Eliminating social stats

[Chet]

I've got a +vote system I've coded for my sci-fi crime saga project that is between players at the end of every scene, that has a subjective evaluation of player behavior as it relates to IC conduct. The outcome of the vote affects a stat that has several purposes, including skill roll multiplier and a system that modifies player experience gain by creating NPC landmark conglomerates in a player repertoire that can be deployed at a scene's start.

I've attempted to create a system that's only possible to 'game' if you play it pure IC. That way, newbies will acclimate quickly, despite the system being largely alien.

[Ominous]

@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:

Look at it this way - if a roleplayer is good enough they can make their character appealing no matter what. It's not cheating, I'm not talking about playing the traits up... but simply portraying an unintentionally funny, fascinating character who might not be wealthy, witty, intelligent or attractive but the writing skill of the person behind the keyboard makes them awesome.

There's no RL equivalency for that. A poor, dull, dumb and ugly person IRL isn't that appealing in the real world.

There is an issue with that, however. If we are rewarding a PC with letting them have what they want because we find them OOCly interesting that hits the main issue that people who support social stats hate. A character that shouldn't sensibly get what they want is getting what they want not because of the character's skill but because the player portraying that character is so good at making them interesting. Hitler didn't sway Germany because they went "Well, he is entirely uncharismatic, but the guy playing him does such a great job at portraying it that I am going to help round up the Jews anyways." If the character is dumb, ugly, poor, and awkward then they should be treated as such whether or not the player is a wordsmith who can mesmerize their fellow players.

[Chet]

That person you describe, could learn a lot from Hitler.

It's my technique also.

All you need, is a nice jacket.

Kids In The Hall is my teacher.

[Arkandel]

@Ominous I'm almost never concerned about players exploiting systems on a design scale - that can come later. My issues with vote implementations are several, such as favoring

• cliques and circle-jerking
• huge public scenes
• spotlight seekers

just to name a few.

[Chet]

Those can all be beneficial, if you use them the right way.

Cliques need a purpose for interacting with other cliques, or at the very least, an integrated universe to force them to RP with each other (consent has to stop somewhere).

Huge public scenes can be good, I've always felt, for things like political meetings and roundtable discussions, or planning missions.

Give the spotlight seeker responsibility to drive RP.

[Ominous]

I rather like huge public scenes. I find them more immersive. It's like going to a bar or restaurant and there being other tables of people talking rather than just me and the people I am talking to existing.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:

My hatred for +vote burns eternal.

You should start a thread asking people's opinions about getting rid of +vote.

Because, you know, this thread has gone so well.

[WTFE]

@Chet said in Eliminating social stats:

Those can all be beneficial, if you use them the right way.

Pity they're almost never used the right way, eh?

[Thenomain]

I'm reading the Quick-Start adventure for an upcoming RPG called The Spire. It is a game about espionage and terrorism (er, sorry, insurgency) against the oppressive masters of the land.

I backed it to get a tangental Bas-Lag fix. I am not disappointed.

It would have been completely stupid for a game about politics and subterfuge not to have some kind of social stats, and so far it generally treats stress to your reputation equal to stress to your body.

The game's complete skill list, for those who want to nitpick about combat, are: Compel, Deceive, Fight, Fix, Investigate, Pursue, Resist, Sneak, Steal. No attributes. Sometimes in order to stop letting combat overwhelm a game system, you put in more things than combat for your game system. Someone else pointed this out. I think they're absolutely right.

[Bobotron]

Re: Incentivize

On the note of the 'give a benefit for failure,' how often has that been tried? And how much benefit do you give? If you fail now, do you get a success to just spend later on?

[Ganymede]

@Bobotron said in Eliminating social stats:

On the note of the 'give a benefit for failure,' how often has that been tried? And how much benefit do you give?

In nWoD 2E games, you generally get 1 Beat for being on the losing end of a stick, from down and dirty combat to resolving a Condition. 5 beats per XP, and XP goes a long way in a linear-progression system.

[Bobotron]

@Ganymede
Right. So some benefits based on the game might be...

• XP: Especially for games using partial XPs.
• Plot Cookies: Something to turn over to staff for Plot Stuff later
• Roll Bonuses: Full Success or +X to a check

[Jennkryst]

I am late to the discussion, but fear not! I have suitably horrific comments to add involving everyone's favorite topic: TS.

Losing social combat and following it up with TS (FTB, I am not a HUGE monster (I mean, unless both parties are into rape play, which is weird and as oxymoronic as the idea of consensual rape sounds, I'm not one to judge)) is as great a gift as the time that football jock in high school lied about his date putting out that one time.

YOU can change the narrative!

Maybe they curled into a fetal ball afterwords? Maybe they cried the whole time and called you mommy. Maybe they could only get it up after you put peanut butter on their nipples.

And if you have a high enough subterfuge pool, people will believe you! Put your Investigate dice to good use, find OTHER PCs who have similarly been social-fu'd into actions, and now you have others to corroborate your story. RealTruth, even if it is a dirty lie.

The idea of everyone having perfect agency is absurd. You will only have perfect agency when you play by yourself. The second you add other players to the mix, anything goes. We often say things like 'no, I didn't mean it that way, text doesn't convey intent well' because the default tone we give people somehow magically lands in sarcasm.

So I propose we extend this to social interaction.

If 'movie logic' is good enough for shooting... good enough for first aid/doctoring... good enough for driving, or mechanics, or literally anything else? Well by God, it's good enough for socializing.

How many movies have you watched where... Bond picks someone up with the cheesiest one-liner you've ever heard? Luke Cage asks if folks want coffee. Just stare at a person and go 'No, don't fall for that'... but they do?

I GIVE TO YOU SOCIAL COMBAT.

True, there is body language and tone inflection and all other manner of variables. But how can I pose body language to you when 'No writing a novel in your poses, go dialogue go!', or how can I attempt to interpret YOUR body language and respond when I get 'Bob laughs. "Words words words," he says, before drinking some more whiskey. "Words speak time more here."' and nothing else?

[Lain]

@Jennkryst said in Eliminating social stats:

How many movies have you watched where... Bond picks someone up with the cheesiest one-liner you've ever heard? Luke Cage asks if folks want coffee. Just stare at a person and go 'No, don't fall for that'... but they do?
I GIVE TO YOU SOCIAL COMBAT.

B-but my character would never fall for that! She's above the bullshit, just like me!

[Ganymede]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

B-but my character would never fall for that! She's above the bullshit, just like me!

You could provide a reward to characters that use social combat, only to have the targets refuse to comply based on agency. If in nWoD 2E, give them a Beat.

You could provide a reward to characters who give in without a roll, or where they knowingly accept a negative consequence as a result of going along with the desired result. Give them a Beat.

Cap the beats, and people will still play the social combat game.

Lots of ways to make it work for as many people as possible.

[Lain]

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

B-but my character would never fall for that! She's above the bullshit, just like me!

You could provide a reward to characters that use social combat, only to have the targets refuse to comply based on agency. If in nWoD 2E, give them a Beat.

You could provide a reward to characters who give in without a roll, or where they knowingly accept a negative consequence as a result of going along with the desired result. Give them a Beat.

Cap the beats, and people will still play the social combat game.

Lots of ways to make it work for as many people as possible.

I think the players who bitch about muh agency would have such a high time preference that they'd pass on the Beats just to pout about how their character would totally respond to successful intimidation with violence instead of just putting their head down. They think about nothing but right now.

[Ganymede]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

I think the players who bitch about muh agency would have such a high time preference that they'd pass on the Beats just to pout about how their character would totally respond to successful intimidation with violence instead of just putting their head down. They think about nothing but right now.

Sure. And that's fine. Let them bitch all the way. Meanwhile, they'll see me rollin' while they hatin', an' I'll be having my beats and ridin' dirty.

[ShelBeast]

Am I the only person who sees that declaring an FTB (not just talking about the seduction angle, but literally using FTB for damn near any "undesirable" social influence) as still having agency? You, the player, get to decide whether or not you want to play a thing. But in the end, what was said about the "movie logic" nature of the game being sufficient for every other part of the game, rather than social rings true. But even going on the flip side of that, in reality we have things like con artists. They literally make their lives by going around convincing people that don't think that they can be bullshitted into bullshittery. That is literally what they do. So, you're telling me that you can't be seduced by the chick with 5 presence, persuasion and striking looks? Tell that to any of the hundreds of people who fall prey to "pickup artists". You can't be talked into buying something you don't want? Tell that to the car salesman who just tacked on an additional grand to your car loan for the extended warranty. You only respond to being threatened by an intimidating bully with violence? Let's see that in play when the 6 + foot biker is looming over you with closed fists and a clenched jaw.

Let's get real, people. This happens to literally every single one of us. Every. Single. One. And most people, it happens to on some small scale nearly every day. We are always being talked into things we don't initially want.

[Lain]

@ShelBeast but what if someone gets a really good roll on they social dice but writes a really stupid pose!?

How can rollplayers even compete?

[Ganymede]

@ShelBeast said in Eliminating social stats:

Am I the only person who sees that declaring an FTB (not just talking about the seduction angle, but literally using FTB for damn near any "undesirable" social influence) as still having agency?

It's not really the same thing, or supposed to be. FTB is used when you accept the consequences, but don't want to play through them. Seizing agency to deny the result of a roll in order to preserve your vision of your PC is another thing altogether.

Let's get real, people. This happens to literally every single one of us. Every. Single. One. And most people, it happens to on some small scale nearly every day. We are always being talked into things we don't initially want.

That's fine. I think that most players (that are here) don't care much if someone intimidates their PC into submission or uses persuasion to con their PC into paying money for something the PC doesn't really want or need. The issue being addressed is situations where the PC is being forced into a path of RP that the player is uncomfortable with, be it adultery or rape or something even more unsavory. These incidences are rare, but when you have the unspoken rule of "play the game or you're a bad person," some players may take advantage of that mentality to coerce other players into playing situations that they don't want to, and that may force those others off the game.

Inserting "agency," or the fallback that you will always retain a measure of control over your character's actions, is intended to be a way to check that ability. This, like all things, can also be abused. So, you can put in incentives or systems that encourage people not to exert "agency" all the time, and accept some unpleasant consequences, in order to balance out the entire "consent" feel.

At the end of the day, it's just a way to strike a balance between folks that want a safe place to play in, and folks that prefer a realistic simulation.