CofD and Professional Training

[Ganymede]

@Arkandel said in CofD and Professional Training:

Even the best implementations I've seen on MU* so far were basically utilizing them in +jobs (or the equivalent, i.e. not in real time and going through staff) but I've never seen one that satisfied me for in-scene conflict resolution.

This one time on Eldritch, I was running a scene for three werewolves where they came upon a crime and were confronted by a handful of gangers. Two of them got ready for a fight, but one got an exceptional success on an Intimidation roll. So, the scene ended.

If you mean PC v. PC conflict, though, it will forever be difficult without someone of authority adjudicating the results of rolls.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede I feel we just haven't shifted the paradigm enough. There will be a breakthrough but we just haven't made it.

I mean... yes, assuming jerk players there'd be need for outside supervision, sure... but as it stands you can have two reasonable people playing characters in a fistycuffs situation who can figure out perfectly well what happened and who won. And yet the unquantifiable nature of social interaction makes it harder to determine the outcome for interpersonal encounters, which I suspect might be because the RPG systems we're using are adopted or based on table-top ones made to figure out the outcome of PC<->NPC conflict.

We need... something else. One day a developer will figure this out and become a MUSHionnaire!

[Lithium]

There's always this talk of removal of agency like it's such a bad thing, but you know what? If player A knocks player B out with a punch, or kills them, then they just removed player B's agency just the same as if player A had used social rolls in a social conflict.

Probably worse, since most of the time you don't even lose social agency, you just get to decide how your character would react, feeling those things that the social roll made them feelz.

That's not loss of Agency, that's a fucking RP opportunity. A lot better one than laying on the ground knocked out and doing nothing.

[Arkandel]

@Lithium Sure, but you can't justify your way into happening. It needs to be attractive for players to use on a day to day basis - or they won't.

Punching doesn't happen in every encounter but lying or trying to convince someone of something does. It's a more complex problem to solve than getting around the loss of agency which, agreed, is an opportunity.

[Lithium]

@Arkandel How's this for justification: Your character isn't dead?

IMHO to many people think it's justifiable to just punch someone trying to socialize with them. I think there needs to be consequences for the violence. Most of the time violence isn't a good thing, especially in public.

I think the only thing that needs to be done is enforcement, not benefits, just play the game by the fucking rules. Otherwise? You're cheating.

[Ganymede]

@Arkandel said in CofD and Professional Training:

I feel we just haven't shifted the paradigm enough. There will be a breakthrough but we just haven't made it.

No policy will force that breakthrough. Relinquishing agency voluntarily is something not everyone can do. That's all.

I recognize the arguments against very clearly, and I mostly agree with them. However, in pursuit of having a safe environment for players, I recognize that some players -- and, if you go with statistics, about 1 in 3 -- are going to want some way to back out of an uncomfortable situation ICly without making a huge OOC stink about it. And since the game is social, these tend to be social situations.

One way is to remove these sorts of rolls altogether. FS3 sort of does that: there's really no Action roll for "Seduce" or "Convince Someone of Something." The focus of BSG:U is mew mew mew PEW!PEW!PEW!. While the idea of seducing someone seems fun to me (and, fuck, my PB is Felicity Jones YAAAASSS), it's just not really part of the game at all, so any sort of cajoling and pawing relies solely on whether I can make a convincing enough IC argument.

But where there is a system, I believe it should be enforced to the extent it can while providing the target a way out. And that's why I laid out what I did.

[Arkandel]

@Lithium said in CofD and Professional Training:

@Arkandel How's this for justification: Your character isn't dead?

IMHO to many people think it's justifiable to just punch someone trying to socialize with them. I think there needs to be consequences for the violence. Most of the time violence isn't a good thing, especially in public.

I think the only thing that needs to be done is enforcement, not benefits, just play the game by the fucking rules. Otherwise? You're cheating.

Enforcement has been tried. It doesn't work - if people don't want to do it they won't do it. You need to lure them to it and make the use of social skills something positive that consistently adds to their experience. There's a stigma to using social dice, whether anyone likes it or not, and that's that - I've been playing for quite a while and the only ones I see somewhat consistently used are voluntary self-composure checks.

It can't be done through pressure from above. Even if you have the most gung-ho vigilant staff ever the moment they are called into a scene not only is the whole point of unsupervised rolls negated but also bridges are burned; if I call staff on someone because I felt they didn't reveal enough information after a 'conviction' roll I doubt I'll be seeing them in my scenes again.

The solution must involve positive reinforcement, not slaps on the wrist. It has to be something players are happy to use because it makes things more fun for them.

[Lithium]

@Arkandel I think if the 'solution' 'must' use positive reinforcement, then the 'solution' as you outlined it would have been done a long time ago.

The solution is enforcement of theme and rules. Everyone by playing the game knows (or should) know what the rules are for the game and it's systems. They should know what happens when social skills are used.

The rules are there.

The only 'problem' is that not every scene is judged by an ST, and this game is /built/ around ST involvement.

That's how I feel about it anyways, we have st's to judge combat scenes, why not st's judging social combat? It costs the same XP, it should be just as useful in situations where it applies.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede said in CofD and Professional Training:

One way is to remove these sorts of rolls altogether. FS3 sort of does that: there's really no Action roll for "Seduce" or "Convince Someone of Something." The focus of BSG:U is mew mew mew PEW!PEW!PEW!.

Sure, that's absolutely a valid solution. I'm typically not in favor of taking away progress paths from a character since it reduces diversification of builds but... if that's the best we can do then removing social stats is fine.

@Lithium said in CofD and Professional Training:

The solution is enforcement of theme and rules. Everyone by playing the game knows (or should) know what the rules are for the game and it's systems. They should know what happens when social skills are used.

I just explained why that approach hasn't worked - in my opinion. Can you explain why you think that interpretation is incorrect?

The only 'problem' is that not every scene is judged by an ST, and this game is /built/ around ST involvement.

Well, it's a problem, but I agree. That's why earlier I said we needed a paradigm shift, as our approaches so far are either using systems meant for table-top mostly verbatim or are based on/very similar to those.

Funny fact, too: on consent-only games, like Shang, the problem is far smaller for both physical and social interactions. People just seem to figure it out somehow a great deal more often than elsewhere.

[Lithium]

@Arkandel said in CofD and Professional Training:

@Lithium said in CofD and Professional Training:

The solution is enforcement of theme and rules. Everyone by playing the game knows (or should) know what the rules are for the game and it's systems. They should know what happens when social skills are used.

I just explained why that approach hasn't worked - in my opinion. Can you explain why you think that interpretation is incorrect?

It hasn't worked, because it was never enforced. I've yet to see a single game since 1992 that was based on WoD where social rules were actively enforced. Oh sure, Dominate got enforced, certain Gift's got enforced, but not actual social dice.

Admittedly I've not played on every WoD game there was, but if you know of a game where social rules were actually enforced, I'd like to hear why that didn't work. If it was a problem with people not liking the rules, or /other/ problems that usually end up with a mu* dying, like bad staff etc.

[Arkandel]

@Lithium said in CofD and Professional Training:

It hasn't worked, because it was never enforced. I've yet to see a single game since 1992 that was based on WoD where social rules were actively enforced. Oh sure, Dominate got enforced, certain Gift's got enforced, but not actual social dice.

Maybe we're just disagreeing (and that's fine) or I'm not explaining it correctly. In the latter case:

If the goal is to make unsupervised rolls an everyday reality on a game's grid then enforcement, by definition, can't work; if you're calling staff in to judge then the scene is no longer unsupervised. On top of that there is a stigma to using social rolls in RP which is a cultural barrier; to overcome it players need to have a reason to do it. Knowing they can get someone into trouble for not adhering to a roll in the way they think that person should (which might be open to interpretation - did you get 'intimidated enough' by my roll?) doesn't mitigate the fact the act itself of calling staff in just about ensures bad OOC blood, and they might have just lost themselves a RP partner.

That's a trade most people don't want to make. I don't blame them.

Admittedly I've not played on every WoD game there was, but if you know of a game where social rules were actually enforced, I'd like to hear why that didn't work. If it was a problem with people not liking the rules, or /other/ problems that usually end up with a mu* dying, like bad staff etc.

That's because the definition I'm using for why these systems don't work is this: social rolls are not being used, or they rarely are, and that's not because if they try to force the outcome they wouldn't get their way. It's because enforcement itself is disruptive to the scene's flow and it would often make the initiator a less desirable roleplaying partner ("this guy came into our scene, forced a lying roll, and now we're stuck for twenty minutes while staff's getting our stories, dissects the poses and tries to figure this out. Yeah, I'll be playing with them again - not").

Hence the need for positive reinforcement.

[Ghost]

PT is cheeseball garbage designed to fill out a character sheet will all kinds of higher-priced items for cheap. I absolutely hate it. Players should earn the dots on their sheet through RP, not cheese the system to get better dice rolls.

[Misadventure]

It is best if the absolute value of everything a character has is clear. Package deals suck.

[surreality]

@Arkandel said in CofD and Professional Training:

I also think seduction/mind control/abuse is a paper tiger in our community. Yes it has happened but it's rare, and there can be plenty of safeguards against these cases.

Not anywhere near as rare as they should be.

Remember, a lot of the type that pulls this is the same type that only approaches female names with the 'so you must be a submissive' bullshit -- which means as a male player, you're going to experience it directly much less unless you're playing female characters relatively often and the other player thinks you're female OOC.

These things are not unconnected, and you can't reasonably speak for a universal objective perspective as a result.

This is, in part, due to a handful of players who push it hard, and pursue a number of targets at any given time, often from a number of alts. The situation would improve considerably if more staff were willing to do something about the problem children.

[mietze]

These people show up and do this on every game even if the social stats are nerfed. It's tiresome to see the stats talked about as if they are the problem. If anything nerfing social stats and combat seems to be used most often for staff to continue to allow the abuse that happens, because they think they've "solved the problem."

Dealing with problem children requires gonads and spine. I'd say eliminating a whole scope of play that encompasses very different things than sexual issues because one is afraid that the predators and harassers on their game might use it for such (rather than dealing with the real issue regardless of stats), tells me the staff is weak and there's far MORE likely to be predatory behavior on their game.

[Arkandel]

@surreality said in CofD and Professional Training:

I also think seduction/mind control/abuse is a paper tiger in our community. Yes it has happened but it's rare, and there can be plenty of safeguards against these cases.

Not anywhere near as rare as they should be.

Remember, a lot of the type that pulls this is the same type that only approaches female names with the 'so you must be a submissive' bullshit -- which means as a male player, you're going to experience it directly much less unless you're playing female characters relatively often and the other player thinks you're female OOC.

Although you're of course correct in that perception dictates a certain bias in rarity, and I'm sure women have it much harder than men in that regard, I still insist it's 'rare' - in the way that assholery is a clear minority of the total number of IC social interactions taking place on a grid.

What do you think about the following reasoning I just pulled out of my ass? The reason jerks seem to tend to use social rolls and mechanics to abuse others is because they're less likely to care about the general social stigma involved in making such rolls in the first place.

I suppose "OOC forcing her to do it" through a roll tickles their fancy more than "her OOC agreeing consensually to do it" though. Hrm.

[surreality]

@Arkandel It is really not at all rare in my experience. There's no statted game I've played on where at least 2+ players have tried to pull it on just me.

And, yes, there are people in the community who get off on the idea of forcing things they know to be OOCly uncomfortable and unpleasant on other players. (This number seems to grow exponentially the moment 'ftb plz' is uttered, too. Amazing how suddenly 'the natural consequences' of any given scenario escalate dramatically into something crazy the moment somebody isn't going to be getting the RPed jollies out of it... )

@mietze gets it, though: these players are what needs the nerfing. Well. Nerf bats don't inflict enough damage. Aluminum is better.

[Thenomain]

CofD has a system in combat where you must declare the purpose of the combat beforehand. If it has to do with death, you must roll and spend to maintain it.

WoD and CofD work best when you front load the challenges, so you know what modifiers to apply to this. It's really the only way to know what modifiers to apply to it.

It's not anybody's fault but their own if they don't want to live the life of modifiers outside of combat. Maybe people would only take social combat if it was actually combat, if moves had meaning.

[Ghost]

Social combat is important because nearly every player is interested in their social game succeeding, but very few players are willing to organically choose to lose in social situations.

Almost every time I've chosen to lose on a MU (because it made sense ICly) I tend to get pages asking if I'm ruining the character on purpose

These games have plenty of win and lose, but combat is avoided altogether by certain players because there is dice supported winning and losing in combat.

For this reason alone, social dice rolls are important and should be used.

[Misadventure]

"Losing" can be reinterpreted to "not how the character thought it was going to go".

I really think the Players should learn to see that what they want (fun, RP, drama, etc) does not equate to what their PC wants.
IF you are a player where you want everything to go peachy all the time, then you shouldn't be conflict oriented at all.
IF you are a player seeking drama, then you should realize that your character getting what they want, how they want it, is self defeating.

Some day I will care enough again to try to apply some of the yes, no, and, but, trade up result for a cost, trade down a result to avoid a cost, packages of exchanged social effects stuff I have in my head.