Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat)
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@thenomain said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
You know, here’s a case where the D&D Alignment Grid may actually make sense.
Maybe you could come up with an expanded version that mixed alignments with something like the old WoD virtues. Give characters simple ratings in things like loyalty, compassion, courage, selflessness, justice, and a few others. There's some limit so you can't be a saint across the board.
Every trait could work both ways - a high compassion means you can't be persuaded into harming someone but it means you're a sucker for a sob story. I dunno. I still prefer coop/consent, but if you're going to have PVP politics as a core facet of your setting I can see the need for a more codified system. And even if you do have a consent-oriented or opt-in system, some more detailed measure of personality could help keep people honest.
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@faraday said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
Maybe you could come up with an expanded version that mixed alignments with something like the old WoD virtues. Give characters simple ratings in things like loyalty, compassion, courage, selflessness, justice, and a few others. There's some limit so you can't be a saint across the board.
Maybe Paths?
I mean, maybe. I never liked Humanity as a universal basis of morality. Ever.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
Maybe Paths?
I'm not really familiar with that. My WoD experience consists of playing a mortal in a short oWoD campaign back in college so...
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Too bad White Wolf’s Paths write-ups were just as bad.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
Too bad White Wolf’s Paths write-ups were just as bad.
Eh.
I think a good idea, here, is to allow every player to give their PCs 3 additional Breaking Points, set at the 7, 5, and 3 levels. While this may increase your chances of losing Morality/Humanity, you can use the opt-out provision if the intent of the social combat/roll is to get force you to a Breaking Point. A careful reading of the book suggests that you cannot use social rolls to force a person to compromise a Breaking Point.
You can choose to do something that leads to a Breaking Point, mind, and a person can certainly convince you that they may harm your loved ones if you don't do something that is a Breaking Point. It just isn't a direct thing.
I think I may be re-writing my social combat stuff a bit.
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@the-sands I was being factious for one. Also, I'm far more upset about not being about to use it against NPCs...as in, no one tells those stories. Thus, it seems like a waste.
And if I were to decide to wield my phat social skills against a PC, I ask first, OOCly. "Hey, I wanna roll to lie. Is that alright?" Or "Mind if I roll persuade here, see if he can turn it around?"
I don't want to make anyone do anything.
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In the last thread on this topic, I proposed that, instead of social skills being involved in social combat with die rolls, they be linked to getting access to resources. Essentially social combat would become bribes between players. The player with high social skills would have access to more resources that they could then give to other players to get what they want.
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Anyway,
@faraday said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
@thenomain said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
You know, here’s a case where the D&D Alignment Grid may actually make sense.
Maybe you could come up with an expanded version that mixed alignments with something like the old WoD virtues.
d20 Modern replaced "alignment" with "allegiances". But I don't think you need to even go that far.
I am: Chaotic Good.
I am strong against being convinced to do harm against others and follow Rules As Written.
I am weak against being convinced to mess with people (as long as it doesn't cause harm), being sarcastic, and helping people even if it puts myself or others in difficult situations.
I know people will say "meh" about this, but it gives you a structure to talk about What You Can't Make Me Do.
I do like the "Utter Coward" idea, because I am amused at the idea of an Utter Coward with high Willpower, but it doesn't quite work. It does work if there is a severe penalty against making me play against type, and what more useless "type" system is there besides D&D's Alignment system?
The two ideas danced sexily in my head.
Incidentally, there is an absolutely fantastic indie game called A Dirty World that uses a sliding scale to determine what you're good at as in: I am willing to break into someone's apartment so I'm good at it, but being kind to someone and getting them to open up is off-putting to me so I am not good at it.
The system is damn good too for moral ambiguity.
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So, this is social combat:
I am pulling out of a parking spot and can't see jack. Someone lays on their horn and I am the one to feel guilty and I apologize.
Why the fuck did I apologize to this asshole? If there was an accident it would be her fault, not mine!
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I wonder if people who invest primarily in combat skills would claim their character concept and agency was destroyed if the social character rolled well enough to weasel-convince the combatant maybe they shouldn’t kill the pc they were going to.
That opens the combatant up for consequences they may not want, after all. They don’t get to decide to take care of the problem exactly as they wished. They should just get to roll their dice to eliminate the other pc.
I guess I fail to see why somehow the person rolling the social dice is somehow more taking away agency than someone who can just roll combat rolls without needing to take into account the valid potentially mitigating factors of social skills.
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It's always about what I want to do with my character, yes. Social, mental, combat, crafting, people whose ideas are rejected are going to feel themselves rejected.
The best RPers I've known feel a reasonable personal detachment from their characters. They still hate it when something goes wrong, but will roll with it because they're not taking it personally.
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@mietze said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
I guess I fail to see why somehow the person rolling the social dice is somehow more taking away agenc
The agency argument isn't about "I should get what I want all the time". That's not agency, that's just being selfish.
Player Agency is about being able to control the character's thoughts and decisions.
That doesn't mean your character's thoughts are correct. You may completely misjudge someone or misjudge a situation.
That doesn't mean you character's decisions to act will be successful. There may be rolls involved to see whether your decision to do a cartwheel on ice results in a really cool move or you falling on your butt and breaking your leg.
And it doesn't make you immune to consequences or to random acts of nature or intentional acts from other players or NPCs. A building falling on you doesn't deprive you of agency, nor does a bullet fired by a sniper a mile away.
So yes, a social character rolling social skills to make my combat expert not kill the person they wanted to kill does deprive me of agency. Not because it invalidates my character's concept or combat skills, but because it takes away my ability as a player to control my character's thoughts and decisions. Incidentally, so would a social character manipulating my combat expert into killing someone, even though that is perfectly aligned with their concept.
Either you trust players to know their characters or you don't. Frankly I don't want to play on a role-playing game where someone else gets to play my character for me. That's agency.
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@faraday so in other words, yes you think your right to physical action on your pc supersedes any other mitigating factor besides armor or dodge. Any attempt to use mitigating factors (rolling for lying, persuasion, begging for one’s life) cannot and should not be allowed by anyone but the combat character.
I mean every roll of a dice takes away your agency. Your crappy roll might take away certain actions available to you to take. In some systems you don’t really get to decide how you’re injured (say it is prescribed if you are hit in head/gut/butt/foot, vs a generic amount of damage that you can rp anyway you like so that all avenues of playing your character as you wish are limited.)
I’m just saying I do not understand why loss of agency is not decried in the case of combat—but any attempt to use social skills to mitigate things (not reverse or dictate per de) is treated as if that means someone’s character is being puppetted.
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@mietze I think you're missing my point, or I wasn't clear. Every roll of the dice does not take away my agency. Only the ones that override what I feel my character's thoughts and decisions should be. Rolling to make a fire in the wild? Failing that doesn't deprive me of player agency. Nor does failing a drive roll. Or a knowledge roll (I don't mean facts when I say thoughts). Or a million other rolls.
Social rolls don't take away agency either when they're treated as performance rolls and not mind control rolls. Your social roll can tell me that your character sounds sincere. How I have my character react to that is agency.
Agency also doesn't mean I get to put my own OOC desires above what's IC. If you roll well on a bluff roll and my character has no reason to doubt you then my character should be bluffed.
None of this renders social rolls useless. It makes them work differently than combat rolls, yes, but it doesn't invalidate them IMHO.
ETA: To your point about damage... I can have my character decide to try to get up even though the +damage says she's too injured to succeed. That's not a loss of agency. A loss of agency would be if the damage system says something like: "your only possible action is to lie there blubbering and not even try to move" because it's then telling me what my character has decided to do. Code and rolls should set up situations (a rock falls on you; the car crashes; you've been shot in the leg and it hurts terribly and you can't use it effectively). Players should decide how their characters react to those situations.
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@mietze said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
I’m just saying I do not understand why loss of agency is not decried in the case of combat—but any attempt to use social skills to mitigate things (not reverse or dictate per de) is treated as if that means someone’s character is being puppetted.
Because you're confusing social skills with social powers. Strength, agility, stamina, these aren't skills - they are powers or if you prefer forces which affect the real world through physics. Charisma, manipulation, wits, these aren't powers - they are skills which affect nothing but the perceptions of others based on your employment of tactics, whether you learned them from reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or just lying to parents and teachers your whole life.
Firearms and melee, again, relate to the handling of physical objects that affect the real world through the application of forces. Intimidation and subterfuge, on the other hand, relate to particular forms of social maneuvering.
Your argument is literally identical to the argument that you should be able to mathematically win a gun or a knife fight by rolling Intelligence or Wits and some appropriate science or math skill, or that you should be able to punch a hole in a brick wall by succeeding on a Small Unit Tactics check.
Social skills are designed for use in situations where your target is unwitting or undecided. Charisma helps people like you better, which is fine if they just met you but if they're a cold-blooded assassin sent to kill you by a religious cult then why should they spare your life when the cult probably prepared them for this by making them kill their own family as an introductory task? Manipulation helps you lie better or convince somebody that your way of doing things is right, but using the example of the religious cult they have a whole mountain of indoctrination on one side of the scale and no matter how well you can possibly roll you can't amount to more than a few pebbles or maybe a rock on the other side without a months-long dedicated de-programming session first. Even intimidation, if somebody has you on your knees and a loaded gun to your head and some kind of payday waiting after they pull the trigger, isn't going to make any difference - they're already risking life in prison or the death penalty, and if that isn't incentive enough not to start out in the first place what on earth is begging for your life going to accomplish?
You see these things happen in movies because it's in the script. There's always some backstory explaining how or why the assassin was already willing to turn their back on their government or cult or occupation, and the begging is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Trying to replicate that effect in an RPG, with no backstory against the opposing character at all, is insane. It's an MMO or a MUD mentality.
If the assassin was your best friend since childhood sent to kill you by your mutual mob boss? Totally different conversation. Social roll it up.
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I just have to say, again:
FATE social combat:
Full agency to how it ends (99% of the time). AKA: Yes you rolled crazy high seduction, but, rather than sleep with you my character instead removes themselves from that social interaction because they are embarrassed. Or something similar.
Social health tracks. Social stats determine social health track. The social health track also has lasting effects if you let it get that far, which is how brainwashing works.
Aspects which may be called on to either defend, or harm, if you figure them out. Social aspects that can give you bonus points, or reduce bonuses for others.
Yes, there is social PvP (I've lost social pvp on several occasions, not once was my character forced to do anything out of character, because I had agency) but it is not one roll, it takes time, and it is in a way /far/ more powerful than combat skills... because they are social acceptable. Pulling out a sword or gun or just punching someone's face in? Generally not.
Still not sure why FATE gets so much hate honestly.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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So I started this thing, then got distraced by Rimworld for a few days, but now I am back!
@ganymede said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
@derp said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
If you want the kind of character that never blinks in the face of such things, then -invest in the stats that make sure you rarely lose those rolls-, and then when you do lose one, figure out why this time is different.
Super major peeve -- your character doesn't get extra stats/immunity based on backstory.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS. I just... I just want people to spend points to be immune to things, sheesh. And to remember that these are games.
@surreality said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
@kitteh said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
So if people want games with social rolls, game designers need to go back to the drawing board and 2.0 their whole concept of these game systems. Nearly everything we play is a WoD-clone, with the same stat-skill conventions and minimal focus on social stuff beyond 'maybe you can put one virtue and vice.' These arguments will always go back and forth fruitlessly under these conditions.
It does work both ways, though, in some respects: while there's some stat things that give you what are 'core ideals/drives/haven't decided quite what to call them yet', they can work 'against' someone, too. If someone took something like "I will not allow my children to come to harm," they get a big bonus to resist anything that'd make them do harm to their children.
Sorta like FATE?
@lithium said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
I just have to say, again:
FATE social combat:
[snip]
Still not sure why FATE gets so much hate honestly.See? FATE!
Um, I'm guessing because of the way that advancement and refresh works? That, or balancing powers being tricksy. I'm limited to Dresden and FATE Accelerated, and it's been literal years since I did anything with it, so ymmv.
FINALLY, I can't find the actual post to quote now, but someone else brought up the biggest point to me: we're all playing a game, not some hyper accurate reality simulator. Ammosexuals could go on about the Firearm skill being garbage... Coders could go on about the Computer skill being garbage... I could go on about how Expression for playing a Euphonium is garbage (by the way, it is utter garbage).
But no matter how many (City) by Night games are made, the games do not take place in the real world, and real-world things that might limit them such as backstory or personality have no place for affecting things. Use movie logic and accept that while something might be bullshit to you, your character might think otherwise.
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@jennkryst said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
@surreality said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
@kitteh said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
So if people want games with social rolls, game designers need to go back to the drawing board and 2.0 their whole concept of these game systems. Nearly everything we play is a WoD-clone, with the same stat-skill conventions and minimal focus on social stuff beyond 'maybe you can put one virtue and vice.' These arguments will always go back and forth fruitlessly under these conditions.
It does work both ways, though, in some respects: while there's some stat things that give you what are 'core ideals/drives/haven't decided quite what to call them yet', they can work 'against' someone, too. If someone took something like "I will not allow my children to come to harm," they get a big bonus to resist anything that'd make them do harm to their children.
Sorta like FATE?
I couldn't tell you; I don't know the FATE system. Enough people talk about it, but for some reason it bounces off my brain in full.
Possibly? Maybe?
More or less the sum total of what I have absorbed about FATE:
"I think you should use FATE but I know you won't because everybody hates FATE for no good reason." - <lots of people>
I ultimately have no idea why I should be inclined toward using it, or why everybody hates it, but that's the statement that pops into my brain more or less any time somebody mentions it as the most oft-repeated thing about FATE on the forum. It has unfortunately stuck and wedged itself in there pretty good re:
'Self, what is FATE?'
'FATE is what some people think should be used but everybody hates it.'
'Why, Self?'
'I'unno. <mental shrug, meanders off to play with navel lint>' -
@lithium said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
Still not sure why FATE gets so much hate honestly.
I've occasionally been one of the FATE-haters, but I think every time I've mentioned it I've also singled out that I actually really love its damage (stress) system. Both the multiple tracks and the use of the boxes and conditions are great.
I dislike FATE for totally unrelated reasons, mostly that I don't think the FATE point economy actually works at all as a game mechanic (even in tabletop, and FAR less so on a MU), and that Aspects tend to become over-saturated and meaningless. Combat boils down to 'Everyone rolls their highest skill, pretty much no matter what it is, as a maneuver to add an Aspect to the environment/badguy, then someone attacks with a bajillion free tags and wins.' Also Compels don't really work for me as a stand-in for 'hard' status effects/conditions (and just like above, they work even less well on a MU).
But I really do love the damage system. Someone should just port that onto a game that doesn't suck.
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@jennkryst said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
FINALLY, I can't find the actual post to quote now, but someone else brought up the biggest point to me: we're all playing a game, not some hyper accurate reality simulator.
We're not daft, but I think the purpose of recent discussion has been "how can we make the game-playing experience better for more people"? A lot of people have expressed their preferences, made suggestions on how to make games better for them, and so on.
At least, that's how I'm taking it.
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@surreality
Fate is Fudge with a lot of bells and whistles added.
I am not sure why everyone hates it, it is a perfectly fine low complexity setting independent game system, though I think a lot of people are put off by the free form nature of aspects.
