Posts made by Lain

Does Game of Thrones still qualify as "good TV" in Season 7?

inb4 it's not TV, it's HBO

I really enjoyed this week's episode of Rick and Morty. This "redemption of Jerry" arc could be very interesting, and they're doing a decent job at the characterization.

@faraday said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Just an FYI, social skills are abilities. Also, you can't regulate a character's knowledge without regulating their thoughts and attempted actions.

Nobody's arguing that social skills aren't abilities. What we're debating is how they should work. I don't see a lack of knowledge/ability as a lack of autonomy. Saying my character can't cast spells because they're not a magician or do brain surgery because they're not a surgeon isn't depriving me of autonomy over my character's thoughts and actions.

The inability to resist being manipulated/coerced is definitionally a lack of autonomy. Since you want to play autonomous characters, maybe you should use your points toward that end. At least, in cases where the rules measure autonomy in some form or other.

There are systems that do not in any way measure autonomy, and in those systems it would make sense for essentially nobody to be meaningfully deceived or coerced, but that would be boring af tbqh. I just don't see why your PC should have some kind of magical plot armor against being played like a tool that NPCs do not.

@faraday said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Here's the thing: unless you also want to get rid of Mental stats, they already do. As an example of someone who wants to crack a neighbor's WiFi password, if they have Computer 0 in game but Computer 2 out of game, they might know OOC to download Kali Linux. This, by no stretch of the imagination, grants the player license to tell the ST, "Okay, so my guy downloads Kali Linux."

To me, there's a difference between regulating a character's abilities, which is like every stat system ever, and regulating their thoughts and attempted actions. I can try to punch Russel Crowe in the face. That doesn't mean I'm going to succeed, or do any appreciable damage even if I surprise him.

It's okay if someone doesn't see a difference there, but I do.

Just an FYI, social skills are abilities. Also, you can't regulate a character's knowledge without regulating their thoughts and attempted actions. Computer 0 characters don't think "I should download Kali Linux" when they don't know the WiFi password. Computer 2+ people just might.

There is a difference between social skills and mental skills, but the difference isn't material for the purpose of autonomy over your character's decisions. A character's mental faculties to no small extent determine how they go about things. Social characters get other people to act in their interest. Mental characters do the math and engineer their way out of it in some way.

If you want to make other people do your bidding, use your points thusly or accept that your neckbeard is going to be kind of patchy.

@faraday said in Eliminating social stats:

Personally, I have a basic fundamental objection to having dice tell me how to play my character.

Here's the thing: unless you also want to get rid of Mental stats, they already do. As an example of someone who wants to crack a neighbor's WiFi password, if they have Computer 0 in game but Computer 2 out of game, they might know OOC to download Kali Linux. This, by no stretch of the imagination, grants the player license to tell the ST, "Okay, so my guy downloads Kali Linux."

Should a player decide to do this with their Computer 0 character, they are pretty much already in the wrong. However, the ST can choose to be magnanimous by allowing the player to roll to see if their character knows this information. If they fail that roll, they don't know how to go forward; and no, you don't get to reroll. Also if you get a dramatic failure due to your -3 dice penalty your character downloads and runs definitelynotmalware.exe onto his Windows 10 Botnet Edition installation and it destroys it, rendering the machine unusable until the operating system is reinstalled. Finally, he doesn't know how to do this reinstallation because of his already-failed Computer roll on this exact topic.

Such is similar with players who want to use some subtle emotional ploy with their Manip 1 Persuasion 0 character. It almost definitely doesn't work. This is precisely why we have rolls. So yes, you can RP the specifics how you want, but if you fail the Manip + Persuasion vs Resolve + Composure roll, you are obligated to make your character say/do something stupid. Something unpersuasive. Something mildly embarrassing or just cringey. Why? Because he sucks at this. No, you don't get to evade it. You don't get to find some cleverly tactful way to make spaghetti fall out of your character's pockets. They just fuck up or sperg out. Period.

Similarly, your Resolve 2 Composure 2 character doesn't get to go on some ride-or-die shit when someone points a gun in his face and he loses the Intimidation roll. What actually happens is he crumples. He puts his hands up and his eyes go wide. He gives the thug his wallet and begs to be allowed to keep his ID. If it's a dramatic loss (the thug gets 5+ successes on him), he might literally shit himself. He doesn't teleport behind you, and he doesn't unsheathe his katana. He just acts like a weak-ass bitch, in public.

If you want more autonomy over your character you're just going to have to spend your finite point-spend resources on making them more behaviorally resilient. If you want them to be able to make other characters do what he wants, you'll have to also spend your finite point-spend resources on extroverted social skills like Persuasion, Intimidation, etc.

Saying that your socially awkward character can make some Tyrion Lannister power play is like saying my Firearms 0 character can snipe your Tyrion Lannister character from 3mi away. The correct answer is: just no.

@Ominous said in Eliminating social stats:

My coding is "Baby's First C/C++ Program" level of skill. I can make a tic-tac-toe game that can play 2, 1, or 0 human players, and that is the apex of my skill.

Unfortunate. The kind of things you brought up can be done in surprisingly low-tech ways. Just run an IRC server and let people use /nick <charnamehere> as it's appropriate. Ban people who abuse it based on their IP address. You can do a lot with very straightforward tools.

@Ghost said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain
My vampire beats your vampire, because my vampire's PB is Dolph Lundgren and your vampire's PB is Russell Brand.
I mean, clearly, that seems fair to me.

Actually, my epenis is bigger than yours because my mall katana is cooler than yours; that's why my vampire > your vampire tbqh.

@Ominous said in Eliminating social stats:

@Ganymede We need more battle to the death quiz shows on MUs.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

@Ominous I agree. It's outdated. So let's make a MU that breaks these kinds rules, man.

My coding is "Baby's First C/C++ Program" level of skill. I can make a tic-tac-toe game that can play 2, 1, or 0 human players, and that is the apex of my skill.

Most of these systems can be "coded" without much effort. Or you can just run an IRC server and ban people who abuse the /nick <namehere> command. A lot of these things can be implemented with surprisingly low-tech methods.

@Ghost said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain

My vampire beats your vampire, because my vampire's PB is Dolph Lundgren and your vampire's PB is Russell Brand.

I mean, clearly, that seems fair to me.

My e-penis is longer than yours because my mall katana is longer than yours. That's why I autowin this RPG vampire fight.

@Ominous I agree. It's outdated. So let's make a MU that breaks these kinds rules, man.

@Ganymede I write software for a living, but I think it would be bad roleplaying on my part to have my Int 2 Computer 0 World of Darkness character conveniently know how to crack people's WiFi passwords just because I do. No matter how useful that would be in certain uhm, circumstances. :^)

@Ominous

One of my suggestions has been to move more towards troupe style play, where no one person controls a PC. Instead they are all on a roster and, when you log on, you can grab any character not currently played and take them out for a few scenes. This would be a completely different paradigm than what we have now, and things like IC secrets also being OOC secrets wouldn't be a thing.

I love alternative approaches to RPing, so if this were available on a MU* with a real userbase on it, I'd do it. Also, I saw you ninjaing a few things but the content of this response remains.

I'm also aware of the D&D thinking on this matter, where gamism is the thing to do, but this doesn't work as well on any kind of RPG that isn't about killing monsters and collecting loot, and frankly, we have MMORPGs and Diablo for that now. IC/OOC distinction is important in spoken/written RPGs like tabletop RPGs or MU*s because they caulk a hole that World of Warcrack simply cannot: the literary-narrative one.

@Ominous said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain I ninja'd you. I corrected my misuse of NPC.

It's fine, don't sweat it.

@Ominous said in Eliminating social stats:

First, I think the easiest solution is to make it a standard rule that social skills can't be used to initiate TS. At most the skills can make a person swoon or get a kiss out of them. Unless your game is some sort of Fantasy or Horror theme that has succubus archetypes that feed on sex, or it's a game about prostitution or something, there really isn't much reason to allow it. That will hopefully ease some of the concerns about people abusing the skills to get their rocks off.

@Rook

That is somewhat similar to my idea of letting social stats grant access to resources. The resources in your example being simple with Influence and Resistance.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

I think part of the point of social stats is to deprive targets of the exact kind of agency you describe, though. Let's say I want to use Intimidate in a WoD game. My character is annoyed with someone, so they decide to rob them. He pulls out his knife, waves it in the guy's face, and says, "Gimme all yer money!" with the intention of compelling him to do just that.

This is also a good argument for using resources instead of dice rolling. In this case, the knife wielder shouldn't even need to roll. The threat is already mechanically enforced and can be acted on. If the player of the threatened NPC feels threatened (the wielder likely has the advantage in any potential combat), then they will have their PC act accordingly. The issue is that the threatened PC,i f the social sort, needs access to resources to counter said intimidation. For instance, if the threatened PC is the local crime lord, he needs to be able to say 'You better be good enough with that to finish the job, because if you ain't, my boys will find you and give you a personal demonstration on how to finish the job. If you just scram, maybe I will forget that this whole thing even happened.' Then he/she needs access to the resources to be able to back it up - the ability to command NPC thugs, resources he/she can offer to PCs as a bounty to kill the threatener, etc.

The thing is, when discussing IC intimidation we are not discussing whether or not "the player of the the threatened NPC" feels intimidated, but whether or not the NPC (or PC) feels intimidated, which means that there needs to be a system where a player's character can get intimidated even if the player is not. Tying the character's emotional state to the player's emotional state is a terrible conflation of IC and OOC. Tying a character's interpersonal ability to their player's interpersonal ability would be comparable to tying a character's Strength rating to how much that player can bench.

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

Maintaining a player of "agency" is negative when used like this, but it is positive and important when you have a player trying to use Intimidate or Dominate to get into someone else's pants or skirt. And for all the times I've had some player punk out of a legitimate social roll -- which happens regardless of whether the stats exist -- I'd rather that happen than to hear that someone rolled to seduce an unwilling player's character, and then had that enforced by staff who were "just following the rules."

As an improv performer, I'd frown at the douchebag who acts inappropriately to intimidation, but I'd seriously beat the fuck out of anyone breaking the cardinal rule of "don't be a fucking sexual predator."

I definitely see where you're coming from, with players having an interest in being able to avoid entering some weirdo's magical realm, but wouldn't it be preferable to just ban magical realm shit without suppressing the import of social roles in basically any other context, than it would be to handwave social stats completely?

EDIT:

@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:
I think part of the point of social stats is to deprive targets of the exact kind of agency you describe, though. Let's say I want to use Intimidate in a WoD game. My character is annoyed with someone, so they decide to rob them. He pulls out his knife, waves it in the guy's face, and says, "Gimme all yer money!" with the intention of compelling him to do just that.

We do our roll of dice, and my guy wins; the target is intimidated. Now, obviously, the point of intimidation is to compel someone to do something -- or refrain from doing something -- they otherwise wouldn't because they're scared of you. In this case, the point would be to make him fork over his cash and then act scared and maybe piss his pants or something. It would be to make him bend the knee, so to speak, and act like he's scared of getting stabbed.

That's one of the major reasons I'm considering eliminating social stats.

Sure, you roll, the other guy rolls, you win... and then what? Did you scare the target shitless? Is the way they're responding adequately scared? What if you think they're kinda meh about it but their player thinks that's just how the PC shows fear? What if they recover in the next pose, is that too early? Are you supposed to scare the Elder by glaring at him, you neonate? What about in the next scene, should there be a lingering effect?

Sure, various systems and mechanics attempt to address the scope of social stats but I've just...never been satisfied with them. The primary issue is that they're typically pretty complicated - but unlike punching (which happens rarely since violent confrontations aren't an everyday thing), social interactions take place constantly, so if it's not easy to use such a system then it won't be... which may be worse than not having one at all.

I think it's pretty self-explanatory what a social roll entails in most cases. If your character loses an Intimidation roll, that character just got punked, and is going to act like a little bitch in the most relevant capacity. Putting his hands on his face, taking up less space and kind of curling into himself, resorting to de-escalation methods, appeals to sympathy and maybe even outright begging. They go into damage control mode.

If some player can't make their character respond appropriately to losing a social roll they're just bad at roleplaying and should probably be consequenced if not outright banned.

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

@ThatOneDude said in Eliminating social stats:

But couldn't you /deprive agency/ with physical stats? IE: I grapple you and force you to stay when you want to leave. Or using force/violence I could make your PC do something they normally wouldn't. That's why to me it just makes sense to have a like for like system, that has like attack/defense. Then follow up with the "if you don't feel good with what's happening then fade to black or whatever."

By "agency," I mean intent and thought, rather than actual ability. As mentioned by another, grappling me is different than using some power or social ability to prevent me from resisting. You could physically force me to back down, or do it via power. I personally don't mind someone depriving me of agency, but it is a sticking point for others due to past histories, creepers, etc.

I think part of the point of social stats is to deprive targets of the exact kind of agency you describe, though. Let's say I want to use Intimidate in a WoD game. My character is annoyed with someone, so they decide to rob them. He pulls out his knife, waves it in the guy's face, and says, "Gimme all yer money!" with the intention of compelling him to do just that.

We do our roll of dice, and my guy wins; the target is intimidated. Now, obviously, the point of intimidation is to compel someone to do something -- or refrain from doing something -- they otherwise wouldn't because they're scared of you. In this case, the point would be to make him fork over his cash and then act scared and maybe piss his pants or something. It would be to make him bend the knee, so to speak, and act like he's scared of getting stabbed.

However, by giving players "agency" over their characters, you allow them to cop out of the real outcomes of the dice rolls, by coming up with cute and interesting ways to evade the point of the rolls at hand, and ignore the context that their characters are put in:

"Oh, my character is just soooooooo intimidated by this that his fight-or-flight response triggers and he comes at you. Roll initiative."