@sparks For me personally, I'd love to see how a system like Arx's clue system is made. (Just the displaying/tracking/sharing, not the automated investigation system, etc.) I don't know if that would be too complex for the tutorial, but it fascinates me.
Posts made by Pyrephox
-
RE: Make Evennia 'more accessible' - ideas?
-
RE: Make Evennia 'more accessible' - ideas?
@sparks This would be incredibly helpful.
-
RE: Do you read the book(s)?
@mietze Hahaha! This has always been my problem in D&D 3.5/Pathfinder. Once you get past level...3 or so, I forget what half my feats and powers do, or that I have them. And oh god, spells.
Note cards help, but not as much as they probably should.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
Oh for fucks' sake.
If you expect a social system to map out every possible use of the system under every possible circumstance including whatever whackadoodle scenarios you invent specifically to try to break the system, then no, you will never find any that does that, because it's not physically possible to write that out, and if you did, no one would ever read it.
Game systems, every single game system, operate under the assumption that the players want to play the game, and not set out to try and act in bad faith at every possible level - bad faith actors should be expelled from the game. No system will ever stop an idiot from trying to abuse mechanics - that doesn't mean a system is useless or broken, it means that idiots shouldn't be humored.
Getting rid of social systems won't stop idiots, either. If you're trying to build a game under the premise of "how do we stop idiots from being idiots" then no matter what systems you use, you are doomed to failure.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@tinuviel Is it inaccurate? Or do you feel that it misrepresents the general resolution mechanics of the game such that it has no utility to illustrate that system to someone who has not previously read it? Is there an actual objection to the content or its accuracy, or is this just being pedantic for the sake of it?
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@tinuviel I mean, I'm at work, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty much cut and pasted from the core book, minus a few other explicit uses of the skill? Someone is welcome to look up the book if they've got it on them and check, though if they believe it to be inaccurate.
It is, at the very least, an accurate exemplar of how WoD's actual rules handle social contests in every version until the Doors system. (Also, did you know that WoD has rules for negotiation? Like actual rules, which walk you through how many concessions are given based on what rolls in an extended contest are won and lost, how long it takes, etc? It's pretty cool.)
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@faraday http://nwod.org/wiki/index.php/Intimidation_Skill
For your reading pleasure. It's not a full writeup, because wiki, and it's WoD not CoD, but it might at least help you get an idea of the applicable system involved.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@faraday "Feeling intimidated" is defined by the system. If the system says, "when a character successfully wins a contest of intimidation, X happens" then that is what happens, and if you don't like that, then don't play the game.
Part of agency is responsibility - don't play a game with rules you can't abide. And EVERY system (professional system, at least, not homebrew) that has social contests tends to define what the acceptable outcome of those contests are. Read the rules, know the rules, follow the rules.
Or explicitly house-rule the rules, or don't play the game. But once you agree to play a game rules as written, don't throw a fit because you don't like what the outcome of a social contest is.
EDIT: I suppose this is the core of my frustration with this endless round of arguments, because people are so damned generic about it. You can't say you like or don't like 'social systems' because there five billion of the damned things. And almost no one on the "no social stats/skills" side has been talking about /World of Darkness/ social skills/stats/processes and what specific problems they have with them in play. Possibly because I'm not sure anyone's actually read them - certainly, the situations they describe /cannot happen/ under most versions of the rules as written, without someone being ignorant or lying about the rules that exist.
You can't have a reasonable discussion about boogieman that people make up in their heads, and I don't think anyone has been advocating FATAL as a system here.
Now, there are issues even with the Doors system, as much as I love it. For example, when I ran an organization Doors attack for someone who wanted to get my character over a barrel by attacking his business interests, it was great fun, but one problem I DO think exists is there's no real way to 'fight back', so to speak. You can counter attack (open a Doors attack in return on an asset of the attacker, if your character knows about it), but there's not really anyway in that indirect conflict for your character to find out about it and shore up their defenses. The system is oriented towards PC -> NPC action, with the Doors as obstacles to overcome, and could probably use some tweaking to be more PC <-> PC friendly.
And in an earlier version of the intimidation contest in WoD, for example, an exceptional success on Intimidation made the target permanently intimidated. That was great when you're talking an NPC who might become a reoccuring character who gets cowed into helping the PCs. Not so much in PC <-> PC conflict. No game that I know of ever House Ruled it to something more reasonable.
-
RE: Do you read the book(s)?
Always. I'll often skip the fiction, and I won't say I REMEMBER it all but definitely I want to know the rules of the game I'm playing, even if I have to have the book with me for reference for the first several months. Particularly if it's with strangers - I'll get lazy with a tabletop with friends, sometimes. But I get twitchy about starting a game without having a solid grasp of the basic mechanics, and any special things I need to know about my character.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@arkandel It is a crime that one can only upvote a post once.
And yes, negotiation with the GM is an extremely common thing in many tabletop systems. In fact, more modern narrative based systems have even moved towards giving more of that power to PCs. Like, 13th Age, which does adventurous high fantasy, has 'backgrounds' instead of skills, and successfully rolling on a background allows a player to TELL the GM how their background is relevant to the situation, including to the point of changing the world around them - "I am a Former Captain of the Imperial Guard," (roll success) "so it's not hard for me to find one of the guards at the ball who owes me a favor, and he lets us crash the party, as long as we don't rat him out if we get caught."
Other systems, realizing that players do not have the skills of their characters, incorporate that into skill checks. For example, having a Tactics skill, where yes, the player can roll for their character to come up with a decent plan, and the GM can outline the plan they come up with and give them a bonus to actions to execute that plan. (Something will still go wrong, because GAME, but it won't be because a player is not the tactician that their character is). Even WoD has a merit called Common Sense that allows: "Whenever you are about to do something contrary to common sense, the Storyteller should alert you to how your potential action might violate practicality within the mundane realm (often an Intelligence roll). This is an ideal Merit if you are a novice player because it allows you to receive advice from the Storyteller concerning what you can and cannot do, and (even more importantly) what you should and should not do."
EDIT: The new edition of 7th Sea actually has you roll your successes/raises in advance of the scene, and then decide where/when to spend them throughout the scene, which I always thought was an interesting way to do it, too. You have a general idea of your competence to start out, but are not /exactly/ sure of WHAT you'll be competent at.
Because forcing players to rely only on their own skills when they want to play characters who are competent at things that they never had a chance to practice OOC is not a recipe for fun.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@ganymede No, Roz was correct about my intention. I do think that sort of policy directly encourages players who want to manipulate people OOC, which is one reason why I won't play a game that uses it.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@faraday Or it requires players to be kind to one another and recognize that not everyone is playing a character who matches with their skills. JanePlayer: "Hey, MaxPlayer, Jane would like to try to get Max to drop some juicy pillow talk about that secret project he's working on. She's got a fairly high Seduction and Charisma skill."
MaxPlayer looks at Max's social resist skills, winces: "Well, Max is pretty weak-willed, so she can probably get SOMETHING out of him, but I've previously played him as not being into the kind of persona Jane usually projects."
JanePlayer: "Huh. Could I roll Seduction and see if Jane could pick up what WOULD get him to drop his defenses?"
MaxPlayer: "Sure."
roll, moderate success
MaxPlayer: "Okay - he's more into the strong, forthright type. He doesn't like coy or innocent (or fake innocent). He's also probably not going to actually sleep with her any time soon - he's a slow moving kinda guy."
JanePlayer: "Darn. Okay, she doesn't want to put in THAT much time. But she could approach him boldly, ply him with alcohol, and get him to slip something, maybe?"
MaxPlayer: "It's possible! Let's roll and see if he's able to resist her charms."
roll
*roll
MaxPlayer's roll fails.
JanePlayer: "Yaaaaas."
MaxPlayer: "Damn. Okay, let's play it out for a bit, and he'll slip up and give her a juicy clue before he realizes that he's too drunk to be talking about this and runs away. Sound good?"
JanePlayer: "Sure."Now, does that assume two reasonable players? Yes. But a social mechanics system can facilitate that, especially if it can reward MaxPlayer in some way for 'playing along' AND reward JanePlayer for not pushing past MaxPlayer's comfort level even though she won the contest.
And (and this is a big part of it) if the game culture is very explicit about maturity being required between players, and removing players who can't or won't follow through with that. The people who try to abuse systems to creep, and the people who try to no sell other character's skills and abilities? They both need to be vigorously removed without hesitation. As long as you're wishy-washy about it, no matter WHAT you choose as your system, cheaters of both types will manage to squirm around in the cracks, ruining it for everyone.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@faraday I, at least, would be vastly more relieved to see that as a pose than to actually have someone type out what they think a stirring speech looks like. If for no other reason that there is nothing for other players or characters to DO in a 'stirring speech' moment, and there is nothing more OOC boring than posing your character listening to someone ramble on for rounds of poses trying to be inspirational.
Roll for effect, brief summary of things people can react to, move on to the fun parts for everyone.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@ganymede No worries! It's been an interesting discussion.
And, what I MIGHT suggest, if you don't want PCs to be able to affect each other directly with social skills/abilities, is to have robust mechanics for affecting NPCs in meaningful ways. Like, going back to the games up above, on Kingsmouth, social skills made your character better at controlling territory, and allowed indirect conflicts by screwing with NPCs within other territories. Likewise, with Arx, there's very little (that I know of) direct use of intimidation and seduction, despite those being skills, but they CAN be very useful in @actions and GMed scenes. Which gives people a sense of utility and power and agency, without needing to directly 'change' another PC's mind or actions.
However, if you do that, I'd say the systems need to be equally or more powerful than PCs' abilities to use physical or supernatural means to directly change other character's minds (or take them out of the conflict directly).
Still, that's only my thought on it.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@ganymede I fundamentally disagree, based on my own experiences. And since each of our experiences are subjective, and there's no objective data that I know of which supports either, I suppose this is where we break out the old 'agree to disagree' canard.
I will say, despite the flaws of both games, after playing Kingsmouth, I lost most of my interest in WoD MUs, because of their lack of support for social systems - and after playing Arx, I can't ever see myself going back to a WoD MU where social skills are just a meaningless XP sink and used for fueling supernatural powers. So I wouldn't be the target audience for a WoD game without social stats in the first place.
But, if one ever gets made, I hope that it's fun for the people who choose to play there, and that it does well!
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@ganymede It does not! And some people are always going to view /any possible loss/ for their character as a dire attack on their identity as a person. I've GMed for those players, who were lovely people, but just...not capable of viewing otherwise.
However, policy does effect how prevalent and supported a viewpoint is as well as what kind of players are attracted to your game - if you support a policy of, "We don't care if someone sexually harasses other players or sends them repeated graphic rape threats IC," then you're going to get a much higher percentage of players who are totally cool with sending other players graphic rape threats IC and sexually harassing others. Likewise, if your policy is, "IC social contests are contests between players," then you're going to get a higher percentage of players who have poor separation of IC/OOC to start out with. And a higher percentage of people who THINK they are far more seductive/charismatic/clever than they are, and who are not going to deal well with finding out otherwise.
You're also going to dissuade people who are uncomfortable with that sort of boundary crossing, and who prefer to be able to recognize that a character and a player can be good a very different things, without it being a judgement on the player. Now, if that's the playerbase you're looking for, that's fine - it's a good way to get it. If it isn't, then that's something to keep in mind.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@ganymede The lack of IC/OOC divide where there really SHOULD be some is, perhaps, at the root of the whole problem. And "If my character loses, I lose" is a cognition that doesn't spring out of nowhere. If you're actually saying as a game policy that social contests between characters will be resolved based on the skills of the players involved, then a loss for a character IS a loss for that player. Assuming they were trying their best to be a slick social maven, they've just been labeled a failure in that endeavor, possibly in a hugely public way on the game. Not their character, but THEM. So it certainly isn't going to help.
There is no absolute IC/OOC divide - ultimately, characters exist because we OOC want them to do so, and they attempt to do things that we OOC want them to do. But that doesn't mean that the entire concept of 'this is a character's skills and abilities' and 'this is a player's skills and abilities' needs to be tossed out.
If you want to cross the IC/OOC divide in a more productive way, then encourage collaboration in social systems, and make it rewarding for players who are perhaps more skilled or savvy regarding social interaction to HELP players who are less so succeed in directing their socially oriented characters.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@ganymede See, I don't think of the purpose of social maneuvering in games to be one player trying to out-think the other, and I hate that it defaults to that, instead of one character out-thinking the other. The relative abilities of the players themselves, or other metafactors such as who can guess GM thoughts best, should be irrelevant to a social contest between characters. I feel like the idea that it isn't contributes to a toxic OOC environment, and the phenomenon of 'if I lose, it makes me look bad as a player because I wasn't smart/clever/charismatic enough to pull off a win'.
EDIT: And what I mean in the above is that when you make an IC contest into a referendum on the relative abilities and skills of the PLAYERS involved, then it then becomes difficult to say someone should just 'roll with a loss', because the reason their character lost is BECAUSE they were less competent/less well-liked/less charismatic on an OOC level. It's hard to argue for a healthy separation between IC and OOC, when a contest /literally is/ about who is the more competent (or, often, more popular) player.
-
RE: Development Thread: Sacred Seed
I admit, even having taken several online Python courses, when I looked at the Arx code, I just sort of folded up and said, "NOPE." I still want to try it at some point, but that sort of overwhelmed reaction isn't, I think, at all unusual.
-
RE: Social Stats in the World of Darkness
@thenomain said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:
This Makes Me Think Of:
There are different types of LARPs. Some of them you rely on the dexterity of the player as the character, in others the combat is done via cards.
Because we MUSHers are essentially writers using a loose system to fill in the rest, then starting with a system where "making an impassioned speech" is rolled and not role-played will be...a challenge. How do you tickle the writer and role-player when you say, "You can do this, but you need to roll your success and write accordingly"?
A decent writer or roleplayer should be thrilled about that. That's standard procedure in using social skills among most people I know. Declare what you're using, what you're hoping to achieve (or however the system works), THEN roll, then pose out the result of your roll.
Do not pose first and roll afterwards. It is a recipe for inadvertant hilarity (which can and has kicked me in the butt a few times where I thought, "I've got like a three percent chance to fail this roll," and so busted out this great dramatic pose, roll just to confirm and...crit fail. Then you have to do a hasty, "Or that's what she MEANT to say, but instead she stands up, looks around, opens her mouth, and all that comes out is a frog-like croak. Her face turns desperately red, and with all those wonderful words running through her head, she flaps her hands a few times in desperation and then sinks back into her seat and covers her face in her hands." to save it.
Roll! Then pose. The fun roleplaying part is finding a way to make the roll make sense!