Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat)

The Sands

@bobotron said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

If I blow out your kneecaps with called shots that are recorded by the system and you have Conditions or whatever from those, that should be no different than me making a successful Lies roll to get you to speak out of turn and reveal some type of information

Yes and no. To blow someone's knees out you at least need a gun and ammunition. To just say 'well, I lied to you, so give me the information' is like saying 'I use my Medicine skill to make you sick'. You've got to provide more than that.

And we haven't even touched the issue of how critical this piece of information is. What's the consequence of letting it slip? Embarrassment? Life in prison? I'm going to be much more resistant to releasing the information in the second case than in the first. So how does a system handle that? Allow the opposing player to set the difficulty? You're pretty much right back where you started with the bad actors able to set up their resistance unreasonably high.

Just to be clear, I am not a person who plays lots of combat monsters with no social skills. I'm not opposed to the idea of social combat systems that players can opt into when they want to compete (and maybe even compulsory social combat when there are reasonable limitations to what can be achieved). However, if you're going to argue for a social combat system that will force me to like your character while you act like a complete douche-nozzle then I'm going to argue against it, pretty much in the same way I would argue against a combat system that lets you heal someone while shooting them with bullets.

Bobotron

@thenomain

Right, but we circle back around to the 'buy in' and 'player reasonability' angles. I've had tons of fun, personally, getting socially fucked in a game, even without a carrot like a Beat or whatever. But the community has proven that people like us are in the minority.

@The-Sands
Right, and this we agree on. I'm positing the most simple 'if-then' statement for social conflict as my base example, because it's the most common one that people throw screaming fits about on games. And as you state, it circles right back around to unreasonable resistance or unreasonable factors. And things like the criticality of the information is why I had brought up, say, torture and intimidation vs. just a successful talking around you. Different approaches for different setups.

Thenomain

@bobotron said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

@thenomain

Right, but we circle back around to the 'buy in' and 'player reasonability' angles. I've had tons of fun, personally, getting socially fucked in a game, even without a carrot like a Beat or whatever. But the community has proven that people like us are in the minority.

I honestly think that these are issues in any PvP situation, regardless if it's social or combat. Combat is more accepted ("buy-in"), but having lived through many, many oWoD games I can honestly say that multi-day combats are a direct result of the lack of player buy-in or player reasonability.

nWoD largely solves this by making combat more streamlined, far more structured, and easier to understand the cause and effect.

What I like of Apocalypse World is that their social system is: If this happens, this is how you can get screwed. (Bonus: And you get to choose.) This is how every system works.

What I like about Fate Core is that each system that degrades your character is exactly the same. Physical damage is really "negative physical effects". Social damage is really "negative social effects". (Mental, really, but for the conversation it can be both.)

So we have people who are not familiar with anything but non-social-combat systems worried about buy-in and player reasonability when I find the former is up to the game to provide, and the latter is up to staff to enforce.

Lithium

What @Thenomain says here is key:

Player Buy In, /and/ accountability is important.

Nobody has said that social skills should change core concepts of your character with just a single dice roll.

Nobody has.

Except the people who are advocating against Social Combat. The ones who try to strawman the conversation by saying that because someone has so much dice they should be able to break the rules.

No.

The rules state that social combat happens thusly, and so thus must follow.

Nobody has said that people have to RP typesex.

But people /do/ get seduced ALL THE TIME and end up sleeping with people they probably regret doing so, because either they're out of the moment, or they realize they've just shot the pooch when it comes to their current relationship.

By choosing to play a system, people should abide by that system, or any house rules made to that system.

It doesn't matter if I think someone is laughably silly, because /I/ am not my character. Nobody is. We barely remember our own lives let along someone else's.

By saying that your 'player agency' is more important than the rules, you are saying you are not a team player and unwilling to abide by those rules.

If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. Same applies to rulesets.

In most any game system I can think of social combat isn't a roll of one and done, you've got to wear their willpower down, you've got to use tools and tricks and manipulations. Even in oWoD you had to make them burn through all their willpower iirc.

Nothing is stopping you from taking your character out of the situation, but if you /choose/ to remain in it, abide by the rules in place. RP out the consequences, let the character grow in response to their environment and actions rather than dictating a completely one sided story due to 'Player Agency'.

Everyone's fun is equal.

Misadventure

A side note on manipulation, social inputs, and player agency. I've had a lot of experience with Players whose characters have a hair trigger temper, yet you couldn't do anything to trigger it against the Players will, even purposefully creating the same situations that set them off.

I do not want to accommodate this sort of thing.

faraday

Just once, it would be nice to have this debate without folks rampantly demonizing and attacking the other side.

Not everyone who favors social combat is a Creepy McCreeper who wants to go around intimidating or typef—-ing everyone they meet.

Not everyone who favors agency over their character’s thoughts and actions is a selfish sore loser who doesn’t know how to play by the rules.

There are extremists on both sides, yes, and to dismiss that with statements like “literally no one is saying...” is a cheap shot way of undercutting legitimate concerns.

But even so, the majority of players fall somewhere in the middle. Wouldn’t it be nice for a change to look for common ground and ways to compromise instead of flaming each other?

Lol wait... I forgot where I was for a second. Never mind. Carry on. I’ll be at the bar.

peasoupling

I guess I'd feel more at ease if my character sheet was 20 pages long and I had 20+ social fighting merits at my disposal.

Thenomain

@lithium said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Nobody has said that social skills should change core concepts of your character with just a single dice roll.

I do want to say one thing but want it to be clear up-front that I'm not saying this to be contrary.

Apocalypse World can change your character entirely based on a single roll.

But here are the things:

You decide to roll it.
You decide to roll it knowing exactly what the risks are.
The game hammers over and over again that you are playing to see what happens.
You ultimately decide whether or not the roll changes the character.

It's a game for people like @Bobotron, where something horrific can happen without your explicit say-so, but it keeps the player in the pilot's seat at all times.

Here are the game's rules:

When you try to seduce, manipulate, bluff, fast-talk, or lie to someone, tell them what 
you want to do, give them a reason, and roll+hot <2d6 + your Hot stat>. For NPCs: On a 
10+, they'll go along with you, unless or until some fact or action betrays the reason you 
gave them. On a 7-9, they'll go along with you, but they need some concrete assurance, 
corroboration, or evidence first. Fir PCs: On a 10+, do both. On a 7-9, choose 1:
* If they go along with you, they mark experience.
* If they refuse, erase one of their stat highlights <bonus for succeeding in a stat roll> 
  for the remainder of the session.
What they do is up to them.
On a miss, for either NPCs or PCs, be prepared for the worst.

Seducing someone, here, means using sex to get them to do what you want, not (or not 
just) trying to get them to fuck you.

Asking someone straight to do something isn't trying to seduce or manipulate them. To 
seduce or manipulate an NPC, the character needs leverage, a reason: sex, or a threat, 
or a promise, something that the character can really do that the victim really wants or 
really doesn't want.

Absent leverage, they're just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, 
decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.

The assurance that the NPC needs should directly address the leverage the character is 
using. The leverage is sex? The assurance should be sexual. The leverage is violence? 
"Just promise you won't hurt me."

The whole process or needing and offering assurance can be explicit or implicit. Explicit: 
"'Okay, I'll let you through,' he says. 'Just promise you won't tell Keeler it was me.'" 
Implicit: "She takes your hand and nods toward the bed. 'After you,' she says."

When one player's character manipulates another, there's no need for special leverage. 
Instead, the manipulating character simply gets to offer her counterpart the carrot, the 
stick, or both. The carrot is marking experience, and the stick is erasing a stat hilight.

There. Boom. The game tells you that you do not have 100% control of your character, but you still retain agency.

I adore Apocalypse World because it's one of the very few RPGs I've ever read that will tell you how to play, and tell you that if you don't play it that way then you're not playing Apocalypse World and should play a different game.

This is something that has been done in games, and to players, in our hobby recently. Doing this takes time, but is absolutely worth it.

Bobotron

I've long wondered what, other than experience, you could give as a reward for being willing to fail, since this discussion always swings around to carrots needed to make people. Some thoughts...

XP. Natch.
A social 'win' in a future social conflict. Perhaps too powerful.
Extra 'tokens' for social bonuses or bidding (this is one I'm theorycrafting the most, since the social stuff I'm messing with is a token-bidding system. If you willingly fail, you get some extra tokens that you can spend on future social intrigue, above your stat-based maximum.)
Status (this one is the weakest option, as I can't find viable methods to do it even in the recognition system I stole from MET VtM)
Advantage (a reroll on a future die roll?)

Hrm.

Duntada

One of the things I liked with Numenera is that even in combat you can attack a person's mental pool with confusing chatter, fast talking, lies and all sorts of other things.

If you drain their mental pool you don't actually harm them any you just basically brain fry them so badly they can't keep up anymore and are effectively removed from the fight. They find somewhere to hide, stand around looking stupid, or believe whatever you were telling them. It lets you still be useful even in a fight as a social character by disabling bad guys.

And of course outside of combat you can fast talk and all that without it being an attack, but sometimes it is easier to just go ahead and bury someone in so much bullshit it drains their pools and you can blow right past them.

Thenomain

@bobotron

Several WoD games have used brownies/tix/etc. to great effect.

Bobotron

@thenomain

Right, but what's a good bennie that isn't crazy and unbalancing? I suppose that's in the design of each individual system.

@Duntada
That's also a facet of anything that uses the Cortex system, with Mental and Social Stress. I'm sure that those could give some ideas on adding to Social Conflict, but a lot of their 'end resolution' is the same: out of a fight/out of steam and thus, out of the scene, rather than 'trying to get a particular outcome' like we've been theorizing here.

The Sands

@lithium said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Nobody has said that social skills should change core concepts of your character with just a single dice roll.
Nobody has.
Except the people who are advocating against Social Combat. The ones who try to strawman the conversation by saying that because someone has so much dice they should be able to break the rules.

In fact when I've expressed concern about social combat and used examples for why I dislike the concept of 'mandatory social combat' the reply has 'but people can be manipulated'. You yourself tried to counter-argument that you would just make a character whose core concept is 'I can't be defeated in combat'.

Not once do I recall you (or any of the other people who seem strongly in the pro-social combat group) saying 'yes, that's probably not something social combat should be allowed to do'.

Bobotron

@the-sands

There's an obvious difference between 'people can be manipulated' and 'I have been tricked into killing my wife and unborn child'. We've stated multiple times in this thread that there are things that are right out and would require supernatural pushes (IE: someone killing their wife and their unborn child, for example), versus not needing supernatural pushes (being plied with money and favors, gotten drunk and talking through flattery, intimidated through promises of violence backed up by evidence that can be followed through on). HEll, I've said multiple times there should be a list of things social combat should not be able to accomplish.

Ganymede

@thenomain said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

It was incredibly basic, but I realize now that it goes to what @Sparks is saying: You can't make other people do something, but you can still gain information or hide information in a way that doesn't overwrite player's ability to respond.

Insofar as a Vampire game is concerned, that would make Vampires powerful in ways that the game, I don't think, wanted to make exclusive. As if they don't have enough benefits, they have powers that literally make you do what you don't want to do.

I like @Sparks idea, and I would have put a lot of that into the system I proposed, but I came to realize that it's somewhat contrary to what the designers of Vampire had in mind, I think, so I went back to the social combat model.

Still, it's a system in development.

The Sands

@bobotron said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

HEll, I've said multiple times there should be a list of things social combat should not be able to accomplish.

This is true. However, just about ever example given (I freely admit I might have missed some) of 'things social combat should not be able to accomplish' have been classified as such 'because they skeeve people out'. Not 'they seem to be excessive for the ability of social skills'. Honestly, if a character is somehow legitimately 'tricked' into killing his wife and child I don't have that much of an issue with it because I don't think it violates a reasonable core concept (it violates the concept of 'I'm untrickable' but I don't acknowledge that as reasonable). What I don't want is another character able to talk me into killing my wife and child because they asked me nicely and have a stupid high social pool (and I recognize now that people are saying that won't happen. I'm simply reiterating my concern since it appears unclear).

I would also like to say that I think there needs to be something more coming from the social character than 'I'm rolling dice to trick your character'. There has to be some kind of detail as to how you are tricking my character. You want to argue that you don't have to do that in physical combat, but actually you do, at least to some extent. If I dive behind a bar and take cover you don't just get to roll to hit me. You've got to provide at least some minimal detail for how you're going to take another shot at me (and before anyone screams 'strawman' I'm not saying that everyone is demanding that social combat work that way. I'm simply once again specifying what I think are valid requirements and why).

Bobotron

@the-sands
I've mentioned just outright banning skeevy concepts, true, because often they're the thing that people roll a lot more for social stuff. As far as other things to ban, I honestly don't have a concrete list at this point. I think the biggest things revolve around changing core conceits UNLESS the player is willing to lean that way, like your example of being willing to be tricked into killing your wife and child. Defining those core conceits is the difficult prospect though. And I've stated, multiple times in this thread alone, that 'hurr durr Imma trick you +roll' is not an intended goal, at least from my standpoint. RP is needed (even if they're not the best social player, as long as they put forth the EFFORT to TRY, then they get to use their social guns), and some things just wouldn't trigger social-fu anyway (mostly those core conceits).

The Sands

@ganymede said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Insofar as a Vampire game is concerned, that would make Vampires powerful in ways that the game, I don't think, wanted to make exclusive. As if they don't have enough benefits, they have powers that literally make you do what you don't want to do.

I'm sorry. I'm a bit confused. It sounds as though you are worried that vampires would have an ability that mortals don't. Isn't that the whole point of a Discipline, that it's a power that exceeds the boundaries set on normal skills? For that matter isn't that why the character is a vampire and now just 'a mortal with an eating disorder'?

Now if you want to argue that the discipline is unbalanced in the setting you're proposing that's a whole separate issue and can be addressed through modification or removal of the discipline, but saying it's problematic because vampires get it and mortals don't is...odd.

Thenomain

@ganymede

The designers of Vampire have repeatedly gone on record saying that social stats were never intended to be used on other characters.

I don’t know what recent game design philosophies are in the Onyx Path or LARP circles for CoD, but this is the core system that we are still dealing with for that particular game line.

Bobotron

@thenomain

CoD doesn't have a LARP circle. By Night Studios primarily focuses on 1) using Status on other characters, be they NPCs or PCs, and 2) having people be reasonable during Social Challenges, there's no special mechanics for social on NPCs vs. Social on PCs. It's Boons, Negative Status which has mechanical backing, Social Challenges if you're a reasonable player, and Boons.