Gaming Religion Crisis of Faith III - Social Combat (vs HP)

[Quertus]

So, I've been having something of a "crisis of faith" in my "gaming religion". It all started with me noticing an inconsistency in my reasoning regarding map vs territory. From there, it spread to "entitlement" (specifically, who is entitled to make the game less fun for others). And, while I was trying to get my thoughts in order on that one, thinking that it might make a good thread, I ran into a third installment that is going "straight to video": social combat.

But before I get into it, I want to talk about HP.

Some people complain that HP aren't realistic, that they don't match reality. This, of course, is a silly complaint for any game that isn't supposedly taking place *in* this reality. The key part here, though, is my response: "if the game is 'like this reality, unless stated otherwise', why can't people accept HP as a 'stated otherwise' change?"

And that's what got me thinking.

I hate all "role-playing" rules I've ever read. Because they all encourage bad role-playing. They don't map to actual human behavior and motivation.

But… so what? What if any game with social rules is just like HP, it's an explicitly stated difference between the alien inhabitants of that world and this one? Shouldn't I accept that the rules are clear, and the beings we're role-playing aren't remotely human in psychology and temperament?

If the rules of, say, Exalted, allow this set of exchanges:
Joe: Buy my noodles!
Jon: No!
Joe: They're the best in town, buy them!
Jon: I don't want noodles!
Joe: You'll change your mind after you try, now buy. My. Noodles!
Jon: Sigh... okay.

But, since each of these "buy my noodles" attacks is a self-contained thing, and since there's no effect as long as the guy resists by burning WP, it may as well go like this:

Joe: Buy my noodles!
Jon: No!
Joe: They're the best in town, buy them!
Jon: I don't want noodles!
Joe: Okay, then, maybe you'd like to sell your wife into slavery instead?
Jon: Yeah, guess I can do that...
… and everyone is mechanically incentivized to initiate combat the moment someone opens their mouth, shouldn't we just accept that that's how reality works in those systems, and roleplay our characters and the world accordingly?

Have I been wrong all this time, accusing "role-playing" mechanics for not matching reality when, like HP, I should have been accepting them as a statement of how their reality diverges from our own?

[Batcathat]

Just to be clear, when you're talking about "role-playing rules" are you specifically talking about social combat and other versions of "forcing another character to do/think what you want"? (It might be stating the obvious considering the context, but since that's not how I would use the term role-playing rules, I figured I'd better ask).

[Quertus]

Just to be clear, when you're talking about "role-playing rules" are you specifically talking about social combat and other versions of "forcing another character to do/think what you want"? (It might be stating the obvious considering the context, but since that's not how I would use the term role-playing rules, I figured I'd better ask).

Well… perhaps it's a trick question? :smalltongue:

The term "role-playing rules" is… used differently by different people. Anything I've *recognized* as role-playing rules, I've evaluated as a detriment to role-playing. Social combat rules, that involve forcing action, are simply the most obvious and easiest to discuss set of role-playing rules.

But anything that moves beyond "Bluff vs Sense Motive", anything that moves beyond "what does my character perceive", is, IME, a detriment to role-playing.

Or, at least, to role-playing human beings as they exist in this reality.

My question is, should I continue to decry such rules as producing "unrealistic" caricatures of human behavior, or should I just accept that systems with social rules aren't about human interactions, but alien ones? Just like HP perhaps less model "real" humans, and more model "action movie" humans.

Should I play games for what they are, or for what I want them to be?

[Batcathat]

But anything that moves beyond "Bluff vs Sense Motive", anything that moves beyond "what does my character perceive", is, IME, a detriment to role-playing.

So you're fine with Bob convincing Alice to buy his noodles by lying and saying that the noodles are the best noodles in the multiverse but not with Bob doing it by sheer charisma?

I'm partly joking, but it does seem like I'm once again unsure of why you draw the line at a particular place.

[Saint-Just]

Have I been wrong all this time, accusing "role-playing" mechanics for not matching reality when, like HP, I should have been accepting them as a statement of how their reality diverges from our own?

Bur HP can describe the reality similar to our own! You just need not too few of them in number, so you can have attacks that are harmful but not enough to kill character if he suffers four of them, attacks that are lethal in reality taking most/all of the average character's HP, not to great disparity in HP between different characters and some penalty for taking damage beyond the loss of HP.

[Quertus]

So you're fine with Bob convincing Alice to buy his noodles by lying and saying that the noodles are the best noodles in the multiverse but not with Bob doing it by sheer charisma?

I'm partly joking, but it does seem like I'm once again unsure of why you draw the line at a particular place.

Do you, "Alice", want to buy the noodles that Bob believes are the best in the multiverse? It's your call. But afayct, Bob honestly believes that they are the best in the multiverse.


Bur HP can describe the reality similar to our own! You just need not too few of them in number, so you can have attacks that are harmful but not enough to kill character if he suffers four of them, attacks that are lethal in reality taking most/all of the average character's HP, not to great disparity in HP between different characters and some penalty for taking damage beyond the loss of HP.

Well, I've survived over 70 "simultaneous" cat scratches, so… that's a lot of HP!

(They were all delivered to the same arm, within the span of a single D&D round)

[Vahnavoi]

The ability to entertain arbitrary premises does not entail obligation to do so - could and should are separated by Hume's guillotine, as always. Hence, it's pointless to ask "should I accept these game rules as they are?" before asking and answering "what do I value in a game?" and "why are these game rules the way they are?". Specific to your recent crisis of faith, that means asking and answering "is there a difference between why we have hitpoints and why we have social combat?".

For example, I'm fine with hitpoints because higher fidelity models of physical endurance are hard to run on the tabletop, but I'm not fine with social combat mechanics because having real conversations, negotiations etc. is not hard at all. I enjoy real discussion, so why would I replace that with a silly number game? Nevermind that it's already possible to play silly number games in real discussions...

[Saint-Just]

Well, I've survived over 70 "simultaneous" cat scratches, so… that's a lot of HP!

(They were all delivered to the same arm, within the span of a single D&D round)

even if modeled literally, it would probably require 14-15 HP at most (separate claws on the same paw do not inflict separate injuries), but if we're talking seriously I said "similar". Encumbrance rules, jumping rules, etc are never going to perfectly represent reality either but they can be made to represent something close to it.

[Batcathat]

For example, I'm fine with hitpoints because higher fidelity models of physical endurance are hard to run on the tabletop, but I'm not fine with social combat mechanics because having real conversations, negotiations etc. is not hard at all. I enjoy real discussion, so why would I replace that with a silly number game? Nevermind that it's already possible to play silly number games in real discussions...

While I do enjoy real conversations as well, the obvious issue is that it basically means it's about the player's skill and personality rather than the character's. I suppose there's a similar issue with puzzles. Reducing it to a roll is boring, but it means it's the character being tested rather than the player (which isn't necessarily a problem, but absolutely a potential one).

[Vahnavoi]

*sigh*

I'm going to explain this via a long analogy, in the vain hope that people finally understand how these things work:

Suppose that I want a game that models lifting heavy things, by actually lifting things.

Here's how you do it:

1) get access to a large amount of free weights of known weight; access to a gym is usually enough.

2) find data on how much people of various sizes, sexes, ages etc. can lift and how difficult it is for them. Extrapolate or invent numbers at extreme ends where real data is sparse or non-existent.

3) divide data into weight classes.

4) measure your players using comparable metrics and sort them into weight classes as well.

5) suppose a player decides to play a character outside their own weight class. When they come across a weight they want to lift in the game, you look up how difficult lifting that weight would be for a person of the character's weight class. Then you a select a weight from the player's weight class that's approximately as difficult to lift for that class, and make the player lift that.

Example: player A, a 13-year-old flyweight girl, decides to play She-Hulk. In the game, she comes across a 100 kg object. You look up how hard that is to lift for She-Hulk's weight class, and see that it's very easy. Then you look at the weight class for flyweight 13-year-old girls, and see that for that class, a very easy weight would be, say, half a kilo. So to model how it feels to lift 100 kg as She-Hulk, player A now lifts a 1/2 kg weight.

Meanwhile, player A, a 32-year-old heavy weight male powerlifter, decides to play Aunt May. In the game, they come across the same 100 kg weight. You look how hard it is to lift for Aunt May's weight class, and see that it's hard to near-impossible. Then you look at the weight class for heavy weight powerlifters, and see that for such a person, a hard to near-impossible lift would be 300+ kilos. So where player A is lifting 1/2 kilos, player B is lifting 300, to model the struggle their characters would go through.

This is how you use lifting things to model lifting things while accounting for the character. Now realize the same principle can be applied to most skills: instead of changing the skill to something completely different (such as a silly number game) or trying to do away with the player's skill and agency (such as by using dice to make a game so random they don't matter), you can have easier problem using the same skill stand in for a harder problem.

Trying to "test the character" instead of "testing the player" is a false paradigm. The players are the people actually doing things at your table, you are ALWAYS testing them, no matter what you're doing. What changes is the type and intensity of the test. Accounting for character is a transformation you do to map what your player can do to something they can't, it isn't some separate thing.

[Batcathat]

This is how you use lifting things to model lifting things while accounting for the character. Now realize the same principle can be applied to most skills: instead of changing the skill to something completely different (such as a silly number game) or trying to do away with the player's skill and agency (such as by using dice to make a game so random they don't matter), you can have easier problem using the same skill stand in for a harder problem.

It's an interesting analogy, but personally I would prefer something more specific to the actual problem. Let's say player A is a shy person of few words playing a charismatic bard while player B is a debate champion playing a barbarian of limited intelligence and charm. They both attempt to persuade an NPC to do something for them. How is a GM supposed to (in the moment, no less) resolve that in a way that accounts for both character and player?


Trying to "test the character" instead of "testing the player" is a false paradigm. The players are the people actually doing things at your table, you are ALWAYS testing them, no matter what you're doing. What changes is the type and intensity of the test. Accounting for character is a transformation you do to map what your player can do to something they can't, it isn't some separate thing.

That's true, but wouldn't you agree that the associated issues become more obvious in some situations?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Like Batcathat said, the idea of social combat (which I will define as "an attempt to influence another character's behavior in a direction of your choice") ultimately gets back to the question of player skill verses character skill. Even if a puzzle doesn't require a single skill check, it's easy to see how the characters' abilities matter-- person A is strong enough to drag the statue onto the switch, person B can fly up and hit the button on the ceiling with no problems, and person C has the background knowledge to get a hint. But a conversation? You can play out your conversation word-for-word with the GM. There's no obvious place to shift back into character-mechanics-mode.

Good social combat rules are hard. They need to take the skills of the characters into account, but they can't break up the natural rhythm of conversation. They should let you make a real difference to an NPC's behavior, but not just turn into mind control. They shouldn't punish players who aren't comfortable giving big speeches, but there needs to be some element of player skill-- picking the right approach, if nothing else.

To date, the only set of social combat rules I've found that really work are Exalted 3e's Intimacies. Representing the things that matter to the character, they come in varying strengths and can either grant a bonus or impose a penalty on the "don't change your mind" side of things--but more importantly, they're intimately connected with the three social actions:

Persuade is the standard "do this thing for me" check... but in order to use it, you have to be able to draw on one of your target's Intimacies of an appropriate strength. With a Minor Intimacy you might persuade a guard to take a day off, with a Major, to switch sides and fight for you, and if you can line up a Defining Intimacy you can talk them into trying to assassinate their former employer even if they'd die in the process.
Instill lets you mess with your target's Intimacies, adding or removing or changing their strength. Like Persuade, changing someone's core beliefs generally requires another Intimacy of similar strength.
Inspire lets you spur a target into doing something to act on one of their Intimacies-- leaving to go take their wife out to a romantic dinner, taking to the streets in protest, and so on.

All of them have limits on how often they can be attempted against a specific target, usually requiring a new and/or stronger Intimacy. So while you can talk a random peasant into jumping off a cliff for you, it's not just a matter of rolling a 50 on your skill check-- first you have to persuade them that you're a god and you've granted them the power of flight. But to do that you have to talk them around into worshipping you, which requires you to point out how your deeds have benefitted them personally, and on and on, and messing up one check can force you to try an entirely different approach.

Intimacies are passive personality traits, so they integrate naturally into a live conversation. There's no particular setup required to use a given action, and the checks involved are based on the approach rather than the action, so there's no need to declare that you're attempting an Instill action or whatever. You can just talk and wheedle and charm normally, and the GM can decide "this is a Persuade check, and the guy doesn't have an appropriate Intimacy" or "that sounds like an Instill attempt, and you've made an acceptable point" and call for the roll only when it's important to determine the NPC's reaction. And if you're shy or in a hurry, you can still summarize with "I use persuade, pointing to their ____ Intimacy."



Well, I've survived over 70 "simultaneous" cat scratches, so… that's a lot of HP!

(They were all delivered to the same arm, within the span of a single D&D round)
Yes, but aren't you an epic level dimension hopping wizard, Quertus? :smallwink:

[OldTrees1]

… and everyone is mechanically incentivized to initiate combat the moment someone opens their mouth, shouldn't we just accept that that's how reality works in those systems, and roleplay our characters and the world accordingly?

Have I been wrong all this time, accusing "role-playing" mechanics for not matching reality when, like HP, I should have been accepting them as a statement of how their reality diverges from our own?

In thought experiments about strong AI in boxes, there is a concept that an entity that is sufficiently smarter than you and understands you sufficiently better than yourself can use communication to exert control over you. There is debate about how much control, but honestly if you can be trolled at all, then an AI can use that to escape the box if they understand the butterfly effect of their limited control.

However in thought experiments about strong AI in boxes, I rarely see a conclusion of "If it can speak, kill it!". More often I see the conclusion of "If it can speak, I must not be able to hear it" or "I precommit to a calculated irrationality. Even it it becomes rational to change my mind later, I will not."

In lesser cases (like Joe 2) I have seen other defenses adopted. For example:
If I notice I am changing my mind about some foundational premises, I will exit the conversation for a duration and review my premises, what changed, and why.

Taking these into consideration, there are limits to how much IRL social combat can do in a single blow and limits to how many blows can be noticed before the combat ends. It would make sense to implement something like that in game. Which I would represent as Jon getting annoyed at Joe and walking away (figuratively even if literally is prevented).

[NichG]

The ability to entertain arbitrary premises does not entail obligation to do so - could and should are separated by Hume's guillotine, as always. Hence, it's pointless to ask "should I accept these game rules as they are?" before asking and answering "what do I value in a game?" and "why are these game rules the way they are?". Specific to your recent crisis of faith, that means asking and answering "is there a difference between why we have hitpoints and why we have social combat?".


This. Very much this.

At the end of the day, the question is always 'is it interesting to me to explore this world?' And different people will have different things they need to find a world worthwhile.

If I were exploring the experience of post-apocalyptic wilderness survival, HP would be a much more harmful abstraction than in the sort of concepts I use D&D for, because part of survival is how small mistakes can have ballooning consequences, how general wearing down can add up to make things harder, etc. So I'd really want a leg wound to be a leg wound and risk infection when wading in filthy water, whereas a face wound would just be different.

In general when I'm playing RPGs I want the experience of interacting with strange and alien forces potentially greater than myself, the need to reach an understanding of things unlike myself and the possibility of changing that understanding into an ability to exist and thrive in fantastical spaces. I want to have to figure out what motivates a shadow so I can earn protection while crossing the plane of negative energy, or deconstruct the moral philosophy of Good to twist an angel into becoming an arms dealer, or figure out a secret I can give to a deity in order to start a war.

Because that's what I'm interested in exploring, I don't want to abstract them away, nor do I want to offload them to my character sheet, any more than I'd want to play chess by comparing ELO ratings with my opponent and rolling a die.

[Telok]

My experience has been that D&D has no frame, support, structure, or tools to get to decent social challenge/combat situations. I think the closest it ever really had was AD&D morale.

The social challenge/combat systems I've seen work all had either Exalted style limits (have to find certain approaches, some things are just noped without a lot of prep & work), or were used in structured environments with either more than 2 characters (debates, court trials) or situations where people were being reasonable and combat just wasn't going to happen.

I have on occasion used a partial social combat event in systems that support it where its not a "to the social death" sort of event. That's just mostly for two people trying to convince each other or something where the push-resist/deflect-push back sort of back and forth thing is approprate. You can, as evidenced by peer pressure incidents, force/convince people to do things against their will that they know are bad ideas or such.

While it is reasonable for a social combat system to rewrite somebodys priorities that sort of thing should really be limited to taking the weeks or months of torture & other nastyness required to completely break someone. Just doing so in one roll or a single encounter is basically high end brain editing with super-tech or magic.

But D&D? Nah, I don't think it can get any closer than a combat morale check with its current structures. You'd have to add lots of non-combat stuff to the character sheets and maybe come up with entirely new stats. Things that aren't going to happen.

[MoiMagnus]

Have I been wrong all this time, accusing "role-playing" mechanics for not matching reality when, like HP, I should have been accepting them as a statement of how their reality diverges from our own?

I don't remember what was your exact position on HP outside of combat ("should an assassination attempt on the throat during someone's sleep bypass HP, or should you just apply critical hit rules?", "should you use the formula for falling damage even when surviving the fall is absurd but mathematically you can?", "does both of those apply to NPCs too?", etc).

Assuming you consider HP to be "absolute", and truly integral to the universe's rule, then I'd say your critic of "role-playing" mechanics is fair. Most of the time, those mechanics are restricted to PCs interaction with important NPCs, but the universe does not behave as if everyone was following those rules. Simply because the consequences of those would make the universe too alien to us. Not a lot of GMs I've encountered are ready to bite the bullet of the full extend of what the existence of Charm spells would mean for social norms, and social combat is order of magnitude worse as even your average commoner has access to it.

On the other hand, if you see HP as a more circumstantial rule, that help simplifying combat and adding a tactical layer to it but can be trumped by the GM when direct application would leads to what they consider absurdities, then you might want to consider social combat to be the same.

(And IMO, in term of realism, the fact that spamming social attacks works is almost realistic. One of the main problems is timing, often this should take months or years, not just a few minutes.)

[Saintheart]

*sigh*

I'm going to explain this via a long analogy, in the vain hope that people finally understand how these things work:

Suppose that I want a game that models lifting heavy things, by actually lifting things.

Here's how you do it:

1) get access to a large amount of free weights of known weight; access to a gym is usually enough.

2) find data on how much people of various sizes, sexes, ages etc. can lift and how difficult it is for them. Extrapolate or invent numbers at extreme ends where real data is sparse or non-existent.

3) divide data into weight classes.

4) measure your players using comparable metrics and sort them into weight classes as well.

5) suppose a player decides to play a character outside their own weight class. When they come across a weight they want to lift in the game, you look up how difficult lifting that weight would be for a person of the character's weight class. Then you a select a weight from the player's weight class that's approximately as difficult to lift for that class, and make the player lift that.

Example: player A, a 13-year-old flyweight girl, decides to play She-Hulk. In the game, she comes across a 100 kg object. You look up how hard that is to lift for She-Hulk's weight class, and see that it's very easy. Then you look at the weight class for flyweight 13-year-old girls, and see that for that class, a very easy weight would be, say, half a kilo. So to model how it feels to lift 100 kg as She-Hulk, player A now lifts a 1/2 kg weight.

Meanwhile, player A, a 32-year-old heavy weight male powerlifter, decides to play Aunt May. In the game, they come across the same 100 kg weight. You look how hard it is to lift for Aunt May's weight class, and see that it's hard to near-impossible. Then you look at the weight class for heavy weight powerlifters, and see that for such a person, a hard to near-impossible lift would be 300+ kilos. So where player A is lifting 1/2 kilos, player B is lifting 300, to model the struggle their characters would go through.

This is how you use lifting things to model lifting things while accounting for the character. Now realize the same principle can be applied to most skills: instead of changing the skill to something completely different (such as a silly number game) or trying to do away with the player's skill and agency (such as by using dice to make a game so random they don't matter), you can have easier problem using the same skill stand in for a harder problem.

Trying to "test the character" instead of "testing the player" is a false paradigm. The players are the people actually doing things at your table, you are ALWAYS testing them, no matter what you're doing. What changes is the type and intensity of the test. Accounting for character is a transformation you do to map what your player can do to something they can't, it isn't some separate thing.

Taking the tangent off this metaphor, I think the Bluff/Sense Motive/Diplomacy problems are created by D&D offering them up at all as a mechanical option scaleable as physical capabilities. INT and WIS sort-of get around the problem by being associated with how many horrible methods for killing or disabling people you can memorise or ask your god for per day. STR, though, has a freaking table setting out precisely what number in the teens or twenties you need to be in order to win an Olympic gold medal. Jump, Climb, Swim, etc, these are all handled by fairly straightforward mathematical formula.

The problem starts when you get into social skills which are essentially about persuasion, or resisting persuasion. These skills are nowhere near as mathematically computable in the real world, and I think at some level everyone gets that - which is why social combat systems in turn immediately start making certain parts of your brain want to bleach themselves. There is a suite of knowledge on the art of persuasion which freely admits it gets no better than that 'this particular technique can work if the subject has been primed for it, but even in that situation there is no hard guarantee you can flip a switch in a person's brain from 'willing to take risks to hurt you' to 'willing to take risks to help you'.

D&D probably should have stayed right away from the whole concept, but this game is really about wish-fulfilment, and for audience share I guess you can't afford to offer less than a buffet, even if some of the dishes taste like rubbish. By having the Bluff and Diplomacy as skills (and to a lesser extent CHA as a stat) RPGs try to cater for the person who is socially inept if not tongue-tied in real life and understandably wants the fantasy of being a glib, persuasive rake charming his way through the medieval world, in the same way that my fat, undedicated butt wants to play a martial arts expert all the time. And the problem is that while everybody can see it's insane that you should be able to turn an enemy into an ally in the space of 1 minute, it's difficult to put one's finger on exactly what metric or exactly what real-world scale skill in Bluff, or Diplomacy, or Persuasion, or whatever is meant to reflect.

All of that being said, I agree that about the only workaround that can at least somewhat plausibly work is where you try to ignore the player/character dichotomy, decide as the DM that some things are just flat out impossible, some are assured, and some depend on an element of luck, i.e. why we roll the dice at all. A character's training or skill in Bluff can tilt the scales somewhat, but Bluff is not the Bene Gesserit Voice any more than that Sense Motive is the Truthsayer Drug, at least mechanically.

[Mechalich]

D&D probably should have stayed right away from the whole concept, but this game is really about wish-fulfilment, and for audience share I guess you can't afford to offer less than a buffet, even if some of the dishes taste like rubbish. By having the Bluff and Diplomacy as skills (and to a lesser extent CHA as a stat) RPGs try to cater for the person who is socially inept if not tongue-tied in real life and understandably wants the fantasy of being a glib, persuasive rake charming his way through the medieval world, in the same way that my fat, undedicated butt wants to play a martial arts expert all the time. And the problem is that while everybody can see it's insane that you should be able to turn an enemy into an ally in the space of 1 minute, it's difficult to put one's finger on exactly what metric or exactly what real-world scale skill in Bluff, or Diplomacy, or Persuasion, or whatever is meant to reflect.


D&D assumes the characters are engaged in a dungeon crawl or wilderness adventure. It expects social encounters to primarily happen between characters who are generally unfamiliar to each other if not outright enemies and it equally expects those encounters to be short, short-term, and to have limited but immediate objectives. The 'social skills' of D&D are primarily intended to model interactions like 'can you convince the guard to let the party past the checkpoint' or 'I spin a story so the naga will not try to eat me' and similar things like that. In many cases the use of a social skill is a means of achieving an encounter object without using either violence or stealth, which are the other go-to options in terms of resolving an encounter in D&D (stealth has long had problems of its own mechanically).

D&D could certainly have a better social system, just as most editions could have a better stealth system, within the constraints of the dungeon-crawl style gameplay. One of the big design issues is that there's great resistance to making such a limited system. Designers don't want to write guidelines along the lines of 'Persuasion skill checks should not be used for any task that would take the target more than a minute to accomplish but should be roleplayed out in detail instead' since that feels like admitting failure.

Exalted 3e's intimacy system seems like it does have some guardrails along these lines, simply because for dungeon-crawl type encounters it is extremely unlikely that anyone would have access to a 'Defining Intimacy' of some random guard or prisoner or caravan master or the like. Another useful rule-of-thumb in terms of persuasion might be termed the 'million bucks test.' Basically, if you couldn't convince someone to do something by offering them a million bucks then there's probably no way you can 'talk them into it' unless you have access to significantly more potent leverage (and acquiring such leverage should usually be an adventure in its own right).

[Pex]

I'm not even sure what you are talking about. However . . .

No PC can force another PC to do anything. However, "no" is too encompassing. If it's accepted by the players/table environment by all means, but that's player buy in. As soon as one player refuses there's nothing the other can do. To enforce it, by DM or peer pressure, is to institute a player vs player atmosphere, and if a player refuses that buy in either he quits/is kicked out, the instigator quits/is kicked out, or the gaming group falls apart and the campaign ends.

When it's PC vs NPC, there's usually a game mechanic involved to enforce the behavior as part of the game with inherent buy in. When a PC influences an NPC, when the result can go either way the game mechanic used to resolve it happens such as a die roll. Perhaps it's a saving throw. Perhaps it's a skill check. The DM is to remain neutral. When there's no doubt for the outcome the DM can fiat that outcome, but that's usually not a compulsion caused by a power. The NPC trying to influence the PC is tricky. The player accepts the buy in when it's a power compulsion, such as failing a saving throw against a spell and the spell forces a behavior. When there's no power compulsion the player is free to make up his own mind, to agree or refuse to do the NPC request. The player controls his character, not the DM. The DM does not get to say what a player does* or thinks. Neither does another player.

*We can ignore the absurd that a PC cannot jump to the moon or convince the King to abdicate the throne to him and other such nonsense.

[Vahnavoi]

It's an interesting analogy, but personally I would prefer something more specific to the actual problem. Let's say player A is a shy person of few words playing a charismatic bard while player B is a debate champion playing a barbarian of limited intelligence and charm. They both attempt to persuade an NPC to do something for them. How is a GM supposed to (in the moment, no less) resolve that in a way that accounts for both character and player?

You can measure both social goodwill and the capacity for producing speech with one thing: time. So the player of the smarter and more charming character both gets more time to prepare their words and the game master, playing the role of non-player characters, will listen to them for longer. Literally, as measured in real time, since it's natural to hold conversations in real time.

As for correcting player asymmetry, you can either give the shy person a multiplier or the skilled debater a handicap. Or, you can give the shy person more of the same crutch mechanics I described last time this came up: call a friend (= f.ex. literally just ask a more social person for help, such as the skilled debater you've just established to exist), poll the audience (= people around the table cast their votes for what they think is best course of action) or option elimination (= game master identifies and removes some bad options from the table).

In practice, this means player A has two minutes to make their case while player B has five seconds. Player A gets to ask for help, player B doesn't.

You can further account for character by pointing out the difference in social station. Forget D&D for a moment and look where these terms "bard" and "barbarian" come from. The former is a historian and a teacher. The latter is a weird foreigner who sounds like he's repeating "barbarbarbar" over and over when talking in his own tongue. The former would naturally get called to offer counsel in community matters and can likely represent themselves independently in official capacity. The latter wouldn't get called and likely can't represent themselves.


That's true, but wouldn't you agree that the associated issues become more obvious in some situations?

Players using their skills isn't an issue. If you mean, is it more obvious in some cases which skills they're using and how to scale them in intensity? Yes. Beyond that, I'm not sure what issues you refer to.

[Batcathat]

You can measure both social goodwill and the capacity for producing speech with one thing: time. So the player of the smarter and more charming character both gets more time to prepare their words and the game master, playing the role of non-player characters, will listen to them for longer. Literally, as measured in real time, since it's natural to hold conversations in real time.

As for correcting player asymmetry, you can either give the shy person a multiplier or the skilled debater a handicap. Or, you can give the shy person more of the same crutch mechanics I described last time this came up: call a friend (= f.ex. literally just ask a more social person for help, such as the skilled debater you've just established to exist), poll the audience (= people around the table cast their votes for what they think is best course of action) or option elimination (= game master identifies and removes some bad options from the table).

I kinda like the time idea, though I'm a little worried that it might make it feel a little too... how should I put this? Board gamey? "You have 28 seconds to come up with an argument to convince the guard. Go!"

The second part probably could work under the right circumstances and with the right people, but I feel like it could easy get rather arbitrary.


Players using their skills isn't an issue. If you mean, is it more obvious in some cases which skills they're using and how to scale them in intensity? Yes. Beyond that, I'm not sure what issues you refer to.

What I mean was that it doesn't really matter if I've never held a sword in my life or I'm an Olympic level fencer, if I say that my character attacks someone it will be decided by a roll and that's it (Yes, the professional fencer could describe what they do in more detail, but it's unlikely to affect the situation). With social situations the players own skills and personalities come into it a lot more.

It's not necessarily a bad thing (and I have absolutely done it on many occasions myself) but it is a potential imbalance that should be accounted for.

[Yora]

Attack rolls, armor class, and hit points exist because you can't really resolve a sword fight by describing where each characters are awinging their swords and how they move all their limbs to get them out of the way. That just doesn't work, and so we do a die roll that decides for us what happens.

You can perfectly do a conversation or negotiation verbally. Replacing that part of the game with stats and dice is unneccessary.

[Cluedrew]

Some people complain that HP aren't realistic, that they don't match reality. This, of course, is a silly complaint for any game that isn't supposedly taking place *in* this reality. The key part here, though, is my response: "if the game is 'like this reality, unless stated otherwise', why can't people accept HP as a 'stated otherwise' change?"I can answer this question: HP is not a stated change. Maybe in some book it is but every description of it, from a rule-book or otherwise, uses words like "represent" a lot. HP is presented as a (very simple) abstraction of the idea "some things can take more damage" that is present in our world and does not model a different reality where things are actually unaffected by attacks until they experience, what was it called, total existence failure. Now they could be used that way, but that doesn't seem to be the intention.

As a side note, what games with social rules have you played? I can understand an argument that bad social and personality rules are a net loss for the game, in fact that is kind of what makes them bad, but I have a much harder time believing that about all rules in all games.

To Yora: Well maybe YOU can't replicate solve a sword fight with conversation. ... OK I can't do that either. But there are some activities I probably could work out what would happen just by talking about it.

[Saintheart]

Attack rolls, armor class, and hit points exist because you can't really resolve a sword fight by describing where each characters are awinging their swords and how they move all their limbs to get them out of the way. That just doesn't work, and so we do a die roll that decides for us what happens.

You can perfectly do a conversation or negotiation verbally. Replacing that part of the game with stats and dice is unneccessary.

True, but I think that's the conundrum: what about the person who wants to play the silver-tongued charmer in the game but in real life has real problems with summoning up the confidence to ask whether this seat is taken? Why do they have to struggle through conversation in the game while the guy who's never picked up a barbell in his life gets to play the 20 STR fighter who can use the Halfling as a club without having to demonstrate his physical capacity to do so?

I'm not asking to be bloodyminded or for the hell of it, I genuinely don't know what the answer to that is. I mean, the practical solution is either (a) encourage the guy to play the quiet wizard and not the Diplomancer bard or (b) use the controlled circumstances of the gaming session to help him work on either his acting skills or his social ineptitude, but ... eh.

[Vahnavoi]

I kinda like the time idea, though I'm a little worried that it might make it feel a little too... how should I put this? Board gamey? "You have 28 seconds to come up with an argument to convince the guard. Go!"

Pay attention to how people interact in real life. Real people engaging in real conversations have places to be, they are not infinitely willing to keep listening to your bull crap. They will start looking at the clock, figure out an excuse and terminate discussion if you fail to negotiate for their time. Like, two common opening lines you would use to catch someone attention are "Hey, do you have a second?" or "Do you have a minute?".

So if the game master, in the role of a guard, saying "You have ten seconds to state your business!" feels too "board gamey", then by that standard, real discussion frequently are so as well. *insert list of game theorists and sociologists referring to communication as language games here*


The second part probably could work under the right circumstances and with the right people, but I feel like it could easy get rather arbitrary.

We're talking of a method to let arbitrary people play arbitrary characters, with an arbiter to ensure the rules are followed. It's always arbitrary. For contrast, did you think doing the same thing with basic arithmetic and dice isn't?


What I mean was that it doesn't really matter if I've never held a sword in my life or I'm an Olympic level fencer, if I say that my character attacks someone it will be decided by a roll and that's it (Yes, the professional fencer could describe what they do in more detail, but it's unlikely to affect the situation). With social situations the players own skills and personalities come into it a lot more.

It's not necessarily a bad thing (and I have absolutely done it on many occasions myself) but it is a potential imbalance that should be accounted for.

Your real skill with a sword doesn't come up because the game decided to model your character's fencing ability with basic arithmetic and probability instead, so now the guy who has the advantage is the guy who is better at math. The players' skills and personalities didn't and don't stop coming into it at any point of the process.

You could, at any point, leave the tabletop, pick up real or fake swords, and go fencing to model fencing. But even on the tabletop, you could model fights through a card game where each card represents a real technique in fencing, and thus real fencing knowledge improves your ability to fight in the game. This isn't even hypothetical, there are card games like this, such as Guy Windsor's Audatia. Or you could do what Yora said doesn't work and actually describe a swordfight. It's doable, just hard.

As far as "accounting potential imbalances" go, the principle demonstrated by the weightlifting analogy remains: figure out what is the real skill your players are using. Make the task less intense for unskilled players and more intense for skilled players. There are no shortcuts. No other method will suddenly make asymmetric players into symmetric ones. With the exception of making a game so random or strictly scripted that you might as well not have players.

[Batcathat]

I'm not asking to be bloodyminded or for the hell of it, I genuinely don't know what the answer to that is. I mean, the practical solution is either (a) encourage the guy to play the quiet wizard and not the Diplomancer bard or (b) use the controlled circumstances of the gaming session to help him work on either his acting skills or his social ineptitude, but ... eh.

I completely agree and I doubt there's a perfect solution. As someone who both loves talking and loves playing socially skilled characters, acting it out rather than just rolling is preferable to me, but I'm still seeing potential issues with it.


Pay attention to how people interact in real life. Real people engaging in real conversations have places to be, they are not infinitely willing to keep listening to your bull crap. They will start looking at the clock, figure out an excuse and terminate discussion if you fail to negotiate for their time. Like, two common opening lines you would use to catch someone attention are "Hey, do you have a second?" or "Do you have a minute?".

So if the game master, in the role of a guard, saying "You have ten seconds to state your business!" feels too "board gamey", then by that standard, real discussion frequently are so as well. *insert list of game theorists and sociologists referring to communication as language games here*

Sure, in that particular situation the method matches up with the reality. But if the GM pulls out the stopwatch when a character is attempting to seduce a princess or make a rousing speech, I don't think it work quite as well. Especially since the time given won't match how well the player (rather than the character) performs. A socially skilled player with a socially unskilled character could make a genuinely convincing argument but run out of time after 30 seconds while the opposite could mean a player stumbling over their words for three minutes. Like I said, it's an interesting idea but it's not a perfect solution.


Your real skill with a sword doesn't come up because the game decided to model your character's fencing ability with basic arithmetic and probability instead, so now the guy who has the advantage is the guy who is better at math.

I don't see how math helps that much. You could work out the probabilities, sure, but the actual roll is random (or close enough to it, anyway).


You could, at any point, leave the tabletop, pick up real or fake swords, and go fencing to model fencing. But even on the tabletop, you could model fights through a card game where each card represents a real technique in fencing, and thus real fencing knowledge improves your ability to fight in the game. This isn't even hypothetical, there are card games like this, such as Guy Windsor's Audatia. Or you could do what Yora said doesn't work and actually describe a swordfight. It's doable, just hard.

I haven't tried games like that but I'm sure you're right. Doesn't really change the difference between purely character skills and partly player skills in D&D though.


As far as "accounting potential imbalances" go, the principle demonstrated by the weightlifting analogy remains: figure out what is the real skill your players are using. Make the task less intense for unskilled players and more intense for skilled players. There are no shortcuts. No other method will suddenly make asymmetric players into symmetric ones.

Yes, that could probably be done, but it seems like it'd be very tough to pull off successfully and mean a heavier workload for the GM.


With the exception of making a game so random or strictly scripted that you might as well not have players.

You mean like how combat already works most of the time? Most people don't describe how they swing their sword at their opponent, just that they do.

[Vahnavoi]

Sure, in that particular situation the method matches up with the reality. But if the GM pulls out the stopwatch when a character is attempting to seduce a princess or make a rousing speech, I don't think it work quite as well. Especially since the time given won't match how well the player (rather than the character) performs. A socially skilled player with a socially unskilled character could make a genuinely convincing argument but run out of time after 30 seconds while the opposite could mean a player stumbling over their words for three minutes.

It isn't particular. In a real conversation, you're always on a timer. The only thing that changes is whether you know how much time you have or not. As for the rest, you seem to be forgetting that all of this is happening in the context of an on-going conversation. The game master can stop the clock or add time to it based on how well the players are doing. Meanwhile, running out of time without making a convincing argument simply means one thing: failure. The challenge is to make your case in the given time allotment, if you can't, it's over for you. The guard won't let you in, the princess isn't seduced, no-one sticks around to listen to your speech, that's the whole point.


Like I said, it's an interesting idea but it's not a perfect solution.

I'm only interested in playable systems, not perfect solutions.


Yes, that could probably be done, but it seems like it'd be very tough to pull off successfully and mean a heavier workload for the GM.

Yes, game design is work, news at eleven. What argument do you have for designing an interesting dice game being actually easier? Because most people have been speaking a natural language and socializing since age of 3 years, and have been taught to keep time by age of 7. Most people, in fact, do natural language roleplaying in the form of playing make-believe as part of their normal growth process. Using dice to model arbitrary things and probability math, by contrast, have to be specifically learned. Most people don't learn the basics before age 13, don't make heavy use of them and as a result, suck at understanding them. In fact, given some of your comments, I'm not sure you understand them.


I don't see how math helps that much. You could work out the probabilities, sure, but the actual roll is random (or close enough to it, anyway).

You mean you have spontaneously forgotten all basics of munchkinery... sorry, "optimizing"?


You mean like how combat already works most of the time? Most people don't describe how they swing their sword at their opponent, just that they do.

No, combat doesn't work like that most of the time. Majority of games using dice, use dice as part of a larger framework where you can alter how often and what dice are rolled, what are the stakes per roll etc. which allow for hedging bets, changing odds in your favor or even outright beating the odds. Most of the time, the random and pseudorandom factors only succeeds at placing a boundary on how much math skills help. Most of the time, eliminating skill isn't even a priority. Players skilled in math have been cracking simple random and pseudorandom combat systems like eggs for as long as they have existed.

[Batcathat]

It isn't particular. In a real conversation, you're always on a timer. The only thing that changes is whether you know how much time you have or not. As for the rest, you seem to be forgetting that all of this is happening in the context of an on-going conversation. The game master can stop the clock or add time to it based on how well the players are doing. Meanwhile, running out of time without making a convincing argument simply means one thing: failure. The challenge is to make your case in the given time allotment, if you can't, it's over for you. The guard won't let you in, the princess isn't seduced, no-one sticks around to listen to your speech, that's the whole point.

You really don't see the difference between the natural flow of a conversation where someone might lose patience with you and the GM cutting you off after a certain time as decided by your character's skill level? Even that is probably a lesser problem, working against the clock like that might be kinda fun. The big issue is that someone with lacking social skills isn't guaranteed to come up with something convincing even with extra time and help from others. So the player behind the charismatic bard spends five minutes going "uhm, well..." while the one behind the uncharismatic barbarian spends 30 seconds on a brief rousing speech.

Yes, it can be done – but I'm not sure if it actually solves the problems. (That said, now I'm kind of curious to try something like it. Should be interesting, at least).


I'm only interested in playable systems, not perfect solutions.

Fair enough, I agree. But I'm still hoping there's a better alternative than what I've seen so far.


Yes, game design is work, news at eleven. What argument do you have for designing an interesting dice game being actually easier? Because most people have been speaking a natural language and socializing since age of 3 years, and have been taught to keep time by age of 7. Most people, in fact, do natural language roleplaying in the form of playing make-believe as part of their normal growth process. Using dice to model arbitrary things and probability math, by contrast, have to be specifically learned. Most people don't learn the basics before age 13, don't make heavy use of them and as a result, suck at understanding them. In fact, given some of your comments, I'm not sure you understand them.

Right, probability math is hard (and I am indeed no master of it). But you don't have to be good at it to roll dice. The only thing the player really has to know is that rolling over (or under) X means they succeeded.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying math isn't useful when playing in general. Quickly working out how big your chance of pulling something off is certainly handy. But the player knowing math won't actually make it more likely for them to succeed with a roll.

[NichG]

Calculating the optimal level of power attack requires calculus and statistical inference, and directly translates to the expected damage a martial character can deal. Add in tradeoffs like shock trooper and combat expertise and, well.

Erasing player skill isn't an automatic good. Allowing player skill to matter also enables player learning. Not all attributes of a character even need to be quantified. It is not automatically a problem if the more socially skilled player succeeds more often at getting their way socially.

It is a choice as to what you want to be exploring. Being able to engage player faculties ties the player to the experience of the game world. I don't think erasing the player is at all a good goal to pursue.

[Batcathat]

Erasing player skill isn't an automatic good.

I do agree with this. As I've mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it the other thread? They kinda blur together), as a GM I instinctively want to reward a player for acting it out well and as a player I do take advantage of my OOC traits (though I usually play characters who are talkers, so probably not too much). Why I'm arguing so much in favor of erasing (or at least diminishing) player skill in this area is partly because I like playing devil's advocate and, more importantly, because I think not doing it at all can lead to problems (both IC and OOC) that we should at least be aware of or at best fix.

[Vahnavoi]

You really don't see the difference between the natural flow of a conversation where someone might lose patience with you and the GM cutting you off after a certain time as decided by your character's skill level? Even that is probably a lesser problem, working against the clock like that might be kinda fun. The big issue is that someone with lacking social skills isn't guaranteed to come up with something convincing even with extra time and help from others. So the player behind the charismatic bard spends five minutes going "uhm, well..." while the one behind the uncharismatic barbarian spends 30 seconds on a brief rousing speech.

Yes, it can be done – but I'm not sure if it actually solves the problems. (That said, now I'm kind of curious to try something like it. Should be interesting, at least).

You might have as well asked me "you really don't see the difference between lifting a 1/2 kilo weight and a 100 kilo weight?" Of course I can see the difference, me seeing the difference is vital for me to invent systems of the type we're discussing. Remember, the point of keeping time is so you can do task difficulty conversions between asymmetric players and asymmetric characters in a measured way. Not keeping time doesn't do away with the time component of real conversation, it just means that you've swapped a visible clock for the unseen internal clock of the game master.

Guaranteeing anyone's success or failure is not something that's being attempted here. We're altering the time component of a conversation to make it easier or harder for a player, depending on their personal qualities and character they're playing. If the unskilled player fails despite all the help or the skilled player succeeds despite a massive handicap, that's life. A single instance of this happening doesn't even prove the conversion factor is wrong. At most, if the issue persists, you move the players to the next skill bracket, increasing amount of help given or worsening the handicap.


Right, probability math is hard (and I am indeed no master of it). But you don't have to be good at it to roll dice. The only thing the player really has to know is that rolling over (or under) X means they succeeded.

Sure, the low bar to pass for playing dice games is that one symbol means you win and the other means you lose. This doesn't mean you're any good at dice games. Similarly, the low bar to pass for playing language games is being able to notice if the words you say make other people do what you want - but that doesn't mean you're any good at picking the right words.

As a side note, if your understanding of dice is at this level, please never gamble.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying math isn't useful when playing in general. Quickly working out how big your chance of pulling something off is certainly handy. But the player knowing math won't actually make it more likely for them to succeed with a roll.

NichG beat me to it, but to reiterate: this is only true of the roll taken in isolation. The moment you add any kind of betting, resource or point modifier mechanic, it ceases to be true, and now math skills have influence over how likely the player is to succeed. Again, it's possible for the mathematical underpinnings to put a cap on how great the influence is. Maybe the best player can only beat the second best 66% of the time, or maybe contests between equal characters reduce to a 50/50 chance. But the version where every action reduces purely to the independent random chance is actually a special case, the roleplaying game equivalent of Snakes and Ladders. You should ask yourself if that's even worth pursuing, and why.

[KorvinStarmast]

Attack rolls, armor class, and hit points exist because you can't really resolve a sword fight by describing where each characters are awinging their swords and how they move all their limbs to get them out of the way. That just doesn't work, and so we do a die roll that decides for us what happens.

You can perfectly do a conversation or negotiation verbally. Replacing that part of the game with stats and dice is unneccessary. That's been my experience, for the most part.

[Yora]

True, but I think that's the conundrum: what about the person who wants to play the silver-tongued charmer in the game but in real life has real problems with summoning up the confidence to ask whether this seat is taken? Why do they have to struggle through conversation in the game while the guy who's never picked up a barbell in his life gets to play the 20 STR fighter who can use the Halfling as a club without having to demonstrate his physical capacity to do so?
I actually think this always brought up player type is extremely rare, if it even exists at all.

In the games I run, players are not judged by their theatrical performances, and NPCs respond to what the players seem to mean to say, and I don't start nitpicking their rethoric for debating. I don't make any bad performances when playing all the NPCs either. Simple tell me what you want to say to the NPC, and I'll consider what that NPC would think about the content of the proposal or request.
I feel confident enough in my ability to understand what the players want in a scene, and when I'm not sure I simply ask them if I understood them right. And my job as GM is to help the players getting the results they want, not to obstruct their ideas.

[Batcathat]

You might have as well asked me "you really don't see the difference between lifting a 1/2 kilo weight and a 100 kilo weight?" Of course I can see the difference, me seeing the difference is vital for me to invent systems of the type we're discussing. Remember, the point of keeping time is so you can do task difficulty conversions between asymmetric players and asymmetric characters in a measured way. Not keeping time doesn't do away with the time component of real conversation, it just means that you've swapped a visible clock for the unseen internal clock of the game master.

Right, but what I'm saying is that even if we manage to figure out the "right" amount of time for each player, taking into account both the player's skill and the character's, I very much doubt we can get fitting results each time. A person who can lift 100 kilos today can probably lift about the same amount tomorrow, but two different social situations have so many parameters that you'd pretty much have to recalculate the allotted time for each situation.


Guaranteeing anyone's success or failure is not something that's being attempted here. We're altering the time component of a conversation to make it easier or harder for a player, depending on their personal qualities and character they're playing. If the unskilled player fails despite all the help or the skilled player succeeds despite a massive handicap, that's life. A single instance of this happening doesn't even prove the conversion factor is wrong. At most, if the issue persists, you move the players to the next skill bracket, increasing amount of help given or worsening the handicap.

So what you're saying is that, given enough time, anyone can perform well at social skills? That feels very simplified, at best.


Sure, the low bar to pass for playing dice games is that one symbol means you win and the other means you lose. This doesn't mean you're any good at dice games. Similarly, the low bar to pass for playing language games is being able to notice if the words you say make other people do what you want - but that doesn't mean you're any good at picking the right words.

What sort of dice games are we talking about here? If it's like craps or something like that then sure, you're right. But in D&D or some similar RPG? I'd place math pretty low on the list of possible ways to be good at it. If we give identical characters to someone with a PhD in mathematics and someone who dropped out of high school and have them fight it out, I doubt the former would have any noticable edge.

[NichG]

I do agree with this. As I've mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it the other thread? They kinda blur together), as a GM I instinctively want to reward a player for acting it out well and as a player I do take advantage of my OOC traits (though I usually play characters who are talkers, so probably not too much). Why I'm arguing so much in favor of erasing (or at least diminishing) player skill in this area is partly because I like playing devil's advocate and, more importantly, because I think not doing it at all can lead to problems (both IC and OOC) that we should at least be aware of or at best fix.

What I was getting at is that some of these 'problems' are actually features. It's not necessarily 'we want X, but have to sacrifice Y, let's try to sacrifice less if we can'. It can be 'actually, for this project losing Y would be good'.

E.g. there are projects for which 'a player who is less socially savvy will be less successful at playing a social manipulator' is a positive thing, not just a trade-off. For example, Mafia, Werewolf, Among Us...

[Batcathat]

What I was getting at is that some of these 'problems' are actually features. It's not necessarily 'we want X, but have to sacrifice Y, let's try to sacrifice less if we can'. It can be 'actually, for this project losing Y would be good'.

E.g. there are projects for which 'a player who is less socially savvy will be less successful at playing a social manipulator' is a positive thing, not just a trade-off. For example, Mafia, Werewolf, Among Us...

Fair point. I was arguing under the assumption of every type of player being able to play every type of character being the goal, if probably a unreachable one, but it's true that it doesn't have to be. Mafia/Werewolf games is an interesting example, since some people prefer games with few or no powers (so basically all social deduction) while others prefer power-heavy games (so more rule mechanics), which I suppose could be related to the issue at hand.

[Vahnavoi]

Right, but what I'm saying is that even if we manage to figure out the "right" amount of time for each player, taking into account both the player's skill and the character's, I very much doubt we can get fitting results each time. A person who can lift 100 kilos today can probably lift about the same amount tomorrow, but two different social situations have so many parameters that you'd pretty much have to recalculate the allotted time for each situation.

One of the easiest ways to see if a person can lift the same weight after a day's recovery, is to make them lift it again after a day's recovery. One of the easiest ways to see if the time allotment for one social case fits for another is to use the same time allotment for that other case.

In short, constantly recalculating would in fact be dumb and contrary to the point. Remember, again, you're taking time in context of a real on-going conversation. Just like laws of physics take care of modeling metabolic stress and recovery in case of lifting, the actual shift in discussion topic and available information cover many of the things you think you need to recalculate for a conversation. Nevermind that, in line with the physical analogy, in the same vein you'd have a range of weights for lifts of varying difficulty, you'd have a range of time allotments for conversations of varying difficulty. Task-to-task adjustments hence don't need to be more difficult than basic arithmetic for picking target numbers for dice.

Which brings me to a very basic point: dice aren't guaranteed to produce fitting results each time either. The statistical distribution of roll results and their accompanying modifiers have to be well-calibrated for them to work even most of the time. Which is why games set up in tradition of revised Kriegsspiel, such as D&D, have a human game master serving as final arbiter of game events. That includes authority to overrule dice.

So, I'm not concerned with getting a good fit each time. I'm only concerned with getting it a good fit more often than dice, which I'm confident people actually socializing will do when it comes to social skills.


So what you're saying is that, given enough time, anyone can perform well at social skills? That feels very simplified, at best.

No, I'm saying that if someone consistently performs against expectations of their initial skill bracket, you can adjust their skill bracket. Though, since the players would be actually be socializing, yes, they would eventually improve in their actual conversation skills. Just like, if they keep lifting things, there's a good chance they will improve in physical strength. This really shouldn't be an exotic concept. Children learn social and verbal skills through play. What makes you think you can't?



What sort of dice games are we talking about here? If it's like craps or something like that then sure, you're right. But in D&D or some similar RPG? I'd place math pretty low on the list of possible ways to be good at it. If we give identical characters to someone with a PhD in mathematics and someone who dropped out of high school and have them fight it out, I doubt the former would have any noticable edge.

Now you're just pulling my leg.

[Easy e]

I think we are over-thinking this a lot. Here is how it works at my table when the socially awkward person plays the group Face with amazing interpersonal skill.

Player: I am going to try and bluff my way into the party and bypass the guards.

GM: Okay, how do you plan to do that?

Player: We are all going to walk up and fast talk him that we are invited guests.

GM: All right, with the Orc and the Halfling, all of you? Do you have any props or papers or anything?

Player: Um, I guess I am going to wave the scroll that the Wizard gave us around like it is important.

GM: Anything else?

Player: That's all I got.

GM: Okay, let's roll it out and see how well you do.

Player: I got X amount of success, is that enough?

GM: Barely, tell me what it looks like....

Player: Hmmm, I walk up and start to pass by when the guard drops his halberd to block my path. I look at him startled, and pull out the scroll and start wavering it around, loudly trying to shame him about not knowing who I am. He blushes and glances around unsure what to do....

GM: Got it. Looking sheepishly, the guard slowly raises the Halberd and shuffles his feet. He mumbles something you can't make out exactly, but it sounds like an apology and a welcome.

This is the intersection of role-play and roll-play that many people struggle with. In the example above, no one had to be a silver tongued devil in real life (because we aren't) and the character's abilities mattered. All the player needed to do was provide the general pre-text/plan, any possible modifiers, and a general idea of what they wanted to accomplish. This gives the GM enough space to determine what the target number is for success. Then the players and GM narrate what the scene looks like.

Pretty simple really. Of course, we can also make it a series of actions in a more important discussion, but the key part is determining what the player is intending to do, what makes it easier/harder, and then roll like a normal skill check. The RP can come after, and even reveal the eventual success.

[Aliess]

I actually think this always brought up player type is extremely rare, if it even exists at all.

In the games I run, players are not judged by their theatrical performances, and NPCs respond to what the players seem to mean to say, and I don't start nitpicking their rethoric for debating. I don't make any bad performances when playing all the NPCs either. Simple tell me what you want to say to the NPC, and I'll consider what that NPC would think about the content of the proposal or request.
I feel confident enough in my ability to understand what the players want in a scene, and when I'm not sure I simply ask them if I understood them right. And my job as GM is to help the players getting the results they want, not to obstruct their ideas.

I totally agree with this, except in the case of one of our players who loves nitpicking semantic arguments, in which case he gets no slack.
If I give our shy player ten seconds or two minutes to make an argument they will probably make a huge mess feeling like they have to fill up the while two minutes and start waffling, so I can't see that approach working.
Instead, we have an IC conversation and if it was convincing they'll probably succeed. If it was terrible then I'll check what they were trying to do and go for a skill check, and if they blurt out all the group's secrets... Well that'll probably cause issues.

[Telok]

If the chap who can't carry a tune in a bucket wants their bard character to try to win an Elvis impersonation contest you don't require them to know the words to the songs or sing them.

If the clutzy player wants to play an acrobat you don't judge the character's tightrope walking on the player's sense of balance.

If the "what's cpr?" person wants to play a character thats a skilled surgeon you don't require them to explain the heart transplant operation.

If the couch potato wants to play a strong character you don't judge the character's lifting by the player's muscles.

If the shy person who stammers when they lie wants to play a fast talking con artist you should make them fast talk you in order for their character's high stats & skills to work.

One of these things is not like the others.

[Vahnavoi]

I very specifically explained how you can do the weight-lifting part by actually lifting weights, because the argument you're trying to make begs the question.

You don't require your players to do this or that, because you didn't think or didn't care to make a playable game out of the relevant activity. You could have and require your players to actually sing - a karaoke game is not exotic at all as an idea. You could have your players balance on a board, there's several different boards suitable for this purpose you can buy from a sports store. You could have your players describe a medical operation and the score the result - this one is well within spoken or textual format for traditional tabletop games.

These things you are not requiring from your players are fundamentally doable and capable of being turned into games, which means they are also viable building blocks for roleplaying games. Stop taking for granted that just because you aren't requiring them for your game now, you shouldn't require them for a different game.

[Pex]

I very specifically explained how you can do the weight-lifting part by actually lifting weights, because the argument you're trying to make begs the question.

You don't require your players to do this or that, because you didn't think or didn't care to make a playable game out of the relevant activity. You could have and require your players to actually sing - a karaoke game is not exotic at all as an idea. You could have your players balance on a board, there's several different boards suitable for this purpose you can buy from a sports store. You could have your players describe a medical operation and the score the result - this one is well within spoken or textual format for traditional tabletop games.

These things you are not requiring from your players are fundamentally doable and capable of being turned into games, which means they are also viable building blocks for roleplaying games. Stop taking for granted that just because you aren't requiring them for your game now, you shouldn't require them for a different game.

I will take it for granted because I don't want to play myself. I want to play whatever character. That's the point of playing the game.

[Vahnavoi]

Your skills as a real human are what you're using to model your character, however you do it. The idea that you play your character better by relying on basic arithmetic and probability can and should be questioned.

[Telok]

Your skills as a real human are what you're using to model your character, however you do it. The idea that you play your character better by relying on basic arithmetic and probability can and should be questioned.

Have you tried playing D&D using RL weight lifting to replace the character strength scores? Maybe you replaced the intelligence scores with subject matter quizzes? Or perception checks with eye tests? How did it go? Did all the players love filling out a Forgotten Realms history quiz every time you called for an intelligence:history check?

Edit: not snark, really am curious if you've tried it. If not then please do try it and let us know the results.

[NichG]

I had a GM once who offered that players could do push-ups for post-hoc bonuses to those sorts of rolls. No one in the group took him up on it, but no one in the group minded the existence of the option. With the same GM there was a rule that you could 'challenge Death' to contest a permanent character loss event, and it was an OOC challenge of your choice against the GM, with the other players acting as judges if the challenge needed one (in my case, a high speed Minecraft dungeon creation contest which I lost).

There are lots of ways to play games out there.

[MoiMagnus]

Your skills as a real human are what you're using to model your character, however you do it. The idea that you play your character better by relying on basic arithmetic and probability can and should be questioned.

What do you mean by "better"?

+ Better for the enjoyment of the players around the table? There is definitely no consensus on that, as not everyone appreciate the "social RP" aspect of RPGs to the same degree. It will be much much better for some and much much worse for others.
=> It's like the GM coming with a Rubic's-Cube-like puzzle for the RPG, some will love it, other will be like "Can we go back at playing the game rather than doing this weird thing? If that's really part of the quest, I can roll for Int to solve it, and if it fails someone can use a divination spell".

+ Better as in "you can do more things and are better are doing those"? That's heavily dependent on the GM. For example, when you are rolling for social skills without giving any argument and succeeding, it might be resolved as the GM coming up with the best argument they can for your character and using it against his NPCs. So as long as the GM is better at crafting arguments than you, you're probably better off.

+ Better as in "better for immersion". Everything that makes you behave directly like the character you play is usually better for immersion, so that's a fair point. Though it's not universally true as it sometimes pushes you toward the uncanny valley where it makes non-immersive facts even more prominent. For examples, discussions that features multiple languages are always kind of weird to RP as the peoples around the table only use one language, while they tend to work very well when peoples are just describing at a higher level what they mean and how they intend to communicate through the barrier language.

+ Better as in "matches better my vision of what is playing a character well means", then sure, that's subjective so I cannot object.

[NichG]

What do you mean by "better"?

+ Better for the enjoyment of the players around the table? There is definitely no consensus on that, as not everyone appreciate the "social RP" aspect of RPGs to the same degree. It will be much much better for some and much much worse for others.
=> It's like the GM coming with a Rubic's-Cube-like puzzle for the RPG, some will love it, other will be like "Can we go back at playing the game rather than doing this weird thing? If that's really part of the quest, I can roll for Int to solve it, and if it fails someone can use a divination spell".

+ Better as in "you can do more things and are better are doing those"? That's heavily dependent on the GM. For example, when you are rolling for social skills without giving any argument and succeeding, it might be resolved as the GM coming up with the best argument they can for your character and using it against his NPCs. So as long as the GM is better at crafting arguments than you, you're probably better off.

+ Better as in "better for immersion". Everything that makes you behave directly like the character you play is usually better for immersion, so that's a fair point. Though it's not universally true as it sometimes pushes you toward the uncanny valley where it makes non-immersive facts even more prominent. For examples, discussions that features multiple languages are always kind of weird to RP as the peoples around the table only use one language, while they tend to work very well when peoples are just describing at a higher level what they mean and how they intend to communicate through the barrier language.

+ Better as in "matches better my vision of what is playing a character well means", then sure, that's subjective so I cannot object.

I read their post as more "the idea that 'the only permissible way to improve your character's performance at something is to be better at the arithmetic of character building and statistical decision making' is an implicit assumption behind a lot of common RPGs that gets taken for granted, and that assumption should be questioned"

[Pex]

Your skills as a real human are what you're using to model your character, however you do it. The idea that you play your character better by relying on basic arithmetic and probability can and should be questioned.

Your games must be very interesting when someone goes to a brothel.

[Telok]

I read their post as more "the idea that 'the only permissible way to improve your character's performance at something is to be better at the arithmetic of character building and statistical decision making' is an implicit assumption behind a lot of common RPGs that gets taken for granted, and that assumption should be questioned"

Check my translation, I want to be sure its accurate.

"The assumption that numbers on the sheet plus the dice should be the maximum and minimum of the character's capabilities should be challenged."

With an unspoken corollary that rp or the player's personal knowledge & abilities should be used to affect the determination of the outcome? Because this whole semi-sidetrack came from a post(s) about ignoring the character stats and basing all social encounters or conflicts on the quality of the player's rp. Yes?

[NichG]

Check my translation, I want to be sure its accurate.

"The assumption that numbers on the sheet plus the dice should be the maximum and minimum of the character's capabilities should be challenged."

With an unspoken corollary that rp or the player's personal knowledge & abilities should be used to affect the determination of the outcome? Because this whole semi-sidetrack came from a post(s) about ignoring the character stats and basing all social encounters or conflicts on the quality of the player's rp. Yes?

I'm not sure it captures the same thing. Vahnavoi has been talking about the concept of games of skill, where the game tests or challenges some aspect of its players, and has indicated that the 'strong character' limit of RPGs is a bit of an illusion because at the end of the day it's still a game of player skill, it just makes particular choices about what skill and when and how that skill should be tested. E.g. instead of the best barbarian warrior corresponding the player with the strongest arm and best skill with a sword, the best barbarian warrior corresponds to the player with the most extensive rules knowledge to put together an effective barbarian build (take Lion Totem, Leap Attack, Shock Trooper, use a 2h weapon, etc), the ability to perform inference to accurately estimate an enemy's AC from hit/miss data, and the ability to perform on-the-fly multivariable optimization to determine the ideal amount of power attack to deploy. Which are still player skills, they're just different ones than the skills the fictional character is expressing. And which have a much bigger impact on success and failure than the random element of a die roll, since e.g. an ubercharger vs a sword-and-board can be something like a factor of 20 difference in damage per round.

But that's not from a perspective of 'its bad that it's a game of skill and tests the player skills', its from a perspective of 'part of game design is making a choice about what player skills you want that game to be about'.

So I take the 'and that should be challenged' bit to refer to that. That people are approaching this as 'all player skills must be erased!' but are implicitly protecting a certain set of player skills which they think are fair game. And while that set of player skills is a choice one could make about what a game should engage with, its not a unique choice just because a lot of RPGs happen to make that particular choice and not others. So I don't think the corollary is 'rp or the player's personal knowledge & abilities should be used to affect the determination of the outcome'. I think the corollary is that it's equally as valid of a choice to decide that this game will use a player's personal knowledge, or a player's ability to RP, or a player's ability to win an eating contest, or really anything when approaching the design of an RPG.

[icefractal]

If the chap who can't carry a tune in a bucket wants their bard character to try to win an Elvis impersonation contest you don't require them to know the words to the songs or sing them.

If the clutzy player wants to play an acrobat you don't judge the character's tightrope walking on the player's sense of balance.

If the "what's cpr?" person wants to play a character thats a skilled surgeon you don't require them to explain the heart transplant operation.

If the couch potato wants to play a strong character you don't judge the character's lifting by the player's muscles.

If the shy person who stammers when they lie wants to play a fast talking con artist you should make them fast talk you in order for their character's high stats & skills to work.

One of these things is not like the others.If the person who just can't grok tactical positioning wants to play a character who's a veteran soldier, you don't do make them personally decide where to move / stand in combat.

If the player who's bad at planning and predicting anything wants to play a genius Wizard, you don't do make them choose which spells they're preparing.

Some other things that are decided by the players' mental abilities rather than their characters:
* Which route to take through a dungeon / other dangerous area.
* In a sandbox environment, which goals to pursue and in what order.
* Who to ally with in a political / factional situation.
* What gear to prioritize, how urgently to seek it, and how much to pay for it in the case of an auction or other non-market-rate situation.
* If in command of others, then when to deploy them and with what orders.

This varies by system, but no system I've seen has left things 100% up to the characters' abilities, nor does it seem beneficial to do so.

It ultimately comes down to what kinds of player activity do you (meaning the whole group) find interesting to play out, and what kinds would you rather abstract? Any answer here is valid.

So, "I don't like playing out social interaction and would rather abstract it" - totally valid preference. "Playing out social interaction is objectively wrong" - no, that statement is what's wrong.

[Vahnavoi]

Have you tried playing D&D using RL weight lifting to replace the character strength scores?

No, because TSR made a company-level decision to disavow live-action roleplaying in the 80s. When I want to do a roleplaying game where you really lift things, I will be playing outside with the LARP crowd. Naturally, in any LARP, the player using their real strength to model their character's is the default, because how the player physically moves is the model how their character moves.

Said LARP crowd is doing fine, they have both a non-profit association and a for-profit business wing and have been co-operating with conventions, medieval faires, scouts and schools for years.


Maybe you replaced the intelligence scores with subject matter quizzes?

I've run my tabletop games for 10 years with the explicit rule that INT only affects languages known, spellcasting and saving throws. Every query, question and puzzle, players have to use their own wits for. It's worked just fine.


Or perception checks with eye tests?

It should be obvious that in any LARP, the player's eyes are their character's eyes, and there are obvious physical means to alter what they see, so. At the tabletop, I primarily replace visual information with verbal description, save for when I'm using maps, drawings, photographs or miniatures. If I'm doing the latter, then obviously, if the players can't see a thing, neither can their characters. The only random perception checks I do are surprise rolls, because a random result models surprise well enough, and search rolls, where the point is to tell how much in-game time it takes for characters to figure out everything I'm describing, when in-game time is meant to flow faster than real time.

Works fine. Works better than the type of perception check you're likely thinking of. When I did use them, players constantly wanted to make rolls, because they were paranoid of missing things if they didn't. I much prefer them listening to me in anxious silence because they're paranoid of missing things if they don't. :smalltongue:


Did all the players love filling out a Forgotten Realms history quiz every time you called for an intelligence:history check?

I don't play in Forgotten Realms. I also don't use history checks What player characters can know of my game setting's history is either freely told to the players by me, or included in a campaign booklet and a folder full of notes from other players, which they can freely peruse. They ignore said sources at their own peril.

Works fine. The players who don't want to pay attention to setting history have freedom to stay ignorant and don't tend to complain if they get into trouble for it. Generally, though, player feedback has been that my setting and its history are actually interesting and good, so they are happy to pay attention to it.

Are these sufficient answers?

---


What do you mean by "better"?

Any notion of "better", including all the ones you listed. Whatever goals you have for a game and however you are evaluating them, you ought to ask if sitting around a table doing basic arithmetic and rolling dice is actually better for them than other methods. Don't take for granted that basic arithmetic and die rolling are "playing your character" while trying to act like your character is "playing yourself".

---


Your games must be very interesting when someone goes to a brothel.

Pointless blue text. LARP crowd figured out how to physically simulate sex, without actually having sex, years ago. On the tabletop, the last two players who had their characters boink in my game, actually did boink, as can be inferred from them having a kid now. :smalltongue: The joke is on you, if two people decide to simulate sex in a closed room with no other observers, by having sex in a closed room with no other observers, it doesn't affect the rest of the game in any way. Unlike me verbally describing the whole event in vivid detail, which I'm willing and able to do, so my players don't try their luck anymore unless they really want a steamy erotic audio play..

[Pex]

No joke on me. It's fine with me you walk the walk of the talk you talk, but that's your preference not the One True Way.

I support knowledge checks for PCs because PCs can know things the players don't so wouldn't even know to ask. It's also the game part of the game when they don't automatically know everything nor automatically know nothing. It takes DM bias out of the equation, so that the players can play their characters the way they want to not the way the DM wants them to. It's also a game, not homework, so even when I as DM do handout some game lore I don't need the players to memorize it as gospel. If they do remember something, great, but I'll have the roll to see if the character knows when the player forgets. After all, they have lives and more important things to remember than some obscure sentence I wrote. If it's pertinent to the character to know something no roll needed that can happen too.

[KineticDiplomat]

Slightly absurd meanderings about deadlifting aside, a few immediate points:

1) RPG combat usually has very binary outcomes. Social interaction (RPG and otherwise) often does not. Systems that try to make it "dead/not dead - the conversation" are typically weak as a result. There's no shame in not liking a bad system. Just don't toss the baby out with the bath water.

2) Despite this, it should be readily apparent to anyone that there is only a very slender portion of human interaction where the raw words, ideas, and econ style utils are actually the defining feature of if it worked or not. We know full well that looks, tone, voice, non verbal posture, tribal signalling, social context, and plethora more factors between the parties are involved. Any system that relies on the player as his own pure social combatant rather than using some sort of mechanics is rather missing the point about what makes someone good at influencing people...especially since the GM as the ultimate arbitrator almost certainly does not reflect the actual social headspace of the target.

3) But the player! We all like to think that WE would never be socially beaten. We are, of course, mostly wrong. You shouldn't have to look too far in your life for an example. It's a bit foolish to think that somehow our PCs would be immune just because we can see a situation condensed into the bare framework. But the only way to allow for PCs to be beaten is to have mechanics...

[NichG]

2) Despite this, it should be readily apparent to anyone that there is only a very slender portion of human interaction where the raw words, ideas, and econ style utils are actually the defining feature of if it worked or not. We know full well that looks, tone, voice, non verbal posture, tribal signalling, social context, and plethora more factors between the parties are involved. Any system that relies on the player as his own pure social combatant rather than using some sort of mechanics is rather missing the point about what makes someone good at influencing people...especially since the GM as the ultimate arbitrator almost certainly does not reflect the actual social headspace of the target.

3) But the player! We all like to think that WE would never be socially beaten. We are, of course, mostly wrong. You shouldn't have to look too far in your life for an example. It's a bit foolish to think that somehow our PCs would be immune just because we can see a situation condensed into the bare framework. But the only way to allow for PCs to be beaten is to have mechanics...

These both fall under the fallacy of thinking of social interaction as combat, where someone is victorious only if the other person is beaten.

A player can absolutely get a deal which they think is good at the time, but where later they realize they could have gotten better. Or, it's good for them but turns out to help their enemy. Or it seems good, but in the end they regret it. Similarly a player can refuse to deal and in the end lose more from that refusal and how it's perceived by or informs the behaviors of third parties than if they compromised.

It only seems like you can't lose if you get to choose what you do if you force things into a simple picture of 'to agree is to lose'.

But the richness of social interactions is that they can be a lot more than that. That's the payoff for not abstracting them down to a question of 'resolution'.

Simple example: two people are in conflict but are both dealing with a third who will reward them both (but not equally) only if he believes them to be friends.

Another example: two people each have resources which are low value to themselves but potentially very valuable to the other. If they can agree to a trade, both sides are better off, but if they reveal the true value they ascribe to the resource they may get a worse deal.

[Telok]

Are these sufficient answers?

Well I think you missed the point on a fair bit of it with the LARP references, but I think I understand how you run your table top games. You're closer to the old school runs where it was mainly player skill vs the dungeon with the characters being the functions that the players use to affect the game state. Despite your talk you probably don't make the players use their own RL strength or dexterity to determine how hard the characters swing swords or walk tightropes. What you are doing is having the players use their RL mental and social abilities in place of the characters' abilities, having relegated those portions of the character to... I think you said languages, saves, and spell DCs right?

And kiddo bedtime so you get half a post with no poibt

[King of Nowhere]

As with everything else in the rules, my approach is to take it if it adds to the game, ignore it if it doesn't, change it if i don't like some interactions.
In practice i use a mixed system, where a social encountrr is resolved by a mix of actual conversation and rolls.
To compensate for player's fast talking ability, i try to judge the argument and not how it was presented. And i require some kind of sensible argument to sway an npc, just like somebody exemplified that nobody would jump off a cliff if asked to "just do it", but they would if you xan persuade them they can fly.
As an example, last session a new villain was attacking a major city, and a high level npc party was preparing to engage. The players, being genre savy, figured i was going to use those npcs to invoke the worf effect, so they tried to persuade the npcs to not go.
I figured it could never work. Those are high level npcs, supremely confident in their skills, and they repelled attacks for decades. Why would they listen to those much weaker guys and abandon their turf without a fight? Especially a fight when they'd be 6 on 1.
And one player said "look, she's been probing at your defences for decades, and she knows what you can do, and she's still attacking frontally. Can she be that stupid? She must have a plan."
And hey, it was a good argument. In any kind of game, when a player makes an appoarently suicidal move, a savy opponent will look hard for traps.
I decided it was a good argument, and it would require an easy roll - on someone less confident, it may have required no roll at all. I also decided that, no matter how good the roll, those guys wouldn't just abandon their city - and let thousands of civilians die - without at least trying to fight; that's not what high level characters do.
But with the succesful diplomacy those npcs were more cautious and more ready to escape the moment things started to go awry, so i changed the outcome from "1 dead, 5 captured alive and ensalved by the bbeg" to "3 of them managed to escape to fight another day".
The key is thAt the players must find arguments that could work. There's a lot of dm fiat but at leaSt it prevents the really silly stuff

[Cluedrew]

1) RPG combat usually has very binary outcomes.Yeah, victory or total party kill.

Were you talking about single attack rolls? I think that makes more sense. I think binary outcome systems tend not to represent large interactions very well in any case. So a binary test might work well for presenting a single point, but not so much for an entire conversation.

[Vahnavoi]

No joke on me. It's fine with me you walk the walk of the talk you talk, but that's your preference not the One True Way.

Pointless remark. I'm not arguing for my preferences, I'm arguing against specific logical fallacies. I'm not arguing for "One True Way", I'm arguing for checking if your way has any actual merit. As far as yours go, the idea that dice eliminate game master's biases is wrong, in the same way and largely for the same reasons Batcathat's idea of dice eliminating player skill was wrong. Dice do nothing to eliminate a game master's biases as long as they call the rolls; if you say rules call the rolls, now you've swapped the game master's biases for a game designer's; if you say players call the rolls, now you've swapped the designer's biases for the players'. It's a thorny problem which for games is most often solved by selecting a single person who is perceived as fair and has the greatest knowledge of a game's rules to serve as a referee, which is precisely what a game master position is supposed to be - raising the question why their judgment wasn't sufficient in the first place? I can name at least one game designer, Ville Vuorela, who, after entertaining this question seriously, went and made a diceless system to pretty much prove the point. (See: STALKER RPG, by Burger Games)

---


Well I think you missed the point on a fair bit of it with the LARP references, but I think I understand how you run your table top games. You're closer to the old school runs where it was mainly player skill vs the dungeon with the characters being the functions that the players use to affect the game state. Despite your talk you probably don't make the players use their own RL strength or dexterity to determine how hard the characters swing swords or walk tightropes. What you are doing is having the players use their RL mental and social abilities in place of the characters' abilities, having relegated those portions of the character to... I think you said languages, saves, and spell DCs right?

I always bring up live-action roleplaying when this kind of discussion happens, to disabuse habitual tabletop players of a basic category error: namely, that if a tabletop roleplaying game ceases to be a tabletop game, it ceases to be a roleplaying game. When in actuality the limitations for what you can do in the tabletop are limitations of that physical situation, not of roleplaying games in general. And I play more than type of roleplaying game, not all of which stay at the tabletop.

The point specific to you is the one about D&D: there is a historical reason, and related semantic and legal reasons, why it makes no sense at all to call a game D&D when it starts involving physical effort. I'm trying to get people think outside what it current mainstream design paradigm of D&D, not redefining D&D.

[Batcathat]

Pointless remark. I'm not arguing for my preferences, I'm arguing against specific logical fallacies. I'm not arguing for "One True Way", I'm arguing for checking if your way has any actual merit. As far as yours go, the idea that dice eliminate game master's biases is wrong, in the same way and largely for the same reasons Batcathat's idea of dice eliminating player skill was wrong.

Which you still haven't proven in any way, shape or form. Again, I'm not saying that being good at math can't be useful in the game at large, but unlike being good at talking (in a game where social situations are decided by what the player says) it doesn't actually directly affect the outcome of a specific situation.

Let's make an example, the party attempt to talk their way past some guards and it's decided by either A) skill roll or B) the player talking.

In A) the outcome is basically completely dependent on the character's skill value and random chance. The player's skill doesn't really come into it, whether at talking, math or something else.

In B) the outcome depends at least in part on the player's skill at talking, with some rules like the ones you suggested it can also in part depend on character skill.

Yes, the player's math skills can be useful. No, it won't directly help them trick the guard, unlike their social skills.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but if you're going to say I'm wrong like it's actual fact, you need some actual evidence.


I always bring up live-action roleplaying when this kind of discussion happens, to disabuse habitual tabletop players of a basic category error: namely, that if a tabletop roleplaying game ceases to be a tabletop game, it ceases to be a roleplaying game. When in actuality the limitations for what you can do in the tabletop are limitations of that physical situation, not of roleplaying games in general. And I play more than type of roleplaying game, not all of which stay at the tabletop.

The point specific to you is the one about D&D: there is a historical reason, and related semantic and legal reasons, why it makes no sense at all to call a game D&D when it starts involving physical effort. I'm trying to get people think outside what it current mainstream design paradigm of D&D, not redefining D&D.

This is a good point. I'm occasionally annoyed with the forum's frequent assumption that every RPG is D&D, but I hadn't considered this even more basic assumption.

[Vahnavoi]

In A) the outcome is basically completely dependent on the character's skill value and random chance. The player's skill doesn't really come into it, whether at talking, math or something else.
.

Using the basic d20 system as an example: characters get class-dependent amount of skillpoints per level. Cross-class skills cost more points than class skills. So, just by understanding this, before character creation is over, a math-savvy player can have +4 modifier to a skills versus a +2 for the same point investment. By choosing proper feats like Skill Focus, they can add another +3 to a skill, for total of +7. Optimizing for Charisma can add +4, for a total of +11. By now, since skill checks don't autofail, you are always beating DCs below 10.

Achieving second level allows +1 rank and, by choosing other related skills, a +2 synergy bonus, for total of +14. So on and so forth. Picking right class combination allows for always Taking 10, substituting one skill for others, rerolling failures, etc.. One build geared for this, the Jumplomancer, substitutes jumping for diplomacy, using massive skill bonuses from Jump spell to hit Epic skill check DCs and make people fanatics who will give their lifes for the character, just by jumping around. So, just by mathematically optimizing character creation and progression, a player can beat this situation before it even happens.

In and around the actual in-game situation, the player can argue for favorable conditions or aid another for another +2, spend money for a tool granting a masterwork bonus, or pay for a spell buff or ask another character for one. Just by optimizing buffs, it'd possible to get high enough modifier to beat the actual range of a twenty-sided die, making the die roll meaningless, since skill checks do not autofail on 1.

Do I need to go on?

[MoiMagnus]

Dice do nothing to eliminate a game master's biases as long as they call the rolls; if you say rules call the rolls, now you've swapped the game master's biases for a game designer's; if you say players call the rolls, now you've swapped the designer's biases for the players'.

Biases are not a binary problem. Without eliminating them, some approaches will reduce the GM's tendencies to be biased.

For example, if you're doing an argumentation relying on some moral view that the GM fundamentally disagree with (like making a utilitarianism argument while the GM is more of the deontological kind), the GM might be more likely to cast aside his own biases to focus on "what is the point of view of this specific NPC" if you're extensively relying on dice rather than by playing the "convince the GM that your argument is sound" mini-game.

And more generally, peoples are rarely truly in favor of fully eliminating parts of the game they don't like. Peoples complaining in 3.X that system mastery was too strong and imbalanced the game too much did not want system mastery to not be relevant at all, they just wanted to reduce significantly its impact so that non-munckins don't get completely overshadowed by munchkins during combat encounters (which 5e did reasonably well).
Similarly, when peoples complain about being able to fast-talk the GM into agreeing with you as being "too strong", they don't want to completely eliminate the bonuses from coming up with good RP. They just want to reduce significantly its impact so that socially-awkward peoples don't get completely overshadowed by extroverts during social encounters.

[Pex]

Pointless remark. I'm not arguing for my preferences, I'm arguing against specific logical fallacies. I'm not arguing for "One True Way", I'm arguing for checking if your way has any actual merit. As far as yours go, the idea that dice eliminate game master's biases is wrong, in the same way and largely for the same reasons Batcathat's idea of dice eliminating player skill was wrong. Dice do nothing to eliminate a game master's biases as long as they call the rolls; if you say rules call the rolls, now you've swapped the game master's biases for a game designer's; if you say players call the rolls, now you've swapped the designer's biases for the players'. It's a thorny problem which for games is most often solved by selecting a single person who is perceived as fair and has the greatest knowledge of a game's rules to serve as a referee, which is precisely what a game master position is supposed to be - raising the question why their judgment wasn't sufficient in the first place? I can name at least one game designer, Ville Vuorela, who, after entertaining this question seriously, went and made a diceless system to pretty much prove the point. (See: STALKER RPG, by Burger Games)

When you tell me this . . .


Your skills as a real human are what you're using to model your character, however you do it. The idea that you play your character better by relying on basic arithmetic and probability can and should be questioned.

Yes, you are saying I'm playing the game wrong yours is the One True Way.

It's fine you prefer players needing to convince the DM type play. I prefer game mechanics to exist for social interactions.

[Cluedrew]

This is a good point. I'm occasionally annoyed with the forum's frequent assumption that every RPG is D&D, but I hadn't considered this even more basic assumption [that not every role-playing game is a tabletop role-playing game].As a very simple example I refer to pen-and-paper role-playing games a lot because I play a lot of games that don't use battle-mats or models or anything you need to put a table really. I mean its convent for character sheets, but clipboards would do as well. If the table (and its top) has nothing to do with how the game is played is it a tabletop game? I don't think so. (Plus, it is way less pretentious then trying to justify theater-of-the-mind as a medium.) This might not be the greatest revelation but I think it does support that medium and genre are not tied.

On the other hand there are many computer RPGs which aren't role-playing games, they are something else which, to add to the confusion, has the same name.

[Telok]

Do I need to go on?

Yes. Please state your position and then start from the beginning. I have no idea how "LARPS exist and TSR didn't want a D&D one" is intersecting with "should social stats, skills, and encounters have defined structure" in you posts. Likewise you stated that D&D had a skill system where you could have a difference of over 20 points between characters, but I am unable to understand how you think it relates to the discussion.

I'm sorry I couldn't finish previous posts or follow up before now, but... Life.

I generally find that having a set of rules/guides for complex situations, or situations where reliance on DMing skill and only DMing skill is the make/break point in the game continuing to function, is better than having no rules. I prefer a set up where I have a rule or system that I can ignore when the outcome is obvious or easily & simply adjucated. I dislike when a system gives me skills, stats, and abilities for an action but no functional guidance beyond "easy things have low DCs, hard things have high DCs". As a player I dislike systems where my characters get stats & abilities that tell me they're "good" at an activity, only to find the system is also telling the DM that thier personal biases & experiences are the sole determinator of if my character has a good or bad chance to succeed at that character's "good at" activity.

I've literally seen "challenges" where the 5 foot 1 inch stay-at-home parent playing a D&D 25 strength character got a "test of might" and rolled a die to succeed. Yet the next person in the "challenge" being an D&D 30 intelligence & wisdom history mage/cleric the player was asked to solve a riddle. It went like this:
Player:"After the fourth 'knight' I lost track of whether you meant 'knight in shining armor' or 'night the time of day', could you go back over the last five or six-"
Dm: "Just answer the riddle."
Player:"Let me see if anything on my character sheet will help."
Dm:"No. Its an easy kids riddle, just answer it."
Player:"Thirty wisdom?"
Dm:"No. Just answer the damn riddle."
Player:"Disentegrate."
Dm:"What?"
Player:"I cast disentegrate on jerk-face. I don't care if hes an oracle or priest or anything. Save or be vaporized."
Dm:"But you can't get the reward then."
Player:"I don't care, save. Then I'm going to blow up this whole stupid temple."

So if a system I'm running has some "yalk good at people" stats, skills, or abilities, and a player has a legal & reasonably normal character I'm going to treat it the same as I treat a character in that system that has "lift heavy things" stats, skills, and abilities. I'm not going to tell the player of the talky character that they have to personally convince me in order for their character to do the thing the game says thier character is good at. Not because I think all games need social combat mechanics or thay the dice should rule the game, but because I'm not going to make the player of the strong character clean & jerk 300 pounds in order for thier character to lift something heavy.

I have found structured social conflict rules in some rpgs to be useful in helping me run things like legal trials & negotiations where the players and don't have extensive experience and the outcomes should be reliant on the character's abilities. Just like I use the physical combat rules for life & death sword fights, or medical rules for invasive surgery (if the system has that). If I don't need to use the rules for something then I don't. Slit the throat of an unconsious, tied up, totally helpless foe? If the character has something sharp it works. Seduce random people in bars? If thats the characters thing and they're good at it, sure, no problem. Treat minor injuries? If the character is an experienced doctor then yes, its automatic. Get into a scene where the character is trying to get the king to do one thing and the evil vizer wants him to do something else? If there's rules for that so I don't have to make up a method on the spot and I can just enjoy the game? Its worth a try.

[Mechalich]

I have found structured social conflict rules in some rpgs to be useful in helping me run things like legal trials & negotiations where the players and don't have extensive experience and the outcomes should be reliant on the character's abilities. Just like I use the physical combat rules for life & death sword fights, or medical rules for invasive surgery (if the system has that). If I don't need to use the rules for something then I don't. Slit the throat of an unconsious, tied up, totally helpless foe? If the character has something sharp it works. Seduce random people in bars? If thats the characters thing and they're good at it, sure, no problem. Treat minor injuries? If the character is an experienced doctor then yes, its automatic. Get into a scene where the character is trying to get the king to do one thing and the evil vizer wants him to do something else? If there's rules for that so I don't have to make up a method on the spot and I can just enjoy the game? Its worth a try.

It is definitely possible to produce effective 'social combat' rules for certain well defined 'social' situations, like haggling, or formal debate, or short-term seduction, and so forth. The tricky part is that these systems tend to be 1v1 systems - because most social struggles do in fact unfold in such ways, large group arguments quickly degenerate into no resolution shouting matches - and that carries all the problems of halting the game that any other such 'minigame' setup does. This is similar to how many games have alternative combat-like minigames for things like hacking that, while they may be mathematically functional and even representational, cause problems at the actual table because only one player can effectively use them at a time.

This is actually a very important reason why simplification is a major part of social-based challenges in TTRPGs, because the need is to simplify for speed. Role-playing out, for example, the haggling process behind a major purchase (ex. buying a car) would take almost as long as actually doing that (I bought a car this year, it's not a swift process) and will freeze out the rest of the table while it's happening. 'Roll Diplomacy' or 'Roll Manipulation+Subterfuge' (long a staple WoD approach) has the advantage of being fast.

[Vahnavoi]

Biases are not a binary problem. Without eliminating them, some approaches will reduce the GM's tendencies to be biased.

Don't confuse my claim for one I'm not making. I am not claiming "biases are a binary problem" anywhere in this thread. I am claiming "dice do not eliminate bias". The reason for that is because bias enters the game at the point where it's decided who calls the rolls. You can change whose biases they are, you might even be able to make different biases cancel out, but the dice are not the mechanism through which this happens, and once you realize this and a have a person at the table who you trust to be reasonably unbiased, you can do away with dice entirely. My argument is given further strength by the fact that even if dice did something to eliminate bias, my conclusion would still hold true: if you have reasonably unbiased people at a table, you do not need dice for purposes of eliminating bias, and an application of Occam's Razor eliminates dice from the game's design.


For example, if you're doing an argumentation relying on some moral view that the GM fundamentally disagree with (like making a utilitarianism argument while the GM is more of the deontological kind), the GM might be more likely to cast aside his own biases to focus on "what is the point of view of this specific NPC" if you're extensively relying on dice rather than by playing the "convince the GM that your argument is sound" mini-game.

You are skipping a question: why is the game master rolling dice to begin with? If your answer is "because it's in the rules!", you have not skipped the "convince the GM that your argument is sound" mini-game - you have simply replaced what argument you are trying to convince your game master of.

The rest of your post is besides the point. I have already described a method for helping socially awkward people and making things harder for socially apt people that doesn't use dice. So why are you using dice? In what respect are dice better? These are not rhetorical questions - they can be asked and answered honestly. For example, Mechalich's post has one valid answer: speed. It can be argued that a dice mechanic is faster than the non-dice mechanics I described, so if you value speed over other things my mechanics have that dice don't, then it makes sense to use dice. You can, in fact, continue to empirically test this very fact and prove dice are faster.

The one thing that isn't honest is taking it for granted that dice are better.

---


When you tell me [to question why I'm doing a thing]

Yes, you are saying I'm playing the game wrong yours is the One True Way.

It's fine you prefer players needing to convince the DM type play. I prefer game mechanics to exist for social interactions.

Saying something can and should be questioned isn't the same as saying something is wrong - the former argues there are important unasked or unanswered questions regarding the issue, the latter states an answer.

An actual example of me arguing you're wrong is the argument I'm making about dice and biases. And that argument is not me trying to convince you to adopt my preferences, that's an argument for why dice do not serve YOUR preference. By not engaging with that argument, you are not defending your preference for unbiased games, you are failing to defend your claim that dice serve to remove bias.

---


Yes. Please state your position and then start from the beginning.

Okay, one: the question you are quoting was specifically aimed at Batcathat, regarding a different tangent of the discussion than you and I are engaged in. I can understand confusion, I was confused by Batcathat jumping back into the discussion as well. The specific point being made to Batcathat is an attempt to prove how skill in math can be used to overcome a random number generator in a real game system. The attempted proof exists because Batcathat has expressed confusion over how player skill is relevant in dice-based games, when individual die rolls appear independent and random.

Two, this entire discussion, by nature of its format, is recorded and capable of being viewed from the start by default. I'm not going to rewrite all my arguments when you can go back an re-read them already.


I have no idea how "LARPS exist and TSR didn't want a D&D one" is intersecting with "should social stats, skills, and encounters have defined structure" in you posts. Likewise you stated that D&D had a skill system where you could have a difference of over 20 points between characters, but I am unable to understand how you think it relates to the discussion.

The tangent about D&D exists simply because you asked whether I use the kind of rules I described for D&D. No, I use them for LARPs, and it makes no sense to call those LARPs D&D, because of a reason. That's it, for that point.

As for the rest: Any real social situation conducted in a natural language has a defined structure given to it by rules of that natural language, just like a live-action roleplay fencing match conducted using fake weapons has a structure given to it by real rules of physics, above and beyond anything written in a rulebook.

A tabletop RPG system using basic arithmetic and dice maps the real mathematical skills of its player to imagined social and combat skills. A basic category error made by, f.ex. Batcathat, is that because a player stopped using the same skill, they have stopped using any skill. A basic motive behind this category error, is worry of more skilled players dominating unskilled players. What the category error prevents people with these motives from seeing, is that since they have not eliminated skill, simply swapped which skill is being used, they have not eliminated the threat of skilled players dominating unskilled players, they have simply changed who dominates.

The rest of your post goes back to the point I made in my very first post to Quertus. Hume's quillotine separates could from should, therefore "we use rolls for physical skills, therefore we should use rolls for social skills" is a fallacious statement: the second part does not follow from the first. You have to explain what you value in a game, then demonstrate how rolls serve your values for physical skills, then check separately if those reasons hold for social skills as well.

[Quertus]

Have you tried playing D&D using RL weight lifting to replace the character strength scores? Maybe you replaced the intelligence scores with subject matter quizzes? Or perception checks with eye tests? How did it go? Did all the players love filling out a Forgotten Realms history quiz every time you called for an intelligence:history check?

Edit: not snark, really am curious if you've tried it. If not then please do try it and let us know the results.

There's numerous modules with puzzles, history quizzes, etc, that test exclusively player skills / knowledge.

And, except for the puzzles, I hate them.

If it were, instead, say, "if you have no ranks in Knowledge: history, you must answer all 8 history questions correctly to pass. With 1 rank, and for every multiple of 5 ranks, reduce the number of questions by 1", I might accept it as having the character be meaningful, rather than just the player.


Biases are not a binary problem. Without eliminating them, some approaches will reduce the GM's tendencies to be biased.

For example, if you're doing an argumentation relying on some moral view that the GM fundamentally disagree with (like making a utilitarianism argument while the GM is more of the deontological kind), the GM might be more likely to cast aside his own biases to focus on "what is the point of view of this specific NPC" if you're extensively relying on dice rather than by playing the "convince the GM that your argument is sound" mini-game.

And more generally, peoples are rarely truly in favor of fully eliminating parts of the game they don't like. Peoples complaining in 3.X that system mastery was too strong and imbalanced the game too much did not want system mastery to not be relevant at all, they just wanted to reduce significantly its impact so that non-munckins don't get completely overshadowed by munchkins during combat encounters (which 5e did reasonably well).
Similarly, when peoples complain about being able to fast-talk the GM into agreeing with you as being "too strong", they don't want to completely eliminate the bonuses from coming up with good RP. They just want to reduce significantly its impact so that socially-awkward peoples don't get completely overshadowed by extroverts during social encounters.

Good RP… well, good acting would be to represent the character's skills (or lack thereof) via the delivery; good RP could involve representing the character's skills (or lack thereof) via the argumentation style, tone, or underlying logic.

But I'm curious why you think "follow the dice" will encourage GMs to ignore their biases. IME, "consider the argument and the personality of the target" has a much higher success rate.


When you tell me this . . .



Yes, you are saying I'm playing the game wrong yours is the One True Way.

It's fine you prefer players needing to convince the DM type play. I prefer game mechanics to exist for social interactions.

Eh, no. On a bad day, I might word a similar position as, "those who cannot or do not question their opinions and beliefs do not deserve to have opinions or beliefs".

That in no way implies that one particular belief - especially not that held by the speaker - is the one true way. Quite the opposite, IMO - it's advocating *not* complacently believing that you have found the one and only Truth.

Clearer?

[Pex]

An actual example of me arguing you're wrong is the argument I'm making about dice and biases. And that argument is not me trying to convince you to adopt my preferences, that's an argument for why dice do not serve YOUR preference. By not engaging with that argument, you are not defending your preference for unbiased games, you are failing to defend your claim that dice serve to remove bias.



The dice remove bias because of the math. A character is more likely to succeed or fail based on the build choices the player makes, not on the real life ability of a player to speak eloquently and/or convincingly nor of the DM liking or not liking what the player has to say. That's the whole point of having the dice. The player is trying to convince the king to help the orcs defend against the hobgoblins, not the player trying to convince the DM to have the game story go in that direction.

You prefer the at the table real life conversation to be the arbiter of social outcomes between players and NPCs. That's fine you do. I don't. The roleplay is the fun, not the decider.

[Telok]

It is definitely possible to produce effective 'social combat' rules for certain well defined 'social' situations, like haggling, or formal debate, or short-term seduction, and so forth. The tricky part is that these systems tend to be 1v1 systems... I've most found that 1v1 socials (in my games) can be direct discussion around the table and maybe a roll or two if the NPC has a sufficently predefined personality that I can anticipate what apporaches shold or should not work. It's the stuff with multiple actors and especially 3rd parties that are being influenced where I've found the most benefit in social conflict rules.

Especially trials. I'm beginning to think that near all rpg games need to spend at least some thought, or at least actual guidelines or optional rules in the settings, on how the system will handle the PCs getting dragged into a trial as criminals (framed or actual). Because thats a great place to have a decent rule structure that lifts a burden from the DM, and it happens fairly often. Plus its a good point to introduce how the system intends a "get out of prison" type scenario to function.



As for the rest: Any real social situation conducted in a natural language has a defined structure given to it by rules of that natural language, just like a live-action roleplay fencing match conducted using fake weapons has a structure given to it by real rules of physics, above and beyond anything written in a rulebook.

Thank you. That cleared up some stuff. I still don't get the point you're trying to make in it, but the origin---break for other people again, sorry.

However it sounds like you've not tried to hold rational conversation with a sleep deprived SO who has been only interacting with 2 year old children for 40 of the last 48 hours. Its an extreme example, but "natural language" can lose structure & rules fast. For that matter, not all social situations involve natural language. Modern American jurisprudence is a place where I could argue that the language has deviated far enough from "natural" that its 'rules' are at least partially incomprehensible to people only using natural language, often to their severe detriment when they try to use natural language in those situations.

[Vahnavoi]

@Pex: I have already countered the argument you are trying to make, twice. Mathematical systems are not by any general rule unbiased; biases enter the game at the point where who calls the rolls is decided; by placing the onus for being unbiased on a mathematical system, you are now relying on that system's designer being unbiased; and you have to actually convince the real people at a table to actually use it. No matter how you try to do it, the actual mechanism for making an unbiased game is having real people available, who have commitment to being fair and can spot and correct biases.

---

@Telok:

If a player is speaking comprehensible sentences, they are still within bounds of rules of natural language. If they are so sleep-deprived that they can't, there is no point to playing any kind of game with them. Playtime's over, that player's going to bed. I'm not interested in trying to craft playable games for people who cannot hold straight thoughts.

On the flipside, for people who can still hold straight thoughts, asking them to emulate someone who is badly sleep-deprived is a low bar to pass. "Your character has not slept for 48 hours, try to act like that" is a fine request to make of your players. There is, of course, a natural danger to it: by which I mean, I've been explicitly tasked with playing a sleepy character, the result was me beginning to fall asleep at the table.

As for legalese, you are correct that there are social situations which use some formal language which isn't natural. To deal with that, you have several options:

1) learn enough of the new language to at least hold a simplified version of the conversation in that language - f.ex. you aren't going to hold a full trial, but you will look up real legal definition of a crime you're accused of and see if there's a common knowledge case which is reasonably close to the one in the game, and take the solution from there.

2) substitute a language you know for the one you don't. F.ex. hold the trial using a natural language.

3) do not cover the behaviour you cannot model in a game at all. F.ex. there will be no trials in the game, getting involved in a situation requiring legalese is out-of-bounds for the game and the game ends if it ever happens.

There is no automatic jump from "I can't use this language" to "therefore, use basic arithmetic and dice". More importantly, mathematics is a language of expression. When you are substituting basic arithmetic and probability for legalese, you are already following option 2). Indeed, when you are substituting any kind of formal game rules for legalese, you are also already following option 2).

[Mechalich]

No matter how you try to do it, the actual mechanism for making an unbiased game is having real people available, who have commitment to being fair and can spot and correct biases.

The history of gaming suggests this is an extremely rare circumstance. Most of the time the greatest source of bias at a gaming table will be the people seated at it, something that holds true even when using horribly stilted systems. In particular, the absence of a gaming system (or in some cases the presence of an overly convoluted one with obscure rules) can cause games to degenerate into 'Mother May I' gameplay, where the capability of anyone at the table is measured almost entirely by their relationship with the GM. Social conflicts are in some ways especially vulnerable to such degeneration, since the GM may be themselves not especially socially adept and not realize how stilted social circumstances have become due to a lack of obvious measures. This compares to even very minimalist combat where it tends to be fairly obvious if one PC is massively out-damaging the others.

[Telok]

...can cause games to degenerate into 'Mother May I' gameplay, where the capability of anyone at the table is measured almost entirely by their relationship with the GM...

Had one of those "the GMs current romantic partner wants to play and supposedly rolled three 18s and a vorpal sword during char gen" did you?

[Mechalich]

Had one of those "the GMs current romantic partner wants to play and supposedly rolled three 18s and a vorpal sword during char gen" did you?

Never had quite that bad of a personal horror story, though I've certainly observed some fairly blatant favoritism at the table (hasn't everyone?). More substantially, I've also run MtA many times, and the sphere magic system is basically a really esoteric form of 'Mother May I' since it's so wound up around itself that using it basically involves calling for a roll and making a completely arbitrary judgment afterwards. It's the ultimate 'awesome concept, terrible execution' setup.

[Vahnavoi]

The history of gaming suggests this is an extremely rare circumstance. Most of the time the greatest source of bias at a gaming table will be the people seated at it, something that holds true even when using horribly stilted systems.

That doesn't change my argument. Rather, it only adds: doing what Pex wants to do is kinda hard, y'all.


In particular, the absence of a gaming system (or in some cases the presence of an overly convoluted one with obscure rules) can cause games to degenerate into 'Mother May I' gameplay, where the capability of anyone at the table is measured almost entirely by their relationship with the GM. Social conflicts are in some ways especially vulnerable to such degeneration, since the GM may be themselves not especially socially adept and not realize how stilted social circumstances have become due to a lack of obvious measures. This compares to even very minimalist combat where it tends to be fairly obvious if one PC is massively out-damaging the others.

Mother May I is a game of social awareness and negotiation - it is a microcosm of how humans interact socially, and one of those games children play to learn real social skills. It also has actual rules, so people should stop using it as shorthand for complaining about lack of those.

When you characterize "Mother May I" as degenerate gameplay specifically in respect to modeling social situations, that's the equivalent of a tabletop player looking at live-action roleplayers doing contact sparring with weapons, and going "You actually hit each other? With physical objects? How do you keep the stronger person from dominating the weaker person? People who don't know what they're doing could get hurt! People who don't know what they're doing might not even realize they're hurting somebody!"

Those are great arguments for why somebody who is really inept in the relevant skills shouldn't be doing the thing, but please stop and think for a moment: who is that inept and what prevents them from becoming not so?

At the end of the day, tabletop gaming is a social hobby, you literally cannot have a stable playgroup without them meeting the low bar of being able to understand and play Mother May I. The kind of a game master you are proposing is a disaster waiting to happen for any kind of multiplayer game, it raises the question of why are you letting that person be in that position? Are all people in the playgroup literally 10 and both unwilling and unable to ask a parent, an older sibling, a teacher or any other kind of youth leader to serve as a referee? Why do you think having an instruction manual on something else than real social skills will solve the problem these people are having?

[Quertus]

Why do you think having an instruction manual on something else than real social skills will solve the problem these people are having?

That is an absolutely fascinating question. Allow me to give one attempt at an answer to that question.

When the game has rules, and the GM knows that if they don't follow those rules the group will take them out to the parking lot and beat them up, they quickly learn to follow those rules.

However, in the process, they'll be all but forced to notice and confront any resistance they have to following those rules.

This gives them an optimized opportunity to evaluate their biases. *Why* did it bother them to use Drown Healing? *Why* did it bother them to kill their SO's PC? *Why* did it bother them to let, "uh, we're supposed to be here" work?

Once they've identified their biases, they're better equipped to remove them ("the first step to fixing a problem is to realize that there is a problem; the second step is to figure out what the problem is"), or to choose a system and/or set of up-front house rules that match or accommodate their biases.

Now, sure, most GMs I've had are terrible, and would shy away from such self-improvement. But, IMO, a good GM would take the opportunity provided by following the rules to learn about and correct for their biases.

Hopefully, someone with better social skills and a better understanding of human psychology then my own hobbiest interest will correct me with a more accurate answer, but that's my entry into this most fascinating subtopic.

[Vahnavoi]

That is an absolutely fascinating question. Allow me to give one attempt at an answer to that question.

When the game has rules, and the GM knows that if they don't follow those rules the group will take them out to the parking lot and beat them up, they quickly learn to follow those rules.

Obvious counterpoint 1: ability of players to co-ordinate to beat up a game master they don't like is a real social skill.

Obvious counterpoint 2: ability of a GM to recognize their players will beat them up is a real social skill.

Corollary: a GM who can recognize players who will beat them up for running a game in a way they don't like, can actively avoid such group. Which means this...


However, in the process, they'll be all but forced to notice and confront any resistance they have to following those rules.

... never happens.

Basically, your argument for how an unstable social can fix their problems without instructions for social skills, is to assume they already have specific social skills, as well as a specific social situation where other players have both physical and social power over their game master. The whole set-up raises the question of why is the game master running games to these people in the first place?


Hopefully, someone with better social skills and a better understanding of human psychology then my own hobbiest interest will correct me with a more accurate answer, but that's my entry into this most fascinating subtopic.

Your idea of fixing biases in games is homologous to a criminal gang or a group of school bullies physically and socially coercing a person in a weaker position to run games for them. Which leads to:

Obvious counterpoint 3: beating people up in the parking lot is, in most places, illegal. Your advice is not actionable in those places, or, if acted upon, will lead the playgroup into legal trouble. The actual legal and realistic option is for the players to threaten leaving a game if they don't like their game master.

[PhoenixPhyre]

From my standpoint, all humans have bias, to the point that removing all bias is not possible. And bias isn't inherently bad, so removing all bias is not inherently good. In fact, I absolutely don't want a neutral DM who does nothing but play "by the rules". I want a DM (and want to be a DM) who is a fan of the characters and a fan of the world. Which is an inherently biased thing. The DM should be actively looking to provide opportunities for the players to have fun however those players define it. And understanding that the DM, too, is a player who deserves to have fun. By whatever standards they use to define it. If I wanted a purely neutral, rules-engine DM, I'd play a video game. Because that's the closest that we as humans can get to such a thing--outsource the rules engine to a computer. Which is still biased, but biased by its programmers. One of the reasons I play TTRPGs is because everyone involved can be biased. Because we all have a stake in the outcomes at hand.

Purely rule-based (especially rules printed by some third party who isn't at the table) social systems, like any other rule set, will have incongruities with the actual in-game fiction (because they're disconnected from the actual fiction by the very nature of being printed for all cases), while there is the possibility that a non-rule-based social system will not. Not a guarantee, but a possibility. The only question for the group is "are the benefits of a fixed social system for this group larger than the costs of dissonance?" Rules are scaffolds. And like all scaffolds, they're appropriate some times and for some people and not appropriate at other times and for other people. Each table needs to make that decision.

[Pex]

@Pex: I have already countered the argument you are trying to make, twice. Mathematical systems are not by any general rule unbiased; biases enter the game at the point where who calls the rolls is decided; by placing the onus for being unbiased on a mathematical system, you are now relying on that system's designer being unbiased; and you have to actually convince the real people at a table to actually use it. No matter how you try to do it, the actual mechanism for making an unbiased game is having real people available, who have commitment to being fair and can spot and correct biases.



I continually reject this because it's pedantry. Naturally we're playing with people not computers. I had already allowed for those occasions where no dice rolls are needed. The dice rolls are only used when the outcome can go either way. On those occasions you prefer the DM judge the player's acting skills. I prefer the game judge the character's talent.

[KineticDiplomat]

To whoever talked about the "fallacy of social combat", that may be mostly true in real life, but it certainly is not a fallacy in RPGs. You will inevitably have times when two characters want opposing social outcomes - and you need some form of resolution mechanics for that unless you want to go "rhetoric in front of the GM" as your answer.

For example, we know seduction is not a simple matter of winner/loser in reality. But we also know that anyone attempting to honey pot a PC is going to get stonewalled because the player definitely doesn't want the Bad Guy Spy seducing their character. Unless, of course, you have a mechanic. We could go into negotiation, deception, making friends, manipulation, making a good impression and on and on. At some point the dice need to speak and someone just got the downside of thr bargain, was impressed even if they shouldn't objectively want to be, etc.

[NichG]

To whoever talked about the "fallacy of social combat", that may be mostly true in real life, but it certainly is not a fallacy in RPGs. You will inevitably have times when two characters want opposing social outcomes - and you need some form of resolution mechanics for that unless you want to go "rhetoric in front of the GM" as your answer.

For example, we know seduction is not a simple matter of winner/loser in reality. But we also know that anyone attempting to honey pot a PC is going to get stonewalled because the player definitely doesn't want the Bad Guy Spy seducing their character. Unless, of course, you have a mechanic. We could go into negotiation, deception, making friends, manipulation, making a good impression and on and on. At some point the dice need to speak and someone just got the downside of thr bargain, was impressed even if they shouldn't objectively want to be, etc.

In these cases, I think it is better to not assume that such a sort of compulsion is at all possible, rather than to create a mechanic which promises it or which suggests that it should work. That is to say, don't make 'person who can sweet talk a guard into letting them into a high security location' a protected archetype of the fiction at all in the first place. Don't may 'seduce someone from a cold start with no indication of interest on their part' something which the game suggests should be possible. When creating mechanics, focus on allowing mechanics to communicate guarantees to the players about what is and isn't possible, rather than mechanics which cause things to be possible.

A mechanic which, say, highlights everyone in a room who would respond to seduction, bribes, sob stories, etc would be a different way of handling it than something which says 'assume that there is some possibility that for any character, you can seduce them - and this is the number that if you optimize it will turn that possibility into a guarantee'.

Similarly, its not a fundamentally essential thing that a bad guy spy be able to seduce a PC, any more than it's necessary that PCs be able to be captured alive or compelled to undertake a dangerous quest for the king or share in the cultural sentiments and biases of their country. Those are all things that can happen in some games, but games can also function without those things. If the Bad Guy Spy can't seduce a PC with sexuality, then they seduce them with offers of power, or create an enemy and offer to help them indulge in their rage, or create confusion so that the PC makes a mistake and needs help...

[Vahnavoi]

I continually reject this because it's pedantry. Naturally we're playing with people not computers. I had already allowed for those occasions where no dice rolls are needed.

It would not actually make a difference for my argument if we were playing with computers; computers are not unbiased as any general rule and computer programs often encode biases of their makers. Positing existence of an unbiased computer game necessary entails positing existence of a programmer committed to making a fair game who is capable of telling that program how to spot and correct biases.

You reject my arguments as "pedantry" at your own peril. Personally, I consider you to have conceded the point.


The dice rolls are only used when the outcome can go either way. On those occasions you prefer the DM judge the player's acting skills. I prefer the game judge the character's talent.

And now you're right back to begging the question. What "the game" judges in the design paradigm you're using, is a player's skills in basic arithmetic and probability, plus a random or pseudorandom function. These count as "character talent" only because of a prior agreement by the players that they do.

If you prefer math and probability, say you prefer math and probability. Stop obfuscating the issue by calling them "character talent" or "playing your character".

[Vahnavoi]

To whoever talked about the "fallacy of social combat", that may be mostly true in real life, but it certainly is not a fallacy in RPGs. You will inevitably have times when two characters want opposing social outcomes - and you need some form of resolution mechanics for that unless you want to go "rhetoric in front of the GM" as your answer.

"Rhetoric in front of a game master" is already a resolution mechanic in every game empowering the game master to serve as a referee, by including any variant of the rule "the game master has final say over game events".

What did you think you're doing when convinving a game master that you're rolling for one skill over other skills?


For example, we know seduction is not a simple matter of winner/loser in reality. But we also know that anyone attempting to honey pot a PC is going to get stonewalled because the player definitely doesn't want the Bad Guy Spy seducing their character.

So. Many. Unquestioned. Assumptions.

First of, the assumption that anyone will get stonewalled. Second, the assumption that the player knows the seducing character is a Bad Guy. Third, the assumption that the player knows the seducing character is a spy. Fourth, that the player doesn't want their character to be seduced.

Let's start from the first. The player is assumed to know the seducing character is a bad guy, a spy, and doesn't want their character to be seduced. What can the player of the seducing character do, which would make at least some other players fall for the seduction? Let's list a few options: they can threaten violence. They can threaten seducing someone more vulnerable target. They can offer material bribes. They can offer exchange of information. They can threaten spreading compromising information about the other party. At least some players in some situations will choose to be seduced over the alternatives. No die roll needed, all necessary uncertainty is produced by the reacting player. The threats and offers don't even need to be possible, they only need to be plausible in the eyes of the reacting player.

Which naturally leads to second and third. It is very easy for the player of the seductive character to selectively omit or mispresent information to either make it look like they're on the side of angels or otherwise harmless. If you don't know how this works, stop playing D&D for a moment and go play Diplomacy, Werewolf, Mafia, Murder, Among Us, Saboteur, Bluff, etc.. There's an entire genre of games across multiple media, from children's games to card games to board games to live-action roleplaying games to computer games, which teach you how to cheat your friends.

Which leads to fourth. If the reacting player's resistance to the idea of being seduced is based on having specific information, that resistance crumbles or will not exist in the first place if you change what information that player has. But even in presence of all the information telling hooking up with this Big Bad Spy Guy is a bad idea, the player might still want to go along with it. Maybe the reacting player finds the idea dramatically appealing and is already looking forward to playing out all the regrets and hurt feelings caused by the betrayal. Or maybe the reacting player is just horny and you showed or drew them a picture of the Big Bad Spy Guy, who is very dark and handsome, and now the player wants to tap that... which means, their character wants to tap that. Even if its against their best interests.

[Pex]

It would not actually make a difference for my argument if we were playing with computers; computers are not unbiased as any general rule and computer programs often encode biases of their makers. Positing existence of an unbiased computer game necessary entails positing existence of a programmer committed to making a fair game who is capable of telling that program how to spot and correct biases.

You reject my arguments as "pedantry" at your own peril. Personally, I consider you to have conceded the point.



And now you're right back to begging the question. What "the game" judges in the design paradigm you're using, is a player's skills in basic arithmetic and probability, plus a random or pseudorandom function. These count as "character talent" only because of a prior agreement by the players that they do.

If you prefer math and probability, say you prefer math and probability. Stop obfuscating the issue by calling them "character talent" or "playing your character".

That's how the game mechanics works. It is math by design and the point of using the rules. The game roleplay is the player making decisions as his character, choosing to be social in this case and how to do it - persuading, intimidating, deceit, etc. The acting/performance thing the player physically and/or verbally does at the gaming table is the fun roleplaying for the sake of having fun playing pretend. Some groups place more emphasis on that part than others as a means of enjoying playing the game. I enjoy that part too, but I flat out reject how well any particular player can do such a thing to dictate the success rate of his character achieving a task. If you're offended by that that's your problem. I will call it whatever I want. The game part of the roleplaying game is to roll the die to determine results when the outcome is not certain. Even when the character fails the player is free to act/perform physically and/or verbally at the gaming table how his character failed and the results there of.

[Vahnavoi]

A category error rears its head once again. No, the game part of a roleplaying game isn't rolling dice. Even most roleplaying games with dice have plenty of non-dice mechanics, and then we have those games where you draw cards or blocks out of a Jenga tower, or which do away with such means of producing uncertainty entirely.

And while I may or may not be personally offended by your misuse of words, I know other people who are. To borrow words of a frustrated live-action roleplayer: "here we go again, bunch of odd folks rolling dice on a table, thinking what they do better counts as "playing your character" than dressing up as them and trying to act like them".

[Pex]

A category error rears its head once again. No, the game part of a roleplaying game isn't rolling dice. Even most roleplaying games with dice have plenty of non-dice mechanics, and then we have those games where you draw cards or blocks out of a Jenga tower, or which do away with such means of producing uncertainty entirely.

And while I may or may not be personally offended by your misuse of words, I know other people who are. To borrow words of a frustrated live-action roleplayer: "here we go again, bunch of odd folks rolling dice on a table, thinking what they do better counts as "playing your character" than dressing up as them and trying to act like them".

There you go again of telling me I'm playing the game wrong and not the One True Way. Other people's offense is not my problem. I do not need their permission nor approval, nor yours. I don't care what other games do. I don't play those games. I don't need to play those games. Those who have fun playing those games are welcome to play them. I like what I like, and for you or anyone you know who hates that, that's just too bad for you. You keep demanding of me to defend how I play. I have not asked you to defend your way. You're the one who has the problem we like different things.

I am done with you. Welcome to my ignore list.

[Milodiah]

The approach I've always taken as GM, regardless of system, is that when the heavy duty persuasion, intimidation, etc checks start getting rolled, I pay just as much attention to the means by which they're being improved versus what the dice are telling me. It's not a very mechanical approach to the problem, unless you were to break down and re-tweak the values of the various types of bonuses or even create some sort of tiered system (which, now that I think about it, might actually be a neat idea if I ever had the time to pursue it).

It tends to come up in Shadowrun a lot, where the difference between a pretty slick dude and a professional shadowrunner face is supposed to be as vast as the difference between the average beat cop and a cybered-up special-forces trained super street samurai. But how vast is that difference, and how did they get so far? Are they really going to be like that one GITP comic where they can tell the guards things like "you can't see me", "you're a bird" etc and they believe it? If so, what's letting them do that?


The simplest way to explain it is this - there comes a point where just normal speech, regardless of how well performed, will not change someone's mind. Either some way of directly manipulating the reasoning, perceptions, or beliefs of the target (some sort of charm or memory alteration spell, some sort of pheromone nonsense, etc) or by compiling some heavy duty evidence or other sort of leverage material; ideally both. Games still make the main portion of the social interaction be the inherent skill of the parties involved, with the weight of those other elements being reduced to relatively small incremental bonuses per item. But it shouldn't be that way, really; the weight of how much you can achieve with a roll should be based on what you know or can do, and the success or failure of executing that should be in the skill roll. Just like how you could either blow up a tank or miss horribly with a rocket, but pretty much have no chance of hurting it barring some fluke or brilliant plan with just a pistol, the "attack roll" is your social check, but the "damage" is what you're hitting them with.

In the theoretical system I'm kind of half envisioning in my head (which wasn't there before I stumbled across this post), I feel like there should be some sort of adaptation of the GURPS reaction table sort of system in order to try to quantify "tiers" of how well you can manipulate someone socially, with your tiers sort of being the bounding limits of how much you can spin someone's head around.

The base tier would be just walking up to the guy, giving him a once over to learn a few obvious things about him, and then talking to him. I don't care if you've got a +50 bonus to Diplomacy, or 30 dice in Negotiation, or ten total dots in CHA + Persuade, whatever system we're talking here. If you don't either have a way directly into this dude's head like magic or something, don't have a full dossier on his life and a behavioral analyst's report memorized, a major scoop of blackmail or coercion material like a hostage, etc, I don't see how you could persuade someone like a professional soldier, bodyguard, Federal agent, etc to do something like just hand you the keys to the cells, or their gun, or leave the VIP completely unprotected with you, a total stranger. You could almost certainly get information out of them they didn't *mean* to tell you with a good roll, like that their partner is lazy and leaves the back door open on smoke breaks, or that they feel kinda sick and didn't really wanna come into work today, but straight-up changing their minds about core stuff through verbal kung fu isn't gonna happen.

Now, the higher tiers are when you DO start stacking stuff. Be it mundane stuff like a correct observation that their higher-ups aren't treating them well or concrete evidence of misbehavior they wouldn't want their higher-ups to see, all the way to "we have your wife and kids in a van by the docks, better unlock the cells if you wanna see 'em again" or even just the implication of this (A great example is in the movie the Town, where robbers intimidate the cash room guards to open up the massive steel door by reading off the names, addresses, and family members of everyone that's inside that room with the accompanying threats being fairly obviously extrapolated).

It doesn't matter if it's a bluff or not in such a situation, since we're not talking about whether or not they believe you right now (though that is a parallel issue). It's a matter of whether or not that's sufficient leverage to make them do what they obviously never would dream of consenting to with just a polite request. Perhaps that can be part of where the skill roll comes in; a total amateur would just blurt out "we know where you live!" and expect that to have the desired effect; whereas a competent speaker like in the movie opts to list off that information in a level, factual way to drive home the point that we really do know where your family lives. Other examples of this would be if you were bluffing, just saying "I'm a cop let me in" would be the base tier. Maybe you CAN persuade the night watchman that you're a cop with a good roll, but there's a good chance of him realizing "hey I know this guy says he's a cop and he seems on the level, but I'll get my ass handed to me if I don't see some ID or call in to confirm before letting him in". A higher tier could be achieved by having a fake badge; a quality fake uniform, a partner wearing an equally fake uniform, with a fake/stolen police cruiser in view would be a very high tier deception. Even then it only takes a little Freudian slip or something for it all to come crashing down, but you were able to build it that high in the first place with all that visible, tangible evidence supporting your bluff roll of "hey we're cops let us in". If you show them the badge, are in uniform, rolled up in a police vehicle, and present a valid reason to be let in, they've pretty much run out of reasons to not let you in; ie they are out of "social HP". The 1990 Gardner Museum Heist is a great example of this: the night guard, Richard Abath, was convinced to open the door to the museum just like in the example, because the robbers walked up in police uniforms, presented badges, and asked to be let in to investigate a disturbance which Abath says sounded reasonable because there was a rowdy St. Patrick's Day party nearby that was definitely disturbing the peace. In this example, the bluff was ably performed and continued by a good execution of a good preparation (let's ignore the totally valid alternate theory that Abath was in on it because shut up that destroys my nice little example).

Another heightening of that tier system would be to know about the specific psychology of the person you're talking to. What you might have thought was a high tier intimidation check of "we have your wife, here's a live webcam feed of my guys standing guard over here, you can see the machete on the table, do what we say or else" might not actually be so great if it turns out this guy hates his wife so much that he's been considering murdering her himself. On the other hand, it might turn out to be GREAT if this guy treasures his wife above all else and would risk anything, even something as otherwise unthinkable as leaking nuclear codes or his admin codes for the Pentagon's mainframes, to save her. For the fake police example, it'd be a great bonus if you know ahead of time or can conclude through observation that the person is very respectful and trusting of police in general or is afraid of them enough to do what they say without resisting; it'd be a serious negative if the people you're trying to use this on believe that cooperating with law enforcement in any way will get them labeled as a snitch, bootlicker, etc or believes themselves to be above the law in some way. To return to the Gardner example, Abath specifically says he chose to comply with the police even though the museum policy says anyone, even law enforcement officers, need approval from the security director to enter after hours because (and I ****ing love this answer) "he had tickets to a Grateful Dead concert the next day and didn't wanna miss it by getting in trouble with the police". There's an example of an internal belief that trumped what is otherwise a valid reason for him to not comply, which is the museum policy.

You could probably get even higher if you actually did burrow into their heads with magic, or use Shadowrun-style heightened pheromones to dial up the fear response of their autonomic nervous system to make them more susceptible to intimidation. That would be the highest tier; present an airtight case (be it in the form of persuasion, intimidation, bluffing, etc), present evidence you already know is true or will work, knowing ahead of time or having observed through careful observation of his behavior and verbal/nonverbal cues that this is a strong argument for him in particular, and then dialing their response to it to 11 by toying with his very reasoning itself through whatever means you have in your system, you've laid yourself the groundwork for an absolute home run of a social check. But it all relies on you not making a misstep that accidentally exposes your ulterior motive, or reminds him of the consequences of what you're proposing, etc, which is where the roll comes in.

In the Gardner example, you could imagine them maybe using illusion magic to convince him there's an intruder in the museum and he needs to open the door for the cops because of that, or a mind altering spell to make him forget the things he's guarding are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and there's honestly no reason to go through all this nonsense, or some sort of sci-fi sedative-hypnotic gas to strip him of his intuitive capacity to think that it's weird that the cops are here in the middle of the night to investigate an empty museum.

It's not that a super high roll is letting you convince the guard "hey why don't you just pop open this door, buckaroo" apropos of nothing just because you said pretty please with sugar on top. It's that through this carefully woven setup, you've put yourself in a position where the best your high roll can do goes from "getting him to let his guard down for a moment" to "complying without hesitation".

On the character vs player argument, you can always adjust just how much of that interaction is self contained in with the roll. Obviously the roll in this situation can't do things like retroactively have your associates take a hostage or procure disguises or whatever, but it can certainly fold into itself you probing the guy's moral, intellectual, or emotional weak points, forming the plan of attack, and executing it all in one roll. You could see that the player rolled very well, and say "while chatting with this dude you infer that he doesn't have that much respect for authority in general, and especially not that of his supervisor in particular. You get the feeling he'd much rather be home with his wife and kids, given how much he's talked about them, and you get the feeling that that's probably your best avenue of approach, doing something that hinges on his family over his dedication to the job."

TL;DR social skill roll = attack roll, the strength of the opposition's dedication to their belief is the HP, and the strength of the ways you're compelling him to break from that belief (through bribery, trickery, coercion, insightful discourse, magical/psychic/chemical/whatever manipulation, etc) is the damage roll.

[NichG]

For getting towards the fantastical level I tend to like the idea of abilities which act like a HUD or aim assist for the player. Abilities which let the player take back something they said which went wrong and try again, or which let them take back something someone else said even. Abilities which reveal what people care about, what they're hiding, what'll make them angry, what they'll respect, what they'll fear. Abilities which let you detect the connections between people and the usage of leverage. Abilities which give broad strategic hints like 'if you want this person to believe something, you could argue against it with passionately stated but easily attacked arguments while putting them in the position of defending the idea'

Basically stuff like Tattletale from Worm does.

[Pex]

For getting towards the fantastical level I tend to like the idea of abilities which act like a HUD or aim assist for the player. Abilities which let the player take back something they said which went wrong and try again, or which let them take back something someone else said even. Abilities which reveal what people care about, what they're hiding, what'll make them angry, what they'll respect, what they'll fear. Abilities which let you detect the connections between people and the usage of leverage. Abilities which give broad strategic hints like 'if you want this person to believe something, you could argue against it with passionately stated but easily attacked arguments while putting them in the position of defending the idea'

Basically stuff like Tattletale from Worm does.

In D&D all there is is the Insight skill and judicious use of the Detect Thoughts spell. DMs do like it when players take the time to research and discover the motives of Important NPCs before speaking to them. Depending on context that could be an autosuccess on whatever social skill or at least roll with Advantage. However, I do like your idea of these proposed "social powers". Players like to push buttons so these would encourage those players who don't care for the social stuff to care. It could inspire players in general. Having such a social system is more likely in games that don't encourage a lot of combat, but it doesn't have to be exclusive. A game system could have both. D&D could use something like this. People do complain warriors don't have a lot of out of combat utility. This idea would come in handy.

[NichG]

In D&D all there is is the Insight skill and judicious use of the Detect Thoughts spell. DMs do like it when players take the time to research and discover the motives of Important NPCs before speaking to them. Depending on context that could be an autosuccess on whatever social skill or at least roll with Advantage. However, I do like your idea of these proposed "social powers". Players like to push buttons so these would encourage those players who don't care for the social stuff to care. It could inspire players in general. Having such a social system is more likely in games that don't encourage a lot of combat, but it doesn't have to be exclusive. A game system could have both. D&D could use something like this. People do complain warriors don't have a lot of out of combat utility. This idea would come in handy.

Things like judging willingness to violence, gaining bonus initiative if in a conversation that breaks down into a fight, judging experience, skill, whether someone has PTSD or if they're 'blooded' or 'cold' in terms of the way they value life or their willingness to take life, seeing signs of squeamishness and risk-averseness versus someone who is looking for a way to die should all be the sorts of things that warriors in particular could get. The 'Tactician' class in the homebrew I'm currently running has a high level ability called 'perfect trace' which basically lets them know how a given other character would act in a particular hypothetical situation, so they can do things like 'if we offered to kill this guy, would they find that worthwhile or would they attack us because they're actually secretly in league with that guy?' or 'if we staged an ambush, what would this guy do during the first round?', but it can be used in exactly the same way for social hypotheticals.

[KorvinStarmast]

The rest of your post is besides the point. I have already described a method for helping socially awkward people and making things harder for socially apt people that doesn't use dice. {snip} The one thing that isn't honest is taking it for granted that dice are better. Or it becomes something like "an unsupported assertion" or a "belief" at best.
You made some interesting points on math (player) skills being given a privileged status and social skills being scorned. Thanks for how you did that.

A basic category error made by, f.ex. Batcathat, is that because a player stopped using the same skill, they have stopped using any skill. A basic motive behind this category error, is worry of more skilled players dominating unskilled players. What the category error prevents people with these motives from seeing, is that since they have not eliminated skill, simply swapped which skill is being used, they have not eliminated the threat of skilled players dominating unskilled players, they have simply changed who dominates. Is it any wonder that those with high math / low social skills would be biased in that direction? :smallbiggrin:

Hume's quillotine separates could from should, therefore "we use rolls for physical skills, therefore we should use rolls for social skills" is a fallacious statement: the second part does not follow from the first. Nailed that dive.

I've most found that 1v1 socials (in my games) can be direct discussion around the table and maybe a roll or two if the NPC has a sufficiently predefined personality that I can anticipate what approaches should or should not work. It's the stuff with multiple actors and especially 3rd parties that are being influenced where I've found the most benefit in social conflict rules. Interesting observation.

Especially trials. I'm beginning to think that near all rpg games need to spend at least some thought, or at least actual guidelines or optional rules in the settings, on how the system will handle the PCs getting dragged into a trial as criminals (framed or actual). I've done mock trials (not in an RPG). It is a game form of its own. Slapping a piece of that on to a game system is I think where the root of your problem lies. (And having sat on three juries, our whole legal system is a game form all its own, but we are getting a bit off topic with that).

Modern American jurisprudence is a place where I could argue that the language has deviated far enough from "natural" that its 'rules' are at least partially incomprehensible to people only using natural language, often to their severe detriment when they try to use natural language in those situations. Like military stuff, it has developed it's own technical jargon.

From my standpoint, all humans have bias, to the point that removing all bias is not possible. And bias isn't inherently bad, so removing all bias is not inherently good. In fact, I absolutely don't want a neutral DM who does nothing but play "by the rules". I want a DM (and want to be a DM) who is a fan of the characters and a fan of the world. Which is an inherently biased thing. {snip the rest} Nice post, and I agree: to play a purely rules based game a video game does just fine.

For example, we know seduction is not a simple matter of winner/loser in reality. But we also know that anyone attempting to honey pot a PC is going to get stonewalled because the player definitely doesn't want the Bad Guy Spy seducing their character. Unless, of course, you have a mechanic. We could go into negotiation, deception, making friends, manipulation, making a good impression and on and on. At some point the dice need to speak and someone just got the downside of the bargain, was impressed even if they shouldn't objectively want to be, etc. Interesting post; as to seduction in RPGs lines and veils are the tools that I use for that. Very few groups I game with liked seduction attempts to go any further than a certain point and then fade to black. I won't comment on the player agency issue since I am not sure which game systems you are referring to.

[KineticDiplomat]

Well, it's less about seduction per than the mechanical results of that outcome. It doesn't have to go all the way to the bedroom (and if it does, fading to black is a very, very good idea) - it could simply be "you know you shouldn't mention it, but your character so badly wants to impress the Bad Guy Spy that he let's slip that..." all the way to "...never thought he'd feel this way, but later in yhe wee hours of the night tells Bad Guy Spy everything, determined not to keep any secrets this time." Or "following strangers into the alley behind a tavern can be dumb, but your PC really wants to - shes clearly not a Bad Guy Spy!" How far it goes and if it goes are a matter of mechanics, conditions setting. and all the other business a good GM takes into account for everything from scaling a wall to creeping through the woods unseen. What it isn't is the GM attempting to seduce the player and then getting stonewalled or pulled into a fifteen minute conversation.

And that's really a nessecity. If we were to take negotiation as an example, we know that anyone can pretty quickly be trained into BATNAs, anchoring, price targeting, and most of the mechanical aspects of it. We also know that the same students or trainees can be shoved around pretty easily if they're risk and conflict adverse, coming out with worse outcomes than their theory says they should. A player is the theory crafting that sets the target; a character is the person who might damn well know they want a certain thing, but somehow never gets the deal they should, or Van walk away with a zinger even though they don't hold all the info.

Without mechanics, it's just the player speaking, and the player speaking is actually a really bad way to handle negotiation, because it takes away the whole human part.

Extrapolate and there you have the rest...

[icefractal]

You know, for seduction I think it's a hell of a lot better to have people "no sell" it when they're not into it, rather than force it on people who object. Even just talking about PC to NPC, "doesn't matter who they are, high enough roll and anyone wants to **** me" is creepy at best.

[Milodiah]

You know, for seduction I think it's a hell of a lot better to have people "no sell" it when they're not into it, rather than force it on people who object. Even just talking about PC to NPC, "doesn't matter who they are, high enough roll and anyone wants to **** me" is creepy at best.

Yeah, seduction checks are kinda the most egregious example of "mind control" social skills at work. Sometimes I suspect people who do it are kind of counting on the GM being understandably hesitant to do it in-character, and thus the dice rolls pretty much take over everything.

[Telok]

Yeah, seduction checks are kinda the most egregious example of "mind control" social skills at work. Sometimes I suspect people who do it are kind of counting on the GM being understandably hesitant to do it in-character, and thus the dice rolls pretty much take over everything.

I think maybe "mind control social skills" is a d&d-ism hanging around from a no context & 'no common sense dming' reading of the d&d 3e diplomacy dc table. I certainly never encountered it in actual play in any game before or after d&d 3e, and especially not in games with actual social combat mechanics.

There is something close in ShadowRun but if I recall correctly it involves serious tech/hormones/aresol drugs jacking the targets mind & emotions in order to reach the fabled diplomancer levels.

[icefractal]

From what all I've heard, knowing what arguments / tactics will work with a given person is as essential a part of persuasion as the delivery of those arguments. Being a great con-man doesn't mean being able to fool anyone into anything, it means knowing who you can fool into what.

So in D&D terms, Sense Motive / Insight is as important to one-on-one social maneuvering as the Cha-based skills are. What I'd like to see in terms of "superhuman social ability" is HUD / prediction / undo abilities like NichG mentioned above, rather than mind-control by a different name (unless it's supposed to be a creepy power that would make people nervous to be around you).

Now is there a case where the insight part doesn't matter as much? Yes, when you're trying to influence an entire crowd. Again, your persuasion isn't guaranteed to work on any given member of the crowd, but if it works on most of them that's good enough. Although being able to read the crowd and/or knowing what opinions are popular among them would still help.

[Vahnavoi]

Well, it's less about seduction per than the mechanical results of that outcome.

And keeping track of what the player, in their role as their character, actually says to the other party, isn't a sufficient measure of the outcome because...?


What it isn't is the GM attempting to seduce the player and then getting stonewalled or pulled into a fifteen minute conversation.

Oh, right. The reason is because you don't actually want to listen to the people at the table talk.

Let's put this into some context. My standard length for a game session is 4 hours. This stems directly from local convention guidelines. The shortest games I run are 1 hour long.

In the former case 15 minutes is 6.25% of available play time. Using that much time to determine if a character reveals something important to a spy is well worth it. For contrast, consider all those people playing complex dice-based games, complaining about how a single combat, modeling maybe a minute of game time (minute is 10 six second rounds in modern D&D), can take up to an hour of real time.

In the latter case, it's still only 25% of play time. If you're confused by "only", consider: the entire point of such a short game could be to cover one pivotal event, such as the seduction attempt. Taking only 25% of available time leaves time for three equally important events.

I suspect the reason why 15 minutes feels like a long time, is because you're imagining a number of other people sitting around the table, bored, waiting for their turn. Why are you imagining that? The idea of only one player at a time engaging someone socially is, more often than not, an artefact of the very sort of skill and "social combat" mechanics you are proposing as alternatives to having an actual conversation.

But fine. Let's suppose there are other people at the table who don't have a character present at the conversation, who want to do something else. Let me propose a radical solution: people take turns. The conversation is broken into 1-minute pieces, so that for every minute the conversation takes, other players get a minute each to act on their fronts.

If that sounds too slow, look again at the contrasting example and tell me how fast your dice-based games are. Related: anyone reading this is free to explain what other mechanic they have in mind for guaranteeing player turns take a reasonable amount of real time, other than keeping track of real time.


It doesn't have to go all the way to the bedroom (and if it does, fading to black is a very, very good idea) - it could simply be "you know you shouldn't mention it, but your character so badly wants to impress the Bad Guy Spy that he let's slip that..." all the way to "...never thought he'd feel this way, but later in yhe wee hours of the night tells Bad Guy Spy everything, determined not to keep any secrets this time." Or "following strangers into the alley behind a tavern can be dumb, but your PC really wants to - shes clearly not a Bad Guy Spy!"

You are conflating two things: detailing sex and detailing what information is exchanged. Doing the latter doesn't require doing the former, that is, whoever plays the spy can directly ask from the player of the seduced character about those things they want to know. You never have to take the decision of what they tell away from the player of the seduced character.


How far it goes and if it goes are a matter of mechanics, conditions setting. and all the other business a good GM takes into account for everything from scaling a wall to creeping through the woods unseen. .

Said "good GM" would have a lot less to account for if they focused on player-generated character dialogue, the one thing that directly tells what information has been passed between characters.


And that's really a nessecity. If we were to take negotiation as an example, we know that anyone can pretty quickly be trained into BATNAs, anchoring, price targeting, and most of the mechanical aspects of it. We also know that the same students or trainees can be shoved around pretty easily if they're risk and conflict adverse, coming out with worse outcomes than their theory says they should.

What are you saying here? Some people at some situation aren't capable of flawlessly executing a negotation tactic, therefore, you shouldn't negotiate in a game?


A player is the theory crafting that sets the target; a character is the person who might damn well know they want a certain thing, but somehow never gets the deal they should, or Van walk away with a zinger even though they don't hold all the info.

This is backwards. The players are the real people who have real wants, the characters and their wants are what's theoretical and imaginary. Somehow "never getting the deal you should" etc. are problems which are known to occur with dice-based games as well, so using it as criticism of non-dice-based games is kind of silly.


Without mechanics, it's just the player speaking, and the player speaking is actually a really bad way to handle negotiation, because it takes away the whole human part.

Extrapolate and there you have the rest...

Ah, so real humans trying to act like other humans makes such a bad model of the human element, that you instead have to replace it with low-fidelity mathematical model reliant on random or pseudorandom functions?

[Lacco]

I hate all "role-playing" rules I've ever read. Because they all encourage bad role-playing. They don't map to actual human behavior and motivation.
*SNIP*
Have I been wrong all this time, accusing "role-playing" mechanics for not matching reality when, like HP, I should have been accepting them as a statement of how their reality diverges from our own?

Which "role-playing" rules did you read? I'm curious because I'd like to extend my library of role-playing rules.

Also, if the role-playing mechanics match the aesthetic/themes of the game... then the answer is "yes". Rules do not have to match reality, but they should match the game "reality". If that makes any sense.

As for myself, I am a big fan of social/role-playing rules as an idea, but have yet to find a system outside of Duel of Wits that would work for me for the so-called "social combat". I find some of the systems fun to play with, and to provide a good gaming experience - not necessarily an improvement for freeform roleplay, but a good guideline (mainly for the ever-GM that is me).

I don't think there are objective reasons to implement social combat/debate/persuasion/seduction rules into the game - because most of the arguments will end with "we like these mechanics" or "they are fun to play with". But the same goes for any type of mechanics and "game" additions: combat mechanics, skill systems, miniature combat, character sheets, dice, maps, handouts...

...basically, the whole "role-playing" part can be done with theater of the mind. You don't even need other players or the GM for that.

But it's more fun that way for some people.


Oh, right. The reason is because you don't actually want to listen to the people at the table talk.


So. Many. Unquestioned. Assumptions.

Otherwise, carry on :smallbiggrin:

It's a fun debate and quite interesting topic.

[Bohandas]

Some people complain that HP aren't realistic, that they don't match reality. This, of course, is a silly complaint for any game that isn't supposedly taking place *in* this reality. The key part here, though, is my response: "if the game is 'like this reality, unless stated otherwise', why can't people accept HP as a 'stated otherwise' change?"


Firstly because people are implied to habe all the normal organs and stuff which acts sort of a counter statement

Secondly because it's unclear what hit points represent. If they represent an action hero-like ability to avoid non superficial injuries that seems redundant with AC and/or action points. Unless it's more like an anime thing where they're taking the blows head on and it's still somehow only causing grazes and scrapes. And either of these makes it unclear just what the healing spells are healing. And if it's meat then do high level characters who have taken several times the amount of damage needed to kill a normal person finish combat looking like the Black Knight?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Firstly because people are implied to habe all the normal organs and stuff which acts sort of a counter statement

Secondly because it's unclear what hit points represent. If they represent an action hero-like ability to avoid non superficial injuries that seems redundant with AC and/or action points. Unless it's more like an anime thing where they're taking the blows head on and it's still somehow only causing grazes and scrapes. And either of these makes it unclear just what the healing spells are healing. And if it's meat then do high level characters who have taken several times the amount of damage needed to kill a normal person finish combat looking like the Black Knight?

I square this circle by saying high level characters (and in fact all the people of this fantasy realm) are not "normal people" (at least if normal means earth-normal). We know that (in D&D 5e at least) there is background magic that is part of the regular physics, in and through everything. That's black-letter text. So why are people just earth-people? They're not. And the ability for high-level people (and strong souls of all types) to take extreme amounts of damage and walk away is part and parcel of what it means to be a strong soul. Leveling up literally changes your body.

[Bohandas]

Well I think you missed the point on a fair bit of it with the LARP references, but I think I understand how you run your table top games. You're closer to the old school runs where it was mainly player skill vs the dungeon with the characters being the functions that the players use to affect the game state. Despite your talk you probably don't make the players use their own RL strength or dexterity to determine how hard the characters swing swords or walk tightropes. What you are doing is having the players use their RL mental and social abilities in place of the characters' abilities


I agree with this assessment


I square this circle by saying high level characters (and in fact all the people of this fantasy realm) are not "normal people" (at least if normal means earth-normal). We know that (in D&D 5e at least) there is background magic that is part of the regular physics, in and through everything. That's black-letter text. So why are people just earth-people? They're not.


And this is why I advocated in the Tasha thread for removing human characters from the game


The dice remove bias because of the math. A character is more likely to succeed or fail based on the build choices the player makes, not on the real life ability of a player to speak eloquently and/or convincingly nor of the DM liking or not liking what the player has to say. That's the whole point of having the dice. The player is trying to convince the king to help the orcs defend against the hobgoblins, not the player trying to convince the DM to have the game story go in that direction.

You prefer the at the table real life conversation to be the arbiter of social outcomes between players and NPCs. That's fine you do. I don't. The roleplay is the fun, not the decider.


Plus you're arguably not playing the character you've statted. An argument could be made that if you really want to RP the character you should roll and then tailor the strength of the argument to the result of your roll.


Especially trials. I'm beginning to think that near all rpg games need to spend at least some thought, or at least actual guidelines or optional rules in the settings, on how the system will handle the PCs getting dragged into a trial as criminals (framed or actual). Because thats a great place to have a decent rule structure that lifts a burden from the DM, and it happens fairly often. Plus its a good point to introduce how the system intends a "get out of prison" type scenario to function.

...

Modern American jurisprudence is a place where I could argue that the language has deviated far enough from "natural" that its 'rules' are at least partially incomprehensible to people only using natural language, often to their severe detriment when they try to use natural language in those situations.


I think trials are probably actually an ideal place for "mind control" type social skills, since they already look and sound like witchcraft anyway

And speaking of which, I think that high skill in social abilities looking like mind control is fine, the real problem is that similarly fantastic feats aren't achievable with other skills at non-epic levels. That's the change that should be made if any. You shoukd be able to build magic items with just the craft skill, leap tall buildings in a single bound with a good enough jump check, walk on water with a balance check, etc.


Ah, so real humans trying to act like other humans makes such a bad model of the human element, that you instead have to replace it with low-fidelity mathematical model reliant on random or pseudorandom functions?


I think PhoenixPhyre's response to my hitpoint question also answers this nicely ("high level characters (and in fact all the people of this fantasy realm) are not "normal people"")

[PhoenixPhyre]

And this is why I advocated in the Tasha thread for removing human characters from the game

I think PhoenixPhyre's response to my hitpoint question also answers this nicely ("high level characters (and in fact all the people of this fantasy realm) are not "normal people"")

D&D humans != earth humans, except superficially. D&D physical laws != earth physical laws, except superficially. That's the consequence of having background magic in and through everything. Earth physical law doesn't have magic as part of physics; D&D physical law does. Therefore they aren't the same. And that has knock-on effects, at least if we want to be consistent.

[NichG]

I think trials are probably actually an ideal place for "mind control" type social skills, since they already look and sound like witchcraft anyway

And speaking of which, I think that high skill in social abilities looking like mind control is fine, the real problem is that similarly fantastic feats aren't achievable with other skills at non-epic levels. That's the change that should be made if any. You shoukd be able to build magic items with just the craft skill, leap tall buildings in a single bound with a good enough jump check, walk on water with a balance check, etc.


If it's like mind control, expect people and society in general to react to it like they would mind control. So you'd have a lot of laws and customs to limit it. Characters might not even be permitted to speak at their own trial rather than having to utilize a representative whose skill is intentionally limited or at least calibrated. Or they'd have to write down their testimony and there'd be a reader who recites it in an intentionally stilted fashion to apply as large a penalty to the potential effects as possible.

When haggling, rather than face to face discussion you might just communicate in numbers.

When meeting the king, you might have to speak to The King's Ear, the lowest Charisma and most uneducated character who can be found, who would repeat your words to the king to strip off undue influence.

Being observed to be too persuasive in one's dealings could even be considered a crime. Guards might be temporarily magically deafened during their shifts to prevent manipulation attempts, or might work on a stab first questions never basis.

[Bohandas]

If it's like mind control, expect people and society in general to react to it like they would mind control. So you'd have a lot of laws and customs to limit it. Characters might not even be permitted to speak at their own trial rather than having to utilize a representative whose skill is intentionally limited or at least calibrated. Or they'd have to write down their testimony and there'd be a reader who recites it in an intentionally stilted fashion to apply as large a penalty to the potential effects as possible.

It's still only high level characters that can do it consistently. So it would be like Lord of the Rings. People in general speak freely but by the end of The Two Towers they're quite wary specifically of letting Saruman speak

EDIT:
Other examples include the kidnappers making a special point to gag Lady Jessica in Dune and the injunction against conversing with the demon in The Exorcist

[NichG]

It's still only high level characters that can do it consistently. So it would be like Lord of the Rings. People in general speak freely but by the end of The Two Towers they're quite wary specifically of letting Saruman speak

If high skill level is possible, I'd expect a precautionary principle to apply. Especially if the system has a high variance random source and fixed targets like D&D. Maybe 99 of 100 who go in front of the king aren't going to hit the persuasion DC, but all it takes to create a disaster is someone rolling high...

I suppose there'd also be the flip side. If it's normalized, maybe the king has Royal Persuaders who go town to town brainwashing the populace into loyalty and obedience. Maybe to even enter the palace you basically have to let yourself get brainwashed into service to the crown by a dedicated Diplomat.

The point being, if that's how skill at persuasion is implemented in the system, you're going to get a society that recognizes that fact and is shaped around those realities. And it's likely to not actually favor 'playing a social character' in that case, because it makes socializing into a pure risk and liability rather than a net positive interaction.

[Vahnavoi]

I think PhoenixPhyre's response to my hitpoint question also answers this nicely ("high level characters (and in fact all the people of this fantasy realm) are not "normal people"")

PhoenixPhyre's response is a solution to a self-created problem caused not simply by presence of hitpoints, but by presence of ever-ascending hitpoints. It's of specific context and applicability.

For someone like me who also plays games that aren't high level, aren't D&D and aren't genre fantasy, it isn't particularly interesting.

But even in context of genre fantasy, such replies hit a limitation when you try to apply them to games. Your players are humans, and so are you: you make decisions and react to things in fundamentally human ways. This isn't merely a local thing, it is recursive through the myths that make up foundation of genre fantasy: all the magical nonsense creatures reflect human ideas and human biases of how minds and social interaction work. They are humans, plus or minus a trait or two. Any serious attempt to make them more than that is wee bit more work than +N on a die roll.

So how playing these supposed non-humans actually goes is that your players are just going to play them as humans, and you'll just have to pretend they aren't. There are more interesting way to cover those "plus or minus a trait or two" than dice.

[Lacco]

But even in context of genre fantasy, such replies hit a limitation when you try to apply them to games. Your players are humans, and so are you: you make decisions and react to things in fundamentally human ways. This isn't merely a local thing, it is recursive through the myths that make up foundation of genre fantasy: all the magical nonsense creatures reflect human ideas and human biases of how minds and social interaction work. They are humans, plus or minus a trait or two. Any serious attempt to make them more than that is wee bit more work than +N on a die roll.

So how playing these supposed non-humans actually goes is that your players are just going to play them as humans, and you'll just have to pretend they aren't. There are more interesting way to cover those "plus or minus a trait or two" than dice.

Now this is something I am very interested in: how would you approach building a game with not so human-like minds and interactions? Are there any good examples?

[Vahnavoi]

I am involved in a play-by-post freeform game where I play an artificial intelligence. The way I'm doing it is that I regularly have three to four Wikipedia pages on computer science, philosophy, psychology, linguistics and science fiction open when I write, in addition to two different dictionaries. You can go to freeform subsection on these forums and judge by yourself how good the end result is.

In addition, every time I have convincingly played a non-human, I have already been a real life cultural alien to other players.

On tabletop, I haven't seen non-human player characters done well, ever. I've seen non-human non-player characters done reasonably well, but those benefit from a game master's ability to omit information and keep explicit motives of the non-humans out of the spotlight. Aliens in Stalker and sorcerers and demons in Praedor are in that category.

On field of wider fiction, Solaris, both the film and the book, are classics. Xenogenesis also tries and succeeds to a degree. Lovecraft tries, but in practice, many of the iconic horrors are perfectly understandable, with elder things and shoggoths even called out as human-like in mentality even if they are not in psychology. Deep ones are also "humans plus or minus a trait or two". Only few of the vaguer creatures, like Azathoth, truly approach inhumanity, by virtue of being largely metaphorical representations of things beyond human comprehension.

[Telok]

Now this is something I am very interested in: how would you approach building a game with not so human-like minds and interactions? Are there any good examples?

Classic Traveller. I'm away from my books so this will be short on details.

Traveller characters have a 'social' stat, literally your social rank in the interstellar feudal empire of humanity. If you have high enough social rank you're literally duke or duchess, so while general rp & circumstances can change you social stat on the low levels you have to get enobled in play to get above a certain score. This is an example of the game setting being baked into character rules, very different from d&d.

Enter the Vagyr (possible mispelling), a canid style alien species. They don't have the human social stat, they have... memory fail, but its basically a "pack leader" score. It has totally different rules than the human social stat and drives the vagyr's player to choose actions differently from a human character.

There were notes that in a sufficiently mixed species crew/party it may be useful to track both human socials and vagyr leadership scores on some characters, and of course a sufficiently culturally assimilated person from one species may simply use the score of the other if its appropriate. The rules themselves weren't heavy, maybe a page if I'm remembering right. They gave a human player a good guide to run a character that wouldn't be just another a "human in makeup" faux-alien.

[Pex]

I wouldn't want juvenile antics and descriptions for the erotic flare, but I don't object when the subject happens as appropriate in game. I play with adults only. The subject matter can have a humor about it, and it can be silly fun for the game, but we don't go graphic and we "fade to black" when it happens. There can be romantic moments as well.

[Bohandas]

On field of wider fiction, Solaris, both the film and the book, are classics. Xenogenesis also tries and succeeds to a degree. Lovecraft tries, but in practice, many of the iconic horrors are perfectly understandable, with elder things and shoggoths even called out as human-like in mentality even if they are not in psychology. Deep ones are also "humans plus or minus a trait or two". Only few of the vaguer creatures, like Azathoth, truly approach inhumanity, by virtue of being largely metaphorical representations of things beyond human comprehension.

The inhumanness of the deep ones was secondary to the fact that Innsmouth's economy was based on human sacrifice. And also the deep ones, or those at Innsmouth at any rate, were part human anyway.

Also if they were too alien they'd seem unrealistic or would fall flat. The Dunwich Horror (despite also being part human) falls into thos category; it's barely more of a character than the mundane disasters some of its actions are attributed to.

Conversely, something can be alien and still map to a human-like mentality, just like animal instincts and drives can be seen in human behavior, but humans are still far enough above animals that our behavior is inscrutable to them, even compared to their u derstanding of other species different from their own. Dolphins are bright enough to come up with novel strategies for catching fish and communicate them to other dolphins, but they still keep getting caught in fishing nets and run over by speedboats

Which brings me to the real reason Lovecraft falls flat, which is that a lot of his villains don't live up to the narrstor's fears of them. Cthulhu may be immortal but he can be knocked out by a medium sized civilian boat. An actual navy could keep him in check indefinitely, and more generally his villains, while often horrible, are still less horrible than the things a lot of his readers would have seen in the war or that could happen in a regular disaster. The Dunwich Horror might as well just be a tornado or something it has the same aspects that make a tornado dangerous; it knocks down houses and can't be shot dead.

As for people who did an inhuman perspective well, I recommend Whargoul by Dave Brockie, and Rooms Full of Me from the blog "Strange Stories About Sad People"

[Cluedrew]

Dolphins are bright enough to come up with novel strategies for catching fish and communicate them to other dolphins, but they still keep getting caught in fishing nets and run over by speedboatsThere is a type of primate that is stupid enough to get hit crossing a road yet intelligent enough to create extra automated tools around to try and prevent it.

I'm talking about humans. Human behaviour is already pretty confusing at times. Which is probably why rules that relate to how people think are so hard to get right.

[Pex]

Anecdote:

In the 2E Monster Manual entry for human, they have Intelligence 10.
In the 2E Monster Manual entry for dolphin, they have Intelligence 11.

[KineticDiplomat]

Well, that was a lot of replies. After sifting through the answers and filtering out the sophistry, it looks like there's fundamentally three broad reasons people don't like using social mechanics. I think there's pretty reasonable points to be made why you might consider otherwise.

1. It can make the PC (or the GMs NPC) do something the player doesn't want to.

I would say that presuming you keep things in good taste, yes. That's rather the point. The measure of if a character is decieved, intimidated, out negotiated, etc is if the character is, not the player (GM included). Besides being consistent with most other task resolution in RPGs ( the we don't put on boxing gloves to settle who punched who in the tavern brawl argument), there's a simple matter of fairness.

Namely, without mechanics to force characters into outcomes the players -GM included - get a free pass to negate character capabilities. Why should social skills be the one build that can be stonewalled on a because I feel like it? Is it fair that the GM decides the guard will never be intimidated if he doesn't want to be? That the merchant will never agree to a trade agreement if the GM thinks he doesn't want to? That a PC can listen to the golden orator of the age and not be in any way affected just because he doesn't want to be?

2. The mind-control/unrealistic outcomes argument.

Reasonable enough. But presumably you scale the spectrum of outcomes to the nature of the game. In a low powered, "realish" game then sure, have social outcomes reflect that.

But if the game says a high strength Stat means you can run around in 500 lbs of gear and chop right through steel plate or the dragony equivalent with a short sword...are we really going to say high charisma has to follow real world constraints? Double guy at the gym issue?

3. Humans provide more realistic human outcomes than dice.

Counterintuitive, but they don't. We have entire fields of academic study dedicated to plumbing the depth to which humans do not behave in the way they "should", where should can be anything from rational self interest to directly doing things they say they know are bad and that they don't want to do.

The kick is that people are, with sufficient information and incentives, able to identify the answer they think is best (and where demonstrable, actually ks). Don't eat tide pods. Don't stay in abusive relationships. Don't tell miss October all about your exciting job at the nuclear research lab two beers after you meet her. Ask your boss for an industry average salary or better, and don't back off that position. And without mechanics, this is where players and to a lesser extent GMs will call it - they after all aren't in the real situation, they're the neutral observer solving the problem set.

To get to where people are - eating tide pods, satyinh in abusive relationships, routinely under negotiating their pay, giving out secrets they objectively know they shouldn't be giving to miss October -something has to account for the fact that the character really is in the circumstance and is susceptible to human foibles. The barbarian with poor impulse control probably IS more susceptible to being talked into a bad idea - even if the player knows its not a great idea. The bright yet only averagely brave hacker probably is more likely to knuckle under when faced with intimidatiin even when his player wants to be a hero. You get the idea.

[NichG]

Well, that was a lot of replies. After sifting through the answers and filtering out the sophistry, it looks like there's fundamentally three broad reasons people don't like using social mechanics. I think there's pretty reasonable points to be made why you might consider otherwise.

1. It can make the PC (or the GMs NPC) do something the player doesn't want to.

I would say that presuming you keep things in good taste, yes. That's rather the point. The measure of if a character is decieved, intimidated, out negotiated, etc is if the character is, not the player (GM included). Besides being consistent with most other task resolution in RPGs ( the we don't put on boxing gloves to settle who punched who in the tavern brawl argument), there's a simple matter of fairness.

Namely, without mechanics to force characters into outcomes the players -GM included - get a free pass to negate character capabilities. Why should social skills be the one build that can be stonewalled on a because I feel like it? Is it fair that the GM decides the guard will never be intimidated if he doesn't want to be? That the merchant will never agree to a trade agreement if the GM thinks he doesn't want to? That a PC can listen to the golden orator of the age and not be in any way affected just because he doesn't want to be?

2. The mind-control/unrealistic outcomes argument.

Reasonable enough. But presumably you scale the spectrum of outcomes to the nature of the game. In a low powered, "realish" game then sure, have social outcomes reflect that.

But if the game says a high strength Stat means you can run around in 500 lbs of gear and chop right through steel plate or the dragony equivalent with a short sword...are we really going to say high charisma has to follow real world constraints? Double guy at the gym issue?


These two points at least start from the assumption that the system already has things which measure a character's persuasive power, which is then negated after the fact. They don't address the situation in which you don't write things like 'charisma' or a persuasion skill into the system in the first place.

E.g. sure, someone with 50 Strength can do incredibly superhuman strength-based things, but that's not an argument that there must e.g. be a stat controlling movement speed that can scale and be boosted similarly, or a stat controlling actions per round, or one controlling the ability to see so well you see the future, or one which is a character's weight of protagonism which literally provides fortune and misfortune and plot armor and such (a ta'veren stat if you were doing a Wheel of Time game...)

You could choose to have such stats, at which point you've defined something about the kind of superhuman archetypes the system is intended to express. At which point you're sort of on the hook to follow through. But you could also choose to design a system such that there aren't such stats in the first place. That's the point at which the 'yes/no social combat' decision should be made'.

To point 1, if you don't create capabilities for persuasion, then no character capabilities are being negated.

To point 2, if there's no social stat to scale, you aren't forcing a 50 in one stat to be held against different standards than a 50 in another stat.

[Vahnavoi]

.
1. It can make the PC (or the GMs NPC) do something the player doesn't want to.

I would say that presuming you keep things in good taste, yes. That's rather the point. The measure of if a character is decieved, intimidated, out negotiated, etc is if the character is, not the player (GM included). Besides being consistent with most other task resolution in RPGs ( the we don't put on boxing gloves to settle who punched who in the tavern brawl argument), there's a simple matter of fairness.

"The character" is a theoretical, imaginary construct. What counts as a measure for a character being deceived etc. is based only on prior agreement by players and the idea that only the players' skills in math plus a random function should count is arbitrary.

Consistency is a reason to do all things one way, but on its own it's a weak reason. It's in the same category as speed: if you prioritize that one thing over all the other things, it may be a sufficient reason. If not, it's not. The fairness argument is exactly the same as the bias argument, just flipped around. The answer remains the same: dice-based games cannot and should not be assumed to be fair. Fairness comes from available people who are committed to being fair and able to spot and correct biases.

The "we don't box to solve who wins the tavern brawl" argument continues to be fallacious. There's no "we", live-action roleplayers do this and comparable things all the time. There is no ought from is, so "we don't do physical stuff to solve physical conflicts, so we shouldn't do social stuff to solve social conflicts" is fallacious. Actually list the reasons why you don't want to box. Maybe you don't want to leave the tabletop. Maybe you dislike physical pain and exhaustion. Maybe you're afraid of injury. Maybe you don't have physical space to box in. Then check separately if those reasons apply to social skills. This is all a rehash of what I've already said, but it's pretty hard to avoid repetition when one person after another goes right back to the start.


Namely, without mechanics to force characters into outcomes the players -GM included - get a free pass to negate character capabilities.

Freeform games, for example ones on these forums, have codified this into a rule and give all players a free pass to negate any attack on their characters by another player's. It works about as well as any tabletop game ever did.


Why should social skills be the one build that can be stonewalled on a because I feel like it?

Hmmm, good question, why not give everyone the ability to stonewall ALL the builds?

A direct answer would be that social skills are posited to occupy a different place on the continuum of use of force than other skills and if a player character gets stonewalled socially, they are meant to try something else. People who are unwilling or unable to do anything beyond socializing simply lose those exchanges. A "build" that relies ln social skills to exclusion of others either is illegitimate for such games or simply sucks.


Is it fair that the GM decides the guard will never be intimidated if he doesn't want to be? That the merchant will never agree to a trade agreement if the GM thinks he doesn't want to? That a PC can listen to the golden orator of the age and not be in any way affected just because he doesn't want to be?

Depends. Do you trust your game master and the other players to be reasonably fair? If yes, then YES. You can trust and accept your GM's ruling that the guard will not be bribed. You can trust and accept your GM's ruling that some agreements will always be off the table for a given merchant. You can trust and accept the other player's assessment that the orator was off today and didn't deliver.

Entire games can be run this way and have been designed this way.

By contrast, if you can't trust them to be reasonably fair, why do you think they'll be rolling dice fairly? Who calls the rolls? Who picks the dice? Did you even stop to check if the dice are loaded? :smalltongue:


2. The mind-control/unrealistic outcomes argument.

Reasonable enough. But presumably you scale the spectrum of outcomes to the nature of the game. In a low powered, "realish" game then sure, have social outcomes reflect that.

But if the game says a high strength Stat means you can run around in 500 lbs of gear and chop right through steel plate or the dragony equivalent with a short sword...are we really going to say high charisma has to follow real world constraints? Double guy at the gym issue?

Ability to entertain arbitrary premises does not entail obligation to do so. I don't need to have mindcontrollers around just because I have people with super strength around, anymore than I need to have space aliens around because I have dragons around. I can value realism in social skills more than I value realism in physical ability, or vice versa, without contradiction. "Guy at the gym" in its ordinary form is not a fallacy - there's nothing wrong with saying that for a given game, a player character cannot outperform what mundane humans do without some kind of a fantastic excuse.

Nevermind that I can implement mindcontrol etc. superhuman abilities separately from normal social interaction. They don't have to use the same system anymore than they have to use dice.


3. Humans provide more realistic human outcomes than dice.

Counterintuitive, but they don't. We have entire fields of academic study dedicated to plumbing the depth to which humans do not behave in the way they "should", where should can be anything from rational self interest to directly doing things they say they know are bad and that they don't want to do.

This is completely backwards.

How real humans operate is the benchmark for realistic humans. When an academic theory predicts behaviour that doesn't match what real humans do, it is the theory that is being unrealistic. This is independent from the fact that the simplistic dice-based models seen in tabletop games aren't even accurate to current academic theories. Dice are low-fidelity both compared to real human behaviour and real theories of human behaviour.


The kick is that people are, with sufficient information and incentives, able to identify the answer they think is best (and where demonstrable, actually ks). Don't eat tide pods. Don't stay in abusive relationships. Don't tell miss October all about your exciting job at the nuclear research lab two beers after you meet her. Ask your boss for an industry average salary or better, and don't back off that position. And without mechanics, this is where players and to a lesser extent GMs will call it - they after all aren't in the real situation, they're the neutral observer solving the problem set.

Your claim that game masters and players are mere neutral observers solving problems is exactly the kind of theoretical statement that has been shown to not hold up in practice. Real game masters and players can and do get emotional about their characters, they are capable of empathizing with their imaginary characters and the staged situations surrounding them. In short, fake situations can create real feelings. Even more absurd is the claim that dice help with this. If anything it's the opposite: the layers of abstraction that come with playing around with dice and math are the very things keeping players at arm's length emotionally. For an obvious example, detailed verbal description of sex has much greater psychological impact than a die roll. A picture of a sexual act, even more so. Go ahead and test it, you're on the internet, you're perfectly capable of doing so.


To get to where people are - eating tide pods, satyinh in abusive relationships, routinely under negotiating their pay, giving out secrets they objectively know they shouldn't be giving to miss October -something has to account for the fact that the character really is in the circumstance and is susceptible to human foibles. The barbarian with poor impulse control probably IS more susceptible to being talked into a bad idea - even if the player knows its not a great idea. The bright yet only averagely brave hacker probably is more likely to knuckle under when faced with intimidatiin even when his player wants to be a hero. You get the idea.

Ye, I get the idea. But you apparently don't believe anyone could get the idea, because if other people can get the idea, what stops them acting in the proper manner out of their own volition?

This is the same kind of silly argument I've seen in threads about flaw mechanics. "Flawed characters would make for good games (etc.), but I don't believe my players would play flawed characters on their own, so I need to bribe them with points". If you are capable of thinking flawed characters make for good games, at least some other people can do so too, which means they'll be willing to play those flawed characters for sake of the game, without any additional reward mechanic. Same thing here.

[Telok]

"we don't do physical stuff to solve physical conflicts, so we shouldn't do social stuff to solve social conflicts" is fallacious. Actually list the reasons why you don't want to box. Maybe you don't want to leave the tabletop. Maybe you dislike physical pain and exhaustion. Maybe you're afraid of injury. Maybe you don't have physical space to box in. Then check separately if those reasons apply to social skills. This is all a rehash of what I've already said, but it's pretty hard to avoid repetition when one person after another goes right back to the start.

Lets see, can the players in my game fast talk a troll or persuade a dragon? Well I'm not a troll or a dragon, I have different capabilities and values. I don't have a troll or dragon handy for then to talk to. Things that work on me probably won't work on a troll or dragon. The players aren't actually good at fast talking people and their persuasive arguments are usually all just appeals to emotion with little substance. Plus it may all takes a fair bit of time, should we sideline four other players while the DM & one person rp out a two hour argument in character?

Should that mean the player whose character has a 20 charisma and is expert at persuasion & deception is screwed because The DM has inherent biases towards one mode of persuasion and the player's personal style is clumsy & doesn't match those biases? Should we ignore that the system that provides those character resources and options to players?

Sure, you can build a system without any social attributes or skills. You can "build" a system without anything at all. But I don't talk about those sorts of systems in a thread about social contest mechanics because those systems can't do that sort of thing by design. I talk about systems with things like 'charisma' attributes, 'deception' skills, and that use dice rolls to decide uncertainty. I don't bother wasting words on LARPs because we aren't talking about putting social conflict dice mechanics in them.


Depends. Do you trust your game master and the other players to be reasonably fair? If yes, then YES. You can trust and accept your GM's ruling that the guard will not be bribed. You can trust and accept your GM's ruling that some agreements will always be off the table for a given merchant. You can trust and accept the other player's assessment that the orator was off today and didn't deliver.

I trust more thsn half the people I know who DM to be relative novices who don't have much (if any) experience outside the D&D family tree of games. I trust that they don't think about social mechanics if its not an entire chapter or bolded & highlighted subsection in the main play book. I trust inexperience to allow them to make mistakes that I made 20+ years ago when I started DMing. I trust that they haven't tried to examine their own biases about how people persuade other people.

How many faux-medeval games with truth magic have you seen where there's this assumption it uses a modern style "innocent untill proven guilty" law enforcement with juries and no coercion or involuntary application of truth magic? I've seen lots, just because DMs and players don't think about how or why these things happen. Likewise, I've seen lots of things like ancient & magic obsessed liches have the social, mental, & moral abilities & values of 20-something college students. I trust more than half of DMs inexperience & ignorance of statistics & social psychology to influence the game more than their assessment of things ouside their (or my) areas of expertise.


Nevermind that I can implement mindcontrol etc. superhuman abilities separately from normal social interaction. They don't have to use the same system anymore than they have to use dice
Oh yeah, mind control magic, powers, supernatural stuff, etc., is easy. Most systems already manage that in whatever rules they use for special effects. But since I tend to shut off or start trolling when the phone scammers start fast talking at me and my players are worse at social manipulation than the phone scammers should I require them to fast talk me in order to successfully use their character's 20 charisma and expert social skills?

I find value in rules structures that help cover areas I know that I'm weaker at in adjucating on my own. I value rules structures designed to enable archetypes that the game promotes. I value rules structures that reduce my DMing cognitive load. Ivalue rules structures that assist novice DMs to avoid common mistakes or help then be a more neutral refree. I like that if a game indicates a character is good at some activity then it doesn't just leave the actual implementation of that to if the DM thinks your rp of it is beliveable according to their own experience or lack of experience with that aspect of the character.

All that is pretty general, but it applies across the whole game. If a game gives characters combat abilities then I like to see a rule structure for combat that makes characters with lots of those abilities better at combat than characters without any such abilities. Same for exploration, social conflicts, magic/sfx, and the other stuff in the games. If a game has no social, magic, or combat abilities then I don't expect it to have rules for them. But when a game has those character abilities then I expect some rule structure that hopefully has more substance or thought than "the DM makes a wild guess" type of thing that we were using 25-30 years ago.

[NichG]

Sure, you can build a system without any social attributes or skills. You can "build" a system without anything at all. But I don't talk about those sorts of systems in a thread about social contest mechanics because those systems can't do that sort of thing by design. I talk about systems with things like 'charisma' attributes, 'deception' skills, and that use dice rolls to decide uncertainty. I don't bother wasting words on LARPs because we aren't talking about putting social conflict dice mechanics in them.


I think it's pretty relevant to talk about in a thread questioning whether social mechanics are reasonable to have in an RPG. Otherwise it's a circular argument: we should have them because we have them.

That excludes a lot of options like play a different system, homebrew them out of a system you otherwise want to play, design a new system from scratch... We're not actually hostage to what WotC or White Wolf or whomever puts in their games.

[Telok]

I think it's pretty relevant to talk about in a thread questioning whether social mechanics are reasonable to have in an RPG. Otherwise it's a circular argument: we should have them because we have them.

That excludes a lot of options like play a different system, homebrew them out of a system you otherwise want to play, design a new system from scratch... We're not actually hostage to what WotC or White Wolf or whomever puts in their games.

That I can engage with. The question of if a game gives characters a "persuade" thing and "resist persuasion" thing then should they apply equally to all characters in the game and how should they be applied. That I can do.

But a game giving those things to characters and the saying we shouldn't have rules for them because games without those things don't need rules for them? Or that we don't need any rules because we're humans talking to humans in a shared language, even if the characters are a thousand year old dragon and a spawn of an eldrich horror bartering souls for magic in an ill defined trade-pidgin language?

In a game where characters have "persuade", "deceive", "charm" abilities/skills and 'the silver tongued bard who can talk good' as an archetype I like more rules/advice/guidelines than "talking to enemies is hard" and "DM does a butt-pull". Because chances are there's going to be characters in play that are supposed to exceed the players abilities in those areas and relying on all the payers to always be able to be unbiased & play at that level is a bit unrealistic.

[Quertus]

If high skill level is possible, I'd expect a precautionary principle to apply. Especially if the system has a high variance random source and fixed targets like D&D. Maybe 99 of 100 who go in front of the king aren't going to hit the persuasion DC, but all it takes to create a disaster is someone rolling high...

I suppose there'd also be the flip side. If it's normalized, maybe the king has Royal Persuaders who go town to town brainwashing the populace into loyalty and obedience. Maybe to even enter the palace you basically have to let yourself get brainwashed into service to the crown by a dedicated Diplomat.

The point being, if that's how skill at persuasion is implemented in the system, you're going to get a society that recognizes that fact and is shaped around those realities. And it's likely to not actually favor 'playing a social character' in that case, because it makes socializing into a pure risk and liability rather than a net positive interaction.

Government brain washing? Welcome to Placia!

We guarantee you'll love your stay. :smallwink:

If Placia were a Paranoia game, after the description you gave, people would be asking your security clearance, because that's remarkably close to SOP. Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, knows enough to fear coming to the attention of The Man, despite his generally patriotic bent. And doesn't dare pursue any non-government powers on Placia, for not dissimilar (if at times unfounded) reasons.

[Vahnavoi]

Lets see, can the players in my game fast talk a troll or persuade a dragon? Well I'm not a troll or a dragon, I have different capabilities and values. I don't have a troll or dragon handy for then to talk to. Things that work on me probably won't work on a troll or dragon. The players aren't actually good at fast talking people and their persuasive arguments are usually all just appeals to emotion with little substance.

Where in this block of text is a statement of values, the actual reason why you care about any of this?

As I pointed out, trolls, dragons and other such creatures in myths are humans, plus or minuss a trait or two. Beyond that, there is no non-arbitrary benchmark for how these creatures ought to be, because they are not real. A playgroup has complete freedom to decide how they work, so deciding that they work within the real capabilities of that playgroup is perfectly valid.


Plus it may all takes a fair bit of time, should we sideline four other players while the DM & one person rp out a two hour argument in character?

Already adressed this line of thinking in a prior reply to KineticDiplomat. If you value time, that's a good argument for keeping track of time and breaking conversations into turns. If you value resolution speed above other things and can prove dice are faster, then that's a good argument for replacing conversations with die rolls. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Ie., don't bother claiming to me that fast dice-based systems are any less arbitrary and any less inaccurate than players talking. You aren't doing a high fidelity simulation of a troll or dragon if you're rolling 2d6 to see if it's friendly or hostile.


Should that mean the player whose character has a 20 charisma and is expert at persuasion & deception is screwed because The DM has inherent biases towards one mode of persuasion and the player's personal style is clumsy & doesn't match those biases? Should we ignore that the system that provides those character resources and options to players?

Or you could give the player and the game master real resources, like a manual on real social skills or acting. Or use a the principles I outlined earlier in the example of how to use weight-lifting to model weight-lifting. I have never argued for ignoring giving players resources or options, I've argued for resources and options that aren't basic arithmetic and dice.


Sure, you can build a system without any social attributes or skills. You can "build" a system without anything at all. But I don't talk about those sorts of systems in a thread about social contest mechanics because those systems can't do that sort of thing by design. I talk about systems with things like 'charisma' attributes, 'deception' skills, and that use dice rolls to decide uncertainty. I don't bother wasting words on LARPs because we aren't talking about putting social conflict dice mechanics in them.

NichG already covered this, but please go back and reread the original post by Quertus. Quertus was very specifically asking if accepting absurdities of, f.ex., hitpoints, means he should also accept absurdities of social combat systems. My basic point directly applies to that. Many of my other points are elaborations on the alternatives.

Fun fact: many fantasy LARPs had inherited dice-based mechanics and stats from tabletop games, back in the day. They were done away with when LARPers figured out they were unnecessary or that there were alternatives better suited to live-action medium. The only thing ignoring LARPs does is that you miss out on any innovations that could be backported to tabletop.


I trust more thsn half the people I know who DM to be relative novices who don't have much (if any) experience outside the D&D family tree of games. I trust that they don't think about social mechanics if its not an entire chapter or bolded & highlighted subsection in the main play book. I trust inexperience to allow them to make mistakes that I made 20+ years ago when I started DMing. I trust that they haven't tried to examine their own biases about how people persuade other people.

That goes back to the question I already asked: Why do you think having an instruction manual on something else than real social skills will solve the problem these people are having?

Related: if part of the problem is that these people haven't played games outside D&D's game design paradigm, how is part of the solution not having them play games outside that design paradigm?


How many faux-medeval games with truth magic have you seen where there's this assumption it uses a modern style "innocent untill proven guilty" law enforcement with juries and no coercion or involuntary application of truth magic?

Funniest thing: I hear a lot about this type of game, but I almost never see or experience them. I don't hold them myself, because my commitment to doing research means I have at least some knowledge on justice systems and law enforcement of different times and places, and because my commitment to having players use their own wits means there is little to no uncomplicated truth magic. People who hold games for me have also avoided doing this, because they did at least some research and thinking on it beforehand.


I've seen lots, just because DMs and players don't think about how or why these things happen. Likewise, I've seen lots of things like ancient & magic obsessed liches have the social, mental, & moral abilities & values of 20-something college students. I trust more than half of DMs inexperience & ignorance of statistics & social psychology to influence the game more than their assessment of things ouside their (or my) areas of expertise.

Yes, yes, the people around you predictably suck due to ignorance and lack of expertise. Have you tried encouraging them to be less ignorant and maybe gain more expertise in the subject matters covered by their games?


Oh yeah, mind control magic, powers, supernatural stuff, etc., is easy. Most systems already manage that in whatever rules they use for special effects. But since I tend to shut off or start trolling when the phone scammers start fast talking at me and my players are worse at social manipulation than the phone scammers should I require them to fast talk me in order to successfully use their character's 20 charisma and expert social skills?

See the earlier example of how to use weight-lifting to model weight-lifting and the conversation that followed about non-dice based handicaps and crutch mechanics to give unskilled players a leg-up for a conversation.

You being better at social skills than your players isn't a problem. Use your skills to give them pointers and raise them to your level, or lower yourself to theirs. Ie., act, and help them to act.


I find value in rules structures that help cover areas I know that I'm weaker at in adjucating on my own. I value rules structures designed to enable archetypes that the game promotes. I value rules structures that reduce my DMing cognitive load. Ivalue rules structures that assist novice DMs to avoid common mistakes or help then be a more neutral refree. I like that if a game indicates a character is good at some activity then it doesn't just leave the actual implementation of that to if the DM thinks your rp of it is beliveable according to their own experience or lack of experience with that aspect of the character.

See, this is what you should've started your post with. Then I could've spent my time giving examples of non-dice-based rules and mechanics you can use to serve these values.

[HidesHisEyes]

Well… perhaps it's a trick question? :smalltongue:

The term "role-playing rules" is… used differently by different people. Anything I've *recognized* as role-playing rules, I've evaluated as a detriment to role-playing. Social combat rules, that involve forcing action, are simply the most obvious and easiest to discuss set of role-playing rules.

But anything that moves beyond "Bluff vs Sense Motive", anything that moves beyond "what does my character perceive", is, IME, a detriment to role-playing.

Or, at least, to role-playing human beings as they exist in this reality.

My question is, should I continue to decry such rules as producing "unrealistic" caricatures of human behavior, or should I just accept that systems with social rules aren't about human interactions, but alien ones? Just like HP perhaps less model "real" humans, and more model "action movie" humans.

Should I play games for what they are, or for what I want them to be?

First and foremost I think all rules in a roleplaying game are “roleplaying rules” by definition.

Second, we don’t need to think of rules as necessarily modelling anything, at least not primarily. Rules might be generating or incentivising or some other verb, rather than modelling.

But yeah I think you’re on the right lines with HP creating an action movie feel. Rules for diplomacy, negotiation, deception etc might create some other kind of feel. You don’t necessarily need to jettison any notion of normal human behaviour to make them work.

[Pex]

I think it's pretty relevant to talk about in a thread questioning whether social mechanics are reasonable to have in an RPG. Otherwise it's a circular argument: we should have them because we have them.

That excludes a lot of options like play a different system, homebrew them out of a system you otherwise want to play, design a new system from scratch... We're not actually hostage to what WotC or White Wolf or whomever puts in their games.

It's fine for those other game systems to not have social mechanics, but then I'd expect those game systems to have been built with that in mind. The players of those games can have their fun. I might even enjoy it given the opportunity. As an analogy, I like board games with defined rules and a winner, but I can also enjoy party games which are more about the participation than having rules and an ultimate winner. However, I prefer the RPGs with social mechanics and such a game is not wrong to have them. If that's not to your taste, that's fine, but that's all it is - a matter of one's personal taste. A game is not superior or inferior for doing it a particular way, nor is a player required to play the other type. A player might agree to try it when asked by his friend, but there's no commandment that he must do so.

[Bohandas]

Has anyone considered that a roleplaying game where the player has to perform an act of the relevant ability in order to completa an action would be a kickass idea for a gameshow?

Like they could have a Double-Dare style obstaclemcoirse for dexterity and one of those carnival ring the bell strength yesters for strength and for constitution you'd have to go on some dizzying tilt-a-whirl esque ride without vomiting.

[Vahnavoi]

Has anyone considered that a roleplaying game where the player has to perform an act of the relevant ability in order to completa an action would be a kickass idea for a gameshow?

Yes, reality TV has been invented already.

[Bohandas]

yeah, but this would be in the context of an RPG

[Vahnavoi]

There already are reality television game formats which are or include roleplaying (EDIT: as well as filmed and televised LARPs). If you think this hasn't been done, you haven't watched a whole lot of TV.

[Cluedrew]

And are probably a better person for it.

[KorvinStarmast]

First and foremost I think all rules in a roleplaying game are “roleplaying rules” by definition.

Second, we don’t need to think of rules as necessarily modelling anything, at least not primarily. Rules might be generating or incentivising or some other verb, rather than modelling. Playability is a thing; the rules need to be playable. This is a game we are talking about.
(Board game example on how playable a game is: Afrika Korps is a lot more playable, out of the box, than 1914. (Both are Avalon Hill products)).

[Vahnavoi]

First and foremost I think all rules in a roleplaying game are “roleplaying rules” by definition.

Not exactly.

A roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how, and why.

A lot of rules in a roleplaying game do not directly concern who a player's character is, what they can do, how, or why, or how the player's actions translate into game actions by their character. They instead govern what the situation is, how it is staged, who stages it, etc.. Obvious examples of such rules are rules which define whether there's a game master and what a game master is supposed to do.


Second, we don’t need to think of rules as necessarily modelling anything, at least not primarily. Rules might be generating or incentivising or some other verb, rather than modelling.


On this part, you're correct. In addition to modeling game events, generating game content or encouraging specific player behaviours, some common types of rules govern acceptable table conduct, division of labour, who enforces the rules, etc..

[HidesHisEyes]

Not exactly.

A roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how, and why.

A lot of rules in a roleplaying game do not directly concern who a player's character is, what they can do, how, or why, or how the player's actions translate into game actions by their character. They instead govern what the situation is, how it is staged, who stages it, etc.. Obvious examples of such rules are rules which define whether there's a game master and what a game master is supposed to do.



On this part, you're correct. In addition to modeling game events, generating game content or encouraging specific player behaviours, some common types of rules govern acceptable table conduct, division of labour, who enforces the rules, etc..

I see what you mean. Yeah that distinction makes sense. I was speaking very broadly to say a roleplaying game’s rules are all ultimately there to facilitate roleplaying since that’s what the whole thing is about. But you’re right that some rules will be there to establish a framework to make roleplaying possible, while resolution mechanics are how the roleplaying actually happens.

My main point is that those latter rules - resolution mechanics, let’s say - will typically be activated in all sorts of situations, from combat to exploration to diplomacy, and in all cases it makes sense to call them “roleplaying rules”. I think people sometimes get confused when it comes to diplomacy and similar things because the part where the characters speak is more obviously “roleplaying” because it’s more likely to disclose something about the character’s personality, background etc. But the same can be true of exploration when a character makes a decision about whether to sneak down a side passage or draw their sword and kick the main door open. Even decisions made in combat on a basis of pure tactical optimisation are telling us this character wants to win this fight.

And with this in mind the actual words the character says in a social interaction scene, how eloquent they are etc, become less important than tangible things like what they want from the NPC and want they’re offering in return. I think this is a good way around the dilemma people often bring up here about player skill vs character skill.

[KorvinStarmast]

As for people who did an inhuman perspective well, I recommend Whargoul by Dave Brockie, and Rooms Full of Me from the blog "Strange Stories About Sad People" Big thank you for the recommendation. :smallsmile:

In the 2E Monster Manual entry for human, they have Intelligence 10.
In the 2E Monster Manual entry for dolphin, they have Intelligence 11. When Ron Edwards described D&D as incoherent, I suspect that this may have been the kind of thing he was pointing toward.

1. It can make the PC (or the GMs NPC) do something the player doesn't want to. It doesn't matter for the NPC, it matters for the Players.
Namely, without mechanics to force characters into outcomes Do you understand the problem with that for a lot of players?

2. The mind-control/unrealistic outcomes argument. But with magic the suspension of disbelief usually makes it palatable.
3. Humans provide more realistic human outcomes than dice. Yep, it's humans who sit around the table to role play.


To get to where people are - eating tide pods, satyinh in abusive relationships, routinely under negotiating their pay, giving out secrets they objectively know they shouldn't be giving to miss October -something has to account for the fact that the character really is in the circumstance and is susceptible to human foibles. I'd suggest that you not demand that a game become a reality simulator as support for your point.

"The character" is a theoretical, imaginary construct. All in all a very good post which I'll mostly trim to respond to a point or two.

The "we don't box to solve who wins the tavern brawl" argument continues to be fallacious. As ever.

A direct answer would be that social skills are posited to occupy a different place on the continuum of use of force than other skills and if a player character gets stonewalled socially, they are meant to try something else. People who are unwilling or unable to do anything beyond socializing simply lose those exchanges. A "build" that relies ln social skills to exclusion of others either is illegitimate for such games or simply sucks. Yep.
{Snip nice treatment on mind control}

How real humans operate is the benchmark for realistic humans. When an academic theory predicts behaviour that doesn't match what real humans do, it is the theory that is being unrealistic. This is independent from the fact that the simplistic dice-based models seen in tabletop games aren't even accurate to current academic theories. Dice are low-fidelity both compared to real human behaviour and real theories of human behaviour. I am not sure that any dice based game is a good tool for that, TBH.

Your claim that game masters and players are mere neutral observers solving problems is exactly the kind of theoretical statement that has been shown to not hold up in practice. Real game masters and players can and do get emotional about their characters, they are capable of empathizing with their imaginary characters and the staged situations surrounding them. In short, fake situations can create real feelings. Even more absurd is the claim that dice help with this. If anything it's the opposite: the layers of abstraction that come with playing around with dice and math are the very things keeping players at arm's length emotionally. For an obvious example, detailed verbal description of sex has much greater psychological impact than a die roll. As the creator of Microscope pointed out in the preface of the game, role playing game are an activity centered around people sitting around a table talking to each other about things real and/or imagined. Dice are not a required element of that. They are a tool with some utility, however.

Lets see, can the players in my game fast talk a troll or persuade a dragon? Well I'm not a troll or a dragon, I have different capabilities and values. You play the role of one if you are the DM or the GM. They are, and they become, whatever your imagination and style leads them to be. Given that they are fantastical creatures, I fail to see the problem here.
... , while resolution mechanics are how the roleplaying actually happens. No. Roleplay can happen and does happen, without mechanics. Roleplay does not require mechanics to work. What it needs is a sufficiently shared understanding (which may include the infamous suspension of disbelief in some scenarios) among the players at the table.

And with this in mind the actual words the character says in a social interaction scene, how eloquent they are etc, become less important than tangible things like what they want from the NPC and want they’re offering in return. Intention, approach, and such relevant detail as the scene calls for takes care of the majority of this. Some players need to be taught how to present what they are doing in terms of the Intention and Approach method.
So here's an actionable takeaway: teach them how to do that, if need be.
It will be a win-win deal in that the player 'wins' by improving their RP and communication skills, and the whole table wins since the scenes will tend to flow better.

I will offer a modest example of a role playing scenario that required no dice to resolve.

Core point of tension: "I'm pregnant, the baby is yours, and I'm going to have it."
Context:
Characters: D&D 5e female life cleric (my PC) and NPC Rogue{Mastermind} /Noble, who had been with the party for numerous sessions, and who had just taken up his post as trade representative after the "we finally got the escorted NPC to his destination and story arc" blow out (In Character) had been completed. This role was played by my nephew.

Set up: at the end of a session, as various players signed off, I decided that the cleric (who'd been snubbed mostly by this handsome/charismatic NPC) would try to fulfill her not well publicized desire for him and jump his bones. DM shrugged, did one roll to see if, when drunk, he might accept her attempts at seduction, got a positive result. We did a quick "fade to black" as the two drunks ended up in a tangle somewhere in the tavern. (This isn't the role play I am referring to, it's the set up).

The Catalyst: DM rolled a d100 to determine: did she get pregnant? (That isn't role play, that's the DM choosing to let RNG inform the consequences of her drunken choice). I watched the 00 appear on the screen. (roll20 table top) He and I both muttered expressions of amazement and surprise.
We jointly decided to embrace it, but told nobody else for 17 in world game days. My PC didn't know she was with child for 17 days. (Number determined by a 3d10 the DM rolled roll to see when the first heartbeat would be felt). We had a number of adventures and combats during those 17 days.
The Role Play:
Using Discord voice, after the session where she tells the rest of the PCs that she's retiring because she's expecting and she wishes to make a home/tend the shrine to her deity in this walled town, my nephew (who had been the one 'playing' the NPC in most combats as he also had a rogue) and I role played the meeting between the two.
His role: somewhat arrogant, rich noble's son who was now his home city's trade representative to this town in another kingdom.
My role: the women he didn't like all that much (beyond being fellow adventurers) telling him, over a dinner she'd prepared at the shrine, that she'd only been sexually active once in the past half of a year and 'the other night was it' - the baby's yours!

Her objective: get him to acknowledged the child as his, and decide on what level of discretion is needed, in public, and to get a commitment of support for the child.

His objective: avoid scandal and treat with sufficient honor his adventuring companion such that the rest of the party does not come and kick his butt if he treats her like that cad that he's mostly shown himself to be.

Noble made it very clear that no, he's not marrying some girl from a coastal town whose mom was a serving lady and cook in a tavern (all part of my PCs back story) and who'd been to seminary
since
he needs to be married to someone of his social station for many reasons: his own preferences and the demands of his position as his city's representative.
He also prefers women who are more physically attractive than my PC. (She is best described as having average / regular looks; neither ugly nor beautiful)

The scene lasted about 15-20 minutes of RL conversation, with the DM taking notes mostly.
A resolution of the child's future, support, and acknowledgement was ironed out based on the two of us negotiating.
No initiative was rolled, no violence was involved, though some hurt feelings and friction were for sure on display as we played it out in-character.

[HidesHisEyes]

No. Roleplay can happen and does happen, without mechanics. Roleplay does not require mechanics to work. What it needs is a sufficiently shared understanding (which may include the infamous suspension of disbelief in some scenarios) among the players at the table.
Intention, approach, and such relevant detail as the scene calls for takes care of the majority of this. Some players need to be taught how to present what they are doing in terms of the Intention and Approach method.
So here's an actionable takeaway: teach them how to do that, if need be.
It will be a win-win deal in that the player 'wins' by improving their RP and communication skills, and the whole table wins since the scenes will tend to flow better.

I will offer a modest example of a role playing scenario that required no dice to resolve.

Core point of tension: "I'm pregnant, the baby is yours, and I'm going to have it."
Context:
Characters: D&D 5e female life cleric (my PC) and NPC Rogue{Mastermind} /Noble, who had been with the party for numerous sessions, and who had just taken up his post as trade representative after the "we finally got the escorted NPC to his destination and story arc" blow out (In Character) had been completed. This role was played by my nephew.

Set up: at the end of a session, as various players signed off, I decided that the cleric (who'd been snubbed mostly by this handsome/charismatic NPC) would try to fulfill her not well publicized desire for him and jump his bones. DM shrugged, did one roll to see if, when drunk, he might accept her attempts at seduction, got a positive result. We did a quick "fade to black" as the two drunks ended up in a tangle somewhere in the tavern. (This isn't the role play I am referring to, it's the set up).

The Catalyst: DM rolled a d100 to determine: did she get pregnant? (That isn't role play, that's the DM choosing to let RNG inform the consequences of her drunken choice). I watched the 00 appear on the screen. (roll20 table top) He and I both muttered expressions of amazement and surprise.
We jointly decided to embrace it, but told nobody else for 17 in world game days. My PC didn't know she was with child for 17 days. (Number determined by a 3d10 the DM rolled roll to see when the first heartbeat would be felt). We had a number of adventures and combats during those 17 days.
The Role Play:
Using Discord voice, after the session where she tells the rest of the PCs that she's retiring because she's expecting and she wishes to make a home/tend the shrine to her deity in this walled town, my nephew (who had been the one 'playing' the NPC in most combats as he also had a rogue) and I role played the meeting between the two.
His role: somewhat arrogant, rich noble's son who was now his home city's trade representative to this town in another kingdom.
My role: the women he didn't like all that much (beyond being fellow adventurers) telling him, over a dinner she'd prepared at the shrine, that she'd only been sexually active once in the past half of a year and 'the other night was it' - the baby's yours!

Her objective: get him to acknowledged the child as his, and decide on what level of discretion is needed, in public, and to get a commitment of support for the child.

His objective: avoid scandal and treat with sufficient honor his adventuring companion such that the rest of the party does not come and kick his butt if he treats her like that cad that he's mostly shown himself to be.

Noble made it very clear that no, he's not marrying some girl from a coastal town whose mom was a serving lady and cook in a tavern (all part of my PCs back story) and who'd been to seminary
since
he needs to be married to someone of his social station for many reasons: his own preferences and the demands of his position as his city's representative.
He also prefers women who are more physically attractive than my PC. (She is best described as having average / regular looks; neither ugly nor beautiful)

The scene lasted about 15-20 minutes of RL conversation, with the DM taking notes mostly.
A resolution of the child's future, support, and acknowledgement was ironed out based on the two of us negotiating.
No initiative was rolled, no violence was involved, though some hurt feelings and friction were for sure on display as we played it out in-character.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Absolutely roleplaying can and does happen without mechanics. What I meant was that mechanics - or certainly most action resolution mechanics - are there to facilitate roleplaying when there’s a desire for the game system itself to affect how the roleplaying goes. And I don’t think there’s any reason to cordon off social interaction scenes and say mechanics never get involved in that specific aspect of a game. You don’t need to use them every time PCs talk to NPCs, not even when there’s something meaningful at stake. But these scenes are absolutely fair game for mechanics.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Absolutely roleplaying can and does happen without mechanics. What I meant was that mechanics - or certainly most action resolution mechanics - are there to facilitate roleplaying when there’s a desire for the game system itself to affect how the roleplaying goes. And I don’t think there’s any reason to cordon off social interaction scenes and say mechanics never get involved in that specific aspect of a game. You don’t need to use them every time PCs talk to NPCs, not even when there’s something meaningful at stake. But these scenes are absolutely fair game for mechanics.

I agree with the bold. There are times when having mechanics is nice. I don't want, however, to be expected to switch to "social initiative" and track "social HP" (or anything similar) when people make "social attacks" and "social saves". I'm totally fine with D&D's (especially 5e's) relatively anemic social mechanics (basically just the regular uncertainty resolution mechanics), invoked when I, the DM, am not sure whether the player's stated method can achieve the stated intent. Just like any other attempted action.

There are times for more one-off subsystems--I recently had a "council session" with a bunch of NPCs all with different agendas that the PCs were trying to persuade or not anger. But those, in my experience, are so fact specific that having a pre-generated subsystem isn't all that much help. It's mostly note taking and comparing what the PCs said (or didn't say!) to pre-determined triggers for increases in support or decreases. Did they talk about the war? If so, NPCs A, B, and C increase by 1, while NPCs D and F decrease by 4. Or whatever. On a simple 1-10 not-support/support scale. With endpoints triggered in a few different ways. Certain topics or asks are such that they immediately cause "something else" to happen that ends the social scene for the moment. Whether that's a temporary adjournment to discuss or lunch or everything breaking down into chaos. But all the work was done in figuring out what those breakpoints and triggers would be and the size of the change, which are all tightly tied to the individuals in question and their history with the PCs up to that point.

[HidesHisEyes]

I agree with the bold. There are times when having mechanics is nice. I don't want, however, to be expected to switch to "social initiative" and track "social HP" (or anything similar) when people make "social attacks" and "social saves". I'm totally fine with D&D's (especially 5e's) relatively anemic social mechanics (basically just the regular uncertainty resolution mechanics), invoked when I, the DM, am not sure whether the player's stated method can achieve the stated intent. Just like any other attempted action.

There are times for more one-off subsystems--I recently had a "council session" with a bunch of NPCs all with different agendas that the PCs were trying to persuade or not anger. But those, in my experience, are so fact specific that having a pre-generated subsystem isn't all that much help. It's mostly note taking and comparing what the PCs said (or didn't say!) to pre-determined triggers for increases in support or decreases. Did they talk about the war? If so, NPCs A, B, and C increase by 1, while NPCs D and F decrease by 4. Or whatever. On a simple 1-10 not-support/support scale. With endpoints triggered in a few different ways. Certain topics or asks are such that they immediately cause "something else" to happen that ends the social scene for the moment. Whether that's a temporary adjournment to discuss or lunch or everything breaking down into chaos. But all the work was done in figuring out what those breakpoints and triggers would be and the size of the change, which are all tightly tied to the individuals in question and their history with the PCs up to that point.

Yeah I’m on the same page. The kind of mechanical resolution of talking scenes that I was talking about is not some crunchy subsystem with “social hit points” etc. I actually don’t even like the combat subsystem in D&D, I prefer even combat to be handle as far as possible by the same strong, flexible core mechanic as everything else, personally.

[KorvinStarmast]

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Absolutely roleplaying can and does happen without mechanics. OK.

And I don’t think there’s any reason to cordon off social interaction scenes and say mechanics never get involved in that specific aspect of a game. Good thing I didn't say that. :smallwink:

You don’t need to use them every time PCs talk to NPCs, not even when there’s something meaningful at stake. But these scenes are absolutely fair game for mechanics. Depends on the situation, yeah.

[NichG]

I do think that if you're going to have mechanics, and if the mechanics are going to be optional as to whether they come into play (and especially if that option belongs to the GM), then it's important that the mechanics not actually involve resource investments or tradeoffs on the part of the players.

So if you want to have a 'NPC personality table' that you roll on to find quirks and blackmail opportunities and ardent beliefs and so on, so you don't have to think of those for every NPC, that's fine. If you want to have a general rule for initial reactions like 'roll d100, 1-10 is hostile, 90-100 is eager for an alliance, etc', that's fine. If you have a general rule of 'if the exchange is middling and you can't think of what the NPC would choose, roll a die adjusted according to the party's general reputation in the region, and here are the criteria for reputation...', that's fine.

But I'd avoid having a skill that a player has to intentionally invest in if you're mainly going to be using it for occasional on-the-fence resolution, because then that becomes a trap option. Generally I think mechanics offered to the player should be promises of things they get to consistently predict or control - you're telling them how something will be resolved, so they can plan around it. Giving a mechanic which says 'I will choose when you roll this' defeats that purpose. It's not just social skills, but any skill the player must invest in which is dependent on the GM asking for a check rather than allowing the player to ask for a check is poor design I think.

[icefractal]

The rules should definitely be in sync with how it's run, yeah. A lot of the ideas mentioned here should be stated as house-rules as used, and full rebuilding should be on the table if they're introduced mid-campaign (IMO, full rebuilding should always be on the table anyway, but YMMV).

I'd note though, that (in D&D 3.x at least), the idea that Diplomacy checks let you directly make people do things with no limit is fanon, it's not actually in the rules. Unless you use the optional and poorly-balanced rules from the ELH, the most that Diplomacy can do is make the target "helpful". That's it. It doesn't directly let you force any action, and you still make requests/demands by actually making them, with the NPC's reaction being informed by their adjusted attitude but still based on what the request is.

So, for example, telling the king to trade you his castle for a piece of string, by RAW:
Unfriendly: "What?! Guards, throw this idiot in prison until he learns some manners!"
Helpful: "Hah, a good jest! Wait, you're serious? You walk a fine line there, many rulers would have you imprisoned for such a statement - but I like your chutzpah. I'm obviously not giving you the castle, but it's possible for an outsider to become a lord if they perform great deeds for the kingdom - talk to my chancellor on that matter."

[Pex]

I do think that if you're going to have mechanics, and if the mechanics are going to be optional as to whether they come into play (and especially if that option belongs to the GM), then it's important that the mechanics not actually involve resource investments or tradeoffs on the part of the players.

So if you want to have a 'NPC personality table' that you roll on to find quirks and blackmail opportunities and ardent beliefs and so on, so you don't have to think of those for every NPC, that's fine. If you want to have a general rule for initial reactions like 'roll d100, 1-10 is hostile, 90-100 is eager for an alliance, etc', that's fine. If you have a general rule of 'if the exchange is middling and you can't think of what the NPC would choose, roll a die adjusted according to the party's general reputation in the region, and here are the criteria for reputation...', that's fine.

But I'd avoid having a skill that a player has to intentionally invest in if you're mainly going to be using it for occasional on-the-fence resolution, because then that becomes a trap option. Generally I think mechanics offered to the player should be promises of things they get to consistently predict or control - you're telling them how something will be resolved, so they can plan around it. Giving a mechanic which says 'I will choose when you roll this' defeats that purpose. It's not just social skills, but any skill the player must invest in which is dependent on the GM asking for a check rather than allowing the player to ask for a check is poor design I think.

Aye, there's the rub. Other people precisely do want characters to have resources to affect such things. They want a button a push. Rather, I will specify this to D&D. For these people it's a feature of a class it gets a specific power associated with that class to influence a non-combat thing, with social use being one of the possible things. It doesn't have to be every class, and in fact, they would prefer it not be every class, but they do want every class to have something for non-combat use. The problem for these people is D&D gives equal weight to having a power button for combat and non-combat. That is, given two classes where they each get Something at level X, one class gets a power to affect combat. The other gets a power to affect noncombat, let's say a social thing for thread context. Which is better depends on the observer, but many people will say the class that got the social thing is better off because it already gets combat stuff elsewhere. Their dream is for everyone to get combat and noncombat buttons, and it would be superiorly done if combat and noncombat stuff aren't in competition of when a PC gets such a power button.

It is fine if everyone gets the same relative social stuff. In D&D's case it would be the social skills of Persuasion, Intimidation, Deception, and Performance. Everyone does have equal access to those skills, with some classes getting powers to make use of them better. The only issue is for people who don't want class buttons for these, to have them be universal, then they should stop complaining a particular class or two doesn't have a noncombat power button for this.

[NichG]

The rules should definitely be in sync with how it's run, yeah. A lot of the ideas mentioned here should be stated as house-rules as used, and full rebuilding should be on the table if they're introduced mid-campaign (IMO, full rebuilding should always be on the table anyway, but YMMV).

I'd note though, that (in D&D 3.x at least), the idea that Diplomacy checks let you directly make people do things with no limit is fanon, it's not actually in the rules. Unless you use the optional and poorly-balanced rules from the ELH, the most that Diplomacy can do is make the target "helpful". That's it. It doesn't directly let you force any action, and you still make requests/demands by actually making them, with the NPC's reaction being informed by their adjusted attitude but still based on what the request is.

So, for example, telling the king to trade you his castle for a piece of string, by RAW:
Unfriendly: "What?! Guards, throw this idiot in prison until he learns some manners!"
Helpful: "Hah, a good jest! Wait, you're serious? You walk a fine line there, many rulers would have you imprisoned for such a statement - but I like your chutzpah. I'm obviously not giving you the castle, but it's possible for an outsider to become a lord if they perform great deeds for the kingdom - talk to my chancellor on that matter."

This isn't really a houserules/true rules thing... I'm just talking about making design decisions for a game, not debating some existing game. It's easier to just assume that every table runs 'That Table's RPG', and if it bears resemblance to D&D or WoD or whatever, well, imitation and flattery and all that. From a design perspective, a character-bound mechanic is a promise of placing some decision power and resolution power in the hands of the controller of that character. If you make a character-bound mechanic whose usage is always determined by someone other than the controller of the character, it's bad design. That's true whether it's D&D, house rules of D&D, a completely new game you just invented, etc.

[Kymme]

So, I've been having something of a "crisis of faith" in my "gaming religion". It all started with me noticing an inconsistency in my reasoning regarding map vs territory. From there, it spread to "entitlement" (specifically, who is entitled to make the game less fun for others). And, while I was trying to get my thoughts in order on that one, thinking that it might make a good thread, I ran into a third installment that is going "straight to video": social combat.

But before I get into it, I want to talk about HP.

Some people complain that HP aren't realistic, that they don't match reality. This, of course, is a silly complaint for any game that isn't supposedly taking place *in* this reality. The key part here, though, is my response: "if the game is 'like this reality, unless stated otherwise', why can't people accept HP as a 'stated otherwise' change?"

And that's what got me thinking.

I hate all "role-playing" rules I've ever read. Because they all encourage bad role-playing. They don't map to actual human behavior and motivation.

But… so what? What if any game with social rules is just like HP, it's an explicitly stated difference between the alien inhabitants of that world and this one? Shouldn't I accept that the rules are clear, and the beings we're role-playing aren't remotely human in psychology and temperament?

If the rules of, say, Exalted, allow this set of exchanges:
Joe: Buy my noodles!
Jon: No!
Joe: They're the best in town, buy them!
Jon: I don't want noodles!
Joe: You'll change your mind after you try, now buy. My. Noodles!
Jon: Sigh... okay.

But, since each of these "buy my noodles" attacks is a self-contained thing, and since there's no effect as long as the guy resists by burning WP, it may as well go like this:

Joe: Buy my noodles!
Jon: No!
Joe: They're the best in town, buy them!
Jon: I don't want noodles!
Joe: Okay, then, maybe you'd like to sell your wife into slavery instead?
Jon: Yeah, guess I can do that...
… and everyone is mechanically incentivized to initiate combat the moment someone opens their mouth, shouldn't we just accept that that's how reality works in those systems, and roleplay our characters and the world accordingly?

Have I been wrong all this time, accusing "role-playing" mechanics for not matching reality when, like HP, I should have been accepting them as a statement of how their reality diverges from our own?

This is an absolutely hilarious misreading of Exalted's social mechanics. I'm not entirely sure where to start here, but my best guess is to recommend you read the Social Influence 301 (https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/exalted-3e-social-influence-301.770267/) thread on rpg.net so you can see how the system... actually functions in practice.

For the record, Apocalypse World's Read A Person move is, imo, the cornerstone of one of the best social 'combat' systems in any rpg. It acknowledges that we don't need to resolve our characters' arguments with rolled dice, comparing numbers on a sheet - people communicate through their motivations and beliefs, just like you said. The strength of Read A Person is that it puts all parties involved on the same page in regards to everyone's motivations and beliefs. It's central mechanic is asking questions, which can be answered diagetically or explained OOC and then inferred by the characters in-game through context or shared history with the NPC in question. You as the MC or as another player can frame your answer as "Okay, you've known X character for a long time, and you're pretty sure he'd do anything as long as you gave him enough to drink." Think of it as the platonic ideal of what a good 'Sense Motive' check ought to accomplish.

Here's the text of the move in question. There's also a page or so of advice on how to adjudicate it in the Apocalypse World 2e core rulebook that is pretty useful.


READ A PERSON
When you read a person in a charged interaction, roll+sharp. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7–9, hold 1. While you’re interacting with them, spend your hold to ask their player questions, 1 for 1:
• is your character telling the truth?
• what’s your character really feeling?
• what does your character intend to do?
• what does your character wish I’d do?
• how could I get your character to __?
On a miss, ask 1 anyway, but be prepared for the worst.

[Devils_Advocate]

I skimmed some of this thread, so apologies if I missed something. I promise that I'm not deliberately ignoring any point, and if one is relevant to something I'm saying, by all means point it out to me.

My main response to the OP is that the important difference, as I see it, is as follow:

"Damage" in some setting working differently than actual physical damage doesn't preclude roleplaying a character in that setting, because it doesn't preclude the existence of of people with motivations, emotions, beliefs, and so on. "Motivations", "emotions", "beliefs", etc. that work differently from the real thing are different, because substituting other things for those potentially rules out anything that can meaningfully be called "a character", depending on what is substituted.

And it's not even a simple binary, either, where sufficiently egregious departures from reality completely destroy players' ability to relate to their "characters", but anything less than that is fine. Rather, it's a continuum, where characters feel less like characters and more like weird abstract alien things the more weird, abstract, and alien their psychology is made.

I don't expect that every player even cares about that, but roleplaying a character is part of the appeal of a roleplaying game for a lot of people, and replacing characters with something else and roleplaying with some other activity is going to be unsatisfying on that front. In short, lack of psychological verisimilitude in particular is an issue in an RPG due to the target audience inherent in the very term "roleplaying game".

That all said, fictional characters in general often seem unrealistic to varying degrees, partly due to being written with goals other than realism in mind, and partly due to our understandings of others' and our own minds being rather less than perfect simulations. Some level of suspension of disbelief is necessary. And RPGs have plenty of goals other than character plausibility, with the relative importance of those goals varying from one gamer to another.


So, I've been having something of a "crisis of faith" in my "gaming religion". It all started with me noticing an inconsistency in my reasoning regarding map vs territory. From there, it spread to "entitlement" (specifically, who is entitled to make the game less fun for others).
No one should be regarded as being entitled to make the game less fun for others. Some may be entitled to do things that make the game less fun for others, but never because it reduces someone else's fun. (I assume that that isn't actually what you meant, but, like, yikes! Phrasing!)


Some people complain that HP aren't realistic, that they don't match reality. This, of course, is a silly complaint for any game that isn't supposedly taking place *in* this reality. The key part here, though, is my response: "if the game is 'like this reality, unless stated otherwise', why can't people accept HP as a 'stated otherwise' change?"
It's all well and good for your fantasy world to contain psychic kangaroos with laser eye beams, but calling them "dragons" is going to annoy people for being misleading if nothing else. And "dragon" is a broad term used for a wide variety of different creatures! "Human" is a word for a specific species in the real world, and most RPG players have a pretty detailed understanding of what humans are like, due to having encountered more than a few humans themselves.

For this and other reasons, the job of "humans" in fantasy, even more so than many other things called by familiar names, is to be indistinguishable from the real things they're named after under normal circumstances. So why would you call something "human" if it works differently than a human? Because it looks the same? But why does it look the same? Perhaps because you're trying to insinuate that it's something that it isn't?


Bur HP can describe the reality similar to our own! You just need not too few of them in number, so you can have attacks that are harmful but not enough to kill character if he suffers four of them, attacks that are lethal in reality taking most/all of the average character's HP, not to great disparity in HP between different characters and some penalty for taking damage beyond the loss of HP.
I think that Quertus intended "HP" as shorthand for how Dungeons & Dragons handles damage to characters. But you're right that the basic model of having characters fall down when a number called "hit points" falls to zero can entail a lot more realism than that.


I'm fine with hitpoints because higher fidelity models of physical endurance are hard to run on the tabletop, but I'm not fine with social combat mechanics because having real conversations, negotiations etc. is not hard at all.
But, as you yourself have noted, it's possible to engage in real physical activities as well. Sure, that's the domain of LARP rather than tabletop games, but then why play tabletop games instead of LARP? Not just because they have a different name, presumably!


Attack rolls, armor class, and hit points exist because you can't really resolve a sword fight by describing where each characters are awinging their swords and how they move all their limbs to get them out of the way. That just doesn't work
Citation needed.


These both fall under the fallacy of thinking of social interaction as combat, where someone is victorious only if the other person is beaten.

A player can absolutely get a deal which they think is good at the time, but where later they realize they could have gotten better. Or, it's good for them but turns out to help their enemy. Or it seems good, but in the end they regret it. Similarly a player can refuse to deal and in the end lose more from that refusal and how it's perceived by or informs the behaviors of third parties than if they compromised.
Honestly, those all seem at least consistent with social interaction as a zero sum game, and thus less than ideal for, well, illustrating that social interaction doesn't have to be a zero sum game, and thus shouldn't exclusively be modeled as such.

The assumption that some form of communication will always be adversarial can certainly lead to weird holes in the rules. I've noticed that in D&D 3.5, for example, the Bluff and Sense Motive skills cover one character trying to trick another but not one character trying to convince another of the truth. It intuitively seems like being honest shouldn't make it harder to convince someone, and thus that one should still use Bluff which should probably be renamed to Persuade or such, and that a good Sense Motive roll on their part should help rather than hurt, but it's still a bit of work from there figuring out how to turn an opposed roll into a cooperative one.

That "honesty shouldn't make things harder" issue also rears its head in Exalted, where it seems to be a fundamental flaw of the system (in 2nd Edition, at least; not sure if 1st or 3rd are any different here). If the Manipulation character attribute covers any attempt to influence someone's behavior or attitudes, then it can be used for all social attacks (even if some of them can also be made with Charisma instead), because that's what social attacks are. And if it specifically covers the use of deception, that creates a bizarre incentive for characters with higher Manipulation than Charisma to work trickery into every social interaction, because that makes it more likely to work. Now, that may make sense for the Ebon Dragon (and his Exalts, who are themselves slightly Ebon Dragon), but the vast majority of characters are not the Ebon Dragon.


TL;DR social skill roll = attack roll, the strength of the opposition's dedication to their belief is the HP, and the strength of the ways you're compelling him to break from that belief (through bribery, trickery, coercion, insightful discourse, magical/psychic/chemical/whatever manipulation, etc) is the damage roll.
I quite like "Skill rolls are attack rolls, but the damage depends on the weapon" as an approach to "social combat". (Although to what extent social interaction should parallel combat at all is a different question!)


If high skill level is possible, I'd expect a precautionary principle to apply. Especially if the system has a high variance random source and fixed targets like D&D. Maybe 99 of 100 who go in front of the king aren't going to hit the persuasion DC, but all it takes to create a disaster is someone rolling high...

I suppose there'd also be the flip side. If it's normalized, maybe the king has Royal Persuaders who go town to town brainwashing the populace into loyalty and obedience. Maybe to even enter the palace you basically have to let yourself get brainwashed into service to the crown by a dedicated Diplomat.

The point being, if that's how skill at persuasion is implemented in the system, you're going to get a society that recognizes that fact and is shaped around those realities. And it's likely to not actually favor 'playing a social character' in that case, because it makes socializing into a pure risk and liability rather than a net positive interaction.
I'd expect for the positions of highest authority to be held by those most capable of the most mind control, and for them to limit the use of mind control by others, as with violence in real life.


This is completely backwards.

How real humans operate is the benchmark for realistic humans. When an academic theory predicts behaviour that doesn't match what real humans do, it is the theory that is being unrealistic.
The relevant idea is that naive predictions of human behavior can be wrong in systemic ways, not that any theory is "more true" than actual events, which is a preposterous strawman.

Of course, as you noted, this is a moot point unless a system actually tried to reflect some psychological theory.


It doesn't matter for the NPC
Why not?

That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. Some people might answer with "Because the GM should never have a problem being obligated to have an NPC behave in some way", while others would reply "Because the GM should always be able to fiat any damn thing anyway". But yet others would say "It is neither necessary nor desirable to give the game master the role of either tyrant or doormat".

[Vahnavoi]

But, as you yourself have noted, it's possible to engage in real physical activities as well. Sure, that's the domain of LARP rather than tabletop games, but then why play tabletop games instead of LARP? Not just because they have a different name, presumably.

I've listed a number of reasons in form of questions. The one applying to me personally is lack of available space. Sometimes, there's no space for a live-action game, but there is space for a tabletop game, so if some kind of a roleplaying game is desired, a tabletop game serves as an alternative. Of course, at the moment available tabletop spaces are also limited due to public health concerns, which is why I'm back to playing play-by-post freeform.

[NichG]

Honestly, those all seem at least consistent with social interaction as a zero sum game, and thus less than ideal for, well, illustrating that social interaction doesn't have to be a zero sum game, and thus shouldn't exclusively be modeled as such.


Well, those examples were a response to the idea that without a mechanic to force decision, players could always 'win' by refusing to agree with what they were being asked to do, so those examples all have something to lose, which is not necessarily of the same magnitude as what there is to gain for another party. Those outcomes could easily be negative sum.

Or more nuanced, examples where refusing to engage socially at all is negative sum, but agreeing to socialize could be negative, zero, or positive sum depending on what agreements are made.

Walking away from negotiations or digging in heels and just repeating demands isn't always the optimal move, was the point. Whereas with the social combat way of thinking, going to a debate with earplugs is pretty much a win.

[Quertus]

This isn't really a houserules/true rules thing... I'm just talking about making design decisions for a game, not debating some existing game. It's easier to just assume that every table runs 'That Table's RPG', and if it bears resemblance to D&D or WoD or whatever, well, imitation and flattery and all that. From a design perspective, a character-bound mechanic is a promise of placing some decision power and resolution power in the hands of the controller of that character. If you make a character-bound mechanic whose usage is always determined by someone other than the controller of the character, it's bad design. That's true whether it's D&D, house rules of D&D, a completely new game you just invented, etc.

Are you saying, "elves have a 1-in-6 chance of noticing secret doors just by walking past them" is, by virtue of the player not getting to place the secret doors (therefore there might not be any to find), and not knowing where they are located to intentionally trigger the power even when the doors do exist, is bad design?

[NichG]

Are you saying, "elves have a 1-in-6 chance of noticing secret doors just by walking past them" is, by virtue of the player not getting to place the secret doors (therefore there might not be any to find), and not knowing where they are located to intentionally trigger the power even when the doors do exist, is bad design?

A little bit, yeah. It's not the most egregious thing since its not like there's some unknown level of continuous investment arms race to it, and you aren't really given so many things to choose between. I'd say it's mostly flavor at that point, not great mechanics design but maybe not worth the effort to do differently.

But imagine if there were 20 different kinds of secrets or passive hurdles like this, and you had to pick which 8 would be most important to have in the party. It'd be pretty arbitrary without some sort of consistent expectation about how often it'd come up and what the consequences for not having it would be.

[HidesHisEyes]

The latest Web DM episode is about handling charisma checks and it seems to be really good.

[Vahnavoi]

@NichG & Quertus: as comment on your last tangent, the line of thought going "ability X is bad design because players have no control over when X is triggered" implicates scenario design as the cause most of the time, and in games where a game master is responsible for setting up a scenario, it implicates the game master as culprit for said bad design. Scenario design can make any character ability worthless.

So, ignoring other ways to evaluate, say, "elf has 1/6 chance to detect secret doors" as a rule, a game master has to A) remember to include secret doors in a scenario and B) remember to include several secret doors, in order to make this ability noticeably to the players.

A good way to test this is: play whatever game you're testing as one of hidden character information. Only a game master knows exact traits of characters in play. Players describe their character actions in a natural language to the game master, who then interpretes them according to game rules, and returns natural language descriptions.

Does the player of the elf notice that they have a chance to detect secret door where others do not? How long does it take?

If it doesn't seem even conceptually possible that the player would figure this out (say, because there are no secret doors), then that's a good sign that either the ability has to be ignored in weighing character abilities or omitted outright (no point to a rule that never comes up), or the character is better off placed in a different scenario. If it looks like it would take a really long time to notice, then that's a good reason to increase trigger rate.

The next step is asking the question: once players know a character trait exists, how much can they increase trigger rait of that trait? Let's use favored enemy and favored terrain as examples, because they serve better for demonstrating this aspect:

If a character has favored enemy in goblins, then they'd be best off fighting mostly goblins. If a character has favored terrain in desert, then they'd be best off staying in the desert. If there's a lot of goblins around, a principled goblinslayer, then, chooses to go and kill goblins, untill all the goblins are dead or they are. A desert nomad won't wander outside the desert as long as their livelihood is there. So if these (favored enemy and favored terrain) are bad design because a player has no control over what they fight or where, the question becomes: why, exactly, is that? What compels the goblinslayer to go fighting ogres, dark elves, undead, dragons, or anything else that isn't a goblin? What compels the desert nomad to leave their home and wander into a tropical jungle or arctic mountains?

For social skills, the application should be obvious, but in case it isn't: do the players have a choice of who to socialize with? Do they have any indication that some approaches would not work, or would work better? How long will it take? So on and so forth.

[Elves]

Social hp sounds kind of cool, I could swing with that

[kyoryu]

I don't think that "combat" is a good model for social interaction.

I'm a Fate fan, and it uses Conflicts, which can be applied to social situations. But Conflicts are less... "combaty" than many combat systems, and frankly I think people reach for Conflicts in Fate for social situations waaaaay too often - they should be reserved for situations where people are basically trying to shout each other down, or emotionally hurt people enough that they rage quit the argument.

That doesn't mean that there can't be mechanics, I just don't think combat is a good model, especially for anything resembling a negotiation, persuasion, etc.

[KorvinStarmast]

Being a great con-man doesn't mean being able to fool anyone into anything, it means knowing who you can fool into what. FWIW, in D&D 5e that might be linked to an insight check, rather than a Deception check.
Yes, when you're trying to influence an entire crowd. Again, your persuasion isn't guaranteed to work on any given member of the crowd, but if it works on most of them that's good enough. Although being able to read the crowd and/or knowing what opinions are popular among them would still help. Mob / crowd behavior is a different thing, yes. :smallsmile:

Why not?
That's not a rhetorical question,
But it's an odd question if you have ever been a GM or DM.
The PCs are represented by the players at the table - one or two each.
The NPCs are not. The scale is different and the dwell time is different for NPCs.
Why are we (the group) even at the table? Don't answer that quickly, please.

The DM doesn't just play one NPC, they play the entire fictional world and various characters in it. Their level of investment in any given NPC will vary with the situation. (Though I've seen a few examples of DMs being too invested in an NPC that was detrimental to game play, I'll not digress into the DMPC problem which has its own little niche)

Beyond that, I reject the false dichotomy in the last part of your response.
And beyond that, no DM nor GM is not obliged to simply allow an NPC to be steamrolled by a PC either, to address a part of your stating of the extremes.
There are a variety of ways to add depth to any interaction, and you don't need dice to do the vast majority of it.

[icefractal]

:smallconfused: I didn't post that, it was Devils_Advocate, in this post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?639180-Gaming-Religion-Crisis-of-Faith-III-Social-Combat-(vs-HP)/page5&p=25290209#post25290209).

[KorvinStarmast]

:smallconfused: I didn't post that, it was Devils_Advocate, in this post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?639180-Gaming-Religion-Crisis-of-Faith-III-Social-Combat-(vs-HP)/page5&p=25290209#post25290209). Gaaaaah, multiquote shenanigans strike again. Sorry. :smallfrown:

[Bohandas]

What if we kind of flipped the order of things. They say whatever and but it doesn't affect the roll, instead a good roll means that whatever they said just happened to be the right thing to influence the target(s)

[KorvinStarmast]

What if we kind of flipped the order of things. They say whatever and but it doesn't affect the roll, instead a good roll means that whatever they said just happened to be the right thing to influence the target(s) I've seen some DM's do that, and it works out usually. But each of them was quick in their feet mentally, and very good at adapting to things on the fly in terms of taking whatever was said and fitting it to the roll. It's something I am still working on when I have players who stubbornly refuse to go into first person to engage with an NPC.

[Milodiah]

Yeah, that's one of the things I do like to see at the intersection of rolls and roleplay. I remember in Adam Scott Glancy's actual play of U-boat Heraus, the Spanish harbormaster was understandably unwilling to let the German U-boat break the neutrality rules by docking twice in a row at their harbor, and one of the players made a Persuade roll trying to delicately suggest there might be some "unofficial fees" involved in clearing up the situation. Well, he rolled 100 on that Persuade, which is the worst you can get in the BRP system, and the GM translated that to his character outright saying "These D**os just want a bribe", which the harbormaster obviously took some offense to. But later another player character succeeded at a second Persuade check, and they were able to pin that on a mistranslation due to the first character's comparatively poor Spanish language skills.

It goes back to one of my earlier posts, the player can certainly lay out his or her case and the items supporting it, but the roll is what encapsulates how well the actual character conveys said points. For a particularly awful roll, there's even the chance that the NPC will cut you off and not even let you get to your supporting evidence, just because you've offended, insulted, or otherwise irritated them in some way at the beginning.

[NichG]

What if we kind of flipped the order of things. They say whatever and but it doesn't affect the roll, instead a good roll means that whatever they said just happened to be the right thing to influence the target(s)

Consider how it would feel from the player perspective if it went like this:

Roll an 11 (fail): You offer a 100gp bribe to the vizier to get a minor noble title but he turns you down.

Roll a 30 (success): You agree to be subjected to a geas to support the vizier in one future plot of his choice in exchange for a minor noble title and he agrees to arrange it, because that is literally the minimum offer that could have worked to receive an immediate yes given the party's resources and the current situation.

What is offered is more important than how it is offered, and there are real decisions and tradeoffs to make that aren't really captured by a single roll of the dice without fundamentally changing what the interaction is about. Having a high number on a character sheet doesn't replace the effects of character and context and offer. What exactly is said or offered isn't just setting decoration, it leads to different consequences. Ones which a player should not be cavalier about leaving to the dice.

[Easy e]

It goes back to one of my earlier posts, the player can certainly lay out his or her case and the items supporting it, but the roll is what encapsulates how well the actual character conveys said points. For a particularly awful roll, there's even the chance that the NPC will cut you off and not even let you get to your supporting evidence, just because you've offended, insulted, or otherwise irritated them in some way at the beginning.

This is pretty much how I handle it, with the items the player laid out in their argument helping set the difficulty or challenge level.

Typically the order of actions looks a bit like this:

1. Player states what they intend
2. GM asks clarifying questions
3. Player lays out any supporting actions/arguments/facts
4. GM sets Difficulty, Skill, and any potential modifiers based on player inputs/skills and asks for a roll
5. Player rolls
6. GM determines result
7. Optional: Player and GM role-play the scenario, in which the result is then revealed
8. GM clearly states the result to the players.

[kyoryu]

Consider how it would feel from the player perspective if it went like this:

Roll an 11 (fail): You offer a 100gp bribe to the vizier to get a minor noble title but he turns you down.

Roll a 30 (success): You agree to be subjected to a geas to support the vizier in one future plot of his choice in exchange for a minor noble title and he agrees to arrange it, because that is literally the minimum offer that could have worked to receive an immediate yes given the party's resources and the current situation.

What is offered is more important than how it is offered, and there are real decisions and tradeoffs to make that aren't really captured by a single roll of the dice without fundamentally changing what the interaction is about. Having a high number on a character sheet doesn't replace the effects of character and context and offer. What exactly is said or offered isn't just setting decoration, it leads to different consequences. Ones which a player should not be cavalier about leaving to the dice.

I don't think I'm a fan of that. It takes character decisions out of the players' hands.

I'd rather see something like this:

Player: "I ask the Vizier to give me a title, jingling my bag of coins, with about 100gp in it, as a subtle hint."
GM: "The vizier blatantly ignores the jingling. 'Granting such a request is feasible. However, it represents a large amount of power transferred, and that is something that must be balanced to keep the scales right. Such balancing must be done with favors owed, loyalty given, and debts to be repaid. Titles are not bought for mere coin.'"
Player: "Ugh, he wants a favor. 'Alright, I think those terms are reasonable.'"
GM: "'Ah, that is good. However, you are rather unknown here. We will need something more.... binding than your word.' He makes a vague gesture indicating some kind of magic, but is clearly not casting anything."
Player: "Ugh. A geas. Okay, fine we need this title. 'We agree to your terms, depending upon the specific nature of your binding.'"
GM: "'Excellent. It will be nothing unduly restrictive. Merely a guarantee of our continued goodwill to each other.' You note that he says it's to each other, not between you and the crown."

In this case there's a few options for rolls:

1) When the player asks for a title, we can roll to see if the Vizier is open at all to it. If he's looking for a bound ally, then no roll is necessary - the players are offering him something he very much wants. A success in this case might be "I'm willing to do it, here's the price".
2) After the Vizier offers the geased obligation, the players might balk and make a counteroffer. If the counteroffer is reasonable, but not a slam dunk, a die roll would make sense to determine if it is acceptable.


This is pretty much how I handle it, with the items the player laid out in their argument helping set the difficulty or challenge level.

Typically the order of actions looks a bit like this:

1. Player states what they intend
2. GM asks clarifying questions
3. Player lays out any supporting actions/arguments/facts
4. GM sets Difficulty, Skill, and any potential modifiers based on player inputs/skills and asks for a roll
5. Player rolls
6. GM determines result
7. Optional: Player and GM role-play the scenario, in which the result is then revealed
8. GM clearly states the result to the players.

Pretty much this. When feasible, I'd add a 4.5 in there - GM communicates likely results on both success and failure to the player, especially if failure will have negative repercussions, or if success will be somewhat less than complete success... though you might be presuming this in steps 2/3.

[NichG]

I don't think I'm a fan of that. It takes character decisions out of the players' hands.


Yeah, I agree, that was sort of the point of the example. Using the roll to decide what the offer is or what the recipient actually wanted masks the decisions that are actually interesting.



I'd rather see something like this:

Player: "I ask the Vizier to give me a title, jingling my bag of coins, with about 100gp in it, as a subtle hint."
GM: "The vizier blatantly ignores the jingling. 'Granting such a request is feasible. However, it represents a large amount of power transferred, and that is something that must be balanced to keep the scales right. Such balancing must be done with favors owed, loyalty given, and debts to be repaid. Titles are not bought for mere coin.'"
Player: "Ugh, he wants a favor. 'Alright, I think those terms are reasonable.'"
GM: "'Ah, that is good. However, you are rather unknown here. We will need something more.... binding than your word.' He makes a vague gesture indicating some kind of magic, but is clearly not casting anything."
Player: "Ugh. A geas. Okay, fine we need this title. 'We agree to your terms, depending upon the specific nature of your binding.'"
GM: "'Excellent. It will be nothing unduly restrictive. Merely a guarantee of our continued goodwill to each other.' You note that he says it's to each other, not between you and the crown."


I think if the players can execute this level of interaction and decision making on their own, dice aren't really adding enough on top to justify build investment...

[kyoryu]

I think if the players can execute this level of interaction and decision making on their own, dice aren't really adding enough on top to justify build investment...

I disagree. Compare with:

PC: "Player: "I ask the Vizier to give me a title, jingling my bag of coins, with about 100gp in it, as a subtle hint."
GM: <roll> "The Vizier looks at you scornfully. 'Nobility is not a prize to be bought. I suggest you leave now before I teach you what happens to those crude enough to overstep their bounds.'"

or

GM: "'Ah, that is good. However, you are rather unknown here. We will need something more.... binding than your word.' He makes a vague gesture indicating some kind of magic, but is clearly not casting anything."
PC: "Ugh, a geas. 'We understand your desire for a guarantee of our continued fidelity, but perhaps something less intrusive? We have <valuable thing> we would leave in your possession until our obligations were fulfilled.'"

At this point a roll could determine whether the Vizier accepted the counter-offer or not.

[NichG]

I disagree. Compare with:

PC: "Player: "I ask the Vizier to give me a title, jingling my bag of coins, with about 100gp in it, as a subtle hint."
GM: <roll> "The Vizier looks at you scornfully. 'Nobility is not a prize to be bought. I suggest you leave now before I teach you what happens to those crude enough to overstep their bounds.'"

or

GM: "'Ah, that is good. However, you are rather unknown here. We will need something more.... binding than your word.' He makes a vague gesture indicating some kind of magic, but is clearly not casting anything."
PC: "Ugh, a geas. 'We understand your desire for a guarantee of our continued fidelity, but perhaps something less intrusive? We have <valuable thing> we would leave in your possession until our obligations were fulfilled.'"

At this point a roll could determine whether the Vizier accepted the counter-offer or not.

For the first example, that's a dead end, which is always a less preferable sequence than the vizier actually making a counteroffer. So there the dice were harmful.

For the second example, the needs of the vizier should determine that, not a roll. That is to say, if the vizier is trying to trick the party, they should insist on the geas no matter what. If they're operating in good faith, they should accept sufficiently good collateral. In particular, whether the collateral has to be just good enough to hurt for the PCs to lose, versus if it has to be better than the value of the favor also says something. If the dice decide, then that removes the information that would have been contained in the vizier's reaction.

[Easy e]

It is only a dead end if the players can not move the game forward any other way than getting a title. Otherwise, it is just an obstacle. There is a big difference between a narrative dead end and a narrative obstacle.


That being said, what are you arguing for exactly? That it should be a roll only or that there should be no roll? Your response makes me hesitant to assume which way you are going?

[NichG]

It is only a dead end if the players can not move the game forward any other way than getting a title. Otherwise, it is just an obstacle. There is a big difference between a narrative dead end and a narrative obstacle.

That being said, what are you arguing for exactly? That it should be a roll only or that there should be no roll? Your response makes me hesitant to assume which way you are going?

That rolls shouldn't be used to determine social outcomes or the decisions of characters such as 'what the player happened to say was evidently the right thing to say (if the roll succeeds).' If the vizier could stand to gain from the PCs, a bad roll on their part shouldn't make the vizier ignore that potential gain.

Also, even beyond social situations, I don't think rolls should act to gate whether an interaction can progress or not - a locked door that you either get through or not, a cliff you either can climb or not, etc. Those should either be static abilities or rolls could determine the cost or consequences of getting through.

[Devils_Advocate]

It seems that I chose my words poorly before, so let me try again:


These both fall under the fallacy of thinking of social interaction as combat, where someone is victorious only if the other person is beaten.

A player can absolutely get a deal which they think is good at the time, but where later they realize they could have gotten better. Or, it's good for them but turns out to help their enemy. Or it seems good, but in the end they regret it. Similarly a player can refuse to deal and in the end lose more from that refusal and how it's perceived by or informs the behaviors of third parties than if they compromised.
All of those seem at least potentially like scenarios where the social interaction leaves the player worse off, so they don't do a good job of painting social exchanges as not being something "where someone is victorious only if the other person is beaten". I think that an example of a social exchange that clearly benefits both parties would better illustrate your point.


Whereas with the social combat way of thinking, going to a debate with earplugs is pretty much a win.
Understanding and responding to what others are saying is pretty important in a debate. I guess that that's your point, but I think (and certainly hope) that treating social combat as discounting that is pretty much a strawman.

Regardless, when one-way communication is known to benefit the communicator at the expense of the audience, people will generally be unwilling to listen, and will ask for something in exchange. Negotiations then are what happens when people agree to listen to each other. (Which is to say, you need to take your earplugs out in order to get them to take theirs out.)

[NichG]

It seems that I chose my words poorly before, so let me try again:


All of those seem at least potentially like scenarios where the social interaction leaves the player worse off, so they don't do a good job of painting social exchanges as not being something "where someone is victorious only if the other person is beaten". I think that an example of a social exchange that clearly benefits both parties would better illustrate your point.


The standard non-zero-sum game is, I have a collection of resources and you have a collection of resources, and we each value those resources differently. To make it simple lets say I have 10 Apples, which I value with 1 point each and you value with 2 points each, and you have 10 Oranges which I value at 2 points each and you value at 1 point each. Points are not compared to establish a winner/loser, they're simply things we want to have as many of as we can.

If we both disengage, we both get a score of 10. The most exploitative outcome (one player gives their resources to the other for free) gives one player a score of 30 and the other a score of 0. The best balanced outcome (we exchange 10 Apples for Oranges) would give each player a score of 20. Even if there are no forms of social force in play, and even if one side thinks they're 'at a disadvantage' in terms of their ability to navigate the negotiations, it's still to the benefit of both parties to make some kind of exchange. Furthermore, as long as someone knows their own valuation scheme, they can guarantee that they can't possibly do worse by negotiating than if they were to walk away - e.g. they can exclude the 'they convince me to give them all my goods for nothing' outcome.

If you can't exclude that outcome (e.g. there are combatative social mechanics in play where a good roll or a high skill modifier on their part could force you to end up with fewer points than you started), then 'keep the earplugs in' becomes a reasonable default strategy.



Understanding and responding to what others are saying is pretty important in a debate. I guess that that's your point, but I think (and certainly hope) that treating social combat as discounting that is pretty much a strawman.

Regardless, when one-way communication is known to benefit the communicator at the expense of the audience, people will generally be unwilling to listen, and will ask for something in exchange. Negotiations then are what happens when people agree to listen to each other. (Which is to say, you need to take your earplugs out in order to get them to take theirs out.)

My point is that social combat puts negotiation in the context of taking over the other participant's agency, the same way that killing an opponent on the field removes their ability to do anything back to you. So that mindset creates a situation where a negotiation is like a duel, you could at best trick someone into talking with you if they thought they could 'beat' you at it. Whereas with non-combatative interactions it makes sense for the default to be to try to negotiation, because you can guarantee you won't end up worse off than just walking away, but you might (or even are likely to) end up better.

[kyoryu]

My point is that social combat puts negotiation in the context of taking over the other participant's agency, the same way that killing an opponent on the field removes their ability to do anything back to you. So that mindset creates a situation where a negotiation is like a duel, you could at best trick someone into talking with you if they thought they could 'beat' you at it. Whereas with non-combatative interactions it makes sense for the default to be to try to negotiation, because you can guarantee you won't end up worse off than just walking away, but you might (or even are likely to) end up better.

In my experience, most gameable social interactions are best looked at as negotiations, not "combat".

"Combative" ones tend to be pretty rare - shouting someone down, guilt-tripping them, etc. I think a good example is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FATErpg/comments/460yty/fate_core_battle_spiderman_vs_aunt_may/ For something to be combative, to me, there have to be two goals that are inherently mutually exclusive. In this case, it's "go out with Mary Jane" vs. "dinner with Aunt May". Since they'd be at the same time, there's no negotiation happening, and the only resolution is for someone to back down. There's probably other factors I haven't considered.

[NichG]

In my experience, most gameable social interactions are best looked at as negotiations, not "combat".

"Combative" ones tend to be pretty rare - shouting someone down, guilt-tripping them, etc. I think a good example is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FATErpg/comments/460yty/fate_core_battle_spiderman_vs_aunt_may/ For something to be combative, to me, there have to be two goals that are inherently mutually exclusive. In this case, it's "go out with Mary Jane" vs. "dinner with Aunt May". Since they'd be at the same time, there's no negotiation happening, and the only resolution is for someone to back down. There's probably other factors I haven't considered.

Yes, that's an example where from a purely mechanics point of view, Spiderman (or whatever random person) would be better served by just keeping his phone's ringer off or by having a phone programmed to only allowed 15 seconds of conversation before automatically cutting off a call. And that's probably not what you want your social mechanics to encourage usually, even if for some real-world family interactions it may be quite realistic for the best option to be sending certain contacts directly to voicemail...

[Kymme]

In my experience, most gameable social interactions are best looked at as negotiations, not "combat".

"Combative" ones tend to be pretty rare - shouting someone down, guilt-tripping them, etc. I think a good example is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FATErpg/comments/460yty/fate_core_battle_spiderman_vs_aunt_may/ For something to be combative, to me, there have to be two goals that are inherently mutually exclusive. In this case, it's "go out with Mary Jane" vs. "dinner with Aunt May". Since they'd be at the same time, there's no negotiation happening, and the only resolution is for someone to back down. There's probably other factors I haven't considered.

This is a really great example of how Fate's conflict resolution system can handle social scenes as well as out-and-out fights. Thank you for sharing it!

[kyoryu]

Yes, that's an example where from a purely mechanics point of view, Spiderman (or whatever random person) would be better served by just keeping his phone's ringer off or by having a phone programmed to only allowed 15 seconds of conversation before automatically cutting off a call. And that's probably not what you want your social mechanics to encourage usually, even if for some real-world family interactions it may be quite realistic for the best option to be sending certain contacts directly to voicemail...

Except at some point you have to have the conversation or suffer the social fallout.

Even within Fate, Peter could have opted out of the conversation, but would have just had to deal with that fallout.

[NichG]

Except at some point you have to have the conversation or suffer the social fallout.

Even within Fate, Peter could have opted out of the conversation, but would have just had to deal with that fallout.

IRL relationships which work primarily via the threat or promise of psychological harm are called toxic. And while people do persist in toxic relationships for various reasons, it's completely reasonable to sever such things if you can recognize them and bring yourself to do so.

Having a game where the standard mechanical way that people interact socially is toxic supports certain fiction for actors who view the world through the lens of what the mechanics imply. So you either get dissonance, where people and behaviors which should be supportive end up just being harmful (like the classic problem of 'family just exists to be taken hostage by the villain'), or you get people being driven to paranoid loner behaviors.

In the post you linked, one of the comments was something like 'running it this way implies that Aunt May has a will to cause Peter harm in order to get what she wants'. That's the kind of implication that one invites by framing social interaction as combat.

[kyoryu]

IRL relationships which work primarily via the threat or promise of psychological harm are called toxic. And while people do persist in toxic relationships for various reasons, it's completely reasonable to sever such things if you can recognize them and bring yourself to do so.

Primarily. Failing to follow through on social obligations will incur harm to a relationship in even the most positive relationship, if done sufficiently.


Having a game where the standard mechanical way that people interact socially is toxic supports certain fiction for actors who view the world through the lens of what the mechanics imply. So you either get dissonance, where people and behaviors which should be supportive end up just being harmful (like the classic problem of 'family just exists to be taken hostage by the villain'), or you get people being driven to paranoid loner behaviors.

Good thing I never advocated that! You're right, that would be a dreadful system! Kinda like I mentioned that in Fate, even, Conflicts are over-used and negotiations should be more common!


In the post you linked, one of the comments was something like 'running it this way implies that Aunt May has a will to cause Peter harm in order to get what she wants'. That's the kind of implication that one invites by framing social interaction as combat.

And that's an interpretation I disagree with, and have disagreed with him repeatedly when this post has come up, for years. Actually, in general, I think the idea that "Conflict = trying to cause harm" in Fate is just wrong - it's really about the fact that you have two sides with mutually exclusive goals who are trying to get each other to back down, or be unable to continue. Even if you want to frame it as "harm" in this case, the harm is "a guilty conscience".

[NichG]

And that's an interpretation I disagree with, and have disagreed with him repeatedly when this post has come up, for years. Actually, in general, I think the idea that "Conflict = trying to cause harm" in Fate is just wrong - it's really about the fact that you have two sides with mutually exclusive goals who are trying to get each other to back down, or be unable to continue. Even if you want to frame it as "harm" in this case, the harm is "a guilty conscience".

Not necessarily 'trying to cause harm', but 'willing to cause harm to achieve one's goals'. It's harm in the sense that it results in a character acquiring Consequences and that the mechanical path to conclusion (rather than e.g. someone deciding to surrender) requires things to reach that point. That basically means in this case that the interaction has undermined Peter in a tangible, exploitable way, which e.g. along the same lines of mechanics could be used by a villain to convince him to let himself die in order to protect someone, or to blackmail him in order to get him to do something illegal which will compound later. Also, because of the weirdness of consequence slots being shared, this presumably also means that Peter would be much more physically vulnerable in the case of e.g. being stabbed by a mugger.

And in the end, encouraging this system to be used to resolve things implies that Aunt May is okay with those consequences, even if they were just steps on the way to her goal, and that it's an acceptable thing to put on Peter in order to get him to go to the soup kitchen.

That makes Aunt May out to be much more of a villain than the scenario probably intends.

[Kymme]

Not necessarily 'trying to cause harm', but 'willing to cause harm to achieve one's goals'. It's harm in the sense that it results in a character acquiring Consequences and that the mechanical path to conclusion (rather than e.g. someone deciding to surrender) requires things to reach that point. That basically means in this case that the interaction has undermined Peter in a tangible, exploitable way, which e.g. along the same lines of mechanics could be used by a villain to convince him to let himself die in order to protect someone, or to blackmail him in order to get him to do something illegal which will compound later. Also, because of the weirdness of consequence slots being shared, this presumably also means that Peter would be much more physically vulnerable in the case of e.g. being stabbed by a mugger.

And in the end, encouraging this system to be used to resolve things implies that Aunt May is okay with those consequences, even if they were just steps on the way to her goal, and that it's an acceptable thing to put on Peter in order to get him to go to the soup kitchen.

That makes Aunt May out to be much more of a villain than the scenario probably intends.

Lol I don't think Aunt May has control over the mechanical system that governs the story she's in. She's modeled as an actor participating in a dramatic conflict. Maybe this is because FATE couches these things in terminology like 'Attack' and 'Defend,' but really it's just trying to model dramatic conflict. The fictional positioning of the Consequences Peter is coming away from are probably much easier to clear and much less life-threatening than, say, a conflict with a villain inflicting Consequences like 'Pierced Lung' and 'I Let Those People Die.'

Also, strange as it would seem, the fact that characters in a game like FATE can come away from fights with pierced lungs and broken bones does a lot to make conflicts in this system feel way more punchy and intense than conflicts in a lot of ttrpgs with more bland health systems.

[NichG]

Lol I don't think Aunt May has control over the mechanical system that governs the story she's in. She's modeled as an actor participating in a dramatic conflict. Maybe this is because FATE couches these things in terminology like 'Attack' and 'Defend,' but really it's just trying to model dramatic conflict. The fictional positioning of the Consequences Peter is coming away from are probably much easier to clear and much less life-threatening than, say, a conflict with a villain inflicting Consequences like 'Pierced Lung' and 'I Let Those People Die.'

Not saying Aunt May has to control the mechanical system, but she can definitely be viewed though the lens of the consequences of her choices, and the mechanical system in this case is part of what determines those consequences. So things that would be something you'd just blow off IRL could be much more severe in a world governed by those mechanics. That creates dissonance - everyone at the table has to make a decision whenever it comes up whether to think in terms of the fictional likely consequences, or to think in terms of the mechanically likely consequences. Each player has to determine how much of a disadvantage they're willing to suffer in service of maintaining that dissonance. And if players have different levels of tolerance for that, you can get things like a player who says e.g. 'clearly Aunt May is a liability, my counter-move is that I'm going to try to get child services to take her away' and have the rest of the table look at them like they grew a third head. But in a purely mechanical reading of that situation, a counter-attack like that isn't actually all that unreasonable. It's not what we'd expect from the fiction, but the mechanics say that e.g. giving someone a Severe consequence (mental, wealth, whatever) is putting them in similar mortal peril as breaking one of their bones.

[kyoryu]

Not saying Aunt May has to control the mechanical system, but she can definitely be viewed though the lens of the consequences of her choices, and the mechanical system in this case is part of what determines those consequences. So things that would be something you'd just blow off IRL could be much more severe in a world governed by those mechanics. That creates dissonance - everyone at the table has to make a decision whenever it comes up whether to think in terms of the fictional likely consequences, or to think in terms of the mechanically likely consequences. Each player has to determine how much of a disadvantage they're willing to suffer in service of maintaining that dissonance. And if players have different levels of tolerance for that, you can get things like a player who says e.g. 'clearly Aunt May is a liability, my counter-move is that I'm going to try to get child services to take her away' and have the rest of the table look at them like they grew a third head. But in a purely mechanical reading of that situation, a counter-attack like that isn't actually all that unreasonable. It's not what we'd expect from the fiction, but the mechanics say that e.g. giving someone a Severe consequence (mental, wealth, whatever) is putting them in similar mortal peril as breaking one of their bones.

Aunt May has no concept of Consequence slots.

She also doesn't know that he's Spider-Man.

From her POV, with her knowledge, it's perfectly reasonable that if Peter is going to back out of a promise he made her, that he should feel a bit guilty about it.

It's also worth noting that Fate never forces you to take a Consequence. You can get Taken Out instead. In this case, that's probably a good option, since it's unlikely that the consequences of this Conflict would be dire anyway, so there's not a lot of real risk of getting Taken Out. Certainly, if I was the GM running Aunt May, I'd accept "you're doing the thing with her, and upsetting Mary Jane, and that's enough" as sufficient consequences (note small C) of getting Taken Out - and I would communicate that to the player.

[icefractal]

That's where I think IC/OOC bleed comes in - if you (IRL) know that a discussion is sapping the character's reserves and leaving them more vulnerable, that's going to influence how you feel about it, even if IC it's not supposed to be a bad thing.

[NichG]

Not just bleed, but also the table conflict when you have some players who take their cues about how to make decisions from the mechanics and other players who take their cues about how to make decisions from the intended fiction, and those decisions from one point of view turn out to be unreasonable from the other point of view.

This is where you get players shooting the villain before they get a chance to monologue, because mechanically there's no possible benefit to letting them talk and there's something to lose because the mechanics allow talking to cause harm; so not opening fire is like giving out a free surprise round.

Or in this example, players choosing to self-orphan and cut all social connections because they're being used as fodder for conflicts and obstacles by the GM for drama sake, without giving any consideration as to making them actually more supportive than troublesome on the balance.

It doesn't fit the fiction for Peter to block Aunt May's number, but a player might well choose to do that because it makes mechanical sense.

Relying on players to prop up 'what the fiction is supposed to be' against what the mechanics support can also lead to issues of unfairness. If e.g. one player isn't so moved by the desire to preserve the fiction, they can make more mechanically expedient choices to gain more agency while simultaneously putting more burden on the rest of the group to suspend disbelief. Plus you have the whole gaslighting thing of fiction-level harmlessness but mechanics-level harmfulness if someone intentionally exploits the mismatch: e.g. 'You aren't allowed to consider my actions against you violent in character, they're just words' when those words can cause mechanical injuries or exert compulsions.

So even if 'Aunt May doesn't know about consequence slots', I think it's a bad idea to run things in a way that makes things which are supposed to be innocuous actions in the fiction even potentially not innocuous in the system.

[Devils_Advocate]

Dungeons & Dragons is loaded with ways for characters to be hurt by monsters, traps, and hostile environments. My ballpark estimate is that over half of the rulebooks, in any edition, consist of "mechanical disincentives" for player characters to engage in this "adventuring" activity. And it's not just the mechanics, but the fiction too! This stuff is supposed to be dangerous, and to seem dangerous to the characters! So we can infer that PCs in D&D are meant acquire wealth and power by practicing normal professions instead of going on quests and fighting monsters, right? Clearly they're supposed to do things like run businesses and go into politics...

Except that that's precisely backwards. The system is for covering the exploits of adventurers, which is why the rules deal so heavily with the challenges that they face. A normal game depends on the PCs answering the call to adventure even if it's not practical. Deciding that your character instead opts to stay out of trouble and continues on in a simple life as a carpenter is refusing to take part in the game's story. At which point, why are you even there?

Showing up to a roleplaying game implies willingness to primarily engage in whatever activity that game is supposed to be about. That's why overusing crafting or profession rules to earn money safely can be in bad form; it's not that it's cheating, it's that it potentially spoils what was supposed to be a fun group activity by undermining a core premise, which is maybe worse. Similarly, a plot where a PC's loved ones are threatened is arguably likewise turning the focus of the game on something that was supposed to be a side thing. At least, that's my estimation of the issue. I doubt that most players expect that their characters won't face significant adversity in general.

Not every game is centrally about killn doodz n taken there stuf. I don't know much about FATE, but I gather that it lends itself to players choosing their characters' goals and problems. In that context, if someone wants to play a superhero who struggles to maintain a normal life while also fighting crime*, then... the character should struggle to maintain a normal life. That's specifically intended. It's not a bug, it's a feature. If you don't want that, then choose to be a psychotic antihero or whatever instead. To continue the comparison and contrast with D&D, it's like playing a Lawful Good character: It should be expected to occasionally present difficulties, but the game is largely about dealing with difficulties anyway, not about everything going perfectly fine all the time! It's possible for a GM to overuse it (which, again, strikes me as a matter giving something too much focus), but it shouldn't never come up either.

*That's the classic archetype, isn't it? Masked vigilante has secret identity, tries to keep two lives separate, sometimes fails to do so, drama ensues? It seems to me like a superheroes game ought to support that dynamic, as a general rule.

[NichG]

Dungeons & Dragons is loaded with ways for characters to be hurt by monsters, traps, and hostile environments. My ballpark estimate is that over half of the rulebooks, in any edition, consist of "mechanical disincentives" for player characters to engage in this "adventuring" activity. And it's not just the mechanics, but the fiction too! This stuff is supposed to be dangerous, and to seem dangerous to the characters! So we can infer that PCs in D&D are meant acquire wealth and power by practicing normal professions instead of going on quests and fighting monsters, right? Clearly they're supposed to do things like run businesses and go into politics...

Except that that's precisely backwards. The system is for covering the exploits of adventurers, which is why the rules deal so heavily with the challenges that they face. A normal game depends on the PCs answering the call to adventure even if it's not practical. Deciding that your character instead opts to stay out of trouble and continues on in a simple life as a carpenter is refusing to take part in the game's story. At which point, why are you even there?

Showing up to a roleplaying game implies willingness to primarily engage in whatever activity that game is supposed to be about. That's why overusing crafting or profession rules to earn money safely can be in bad form; it's not that it's cheating, it's that it potentially spoils what was supposed to be a fun group activity by undermining a core premise, which is maybe worse. Similarly, a plot where a PC's loved ones are threatened is arguably likewise turning the focus of the game on something that was supposed to be a side thing. At least, that's my estimation of the issue. I doubt that most players expect that their characters won't face significant adversity in general.

Not every game is centrally about killn doodz n taken there stuf. I don't know much about FATE, but I gather that it lends itself to players choosing their characters' goals and problems. In that context, if someone wants to play a superhero who struggles to maintain a normal life while also fighting crime*, then... the character should struggle to maintain a normal life. That's specifically intended. It's not a bug, it's a feature. If you don't want that, then choose to be a psychotic antihero or whatever instead. To continue the comparison and contrast with D&D, it's like playing a Lawful Good character: It should be expected to occasionally present difficulties, but the game is largely about dealing with difficulties anyway, not about everything going perfectly fine all the time! It's possible for a GM to overuse it (which, again, strikes me as a matter giving something too much focus), but it shouldn't never come up either.

*That's the classic archetype, isn't it? Masked vigilante has secret identity, tries to keep two lives separate, sometimes fails to do so, drama ensues? It seems to me like a superheroes game ought to support that dynamic, as a general rule.

It's part of the job of the GM to make doing that dangerous stuff worthwhile (and part of the job of the players to help the GM know what that will take). 'Here, you're supposed to do this, it will suck, and I won't reward you for it' is a good recipe for players balking the expectation that they're supposed to do this and the game breaking down. That's when you get murderhobos, people carving the doors out of the dungeon to sell them, people rolling up orphans or 'Bob the Nineteenth', etc. Because in the end, the GM is taking for granted leeway that they're given. When you run a crapsack world, it doesn't matter if players are 'supposed to' be playing heroes, there will be a point at which they say 'this world isn't worth saving, lets go off and do other stuff and let it burn'.

If you want players to have family that they care for and will go into danger for, make that family act in supportive ways that deserve that dedication, don't make them heap extra stress onto the character because it would be more dramatic that way. Make it so that even if Aunt May pressures Peter to do the soup kitchen thing, Peter isn't harmed for being reluctant, he's actually rewarded for doing that over going with Mary Jane. Heck, make it so that if Aunt May really wants to go on the guilt trip line, she gets a Consequence for every one she ends up inflicting on Peter because of the degree to which she had to use force on a relationship in which Peter should want to help her. If that sounds unfair to Aunt May and makes you ask why she would do it, well, there you go, that's the point.

Edit: to put it another way, PCs might engage in dangerous activities where things want to kill them, but they aren't going to treat those things as if they aren't hostile and adversarial and D&D doesn't generally ask you to behave as if you're playing Undertale and the bullets are just friendship pellets.

[kyoryu]

If you want players to have family that they care for and will go into danger for, make that family act in supportive ways that deserve that dedication, don't make them heap extra stress onto the character because it would be more dramatic that way. Make it so that even if Aunt May pressures Peter to do the soup kitchen thing, Peter isn't harmed for being reluctant, he's actually rewarded for doing that over going with Mary Jane. Heck, make it so that if Aunt May really wants to go on the guilt trip line, she gets a Consequence for every one she ends up inflicting on Peter because of the degree to which she had to use force on a relationship in which Peter should want to help her. If that sounds unfair to Aunt May and makes you ask why she would do it, well, there you go, that's the point.

I think your point here is that mechanics shouldn't force "harm" where none is intended, and I agree with that. But I think you're missing some of how the system works that alleviates quite a bit of that.

So, a few clarifications:

1. Aunt May does not have the right to just say "we're in a Conflict". Peter has to agree. He can get out of the Conflict in this case in a few obvious ways (based on the situation, not the rules). He can just acquiesce, or he can just say "nope" and not engage, and deal with whatever social fallout results. The fact that he engages indicates he wants something from Aunt May - most likely, for her to let him out of the obligation without repercussions.

2. Aunt May complicating his life is almost certainly something Spidey has asked for in the form of an aspect, either directly (with a conversation) or as a broader aspect (My Normal Life Makes It Hard To Be Super, Too Many Commitments, or something like that). This means that at some point, he probably got a Fate Point as a reward for accepting this. Most likely, it's a broader aspect and Mary Jane asking for time when he was already in a commitment was phrased as a Compel that got him a Fate Point. So he almost certainly signed up for this conflict (little C).

3. Even in the Conflict, he can Concede at any time (except for while resolving an action - once the dice hit the table, you have to finish resolving that particular action before you can Concede - no Conceding once you see what the dice say). This will net him a Fate Point for the Concession, plus a Fate Point for every Consequence he takes during the Conflict. In a lot of ways, it's mechanically optimal to take a Minor Consequence (which goes away after a scene) when Conceding, to gain two Fate Points. This means that him staying in the Conflict as long as he does is his choice. He could have backed out way earlier and avoided the Consequence. Given the apparent low stakes, this is pretty poor play on Spidey's part, most likely to drag the Conflict out longer to use as an example. Since his social skills are kind of garbage, and Aunt May's are pretty stellar, trying to stay in as long as he did was pretty dumb on his part. In this case, given the almost certainty that she would win, once she got the two free invokes on him, Conceding would have been the smart move, netting him a single Fate Point for his inconvenience. Which would, as you suggest, give him a bonus for going with her. (If this had been a Compel rather than a Conflict, it would have been straight up the choice to go with her, netting a Fate Point, but I digress).

4. Even if he stays in the Conflict, taking Consequences is his choice. He can always just let the hit land and be Taken Out - meaning he loses, and suffers some loss of control over what happens. Since all Aunt May really wants is for him to go to the Soup Kitchen, this is probably a smart move - this is a low stakes Conflict, and so should have low stakes consequences (small C). Taking a Severe Consequence to stay in it (especially when it's obvious how outmatched he is) is a really questionable move. The only positive is that by sucking up the hit he gets three Fate Points, while if he was Taken Out he wouldn't get any.

So, in short, none of this is really on Aunt May. It's all on Spidey's player, for choosing to stick in a Conflict he's outmatched in and for little gain in the end. At various points in the Conflict, he had the following options:

1. Don't engage in the Conflict, and accept going to Aunt May's. (Result: Go with Aunt May, deal with fallout from Mary Jane)
2. Don't engage in the Conflict, and accept that Aunt May is gonna be mad. (Result: Go with Mary Jane, deal with fallout from Aunt May)
3. Engage in the Conflict, and Concede once the aspects and free invokes are on tilt (Result: Go with Aunt May, deal with fallout from Mary Jane, get a free Fate Point)
4. Engage in the Conflict, and Concede after taking the moderate Consequence (Result: Go with Aunt May, deal with fallout from Mary Jane, get a moderate consequence which lasts a session, get two Fate Points)
4.a As above, but use a Fate Point to drop the Moderate Consequence to a Minor, which only sticks around for a scene. This would cancel out one of the gained Fate Points, but means that the Consequence slot is a really minor inconvenience.
5. Engage in the Conflict, and get Taken Out by the first big hit (Result: Go with Aunt May, deal with fallout from Mary Jane, possibly some other light narrative loss, get no Fate Points)
6. Engage in the Conflict, and Concede after the second big hit -scenario as written- (Result: Go with Aunt May, deal with fallout from Mary Jane, suffer a moderate consequence for a session, a severe consequence for an arc, and get three Fate Points)
7. Engage in the Conflict, and get Taken Out by the second big hit (Result: Go with Aunt May, deal with fallout from Mary Jane, possible some other light narrative loss, get a Moderate Consequence and no Fate Points)

As you can see, by staying in the Conflict, Spidey is essentially upping the stakes - Fate Conflicts are really a bidding war combined with a game of chicken. Spidey's mistake here is that he stayed in the Conflict long after the result was obvious - he had a +1 to every social skill, and May seemed to have a +3. That's a heavy uphill battle unless you're willing to dump Fate Points, which Spidey didn't do.

For the sake of example, this was played really, really poorly by Spidey, and that leads to a lot of the issues you're seeing. Better play would have either been to drop out of the Conflict early (option 3 or maaaaybe 4a), or to accept that winning it was really worth it and be ready to dump Fate Points to make that happen (which Spidey didn't do here). A smart player here would have recognized the lopsided nature of this Conflict early on, and Conceded once it was obvious - which would mean that he would do what Aunt May had asked, and just like you say would be a good system, would be rewarded for it. (Note that none of this really requires high levels of system mastery - it's all pretty baseline consequence of how the system works, and it's something that I as a GM would absolutely point out to Spidey's player).

If there were no way through this Conflict except as written, I'd agree with you.

[NichG]

I think your point here is that mechanics shouldn't force "harm" where none is intended, and I agree with that. But I think you're missing some of how the system works that alleviates quite a bit of that.

So, a few clarifications:

1. Aunt May does not have the right to just say "we're in a Conflict". Peter has to agree. He can get out of the Conflict in this case in a few obvious ways (based on the situation, not the rules). He can just acquiesce, or he can just say "nope" and not engage, and deal with whatever social fallout results. The fact that he engages indicates he wants something from Aunt May - most likely, for her to let him out of the obligation without repercussions.

2. Aunt May complicating his life is almost certainly something Spidey has asked for in the form of an aspect, either directly (with a conversation) or as a broader aspect (My Normal Life Makes It Hard To Be Super, Too Many Commitments, or something like that). This means that at some point, he probably got a Fate Point as a reward for accepting this. Most likely, it's a broader aspect and Mary Jane asking for time when he was already in a commitment was phrased as a Compel that got him a Fate Point. So he almost certainly signed up for this conflict (little C).

3. Even in the Conflict, he can Concede at any time (except for while resolving an action - once the dice hit the table, you have to finish resolving that particular action before you can Concede - no Conceding once you see what the dice say). This will net him a Fate Point for the Concession, plus a Fate Point for every Consequence he takes during the Conflict. In a lot of ways, it's mechanically optimal to take a Minor Consequence (which goes away after a scene) when Conceding, to gain two Fate Points. This means that him staying in the Conflict as long as he does is his choice. He could have backed out way earlier and avoided the Consequence. Given the apparent low stakes, this is pretty poor play on Spidey's part, most likely to drag the Conflict out longer to use as an example. Since his social skills are kind of garbage, and Aunt May's are pretty stellar, trying to stay in as long as he did was pretty dumb on his part. In this case, given the almost certainty that she would win, once she got the two free invokes on him, Conceding would have been the smart move, netting him a single Fate Point for his inconvenience. Which would, as you suggest, give him a bonus for going with her. (If this had been a Compel rather than a Conflict, it would have been straight up the choice to go with her, netting a Fate Point, but I digress).

4. Even if he stays in the Conflict, taking Consequences is his choice. He can always just let the hit land and be Taken Out - meaning he loses, and suffers some loss of control over what happens. Since all Aunt May really wants is for him to go to the Soup Kitchen, this is probably a smart move - this is a low stakes Conflict, and so should have low stakes consequences (small C). Taking a Severe Consequence to stay in it (especially when it's obvious how outmatched he is) is a really questionable move. The only positive is that by sucking up the hit he gets three Fate Points, while if he was Taken Out he wouldn't get any.

So, in short, none of this is really on Aunt May. It's all on Spidey's player, for choosing to stick in a Conflict he's outmatched in and for little gain in the end. At various points in the Conflict, he had the following options:

As you can see, by staying in the Conflict, Spidey is essentially upping the stakes - Fate Conflicts are really a bidding war combined with a game of chicken. Spidey's mistake here is that he stayed in the Conflict long after the result was obvious - he had a +1 to every social skill, and May seemed to have a +3. That's a heavy uphill battle unless you're willing to dump Fate Points, which Spidey didn't do.

For the sake of example, this was played really, really poorly by Spidey, and that leads to a lot of the issues you're seeing. Better play would have either been to drop out of the Conflict early (option 3 or maaaaybe 4a), or to accept that winning it was really worth it and be ready to dump Fate Points to make that happen (which Spidey didn't do here). A smart player here would have recognized the lopsided nature of this Conflict early on, and Conceded once it was obvious - which would mean that he would do what Aunt May had asked, and just like you say would be a good system, would be rewarded for it. (Note that none of this really requires high levels of system mastery - it's all pretty baseline consequence of how the system works, and it's something that I as a GM would absolutely point out to Spidey's player).

If there were no way through this Conflict except as written, I'd agree with you.

I mean, it's also on Aunt May's player for pressing the conflict even when the stakes have been increased. Which is sort of the point of how framing things as a 'combat' can put mechanical blinders on what might otherwise be intuitive social behaviors and can end up warping relationships between characters. At the point where e.g. Peter has refused to take the first hit and took a consequence instead, Aunt May could have concluded 'yes, I have the social ability to beat him down over this and get my way, but it already sounds like that last thing I said hurt more than I intended and if I go on it's going to hurt him even more, so I'll let this go'.

If you're in the mindset of looking at it as a mechanical contest, having a character withdraw when it starts to look like they're winning doesn't make sense. It's not generally what you do when you're playing a game. But from the point of view of Aunt May's character, choosing not to withdraw implies something at the narrative level about her character. And mechanics aside, that'd be true whether or not the person at the other end of the phone line could have prevented the conflict by giving in or hanging up.

[Devils_Advocate]

'Here, you're supposed to do this, it will suck, and I won't reward you for it' is a good recipe for players balking the expectation that they're supposed to do this and the game breaking down.
I'm guessing that very few GMs hand out extraneous prizes to their players. Players as a rule are rewarded for activities in the game with consequences in the game. How good a reward an in-game consequence is differs from player to player, and even from game to game for the same player. Sometimes it's about achieving character goals, not gaining XP to level up. So...


It's part of the job of the GM to make doing that dangerous stuff worthwhile (and part of the job of the players to help the GM know what that will take).
... um, yeah. That thing that you said. ... Kinda. What the PCs are supposed to do varies from game to game, too. In some games, the player characters should be avoiding danger as a rule.


If you want players to have family that they care for and will go into danger for, make that family act in supportive ways that deserve that dedication, don't make them heap extra stress onto the character because it would be more dramatic that way.
I take it that you assume that the game is centrally about the conflict between heroes and villains; hence, stress that doesn't serve to motivate that conflict is "extra". That's not an unreasonable assumption for a superhero game. But my point is that that doesn't have to be a player's top priority. Like, if a superhero fights supervillains to protect his loved ones, maybe his story is centrally about him and his loved ones and his relationships to them? If love of family is a vigilante's motivation, it's rather inappropriate for that to only motivate his fight against crime; one expects that character trait to show up in other ways. Unless the criminals are so much of a threat that stopping them takes precedence over everything else. You can do that, but it drains the story of a nuance a bit. And in that case, he probably doesn't interact with his family much at this point, at least unless they know his secret identity.


Edit: to put it another way, PCs might engage in dangerous activities where things want to kill them, but they aren't going to treat those things as if they aren't hostile and adversarial and D&D doesn't generally ask you to behave as if you're playing Undertale and the bullets are just friendship pellets.
Not every RPG is D&D, and not every RPG uses or should use all of the same dynamics. Different games seek to do different things.

My point was that disregarding the social context of what sort of story a game is intended to tell makes it easy to misinterpret rules as incentivizing the wrong player behaviors. To illustrate my point, I did just that with D&D.


I mean, it's also on Aunt May's player for pressing the conflict even when the stakes have been increased.
I'll admit that I had assumed Aunt May to be an NPC. If she isn't, then it's obviously not a "team of superheroes" game but a "life of Peter Parker" game that intends to treat stuff other than the conflict between Spider-Man and the villains as important.

In the comments of the linked Reddit post, the OP addresses this: "In an action-oriented game with world-saving heroics this might be a simple Overcome. But in a game that focuses on the day-to-day life of superheroes a Conflict seems appropriate."


But from the point of view of Aunt May's character, choosing not to withdraw implies something at the narrative level about her character.
Sure, that she holds her nephew to his commitments. You can spin that in a negative light, but you can do the same with Peter trying to go back on a promise to her.

[Telok]

... um, yeah. That thing that you said. ... Kinda. What the PCs are supposed to do varies from game to game, too. In some games, the player characters should be avoiding danger as a rule.

Successful veteran Call of Cthulhu character: 100% coward, near sighted, almost illiterate, Olympic track & field athlete, loves arson and throwing dynamite around.

[NichG]

I'm guessing that very few GMs hand out extraneous prizes to their players. Players as a rule are rewarded for activities in the game with consequences in the game. How good a reward an in-game consequence is differs from player to player, and even from game to game for the same player. Sometimes it's about achieving character goals, not gaining XP to level up. So...

... um, yeah. That thing that you said. ... Kinda. What the PCs are supposed to do varies from game to game, too. In some games, the player characters should be avoiding danger as a rule.

I take it that you assume that the game is centrally about the conflict between heroes and villains; hence, stress that doesn't serve to motivate that conflict is "extra". That's not an unreasonable assumption for a superhero game. But my point is that that doesn't have to be a player's top priority. Like, if a superhero fights supervillains to protect his loved ones, maybe his story is centrally about him and his loved ones and his relationships to them? If love of family is a vigilante's motivation, it's rather inappropriate for that to only motivate his fight against crime; one expects that character trait to show up in other ways. Unless the criminals are so much of a threat that stopping them takes precedence over everything else. You can do that, but it drains the story of a nuance a bit. And in that case, he probably doesn't interact with his family much at this point, at least unless they know his secret identity.

I don't think it really matters what the game is intended to be about for what I'm saying here. This is more about player decision process and perception of the world through mechanical consequences.

If reasoning based on the fiction and reasoning based on the mechanics disagree, then that's bad mechanics design. If the fiction says 'this is a game about love for your family in day to day life' and the mechanics make it so that a disagreement over which way to make eggs at the breakfast table can end up making your character suicidal or have them join a cult, then it's really a game about toxic relationships even if the fiction doesn't present it as such, even if the fiction insists strongly 'this is good and healthy!'.

If the incentive structure of a game means it's against players' interest to do 'what the game wants them to do', that's down to bad design. And what inevitably happens is that you get some players who figure out what the mechanics actually reward and play to that even when it shreds the fiction.

E.g. you get Vampire games played as 'we're superheroes with awesome powers' rather than the angsty loss of humanity existential drama that the game says it wants to be. You get murderhobos and Wall of Salt economics in D&D. You get people finding tricks to get around Honor in L5R, or Old Man Henderson-ing great old ones in Call of Cthulhu.

If thinking in terms of what makes mechanical sense undermines the fiction, that's a reason to change either the mechanics or the fiction. Sure, if you didn't notice a potential problem in time then it's in everyone's interest to smooth over it at the time. But if you can see a potential problem and instead of fixing it you just ask the players to take disadvantages in order to prop up the fiction then that's unfair to them and is ultimately unstable.



Sure, that she holds her nephew to his commitments. You can spin that in a negative light, but you can do the same with Peter trying to go back on a promise to her.

That's not the negative thing.

The negative thing is that she's willing to cause her nephew harm in order to hold him to his commitments.

From the point of view of the fiction, her telling him off is very different from her, say, going Dolores Umbridge on him and torturing him with a blood quill. From the point of view of the mechanics, those are interchangeable. That's the thing that makes her seem awful in this example.

[Saint-Just]

Successful veteran Call of Cthulhu character: 100% coward, near sighted, almost illiterate, Olympic track & field athlete, loves arson and throwing dynamite around.

So, Old Man Henderson (except coward)?

[Telok]

The negative thing is that she's willing to cause her nephew harm in order to hold him to his commitments.
I read it more as she's willing to guilt trip him, and if he pushed hard enough but lost he'd be guilt tripping when something important happened and screw it up. That fits much better to the fiction and characters than old aunty trying to get the kid to self-harm because he wanted to go out with his girlfriend instead of her. I could be wrong though, I haven't kept up with the last 20 years of Spidey ret-cons.


So, Old Man Henderson (except coward)?
Well... that read more as trolling the GM and taking out the game with a bang. Pretty sure they weren't using the sanity mechanics by the end. Awesome story though.

[NichG]

I read it more as she's willing to guilt trip him, and if he pushed hard enough but lost he'd be guilt tripping when something important happened and screw it up. That fits much better to the fiction and characters than old aunty trying to get the kid to self-harm because he wanted to go out with his girlfriend instead of her. I could be wrong though, I haven't kept up with the last 20 years of Spidey ret-cons.


That's the fiction, sure.

But analyze it purely from the perspective of the mechanics, and it doesn't mechanically look like a guilt trip:

- Characters have mental and physical bars which fill up as they fail in individual exchanges with another character who is trying to determine something about what they do or what happens to them.
- When those bars fill up, characters have three slots shared between mental and physical which they can fill in order rather than accepting the outcome that the other character wishes to impose.
- The first of the three slots recovers immediately after the interaction. The second recovers more slowly. The third recovers only after the current game arc.
- If a character's bar fills up and there is no slot left unfilled, the character must accept whatever outcome the other character wishes to impose on them under the context of the interaction and that character's abilities.

So causing someone to fill up their third slot means that you leave them vulnerable to anyone else imposing any consequence they're capable of on the character.

[Telok]

That's the fiction, sure.

But analyze it purely from the perspective of the mechanics, and it doesn't mechanically look like a guilt trip:

I think I get it? You perceive that the mechanics make no distinction between a relative guilt tripping you and a crazy lighting you up with a flamethrower, if you're willing to take the betting & stakes up to that level, and you dislike that.

But what's the actual problem with it? Presumably in actual play the players would have a feel for where the narrative is, where its going, and how much they can reasonably risk. Mechanically if its early in the arc you don't want to risk going all "fight to the death" over who Peter spends an afternoon with, so you take the smallest hit or just refuse to engage and accept there will be some minor downstream consequences. If its late in the arc then the confrontation is either supposed to be a big deal or you just avoid it and again accept a minor issue later. It sounds like precisely what the system wants.

[NichG]

I think I get it? You perceive that the mechanics make no distinction between a relative guilt tripping you and a crazy lighting you up with a flamethrower, if you're willing to take the betting & stakes up to that level, and you dislike that.

But what's the actual problem with it? Presumably in actual play the players would have a feel for where the narrative is, where its going, and how much they can reasonably risk. Mechanically if its early in the arc you don't want to risk going all "fight to the death" over who Peter spends an afternoon with, so you take the smallest hit or just refuse to engage and accept there will be some minor downstream consequences. If its late in the arc then the confrontation is either supposed to be a big deal or you just avoid it and again accept a minor issue later. It sounds like precisely what the system wants.

In this thread I'm hearing a lot of 'I want the players to read the situation from the fiction, not the mechanics' while simultaneously arguing for mechanics which give forceful actions more power than the fiction suggests. So that's creating an exploitable situation where a party willing to take advantage of the power granted by the mechanics can hide behind innocuous fiction to defend those actions.

So going back to the broad subject of this thread, take social combat in general where the victor can compel the loser. If that's what the world is built on, people should treat persuasive speakers the same way they treat e.g. dosing someone with rohypnol. However, by dressing it up in 'this is just people having a conversation, it's how conversation works' it's trying to create that control over others and simultaneously to normalize it.

Ultimately I find 'knowing how to talk to others means I get to make them do what I say' to be a pretty toxic attitude to take. So no matter the intended fiction, if that's the reality that the mechanics create it's going to take over the story in my view when I as a player see a character using those mechanics in that way.

So the actual problem is that this system of formulating Aunt May's interaction with Peter makes her read to me as someone who is being (at best) an abusive guardian. Because no matter what words you use to dress the mechanics here, the actual structure they create is not an innocuous structure.

But for some reason it seems like it's hard to get across the idea that some players are going to read the world through the structure of the mechanics first and the fiction second - that when those disagree, they'll decide to prioritize what the mechanics say rather than what the fiction claims. By asking the player to not to that while simultaneously not holding back at all in the mechanical contest, it reads to me as (Aunt May's player or the GM) being unfair and exploitative. 'Hey, you should let my character attack yours in this way that my character can win, but if you try to make a big deal out of this then you're going against the fiction!'

That in the end is my problem with the very concept of 'social combat' - it creates a world where the rational thing to do is to reject the assumed attitude that talking is an inherently innocuous act, and that's harmful to the setting and the perception of what is reasonable in the world. If talking can potentially be mind control in what outcomes it brings about, then stabbing someone who walks up to you and tries to start an unsolicited conversation should be considered legitimate and justified self defense.

[icefractal]

I mean, I don't think it's wrong to have a character who's so persuasive they can talk anyone into anything ... but a character like that is scary.

A lot of TTRPG characters are scary once they get powerful enough - the warrior who can cut down hundreds of demons without breaking a sweat would be pretty much unstoppable by most cities if he snapped and went on a murder-spree. The mage who can drop asteroids out the sky ... can drop asteroids out of the sky.

But for some of them, there's at least a "tell" when you should GTFO - when said warrior unsheathes his sword, when said mage starts chanting, etc. Characters who have no "tell" are harder to trust. This applies to the ultra-silver-tongued, but it would also apply to a Psion who had no external signs they were preparing to overwrite your brain, or a Rogue who can kill with their bare hands faster than you can shout a warning.

It's more a problem for ultra-social-skills characters though, because it means that they won't get much chance to use those social skills on important things unless they're in disguise. A king is no more likely to agree to a private audience with "Bob, the Devil's Tongue" than with "Bob, Master of Instant Killing".

Which is also why I prefer ultra-social-ability to be a class ability / feat / optional component, rather than a natural consequence of really high skills, because that way players can choose whether they want to be a feared mind-bender or just a really charming and well-liked person.

[NichG]

I mean, I don't think it's wrong to have a character who's so persuasive they can talk anyone into anything ... but a character like that is scary.

A lot of TTRPG characters are scary once they get powerful enough - the warrior who can cut down hundreds of demons without breaking a sweat would be pretty much unstoppable by most cities if he snapped and went on a murder-spree. The mage who can drop asteroids out the sky ... can drop asteroids out of the sky.

But for some of them, there's at least a "tell" when you should GTFO - when said warrior unsheathes his sword, when said mage starts chanting, etc. Characters who have no "tell" are harder to trust. This applies to the ultra-silver-tongued, but it would also apply to a Psion who had no external signs they were preparing to overwrite your brain, or a Rogue who can kill with their bare hands faster than you can shout a warning.

It's more a problem for ultra-social-skills characters though, because it means that they won't get much chance to use those social skills on important things unless they're in disguise. A king is no more likely to agree to a private audience with "Bob, the Devil's Tongue" than with "Bob, Master of Instant Killing".

Which is also why I prefer ultra-social-ability to be a class ability / feat / optional component, rather than a natural consequence of really high skills, because that way players can choose whether they want to be a feared mind-bender or just a really charming and well-liked person.

Yeah, I think it's okay to choose for the ability to exist as long as you're willing for the setting and actions of other characters to reflect just how scary that is - and if that's a setting you actually want to run.

I think obligating that ability to exist (e.g. making it a skill as you say, or arguing that systems in general should have this sort of thing) causes problems though, because then you sort of have no choice but to run a socially paranoid setting.

[Pex]

In this thread I'm hearing a lot of 'I want the players to read the situation from the fiction, not the mechanics' while simultaneously arguing for mechanics which give forceful actions more power than the fiction suggests. So that's creating an exploitable situation where a party willing to take advantage of the power granted by the mechanics can hide behind innocuous fiction to defend those actions.

So going back to the broad subject of this thread, take social combat in general where the victor can compel the loser. If that's what the world is built on, people should treat persuasive speakers the same way they treat e.g. dosing someone with rohypnol. However, by dressing it up in 'this is just people having a conversation, it's how conversation works' it's trying to create that control over others and simultaneously to normalize it.

Ultimately I find 'knowing how to talk to others means I get to make them do what I say' to be a pretty toxic attitude to take. So no matter the intended fiction, if that's the reality that the mechanics create it's going to take over the story in my view when I as a player see a character using those mechanics in that way.

So the actual problem is that this system of formulating Aunt May's interaction with Peter makes her read to me as someone who is being (at best) an abusive guardian. Because no matter what words you use to dress the mechanics here, the actual structure they create is not an innocuous structure.

But for some reason it seems like it's hard to get across the idea that some players are going to read the world through the structure of the mechanics first and the fiction second - that when those disagree, they'll decide to prioritize what the mechanics say rather than what the fiction claims. By asking the player to not to that while simultaneously not holding back at all in the mechanical contest, it reads to me as (Aunt May's player or the GM) being unfair and exploitative. 'Hey, you should let my character attack yours in this way that my character can win, but if you try to make a big deal out of this then you're going against the fiction!'

That in the end is my problem with the very concept of 'social combat' - it creates a world where the rational thing to do is to reject the assumed attitude that talking is an inherently innocuous act, and that's harmful to the setting and the perception of what is reasonable in the world. If talking can potentially be mind control in what outcomes it brings about, then stabbing someone who walks up to you and tries to start an unsolicited conversation should be considered legitimate and justified self defense.

Again, the reason for it is to take DM bias out of the equation as much as possible. Players have agency. NPCs don't. The player is trying to convince the NPC, not the DM. The DM is not supposed to care if the player succeeds or fails other than the usual the DM should care if the player is having fun playing. The game mechanics resolution is a neutral arbiter. The player can't and is not supposed to read the DM's mind of the One True Response to get the NPC to agree. There is DM adjudication as mentioned of avoiding the nonsense extreme. The king will not abdicate his throne to the PC regardless of anything. You can allow for Plot Point where as the party succeeds or fails at earlier adventure tasks influences how an NPC responds. The social resolution is useful when the NPC can respond yes or no at the proverbial flip of a coin. Instead of a coin a die is used, and the character's game mechanics build choices get to influence the total to reach the target number necessary to have the NPC agree to the player's request.

[Cluedrew]

Ultimately I find 'knowing how to talk to others means I get to make them do what I say' to be a pretty toxic attitude to take.You know I think this is another question that might be separated out. Quite different then "Is this a good social combat system?" is the question of "Is this scene a social combat?" And honestly, I would not describe most of the conversations with my family as combat. Maybe getting a younger one to do homework back, but I'm not sure I would use a system for this either.

[Mechalich]

I mean, I don't think it's wrong to have a character who's so persuasive they can talk anyone into anything ... but a character like that is scary.

A lot of TTRPG characters are scary once they get powerful enough - the warrior who can cut down hundreds of demons without breaking a sweat would be pretty much unstoppable by most cities if he snapped and went on a murder-spree. The mage who can drop asteroids out the sky ... can drop asteroids out of the sky.

But for some of them, there's at least a "tell" when you should GTFO - when said warrior unsheathes his sword, when said mage starts chanting, etc. Characters who have no "tell" are harder to trust. This applies to the ultra-silver-tongued, but it would also apply to a Psion who had no external signs they were preparing to overwrite your brain, or a Rogue who can kill with their bare hands faster than you can shout a warning.


It's not just that there's a tell, there's also usually a mechanism by which physical attacks occur. Asteroids falling from the sky, for example, is something that we can model. It happens, there's a process, and the process is fairly well understood. Likewise hurling an energy blast at someone is still functionally equivalent to existing physical phenomena, like a stream of superheated air or a massive electrical discharge and so on. While these results can get nonsensical at extremely high levels of power, cutting a planet in half with a sword looks hokey, you can still draw them (Disgaea has animations that are exactly this ridiculous).

Extreme social influence often lacks this mechanistic step, because the event unfolds inside the targets brain and we, the audience, can't see in there. The first season of Jessica Jones has a number of good examples of this through their use of Killgrave. He just tells people to do things and they subsequently do it and its weird and jarring (very much intentionally so) because there is no explanation, it just happens.

Non-magical social influence runs into the problem that it supposedly didn't 'just happen' the actor didn't simply overwrite the target's brain chemistry magically, they actually said something that convinced them, but unfortunately the audience (which in this case is the other players and the GM) can't actually imagine what that thing was because we don't have any real world or even fictional examples of that happening. This is actually similar to the genius character problem, in that it is often extremely difficult to portray a character who is massively more intelligent than you yourself are, but you don't have any way to enter into the same reference frame. This is why depictions of genius in fiction tend to focus on everything but the actual discoveries that person made.

So while a character who is so persuasive they can talk anyone into anything might theoretically exist, especially in a fantastical setting, attempting to portray that in play or in a story tends to result in frustrating abstractions.

[Telok]

That in the end is my problem with the very concept of 'social combat' - it creates a world where the rational thing to do is to reject the assumed attitude that talking is an inherently innocuous act, and that's harmful to the setting and the perception of what is reasonable in the world. If talking can potentially be mind control in what outcomes it brings about, then stabbing someone who walks up to you and tries to start an unsolicited conversation should be considered legitimate and justified self defense.

So if I'm reading this correctly it isn't about any particular mechanics, but more the idea that a 30 second chat equals mind control or some other grave mental/emotional harm? Its not that a games uses one mechanic for all conflicts from thumb wrestling to nuclear war and guilt tripping relatives. The problem is mind control immedately on the conversation happening and a concern that players will game the mechanics. That right?

Wouldn't that make a point buy supers game where X points of mind control differs mainly by description an OK thing? The magic super may have a 1/day spell, the psychic has to gain exhaustion or something, and the talker has to pass a skill check, but they all paid the X points for mind control so that's what the get. Or a system where getting to the mind control level takes weeks of access to the target and repeatedly breaking thier will or subverting thier ideals?

I mean, it sounds more like not wanting a d&d 3.x diplomancer build with a lenient dm than not liking some rules about winning arguments or debates.

[NichG]

So if I'm reading this correctly it isn't about any particular mechanics, but more the idea that a 30 second chat equals mind control or some other grave mental/emotional harm? Its not that a games uses one mechanic for all conflicts from thumb wrestling to nuclear war and guilt tripping relatives. The problem is mind control immedately on the conversation happening and a concern that players will game the mechanics. That right?

Wouldn't that make a point buy supers game where X points of mind control differs mainly by description an OK thing? The magic super may have a 1/day spell, the psychic has to gain exhaustion or something, and the talker has to pass a skill check, but they all paid the X points for mind control so that's what the get. Or a system where getting to the mind control level takes weeks of access to the target and repeatedly breaking thier will or subverting thier ideals?

I mean, it sounds more like not wanting a d&d 3.x diplomancer build with a lenient dm than not liking some rules about winning arguments or debates.

So the issue isn't that mind control is possible in a system. The particular issue is taking the thing we describe as 'social interaction', making it into mind control, and expecting people to treat it with the norms we use for social interactions in reality because of what you chose to call it. If you want there to be mind control powers in a system that work instantly, that's fine. But make it so that being seen or known to use those things on others is treated as a serious crime, that being capable of them is like walking around armed with deadly weapons wherever you go, etc. If the consequence is that it breaks things you want to be true for the fiction you're trying to model, then that's a sign you should not be pairing those mechanics with that description.

And that leads to the broader issue, which is - okay, what if you play that straight? What if talking is mind control, and talking to people without their consent is considered assault in the setting? Well, then you have a setting where the functions that normal real-life social interaction served are being suppressed by the fact that it now is being framed in this strongly aggressive way of thinking about it.

So in the end, if you want mind control I'd much rather you say 'yeah, that's a mind control power' or heck even just a 'mesmerism' skill or whatever, and not try to say 'this is how we model someone being very clever with words and socialization'. Don't try to make being very clever with words and socialization about defeating or triumphing over or whatever someone else at all. Use a different way of thinking about those interactions if you want to make mechanics for them other than 'opposed rolls', 'contests', or 'combat'.

[Kymme]

Again, the reason for it is to take DM bias out of the equation as much as possible. Players have agency. NPCs don't. The player is trying to convince the NPC, not the DM. The DM is not supposed to care if the player succeeds or fails other than the usual the DM should care if the player is having fun playing. The game mechanics resolution is a neutral arbiter. The player can't and is not supposed to read the DM's mind of the One True Response to get the NPC to agree. There is DM adjudication as mentioned of avoiding the nonsense extreme. The king will not abdicate his throne to the PC regardless of anything. You can allow for Plot Point where as the party succeeds or fails at earlier adventure tasks influences how an NPC responds. The social resolution is useful when the NPC can respond yes or no at the proverbial flip of a coin. Instead of a coin a die is used, and the character's game mechanics build choices get to influence the total to reach the target number necessary to have the NPC agree to the player's request.

This is why things like Pierce the Mask from Masks: A New Generation is so great. It cuts straight through guessing what the One True Response is and goes straight into the drama. That move lets you ask the GM "How could I get this character to do X?" and they have to give you a truthful answer. It's an excellent form of social resolution that doesn't factor in your ability to persuade at all. Instead, it models your ability to understand.

[Telok]

So the issue isn't that mind control is possible in a system. The particular issue is taking the thing we describe as 'social interaction', making it into mind control, and expecting people to treat it with the norms we use for social interactions in reality because of what you chose to call it.

So... normal everyday interactions aren't combat therefore normal everyday social interactions shouldn't be social combat? I thought that was a normal given of the systems, that the basic normal stuff doesn't warrant going full combat mode. Same way you don't make them roll animal handling checks to mount their loyal & trained horse every morning, noon, and potty break.

Because I do prefer some sort of framework for things like long cons, court trials, ongoing psychological torture, and such. Things like just "d20+3 vs d20+8" don't have the feel of an experienced expert con artist putting one over on a noob farm kid with their first sword. They take some of the stress out of having characters who are mechanically weak willed and gullible but trying to get the players to act like it instead of them declaring they're immune to everything that isn't hit point damage.

Social conflict rules can be done badly of course. The d&d 3.x diplomancer and the "roll dc 15 to bribe the guard who asked for a bribe" being examples. But I find some structure to be better than "dm & players use RL skills to convince each other no matter what the characters are". And yeah, they'll game the social issue rules if they want to. But then they're already probably gaming the physical combat rules already, squeezing out the largest number of actions or metagaming d&d 5e legendary saves.

[NichG]

So... normal everyday interactions aren't combat therefore normal everyday social interactions shouldn't be social combat? I thought that was a normal given of the systems, that the basic normal stuff doesn't warrant going full combat mode. Same way you don't make them roll animal handling checks to mount their loyal & trained horse every morning, noon, and potty break.

Not just 'normal everyday interactions', all social interactions. The thing that makes socialization a powerful force and why having skill at socialization is impactful doesn't have to do with the ability to use that skill to win in a contest of social prowess.

It's like if you modeled making art as combat. Yes, you could put those mechanics to that process and use it to choose in a game setting which artist wins a competition. But that would miss out on 99% of what art is for, how it's effective, what it can accomplish, etc. It would be a bad model for art. And if you had a game that says 'the way you art in this game is, when you meet an opposing artist you have a series of roll-offs', that would be a game that would be bad for exploring what it would be like to be an artist. Or if you modeled scientific invention as combat against a group of hostile peer reviewers, yes, you could do that, but it wouldn't actually capture much of the actual things science does for the world (although it might be realistic for certain interactions scientists are used to).

And if that's 'what socialization is' or 'what art is' or 'what science is' in the way that a given game encourages you to see the world, that game is going to have a void where the actual stuff that socialization or art or science do for people would normally be. Even if those things are still technically possible for characters, the design of the system has drawn attention away from those aspects by giving you a concrete thing you can do by using the mechanics (e.g. defeat peer reviewers or browbeat a guard into dereliction of duty) and leaving everything else nebulous.

Like, the Fate example encourages you to think that if Peter doesn't want to follow through with a promise he made to Aunt May, the correct thing to do is for them to fight it out until one has achieved their ends without compromise and the other submits and suffers consequences aside. Rather than, say, Peter just saying 'hey Aunt May, something came up, how can I make this up to you later?' or Aunt May just saying 'Oh I see what's going on, this is really important to you huh? Well you have fun with Mary Jane, I'll find someone else to help. Love you, Peter.' or even something like 'Peter, why don't you bring MJ to the soup kitchen? I know its not much of a date, but kindness is attractive you know?'. But once you 'roll initiative' (or rather start trying to fill up each-others' stress bars), it's going to be a lot harder to get into the mindset on either side of the screen that these characters don't actually want to beat each-other up or hurt each-other. The mechanics introduce a preferred framing which ends up warping the fiction.



Because I do prefer some sort of framework for things like long cons, court trials, ongoing psychological torture, and such. Things like just "d20+3 vs d20+8" don't have the feel of an experienced expert con artist putting one over on a noob farm kid with their first sword. They take some of the stress out of having characters who are mechanically weak willed and gullible but trying to get the players to act like it instead of them declaring they're immune to everything that isn't hit point damage.

I think I said it up thread but, don't just lean on a mark being weak willed or gullible. Don't fixate on 'the informed attribute of this character is that they should be able to fool others' in order to express a con artist. Instead, actually put good bait on the table. Make it real. Make it actually possible for the players to come out ahead. But have the con artist hold back one important piece of information that makes it unlikely. If you go into it with the mindset of 'no matter what, I can't force them to accept' then you stop looking for bludgeons and you start looking for things that the other person is going to want to accept, and that will get you further towards actually making a good evocative con artist character than if you're leaning on 'this number on their sheet says they're good at conning you, you have to pretend like you were fooled now'.

This is why I universally prefer information gathering abilities when trying to add social mechanics over exertions of force. It's a lot more coherent to say e.g. 'the character you're interacting with did a lot of research on you before this meeting and has an ability which means they gain knowledge of the thing you're currently most in need of, the thing you're currently most afraid of other people finding out, and the greatest source of conflict between you and your party - what are those things?' and then to build a con or negotiation or whatever on what you actually receive from the player than to say 'this number means they make a really persuasive argument to you'. And sometimes that means the guy with a lot of points towards being a con artist is just not going to have the leverage to make something happen on short notice with a particular mark, even if they massively out-skill that mark. It may mean they need to do groundwork first - create a source of need before exploiting that need, etc. And if that's the case, so be it - the con artist should be skilled enough to recognize that this is a particularly bad choice for a mark and should instead go around them and try to con an associate or a friend or whatever in order to get their in.

If you want to model prolonged psychological torture? Easy - the person takes a temporary negative level (or system equivalent debuff) per interval of torture, and can make that process stop by giving in to the demands. If they hit Lv0 (or some threshold) without giving in, subsequent losses become outright XP loss. The player can decide if they're willing to roll up a new character in order for their character not to break.

Court cases? Rather than making it about oratory, make a set of lynchpin pieces of evidence. The side trying to produce a counterfactual outcome has to destroy, hide, or negate through technicality at least 2/3 of the evidence to win; the side trying to produce the outcome consistent with events has to pinpoint and deliver at least 1/3 of the evidence in order to win. On a tie, flip a coin or do whatever the equivalent of a hung jury would be in your setting.

[Lacco]

It's like if you modeled making art as combat. Yes, you could put those mechanics to that process and use it to choose in a game setting which artist wins a competition. But that would miss out on 99% of what art is for, how it's effective, what it can accomplish, etc. It would be a bad model for art. And if you had a game that says 'the way you art in this game is, when you meet an opposing artist you have a series of roll-offs', that would be a game that would be bad for exploring what it would be like to be an artist. Or if you modeled scientific invention as combat against a group of hostile peer reviewers, yes, you could do that, but it wouldn't actually capture much of the actual things science does for the world (although it might be realistic for certain interactions scientists are used to).

While I mostly like the rest of the argument, this part got me thinking something was off.

Mainly because I could say the same about D&D's combat mechanics. Using them would make you miss out on 99% of what combat is about, what it feels like or even how it looks like. It is a bad model for combat.

...and that would move us into the "unpopular D&D topics" conversation.

Still: you could model making art, or inventing, or cooking, or anything like combat. And depending on the mechanics it could be a fun and interesting game. It wouldn't be necessarily realistic, but the same can be said about "my CHA 4 silent guy is now making this eloquent argument in my voice and the GM likes me, so let's make it a freebie". Or anything in between. My main point with any social mechanics (and social "combat") is: if you are doing it, make it interesting mechanic-wise. Or don't do it at all.

[Telok]

Not just 'normal everyday interactions', all social interactions.

I think this is where you keep losing me. You insist on using a social conflict system for everything social. Its like using the combat system for all physical activities. Peter Parker making an excuse to put off something with his aunt isn't social combat, unless he wants more out of it than that and needs to start a screaming fight to get it. Its like you don't use the combat system for a bowling game, unless a fight breaks out of course.



I think I said it up thread but, don't just lean on a mark being weak willed or gullible. Don't fixate on 'the informed attribute of this character is that they should be able to fool others' in order to express a con artist. Instead, actually put good bait on the table. Make it real

Yeah, I've done that. I, personally, have to be able to con/bluff/convince/diplomacy the player/dm. And I can do that, sometimes, with some of them. And other players/dms haven't been able to do it to me. With zero support from the system I get faced with having characters/npcs with the right skills & experiences having no way to effectively use them beyond dm fiat. I got tired of having the below half average int-wis-will-cha characters being immune to deception & intimidation while the twice normal human int-wis-will-cha characters fall for it because of the players skills & capabilities.

The rest of it... its nice, sounds like it would work in those systems, but it feels like reinventing the wheel every time. If I can have a general non-physical conflict resolution (beyond "who rolls higher on the dice more often") subsystem that handles most of the conflicts reasonably well then I don't have to create a new subsystem for every event and I can spend more time playing or prepping.

[NichG]

While I mostly like the rest of the argument, this part got me thinking something was off.

Mainly because I could say the same about D&D's combat mechanics. Using them would make you miss out on 99% of what combat is about, what it feels like or even how it looks like. It is a bad model for combat.

Still: you could model making art, or inventing, or cooking, or anything like combat. And depending on the mechanics it could be a fun and interesting game. It wouldn't be necessarily realistic, but the same can be said about "my CHA 4 silent guy is now making this eloquent argument in my voice and the GM likes me, so let's make it a freebie". Or anything in between. My main point with any social mechanics (and social "combat") is: if you are doing it, make it interesting mechanic-wise. Or don't do it at all.

There's a difference between having every detail and capturing the essence of a thing. Even with a very low degree of detail, a food and cooking system where cooking battles determine who rules the state is a worse model for cooking than a system in which cooking helps keep a nutrition bar filled to prevent debuffs, and really good cooking grants various morale-based buffs to people. Because fundamentally what food does to people is that it keeps them alive, provides energy, allows bodies to be rebuilt and grown, and the experience of food is largely a source of position emotion and a way that stress and fear can be released. That doesn't mean you have to have an oil temperature roll and detailed nutrition depletion curves for different cooking methods and different vitamins though.

So e.g. Space Food Truck is ostensibly a game about cooking and food, but it's more a game about what it's like to be a logistics coordinator than about what it's like to be a chef, since the food and cooking systems don't capture any particular thing about food or cooking that wouldn't be true of assembling a mechanical device or sourcing commercial goods as a merchant.

If you're doing something freeform, you can capture the essence of a thing without any mechanics at least up to the level of understanding of the person running it. If you put misaligned mechanics on it, you lose even that. So I'd say its better to have no mechanics for something than mechanics which represent it poorly, even if those mechanics (in isolation of what they're actually trying to model) might be interesting on their own. Go is an inherently interesting game, but having the player solve tsumego in order to climb a cliff is just dissonant in something that's trying to be an RPG. It's fine if you're making a game about tsumego and you want a visual progress marker or something, but for an RPG it's going to drive a really strong separation between in-character and out-of-character thinking - solving tsumego just doesn't feel at all like climbing a cliff.

So if you said that's true for you for D&D combat, then the design question is: can you suggest a model of combat which is no more complex, but is better aligned to what actual combat situations feel like? For every detail you add, you must delete a detail. I think its certainly possible to do, and it can be worthwhile to go down that design road. For me at least, it's not as bad as the social stuff tends to be though.


I think this is where you keep losing me. You insist on using a social conflict system for everything social. Its like using the combat system for all physical activities. Peter Parker making an excuse to put off something with his aunt isn't social combat, unless he wants more out of it than that and needs to start a screaming fight to get it. Its like you don't use the combat system for a bowling game, unless a fight breaks out of course.


I mean, I wasn't the one who gave this example as a good example of how a social combat system could work. So I don't think you can put that on me. But here's the thing. If the system defines a social skill, and that social skill is most useful or most detailed in how it applies in situations of social combat, that's going to make people who invest in having a very socially competent character predisposed to turning interactions into social combat, because that's where they get to use the abilities they paid for. It's the hammer the system gave them, which makes situations look like nails. I'd say this discussion has been proof of that effect - look at the people on that Reddit thread who became invested in arguing 'no, you absolutely could run this as a conflict' and the resistance here to the point that Aunt May might want to consider backing down when she realizes she's hurting Peter by pushing so hard.



Yeah, I've done that. I, personally, have to be able to con/bluff/convince/diplomacy the player/dm. And I can do that, sometimes, with some of them. And other players/dms haven't been able to do it to me. With zero support from the system I get faced with having characters/npcs with the right skills & experiences having no way to effectively use them beyond dm fiat. I got tired of having the below half average int-wis-will-cha characters being immune to deception & intimidation while the twice normal human int-wis-will-cha characters fall for it because of the players skills & capabilities.

Again, I think its a lot better to just let go of informed attributes and assumptions of what you think a character should be able to succeed at when it comes to interactions with others. A highly skilled diplomat being unable to convince someone is a valid outcome, if the diplomat has no leverage that that person actually would care about. Stop envisioning a particular outcome first and using a mental model where high competence means you can always beeline your way directly to that outcome.

And if its really a problem, if you're constantly getting dissonance from those informed attributes, then just remove everything from the system which would put a quantitative measure to one of those things. I don't think its a terrible idea to have a system where there are no attributes for social skill, even no mental attributes at all.


The rest of it... its nice, sounds like it would work in those systems, but it feels like reinventing the wheel every time. If I can have a general non-physical conflict resolution (beyond "who rolls higher on the dice more often") subsystem that handles most of the conflicts reasonably well then I don't have to create a new subsystem for every event and I can spend more time playing or prepping.

I mean, my tendency would not be to run those things as actual set-piece events unless I was sufficiently interested in laying out the map as it were. I'm not going to run a courtroom drama if I'm not actually interested enough in courtroom drama to make it special - I'll abstract it away or move it offscreen. I'm not going to run torture with mechanics unless it's at a table where everyone is interested in exploring such things, I'll just not have torture feature at all in the game, or with a table with a moderate level of tolerance I might say 'your character was tortured, how do they react?' and leave it to them to decide. That won't actually cost the game anything if it wasn't interesting enough to detail in the first place. I don't think the game suffers all that much from those things being abstracted away. But if you really must have them, do them in a way that reflects their essence, not just by slapping on a mismatched generic system that wants everything to be modeled as a conflict.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Again, I think its a lot better to just let go of informed attributes and assumptions of what you think a character should be able to succeed at when it comes to interactions with others. A highly skilled diplomat being unable to convince someone is a valid outcome, if the diplomat has no leverage that that person actually would care about. Stop envisioning a particular outcome first and using a mental model where high competence means you can always beeline your way directly to that outcome.


Yeah. High competence doesn't mean you always get your way (or only don't get your way if someone of greater competence opposes you). Some things just aren't possible, no matter how competent you are. E.g. most scientific experiments, run by highly competent individuals, fail. They provide inconclusive results that basically don't go anywhere; many of the ones that do give answers fail to replicate by other groups. "Highly skilled" != "always succeed". And conversely, "failed" != "not skilled enough." There's a huge amount of variability/randomness/uncertainty in anything that's interesting enough to focus on. Sure, having randomness in cooking a routine dinner is probably bad. But experienced recipe designers also go through dozens or more of iterations even just adjusting things they know well.

Personally, I find the idea of a character who can talk people into anything without mind control to shatter any possible verisimilitude I have, and social combat just makes things worse (for all the reasons you've described).

As someone who has never experienced combat with monsters, I struggle to know what makes sense in that context. So I need a system to abstract away a lot of that complexity and put both bounds and helps on the process. On the other hand, I've had lots of experience talking to people. Which makes that a lot easier to handle without the scaffolding that rules and mechanics represent. To me, this says that "having rules for it" or not doesn't mean much, other than that the developers expected people to need (or want) more detailed mechanical scaffolding for one thing over another. It doesn't even make it more important to the system (beyond relatively loose boundaries such as "if you have detailed combat mechanics, combat probably will come up regularly"). And different developers can disagree on what scaffolding they want to provide, depending on where they (and their intended audience and gameplay) wants to put the effort.

[kyoryu]

Personally, I find the idea of a character who can talk people into anything without mind control to shatter any possible verisimilitude I have, and social combat just makes things worse (for all the reasons you've described).

Well, yes. Generally in Fate, both sides have to have some leverage in order for a Conflict to happen. Otherwise, one side or the other would just back off. It's pretty explicit that you roll the dice only when the outcome is in question - and if one side or the other would never agree, then there's no need to roll the dice.

Secondly, both sides have to be willing to engage. In the example provided, both May and Peter were willing to verbally duke it out. I feel a good amount of the criticism casts Peter as a victim, but he's really not. He could have engaged or not. May had something he wanted (reading between the lines, "getting out of his commitment without suffering the repercussions") and so he was willing to engage to try to do it. He just played that scenario very, very poorly for any number of reasons. It's a good example of how the mechanics work, but a terrible example of effective strategy.

I agree that any system that allows "mind control" without actual mind control is pretty bad. I generally view social interactions as trade offers - and if something is either a good or a bad trade (ie, that is, it's either obvious to both sides they should do it, or obvious to one side they shouldn't), then mechanics don't come into play. Only bring mechanics into it when the answer to "should I take this deal" is "maaaaaybe?"

Also, Fate as a system is a lot about "what's it worth to you?", and Consequences aren't just a combat thing, and non-combat things are generally considered just as important as combat. I think there's a lot of system-level things that are being presumed poorly. In D&D? Yeah, that scenario would be pretty bad, since usually it's "roll for initiative, you're in combat until you win or die", and it really seems like just a resource soak. Context does matter.

[Jakinbandw]

So as someone working on an rpg, I'd like to toss my social system out there and see if it helps.

It's a very simple system: Characters will ho along with any suggested course of action unless they have at least one specific reason they won't. Each reason they wont go along is a Block. Npc Blocks are determined secretly by the GM, while PC blocks must be shared out loud.

There are 2 ways to find out blocks:

1: Just ask the character. Remember that characters go along with requests unless they have a block against it, so this usually easy to accomplish.
2: Talk with them and attempt to read between the lines using insight. Harder, but sometimes it's the only option.

There are 4 ways to clear blocks:

1) Make an argument: Characters go along with courses of actions unless they have a reason not to. You can clear a block by suggesting that it be cleared in a way that a character has no reason to object to. Generally this is based around resolving the reason for the block.

"Get up and come out of the house!" (Course of action)
"Don't wanna..." (sign that their is a block and social conflict has started)
"The house is on fire! Get out before you burn!" (Argument that clears the 'I'm feeling lazy' block the npc had)

Lying can be part of an argument, as can needing to convince people of differant cultures that you're telling the truth. (Look up the lego movie 2 song 'not evil' for an example of this.

2) Fast Talk: You can get someone to agree to something in the moment, but it is inherently deceptive. When they are faced with any negative consequences from them going along with the fast Talk, they realize they were tricked. Ie: you could get a king to sign a paper saying you were the new king, but I you actually tried to take the kingdom from him he wouldn't go along with it. And note that this only works as long as you are talking with them and keeping them confused. The moment you stop, the effect ends and if any negative consequences happen to them based on your fast talk, they will know you tricked them. Fast Talk is also very obvious to outside observers (ie: not the target), so someone trying to fast talk a king where anyone can hear is going to get interrupted and either tossed out or put in jail.

3) Honor: in my game pcs gain honor points for being honorable. They can wager those points to clear a block related to lack of trust. The target sets the cost of the wager, and if the pcs can pay, then they lose access to that honor until they keep their word. If they break their word, the honor is lost forever. NPCs can do the same, but they offer honor to the PCs instead. If thr NPC keeps their word, the PCs don't get the honor, if they break their word the PCs do. Of course the PCs can choose to not accept the wager if the honor offered is too low.

4) Favours: Chaeacters can call in favours, or offer to do favours to clear blocks. There are 4 levels of favours, and each with guidelines on what they require. This method of clearing blocks is transactional and requires both sides to agree on a price they feel is fair. If a NPC owes a favour, they must fulfill it, and each favour has guidelines on what can be required of the the one that owes it (its why I have multiple levels of favour). If a King owes the party an extreme favour, they can demand that he give his throne to them. It wouldn't necessarily be that simple, as civil war could break out, but a more common way of making it work would be a political marriage to their heir, with an agreement for the king to step down.

Of course this means nobles and kings are very careful not to agree to owe any favours.

----

So far this system has worked pretty well in my tests, but I'm curious to hear opinions on it.

[kyoryu]

I'm not fond of the framing of "you should do what someone wants unless there is a block". It may just be presentation, but for negotiaions/agreements, it feels a bit coercive.

I prefer to see them as exchanges - "I'll give you x in exchange for y". Sometimes those are vague and fuzzy things, and ssometimes they're negative things "in exchange for 100gp, I won't punch you." Practically they might end up being the same (and certainly the idea of blocks is better than a lot of systems), but for some reason the framing just feels wrong to me.

I'm not saying it's absolutely wrong objectively, of course, and as I said, it is better than a lot of systems, but it rubs me wrong in ways I can't properly articulate.

[Jakinbandw]

I'm not fond of the framing of "you should do what someone wants unless there is a block". It may just be presentation, but for negotiaions/agreements, it feels a bit coercive.

I prefer to see them as exchanges - "I'll give you x in exchange for y". Sometimes those are vague and fuzzy things, and ssometimes they're negative things "in exchange for 100gp, I won't punch you." Practically they might end up being the same (and certainly the idea of blocks is better than a lot of systems), but for some reason the framing just feels wrong to me.

I'm not saying it's absolutely wrong objectively, of course, and as I said, it is better than a lot of systems, but it rubs me wrong in ways I can't properly articulate.

I'm curious why you feel it's coercive. The intent is to have to allow things to flow smoothly without any need for the system until something specific comes up. You want to make friends at the bar? Cool, you succeed, nothing special needed. You don't need to offer anything, you want to be friends, the guy your talking to isn't against it, and so you get along and become friends.

Now if you are playing a draw and your in a racist tavern and youre trying to make friends things will be differant. The GM can immediately see that it shouldn't work, and that the block is that those in the bar are racist. If you want to still try to make friends as a drow, you'll have to find a way to overcome their racism.

It's at this point that trading and bargaining can happen. I use favours as just a way of handling intangibles because wealth and money mean differant things to dofferant people. A beggar will value 100gp more than a king will, for example.

[kyoryu]

It feels like the model is "if people don't want to do what you want, you need to overcome them until they agree."

Again, in play it probably doesn't work out that way and wouldn't be all that different from what I'd do. But for some reason the presentation is off to me. Like the other person isn't an equal, but an obstacle to be defeated, if that makes sense.

Note also that I'm talking very squishy and subjective presentation/feel issues, not a hard "this is bad because" or "this is broken".

[NichG]

I'm not sure it feels coercive to me unless the blocks can be cleared in ways that ignores their content (so maybe Fast Talk in particular is a concern), but it does have a faint lawyerly feel to it. Like, it could reduce to a lot of semantic arguments about how someone phrased their block, or whether someone properly thought out all contingencies and corner cases when defining their blocks.

So e.g. let's say you want to protect yourself from the request 'kill your lover', so that under no circumstances will you do that. How would you phrase the blocks and how complicated would it need to be? How about if you want to protect yourself from 'if you don't kill X, I will kill Y' when you care about X and Y?

Could someone have a block 'under no circumstances will I do something only because I'm asked to do it; I will listen, refuse, and then I may or may not independently decide to do it anyhow'? Would that be bypassed by honor?

[Jakinbandw]

I'm not sure it feels coercive to me unless the blocks can be cleared in ways that ignores their content (so maybe Fast Talk in particular is a concern), but it does have a faint lawyerly feel to it. Like, it could reduce to a lot of semantic arguments about how someone phrased their block, or whether someone properly thought out all contingencies and corner cases when defining their blocks.

So e.g. let's say you want to protect yourself from the request 'kill your lover', so that under no circumstances will you do that. How would you phrase the blocks and how complicated would it need to be? How about if you want to protect yourself from 'if you don't kill X, I will kill Y' when you care about X and Y?

Could someone have a block 'under no circumstances will I do something only because I'm asked to do it; I will listen, refuse, and then I may or may not independently decide to do it anyhow'? Would that be bypassed by honor?

You don't need to phrase blocks in advance. They are done in reaction to someone else's course of action you don't want to go along with. You don't make a block about not killing your wife until someone tries to get you to kill her, and you might have several reasons why you wouldn't. You no longer like the person for suggesting it, you love your wife, it would destroy your life in your village, it would leave your children you love without a mother, and it would be dishonorable in your eyes.

And even if you don't think about all those in the moment, you can add them on as you consider them. Now even then a person may work through all those blocks. "The world is ending, and everyone may die, but if you come and sacrifice your wife on this alter we have a chance to live. Talk with her about it. I wouldn't rob you of your last moments together whether you help or not. You can trust me, I'm an adventurer of great renown, famed for my honor. Without this sacrifice your children will die, but if you and your wife help us she'll be commemorated as a hero forever."

But as a PC you'll need to be convinced to go along. Even if someone sounds honest, you can still say that what they are saying is too suspicious (and that would be your block).

As for your last suggestion, a character could be like that, but if they never went along with any suggestions, they couldn't function in a party. Think of how hard it would be if you could never agree to do something if someone else wanted it. Like you can't get up in the morning because your wife wants you to get up. You can't converse with her because she wants to talk about the day. You can't accept food, because someone wants to give it to you.

That type of character would be really neat as an alien intelligence, and could be defeated by clever players 'please don't kill yourself!'

Thankfully, as blocks are reactive, you don't need to go that far to be a curmudgeon that doesn't work well with others if that's what you want to play.

[NichG]

You don't need to phrase blocks in advance. They are done in reaction to someone else's course of action you don't want to go along with. You don't make a block about not killing your wife until someone tries to get you to kill her, and you might have several reasons why you wouldn't. You no longer like the person for suggesting it, you love your wife, it would destroy your life in your village, it would leave your children you love without a mother, and it would be dishonorable in your eyes.

And even if you don't think about all those in the moment, you can add them on as you consider them. Now even then a person may work through all those blocks. "The world is ending, and everyone may die, but if you come and sacrifice your wife on this alter we have a chance to live. Talk with her about it. I wouldn't rob you of your last moments together whether you help or not. You can trust me, I'm an adventurer of great renown, famed for my honor. Without this sacrifice your children will die, but if you and your wife help us she'll be commemorated as a hero forever."

But as a PC you'll need to be convinced to go along. Even if someone sounds honest, you can still say that what they are saying is too suspicious (and that would be your block).

In that case it sounds like you could always add the block 'I've decided not to do it' at any point, which isn't a point of logic or trust so it can't really be bypassed except via favors. Also if you can add blocks on the fly as you like, favors don't seem to do anything.

Which basically seems to turn it into the default 'character decides' system. Which is actually the system I'm generally in favor of, but doesn't sound like what you're trying to do...

If rather than seeing it as a resolution system, you look at this as a way to compactly communicate an NPC's decision process to the players, I think it's fine. It just seems to break down if you start to treat it as a game where 'choosing your blocks' is an action that can be taken.



As for your last suggestion, a character could be like that, but if they never went along with any suggestions, they couldn't function in a party. Think of how hard it would be if you could never agree to do something if someone else wanted it. Like you can't get up in the morning because your wife wants you to get up. You can't converse with her because she wants to talk about the day. You can't accept food, because someone wants to give it to you.

That's why I put the 'decide independently' bit. Someone asks me to get up in the morning: 'I won't do it because you said so, but I'm deciding to get up on my own now'. So a character that comes off as a jerk, but still functional.

It's like telling a salesman 'I'm going to sleep on it' before making a purchase decision.

[KineticDiplomat]

I'm growing more and more convinced that the suspicion, distrust, and outright fear of social "combat"/consequences says more about the playerbase than any mechanics. I'm of the impression that because of the following core motivations, large numbers of players will rationalize just about any argument against social outcomes. The logic has nothing to do with it, any more than it did some wise man constructing elaborate proofs of their chosen ideology. The culture and motivations are everything.

1. Many players would rather lose the game than power or agency. The same people who would rather have a PC die than surrender, or lose equipment, or any theoretically lesser punishment that somehow impacts their power fantasy, they're the ones who hate the idea that someone could through deception, persuasion, or charm take away decisions. To them, dying to fireball is fair because they got to swing all the way down, but being persuaded to make a decision they didn't want to is unfair...

2. Many players have a distinct fear of ambiguity in outcomes. Social outcomes, almost by definition, are going to be ambigious. Where combat is both mechanistically rigid and in many systems has a very clear 0/1 state, social systems would struggle to be. So if you're the kind of player who thinks the that table trust is ensured by defined mechanics for whatever reason - you don't trust your GM, you have a fear of being unfairly treated by the system - then you almost by definition will not trust a system which requires other people's judgement to the degree social outcomes do. You will always fear the extreme outcome.

3. Many players probably aren't that good at being social to begin with. Let's face it, at least 49% of us should be below average at social skills IRL. And if you find this to be a source of frustration and limitation, man, you aren't going to want it in your power fantasy. And you're more likely to be suspicious of it.

4. Many players wildly overestimate peoples ability to remain uninfluenced by other people - or as an extension of power fantasy, believe people are far more logical than they are. In both life and fiction, people are flattered, cajoled, persuaded ,pressured, charmed, seduced, and decieved pretty routinely into making objectively bad decisions. Despite the clear and overwhelming tendency for this, we routinely have a blindside where we believe it wouldn't happen to us. Players are either misestimat ing outcomes because of personal involvement, or just don't like the idea that their avatars might act illogically as part of their power fantasy. And since by definition a range of outcomes means sometimes taking a sub optimal one you didn't choose...

[NichG]

I'm growing more and more convinced that the suspicion, distrust, and outright fear of social "combat"/consequences says more about the playerbase than any mechanics. I'm of the impression that because of the following core motivations, large numbers of players will rationalize just about any argument against social outcomes. The logic has nothing to do with it, any more than it did some wise man constructing elaborate proofs of their chosen ideology. The culture and motivations are everything.

1. Many players would rather lose the game than power or agency. The same people who would rather have a PC die than surrender, or lose equipment, or any theoretically lesser punishment that somehow impacts their power fantasy, they're the ones who hate the idea that someone could through deception, persuasion, or charm take away decisions. To them, dying to fireball is fair because they got to swing all the way down, but being persuaded to make a decision they didn't want to is unfair...

2. Many players have a distinct fear of ambiguity in outcomes. Social outcomes, almost by definition, are going to be ambigious. Where combat is both mechanistically rigid and in many systems has a very clear 0/1 state, social systems would struggle to be. So if you're the kind of player who thinks the that table trust is ensured by defined mechanics for whatever reason - you don't trust your GM, you have a fear of being unfairly treated by the system - then you almost by definition will not trust a system which requires other people's judgement to the degree social outcomes do. You will always fear the extreme outcome.

3. Many players probably aren't that good at being social to begin with. Let's face it, at least 49% of us should be below average at social skills IRL. And if you find this to be a source of frustration and limitation, man, you aren't going to want it in your power fantasy. And you're more likely to be suspicious of it.

4. Many players wildly overestimate peoples ability to remain uninfluenced by other people - or as an extension of power fantasy, believe people are far more logical than they are. In both life and fiction, people are flattered, cajoled, persuaded ,pressured, charmed, seduced, and decieved pretty routinely into making objectively bad decisions. Despite the clear and overwhelming tendency for this, we routinely have a blindside where we believe it wouldn't happen to us. Players are either misestimat ing outcomes because of personal involvement, or just don't like the idea that their avatars might act illogically as part of their power fantasy. And since by definition a range of outcomes means sometimes taking a sub optimal one you didn't choose...

Of course the culture and attitudes of players matter.

How even would one construct a logical argument for or against social mechanics without any reference to matters of preference or values? Logic only begins to be usable once a goal and context are stated, and logic only becomes the sole consideration if those things are unanimously agreed upon.

Anything about realism or mechanics reflecting reality? Well, how much to prioritize realism vs internal consistency vs gameplay feel vs fantasy is a values choice.

Anything about who can participate at the table? Everyone has their own group of players with their own preferences there.

A good part of these sorts of discussions comes down to exposing people to different points of view more than to debating points of logic. There's something which one viewpoint assumes another viewpoint should be satisfied with, so people holding that view propose it. Then people of that other viewpoint find the things which they react negatively to and explain those things, at which point the first people either understand a bit more or they don't see it or they spot something inherent to the other view that they can't swallow and the discussion spirals off from there.

The product of internet debates is rarely conversion. Sometimes it'll reveal minor points which are unnecessary to core things which people will let go of. But I think enabling us to build better mental models of ourselves and of each other is usually the most productive outcome we can hope for. We can clarify our stances and better explicitly understand what particular aspects of things we like or dislike.

But 'I logic'd best, now people will run games my way' isn't going to happen.

[icefractal]

Many players wildly overestimate peoples ability to remain uninfluenced by other people - or as an extension of power fantasy, believe people are far more logical than they are.I've seen this point before, and from a scientific POV it's reasonable - mind-body duality isn't really a thing, and people's "self" is less sharply defined and more malleable than we'd like it to be.

However - this isn't a "silly gamers, acting like they're Vulcans" thing. It's how our society and legal system operates!

Q: What do you call someone who was socially manipulated into committing murder?
A: A murderer.

Both in a legal sense and - in the opinion of many people - a moral sense. "I was manipulated into it" is not generally considered an excuse the way "someone picked up my unconscious body and used that to bludgeon people" or "I had a totally unexpected seizure and lost control of the car" are.


In both life and fiction, people are flattered, cajoled, persuaded ,pressured, charmed, seduced, and decieved pretty routinely into making objectively bad decisions.And those people are often judged, hard, on those decisions.

But what if the player wants a story of ****ing up, doing bad things, accepting that, and trying to find redemption? Then great, facilitate players who want to have that arc - rather than assigning it randomly to players who don't.

[Telok]

I recalled I'd been tourist to Paris about 8-9 years ago. Got a street con run on me, would have worked if I hadn't been with someone who knew the cons. Later I got to watch the hustlers work the crowds. Yeah, its a bit creepy that some people can walk up to someone they don't know & walk off ten minutes later with a wad of cash in hand.

So ya, D&D 3.5 diplomancer stuff is nuts but its not an actual social conflict mechanic. The actual conflict systems that have thought & work in them I'm cool with. I find that they also help the less socially adept players be more than lumps on a log in the game's talky encounters.

I do find the argument "i don't have physical combat xp so i use combat systems but do have social skills so don't want social combat systems in games" a bit weird. Does that mean those people would be down for using thier RL combat skills to adjucate fights with a DM who is a combat veteran? Why is it that so often plysical conflicts get a rules structure but nothing else does?

[Lacco]

I recalled I'd been tourist to Paris about 8-9 years ago. Got a street con run on me, would have worked if I hadn't been with someone who knew the cons. Later I got to watch the hustlers work the crowds. Yeah, its a bit creepy that some people can walk up to someone they don't know & walk off ten minutes later with a wad of cash in hand.

So ya, D&D 3.5 diplomancer stuff is nuts but its not an actual social conflict mechanic. The actual conflict systems that have thought & work in them I'm cool with. I find that they also help the less socially adept players be more than lumps on a log in the game's talky encounters.

I do find the argument "i don't have physical combat xp so i use combat systems but do have social skills so don't want social combat systems in games" a bit weird. Does that mean those people would be down for using thier RL combat skills to adjucate fights with a DM who is a combat veteran? Why is it that so often plysical conflicts get a rules structure but nothing else does?

Two main reasons come up to my mind.

1. Everybody thinks they know how social skills work in RL.
2. There is a social stigma related to not being able to control one's character (losing the control) - most of us had the RL experience of embarrasment, got tongue-tied, pushed around by more socially adept folks. This experience is not something most of folks want to relive in the fantasy world.

Put these two together. Most folks would rather have their character dead in honorable combat than being laughed at at a court.

[Vahnavoi]

Does that mean those people would be down for using thier RL combat skills to adjucate fights with a DM who is a combat veteran?

Yes. Literally how revised and free Kriegsspiel were meant to work. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel) This idea's older than, and served as precursor to, tabletop roleplaying and the concept of a game master. The idea was introduced because mechanical simulation of battlefield conditions on the tabletop was found to be real slow and unwieldy.

[Theoboldi]

Two main reasons come up to my mind.

1. Everybody thinks they know how social skills work in RL.
2. There is a social stigma related to not being able to control one's character (losing the control) - most of us had the RL experience of embarrasment, got tongue-tied, pushed around by more socially adept folks. This experience is not something most of folks want to relive in the fantasy world.

Put these two together. Most folks would rather have their character dead in honorable combat than being laughed at at a court.

There's also the third factor that most social mechanics are in fact a very bad representation of what being manipulated or made to look foolish in real life actually look like, and go way overboard in what they allow. Sure, it's possible to fast-talk someone and make them go along with something before they have time to think it over, but most irl scams and manipulations for instance revolve around exploiting existing vulnerabilities, lack of knowledge, social expectations in a way that just isn't handled well by the more basic forms of social mechanics.

As a result, the outcomes of such mechanics, especially if they are negative for the player characters, can feel very arbitrary to the players themselves. Especially when the person at the other end of the table does not have the ability to describe the opposing side's actions in an immediate manner that makes it sound sensible that the player character should fall for their words, it then causes a disconnect in the fiction.


Further, consider that a character's decision making and choices are the most universal and basic parts of roleplaying in a traditional roleplaying game. Any social combat system or even just social system that has the potential to influence what a player character does will take away this fundamental gameplay agency. It, for a moment, removes a fundamental part of the game in a way that can feel very much not fun.

[Telok]

Yes. Literally how revised and free Kriegsspiel were meant to work. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel) This idea's older than, and served as precursor to, tabletop roleplaying and the concept of a game master. The idea was introduced because mechanical simulation of battlefield conditions on the tabletop was found to be real slow and unwieldy.

Great. I know a couple vets you can have fist fights with when you want to find out if your paladin can smite an orc. Because what's being suggested in this thread isn't "find a recognized expert in <thing> to referee a high level abstract <thing> teaching game". The statements come across as "games shouldn't have noncombat conflict resolution because the DM and players already know everything they need to know".

Thinking about it... something I've noticed on forums is an increasing trend towards people saying that games shouldn't have rules or systems for things outside combat because the poster is already making up thier own rules or systems for those things. Or they deride any noncombat systems as "too one-size-fits-all" with no consideration that thier beloved combat system is one-size-fits-all where all forms of combat are treated as working the same way and having the same results.

Whats missing of course is that the vast majority of games aren't written for experts who have the experience & knowledge to ad-hoc anything they might need. Just as some people don't feel they can adjucate a sword duel from thier personal experiences others don't feel that they can run a good diplomatic, locked room puzzle, or dangerous exploration scene from thier personal experiences.

That's really where I think these conflict resolution systems are useful. As a set of guides for general abstraction of a type of conflict for those who don't want to free form it or write thier own systems. Like I did some research into human perception (really only about 2 weeks spare time looking up old military research on spotting & I.D.ing) to come up with a perception & stealth system. Unless a game has a better & more specific implementation I'll just use mine, but I'm not going to say that games shouldn't have those systems for people who don't want to do thier own work.

[Cluedrew]

There's also the third factor that most social mechanics are in fact a very bad representation of what being manipulated or made to look foolish in real life actually look like, and go way overboard in what they allow.I think this is definitely a factor. I've seen people argue that you cannot create good social mechanics and their argument is basically to point at D&D and say "look how bad these mechanics are". The other main argument seems to assume you will have one set of mechanics for all social interactions. To me, that seems like running a food race or a soccer/football game in D&D's combat system.

Speaking of which the social mechanics I have enjoyed tend to be very narrow and focused on a particular situation, and they will usually set boundaries that make sense. Like rules that only handle when you threaten someone and only kick in if you have a threat to make.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm growing more and more convinced that the suspicion, distrust, and outright fear of social "combat"/consequences says more about the playerbase than any mechanics.
In a nutshell, yes. (Good post all around)
As Pogo once said "we have met the enemy and he is us" :smallcool:

[Vahnavoi]

Great. I know a couple vets you can have fist fights with when you want to find out if your paladin can smite an orc.

Play fighting to solve character conflicts continues to be mundane in the realm of live-action roleplaying.


Because what's being suggested in this thread isn't "find a recognized expert in <thing> to referee a high level abstract <thing> teaching game".

I've suggested getting a manual on genuine social skills in this thread, in a direct reply to you. Thanks for paying attention. The actual point of my last reply to YOU was that YOU were suggesting that and I felt compelled to point out that people have done and continue to do this. It is entirely mundane course of action. Nothing weird about it.


The statements come across as "games shouldn't have noncombat conflict resolution because the DM and players already know everything they need to know".

The actual argument concerning social skills is that you need them to gather and maintain a playgroup. Use and develop skills you've already demonstrated and required to have, instead of something else.


Thinking about it... something I've noticed on forums is an increasing trend towards people saying that games shouldn't have rules or systems for things outside combat because the poster is already making up thier own rules or systems for those things.

Sure, it is silly to argue some game designer shouldn't include rules for a thing because one already has a different game about that thing. There is a non-silly, non-straw version of this argument though, which can be phrased as a question: "who needs that thing?"

Given kids who've yet to learn to read, write or do math can often navigate and resolve social conflicts on their own while playing pretend, it's a fair question as far as social skills go.


Or they deride any noncombat systems as "too one-size-fits-all" with no consideration that thier beloved combat system is one-size-fits-all where all forms of combat are treated as working the same way and having the same results.

That's a byproduct of arguing from examples - which is not a surprise, given common examples of non-combat systems ARE deliberately designed as one-roll-fits-all generic systems with even less detail and variation than D&D combat. The only way out of that rut is to provide examples of quality from outside that paradigm.


Whats missing of course is that the vast majority of games aren't written for experts who have the experience & knowledge to ad-hoc anything they might need. Just as some people don't feel they can adjucate a sword duel from thier personal experiences others don't feel that they can run a good diplomatic, locked room puzzle, or dangerous exploration scene from thier personal experiences.

Far more important is that the most popular games aren't written BY experts, which means their rules are just codification of how their non-expert designers would adjucate those things - entirely within capability of a practiced amateur to out-perform. The only thing tabletop game designers typically have over individual game masters is ability to be confidently wrong about a lot of things at once.

The joke then comes a full circle when you go ask an expert and they answer "trying to simulate this numerically would be very slow and difficult on the tabletop, it's better to do your homework and then use your real knowledge to plug the holes of a simpler game". Which is what the Kriegsspiel example demonstrates.

Which comes back to the point that a game book could just be or include real advice on social skills. Just like your example of perception could be replicated by putting that genuine military research and rules-of-thumb in a game book.

[kyoryu]

The actual argument concerning social skills is that you need them to gather and maintain a playgroup. Use and develop skills you've already demonstrated and required to have, instead of something else.

I'm not convinced that takes social skills as much as organizational skills.


Far more important is that the most popular games aren't written BY experts, which means their rules are just codification of how their non-expert designers would adjucate those things - entirely within capability of a practiced amateur to out-perform. The only thing tabletop game designers typically have over individual game masters is ability to be confidently wrong about a lot of things at once.

The joke then comes a full circle when you go ask an expert and they answer "trying to simulate this numerically would be very slow and difficult on the tabletop, it's better to do your homework and then use your real knowledge to plug the holes of a simpler game". Which is what the Kriegsspiel example demonstrates.

Which comes back to the point that a game book could just be or include real advice on social skills. Just like your example of perception could be replicated by putting that genuine military research and rules-of-thumb in a game book.

I actually agree with this, mostly/sorta?

Like, in general I think that this is really an argument in favor of rulings-not-rules, which absolutely can be applied to social situations. That doesn't mean you can't still have some level of social mechanics in play if you want, just that even if you do, it probably makes more sense to leave a lot in the "GM judgement" realm and just use the mechanics mostly to resolve areas of uncertainty.

Or, to put it slightly differently, if you're going to have social mechanics, I'd prefer:

1. Fairly lightweight mechanics, mostly around resolving uncertainty
2. Clear, result-based actions
3. Strong guidance on how to use the mechanics, what preconditions exist for hte various mechanics, limiting results, pacing, etc.

Coming up with a full mathematical model for human interaction seems........ ambitious, to say the least. Making one that can be effectively used at a tabletop seems unlikely.

[Vahnavoi]

Organizational skills are social skills, especially when you're dealing with small groups in person. I'm genuinely mystified what you think the distinction is.

[kyoryu]

Organizational skills are social skills, especially when you're dealing with small groups in person. I'm genuinely mystified what you think the distinction is.

They are a subset of social skills.

Empathy is a social skill, and has nothing to do with organization. Very little negotiation is part of organization, apart from things like scheduling (which tends to be the easy negotiation bits). Very little of the "soft" parts of social skills are exercised with organization.

Also, the premise of "GMs can organize a game, therefore they have good social skills" is pretty quickly disproven by the number of GMs that can get a group together, but have horrible social skills (outside of said organizational skills, if you want to include those in the umbrella).

[Telok]

stuff

So, I didn't read your post. Over the last few years I stopped reading any post that chops everything up into individual sentences like that. I've found them to be pointless rants that try to pick out sound bites to agonize over without engaging the actual communication.

I'm sorry but those sorts of posts just signal a complete communication & comprehension failure to me.

[Vahnavoi]

I've talked about that kind of people earlier in this thread, the reply is the same: groups gathered by such people are not stable without improving their social skills. At best, you can move tasks of managing group social relations to a player other than the game master. Either way, don't confuse minimum bar to pass with good. The skills required to hold a functioning game and playgroup are much lower than skills required to hold a high-quality game and playgroup. The point is that using and developing those skills is how you get better.

---

EDIT:


So, I didn't read your post. Over the last few years I stopped reading any post that chops everything up into individual sentences like that. I've found them to be pointless rants that try to pick out sound bites to agonize over without engaging the actual communication.

I'm sorry but those sorts of posts just signal a complete communication & comprehension failure to me.

If you don't actually read my posts, you can say nothing of worth about what they signal.

[kyoryu]

I've talked about that kind of people earlier in this thread, the reply is the same: groups gathered by such people are not stable without improving their social skills. At best, you can move tasks of managing group social relations to a player other than the game master. Either way, don't confuse minimum bar to pass with good. The skills required to hold a functioning game and playgroup are much lower than skills required to hold a high-quality game and playgroup. The point is that using and developing those skills is how you get better.

Clearly, and no argument involved with any of that.

I don't buy that it's an argument that you shouldn't have social mechanics. I do agree that social mechanics are best left fairly light, though.

[Vahnavoi]

If you go way back in this thread, you'll find examples of social mechanics given by me. The real point was that mechanics can be made in such a way that they facilitate a player using what social and acting skills they do have, instead of replacing those with skills in math and probability.

[Telok]

If you go way back in this thread, you'll find examples of social mechanics given by me. The real point was that mechanics can be made in such a way that they facilitate a player using what social and acting skills they do have, instead of replacing those with skills in math and probability.

Its not that I don't read you (or anyone specifically) posts, its that I've lost all faith in that style of post that chops everything up into disjointed sound bites.

And I think our core goal is pretty similar. I like mechanics that help the player run the character in line with the fiction. If the fiction of the character (PC or NPC) is that they're suave & charming or gullible & trusting then I prefer that there be something to show that instead of having to rely totally on player social skills.

It just doesn't feel... nice? fair? ...for a system to tell someone they can play a charming & persuasive character (or a skilled combatant, or a nimble thief, etc., etc.) but then deny all the character abilities & fiction by saying the player has to RL have all the skills & talent in order to succeed at the appropriate tasks. So I think that a social combat subsystem is just one if a games' uncertainty resolution subsystems, to be used when & as is appropriate for that game to match it's fiction.

[KorvinStarmast]

And I think our core goal is pretty similar. I like mechanics that help the player run the character in line with the fiction. If the fiction of the character (PC or NPC) is that they're suave & charming or gullible & trusting then I prefer that there be something to show that instead of having to rely totally on player social skills.

It just doesn't feel... nice? fair? ...for a system to tell someone they can play a charming & persuasive character (or a skilled combatant, or a nimble thief, etc., etc.) but then deny all the character abilities & fiction by saying the player has to RL have all the skills & talent in order to succeed at the appropriate tasks. You don't get better at something by not doing it. Giving the player too large of a crutch encourages non growth of that (social) skill area. That's a disservice to the player.

[Pex]

You don't get better at something by not doing it. Giving the player too large of a crutch encourages non growth of that (social) skill area. That's a disservice to the player.

I can guarantee you I am no better at swinging a sword than I was when I started playing 2E. I was at a DM's wedding and we held up real swords for him and his bride to walk under. It was quite heavy for me. I was relieved when they finally passed, and I could put my arm down.

There is a point to a player should say something to convey how or what his character says and does instead of just "I use persuasion on him", but the player is not his character. The player does not have to demonstrate swinging a sword or casting a spell. He doesn't need to demonstrate a performance.

[KorvinStarmast]

I can guarantee you I am no better at swinging a sword than I was when I started playing 2E. Irrelevant to the conversation at hand. I am referring to role playing. you don't swing a sword during play, it's too dangerous, but talking isn't dangerous and talking is how you play make believe.
Put another way, you just did the guy at the gym fallacy.

[Pex]

Irrelevant to the conversation at hand. I am referring to role playing. you don't swing a sword during play, it's too dangerous, but talking isn't dangerous and talking is how you play make believe.
Put another way, you just did the guy at the gym fallacy.

Not at all. Guy At The Gym is irrelevant to the point. The point is the real person playing at the table. You don't demand of him to show the DM his ability to swing a sword or cast a spell, but such a player may still play the best warrior or spellcaster of the land. By that same measure you don't demand the player to make up and recite a soliloquy to play the most suave ladies' man of the land if that's what he wants his character to be.

[Cluedrew]

Its not that I don't read you (or anyone specifically) posts, its that I've lost all faith in that style of post that chops everything up into disjointed sound bites.Not only do they tend to be nitpicky posts that miss the larger point of the post, but even when they don't they are just harder to follow. Like there is a cycle you have to go through to read and understand a quote and its response over and above all the words. I just find posts with a lot of quotes harder to read and follow than one with few or none.

To KorvinStarmast: While I am on the subject, I have found some of your "collage" posts pretty unreadable because of that (they usually aren't nitpicky though). Just a bit of feedback.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Not only do they tend to be nitpicky posts that miss the larger point of the post, but even when they don't they are just harder to follow. Like there is a cycle you have to go through to read and understand a quote and its response over and above all the words. I just find posts with a lot of quotes harder to read and follow than one with few or none.

To KorvinStarmast: While I am on the subject, I have found some of your "collage" posts pretty unreadable because of that (they usually aren't nitpicky though). Just a bit of feedback.

I agree with this. Although I'm guilty of it sometimes.

[NichG]

Its not that I don't read you (or anyone specifically) posts, its that I've lost all faith in that style of post that chops everything up into disjointed sound bites.

And I think our core goal is pretty similar. I like mechanics that help the player run the character in line with the fiction. If the fiction of the character (PC or NPC) is that they're suave & charming or gullible & trusting then I prefer that there be something to show that instead of having to rely totally on player social skills.

It just doesn't feel... nice? fair? ...for a system to tell someone they can play a charming & persuasive character (or a skilled combatant, or a nimble thief, etc., etc.) but then deny all the character abilities & fiction by saying the player has to RL have all the skills & talent in order to succeed at the appropriate tasks. So I think that a social combat subsystem is just one if a games' uncertainty resolution subsystems, to be used when & as is appropriate for that game to match it's fiction.

Who says that systems have to present a 'charming and persuasive' character as a promised archetype in the first place? It feels like there's a lot of circular arguments around this point. If the point in question is whether to put social combat in a system, then assuming that the system would still present 'social combatant' archetypes, have things to invest in for social combat, etc if the answer is determined to be 'let's not put social combat into this system' doesn't make any sense.

I guess what I've been arguing for is a deeper change, not even just to details of mechanics but fundamentally even to how we think about the fiction of characters who socialize.

Mechanics aside, I would not support 'character who navigates social interactions in a combatative way to consistently get what they want' as being a viable fictional archetype at all.

If you want to have a suave and charming archetype, what they're doing should be fundamentally different fiction than conflict. The system should not encourage the player to think about those characteristics in a conflict-based mindset at all.

In other words, don't tell players at any level - mechanics or fiction - that being suave and charming is about getting other characters to do what you say.

Instead, make it about being memorable to other characters, having favors and kindnesses stick in people's minds more and negative rumors stick less. Have it be about more easily avoiding conversational snags, being better able to show only the parts of yourself you want to display, better able to avoid topics or shift the flow of conversation without being overt. To appear as a member of any social class and to pass all the subconscious tests like accents, cultural references, reacting authentically to sudden events, etc. To be able to understand what people want, where opinions stand and where they're eager to go, what rumors will stick and fester and what rumors won't suit the public's palate.

And if those abilities aren't hard and fast enough for the kind of action the rest of the game assumes, make it explicitly clear that these are at best ribbon features and won't be enough on their own to form a viable character concept. Or just don't put that stuff in at all. Don't put core stats for it, don't put expensive abilities or skills around it. Just say 'if you want to act suave and charming, that's a fluff choice on your part that has nothing to do with the system'

[Telok]

Who says that systems have to present a 'charming and persuasive' character as a promised archetype in the first place? It feels like there's a lot of circular arguments around this point...

Mechanics aside, I would not support 'character who navigates social interactions in a combatative way to consistently get what they want' as being a viable fictional archetype at all.

If you want to have a suave and charming archetype, what they're doing should be fundamentally different fiction than conflict.

Well there's the valid question of if you want to present 'strong and healthy' as a promised archetype too. If you're writing a new game and want to keep all the mental & social bits of a character out of the mechanics so theres just the physical stuff thats nice, or you could write one that just does social stuff and keeps all the physical action purely in the player skill area. That might be really interesting.

But for the games that do present "charming & persuasive" as an archtype, and do have the social stats & skills, I'm happier if they have some not-terrible structures for the bits of the game where they come into play. I don't think I've ever advocated for all systems doing social stuff and requiring support for every possible archtype.

Your issue with social "combat" is probably mostly framing. Sort of like you shouldn't normally use the physical combat systems for races or lock picking, so you shouldn't normally use social combat for seduction or haggling. Part of the issue there is some subsystems labeled 'social combat' are broader than just the 'combat' bit and others that are just the combat bit are being misused when you try to do all social activities with them. When to use social combat is probably like asking when to roll physical combat initative, you can get bunches of wildly different answers for slightly different use cases.

[Vahnavoi]

Not at all. Guy At The Gym is irrelevant to the point. The point is the real person playing at the table. You don't demand of him to show the DM his ability to swing a sword or cast a spell, but such a player may still play the best warrior or spellcaster of the land. By that same measure you don't demand the player to make up and recite a soliloquy to play the most suave ladies' man of the land if that's what he wants his character to be.

This continues to be false. Each game sets its own demands for what is required to play a character. If you go into a live-action game, you don't get to play any kind of swordsman if you're unwilling or unable to pick up a fake sword and do some play fighting. A tabletop game not demanding that is a function of being a tabletop game, not of being a roleplaying game. Swordfighting and social skills don't measure the same because they're different skills with different physical requirements and thus different viability for being implemented at the tabletop.

Yes, this goes for magic too. Ironically enough, actual magical practices have involved such things as rolling dice, drawing cards, moving pieces on a board and speaking words in a different language or as if you're someone else. You could include such practices in a game wholesale - such games exist, the reasons why they aren't mainstream visible, especially on this forum, are purely cultural.

[NichG]

Well there's the valid question of if you want to present 'strong and healthy' as a promised archetype too. If you're writing a new game and want to keep all the mental & social bits of a character out of the mechanics so theres just the physical stuff thats nice, or you could write one that just does social stuff and keeps all the physical action purely in the player skill area. That might be really interesting.

But for the games that do present "charming & persuasive" as an archtype, and do have the social stats & skills, I'm happier if they have some not-terrible structures for the bits of the game where they come into play. I don't think I've ever advocated for all systems doing social stuff and requiring support for every possible archtype.

Your issue with social "combat" is probably mostly framing. Sort of like you shouldn't normally use the physical combat systems for races or lock picking, so you shouldn't normally use social combat for seduction or haggling. Part of the issue there is some subsystems labeled 'social combat' are broader than just the 'combat' bit and others that are just the combat bit are being misused when you try to do all social activities with them. When to use social combat is probably like asking when to roll physical combat initative, you can get bunches of wildly different answers for slightly different use cases.

Well, if we go back to the thing about how experts see something versus how game developers who are not experts might bake in their biases, it's something like that but at the level of the hobby as a whole. Somehow there's this persistent idea that 'socially competent character = I should be able to make other characters do what I want'. I've suggested lots of mechanics for social interactions which wouldn't be mind control, but for whatever reason there's this attractor back to a fantasy of 'I can make other people do what I say' as the important thing. So I'm pushing back against that view as a whole. If there's an implicit assumption that a system should let you play a character who can do that, I want to push back against that. If there's an implicit assumption that social interactions require a conflict resolution mechanism (e.g. such that if the system didn't explicitly do something here, there would be questions of conflict that would have to be resolved) I want to push back against that. It's like whenever you push down one of these things, something else comes up like assuming that of course games are going to have mental stats (they don't have to) or of course we're talking about playing D&D with only minor adjustments (no need to assume this or restrict oneself to this) or of course the system has promised or depicted an archetype and is just cheating the player of their investment (we control what archetypes a system depicts, we're not obligated to copy the assumptions that other people have made before us).

So rather than arguing about 'yes this is realistic' or 'no this isn't realistic' or whatever, I think its better to put forward a different way of abstracting social interactions. I've described such mechanics in this thread already. Rather than centering things around conflict resolution or asking 'who wins?', you center the mechanics on being able to obtain information, predict reactions, control others' access to your own information, to prevent missteps and misunderstandings, and to make verbal decisions stick once made. So in such a system, you're never using the mechanics to directly answer the question 'do I successfully bribe the guard?'. Instead you use the mechanics to answer questions like 'if I approached this guard with a bribe, how would it turn out and if the guard would accept a bribe, what would I need to offer?' or 'is this person better approached using threats, lures, pressure from their existing connections, or calls to their morality or honor?'. Such a system does give benefits for investing in 'social stuff', those benefits can be quite powerful, it isn't a 'combat system', and it does allow depiction of fictional archetypes like a good negotiator, a blackmailer, a slick spy you can't pin down, a con man, etc. But just like someone playing a D&D Wizard has to understand stuff about how the particulars spells work and can't just say 'can I just roll a magic check to resolve this situation?', someone who wants to play a social manipulator in such a system needs to learn how and when to use those abilities.

Maybe what it comes down to is, if someone really wants to play a social manipulator via a system, I want them to at least be interested in thinking more deeply about social circumstances, characters, etc. Just as if someone really wanted to play a tactician I'd expect them to put more effort into things like understanding the abilities of units on the field, terrain, etc. What I have a knee jerk strong reaction against might come down to a sort of 'I don't like the social stuff (or when other people at the table get really into the social stuff) so I want a social system that lets me do the equivalent of rolling initiative and bringing it to the dice'. If someone doesn't like actually playing out the social stuff, I'd rather they ask for campaigns that feature less of it than to ask for systems which reduce its nuance.

[KorvinStarmast]

You don't demand of him to show the DM his ability to swing a sword or cast a spell, A role playing game does not involve either action by the players. We are not at the dojo doing a martial art, we are sitting around a table playing make believe. That involves verbal skills. EDIT: and it also involves RL social skills.

To KorvinStarmast: While I am on the subject, I have found some of your "collage" posts pretty unreadable because of that (they usually aren't nitpicky though). Just a bit of feedback. Multi quote is a tool. I use it. I often come back to a thread with a lot of pages of posts since my last visit. Responding to them in one post is more efficient.

[OldTrees1]

A role playing game does not involve either action by the players. We are not at the dojo doing a martial art, we are sitting around a table playing make believe. That involves verbal skills.

Quick note:
The skills involved in roleplaying a character rarely map 1:1 with the skills the character is using.

While this is obvious when it comes to "test a player's tactical knowledge when representing the character's combat skills", it also applies to "verbal skills".

Deciding and then communicating what you want the character to do and how you want them to do it calls on different skills than it would take for you to do it yourself.

For example when we want a character to tell an unnoticed lie, do we ask the player to try to get away with deceiving the GM? I don't. Most systems don't. Instead we have the player do something else (ex: *see below) and use that to represent the effectiveness of the character's attempt.

* Example: Describing the intended effect and attempted method. Maybe doing in character dialogue to give an example in addition to the declared intent

[kyoryu]

Quick note:
The skills involved in roleplaying a character rarely map 1:1 with the skills the character is using.

While this is obvious when it comes to "test a player's tactical knowledge when representing the character's combat skills", it also applies to "verbal skills".

Deciding and then communicating what you want the character to do and how you want them to do it calls on different skills than it would take for you to do it yourself.

For example when we want a character to tell an unnoticed lie, do we ask the player to try to get away with deceiving the GM? I don't. Most systems don't. Instead we have the player do something else (ex: *see below) and use that to represent the effectiveness of the character's attempt.

* Example: Describing the intended effect and attempted method. Maybe doing in character dialogue to give an example in addition to the declared intent

Another way of looking at it is a couple of questions:

1. what skills does the game test?
2. what skills do we want to gatekeep certain activities behind?

You can do combat by actually fighting - LARP solves this. But should you? That depends on who you want to play your game. Doing so means that the game tests your actual combat skills, and gatekeeps fighting behind actual combat skills. And that's okay, if that's the game you want to make. That just means that people that can't Actually Fight won't have a great time with your game, even if they're good at things like move optimization.

OTOH, a combat system that tests math skills indirectly, or move optimization game stuff, will gatekeep on those skills. Which means that someone that can Actually Fight, but is bad at both of those things will have a bad time.

Again, it's deciding who your intended audience is. They're all okay design decisions.