Eliminating social stats

[Lain]

@Sunny People are free to run a game with no social stats, but if their stated reasons also lead one to the conclusion that we should also remove mental and physical stats, yet they don't feel like doing so, it does make their stated reasons invalid. If the stated reason somebody gives for supporting Policy A also supports Policy B (which they say they oppose), they either start supporting both, admit their stated reason is very flawed, or begin engaging in cognitive dissonance.

The idea of a game with no social stats but mental and physical ones is not invalid, but the arguments presented in this thread for such a game undoubtedly are.

[Sunny]

@Lain

No. The only reason they're leading to that conclusion is because you refuse to acknowledge they could be interpreted any other possible way. Your premise (that X leads to Y, and therefore Z is true) is incorrect, because it is only for you that X must lead to Y. This is where 'personal' comes in for personal preference.

[Lain]

@Sunny said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain

No. The only reason they're leading to that conclusion is because you refuse to acknowledge they could be interpreted any other possible way. Your premise (that X leads to Y, and therefore Z is true) is incorrect, because it is only for you that X must lead to Y. This is where 'personal' comes in for personal preference.

So what you're saying is when you said this:

@Lain

No more than people insisting that if you are bad with people IRL then by extension so must your character. If "it's just personal preference" can justify abolishing social but not mental skills, then logically, the inverse can also be true. I'm in favor of neither, mind you.

There's a huge, very significant difference, actually. I can see why you would be in favor of rollplay instead of roleplay where it comes to social skills, if you seriously equate these things out to the same sort of thing. Apples and rocks.

You weren't making any statements aside from ones about your personal preference? Are you sure? This cannot be undone.

[Sunny]

@Lain

Are you for real? Yes. That is exactly what I was saying, because I was snarking at you over refusal to acknowledge that 'let's try it this way' and 'you are doing it wrong' are two different statements. There IS a huge difference, and if you genuinely think that there is not, you fail at social interaction and would obviously need to go with not having to RP stuff out. I was calling you an idiot.

[WTFE]

@Pyrephox said in Eliminating social stats:

Putting it as a continuum suggests that you can't have or want both. I do. I value good writing, I value good mechanics. I value good story, I value good game. It's entirely possible to do both.

It's possible where the two do not clash. At issue is how to react when, inevitably, the two clash.

Let me use an extreme example by climbing into the Wayback Machine as we witness an actual event that happened to me. Many, many, many years ago there was a college professor who ran RPGs: started with D&D, switched to C&S (after I introduced him to it), switched for a while to Traveller:2300/2300AD, then switched to Rolemaster. He was in most circumstances not merely a good GM but a great one. His worlds lived and breathed. His NPCs were alive. He had one niggling little flaw, however, which was highlighted by how his 2300AD phase ended.

In the 2300AD game he had us hitting a world that was under invasion as part of the Alberta Farming Cooperative relief mission. The system the world was in was contested and the place the relief supplies had to get to was under enemy watch. We had to penetrate their defences with the relief shuttle. It was a risk and we all understood the risk, both IC and OOC.

Down went the shuttle, desperately evading the enemy missile fire.

Oops. We failed. The shuttle gets hit. Fair enough, we knew this was a possibility. (Probability: ~20% cumulative over the die rolls that we had to make.) Time to bail out. This required a task roll of each of us, naturally.

Oops. We failed to bail out. Every single motherfucking one of us. And the task wasn't even particularly difficult. By the odds, of the eight characters (!) six should have succeeded. But the dummy fucking dice decided to get obstinate that day and seven characters were just obliterated before they could even get to the bail-out pods and the eighth sustained injuries on crash-landing that killed her.

And there we were. Sitting there facing a legit TPK. And this is where the prof's single flaw as a GM shone forth: he went by the rules. Period. The rules said everybody was dead, so everybody was dead. Characters we'd built up and invested in for almost eight months of twice-weekly gaming were gone in a flash. There was about six more weeks of gaming left before exams (and the end of this year's campaign) and we were expected to make eight new characters and continue the "story" with a complete, 100% break. Characters who had no IC investment in the relief mission because they didn't have the history that led to it were suddenly going to be our new avatars in the relief mission.

It didn't work.

The story that had been told up to that point, a story filled with intrigue, danger, nail-biting tension at points (there was one space battle that had us literally at the edge of our seats as we desperately evaded enemy forces that got within a hairsbreadth of finding our main convoy body) had its heart ripped out AND its spine broken by the dummy dice. The dice and mechanics clashed in a very big way with having a satisfying (even if tragic) narrative.

And I maintain to this day that the GM reacted incorrectly to that happening; that by letting the mechanics win out over a satisfying narrative he left a bad taste in everybody's mouth (ironically including his own). Two players dropped out after that session, never to return. By the end of the term there were only three players left. At the beginning of the next term only one player (me) came back. The superior way to handle this would be at the very least to reroll the exit rolls so that some characters survived. Then that satisfying, dangerous, thrilling narrative could continue with the survivors mourning those lost even while they were struggling hundreds of kilometres behind enemy lines and trying to get to friendly (friendlier?) territory.

This would be an extreme example of "roll-playing" fucking up "role-play" and the kind of thing that makes me leery of anybody who wants to stick to the game's mechanics at all costs.

[Lain]

@Sunny said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain

Are you for real? Yes. That is exactly what I was saying, because I was snarking at you over refusal to acknowledge that 'let's try it this way' and 'you are doing it wrong' are two different statements. There IS a huge difference, and if you genuinely think that there is not, you fail at social interaction and would obviously need to go with not having to RP stuff out. I was calling you an idiot.

Look at the context.

Me:

No more than people insisting that if you are bad with people IRL then by extension so must your character. If "it's just personal preference" can justify abolishing social but not mental skills, then logically, the inverse can also be true. I'm in favor of neither, mind you.

You:

There's a huge, very significant difference, actually. I can see why you would be in favor of rollplay instead of roleplay where it comes to social skills, if you seriously equate these things out to the same sort of thing. Apples and rocks.

You argued that comparing mental skills to social ones is comparing "apples and rocks," and that "it's my personal preference" can be used to justify getting rid of social skills, but not mental skills.

You argued this. So while you were busy calling me an idiot, you were, in fact, being an idiot. The irony.

[faraday]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Except "I lie <clatter of dice>" is about as immersive as "I cook the meth <clatter of dice>" or "I fortify the Sanctum <clatter of dice>" or "I cast magic missile against the goblin <clatter of dice>."

I think you're missing the point that some of us are saying that "I cook the meth" is no more satisfactory than "I lie" or "I treat the patient" or "I fight Bob". We come for immersion. We come for story. We expect some measure of detail in poses -- all poses. Social skills are a little different because they're harder to fake. Not everyone has a BS-o-meter tuned for medical stuff or meth cooking, but everyone has a BS-o-meter tuned for socialization, and socialization comes up literally all the time.

It's fine to have a different point of view. Really it is. It's not okay to dismiss the alternative as some form of "I just want my character to be immune to social stuff" powerplaying just because you don't understand and/or agree with it. That's insulting and dismissive. Lots of games do this successfully. It's not some alien concept that's never been tried.

[Sunny]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

You argued that comparing mental skills to social ones is comparing "apples and rocks," and that "it's my personal preference" can be used to justify getting rid of social skills, but not mental skills.

You argued this. So while you were busy calling me an idiot, you were, in fact, being an idiot. The irony.

No. I did not. "Apples and rocks" was referring to the difference between 'you're doing it wrong' and 'I would like to try it this way'. I have not spoken to anything but you calling WRONGFUN on people who are trying to have a discussion about the sort of fun that they want to have.

[Pyrephox]

@WTFE Yeah, I admit - I grew up playing 2nd Ed D&D. /Magic users/ in 2nd Ed D&D. So any illusion of a character as an 'investment' was beaten out of me pretty early - I once had a character die by falling down a hill. It wasn't even a big hill. Also, I have terrible dice luck, so my character failing at all things is something I'm accustomed to.

Which is not to say that I don't fudge things or handwave things, or that as I've gotten older, I haven't become more and more of a fan of failure at the dice meaning a complication is added, rather than an opportunity taken away. But I'm also aware that by choosing to play in a system that adds an element of chance, you're going to get some outlier results that completely change the game - or bring it to a premature end, some times. I like making characters and trying new things, so as long as a system is generally fair, losing characters to a crazy roll of the dice doesn't bother me TOO much, as long as the next character is fun.

My general philosophy on gaming is that I'm not investing in a character's story. I'm playing the character's story, riding it hard to wherever it goes. If that ride stops being fun, that's one thing. But if it comes to an abrupt end, that's usually a good story to tell, and hey, I had fun up until that point, so I'm good.

[WTFE]

@Pyrephox And that is not a stance I will judge you negatively for. The point of my little story is that while yes, you can, often for even a long time, have both mechanics and good story-telling, there will come a point where they clash and you have to pick one or the other.

In the case of that 2300AD campaign I happen to think the GM picked the wrong one, but that's an issue of taste. You obviously fall in the "let the story fall where the dice do" camp and that's fine too. But it doesn't change that the game mechanics can and often do clash with good stories.

[Lain]

@faraday said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Except "I lie <clatter of dice>" is about as immersive as "I cook the meth <clatter of dice>" or "I fortify the Sanctum <clatter of dice>" or "I cast magic missile against the goblin <clatter of dice>."

I think you're missing the point that some of us are saying that "I cook the meth" is no more satisfactory than "I lie" or "I treat the patient" or "I fight Bob". We come for immersion. We come for story. We expect some measure of detail in poses -- all poses. Social skills are a little different because they're harder to fake. Not everyone has a BS-o-meter tuned for medical stuff or meth cooking, but everyone has a BS-o-meter tuned for socialization, and socialization comes up literally all the time.

It's fine to have a different point of view. Really it is. It's not okay to dismiss the alternative as some form of "I just want my character to be immune to social stuff" powerplaying just because you don't understand and/or agree with it. That's insulting and dismissive. Lots of games do this successfully. It's not some alien concept that's never been tried.

This is you telling me not to be insulting and dismissive.

@faraday

LOL. I'm not even going to respond to that one.

This is you being insulting and dismissive.

If you want me to not be insulting and dismissive to you, you're going to have to refrain from being insulting and dismissive to me.

Now. Onto your point: social skills aren't harder to fake. Especially if you keep it in somewhat vague terms: "Her eyes glaze over and her lower lip starts trembling. Something about this seems so innocent and helpless." There. This pose can be used for basically any plea of helplessness. Just because you, faraday, might be able to call these crocodile tears for what they are OOC does not, in fact, mean that a character will. People fall for really obvious manipulative ploys IRL all the time. If you don't believe me, go to any real life setting where people interact with each other regularly. If you don't bury your face in your palms at least once a day because you catch some third party making a BS manipulation/powerplay/whatever on another third party and you notice it but the target doesn't, you're autistic as fuck.

That's what is so awful about humans: we're gullible as hell. Most people acquiesce to, if not outright fall for, blatant and obvious lies, deceptions, and hollow threats all the fucking time. We see it in fiction and in real life all the time: people falling for really stupid shit.

We know from this that if anything, especially in the context of an RPG, faking social ability is, if anything, easier, since it's the norm in fiction for otherwise intelligent and capable characters to fall for really stupid shit all the time. It's even more plausible for gullible or weak willed characters to fall for really stupid shit, as well.

You can write off practically all obvious cringe shit from a Cheetos American neckbeard's interpretation of seduction with "there's a certain je ne sais quoi about his character." Whereas, you simply cannot make meth by mixing ammonia and bleach -- at least, not to the best of my knowledge -- because that's just not how chemistry works.

[Lain]

@Sunny said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

You argued that comparing mental skills to social ones is comparing "apples and rocks," and that "it's my personal preference" can be used to justify getting rid of social skills, but not mental skills.

You argued this. So while you were busy calling me an idiot, you were, in fact, being an idiot. The irony.

No. I did not. "Apples and rocks" was referring to the difference between 'you're doing it wrong' and 'I would like to try it this way'. I have not spoken to anything but you calling WRONGFUN on people who are trying to have a discussion about the sort of fun that they want to have.

You might want to work on your writing skills, then, because the context says otherwise:

"If you can do X, then you can do Y as well."

"There's a huge, very significant difference, actually."

The context says you're talking about X and Y being incomparable. Even if you meant something else.

That said, I do fundamentally agree with you on this being a matter of personal preference, if that's any consolation.

[Pyrephox]

@WTFE But here's the thing: you're not arguing that because one time the dice put an end to your story "prematurely" that rolling to determine success at a task is stupid.

There is no RPG system that doesn't have a rule 0, that I'm aware of. And rule 0 is, of course, "If the dice or the rules say something that makes no goddamned sense, or something that doesn't work for your group, then change it."

And if someone made a social action that made no goddamned sense, or would utterly ruin a reaasonable player's fun, then obviously that situation would need a GM's attention. That's just common sense. But that has no relevance to the day to day running of a system, and it's certainly not a reason to toss the whole thing down the toilet and decide you don't need rules at all.

[Sunny]

@Lain

This is a great example of 'if you don't do it the way that I do it, you've got bad motivations/are a bad player' when it's actually personal preference.

This is what I said. These are the two things that there is a difference between. This is the statement you challenged when I answered with apples and rocks. I'll work on my writing while you work on your reading comprehension, eh?

[faraday]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

This is you being insulting and dismissive.

No it was me laughing because your comment "I'm not sure if you've ever read a combat pose" is a ridiculous thing to say to someone who designed a widely-used combat system and has run several successful war-centric MUSHes. It's a pretty insulting and dismissive thing to say to anyone, really, but I found it hilarious.

[Lain]

@Sunny said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain

This is a great example of 'if you don't do it the way that I do it, you've got bad motivations/are a bad player' when it's actually personal preference.

This is what I said. These are the two things that there is a difference between. This is the statement you challenged when I answered with apples and rocks. I'll work on my writing while you work on your reading comprehension, eh?

Here is what I said:

No more than people insisting that if you are bad with people IRL then by extension so must your character. If "it's just personal preference" can justify abolishing social but not mental skills, then logically, the inverse can also be true. I'm in favor of neither, mind you.

Here is what you said in response:

There's a huge, very significant difference, actually. I can see why you would be in favor of rollplay instead of roleplay where it comes to social skills, if you seriously equate these things out to the same sort of thing. Apples and rocks.

I'll give you an upvote because this conversation is going in circles.

[Thenomain]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

I'll give you an upvote because this conversation is going in circles.

Ah, I see you're fitting in here quite well!

[WTFE]

@Pyrephox said in Eliminating social stats:

@WTFE But here's the thing: you're not arguing that because one time the dice put an end to your story "prematurely" that rolling to determine success at a task is stupid.

No, I'm not. I'm arguing, though, that adherence to mechanics can (and inevitably will) clash with satisfying (or even vaguely coherent) story. So there will come a time when the good writing will clash with game mechanics and one or the other must give.

Don't get me wrong. I like dice. I like the unexpected twists you have to think and react your way out of when playing. (Hell, I like it in my non-RPGS. There's a reason why I like board wargames with dice (or some other randomizing element) more than I like Chess or Go most times.)

There is no RPG system that doesn't have a rule 0, that I'm aware of. And rule 0 is, of course, "If the dice or the rules say something that makes no goddamned sense, or something that doesn't work for your group, then change it."

Oh, you poor, innocent child. Do not follow this link for your own sanity's sake.

And if someone made a social action that made no goddamned sense, or would utterly ruin a reaasonable player's fun, then obviously that situation would need a GM's attention. That's just common sense. But that has no relevance to the day to day running of a system, and it's certainly not a reason to toss the whole thing down the toilet and decide you don't need rules at all.

I would say, however, that if a given mechanic (or class of mechanics) has a long history of causing this kind of problem that perhaps said mechanism needs to be entirely retooled or, even, dumped.

Again an example from history: Traveller, as originally published, (in)famously had the possibility of your character dying in character generation. This is utterly stupid and has been the source of many jokes at Traveller's (and its players') expense over the years. One of the earliest rules changes was based on common house rules that basically said "if you fail the survival roll you end character generation then and there half-way through your term without getting any term benefits" (like skills, money, or equipment). This was an improvement but it was still pretty fucking stupid. (My 20-year old character with literally no skills, no money, no equipment, and no lifespan after character generation is a case in point.)

This useless mechanism of failing a survival roll was a terrible mechanism put in place because character generation in Traveller was itself pretty fucking stupid. It would have been (and was, in later editions!) better to just gut the character generation as it was and replace it with something that wasn't as stupid because it caused trouble far more often than was warranted.

[Pyrephox]

@WTFE Synnibarr doesn't count! Nor does FATAL - we have to have some standards.

Traveler is its own thing. And yeah, dying in chargen is silly - but just like the Tomb of Elemental Evil, sometimes you're in the mood for something ridiculously hardcore. I know some people who really enjoy that kind of thing.

[Seraphim73]

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Now. Onto your point: social skills aren't harder to fake. Especially if you keep it in somewhat vague terms

Here's the problem with this one... you're obviously someone who can write coherently, and has some idea about how social skills work. The concern being brought up is more for people who don't have any sense of how social skills work, and they're quite prevalent on MU*s, because it's a semi-safe way for introverts to pretend to be extroverted.

The problem many people (myself included at times) have with hard-and-fast do-or-die social combat systems is that you get the character rolling up to another character, insulting them, stating that they're out to get them, and then asking for help. Or something else utterly ridiculous that the socially awkward player (not character, player) thinks is a good idea. And the dice say, "YUP! That's a great idea! You win!" It breaks immersion for many players, especially those who DID spend the points to buff up their social defense skills/attributes/whatever, but just rolled poorly.