What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?

[Thenomain]

@Warma-Sheen said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@Thenomain said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

A similar issue in the World of Darkness crowd used to be the Mage antagonists, the Technocracy. We've had Technocracy players and this shed light on a single problem: They had nothing to do but pick on the other Mages, and as they had a huge advantage of organization and backing, things quickly got into the realm of suck for the Mages.

To be perfectly honest, that doesn't sound like a problem. That sounds like the way things were supposed to work. Except that players whine and cry because they want to use their powerz for frivolous stuff out in the open without penalty. Players have to respect the setting in order for the game to work, otherwise it doesn't.

Except it isn't how the Technocracy is supposed to work. It may be years since I've read the Guide to the Technocracy, but I know that Technos have a lot on their plates that has nothing to do with Tradition mages, that even in the first edition Mage book that the Technocracy has essentially won and is quite busy going about ruling their increasingly complex and overwhelming empire.

So if you have all the power and none of the responsibility, of course you're going to disrespect the setting. My personal experience of this had the Technos install Active Manar pretty much everywhere in the city. Why? To catch PCs. Why? So they would have something to do. Doing something because you can is not strictly wrong, and can be strictly within allowances, but the day that I accept "it's not strictly wrong" as a stand-alone answer is because I'm dead and can't smack you in the back of the head.

Which is what I did each and every time a Techno or Mage player said it to someone with less power or resources than them. Or Vampire player. Or Werewolf player. Or any player.

Because a tabletop game has translation issues when applied to a Mu*, which is what this thread is about.

Also, stop disrespecting players who disagree with you by calling them "whiners". It makes you look like a tool.

[Warma Sheen]

@Thenomain I never called anyone a whiner just for disagreeing with me. You're just trying to pick a fight here.

Players do whine (if you're really concerned about that very particular word, feel free to substitute it for something less abrasive to you) about being given consequences for using powers that are supposed to stay off the radar out in the open. There are players who complain about just being warned that there will be consequences, because they feel oppressed or whatever their rationale is.

It happens. It is a thing. To pretend it isn't is ignorant.

[Thenomain]

@Warma-Sheen

If that's the only thing you have to disagree about, I'm guessing we otherwise agree and we can move on to the more important task of finding those whiners and smacking them around.

Also, an apology for taking the word "whining" the wrong way. Left at its rawest contexts, I've lately been taking as "whining" to be euphemism for a way to undermine the issues and often (not always, often) legitimate issues of others.

At its most strictest, yes, people complain about losing. I didn't see what that had to do with what I said other than "man, those Mage players, whining when they can't get their way", defending when some Technocracy players ... do whatever they can to get their way.

Maybe that's the point. People who "do whatever they can" to get their way, IC and OOC, is an issue easiest solved in Tabletop, and hard to solve on Mushes.

Anyhow.

[Seraphim73]

@acceleration
I have many of the same enduring questions that you do about social skills on MU*s. I don't pretend to have all of the answers... or even any of them.

Your example of Bluff vs Perception is actually one that I don't mind at all, despite my stated preference for not influencing the mind of the character. But that's because it's a concrete example, and it doesn't change the character's thoughts. It just means that they failed to notice/question something. Sure, your character can look foolish if the Bluff is posed badly, but you the player still have control over their thoughts. More problematic to me is Persuasion, trying to convince a character to change their mind. It's probably going to take a whole lot more than a single Persuasion check to make a Paladin break their vows.

The question of torture vs seduction and which is rolled and which isn't is particularly troublesome, because there is a LARGE segment of the MU* population that would decide that their character would never break. And that's stupid. And yet I certainly don't want my characters (or at least not most of them, I've played some idiots in my time) falling for the line "So, bae, what's happening? I heard there's this top secret project going on, you should tell me about it" just because someone rolled high on their Interrogation/Seduction/Persuasion/Deception/Whatever check. To me it's a question of immersion.

There's also the creeper factor that you bring up: what about a total creeper player who rolls up a pornomancer character (maxed social/seduction skills, attributes, and bonuses) and goes around "seducing" characters whose players have no interest in such a thing? Yes, reducing the impact of such characters does reduce the impact of social-power characters. Absolutely. And that's unfortunate. But if there are plentiful NPCs to still influence (and to influence into providing physical protection for the social character), that impact can be minimized, in my opinion.

[faraday]

@Seraphim73 said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

The question of torture vs seduction and which is rolled and which isn't is particularly troublesome, because there is a LARGE segment of the MU* population that would decide that their character would never break.

I think it comes down to whether or not you believe that someone is seduced against their will (a contested roll) or whether seduction is a manner of persuasive performance akin to leadership, bluff and acting. I believe the latter, so it's not an issue for me. The seducer/con artist/actor rolls for the quality of their performance. The recipient chooses how they react to it.

To look at it another way... let's say someone tells a story that's 100% true. There's no con roll involved, obviously, but the listening character still may or may not choose to believe them. Why should it be any different for someone telling a convincing lie?

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Because people who believe themselves to be reasonable, steadfast, and intelligent are still manipulated because of their ego, fear, and ignorance.

[Duntada]

@faraday

When it comes to torture, there's actually a lot of argument on how well that works anyway, since the person is going to tell you whatever they think you want to hear rather than anything resembling the truth.

It was a point that was brought up to me while I was playing a character that later went on to become an interrogation specialist. Still one of my favorite characters because people hear the term "Interrogation Specialist" and picture a large brutish man with self inflicted scars and a fetish for some sort of pain... but then in walks this cheerful, friendly person who just seems mildly disappointed in you.

The person who trained our team ICly had a player that knew his stuff when it came to interrogation frighteningly well. We still always did two person interrogations, but it was never good cop bad cop. It was "good cops vs bad world." If you want good information you don't scare and torture the person, you earn their respect and convince them you are both just stuck in a bad place. You understand why they did what they did. If you were there, you'd do it too, but that doesn't change the fact they did it. You want to help them, because you know why they did it, but if you're going to help you need to know every single detail as accurately as possible, so that the other guys can't poke holes in your story. You are putting your credibility and career on the line for them, they need to help you.

His approach worked almost every time, and there was no OOC conflict of "that didn't work" because they didn't have to resist anything. We weren't rolling to make them do things. I know torture is dramatic and cool... and some people don't have the patience to do three days of scenes of being amicable with a serial killer but it works, and in the end makes pretty fun RP to me.

As for seduced against the character's will, I have had people roll the seduction at me and let the results stand no matter how I felt about it OOC, since there's a mechanic for it. I just also fade to black to scenes.)

[Lotherio]

My dice are thrown into the social dice should stand where they fall pool.

I had a long term TT game, with a player that had social anxiety. When they played the social oriented char, we ran with them explaining third person what the character did. I try to relate it to mu* experiences.

I'm good with this on a mu*, and yes, these players will be shunned and avoided if others think the rp is lacking. I see it as an opportunity to help them develop by playing with them.

I still see it as: no one makes the heavy fighter show real fighting prowess. It's only fair to those less gifted in written eloquence, or as is often true, the ones writing from an ESL standpoint, to allow social dice to reflect how the character is designed rather than how the player may portray them with lack of said skill themself.

Bare in mind, some of these folks do not have the luxury of being in an environment conducive to finding a TT, they are not in an urban environment like some of us. Others really have social anxiety, online is there only outlet. It's not entirely fair to force them to write better than their ability level to play the character they want to, much as we don't force each other to train in mma to play a brawler online.

[acceleration]

@Seraphim73
Immersion works both ways in your example there, though, re: interrogation vs seduction vs anything else. Why should a player get to ignore the results of social dice if they can't ignore the results of physical interrogation?

In a system where social dice exist, accepting your PC is weak-willed and gullible because you built them that way should absolutely be a thing, and I think using FTBs and avoidance to prevent rewarding 'pornomancers' is more true to the game system than saying 'no, you can't affect me because I'm a PC'. Properly used, social dice can be handled in a manner very similar to combat dice, which is the whole point of the doors system, although I admit I haven't used doors in a PVP situation.

It's better to avoid the construct entirely (avoid balancing around social dice at all, which can't be done in WoD's system, so it would involve going to something else, like maybe FATE) or accept that social dice are going to come into play, I think, or else legitimate social chars will probably end up having very little presence on a given MU*'s grid.

For the purpose of this example, @Duntada, I'm using the torture-as-interrogation story type. I realize IRL there's argument about whether or not it's actually effective and science supports that it isn't, but I don't think it'll go away in storytelling for awhile yet.

@Lotherio

To some extent I agree, but I think players should absolutely be pushing each other to be better writers. Players should be pushing each other to RP stuff that can be responded to and not just dead end a scene, try to use correct punctuation/capitalization, and otherwise improve their writing ability. But I don't think they should be prevented from trying concepts that would otherwise exist and be effective simply because people are more willing to deal with torture than mind control.

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@faraday

Because people who believe themselves to be reasonable, steadfast, and intelligent are still manipulated because of their ego, fear, and ignorance.

They can be. They can also not be. Even the best advertisement in the world doesn't convince everybody, otherwise everyone would be buying (pick a thing). Is it because Bob failed his Willpower roll and Susy didn't? Or because they just have different tastes? I believe it's more the latter than the former. This doesn't negate the utility of social skills - people should still utilize the results of rolls in their RP as they see fit. It just makes them a matter of influence rather than mind control.

Edit to avoid double posting: @Duntada - As you pointed out, interrogation is complicated and controversial. Fortunately it doesn't come up that often in PC vs PC matchups, so I don't really have a strong opinion on how to resolve it.

[surreality]

@acceleration said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

I think using FTBs and avoidance to prevent rewarding 'pornomancers' is more true to the game system than saying 'no, you can't affect me because I'm a PC'.

It may be more true to the system, but it is largely ineffective for reasons too numerous to repeat yet again, prime among them the fact that most players already intent on using the system to strong-arm this type of roleplay are also keen on using other exploitative means OOC to force their way, often insisting on escalations of consequences or events in the FtB that further punish the player requesting the FtB once they do so, many times, in ways that make the target unplayable thereafter.

No one would dream of pulling this crap in tabletop (trying to strongarm another PC into sexual RP while they likely have their pants off under said table) and expect players to return to that table until it was addressed, and no one would try this kind of tactic at a table and expect to be invited back.

The anonymity -- and frankly, the lack of having to look someone you've just disgusted with your urge to wank all over them (who wants no part of it) in the eye, -- of the internet makes this much less simple, because they both enable these behaviors considerably. The dynamic at the table is fundamentally different enough from the dynamic on a M* that a vast array of changes become necessary -- sometimes due to number of players, and sometimes due to the vastly different social dynamics at work. At the table, everything works against the person who shows up with an aim to forcibly creep. On a M*, it's completely the opposite. Choosing to ignore this reality is a pretty bad idea, because it gives some genuinely awful players free rein to abuse others, and it's not going to be a question of whether your game loses players over it, it's going to be a question of how many and how fast.

At the end of the day, players are more important than pure mechanics and always will be. Games that forget this ultimately do so at their own peril.

[Kanye Qwest]

@faraday said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@Thenomain said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@faraday

Because people who believe themselves to be reasonable, steadfast, and intelligent are still manipulated because of their ego, fear, and ignorance.

They can be. They can also not be. Even the best advertisement in the world doesn't convince everybody, otherwise everyone would be buying (pick a thing). Is it because Bob failed his Willpower roll and Susy didn't? Or because they just have different tastes? I believe it's more the latter than the former. This doesn't negate the utility of social skills - people should still utilize the results of rolls in their RP as they see fit. It just makes them a matter of influence rather than mind control.

Edit to avoid double posting: @Duntada - As you pointed out, interrogation is complicated and controversial. Fortunately it doesn't come up that often in PC vs PC matchups, so I don't really have a strong opinion on how to resolve it.

If you are in favor of being able to ignore social dice rolls at will, what's the point of having them at all? I think they are a very good way, as Duntada (I think) mentioned, to let people who might not have the writing skill to portray charming, manipulative characters. I doubt even 10% of combat beast PCs in all of MU-dom are played by people who have any experience at all with actual fighting.

But if someone rolls a critical success on a seduction attempt, yea verily your PC should be seduced. Notable exceptions for common sense, of course. If the PC seducing yours murdered your family or is trying to seduce you outside your orientation, that should be contestable.

[Pyrephox]

@surreality Except that what you point out isn't an issue with social mechanics. It's an issue with games and game staff tolerating and protecting abusive players. Abusive players will do the exact same thing no matter what social system is or isn't in place - the ONLY way to stop them is to build a culture in the game where people feel comfortable and supported going to staff and reporting attempted abuse, and where staff follows up on those reports quickly and completely, including uninviting people from games. Social dice have nothing to do with it.

Personally, I like the suggestion further up of letting people pick a few things that OOC, they would find ruining their fun if their character bent on, and leaving everything else up to dice in PvP, and having social skills be meaningful and powerful ways to resolve situations (on a par with combat dice) in PvE.

[faraday]

@Kanye-Qwest said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

If you are in favor of being able to ignore social dice rolls at will, what's the point of having them at all?

Well I tried to explain why - because a social "contest" if you will depends a great deal on the person's personality, morality, personal preferences, etc. most of which are not reflected by stats. This is very different than the situation with combat rolls, which are very well modeled in most systems.

Someone who has deliberately chosen to have "gullible" as part of their personality would react very differently to a mediocre con roll than a cop who is suspicious of everyone or a character who just doesn't like your PC. Someone who is married or highly religious or interested in members of a different sex or only into redheads would react very differently to a seduction roll - even a very good one - than someone who isn't.

So the roll is just half the story. You should still RP "appropriately" to the roll, but what that appropriateness means is not a one-size-fits-all answer that can be reflected by "Joe rolls seduction - Good Success".

I don't expect everyone to agree with this. As someone said earlier in the thread, the debate about how to handle social skills has been raging since the beginning of MUSHdom. Just explaining my position.

[surreality]

@faraday What you're describing is fairly reasonable. In the systems currently out there, though? The modifiers for things like you describe are either not present, or are left to GM discretion. If they exist at all, the players making the rolls love to fall back to, 'you're just trying to weasel out of losing!' when, absolutely, a priest is probably going to be harder to get into bed than a horny college kid, even if their stats on sheet are the same. This is 100% common sense to me, too, but it goes straight out the window the moment someone wants to make one of these rolls, and it is head-desk-worthy. No one argues you'd have a mod for sword-fighting in a hailstorm, but a mod for 'not my gender of preference' apparently means 'that guy is cheating!'

@Pyrephox I think the suggested 'no go' zones are a good start (and they would need to be fairly broad, not loop-hole ridden specificity), but it does, absolutely, need pairing with staff with enough balls to curb stomp abusive players right out the door. Neither of these things are 'true to the system' as what was being described as a laudable ideal, though; in our environment, mods of some kind are necessary to make that system remotely viable. 'Being true to the system' should never be a higher goal than 'players not being abused'.

[Arkandel]

An overlooked part of this conversation so far is the cultural adoptation of any given mechanic. This is far more important to MU* than the actual system.

I've been on MU* before where no one rolled outside PrPs. And I've played games where people did roll somewhat often but almost always for powers ("Auspex! What are your feelings?") rather than mundane purposes (you'd rarely see perception rolls like Wits+Composure for instance). I've even been on spheres where it was considered rude, a douche move, if you rolled at people - the rules never made it consent-only but the community had, at least for that particular span of time.

If a system can't win players over it's no good no matter how good it is, if that makes sense. On table-top you can get away with a lot because as long as the ST wants it done a certain way it's what will happen but on the grid of a multiplayer game it's different.

[Lotherio]

@acceleration said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@Lotherio

To some extent I agree, but I think players should absolutely be pushing each other to be better writers. Players should be pushing each other to RP stuff that can be responded to and not just dead end a scene, try to use correct punctuation/capitalization, and otherwise improve their writing ability. But I don't think they should be prevented from trying concepts that would otherwise exist and be effective simply because people are more willing to deal with torture than mind control.

Oh, I think we agree more than realized, this is what I meant by I see it as an opportunity to help them develop. By simply playing with some that others avoid because of grammar/ESL/etc., maybe they'll try a little more. Maybe they are new. And barring that, I don't mind paging someone with pointers if it seems they start doing things that are hard to respond to in general. I'm more a fan of the recommendation type +kudos to offer criticism than the one to +reward someone with XP for a good pose (unless its one of these people I've seen improve).

We should help each other to be better writers in this medium, but I'll still go with +roll for social. Like on Realms, rolling the skill before the pose and trying to affect the results was always entertaining. Even with good role-players. I enjoyed watching @Seraphim73 posing after rolling a critical fail socially. Then again, I don't mind failing at any dice and playing the outcomes to maybe turn it around eventually instead of only wanting wins too.

[Pyrephox]

@surreality said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@Pyrephox I think the suggested 'no go' zones are a good start (and they would need to be fairly broad, not loop-hole ridden specificity), but it does, absolutely, need pairing with staff with enough balls to curb stomp abusive players right out the door. Neither of these things are 'true to the system' as what was being described as a laudable ideal, though; in our environment, mods of some kind are necessary to make that system remotely viable. 'Being true to the system' should never be a higher goal than 'players not being abused'.

Well, yes. But again, that's an OOC issue, not an issue with the mechanics. Additionally, it allows for players to be abusive in the other direction, by gaming people's reluctance to enforce social mechanics in order to do frankly ridiculous things that damage other people's ability to enjoy the game. Like continuously harassing another character who has less physical/mystical power but more social power, and forcing them to take the consequences of your actions, while constantly ignoring their attempts to use their own form of power to just leave them alone. Which, by the rules, SHOULD work, but doesn't because "oh god you don't get to tell me how my character thinks/feels! If you don't like it, then throw a punch! Make me leave! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon! It's a non-consent game, if you don't like it, do something about it IC! ...except that. Because intimidation doesn't work on me! Or, no, it works, but when my character gets scared he becomes really aggressive so I'm warning you, if you do it, you'll be sorry because I've got 18 dice in brawl and 20 Defense (because I didn't have to spend any XP on social resistance)...."

I will say, though, that if you're going to fall on the side of "social dice don't work on PCs", then you either need to ensure that there is a powerful, NPC-controlled status system that allows for meaningful action and influence on the parts of the game that matter (and come down hard on any ST who does not allow the PCs to use their social skills in effective ways in interactions with NPCs), or you need to do away with those skills. It's frankly unfair to expect people to invest XP into skills and abilities that have no functional use on the game.

[surreality]

@Pyrephox I was pretty specific about what I said, namely that 'true to the system' is not viable in this case for M*, and that it isn't a solution that suits this medium, and in many ways, 'true to the system' is a less ideal aim than is remotely practical when translating from one medium to the other.

I didn't say 'social dice shouldn't work on PCs' for any reason ever. As a result, we're not even having the same conversation here -- you're arguing things that are not, not even remotely, what has been said.

Instead, we're getting the same tired-ass argument about combat twinks as a reason to allow free rein on all things social, which everyone knows and everyone agrees are also a problem that also needs to be addressed by staff reinforcement and potential bitch-slap HRs for those who abuse the system in that direction. Everybody knows these asshats are a problem, just like everybody knows the people who want to force someone to go against sexual preference for their OOC jollies factor are a problem. The rules similarly don't forbid the classic, "He sat on my favorite bar stool, so I killed him dead," but somehow we all manage to understand that a player who pulls this one is an asshole, and HRs or policy to control that breed of asshattery are also not unheard of.

[Bennie]

I always thought it would be interesting if some of the old MUD coding was adapted to MUSHing. For example:

If the game handled things like Wits + Composure in a few minor ways. When you enter a room, you get a description, but what if you got an extra section, or paragraph? So for example the main description might describe the location in general terms but then you might see:

(Wits + Composure: 2 Successes) You notice behind the bar a security camera with an ample view of things. The red light on it gave it away. It doesn't seem unusual for a bar in this part of town to have closed circuit security. After all, things do become a little more upscale North of 10th street.

In another example, while most players do not even set an @desc per se. The same could be applied when looking at a character:

(Wits + Composure: 1 Success) You notice the telltale bulge of a concealed handgun in a holster at the small of the back right at the belt. In fact, you notice just under the hem of the jacket in front the glint of what must also be a badge clipped to the belt too.

Once upon a time, just having something set, like Heightened Senses as an Attribute = 1 on a character would enable a host of extra tidbits like small sentences of enhanced information that a Werewolf or a Vampire with Auspex might receive. With new games likely for Exalted and Mage on the horizon, seeing a sentence here or there for those with various extrasensory purchases, even Mage Sight (which I assume exists still), would go a long way toward shaping the game's culture, but most especially if they are labeled for what they are. If the game says you get this info because you succeeded in gleaming that information.