthwhile trade off for some people, but its not for me.

"A Role-Playing Game that relies on Role-Playing is still a Game, but is no longer a Role-Playing Game." Did I misread you, or did you really just say that? :smallconfused:


The big problem with "nah, you should just let me decide if it actually persuades my character" is that it basically turns it into less of a game, and more of a question as to whether the GM/player can successfully act like a social manipulator IRL to persuade the player of the target character (PC or NPC) that his character should be acting/believing/feeling a certain way.

It's essentially the same argument to say, "Okay, to convince Bob that you're telling the truth, you have to convince Bob's player that Bob should believe you're telling the truth," as it is to say, "Okay, to hit Bob with that attack, you have to be able to hit Bob's player with this nerf simulation weapon."

It makes it so that the only people who can play socially adept characters are those who have the skills of those characters.



I've never been in such a situation, but I imagine that that's how seduction, particularly as portrayed in fiction (to manipulate others) works: the target KNOWS it's a bad idea to heed the seductor, knows that the seductor is asking for actions that should be refused...but the seductor is so HOT, and their promises so...well, seductive...that doing it in hopes of receiving the rewards promised is just too good to pass up. Whether all the seductor wants is "in your pants," or is asking you to do them a favor in return for satiation.

That said, it is also possible to have certain things you just won't do, and won't give in on. I know, for instance, that no matter how "seduced" I might get, I can probably keep saying "no," because I long ago made a decision that I would wait 'til I'm married. Similarly, I do'nt drink or do drugs. My response is just a flat "no" to such things. I don't think I could be persuaded without a great deal of coercion (as opposed to simple "but you'll enjoy it!"). I could be wrong, having never been truly tempted on those fronts, but I do think one can make "I don't do X" a part of their personality. But there are only so many things this is true of for any one person. And it has to be ingrained as a true habit, as a bit of their nature. It can't just be "in this circumstance, I wouldn't."

So it's not easy to model. And I wouldn't put it past a sufficiently skilled corruptor to undermine the "Nope, I just don't do that" character, too. But it would take a campaign of undermining that character's personality in those areas. I'm not even sure where one would begin in most circumstances, if the boundaries are set far enough out there. Eroding a "no drugs" boundary, for instance, would be difficult without some reason to lift it that was more than "just this once." (It's why prescription narcotics are so carefully monitored, though; it's not (just) that they can be subverted by dealers, but that even those who would never get into them normally can have the "I need it now; the doctor said so" become "I can manage it; I don't have to stop yet" and...well, you see where it goes from there.)

Kudos on your decision to wait until you are married (etc), and to having the courage to voice such a... rare conviction. :smallsmile:

As to the rest... I think your argument is missing a layer of abstraction. That is, you don't have to convince Bob's player of X, you have to convince Bob's player that Bob is convinced of X. Just like you don't have to hit Bob's player, you just need to convince Bob's player that it is realistic that Bob was hit. Having seen that last one fail quite a few times (because Bob wasn't in the room, because Bob had 100% cover, because Bob should be almost impossible to hit but was hit on 4 out of 5 attacks, etc), I think this level is really important.

Even if I know OOC that I'm dealing with a succubus, I can roleplay that my character is totally falling for her charms. I'd personally rather not have OOC knowledge (as I find the game more fun that way), but it can be difficult for a non-30-charisma DM to roleplay act out the part of the succubus successfully without resorting to some level of OOC knowledge (because, seriously, how many random peasant girls have a +30 bluff / diplomacy / whatever social skill she would be using in this scenario?).

But I trust myself to roleplay this scenario reasonably far more than I trust any of the systems described thus far to simulate it correctly.

Even some of the ones that don't force an action have it backwards - I get a bonus every time I follow my convictions. If someone, say, offers me drugs and I decline, I don't have issues - quite the opposite. Now, my choices may have an opportunity cost, but, from a game model PoV, it would be... "carrot of bonuses to my rolls" vs "carrot of strengthening relationships with friends / whatever shared experiences we would have".

Segev
2016-06-16, 12:38 PM
"A Role-Playing Game that relies on Role-Playing is still a Game, but is no longer a Role-Playing Game." Did I misread you, or did you really just say that? :smallconfused:It removes the "game" aspect, and becomes an acting exercise. Given that the "game" aspect has its own rewards and success/failure conditions, pitting the "game" aspect against the "good acting" aspect strains the system. It causes the game to interfere with role-playing, or the role-playing to interfere with the game (depending on your perspective).

A well-designed role-playing game strives to make it so that gameplay and roleplay decisions are in harmony. If it is "in character" to do something, the game encourages, enables, or even empowers that behavior. If there is meant to be a quandary facing the character, the player should face a similar gameplay quandary.

I keep coming back to this because it's such a good example, in my mind:

In Exalted, the Fair Folk are ravenous, soul-eating monsters from beyond reality (and yes, they're playable). While it is possible for them to be "good citizens" of Creation, and only nibble or even take from the willing in return for favors and the like (in ways that let the donor recover), the fluff says that they so enjoy indulging because it's just so DELICIOUS that most tend to really gorge and lay waste to entire villages and blight sections of cities as they pass through.

The mechanics representing this are that their "mana" equivalent drains while in Creation, and they refill it only by feeding. Their mana pools, however, are so small that just a light snack on one mortal (who would recover in less than a month, usually) will sustain them for a week or more. Even if they spend mana on magic in a profligate manner, gorging to the point of laying waste to towns is going to squander that mana faster than they likely can spend it. Certainly in any way that is enjoyable.

There is no incentive to be the ravening monster depicted in the fluff, and plenty of incentive (both in terms of not making yourself out of food supply, and in terms of avoiding being hunted down by super-powerful Exalted who would turn you into an abstract melody with a single punch) to be temperate in your consumption.

The mechanics in late second edition started introducing things to do with the "gorging" mana that overflows your pool. And they're cool, but expensive. Making it tempting to gorge and gorge hardcore just to get and maintain those cool bonuses and features. That is good design. Make the temptations the PC is supposed to feel be reflected in temptations the game gives to the player. Make things the PC should be hesitant at be reflected by gameplay states which cause the player to feel hesitant.



Kudos on your decision to wait until you are married (etc), and to having the courage to voice such a... rare conviction. :smallsmile:Heh, thanks. It doesn't take much courage, because I don't really feel all that mocked if anybody thinks it "weird." I mean, it's my choice, and I'm certainly not hurting anybody (and, in pragmatic terms, it's safe, too).


As to the rest... I think your argument is missing a layer if abstraction. That is, you don't have to convince Bob's player of X, you have to convince Bob's player that Bob is convinced of X. Just like you don't have to hit Bob's player, you just need to convince Bob's player that it is realistic that Bob was hit. Having seen that last one fail quite a few times (because Bob wasn't in the room, because Bob had 100% cover, because Bob should be almost impossible to hit but was hit on 4 out of 5 attacks, etc), I think this level is really important.I get that. But you're still making it a social manipulation game of convincing the other players.

It's like you're playing chess, but you now also have to persuade the other player that, because your knight is so dashing and brave, his queen has a crush on him and will not move to capture said knight.

It's a different game than the one you're supposed to actually be playing; you're convincing the PLAYER not to use the mechanics of the game and to instead choose to play in a way not as well as he knows he could.

It pits the gameplay against the roleplay. Worse, it makes it so that Persuasive Paul, the player with the silver tongue, is able to convince people that his Cha 3 ogre should be making Timid Tina's highly snobbish and discerning elf feel like she should go along with the ogre's plan. Because Paul is just that persuasive, and has Tina convinced that, because the system relies on her making good IC choices to be "a good role player," she has to go with Paul's ogre's plan or she's not being a good role player because her elf TOTALLY should be convinced.

With gameplay not meshing with roleplay, you wind up with not just the silver-tongued character being unable to persuade the supposedly-gullible character (because his player doesn't want to think he'd be persuaded by that), but with the silver-tongued PLAYER being able to bypass what mechanics there are by persuading other PLAYERS, who have nothing to point to to tell him he's wrong.

It's like if Persuasive Paul could have his ogre make gunpowder because Paul knows the recipe and how to get the ingredients, and precisely describes how his ogre goes through the steps to get exactly the right amounts mixed exactly the right way. He doesn't have to touch dice, you see, because he did exactly the right thing!

Or bypassing grappling rules because Martial Artist Matt describes EXACTLY how his wizard grabs the monk in the exact way to hold somebody stronger than you immobile.


The mechanics need to work WITH the roleplaying that the game is intended to enable; when they work at odds, it's a problem. And "oh, you have to convince the player his character is persuaded" lends itself to the mechanics working at odds to the RP, since there is mechanical penalty (and no upside) to being "a good role player" in that case.

AMFV
2016-06-16, 12:48 PM
It is important to note though, that for some systems the "acting exercise" is the actual gameplay. Although that's not all games, but it's certainly reasonable to have a game where your real-world persuasiveness was a factor. The same as it's reasonable to have one where your real-world tactical savvy is.

Segev
2016-06-16, 05:31 PM
It is important to note though, that for some systems the "acting exercise" is the actual gameplay. Although that's not all games, but it's certainly reasonable to have a game where your real-world persuasiveness was a factor. The same as it's reasonable to have one where your real-world tactical savvy is.

Sure. But such a game should not be billed as one where you can play characters wildly different from yourself, as many are.

I generally wouldn't play such a game for the same reason I don't play sports or most video games: I'm bad at social persuasion, and don't enjoy playing games where I lose all the time. I have enough of my own incompetence getting in my way IRL; I don't need to have my recreational time devoted to activities where my failings are highlighted again and again, as well.

Cluedrew
2016-06-16, 08:21 PM
"A Role-Playing Game that relies on Role-Playing is still a Game, but is no longer a Role-Playing Game." Did I misread you, or did you really just say that? :smallconfused:You misread, I didn't say that.

Would you like clarification? If so on what section?

goto124
2016-06-16, 09:42 PM
In a different thread, we decided to deal the bit about player persuasion by letting players describe in point form what their character's arguments are, before rolling to see how their characters presented those points. It's not even necessarily the characters' or players' fault; rolling low could mean the character accidentally presented a point that reminded the queen of a bully in her childhood days. As an example.

When someone said "what about certain players who have less RL Charisma than the other players", replies were more or less "as long as they can make a DC 5 check and take 10", and "RPGs are a social game, it'a impossible to completely remove the subjective element unless we turn the GM into a computer, which removes the advantage of TTRPGs over CRPGs".

---

If my PC met sky-high-Charisma NPCs, I would personally wonder why the GM is using them against me in the first place (especially if more than a few of such NPCs). 'Against me' in a way that feels more like combat-with-words than an actual social situation.

Could social mechanics be structured such that social situations are less like us-versus-them combat? So far I seem to be seeing social combat, which is the exact opposite of what I'm looking for here.

Quertus
2016-06-16, 10:03 PM
Heh, thanks. It doesn't take much courage, because I don't really feel all that mocked if anybody thinks it "weird." I mean, it's my choice, and I'm certainly not hurting anybody (and, in pragmatic terms, it's safe, too).

I apologize if I came across as anything other than 100% sincere in tipping my hat to you, both for your convictions and your (perceived) courage.


It pits the gameplay against the roleplay. Worse, it makes it so that Persuasive Paul, the player with the silver tongue, is able to convince people that his Cha 3 ogre should be making Timid Tina's highly snobbish and discerning elf feel like she should go along with the ogre's plan. Because Paul is just that persuasive, and has Tina convinced that, because the system relies on her making good IC choices to be "a good role player," she has to go with Paul's ogre's plan or she's not being a good role player because her elf TOTALLY should be convinced.

With gameplay not meshing with roleplay, you wind up with not just the silver-tongued character being unable to persuade the supposedly-gullible character (because his player doesn't want to think he'd be persuaded by that), but with the silver-tongued PLAYER being able to bypass what mechanics there are by persuading other PLAYERS, who have nothing to point to to tell him he's wrong.


Sure. But such a game should not be billed as one where you can play characters wildly different from yourself, as many are.

I generally wouldn't play such a game for the same reason I don't play sports or most video games: I'm bad at social persuasion, and don't enjoy playing games where I lose all the time. I have enough of my own incompetence getting in my way IRL; I don't need to have my recreational time devoted to activities where my failings are highlighted again and again, as well.

In acting, the onus is on the actor; in role-playing, the onus is on the audience.

You're not a bad roleplayer if you can't convince people that a 30 charisma succubus is convincing - you're a bad roleplayer if you can't be convinced by a 30 charisma succubus, regardless of who is running her.

So, if the rest of the players can roleplay, they'll all be trying to convince Persuasive Paul that his character should be convinced byTimid Tina's, not the other way around.

At least, that's my take on role-playing.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-16, 10:40 PM
There's also some onus on the GM to understand which players are going to enjoy playing out their character being swayed by the succubus, and which players won't.

goto124
2016-06-16, 11:08 PM
In acting, the onus is on the actor; in role-playing, the onus is on the audience.

You're not a bad roleplayer if you can't convince people that a 30 charisma succubus is convincing - you're a bad roleplayer if you can't be convinced by a 30 charisma succubus, regardless of who is running her.

In roleplay, the actors and audience are the same people.

To be honest, I would be pretty leery of a 30 Cha succubus, especially when as a player I don't know the woman I'm talking to is a succubus in disguise. In gameplay it would look something like this:

GM: She flutters her eyelashes, tugs at her top to show off her cleavage, and whispers seductively, "Would you like to spend the night with me?"
Me: I tell her to sod of-
GM: She's really convincing, so you fall for her charms and agree.
Me: What? She can't use Charm Person on me, I have a helmet that protects against mind control spells.
GM: She didn't use a spell. She's just really convincing.
Me: Do I not get to roll against h-
GM: I repeat, she is really convincing. Now, you follow her to her home...

Hope the 30 Cha succubus appears just once in an entire campaign and only in a situation where it actually makes sense and all the clues have been dropped in front of the players, because with her extremely inflated stats her skills are as good as mind control. It's like throwing a level 30 dragon at a level 1 party - sure the dragon should defeat the party, but why did the situation even occur in the first place? It would be a contrived one.

Quertus
2016-06-17, 01:30 AM
In roleplay, the actors and audience are the same people.

To be honest, I would be pretty leery of a 30 Cha succubus, especially when as a player I don't know the woman I'm talking to is a succubus in disguise. In gameplay it would look something like this:

GM: She flutters her eyelashes, tugs at her top to show off her cleavage, and whispers seductively, "Would you like to spend the night with me?"
Me: I tell her to sod of-
GM: She's really convincing, so you fall for her charms and agree.
Me: What? She can't use Charm Person on me, I have a helmet that protects against mind control spells.
GM: She didn't use a spell. She's just really convincing.
Me: Do I not get to roll against h-
GM: I repeat, she is really convincing. Now, you follow her to her home...

Hope the 30 Cha succubus appears just once in an entire campaign and only in a situation where it actually makes sense and all the clues have been dropped in front of the players, because with her extremely inflated stats her skills are as good as mind control. It's like throwing a level 30 dragon at a level 1 party - sure the dragon should defeat the party, but why did the situation even occur in the first place? It would be a contrived one.

... I really should have picked a different example. Ok, no point crying over spoilt milk... Hmmm... Bolding for clarity...

In my idealized view of role-playing, for any given statement / at any given moment, one person is role-playing by choosing what to say based on their character; everyone else is role-playing by interpreting how their character internalizes what they heard based, not on themselves and the speaker, but on their character, and the character of the speaker.

In my idealized version of role-playing, the GM never tells you what you do. That is for you to decide. That is pretty much the definition of role-playing for me - making decisions for your character, based on your character's view of the world.

So, for the above example, if the player has their character do something the DM finds difficult to fathom (such as when you had your character tell the succubus to sod off), it becomes a conversation. Is there some reason the character wouldn't respond positively to her suggestion?

If the answer is vow of chastity, or only likes redheads / guys / half-dragon centaur amputees, then yeah, it's legit. Succubus should have studied her target first, instead of being overconfident in her charms. Moving on.

If the player just didn't register that outcome from the DM's description, an OOC nudge of, she's actually doing well at (3.5 doesn't have a seduction skill), repeat process.

If the character has 100 illegitimate children in 100 towns, but is suspicious of this one particular npc, it becomes a question of whether that suspicion is legitimate IC, or whether it is purely OOC (based on DMs bad acting, the DM spending more time describing her than the last 50 girls, whatever). Hopefully, what I believe a good roleplayer should do in each of these circumstances is obvious.

-----


You misread, I didn't say that.

Would you like clarification? If so on what section?

Glad to hear it. Yes, please. :smallsmile: The bold parts are what I read to come to my incongruous conclusion.


The big problem with "nah, you should just let me decide if it actually persuades my character" is that it basically turns it into less of a game, and more of a question as to whether the GM/player can successfully act like a social manipulator IRL to persuade the player of the target character (PC or NPC) that his character should be acting/believing/feeling a certain way.

Role-playing?


I actually wrote this last night but the post seems to have been lost.

I agree with almost everything in your post except this bit. I agree with NichG's point that that is still a game. Just a different type of game. In fact all the games he mentioned (and all the ones I could add to the list, from Coup to Battle Star Galactica: The Board Game) generally would not be called RPGs. Now just about any RPG could be a player-level intrigue game, but I think that takes away some of the role-playing aspect of it. Because it about how you lie, trust and tell the truth, not about how the character does it. That might be a worthwhile trade off for some people, but its not for me.

So I actually agree with you here too, there are just a few other steps to go through.

Still a game... not an rpg... because RP?

That's the pieces I mishandled into my question. What did I miss? 'Cause it sure sounded odd the way I interpreted it. :smallconfused:

goto124
2016-06-17, 02:05 AM
So, for the above example, if the player has their character do something the DM finds difficult to fathom (such as when you had your character tell the succubus to sod off), it becomes a conversation. Is there some reason the character wouldn't respond positively to her suggestion?

If the answer is vow of chastity, or only likes redheads / guys / half-dragon centaur amputees, then yeah, it's legit. Succubus should have studied her target first, instead of being overconfident in her charms. Moving on.

If the player just didn't register that outcome from the DM's description, an OOC nudge of, she's actually doing well at (3.5 doesn't have a seduction skill), repeat process.

If the character has 100 illegitimate children in 100 towns, but is suspicious of this one particular npc, it becomes a question of whether that suspicion is legitimate IC, or whether it is purely OOC (based on DMs bad acting, the DM spending more time describing her than the last 50 girls, whatever). Hopefully, what I believe a good roleplayer should do in each of these circumstances is obvious.

Imagine the GM telling the player "your character falls for her charms and follows her home" is a truncated version of what is actually a very long conversation, where the player repeatedly tries to do everything except follow what is obviously a trap*, only for the GM to keep telling the player "no, your character won't do that, she is very convincing". And when the "very convincing" part is due to the GM inflating her stats all the way up, it's unclear how the player has agency.

* In this case, the reason the player refused is because it's obviously a trap. Issues include figuring out whether or not the trap was obvious ICly or only OOCly, whether it was the GM bad acting or the NPC bad acting, whether the PC would've caught onto the signs of a trap or if the PC is successfully seduced and distracted from the signs that indicate it's a trap, etc...

If the PC had 100 illegitimate children in 100 towns, it's a clear-cut case (when interpreted the way you meant it. Maybe PC is used to seducing but not used to being seduced? I get your point though). It often isn't clear-cut, especially when the PC's sexuality has never been brought up until the succubus walked in.

NichG
2016-06-17, 07:06 AM
Maybe instead of worrying about whether someone else's roleplay was 'good' or 'bad', one should focus on the reasons for deciding to play a role-playing game in the first place. So what if someone is role-playing 'incorrectly', if it's doing for them what they want out of the game.

If you want your players to feel connected with the world and their characters, they have to actually feel it, not be told they should feel it (or they're a bad roleplayer!). In the succubus case, if a player isn't feeling very seduced, telling them 'the rules say you should be seduced right now' or 'are you sure you aren't seduced' isn't going to help them feel it. It was just a failure, move on, try again or try something else.

Cluedrew
2016-06-17, 07:10 AM
To Quertus: OK I think I get it, there are a few fuzzy points there I will try to clarify.

When I said it changes the kind of game I did mean within role-playing games. It is an adjustment to the player skill : character skill ratio, which in my experience can really change the feel of a game. Or at least it tends to be accompanied by enough related changes to do so.

Anyways my next point is that a lot of games that go really heavy on player skill are not to be role-playing games. Not by definition but (this is my personal theory) because adjusting the player's skill to match the character's is really hard. Playing below your skill level can be hard (there is often a noticeable difference between an expert holding back and an armature) and playing above your skill is even harder.

So the more a game relies on player skill the harder it becomes for you to role-play a character beyond yourself. Going back to "I decide if my character is convinced" if you want to be able to play someone other than yourself that answer should be different from "am I convinced".

On a related note I don't think player skill should be cut down to a minimum, but there is a point at which it is too much. And I hope this clarifies what I was saying originally.

On the Succubus: I am a Warforaged you squishy! ... OK that isn't really an point, but I just wanted to say that.

Quertus
2016-06-17, 07:51 AM
Imagine the GM telling the player "your character falls for her charms and follows her home" is a truncated version of what is actually a very long conversation, where the player repeatedly tries to do everything except follow what is obviously a trap*, only for the GM to keep telling the player "no, your character won't do that, she is very convincing". And when the "very convincing" part is due to the GM inflating her stats all the way up, it's unclear how the player has agency.

* In this case, the reason the player refused is because it's obviously a trap. Issues include figuring out whether or not the trap was obvious ICly or only OOCly, whether it was the GM bad acting or the NPC bad acting, whether the PC would've caught onto the signs of a trap or if the PC is successfully seduced and distracted from the signs that indicate it's a trap, etc...

If the PC had 100 illegitimate children in 100 towns, it's a clear-cut case (when interpreted the way you meant it. Maybe PC is used to seducing but not used to being seduced? I get your point though). It often isn't clear-cut, especially when the PC's sexuality has never been brought up until the succubus walked in.

Completely valid counter. Valid if they actively dislike being seduced. Succubus should have researched her target better. :smallwink:

Note that I keep trying to word it as, "this particular course of action makes little sense to me - please explain" rather than, "you must do x". I've had DMs (yes, plural!) who believed that property role-playing meant looking at a scenario table, and choosing the response that matched your alignment / DMs who believed that there were exactly 9 responses to any given scenario, and, if your character wasn't doing the one that corresponded with their alignment, you were a bad roleplayer. I also found one that was slightly more "advanced", who believed that race and gender also figured in. That's right, human females: if you are not seduced by cheesy pickup lines, and you don't wear red on Tuesday, I have logically deduced that you are evil, and I may slaughter you without remorse. :smallyuk:

So this prescriptive method of roleplay, where the DM keeps telling you to act a certain way is not what I mean. Maybe the character decides this is the girl he wants to marry, and tries to drag her to the church. Maybe he decides that he could pick up anyone; a girl this willing may be good for one of his less charismatic friends. Or may be willing to be shared. Maybe any number of other crazy responses, where the DM can see where the character is coming from. Or, yes, maybe the character picks the most obvious answer, and falls for the trap.

Now, let me flip that for a moment. Let's say that the character has a well established vow of chastity. The unfortunate succubus did not research her target, and chose the impossible character. When the DM has her ply her wiles, the character inexplicably acquesses. This is also a good time for the DM (or, heck, even one of the other players) to ask why the player chose that course of action. The answer may well be that they thought they were playing along with an obvious plot hook. It may be that they (legitimately or otherwise) suspect a trap, and want to spring it from the inside. It may be that they have decided to change their stance, or to start trying to change the stances of every loose woman they meet from here to the end of the campaign. Whatever their reason, it's a good time to get to know the character better (and, admittedly, to check for OOC influences on the decision making process).

And it's not necessarily a lengthy conversation. It's more of a, "your friend just said something really out of character for them - 'Is everything all right?' " kind of deal.

That's what role-playing means to me. :smallsmile:

Segev
2016-06-17, 10:50 AM
I apologize if I came across as anything other than 100% sincere in tipping my hat to you, both for your convictions and your (perceived) courage.Not at all! I took you as quite sincere. So thank you for the compliment. :smallsmile:


In acting, the onus is on the actor; in role-playing, the onus is on the audience.

You're not a bad roleplayer if you can't convince people that a 30 charisma succubus is convincing - you're a bad roleplayer if you can't be convinced by a 30 charisma succubus, regardless of who is running her.

So, if the rest of the players can roleplay, they'll all be trying to convince Persuasive Paul that his character should be convinced byTimid Tina's, not the other way around.

At least, that's my take on role-playing.The trouble here is that this becomes either implicit or explicit social bullying. "You're not a good role-player if you don't do what I'm telling you to." Persuasive Paul really doesn't see how his ogre could possibly be convinced to do what Timid Tina's character wants him to do. If Paul were playing that character, he'd probably engage in RPing out lengthy maneuvers over multiple scenes to work the ogre around to where the ogre WOULD accept it. Timid Tina doesn't have an inkling of how to do that, and the game mechanics offer her nothing to suggest that is the appropriate route. Paul is a natural; he doesn't realize his techniques work a certain way, so he can't identify what Tina is "doing wrong;" he just thinks this an impossible persuasion.

"But Tina's bard is super-persuasive, so you're a bad RPer if you don't go along with it!" basically amounts to trying to use social pressure and manipulation to convince Paul his ogre SHOULD be persuaded...and Paul's way better at expressing why his ogre SHOULD NOT be, so Paul's ogre isn't. Meanwhile, Timid Tina is told by Paul, who uses the same "you should be persuaded" argument, but phrased way better, so now her PC is persuaded by the dumb ogre with no social skills because "it just happens that" the ogre's points are that good and it's bad RP not to be persuaded.


... I really should have picked a different example. Ok, no point crying over spoilt milk... Hmmm... Bolding for clarity...

In my idealized view of role-playing, for any given statement / at any given moment, one person is role-playing by choosing what to say based on their character; everyone else is role-playing by interpreting how their character internalizes what they heard based, not on themselves and the speaker, but on their character, and the character of the speaker.

In my idealized version of role-playing, the GM never tells you what you do. That is for you to decide. That is pretty much the definition of role-playing for me - making decisions for your character, based on your character's view of the world.
This is a valid form of RP; it is how D&D used to run (and still does, practically, most of the time). But it means the only thing important on your character sheet is your physical adeptness. Your mental/social stats are meaningless, because they do nothing other than serve as one more (usually relatively minor) argument as to why the "audience" should be persuaded by your character.

Since the point of giving a game mechanics is to avoid the cops-and-robbers "I hit you!" "No you didn't; I dodged it!" type arguments, pushing the social mechanics into "I persuade you!" "No you didn't; I don't like your face!" type arguments puts us back where we started.


If you want your players to feel connected with the world and their characters, they have to actually feel it, not be told they should feel it (or they're a bad roleplayer!). In the succubus case, if a player isn't feeling very seduced, telling them 'the rules say you should be seduced right now' or 'are you sure you aren't seduced' isn't going to help them feel it. It was just a failure, move on, try again or try something else.Yes and no. Yes, if the mechanics don't provide a connection to the PC for the player, it's a failure of the mechanics. But no, that doesn't mean that the DM has to be able to seduce the player for the succubus to be able to seduce the PC. (That is a bit of an extreme take on what you said, I admit, but finding where the line is drawn is hard, which is my point.)



Anyways my next point is that a lot of games that go really heavy on player skill are not to be role-playing games. Not by definition but (this is my personal theory) because adjusting the player's skill to match the character's is really hard. Playing below your skill level can be hard (there is often a noticeable difference between an expert holding back and an armature) and playing above your skill is even harder.This. This is the crucial point in this thread, I think.

If you want to feel like a brilliant tactician (but you aren't), and want to "play as" one, do you get out Go and Chess and challenge grand masters and 7-Dans? No, of course not; those games are about exercising and implementing those skills you specifically lack. You might try to learn them to become better at strategy and tactics, but you wouldn't play them to try to feel like/RP as such a person.

The point of an RPG having mechanics is to allow you to have a character that you RP as who is competent in areas you are not (or incompetent in areas you're competent). This is why we don't just have you perform all the tasks your character attempts, and rate how well your character does based on your performance.

If the player (or DM) wants to role-play as a silver-tongued devil, but he is not so glib, himself... that's why we have social mechanics.


So the more a game relies on player skill the harder it becomes for you to role-play a character beyond yourself. Going back to "I decide if my character is convinced" if you want to be able to play someone other than yourself that answer should be different from "am I convinced".Exactly. Even if you strive to be "a good role-player," the reason we have mechanics is, in part, to help you determine whether a particular instance should or should not impact your character in a particular way. Should THAT bullet from THAT robber's gun have hit your cop? In the arm? Leg? Head? Are you being a "bad player" if you don't accept the robber's player's assertion that he lamed you? Or is he being a "bad player" for insisting that his character is so much better a marksman than yours is at dodging that he must have hit you in the leg?

Mechanics help you both agree on this. They let you have the rare, strange-odds occurrences, while still reasonably reflecting relative and absolute capability.


On a related note I don't think player skill should be cut down to a minimum, but there is a point at which it is too much. And I hope this clarifies what I was saying originally.It is definitely a balancing act. It's a question as to where you want to draw the line. And this line can (and is!) drawn in different places in different aspects of mechanics.

But the more the PC is meant to be able to do things the player cannot - which usually means, the more the focus of the RPG is on a particular element - the more the PC skill has to take primacy over player skill in the game's design. So in a game of political intrigue or social influence, the PC's skill had better be more important than the player's. In a game of martial arts mayhem, the PC's skill at martial arts had better be more important than the player's. In a game of tactics and strategy, where players play brilliant generals, the PCs' skills in those areas had better be more important than the players'.

Otherwise, it's not role-playing. It is, at best, acting, and even then, it's GUESSING, because if you're good at something but playing a character who isn't, you have to hold back and try to play "badly." This can lead quickly to overcompensation; as a popular meme on this forum goes, a wizard can be far more sub-optimal than a fighter because he can make more powerful deliberately-bad choices. If you're trying to play somebody good at something that you're not... you have to try to do what they can...with your lackluster skills...and... well, it can range from "frustratingly difficult" to "literally impossible."


I, personally, think that the best-designed social mechanics work to make the PLAYER experience at least some measure of the stresses, temptations, and influences that the CHARACTER does. It is, indeed, rather connection-breaking to be told, "Your PC is seduced and follows her home." Especially if you're playing a straight female who you don't think is into that kind of thing. And you're personally a bit weirded out by it.

Similarly, if you can't imagine why your honorable Samurai would risk giving the dishonorable Scorpion Clan blackmail material by accepting the invitation, even if it's to a really, really fun party, you'll be frustrated to be told, "and he goes, because the Scorpion rolled well."

But if the Scorpion's good roll merely meant that you gain some interesting bonuses (perhaps bonus Void points to spend in the future based on just how good it felt to indulge) for going along with it, or your refusal cost you some penalties (perhaps causing your next few 10s to fail to explode on your dice, or causing dice to fail to explode on a roll of the Scorpion's choice in the future) because of how 'what could have been' weighs upon your mind... That might make the PLAYER weigh his choices similarly to how the CHARACTER does.

Even just with the classic "she's hot and wants to make out," where the player gets nothing from it so sees only the down-sides, but the character (presumably) is turned on and gets physical immediate pleasure out of it, so IS tempted and maybe even ignoring the downsides, putting something on the table that the player has to weigh cost-benefits to helps get him in the right mind-frame.

NichG
2016-06-17, 12:52 PM
Yes and no. Yes, if the mechanics don't provide a connection to the PC for the player, it's a failure of the mechanics. But no, that doesn't mean that the DM has to be able to seduce the player for the succubus to be able to seduce the PC. (That is a bit of an extreme take on what you said, I admit, but finding where the line is drawn is hard, which is my point.)

What I mean is, you need the context of 'why is the DM using a succubus to try to seduce a PC here?'. In my mind, the reason for that is because somehow in the experience that the players and DM wanted to share, the idea of a seductive force of evil was something that people at the table wanted to explore. Otherwise, you could replace succubus seduction with 'a dimensional laywer just served you with a geasubpoena, do this action now', or whatever.

The fiction is there because the people at the table are interested in engaging with that fiction, not because it inherently has to be there or some abstract wrong against gaming has been committed.

To put it another way, lets say the succubus is just guaranteed to fail at seducing the PC from the outset. What is actually broken by that, that isn't broken by the succubus succeeding in-game but the player feeling that the entire episode felt really cheesy and fake? Is it really so important that the succubus be able to succeed, and that the modality be through social manipulation? If you just need the PC to be forced into action, why use a succubus instead of a mind-controlling spell?

Thrudd
2016-06-17, 03:08 PM
I think people are starting to conflate two different issues. The argument keeps coming up that players should be able to play a character that has skills they don't have in real life. That isn't really the topic of contention. Players should absolutely use mechanics to affect NPC's socially, and accomplish many other things.

The issue is when the GM expects to use those same skills against the players, essentially forcing them to act a certain way. This issue is primarily restricted to social manipulation and diplomacy skills, not anything else. Being socially manipulated is not the same thing as being beaten in combat or any other physical test, because it is affecting the character's thoughts and perception. If this is a regular element of the game (rules dictating PC behavior), one has to ask what the role of the player is in that game; what are they meant to be doing?

Given that the mechanics of the game allow players to simulate characters with different abilities from their own, there is a point where you have to draw the line. The game must involve the players using some element of their own mind and abilities, otherwise what is it other than a simulation? Exactly what sort of engagement the game expects from the players varies from game to game, but there has to be something that challenges the players, be it dramatic acting ability and improvisation or tactical and strategic thinking. Decide what ways you expect the players to engage and that will dictate where you fall on the mechanical manipulation of PC issue. All game mechanics should ideally work together to support the type of player engagement you want.

Quertus
2016-06-17, 03:20 PM
Similarly, if you can't imagine why your honorable Samurai would risk giving the dishonorable Scorpion Clan blackmail material by accepting the invitation, even if it's to a really, really fun party, you'll be frustrated to be told, "and he goes, because the Scorpion rolled well."

But if the Scorpion's good roll merely meant that you gain some interesting bonuses (perhaps bonus Void points to spend in the future based on just how good it felt to indulge) for going along with it, or your refusal cost you some penalties (perhaps causing your next few 10s to fail to explode on your dice, or causing dice to fail to explode on a roll of the Scorpion's choice in the future) because of how 'what could have been' weighs upon your mind... That might make the PLAYER weigh his choices similarly to how the CHARACTER does.

Even just with the classic "she's hot and wants to make out," where the player gets nothing from it so sees only the down-sides, but the character (presumably) is turned on and gets physical immediate pleasure out of it, so IS tempted and maybe even ignoring the downsides, putting something on the table that the player has to weigh cost-benefits to helps get him in the right mind-frame.

You deserve a much more thorough response; for now, let me just say that my experience IRL is the opposite of that. When I get a chance to reinforce who I am - when I, say, turn down the scorpion clan party - I get a bonus. To use your mechanics, my 9's and 10's start exploding. Maybe that's just a unique merit my player purchased for me at character creation - I didn't take enough psychology classes in college to say either way whether this is how "normal " people operate. But my experiences makes it hard for me to imagine being penalized for properly role-playing my character's disinterest in the party. :smallconfused: And that's not to mention how much it disincentives role-playing to penalize people who create realistic characters, with goals, motives, and inner workings that this particular attack vector might not be properly aligned with.

Now, that having been said... this is assuming making a social attack in ignorance of your target's triggers. Having watched many clever manipulators in action, one common tactic seems to be that, when one vector fails, try another. The target has shown complete disinterest in the party itself... maybe the target can be enticed with specific details. There will be a tournament of prowess with spitting needles... and the court musician will be trying out his latest song... human sacrifice is at midnight... free kittens... we validate parking...

So, to put it in D&D terms (not that D&D has the social mechanics to support this kind of attack in the first place), perhaps on an unsuccessful social attack, for every x points by which the attacker beat the target DC, they get to attempt a new vector.

So, yes, I can imagine why my honorable samurai might attend the party; that's not the question. The question is, can the one making the invite figure out how to convince my samurai to attend. Just like I'd expect to have to figure out how to convince the honorable samurai if our roles were reversed.

Otherwise, it's like trying to roleplay superman going on a killing spree, or everyone being non-magically convinced to chow down on live babies. Just because numbers. Where is the player agency in that?

Segev
2016-06-17, 04:03 PM
To put it another way, lets say the succubus is just guaranteed to fail at seducing the PC from the outset. What is actually broken by that, that isn't broken by the succubus succeeding in-game but the player feeling that the entire episode felt really cheesy and fake? Is it really so important that the succubus be able to succeed, and that the modality be through social manipulation? If you just need the PC to be forced into action, why use a succubus instead of a mind-controlling spell?This is an interesting question. I think the point, to me, is that it only matters if the mechanics reflect the difference. Does it really matter if the party is prevented from taking the Gem of Super Sparkle Awesomeness by a three-headed ogre-mage or an ancient dragon? If not, why use the former rather than the latter?

Does it matter if the party is prevented from stealing the legendary Number 1 Silver by the cleverness of a trio of ducklings or by an impregnable vault? ...actually, it probably does, because it will involve different skillsets and means of getting through to it.

In the end, the reason you use a succubus rather than a mind-control spell is because you're creating a different feel. If the game can't achieve that feel, then it's a failure of the game, whether mechanically or otherwise.


Players should absolutely use mechanics to affect NPC's socially, and accomplish many other things.

The issue is when the GM expects to use those same skills against the players, essentially forcing them to act a certain way. This issue is primarily restricted to social manipulation and diplomacy skills, not anything else. Being socially manipulated is not the same thing as being beaten in combat or any other physical test, because it is affecting the character's thoughts and perception. If this is a regular element of the game (rules dictating PC behavior), one has to ask what the role of the player is in that game; what are they meant to be doing?

What is the role of the player in Chess?

What is the role of the player in Soccer?

What is the role of the player in StarCraft?

What is the role of the player in Magic: The Gathering?

What is the role of the player in Overwatch?

These are somewhat rhetorical questions, obviously, but the answer is not meant to be implying an answer to the question of the role of a player in an RPG. It's more to illustrate that the role of a player varies by game.

One could argue that the player's role in an RPG is to be the primary decision-maker regarding a character's actions, but that it is not to be the character, himself. He is, perhaps, the keeper of the character's idealized self. Or of the character's idealized archetype. The definer and judge of what the character would do absent outside influences, and the one who designed the initial state of the character. But that, just as he is not the determiner of the character's success in holding to his physical efforts, he is not the determiner of the character's success in holding to his mental, social, emotional, and willpower-related efforts.

This is not always the case, but if you're going to have a game where social interaction and intrigue is crucially the focus, it probably should be, because otherwise, it's like having a game where the PCs use mechanics to determine if they hit the enemies, but the players just decide if their characters get hit or not by those enemies.


You deserve a much more thorough response; for now, let me just say that my experience IRL is the opposite of that. When I get a chance to reinforce who I am - when I, say, turn down the scorpion clan party - I get a bonus. To use your mechanics, my 9's and 10's start exploding. Maybe that's just a unique merit my player purchased for me at character creation - I didn't take enough psychology classes in college to say either way whether this is how "normal " people operate. But my experiences makes it hard for me to imagine being penalized for properly role-playing my character's disinterest in the party. :smallconfused: And that's not to mention how much it disincentives role-playing to penalize people who create realistic characters, with goals, motives, and inner workings that this particular attack vector might not be properly aligned with.Note that that's for sticking to your character, your personality. More on that in a moment.


Now, that having been said... this is assuming making a social attack in ignorance of your target's triggers. Having watched many clever manipulators in action, one common tactic seems to be that, when one vector fails, try another. The target has shown complete disinterest in the party itself... maybe the target can be enticed with specific details. There will be a tournament of prowess with spitting needles... and the court musician will be trying out his latest song... human sacrifice is at midnight... free kittens... we validate parking...And that's where I think you're missing the mark: you're assuming that the social character's efforts are only attacking your honorableness with things you wouldn't do. That he isn't trying a number of methods. That she isn't working around until you actually rather like her, and DO want to spend time with her...and now she's inviting you to that party. Do you want to disappoint her?

Now, yes, on the surface, a player (who may be the GM) who is bad at manipulation will probably rely heavily on stats. "I seduce you" is akin to "I hit you with a sword" for how boring it is. Moreover, it's actually a mark of poor social mechanics when "I seduce you" is all it takes, wham, make a roll, it's done. That's less like "I hit you with my sword" and more like "I kill you." Mainstream RPGs just don't tend to have combat systems which amount to "make a roll to see if you kill him" as the sole action taken in combat!

But many have exactly that for social persuasion/interaction.

A better social interaction system would give levers and hooks to base the judgment of the target upon, would let hooks be inserted and levers pushed to develop social handles with which to manipulate them. It would take "rounds" of activity, and possibly multiple encounters in some cases.

By the time the seductress is successfully rolling to get you to go to the party, she's gotten a read on you, has built some desire in you to please her on some level (and/or spend time with her), and is making a presentation of something that, IC, your character WANTS. Even if he's conflicted on it, he wants it on some level.

So your honorable samurai has a crush on her, or at least lusts after her, and has to fight those urges to resist giving in. Maybe he has other urges and desires in conflict (in fact, he probably does, if only in terms of loyalty or ambition or morals).

One way to approach such a system would be to have these lists of desires and urges and drives, and to have how much you've indulged them (or stuck to them) give certain bonuses, and how much you're fighting them or ignoring them give penalties. Her job is to make "you want to do what she asks" so enticing, so full of bonuses, that it competes with even violating your "must stay chaste and honorable" drives. Its penalties outweigh the honorableness bonuses, or its bonuses outweigh the honorableness penalties. And maybe that last push to roll to seduce gives a big boost to her penalty/bonus granting.

Remember: by the time she's making this roll, it shouldn't be going from "cold honor" to "hot and bothered" in 1 roll of the dice. It should be worked up to until it would be believable if you read it in a novel.

So, to put it in D&D terms (not that D&D has the social mechanics to support this kind of attack in the first place), perhaps on an unsuccessful social attack, for every x points by which the attacker beat the target DC, they get to attempt a new vector.



Otherwise, it's like trying to roleplay superman going on a killing spree, or everyone being non-magically convinced to chow down on live babies. Just because numbers. Where is the player agency in that?Indeed. If it's from 0 to mind-slave in one die roll, that makes no sense at all. That's not what I'm advocating, and I hope it's more obvious from this post what I mean.

Sith_Happens
2016-06-17, 10:08 PM
I'm not gonna lie, seeing an innocuous question I asked (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?489409-Things-that-make-you-go-NOPE-in-a-game/page9&p=20875219#post20875219) fork off into its own entire thread makes me feel kind of important.:smallbiggrin:

Anyways, brace yourselves, because I just read through the whole thing in one go so this is going to be a LONG post with a LOT of quotes.


Probably not. It's up to me if my character is persuaded, likes someone, dislikes someone, is intimidated, or believes someone.



I'm going to assume that all of that is supposed to be interpreted as a description of your preferences as to how things should work, even though the way you worded everything it technically sounds like you're trying to assert factually how they do work.


When I DM, social checks aren't guarantees of success, in the sense of getting what you want out of a Persuasion deal or convincing someone to do something with a Deception. For example, if the guard was told "No one is allowed entry without credentials," they might believe you "forgot" yours, or "got mugged," or whatever... and still not let you pass, because they could be fined/fired/executed/whatever if they're caught bending the rules. (Not terribly likely--a good bluff in that situation would probably convince them you're legit, and if the chance of discovery or the penalty is low, get you in without a problem--but it's possible.) A raging berserker barbarian who's already decided to attack you probably doesn't care if you're intimidating or if you're trying to talk them down with reasoning.

That's... one way to restore symmetry, I suppose. Definitely one that I would personally be extremely wary of, though.


I suspect moving away from DnD's poor social skills system may be helpful...

Very yes. In fact I specifically qualified my initial question to JAL_1138 with the clause "provided that the mechanics for such are actually well thought out and don't just amount to de facto mind control magic."

For illustrative purposes, here out of the game systems I know well enough to comment on are the ones that I personally think handle social actions against PCs well, each in its own unique way:

Exalted Third Edition (EX3):

(Note that the mentions of Exalted earlier in this thread were with respect to Second Edition, whose "social combat" rules are generally regarded as... not the best.)

With the single exception of seduction, PCs have no special privileges with respect to social skills and are in theory just as susceptible to them as NPCs. The social rules themselves, however, are quite nuanced and specifically take into account... actually, very close to everything that's been said so far about how PCs being persuaded "should" work if allowed at all. To give the CliffsNotes version of the relevant bits:

On your sheet is a place in which to write down any principles or beliefs your character holds; as well as any notable persons, places, or things that they have particular feelings towards (whether positive or negative); and specify on a three-point scale how strongly the character holds each such principle/belief or feels the way they do about each such person/place/thing. These are collectively known as your character's Intimacies.
-
Any roll to make someone do, feel, or believe something takes a penalty if it goes against at least one of that person's Intimacies and/or gains a bonus if it aligns with at least one of their Intimacies (if multiple Intimacies apply, take the largest bonus and the largest penalty and stack them).
-
Not only are the above modifiers potentially huge, but there are hard limits on how far you can sway someone without appealing to a sufficiently strong Intimacy, and if you're trying to change their thoughts or feelings (i.e.- mess with their Intimacies directly) then your argument also has to have enough substance behind it.
-
Even after all of that, under certain circumstances the target has the chance to spend Willpower to auto-resist, which specifically represents them going "Look, you make a very compelling argument, but I still just can't bring myself to go along with what you're saying" or the equivalent.
Overall, even with the biggest bonuses in the world, trying to make someone your fanatical follower or persuade them to do anything really major will generally require multiple rolls and often plays out almost like a puzzle game; you have to figure out what the best angles are to exploit to make them want to be persuaded, very similarly to Segev's thoughts (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20903621&postcount=109) in the post just before this one regarding the hypothetical L5R example.

Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition:

While there is a high-risk-high-reward option via which to try and persuade someone in a single roll, by default convincing someone to oblige any request they'd normally be inclined to refuse requires multiple separate checks over the course of which you essentially pressure and/or brown-nose them enough that they finally change their mind. The precise number of successful checks required depends on a combination of their stats and certain roleplaying factors, while how often you can try depends on their "impression level" which basically represents how willing they are to put up with you and can be improved by a few different methods and well as improved or worsened as befits the circumstances.

If or when the last check is passed, the distinction between whether the target is a PC or NPC comes into play. If an NPC they simply do the thing, no more questions asked. If a PC, on the other hand, the player gets a choice:



Go With the Flow

If the character does as requested and abides by the intended goal, his player takes a Beat (see p. 157).

Offer an Alternative

If the subject’s player chooses, he may offer a beneficial alternative and the initiator’s player can impose a Condition (see p. 180) on his character. This offer exists between players; it does not need to occur within the fiction of the game (though it can). The alternative must be beneficial and not a twist of intent. The Storyteller adjudicates.

The initiator’s player chooses a Condition to impose on the subject. It must make sense within the context of the scenario.

* A Beat being basically an experience point, sort of. Technically it's a fifth of an experience point but you always earn your XP one Beat at a time instead of getting whole points at once so it's really just an arbitrary lingo change (albeit a neat-sounding one).

Fate Core:

I'll just copy-paste the relevant sidebar:



Social Skills and Other Characters

Many of the social skills have actions that let you change the emotional state of another character or make them accept some fact in the story (like believing one of your lies).

A successful use of a social skill does not confer the authority to force another character to act contrary to their nature or how the person controlling the character sees them. If another PC gets affected by one of your skills, the player gets input on how their character responds. They can’t negate your victory, but they can choose what it looks like.

So, you may successfully Provoke by getting in their face and screaming at them, intending to scare them into hesitation and create an advantage. But if the other player doesn’t imagine his character reacting that way, you should work out an alternative—maybe you make him so angry that he’s unbalanced by his rage, or you embarrass him by making a spectacle around him in public.

As long as you get your advantage, you’re fine. Use it as an opportunity to create story with other people, instead of shutting them down.

In short, if you roll a social skill against another PC and win, then mechanically you get the same benefit you would against an NPC but narratively the other player has a say in what form that benefit takes (yay abstraction!).


I mean, this makes sense as far as it goes, but when my buddy Thews McManly over there is cleaving dragons in twain with a single blow and my friend Sneaky the Weasel can ghost across an open field under the eyes of thirty sentinels, I feel like possibly I'm due converting a baby-eater or seven with a few well-chosen words?

I actually forgot what I wanted to say about this but I do suddenly want to add it to my list of Quotes That Will Be in My Extended Signature Once I Hypothetically Actually Get Around to Making One.


Act 2 - proper role-playing

Now, let's say that the thing my character hates most, the most deeply ingrained thing in his entire, distributing persona, is a racist hatred of drow.

Let's say the party encounters a drow (let's ignore the circumstances, whether it's a PC, etc) who happens to have a 30 charisma, +30 to bluff and diplomacy, etc. If my character reacts exactly the same to this drow as to any other drow - if I don't at least give a nod to the effect of these stats - IMO that's bad role-playing.

Now, admittedly, the character's first reaction might be to trust the drow less, viewing him as some scary fast-talker who may have tricked the rest of these gullible fools, but you're on to them.

But, for proper role-playing, your ability to believe them over time should be affected by their social stats. Kinda like the whole social combat idea, with each piece of evidence dealing more damage to your social HP.

So, over time, after the drow has saved your life and the lives of your companions several times, has undergone multiple sessions of [S]truth serum zone if truth / ring of truth / divination / etc, underwent the entire council of elders aiding another on sense motive checks, and passed a credit check, well, I guess maybe not all drow are equally bad, and maybe this is one of the good ones. Maybe.

And while you smiled in grim satisfaction the first time a kobald ran him through, and even spat on his unconscious body when the griffin mauled him, you did wince when the balor took off his ear, and even helped him to his feet when the cleric raised him after he sacrificed himself to hold off the ancient dragon, just for a round. Ah, good times. If he hadn't been so likable, you probably would have killed him in his sleep the first night, or have "tended his wounds" after the griffin, or sold him to those slavers when most of the party was disabled. It's almost a pity you're about to betray him, along with the rest of your party, to the BBEG, but them's the breaks.

I'd hesitate to use the phrase "good/bad role-playing" just on principle, but besides that I agree with all of this wholeheartedly. Stats mean things, and just straight-up ignoring those things is rather rude.


There's a difference between "this character has given you no reason to not believe what he's telling you" and "you believe this character because the dice / the rules / I said so".

Yes, presentation is extremely important any time you're talking about IC/OOC separation.


That's just it. They don't have a high sense motive skill, they don't believe you even if youre telling the truth. You can reverse psychology them, I guess, but whatever you tell them they wont believe you.

That particular gap in the rules is rather specific to D&D as far as I know.


(So you can't moon the Queen when another player is attempting to talk to her for a basic example.)

Why would you ever disallow that? Then you're missing out on the part where the rest of the party immediately scrambles to throw the mooner under the buss as decisively as possible.:smalltongue:


I once read a thread started by a girl who asked how to construct a character that would resist all seduction attempts - because there was a player in her group who wanted to force her to roleplay sex with his character.

Was that thread on this forum, because if so I'm pretty sure I remember it. And the mere memory of it is now continuously sapping my faith in humanity.:smallsigh:


Even with the improv thing, there's a difference between something like playing a part on a stage or for a movie, and playing a part at a gaming table. The goal in playing a part to an audience is to communicate that character to the audience, to make them understand the character. But when you're playing a roleplaying game, you're the audience of your own acting. Your own ability to feel like you're in tune with the character, that you get into character so much that you don't have to step back and do a meta-analysis of what they would do or think, is much more important. Being told 'okay, now think this' is destructive to that process.

Oooh, we're getting philosophical up in here!:smallwink:

I do like this, by the way, it's a very interesting distinction.


I guess, again using the example of Burning Wheel. First the players have identified the conflict, probably through RP. Taking a half remembered example of a game, the conflict is the king is missing, the kingdom is in chaos, and the princess and high ranking official of the government are debating over what to do.

Once the conflict is clear both people will make statements of intent, the thing they're trying to persuade the other person of. Both players need to agree that the other person's statement of intent is something that their character could be persuaded of at all. In this case:

Princess: "You will find my father and return him to his kingdom."
Agent: "In all likelihood, your father will never return. You will claim the throne and rule the kingdom."

Once that's done, there's the big conversational fight, the mechanics of which aren't important. In this example the princess wins the argument, but takes a lot of damage in the process. Say she has 1/10 "hit points" remaining. That means she gets what she was after, but owes the agent a major compromise. The players discuss again what this compromise could reasonably be and settle on "The princess will act as regent until the agent finds and returns her father to the kingdom."

Both sides are then bound to follow these terms in good faith, because their characters have genuinely been persuaded of these things.

Oooooh. This thing, I like it.:smallcool:


These skills exist for arbitrating the fairly narrow space between "Of course I'll do it!" and "F*** off!"

Exalted 3E has a sidebar saying more or less this, so another point for it.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-17, 10:20 PM
There's a difference between "this character has given you no reason to not believe what he's telling you" and "you believe this character because the dice / the rules / I said so".




Yes, presentation is extremely important any time you're talking about IC/OOC separation.


The former is presenting information to the player about the reality that their character inhabits.

The latter is seizing control of the player's character or demanding that they play their character a certain way.


To me, that's a huge and critical difference.

NichG
2016-06-17, 10:29 PM
This is an interesting question. I think the point, to me, is that it only matters if the mechanics reflect the difference. Does it really matter if the party is prevented from taking the Gem of Super Sparkle Awesomeness by a three-headed ogre-mage or an ancient dragon? If not, why use the former rather than the latter?

Does it matter if the party is prevented from stealing the legendary Number 1 Silver by the cleverness of a trio of ducklings or by an impregnable vault? ...actually, it probably does, because it will involve different skillsets and means of getting through to it.

In the end, the reason you use a succubus rather than a mind-control spell is because you're creating a different feel. If the game can't achieve that feel, then it's a failure of the game, whether mechanically or otherwise.


Yeah, I agree that its about the feel you want to create. But if a player is saying adamantly 'no, its obviously a trap, I'm not interested', that means that probably the feel you were going for has already failed. At that point I think the right thing to do is to just move on and try something else, or grab another facet of the feel you're going for and work on that, rather than try to convince the player that actually they're feeling what you wanted them to feel when they just aren't.

Or to put it another way, if I look at what a mechanical contest is likely to make a player feel - fear or envy (if the other guy's stats are visibly quite high), indignation or anger (about being forced on some issue/failing a roll), and perhaps resignation or frustration (fine, lets just let the DM have their fun...). So I should use opposed rolls with a negative outcome on the line only if I really want to evoke those emotions. If there's just a bonus or malus on the line, I might get greed, caution, or uncertainty out of the players with that - which is okay if that's what I'm going for, but it doesn't feel like 'being seduced' - closer to 'being convinced of something' though, so might be okay for negotiation.

But if I want to evoke fascination, curiosity, infatuation, adoration, and lust, these all seem to be pretty far away from the emotional response I want the player to have. If I want to design mechanics or just an RP situation for that, I need to break those things down carefully and figure out what might lead there. I would probably start with the idea of a succubus as an illicit offer - a way for people in a highly constrained culture to indulge in a part of themselves that is normally repressed, and would be seen as inappropriate by that society. Because normally, both sides would maintain propriety and exert judgement over each-other if impropriety occurred, the succubus unbalances that relationship by encouraging the impropriety instead, and making their target feel good about violating their cultural and social mores. So the succubus needs to be making their target feel special, like they're above their own morality and ethics and the judgement of others (because the succubus won't judge them no matter what). And then, the eventual betrayal completes the interaction as a morality play (which we may or may not want to subvert, since thats the thing the player will see as an obvious outcome of this). That's pretty complex, can we boil it down?

The succubus has to make their target feel special and privileged. So rather than just randomly going up to a party member and saying 'sleep with me', the succubus could make a show of comparing the various PCs to each-other and then disregard all but one of them as uninteresting, favoring that one, belittling the others in conversation when they disagree with the chosen target, etc. Then, if the target is a hero-type, a moment of vulnerability where the succubus confesses some need or weakness to her target - something innocent, not asking for illicit action yet. If this doesn't click, the succubus has pretty much failed, but if the target sympathizes with her and starts to become protective, she can move on to developing that into a seduction, and to try to escalate jealousy between her target and her target's friends. 'You always hang out with that wizard but I don't like him, he's always suspicious of me, casting detection spells when he thinks I won't notice. What did I ever do to him?'. The succubus can also make their target feel like they're getting away with things they shouldn't - they make some kind of mistake or moral misjudgment, and the succubus can excuse them for it 'I know you're feeling bad about having to leave that guy behind, but it was a really hard situation and you made the tough decision when no one else was willing to. You took the responsibility upon yourself that others were afraid of, so you deserve to be forgiven if it goes wrong some times.'

That's roughly how I'd construct the RP. Can you think of mechanics that would amplify that kind of structure without making the PC feel like 'they're being told to play along'?

Quertus
2016-06-19, 03:38 AM
And that's where I think you're missing the mark: you're assuming that the social character's efforts are only attacking your honorableness with things you wouldn't do. That he isn't trying a number of methods. That she isn't working around until you actually rather like her, and DO want to spend time with her...and now she's inviting you to that party. Do you want to disappoint her?

I was kinda assuming all that in there, actually. Admittedly, my examples were terrible - I'm gonna claim that, when I posted that, my blood sugar was dropping, or I was fending off an attack by aliens or something. :smallredface: But what you're saying here and what I was failing to convey are equivalent.


Now, yes, on the surface, a player (who may be the GM) who is bad at manipulation will probably rely heavily on stats. "I seduce you" is akin to "I hit you with a sword" for how boring it is. Moreover, it's actually a mark of poor social mechanics when "I seduce you" is all it takes, wham, make a roll, it's done. That's less like "I hit you with my sword" and more like "I kill you." Mainstream RPGs just don't tend to have combat systems which amount to "make a roll to see if you kill him" as the sole action taken in combat!

But many have exactly that for social persuasion/interaction.

A better social interaction system would give levers and hooks to base the judgment of the target upon, would let hooks be inserted and levers pushed to develop social handles with which to manipulate them. It would take "rounds" of activity, and possibly multiple encounters in some cases.

By the time the seductress is successfully rolling to get you to go to the party, she's gotten a read on you, has built some desire in you to please her on some level (and/or spend time with her), and is making a presentation of something that, IC, your character WANTS. Even if he's conflicted on it, he wants it on some level.

So your honorable samurai has a crush on her, or at least lusts after her, and has to fight those urges to resist giving in. Maybe he has other urges and desires in conflict (in fact, he probably does, if only in terms of loyalty or ambition or morals).

One way to approach such a system would be to have these lists of desires and urges and drives, and to have how much you've indulged them (or stuck to them) give certain bonuses, and how much you're fighting them or ignoring them give penalties. Her job is to make "you want to do what she asks" so enticing, so full of bonuses, that it competes with even violating your "must stay chaste and honorable" drives. Its penalties outweigh the honorableness bonuses, or its bonuses outweigh the honorableness penalties. And maybe that last push to roll to seduce gives a big boost to her penalty/bonus granting.

Remember: by the time she's making this roll, it shouldn't be going from "cold honor" to "hot and bothered" in 1 roll of the dice. It should be worked up to until it would be believable if you read it in a novel.

So, to put it in D&D terms (not that D&D has the social mechanics to support this kind of attack in the first place), perhaps on an unsuccessful social attack, for every x points by which the attacker beat the target DC, they get to attempt a new vector.


Indeed. If it's from 0 to mind-slave in one die roll, that makes no sense at all. That's not what I'm advocating, and I hope it's more obvious from this post what I mean.

IME, most people who initiate social attacks against PCs via rolls do not do the legwork of feeling the target out first. If they did, they probably wouldn't need a roll.

Actually, my experience IRL also suggests that people strangers don't make (or, at least, don't succeed at the) rolls to read me before attempting to manipulate me. People who know me, sure, use what they know. I remember one particularly self-aware little girl making a request, being told "no", thinking for a moment, then explicitly asking, "whining doesn't work on you, does it?". Admiring her honesty, I told her no, it doesn't, and taught her the "good" way to manipulate me.

As to trying to make the bonus she gives more attractive than the bonus the samurai gets for refusing... I personally don't like the idea of viewing the persuasion minigame through that level of abstraction. I prefer the minigame of research, sense motive, etc, presenting arguments etc. But that's just a personal preference, I agree that sounds like a perfectly workable model. I do caution that many pools likely have a size limit, depending on the individual character. Fame may be a huge motivator for one character; infinite fame may give no more bonus than a hot meal to a second; to a third, fame might exclusively give a penalty. Pre-modeling all that sounds tedious and/or impossible; modeling it on the fly sounds, to me, little different than my idea of role-playing in the first place. But, if expressing the character's personality in terms of dynamically-generated trigger buckets, with equations for their fill rate and max volume, is what works for you, go for it! :smallsmile:

In such a game, I'd still just play the character, and only really care about the buckets if I felt they were too exploitable, or otherwise got in the way of role-playing.

So, if properly implemented, and they got everyone on the same page, I think I'd greatly approve.

Cluedrew
2016-06-19, 07:55 PM
You know, I want to say something insightful, but we have covered most of the points that I can think of.

The character being influenced actually effecting how one influences them might be the most important one. ... Actually I was going to list a bunch of others but really almost everything else seems to be some extension of that idea. And it is something a lot of systems seem to ignore. And in a way I kind of understand why, because you either have to encode all of this information (which if the game isn't about that anyways... that wastes time) or you have to leave some room for interpretation based on people's notions of the character (which can be too fluid sometimes). Which are sort of the rules-heavy and rules-light solution to the problem.

There may be more solutions, but those seem to be the two basic ones.

Segev
2016-06-21, 12:33 AM
As to trying to make the bonus she gives more attractive than the bonus the samurai gets for refusing... I personally don't like the idea of viewing the persuasion minigame through that level of abstraction. I prefer the minigame of research, sense motive, etc, presenting arguments etc. But that's just a personal preference, I agree that sounds like a perfectly workable model. I do caution that many pools likely have a size limit, depending on the individual character. Fame may be a huge motivator for one character; infinite fame may give no more bonus than a hot meal to a second; to a third, fame might exclusively give a penalty. Pre-modeling all that sounds tedious and/or impossible; modeling it on the fly sounds, to me, little different than my idea of role-playing in the first place. But, if expressing the character's personality in terms of dynamically-generated trigger buckets, with equations for their fill rate and max volume, is what works for you, go for it! :smallsmile:

In such a game, I'd still just play the character, and only really care about the buckets if I felt they were too exploitable, or otherwise got in the way of role-playing.

So, if properly implemented, and they got everyone on the same page, I think I'd greatly approve.

One way such a system would be useful to you "just playing the character" would be helping to give an objective standard of what the character "should" be feeling at the time, so you can act appropriately with less guesswork and more confidence that you're playing the character "honestly" rather than "power-gaming" or "no-selling" in an unfair manner. ("No, my samurai would never give in to her blandishments! He's too honorable! And I know OOC that this is a trap and that it'd be a bad game-move to do so." "What? The beautiful daughter of the daimyo is interested in me? Why, it would be dishonorable not to see if I could return her affections! And it carries way more benefits than downsides, because it could get me more social influence. Oh, my, um, I seem to be so in love with her I'll sacrifice my honor a bit. That just shows how much I love her! Really!"

All of those justifications could be perfectly true, but I don't know about you, but I would be second-guessing my own motives for how I chose it to work. Because I would know I was giving myself advantages or disadvantages by choosing certain behaviors, and whether my character is tempted or not, is going to hold to his honor or not, would be colored by what I knew to be the mechanically beneficial route (or at least believed to be).

Give me some mechanical guidance as to just how tempting my character finds it, and I can be a "good role-player" and go along as much as he should, while still holding to his guns and NOT going along when he shouldn't. Give me mechanical guidance that makes me consider the benefits of it vs the penalties in a game-play sense, and now I actually am more immersed because I don't even have to groan and say, "Man, I don't WANT him to do this, because I know it'll screw him over, but..." Instead, I'm thinking, "Ooh, I know it's a bad idea on the one hand, but it could be a lot of fun to have those perks..." just like he's (probably, if this is the game-state being reflected) thinking, "Ooh, I shouldn't, but she's so HOT..." (or something like that).

goto124
2016-06-21, 01:40 AM
I don't even have to groan and say, "Man, I don't WANT him to do this, because I know it'll screw him over, but..."

For me, it's more of "Man, I don't WANT him to do this, because I know it'll screw the entire party over..."

NichG
2016-06-21, 07:08 AM
One way such a system would be useful to you "just playing the character" would be helping to give an objective standard of what the character "should" be feeling at the time, so you can act appropriately with less guesswork and more confidence that you're playing the character "honestly" rather than "power-gaming" or "no-selling" in an unfair manner. ("No, my samurai would never give in to her blandishments! He's too honorable! And I know OOC that this is a trap and that it'd be a bad game-move to do so." "What? The beautiful daughter of the daimyo is interested in me? Why, it would be dishonorable not to see if I could return her affections! And it carries way more benefits than downsides, because it could get me more social influence. Oh, my, um, I seem to be so in love with her I'll sacrifice my honor a bit. That just shows how much I love her! Really!"

All of those justifications could be perfectly true, but I don't know about you, but I would be second-guessing my own motives for how I chose it to work. Because I would know I was giving myself advantages or disadvantages by choosing certain behaviors, and whether my character is tempted or not, is going to hold to his honor or not, would be colored by what I knew to be the mechanically beneficial route (or at least believed to be).

To be honest, this is completely incomprehensible to me. It's basically the opposite of anything I'd ever want. I don't want an objective set of guidelines for telling me how the character feels, because then what's the point? I want to have the experiences and discover spontaneously what the character feels by actually feeling it.

I'd much rather have an environment where if someone says 'yes, I'm doing this because I'm power-gaming' everyone says 'oh, okay' and if someone else says 'even if this is an objectively bad choice, I'm doing this because of RP' then everyone says 'oh, okay'. The kind of game where everyone is constantly looking to accuse others of roleplaying wrong just seems too toxic to bother with.

goto124
2016-06-21, 07:21 AM
To be honest, this is completely incomprehensible to me. It's basically the opposite of anything I'd ever want. I don't want an objective set of guidelines for telling me how the character feels, because then what's the point? I want to have the experiences and discover spontaneously what the character feels by actually feeling it.

I'd much rather have an environment where if someone says 'yes, I'm doing this because I'm power-gaming' everyone says 'oh, okay' and if someone else says 'even if this is an objectively bad choice, I'm doing this because of RP' then everyone says 'oh, okay'. The kind of game where everyone is constantly looking to accuse others of roleplaying wrong just seems too toxic to bother with.

Sounds like someone who already has a good handle on RP. For someone who still doesn't quite know how to roleplay without worrying a lot about taking 'optimal' actions, such mechanics can help guide that person towards learning how to roleplay in a way that doesn't come to 'powergaming with fluff'.

If you already know how your character would act, you don't need an objective set of guidelines. This is for people who don't know how their character would act, and aren't used to stepping inside other people's shoes.

Thrudd
2016-06-21, 09:10 AM
Sounds like someone who already has a good handle on RP. For someone who still doesn't quite know how to roleplay without worrying a lot about taking 'optimal' actions, such mechanics can help guide that person towards learning how to roleplay in a way that doesn't come to 'powergaming with fluff'.

If you already know how your character would act, you don't need an objective set of guidelines. This is for people who don't know how their character would act, and aren't used to stepping inside other people's shoes.

For a game system to be fair, the same rules need to apply to everyone. So you can have a mechanic that tells you how a character is supposed to feel, and either everyone has to obey the results or no one does. I guess it's ok if some people want ideas for how to role play.


Segev, I don't understand the idea of second guessing your own role play choices. This is why the game needs a clear objective.

If the objective is dramatic acting to tell a story, then there should be no hesitation to act in a way that seems "sub optimal", because in this game there is no such thing. The player's goal is to create an interesting story, regardless of what the character's goals and thoughts are. If you think it's more interesting or dramatic for the character to fall in love despite his vows, then that's what you should do.

If the objective is problem solving, then you shouldn't feel bad about making the smart choice that gives you the most benefit. That's what your character would do, because in this sort of game the character's goals and player's goals should be basically identical. You are still role playing.

The problem comes when a game isn't clear if it is the first type or second type or tries to be both. This is why you'd get conflicted about your choices, because the game tells you that you should be doing both, even though those two objectives are often conflicting.

goto124
2016-06-21, 10:11 AM
So games are either 'problem solving' or 'drama inducer'? And I have to choose between the two? And make my players make the same choice as well?

By this language, I tried to go 'problem solver', only to get 'drama inducer' in return, did the verbal equivalent of smashing my head against a brick wall of "that's what my character would do", then broke down and avoided contact with the brick walls players for a month.

Earthwalker
2016-06-21, 10:21 AM
So games are either 'problem solving' or 'drama inducer'? And I have to choose between the two? And make my players make the same choice as well?

By this language, I tried to go 'problem solver', only to get 'drama inducer' in return, did the verbal equivalent of smashing my head against a brick wall of "that's what my character would do", then broke down and avoided contact with the brick walls players for a month.

Of course its not as simple as two flavours of games.
I think how you set out your rules dictates how they are going to be used in game and what effects they have.

Lets take Fate and Pathfinder.

In Fate I would not mind at all someone using rapport on my character to convince them of something or to gain an advantage on me. Its what the skill is for and above there is a right up of how it should work player v player.

In Pathfinder diplomacy is not something that can be used on players, it specifically excludes the use on other PCs.

Rules differences like this create different expectations of the kind of game that is being played.

Segev
2016-06-21, 01:02 PM
To be honest, this is completely incomprehensible to me. It's basically the opposite of anything I'd ever want. I don't want an objective set of guidelines for telling me how the character feels, because then what's the point? I want to have the experiences and discover spontaneously what the character feels by actually feeling it.

I'd much rather have an environment where if someone says 'yes, I'm doing this because I'm power-gaming' everyone says 'oh, okay' and if someone else says 'even if this is an objectively bad choice, I'm doing this because of RP' then everyone says 'oh, okay'. The kind of game where everyone is constantly looking to accuse others of roleplaying wrong just seems too toxic to bother with.Ultimately, the people who powergame WILL take over the narrative, if only because their characters are more capable. Unless the "RPers uber alles" will also "RP" that their characters are more powerful than mechanics say they are, and declare that they can, in fact, dodge attacks or escape from grapples or pick locks or ignore spells that they cannot, because the player "feels" that they can.

I get that you want to feel it, yourself. But again, you're cheating those players who are not good actors if you do that. Timid Tina's bard will never make you feel the way your character is supposed to, because Timid Tina is doing well to work up the guts to invoke the mechanics and say what her bard is trying to do. It will come off as "tell" rather than "show," and you will find it falling flat.

So of course, because Timid Tina is just BAD at play-acting a confident and suave bard, you'll see her bard as a cad at best and a milquetoast at worst, and either way said bard will make you feel like he's all talk and no delivery.

As well, you will never feel the unearthly terror of the eldritch wraith; your character is supposed to, but you don't because, frankly, you're safe at the gaming table with friends and snacks at hand. It's EASY to say, "Yeah, my character's too brave for that to stop him," and give yourself an RP-flavored pat on the back for making him "hesitantly" act against that fear (in adjective, but not mechanical choices).

Sure, you might actually think, "No, obviously he's scared." Great. But... what makes you decide he's scared? Is he always scared of everything described as spooky/scary/unearthly? Does he never gird his loins and face his fears? If he does, sometimes, what makes you decide he does...this time? Is it "it's important" or "he cares about somebody?" Do your characters never fail out of fear when their loved ones are in danger? Or do they succumb, hating themselves for it as they do? If it's not always one or the other, how do you decide that this time, he'll succumb, but this other time, he'll pull it together? If it's a progression thing, how do you decide if he needs to fail his loved ones 1 time, 2 times, 14 times, or more before he finally manages to overcome it?

"Whatever's dramatic" is an easy answer, and some people can probably do it. But novelists are rare, and talented ones rarer still.

If we wanted to write dramatic stories, we wouldn't need RPGs; we can do that, ourselves. Heck, we don't need combat mechanics if we're really that good at RP: we all can agree that this fight is dramatic if described this way with these consequences.


Segev, I don't understand the idea of second guessing your own role play choices.It's simple: you're a fallible, emotional human being playing a game. Your PC is your game piece, your avatar in the game-world, and you generally want to do things like be able to play him or help out the other players' characters. It almost never seems "fun" in the moment for bad things to happen to you, especially when it will cause bad things to happen to others. Without mechanics to tell you that yes, you avoid the "bad stuff" this time, but no, you didn't this other time, you're just making it up, and there really is no drama to it. Success and failure are arbitrary, and you'll have to be a table full of magnificent storytellers to make it seem otherwise. To make the victories seem a triumph rather than a simple declaration that "the cops beat the robbers, because we say so."


If the objective is dramatic acting to tell a story, then there should be no hesitation to act in a way that seems "sub optimal", because in this game there is no such thing. The player's goal is to create an interesting story, regardless of what the character's goals and thoughts are. If you think it's more interesting or dramatic for the character to fall in love despite his vows, then that's what you should do.And if you have no real sense of drama, and are the sort who would write mary sue fics if you were an author, does your decision that it's "more dramatic" for him to always do the right thing and succeed at everything he tries and always make all the right decisions make the story better?

"A clear objective" helps, but not in this sense, because "good drama" is so very highly subjective.


If the objective is problem solving, then you shouldn't feel bad about making the smart choice that gives you the most benefit. That's what your character would do, because in this sort of game the character's goals and player's goals should be basically identical. You are still role playing.So in those sorts of games, you shouldn't actually have anything that a character could experience that a player could not, because it obviously is objectively better for your character to ignore pain and fear to defeat the enemy, and since the player doesn't feel the pain or fear, he should just make the optimal choice to ignore it.


The problem comes when a game isn't clear if it is the first type or second type or tries to be both. This is why you'd get conflicted about your choices, because the game tells you that you should be doing both, even though those two objectives are often conflicting.No, the problem is that an RPG is supposed to let you represent a character in a setting, with all the challenges such a character would face. Including the ones that you, the player, do not "feel" because you are not there. It really is no different than a question of physical capability; do you have the emotional or mental ability to overcome the obstacles you face? Of course the player does; he isn't facing the obstacles. Saying "My character ignores the seductress and walks up and slaps the 'terrifying' dragon in the face" is as easy as saying "My character ignores the 30-ft. wall by jumping over it and uses his bare hand to remove the vampire-lord's heart and crush it to dust."

Thrudd
2016-06-21, 01:02 PM
So games are either 'problem solving' or 'drama inducer'? And I have to choose between the two? And make my players make the same choice as well?

By this language, I tried to go 'problem solver', only to get 'drama inducer' in return, did the verbal equivalent of smashing my head against a brick wall of "that's what my character would do", then broke down and avoided contact with the brick walls players for a month.

A good role playing game will be some flavor of one or the other, yes. You choose by choosing what game to play. If you choose D&D (and are playing according to the written rules), you've chosen problem solver. With home brewing, you could turn it into a more dramatic game, but most of its mechanics point toward problem solving. If you choose the Apocalypse World family of games, you've chosen drama. Those mechanics clearly encourage collaborative story telling and dramatic character acting.

You run into problems if you or your players don't recognize what type of game you're playing and expect it to do things the game's mechanics aren't good for. That's smashing your head against the brick wall.
You can tell how to run the game and what relationship the players should have to their characters by the sort of rules the game has. A game where there are rules that let players manipulate the narrative directly and rewards them for making dramatic story choices is an acting game. A game that rewards the players for defeating challenges and directly ties in-world success with player success is a problem solving game, where the players are motivated to do their best to overcome the challenges the GM has presented. If you reward one thing, but ask the players to do the other thing, then you've got a problem and people will probably by unsatisfied.

You can still act in a problem solving game, and there is still problem solving in an acting game; there are also different kinds of acting/story telling and different kinds of problem solving. But the game's mechanics are going to encourage and reward one over the other.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-21, 01:10 PM
You can also have different sorts of players/PCs in the same game, and tailor their interaction with the rest of the "world" to suit their preferences.

The same groups of players can have a Drama King, a Problem Solver, and several other archetypes. Some players like having their characters go through things like "mind control" and some don't.

A good GM should keep these different preferences in mind, not try to force a PC into situations that the player won't enjoy.

Lacco
2016-06-21, 01:23 PM
Timid Tina's bard will never make you feel the way your character is supposed to, because Timid Tina is doing well to work up the guts to invoke the mechanics and say what her bard is trying to do. It will come off as "tell" rather than "show," and you will find it falling flat.

Just to address this point - there was this article I read few years ago - this one (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/38/play-constructively-pass-the-ball/). I really liked especially this part:


Embrace their character concept — A player wants his necromancer to be dark and mysterious, so try and play like he is, no matter how badly that player sells it. Give him the benefit of the doubt and buy into the character concept he is trying for, don’t disregard it because “you’re not convinced.” If you embrace the concept you will make it easier for that person to play better.

I translated the thing and provided it to my players. The best ones got even better. The worst ones? They got at least better. Everybody wins! :smallwink:


As well, you will never feel the unearthly terror of the eldritch wraith; your character is supposed to, but you don't because, frankly, you're safe at the gaming table with friends and snacks at hand. It's EASY to say, "Yeah, my character's too brave for that to stop him," and give yourself an RP-flavored pat on the back for making him "hesitantly" act against that fear (in adjective, but not mechanical choices).


I've had a player who felt it. He was the kind who imagined it fully and he was able to "pull" others into IC. When three of my best players sat around a table, I didn't have hard job as a GM - they were so good that they lived in the world for the time when we were playing.

I've had one observation - from several games here on the forum. It may be biased, but if a game requires you to metagame to survive, and is basically about resource management, situations like goto124 described will happen if you try to roleplay and - even hamstring your PC because you feel he should feel fear or disgust or be persuaded.

But there are other games :smallsmile:.

NichG
2016-06-21, 01:46 PM
Ultimately, the people who powergame WILL take over the narrative, if only because their characters are more capable. Unless the "RPers uber alles" will also "RP" that their characters are more powerful than mechanics say they are, and declare that they can, in fact, dodge attacks or escape from grapples or pick locks or ignore spells that they cannot, because the player "feels" that they can.

I get that you want to feel it, yourself. But again, you're cheating those players who are not good actors if you do that. Timid Tina's bard will never make you feel the way your character is supposed to, because Timid Tina is doing well to work up the guts to invoke the mechanics and say what her bard is trying to do. It will come off as "tell" rather than "show," and you will find it falling flat.

So of course, because Timid Tina is just BAD at play-acting a confident and suave bard, you'll see her bard as a cad at best and a milquetoast at worst, and either way said bard will make you feel like he's all talk and no delivery.

As well, you will never feel the unearthly terror of the eldritch wraith; your character is supposed to, but you don't because, frankly, you're safe at the gaming table with friends and snacks at hand. It's EASY to say, "Yeah, my character's too brave for that to stop him," and give yourself an RP-flavored pat on the back for making him "hesitantly" act against that fear (in adjective, but not mechanical choices).

Sure, you might actually think, "No, obviously he's scared." Great. But... what makes you decide he's scared? Is he always scared of everything described as spooky/scary/unearthly? Does he never gird his loins and face his fears? If he does, sometimes, what makes you decide he does...this time? Is it "it's important" or "he cares about somebody?" Do your characters never fail out of fear when their loved ones are in danger? Or do they succumb, hating themselves for it as they do? If it's not always one or the other, how do you decide that this time, he'll succumb, but this other time, he'll pull it together? If it's a progression thing, how do you decide if he needs to fail his loved ones 1 time, 2 times, 14 times, or more before he finally manages to overcome it?

"Whatever's dramatic" is an easy answer, and some people can probably do it. But novelists are rare, and talented ones rarer still.

If we wanted to write dramatic stories, we wouldn't need RPGs; we can do that, ourselves. Heck, we don't need combat mechanics if we're really that good at RP: we all can agree that this fight is dramatic if described this way with these consequences.

It's simple: you're a fallible, emotional human being playing a game. Your PC is your game piece, your avatar in the game-world, and you generally want to do things like be able to play him or help out the other players' characters. It almost never seems "fun" in the moment for bad things to happen to you, especially when it will cause bad things to happen to others. Without mechanics to tell you that yes, you avoid the "bad stuff" this time, but no, you didn't this other time, you're just making it up, and there really is no drama to it. Success and failure are arbitrary, and you'll have to be a table full of magnificent storytellers to make it seem otherwise. To make the victories seem a triumph rather than a simple declaration that "the cops beat the robbers, because we say so."

And if you have no real sense of drama, and are the sort who would write mary sue fics if you were an author, does your decision that it's "more dramatic" for him to always do the right thing and succeed at everything he tries and always make all the right decisions make the story better?

"A clear objective" helps, but not in this sense, because "good drama" is so very highly subjective.

So in those sorts of games, you shouldn't actually have anything that a character could experience that a player could not, because it obviously is objectively better for your character to ignore pain and fear to defeat the enemy, and since the player doesn't feel the pain or fear, he should just make the optimal choice to ignore it.

And if a player decides that that's how their character is going to be, to me that's perfectly fine. There's plenty of room for Mike to play his Chuck-Norris fantasy vision who shrugs off pain and awkward situations and punches the universe into submission alongside Mark who wants to really explore the feeling of intense and creeping fear, shock, and numbness from being constantly in life-or-death situations and to withdraw into gibbering insanity. I've personally played both, and both were interesting experiences that were worth having. Even if you don't like Mary Sues, maybe Mike does like Mary Sues - so let him have his fun with being one. Comparing to cops and robbers seems a non-sequiteur - that's a mock-competitive game, where the players are always going to be in opposition, so of course fairness matters more there. But the nature of RPGs is broad enough that they don't all have to be competitive zero-sum games where either you play optimally or you're forced to play suboptimally or everything falls apart. This concept of protecting the sanctity of the game against someone potentially roleplaying their character incorrectly because it might confer some kind of advantage or violate the simulation or whatever feels totally backwards to me, like putting this sort of ideal of 'the game' as something with its own moral weight above and beyond the actual players playing it.

Keltest
2016-06-21, 02:08 PM
And if a player decides that that's how their character is going to be, to me that's perfectly fine. There's plenty of room for Mike to play his Chuck-Norris fantasy vision who shrugs off pain and awkward situations and punches the universe into submission alongside Mark who wants to really explore the feeling of intense and creeping fear, shock, and numbness from being constantly in life-or-death situations and to withdraw into gibbering insanity. I've personally played both, and both were interesting experiences that were worth having. Even if you don't like Mary Sues, maybe Mike does like Mary Sues - so let him have his fun with being one. Comparing to cops and robbers seems a non-sequiteur - that's a mock-competitive game, where the players are always going to be in opposition, so of course fairness matters more there. But the nature of RPGs is broad enough that they don't all have to be competitive zero-sum games where either you play optimally or you're forced to play suboptimally or everything falls apart. This concept of protecting the sanctity of the game against someone potentially roleplaying their character incorrectly because it might confer some kind of advantage or violate the simulation or whatever feels totally backwards to me, like putting this sort of ideal of 'the game' as something with its own moral weight above and beyond the actual players playing it.


RPGs may not be inherently competitive, but they are supposed to be cooperative, as a rule. Mary Sue who Punches Like Chuck Norris is not a compatible character with "Courage the cowardly bard." When someone else is running around punching all your problems in the face, even when they don't have one, your character's emotional responses (and indeed, ability to participate in the problem solving) become quite limited. Aboleth, Dragon, Cthulu, if Mary Sue is just gonna punch them to death regardless, they quickly lose their ability to emotionally affect you. theyre just another target to watch get punched.

Sith_Happens
2016-06-21, 02:38 PM
Aboleth, Dragon, Cthulu, if Mary Sue is just gonna punch them to death regardless, they quickly lose their ability to emotionally affect you. theyre just another target to watch get punched.

Which isn't inherently a bad thing, it just changes the scope of what might conceivably "get to" the PCs.

kyoryu
2016-06-21, 02:50 PM
One thing I always do, and it's a mitigating thing, is require that before you can social-skill someone (even NPCs), to have "leverage" on the target of the social skill.

In other words, you have to have something that they want, something that they're willing to agree to throw up against the dice.

For intimidation, it's easy, as the "leverage" boils down to "I won't hurt you", which is generally something people like.

But you can't just diplomance people. You have to offer them something they want first.

Cluedrew
2016-06-21, 03:09 PM
This concept of protecting the sanctity of the game against someone potentially roleplaying their character incorrectly because it might confer some kind of advantage or violate the simulation or whatever feels totally backwards to me, like putting this sort of ideal of 'the game' as something with its own moral weight above and beyond the actual players playing it.Really to me this is more about making it easier to role-play well vs. protecting anything.

Good role-playing is not easy, and there are a lot of things beyond the system that effect it but that doesn't mean the system shouldn't make it easier when it can. For me that is what this is about. As a simple example, when the giant monster appears and the character goes "Oh beeps, I am going to die" the player should be going "Oh beeps, I am going to lose". Because that puts the player and character in similar modes and so it is easier for the player (or maybe just me) to think like the character.

The other main aid is numbers. Do you hit? Assume for a second that you are capable of running a simulation of the combat situation in your head and deciding in some unbiased manner if each attack hits. That still sounds like a lot more work than "I need a 9 {rolls} 17." This also overlaps quite heavily with the challenge aspect of the game, but that isn't the only thing the numbers do.

So yeah... rules as role-playing aids. Actually I think this is one of the main decider of whether the social mechanics are good. Bad social mechanics ignore your concept and make it harder to play a good character because they result in illogical outcomes. Good social mechanics on the other hand can represent a character (if not perfectly) and take some of the effort of doing so away from the player.

kyoryu
2016-06-21, 03:17 PM
So yeah... rules as role-playing aids. Actually I think this is one of the main decider of whether the social mechanics are good. Bad social mechanics ignore your concept and make it harder to play a good character because they result in illogical outcomes. Good social mechanics on the other hand can represent a character (if not perfectly) and take some of the effort of doing so away from the player.

Even without rules, I'll often think about what my character would do - "Well, I might do X, and I might do Y." Assign a probability to it, roll the dice, and go with it.

Sith_Happens
2016-06-21, 03:18 PM
Even without rules, I'll often think about what my character would do - "Well, I might do X, and I might do Y." Assign a probability to it, roll the dice, and go with it.

I have a friend who does this to occasionally-hilarious results.

kyoryu
2016-06-21, 03:23 PM
I have a friend who does this to occasionally-hilarious results.

Depends on how insane you make the "they might do X" bits :smallbiggrin:

Segev
2016-06-21, 04:39 PM
Just to address this point - there was this article I read few years ago - this one (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/38/play-constructively-pass-the-ball/). I really liked especially this part:



I translated the thing and provided it to my players. The best ones got even better. The worst ones? They got at least better. Everybody wins! :smallwink:Ah, but you (or the person to whom I was replying, at least) said you should rely on how you felt to make your decision on what your character feels. It is to that specifically that I wrote that response.

If you're now going to say, "Pretend Tina's bard is the most charismatic fellow ever," that's also all well and good...but how do you decide if his persuasive charms are ENOUGH to make you decide to man up and face down the horror-wraith that you decided your character was afraid of (because the horror-wraith is conceptually supposed to be scary, so you're selling to that)? Do you rely on Tina's descriptions? If so, well, they're nowhere ear as good as the DM's descriptions of how scary the wraith is. Do you assign more value to Tina's desire to be persuasive and charismatic than to the DM's to have a scary monster? Which is the "right" RP move?

Mechanics help you judge these things. On a rudimentary level, Tina's Bard rolls better than the horror-wraith (or doesn't) so you're brave enough to face it (or aren't). In a more complex system, Tina's bard might play off of an intimacy you have to give you the strength of will to resist the fear, or might not be able to quite pull enough out to make you brave enough. With the notion of bonuses and penalties, Tina's morale bonus might counteract the wraith's fear bonus, or the bonus she gives you for choosing to fight might be enough to offset your penalties for not giving in to the fear to make that, plus how worthwhile not giving into fear is, worth the choice.

Mechanics help you make decisions because they give you an objective view of what influences your character is experiencing.


I've had a player who felt it. He was the kind who imagined it fully and he was able to "pull" others into IC. When three of my best players sat around a table, I didn't have hard job as a GM - they were so good that they lived in the world for the time when we were playing.More power to him. But "I have one player who is so magnificent that he could do it" only justifies you playing free-form with that player, not your claim that mechanics are needless. Otherwise, "Tom Brady can play football superbly, therefore rules to simulate it in an RPG aren't necessary; we should all just to out and play a few minutes of the sport to see how things go," would be a valid argument.


If a game requires you to metagame to survive, and is basically about resource management, situations like goto124 described will happen if you try to roleplay and - even hamstring your PC because you feel he should feel fear or disgust or be persuaded.

But there are other games :smallsmile:.Sure. And the fact that I'm recommending mechanics that don't happen to exist in D&D rather acknowledges this. :smallamused:



RPGs may not be inherently competitive, but they are supposed to be cooperative, as a rule. Mary Sue who Punches Like Chuck Norris is not a compatible character with "Courage the cowardly bard." When someone else is running around punching all your problems in the face, even when they don't have one, your character's emotional responses (and indeed, ability to participate in the problem solving) become quite limited. Aboleth, Dragon, Cthulu, if Mary Sue is just gonna punch them to death regardless, they quickly lose their ability to emotionally affect you. theyre just another target to watch get punched.Which isn't inherently a bad thing, it just changes the scope of what might conceivably "get to" the PCs.
Nope. Because no matter the scope, Gary Stu, the bishi half-vampire half-werewolf empowered by a dark pact his wicked stepmother made with a greater demon-god (and oh so tormented by it) will use his progressive katana to cut whatever it is in half. Or his pure tears of manly purity to cure whatever ails may befall.

Mechanics exist to help you judge objectively what your character can and can't do, whether it's physical, magical, emotional, intellectual, or anything else. Good mechanics let the player "feel" something akin to the character's experience, and the pressures involved in the choice.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-21, 05:03 PM
As long as we remember that the mechanics exist to model something, not define it -- and that they are a means, not the ends.

If I want a game that's all about the rules and the rolls and everything else is secondary or meaningless, I'll play chess or Lords of Waterdeep or whatever.

.

NichG
2016-06-21, 10:18 PM
Ah, but you (or the person to whom I was replying, at least) said you should rely on how you felt to make your decision on what your character feels. It is to that specifically that I wrote that response.

If you're now going to say, "Pretend Tina's bard is the most charismatic fellow ever," that's also all well and good...but how do you decide if his persuasive charms are ENOUGH to make you decide to man up and face down the horror-wraith that you decided your character was afraid of (because the horror-wraith is conceptually supposed to be scary, so you're selling to that)? Do you rely on Tina's descriptions? If so, well, they're nowhere ear as good as the DM's descriptions of how scary the wraith is. Do you assign more value to Tina's desire to be persuasive and charismatic than to the DM's to have a scary monster? Which is the "right" RP move?

There isn't a 'right' RP move and a 'wrong' RP move. Both are equally 'right'. Either move you make is a choice to express a different thing about your character. The point of leaving it as a choice is that then, the outcome is meaningful to you - you had to choose.

In terms of Tina trying to be awesome, this makes another point - I don't think it matters if you're a good or bad roleplayer, but it really matters if you're good or bad at the OOC metagame. That is to say, you're going to set in your own mind something that that you feel is necessary in order for your character concept to be actualized. If that is something which is inwardly directed, its much more realizable than something which is outwardly directed (but the DM should help with the outward stuff). But if you choose something that requires other players to react a certain way, its inevitably going to cause problems. I've seen quite a few new players make this mistake in getting into the RP mindset - they author a story in their own head and don't realize that they have co-authors they have to share the writing with, and then complain or just get really disappointed when things don't go as they imagined them.

That is to say, if you're playing Chuck Norris and the first thing you do is decide 'the only way for me to be as awesome as I imagine I am is for me to singlehandedly beat down the rest of the PCs and then go drinking with them afterwards like the cool guy I am and so they all forgive me because of how awesome I am' then, yeah, you're in for disappointment. Because you might get beaten down yourself, or you might get kicked out of the party, or all sorts of other things that don't match the fiction in your head. So if you're Tina and want your bard to be super-charismatic, you actually should metagame the situation and realize that hinging your expectations on being able to control how the other PCs react to you is a bad idea - and pick a different way to explore how charismatic that bard is.

Segev
2016-06-21, 11:30 PM
I honestly don't see how a mind-set that anything outwardly focused is somehow begging for trouble can allow you to play anybody who DOES anything. Certainly disallows "I am a suave and charismatic bard" or similar concepts as being "okay."

And of course the mechanics are meant to model the thing. That's why it's so important that they model the correct thing by working best when used to emulate that which the game purports to be about.

NichG
2016-06-22, 04:12 AM
I honestly don't see how a mind-set that anything outwardly focused is somehow begging for trouble can allow you to play anybody who DOES anything. Certainly disallows "I am a suave and charismatic bard" or similar concepts as being "okay."

The problem is more about someone being outwardly 'reliant' rather than outwardly 'focused'. It all comes down to how you internally define your character, and there are good habits and bad habits. For example, for the suave and charismatic bard, you can have:

- My bard is someone who is always trying to be suave and charismatic. They care a lot about how other people see them, and always take pains to try to manipulate that to be favorable towards themselves. They want to be loved by all.

- My bard is someone who is suave and charismatic. Other people always see them in a favorable light, and they are loved by all.

In the first case, you're only relying on internal things - you're trying to be suave and charismatic, but if you fail then you're still that character, you just have to explore what happens when he doesn't live up to his own expectations. You want to be liked, but if someone doesn't like you, you're still that character - its just something external that they couldn't control, and now they react to that situation.

In the second case, the problem is that if the external world doesn't respond the way you want, then the way you've specified that character breaks. If someone doesn't love you, no, that's not allowed, now my character is different than I had envisioned and there's a problem!

Now, its not the end of the world if you don't always do this separation perfectly. The reason is that it's part of the DM's job to help you realize your character, so the world isn't completely out of your control as a player. You can negotiate - 'I want to experience being a really competent speaker' and the DM says 'okay, I'll have NPCs react well to you' and all's good. But one thing that is (and, IMO, should be) completely out of your control is the other players. If another player decides that their character hates your bard because he seems fake and their character values forthrightness and honestly above all else, that isn't something about the bard's character, it's about that other player's character, and its their's to decide (that said, they should also be a good metagamer and express that hate in ways that don't disrupt the game)

Earthwalker
2016-06-22, 06:10 AM
Now, its not the end of the world if you don't always do this separation perfectly. The reason is that it's part of the DM's job to help you realize your character, so the world isn't completely out of your control as a player. You can negotiate - 'I want to experience being a really competent speaker' and the DM says 'okay, I'll have NPCs react well to you' and all's good. But one thing that is (and, IMO, should be) completely out of your control is the other players. If another player decides that their character hates your bard because he seems fake and their character values forthrightness and honestly above all else, that isn't something about the bard's character, it's about that other player's character, and its their's to decide (that said, they should also be a good metagamer and express that hate in ways that don't disrupt the game)

One thing I find odd about this is if you change it to a physical aspect of the character.
So I make Grobard the barbarian who as a concept and mechanically is really physically strong.
Then another players thinks "No Grobard is weak" I think strength comes from facial hair and Grobard has no facial hair just big muscles.

Just re-read that and it sounds more harsh than I was going for. I aren't saying you shouldn't have control over what your character thinks. I just feel things will work better if everyone buys into each others character concepts. If you cant then change the characters.

NichG
2016-06-22, 09:23 AM
One thing I find odd about this is if you change it to a physical aspect of the character.
So I make Grobard the barbarian who as a concept and mechanically is really physically strong.
Then another players thinks "No Grobard is weak" I think strength comes from facial hair and Grobard has no facial hair just big muscles.

Just re-read that and it sounds more harsh than I was going for. I aren't saying you shouldn't have control over what your character thinks. I just feel things will work better if everyone buys into each others character concepts. If you cant then change the characters.

The thing I'm bringing into question is, why did you choose to hinge your feeling of who Grobard is on how others react to him, as opposed to just hinging it on who he is to himself? Yes, you can say that the other player is being weird and arbitrary, sure. But sometimes other players are weird and arbitrary. You can't control how they're going to react or the opinions they'll form, so you shouldn't make those things an essential part of your character. And, ultimately, you don't need to.

Lets take Grobard and remove all of the externalities. For example, you said that Grobard's concept is being really physically strong, but that might not play out the way you expect in practice (what if there's a guy in power armor in the group? Or someone who layers all sorts of buffs to become supernaturally strong? Or someone who turns into a dragon? You have no guarantee that you're going to be the strongest PC, so you shouldn't rely on that to define you). So instead, you could say: "Grobard as a character is used to feeling stronger than everyone around him. He likes to throw around his strength, and at some level believes that brute physical strength is the true measure of a person. Grobard is always trying to test and improve his strength."

If you define Grobard that way, its suddenly not a problem if someone else in the party thinks he's weak. Now you know how Grobard would respond to that - he'd be constantly trying to show off, to convince this guy that he really is strong, by doing extreme things like grappling monsters or racing up cliff sides or so on. If Grobard arm-wrestles Thor and loses, now it doesn't mean that Grobard's character concept was somehow damaged or diminished because an NPC was stronger than him and his thing was being the strong guy - instead, he now has a goal, to become strong enough to come back and win the next time. If Grobard simply can't become strong enough to keep up because of the limits of the world, its unfortunate to his self-image and he might get depressed, but it doesn't actually diminish who he is (whereas, if Grobard were defined as 'being strong' then it would).

This is what I mean by defining a character inwards. Remove all the mechanical bits and bobs, all the physical 'this is how I would see him if I met him' things, and focus on how the character thinks about themselves and the world.

AMFV
2016-06-22, 10:06 AM
The problem is more about someone being outwardly 'reliant' rather than outwardly 'focused'. It all comes down to how you internally define your character, and there are good habits and bad habits. For example, for the suave and charismatic bard, you can have:

- My bard is someone who is always trying to be suave and charismatic. They care a lot about how other people see them, and always take pains to try to manipulate that to be favorable towards themselves. They want to be loved by all.

- My bard is someone who is suave and charismatic. Other people always see them in a favorable light, and they are loved by all.

In the first case, you're only relying on internal things - you're trying to be suave and charismatic, but if you fail then you're still that character, you just have to explore what happens when he doesn't live up to his own expectations. You want to be liked, but if someone doesn't like you, you're still that character - its just something external that they couldn't control, and now they react to that situation.

In the second case, the problem is that if the external world doesn't respond the way you want, then the way you've specified that character breaks. If someone doesn't love you, no, that's not allowed, now my character is different than I had envisioned and there's a problem!

The problem is that if I want to play a suave and charismatic bard because I am not. And the world reacts as though it is me a not-sauve sweaty geeky guy attempting to be suave around them. Then it isn't a very fun game for me. Certainly there's room for character growth when things happen that you don't expect in a game. But if my concept is suaveness and charisma and I cannot manage that, then it isn't reasonable to hinge my character's ability on my own, unless that's a previously stated part of the game.

There are two major problems with your "inward focus" argument. The first is this: Unless I am making a gimmick character or a comic relief character, it is not sensible or reasonable that my character would continue to attempt to suave and charismatic after failing multiple times. That breaks verisimilitude, why would I keep trying the things that fail, people generally don't do that in real life. The other problem is that it makes certain concepts impossible for certain people to maintain, while it is impossible to have a game that doesn't involve some level of skill, it is perfectly to have a game where you can simulate a skill that you don't have. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to simulate a social skill you don't have.

Here is the other thing. I AM not my character. My character is NOT me, as you state in the quoted section. My character might be derived from aspects of me, or wholly different. My character is a character, it need not rely on me possessing traits that my character does. Otherwise we could not allow an asthmatic geek to make a tough dwarven warrior who can hike long distances in thin air.



Now, its not the end of the world if you don't always do this separation perfectly. The reason is that it's part of the DM's job to help you realize your character, so the world isn't completely out of your control as a player. You can negotiate - 'I want to experience being a really competent speaker' and the DM says 'okay, I'll have NPCs react well to you' and all's good. But one thing that is (and, IMO, should be) completely out of your control is the other players. If another player decides that their character hates your bard because he seems fake and their character values forthrightness and honestly above all else, that isn't something about the bard's character, it's about that other player's character, and its their's to decide (that said, they should also be a good metagamer and express that hate in ways that don't disrupt the game)

The issue is that we're not having the character's respond to the other character in ways that are genuine in the game. After all, while my bard may seem to be fake to the PLAYER (since I am not able to roleplay sincerity as well as my Bard is). It is not reasonable to assume the same is true of their characters.

We aren't discussing differences of values, where this sort of thing makes sense. We are discussing general impressions, and first impressions and conversation, which is as much a skill as walking or fighting, or running. After all, not everybody is going to like a flim-flam man, if they're forced to interact with them regularly, but that's an entirely different thing than arbitrarily disbelieving them because you know that the player who is playing said flim-flam man is not as good at lying as is his character.

Thrudd
2016-06-22, 10:19 AM
The problem is that if I want to play a suave and charismatic bard because I am not. And the world reacts as though it is me a not-sauve sweaty geeky guy attempting to be suave around them. Then it isn't a very fun game for me. Certainly there's room for character growth when things happen that you don't expect in a game. But if my concept is suaveness and charisma and I cannot manage that, then it isn't reasonable to hinge my character's ability on my own, unless that's a previously stated part of the game.

There are two major problems with your "inward focus" argument. The first is this: Unless I am making a gimmick character or a comic relief character, it is not sensible or reasonable that my character would continue to attempt to suave and charismatic after failing multiple times. That breaks verisimilitude, why would I keep trying the things that fail, people generally don't do that in real life. The other problem is that it makes certain concepts impossible for certain people to maintain, while it is impossible to have a game that doesn't involve some level of skill, it is perfectly to have a game where you can simulate a skill that you don't have. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to simulate a social skill you don't have.

Here is the other thing. I AM not my character. My character is NOT me, as you state in the quoted section. My character might be derived from aspects of me, or wholly different. My character is a character, it need not rely on me possessing traits that my character does. Otherwise we could not allow an asthmatic geek to make a tough dwarven warrior who can hike long distances in thin air.



The issue is that we're not having the character's respond to the other character in ways that are genuine in the game. After all, while my bard may seem to be fake to the PLAYER (since I am not able to roleplay sincerity as well as my Bard is). It is not reasonable to assume the same is true of their characters.

We aren't discussing differences of values, where this sort of thing makes sense. We are discussing general impressions, and first impressions and conversation, which is as much a skill as walking or fighting, or running. After all, not everybody is going to like a flim-flam man, if they're forced to interact with them regularly, but that's an entirely different thing than arbitrarily disbelieving them because you know that the player who is playing said flim-flam man is not as good at lying as is his character.

The game still has rules to let the character be successfully charismatic regardless of the player's abilities. He just doesn't get to flim-flam the other player characters. The GM and the player would describe him to the other players as a very suave, handsome, charismatic guy. They will choose how to roleplay their characters' reaction to that. NPCs will be affected by the mechanics of flim-flam.

AMFV
2016-06-22, 10:27 AM
The game still has rules to let the character be successfully charismatic regardless of the player's abilities. He just doesn't get to flim-flam the other player characters. The GM and the player would describe him to the other players as a very suave, handsome, charismatic guy. They will choose how to roleplay their characters' reaction to that. NPCs will be affected by the mechanics of flim-flam.

Well the thing is that there is nothing inherently wrong with including rules that DO advise the other players as to how to react to said flim-flam. Since the other PCs are the people that any given character is most likely to interact with most of the time, it is not very believable for a character to be only charismatic with others. It's also hard to maintain internal coherency if your character is seen as only charismatic with Guard #42 and Joe The Generically Named Bartender. If you make a character who is intended to be a charismatic leader and he cannot fill that role in his own group, then he's not very believable, and it makes that sort of character harder to play and less fun.

This is perhaps the reason why in D&D you don't see many people who play "face type" characters unless they also have another role. Now certainly using rules against other PCs should be carefully considered, but newer editions of D&D don't have nearly as much intra-party conflict, you don't have rogues stealing from the party (or that's heavily discouraged), but we don't limit rogues abilities or perceived abilities as a result. Why should we do that to the potential con-man player?

NichG
2016-06-22, 11:47 AM
The problem is that if I want to play a suave and charismatic bard because I am not. And the world reacts as though it is me a not-sauve sweaty geeky guy attempting to be suave around them. Then it isn't a very fun game for me. Certainly there's room for character growth when things happen that you don't expect in a game. But if my concept is suaveness and charisma and I cannot manage that, then it isn't reasonable to hinge my character's ability on my own, unless that's a previously stated part of the game.

There are two major problems with your "inward focus" argument. The first is this: Unless I am making a gimmick character or a comic relief character, it is not sensible or reasonable that my character would continue to attempt to suave and charismatic after failing multiple times. That breaks verisimilitude, why would I keep trying the things that fail, people generally don't do that in real life. The other problem is that it makes certain concepts impossible for certain people to maintain, while it is impossible to have a game that doesn't involve some level of skill, it is perfectly to have a game where you can simulate a skill that you don't have. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to simulate a social skill you don't have.

There's no reason you can't simulate it, sure. But there is a reason why it is a bad idea to choose to focus on a character concept that requires other people to act a certain way lest your concept be destroyed. It's much the same as how you can have one player who wants to play a necromancer and another who wants to play a paladin, but unless they work together to figure out ahead of time how to make that work then even though the game allows it, it's likely to cause problems.

Ultimately, when you set down to a game and imagine a character and concept and envisage the experience you're going to have, there are choices that you're explicitly or implicitly making. You can make all sorts of choices as to what to hinge your gaming experience on - that is to say, you're allowed to - but some are more likely to lead to disappointment than others. My advice about internal validation rather than external validation is that if you rely on external validation you will inevitably have problems. Even if the game mechanics give you all the support you could want, you cannot prevent some other player from using their own system mastery and choosing a character concept which runs circles around you, nullifies your ability to influence them, etc. So, totally regardless of any system design or game design considerations, its simply a bad idea to rely on the reaction of the world in order to imagine your character.

For an example, I was in a game where a new player brought in a vampire character. Okay, no problem. But he thought it'd be really awesome roleplay if we found him after he had gone into a starvation coma, which (by the rules associated with the type of vampire he was) meant that he would basically be in frenzy the moment he woke up. I think he imagined there'd be a scene where he'd attack us, show us how scary-powerful a World of Darkness vampire can be, be about to kill one of us, and then he'd have an awesome RP moment where he seized control back from the frenzy and became our friend. What actually happened is that mechanically, straight by the rules, he was successfully beaten down by the PCs without a sweat. So rather than his awesome intro making him feel his character was powerful, he ended up just being humiliated and with bad blood between his character and ours. Yes, that was the game playing out the way its rules specified, yes that's 'what should have happened' according to those rules, but it would have been a lot better for everyone involved if he had recognized the metagame problems with his cool concept and had figured out a way to do things differently.

And, ultimately, if you design your character internally, you will end up with a much better, much more fleshed out, and much more flexible character. If you make a solid personality and set of attitudes, it doesn't matter if they get transplanted into the body of a 90 year old woman with a bad back or a space dragon or a microbe or the avatar of a country, because the thing that creates the character's identity will still come through in the way their mind works - how they think, what they want, how they react, what they say, etc. But if your idea is 'a really suave guy who convinces other people' then its ultimately shallow - its a power, not a persona, and it can easily end up being made irrelevant, taken away, or overshadowed.

AMFV
2016-06-22, 12:09 PM
There's no reason you can't simulate it, sure. But there is a reason why it is a bad idea to choose to focus on a character concept that requires other people to act a certain way lest your concept be destroyed. It's much the same as how you can have one player who wants to play a necromancer and another who wants to play a paladin, but unless they work together to figure out ahead of time how to make that work then even though the game allows it, it's likely to cause problems.

It's only a bad idea if there's inherently a problem with the system. If the system allows for Paladins and Necromancers to work together, then there's no problem. If the system doesn't then there is. On the main topic, if the system works to allow your character to influence other PCs, then that sort of concept is fine (there are many systems that work just like this), if it doesn't then you have to discuss this with players.

Essentially you're suggesting what amounts to a general consensus houseruling on the matter. The group agreeing that something can work a certain way, because the game system doesn't allow for it. That's not always a good solution. And is further made more problematic because for certain people they won't need the system to allow for it, because of their own personal charisma. So there's nothing wrong with including that sort of rule in a system, after it all it does allow for better simulation of a different kind of character. Although admittedly it is not the best option for everybody.



Ultimately, when you set down to a game and imagine a character and concept and envisage the experience you're going to have, there are choices that you're explicitly or implicitly making. You can make all sorts of choices as to what to hinge your gaming experience on - that is to say, you're allowed to - but some are more likely to lead to disappointment than others. My advice about internal validation rather than external validation is that if you rely on external validation you will inevitably have problems. Even if the game mechanics give you all the support you could want, you cannot prevent some other player from using their own system mastery and choosing a character concept which runs circles around you, nullifies your ability to influence them, etc. So, totally regardless of any system design or game design considerations, its simply a bad idea to rely on the reaction of the world in order to imagine your character.


The issue is this: There are MANY MANY character archetypes that require external validation. if I'm playing Thogg, the mighty barbarian, then I will need validation that he is actually mighty, by the way he interacts with the rules. If I'm playing a skilled warrior, then the way he interacts with the rules requires that external validation. The same stands as true for a character who is socially adept, again the rules need to be built around that capacity if that is an expected archetype.

Certainly there is the question of system mastery. But let's offer this alternative, if you remove mechanics then you are just valuing social skill and negotiation over system mastery. Where there are no rules typically it's fast-talking and negotiation that makes the call one way or the other. Now there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. But it does value a different skillset from the real world more highly, and as such might not appeal to people who are skilled in different areas.

And there is the matter of the social contract, naturally, but that is a touchy and more complicated issue, the key here as far as that goes, is to find a ruleset that supports as many of the desires of the players involved as possible.



For an example, I was in a game where a new player brought in a vampire character. Okay, no problem. But he thought it'd be really awesome roleplay if we found him after he had gone into a starvation coma, which (by the rules associated with the type of vampire he was) meant that he would basically be in frenzy the moment he woke up. I think he imagined there'd be a scene where he'd attack us, show us how scary-powerful a World of Darkness vampire can be, be about to kill one of us, and then he'd have an awesome RP moment where he seized control back from the frenzy and became our friend. What actually happened is that mechanically, straight by the rules, he was successfully beaten down by the PCs without a sweat. So rather than his awesome intro making him feel his character was powerful, he ended up just being humiliated and with bad blood between his character and ours. Yes, that was the game playing out the way its rules specified, yes that's 'what should have happened' according to those rules, but it would have been a lot better for everyone involved if he had recognized the metagame problems with his cool concept and had figured out a way to do things differently.


This isn't exactly the same thing, as that isn't a concept, but rather a scene. I'm discussing concepts, a scene not working is not necessarily a good representation of difficulties in bringing character concepts to the table. If his concept was "Vampire Always on the Edge who is a Super-Badass" then that might have been something where the metagame created a problem, but the issue is that you're focusing on a single scene, rather than a concept.

Now, it is entirely possible that system mastery can screw a concept, but otherwise it's your ability to negotiate that puts you ahead. "Hey guys, this scene would be really awesome, let's do it!" And now it's the player who is the most convincing salesman who wins out instead of the one who has the best system mastery. Neither is really better, but let's not pretend that one is any more fair than the other.



And, ultimately, if you design your character internally, you will end up with a much better, much more fleshed out, and much more flexible character. If you make a solid personality and set of attitudes, it doesn't matter if they get transplanted into the body of a 90 year old woman with a bad back or a space dragon or a microbe or the avatar of a country, because the thing that creates the character's identity will still come through in the way their mind works - how they think, what they want, how they react, what they say, etc. But if your idea is 'a really suave guy who convinces other people' then its ultimately shallow - its a power, not a persona, and it can easily end up being made irrelevant, taken away, or overshadowed.

Here's the thing, your persona depends on your actual abilities, both in the real world and in game. There's a reason why the "cocky jock" is a stereotype. Because his real abilities have influenced how he sees himself. You can't take somebody and put them into a different body or a different skillset without potentially influencing their personality and/or actions. You can't build a character where the concept is entirely internal, it simply doesn't work, and isn't realistic in the slightest.

If I am a gritty and tough warrior, then that will be resulting not only from my personality, but from my experiences, which are in-turn affected by my skills and abilities. So my entire life factors into a character. Inwardly focusing doesn't help in authentic design, because people are not inwardly focused.

Furthermore there is no reason why "suave guy who convinces other people" is at all a worse place to start than "person who is super confident in his social abilities regardless of whether that confidence is earned or not". They're entirely different character concepts, and different rules would be needed to best simulate both of them. The former is however as a valid a concept as the latter is, despite your arguments to the contrary.

NichG
2016-06-22, 12:54 PM
It's only a bad idea if there's inherently a problem with the system. If the system allows for Paladins and Necromancers to work together, then there's no problem. If the system doesn't then there is. On the main topic, if the system works to allow your character to influence other PCs, then that sort of concept is fine (there are many systems that work just like this), if it doesn't then you have to discuss this with players.

You can go to a game, make a bad choice, have a bad time, and blame the system for it. But in the end, you still had a bad time. Or you can just take responsibility for your own fun and make a good choice in the first place.



The issue is this: There are MANY MANY character archetypes that require external validation. if I'm playing Thogg, the mighty barbarian, then I will need validation that he is actually mighty, by the way he interacts with the rules. If I'm playing a skilled warrior, then the way he interacts with the rules requires that external validation. The same stands as true for a character who is socially adept, again the rules need to be built around that capacity if that is an expected archetype.


Just because you can define a character archetype doesn't make it a good idea to play the way you defined it. I can come up with lots of characters who should never see the light of day and are just straight-out terrible ideas to bring to any gaming table. Someone who decides what to do by rolling a die and looking up stuff on a table - its a valid archetype, variations of it show up in inspirational media (Two-Face in various incarnations of Batman), but it's disruptive and dumb. I can imagine it, and I can play it, but I shouldn't. Not because its against the rules or anything, but because it will not actually make for good gaming.

Not just that, but I can imagine all sorts of characters that are inappropriate for the game at hand. If I bring a resolute pacifist to an goblin-genociding dungeon crawl, its something I can do, but I was an idiot to do so. When things go badly because of that choice that I made to bring in that character, it won't be the system's fault or the DM's fault or the other players' faults, it will be my fault.

The choice is yours not to play those bad ideas, or to reinterpret them in ways that don't create problems. Just because you technically 'can' do them doesn't mean you should.

Don't play a 'mighty warrior', play someone who is obsessed with might and war. Don't play a socially adept person, play a gregarious person who enjoys socialization. Don't play a master thief, play someone with a dangerous level of curiosity, greed, and lack of respect for property rights. What happens in game will decide if your warrior was truly mighty, your socialite truly adept, and your thief truly master. The point being - they might not turn out to be, and if you can build in ways to be okay with that then it will make you far less of a brittle player.



Certainly there is the question of system mastery. But let's offer this alternative, if you remove mechanics then you are just valuing social skill and negotiation over system mastery. Where there are no rules typically it's fast-talking and negotiation that makes the call one way or the other. Now there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. But it does value a different skillset from the real world more highly, and as such might not appeal to people who are skilled in different areas.


Both of these are already adversarial. Better to make the choice that doesn't create a fight in the first place. You've got a character who likes to flim-flam people, great. You can choose not to try to flim-flam the other PCs, and this never comes into question at all - you don't need to be good at mechanics, negotiation, anything, and no one is going to 'lose' by having their character disrupted. You have the power to avoid the issue entirely, just by imagining your character in a way that does not depend on the other players' reactions.



This isn't exactly the same thing, as that isn't a concept, but rather a scene. I'm discussing concepts, a scene not working is not necessarily a good representation of difficulties in bringing character concepts to the table. If his concept was "Vampire Always on the Edge who is a Super-Badass" then that might have been something where the metagame created a problem, but the issue is that you're focusing on a single scene, rather than a concept.

The scene is a single specific example of course, but it originates from the same fundamental mistake as imaging your concept as being rooted in the reactions of others. After all, each such reaction is concretely going to be at issue or not in a particular scene - the moment where you want to make that roll to force another player to react a certain way.

The mistake is the same - for you to be happy, you have arranged things so that you need to control something that you can't. So now, suddenly, your happiness is at risk; you have to fight to get what every player at a game should be receiving as a matter of course, and its a fight you could lose (whether its system mastery or negotiation or luck or whatever doesn't matter). But that wasn't necessary - you could have made choices that don't put your happiness at risk at all. That's why I say it's a bad choice - because that way of thinking means you are often going to write yourself into a corner.



Here's the thing, your persona depends on your actual abilities, both in the real world and in game. There's a reason why the "cocky jock" is a stereotype. Because his real abilities have influenced how he sees himself. You can't take somebody and put them into a different body or a different skillset without potentially influencing their personality and/or actions. You can't build a character where the concept is entirely internal, it simply doesn't work, and isn't realistic in the slightest.


Having played many such characters, your 'it simply doesn't work' rings hollow to me.



Furthermore there is no reason why "suave guy who convinces other people" is at all a worse place to start than "person who is super confident in his social abilities regardless of whether that confidence is earned or not". They're entirely different character concepts, and different rules would be needed to best simulate both of them. The former is however as a valid a concept as the latter is, despite your arguments to the contrary.

The validity of the concept isn't in question, it's the wisdom of choosing that as your concept. There are lots of things which are valid - that is, not technically excluded by any kind of explicit rule - but which will create problems for you and for others nonetheless.

Cluedrew
2016-06-22, 06:05 PM
You can go to a game, make a bad choice, have a bad time, and blame the system for it. But in the end, you still had a bad time. Or you can just take responsibility for your own fun and make a good choice in the first place.I fell the need to point out... bad systems are a thing, they are systems that are bad. There are also systems that are good at particular things and bad at others. You could say then that picking the system is the good/bad choice. But there are also limits of knowledge and ability to consider.


Having played many such characters, your 'it simply doesn't work' rings hollow to me.... OK this is a bit of a nitpick but the fact that the characters you play conform to your understanding of how people work should not come as a surprise. You are the one deciding how they act and I'm going to guess you generally have your characters do things that make sense to you.

But on the main topic. If I want to play someone friendly and charming, I would like to be able to do that even though I generally lack charming (I can sometimes pull of friendly). However I don't want to play someone who tries to be charming, I could go outside and try to be charming (I have since given up on most conventional forms of charming). For me, that is not what role-playing is about it is more about playing someone who is actually different from myself. You seem to have a much easier time on that than I do (just looking at how you try to solve the related problems, you often seem to fall back on skill I do not* possess).

As for the concepts you outlined, I think the problem is not that they include people's reactions. The problem is that they contain absolutes. Don't play someone who charms everyone and is always the center of attention, play someone who is generally charming. Sure they can't win over everyone, they might not even be the most charming person in the room, but that doesn't change the fact that usually people like them.

*Yet, I'm practicing when I can.

NichG
2016-06-22, 09:04 PM
I fell the need to point out... bad systems are a thing, they are systems that are bad. There are also systems that are good at particular things and bad at others. You could say then that picking the system is the good/bad choice. But there are also limits of knowledge and ability to consider.

Sure, but lets say that for some reason you end up having to play in an imperfect system (they all are), or even a really really terrible system. You're stuck playing FATAL or whatever, and for some reason 'just walk away' isn't an option you'd like to exercise. Given that you're playing in a terrible system, you still have many things that you as a player can do to try to have a good time despite that. Whereas being able to sit back and say 'I've come to the determination, the system is bad!' doesn't actually help you increase your enjoyment (not saying that making that determination is bad or useless - if you're making systems or choosing systems or whatever, it's helpful to make the next time better, but getting stuck on that determination as the end-point of your thought process is a problem).

Just because you can identify external factors which might make having fun harder for you isn't a good reason to stop trying to improve your chances of having fun despite that. Ideally, it should enable you to take those factors into account and use them to figure out an even better way to enjoy yourself.



... OK this is a bit of a nitpick but the fact that the characters you play conform to your understanding of how people work should not come as a surprise. You are the one deciding how they act and I'm going to guess you generally have your characters do things that make sense to you.


That's kind of my point - I decide. It's not decided by the world or realism or anything like that. So if I decide to have an understanding of characters that makes it more likely for me to feel that those characters will be fulfilled and realized even if that understanding is ignoring some things in favor of others, my mindset will be better adapted to tabletop gaming environments where metagame considerations are a real thing and I'll generally get along better and have more fun. My choice of how to approach the game is central and critical to the amount of fun that I will have in playing - its not a random, set-in-stone thing that I was born with but rather something that I have to shape and update as a result of having lots of gaming experiences and seeing what was fun and what wasn't.



But on the main topic. If I want to play someone friendly and charming, I would like to be able to do that even though I generally lack charming (I can sometimes pull of friendly). However I don't want to play someone who tries to be charming, I could go outside and try to be charming (I have since given up on most conventional forms of charming). For me, that is not what role-playing is about it is more about playing someone who is actually different from myself. You seem to have a much easier time on that than I do (just looking at how you try to solve the related problems, you often seem to fall back on skill I do not* possess).

As for the concepts you outlined, I think the problem is not that they include people's reactions. The problem is that they contain absolutes. Don't play someone who charms everyone and is always the center of attention, play someone who is generally charming. Sure they can't win over everyone, they might not even be the most charming person in the room, but that doesn't change the fact that usually people like them.

*Yet, I'm practicing when I can.

I heartily recommend player-skill-driven RP with a helpful DM who is already skilled in the thing you're interested in as as a way to practice skills you wish to obtain. Ask the DM have situations in-game for you to practice the skill, and to cut you some slack as you're learning, and then gradually increase the challenge and difficulty of those situations. As you think 'how would this character approach it?', 'what would this character think?', etc, you'll have better ideas to try out that you might feel inhibited from attempting in real life, and then as they work or fail you can update your intuitions.

But I wouldn't recommend trying it on your fellow players because as a rule, players do not pull punches whereas a good DM knows that it's their job to put up a convincing fight but to eventually lose. So you're likely to get a big hit against your confidence.

Cluedrew
2016-06-22, 09:22 PM
I agree:
Play with the hand you are given. (Unless you can mulligan, then consider the mulligan.)
Yes, this is not a scientific endeavor, having fun is important.
An excellent strategy for improving.
Just one question. Why does any of this mean we should through out social mechanics instead of creating a better system? To me that seems to be your main argument, although we have wandered down a side path a bit. More then a bit, I'm not entirely sure how this connects anymore. Something about internal vs. external characterization.

Segev
2016-06-22, 09:51 PM
The game still has rules to let the character be successfully charismatic regardless of the player's abilities. He just doesn't get to flim-flam the other player characters. The GM and the player would describe him to the other players as a very suave, handsome, charismatic guy. They will choose how to roleplay their characters' reaction to that. NPCs will be affected by the mechanics of flim-flam.So... now the players are all playing the only sane people in the room. The only ones who don't think his weaksauce prattle is charming or persuasive. Because they aren't persuaded, they can see how unlikable the character really is, and see everything he does as skeevy.

Even though he's doing his best to play a suave, charming, and honestly good person who just happens to want people to like him. But because trying to make people like him comes off lame when he does it, it almost gets creepy how well people respond to it.

Yeah. That helps everyone's immersion, I'm sure.

Or, you could have mechanics that reflect what he's trying to do, and give him game-terms he can use if he's not creatively charming enough to come up with arguments himself. So he can say "I bring up and play on such-and-such key element to get such-and-such desired result." And since it's game terms, it isn't going to enter into "your PC is being maniulative and skeevy" so much as "your PC is engaging in charming behavior relating to this emotional key in the other character."

This also would show the players that, even if Bob the Uncharming is not very persuasive, his character is, and the gameplay moves involved (being as involved as combat, hopefully) would give them more keys on which to guage HOW he's persuading their characters.

The trouble is that social influence mechanics are often seen as "roll Diplomacy; okay, he agrees with you," and thus can go from "hostile orc who hates your guts" to "fanatical follower who'd give his life for you" in one minute of unspecified interaction.

That's SPOOKY. It comes of as magical.

But "magic" becomes explicable and even sensible when there's knowledge of the intervening steps.

An excellent example of the difference between apparent mind-control and genuine persuasion is in a futurama episode wherein Bender needs a "compatibility upgrade" to learn to interact with another robot. He hates that robot. When the robot ahead of him in line for the upgrade goes into the process, he's saying how much he hates the new kind of robot and how it'll never change. A jolt later, that robot is saying how much he loves the new kind of robot.

Then Bender, in a panic, breaks free of his upgrade restraints just as the procedure is about to start.

He runs away and has an adventure that takes the whole episode, and leads to him coming to appreciate the new kind of robot as a tool he can use to make himself even greater while being lazy. He "wakes up" in the upgrade chamber, saying how much he loves the new robot.



As for the concepts you outlined, I think the problem is not that they include people's reactions. The problem is that they contain absolutes. Don't play someone who charms everyone and is always the center of attention, play someone who is generally charming. Sure they can't win over everyone, they might not even be the most charming person in the room, but that doesn't change the fact that usually people like them.
The trouble is when Bob the Uncharming tries to play somebody who is charming, he fails. Just like Sam the Scrawny fails at playing Barbarian Biff the Bufftacular in a LARP where you have to actually perform feats of personal strength IRL to simulate those your PC is doing. Otherwise, the world (and other characters) react to your failures.

NichG
2016-06-22, 10:31 PM
I agree:
Play with the hand you are given. (Unless you can mulligan, then consider the mulligan.)
Yes, this is not a scientific endeavor, having fun is important.
An excellent strategy for improving.
Just one question. Why does any of this mean we should through out social mechanics instead of creating a better system? To me that seems to be your main argument, although we have wandered down a side path a bit. More then a bit, I'm not entirely sure how this connects anymore. Something about internal vs. external characterization.

The side-track is mostly because in the discussion about social mechanics, the goalposts keep moving as people try out different arguments for why they should be necessary. My point here is to say that things like 'letting someone play a concept' or 'ensuring fairness' aren't really relevant when we're talking about PCs as the ones being controlled. They're artificially created problems built on the basis of the player in question deciding beforehand 'I can only be satisfied if ... happens, therefore if you don't let me make that happen by force (mechanics) then you're denying me the ability to play my character'. I'm trying to establish that is you're really arguing from a basis of preserving people's ability to play a character they can be happy with, there's a greater value in preserving a character's ability to think as the player decides over preserving a character's ability to control how the other PCs react.

It's sort of like saying that because making people happy is important, everyone in the world should give me their money because that would make me happy. The logical flaw is in implicitly not considering the rest of the world people. The guy wanting to play a charismatic character but unable to in the context of this discussion feels to me like a sob story that ignores that the other players also have things they want out of the game, and Segev's example of Bob's unfortunate misaligned desires do not justify giving him priority over the others.

That said, what I would really want to center on with social mechanics is related to something Segev said - the mechanics have to feel like what the character experiences. I think you can have mechanics that help a player experience new things, but if we want to design those we have to move past this idea of 'control' entirely. I'd like to go back to the succubus example earlier - I posted the sort of RP on the DM's part that I thought would give the players the experience of seductive evil. Can we think of any mechanics that would improve the experience given that RP, rather than interfering or breaking immersion or creating resentment?

goto124
2016-06-23, 02:02 AM
Even though he's doing his best to play a suave, charming, and honestly good person who just happens to want people to like him. But because trying to make people like him comes off lame when he does it, it almost gets creepy hilarious how well people respond to it.


Jokingly fixed that for you :smalltongue:

Cluedrew
2016-06-23, 07:38 AM
The side-track is mostly because in the discussion about social mechanics, the goalposts keep moving as people try out different arguments for why they should be necessary. My point here is to say that things like 'letting someone play a concept' or 'ensuring fairness' aren't really relevant when we're talking about PCs as the ones being controlled. They're artificially created problems built on the basis of the player in question deciding beforehand 'I can only be satisfied if ... happens, therefore if you don't let me make that happen by force (mechanics) then you're denying me the ability to play my character'.On 'ensuring fairness'... well fair compared to what value? So yeah that one is weird. But l personally feel that 'letting someone play a concept' is the point. Now there are many different ways to achieve this and it seems like everyone has a slightly different thing out of it. This is why there is more than one role-playing game out there.


Can we think of any mechanics that would improve the experience given that RP, rather than interfering or breaking immersion or creating resentment?I'm looking. In fact my quest for them is my main motivation in this thread. And there a lot of things to balance off. In addition to the usual trade offs you might have to make for combat or crafting there are a bunch of other things. For instance PC-PC influence has come up (you even mentioned it in that post). I think entirely taking away a character's ability to influence is problematic, as is taking away the ability to decide how to reach. So I look for some middle ground, I haven't quite found it yet but a lot of the ideas mentioned in previously in this thread seem worth exploring.

Thrudd
2016-06-23, 09:08 AM
So... now the players are all playing the only sane people in the room. The only ones who don't think his weaksauce prattle is charming or persuasive. Because they aren't persuaded, they can see how unlikable the character really is, and see everything he does as skeevy.

Even though he's doing his best to play a suave, charming, and honestly good person who just happens to want people to like him. But because trying to make people like him comes off lame when he does it, it almost gets creepy how well people respond to it.

Yeah. That helps everyone's immersion, I'm sure.

Or, you could have mechanics that reflect what he's trying to do, and give him game-terms he can use if he's not creatively charming enough to come up with arguments himself. So he can say "I bring up and play on such-and-such key element to get such-and-such desired result." And since it's game terms, it isn't going to enter into "your PC is being maniulative and skeevy" so much as "your PC is engaging in charming behavior relating to this emotional key in the other character."

This also would show the players that, even if Bob the Uncharming is not very persuasive, his character is, and the gameplay moves involved (being as involved as combat, hopefully) would give them more keys on which to guage HOW he's persuading their characters.

If the other players choose to role play that way, always ignoring the character's charms, that is their decision. That really depends on knowing the group. If that's how they play, do you think they'd be happy letting the dice tell them they need to act differently?

Also, this whole premise seems heavily predicated on an assumption that PvP is happening as frequently or moreso than is cooperative behavior against the GM's setting. If a game was in that category, being primarily about players working against each other, with social interaction treated mechanically as a form of competition, then absolutely the rules need to tell the players how to act towards each other's characters. That would be the main premise of such a game. Such a game, as I've said many times, would be more of an acting exercise than a game where players solve problems, because you would not have full control of your character's actions much of the time (although it may be a more accurate simulation of how people really interact with each other).

However, many, most, RPGs are games where the players are cooperating to solve the GM's challenges or at least to uncover the GM's story. Any PvP that happens is incidental, sometimes unwelcome, and often detrimental to overall progress in the game. You don't need rules making it easier for players to mess with each other's characters; it's sometimes hard enough to keep them from doing that as-is, without giving them rules to force people to act differently without even expending spell resources.

Here's what I could see working: characters have something like bonds, flaws, and ideals that inform their roleplaying and might have some mechanical effect (like getting an inspiration die in 5e). A social skill can let a character learn those things about another character that they have interacted with for a period of time(the player or GM will literally tell the other player what is written on the sheet). The social player can use that information to influence the other player's character, by coming up with a way to work it into his argument/negotiation. The target player still has control to decide what the character will do, but there's an incentive to follow the written personality attributes to get an inspiration die, if simply good role playing is not incentive enough. I'm actually more inclined not to even have the inspiration dice, which is a mechanic that could be gamed, and leave it solely in the realm of role playing guidelines.

This is similar to what some systems do already, but a bit less forced/mechanized. There is still a requirement that the players think for themselves how to use the information the skills give them. So a player learns that Bender has a flaw of "conceited and subject to flattery." The player then decides to say "Bender, you're so great. I don't think anyone but you could carry this big piece of metal all the way back home." Bender's player can decide to agree and carry the thing, because Bender loves being flattered. Or, they could decide to say "yeah, that's true." and not do anything, because Bender also has a flaw "laziness", which the other player might not have discovered yet.

It's not: "they rolled high on their attempt to convince you using flattery, roll against your 'conceited and subject to flattery' character flaw to see if your character is convinced".

Yes, this means players can still totally ignore all persuasion attempts against them, even when it goes against their character's personality. If you have players like that, they aren't really interested in that type of role playing and using a game that forces them to "act appropriately" probably isn't going to be what they are into. Players that are fine with acting character's personalities don't need rules to tell them what to do, you can invoke their stated character attributes and they will role play the personality they have chosen.

Segev
2016-06-23, 11:34 PM
If you're predicating this on "well, PvP shouldn't be happening anyway," then what does it matter if these mechanics can affect PCs or not?

If it's that you're afraid the GM will use them on you, then it still raises the exact same questions. Is the GM only allowed to play NPCs and creatures who are no more charismatic and persuasive than he is? That charming socialite the GM is trying to build into the plot just fails because the GM is not able to fool YOU into thinking that the NPC is telling the truth or to like that NPC?

I get that having anything tell you, "No, your character doesn't do exactly what you want him to," is frustrating. This is why well-designed social mechanics will put you, if not in your PC's head, then at least in the same state of having torn desires. Because it will give you a taste of the temptation he is feeling when the temptation is for something utterly irrelevant to you as a player IRL (e.g. a rare and delicious food that your PC salivates over but you...well, won't ever get to taste and could imagine eating without giving in to the temptation to do what the one offering the morsel is bribing you to do just as well as you can by imagining giving in and eating it).

But if you're going to say that no game should have social mechanics that work on the PCs, then every argument you use can be just as blanket applied to show why no game should have combat mechanics that work on the PCs. Or theft mechanics. Or any mechanics at all that do something other than ask the player if he thinks his PC would be affected and how.

goto124
2016-06-24, 01:52 AM
(e.g. a rare and delicious food that your PC salivates over but you...well, won't ever get to taste and could imagine eating without giving in to the temptation to do what the one offering the morsel is bribing you to do just as well as you can by imagining giving in and eating it).

This is why the best GMs are also the best cooks.

NichG
2016-06-24, 07:04 AM
If you're predicating this on "well, PvP shouldn't be happening anyway," then what does it matter if these mechanics can affect PCs or not?

If it's that you're afraid the GM will use them on you, then it still raises the exact same questions. Is the GM only allowed to play NPCs and creatures who are no more charismatic and persuasive than he is? That charming socialite the GM is trying to build into the plot just fails because the GM is not able to fool YOU into thinking that the NPC is telling the truth or to like that NPC?

Actually, I think that (modulo the extra leverage given by preparation and by controlling the world) the GM really isn't allowed to play NPCs and creatures who are no more charismatic and persuasive than they can appear to be, at least not for any significant length of time. If a GM can't convincingly pull off 'super-intelligent', then they should keep the super-intelligent NPCs mostly off-screen and acting in the background. If the GM can't convincingly pull off 'super-charismatic', then they should minimize the time that super-charismatic NPCs are onscreen and interacting with the players. The reason is, if the GM fails to pull it off and make it convincing, the players will be able to tell and will receive the wrong impression.

The GM's job is to sell an experience. If the GM tries to sell a particular experience but can't, then simply speaking they have failed. No amount of mechanical support or insistence can force the players to be impressed. Trying to force the issue will just exacerbate that failure.


But if you're going to say that no game should have social mechanics that work on the PCs, then every argument you use can be just as blanket applied to show why no game should have combat mechanics that work on the PCs. Or theft mechanics. Or any mechanics at all that do something other than ask the player if he thinks his PC would be affected and how.

The way we evaluate the minds of others is different than the way we evaluate the bodies of others. If you tell me 'this guy is strong, he lifted 300lbs' I have to say that, okay, I can't personally verify but I guess that's strong. If you tell me 'this guy is smart, here's a smart thing he did' then I can evaluate whether that thing he did is actually smart or not. Same for charismatic. You can tell me 'look how charismatic this person is, he convinced this other guy of this thing' and I can say 'based on what he said, I would not have been convinced'; I can evaluate that independently of you telling me what happened, and if my evaluation comes up differently than your claim I can detect that mismatch in a way I can't verify for similar claims about how strong or agile someone is.

Communication is closer to the mind than the body, and the way we play tabletop games is through communication, so they're not symmetric things.

Quertus
2016-06-24, 09:11 AM
The issue is this: There are MANY MANY character archetypes that require external validation. if I'm playing Thogg, the mighty barbarian, then I will need validation that he is actually mighty, by the way he interacts with the rules. If I'm playing a skilled warrior, then the way he interacts with the rules requires that external validation. The same stands as true for a character who is socially adept, again the rules need to be built around that capacity if that is an expected archetype.

Certainly there is the question of system mastery. But let's offer this alternative, if you remove mechanics then you are just valuing social skill and negotiation over system mastery. Where there are no rules typically it's fast-talking and negotiation that makes the call one way or the other. Now there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. But it does value a different skillset from the real world more highly, and as such might not appeal to people who are skilled in different areas.

And there is the matter of the social contract, naturally, but that is a touchy and more complicated issue, the key here as far as that goes, is to find a ruleset that supports as many of the desires of the players involved as possible.


"Hey guys, this scene would be really awesome, let's do it!" And now it's the player who is the most convincing salesman who wins out instead of the one who has the best system mastery. Neither is really better, but let's not pretend that one is any more fair than the other.


So my entire life factors into a character. Inwardly focusing doesn't help in authentic design, because people are not inwardly focused.

Furthermore there is no reason why "suave guy who convinces other people" is at all a worse place to start than "person who is super confident in his social abilities regardless of whether that confidence is earned or not". They're entirely different character concepts, and different rules would be needed to best simulate both of them. The former is however as a valid a concept as the latter is, despite your arguments to the contrary.



Both of these are already adversarial. Better to make the choice that doesn't create a fight in the first place. You've got a character who likes to flim-flam people, great. You can choose not to try to flim-flam the other PCs, and this never comes into question at all - you don't need to be good at mechanics, negotiation, anything, and no one is going to 'lose' by having their character disrupted. You have the power to avoid the issue entirely, just by imagining your character in a way that does not depend on the other players' reactions.

the moment where you want to make that roll to force another player to react a certain way.

The mistake is the same - for you to be happy, you have arranged things so that you need to control something that you can't. So now, suddenly, your happiness is at risk; you have to fight to get what every player at a game should be receiving as a matter of course, and its a fight you could lose (whether its system mastery or negotiation or luck or whatever doesn't matter).


The side-track is mostly because in the discussion about social mechanics, the goalposts keep moving as people try out different arguments for why they should be necessary. My point here is to say that things like 'letting someone play a concept' or 'ensuring fairness' aren't really relevant when we're talking about PCs as the ones being controlled. They're artificially created problems built on the basis of the player in question deciding beforehand 'I can only be satisfied if ... happens, therefore if you don't let me make that happen by force (mechanics) then you're denying me the ability to play my character'. I'm trying to establish that is you're really arguing from a basis of preserving people's ability to play a character they can be happy with, there's a greater value in preserving a character's ability to think as the player decides over preserving a character's ability to control how the other PCs react.

It's sort of like saying that because making people happy is important, everyone in the world should give me their money because that would make me happy. The logical flaw is in implicitly not considering the rest of the world people. The guy wanting to play a charismatic character but unable to in the context of this discussion feels to me like a sob story that ignores that the other players also have things they want out of the game, and Segev's example of Bob's unfortunate misaligned desires do not justify giving him priority over the others.

That said, what I would really want to center on with social mechanics is related to something Segev said - the mechanics have to feel like what the character experiences. I think you can have mechanics that help a player experience new things, but if we want to design those we have to move past this idea of 'control' entirely. I'd like to go back to the succubus example earlier - I posted the sort of RP on the DM's part that I thought would give the players the experience of seductive evil. Can we think of any mechanics that would improve the experience given that RP, rather than interfering or breaking immersion or creating resentment?


A social skill can let a character learn those things about another character that they have interacted with for a period of time(the player or GM will literally tell the other player what is written on the sheet). The social player can use that information to influence the other player's character, by coming up with a way to work it into his argument/negotiation. The target player still has control to decide what the character will do, but there's an incentive to follow the written personality attributes to get an inspiration die, if simply good role playing is not incentive enough. I'm actually more inclined not to even have the inspiration dice, which is a mechanic that could be gamed, and leave it solely in the realm of role playing guidelines.

Yes, this means players can still totally ignore all persuasion attempts against them, even when it goes against their character's personality. If you have players like that, they aren't really interested in that type of role playing and using a game that forces them to "act appropriately" probably isn't going to be what they are into. Players that are fine with acting character's personalities don't need rules to tell them what to do, you can invoke their stated character attributes and they will role play the personality they have chosen.

The following is largely me thinking out loud. Some of the things that got me thinking, and some of the points I'd like to address are spoiled above.

Social PvP

I hadn't really acknowledged this, but, yes, social PvP is a thing. If we are looking for the One True Solution to handling role-playing in an RPG, it needs to be able to handle social PvP.

What's good for the goose...

Also known as, "on rolls controlling your NPCs"

I've been thinking about why it is that we can find it objectionable for rolls to dictate the actions of the PCs, but why (almost) no-one cares about rolls controlling the NPCs.

For myself, it is in part because Joe the generic shopkeeper isn't as fleshed out as my PCs. He is, at best, a 2-dimensional Bender-level caricature than a Turing-passing being. But, honestly, I'd still rather deal with his reaction through role-playing, or use rolls to advise role-playing, than using any system I've seen. And I certainly don't want to spend 257 hours pre-scripting every last detail of every trait, hope and dream of every minor npc. In a system that cares about such details, I suppose I'd give a % chance for a particular string the PCs try to pull to actually exist.

But, really, people have been quite vocal on rolls controlling NPCs, just not in this thread. Think of all the hate the D&D Diplomancer has received.

Role-playing is a cooperative activity

Just like how "players vs DM" is going out of style, hopefully some day people will look back at some of these comments with a similar eye of, that's how people used to play the game, before they learned the power of friendship cooperation.

There have been posts about the DMs responsibility to help players actualize their concept. I like, and for the most part agree with, this idea. But, in my idealized version of role-playing, everyone is responsible for helping actualize everyone's concept. No, that has the wrong connotation - everyone should want to help actualize everyone's concept. Your job - your goal - as a good roleplayer is to make Timid Tina's bard come across as charismatic.

Or, put another way, validation is a team sport.

Post traumatic stress disorder

I know what your thinking: WTF is PTSD doing in a discussion about social PvP? At least, that's what I'd be thinking if I saw this heading.

Method acting - acting by feeling what the character feels - has gone out of style largely because, well, it was successful. It was so successful that actors were diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder from living through the experiences of their characters.

I doubt any system will let players feel what their characters feel - I suspect that will remain solely within the realm of (arguably dangerous) levels of getting inside your character's head - ie, role-playing.

goto124
2016-06-24, 09:24 AM
Method acting - acting by feeling what the character feels - has gone out of style largely because, well, it was successful. It was so successful that actors were diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder from living through the experiences of their characters.

Does it help to write up and play characters who aren't like me?

Amphetryon
2016-06-24, 09:33 AM
The GM's job is to sell an experience. If the GM tries to sell a particular experience but can't, then simply speaking they have failed. No amount of mechanical support or insistence can force the players to be impressed. Trying to force the issue will just exacerbate that failure.



How do you resolve combat under this paradigm? How does a GM successfully sell the experience of a Character being threatened and/or injured with a weapon?

Quertus
2016-06-24, 11:34 AM
Does it help to write up and play characters who aren't like me?

Does it help with method acting? Sure. Does it help prevent PTSD? Probably not. Part of the point of method acting is to think like characters who aren't like yourself.

Think of it this way: if you are successfully feeling what they feel, the feeling is still just as real, no matter how like or unlike you the character is.

NichG
2016-06-24, 01:18 PM
How do you resolve combat under this paradigm? How does a GM successfully sell the experience of a Character being threatened and/or injured with a weapon?

Firstly, recognize that most combats aren't actually intended to be scary in most games, they're intended to give players a power trip. For this kind of combat ('popcorn fights'), the GM's role is to create a target-rich environment where targets show off just enough that players feel like they're being impressive when they take them out in droves.

Now, as to the exceptions, where you really are trying to communicate threat and injury, you have to figure out what kind of stuff is scary from a metagame point of view. Then use those things. One method is to use things which make the outcome of the fight very unstable; single actions which take multiple rounds to recover from, especially things which put individual characters in a highly vulnerable/helpless situation and then ask if the other PCs can/will save them. That will give each player 30 minutes to an hour of thinking of all the ways things could go wrong or fall apart, which will get them tense and full of adrenaline.

If you really want to amp it up, put things on the line that would normally be sacrosanct. For example, if an enemy is capable of causing permanent harm - even an irrelevantly small amount - it will instantly become very scary to players who are used to combats being 'if we win, its back to status quo'. In D&D, a creature that permanently lowers the max HP of someone it successfully hits by 1 every time it hits (in a way that cannot be recovered by the usual magical techniques) will freak out players who are suddenly forced to evaluate whether their actions in this fight might make them lose all the next fights. Despite that, its relatively safe to use - the party as a whole is unlikely to end up more than 3-6hp behind, which is easily within the variance of if you had decided to roll for hitpoints on a single level rather than take average. An enemy that can reactively (but not proactively) destroy equipment is another type of courage-challenge - players can't just use the excuse that the DM is trying to divest them of their cool loot, because the mechanic explicitly lets you protect your loot in exchange for being ineffective. Also, situations where reward/success depends on protecting a weak target can be another way to evoke this kind of fear for safety response.

kyoryu
2016-06-24, 01:45 PM
Now, as to the exceptions, where you really are trying to communicate threat and injury, you have to figure out what kind of stuff is scary from a metagame point of view. Then use those things.

I prefer using narrative consequences, personally. "How does the world change for the worse if you lose this fight?"

Thrudd
2016-06-24, 02:16 PM
How do you resolve combat under this paradigm? How does a GM successfully sell the experience of a Character being threatened and/or injured with a weapon?

There is tension because characters might die. The player doesn't want to lose their character or their progress in the game, just like the character doesn't want to lose their life. Both player and character want the same thing, to survive and achieve whatever goal the enemies are trying to prevent them from achieving.

In many social situations, it isn't the same. If a character is offering a PC something connected to the player's game goals, then the player would feel what the character does, temptation to take the offer. In other situations, where the character is being tempted with something that will hurt their ability to reach their goals or is unrelated to goals, the player will not be connected to the character's feelings, regardless of whether the dice tell them they ought to act a certain way. A player who likes character acting will choose to act, because they have fun doing it and the game objectives aren't more important than the acting, to them. However, that is their choice, and no one can blame a player who is rather more focused on achieving the goal/completing the quest than they are in acting out character flaws. Unless, of course, the game is expressly stated as being a character acting game where the story is driven by inter-PC interaction and preplanned plot rather than by objective in-world goals.

Some games use a mechanic in which a meta-game resource is offered in return for players roleplaying against their own game interests and according to their character's flaws or the results of social contest against them, like inspiration dice or fate points or rerolls, which can be used later on to favorably affect unrelated tasks. In my opinion this has the opposite effect from what I desire: this encourages meta-game decision making and does not aid a player feeling what the character would feel. In other words, it offers no more character immersion than other systems, it simply provides a game incentive for players, usually disconnected from the character's motives, to succeed at whatever they are trying to do in the game. This is perfectly fine in a game where the main goal of the players is, in fact, to act out scenes with each other as their characters, and the character's goals are mainly to explore and develop relationships with each other.

Quertus
2016-06-24, 03:43 PM
In many social situations, it isn't the same. If a character is offering a PC something connected to the player's game goals, then the player would feel what the character does, temptation to take the offer. In other situations, where the character is being tempted with something that will hurt their ability to reach their goals or is unrelated to goals, the player will not be connected to the character's feelings, regardless of whether the dice tell them they ought to act a certain way. A player who likes character acting will choose to act, because they have fun doing it and the game objectives aren't more important than the acting, to them. However, that is their choice, and no one can blame a player who is rather more focused on achieving the goal/completing the quest than they are in acting out character flaws. Unless, of course, the game is expressly stated as being a character acting game where the story is driven by inter-PC interaction and preplanned plot rather than by objective in-world goals.

Some games use a mechanic in which a meta-game resource is offered in return for players roleplaying against their own game interests and according to their character's flaws or the results of social contest against them, like inspiration dice or fate points or rerolls, which can be used later on to favorably affect unrelated tasks. In my opinion this has the opposite effect from what I desire: this encourages meta-game decision making and does not aid a player feeling what the character would feel. In other words, it offers no more character immersion than other systems, it simply provides a game incentive for players, usually disconnected from the character's motives, to succeed at whatever they are trying to do in the game. This is perfectly fine in a game where the main goal of the players is, in fact, to act out scenes with each other as their characters, and the character's goals are mainly to explore and develop relationships with each other.

Is that an "IME", or did you really mean IMO? That is, have you tried such mechanics, and found them wanting, or do you just imagine that they would be detrimental? I ask because, earlier, I said I would tend to just ignore such mechanics - I imagine them as sufficiently non-invasive that they would pose no significant issue to immersion. Does my vision conflict with reality?

On a different note, I would contend that a game that... is expressly stated as being a character acting game where the story is driven by inter-PC interaction, but where the plot is not pre-planned... is a good test of role-playing, and, as such, is a good way to build up your role-playing ability among friendly peers.

Segev
2016-06-24, 03:50 PM
Actually, I think that (modulo the extra leverage given by preparation and by controlling the world) the GM really isn't allowed to play NPCs and creatures who are no more charismatic and persuasive than they can appear to be, at least not for any significant length of time. If a GM can't convincingly pull off 'super-intelligent', then they should keep the super-intelligent NPCs mostly off-screen and acting in the background. If the GM can't convincingly pull off 'super-charismatic', then they should minimize the time that super-charismatic NPCs are onscreen and interacting with the players. The reason is, if the GM fails to pull it off and make it convincing, the players will be able to tell and will receive the wrong impression.

The GM's job is to sell an experience. If the GM tries to sell a particular experience but can't, then simply speaking they have failed. No amount of mechanical support or insistence can force the players to be impressed. Trying to force the issue will just exacerbate that failure.So, in other words, you don't think the GM should need a game system to run his game.

Because the job of the game system is to provide that framework which allows the GM to make a statement and then use the tools of the game system to help sell it. This is one reason people scoff at "ultra-powerful" gods that have stats: the creators of those stats are so far from being optimizers that most PCs can trounce such creations of "powerful" beings, which makes the "powerful" beings seem to go from 'untouchable' to 'push-over,' at least to TO types.

But that's a failure, as well, of the designers, in not creating a thing which actually lives up to its hype.

The game system allows the GM in most games to provide real sense of threat, tactics, and tension in combat. It is, in fact, one of the main reasons why "combat" seems like a must-have for drama and tension as well as a go-to solution to problems: it is the subsystem in most game systems for which we have the best-developed mechanics. With the most options, and the best-defined results of any particular choice or "game move."

We don't expect the GM to "sell" the "combat experience" based solely on his ability to describe a dramatic, impressive fight and justify through his narrative why the PCs are in such dire straits and how difficult the battle is for them. We have game mechanics that let us see objectively how the PCs choices (and those of their players) interact with the setting and other creatures, and thus get a sense of how much danger they're in, why a certain dramatic action has the impressive effect (or embarrassing failure) that it does, etc.

This is what I, at least, hope to one day see in social mechanics: levers and mechanical tools to determine objectively what the results of specific choices are. The GM should not be expected to be as seductive as the villainous bard or even to describe in enough detail to titillate and tempt the player how the succubus is seducing his PC. It would be sufficient for there to be a system in place where the levers these charmers are pulling are as clear as AC and hit points are in combat. "She rolled high, so you're seduced" is unsatisfying, of course. But "she reminds you of your kid sister, arousing your protective instincts, but you are acutely aware that she is definitely not your sister," is a good start to a seduction (for the right character, who the succubus earlier figured out has a protective streak). She can later build on that by strengthening the "not your sister" angle and introducing a "she's really quite attractive" feeling, or otherwise playing up the protectiveness into a desire to spend more time with her.

Of course, there are the medieval tales of knights falling "madly in love" with a princess based solely on her portrait, so... maybe it's our level of disbelief and cultural norms regarding it that gets in the way. Or maybe it just takes the right kind of character.

Regardless, the mechanics should empower the player (or GM) to know how to make a believable play on any social maneuver. If the PC's existing nature is played upon and modified until he will do what is asked, it becomes believable and gamable. Just as it's believable when the character with low AC is eventually brought down by a series of blows that keep hitting home.


The way we evaluate the minds of others is different than the way we evaluate the bodies of others. If you tell me 'this guy is strong, he lifted 300lbs' I have to say that, okay, I can't personally verify but I guess that's strong. If you tell me 'this guy is smart, here's a smart thing he did' then I can evaluate whether that thing he did is actually smart or not. Same for charismatic. You can tell me 'look how charismatic this person is, he convinced this other guy of this thing' and I can say 'based on what he said, I would not have been convinced'; I can evaluate that independently of you telling me what happened, and if my evaluation comes up differently than your claim I can detect that mismatch in a way I can't verify for similar claims about how strong or agile someone is.It is remarkably easy to say, "Bah, I wouldn't be persuaded by that," when you're not in the situation dealing with the (supposedly-)charismatic dude. Especially since, yes, there is a lot of reading the "mark" in persuading that person to do something, so what he'd use to persuade you might be quite different than what he used to persuade this other person.

And I don't see how you can say, "Lifting 300 lbs. is definitely strong, but whether or not developing that new 3rd level wizard spell is smart cannot be objectively determined." Is Int 13 smart or not? Is Str 13 (or whatever can lift 300 lbs) strong or not? Both are equally objective or subjective.


Communication is closer to the mind than the body, and the way we play tabletop games is through communication, so they're not symmetric things.They absolutely are. The mechanics that work for one vs. the other may be different for the same reason that the same mechanics used to determine the results of a footrace couldn't necessarily be equally good for determining the results of an attempt to kill each other in no-holds-barred combat, but they are equally benefitted by a subsystem to mechanically represent them in game-play choices and "moves," rather than requiring the player to perform as well as the character is allowed to be able to.


But, in my idealized version of role-playing, everyone is responsible for helping actualize everyone's concept. No, that has the wrong connotation - everyone should want to help actualize everyone's concept. Your job - your goal - as a good roleplayer is to make Timid Tina's bard come across as charismatic.

Or, put another way, validation is a team sport.And in the end, mechanics that let Timid Tina make game-play choices (rather than specific efforts at being personally charismatic for which she lacks the skills) to generate an objective result help all involved players (including the GM) to gauge just how well her character is doing at it. Because unless "validation is a team sport" means "everybody should always let Tina's PC 'win' in social encounters," an objective way to judge when she does succeed and when she does fail will be superior to having to guess whether you've been lenient about enough things in the past that you can take her failure to be personally persuasive to you, her fellow player, as excuse to not have your PC be persuaded this time.

It removes a lot of the confirmation bias and lack of personal perfect memory of just how often you've let her "win" vs. "lose" at her area of supposed expertise, because the mechanics TELL you how she is doing.

Moreover, it lets you, without stepping in and putting words in her character's mouth, help her make her persuasive PC objectively more persuasive by giving her GAME MECHANIC advice. Optimization advice. It also lets you recommend moves she can make with objective knowledge of what the consequences could be, rather than "well, maybe this is the right approach?" as you try to RP for her.



I doubt any system will let players feel what their characters feel - I suspect that will remain solely within the realm of (arguably dangerous) levels of getting inside your character's head - ie, role-playing.On the off chance this is directed at my repeated mentionings of putting the player in the same sort of tension-of-choice the character is experiencing, I want to point out that I'm not actually saying the mechanics should enforce method acting.

I do not expect Sam U. Rai the honorable's player to feel seduced by the GM when Xi Terry, secretary to his boss's rival, works her charms on Sam to get Sam to go to that party (finding somebody else to "cover" him in his conflicting duty, which he'd normally never do because duty uber alles). I do expect Sam's player to feel the same tension of choice, however. Without social mechanics, Sec. Xi Terry's blandishments have no force to Sam's player. The mechanically optimal choice is to avoid the potential trap / being absent for potential mischief at his normal duties, since the only benefit to Sam on a game-important level is in avoiding the consequences of those actions. The benefit to Sam of spending time with the hot chick who makes him feel good and whose company he enjoys is not felt by Sam's player.

With good social mechanics, Sec. Xi Terry's seduction of Sam might be represented by boons Sam U. Rai receives if he goes along with it. In L5R, the effort is made for Courtiers to have real bribes they can offer (even if it's just "connections") on top of the seductions, but these could instead be metagame things. Maybe Xi creates in Sam a "yearning," which when denied gives him distraction or melancholy penalties. Or she has the power to hand out "euphoria" bonuses from being around her that make Sam better. Perhaps even with the two being linked; indulging a yearning gives bonuses, and denying it gives penalties.

Now, Sam's player feels the tension between knowing that Sam will be less effective overall in the game if he refuses (and conversely MORE effective overall if he accepts) and knowing the likelihood that Xi is luring Sam away from his duty so something Sam won't want to happen can happen. Just as Sam might be thinking, "I don't want to think she's up to something, and...well, if there's trouble, I can just handle it later," Sam's player might be thinking, "Even if I think she's up to something - and the GM is doing it, so she probably is - but with the bonuses he gets from this he can probably handle the fallout better than the penalties would let him fight off the problem."

That's what I mean by putting the player in a similar state to the character: he should have the same level of "torn decision" that the character does, even though often the "benefit" to the "obviously bad" decision is intangible to the player.



How do you resolve combat under this paradigm? How does a GM successfully sell the experience of a Character being threatened and/or injured with a weapon?
This is largely what I'm trying to say earlier. Good point, Amphetryon.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-24, 04:36 PM
There is tension because characters might die. The player doesn't want to lose their character or their progress in the game, just like the character doesn't want to lose their life. Both player and character want the same thing, to survive and achieve whatever goal the enemies are trying to prevent them from achieving.

In many social situations, it isn't the same. If a character is offering a PC something connected to the player's game goals, then the player would feel what the character does, temptation to take the offer. In other situations, where the character is being tempted with something that will hurt their ability to reach their goals or is unrelated to goals, the player will not be connected to the character's feelings, regardless of whether the dice tell them they ought to act a certain way. A player who likes character acting will choose to act, because they have fun doing it and the game objectives aren't more important than the acting, to them. However, that is their choice, and no one can blame a player who is rather more focused on achieving the goal/completing the quest than they are in acting out character flaws. Unless, of course, the game is expressly stated as being a character acting game where the story is driven by inter-PC interaction and preplanned plot rather than by objective in-world goals.

Some games use a mechanic in which a meta-game resource is offered in return for players roleplaying against their own game interests and according to their character's flaws or the results of social contest against them, like inspiration dice or fate points or rerolls, which can be used later on to favorably affect unrelated tasks. In my opinion this has the opposite effect from what I desire: this encourages meta-game decision making and does not aid a player feeling what the character would feel. In other words, it offers no more character immersion than other systems, it simply provides a game incentive for players, usually disconnected from the character's motives, to succeed at whatever they are trying to do in the game. This is perfectly fine in a game where the main goal of the players is, in fact, to act out scenes with each other as their characters, and the character's goals are mainly to explore and develop relationships with each other.


Well said.

Players don't all share identical priorities, and whenever I've GMed, I've always tried to respect that, and to tailor each player's experience to their preferences to whatever degree still fit within the framework of the setting, the tone, etc, and the boundaries of the other players' enjoyment as well.

Segev
2016-06-24, 05:56 PM
If a character is offering a PC something connected to the player's game goals, then the player would feel what the character does, temptation to take the offer. In other situations, where the character is being tempted with something that will hurt their ability to reach their goals or is unrelated to goals, the player will not be connected to the character's feelings, regardless of whether the dice tell them they ought to act a certain way. A player who likes character acting will choose to act, because they have fun doing it and the game objectives aren't more important than the acting, to them. However, that is their choice, and no one can blame a player who is rather more focused on achieving the goal/completing the quest than they are in acting out character flaws. Unless, of course, the game is expressly stated as being a character acting game where the story is driven by inter-PC interaction and preplanned plot rather than by objective in-world goals.If a game is defined as such, the mechanics should encourage and support that kind of decision-making. The game's goals should determine the mechanics. If the mechanics actively discourage following the game's goals, the mechanics are failing the game.

So if acting against your character's interests is a bad mechanical decision, but a good "purpose of the game" decision, then the mechanics have failed in that instance. The more often the mechanics fail like that, the more likely they are to be poor mechanics for that game.


Some games use a mechanic in which a meta-game resource is offered in return for players roleplaying against their own game interests and according to their character's flaws or the results of social contest against them, like inspiration dice or fate points or rerolls, which can be used later on to favorably affect unrelated tasks. In my opinion this has the opposite effect from what I desire: this encourages meta-game decision making and does not aid a player feeling what the character would feel. In other words, it offers no more character immersion than other systems, it simply provides a game incentive for players, usually disconnected from the character's motives, to succeed at whatever they are trying to do in the game.I half agree, half disagree. A lot of the time, the metagame resource is of a nature that really doesn't connect to anything, and (in my experience) is often never worth the gameplay disadvantage at which you put yourself to accept it.

Done properly, the specific temptation will result in specific perks which, metagame or not, are tied to the PC's performance and the temptation in question in the same way that games with wound penalties tie damage to penalties: it hurts and makes you less able to act at your best.


Done right, it would improve immersion at least as much as moving from evocative descriptions of combat having to convince the players their characters are winning or losing or injured or not, to having combat mechanics to tell players how well their PCs are doing and how hurt they are.

The "metagame rewards" should be things that suit the behaviors being encouraged and discouraged. This will help with immersion; you feel your character's anguished choice as to whether to behead his firstborn for said firstborn's dishonor to his household, but as a measure of your value of your mechanical honor stat vs. the value of the "emotional well-being" stat associated with "protect my child." (Or something. I don't have specific systems in mind here.)

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-24, 06:48 PM
There is such a thing as trying too hard to model infinite possibilities instead of relying on the players and GM to roleplay the situation out.

Cluedrew
2016-06-24, 07:57 PM
Yes there is, encoding all social interactions and personality traits in rules and stats is a futile effort. Unless you have some abstract way of doing it, which still requires some player work to then apply it.

But are there still things you can do, guidelines and so on, that can direct and hopefully ease play while still giving enough flexibility that you can shift it to match your exact concept. It makes me think of games like FATE and Apocalypse World. The first has rules that can be applied in different situations, the second presents you with options that you get to apply depending on what you want from the situation (or what your character wants). Both systems have rules that allow players to adjust for the situation and characters.

So you can mix those two things.

Thrudd
2016-06-24, 08:23 PM
If a game is defined as such, the mechanics should encourage and support that kind of decision-making. The game's goals should determine the mechanics. If the mechanics actively discourage following the game's goals, the mechanics are failing the game.

So if acting against your character's interests is a bad mechanical decision, but a good "purpose of the game" decision, then the mechanics have failed in that instance. The more often the mechanics fail like that, the more likely they are to be poor mechanics for that game.


Absolutely. Conversely, I think sometimes people make assumptions about "purpose of the game" without considering the mechanics of the game system. It's a mistake some people are making to assume that all RPGs have or should have the same purpose and methods (dramatic character acting story game). Look at the game and see if it's mechanics support the kind of game you want to play.

We get threads sometimes with people asking "how do I get my players to do more of 'x'" and "how do I run a game like 'y'". And the answer is often "play a different game, the one you're using (usually D&D) doesn't do that well, or at all."

Quertus
2016-06-24, 10:50 PM
Because the job of the game system is to provide that framework which allows the GM to make a statement and then use the tools of the game system to help sell it. This is one reason people scoff at "ultra-powerful" gods that have stats: the creators of those stats are so far from being optimizers that most PCs can trounce such creations of "powerful" beings, which makes the "powerful" beings seem to go from 'untouchable' to 'push-over,' at least to TO types.

But that's a failure, as well, of the designers, in not creating a thing which actually lives up to its hype.

Completely off topic, but... Quote from a game I was in: "I just looked at the stats for the god of magic, and Quertus had the same max spell level, the same save DC, and the same spellcraft bonus. But that was last level, and before Quertus got the hang of casting in 3e."

Happily, D&D gods are supposed to be pushovers, are supposed to fear the PCs.


The game system allows the GM in most games to provide real sense of threat, tactics, and tension in combat. It is, in fact, one of the main reasons why "combat" seems like a must-have for drama and tension as well as a go-to solution to problems: it is the subsystem in most game systems for which we have the best-developed mechanics. With the most options, and the best-defined results of any particular choice or "game move."

We don't expect the GM to "sell" the "combat experience" based solely on his ability to describe a dramatic, impressive fight and justify through his narrative why the PCs are in such dire straits and how difficult the battle is for them. We have game mechanics that let us see objectively how the PCs choices (and those of their players) interact with the setting and other creatures, and thus get a sense of how much danger they're in, why a certain dramatic action has the impressive effect (or embarrassing failure) that it does, etc.

This is what I, at least, hope to one day see in social mechanics: levers and mechanical tools to determine objectively what the results of specific choices are.
I figured combat was the go-to because more people enjoyed the tactics minigame than the sense motive minigame. But it would be nice if a game ever modeled social mechanics correctly, to give an acceptable alternative to "role-playing through it".

The GM should not be expected to be as seductive as the villainous bard or even to describe in enough detail to titillate and tempt the player how the succubus is seducing his PC.
100% agree.

It would be sufficient for there to be a system in place where the levers these charmers are pulling are as clear as AC and hit points are in combat.
Although I in no way disagree, having a system of social levers is 1) sufficient, but not necessary - it could alternately be handled through role-playing; 2) something I have yet to see implemented to my satisfaction - if it were, I'd happily play with and/or largely ignore such rules, depending on how engaging and/or transparent they were.

"She rolled high, so you're seduced" is unsatisfying, of course. But "she reminds you of your kid sister, arousing your protective instincts, but you are acutely aware that she is definitely not your sister," is a good start to a seduction (for the right character, who the succubus earlier figured out has a protective streak). She can later build on that by strengthening the "not your sister" angle and introducing a "she's really quite attractive" feeling, or otherwise playing up the protectiveness into a desire to spend more time with her.
Ok, I've got a protective streak, and I've got a little sister but... I don't think that reminding me of my sister is in any way going to help someone seduce me. :smallconfused:
Making me feel protective (through some other means) + being attractive + demonstrating a desire to spend time with me... I can see how that is a good base to work from, and would... give her seduction attempt more HP and/or make the fail condition less severe. Of course, unless more people who also have a little sister and a protective streak respond, it'll be difficult to gauge how much more complex the social system would need to be in order to correctly emulate this.

Of course, there are the medieval tales of knights falling "madly in love" with a princess based solely on her portrait, so... maybe it's our level of disbelief and cultural norms regarding it that gets in the way. Or maybe it just takes the right kind of character.

Just the other day, I had to explain to an 11-year old who was kinda freaked out by it that, while not exactly logical, her experience with a boy seeing her for the first time and immediately declairing that he loved her wasn't incomprehensibly abnormal.


Regardless, the mechanics should empower the player (or GM) to know how to make a believable play on any social maneuver. If the PC's existing nature is played upon and modified until he will do what is asked, it becomes believable and gamable. Just as it's believable when the character with low AC is eventually brought down by a series of blows that keep hitting home.
Holy ****ing **** - RPGs can't even model the basic social minigames (read / convince / seduce / etc) correctly yet, and you're already looking at the personality-changing life event minigame?!

And in the end, mechanics that let Timid Tina make game-play choices (rather than specific efforts at being personally charismatic for which she lacks the skills) to generate an objective result help all involved players (including the GM) to gauge just how well her character is doing at it. Because unless "validation is a team sport" means "everybody should always let Tina's PC 'win' in social encounters," an objective way to judge when she does succeed and when she does fail will be superior to having to guess whether you've been lenient about enough things in the past that you can take her failure to be personally persuasive to you, her fellow player, as excuse to not have your PC be persuaded this time.

Allow me to present several alternatives to this unfortunate false dichotomy of "always" or "threshold excuse":

Always. This one is easy to implement: if Timid Tina's bard is supposed to be convincing, always be convinced. I've seen DMs force this on players (some of whom needed the lesson), and players force this on themselves (usually when they were having trouble remembering that Timid Tina was running a charismatic bard), but... hmmm... as much as I'd like to deride this style, it's actually where I'd like anyone new to the concept of role-playing to start.

Threshold excuse. As much as I'd like to deride this style, I've actually advocated a variant of it in the past: GMs should not present their "like the PC, but better" opponent until they have first acknowledged the character's skills. This seems to me to be another learning tool, not really a destination in itself.

Always, unless. Always act in accordance with the character's ability, unless you have a reason not to. The succubus cannot seduce a character who isn't into girls, for example.

Always, to limit. Timid Tina's bard is x charismatic; therefore, you will do things up to y. In WoD vampire, that might be any act allowed by, say, your current humanity - 1. This is actually a great example (sort of), because there are paths other than humanity, so more generally, anything up to level y on your character's personal "path".

Always, to limit, unless. Combine the above. For persuasive x, you will perform acts up to y level, unless your character has a really good reason not to.

But these are all just steps along the path to enlightenment to getting the group to trust you to roleplay correctly, or to learn how to roleplay in the first place.

Trust... but verify.

Even in groups that know how dedicated I am to role-playing, when I have a character do something that they don't understand, I'll get asked why I did what I did. Which is good - everyone makes mistakes, forgets details, etc sometimes. If it's not part of some super secret... secret... I'll happily explain why my character's actions seem incongruent with their perceived persona. Depending on the group, sometimes these questions even occur in-character. :smallbiggrin:

Now, to present a completely different part of the path to enlightenment:

Read the player. How happy is Tina with everyone's validation of her character? What is she expecting from this, and how will your character's reaction affect her?

Read the room. If you're in a cooperative roleplay group like I have described, people should be providing you with feedback, perhaps directly, but more likely in the questions they're asking, and in tone, body language, etc. Have you built up trust in your role-playing, or have your shenanigans worn out their welcome?


On the off chance this is directed at my repeated mentionings of putting the player in the same sort of tension-of-choice the character is experiencing, I want to point out that I'm not actually saying the mechanics should enforce method acting.
I gotta eat some crow on this one - it was directed at a misinterpretation of NichG's summary of your stance. :smallredface:



I do not expect Sam U. Rai the honorable's player to feel seduced by the GM when Xi Terry, secretary to his boss's rival, works her charms on Sam to get Sam to go to that party (finding somebody else to "cover" him in his conflicting duty, which he'd normally never do because duty uber alles). I do expect Sam's player to feel the same tension of choice, however. Without social mechanics, Sec. Xi Terry's blandishments have no force to Sam's player. The mechanically optimal choice is to avoid the potential trap / being absent for potential mischief at his normal duties, since the only benefit to Sam on a game-important level is in avoiding the consequences of those actions. The benefit to Sam of spending time with the hot chick who makes him feel good and whose company he enjoys is not felt by Sam's player.

With good social mechanics, Sec. Xi Terry's seduction of Sam might be represented by boons Sam U. Rai receives if he goes along with it. In L5R, the effort is made for Courtiers to have real bribes they can offer (even if it's just "connections") on top of the seductions, but these could instead be metagame things. Maybe Xi creates in Sam a "yearning," which when denied gives him distraction or melancholy penalties. Or she has the power to hand out "euphoria" bonuses from being around her that make Sam better. Perhaps even with the two being linked; indulging a yearning gives bonuses, and denying it gives penalties.

Now, Sam's player feels the tension between knowing that Sam will be less effective overall in the game if he refuses (and conversely MORE effective overall if he accepts) and knowing the likelihood that Xi is luring Sam away from his duty so something Sam won't want to happen can happen. Just as Sam might be thinking, "I don't want to think she's up to something, and...well, if there's trouble, I can just handle it later," Sam's player might be thinking, "Even if I think she's up to something - and the GM is doing it, so she probably is - but with the bonuses he gets from this he can probably handle the fallout better than the penalties would let him fight off the problem."

That's what I mean by putting the player in a similar state to the character: he should have the same level of "torn decision" that the character does, even though often the "benefit" to the "obviously bad" decision is intangible to the player.
Again, if the system cannot have "make connection" for party vs "get bonus" for abstain, it cannot model me IRL, and thus fails my test of acceptably modeling social dynamics. But, yes, it must also be able to work the way you described if that reasonably models the dilemma for others.

This is largely what I'm trying to say earlier. Good point, Amphetryon.

How do you resolve combat under this paradigm? How does a GM successfully sell the experience of a Character being threatened and/or injured with a weapon?

I have clearly misunderstood at least one of you, then.

On a... unrelated (?) note, what can we learn by looking at instances of when GMs fail to sell the combat experience, and can we apply that to this discussion in any meaningful way?

Instances of GMs failing to sell the combat experience:

GM picking invalid target. The npc did not have LoS, LoE to the target. The target was the wrong type, immune, etc. The target was out of range.

The npc was not aware that the target existed. The target was invisible, hadn't entered the room yet, etc.

The npc wasn't aware that the target was a target. The target should have appeared to be something other than what it was, looked the same as the background NPCs that were being ignored, the target hasn't actually turned on the npc yet, etc.

The GM was playing "foo" in a "bar" game.

NichG
2016-06-24, 10:56 PM
So, in other words, you don't think the GM should need a game system to run his game.

Because the job of the game system is to provide that framework which allows the GM to make a statement and then use the tools of the game system to help sell it. This is one reason people scoff at "ultra-powerful" gods that have stats: the creators of those stats are so far from being optimizers that most PCs can trounce such creations of "powerful" beings, which makes the "powerful" beings seem to go from 'untouchable' to 'push-over,' at least to TO types.

But that's a failure, as well, of the designers, in not creating a thing which actually lives up to its hype.


A game system can definitely be a very useful tool, but I think that the ordering of how it should be used in your example is wrong. You're saying that first the GM should make a statement and only then try to defend it. So from that point of view, it looks like the job of the system is to provide the GM concrete things to back up their words. I think that's misleading, because then it creates this kind of idea of 'well, but what if what the GM said isn't what the players take away?!'. That leads to the problem you mention with having ultra-powerful entities. Yes, it's a problem because they actually aren't powerful, but it's also a deeper problem that even if the entity actually is mechanically powerful, players can recognize that the GM has control over its stats, and so they know at some level not to be impressed - thus the DMPC Mary Sue turns out not to be loved by all, but rather scoffed at and ridiculed by the players.

What if instead the GM doesn't start with a statement of what they intend to sell? So the GM uses their tools - their acting, their thinking, the system, etc - and sees the way that those tools make the players respond. Then, the GM simply dives in and uses them without first alerting the players of what they're supposed to be feeling. Now, if the players feel what the GM was going for, they should be able to make that opening statement that the GM has omitted. And if they don't feel what the GM was going for, what they feel is still authentically their reaction to the situation - you avoid the dissonance of being told 'you are supposed to feel this way' when actually feeling differently. In writing, this is related to 'show, don't tell'.

So from that point of view, I think the initial motivation that you implied in the previous post of 'the game system is there to help the GM express specific characters which are beyond their real-life abilities' is wrong. That's not why the game system is there. It's there to provide a context and a set of guarantees that hook into the way the players will build an understanding of the world (as well as to smoothly handle issues of abstraction and things like that). That can then become a tool that can be leveraged to provide experiences, but its more subtle than just providing direct proof of the GM's claims about NPCs.

From the point of view of social mechanics, I'd say my way of looking at it is more that you can have mechanics which have social consequences, rather than 'because you want to be social, you should have mechanics that model being social'. The mechanics I prefer for this kind of thing are to create a context for social interaction that then shapes the overall nature of that interaction - encouraging deals, cooperation, alliances, betrayals, influence-mongering, whatever - rather than specifically being designed to emulate supernaturally high individual levels of social ability. If the context-shaping mechanics clarify some aspects of real social interaction that would otherwise be murky to people by providing explicit examples of how to benefit, it can help people realize new modes of interaction; so rather than augment characters' abilities, its actually augmenting players' abilities directly by making things more understandable. And that in turn gets players more into the mindset of thinking about deeper types of social interactions, which makes it possible in turn to create a wider range of experiences in that arena. Once the players are thinking that way, a totally unaugmented NPC has much more room to have perceived social characteristics than if players are thinking in terms of hitting things with swords.

For a concrete example of this, I had a campaign where the players controlled nations. The resource system in that campaign worked such that it was pretty hard to stockpile resources, so what you could build or do was mostly controlled by your immediate resource generation rate, and that was pretty restrictive. You couldn't build something unless you could pay its entire cost at once. However, you could share that workload with other players/nations. As a result, one of the players figured out that they should make a big compact between their nations and all of the dinky little one-province nations around them, because those one-province nations were generating small amounts of resources and couldn't afford to buy even the basic resource-extraction buildings, so they were just constantly going to waste. The game mechanics there weren't to help me as a GM sell 'this nation is really diplomatic' or something like that, they were there to get the players thinking in terms of diplomacy.



And I don't see how you can say, "Lifting 300 lbs. is definitely strong, but whether or not developing that new 3rd level wizard spell is smart cannot be objectively determined." Is Int 13 smart or not? Is Str 13 (or whatever can lift 300 lbs) strong or not? Both are equally objective or subjective.


Developing that new 3rd level wizard spell is, to me, perceptually orthogonal to being smart. It's something which has been arbitrarily made contingent on a stat called 'intelligence', but there's nothing about how it works that reminds me of what intelligence feels like. If you told me that it took Wis 13 or Dex 13 or Cha 13 to develop that spell, I could just as easily come up with stories about why that should be true rather than Int 13.



They absolutely are. The mechanics that work for one vs. the other may be different for the same reason that the same mechanics used to determine the results of a footrace couldn't necessarily be equally good for determining the results of an attempt to kill each other in no-holds-barred combat, but they are equally benefitted by a subsystem to mechanically represent them in game-play choices and "moves," rather than requiring the player to perform as well as the character is allowed to be able to.

The reason they're not symmetric is because in the case of physical things, I as the player am not interacting with the illusion. I can't feel how heavy the boulder is that the barbarian is lifting. But I can feel how bad the argumentation is that someone is trying to pass off as witty, charismatic persuasion. Nothing the mechanics inform me will make me not notice OOC that I'm being told that a rock is actually a cow. As you said earlier, even trying to do so or pushing for the ability to do so often comes off as sort of creepy or skeezy.

AMFV
2016-06-24, 11:12 PM
The reason they're not symmetric is because in the case of physical things, I as the player am not interacting with the illusion. I can't feel how heavy the boulder is that the barbarian is lifting. But I can feel how bad the argumentation is that someone is trying to pass off as witty, charismatic persuasion. Nothing the mechanics inform me will make me not notice OOC that I'm being told that a rock is actually a cow. As you said earlier, even trying to do so or pushing for the ability to do so often comes off as sort of creepy or skeezy.

That's only not symmetric in the case of somebody that does not have relevant experience in that area. Somebody that knows what moving rock is like, will have a similar experience to your social experience. I have a lot of experience with lifting heavy things, and with firearms. RPGs tend to be bad at representing both. But I can suspend my disbelief, since I understand that it's an approximation. The same is true of social systems.

Yes, it's true that a rules lite social system is fine, but it isn't the only option and it has certain modelling problems. Both rules lite and rules heavy systems are going to have different modelling problems, and are appropriate in different kinds of games.

NichG
2016-06-24, 11:22 PM
That's only not symmetric in the case of somebody that does not have relevant experience in that area. Somebody that knows what moving rock is like, will have a similar experience to your social experience. I have a lot of experience with lifting heavy things, and with firearms. RPGs tend to be bad at representing both. But I can suspend my disbelief, since I understand that it's an approximation. The same is true of social systems.

Putting aside the mechanics and just imagining that you were reading these things in a book, I don't see how your experience with lifting heavy things would let you say something like 'no, that rock wouldn't actually be all that heavy'.

I could see how you could say 'no, running out into the middle of a kill zone and firing in every direction like Rambo isn't cool, its just stupid'. And of course, the game system could reward that kind of behavior by making the average character have the durability of a tank, so in-character it might actually not be stupid. But because of what you know, that would cause dissonance - it probably wouldn't really help make you feel viscerally that its a good idea to abandon cover and stand there hip-firing.

But this gets to my point about things not being symmetric. Each thing you might want to convey comes with inherent issues associated with what that thing actually is in real life, which means that some things are easy to make convincing and other things are really hard to make convincing because its much easier for the receiver to confirm or deny what they're being shown.

goto124
2016-06-25, 10:01 AM
That's only not symmetric in the case of somebody that does not have relevant experience in that area. Somebody that knows what moving rock is like, will have a similar experience to your social experience. I have a lot of experience with lifting heavy things, and with firearms. RPGs tend to be bad at representing both. But I can suspend my disbelief, since I understand that it's an approximation. The same is true of social systems.

Also, it's harder to suspend disbelief in a social system, if only because many of us are far more intimate with social 'skills' IRL than combat ones. Heck, we're using social skills right now, and we train them every day!

The question is how much to simplify and approximate, and what way to do so that retains enough verisimilitude.

ClintACK
2016-06-25, 04:40 PM
On the asymmetry...

A Character is a physical body + a clever, problem-solving mind + a core of wants and needs and likes and dislikes -- a spirit.

The Player is somewhat like the spirit of the Character -- deciding what it is the Character *wants* to accomplish and then using the Character's mental and physical capabilities in pursuit of that goal.

Having mechanics to tell us what the Character's Body can do -- is it exhausted, damaged, stunned, poisoned, paralyzed, injured or healthy. Can he lift that? Will the current sweep him off his feet? -- that all seems quite reasonable

Having mechanics to tell us what the Character's Mind can do -- What languages does the Character speak, How much knowledge does the Character have about the world? Did the Character notice the sneaky goblin (or the liar's "tell")? All reasonable mechanics.

It's when we start to use mechanics to tell us about the Character's spirit that it doesn't feel quite right (to me). The DM should ask the Player, "What does *Character* want?" It's strange and backwards for the DM (and game mechanics) to be responding the Player, "No, your Character doesn't want to do that." (The DM might respond, "Are you sure? Your Character notices that it's a long way down." But he shouldn't make the Player role a skill check to control his Character.)

(Usual caveat: The way some people want to play RPGs...) The idea of Role-Playing is to step into a role and inhabit it. Being told what the Character wants shoves you out of inhabiting the role and turns you into more of a spectator.

That isn't to say it's "wrong" to play a game where the mechanics decide what the character wants and feels -- just that it's quite a different thing than playing a game where the mechanics decide how high the character can jump.

AMFV
2016-06-25, 05:25 PM
Putting aside the mechanics and just imagining that you were reading these things in a book, I don't see how your experience with lifting heavy things would let you say something like 'no, that rock wouldn't actually be all that heavy'.

Well, I am very glad that you are here to tell me how I feel about my experiences and how they affect my beliefs and my suspension of disbelief. That definitely makes this a whole lot easier.




I could see how you could say 'no, running out into the middle of a kill zone and firing in every direction like Rambo isn't cool, its just stupid'. And of course, the game system could reward that kind of behavior by making the average character have the durability of a tank, so in-character it might actually not be stupid. But because of what you know, that would cause dissonance - it probably wouldn't really help make you feel viscerally that its a good idea to abandon cover and stand there hip-firing.

But this gets to my point about things not being symmetric. Each thing you might want to convey comes with inherent issues associated with what that thing actually is in real life, which means that some things are easy to make convincing and other things are really hard to make convincing because its much easier for the receiver to confirm or deny what they're being shown.

True, but somebody being convincing and charismatic, is incredibly realistic. If it were not con-men would not make a living, and many of them make a very good one. So that is a realistic thing.

Cluedrew
2016-06-25, 07:30 PM
On Want: Actually CintACK's division is pretty useful. However I would actually put your social abilities under mind (social intelligence). Want, or the character's drives are however separate from that. To a degree 'direct' social manipulation, making someone want something, crosses this line. But most other things (such as lying, reading people, bartering) can be separated from actually what a character wants.

And where they overlap, the mechanics should follow from what the player has said about the character, not the other way around. For instance rolling for temptation (any sort of temptation): your chance of giving in should be based on how much you want it, it shouldn't decide if you want it or not. Control should flow out and I think you can write rules to accomplish that.

Segev
2016-06-25, 09:51 PM
My apologies for not quoting and responding directly, but my own posts had been growing to excessive size, and thus causing others to do much the same. I will attempt to address things in broad strokes.

The issue with "always, unless" approaches is that it's either a double standard ("Use it in social situations, but not combat,") or it's a very archetype-driven game with a ton of absolutes. "He's good at combat, so he always wins."

Now, you can say, "but you're forgetting the 'unless!'" But what defines that "unless?" The moment you inject "unless," you either need clear definitions of it, which ultimately are what combat resolution mechanics are, or you are back in the territory of "unless I can describe why you shouldn't succeed." Which brings us right back to poor Timid Tina being unable to play a persuasive character because there's always a reason the RL audience of the other people at the table can come up with for an "unless." Always. She's just not good enough at playing suave and charismatic for the "always" to not hit an "unless she does THAT."

The whole point of mechanics is to provide a defined framework for "always, unless." All "always, unless" really is, when you strip things down to their essence, is a way of determining when somebody can do something or not.

Now, NichG is saying that there's a difference between a body and a mind because the body can't possibly show the player how he would or would not feel in that situation. So we have to have mechanics to abstract it. "Yeah, sure, I guess he's tired and exhausted, because the mechanics say so." But, somehow, NichG can tell that the skill of the NPC at persuading his character is just not good enough, because NichG can hear the GM describing it and the GM just isn't that skilled. Or can hear Timid Tina trying to describe it and she's just so timid and uninspiring. So obviously whatever she says her bard says is ineffective.

The flaw in this is that NichG is assuming that the GM describing something he can't feel in his own body justifies mechanics telling him what his character can and cannot do because of it, but that the GM describing something he can't feel in his own mind/heart/whatever means that the GM's NPC just fails to be able to do it.

This is a double standard. It is not a justified one. The character is interacting with a highly skilled socialite who can read him, present cogent arguments and effective emotional appeals, and knows how to work things around to make them sound reasonable and desirable. NichG, as that character's player, is not; he's interacting with the GM (or worse, Timid Tina), who probably just isn't that skilled. So just like he's taking the GM's word for it that the mechanics describe how hard that boulder is to shoulder out up and off of the miller's leg, rather than expecting the GM to provide a simulation of an object as relatively heavy to NichG's own personal strength as that boulder is to NichG's character's strength, he should be taking the GM's word for it that the miller's daughter is actually as persuasive and comely and/or seductive as the mechanics say she is, rather than claiming that it's dictating to him something he knows his character would never feel.

Else, he should also be claiming that the GM shouldn't be dictating to him that the boulder is strenuous for his character to lift when he knows his character is definitely strong enough to lift it. It's his concept, after all, that his character be strong enough. Just as it's his concept that his character wouldn't be swayed by the miller's daughter.

NichG
2016-06-26, 02:18 AM
Well, I am very glad that you are here to tell me how I feel about my experiences and how they affect my beliefs and my suspension of disbelief. That definitely makes this a whole lot easier.

Then explain.


True, but somebody being convincing and charismatic, is incredibly realistic. If it were not con-men would not make a living, and many of them make a very good one. So that is a realistic thing.

There are well-trained soldiers, brilliant tacticians and strategists in the world. Their existence is 'realistic'. But if you tell me 'this guy is a well-trained soldier and a brilliant tactical and strategic mind' and the best he comes up with is a blind charge across open ground with melee weapons against enemies who have higher ground and ranged weapons (but his tactical and strategic brilliance gives everyone on his side a +10 to AC!), I'm not going to buy that, because there's dissonance. Being smart/tactical/etc is something I can independently verify based on observing his actions without being told. If my un-coached response is 'this guy is an idiot' but I'm being told 'no, he's smart, look, he's succeeding, the game mechanics prove he's smart' then you have totally failed to sell me the idea that I'm observing strategic or tactical brilliance.

If you tell me, 'this guy is strong, look, he can bench press 300lbs', what other line of information do I have access to which would let me come to a different conclusion?



The whole point of mechanics is to provide a defined framework for "always, unless." All "always, unless" really is, when you strip things down to their essence, is a way of determining when somebody can do something or not.


This is probably the point of disagreement.

To me, ultimately, determining some kind of objective external 'truth' is pretty much irrelevant to playing a game. It's not actually important whether someone 'really can' do something or not. What's important is the experience generated by the game.

The example you give about exhaustion is, IMO, the wrong way to look at what exhaustion in mechanics is for. It's not that you should tell the player that they are supposed to be exhausted now - that's useless. What was gained? The player says 'um, okay, sure', but its not authentic. If I want to make an exhaustion mechanic in a game, its either that I want to create a thing that makes effort expensive, because of the consequences of effort having cost that then extend into the types of actions that players will view as reasonable (so players will have the thought process 'no, we can't just run for 3 days without sleep or food or breaks'), or that I want a mechanic that actually makes the player feel exhausted.

goto124
2016-06-26, 05:02 AM
or that I want a mechanic that actually makes the player feel exhausted.

This is easy. Make them play either:

- Rollmaster
- FATAL

Job done!

Quertus
2016-06-26, 07:09 AM
The issue with "always, unless" approaches is that it's either a double standard ("Use it in social situations, but not combat,") or it's a very archetype-driven game with a ton of absolutes. "He's good at combat, so he always wins."

Now, you can say, "but you're forgetting the 'unless!'" But what defines that "unless?" The moment you inject "unless," you either need clear definitions of it, which ultimately are what combat resolution mechanics are, or you are back in the territory of "unless I can describe why you shouldn't succeed." Which brings us right back to poor Timid Tina being unable to play a persuasive character because there's always a reason the RL audience of the other people at the table can come up with for an "unless." Always. She's just not good enough at playing suave and charismatic for the "always" to not hit an "unless she does THAT."


Several things.

First, "always, unless" is a straw man. As I apparently failed to explain, every last one of my examples was a straw man. Every last one was the blind man describing the elephant. Every last one was not good enough. Every last one was simply a step on the path to enlightenment role-playing, not an end goal in and of themselves. So, absolutely there are issues with it. Just like there are issues with the way Michael Jordan played basketball in 3rd grade. As I apparently failed to explain, I have never seen a mechanic - including ones I have invented - that accurately modeled human social interaction. None of them work as well as good role-playing, or good method acting. BTW, bad role-playing is therefore also a straw man. But. It would not be completely inaccurate to claim that my recommendation for the unskilled roleplayer was to force them down the path of enlightenment by using my various straw man steps, or some better path that a brilliant duel-class game theory master / method actor invents.

Viewed as a logic puzzle, sure, you can always find an unless. I'll believe that. But that's not the point, and looking at it that way misses the point. For any given statement, I could probably find an unless in the characters I have played, but not every character will have an unless. Not even to eating live babies! The point of role-playing is to accurately portray the character, not to try to weasel out of helping your friends portray theirs.

Mixing "always, unless" with, "when GMs fail to sell combat", I actually have a rather poignant example: Superman. Superman should always win combat. Unless kryptonite. Or magic. The idiots who wrote... Justice League?... had to eat some crow for having Superman get knocked out in every episode*. Their reason for doing it ran something like, "wow, that guy took down Superman? He must be serious". They made the mistake of not only making story > character, but of trying to sell their villains as cool at the expense of not caring about Superman coming across as cool. I really wouldn't want them at my gaming table any more than someone who was always looking to undermine Timid Tina's concept.

Lastly, it's not about finding an unless to Timid Tina's delivery, but to her logic. If the only reason you won't eat live babies is because "Tina doesn't sound convincing", fail, you're eating that baby. On the other hand, if you're just not into girls, the succubus is gonna have some issues.

* more or less, not sure on the specifics.

goto124
2016-06-26, 07:38 AM
So er... why play a character who isn't asexual?

Or why the GM doesn't use a succubus smart enough to 'seduce' in a non-sexual manner. A stranger getting sexual with you is quite suspicious, so seduction often starts off with platonic friendship anyway.

... I must've missed the point entirely.

Is there a term for non-sexual 'seduction'?

Quertus
2016-06-26, 07:54 AM
So er... why play a character who isn't asexual?

Or why the GM doesn't use a succubus smart enough to 'seduce' in a non-sexual manner. A stranger getting sexual with you is quite suspicious, so seduction often starts off with platonic friendship anyway.

... I must've missed the point entirely.

Is there a term for non-sexual 'seduction'?

Tactically? Well, I guess because the asexual character won't get a morale bonus from getting a kiss from the princ(ess). :smallwink:

RP-wise? Because that would get boring?

And... yeah, there are a lot of reasons I hate the succubus example. But... strangers wanting a 1-night stand isn't that strange, even before factoring in that the PCs are usually big heroes, and arbitrarily attractive.

goto124
2016-06-26, 08:03 AM
When it comes to seduction, players can easily come up with reasons why ther character wouldn't be attracted to someone. Not their type, not in the mood, gotta save the world/country etc.

Can something as complex as sexuality be modeled in game mechanics? Should something as touchy (har har) as sexuality be modeled in game mechanics?

Cluedrew
2016-06-26, 08:14 AM
To me, ultimately, determining some kind of objective external 'truth' is pretty much irrelevant to playing a game. It's not actually important whether someone 'really can' do something or not. What's important is the experience generated by the game.
There are well-trained soldiers, brilliant tacticians and strategists in the world. Their existence is 'realistic'. But if you tell me 'this guy is a well-trained soldier and a brilliant tactical and strategic mind' and the best he comes up with is a blind charge across open ground with melee weapons against enemies who have higher ground and ranged weapons (but his tactical and strategic brilliance gives everyone on his side a +10 to AC!), I'm not going to buy that, because there's dissonance. Being smart/tactical/etc is something I can independently verify based on observing his actions without being told. If my un-coached response is 'this guy is an idiot' but I'm being told 'no, he's smart, look, he's succeeding, the game mechanics prove he's smart' then you have totally failed to sell me the idea that I'm observing strategic or tactical brilliance.

If you tell me, 'this guy is strong, look, he can bench press 300lbs', what other line of information do I have access to which would let me come to a different conclusion?Or perhaps you could say it is about an subjective truth, because whether you buy the mechanic or not does actually depend on how it portrays things as compared to how we understand they work outside of the game. Of course we are willing to suspend disbelief in certain cases and in many others we are willing to settle for approximations and abstractions (such as HP).

Quertus
2016-06-26, 09:09 AM
When it comes to seduction, players can easily come up with reasons why ther character wouldn't be attracted to someone. Not their type, not in the mood, gotta save the world/country etc.

Can something as complex as sexuality be modeled in game mechanics? Should something as touchy (har har) as sexuality be modeled in game mechanics?

We don't have AI yet. People who have dedicated their lives to writing millions of lines of logic... haven't been able to codify human emotion.

Let that sink in.

Would it be possible to have rules that correctly model human behavior, that take up less space to write than an encyclopedia set, and are fun to use? No, probably not.

Is anyone ever going to write a set of rules that works better than me "eyeballing it"? Doubtful.

Would I be willing to learn 2000 pages of social rules for a system that is a less accurate representation of human behavior than my current role-playing? Probably not - what's the convince modifier of the speaker? :smalltongue:

Would I use a system that was based off a successful AI, and was 100% accurate in defining that AI, even if it took several months to read through? Probably.

So, should social interaction be modeled in game mechanics? I guess I'd have to say that, in this case, I find guidelines to be helpful, and rules to be detrimental. But I expect other people's experiences will vary.

Segev
2016-06-26, 09:31 AM
There are well-trained soldiers, brilliant tacticians and strategists in the world. Their existence is 'realistic'. But if you tell me 'this guy is a well-trained soldier and a brilliant tactical and strategic mind' and the best he comes up with is a blind charge across open ground with melee weapons against enemies who have higher ground and ranged weapons (but his tactical and strategic brilliance gives everyone on his side a +10 to AC!), I'm not going to buy that, because there's dissonance. Being smart/tactical/etc is something I can independently verify based on observing his actions without being told. If my un-coached response is 'this guy is an idiot' but I'm being told 'no, he's smart, look, he's succeeding, the game mechanics prove he's smart' then you have totally failed to sell me the idea that I'm observing strategic or tactical brilliance.Which is why the DM who can't come up with something, himself, which doesn't at least LOOK like a brilliant tactic to people who are playing his game can instead simply abstract it. "This brilliant tactician has enacted a plan involving teamwork that you have never seen before; it is giving his men a +10 to their rolls."

There. You've quantified, in objective terms, how big a difference Sergeant Tacticles has made with his tactics. Just as D&D 3e quantifies in objective terms just how inspiring Bardicus Jones's exhortations in poetry are to his allies by saying "it provides a +1 morale bonus." Bardicus Jones's player doesn't have to come up with the poetry for NichG or any other player to say, "meh, that's not really that inspiring, so I can't see how my PC would perform any better" to. He just says, "Bardicus starts using Bardic Inspiration," and the +1s get distributed.

If you tell me, 'this guy is strong, look, he can bench press 300lbs', what other line of information do I have access to which would let me come to a different conclusion?You've experienced lifting 300 lbs. Maybe you're a lumberjack by trade, and 300 lbs is merely a moderate load for you, something you heft daily. Maybe you have no good frame of reference for how heavy 300 lbs is, and think anybody who can't lift that is just not trying hard enough.

If I tell you, "This sergeant's tactics are brilliant; they let his otherwise-ineffectual, outnumbered men defeat seemingly-superior forces in both numbers and training," what other line of informatio ndo you have access to which would let you come to a different conclusion? (This is, incidentally, why sometimes it's more effective to show just the results and not the action on camera. There's a great scene in one Batman Beyond episode where Terry!Batman is trying to interrogate somebody who just isn't giving in, even when Terry is clearly willing to cross a line and HURT him in a permanent way. Bruce has Terry step outside, and all we see is the shadow fall over his face and the "Batman Eyes" appear before we cut away to Bruce stepping out of the room and telling Batman, matter-of-factly, everything they needed to get from that guy. We never see what he did or threatened him with nor how he intimidated him.)



The example you give about exhaustion is, IMO, the wrong way to look at what exhaustion in mechanics is for. It's not that you should tell the player that they are supposed to be exhausted now - that's useless. What was gained? The player says 'um, okay, sure', but its not authentic. If I want to make an exhaustion mechanic in a game, its either that I want to create a thing that makes effort expensive, because of the consequences of effort having cost that then extend into the types of actions that players will view as reasonable (so players will have the thought process 'no, we can't just run for 3 days without sleep or food or breaks'), or that I want a mechanic that actually makes the player feel exhausted.That's what exhaustion is, though, in a gameplay sense. That's what ANYTHING is: it's a resource you can expend. Choice is a resource you have in limited supply. It just tends to be a resource you have to choose to spend as soon as you get it. You can't save it up or stockpile it, but you have different options to, well, choose. Choice is inherently opportunity cost.

What is gained by calling it "exhaustion" rather than "movement points?" In your example, there's no point in calling it "exhaustion" if the point isn't to model physical and/or emotional/mental exhaustion. You could just as easily call it "chi" or "potential" or "action points." The purpose of having exhaustion rules is not just to create a resource, but to link that resource to an expression of the model you're trying to present.

"The reason your PC can't keep going for another 4 hours of hard marching through the desert in the middle of the day is because he's exhausted," lets the player know not only that his PC is out of resources, for now, to continue moving, but why. It provides RP cues to him, if he wants them. It also tells the player that no, his PC isn't an inexhaustible demigod able to willpower through this exhaustion. He didn't buy (or wasn't allowed to buy) the resources to permit that.



Mixing "always, unless" with, "when GMs fail to sell combat", I actually have a rather poignant example: Superman. Superman should always win combat. Unless kryptonite. Or magic. The idiots who wrote... Justice League?... had to eat some crow for having Superman get knocked out in every episode. Their reason for doing it ran something like, "wow, that guy took down Superman? He must be serious". They made the mistake of not only making story > character, but of trying to sell their villains as cool at the expense of not caring about Superman coming across as cool. I really wouldn't want them at my gaming table any more than someone who was always looking to undermine Timid Tina's concept.The Worf Effect is a rather nasty syndrome to which to fall, yeah. I think the best selling of Superman in the Justice League was in the Justice Lords episode, where he just...stopped holding back. At all. "Efficient" is not a word you really want associated with the Man of Steel if you know of what he's capable.


Lastly, it's not about finding an unless to Timid Tina's delivery, but to her logic. If the only reason you won't eat live babies is because "Tina doesn't sound convincing", fail, you're eating that baby. On the other hand, if you're just not into girls, the succubus is gonna have some issues.Well, yes. I've said repeatedly that anything which boils it down to "she rolled high so you're seduced" is a poor model of this. If you're "not into girls," then the succubus will have to try other tactics. She will "have some issues," as you put it. But it shouldn't be impossible for her to overcome them.

Perhaps she's of the "succubi and incubi are really the same, shapeshifting creature" variety, and just comes back as a guy. Or perhaps she learns whta you ARE into, and tweaks her presentation to be...close to that. you're not into girls, but...there's something about THIS girl.

Mechanics should have means for you to expend character-building resources on your values, your likes, your personality traits, etc. For things which really will ruin a character for the player, we step out of "mechanics should" and into "OOC table contract" areas: it is the responsibility of a GM and players to help everybody have fun. But mechanics can't enforce that. If it really will ruin your character to have him (or her) be seduced by this girl (maybe you just DO NOT WANT to play a lesbian, or even somebody who's even once "experimented"), then the GM should choose not to make the game-play move that would/could force it.

Of course, it's highly likely that this succubus, femme fatale, or what-have-you isn't really after you for sex. She's after using sex to manipulate you. So the socialite thus turns to whatever you ARE in to, what you care about, what motivates you, to manipulate you(r PC).




When it comes to seduction, players can easily come up with reasons why ther character wouldn't be attracted to someone. Not their type, not in the mood, gotta save the world/country etc.

Can something as complex as sexuality be modeled in game mechanics? Should something as touchy (har har) as sexuality be modeled in game mechanics?
It can be. It should be if that's going to be an important aspect of the game's narrative. Don't play in such games if you don't want to deal with it.





Optimally, though, playing your adventurer as asexual and disinterested in human contact is the best plan. Why, then, do adventurers have reputations for "ale and whores?" For bedding every eligible wench? Why do rock stars infamously have groupies they pick and choose from for one-night stands? Why does ANYBODY engage in one-night stands? They're not optimal for advancing your life in the long run, and carry a great deal of risks!

If those rock stars were run by players who didn't feel the temptation of sexy, willing girls (or boys), they probably wouldn't, especially if the GM modeled "realism" such as child support, STDs, and the like into it. It's all risk and no reward. Unless the players see some game advantage commensurate with the temptation the characters feel that makes "STDs and child support" into risks they can...overlook. Because the STD and child support are game disadvantages. (Unless they're not, in which case the player may not care. "Yeah, sure, I pay it. Oh, I have herpes now? Meh, as long as it doesn't give me any penalties, no big deal.")

NichG
2016-06-26, 11:50 AM
Or perhaps you could say it is about an subjective truth, because whether you buy the mechanic or not does actually depend on how it portrays things as compared to how we understand they work outside of the game. Of course we are willing to suspend disbelief in certain cases and in many others we are willing to settle for approximations and abstractions (such as HP).

Yeah, I'd say it's about the subjective experience of it. If something in the system/module/DM's head/etc said 'this guy shouldn't be able to do X' but it turns out that for whatever reason, he ends up being able to do X, then that doesn't really matter; its whether the players' perception of him doing X feels authentic or causes dissonance.

Or to put it another way, just because something is provided as an objective outcome by some set of rules is no guarantee that the result will feel more authentic to players rather than less. If the rules say that the average 3 year old human child can lift a 300lbs boulder 5% of the time, that may be 'objective truth' in a reality governed by those rules as their physics, but something like that will tend more to alienate players than convince them and draw them into the fiction.


Which is why the DM who can't come up with something, himself, which doesn't at least LOOK like a brilliant tactic to people who are playing his game can instead simply abstract it. "This brilliant tactician has enacted a plan involving teamwork that you have never seen before; it is giving his men a +10 to their rolls."

If I tell you, "This sergeant's tactics are brilliant; they let his otherwise-ineffectual, outnumbered men defeat seemingly-superior forces in both numbers and training," what other line of informatio ndo you have access to which would let you come to a different conclusion? (This is, incidentally, why sometimes it's more effective to show just the results and not the action on camera.

Yes, I agree here. For off-camera stuff (physical, social, intelligence, etc), abstraction is appropriate and can work well.


That's what exhaustion is, though, in a gameplay sense. That's what ANYTHING is: it's a resource you can expend. Choice is a resource you have in limited supply. It just tends to be a resource you have to choose to spend as soon as you get it. You can't save it up or stockpile it, but you have different options to, well, choose. Choice is inherently opportunity cost.

What is gained by calling it "exhaustion" rather than "movement points?" In your example, there's no point in calling it "exhaustion" if the point isn't to model physical and/or emotional/mental exhaustion. You could just as easily call it "chi" or "potential" or "action points." The purpose of having exhaustion rules is not just to create a resource, but to link that resource to an expression of the model you're trying to present.

Actually, I think its just fine to call it chi or potential or action points - it'd still serve the same purpose. To me it'd be a big sign of a successful mechanic if players spontaneously used words like 'exhaustion' to describe their state with respect to their resources without being primed for that. That'd be a good indicator that the players are actually feeling exhausted, rather than just being informed that they should be exhausted.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-26, 12:26 PM
On the asymmetry...

A Character is a physical body + a clever, problem-solving mind + a core of wants and needs and likes and dislikes -- a spirit.

The Player is somewhat like the spirit of the Character -- deciding what it is the Character *wants* to accomplish and then using the Character's mental and physical capabilities in pursuit of that goal.

Having mechanics to tell us what the Character's Body can do -- is it exhausted, damaged, stunned, poisoned, paralyzed, injured or healthy. Can he lift that? Will the current sweep him off his feet? -- that all seems quite reasonable

Having mechanics to tell us what the Character's Mind can do -- What languages does the Character speak, How much knowledge does the Character have about the world? Did the Character notice the sneaky goblin (or the liar's "tell")? All reasonable mechanics.

It's when we start to use mechanics to tell us about the Character's spirit that it doesn't feel quite right (to me). The DM should ask the Player, "What does *Character* want?" It's strange and backwards for the DM (and game mechanics) to be responding the Player, "No, your Character doesn't want to do that." (The DM might respond, "Are you sure? Your Character notices that it's a long way down." But he shouldn't make the Player role a skill check to control his Character.)

(Usual caveat: The way some people want to play RPGs...) The idea of Role-Playing is to step into a role and inhabit it. Being told what the Character wants shoves you out of inhabiting the role and turns you into more of a spectator.

That isn't to say it's "wrong" to play a game where the mechanics decide what the character wants and feels -- just that it's quite a different thing than playing a game where the mechanics decide how high the character can jump.

Very well said.

Thrudd
2016-06-26, 12:46 PM
Which is why the DM who can't come up with something, himself, which doesn't at least LOOK like a brilliant tactic to people who are playing his game can instead simply abstract it. "This brilliant tactician has enacted a plan involving teamwork that you have never seen before; it is giving his men a +10 to their rolls."

There. You've quantified, in objective terms, how big a difference Sergeant Tacticles has made with his tactics.

That only works in a game that isn't about the players using actual tactics to play out battles. Once you abstract away the thing the players are supposed to be doing in real time with their own minds, aka the purpose of the game, what is left but an abstract simulation?

It comes back to the "purpose of the game" that was brought up earlier. Choosing a mechanic because it allows a more accurate simulation of something or is "realistic" for the character should only be considered if it does not conflict with the purpose of the game, which in a general sense always involves the players actually doing something and making meaningful decisions. The thing that the players are supposed to be doing themselves should not be abstracted or mechanized, lest the purpose of the game be lost.

The argument about players who want to play a tactical genius but aren't tactical geniuses does not apply to a game about tactical battles. The game is testing the players' tactical abilities, and that includes the GM. In a story telling game where battles are abstracted down to a brief descriptive scene, you can absolutely simulate a character's tactical skill.

If the game is about players figuring out a mystery, or players making choices to solve a problem, you can't take away their ability to do that with abstract simulation mechanics. If the GM isn't good at portraying a mystery scenario, then that is the wrong scenario for that GM to be using, mechanics can't replace that.

All games, even role playing games, are about testing some skill or skills of the players. If you aren't good at a skill, practicing it makes you better. If you aren't good at some aspect of a game but you want to be, you learn from your mistakes and keep trying until you're better at it. When we're talking about the game-purpose skills, you don't insist that everyone else pretend you're as good as you want to be and let you win "because my character is supposed to be amazing at this".

Segev
2016-06-26, 01:09 PM
That only works in a game that isn't about the players using actual tactics to play out battles. Once you abstract away the thing the players are supposed to be doing in real time with their own minds, aka the purpose of the game, what is left but an abstract simulation?Obviously. If you're playing Warhammer or Mage Knight or Heroclix or even most editions of D&D, abstracting tactics defeats the purpose of the game, where the combat simulator is meant to be a tactical-choices game with the abstraction occurring at the level of physical capability.

Social mechanics don't have to be "social interaction games," though, any more than the fight mechanics are "martial arts games." Given that the "tactical game" is the level at which most RPGs operate, leaving it as a "tactical game" for social interaction is appropriate. That is, Timid Tina doesn't need to be able to frame her argument in terms that are appealing. She needs to instead find out what things are valued by and influence her bard's soon-to-be buddy, then make tactical decisions about how her bard will approach his goals with that person through those important things. Learning that the innkeeper loves his daughter and is being terse because she's run off with the miller's son (of whom he disapproves) and, worse, that her bard reminds him of the miller's son, Tina seeks first to create mental distinctions contrasting her bard with the miller's son, then to commiserate with the innkeeper over the cad's wiles. Maybe she then seeks to build up the innkeeper's fondness for his daughter over his anger at her (in his mind) bad choices, or she seeks to buck him up by making him think, "If only she'd fallen for a stand-up fellow like Bardicus Jones, here." In any event, she's used what she learned and made tactical decisions about what game-moves to make in order to shift the innkeeper from hating her bard to actually liking him, and done so in a believable way. All without having to be really all that skilled, herself, at creating that contrast between Bardicus and Millerson, or at evoking whatever other memories or emotions she wants Bardicus to engender in the innkeeper.



The argument about players who want to play a tactical genius but aren't tactical geniuses does not apply to a game about tactical battles. The game is testing the players' tactical abilities, and that includes the GM. In a story telling game where battles are abstracted down to a brief descriptive scene, you can absolutely simulate a character's tactical skill.Yes and no. In a game about tabletop tactics, you're MOSTLY right. But you can still abstract certain things. With a "good tactics roll" (whatever that means in the game mechanics), perhaps the player of Sergeant Tacticles can be told by the GM, "You know, there and there and there would be good spots to hide soldiers for an ambush." It now gives the player of Tacticles an idea that a) maybe there are ambushing troops there, and b) perhaps he could gain advantage by putting his own ambushing troops there. Where the game doesn't simulate strategy (or even where it tries to) on a larger scale, the battle itself may still benefit from abstracted bonuses such as "a -2 morale penalty to the enemies thanks to the general disrupting their supply lines, making them feel cut off" or "a +1 circumstance bonus to all rolls because the general set things up so you have a home-field advantage." Where such "home field advantages" are myriad little things that can't be reflected directly in tactics (such as knowing the ground is shifty there, so you use it to your advantage on the attack roll).

There will be abstraction levels everywhere. The key to good game design is knowing what is and is not abstracted, and to what degree, and using the abstractions to help you model things that are not supposed to be testing the players' skills and talents. As you said, it depends heavily on the purpose of the game.


If the game is about players figuring out a mystery, or players making choices to solve a problem, you can't take away their ability to do that with abstract simulation mechanics. If the GM isn't good at portraying a mystery scenario, then that is the wrong scenario for that GM to be using, mechanics can't replace that. You're mostly right. Though what you CAN do to present a mystery is have mechanics reflecting information control. No, you'll never be able to remove the decision-making as to what to pursue and what to ignore, nor to fully hand the solution to players (at least not without removing the point of the game) in a mystery game, but you can design mechanics to simulate the abilities that are supposed to make the various characters good at solving mysteries in certain ways. Abstracting those abilities into something that distills information into the players' hands is how you reduce the required skill of the player to whatever it is that's supposed to be the focus. In most mysteries that are designed to feel like detective novels or TV shows, that would be the ability of the player to put together information to come to a final conclusion (as opposed to how to GATHER it and SYNTHESIZE it, which can be abstracted).


All games, even role playing games, are about testing some skill or skills of the players. If you aren't good at a skill, practicing it makes you better. If you aren't good at some aspect of a game but you want to be, you learn from your mistakes and keep trying until you're better at it. When we're talking about the game-purpose skills, you don't insist that everyone else pretend you're as good as you want to be and let you win "because my character is supposed to be amazing at this".At the same time, unless the purpose of the game is to exercise your acting/manipulation chops, it probably is appropriate to want mechanics that can make your socialite character actually better than you are at social interaction.

NichG
2016-06-26, 08:40 PM
If the game isn't about exercising your social manipulation/acting chops but is instead, say, about exercising your tactical acumen, what is gained by the game giving the GM ways to use social interaction as a mechanical threat?

Segev
2016-06-26, 08:51 PM
If the game isn't about exercising your social manipulation/acting chops but is instead, say, about exercising your tactical acumen, what is gained by the game giving the GM ways to use social interaction as a mechanical threat?

I think you're conflating multiple things that are distinct threads of conversation to come to this conclusion. But nevertheless, your point is poorly made anyway.

Can you honestly not see how a game about social and political challenges can still be about something other than personal manipulation/acting capability? Just as a game about combat can be something other than a martial arts bout IRL? And a game about racing can be something other than climbing into real cars and racing them down the street?

The game of political manipulation and social interaction can easily be meant to let players come up with strategies and game moves to accomplish the kind of persuasion and deception required. The persuasion and deception are tools and character capabilities.

Capabilities that the players don't need to have, and in fact should not be required to have in order to play the game, otherwise it is a game that can't be played by people who want to experience a role other than their own RL selves.

AMFV
2016-06-26, 08:57 PM
If the game isn't about exercising your social manipulation/acting chops but is instead, say, about exercising your tactical acumen, what is gained by the game giving the GM ways to use social interaction as a mechanical threat?

There are plenty of real life games that involve social challenges that aren't represented by your real life social skills. But let's talk about board games. What you're discussing is "Diplomacy" where players real diplomatic ability becomes crucial. What Segev is suggesting is something like Love Letter or Resistance, where there are implied social situations that are resolved through the mechanics rather than being resolved through an actual social discussion.

NichG
2016-06-26, 09:22 PM
I think you're conflating multiple things that are distinct threads of conversation to come to this conclusion. But nevertheless, your point is poorly made anyway.

Can you honestly not see how a game about social and political challenges can still be about something other than personal manipulation/acting capability? Just as a game about combat can be something other than a martial arts bout IRL? And a game about racing can be something other than climbing into real cars and racing them down the street?

I'm questioning the motivations for choosing social interaction as the subject of mechanics.

If its more than reflexively mechanizing something because it could be mechanized, then it should be possible to give a good explanation of why specifically mechanizing social interaction for a tactical combat game would be helpful, rather than just listing off generalities that 'other games mechanize things so why not?'.


The game of political manipulation and social interaction can easily be meant to let players come up with strategies and game moves to accomplish the kind of persuasion and deception required. The persuasion and deception are tools and character capabilities.

Okay, this is a start. So, what sort of different strategic gameplay is enabled by choosing this particular fiction to mechanize compared to, say, moving armies around a field?


There are plenty of real life games that involve social challenges that aren't represented by your real life social skills. But let's talk about board games. What you're discussing is "Diplomacy" where players real diplomatic ability becomes crucial. What Segev is suggesting is something like Love Letter or Resistance, where there are implied social situations that are resolved through the mechanics rather than being resolved through an actual social discussion.

Again, I'm questioning the motivation.

If you want a game about tactics and strategy, tactical combat is already a very close metaphor. So there's very little stretching you need to do in order to wrap your mind around the abstractions/etc introduced to gamify it. Of course I could also take those exact same mechanics and wrap them in the metaphor of, say, the day-to-day operations of a dry-cleaning business. The business has four 'marketing foci', who stand on a grid to represent different aspects of their advertising campaign, and do battle with the marketing foci of their competitors, with adjacent squares being ad campaigns that can directly interfere with each-other, and AOOs representing the vulnerability induced by a change of marketing strategy and so on.

But it would be really dissonant, so I have to give really good justification for the choice of picking those mechanics for that fiction.

So for board-games, the question is the same - why choose the fluff of socialization for something whose internal structure is a tactical combat game? You're moving away from a direct, easy mapping that players should quickly be able to get their head around, and into something very mismatched where there's going to be quite a lot of dissonance.

I'm not saying there can't be reasons to mechanize these things, but so far I've just heard a lot of 'but we have to mechanize it, otherwise Timid Tina can't play their bard!'. Which is a complete non-sequiteur given that this thread is about the PCs themselves being subject to being controlled by social mechanics, rather than the presence of social mechanics the PCs can use.

Cluedrew
2016-06-26, 09:39 PM
I'm not saying there can't be reasons to mechanize these things, but so far I've just heard a lot of 'but we have to mechanize it, otherwise Timid Tina can't play their bard!'. Which is a complete non-sequiteur given that this thread is about the PCs themselves being subject to being controlled by social mechanics, rather than the presence of social mechanics the PCs can use.OK, why mechanicize it?

Personally (others may have different reasons) it is because I want to represent different characters. A lot of this can be done about what I say about them, this is where things like demeanor and wants come through. But there is another part of that and that is representing abilities. Abilities beyond my own, I don't know much about swords or guns and can't use either in a combat situation, I can't track people, make sculptures or fix junker cars. But I have played characters that can do those things.

So why can't I play a character that can win over a crowd? Who can spin a(n almost) flawless web of lies? Because we don't have the mechanics to support that.

The other reason is I have played a lot of the free-form type of social games. And a lot of games that you might as well through out the social rules and go free-form. Free-form isn't bad, but I feel I have explored that area and I am curious about what we can do with the mechanics. Which I suppose makes me biased, but I think it can work for all the reasons I have mentioned previously.

Segev
2016-06-26, 09:52 PM
NichG, tactics don't have to be "tactical board game" tactics. Even leaving games aside, people refer to "social tactics" all the time. Social engineering techniques have a variety of tactics which hackers use to try to trick people into giving them privileged access to systems in which they have no business being.

So if your objection is that you're seeing my description of representing social interaction as a mechanized thing where you don't have to demonstrate the social maneuver to stop somebody from thinking of you in a certain way (e.g. Bardicus Jones making Innkeeper Bob stop thinking of Jones as just like Millerson) any more than you have to demonstrate how Graplli the Gnome can pin the ogre with a clever joint lock. You just have to say "Graplli grapples the ogre" and invoke the mechanics. "Oh, so the innkeeper thinks I'm just like Millerson, who he hates? I'd like to convince him that I'm not like that cad, and am a more upstanding sort of fellow who shares his morals and ethical beliefs." This would invoke mechanics in some fashion to determine if that effort is successful, without Tina having to actually come up with Bardicus Jones's argument and convince the DM that it's good enough to persuade the innkeeper.

NichG
2016-06-26, 09:53 PM
OK, why mechanicize it?

Personally (others may have different reasons) it is because I want to represent different characters. A lot of this can be done about what I say about them, this is where things like demeanor and wants come through. But there is another part of that and that is representing abilities. Abilities beyond my own, I don't know much about swords or guns and can't use either in a combat situation, I can't track people, make sculptures or fix junker cars. But I have played characters that can do those things.

So why can't I play a character that can win over a crowd? Who can spin a(n almost) flawless web of lies? Because we don't have the mechanics to support that.


This would be covered by PC abilities that only affect NPCs.



The other reason is I have played a lot of the free-form type of social games. And a lot of games that you might as well through out the social rules and go free-form. Free-form isn't bad, but I feel I have explored that area and I am curious about what we can do with the mechanics. Which I suppose makes me biased, but I think it can work for all the reasons I have mentioned previously.

This I think is a reasonable motivation, but then we need to decide what we're trying to do with the mechanics that is different from other mechanical subsystems for non-social things.

That is to say, it's not enough to just have mechanics, there needs to be a concrete goal to design around.



...


What you're giving me is demonstrations that it's possible to write social mechanics, but not compelling reasons why you should.

Segev
2016-06-26, 09:57 PM
That is to say, it's not enough to just have mechanics, there needs to be a concrete goal to design around.

...I thought that was obvious. :smallannoyed:

Quertus
2016-06-27, 07:11 AM
That only works in a game that isn't about the players using actual tactics to play out battles. Once you abstract away the thing the players are supposed to be doing in real time with their own minds, aka the purpose of the game, what is left but an abstract simulation?

It comes back to the "purpose of the game" that was brought up earlier. Choosing a mechanic because it allows a more accurate simulation of something or is "realistic" for the character should only be considered if it does not conflict with the purpose of the game, which in a general sense always involves the players actually doing something and making meaningful decisions. The thing that the players are supposed to be doing themselves should not be abstracted or mechanized, lest the purpose of the game be lost.

The argument about players who want to play a tactical genius but aren't tactical geniuses does not apply to a game about tactical battles. The game is testing the players' tactical abilities, and that includes the GM. In a story telling game where battles are abstracted down to a brief descriptive scene, you can absolutely simulate a character's tactical skill.

If the game is about players figuring out a mystery, or players making choices to solve a problem, you can't take away their ability to do that with abstract simulation mechanics. If the GM isn't good at portraying a mystery scenario, then that is the wrong scenario for that GM to be using, mechanics can't replace that.

All games, even role playing games, are about testing some skill or skills of the players. If you aren't good at a skill, practicing it makes you better. If you aren't good at some aspect of a game but you want to be, you learn from your mistakes and keep trying until you're better at it. When we're talking about the game-purpose skills, you don't insist that everyone else pretend you're as good as you want to be and let you win "because my character is supposed to be amazing at this".

Ok, this is good. In a game, there is a place for player skills, and a place for mechanics. I believe that, on the original topic, some people up thread claimed that making choices for their character is the only meaningful thing that the player gets to do in a rpg.


NichG, tactics don't have to be "tactical board game" tactics. Even leaving games aside, people refer to "social tactics" all the time. Social engineering techniques have a variety of tactics which hackers use to try to trick people into giving them privileged access to systems in which they have no business being.

So if your objection is that you're seeing my description of representing social interaction as a mechanized thing where you don't have to demonstrate the social maneuver to stop somebody from thinking of you in a certain way (e.g. Bardicus Jones making Innkeeper Bob stop thinking of Jones as just like Millerson) any more than you have to demonstrate how Graplli the Gnome can pin the ogre with a clever joint lock. You just have to say "Graplli grapples the ogre" and invoke the mechanics. "Oh, so the innkeeper thinks I'm just like Millerson, who he hates? I'd like to convince him that I'm not like that cad, and am a more upstanding sort of fellow who shares his morals and ethical beliefs." This would invoke mechanics in some fashion to determine if that effort is successful, without Tina having to actually come up with Bardicus Jones's argument and convince the DM that it's good enough to persuade the innkeeper.

No, no, no, Timid Tina's issue was that she wasn't convincing. If Bland Betty wants to play a social character where they describe the end state without the intervening steps / without explaining what they do to get there... hmmm... I have several issues.

I think the biggest issue I have is the role-playing dissonance that occurs from filling in the gaps. If I roleplay my reaction as though she got there through personal charisma, while someone else pictured her as manipulative, and the rest of the party had painted her as flirting, seducing, intimidating, bribing, blackmailing, conning... this method leaves each player to paint their own picture of events, and when those disparate images collide, it creates levels of dissonance that greatly detract from the game, and that no amount of retcon can fix.

And all this struggling on the part of the rest of the party to invent a how for role-playing purposes sounds like as big a disconnect from role-playing as when Jerky Jeff was viewing role-playing as a puzzle where his job was to always find an "unless" to ignore Timid Tina's bard.

And imagine if combat were handled that way. "You see a troll. "I kill it." "Ok, roll combat, DC..." ... "You see a dragon." "I subdue it, to make it do a favor for me for sparing it's life.""Ok, roll combat, DC..." ... "You are waylayed by bandits." "I wow then with my amazing swordsmanship, Zorro style, convincing them to give up this life of crime, and become my loyal henchmen." "Ok, roll combat, DC..." ... Sounds grossly unsatisfying to me.

AMFV
2016-06-27, 08:13 AM
What you're giving me is demonstrations that it's possible to write social mechanics, but not compelling reasons why you should.

Because he wants them in his game? Because there are people who do not like the social/acting/negotiating part of the game. The same reason a person might be inclined to play Love Letter instead of Diplomacy (although since those are pretty disparate there are others.

It's the same reason why some people who don't enjoy boffing want combat mechanics that aren't based on real skill. And some people want combat mechanics that are very tactically focused, others want some that are narratively focused. There will always be people who may be put off by a particular mechanic, but there may be some people who are truly excited by it.

themaque
2016-06-27, 09:28 AM
I don't think it's been mentioned, but Monster of the Week based on the Apocalypse system handles this issue very well.

Example my character rolls leadership on your character and tells you "Make me a sandwich!"

If I roll a success then you gain XP for making me a sandwich. You can chose to ignore me to no penalty but you gain XP for doing so, thus rewarding the PLAYER for following along with the mechanics.

If I Roll well enough and you gain a bonus to your action in following the command. You end up making a really really good sandwich. however, you can still ignore me telling me "Make your own darned sandwich!" and not break character.

If I roll poorly, you get XP for NOT doing what I say, again rewarding the PLAYER as well as the character for going along with the mechanics. Even if I had a good suggestion it rewards you for going along with the die rolls but doesn't force you to do so.

That is the best way I've seen it done myself. I don't believe that just because I rolled a 19 you should have to break character or I should be allowed to dictate how you play your character.

Thrudd
2016-06-27, 09:53 AM
I don't think it's been mentioned, but Monster of the Week based on the Apocalypse system handles this issue very well.

Example my character rolls leadership on your character and tells you "Make me a sandwich!"

If I roll a success then you gain XP for making me a sandwich. You can chose to ignore me to no penalty but you gain XP for doing so, thus rewarding the PLAYER for following along with the mechanics.

If I Roll well enough and you gain a bonus to your action in following the command. You end up making a really really good sandwich. however, you can still ignore me telling me "Make your own darned sandwich!" and not break character.

If I roll poorly, you get XP for NOT doing what I say, again rewarding the PLAYER as well as the character for going along with the mechanics. Even if I had a good suggestion it rewards you for going along with the die rolls but doesn't force you to do so.

That is the best way I've seen it done myself. I don't believe that just because I rolled a 19 you should have to break character or I should be allowed to dictate how you play your character.

What does xp do in this system? Are the players competing with eachother to get the most xp? If so, then this is a good mechanic. If not, then it's not so good. If my character, and by proxy the whole group, get stronger when I gain xp, then what stops players from constantly making rolls against each other and gaining xp like crazy? It would be especially easy to make attempts with poor skills that you expect to fail at and gain xp for literally doing nothing. "Make me a sandwich!" (xp) "No! You make ME a sandwich!" (xp) "No! YOU" (xp)

themaque
2016-06-27, 10:06 AM
What does xp do in this system? Are the players competing with eachother to get the most xp? If so, then this is a good mechanic. If not, then it's not so good. If my character, and by proxy the whole group, get stronger when I gain xp, then what stops players from constantly making rolls against each other and gaining xp like crazy? It would be especially easy to make attempts with poor skills that you expect to fail at and gain xp for literally doing nothing. "Make me a sandwich!" (xp) "No! You make ME a sandwich!" (xp) "No! YOU" (xp)

It's a fairly light system honestly. about 5 or so XP gets you a perk/level. (similar to Fallout 4) There are many different ways to get XP so it's a good temptation that I rarely see people turn down but not something that is so tempting it feels punishing if you don't follow along.

And I don't think there is anything inherently preventing you from benefiting from failure loops aside from the GM letting the said monster of the week show up and eat both of you for being stupid. Probably you only get XP the first time you attempt it but you would need a new scene or different skills/commands for more. I'm not near my books.

I've seen one guy make a pretty powerful character based around failure. He got XP when he messed up nearly anything. It was pretty amazing. Tell people what to do? Failed. Ignored. Everyone got XP. Went into danger alone? XP. Failed his sneak check? XP. Got kidnaped? XP.

It would require some tweaking and refinement for a more serious or involved rules system but I think the inherent idea is brilliant.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-06-27, 12:24 PM
What does xp do in this system? Are the players competing with eachother to get the most xp? If so, then this is a good mechanic. If not, then it's not so good. If my character, and by proxy the whole group, get stronger when I gain xp, then what stops players from constantly making rolls against each other and gaining xp like crazy? It would be especially easy to make attempts with poor skills that you expect to fail at and gain xp for literally doing nothing. "Make me a sandwich!" (xp) "No! You make ME a sandwich!" (xp) "No! YOU" (xp)

I haven't played this one, but generally the way all the Powered by the Apocalypse games work is that the GM is the arbiter of what requires a roll and what doesn't.

Quertus
2016-06-27, 01:36 PM
I don't think it's been mentioned, but Monster of the Week based on the Apocalypse system handles this issue very well.

Example my character rolls leadership on your character and tells you "Make me a sandwich!"

If I roll a success then you gain XP for making me a sandwich. You can chose to ignore me to no penalty but you gain XP for doing so, thus rewarding the PLAYER for following along with the mechanics.

If I Roll well enough and you gain a bonus to your action in following the command. You end up making a really really good sandwich. however, you can still ignore me telling me "Make your own darned sandwich!" and not break character.

If I roll poorly, you get XP for NOT doing what I say, again rewarding the PLAYER as well as the character for going along with the mechanics. Even if I had a good suggestion it rewards you for going along with the die rolls but doesn't force you to do so.

That is the best way I've seen it done myself. I don't believe that just because I rolled a 19 you should have to break character or I should be allowed to dictate how you play your character.

I've heard of giving an xp bonus for good role-playing, but this system gives an xp bonus for bad role-playing, if you choose to follow the roll over what your character would actually do. Gay munchkin going out with another girl? Yup, third this week. She rolled high on her seduction roll. But the guy of his dreams, who he's been after since forever, rolled poorly on his seduction attempt, so the munchkin turned him down.

Further, in a group of equal roleplayers, it rewards making the blandest character, who can go with either outcome of any given roll without it feeling out of character to do so.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a fun system to play with and manipulate, but, if I'm understanding it right, I don't think I can agree with the behaviors it reinforces, Pavlovian-style.

kyoryu
2016-06-27, 01:37 PM
True, but somebody being convincing and charismatic, is incredibly realistic. If it were not con-men would not make a living, and many of them make a very good one. So that is a realistic thing.

Con-men are a good point of reference. One of the things about con men is that they are good at picking out prey - people whose greed is likely to overcome their common sense.

Really, for social type rolls to "work", there has to be something that the target *wants*.

themaque
2016-06-27, 02:42 PM
I've heard of giving an xp bonus for good role-playing, but this system gives an xp bonus for bad role-playing, if you choose to follow the roll over what your character would actually do. Gay munchkin going out with another girl? Yup, third this week. She rolled high on her seduction roll. But the guy of his dreams, who he's been after since forever, rolled poorly on his seduction attempt, so the munchkin turned him down.

Further, in a group of equal roleplayers, it rewards making the blandest character, who can go with either outcome of any given roll without it feeling out of character to do so.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a fun system to play with and manipulate, but, if I'm understanding it right, I don't think I can agree with the behaviors it reinforces, Pavlovian-style.

Well, the example of the build that succeeds through failure is an extreme and a poor example of how it normally works.

Yes, it rewards those who go with the dice rolls but that ONLY applies when it's PC vs PC. NPC vs PC is still PC's choice without favor and obviously PC vs NPC works differently.

It's a way to reflect "This guy is REALLY smooth" without negating player agency. Definite not suitable for every game but I think it's a good concept.

In a group of equal role players... who wouldn't get super bored super quickly playing someone THAT bland?

AMFV
2016-06-27, 02:56 PM
Con-men are a good point of reference. One of the things about con men is that they are good at picking out prey - people whose greed is likely to overcome their common sense.

Really, for social type rolls to "work", there has to be something that the target *wants*.

Well Ad-men and Con-men convince you that you "want' something even if you didn't before. Politicians sell you things that you previously didn't know you needed sold. It's certainly possible to do that.

KillianHawkeye
2016-06-27, 03:27 PM
It doesn't cause them to believe a certain way beyond their control. It can give no indication of falsehood and every indication of sincerity and/or legal and factual accuracy, but it can't force them to agree with me / rule in my favor. All that the greatest legal argument in the history of law (not that I'm ever going to make the best legal argument in the history of law, but hypothetically speaking) can get me is the best possible chance I can get that they'll do so. That best chance might still be zero.

This is why I personally prefer to present social checks as giving information rather than mechanically requiring belief. For example, a successful Deception check would mean body language, facial expression, attitude, tone of voice, etc. don't betray any detectable indication of deliberate falsehood or ulterior motive. Thus, disbelieving it is still possible, but is the result of either having other information or irrationality of some kind, or some combination thereof.

Yeah, I agree with this. Normally, when I am the DM, the best I will say (whether it's for someone checking against an actual honest person or failing against a skilled liar) is that they seem to be telling the truth.

For anyone who has seen the movie Pitch Black, that "seem to be" should carry the same weight as when Vin Diesel's character Riddick tells the others that the way ahead "looks clear."
Someone then proceeds ahead and immediately gets eaten by ravenous monsters.
Another character says "I thought you said it was clear!"
Riddick replies "I said it looks clear."

kyoryu
2016-06-27, 04:36 PM
Well Ad-men and Con-men convince you that you "want' something even if you didn't before. Politicians sell you things that you previously didn't know you needed sold. It's certainly possible to do that.

And the way that they do so is typically by appealing to well-known, general human needs - attention, love, fear, etc. They also typically don't ask for much - marking off a box on a ballot is fairly low cost.

themaque
2016-06-27, 04:47 PM
Best Charisma based character I can think of for a great example is Thank You For Smoking. That guy is smoother that greased glass. But he knew HOW to talk people into things, and even showed some people you CAN'T talk around, but you can make them look foolish to everyone else.

So it is very much hypnotism. You can get people to go along with it only so far as they are willing to be lead along. You can trick them into going further than they may want, but there will be a line.

That's where magic comes into play.

And in an RPG as a player, I control the spirit of my character, as previously described, and dictate where the line is drawn. Some people will take advantage of that but some people will take any advantage they can.

Segev
2016-06-27, 06:01 PM
What you're giving me is demonstrations that it's possible to write social mechanics, but not compelling reasons why you should.You're moving the goalposts. I will be generous and assume it is not deliberate. I have repeatedly spelled out why they should exist. To wit: Timid Tina should be able to play Bardicus Jones the Suave every bit as much as Tiny Tim can play Barbarian Biff the Buff. Just like Tim uses mechanics to determine if Biff can do something physical of which Tim is utterly incapable, Tina uses mechanics to determine if Jones can do something social of which she is utterly incapable.

To this, the most common retort (which I believe you have given, as well, though I could be mistaken) has been, "But the game shouldn't do that, because mechanics for social interaction will feel fake!" I've replied by providing broad strokes on how that can be avoided by having social mechanics use social tactics, the way combat mechanics use combat tactics.

To this you've objected by making a ludicrous straw man (which, again, I'll generously assume you honestly believe I and others are defending) saying that using tactics in mechanics will mean you're playing a combat minigame with figurines and movement around a board and calling moves and attacks by funky names, creating a stilted experience at best.

At this point, I replied with the post on how social tactics work and would look, explaining how your straw man is, in fact, a straw man and that nobody is defending it.

You replied with the quote above, which is, in fact, moving the goal posts. "Why should you have social mechanics?" "For the same reason you have combat and physical mechanics: so people bad at socializing can play characters good at it." "But you can't do that, because social mechanics are basically mind control and totally unengaging." "Nonsense; you just have to give them more depth and thought than most systems do. You can make them every bit as engaging as the combat subsystems of most games, and every bit as sensible. It just takes some work because it doesn't have as rich a history on which to draw, in terms of mechanics technology." "You mean you want to move people around a board and call your attacks 'persuasions' and hit points 'willpower' or something?" "No, I want to model social tactics on the same level of detail, not in the same fashion, as physical tactics." "Yeah, okay, you've shown you CAN, but why should you?"

Circular arguing and moving the goal posts 101.


No, no, no, Timid Tina's issue was that she wasn't convincing. If Bland Betty wants to play a social character where they describe the end state without the intervening steps / without explaining what they do to get there... hmmm... I have several issues.Re-read what I wrote. I expressly called out that what you describe below is uninspiring and not what I'm talking about.

What I went on to do is spell out how the "social tactics" would break it down to more believable steps.


And imagine if combat were handled that way. "You see a troll. "I kill it." "Ok, roll combat, DC..." ... "You see a dragon." "I subdue it, to make it do a favor for me for sparing it's life.""Ok, roll combat, DC..." ... "You are waylayed by bandits." "I wow then with my amazing swordsmanship, Zorro style, convincing them to give up this life of crime, and become my loyal henchmen." "Ok, roll combat, DC..." ... Sounds grossly unsatisfying to me.Indeed, that would be amazingly uninspiring, and any game where combat was meant to be an interesting and engaging way for people to show off their characters' prowess would fail if those were the mechanics.

Note how that is not how combat runs in most RPGs. Instead, you have actions like "I attack the troll with my sword; now I light a torch and use it to inflict fire damage so he can't regenerate. I flank the troll with my beast companion," rather than "I kill the troll."

Similarly, rather than "I make the innkeeper like me," you have "I try to find out why the innkeeper has a problem with me; now I try to address that specific issue by pointing out how I'm not like Millerson. I also try to endear myself by agreeing that Millerson sounds like a cad, and it's a pity his sweet daughter is being misled by such a jerk."

The mechanics are there to see how successful "I try to find out why the innkeeper has a problem with me," just as they're there to see how successful "I hit the troll with my sword" is.

Cluedrew
2016-06-27, 06:36 PM
This would be covered by PC abilities that only affect NPCs.Would it? I don't know a single game that prevents players attacking each other physically, so why should we prevent social attacks? Or social support for that matter. If being influenced by someone else prevents you from playing your character concept, what does the character being dead do?


This I think is a reasonable motivation, but then we need to decide what we're trying to do with the mechanics that is different from other mechanical subsystems for non-social things.We are trying to represent social (inter)actions as opposed two non-social (inter)actions. It sounds circular, and maybe it is, but I think the simple fact that what the rules are trying to represent is different is in and of itself a pretty significant difference.


That is to say, it's not enough to just have mechanics, there needs to be a concrete goal to design around.Yes it is true. I have said my more concrete goals as well. This is... an aside.

In other news: Wow a lot of stuff is happening in this thread all of a sudden.

NichG
2016-06-27, 07:17 PM
Segev, rather than reply in detail, which is just going to have us going in circles again, just assume I categorically reject any argument predicated on 'Timid Tina'. To me it's pure sophistry, and not a solid ground for motivating or designing a system.

kyoryu
2016-06-27, 08:01 PM
There's really two reasons to design a mechanical social system.

1) You want to allow socially awkward people to play socially competent characters
2) You think a mechanical system would be more interesting to game than an acting/fiat-based system.

If neither of these apply to you, then a mechanical social system is not a good idea for you.

If either of these apply to you, then a mechanical social system is a good idea for you.

Amphetryon
2016-06-27, 08:06 PM
Segev, rather than reply in detail, which is just going to have us going in circles again, just assume I categorically reject any argument predicated on 'Timid Tina'. To me it's pure sophistry, and not a solid ground for motivating or designing a system.

Are you claiming that the notion that a Player should wish to play a Character who excels in areas where the Player is personally bad is pure sophistry and not a solid ground for designing a system?

Cluedrew
2016-06-27, 09:18 PM
1) You want to allow socially awkward people to play socially competent characters
2) You think a mechanical system would be more interesting to game than an acting/fiat-based system.Defiantly number 1, and I am hopeful that number 2 will pan out. And I don't even reject the free-form solution, I've done a lot of completely free-form role-play and would be glad to go back if any of the groups I knew started that up. Personally however I feel that works better in the play-by-post or forum format because you have time to work out what your character does and so you can fake having more skill by putting in more time. Plus out-of-character chat, although that is an option in table-top/live role-play as well. I hope that mechanics can do some of the same in a more fast passed game. I have seen (and have myself) game ground to a halt when you try the more time option, it doesn't work as well there.

And since we have mentioned some reasons for adding social mechanics, I can think of a few reasons not to:
You lose the fine grained control of your character to the randomization of the dice and the approximations of the rules.
Bad social rules can brake visma...what-you-mi-call-it or immersion and detach you from the game.
And there are probably others, but those are the two that I notice (both in others arguments and when I play). The first is a trade off I am willing to make, to a certain point. The second is dependant on the rules being bad, so a good rule set should address it. That is just my opinion on the matter of course. Either one or another I missed could be a no-sell for someone else.

Quertus
2016-06-27, 10:57 PM
You're moving the goalposts. I will be generous and assume it is not deliberate. I have repeatedly spelled out why they should exist. To wit: Timid Tina should be able to play Bardicus Jones the Suave every bit as much as Tiny Tim can play Barbarian Biff the Buff. Just like Tim uses mechanics to determine if Biff can do something physical of which Tim is utterly incapable, Tina uses mechanics to determine if Jones can do something social of which she is utterly incapable.

To this, the most common retort (which I believe you have given, as well, though I could be mistaken) has been, "But the game shouldn't do that, because mechanics for social interaction will feel fake!" I've replied by providing broad strokes on how that can be avoided by having social mechanics use social tactics, the way combat mechanics use combat tactics.
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You replied with the quote above, which is, in fact, moving the goal posts. "Why should you have social mechanics?" "For the same reason you have combat and physical mechanics: so people bad at socializing can play characters good at it." "But you can't do that, because social mechanics are basically mind control and totally unengaging." "Nonsense; you just have to give them more depth and thought than most systems do. You can make them every bit as engaging as the combat subsystems of most games, and every bit as sensible. It just takes some work because it doesn't have as rich a history on which to draw, in terms of mechanics technology."
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Re-read what I wrote. I expressly called out that what you describe below is uninspiring and not what I'm talking about.

What I went on to do is spell out how the "social tactics" would break it down to more believable steps.

Similarly, rather than "I make the innkeeper like me," you have "I try to find out why the innkeeper has a problem with me; now I try to address that specific issue by pointing out how I'm not like Millerson. I also try to endear myself by agreeing that Millerson sounds like a cad, and it's a pity his sweet daughter is being misled by such a jerk."

The mechanics are there to see how successful "I try to find out why the innkeeper has a problem with me," just as they're there to see how successful "I hit the troll with my sword" is.


Segev, rather than reply in detail, which is just going to have us going in circles again, just assume I categorically reject any argument predicated on 'Timid Tina'. To me it's pure sophistry, and not a solid ground for motivating or designing a system.

Personally, I like the Timid Tina line of thought. I like the idea that anyone can be anything. But is it based on a flawed premise?

There are player skills, and there are character skills. In any game, there must be some skill that the player is using. In a war game, that skill may manifest in where to place minis, which unit to have attack which unit, which abilities to use when on whom, and which units to pick in the first place.

In such a game, it clearly helps for the player to have some grasp of strategy and tactics. But what if one of their units has a "master strategist" ability, which gives all nearby units +2 attack, and +2 defense / AC? Can it possibly make any sense to pick such a mini if the player is completely inept in such an area?

I contend that the answer is yes. The tactician implements the idiotic orders in the most effective way possible. If ordered to charge across an open field into enemy fire, he throws down smoke grenades, or yells really loud to startle his foes, or feints toward cover before his mad dash, or does one of any number of other things to improve the odds of success.

In fact, I'd say having that mini give bonuses would be less jarring than if the terrain gave no mechanical benefit, but was instead just eye candy.

However, in such a game, I don't see a mini having an ability that places all your minis in the optimal position. It just doesn't make sense to have a mini that plays the game for you.

So, what are the player skills in an rpg, and what does that mean for Timid Tina?

Oddly enough, I'm going to contend that the primary skill that the player uses in the role-playing portion of an rpg is role-playing - interpreting the world for and making decisions in accordance with your character's knowledge and personality. As such, I think Timid Tina should be fine to run her bard.

Also, note that, in a good group, Timid Tina can play a charismatic bard with no mechanics beyond, "I want to play a charismatic bard". So, having good social mechanics is just one theoretically possible way to achieve the end goal of enabling Timid Tina's dreams, not the only way.

Segev
2016-06-28, 12:00 AM
Segev, rather than reply in detail, which is just going to have us going in circles again, just assume I categorically reject any argument predicated on 'Timid Tina'. To me it's pure sophistry, and not a solid ground for motivating or designing a system.


Are you claiming that the notion that a Player should wish to play a Character who excels in areas where the Player is personally bad is pure sophistry and not a solid ground for designing a system?

As Amphetryon so eloquently puts it, what would you accept? Because "I categorically reject it because it's sophistry" doesn't actually explain what it is that is "sophistry" to you. You may as well have said "I categorically reject it because it's pastafarian." With no supporting comments to explain what it is you find sophistic about it, I can't begin to try to frame the point I am making in a way that you might deign to consider.

Which, of course, could be the goal, if you are rejecting it because you aren't interested in discussion but are instead simply denying that anybody might, as Amphetryon said, want to play a character with abilities they themselves do not have. Or at least, that if they want to, they shouldn't be allowed to, because it's "not convincing" or whatever.



Ultimately, the point is simple: mechanics exist to allow characters in the game to have objectively measurable capabilities in areas that their players are not able - for whatever reason - to perform on their characters' behalf. What's sophistic about that? Why should you be able to play a wizard who can cast spells, Amphetryon be able to play a barbarian who can fly into a rage and rip apart foes on the battlefield, but I can't play a bard who can convince a town that he would be a better mayor than the incumbant who is up-to-now running unopposed? (I can all but guarantee you that I, personally, lack the social and political acumen to pull off such a stunt. But I could probably look at a game system for convincing people to do something and make game-moves based on my bard's mechanical advantages and numbers to have a high likelihood of bringing such a thing about.)


Personally, I like the Timid Tina line of thought. I like the idea that anyone can be anything. But is it based on a flawed premise?

There are player skills, and there are character skills. In any game, there must be some skill that the player is using. In a war game, that skill may manifest in where to place minis, which unit to have attack which unit, which abilities to use when on whom, and which units to pick in the first place.

In such a game, it clearly helps for the player to have some grasp of strategy and tactics. But what if one of their units has a "master strategist" ability, which gives all nearby units +2 attack, and +2 defense / AC? Can it possibly make any sense to pick such a mini if the player is completely inept in such an area?

I contend that the answer is yes. The tactician implements the idiotic orders in the most effective way possible. If ordered to charge across an open field into enemy fire, he throws down smoke grenades, or yells really loud to startle his foes, or feints toward cover before his mad dash, or does one of any number of other things to improve the odds of success.

In fact, I'd say having that mini give bonuses would be less jarring than if the terrain gave no mechanical benefit, but was instead just eye candy.

However, in such a game, I don't see a mini having an ability that places all your minis in the optimal position. It just doesn't make sense to have a mini that plays the game for you.

So, what are the player skills in an rpg, and what does that mean for Timid Tina?I like to think I've answered this multiple times in this thread by now. The player skills are in making the choices about how to use the PC's capabilities.

In our Bardicus Jones and the Innkeeper example, Bardicus's player, Tina, recognizes that she has to figure out why her usual "opening salvo" of a first impressions roll fell so flat. She presents him as a suave and confident sort who knows others like him; normally, this is okay for most people and works out well with her high numbers in this area (just as Barbarian Biff's high numbers for combat make charging in and smashing things with his club usually work out well for him). But in this case, it fell flat, for much the same reason that Biff's clubbing would fall flat against a creature immune to bludgeoning damage: Jones's normal tactic is exactly wrong for this guy's state of mind.

Tina and her character don't know this, of course, so she makes a "read this guy" roll to get one (or more) answer(s) to her question(s) about his state of mind, motives, drives, or emotions. The answer(s) she gets from her (successful) use of this ability tells her that Bardicus reminds her of somebody the innkeeper is specifically and actively angry at. Tina hasn't a clue how to manipulate somebody, but she knows that she wants to find out more about this person and why the innkeeper's mad at him. Rolling an appropriate skill or two, she manages to get the innkeeper to snarl things that spell out, to her character's socially adept acumen, the narrative of his daughter running off with Millerson.

Tina then decides the best thing to do is to establish a rapport over slamming Millerson, trying to both separate Bardicus from Millerson in the innkeeper's mind, and to win the innkeeper over so he likes/trusts Bardicus.

In all of this, Tina has not had to have the social skills to pull off these stunts. Her "player skill" has entered in her ability to understand the rules of the game and what moves are available to her, and in making tactical choices about how to use them. She could have decided to do a number of different approaches. Maybe she would instead try to make use of the innkeeper's redirected anger at Bardicus to get the innkeeper to do something Bardicus wants done. That would be an entirely different way to take it, but it would use mechanics and existing game states regarding the innkeeper's mindset to pull it off, and would still be a socially adept thing to do. Maybe, upon learning the story of the daughter and Millerson, Bardicus decides that he wants to go woo the daughter, himself. It won't help with the innkeeper, but if Millerson is so much like Bardicus, surely the more suave and handsome Bardicus can win her over. Then he can try to get what he wants from her instead of the innkeeper (whatever it is).

So player skill in a well-designed (sub-)system lies in applying the rules and tools of that (sub-)system. Just as combat doesn't require Biff's player Tiny Tim to be able to engage in a full minute of boffer combat with weighted foam weapons while frothing and raging against the DM and his friends, but only requires Tim to know how to apply Biff's mechanics and to tactically make choices of what to do with the combat system's rules, social mechanics shouldn't require Tina to be able to persuade the DM that her delivery of actual dialogue on Bardicus Jones's behalf should win over the innkeeper. She just has to have the skill to understand and apply her advantages to the rules and to make moves in the game which help her advance her agenda via her PC's mechanical strengths.


Oddly enough, I'm going to contend that the primary skill that the player uses in the role-playing portion of an rpg is role-playing - interpreting the world for and making decisions in accordance with your character's knowledge and personality. As such, I think Timid Tina should be fine to run her bard.I think I understand what you're saying here, and if so, my post here (as detailed just above this quote block) should show why. That isn't quite how I define "role-playing," but it's a better definition than what seems to more commonly be used, which amounts to "acting."


Also, note that, in a good group, Timid Tina can play a charismatic bard with no mechanics beyond, "I want to play a charismatic bard". So, having good social mechanics is just one theoretically possible way to achieve the end goal of enabling Timid Tina's dreams, not the only way.

Eh, I disagree, in the sense that this is either trivially true (because "In a good group, Tiny Tim can play a powerful barbarian with no mechanics beyond, "I want to play a powerful barbarian." So, having good combat mechanics is just one theoretically possible way to achieve the end goal of enabling Tiny Tim's dreams, not the only way"), or it fails utterly because if it were universally true, there wouldn't need to be mechanics for anything. We'd just run free-form, because we have that hypothetical "good group" that renders mechanics for any given system or sub-system needless.

goto124
2016-06-28, 02:43 AM
But in this case, it fell flat, for much the same reason that Biff's clubbing would fall flat against a creature immune to bludgeoning damage: Jones's normal tactic is exactly wrong for this guy's state of mind.

That reminds me. A GM can't give out weapon type immunity to creatures nilly-willy. The creature has to meet guidelines for DC and the PCs' levels and such, to ensure encounters are level-appropriate. Even if the GM decides to place overpowered creatures, at least there's a way for the GM to know the creatures are overpowered in the first place.

Should there be a similar "setting the difficulty" DC system for social mechanics? Will it help avoid NPCs who are inexplicably immune or resistant to everything the PCs do? Is this a goal to strive for?

NichG
2016-06-28, 09:01 AM
As Amphetryon so eloquently puts it, what would you accept? Because "I categorically reject it because it's sophistry" doesn't actually explain what it is that is "sophistry" to you. You may as well have said "I categorically reject it because it's pastafarian." With no supporting comments to explain what it is you find sophistic about it, I can't begin to try to frame the point I am making in a way that you might deign to consider.

As you said, we were speaking in circles. I gave the arguments as to why I reject it earlier in the thread, and I haven't heard anything I accept as a refutation. So if you don't consider the responses I made earlier to be a refutation, the only way forward that isn't repetitive is to just acknowledge that this is going to be a static point of disagreement and find something which doesn't hinge on it on either side.

Segev
2016-06-28, 09:41 AM
That reminds me. A GM can't give out weapon type immunity to creatures nilly-willy. The creature has to meet guidelines for DC and the PCs' levels and such, to ensure encounters are level-appropriate. Even if the GM decides to place overpowered creatures, at least there's a way for the GM to know the creatures are overpowered in the first place.

Should there be a similar "setting the difficulty" DC system for social mechanics? Will it help avoid NPCs who are inexplicably immune or resistant to everything the PCs do? Is this a goal to strive for?Sure. It would depend heavily on how the system were designed, but it would be something along the lines of how you design a character's "hooks."

In our innkeeper's case, his "hooks" are related to his ire over his daughter running off with the miller's son. I will point out that even if our GM designed this specifically to thwart Bardicus's usual opening strategy, he didn't do so in a way that made it unrecoverable or irredeemable. Just as it's okay for the GM to decide that he wants to raise the challenge to Biff by making him have to do something other than just smash with a club (and chooses his monster accordingly).

Ideally, the social mechanics should have sufficient codification that it's a fairly clear decision as to whether a particular character is "immune" to a particular vector of social influence. And that "immunity" should only be absolute, at most, in the sense that you have to come at it in some way to break it down via a different vector, not in the sense that it can never, ever change. (Or maybe some things should be that inviolate. If you think there are aspects of personality and belief that nothing, ever, could change. That they take no effort nor defense on the part of the character to maintain.)


As you said, we were speaking in circles. I gave the arguments as to why I reject it earlier in the thread, and I haven't heard anything I accept as a refutation. So if you don't consider the responses I made earlier to be a refutation, the only way forward that isn't repetitive is to just acknowledge that this is going to be a static point of disagreement and find something which doesn't hinge on it on either side.

But you haven't.

You've said you reject it "because it's sophistry" most recently.

Earlier, you've said you reject it essentially because it is an unsolvable problem. My reply to that has been to demonstrate how it is solvable. You acknowledge it's solvable, then say that I haven't justified why it should be solved.

Perhaps you mean that your explanation for why you don't think it should be solved is that only people who can be socially adept should be allowed to play socially adept characters?

When faced with the analogous argument that only those able to fight effectively with foam weapons should be allowed to play skilled warriors, you said there's a difference in what is "believable" with describing a barbarian fighting vs. describing a socialite socializing.

But your arguments there allowed the barbarian's player to get away with describing what he's trying to do, while you insisted that the socialite's player has to actually act out what he's trying to do. Which brought us back to my explanation of how you can abstract the social interaction to the same degree you abstract the combat.



We're not arguing in circles. I've addressed each of your arguments. The only "circle" here is that you're continually retreating to already-addressed arguments, claiming they've not been addressed, and then rejecting the points being made without having any basis on which to do so that doesn't rely on retreating to other already-addressed concerns.

"I reject your argument because it doesn't support my position" isn't proof that people are arguing in circles with you.

Quertus
2016-06-28, 10:53 AM
There's really two reasons to design a mechanical social system.

1) You want to allow socially awkward people to play socially competent characters
2) You think a mechanical system would be more interesting to game than an acting/fiat-based system.

If neither of these apply to you, then a mechanical social system is not a good idea for you.

If either of these apply to you, then a mechanical social system is a good idea for you.

My response is obvious, right? :smallwink: Mechanics are not strictly necessary to allow socially awkward players to play social characters. But, yes, they would be nice.


I think I understand what you're saying here, and if so, my post here (as detailed just above this quote block) should show why. That isn't quite how I define "role-playing," but it's a better definition than what seems to more commonly be used, which amounts to "acting."



Eh, I disagree, in the sense that this is either trivially true (because "In a good group, Tiny Tim can play a powerful barbarian with no mechanics beyond, "I want to play a powerful barbarian." So, having good combat mechanics is just one theoretically possible way to achieve the end goal of enabling Tiny Tim's dreams, not the only way"), or it fails utterly because if it were universally true, there wouldn't need to be mechanics for anything. We'd just run free-form, because we have that hypothetical "good group" that renders mechanics for any given system or sub-system needless.

Role-playing <> acting. The techniques of method acting happen to be similar to role-playing; otherwise, they bear no more similarity than conflating "being warlike" and "a rifle". I am curious how you would define RP, though.

And... I think I'm too much of a grognard war gamer to be able to actually understand the concept of freeform combat. :smalltongue:

NichG
2016-06-28, 11:13 AM
But you haven't.

You've said you reject it "because it's sophistry" most recently.

It seems we can't actually move onto anything productive, so lets just bury this.

'Timid Tina' is a construction. She can be granted any property that the user thereof finds convenient in order to take a personal opinion and express it as if it belongs to some unseen majority, thus giving it artificial credibility in argumentation. Outside of this thread, the use of this type of argumentation is of the same form as 'please, won't somebody think of the children'. Create a false victim, such that saying 'this target does not have legitimacy' would create a negative emotional response, then grant that victim properties as desired such that you can block out sections of discussion due to the associated emotional charge.

The first time Timid Tina was used in this thread, I could see that as just a sort of tired reflexive rehashing of old argumentation. Its initial use was misplaced, given that usually this particular horse is trotted out in response to 'no, you can't roll diplomacy against my NPCs' type comments. However in this thread, the topic centered on rolls controlling a PC's character - thus, its a non-sequiteur. But that could just happen thoughtlessly, so I engaged, mistakenly assuming that its something that could be clarified.

However, when we went into detail about what exactly this Tina's experiences would be like, she kept being redefined so as to only be satisfied in very particular circumstances. 'Okay, what if you play a character who sees themselves as X rather than defining themselves as one who succeeds at X'. Well, Tina wouldn't be happy with just that, because its 'different' than she images. 'Okay, well, you don't need to control other PCs in order to control NPCs with rolls, why not show off that way'. Well, Tina wouldn't be happy with just that, because if she did happen to try to do the same thing to another PC and failed because they thought it was stupid, it would destroy her vision of her character (but now, Tina is choosing to act in particular ways intentionally to expose the illusion, because thats more convenient for the argumentation). 'Okay, well, people could just be cooperative and help Tina out' (not suggested by me, but by other posters) - well, Tina wouldn't be satisfied with that.

Since there's no Tina, I don't see a point in speculating about what this phantom would or would not be satisfied with in a game. There's nothing solid there to talk about. Engaging with it just triggers the emotional valence, but it doesn't actually move us anywhere.

Segev
2016-06-28, 12:13 PM
My response is obvious, right? :smallwink: Mechanics are not strictly necessary to allow socially awkward players to play social characters. But, yes, they would be nice.Mechanics are not strictly necessary for tactically inept players to play toy soldiers, either. But they're nice. If they weren't, we'd play D&D by just describing how we beat up the monsters with our figurines.


Role-playing <> acting. The techniques of method acting happen to be similar to role-playing; otherwise, they bear no more similarity than conflating "being warlike" and "a rifle". I am curious how you would define RP, though.Role-playing varies in definition if you want to get specific. In the context of an RPG, you can't divorce it from the idea of a "game."

Playing a game without role-playing is about making game-move choices, and the conceits about what they "represent" are less important than playing optimally. You're not RPing as a King when you play chess. You're moving pieces according to rules to win the game. If you were RPing, you might consider how your King feels about his subjects, and whether he's a cruel monster who sacrifices them for his own safety and power, or a caring monarch who protects them and values their individual lives. You might consider whether he values his black-square bishop more than his white-square one based on their relative advice, or loves his wife the Queen or not.

None of these come up.

A game of Chess designed to be an RPG would incorporate these kinds of role-important elements into its mechanics, to some extent. The Queen's ability to convince the enemy Knight not to slay her out of chivalry would become important. The bishops' religious advice would make a difference.

An RPG is a game where you play a role, so those considerations are important, but the "game" aspect makes that role have rules and mechanics you can use to model how that role plays out. It empowers you to play that role better than you could extemporaneously act it out, personally, by giving you game-moves which relate to your role. That's what makes it a "role-playing game," as opposed to a "game" (wherein the role is irrelevant; the game-moves are just strategic waypoints on your way to victory) or "method acting a role" (wherein the only thing that matters is that you get as much into your character's head as possible and are able to convincingly portray somebody with the personality, traits, and capabilities of your character).


And... I think I'm too much of a grognard war gamer to be able to actually understand the concept of freeform combat. :smalltongue:In war-gaming terms, the analogous activity would be "playing toy soldiers." Get your figurines out and make it up without referring to stats or rules.


It seems we can't actually move onto anything productive, so lets just bury this.

'Timid Tina' is a construction. She can be granted any property that the user thereof finds convenient in order to take a personal opinion and express it as if it belongs to some unseen majority, thus giving it artificial credibility in argumentation. Outside of this thread, the use of this type of argumentation is of the same form as 'please, won't somebody think of the children'. Create a false victim, such that saying 'this target does not have legitimacy' would create a negative emotional response, then grant that victim properties as desired such that you can block out sections of discussion due to the associated emotional charge.Except that I've given her very specific traits: she is timid and unpersuasive. The only important thing about Timid Tina is that she is not skilled at the kinds of social activities Bardicus Jones is supposed to be.


The first time Timid Tina was used in this thread, I could see that as just a sort of tired reflexive rehashing of old argumentation. Its initial use was misplaced, given that usually this particular horse is trotted out in response to 'no, you can't roll diplomacy against my NPCs' type comments. However in this thread, the topic centered on rolls controlling a PC's character - thus, its a non-sequiteur. But that could just happen thoughtlessly, so I engaged, mistakenly assuming that its something that could be clarified.I have no idea what you're getting at, here. I "trotted out" this example precisely because it matters here: you asked why mechanics were necessary. I pointed out that they exist to allow people who do not have the capabilities their characters do to be able to have their characters do things successfully.

"Nonmagical Norm" can't cast spells, because he's a real person IRL who isn't trained in any sort of functional magic (and I won't get into whether it even exists or not; I think we can all agree that Norm, a real person IRL, can't wave his hands and chant some words with nothing but sulfur and guano on his person and hurl a fireball). But "Magical Mel the Magician," his character, can. Game mechanics provide rules that let him do so.

"Timid Tina" can't convince you that Bardicus Jones should not make the innkeeper angry. She just doesn't know how. Any "acting" she does to try to come up with the arguments, the persuasions, or whatever will fall flat to you. That is the sole important trait of Tina. Maybe you can come up with what she SHOULD have said to make it happen. But she can't. Maybe you can't see what it might be. But you also can't see how Mel can hurl fireballs, even though in game he can. But Bardicus Jones can convince the innkeeper that he shouldn't be angry at Bardicus Jones. That's what game mechanics are for.

That you can't accept "Bardicus Jones is able to persuade the Innkeeper to not direct his anger at Millerson at Bardicus," but you can accept "Mel can hurl fireballs" says more about you than anybody else. That you demand that Tina figure out how to do it without using game mechanics, that there be no need for mechanics to let the GM figure out if this time Jones figured out the right way to present it or not (because Jones is not perfect and doesn't always succeed, but is pretty good and thus doesn't usually fail), but that you're fine with mechanics that determine if Barbarian Biff successfully hit Mel's summoned fire elemental this time or not, reveals the hole in your argument. The flaw in your dichotomy.


That you're calling this a "tired construct" and dismissing it as unrelated to anything reveals that you're not actually engaging in this discussion.

You've yet to make a point I haven't addressed. If you think you have, by all means, reiterate it; we can discuss it. But "meh, your examples are contrived" is an invalid response when my examples expressly address the points you're raising.



However, when we went into detail about what exactly this Tina's experiences would be like, she kept being redefined so as to only be satisfied in very particular circumstances. 'Okay, what if you play a character who sees themselves as X rather than defining themselves as one who succeeds at X'. Well, Tina wouldn't be happy with just that, because its 'different' than she images.Um, what?

No, sir, you do not get to redefine Tina to be something other than what she's presented as, and then complain that others are shaping and molding her.

Tina wants to play Bardicus Jones, who is a capable socialite. This was established at the inception of the example. To say, "Well, no, Jones just SEES himself as a capable socialite" is to effectively say, "Sorry, Biff just SEES himself as strong and mighty. He actually can't hit anybody with his sword and couldn't kill a goblin if his life depended on it."

Sure, you can design a game that says that, but is that REALLY the game you think everybody should have to play? Remember, you're not just saying, "I don't want social mechanics." You're saying, "They're not necessary and you're creating something pointless and badly designed if you even try." You ARE claiming that it can't be done, or shouldn't be done (and you shift which you're saying depending on whether somebody just refuted one or the other).



'Okay, well, you don't need to control other PCs in order to control NPCs with rolls, why not show off that way'. Well, Tina wouldn't be happy with just that, because if she did happen to try to do the same thing to another PC and failed because they thought it was stupid, it would destroy her vision of her character (but now, Tina is choosing to act in particular ways intentionally to expose the illusion, because thats more convenient for the argumentation).Again, not warping Tina. That you don't want to accept that people want the rules to be the rules to be the rules, that you don't want to accept that Barbarian Biff should be able to determine if he can win a tug-of-war with Magical Mel just as he can with that NPC canine over there, is not anybody changing the rules on you. They're addressing your point.

"I don't like your answer" doesn't make the point unaddressed. You actually have to refute the point, show why it is bad. Otherwise, you don't get to say "Tina shouldn't be accommodated." All you're really doing is saying that you don't like Tina having the ability to play a competent socialite, and that therefore there shouldn't be any effort put into making it so.


'Okay, well, people could just be cooperative and help Tina out' (not suggested by me, but by other posters) - well, Tina wouldn't be satisfied with that.Nonsense. The response to that is that people who WANT TO HELP HER OUT will benefit from the mechanics. The mechanics will help them gauge with at least some objectivity how well Bardicus Jones is doing. It lets them divorce Bardicus Jones's in-game eloquence from Timid Tina's out-of-game lack of panache.

Tina might stutter and blush her way through explaining what she wants Bardicus Jones to do. It may therefore come off to even those who want to help her as something...unconvincing. And if there's convincing going on, they DO have to decide if their characters' opinions are changed or not.

"People will just help her out" is as useless as "people will just help Biff out." If Solid Stan the Immovable Man and Barbarian Biff are together in the party, how does Stan decide if he's going to "sell" Biff's incredible strength when Biff tries to push him out of the way? Does he always no-sell, or always sell? The moment you say "well, he should sometimes..." then you've acknowledged a use for mechanics: they tell you when Biff moves Stan, and when Stan is unmoved.

Likewise, mechanics help those players who want to help Tina out know just how far to go in "selling" Bardicus's suavity.

This is something Iv'e said before, and to which you've never responded except to say "I reject your argument because Timid Tina is involved."


Since there's no Tina, I don't see a point in speculating about what this phantom would or would not be satisfied with in a game. There's nothing solid there to talk about. Engaging with it just triggers the emotional valence, but it doesn't actually move us anywhere.
This is actually sophistry, for the record. There are definitely people who cannot be as socially smooth as the characters they want to play.

I have said that I, myself, appreciate mechanics to let me know just how well another PC is doing at a particular thing; it helps me judge how my character reacts or "sells" the other PC's success. So there's one example that is a real person who benefits from something you said isn't needed.

I am not particularly emotionally persuasive, and have a hard time combatting emotional clinging to what I perceive as irrational positions. I will try, but I am rarely successful, because I don't have the talents and skills to erode the emotional links and build new ones. But there are real people who absolutely can. If I wanted to play such a character, I need mechanics that operate in ways I CAN understand to make them happen.

So let's replace "Timid Tina" with "Segev," if that helps.

Segev is not timid, admittedly, but he's highly unpersuasive when it comes to any sort of interpersonal interaction. He doesn't make friends easily, because he's socially awkward (imagine that; a gamer who's socially awkward). But he wants to play Bardicus Jones, who can walk into a room and have most women want him and most men want to be him. He can be nearly anybody's best friend within minutes.

Now, let's say that there's an exact copy of me, playing a PC Bardicus wants to befriend. Segev II, we'll call him, appreciates rules that help him see just how well Bardicus's introduction goes over with Segev II's PC.

Segev I (Bardicus's player) really can't convince a GM that Bardicus should be able to befriend that innkeeper, for the reasons the GM outlines regarding Millerson running off with the innkeeper's daughter. Segev I can, however, make the statement, "Well, to change his opinion, I'll first divorce myself in his mind from Millerson." If Segev I had to actually give that speech, it would be highly unpersuasive. It would be stilted, filled with way too much direct logic about fairness in giving people a chance and pointing out differences. What I've seen of successful manipulations of this sort are far more subtle. I can recognize them, sometimes, but don't ask me to write them. I can't.

Bardicus, however, can engage in them. That's why he has high numbers in the appropriate skills, and abilities and features that help him out. Engaging the mechanics for such a persuasion, thus, Segev I invokes the rules and maybe makes a roll to see if Bardicus's words (which are far more well-chosen than Segev I's would be) were sufficiently well-chosen to achieve that goal.


There. We've removed this hypothetical person standing in for all players who, like me, couldn't persuade an unsympathetic jury to let him avoid prison no matter how much he had evidence on his side that he's innocent. Who couldn't MAKE them sympathetic. Now we've got me. I'm not skilled at this. Are you saying I shouldn't have mechanics to support my ability to play Bardicus, if I want to? That I shouldn't be allowed to play him, but that the best I should expect is that I am allowed to play a self-delusional oaf who THINKs he's all that but is actually a worthless, loathesome, unappealing slug of a character that everybody hates?

NichG
2016-06-28, 12:22 PM
That you're calling this a "tired construct" and dismissing it as unrelated to anything reveals that you're not actually engaging in this discussion.

Yes, it is currently my express intent to disengage from this angle of the discussion. I don't feel that productive communication is going on at this point. Whether the reason for that is an honest misunderstanding, an unaddressable axiomatic difference, or actual malice, I don't know. It's feeling more and more like malice to me. Even if that's not true, that impression is poisonous to actually coming to any kind of mutual understanding on this point - thus, why I am trying to disengage.

Actually, lets just call this my last post in this thread.

Thrudd
2016-06-28, 01:46 PM
Here is a question I think most people have not really been addressing regarding the topic:

What is the "big picture" of the game where PC's are either affected/controlled or not by social rules?

For people that believe mechanical social control/manipulation of PC's is a good idea (either by the GM/NPC's, other PC's, or both), what do you perceive as the objective or purpose of the game that this mechanic would exist in? What player skill is expected/tested in your game?

Likewise, if you believe there should not be social control of PC's in the game, what do you perceive is the game objective? What skills are required of the players?


For both, what are your preferred game systems to meet the objectives stated? Do your systems lack anything or have mechanics that actively work against the objective that the game otherwise proclaims to have?

Of course, each of us may play more than one game with more than one purpose (I would think this is the case for most people). When I run D&D (B/X 1e OSR), specifically, the game objective in general is

a.) using strategy and tactics to keep a character alive to higher levels.
b.) make decisions to lead a character toward some long term goals, such as becoming rulers, warlords, immortals, gang bosses, etc., which will make a permanent change/addition to the setting (at which point a new campaign could be started with level 1 characters)

In pursuit of these objectives, the social element of the game mostly involves players negotiating with NPCs in order to avoid fights, ask for help, or get information.
To this end, characters have charisma that can modify NPC's reactions to them, so a character with high charisma can be more convincing than a player that might not know exactly what to say. I completely allow descriptive/third person role play (my character says something smooth and charming and then asks the prince for permission). First person character acting is welcome, of course, for anyone that can/likes to, but the game isn't about testing this ability so the character's charisma and reaction rolls still determine the outcome, so that it is fair for players that aren't good at this.

Players will debate and negotiate with each other regarding the best course of action, NPCs might make offers and requests and the players can decide how to respond. In no case would it be appropriate to alter the players decision making with rules, because their decision making is the main purpose of the game.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-28, 02:09 PM
In L5R, there's an entire "class" built almost entirely around social interaction and manipulation (the others being "wuxia samurai", "elemental priest", "trope-ish ninja", "mystical monk", and some minor stuff). All the others have techniques and prayer-spells and so on for combat and other crunchy bits.

This means that building an entire "class" around social manipulation almost requires a heavy set of social game mechanics, or you end up with a class designed around roleplaying... and anyone can freeform roleplay, they're just limited by their character and what they can talk the GM into having happen. Yeah.

Personally, I wonder if a game isn't just better off without a "social manipulation" class.

kyoryu
2016-06-28, 02:18 PM
My response is obvious, right? :smallwink: Mechanics are not strictly necessary to allow socially awkward players to play social characters. But, yes, they would be nice.

The length of this thread would suggest it's not all that obvious.

I think it's the "for you" part that is problematic.

Cluedrew
2016-06-28, 03:07 PM
Actually, lets just call this my last post in this thread.Too bad, although I find myself disagreeing with you I still find much of what you say insightful. Including the bit about the direction of influence which to paraphrase "why do we need to worry about what players can influence when we are taking about what can influence a player character".

My reply to that is mechanics. Consider 4 directions of inter-character influence (social, physical or what-have you):
PC->NPC
NPC->PC
PC->PC
NPC->NPC
Now we can have a different mechanic for each of these (you can easily throw out and hand wave number 4 as well) to try and get exactly what you want. In fact to have separate rules for 1 & 2 is the bases for most "player-facing" games. But this does a couple of bad things: first it increases the amount of rules that one has to know (a problem that can be alleviated by reusing the same base); and second it opens up the opportunity for dissonance. PC/NPC is usually a meta-game distinction with other differences between them being coincidental. So why should the mechanics which represent the "reality" in game change when the reality being represented hasn't?

In my experience the answer to that is to make it feel like it hasn't, you are just focusing on a different side of the story. And maybe that is enough to make a set of fun social mechanics. In fact we may be committing the playgrounder's fallacy in assuming a D&D style symmetric set up. But even that is a set of social mechanics that goes beyond free-form role-play.

On Timid Tina: I also see a lot of myself in Timid Tina. She may be a construction, but I believe she is a very reasonable representation of a socially awkward gamer who wants to play some kind of charismatic.

Segev
2016-06-28, 03:09 PM
Here is a question I think most people have not really been addressing regarding the topic:

What is the "big picture" of the game where PC's are either affected/controlled or not by social rules?

For people that believe mechanical social control/manipulation of PC's is a good idea (either by the GM/NPC's, other PC's, or both), what do you perceive as the objective or purpose of the game that this mechanic would exist in? What player skill is expected/tested in your game?

Likewise, if you believe there should not be social control of PC's in the game, what do you perceive is the game objective? What skills are required of the players?
I thought I explicitly answered this earlier.

The "player skill" is tactical decision-making. Not in a "combat" sense, but in the sense of making choices about WHAT to do, without having to have the personal skills and talents to successfully execute it.

If you like sports metaphors, think of it like being the coach to an athlete. The coach can't pull off the physical stunts, but he can tell the athlete which stunts to execute in order to win the competition.

If you prefer naval ones, the captain of the ship may not be the best navigator, the best pilot, or the best gunner. He probably isn't the best engineer. But he can tell the engineer what to prioritize, he can tell the pilot WHERE to go, and he can tell the gunner who to shoot and even when to begin.

The player in such a game, then, is dictating WHAT the character does and tries to accomplish. The mechanics determine how well he does at these things.


For both, what are your preferred game systems to meet the objectives stated? Do your systems lack anything or have mechanics that actively work against the objective that the game otherwise proclaims to have?Exalted 3e has the best social mechanics I've seen, though it still leaves a lot to be desired. We have a long way to go before social mechanics are as well-designed as combat mechanics tend to be. I've spoken here in broad strokes about the kinds of things one might design for, what principles one might design around.

The goal is to design a system which gives the player tactical options to make choices about his character's actions in the system. Done well, it will also make the choices to go along with or oppose these influences reflected in the gameplay choices of the players of the characters in question.

But if it was so easy I could write the subsystem out in detail in this thread, it would already be done. Or at least, I'd have done it and tried to market it, myself!

Thrudd
2016-06-28, 04:34 PM
I thought I explicitly answered this earlier.

The "player skill" is tactical decision-making. Not in a "combat" sense, but in the sense of making choices about WHAT to do, without having to have the personal skills and talents to successfully execute it.

If you like sports metaphors, think of it like being the coach to an athlete. The coach can't pull off the physical stunts, but he can tell the athlete which stunts to execute in order to win the competition.

If you prefer naval ones, the captain of the ship may not be the best navigator, the best pilot, or the best gunner. He probably isn't the best engineer. But he can tell the engineer what to prioritize, he can tell the pilot WHERE to go, and he can tell the gunner who to shoot and even when to begin.

The player in such a game, then, is dictating WHAT the character does and tries to accomplish. The mechanics determine how well he does at these things.

That sounds exactly like what I described, a mechanic that lets characters do things the players might not be able to, excepting the realm of skills the players are being tested on.

Manipulation/control of PCs, the question at issue, hasn't been directly addressed, however.

Would not allowing the GM/NPCs to manipulate PCs, altering or even determining the player's choice of WHAT to attempt, be counter productive to the game you just described? Or is the onus on the GM not to use the rules system in a way that will negate player choices, even though there is nothing technically stopping them from doing so? ie, Even though the GM could have an NPC mechanically manipulate a PC, they shouldn't, unless it isn't going to affect anything important.

Segev
2016-06-28, 10:00 PM
That sounds exactly like what I described, a mechanic that lets characters do things the players might not be able to, excepting the realm of skills the players are being tested on.

Manipulation/control of PCs, the question at issue, hasn't been directly addressed, however.

Would not allowing the GM/NPCs to manipulate PCs, altering or even determining the player's choice of WHAT to attempt, be counter productive to the game you just described? Or is the onus on the GM not to use the rules system in a way that will negate player choices, even though there is nothing technically stopping them from doing so? ie, Even though the GM could have an NPC mechanically manipulate a PC, they shouldn't, unless it isn't going to affect anything important.

Does not allowing the GM/NPCs to attack the PCs, restricting or even ending the player's ability to do things in the game, become counter productive to the game?

A big reason I emphasize making the system work by providing the PLAYER with the same kind of torn choice that the CHARACTER is experiencing is to keep it in the player's control, as much as it is the PC's. Sure, the player won't be seduced by the DM (or at least, I hope not under most circumstances; that would be uncomfortable), but the player can feel torn between two choices of moves based on the actions of the NPC seducing his character. One move would be "giving in" and acting on the seduction. The other would be resisting. And the consequences of giving in should be measurably balanced against those of resisting (as should the rewards), from the PLAYER'S perspective, so that it keeps him on the same page as his character.

That way you don't have the system saying, "Sorry, even though you don't want your PC to make the risky move of sleeping with the seductress, he does anyway." Instead, the system is modelling the temptation your PC is experiencing in a way that you as a player find turning down this opportunity to be costly enough that the risk may be worth it. Or giving in may be rewarding enough that the risk may be worth it.

goto124
2016-06-29, 01:27 AM
Does not allowing the GM/NPCs to attack the PCs, restricting or even ending the player's ability to do things in the game, become counter productive to the game?

That way you don't have the system saying, "Sorry, even though you don't want your PC to make the risky move of sleeping with the seductress, he does anyway." Instead, the system is modelling the temptation your PC is experiencing in a way that you as a player find turning down this opportunity to be costly enough that the risk may be worth it. Or giving in may be rewarding enough that the risk may be worth it.

This goes back to 'social mechanics should not consist entirely of Save Or Suck spells'. Imagine an entire combat system where everything is rocket tag!

Is it alright for a social system to be largely a refluffed combat system? How much need is there to make an entirely new system that doesn't resemble combat?

Earthwalker
2016-06-29, 04:55 AM
I am going to try to put forward a reason why in a game system that has social skills can be used on other players. Not sure how much success I will get. I do feel this is system dependant and in some systems I never would roll as a GM social skills on players or in fact have players use social skills on each other.

I am going to talk about Fate. In Fate your skills are your tools to gain narrative control. Now I feel within the system all skills should have equal value. They cost the same to buy and improve they should have the same value in game.

So you have a situation where PC! Is guarding a door. He is stood in front of the door and blocking it. PC2 wants to get past the door.

So PC2 will describe what he is trying to do to get past the door.

PC2 decides he is going to knock PC1 out of the way of the door and get through to the other side. This is handled by an opposed test on physique. PC1 wins and gets through the door.

Now what happens instead of a physical skill PC2 tries a social skill ?
For me it should still work all skills are of equal worth.

PC2 can try to lie his way through, he comes up with a good lie about how PC1 is needed somewhere else for an emergency. This times he rolls his deceive against PC1s empathy and scores a success. Now its up to PC1 what he does with this lie but no matter his choice he can’t take away PC2 victory so PC2 get through the door. Just like he used Physique.

Segev
2016-06-29, 07:09 AM
You certainly can try to use the same mechanical structure for social mechanics as physical combat. Exalted 2E even called it "social combat."

The trouble with that approach is two-fold:

1) Not every social challenge is as dichotomous as combat; you don't have "sides" in the same way, and the goal is actually USUALLY distinct. Framing it as combat frames it in a "I win/you lose" perspective, and makes the outcome seem far more hostile than it often should. It works out alright for actively debating and defeating somebody in an argument. It kind-of works if you view "persuading" somebody as taking over their mind. But for obvious reasons, that's not entirely desirable for most social-focused PCs. What you want is something which lets you model changing perspectives and leading people to the conclusions you want on their own.

2) The model framework for combat doesn't work for every challenge. Modelling climbing a wall as combat against the wall or against its height is a stretch. Modelling building or fixing a car as combat against the car's progress-towards-completion strains it still further. There are so many more elements that enter into certain activities than enter into combat, and things which combat involves which just don't apply elsewhere.

Summing up: "social combat" is almost always unsatisfying, and often leads to the counterintuitive suggestion that a proper response to "join debate" is "join battle." (i.e. "How dare you try to mind-control me with your words! HAVE AT YOU!)



So the mechanics for social interaction should probably be different in a number of ways. The most they should resemble combat might be where you try to pit your skill with words and persuasive action against somebody's stubbornness or devotion to an emotional state or idea, which amounts to a "to hit" roll. I'd probably avoid even making it a "to hit" and "damage" roll; instead, if you've got anything even remotely resembling "hit points" on the thing you're trying to change in somebody's mind, I'd combine this roll into one. And note that you're less playing with hit points that go from "full" to "zero," and more dealing with a scale that measures how strongly somebody feels about something, which means you can pile it as high as your ability to persuade and their ability to care will let you...and erode it to nothing and beyond as you build up devotion to the opposite concept.

Thinking further on such a model, there probably should be increasing difficulty to making somebody care "more" the more they already care, as well as to eroding it, and to making them change if they've changed their mind once already. Few people genuinely waffle in their beliefs without actually new facts coming into play. And even then, after swinging a few times, they tend to get cynical and decide to stick with their position even in the face of contrary evidence. For instance, "Bob is a traitor!" "No, he's our friend!" "But he's--" "--done something, AGAIN, that looks like a betrayal, but probably will turn out to have been for a good reason that helps us in the end."

Cluedrew
2016-06-29, 07:09 AM
I have yet another reason why it is productive to allow NPC's to attack and influence PC's socially. Challenge, the G in RPG calls for some degree of challenge and the ability to fail. Let us go back to the physical combat analogy. How would a tactical combat game play out if one side was impossible to hit? I don't think it would be nearly as challenging or fun. So you generally have to have some sort of incoming threat for the challenge part of the game. Not necessarily, there are other sorts of challenges that you can offer, but this is a broad enough group that I don't think many systems would be better of just ignoring it.

Amphetryon
2016-06-29, 07:27 AM
@Segev: Are you familiar with the Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard model of social combat? If so, how do you feel it does in modeling the sort of PC/NPC interactions you describe?

*Apologies if you've addressed this up-thread and I simply forgot.

Segev
2016-06-29, 08:30 AM
@Segev: Are you familiar with the Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard model of social combat? If so, how do you feel it does in modeling the sort of PC/NPC interactions you describe?

*Apologies if you've addressed this up-thread and I simply forgot.

I'm not. I haven't really looked at those games. What little I've heard makes it sound like they're relatively generic challenge-resolution systems with the same overall mechanics for climbing a wall, impersonating a castle servant, making soup for an imperial feast and then serving it, persuading the princess to sneak out on a date with you, or beating the tar out of her would-be kidnapper.

I could be entirely wrong, though.

Wonton
2016-06-29, 11:06 AM
It's probably been mentioned by a bunch of other people, but the way I do this is I say "he rolled a 25 Diplomacy, so his argument will influence your character", but I don't ever force them to decide one way or another. I would never just take away control from a player (and if I was playing, I'd be pissed if a DM took control away from me).

kyoryu
2016-06-29, 11:12 AM
I'm not. I haven't really looked at those games. What little I've heard makes it sound like they're relatively generic challenge-resolution systems with the same overall mechanics for climbing a wall, impersonating a castle servant, making soup for an imperial feast and then serving it, persuading the princess to sneak out on a date with you, or beating the tar out of her would-be kidnapper.

I could be entirely wrong, though.

That's fairly true of Fate, but less so for Burning Wheel. It has specific subsystems for fighting vs. talking vs....

Admittedly, they're based on a similar skeleton.

Even with Fate, while that's true, those systems are best thought of as pacing mechanics rather than simulations - they're mostly ways of saying "okay, so when do we say we're done with this?"


It's probably been mentioned by a bunch of other people, but the way I do this is I say "he rolled a 25 Diplomacy, so his argument will influence your character", but I don't ever force them to decide one way or another. I would never just take away control from a player (and if I was playing, I'd be pissed if a DM took control away from me).

I generally like systems that give soft influence on a character over hard control. "Okay, now I have influence on your character, so I can give you -x on any roll when you're actively going against what I want, and -y if you're just doing something unrelated." You can still choose to fight the control, but it's a battle.

Segev
2016-06-29, 11:20 AM
That's fairly true of Fate, but less so for Burning Wheel. It has specific subsystems for fighting vs. talking vs....

Admittedly, they're based on a similar skeleton.

Even with Fate, while that's true, those systems are best thought of as pacing mechanics rather than simulations - they're mostly ways of saying "okay, so when do we say we're done with this?"I've not really read FATE, but everything I've heard of it makes it sound like it's not for me. It's too rules-heavy for light and fluffy agree-to-give-and-take games, and its mechanics don't sound definite enough to serve for games where I want actual simulation and determination of my character's abilities.


I generally like systems that give soft influence on a character over hard control. "Okay, now I have influence on your character, so I can give you -x on any roll when you're actively going against what I want, and -y if you're just doing something unrelated." You can still choose to fight the control, but it's a battle.That's close to what I'm suggesting for how to model social influence, yeah. Though I think having bonuses you can hand out would be valuable, too.

kyoryu
2016-06-29, 11:25 AM
I've not really read FATE, but everything I've heard of it makes it sound like it's not for me. It's too rules-heavy for light and fluffy agree-to-give-and-take games, and its mechanics don't sound definite enough to serve for games where I want actual simulation and determination of my character's abilities.

It's actually pretty damn rules light.


That's close to what I'm suggesting for how to model social influence, yeah. Though I think having bonuses you can hand out would be valuable, too.

Absolutely.

Wonton
2016-06-29, 11:37 AM
That's fairly true of Fate, but less so for Burning Wheel. It has specific subsystems for fighting vs. talking vs....

Admittedly, they're based on a similar skeleton.

The Duel of Wits from Burning Wheel is an interesting mechanic for social conflict resolution, but honestly quite weird. It's just a copy of the combat system, but with "Attack" replaced with "Point", "Counterattack" replaced with "Rebuttal", etc. This mechanic works great for combat, where things are hectic, a single "action" takes about a second, so it makes sense to script 3-5 actions ahead of time, and see how they play out vs what your opponent scripted. In social conflicts, I found it super weird that you have to "script" your arguments. I could see that working in a court of law, where you do have to prepare evidence and arguments ahead of time, but for the average social conflict, I just found it too clunky.

AceOfFools
2016-06-29, 11:54 AM
Some of my favorite social attacks allow the creation of incentives rather than outright compulsions.

"His influence roll crushed your resistance roll. If you do what he wants you get 200xp. If you don't you lose 10 hp." It's harder to adapt to DnD because it's options for how to apply incentives aren't great, but the concept is really strong.

You CAN ignore succesful social influence, but either accept a mechanical penalty or forgo a tangible benefit for doing so.

The real problem is that rewards can strongly encourage players to have their characters bicker over every decision the party has to make...

kyoryu
2016-06-29, 12:02 PM
The Duel of Wits from Burning Wheel is an interesting mechanic for social conflict resolution, but honestly quite weird. It's just a copy of the combat system, but with "Attack" replaced with "Point", "Counterattack" replaced with "Rebuttal", etc.

It's not entirely a copy, actually. The decision matrix is a bit different. But the general skeleton - script three actions, the results are determined against the opponent's action - is the same.

Quertus
2016-06-29, 02:17 PM
@Segev: For the record, your idea of "social moves" and my idea of "roleplaying" seem approximately synonymous. :smalltongue:

The only difference I can see, at that step, is that you discuss a pre-scripted set of moves, where my idea of roleplaying involves dynamically-generated moves. I guess I've run under too many bad GMs who, when given a set of rules, if it wasn't explicitly called out in the rules, you couldn't do it. You know, "the 'dead' condition in 3.5 doesn't explicitly call out what it does, so it does nothing" level of inflexibility towards the written rules. So I shy away from making an explicit list of social moves, personally, but that's just a me thing. Otherwise, the experience is somewhere between "similar" and "identical".

And, since we've replaced "Timid Tina" with "Segev", and Segev had demonstrated the ability to invent these moves for his hypothetical scenarios, I'd say, for Segev, we're looking at closer to "identical". :smallwink:


The length of this thread would suggest it's not all that obvious.

I think it's the "for you" part that is problematic.

Sorry, I meant, "obvious that I will say this," not "obvious that I am right". :smallredface:

And... I suppose it's not easy "for me", but easy "with me"; or, rather, with the right group... of which my rollplay-first grognard wargamer self is nominally a member.


First person character acting is welcome, of course, for anyone that can/likes to, but the game isn't about testing this ability so the character's charisma and reaction rolls still determine the outcome, so that it is fair for players that aren't good at this.

Heartily agree with this bit. As to the rest, I've played a good many systems, but I have neither found a social system better than roleplaying, nor one I found particularly engaging. I subsequently tend not to remember enough about them to adequately respond to your line of inquiry.


I am going to try to put forward a reason why in a game system that has social skills can be used on other players. Not sure how much success I will get. I do feel this is system dependant and in some systems I never would roll as a GM social skills on players or in fact have players use social skills on each other.

I am going to talk about Fate. In Fate your skills are your tools to gain narrative control. Now I feel within the system all skills should have equal value. They cost the same to buy and improve they should have the same value in game.

So you have a situation where PC! Is guarding a door. He is stood in front of the door and blocking it. PC2 wants to get past the door.

So PC2 will describe what he is trying to do to get past the door.

PC2 decides he is going to knock PC1 out of the way of the door and get through to the other side. This is handled by an opposed test on physique. PC1 wins and gets through the door.

Now what happens instead of a physical skill PC2 tries a social skill ?
For me it should still work all skills are of equal worth.

PC2 can try to lie his way through, he comes up with a good lie about how PC1 is needed somewhere else for an emergency. This times he rolls his deceive against PC1s empathy and scores a success. Now its up to PC1 what he does with this lie but no matter his choice he can’t take away PC2 victory so PC2 get through the door. Just like he used Physique.

OK, it's not at all what I'm looking for in an RPG, but I think I have to agree: when you paint in such broad strokes, and ignore the internals of the character, that is a very workable system. As long as you're not trying to roleplay a character, but, rather, perform moves towards an objective (where said objective may be changed by the "social PvP" actions of others?), that is exactly how I'd want the system to be balanced.

---

On rolls controlling your character... so, in order to allow Timid Tina Segev to play a character more charismatic than the player... one needs to do something*.

The "somethings" presented so far (have I missed any?) are "roleplay", "rules encourage behavior", and "rules force behavior".

"rules force behavior" has received criticism on the grounds that taking away the player's only contribution to the game is bad form.

"rules encourage behavior"... I have personally kept a very critical eye to exactly what behaviors were being encouraged, but has anyone voiced any reason why such rules could be inherently bad?

"roleplay"... as it inexplicably seems to be my baby, I'll not bias this summary by commenting further.

Have I missed any other major points? I just watched "Finding Dory", and I'm feeling some kinship to the memory-impaired heroine right now. :smallredface:

* It has also been argued that nothing can be done, that Segev literally cannot play a character more charismatic than himself. Having seen it happen, having seen a dormouse successfully play a charismatic character, I reject this notion.

kyoryu
2016-06-29, 02:35 PM
"rules force behavior" has received criticism on the grounds that taking away the player's only contribution to the game is bad form.

Most games I'm familiar with that have such things generally are a kind of opt-in situation. You can't walk up to the king and social-skill your way into getting to marry his daughter if you're a broke peasant. He's got no reason to engage with you at all. You've got to set up a set of mutually-agreeable 'stakes' for the discussion to even take place. BW handles this quite well by forcing the winner to offer certain concessions to the loser - so the winner gets what they want, but they either get part of what they want instead of all of it, or the loser gets what they want.

This goes back to the con man - you've got to find someone that is greedy enough to engage in the first place.

Social rules that allow you to just walk up to someone and get them to do *anything* without any kind of reason why they'd even engage you are pretty bad and stupid.


"rules encourage behavior"... I have personally kept a very critical eye to exactly what behaviors were being encouraged, but has anyone voiced any reason why such rules could be inherently bad?

I think this goes with the 'soft control' type of mechanism - you either get some benefit if you do what the 'controller' wants, some penalty if you don't, or some combination of the above.