Posts made by Arkandel

For starters I completely differentiate between social supernatural powers and what we're discussing here generally. Before we can have something like Majesty bypass conflict through stats we need to first design how that conflict normally goes.

In other words Majesty jumps ahead from Step #1 straight to Step #6, but we first need to know what each of those steps is normally and how it's crossed.

For another I disagree with @Groth in the way that I hate character control being taken from me; I mean I do, in the same way that I'd be mildly irritated by someone beating up my character if I had a different story/idea of his story progress, but that's fine - it comes with playing with other people. The unpredictability isn't a drawback as long as it's treated correctly by all participants starting with me; if my immediate mindset initially isn't that I just lost something then it's all good.

No, what I mind is if scenes can't flow properly because we keep having to interrupt their momentum to do dice stuff, chat OOC to debate mechanics and call staff in when we don't know/can't agree how something works. That shit kills my interest in a scene. A social system needs to be very, very fast-paced.

For example:

My character, Joe, is trying to fast-talk @Ganymede's Jane into letting him get through to the private back room.

I pose the social attempt, then do "+social/fasttalk Jane".

Ganymede sees the attempt ("Joe is trying to fasttalk you. Type '+social/defend Joe' followed by a modifier from -5 to +5. 0 is the default if you don't assign one").

Since Joe did something mildly clever by bringing up Jane's combat prowess as a backhanded compliment ("come on, if I misbehave you can kick my ass easily, we both know that") the attempt is given a defensive -2 modifier making it easier to succeed.

Ganymede runs "+social/defend Joe -2", sees the result (but I don't, I don't know the outcome) then poses accordingly.

The roleplay continues. There's near zero delay.

I am completely fine with this system.

Since we're not that far from 2017 now, and since with that come New Year's Resolutions... I will never not post this.

@lordbelh said in Social Conflict via Stats:

The problem with the Doors system, to whoever mentioned that, is that it was utterly in favor of the aggressor.

See, in a table-top setting that isn't so bad. It works for the same reason combat does - things aren't meant to be too nuanced or realistic, especially since it's written to be used on NPCs; the idea is that physical combat must resolve. You can't have defences too high because then no one would win in a reasonable amount of time, which for combat is a complete downer. You need a winner and a loser! So these mechanics are biased toward declaring an outcome either way.

In social interactions not so much! You can absolutely have debates where it's utterly impossible to change the other person's mind... and if anyone has doubts about this, read this MSB thread. Read almost any thread. Or argue politics with that stubborn old uncle of yours who thinks Trump will fix the world. You can have a great argument, articulate it perfectly and yet still fail to convince the other person... simply because they refuse to budge.

And that should be fine, too. Unlike physical combat there should be topics where you just can't make much progress at all because it's a core tenet of the other character, or they just don't like yours or any number of things. And the opposite of course; maybe my character has Strong Beliefs but he's a sucker for a hot chick, so when she comes onto him he crumbles.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Social Conflict via Stats:

And people don't like it when they don't have full autonomy over their character. So you will never get that relatively easy ruleset until the players stop bitching about not being in complete control of their character's choices/actions/etc.

Absolutely. That's why I keep repeating the same thing (so forgive me one more try ) - in order for a social stats system to have a chance of being culturally accepted and actually used, as opposed to being merely forced on people, it must offer something we don't currently have.

In other words it can't just be an addon to the way we already play in scenes. That's a disadvantage then. It's interrupting scenes which already flow a certain way with extra delays for OOC conversations, dice rolls, looking up tables, debating mechanics, etc.

What it must do is make things better than what we are doing now. And not just better because 'whelp, we are using social stats now' - that's the goal, not the means. We must answer the question 'how is this making things more fun than before? convincingly.

I like it, @Lisse24 .

One suggestion: Even if the Initiator's attack fails, the Initiator shouldn't be made aware of it (perhaps not without an Empathy roll); giving people rope to hang themselves should be a valid social strategy.

@Coin said in Social Conflict via Stats:

It's also a bad example within context because we're talking about social (and in a way, mental) stats. So either the PLAYER needs to have a compelling argument, or you can have the dice decide who has the better argument, otherwise, why both rolling? And if you're not gonna roll, why bother with the stat? Just dump it all in physicals...

And yet the exact same paradigm exists in many systems for violent encounters. Take the CofD for instance, you have a different negative modifier for brawl than you do against melee and then again than you do against bullets; some characters take more damage from some sources than they do for others.

Notice also that while physical attributes are far easier to quantify and generalise than social ones we still have to consult fairly extensive tables with different modifiers; a broadsword does more harm than a dagger. A rifle does more harm than a pistol but it's slower. Reinforced clothing is worse than body armor but penalises you less.

I don't think then that we're being inconsistent in applying modifiers to social encounters. The only difference is we can't generalise as easily or in advance because there are too many nuances to possibly stick in a table. My assertion is we let the defender do so; if your character is hitting all the right notes I give the attempt a bonus. If they are making a bad offer I assign a penalty.

It sounds reasonable.

@Ganymede I was talking about mundane attributes here. I'm not factoring in supernatural powers which can accelerate or bypass entire stages of social interaction.

Let's get basic stats working first.

@Pyrephox said in Social Conflict via Stats:

How exactly do we define "posing quality"?

It would need to be an individual definition. Because there can be no universal one.

The code doesn't know (and can't) how your character is predisposed toward anything. What I presented as atheism/religiousness can be anything - how easily a pretty girl can manipulate him, how she's particularly hostile toward authoritative individuals, how impressionable they are to being complimented, etc.

All of those things can change how you IC react to social manoeuvring. And since only you can know, it stands to reason you should be able to assign modifiers to the attempt - both positive and negative ones - because it absolutely should affect your character's defense - if the other person appealed to one of your weak spots that should count. If they rub your character the wrong way it, too, should matter.

That's what 'posing quality' means in this context.

@Coin It looks like nothing to me.

(Can someone move it, please? )

How are we not talking about how fucking amazing Westworld is, like, all the time?

Every one of the last three episodes was the best one so far... it's going from strength to strength.

So what do you think is going on? (I propose a 2-day spoiler-free period after each new episode - so we can discuss them on Wednesdays since they air on Sundays).

@Lisse24 Exactly, and that's what I meant earlier about having to quantify social 'damage' (and we probably want to shy away from that term if we want to avoid people treating it as a negative thing).

To put it in perspective let's use real life for a second - although obviously there are huge differences between that and depictions on games, I think I can still make my point.

Any given fight can change your life - every single time you get punched someone can poke your eye out, pull a shoulder out of its socket, cause internal bleeding... and that's without counting weapons. With weapons all bet are off, at that point chances are your life is about to change especially if you lose.

But how often have you sat with someone and had a chat after which any dramatic (hell, even significant) changes in perspective took place? You have conversations every day, arguments, debates... when's the last time any of us sat with someone whose political views are different and caused a tangible, somewhat permanent shift? Not that often, right? But maybe if you continue to sit down and have these chats until a different perspective is hammered into you there could be a more noticeable shift - that's how people get indoctrinated into cults or educated at school after all. Not in bursts but in degrees, normalising their behaviour based on their environment and the stimuli they receive from it.

That's what I'd like to see in RP.

I'm an Carthian atheist and you're playing a Sanctified. I sit down with your character and he/she 'wins' the religious argument? The IC result could be some more respect for you people. You win another of those? I understand better the role you play and maybe am a bit more sympathetic toward the overall cause. Another? I could be convinced to take minor action - nothing that could do my causes damage but giving you a freebie piece of information maybe - to help you guys out. And so on - each of those arguments being an entire scene.

If I started out as a devout Catholic already interested in the Sanctified though it'd go significantly faster. You could entice me to help out in the first scene, for instance.

That's how I imagine social stats should be used. There's inertia in people's views, different levels of 'defence' against gaps in opinions - and somehow in all that posing quality should matter. For example we should be trusted to assign modifiers to our own resistances; if you just made a great IC argument I'll give you a +2 bonus against my own character's convictions. If you just threatened I'll burn in hell if I don't help you, here's a -3 for your trouble. That sort of thing.

There must be cooperation from both sides for this to work out. There's no way it'll function if someone is OOC negatively predisposed toward it or is using the system as a sledgehammer ("here's my roll, now you want me!").

Social attributes must facilitate RP if they are to be used in RP. They need to enrich it.

@lordbelh said in Social Conflict via Stats:

Because I can't recall coming across it on a MU I played on, ever.

And imagine if people expect it's okay to do that using physical means which are at least obvious and the intent is right there for all to see - no one will ever think you had the other player's best intentions in mind to make things interesting for them when you decided to make their character a paraplegic or kill them outright.

But we have seen, at least in the more extreme ranges of the spectrum, folks who didn't seem to hesitate for a second before trying to (and insisting they could, for your own good) change your character just as dramatically or make them borderline unplayable by changing their core personality with a roll. What do you mean you're a Carthian? No, I just convinced you - you're a traitor now. See, isn't that more fun than what you had in mind before? You're welcome.

An issue we're dealing with here, unfairly or not, is that the roadblocks to using social stats convincingly in RP are littered with idiots who've done a fairly good job putting the problems we haven't solved in front of the advantages we'd gain from rolling them more frequently.

Idiots trying to strong-arm people into TS? Check. Fools trying to change someone's entire view of the world in one bar scene? Check. Jerks pointlessly brute-forcing social rolls down everyone's throats just because they can? Check.

On top of that we all have our pet peeves. For example mine has to do with politics, and although I probably shouldn't feel that way I can't separate the words on my screen from the intent of the roll which follows them; someone coming to my character with a ludicrous deal ("if you vote for me against your own interests I'm gonna give you this cookie") and lots of dice irks me. And the reason I shouldn't be bothered by it is that the same crappily posed attempt on the physical plane ("I'm'a gonna punch you good!") wouldn't sound half as bad.

I think what'll make a system work isn't incentives. It will however need to give us something we don't currently have - in other words in any social system we care to propose we - the players - must get toys to play with we don't want to be without. Perhaps an overall overhaul of politics wrapped around the use of such attributes with resources, allies and contacts baked into it. But there must be a reason to make players want this in their scenes, and XP ain't it.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Social Conflict via Stats:

Then, maybe whoever gives in first GETS the social resources that were 'bet' during the conflict? And in our game in particular, there's no way we'd be able to let someone use a player on player social conflict vehicle to make someone do something permanently binding - such as swear an oath or sign a writ.

Alright, fair enough... let's keep going though!.

So for example you're saying players can't go too far in claiming ground after winning a social encounter, and that's fair, but how do you quantify how far they can go?

And how do we quantify social 'defense'? For example if I'm a boxer everyone has a roughly equal chance of punching me - my defense is about equal, it's only their offense that matters. But maybe I'm playing a religious person meeting with a known atheist, how is that handled?

And speed. That must be a given. @Bobotron mentioned it earlier and I really liked the idea. We're in a scene, I don't want us to take fifteen minutes between poses just to figure out if my asking you something IC will succeed or not, or its momentum has already gone to hell at that point (especially if on your next pose you make a counter-offer and... fifteen minutes again).

@Ganymede said in Social Conflict via Stats:

Enforcing them?

I mean, nWoD 2E has a very robust system. People just choose to ignore it sometimes. Most players go along with it, but some do not. If staff would step in and mud-stomp the cheaters, that'd be great.

Read up, though!

The problem isn't enforcement - you can have players perfectly willing to use social conflict rules and it's still inconvenient to do so, unclear how it works (the last time I asked on the vampire channel with multiple staff there how a basic thing worked it took a while going through books to come up with 'it depends'), and slow.

These things need tweaking if we ever want it to be common place enough that it becomes part of gaming culture and a natural thing people do in their everyday scenes.

@Kanye-Qwest Yes, we all agree on this!

But how?

TV show memes.

God fucking dammit, it's THE NEXT DAY. I'm already bombarded on web sites and social media with image memes about last night's The Walking Dead and Westworld's episodes which are impossible to avoid because by the time I realise I'm not supposed to be reading them I've already read them.

I get it if it's been half a week but it's not even twenty four hours.

@surreality Who gets to +poseclear?

For instance you start a scene with Theno and you're having fun until I pop in there. HI U GUYS! I pose a couple of times then... shit, look at the time! +poseclear.

And your log is fucked.

@Pyrephox said in Social Conflict via Stats:

And that is where, IMO, a lot of games really fall down. Social stats/skills don't need to work on PCs, IF they work on NPCs and work in meaningful, predictable, usable ways.

Then they need to be cheaper, because physical skills work on both NPCs and PCs juuuust fine.

And in my experience, a lot of staff balk at even letting PCs use social skills/stats against NPCs in any meaningful way. You're far more likely to get a "no, you can't do that" regarding social maneuvering against NPCs than you are if you say, "I'm going to beat him up." Which renders social skills doubly useless.

That's a staff failure, not a systemic one.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Social Conflict via Stats:

I'm confused as to why social combat should not use social stats.

Physical combat uses physical stats. If you build your pc as a combat beast, the understood tradeoff is that things relying on the OTHER stats, the ones you shanked to become a combat beast, are going to go much less great for you.

The argument isn't why they shouldn't be used - I don't think anyone is saying that - but how. And some of the reasons that complicate the matter are these:

1. Even combat scenes are annoying; they take too long. In the nWoD a fight can easily take over an hour, often considerably more than that. There are all sorts of tables to look up, rules to argue, the roll-then-pose sequence is time-consuming, etc. Now consider how far more rare they are than social encounters, which account for most of the scenes in a game. If the system isn't super streamlined to use it'd be a huge pain in the ass.

2. It's not as easy to quantify social damage compared to physical damage. You have 10 hit points so if I inflict 11 hit points I knock you out... but what about your alliance to Bob? How much do I need to inflict to make you change your mind? How much changing does that accomplish? Do you hate Bob now that I scored a critical hit or just have doubts? It's far more of a gray area.

I agree on the premise that social stats need to matter as much as physical ones, the question now is how.