Social Conflict via Stats

Miss Demeanor

@Arkandel said in Social Conflict via Stats:

For starters I completely differentiate between social supernatural powers and what we're discussing here generally. Before we can have something like Majesty bypass conflict through stats we need to first design how that conflict normally goes.

In other words Majesty jumps ahead from Step #1 straight to Step #6, but we first need to know what each of those steps is normally and how it's crossed.

For another I disagree with @Groth in the way that I hate character control being taken from me; I mean I do, in the same way that I'd be mildly irritated by someone beating up my character if I had a different story/idea of his story progress, but that's fine - it comes with playing with other people. The unpredictability isn't a drawback as long as it's treated correctly by all participants starting with me; if my immediate mindset initially isn't that I just lost something then it's all good.

No, what I mind is if scenes can't flow properly because we keep having to interrupt their momentum to do dice stuff, chat OOC to debate mechanics and call staff in when we don't know/can't agree how something works. That shit kills my interest in a scene. A social system needs to be very, very fast-paced.

For example:

My character, Joe, is trying to fast-talk @Ganymede's Jane into letting him get through to the private back room.

I pose the social attempt, then do "+social/fasttalk Jane".

Ganymede sees the attempt ("Joe is trying to fasttalk you. Type '+social/defend Joe' followed by a modifier from -5 to +5. 0 is the default if you don't assign one").

Since Joe did something mildly clever by bringing up Jane's combat prowess as a backhanded compliment ("come on, if I misbehave you can kick my ass easily, we both know that") the attempt is given a defensive -2 modifier making it easier to succeed.

Ganymede runs "+social/defend Joe -2", sees the result (but I don't, I don't know the outcome) then poses accordingly.

The roleplay continues. There's near zero delay.

I am completely fine with this system.

Bolded and italicized relevant comment. Apologies to the tag for you Ark, just didn't want to get called on 'editing'.

ThatGuyThere

@Miss-Demeanor
Yeah I missed that part. I am fine with the entirety of Ark's proposed system except for that. But then I would be just as against that system for anything physical as well, so maintain the partial stance of it would be no different doing that for something psychical as well as social.
I think any sort of code mechanical thing should emit to both sides, though I still feel there should be no functional difference between how psychical confrontation works from social, or mental confrontations like chess, or if the systems has it codified as such economic confrontations such as two business competing or one attempting a take over.

Arkandel

@ThatGuyThere That part isn't really too integral for my system. I threw it in there because I like little subtleties of the sort (faking going along with something) but I can see why people might think it's too trusting on the defenders' side.

The real point of my original post was speed. Pose, make an attempt as simply and quickly as possible, defend it or not and keep posing.

Any social system that disrupts the flow of my scenes is useless to me. I don't mind how it can fuck with my character's head, its integration is what needs to be as seamless as possible.

Kanye Qwest

@Thenomain said in Social Conflict via Stats:

@Kanye-Qwest said in Social Conflict via Stats:

@Ganymede said in Social Conflict via Stats:

@Kanye-Qwest said in Social Conflict via Stats:

But this isn't an all or nothing distinction. No one is reasonable all the time, and otherwise reasonable, pleasant (OOC) people will sometimes lose their shit and get very emotional and bent out of shape during any type of conflict - social OR physical.

Speak for yourself, sir.

Well I'm not speaking for the fuckin trees, here.

Leaf us alone.

I lol'd, gdi.

Bobotron

@surreality
Right, I am not making a WoD game. It's my own setup and history and world, so it's not using any of the WoD specifics, but being a modern supernatural game, WoD is the closest (and I won't deny it's being made to offer an alternative to the standard WoD MUSH out there).

@Lisse24
Yours is very similar to my idea. I haven't gotten it completely written up yet, but the ideal for mine follows a similar format to yours as far as declaration of intent and the 'end goal' of the exchange. My version ends up with two additional things:

A representation of how you feel about someone called Disposition, which is essentially 'social armor' and modifiers. It ranges from Indifferent in the middle, to to Friendly on the top end and Hostile on the bottom end. This doesn't need recorded separately for everyone, as you set your Disposition at the start of an exchange, but certain things may make your Disposition different (and those should/would ideally be set on you as +notes)
A 'social health' called Sway, determined by your Social and Willpower Attributes and modified by things such as the Blasé Quality; Sway starts at 0.

During the exchange, the social parley increases or reduces Sway on the defender. Generally you have five tactics: Deceive, Persuade, Intimidate, Bargain and Seduce based on your Social Attribute and an appropriate skill (Subterfuge, Leadership, Intimidation, Streetwise and Empathy, this will likely change around) and your defense is automatic based on the tactic that is used on you (another combination of Social + certain skills such as Empathy and Awareness). modified by certain powers such as Cult of Personality, a Basic Magnetism power, for example. Multiple 'aggressors' vs. one 'target' grant a bonus to the target's social defenses.

The commands are inbuilt and will take any modifiers from powers, or other things such as optional bonuses from pose quality. The 'aggressor' attempting to convince someone of something uses the command and the code takes care of everything, determining how much Sway is put upon the 'target'. Guidelines will be in place, but ultimately, Sway is meant to create a cooperative method of 'what can I get out of you?' This isn't meant to be used for every pose; guidelines will be in place, but roughly every 3 'pose rounds' or back-and-forth if it's just one person. I'll have in place some general 'here's what you should, on average, acquiesce to if you are Swayed by a successful argument,' and at any time a target or an aggressor can yield. If an aggressor yields, they do not get what they want. If the target yields, they are required to compromise on the outcome; the aggressor doesn't get their full goal, but the target doesn't go down in defeat and have to give up the full thing.

Without the application of powers such as the Ironclad Command, a Basic Compulsion power, social conflict can't force a character to:

Physically harm himself
Physically harm another
Do something entirely counter to his character (“I want to sleep with her but she's happily married.”)
Perform an impossible action (“I want her to disappear”)

Any of those things CAN be agreed upon as an outcome if the players feel it is appropriate; but if not, a character must give into at least something along those lines. A happily-married man might be flattered and let some information slip, or a character might contemplate jumping a rival that they were just talked up about, influencing their Disposition towards that person.

That being said, a wide range of intent can still take hold. Examples might include:

“I want him to feel ashamed at his actions.”
"I want him to believe that Bernard is coming after him, and he has to strike first,"
“I want to turn his anger toward his sire and away from me;”
“I want to turn her on, sexually.”

Seraphim73

@Bobotron I'm a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire's social combat system (which this basically is), but while such a hard-and-fast combat system for social interactions is great in tabletop, where you (theoretically) trust everyone around you, it's a little more difficult on a MU*. This is, in fact, exactly the point that I'm struggling with, as the system I'm working on is (generally) based on ASoIaF as well.

I like the idea that @Arkandel put forward about instant modifiers based on the actual words/arguments used, although as others have mentioned, I would absolutely make choosing the modifier open for all to see. Another friend made another suggestion that she said would help assuage her concerns about a hard-and-fast social combat system, something I'm calling "Hills to Die On." At Chargen, each character gets to pick three ideals (with the approval of Staff, of course) that their character can never be forced by the combat system to betray. If they choose to have their character betray them in RP, that's something else of course (and would probably remove the ideal from the list). These would have to be policed carefully, because something as broad as "Loyalty" or "Unseduceable" won't work (unless the character is a eunuch?), but something like "My Word is My Bond" (if my character promises something, they will never go back on it) or "Never a One Night Stand" (self-explanatory) would.

Arkandel

@Seraphim73 said in Social Conflict via Stats:

something I'm calling "Hills to Die On." At Chargen, each character gets to pick three ideals (with the approval of Staff, of course) that their character can never be forced by the combat system to betray. If they choose to have their character betray them in RP, that's something else of course (and would probably remove the ideal from the list). These would have to be policed carefully, because something as broad as "Loyalty" or "Unseduceable" won't work (unless the character is a eunuch?), but something like "My Word is My Bond" (if my character promises something, they will never go back on it) or "Never a One Night Stand" (self-explanatory) would.

I think that's a poor idea. Consider the following:

At chargen many people (myself included) only have a general idea of who the character really is. I might not know his 'hills' yet, or be mistaken about them, until he clicks.
It sounds easy to abuse and, worse, easier to lead you into Mary Sue kind of concepts; he is unshakeably loyal, truthful and just! Also those same values can be probably applied against any social attempts to make him do anything unseemly.
Characters (should) change. Maybe he starts as a newly Changed Ghost Wolf but then he's exposed to enough Pure shenanigans to make him really despise them, and now he's all arggh about killing the motherfuckers. Or he meets a girl and really wants to settle down. That's not something you can predict, so there should be more flexibility than just what's in CGen.

Pyrephox

Unknown Armies had a mechanic defined at chargen called Stimuli - so, every character has a Fear Stimulus, a Rage Stimulus, and a Noble Stimulus. These Stimuli can be invoked through play for various effects, to allow characters to get a significant boost when acting in accordance with their Stimuli. It might be a more workable method to adapt the Hills to Die On, which I like the IDEA, but might be a little too freeform to be workable.

Bobotron

@Seraphim73
You have no idea how much I've weighed options. At this point it's going to be a test anyway, and if it doesn't work, it's a simple 'okay, we turn off that bit of code'. But I think that, once I get all of the stuff based around it, it'll be workable. Besides, even 'instant modifiers' and 'chosen at chargen things you can never betray' are still part of the thing: trust. No matter WHAT you have to trust the other person and communicate and BE REASONABLE and NOT A FUCKING CHEATER who ignores the stats.

Part of why I'm aiming for the 'social health' type setup, and trying to come up with 'fail forward' and other types of 'fail with some reward' setup, which is my ideal (and not something like 'take a beat for a dramatic failure') is to at least mitigate some of the crazy modifiers and give the stuff (like, in all honesty, if someone was trying to seduce a happily married, the Disposition would immediately shoot from Indifferent to Hostile, which is also a factor in the system), and giving compromises and 'here's what can't be done with social Sway'..

No system is going to be perfect without a buy in and, ultimately, a cooperation on the players' parts to be reasonable. Which is going to be a problem no MATTER what is done. I am simply choosing to start out by asking people to work with each other, let the system help guide things when you really need to, and communicate to make things work there.

Misadventure

Well, one of my goals is to have other players learn my character and how they tick, whether they are easy to manipulate, or hard, low risk or dangerous.

I place a lot of value on making the effort, and the skills to discover the better approaches, and the levers I have built into my characters. Frankly, I can't see someone getting very far with most PC types because most are dangerous and difficult, unless they learn those approaches and levers.

Arkandel

@Bobotron said in Social Conflict via Stats:

Besides, even 'instant modifiers' and 'chosen at chargen things you can never betray' are still part of the thing: trust. No matter WHAT you have to trust the other person and communicate and BE REASONABLE and NOT A FUCKING CHEATER who ignores the stats.
...
No system is going to be perfect without a buy in and, ultimately, a cooperation on the players' parts to be reasonable. Which is going to be a problem no MATTER what is done. I am simply choosing to start out by asking people to work with each other, let the system help guide things when you really need to, and communicate to make things work there.

I think that's the correct approach; there is so much paranoia in our community about all the cheaters, exploiters, terrible people out there who abuse everything to force others into panther-cock TS. So we end up shooting ourselves in the foot this way trying to come up with a ton of provisions ahead of time to eliminate any chance someone might step out of line using our precious systems.

That doesn't work. The type of unwanted person is undeterred; I mean they are completely unobstructed. All they need is the page command and the law of large numbers, hitting up everyone until someone bites. In the mean time legitimate players are faced with borderline hostile mechanics treating them like suspect cheaters and it's not unreasonable that they don't use them.

Taking a leap of faith is a genuinely good idea. Rely on players to not be dicks; most are not.

Apos

@Arkandel I generally agree but I think everyone judges the relative merits versus what's possible from abuse cases. I don't think anyone would argue that giving everyone full admin privs on every game would be a great idea, even though it would definitely cut down on overhead. I think most players are honest, non-dicks. I also think most people get extremely involved in their stories, and the time they are least likely to be reasonable is when they get emotionally invested in a conflict against another player or feel slighted by something, and it's not that paranoid to try to avoid cases that get people worked up. For me, the cases that worry me the most are ones where it would be largely invisible to staff and extremely difficult to correct, resulting in a corrosive atmosphere for the game. Pretty much any system players feel justified in policing one another will result in players hating the fuck out of one another, imo.

Misadventure

What are the goals, the positives, of a social conflict system?

I said before: chance to have others learn some about my character, and the mirror, I get a chance to learn about theirs.

Have appropriate skills, and social advantages and disadvantages matter.

Make clear the limits of quick influence, as well as long term influence. (I'm a limiting sort of guy, I like to savor things.)

Don't dilute strong personal values.

Let the player be clear when they are solid in the area of effort, as well as when they are gambling big.

Suggest compromises to the players, with a guideline to what is enough and what is too little or too much.

Have it be reasonably easy to quick glance at all of the above and just play through without rolls and have it be a decent approximation.

Arkandel

@Apos said in Social Conflict via Stats:

@Arkandel I generally agree but I think everyone judges the relative merits versus what's possible from abuse cases. I don't think anyone would argue that giving everyone full admin privs on every game would be a great idea, even though it would definitely cut down on overhead. I think most players are honest, non-dicks. I also think most people get extremely involved in their stories, and the time they are least likely to be reasonable is when they get emotionally invested in a conflict against another player or feel slighted by something, and it's not that paranoid to try to avoid cases that get people worked up.

There is however a balance in which cases it's worth trying to avoid getting people worked up about without inconveniencing everyone else. Common sense and basic player etiquette can go a long way into mitigating risks from roleplaying systems.

Let me offer an example. When I made the switch from MUDs to MUSHes years ago I was scratching my head about how staffs everywhere were permitting @emit - it's such a broken command! You can literally do anything you want with it... only of course you can't because if you try others will squint in your general direction so hard your skin will melt.

In fact to give you an idea, I had coded something similar on the game I had been playing called pemote; it was functionally identical to @emit only it put "[$characterName]" at the end to avoid cases of abuse where people could badmouth other players anonymously or fake others' poses if it didn't have their name attached. Yes, those were concerns that had been brought to me about it at the time, that's why the pemotes were name-tagged.

These are all possibilities even now, right? I mean I could go to one of @Ganymede's scenes and "@emit Ganymede eats a bag of dicks" couldn't I? It's the perfect crime, no one can find out it was me! Mwahahah!

... Yeah - but when was the last time this was actually done? No one is trying to fix this broken command because who the fuck cares? It'd be way worse to prevent a tiny margin of abuse by one immature idiot (me, as usual) than to enable everyone else to pose anything they legitimately want.

I think the same applies to what we're discussing here. Yes, someone might abuse it. Maybe. In fact they have even without the need for fancy systems - panther semen and all. But the vast majority of players don't carry panther semen around, they just play the game as it's supposed to be. Those are IMHO the ones we should be aiming to accommodate primarily and then, as much as we can, do our due diligence for the assholes among us.

Apos

@Arkandel Yeah, I had the same reaction to @emit when I first saw it, and even though it's constantly reinforced about what is acceptable or not by the community, there's still some problematic cases. Some people do unclaimed emits to be funny- some people think it's funny, some thing it is incredibly annoying, and you have people walking away with two very different feelings from the same scenes.

What I think are a problem are ones that aren't easily caught and corrected. Some new player does an unclaimed emit in a scene of literally 50 people, you have a half dozen people ask to please not do that. It's not repeated, everything is fine. It's big, it's noticeable, there's no need for a rule since it's immediately responded to. But on the other hand, what about something mostly invisible? A game has a social system that two people in a private scene use, one things it gives authority over another character, the other person is super creeped out but still feels that they would be the bad guy if they don't play along, it leaves a bad taste in their mouth, they log off and never come back, and staff never knows what happens, and the person that even did it probably doesn't even know. Those are the very problematic systems.

Ganymede

@Arkandel said in Social Conflict via Stats:

These are all possibilities even now, right? I mean I could go to one of @Ganymede's scenes and "@emit Ganymede eats a bag of dicks" couldn't I? It's the perfect crime, no one can find out it was me! Mwahahah!

I'm pretty sure that this is the most terrifying image you could have ever described.

Arkandel

@Apos said in Social Conflict via Stats:

But on the other hand, what about something mostly invisible? A game has a social system that two people in a private scene use, one things it gives authority over another character, the other person is super creeped out but still feels that they would be the bad guy if they don't play along, it leaves a bad taste in their mouth, they log off and never come back, and staff never knows what happens, and the person that even did it probably doesn't even know. Those are the very problematic systems.

But it's not the intent here that I'm disputing. Of course the reason people who want more draconian checks and greater oversight on social rolls are doing it to hinder bad guys. What I'm saying is it doesn't work, and the act of trying to limit these things simply penalizes the good guys.

Look at the worst offenders we've had in our community, the big names, what did they use? Exactly what you mentioned, the insinuation saying 'no' would mean they are doing something wrong. They accomplished that through pages, cherry-picking book passages ("look, Mind 4 means you gobble down that panther dick, it's the rules"), abusing staff connections ("can you prove 100% you were told to gobble down panther dick? No? Liar.") and so on.

In the mean time social attributes in general are barely being used in practice. Sometimes I see social powers, perhaps in certain +jobs for investigations, but their usefulness truly pales compared to their physical equivalents, and part of that is people - reasonable, well-meaning players - are already pretty self-conscious about 'forcing' others to do things, it's being seen as a form of PvP and not creative collaboration using dice to settle outcomes.

That's the real challenge here, I think; the real hurdle isn't to prevent assholes from being themselves because they already have every tool at their disposal to do so. The hard part is to somehow lift the collective cultural taboo we have in employing social rolls in even non-drastic ways (lying/detecting lies, trying to get someone to keep talking and reveal secrets, measure the impact of someone's stern admonishment) during everyday social scenes.

If we go too far in the former direction we'll harm the other too much, IMHO. A system people won't use might as well not exist.