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AstralFire
2008-09-14, 08:23 AM
As many of you (I hope?) noted, I'm working on a homebrew system that's meant to be extremely pick-up and play, and the majority of the rules are in regard to physical effects.

Up 'til now, I've eschewed putting in a social combat system because... frankly, I'm kind of ambivalent about them in general.

All of the ones I've seen tend to be extremely ad-hoc in play; any GM who sees something as a reasonable statement grants you a circumstance/equipment/whatever bonus or says it works or whatnot and what have you.

The best I've seen are systems that said "well, you say this and the GM decides it was good and therefore knocked off this much of the person's resolve" (which is determined in ad-hoc by the GM) "so you succeed!" Which is barely one step above free-form.

I can see a social combat system working well in a very complicated, rules-heavy game where everything is defined and metered. (It would have to be done -very- well, though.) But in a rules-light game, is there even a point?

Pronounceable
2008-09-14, 09:49 AM
But in a rules-light game, is there even a point?

No.


*sigh*

RandomFellow
2008-09-14, 10:42 AM
No.


*sigh*

You are correct sir.

Knaight
2008-09-14, 11:37 AM
As a rule no, however they can work in fairly rules light systems, and are appropriate for some game. An example of them working in a rules light system:
http://www.fudgefactor.org/2005/11/fudge-social-combat.html

Zeta Kai
2008-09-14, 12:37 PM
1) This isn't a Homebrew question so much as a Gaming-in-general question.

2) It would be nice if there were a way to quantify social interactions in a concise, concrete manner, but no game system I know does this. They all, as you say, break down to "well, she's kinda stubborn (-4), but you made some good arguments just now (+6), so she's vulnerable; you get a +2 (for now)".

3) Any good social interaction system would have to have a way of factoring eloquence, force of personality, stubbornness/impressionability/open-mindedness, etc. beforehand, & then be able to pit these against each other in a semi-realistic fashion. This would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

4) The Giant's Diplomacy fix is probably the best you're gonna get. It's simple, robust, & easy to implement.

Knaight
2008-09-14, 01:18 PM
The one directly above your post does 2 and 3, although its highly granular.

Prometheus
2008-09-14, 02:11 PM
I do recall the FUDGE rules for combat could also be applied for Debates and Games. If you win a match, you put your opponent at a disadvantage, but they can still win another match and come back, especially as the modifiers change over the course of the "battle".

The way I would imagine social combat:
1) Each person has a force of personality number P or reputation R
2) Each person has a number of contacts related to P or R
3) Each person-to-person contact has a value of relationship strength C (a large positive number is close friends, zero is no strong feelings, large negative is a bitter enemy)
4) To find the relationship between a person and people who they do not have a contact with, you find all the chains of contacts that connect the two people and some formula of those Cs would represent the relationship
5) People can spend time/energy/social capital to invest in relationships of their own contacts, or influence the contacts of other people (success is based on P and the network of Cs)
6 (optional) People can do this more powerfully by lying or otherwise deceiving, but they can similarly can uncover the lies of others which is cause the relationship to be much worse (probably also based on P and Cs)
7 (optional) Sometimes positions of wealth or power (R) can put bounds on the C between two people. Someone who controls the town has to be at least tolerated by everybody, someone who is poor or of a bad reputation can't marry out of their class. Likewise, other rules can be added, such as racist society has divisions between groups and cohesion within groups.
8 (optional) Cs decay towards zero when you aren't in contact with these individuals or investing into them. You can always swap a contact for another contact (and the initial value of the contact would probably be set by the network of Cs or a default value based on P). R decays over time as well.

I find that this would probably be the most sophisticated representation of a social interaction and seems to cover the basic ideas pretty well. To become popular you get in with the "in crowd" (people with high P and lots of close contacts who have close contacts are are hoping to be in with the in crowd etc etc). Unless they were personally your own contact, you probably wouldn't be friends with someone who that one of your own contacts hated. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If you wanted to socially isolate someone, you'd spread false rumors about them, become better friends with their contacts than they are, and use that influence to separate them from their friend. The only real problem that I can see is that I left rules 4 and 5 vague about the mechanics and while this is technically rules light, the wrong formula could either make the game mathematics-heavy or have bizarre consequences. It could quickly become its own little strategy game. Nevertheless, I might try to give a whack at it if others were interested. If the mathematics are indeed heavy, maybe it can be supplemented with a computer program that does all the hard work.

AstralFire
2008-09-14, 02:48 PM
I suppose this is more of a gaming-in-general question, true.

I'm not familiar with Fudge proper, but SotC uses Fudge as a base, and I like its Social Combat more than others', but its only real solid advantage is using aspects - which are hard to export into a system without aspects pre-existing.