Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning
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@nyctophiliac Yeah where is the social combat? I also suggested dance combat but they were very against it. Imagine if you could settle disagreements by dancing?
Actually that should be a duel for Thraxians. They just dance on the oars of their longboats, and whomever falls off the oars into the water is the loser. It has a very viking-pirate feel.
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@nyctophiliac said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
That being said, I think the most frustrating things for me have been the lack of social combat system (which means everyone settles everything by duels lending to a "Euro L5R" feel - not necessarily bad, but frustrating for the social types)
Social combat is one of those things that has always been a huge headache for games.
Physical combat is easy. There's no "I found your sword-strike unconvincing"; you got hit, you got hit. Social combat, though? That's harder to define.
Let's say you're holding a secret that could get someone you care about killed; a mother, an uncle, a lover, whatever. I suspect you're hiding something, so I +check a given stat and succeed highly, and go "Are you hiding something?" Let's say you say yes, so I immediately roll a 'manipulation' check and then say "Great, I convinced you: tell me the secret." At which point you go, "I don't want my character to die just because you rolled high manipulation", and call staff in.
What I keep meaning to do somewhere someday is actual combat, but with various 'methods' as weapons. So just like you have big weapons that use 'huge wpn' as the skill, daggers that use 'small wpn', etc., you would have satire, logic, manipulation, etc.
When you started a 'social combat', you'd set some sort of goal from a list of 3 or 4 'types' of combat, and the 'hitpoints' would be based off things accordingly. Are you trying to convince your opponent? Base it off willpower+perception. Are you trying to humilate them, in which case you base it off of reputation.
Then you'd get to wield 'manipulation' (works off of charm + manipulation, countered by the higher of willpower for resistance or perception for "I see through you"), 'logic' (works off of intellect and whatever, countered by intellect), 'satire' (works off of charm and entertainment/riddles/whatever, countered by... I don't know, but something), etc.
And you'd do 'damage' to the hitpoints—the resistance—of the other person. When someone is 'knocked out', your argument has convinced them.
It has the benefit of reusing a lot of a given game's combat code, so social and physical combat can share a lot of functionality. Not to mention you have the fun of trying to figure out someone's weak points. High intellect, but low willpower? You want manipulation rather than logic to try to win them to your opposing viewpoint, clearly.
And while you might STILL run into the problem of "I don't want to give up the secret that will get my loved one killed", it's less likely to be a bitter point than it is off of a single set of rolls.
Plus, I think those sort of social combats would just be FUN to watch and to play.
And I shouldn't be theorizing system design in an advertisement thread but ANYWAY.
@nyctophiliac said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
...and lack of information/wiki type stuff (They are really good about answering your setting questions, but honestly I would love to dig my teeth into some reading about the place). I know these things are on the way though and the place is still in Beta.
To be fair, some of this is purely IC and can be sought out ICly. There are Reasons
that a lot of the theme—at least the historical components of it—are sort of obscured and hazy even to the characters themselves.However, I do completely get what you mean; it took me a while to get my feet under me at first, too. People would mention "the Tragedy" and it took me a while to realize both that they could mean the Tragedy of Sanctum (when most of the main royal branch inherit-the-throne Valardin were killed) or the Tragedy (an orphanage in the Lower Boroughs), and a bit longer still to figure out if the Tragedy was something that had happened a few years ago (yes), a decade or more ago (no), or in the distant mists of time (also no).
So I do wish there was a more immediately clear "Quickstart Guide to Theme". Maybe it's worth making a little Player's Handbook to Arx to put up somewhere.
a.k.a. Packetdancer (or "Pax" for short)
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@Sparks At some point in the coming months, I may want to pick your brain a little on some of the social combat stuff you describe, and am looking at something fairly similar. (I agree with this and would like to subscribe to your newsletter, essentially, but I won't extrapolate on that in somebody's ad thread in a derail.)
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@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Physical combat is easy. There's no "I found your sword-strike unconvincing"; you got hit, you got hit. Social combat, though? That's harder to define.
Fate does this incredibly elegantly, mostly that social combat isn't about social situations, but your ability to maneuver in them. To Fate, social grace is a mental trait.
So I do wish there was a more immediately clear "Quickstart Guide to Theme". Maybe it's worth making a little Player's Handbook to Arx to put up somewhere.
Asking/wondering/confused about this is the start of what got me labeled a troll on Arx. This game needs something like this so much that it burns. The chaotic and half-complete state of their news files is absolutely heartbreaking.
I understand someone started their own wiki to solve this problem; you may want to ask around.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
Recently I have been wondering if making the social sphere work like the physical sphere is ineffective. Instead of having social combat, social stats should give access to more resources that can be used to convince others to work with them. In Arx's case, economic, social, and military resources and more support points to be used for tasks would be these resources.
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@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Physical combat is easy. There's no "I found your sword-strike unconvincing"; you got hit, you got hit. Social combat, though? That's harder to define.
Fate does this incredibly elegantly, mostly that social combat isn't about social situations, but your ability to maneuver in them. To Fate, social grace is a mental trait.
Fate also requires an active storyteller for many things; it's not particularly great, in my experience, at automated resolution between players.
@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
I understand someone started their own wiki to solve this problem; you may want to ask around.
Roz and Glitch set up an unofficial wiki some time back with staff permission, and it looks like there is a very useful and simple quick start introduction on there. (I tend to forget about the wiki, which is a real failing on my part.)
a.k.a. Packetdancer (or "Pax" for short)
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@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Roz and Glitch set up an unofficial wiki some time back with staff permission, and it looks like there is a very useful and simple quick start introduction on there. (I tend to forget about the wiki, which is a real failing on my part.)
This is, without hyperbole, about the only way I could possibly have gotten started on the game. The news and theme files otherwise are like playing 52 Card Pick-Up with the 3x5 cards of someone's book outline. I hope that the quick-start wiki is still being maintained.
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@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Social combat is one of those things that has always been a huge headache for games.
... Social Combat DetailsBased off the A Song of Ice and Fire system, just like the social combat system that I'm working on (off and on). I like it, because it's detailed, but it still doesn't fix, as you note, the issue of crap poses or character-ending information.
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If physical situations can end a character, why not social situations? Is it different if the cut comes from a knife or a tongue?
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@Thenomain People seem to be more resistant to death-by-talking. Also, there's the issue that you can get someone else killed in your own social situation, which is harder to do in a physical situation. I started out in a very "social combat needs to be held to a higher standard" viewpoint, and I've come around quite a bit over the last half-dozen years. I don't think they should be held differently, I just think it takes a bit of work to get past some issues (like not wanting to be the guy/gal who let slip information that got someone else's character killed, and not wanting to have someone convince you to do so with a huge roll and a pose that is effectively, "You know you wanna...").
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@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Physical combat is easy. There's no "I found your sword-strike unconvincing"; you got hit, you got hit. Social combat, though? That's harder to define.
Fate does this incredibly elegantly, mostly that social combat isn't about social situations, but your ability to maneuver in them. To Fate, social grace is a mental trait.
Fate also requires an active storyteller for many things; it's not particularly great, in my experience, at automated resolution between players.
While I think most of FATE is dull, same-y, and not a particularly great system either on a mush or off (particularly everything related to fate points themselves), there's probably some room where the stress track vs. consequences element of its conflict system could be converted usefully to MU use, and work nicely for abstract things like social and resource/stats conflict.
It provides a kind of release valve where the victim/loser of an interaction can control, to some degree, what they're giving up while still suffering defeat/setback. IE the victim of an intimidation roll can flee outright/surrender/hand over stuff/whatever (equiv to losing all their stress) or stick around while being rattled/nervous (suffering a penalty in combat if that occurs, or in other social rolls, etc). This handles the (totally valid) concerns over different kinds of reactions from different personality types, core values that can't easily be coded, etc. It's also a bit of an escalation/push your luck system, because persisting in conflicts longer tends to reduce your degree of control.
Of course, these systems do tend to make certain outcomes impossible if the victim doesn't want them (seduction is a good example), but I imagine that's a feature, not a bug, to many.
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@bored I have to agree that the Fate point part of Fate can be a handful on a MU* setting but the core elements of the system however work very well. If you 'lose' social, you have lost any ability to influence the scene further. I've had social combats on Dresden Files games where my character lost the social combat, so they got angry and left the conversation. I've had others where they realized they weren't going to change anyone's minds and thus stopped being socially combative, and still others where my character had their mind changed.
All of this was based on the RP and the type of social maneuvers used per se and it worked very well in my experience.
The part where the system gets tricky is indeed the Fate Point aspect of it, I think it might be better to just have so many fate points every scene. That way having a high refresh is still good. You could still use aspects and tagging etc, but it'd make having to book keep how many fate points someone deserves less an issue.
People could still take compels, and if the scene agreed, gain a useable fate point for the scene but this is a big time tangent.
Sorry.
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When I say I dislike the rest I'm mostly talking about the aspect/fate/compel system. I hate pretty much everything about it, and I wasn't meaning to discuss or suggest that part of it at all. Like if someone wants a fate game, cool on them, but that's not what I'm talking about. The stress/consequence system really has nothing to do with the rest of it, and you can pretty much lift it while ejecting that stuff.
Basically it's just a 2D wound system, no different than say D&D w/ an optional Critical Hit module, with the caveat that you're using one to prevent the other. That's the thing I'm getting at. In a non FATE version, the consequences wouldn't be loosey-goosey things that don't do anything unless someone compels them, they'd be more like NWoD tilts or whatever, actual things with actual game effects.
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I'm opposed to any system which compels people to spill their secrets against their will due to dice rolls, when it's perfectly possible to get people to spill their secrets willingly by doing that thing we signed on to do - roleplay. I've heard the argument 'What if my character is sheeted to be cunning but I'm not particularly cunning in real life?' but I'm afraid I'm not very sympathetic to that plight. If you can't get people to like and trust you without brute force dice rolls, I very gently and politely and sympathetically suggest you play a character more in-line with your comfort zone.
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@Sparks said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
However, I do completely get what you mean; it took me a while to get my feet under me at first, too. People would mention "the Tragedy" and it took me a while to realize both that they could mean the Tragedy of Sanctum (when most of the main royal branch inherit-the-throne Valardin were killed) or the Tragedy (an orphanage in the Lower Boroughs), and a bit longer still to figure out if the Tragedy was something that had happened a few years ago (yes), a decade or more ago (no), or in the distant mists of time (also no).
So I do wish there was a more immediately clear "Quickstart Guide to Theme". Maybe it's worth making a little Player's Handbook to Arx to put up somewhere.
They really, really need to work on this kind of stuff, especially since the game is not really 'in beta', the plot is in full flow. There are also a ton of other theme elements that really should impact play but are not defined anywhere, I mean what is life like for peasants and commoners outside of the capital? Are most farmers serfs? Free tenants? Are serfs even a thing?
What about Abandoned/Shavs, are they all nomadic or are some static feudal societies very similar to the Compact? Are they a complete isolated enigma or are there low key intermarriages/trade with local groups in rural areas? It can make it hard to play other than very generically given this is an original theme and that attempts to draw parallels from history cause Hellfrog to leap on you screaming.
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@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
If physical situations can end a character, why not social situations? Is it different if the cut comes from a knife or a tongue?
Because in physical situations, losing a character can be chalked up to bad roles. A few more successes on a defense and you could have gotten out of it! In a social situation, because we're unwilling to let the dice stand alone and because of the myriad of ways to approach the social situation, if you lose it's because of your choices. And if the opposing character has more sway then you and you don't really have a choice? It stings all the more.
In fact, I have lost a character in a social/political situation, and when it was over, a staffer sat me down and told me that it was because I RPed wrong, and seemed to hint that if I had just worded one part of one pose differently everything would have gone differently. I still count that as the worst player-staff interaction that I have ever had.
All that being said, can we spin this discussion off into another thread, because I definitely have thoughts on how to make social combat meaningful. Mainly, I think CoD is on the right track with conditions. You get through a chars defense, and you get to slap a condition on them. That condition gives them a certain penalty/bonus/effect for a significant amount of time, but can also be resolved by playing into the initiating characters hand.
In that situation, no one is robbed of their choice or their autonomy, because social defenses have to be broken before the condition is set, it's unlikely that your character can be overwhelmed/co-opted in a single scene. However, at the same time, ignoring my character's dice and my character's roll is not something that is acceptable.
@Ominous said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
Recently I have been wondering if making the social sphere work like the physical sphere is ineffective. Instead of having social combat, social stats should give access to more resources that can be used to convince others to work with them. In Arx's case, economic, social, and military resources and more support points to be used for tasks would be these resources.
This might work. In general, I think Arx needs to do a bit more work to involve social characters more. I know some of that is due to the player base choosing to ignore possible diplomatic solutions to problems in Plot, however it does feel that unless you mix your social skills with investigative/intellectual skills or occult/supernatural skills, you don't really have a meaningful way to contribute.
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Marius is sheeted as a diplomat (that he lacked skills when I took him notwithstanding), and I'd be completely in favour of a social combat system. Otherwise, why bother having those types?
If it's up to the other player whether their character is affected in a real way by my character's skills, then there's no reason for me to ever use them - the other person can just pose not being affected and I've wasted my time and xp
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@nyctophiliac said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Ganymede : We played together before on two different MUs ever so briefly (one scene each!) and honestly I would adore it if our paths crossed again one day. If you joined Arx I would be happy. You were fun in those two scenes, and I really think you'd like it at Arx.
Thanks for the shout-out, Nyct. I'll give it substantial consideration. PM me some time?
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@Packrat Not sure if you are aware or not, but for the record there's a "theme questions" bb board where you can ask your burning questions and get responses that are there for posterity.
There you go, I leapt on you screaming a solution.
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@Packrat The first question is easy to answer. Commoners are free tenants/sharecroppers. Nobles own the land and the commoners rent it, essentially.
@Pandora How do you deal with people ignoring social skills, since they no longer do anything, and putting all of their XP into physical skills?
Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
