Posts made by Pyrephox

@SG said:

@Derp said:

If there were no social -stats-, then you could completely freeform it. But since in most systems that's not the case, it's important to give the people who invest in them a meaningful way to use them as well.

I agree, but the issue is many players have difficulty separating themselves from the characters they're playing. They often can't conceive of backing down from an intimidating goon, or being momentarily charmed by someone they loathe.

Of course, quite a bit of that is tied to poorly crafted poses, or people who don't sink points into something, but go all purple on everyone and expect the same results with the point costs.

I think freeforming social is the best way, at least when other players are involved. NPCs it's fairly easy to run because most GMs don't take things too personally with mooks.

Sadly untrue. GMs, at least on MU*s, are just as likely to block or twist the attempt to use social skills on NPCs, and for the same reasons. "I'd like to persuade this cagey informant to give a straight answer." "You can't do that. Social skills aren't mind control, and he doesn't want to tell you." "I'd like to intimidate this thug into backing down." "He's more scared of his boss than he is of you and nothing's going to change that." Or worse, "I'd like to intimidate this guy into telling me what he knows." roll dice, exceptional success "You scared him so much that he's too terrified to talk. Also, he's going to attack you now."

About the only place I know that really took social skills seriously even for NPCs was RfK, and even there, they prioritized Merits over skills (even though Merits cost less than skills), and gatekeeped pretty heavily what level of Aliies/Influence you had to have in an NPC faction before you could use social skills on any member of that faction. But at least they did acknowledge that you COULD influence NPCs in a meaningful way, and had an explicit system for how that worked, which is more than most.

13th Age.
Any sort of Urban Fantasy that isn't WoD.
Call of Cthulhu!
Unknown Armies.

@Groth said:

In the doors system as written the highest number of possible doors is 9 (Resolve 5, Composure 5, against virtue/vice and aspiration). Any character can at that point choose to make a roll with a -9 penalty and open all the doors in a single roll as long as they score a single success, this isn't too hard to achieve without accounting for powers or merits. At that point your target has to do what you want them to do with no ability to say no.

I'm not entirely sure where you're getting that? Under the normal Doors system, each successful roll removes ONE door, no matter how many successes you score (although Merits and exceptional successes do alter this). Now, if you're FORCING Doors, which I assume is where you're getting the dice penalty from, that's another thing - but in that case, you're also using Hard Leverage, which involves risking an Integrity break, and if you /don't/ make that roll, then that character is immune to all further attempts at social maneuvering from you from then on.

Furthermore, if Forcing the Doors succeeds, it does not make your PC target "have to do what you want them to do with no ability to say no". Per the rules, (GMC, 194) you proceed to "resolution as normal". Resolution as normal always offers PCs two choices: Go With The Flow (do what the other PC asks, and gain a Beat), or Offer an Alternative, which is what I was alluding to previously. And yes, either way, the targeted PC will be doing something beneficial for the targeter, because it's a game mechanic, and it was resolved in the initiator's favor. That's what game mechanics MEAN. It's one of the things that distinguishes a roleplaying game from collaborative storytelling - sometimes, the dice mean that things don't always go your way, or as planned. There is pretty much no way to develop a dice-based social resolution system that doesn't...well, allow one character to influence the other. I mean, that's the point of these systems, and if your bar for a system that works is "no PC ever has to accept any kind of influence from any other PC under any circumstances", then that's a pretty impossible standard for any system to meet.

However, the point about the -9 is well taken, largely because the Storyteller system in general breaks down once people have Enough Dice to throw at any problem. Honestly, my preference is for a blanket +5/-5 modifier limit to any roll, supernatural or otherwise, so that no one has any more than 15 dice to throw at a single given roll. For me, any pretense of risk or of being a "horror game" goes out of the window when you can throw thirty dice at any given problem.

But then, I'm one of the crazy people who would also want a blanket XP cap, set at about 20 XP (GMC), because I've yet to do see a MU* that really distinguishes the qualitative difference between street-level and high-level play. Most MU*s just...scale up street-level type threats/plots by adding more dice and more minions, which, to me, isn't the best way to handle it. I suspect most STs would do much better jobs if they knew they didn't have to accommodate Random PC With 30+ Dice Pools in their plots.

I do like the idea you mentioned of making it explicit that the target gets to present the targetter with three options for each roll. Anything that increases communication between players about how to make things fun is a good thing, and helping players feel empowered even when their character is stymied or influenced is ALSO a good thing.

@Groth said:

@Pyrephox said:

People on your own game used them pretty regularly, actually. A couple of them were really good at it. A few were a bit annoying, but most people were pretty reasonable in play.

RfK used a social combat system that I believe Shavalyoth originally found on the OPP forum. The idea behind it was to try to make social combat as painless as possibly by instead having characters be directly convinced, their player would be offered a bribe "If you let your character be convinced, you get all these positive conditions and possibly even a beat!'. One of the best things about nWoD 2.0/GMC is the general philosophy of giving characters beats whenever bad things happen to them, it really does help soften the psychological blow.

Even so it was only ever extensively used by one player even though we would have liked to see it used more, because at the end of the day actually rolling the dice is the only way other players can tell if your character is actually convincing or you're just a good writer.

RfK's system was, sadly, inferior to the actual Doors system, but yeah, it wasn't terrible. It allowed too much to rest on one roll, though, rather than an extended interaction. Which, ironically, made it closer to that "one roll and you love me" thing that people tend to complain about. However, I suspect it was used more often than you realize - I was in several scenes where different people used it for different things, and one of the things I thought DID work really well was extending it out to apply to creative works. Letting crafting/art rolls give people beat-giving conditions if they accepted them was great, and a house rule I fully intend to steal for any games I run in the future.

Moving back to an Influence/Rep system - if we're not talking about WoD, I think that a "Faction Status Seesaw" would be useful in some ways. Have the factions in the game each have an opposing faction, and if you earn/buy status in one faction, the status in the opposing faction automatically goes down. (In GMC terms, you might create a persistent Condition called Opposed, that gives a -1 to social interactions to people from the opposing faction for each level of status that you have in the rival faction, that gives you a Beat whenever a member of that faction blocks you from achieving an Aspiration or takes direct action against you.) And then open up events and character opportunities that can only happen if you've got negative Status. If, say, you have negative Status (local government), then you can join the local violent anarchist mystery cult and take advantage of their bennies, or when a plot comes along that involves screwing with the local government, you're first on the NPCs' lists to be recruited.

@Groth said:

@Pyrephox said:

It's one of the MOST agency-preserving social systems you can possibly have while still having mechanics for social actions. Which, if you're making people spend XP on social skills and merits for their characters, you NEED to have some sort of social mechanical system. If, on the other hand, you're house ruling that players don't have to spend any points on social skills, merits, or abilities, then sure, people can play social cops and robbers "I shot you!" "No you didn't!" all day, and at least no one's screwed out of a character build.

In practise, social combat systems are almost never used because anyone that uses them will be OOCly shunned. It doesn't matter how powerful you are socially if noone wants to enter the same scene as you.

People on your own game used them pretty regularly, actually. A couple of them were really good at it. A few were a bit annoying, but most people were pretty reasonable in play.

@Groth said:

@Pyrephox said:

Much the same way we would if people started throwing shit fits about not wanting to take damage in combat.

It's a lot easier for most people to go along with.

"Your characters arm just got cut off by the ogres blow, what do you do next?"

then

"Your character has been convinced that they're inlove with the prince, what do you do next?"

The former is an event that happens to your character that you're allowed to react to. In the latter case the reaction is dictated to you, your agency as a player is removed and most players have a fundamental objection to that. I don't think PC vs PC social combat will ever be well received.

By definition, any situation in which you give a single environmental stimuli and ask the player what their character does next is not a removal of player agency. For that matter, we have no trouble as a culture asking players to deal with this when it's a supernatural power that's enforcing some sort of emotion on the fictional characters we're playing. Furthermore, that's not even how the social system in GMC /works/. You do not "convince someone that they are in love with you" in GMC Doors. You say, "I need this person to agree to do X thing," and seduction might be one of the tactics you use (but it's just as likely to be bribery, or petsitting, or fixing their car), depending on whether the target thinks that's a valid choice of tactic. If you then succeed, the person either does X for you (and may immediately regret it and wonder, "Oh god, how did I get sucked into that?") or they might choose to say, "I don't think my character would ever agree to do that specific thing, but I would be willing to take this Impressed/Swooning/Leveraged Condition instead, and his guilt about not being able to help you out with this will make him more inclined to go along with you in other circumstances."

It's one of the MOST agency-preserving social systems you can possibly have while still having mechanics for social actions. Which, if you're making people spend XP on social skills and merits for their characters, you NEED to have some sort of social mechanical system. If, on the other hand, you're house ruling that players don't have to spend any points on social skills, merits, or abilities, then sure, people can play social cops and robbers "I shot you!" "No you didn't!" all day, and at least no one's screwed out of a character build.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

@Derp I will note that I did not and do not question Status as a way to represent influence in social situations. So the 'thing' that was originally asked for DOES exist... but some people ignore it anyways. Much like they do with nearly all social and/or mental types of manipulation or domination. You can't get away from it. The people that are going to scream and cry and swear on a stack of holy books that their character "SO wouldn't do that" are still going to scream and cry and swear regardless of any system that's put into place. You can't change the players. The question is moot because until people stop being so anal about having their characters manipulated or dominated, the problem will persist.

So no, GMC's social rules isn't an 'answer' to the problem. Because the problem isn't a rules problem, its a people problem. I hate the GMC social rules, so yes, I will gladly take the Go With the Flow option right off the bat, take my Beat, and be on my merry. But it has nothing to do with me wanting to ignore the social rules in place. That's my way of not having to draw out something that I find to be tedious, boring, and entirely unnecessary.

The long and short of it is that there is no fix to this problem. You can't make people not be people, and the people that ignored it then will ignore it now. Doesn't mean the system in place doesn't suck.

While I agree that it's a people problem more than a system problem, I think that it's a CULTURE problem. People throw shit fits over it because, honestly, we all allow them to get away with throwing shit fits over it, and would rather say, "Oh, well, we just won't have rules then/the rules are entirely optional (screwing the players who choose to buy social skills/abilities)" than say what we need to say, which is, "These are the rules this game is using. You have a choice of learning and using the rules, or playing a different game."

Much the same way we would if people started throwing shit fits about not wanting to take damage in combat.

@surreality said:

@Pyrephox said:

None of which will stop someone who isn't playing in good faith from abusing the system. But I've yet to see a system that DOES stand up to someone not playing in good faith. One of the big issues with social systems on WoD MU*s is that we let far too many people get away with playing in bad faith in this particular subsystem.

This is essentially the problem in a nutshell. There are plenty of people who have zero qualms about playing in completely bad faith.

This, and...well, there are a lot of people playing WoD games who don't know the rules. Or who KNEW the rules when they were oWoD, and are still trying to play by those rules in GMC. More than a few of them are staff, who then enshrine their erroneous knowledge as house rules (often trying to fix something that didn't need fixing), which then gets internalized by other players as the way the rules are, when they aren't.

See all the many, many people who complained about 1st Ed nWoD social rules being "one roll and they get to tell me what to do".

@Coin said:

And, to add to @Pyrephox's example, there's no reason why things can't happen in the scene that change it. Maybe there's a tense moment of sexual interplay that leads to a steamy night--how does that influence whether or not you'll vote for them?

Honestly, the problem is:

1. People who want something out of people who have no interest in giving it, regardless of how important it is or not (such as Player A randomly deciding they want to either scare the hell out of, or super-seduce, Player B, and whether they can or not having no effect on the story whatsoever);
2. People who engage every social contest as if it were actually a competition. It's not, it's cooperative.
3. people who get super butthurt when shit doesn't go their way.

Yeah.

It's worth noting that the Doors system incentivizes letting yourself be socially manipulated (you can get Beats from someone helping you meet your Aspirations or accepting a negative Condition, and recover WP from meeting your Vices, or Virtues), and explicitly encourages the target to negotiate what the effect of a loss is. In the case of that 'I want to seduce you', the target is entirely justified in saying, "Yeah, my PC isn't going to sleep with you, dude. But he's Swooning, so if you want to persuade him into anything /else/, then he'll go along with it despite his better judgement (and I get a sweet, sweet Beat for resolving that condition)."

None of which will stop someone who isn't playing in good faith from abusing the system. But I've yet to see a system that DOES stand up to someone not playing in good faith. One of the big issues with social systems on WoD MU*s is that we let far too many people get away with playing in bad faith in this particular subsystem.

@Tempest said:

If only those conversations ever went like that.

Even if the first part did go smoothly like that, I'm pretty sure things would blow up around 'my pc talked to other dude and negated your rolls/whatever in our previous scene!'

Except that it didn't negate the roll. Mechanics-wise, what probably happened was Rival PC opened a Door for the PC B, and how Player B decided to reflect it was "Hey, you can't use the same skill again." The previous Door was still opened, and PC A didn't lose ANY progress.

@Coin said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Fair enough... but twice as bad. It really is just like combat now. Everything will take forever to resolve. Its bad enough combat takes forever to resolve, now going to hang out at the local bar can take just as long with less actual posing. Just agreeing to the whatever and avoiding the whole boring mess is looking more and more enticing as an option.

Well, I get the feeling you're equating "one roll, one pose", when it doesn't really work that way. If someone's impression only lets them make one roll an hour to seduce you, then they can roll, open one of your doors, and before an hour has passed, you pose leaving. You can--and should--interact between rolls. And if the person does or says something after a roll that would totally turn your character off, you inform them of such and suggest, "I think this would ad a door," or "I think this would reduce my Impression".

If you can only make one roll a week... well, that's only good for when you're working someone long-term, and hopefully to improve the Impression.

I don't know why you insist that you just sit there while someone else rolls. That isn't ever how I would play it, run it, or interpret it.

Agreed with this. The Doors system is not meant for social manevuers that take place in one scene, /generally/, unless the impression is great. It's meant to represent the work put in over days and repeated interactions in swaying someone to your point of view via favors and currying goodwill. A typical PC vs. PC Doors interaction should really be something along the lines of:

Player A: My PC wants to persuade you to vote for him in the next election.
Player B: Hmm. Well, my PC doesn't have much of a stake in it one way or the other, so I'd set the Impression at Neutral and the number of Doors is 3 for her.
Player A: Hmm...what if my PC invites yours out to a fancy restaurant to talk about his run for office - on his tab, of course! (Soft leverage!)
Player B: ...well, one of my PC's Aspirations IS to make a favorable impression on some of the local social scene, so we could run a scene with going out to Fancy Restaurant X, and if it goes well, my PC would be favorably inclined to yours. (Impression goes up!)
Player A&B scene the scene, during which, Player A has their character roll Presence + Socialize to ensure that the couple make a favorable impression on the local socialites, then Manipulation + Politics to introduce Player B's PC to the office PC A is running for, and some of the reasons it would be important to have a Good Person in that office. Player B agrees that this opens one of PC B's Doors.
Player A&B split up, go out and play other scenes - maybe Player B is approached by another contender for the office, and when Player A comes back, Player B says, "Hey, my character has been talking to PC Rival, and has a different perspective on the vote, now. You won't be able to use Politics again to sway them further."
Player A: Damn. Umm...hmm, okay. My PC is gonna use Wits+Investigation to see if there's any favors your PC needs done that he can fulfill. If he's successful, he'll drop by and casually mention that he can solve that for her because he's well-connected and concerned about people's well-being (and therefore she should vote for him!)
Player B: Hmm. Yeah, sure. That'll open a door. Roll it.
Player A rolls Wits+Investigation, fails.
Player A: WOE.
Player B: Sorry - you just don't have the right connections to fulfill any of PC B's needs right now.
Player A: Okay, okay. Time for the big guns, then. He figures she's pretty concerned with her status in the community, so he's going to use Presence + Persuasion to get the Ladies Who Lunch to invite her out for one of their hoity-toity lunches.
Player B: ...hell, you manage that, and I'll give you two doors, since it directly plays into PC B's vice of Easily Flattered by Rich People.
Player A: rolls successfully! Okay, so you want to play a scene where he introduces them and she is shamelessly flattered by rich old ladies with too much time on their hands?
Player B: Hells yeah. And your PC has her vote!

I.e. it should be a conversation and a back and forth dynamic, with the players talking and working out what is going to have a chance to sway a character one way or the other. If Player B is a passive recipient, then someone is playing it wrong.

With reputation and status, I feel like one thing we need to do more of is incentive BOTH ends of the scale. Everyone wants to have high rep and status because you /get stuff/ by doing so, and no one wants to be shut out of potential RP or plot because their character has low status or rep. So of course, there's a race for the top, and of course people get upset when their characters lose rep, because now those characters are objectively less effective and connected than before. Which means less RP for the PC.

But I think if we offered appropriate incentives for having both high OR low status/rep, then people would be more willing to take the hits. Like, there should definitely be events tied to and benefits for having a low or negative rep, to make it fun for those players to play that, and give some compensation for not having the bennies of high status and rep. Whether it's having targeted RP where enemy factions try to recruit you, or events where there's a Status ceiling of people allowed to join (the police commissioner should not be investigating the gritty street crime), or high risk/high reward plots that require a bit of "plausible deniability".

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Pyrephox said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Usekh said:

I would kill you all for a 7th Sea MU*. Well save for those running and coding it of course

If I could ever figure out how to make one work, I'd do it. Fuck world of darkness. Fuck Mage 2E. But I always circle back to: Isn't 7th Sea supposed to be about travel?

I mean. I suppose we could set it on some gigantic galleon thing ala star trek games being set on a ship-- but how would people be from different nations then? AUGH!!! pulls out her hair

Actually, one of the quirks of 7th Sea is that the worldbuilding makes it /vastly more likely/ to have adventures on land, or - at worst - on coastal ships rather than the "high seas".

I didn't say "high seas" I said travel! The games I've played in all of the adventuring was done on land, but they've always been 'travel to this place have adventures' and then 'travel to the next place have adventures' etc.

Suppose what one could do is set up a large privateer ship that docks in different places for different story arcs (e.g. The ship docs somewhere close enough to Freiberg that the crew travels to said area for a plotline once its done they return to the ship to move onto the next place). Apps at the beginning of the game would probably all be crew members or passengers. Then after landing somewhere people could app in as natives who hire on as a crew or buy passage on the ship to the next place.

Hmm.

That seems like it would be pretty confining as far as both character concepts and Things To Do, and it doesn't give the PCs much agency or tangible influence in the world - considering how much players tend to like being able to stake a claim on the grid and have some space/assets that are theirs, I wonder how that would look in that kind of setting. I can't help but feel it would be a very small, very niche sort of game. Although it'd make a very fun OTT.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Usekh said:

I would kill you all for a 7th Sea MU*. Well save for those running and coding it of course

If I could ever figure out how to make one work, I'd do it. Fuck world of darkness. Fuck Mage 2E. But I always circle back to: Isn't 7th Sea supposed to be about travel?

I mean. I suppose we could set it on some gigantic galleon thing ala star trek games being set on a ship-- but how would people be from different nations then? AUGH!!! pulls out her hair

Actually, one of the quirks of 7th Sea is that the worldbuilding makes it /vastly more likely/ to have adventures on land, or - at worst - on coastal ships rather than the "high seas". All the major nations are continental, and there isn't any India or Americas trade equivalent to create the long-distance, poorly-guarded routes that made piracy so very appealing.

Your best bet, however, is just privateer ships, if you want ship-based play. Someone with a marque from a country doesn't necessarily have to be all of that country, nor does their crew have to be. And if you steal from pirate culture to make the ships more democratic than, say, official navies, it's more suited towards PCs. Of course, then you do run the Firefly Problem, where ships and crews become the main vector of play, and if you can't find one, well, screw you.

My suggestion would likely be to have it set in a capital city (I really like the Montaigne capital for this), as both a hub for player interaction, and a branching off point for different adventures - rather than ship-captains, characters could sign up as crew for plots (basically "signing on" for an abbreviated and cinematic tour, rather than a five year haul), either on the sea, in the surrounding country (Three Musketeers style), political intrigue in the courts of the city, or adventures in the dangerous, magical dungeons beneath the city (which are a thing that exists!).

For pure swashbuckling, you CAN set it in the Pirate Nations, but you wouldn't get the breadth of opportunities a setting on the continent would provide, IMO.

I've always found 7th Sea to be pretty elegant in play, although yeah, the mechanics don't read smoothly at all. But it has some of the best support for social combat of any system, even keeping the swashbucklely feel along with the court intrigue. Personally, I think GURPS would be a terrible idea for any sort of cinematic swashbuckling game - but I'm biased, as I loathe GURPS with the passion of a hundred, fiery suns.

Me, I would take the combat specialization (Sword Dance) and be the ultimate crowd control combat monster. That's right, bastards, stare at me while I stab out your eyes!

@BallisticOrange said:

The kiths seem to be having the issue they did in 1E, which is to say some serious bonuses to one or two and a few others that look a bit dodgy by compare.

The gulf seems to be narrowed, though. Looking at those, I can't think of any that I couldn't find a character concept that would love it, even if some are beefier than others.

One of the things that I think Kingsmouth really did well, the thing that also fed into the creation of these systems, was that that it knew what kind of game it wanted to be, and made it very clear in everything it did. The backstory of the game fed into it being a highly political game where change was expected. The territory system, the boon system, influences, /every/ system was built from that focused premise. It was a politics-focused Vampire game, and every member of staff was on board with that. It didn't support other kinds of play, and didn't try...and that was okay!

Too often, WoD games try to be everything to everyone in order to garner the most butts in chargen, and I think that leads to the Anywhere By Night feel, and many of the tensions between players that want fundamentally different experiences. Kingsmouth was a game that succeeded by doing the opposite - instead of doing a whole bunch of things poorly-to-mediocre, it chose one thing that staff were passionate about, and did it /very well/. And that brought people. People who were new to MU*s, to Vampire, or to WoD, in a number of cases. Hell, it got me to play Vampire for a while, and that's a thing that I thought would never, ever happen.

I dunno - it seemed like they DID work, for a while. Vampire's the most popular game-line, it seems. I suspect one of the less popular ones that had the same amount of care in the systems (GMC Changeling, please GOD, GMC Changeling) could be sustainable for quite a while. Especially if (and this probably isn't a popular idea, but what the hell), there was a game cap at the point where staff felt they no longer could continue to expand.

I will say that I think the Staff PC policy was one of the things that kept player trust in staff pretty high, at least when I was there - I didn't see the constant paranoia about staff that I was accustomed to seeing in other games, and even when I didn't agree with staff decisions, I never felt (or saw other people say they felt) that those decisions were being made to favor staff-alts. In the occasional +job asking for player feedback about the policy, most players seemed to support it to one degree or another.

I think that sounds wonderful. The biggest thing to make sure of, though, is that there's follow through on the part of staff. If you set up the expectation that hey, here's a thing that will help you get involved in the plot, and then don't follow through, players will feel more put off than if you offered nothing at all.