@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:
@ziggurat said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:
Didn't I also suggest that it might be more expedient for us to approach these disputes, frustrations, and misunderstandings at the interpersonal level, using player to player conversations that are facilitated by staff through a framework of easy/simple prompts, or questions, an atmosphere which encourages collaboration, a willingness to remove players that cannot maturely navigate these discussions, and more than just oversight, a plainly drawn expectation (with explanation) that players make the effort to cooperate in the resolution of these things as much as they would in any other conflict...?
I think you're misunderstanding the thrust of this discussion. All of the above is simply irrelevant.
It's not really irrelevant at all, though. I get that your initial idea was to remove social mechanics between players entirely, and that you've since moved on to consider the opposite option - that you should develop a system of social mechanics that is more complex and nuanced, so that when used between player characters there is less need for oversight, less potential for headaches, etc.
I'm suggesting plainly that neither are necessarily the solution, and that maybe the problem you're trying to solve doesn't need to be dealt with through mechanics. Maybe the issue is a cultural one, and there are staff practices and methods of facilitation that could handle this just as well.
This is a thread about the place of social stats between players in the world of darkness, intended primarily for discussion about how to manage these encounters and create a fun, equitable experience. I don't know how it could possibly be 'irrelevant' to contribute the idea that the mechanics themselves aren't nearly as problematic as the way that players (and staffers) opt to deploy them, far more often than not. Frustrations rooted in disputes over social rolls are, I think, symptomatic of larger, pervasive norms in this community when it comes to direct communication, transparency, and good faith. Not to say those things don't exist in the WoD MU community, just that they can be scarce, and the impersonal nature of the medium tends to coax opaqueness and distrust out of people, and instead of resolving to create tools to remain grounded in collaboration, folks are often permitted to remain wary, if not hostile.
but the aim of the current discussion is to examine what might be implemented when the lines of communication are cut
What needs to be implemented is more communication, simple as that.
If you're really only interested in 'automating' this so that there is no possible scenario where a staffer could ever need to step in, in the case that two adults cannot maturely discuss how to resolve a dispute that their characters are having, that's all well and good. But if the result is a system that removes the need to problem solve or cooperate OOC in order for players to butt heads ICly by mathematizing social encounters as thoroughly, or even more so, than physical combat? You're not going to reduce OOC hostility very much, you're just going to reduce the ability for people to throw tantrums when they don't get their way (and note, people still do this over physical combat, in any system, so idk what kind of platonically ideal social mechanics you had in mind but even they might not do what you're hoping for).
ETA: problems on MUs are, more often than anything else, problems between people - it baffles the shit out of me that helping people learn to/be able to successfully resolve interpersonal problems themselves is not considered a viable course of action here! I promise it'd take way less work than developing a social combat system that is more robust than Doors or the system from Danse Macabre, and it'd fix more than just social encounter misgivings