Social effects

[Sean Waters]

Re: Social effects

 

This is an interesting old discussion, isn't it?

 

I doubt we are all that far apart in what any of us are saying - we want a good game, and we don't want to be told how to play it. The Divine is in the Detail though (as is the Devil )

 

However any game requires that you cede some control, if only because you are accepting a common basis of play where your consent is the only guarantee of enforcement. You accept limitations on your ability to do anything you like because you have chosen to, and to that extent you are therefore doing what you want completely, and so have not given up your freedom to act at all: you have chosen to limit it voluntarily.

[Ice9]

Re: Social effects

 

Something else has occurred to me. We're talking about losing a social conflict being like losing a physical conflict. But how often do characters actually lose physical combats?

 

First off, physical combats are usually entered as a team, and one member being KO'd doesn't mean they lost - if your team wins, you'll wake up in a couple minutes, none the worse for wear. Social conflicts are more often entered individually, and often with a 50/50 or better chance of losing. I doubt that most campaigns have a 50% chance to TPKO in anything like a standard battle.

 

Second, physical combat often has no lasting effects. If you just take STUN, you literally don't notice it after a few minutes. Even if you take BODY, that's often healed up within a few days - more so in some settings than others, of course. Many social conflicts have more lasting effects. To do a rough comparison:

 

Physical / Social:

Get knocked out, villains escape / Convinced to let villains go, for justifiable reasons

Serious wound, takes weeks/months to heal / Convinced to do something which temporarily damages your reputation/self-image

Permanent injury, like losing an arm / Convinced to do something which permanently damages your reputation/self-image

Killed / Convinced to do something that makes the character unplayable (including no longer wanting to play that character)

 

So for instance, being fooled into killing your wife would fall into either the Permanent Injury or Killed category, depending on the player. As such, it should only be used to the extent that you'd include a physical combat with a probable chance of those effects.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Social effects

 

Nice analogy!

[nexus]

Re: Social effects

 

Edit: stepping away from the thread

[Utech]

Re: Social effects

 

Something else has occurred to me. We're talking about losing a social conflict being like losing a physical conflict. But how often do characters actually lose physical combats?

 

First off, physical combats are usually entered as a team, and one member being KO'd doesn't mean they lost - if your team wins, you'll wake up in a couple minutes, none the worse for wear. Social conflicts are more often entered individually, and often with a 50/50 or better chance of losing. I doubt that most campaigns have a 50% chance to TPKO in anything like a standard battle.

 

Second, physical combat often has no lasting effects. If you just take STUN, you literally don't notice it after a few minutes. Even if you take BODY, that's often healed up within a few days - more so in some settings than others, of course. Many social conflicts have more lasting effects. To do a rough comparison:

 

Physical / Social:

Get knocked out, villains escape / Convinced to let villains go, for justifiable reasons

Serious wound, takes weeks/months to heal / Convinced to do something which temporarily damages your reputation/self-image

Permanent injury, like losing an arm / Convinced to do something which permanently damages your reputation/self-image

Killed / Convinced to do something that makes the character unplayable (including no longer wanting to play that character)

 

So for instance, being fooled into killing your wife would fall into either the Permanent Injury or Killed category, depending on the player. As such, it should only be used to the extent that you'd include a physical combat with a probable chance of those effects.

 

I return only to say, "Thank you!" This is exactly the sort of thing I had meant to suggest from the beginning.

 

If the Physical Combat system does not hamper roleplay and is enjoyable, there's no reason why a Social Combat system needs to be any different -- either in use or fallout.

 

Cheers!

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Social effects

 

Social conflicts are more often entered individually' date=' and often with a 50/50 or better chance of losing. [/quote']

 

I agreed with the rest of your post and it was a nice analogy to the physical combat but I think it is often counter-productive to make too much reference to social versus physical.

 

I would also disagree with the above quote. Do physical combats that are entered physically have a 50/50 or better chance of losing?

 

Why should player characters (who are supposed to be the centre of the game universe) lose more than half of their social contests? I would expect that the contests that player characters enter into would be (in the main) successful, just like most physical contests are successful.

 

This may explain some of the resistance to such contests - I've never seen so many people talk about contests where they worry so much about losing. If people think that they will lose more than half the social contests their characters face if we introduce them then I'm not surprised there is resistance.

 

 

Doc

[Sean Waters]

Re: Social effects

 

I agreed with the rest of your post and it was a nice analogy to the physical combat but I think it is often counter-productive to make too much reference to social versus physical.

 

I would also disagree with the above quote. Do physical combats that are entered physically have a 50/50 or better chance of losing?

 

Why should player characters (who are supposed to be the centre of the game universe) lose more than half of their social contests? I would expect that the contests that player characters enter into would be (in the main) successful, just like most physical contests are successful.

 

This may explain some of the resistance to such contests - I've never seen so many people talk about contests where they worry so much about losing. If people think that they will lose more than half the social contests their characters face if we introduce them then I'm not surprised there is resistance.

 

 

Doc

 

I think that an awful lot of social combats work on a straight roll, and probably do not make enough use of modifiers: the social skills system int he basic rules is not very well developed. To that extent PCs will more often succeed with social rolls than 50% and they will tend not to spend a lot of time over social skills in game as it is just a roll. Even if you are superhumanly gifted at social skills, normals are not always going to do what you say when you say it. If you want to persuade someone to do something that they don't particularly mind doing and that is not going to have much, if any, cost to them, that seems like a straight roll to me, but if you want to do something that does have a cost to a target or that they are disinclined to do then penalties should apply. The difficulty is assessing such things, even remembering to assess such things.

 

For that reason I personally prefer a 'target number' system to the current X or less skill roll system.

 

Take CHAR/5 as your basic skill level (to which you can add skill levels) and call that OSV (Offensive Skill Value).

 

A 'Normal' skill use has a target number of 2, which we will call the DSV (Defensive Skill Value). For opposed rolls use opponent's CHAR/5.

 

An Easy skill use had a DSV of 0.

 

A Tricky skill use has a DSV of 4.

 

A Difficult skill use has a DSV of 6.

 

Etc...

 

Then you just run the numbers as if they were OCV and DCV in physical combat. This is not a new idea - it has been kicked around before but I particularly like it because it unifies the skill and combat systems and, more importantly, makes you think about the DSV - I think GMs will be much more willing to change the 'base difficulty' in a system like this, ad much more conscious of the possibility of doing so. It would be easy enough to have a little table of DSVs for selected tasks in each skill use description, which you could use in addition to the generic modifiers that apply to all skill use.

 

I think that could work well but I could be wrong. It happens

 

 

Also I reckon, for those of you who prefer CHAR/3 for skills, well, it is easy to change. In fact, taking a leaf from the Storyteller system, I'd uncouple specific characteristics from skill use: sure conversation is usually going to involve PRE, but if you are writing an essay on conversation it might take INT. Then you just record a skills as:

 

Lockpicking +0 (which indicates that you take a basic CHAR roll - usually DEX, but maybe INT for electronic locks and do not add anything to that for your OSV)

 

Bureaucracy +3 (which indicates you take a basic CHAR roll - usually PRE - and add 3 to it for your OSV)

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Social effects

 

Then you just record a skills as:

 

Lockpicking +0 (which indicates that you take a basic CHAR roll - usually DEX, but maybe INT for electronic locks and do not add anything to that for your OSV)

 

Bureaucracy +3 (which indicates you take a basic CHAR roll - usually PRE - and add 3 to it for your OSV)

 

 

Looks like D20 to me! Burn the heretic!

 

Actually, looking like D20 is not a bad thing - I have tricked HERO character sheets up to look like D20 for some groups and it has gone down a storm...

 

 

Doc

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Social effects

 

Second, physical combat often has no lasting effects. If you just take STUN, you literally don't notice it after a few minutes. Even if you take BODY, that's often healed up within a few days - more so in some settings than others, of course. Many social conflicts have more lasting effects. To do a rough comparison:

 

Physical / Social:

Get knocked out, villains escape / Convinced to let villains go, for justifiable reasons

Serious wound, takes weeks/months to heal / Convinced to do something which temporarily damages your reputation/self-image

Permanent injury, like losing an arm / Convinced to do something which permanently damages your reputation/self-image

Killed / Convinced to do something that makes the character unplayable (including no longer wanting to play that character)

 

So for instance, being fooled into killing your wife would fall into either the Permanent Injury or Killed category, depending on the player. As such, it should only be used to the extent that you'd include a physical combat with a probable chance of those effects.

 

This cuts to the crux of the dispute, I think. Those dead set against a conflict resolution mechanism for social situations seem to assume that the GM will place them into the "permanent injury/death" category on a regular basis. Those who do not see that as a problem believe a good GM would not set challenges that disable or destroy a character socially with any more frequency or likelihood of PC loss than challenges that would disable or destroy the character physically.

 

IOW, a GM who routinely removes control of the PC's through unbeatable social challenges is no better than the GM who routinely kills the PC's off through unbeatable physical challenges.

[Markdoc]

Re: Social effects

 

Well...look at it his way.

 

If a GM tells you that Jimmy is pointing a gun at you and his finger is tightening on the trigger and he looks angry, you get a choice about what you DO, but if everything about the situation would make someone in your position believe that they are about to be shot, it would be a poor GM who didn't convey that information to you.

 

Now to me there is no practical difference, in the vast majority of cases, between a GM giving the description above OR saying 'You believe Jimmy is about to shoot you' OR 'It looks like Jimmy is about to shoot you'. It makes no difference if the GM tells you that because it is part of the exposition or because he asked you to make a PER roll, which you didn't blow*.

 

There is one major difference. The first option means the player can't say "I don't believe Jimmy would shoot me: I stand tough". In the second situation, the player gets to make that call. He may be wrong, but hey - it's his choice. He may choose to stand there anyway - but he's doing so "knowing" that Jimmy's going to shoot him - which in game should give the thing a completely different context.

 

Of course if you think the GM is lying to you or that you only think that because of a bad dice roll' date=' you can choose to stand there and do nothing, but then, of course, you are metagaming, not role playing at all.[/quote']

 

Shrug. Once you introduce hardwired social conflict systems, metagaming becomes inevitable: the whole point of such a system is to introduce a distance between player and character. In games like DiTV, the metagame is the game.

 

 

I suppose the point I'm aiming at is that the world interferes with people all the time' date=' beliefs and understandings, perceptions and even reactions are not always conscious.[/quote']

 

I understand your point - I merely feel it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The question is not "Does the world interfere with characters?" Of course it does, all the time. The question is "How much control should a player have over his own character's thoughts and intentions?" The two are only peripherally related.

 

This is where things become difficult' date=' of course, with social skills. If the GM CAN tell you what your feeling about something is - and sometimes that is inevitable - because most GMs don't come with the power Mental Illusions' to fully convey the experience to you - and emotional context can be vital - then you need to consider how that will affect your actions. You shouldn't just ignore it because you know better, or, even worse, because you don't think you would feel like that. THAT is what your character is experiencing - it is up to you to translate that into actions that follow logically, from context. Sometimes that might mean having your character do something distasteful, or even something you really do not want them to. Some of the best role playing I've ever seen arises from such situations.[/quote']

 

I agree with this. I've also seen a GM try to push this aspect and some of the very worst GM'ing I've ever seen arises from such situations.

 

If a player ignores what the GM tells them is happening in their character's world' date=' unless it is something the player wants to hear, I'd ask the same question you did: what are they even doing there?[/quote']

 

A player who does that isn't likely to be there very long, anyway. However, there is wide - nigh-unbridgeable - gulf between telling a player what is happening in their character's world and telling them what their character thinks about those events.

 

Assuming that Jimmy IS about to shoot you' date=' or, if he isn't maybe it is because you DID blow the PER roll. I often ask players to make a PER roll where they can not see the result, or even make one for them, because you generally will not know what the result of a PER roll actually is and so you won't know if the information is reliable or not - just the rough odds of it being reliable.[/quote']

 

I assume all decent GM's do that: it's only common sense.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Social effects

 

End of the day if a player really doesn't want to be told if their character believes someone they are talking to' date=' there's no point in forcing them, but I do think they are missing out on some interesting new experiences.[/quote']

 

And here you have put your finger on the core of the discussion. If the players are willing to role-play along, they will: hard rules don't really add anything. If they're not willing, the whole thing's a waste of time, rules or not.

 

And in my experience, players are more willing to play along if they don't feel they are being coerced into it.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Social effects

 

Under a hard coded social skills system, the mentor has tried to persuade Jack that his trust in Lilly is misplaced (the faerie believes that, so it is a "best of intentions" attempt). But Jack's resistance to social skills, his force of will and his own faith in Lilly (likely providing a bonus due to his background, his in-game behaviour to date and/or any relevant psych lim's) has caused him to successfully resist the use of social skills.

 

To me, that is more dramatic in game. There was a chance of failure, and that makes success meaningful. Simply being able to say "screw you - my character does not listen" is not dramatic, in my opinion. It adds no real tension to the game. The social skills of PC and NPC alike are reduced to simple flavour text with no ability to meaningfully impact the characters' success or failure in achieving their objectives.

 

And to me, it's a wet soufflé of disappointment and flaccid boredom. If the player knows or strongly suspects that Lilly is true but has to make a roll-off to allow his PC to act on his beliefs, it reduces the whole deal to petty chance. Am I heroic? (rolls dice) Nope, I guess not.

 

The drama must come from the GM'ing. If the players really don't wonder if Lilly is about to do the cutting then the entire episode is without flavour. From the player having to make a choice - a choice with momentous consequences - it becomes "Fred, I'm getting a drink - can you roll to see If I believe? Hey, who drank all the Mountain Dew?"

 

Frankly, if a GM tried to pull a stunt like that on me, I'd go find a better game.

 

cheers, Mark

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Social effects

 

And to me' date=' it's a wet soufflé of disappointment and flaccid boredom. If the player knows or strongly suspects that Lilly is true but has to make a roll-off to allow his PC to act on his beliefs, it reduces the whole deal to petty chance. Am I heroic? (rolls dice) Nope, I guess not.[/quote']

 

I think you are misrepresenting. The roll is to see whether the character believes, not whether he will be heroic.

 

If the character believes that Lilly will do the deed then he has a dilemma. The player may not believe that the GM will make Lilly kill the unicorn and if he did make Lilly kill the unicorn when you stood back 'heroically' and allowed it to happen then again you might say:

 

Frankly' date=' if a GM tried to pull a stunt like that on me, I'd go find a better game.[/quote']

 

With the social resolution you, as a player, knows that your character believes Lilly will kill the unicorn and know that this conflicts with a lot of other things that you 'know' about Lilly.

 

What you have to do is think what the heroic action would be based on all of those things - not on the bits that you want to be true. If Lilly is truly going to kill the unicorn then the heroic action is to kill or disable Lilly and save the unicorn. If Lilly is not then the heroic action is to ensure the unicorn's safety while providing Lilly with the opportunity to prove your belief wrong.

 

The system itself does not make your character act unheroically, instead it is the players disappointing and boring response to the system.

 

Doc

[Sean Waters]

Re: Social effects

 

There is one major difference. The first option means the player can't say "I don't believe Jimmy would shoot me: I stand tough". In the second situation' date=' the player gets to make that call. He may be wrong, but hey - it's his choice. He may choose to stand there anyway - but he's doing so "knowing" that Jimmy's going to shoot him - which in game should give the thing a completely different context.[/quote']

 

You can believe Jimmy is going to shoot you without knowing why. The character has enough information that the are morally certain of something - but the conclusions he comes to about why the world is working like that and what he should do about it remain his own, so long as what he has the character do is consistent with the information (including background/historical information) that the character has - that's role playing.

 

He can be certain Jimmy is going to shoot him and stand tough because that is out of character so there must be another explanation and get shot because Jimmy is mind controlled. Telling the player he is anything less than certain is doing him a disservice. If you can tell the player he is certain he is about to get shot and he's wrong, well, there's nothing wrong with using the same descriptive language - all that is is an emphatic description.

 

I was watching Third Watch last night - cop show - one cop falls on some ice and a bystander picks his gun up to hand it back to him as he has dropped it. Guy's partner runs round the corner, sees man with gun over his fallen partner and draws down on him, hitting and paralysing him. He was certain his partner was going to be shot otherwise - and he was wrong.

 

Cue lots of interesting drama.

 

If that was an RPG you couldn't criticise the GM for saying 'Your partner is down and there is a guy standing over him pointing a gun at him - you think he's about to shoot him!' That's just description - it DOES look like he is about to shoot him. Anyone would think that with th einformation they have.

 

How the character deals with that information is another thing entirely.

 

 

 

Shrug. Once you introduce hardwired social conflict systems' date=' metagaming becomes inevitable: the whole point of such a system is to introduce a distance between player and character. In games like DiTV, the metagame [b']is[/b] the game.

 

Absent some pretty remarkable halluncinogens, you'll always be metagaming to an extent, my point is that sometimes you do it more than others. Hardwiring social conflict doesn't change the distance between player and character at all - you are not your character, they are not you - it just changes the source of the information you are working from.

 

When we were talking about nun seduction I'm not suggesting that, if all the right rolls are made the nun has to sleep with her seducer because she has no choice, I'm suggesting that she sleeps with her seducer because she has come to the conclusion that is what she wants to do, or feels she has to do. That is the choice that makes most sense for that character in that situation. Given that is the conclusion she has reached, it is only sensible role playing for her to do it, although there might be other options even then. She's not being controlled into doing it - she's being persuaded, convinced, coerced or whatever into doing it.

 

That may seem like an irrelevant distinction, but the choice remains with her - and as a GM role playing a character, almsot the only sensible role playing choice for a 'real' character in that situation is to go to bed.

 

That's got a bit of versimilitude to it. A player simply saying 'My character would never do that' is a player who just hasn't thought it through.

 

Anyway, what is good for the goose is good for the gander: if a player can say 'My character would never do that', or 'I choose that my character doesn't do that', well why shouldn't GM characters do the same: the guard won't leave his post to speak to the stranded motorist, he calls backup in accordance with protocol because he'd never leave his post, the petty thief won;t tell you the truth even though you are sure he is lying, because he doesn't want to.

 

The GM is supposed to role play the reactions of characters to social interaction skills or role played overtures - why shouldn't the players extend the same courtesy? Why, in other words, should the player characters have hard coded reactions?

[Markdoc]

Re: Social effects

 

I think you are misrepresenting. The roll is to see whether the character believes' date=' not whether he will be [b']heroic[/b].

 

Not really. The heroism lies in the choice. If the choice (whether to believe or not) hangs on a die roll, that's not heroic.

 

In this case, an analogy with physical combat is feasible. Rolling to hit the bad guy is not heroic. It's the decision to shoot at him that is heroic.

 

If the character believes that Lilly will do the deed then he has a dilemma. The player may not believe that the GM will make Lilly kill the unicorn and if he did make Lilly kill the unicorn when you stood back 'heroically' and allowed it to happen then again you might say:

 

Again, I'd simply have to disagree. The player gets to make the choice. The player gets to live with the consequences. If Lilly really has gone over to the dark side, not shooting her may be the wrong choice. But either way, it's the player's choice. I can think of few things that would stink as badly as having to live with the consequences of a bad "decision" that you didn't actually make, but which were dictated by the dice.

 

With the social resolution you, as a player, knows that your character believes Lilly will kill the unicorn and know that this conflicts with a lot of other things that you 'know' about Lilly.

 

What you have to do is think what the heroic action would be based on all of those things - not on the bits that you want to be true. If Lilly is truly going to kill the unicorn then the heroic action is to kill or disable Lilly and save the unicorn. If Lilly is not then the heroic action is to ensure the unicorn's safety while providing Lilly with the opportunity to prove your belief wrong.

 

So let the player make the choice. If he or she chooses wrong, let them live with the consequences. Don't insist that the GM make it for them. Neither of the outcomes you describe above, in any way require "rolling for belief".

 

We come back again to the core point: if the GM has done his job, the player (and thus the PC) believes there is at least a good chance Lilly s going to stick the unicorn. Cue! Dramatic tension! Let him play it from there taking his former experiences and psych lim.s into account. In this case, the persuasion might tip his hand. If the GM hasn't done his job, then "forcing" belief with a die roll is a clumsy, ugly attempt, which adds only irritation and further suspension of disbelief - now the player knows she isn't actually going to to do it.

 

Because of course, the truth is, in the film, the hero did not believe Lily would kill the unicorn. In fact he would not - no matter what his sidekick said. That is, after all, the entire point.

 

 

I'm honestly not seeing what the upside to circumscribing the player's choice is here. Either it's:

The PC must act as though Lilly were now evil. Options like trusting her are now off the table (in other words, the GM is starting to dictate the player's actions)

or:

The PC believes that Lilly is evil - but may act as he chooses anyway (in which case the whole belief thing is moot and the persuasion attempt served no purpose).

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Social effects

 

Anyway' date=' what is good for the goose is good for the gander: if a player can say 'My character would never do that', or 'I choose that my character doesn't do that', well why shouldn't GM characters do the same: the guard won't leave his post to speak to the stranded motorist, he calls backup in accordance with protocol because he'd never leave his post, the petty thief won;t tell you the truth even though you are sure he is lying, because he doesn't want to.[/quote']

 

Oh, absolutely. I've said that repeatedly. The game's going to be pretty drab if no-one ever cooperates, but there are times when an NPC is going to simply say "No".

 

To take the "carrying sword into the castle" example from an actual game I used before, Lamoniak succeeded magnificently in his persuasion but failed anyway. Was I being arbitrary? Well, you judge: the guard's though processes ran like this.

"Gee, he seems like a really nice guy and I'm sure he's not going to do anything bad, and he's a high noble and I'm just some grotty underling. On the other hand, he's going to sitting right next to m'lord at dinner so there's no way the sword will be unobserved and the last person to disobey m'lord had stakes driven through his shoulders and was pinned to the castle walls until he died in thirst and agony .... so, Mr Sword stays outside"

 

I simply decided. "No chance of success." I guess I could have said "OK, that's a -10 modifier so you fail", but to be honest, I don't actually see a difference.

 

The GM is supposed to role play the reactions of characters to social interaction skills or role played overtures - why shouldn't the players extend the same courtesy? Why' date=' in other words, should the player characters have hard coded reactions?[/quote']

 

They absolutely should. I've said that repeatedly. And, in my experience, most players do. Things should be (and in the current system, are) balanced for NPCs and PCs. They can react as seems most realistic and appropriate at the time, given the information they (or their PCs) have.

 

cheers, Mark

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Social effects

 

Again' date=' I'd simply have to disagree. The player gets to make the choice. The player gets to live with the consequences. If Lilly really has gone over to the dark side, not shooting her may be the [b']wrong[/b] choice. But either way, it's the player's choice. I can think of few things that would stink as badly as having to live with the consequences of a bad "decision" that you didn't actually make, but which were dictated by the dice.

 

A bad "decision" you didn't actually make, but which were dictated by the dice, could also be going into combat and getting nailed by a lucky head shot because your opponent rolled 2 3's in a roll then rolled max damage. We accept that.

 

So let the player make the choice. If he or she chooses wrong' date=' let them live with the consequences. Don't insist that the GM make it for them. Neither of the outcomes you describe above, in any way require "rolling for belief".[/quote']

 

The player is not "rolling for belief". He is rolling to determine whether he resists third party intervention (the sidekick, whom he does not control) directed at changing his beliefs. Just as the player could roll to persuade the local guards to ignore his violation of the spitting on the sidewalk ordinance, or tell him where the Captain is.

 

Because of course' date=' the truth is, in the film, the hero did [b']not[/b] believe Lily would kill the unicorn. In fact he would not - no matter what his sidekick said. That is, after all, the entire point.

 

Or he believed because he resisted the sidekick's attempt to persuade him otherwise. I doubt the script indicates he rolled to resist persuasion, but I suspect his to hit and damage rolls when he fired on the villain were annotated either.

 

And, if there was no perceived possibility he would NOT be persuaded, where would the drama in the movie be? In games, the possibility of failure and success are determined by the dice, not by player or GM fiat.

 

To take the "carrying sword into the castle" example from an actual game I used before, Lamoniak succeeded magnificently in his persuasion but failed anyway. Was I being arbitrary? Well, you judge: the guard's though processes ran like this.

"Gee, he seems like a really nice guy and I'm sure he's not going to do anything bad, and he's a high noble and I'm just some grotty underling. On the other hand, he's going to sitting right next to m'lord at dinner so there's no way the sword will be unobserved and the last person to disobey m'lord had stakes driven through his shoulders and was pinned to the castle walls until he died in thirst and agony .... so, Mr Sword stays outside"

 

I simply decided. "No chance of success." I guess I could have said "OK, that's a -10 modifier so you fail", but to be honest, I don't actually see a difference.

 

A -10 (or higher) modifier may well have been reasonable, and dictated that the character have no chance of success. But he has no chance of success because of the difficulty of the task, and the level of his skill. It's perfectly reasonable to decide "I do not want such virtually impossible tasks to be viable, so skill rolls cannot be high enough in this game to allow them to succeed".

 

At the same time, I would not take issue if attacking the guard resulted in death for the character against overwhelming odds he could not possibly prevail over. Some tasks are not possible given the abilities of the character. But if the character had a Teleportation spell, he could certainly attack the guard while pretending to remove his sword to hand it over, then Teleport away with a Triggered spell. For the GM to say "no, the guards fill you full of arrows before you can Teleport" would be unreasonable. The characters should be able to use their abilities as allowed by the GM - Teleport spells or extreme skill rolls. And the GM should ensure the abilities allowed will be consistent with the desired challenge levels in the game.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Social effects

 

Not really. The heroism lies in the choice. If the choice (whether to believe or not) hangs on a die roll' date=' that's not heroic.[/quote']

 

I disagree that it is heroic to choose to believe someone is evil or not. That is a simple matter of interpreting the facts before them. It is also not heroic or not whether to believe that someone is about to commit an evil act. Again that is a simple matter of interpreting the situation before them.

 

The heroism comes in the actions taken with those (and prior held) facts in hand.

 

In this case' date=' an analogy with physical combat is feasible. Rolling to hit the bad guy is not heroic. [u']It's the decision to shoot at him that is heroic[/u].

 

You are confusing the player and the character again. The player never does anything heroic - they get their characters to do heroic things. So rolling the dice is a player thing (thus never heroic).

 

Deciding to shoot someone is not in essence a heroic thing either, it is making the shot that makes someone heroic. Doofus might see the villain, draw his uzi and let loose. When he misses the villain and takes out three innocent bystanders, the choice to shoot was not heroic...

 

If the GM hasn't done his job' date=' then "forcing" belief with a die roll is a clumsy, ugly attempt, which adds only irritation and further suspension of disbelief - now the player [b']knows[/b] she isn't actually going to to do it.

 

What the player knows is that the GM has employed an NPC to persuade him that Lilly will do it. The player may interpret that as the GM leading him to do something wrong, he might also interpret it as the GM providing the character with an in-game clue that something has led Lilly to the point of an evil act. This comes down to the level of trust between players and GM, not trust in the system.

 

Because of course' date=' the truth is, in the film, the hero did [b']not[/b] believe Lily would kill the unicorn. In fact he would not - no matter what his sidekick said. That is, after all, the entire point.

 

After the fact, that is the point. If the hero had no chance of believing it then there is no drama, and thus no point in the scene...

 

 

The PC must act as though Lilly were now evil. Options like trusting her are now off the table (in other words, the GM is starting to dictate the player's actions)

or:

The PC believes that Lilly is evil - but may act as he chooses anyway (in which case the whole belief thing is moot and the persuasion attempt served no purpose).

 

Another false dichotomy. The PC must act as if he believes Lilly is about to off the unicorn - the player may decide to treat that as Lilly is now evil. He may also choose to interpret it as Lilly about to do an evil act (probably with reasoning the hero is not privy to). It is all about the choices made with those beliefs in play.

 

You seem to treat every roll as if it collapses all choice into black and white situations where the players is forced to follow the whim of the dice. Instead, I believe that it puts the player into a different perspective where, if he wants to play a role, then has to discover the heroic path even when it deviates from where the player might want it to be.

 

Doc

[Sean Waters]

Re: Social effects

 

Oh, absolutely. I've said that repeatedly. The game's going to be pretty drab if no-one ever cooperates, but there are times when an NPC is going to simply say "No".

 

To take the "carrying sword into the castle" example from an actual game I used before, Lamoniak succeeded magnificently in his persuasion but failed anyway. Was I being arbitrary? Well, you judge: the guard's though processes ran like this.

"Gee, he seems like a really nice guy and I'm sure he's not going to do anything bad, and he's a high noble and I'm just some grotty underling. On the other hand, he's going to sitting right next to m'lord at dinner so there's no way the sword will be unobserved and the last person to disobey m'lord had stakes driven through his shoulders and was pinned to the castle walls until he died in thirst and agony .... so, Mr Sword stays outside"

 

I simply decided. "No chance of success." I guess I could have said "OK, that's a -10 modifier so you fail", but to be honest, I don't actually see a difference.

 

 

 

They absolutely should. I've said that repeatedly. And, in my experience, most players do. Things should be (and in the current system, are) balanced for NPCs and PCs. They can react as seems most realistic and appropriate at the time, given the information they (or their PCs) have.

 

cheers, Mark

 

I tend to believe that anyone can be made to do anything, and an absolute in personality is an difficult to justify as invulnerability to physical attacks. It is all a matter of leverage. The example you gave above is one where the guard is weighing his options. If Lamoniak had sweetened the deal with 10000 in gold and a fast horse, well, he might have come to a different conclusion. It is not that he would not do what was asked under any circumstances, it is just that he would not do it under those circumstances. -10 on the roll and 'no chance' are functionally identical, but at least if you start at -10 then you can modify further with bribes, threats or whatever.

 

Also, there are always various approaches - where a straight persuasion roll might fail, you might be able to fool the guard, or threaten him and accomplish your aims that way.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Social effects

 

Also' date=' there are always various approaches - where a straight persuasion roll might fail, you might be able to fool the guard, or threaten him and accomplish your aims that way.[/quote']

 

See Gandalf taking his staff into the hall with Theoden. I'm sure that the guard there was under the strictest of instruction and under no illusions what would happen if he failed (even if that turned out not to be the case).

 

Gandalf pulled a bait and switch to influence the persuasion that he be allowed to take his staff into the hall and the bluff that it was not a weapon but a stick to aid an old man.

 

 

Doc

[nexus]

Re: Social effects

 

If social mechanics with weight and influence are so universally bad and do nothing but destroy all that is good in gaming...why do so many games both narrative and mechanistic have them and why do people play those game and praise those mechanics? People actually do use them and enjoy them. Not everyone, people have different tastes but they don't destroy everything that they touch.

 

And if they aren't this universal bane to gaming and it's just a matter of preference and opinion... what the heck are we arguing about here? This isn't even the 6th edition threads so no one need hope or fear that anything will be taken from this thread and used in 6th edition even as a presented option. The thread has rapidly gone from talking about a game and different ways to play Let's Pretend to a battle between Good and Evil instead of talking about opinions which is all this really is.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Social effects

 

If social mechanics with weight and influence are so universally bad and do nothing but destroy all that is good in gaming...why do so many games both narrative and mechanistic have them and why do people play those game and praise those mechanics? People actually do use them and enjoy them. Not everyone, people have different tastes but they don't destroy everything that they touch.

 

And if they aren't this universal bane to gaming and it's just a matter of preference and opinion... what the heck are we arguing about here? This isn't even the 6th edition threads so no one need hope or fear that anything will be taken from this thread and used in 6th edition even as a presented option. The thread has rapidly gone from talking about a game and different ways to play Let's Pretend to a battle between Good and Evil instead of talking about opinions which is all this really is.

 

And we are all trying to use our own social skills to influence each other

 

I like a decent mechanical system because it often comes to conclusions I probably wouldn't have and so puts me in situations I would not have accessed otherwise. I see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.

[Vulcan]

Re: Social effects

 

Something else has occurred to me. We're talking about losing a social conflict being like losing a physical conflict. But how often do characters actually lose physical combats?

 

First off, physical combats are usually entered as a team, and one member being KO'd doesn't mean they lost - if your team wins, you'll wake up in a couple minutes, none the worse for wear. Social conflicts are more often entered individually, and often with a 50/50 or better chance of losing. I doubt that most campaigns have a 50% chance to TPKO in anything like a standard battle.

 

Second, physical combat often has no lasting effects. If you just take STUN, you literally don't notice it after a few minutes. Even if you take BODY, that's often healed up within a few days - more so in some settings than others, of course. Many social conflicts have more lasting effects. To do a rough comparison:

 

Physical / Social:

Get knocked out, villains escape / Convinced to let villains go, for justifiable reasons

Serious wound, takes weeks/months to heal / Convinced to do something which temporarily damages your reputation/self-image

Permanent injury, like losing an arm / Convinced to do something which permanently damages your reputation/self-image

Killed / Convinced to do something that makes the character unplayable (including no longer wanting to play that character)

 

So for instance, being fooled into killing your wife would fall into either the Permanent Injury or Killed category, depending on the player. As such, it should only be used to the extent that you'd include a physical combat with a probable chance of those effects.

 

This is an excellent point, and assuming that a 'social confict system' sticks closely to these levels of comparison, I actually might not mind such a system.

 

What I have experienced is that social conflict systems tend to very quickly escalate to the Killed / Convinced to do something that makes the character unplayable (including no longer wanting to play that character) level very quickly. A system that corrects that flaw I might actually consider 'playable.'

[Vulcan]

Re: Social effects

 

And here you have put your finger on the core of the discussion. If the players are willing to role-play along, they will: hard rules don't really add anything. If they're not willing, the whole thing's a waste of time, rules or not.

 

And in my experience, players are more willing to play along if they don't feel they are being coerced into it.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Another good summary of my entire point. Hard sysytem or soft, if the Players and GM are not willing to work together in a reasonable manner, there is no reason for any of them to be there.

[Vulcan]

Re: Social effects

 

You seem to treat every roll as if it collapses all choice into black and white situations where the players is forced to follow the whim of the dice. Instead, I believe that it puts the player into a different perspective where, if he wants to play a role, then has to discover the heroic path even when it deviates from where the player might want it to be.

 

Doc

 

The problem is that when you use dice to resolve a conflict, you have reduced it to a binary solution: you made the roll, or you didn't. So all the shades of maybe-maybe not that are present in social interactions are lost in the yes/no mechanics of the die roll.