Social Systems

[Arkandel]

@surreality Hey, I never said my interface was good. It was just an example.

[surreality]

@arkandel It's more a matter of 'try not to create more problems than you solve'. For a lot of the folks who were into the spreadsheet fu and whatnot from RfK, or more heavily coded environments, that might work brilliantly.

Just... not everybody's one of those people.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Perhaps his Willpower is high enough that the system says that you can waive the roll. Perhaps the system has a bonus stay on focus. Perhaps the system is about fighting and therefore pain is not factored.

This is my point and has been my point. If the game is about a thing, you play about the thing. Imagine how dull a Shadow Run game would be if you weren’t engaging the conceit there in the title of the game!

[Ganymede]

@thenomain said in Social Systems:

This is my point and has been my point. If the game is about a thing, you play about the thing. Imagine how dull a Shadow Run game would be if you weren’t engaging the conceit there in the title of the game!

Imagine how fun it would be if vampires were to play their requiem rather than their players' erotic fantasies birthed from teenage fiction.

My eyes did glaze over Arkandel's example of a process. If one of the fun parts about MUSHing is being able to engage in social play, then I don't see the need to codify it so. And I know, that sounds funny from someone who is pro-code-lots.

But part of the fun of vampire political play is when people don't use the dice. Then it is a match of wits and writing. Or maybe someone tosses in a power to make it all come apart, only to have another person toss in, and, boom, the dynamic changes, and --

Anyhow, I still would never use a power to compel someone to act in a way they did not mind. That's some bullshit right there.

[Ortallus]

@thenomain said in Social Systems:

@faraday

This is my point and has been my point. If the game is about a thing, you play about the thing. Imagine how dull a Shadow Run game would be if you weren’t engaging the conceit there in the title of the game!

All of Shadowrun: Denver, please read the above quote. <.<

[surreality]

@ganymede said in Social Systems:

Imagine how fun it would be if vampires were to play their requiem rather than their players' erotic fantasies birthed from teenage fiction.

^ This.

[Ghost]

@ganymede said in Social Systems:

Imagine how fun it would be if vampires were to play their requiem rather than their players' erotic fantasies birthed from teenage fiction.

To the rest of your post, though?

I think some of us are really good at writing it through and handling it as a cooperative story. Nothing is better to me on these games than when I'm in a group of writers all about writing deception, chaos, lies, and plot twists going in knowing that they are happening and congratulating each other on our writing.

However, there's a concept I've mentioned before that I came up with in my LARP years:

PLAYING THE PLAYER

This is when people make their RP decisions poker-style based on what they know about the OOC person or their likes/dislikes. It's a form of metagaming that is hard to catch and even harder to convince players to stop doing.

In terms of social role play without dice, its the "My character isn't going to believe Tom's new character, because Tom likes making characters who lie, and I don't want my character to be lied to"

I won't get on my soapbox about how this I think has become the norm more than not and why so many Mushers care about which player is playing which bit...but on-topic, Playing the Player is one of my big reasons for being into social rolls.

If we are, in fact, gaming, then it should be what happens IC that determines the flow, and social dice provides a little protection from this kind of metagaming.

[Ganymede]

@ghost said in Social Systems:

PLAYING THE PLAYER

This is when people make their RP decisions poker-style based on what they know about the OOC person or their likes/dislikes. It's a form of metagaming that is hard to catch and even harder to convince players to stop doing.

Sure, I understand your point. And I see why you'd think social rolls would alter this. And I agree that it would.

But, to my point, so what?

If a player doesn't want to go along with my PC's suggestion to theirs to do something, that's fine. I'm okay with that. I can lay out why, reasonably and accurately. And their PC may roll to see if mine is lying or being disingenuous, and that check would come up negative; in Vampire, lying is stupid because it is so easy to detect.

My remedy: remove that player's PC from the political arena.

If we are gaming, and we are playing a political game like vampire, then you must know -- you must realize -- that everything that happens around my PC is likely according to some sort of plan. This is because you are actively losing in politics if you cannot predict what will happen next. Players like me -- Lisse24, Caryatid -- enjoy the interaction, the meddling, and the positioning because that's what Vampire is about. And setting yourself up where you cannot lose is less about power and stats than it is, simply, about positioning.

I'd really like to play this game. A lot.

Instead, we have people using Dominate to blood-bond neonates into divulging secrets of blood sorcery for the purpose of growing magic dicks.

Like, seriously, I have that power so that no one can accuse me of trying to get it from someone else. Like, fuck y'all, I have a futanari penis omgsoecchiheehee.

[Arkandel]

@ghost said in Social Systems:

I won't get on my soapbox about how this I think has become the norm more than not and why so many Mushers care about which player is playing which bit...

About that bit... the easy answer is to not play with (or limit interactions with) people you don't like. It's pretty intuitive too - we do it in every other game, both online and iRL, so why not MU*?

Now if I know you hate my guts and I keep showing up to throw dice (or even just poses) at you then I'm an asshole, and that's not a problem systems can solve. But it's not a problem per se - I'm totally fine with people caring who's playing whom - and it only becomes one when circumstances or policies try to force them to continue interacting on any meaningful level.

[Ghost]

@ganymede @Arkandel I knoooooooow and I love you both dearly for those two really specific points. I agree. Remove those people from the political arena and avoid them.

But it's just a damned shame that I can't RP with every single approved character and expect the same level of metagaming ethic when it comes to that kind of stuff.

PLAYING THE PLAYER is like:

VLAD SAYS SOMETHING

• Who plays Vlad?
• Ask around
• No one knows him? Page him with "hey where else do you play?"
• wikistalk
• check if he is using a PB you hate

If your search turns up to be negative:

• Your character doesnt believe him
• Never RP in a room with them again

If you know him and like his player?

• Page "LOL OMG ARE YOU??? HIIIII"
• Plan RP together

If you don't know who they are

• Proceed with caution, ask OOC if they're lying

Like...I know we all know people who do this lol.

And so my while involvement in this thread has mostly been because I wholly prefer "stop paging me and dice me, bro" as an alternative.

[Lotherio]

@thenomain said in Social Systems:

Imagine how dull a Shadow Run game would be if you weren’t engaging the conceit there in the title of the game!

I can't keep up wholly with the conversation. But what if game wasn't in the title. What if it was just Shadow Run MUSH, and folks only wanted to RP and story tell?

My two cents, I've enjoyed consent based stat-less games as much as I've enjoyed rolling stats and the joy of a failure with trusted people to RP with where finding a solution after failing or letting the story develop from the fail is just as enjoyable.

I don't think a social system could account for all potential in socialization, we're pretty advances socializes by our nature. Its far more complex than combat and lots of systems can make for complex combat mechanics.

My preference is like Ghost hinted, if there is a system in place, using that system. Against NPCs, one roll for success or failure. If needed against another player, my history is that we've been able to work out modifiers, multiple rolls, whatever to the fun of all involved. As @Ortallus suggested, if the other player and I can't work something out, one of us is being far to aggressive on the game concept and its not the place for me, alas.

[Arkandel]

@ghost said in Social Systems:

But it's just a damned shame that I can't RP with every single approved character and expect the same level of metagaming ethic when it comes to that kind of stuff.

I despise metagaming. It's because it has such a subtle, corrupting influence on politics - and it's nearly impossible for staff to do anything about it.

For example let's say we're in a bitter IC stalemate; I need someone to transport shipments of my produce over to the capital, and your House has all the boats, but we can't agree on a price.

Workaround: I ask a friend of mine who makes an alt (perhaps in your House, to add insult to injury, but it can be another faction with boats) and they make a cheaper deal with me.

Fuck that. And the problem is this kind of problem can't be fixed with a social system either; it would require resource management to tackle (i.e. sure, my friend can cut me that great deal, but it loses their House money, so hopefully one of the other players there goes WTF DUDE? at them).

[surreality]

@arkandel Exactly this.

I will not play with Jeurg because I know he will engage in disingenuous bait and switch behavior that skews toward subject matter I don't enjoy and find intensely disturbing, and he likes to force people to go along with it even knowing they are not enjoying themselves at all on the OOC level because he has said so.

I will not play with Spider, because she's keen on emotional manipulation of other players on the player level, and is abusive.

I will not play with Ravaun/Hawker, because I find him to be disturbingly unstable and he has no respect whatsoever for OOC boundaries.

I could go on and on. Is this metagaming? Frankly, I don't give a damn either way.

If 'playing the game' or 'being a good player' means 'my experience of the game consists of being forced to interact with these people at length through a chain of experiences that are no fun for me at all as a player because the rules say I have to', that game is not going to be a game I am interested in playing.

Further, I don't think 'is a game' is an excuse for this to be considered an acceptable space to engage in gross behavior OOC through game mechanics as a means of force. I don't think 'is a game' is reason to tolerate these behaviors, or that an unwillingness to tolerate these behaviors is an indication of immaturity, childishness, poor sportsmanship, or 'being too invested/having IC-OOC boundary problems/etc.' or any of the other utter bunk people try to pass off as being the case.

I consider this being a person who doesn't have infinite time to spend on anything, and if I'm going to engage with something, it has to be worth my time to do it. If it is not fun because it's set up in such a way as to encourage wholly selfish players to power trip or generate wankbait through game mechanics at the expense of people who are trying to behave in a reasonable and respectful manner toward their fellow players with cooperation, collaboration, give and take, and otherwise giving a damn about the fun other people are having as well as their own, it is not going to be worth my time to be there at all, and ultimately there's not much that policy or mechanics are going to do change that plain and simple reality.

[Ghost]

@arkandel Fuck yes, such a good example.

I can't remember which game it was, but my character accepted information that I, as a player, knew to be a lie. There was even a log on the wiki about how they were going to lie to my character. I read it before the scene and still my character believed it.

A player paged me and asked(sic:) "LOL OMG are you wanting your character to be ruined on purpose?"

Social rolls won't get rid of metagaming, but the fact of the matter is that you and I, Arkandel, should be able to play with each other without me trying to guess what YOU are up to. It should be about perception at the character level. Logs and scenes your character is not aware of should not, but often do, affect character decisions.

So, back to social RP? Ethic like ours should be standard because it's fair to other players. Were that ethic the majority, we probably wouldn't have to wonder about social rolls at all. It would just be a question of what plot twists we wanted to throw at each other.

But I can't help but feel in a culture where little bits of metagaming here and there are considered commonplace that I'd love to be able to effectively lie ICly to any given player and not have it be treated like an OOC betrayal or cheating.

But even with dice, they'd know deception was rolled so...

[Thenomain]

@lotherio

In the end,the staff are beholden to their players, and the players are beholden to the staff. If you set up a D&D Mu* with complex dungeon crawling, inventory, and resource management tools, and most of your players hang around in the taverns and complain there is nothing to do, you can’t exactly yell at them for not engaging the game as designed.

I mean, you can, but be careful for not coming off as a complete asshole. That’s a lot of work for people to wander into and say how dull it is.

Why people pay WoD games varies hugely, and is something Gany mildly commented upon. I was using Shadow Run specifically because I know that’s a real situation. The above D&D game really happened to Nuku, who didn’t complain, and it really happened to Serenity Mush, who did.

Staff has a responsibility to help players learn the game as intended, and players have a responsibility to try and learn the game as intended. Sometimes people will meta game this, and that’s just going to happen. You scold them when they are caught, and you praise those who engage.

tl;dr: Shadow Run is written top to bottom about a certain kind of character. So is D&D. They are games about a thing and are geared toward that thing and so should be played about that thing.

The various Chronicles of Darkness lines have finally moved in this direction again and should be honored. Mad props to my old Eldritch crew, @SunnyJ, Fate’s Harvest, and several other game creators for realizing this.

[Arkandel]

@ghost said in Social Systems:

Social rolls won't get rid of metagaming

I think three types of systems - in tandem, not individually - would help run a political landscape. It wouldn't get rid of metagaming, but it'd go a long way.

• Social stats mattering to whatever degree the game deems appropriate and thematic, allowing characters like Littlefinger to exist.

• Resource management offering the game the concept of consequences, without which politics are meaningless. If you don't have to make hard choices what are you doing?

• Offering an incentive for people to lose. We can't seriously expect everyone to "like losing" or even to be okay with it - but give them something back so it's not a constant zero-sum game. Did you lose to a master politician? Damn, you must have learned something from them in the process! Get some XP, a modifier to future rolls, something.

[Thenomain]

Has anyone in this thread delved into how RP-Centric LARPs have addressed social systems?

Philosophy is fine, but which Larps have done what that's worked?

[Lotherio]

@thenomain said in Social Systems:

you can’t exactly yell at them for not engaging the game as designed.
I mean, you can, but be careful for not coming off as a complete asshole.

Unless your name is Gygax, then you write a whole article about the difference between official rules (chess/hoyle/poker) and 'not' playing the game. There is a hang up here, game. Your example of the code heavy D&D place where no one plays it but instead sits in bar and plays slice of life RP is more what I'm getting at. The fun of the 'game' and its arbitration are between the players present at the time of deciding that.

Making a complicated add-on system of social stats doesn't seem conducive to me, but then, like others, most of my experience has been with consent based and oft times stat-less MUs. Not games, I like original theme, no one ever tacked on game by default. I think the concept of MUs and game are not mutually exclusive; and I'm one of those who, when presented with stats and social systems, doesn't mind playing as its laid out and tend to enjoy losses more than victories sometimes as it seems to create more story for me in the long run. That's my fun.

Edited to remove italics, my bad habit of putting an asterisk after MU.

[faraday]

@Arkandel @Ghost I have immense respect for you guys, but the more I read the more I just think we come from polar opposite RP worlds.

The kind of metagaming you hate? I love. I view MUSHes not as games first, but as a collaborative storytelling community with some mechanics to keep things moving smoothly.

The key words there being collaborative and community. You can't collaborate if you don't metagame to some extent. You can't have a community if you have no connections to the other players beyond the IC interactions.

Now there's a disclaimer on that in that I think everything has to be justifiable ICly or it's cheating. If you and your OOC buddy have IC reason to team up? Go for it. If you read something in a RP log and say "Hey that sounds way cool I want to work with Ghost to get in on that". Awesome. Find a way to make it work ICly.

But if I read something in a RP log about Ghost plotting to poison me and somehow, for no sensible reason have my char decide to start poison-testing all her food? No, that's BS. That's cheating and it needs to be smacked down hard.

:helpless shrug: As usual, I'm in the minority. I'm just gonna go back to my coding hideaway for a bit.

[surreality]

@faraday I have to second this, because I am more than a little disgusted by the idea that 'I know I like playing with this player and we have fun when we write together so I'm going to play with them when I get the chance to' is an indication that I'm a bad evil cheating metagamer abusing all the good-hearted players everywhere with my cheaty cheaty ways.

ETA: I'm doubly digusted that 'that player was gross and abusive to me in the past OOCly, and I don't want to play with them again' apparently also makes me a horrible cheaty cheater McCheatsALot.