Posts made by surreality

@HelloProject said in How Do I Headwiz?:

One thing I've noticed about a lot of places, is that the places aren't really made with the amount of work it would take to maintain such a place. Like, making incredibly long apps even though that would obviously be a huge workload if you got a ton of players, or straight up lacking a firm advancement policy, so you end up with a fuckload of jobs that all have to be handled somewhat differently, with no real guide to look at for how to handle any given one.

That you're even looking at this is a good sign. A lot of folks look at 'what is ideal to get a ton of data' and then don't have a firm plan to effectively handle that data and process it in a quick and reasonable way.

I know that's one of the things I've been poking. While I have stuck my project on the shelf for a while, 'cause life, I've been prodding at things like that for upwards of 2 years now. It's still not close to where I want it on those points.

Easy matters. It matters for players and it matters for staff.

Just a few things to add, really.

1. No matter how many things you plan for, expect to find ten more you didn't foresee as you work on getting those things done. This will continue for the duration of the game, no matter how well you've planned. This is OK. If you want to knock it down to nine more of these things the next time, keep notes on the things you forgot/overlooked/did not foresee this time. (This will continue for the duration of, well... life.)

2. Be prepared to deal with more irrational behavior than you expect. We all expect some, but there is always more than that.

2a. You will be tempted to think that reasonableness, understanding, and transparency will resolve this. Sometimes, it will. Sometimes, it will help a little. Other times, it won't, and anything you do or say will be twisted into something horrible. This will be frustrating and you'll feel helpless to 'fix' it. This is because you actually can't fix it; like politics, the same basic, harmless statement or event can become a firestorm through convoluted interpretations alone. You can try. You just need to accept that no matter how hard you try, it isn't necessarily going to work. The best you can do at this point is to recognize that this is not really about what you're doing, and try not to take it personally for that reason. The tl;dr of this is: you can only discuss what you've actually said or done; there's only so much you can do regarding what somebody thinks you have said or done.

3. Do not expect that everyone will know the ins and outs of the culture of the game, or games like this at all. Newbies happen. If there's a social contract, lay it out. Nothing is so daunting to newcomers as being treated like they're horrible because they didn't realize they couldn't enter a room that was unlocked without permission if they're used to playing on games where you'd use a lock if you wanted or expected privacy, etc. Let people know what your expectations actually are, even if you think they're common sense. (What is or isn't common sense varies wildly.)

This is all in addition to what everyone else has already said.

That is a highly neat idea, @Apos.

Could be a useful RP tool, too, if people can view the impressions people have had of them? (I don't know if they can or not, attributed or otherwise.) It'd be a great way to see if you're hitting the mark you aim for in your character's portrayal and such.

@Arkandel It isn't the number of successes, though. It's that the only consequence of failure, typically, in a social roll in most systems is 'you didn't get your way'. There's no inherent consequence there, as there absolutely would be if you just saw someone try to punch you and miss, in which case 'you didn't land your punch and now JoeBob knows you want to punch him'.

This dramatically lessens the potential consequences of a social roll if it fails as compared to a physical one if it fails.

@HelloProject I haven't played anything d20, but it's good to know it's a thing. Helps strengthen the relevance.

Is it something automatic on a failure? I think that's relevant here, since it seems like social attempts default to stealth mode in most failures, while physical attempts you need to take additional measures to allow failures to go undetected.

@Lotherio That's a really, really good point.

Physical attacks can/do often have modifiers for stealth, or 'attack unseen', but that often requires additional modifiers, preparation, or in some cases, special powers to escape a target from detecting that some kind of attack has occurred, or the source of that attempt, whether the attempt succeeds or fails, and that does create a risk to the aggressor.

The only time I've seen socials called out as 'the attempt and failure is detected' is in WoD/CoD, and that's on a dramatic failure. Even if a normal failure allowed, by default, an attempt on the part of the target (an appropriate roll) to notice that an attempt was made to deceive, charm, or manipulate them, it would allow for the opportunity for more potential consequences here. That otherwise the consequences (barring a dramatic failure) just vanish into the ether aside from the failure itself is definitely not in balance with the risks and consequences of physical combat. The target may not know why the aggressor is attempting to <thing>, but providing a chance to know they've attempted to <thing> is definitely relevant.

Depending on the system, and how much automation is employed, something like +roll charm vs <target> could, potentially, automatically +roll detect charm <initial aggressor> for the initial target on a failure, and if the target makes the detection roll, it could alert them that '<Aggressor> has attempted to charm you.' or similar.

@Seraphim73 Seriously, please, use anything you find useful. If I ever get this thing done, I'm going to hand it out freely; it's all being developed for creative commons usage intentionally as it is, just in case it works/is liked/can be a tool for people to quick-start something of their own somehow.

There's a 1-5 standard range for humans, with some other races being able to get as high as 8 in certain things. It's WoD cloney that way, with the 1-5 and 2 as human average. So even if I ended up going with Identity + Willpower, that leaves the average human with 4 core motivations, which vibes right to me for the average person, who might have something like 'I will never cheat on my spouse', 'I will protect my children from bodily harm', 'I will <something relevant to job>', and 'I will never <something related to faith/faction membership/social status/etc.>' and feels like a typical standard normal person conceptually.

So long as they're properly specific, I don't mind people having a big pile, especially since the more of them they have, the more likely there will be a conflict that starts cancelling them out back and forth if they try to cover too much ground.

@Seraphim73 I'm stuck between 'core principles' and 'core motivations', personally. Core ideals? Ideals, maybe? Oddly, I like Ideals, since it meshes well with a stat called Identity. The initial repetition there might make a good relatable mnemonic.

Quick edit: this is the writeup I had for it:

For each dot a character possesses in the Identity attribute, choose a personal motivation. These motivations are considered to be the character's core drives, the ideas and ideals they consider integral to who they are.
These motivations should be fairly specific, such as:
I will not kill someone due to my religious beliefs
I will protect my children from physical harm
I want to earn my freedom from indentured service
I will not betray my captain's trust in me
I will not pass up an opportunity to turn a profit
I will not harm a child
These goals may have some flexibility, but they are not overly broad. Due to the benefits provided, some specificity and a fairly narrow interpretation is required.
For each listed motivation, the character receives +2 dice to resist attempts to force them to act against these core values, OR they may choose to reduce the target number to resist the attempt by 1 (to a minimum of target difficulty 2). These bonuses stack if multiple core values are being challenged. If acting in line with one core motivation means acting against another, the bonuses cancel each other out one for one.
If a character is attempting to convince or persuade another to do something that would be in line with one of their core motivations, it reduces the target difficulty of the attempt by one for each corresponding motivation to a minimum of target difficulty of two (2), but does not have the option of adding additional dice to the attempt. If doing so would cause the character to act against another of their core motivations, the same cancelation of benefits on a one for one basis applies.

...I plan to change some of the specific mechanics there, but the general idea comes across. It's also relevant that if someone's being asked to do something that supports their core motivations, it's going to be easier for the persuader to get them to join in the effort or take action.

@Seraphim73 said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

First I poked around at a system like @surreality mentioned, allowing PCs to have 1-3 Hills to Die On--things that were immutable about their character (ie, "No Mistreating Pets," "No Killing Kids," and "No Betraying the King" or something like that). These were then things that could not be changed with social combat. But I decided that it would be nearly impossible to police from a chargen perspective, and that many players would try to make these too broad ("Paragon of Virtue" or "Good Person" or "Never Cheats" or something like that) to give themselves as much defense as possible against social combat without investing in the appropriate stats. I do like the idea of them being modifiers rather than inviolate points.

This, I'm not worried about as much as I might be. Having staffed CoD for a while, which has custom breaking points and aspirations for every character, there are actually a lot of staffers versed in checking for this out there and in talking to players about setting them up appropriately. If there wasn't an existing example to reference, or there weren't any staffers out there who had dealt with similar things, I'd have more concern.

I've only seen this come up once in terms of a player being a dick about things, and that was Rex/Sovereign... so, y'know•. It's a less pervasive problem than might be imagined; people tend to behave themselves on these, even if that means being nudged to narrow things down some or clarify them.

• "The girl staffer is telling me to clarify a thing! I must demonstrate my dominance by trying to argue and swinging my dick around!" (You can all guess how well that went for him.)

@Arkandel WoD has the problem because they created the game specifically to allow for the problem, which is less a problem in the tabletop environment than it is online. That's kinda the thing here; tabletop, you're going to get something a lot more consistent than in a game of hundreds of characters and dozens of STs. In tabletop, it's a feature, not a bug, and the consistency problem is less an issue. It becomes a huge issue on a MUX, where consistency is often more important than flexibility. Depending on the environment, this deliberate system mix-and-match-ness design choice is at various stages along the bug <---> feature continuum.

As to why Arx has the problem, I couldn't tell you, since I've not looked at their system.

I know I'm using a list of tasks, which aren't miles off from the list of rolls WoD provides. ('Create Art', 'Dodge', 'Detect Lies', etc. are all examples in the books.) It's just simplified from 'you have to remember the combinations of that roll or look it up' to +roll/task <task name>, which cuts down on the memorization problem for any standard attempt to <task name>.

There are ways to fix this stuff, and they really, really are not impossibly hard to find. People being lazy and refusing to memorize or reference the list and pulling something out of their ass instead is a problem; that isn't the system's fault, though, and throwing out any attempt at making a viable system on those grounds is kinda like throwing out a gourmet dinner in total because somebody forgot the freshly whipped cream on dessert.

You can set things up to minimize if not eliminate this problem in a coded environment, and they generally aren't terribly difficult, or more difficult or complex than any other roll you need to enter into the system is going to be.

@Arkandel said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

On the other hand - for example - I keep going back to having too many possible specialties and sub-cases is a systemic problem; with physical confrontations I could conceivably specialize and be entirely functional at a far smaller cost than it takes to be versed enough to cover their every social equivalent - grab Weaponry and Strength... and you're done, you're now useful in 90% of fighty situations where you have access to an axe. But if you get Presence and Intimidation you might be useless to a diplomatic meeting; no, the ST called for Manipulation and Persuasion. D'oh!

This is really not hard to manage. It's not even hard, man.

There is a reference list of what the rolls entail in most systems. (Not all of which are WoD. WoD is more flexible with this in ways that plenty of games are not -- and this is quite relevant in a general discussion. Don't hang the problems of WoD around the neck of every other potential game out there, essentially.)

Yes, sometimes people can fudge them in special circumstances.

That doesn't mean that a standard reference does not -- or cannot -- exist to almost completely if not completely resolve this issue.

@Sparks It doesn't totally stop the whining on #4, but it's a tidy way to remind that group that a sweeping 'nope!' approach is not considered fair play. It also still provides them with a handful of things they can protect, and a stat or mechanism they can invest in to bolster that ability if it is really the priority to them.

(I have a stat called 'Identity' in the system I'm tinkering with that supports this mechanic. It has a few other quirks, but it's the core stat used to generate the number of items on the list. There's a 'Willpower', too, which may ultimately get added, so people can pick a few more things. I'm still waffling around on the specifics.)

@Sparks #1 is exactly the problem I'm trying to describe, yep. You put that beautifully.

For #3 and #4: Take a look at the stats you have available. I think I have a partial solution on that one, at least. If you have something like a 'willpower' stat, or similar, you can let people pick <points in stat/percentage of points in stat/some other 'derived by character attributes' number of points/generic number of points consistent for all characters if you don't feel like tying it to other stats> in personal modifiers for the character's own unique drives and motivations. How, or how much, those modifiers take effect, depends on your system.

You may or may not want to add a list of 'this is beyond the scope of a roll', 'this is a list of standard modifiers', too.

It helps the player firm up the character's core motivations and drives, which limits how much people can effectively whine and wheedle on point #4 (since they have to pick things, not 'everything'), and allows players in the #3 area, who have things that really are core to their character's concept to have a system-supported method of having the importance of that thing explicitly recognized in play, in the game mechanics.

@Coin They're definitely out there, yeah. (Especially irksome are the ones that love to talk endlessly on channels about the ninety things that they could do to <any random person>, but flip their shit if there's even a snowball's chance in hell that someone could do something that might have an impact on them somehow. )

I think this tends to be something that works out better on smaller games, where players are a little more likely to have run across each other more often in the course of play, too. There's a bit of a chance to build up some trust there, while that's more of a total crapshoot on any of the sprawling megagames.

@Coin said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

@surreality said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

@Coin I dunno. I have no real objection to multiple rolls doing things with proper modifiers. (I may not want to play the character again after whatever it is, but that's a different issue.) Treating anything social as the equivalent of a one-shot-kill with superpower strength effects, though, is not horribly uncommon, and once somebody's been on the receiving end of this, I empathize strongly with the aversion developing.

I think the best storylines happen when people divorce themselves from their "vision" of the character they're playing and allow the story to mold and change them, including their interactions with others. But I can sympathize with the desire to play the character "as envisioned". I just think it's also one of the things that limits us from having truly great RP the most.

I think you're reading a little more into that than is really there.

For the really obvious example, I'm not at all interested, for instance, in playing a rape victim. On any given number of games, it's possible for that to occur. No, I'm not going to continue to play the character after that, even if it's entirely fair play to allow it to happen if the system says it does and there are no consent rules allowing an opt-out.

I'd FTB it, sure, but it still ICly happens, and I'm really just not interested in exploring that storyline at all in my pretendy fun times. It is non-enjoyable to me and I'm not going to waste my enjoyment time on that, nor should anyone ever feel obligated or pressured to do so in the name of some higher 'artistic roleplayer ideal'.

Edit: I agree with what you're saying re: the folks who just can never ever be lied to, or intimidated, or charmed, etc. But realistically, people absolutely have the right to have limits for what they consider an appropriate amount of non-enjoyment in their hobby time.

@Coin I dunno. I have no real objection to multiple rolls doing things with proper modifiers. (I may not want to play the character again after whatever it is, but that's a different issue.) Treating anything social as the equivalent of a one-shot-kill with superpower strength effects, though, is not horribly uncommon, and once somebody's been on the receiving end of this, I empathize strongly with the aversion developing.

@Coin Which is true, but the core point is: you don't declare a one-shot-kill in a roll. You declare the steps taken to get there. Similarly, you don't declare 'I get my endgame in this single roll', you declare a step taken to get there in social. Part of the issue people have with the way socials have often traditionally been handled is the assumption of one roll doing the equivalent of a one-shot kill as their intended usage.

@Roz Exactly. No problem child tracking involved. Just 'here's a way to connect up with folks'.

@Cupcake I have admittedly thought about doing something like this, kinda like what @Roz and I talked about like... a year or more ago at this point? Kinda like a general database of games (current and previous) and with people having the ability to list who they've played and where if they want, similar to the way the A Shout in the Dark threads do, just without the snark/bitchy rumor factor, and with better indexing/cross-referencing, which wiki tends to be good at. If people want to be asshats and edit war things, smacking can occur.

I may actually look into this a bit more now since I need a project and the game project is temporarily on hold, pending... things.

@Ganymede For clarification:

In physical combat, we don't declare an intent of: kill the guy. We do something like I'm going to swing my axe at Joe's head!, even if kill the guy is the ultimate end goal.

So for social, you would have something like get Joe to vote and advocate for me for mayor; instead of the I'm going to swing my axe at Joe's head, you have something like I'm going to appeal to Joe's ego so he'll like me more or I'm going to threaten Joe's family to intimidate him so he'll be more likely to comply with what I want as your stages.

Both have end goals, they're just typically achieved in steps, rather than as a single sweeping and all-encompassing roll.