zornwil

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

Young people today (meaning people around 30 and less) don't even get "chocolates and pantyhose" as bribe-worthy materials references.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Yeah' date=' "cosmic ray strikes". Back before manufacturers realized that it actually mattered where you got your sand for making silicon wafers, and before it had been demonstrated that a lot of said "cosmic rays" were actually silicon-32 decays within the chip itself.[/quote']

I knew scientists were all stupid numb-numb heads. See how scientists are no better than medicine men!? Medicine men I say!

 

(just practicing ranting illogically and tangentially for later in life)

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Need a roomie?

Sorry for such a late response, absolutely, would enjoy it.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Are you?

Yes

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Log, hope you're doing better or will soon. Unrelated, are you going to GenCon this year?

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Old Man, great musing, had me really wondering! Good story, too.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

When is it a bad time for such discussions?

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Open Letter to SatinKitty and tkdguy:

 

Dear people, if I ever meet you in the flesh, you are hereby encouraged to slap me, once, across the face, for being a sissy.

I thought i was the only one who could call you a sissy and slap you!

Re: Oink oink

Get me an interview then? I can relocate.

Hey, I saw your Pandora message!

Re: Oink oink

16 more pages by standard posts per page and we're up to 1000 pages!

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

It's also easy to win every "social" conflict by just having a high Mind Control, too. And a general issue (and feature) of HERO is that there's a number of "one punch" ways to do things but also a lot of "undefeatable" defensive constructs. I think the trick is more in balancing this and assuring that social conflicts have the right barriers/defenses.

Also, I'd like to point out something about social conflicts: very often, the issue isn't that someone will win, but rather HOW they win - just as with physical conflicts. A conflict system is very much about shaping how and what it means. For me, the most important part of the stakes-based conflict I've seen that merges social and physical seemlessly is that in a given conflict the aspect of what approach people take and how they take it and what incremental gains they make, even if they lose a conflcit, is key to RPGign moments. You can get small or tangential concessions that are meaningful later ("He respects you now, even though he won't do what you say."). Also, the process of playing out the social conflict should mesh with, not divorce from, the dialogue and roleplaying, so that it's enjoyable. it isn't just resolving the conflict - it's the "how" and "what" to resolving it that's of value.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

I agree with many of the point made but' date=' like anything else in an rpg, you're not going to be able to simulate [i']everything[/i] involved in Social Interaction accurately It's just too variable.

 

Physical Combat in Hero doesn't simulate everything. It's an approximation. Something have to be left up to common sense, drama, a bit of handwaving and reverse engineering when interpreting dice rolls.

Thanks, that's a good way to put it.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Thing is that an ill considered approach or unappreciated argument can actually make you more entrenched in your position. There is a certain 'Dale Carnegie' sales patter than inevitably makes my blood boil. I bloody well won't buy whatever is being sold' date=' even if I want it. It seems to me that with a 'combat' system, all you do is wear your opponent down. Practically, if you allow people to say 'well, I don't respond well to that argument', then the basis of social combat is that it can only work by consent, and logically, you can therefore only convince someone of something they either don't care about, or have alerady half decided to do anyway.[/quote']

I'm not sure what to say besides from experience that hasn't been the case with such things in other systems. As you say, if someone's seriously resistant no matter what, the conflict will quickly move to physical or other such means, if the other party really wants to go there, and if it's worth going to that extreme (e.g., regular battle ("Stop robbing that bank, Mr. Evil! What's that, you say words won't convince you? Feel my fists!", torture ("Oh, indeed, you'll tell us what we want to know..."), etc.), then it's worth the conflict and worth the repercussions. But there's also tremendous ground in-between; just as in any social situation, there's lots of things we get "coerced" into doing, humans do have a wide bit of stuff we "don't 'really' care about" enough to force the issue beyond some point.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

I agree...but I disagree. Peer pressure does not have consistent results. In a given peer group, a test group of ten similar subjects is placed. Some sunjects might be persuaded to drink liquor and kiss women, others might not. Stick the same sunjects in with different peers, and some might be persuaded to worship Jeebus, and some might not...and we have no way of knowing in advance if it would be the same people, different people or some weird overlapping venn diagram thing.

 

How does that square with social combat? To my mind, how you are and can be influenced is a very complex thing, based on a lifetime of observations and prejudices. We just don't have enough paper to accurately model that.

 

What aer the possible outcomes going to be?

 

Agrees

Disagrees but goes along anyway

Agrees but likely to change their mind soon

Disagrees

Disagrees but pretends to agree

Agrees but pretends to agree out of orneryness

 

...could be a long list...

 

I don't know enough about brainwashing to know if it works consistently, but if it does I'd suggest it is less of an application of social skill and more of a RSR mental transformation.

 

In fact that almost defines skills in Hero: stuff you do that you can't guarantee will work.

But I think the dice might provide of that variability, along with allowing for the inflection of psych lims. It seems to from experience. And most often, if someone is really going to dig their heels in, if it's not that important to the other party then it won't get pushed, so that puts off a lot of unrealistic outcomes. Finally, if one party isn't as strongly interested in pushing the conflict, it doesn't mean they don't get something out of it, such as a point granted or such, although I don't think anything of the above mechanics necessarily goes in this direction. I think you could go this way by allowing for partial victory for the side that loses but comes close (-1 to -2 or such).

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Can I just say that, whilst on one level (the tinkerer level) of my mind, I like the idea of 'social combat'. It appeals to the mechanical mindset I often adopt and simplifies the situation to a set of rules. I like the idea of the certainty that such a mechanic can bring to social interaction. Besides, 'Social Stun' has a certain alliterative charm.

 

OTOH my concern is that it implies that anyone, if sufficiently beset, can be made to comply with a social requirement, whether it be a request for information, or forebearance, or whatever. Moreover, it quite strongly implies that all social requirements have an equal degree of 'social force', unless you are going to define social defences to a very high degree.

 

I don't believe that to be the case. Darth Sidious may well have been able to turn Anakin, but could he have turned Yoda? Doubt it. Could he have turned my 7 year old son? Absolutely not (although The Emperor might well have been in danger of being shown exactly what 'The Dark Side' is...).

 

Any social combat needs, at very least, a 'fumble' mechanic so that, if you blow it, you've blown it. Moreover, any such social combat would have to be undertaken 'in the dark'. A large part of 'social combat'is that you only know how well you've succeeded with hindsight. Did you REALLY convince the guard to let you by without reporting you, or did he just let you by SO that he could report you?

I think, to your and Doc Democracy's point, though, having seen and heard of this in action for some time now I think that group guidelines and common sense address it pretty easily. It's pretty intuitive in practice.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

I think we could have three tiers of conflict resolution.

 

The first would be skill-based, so the most you do is roll one opposed skill roll, determining the results. That's how we presently handle, say, moving silently or crafting a sword, but as noted above, it could easily be extended to physical combat.

 

The second is one we don't presently have, but would be based on skills and time. You want to use your Smith skill to craft a sword? We determine how tough it is to craft the sword, and you make your roll. The degree of success determines the extent of progress made towards crafting that sword. We'd need rules for adjudicating time requirements, as well as degree of difficulty. This might be a rational middle ground for, say, a medical problem. After some period of work (say 6 hours), the Doctor rolls his skill. Made it by 4? OK, that counts as 3 "successes" (one for a successful roll, plus one for every 2 the roll is made by). The GM marks off his progress on the "cure" chart crafted for this medical issue. He hasn't solved the problem, but he now knows this will ultimately be fatal if not treated (for which he needed 1 success), and that a sample of the toxin from the creature that bit the victim would greatly assist in finding a cure (add +3 to his future rolls). The timeline would have other breakpoints, up to "cure from sample", "cure without sample", "immunization with sample" and "immunization without sample". What's the catch? He only gets one roll per time period, meanwhile the venom is running its course in the victim.

 

The third approach would be a full combat-like system, so Doc is now rolling against the disease/venom's own "hide cure" skill, rolling "damage" and applying it to the condition's "defenses", 'con", "stun" and "bod". If it's Stunned, he's at least slowed its progress for a time. If it's KO'd, it's in remission until it recovers. Get it down to "dead" and it's fully cured.

 

It seems reasonable for the toolbox to outline the three approaches, and provide detailed mechanics for the most common RPG conflict, being combat. Maybe some guidelines for the middle ground approach for a couple of commonly sued skills would be appropriate as well. High end resolution mechanics for other areas might best be presented in appropriate sourcebooks.

That's a neat idea. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that really the tiers represent a sort of basic story-level interest level, in that where you resolve something could in theory be done any tier, just that we select the tier most satisfying to the level of story-time we want to put into that conflict.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Very well said all the way around, Jaws.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

You sum up my point nicely. Because these skills do more bad than good (spoil the plot, make the problems too easy, give out information which the GM hides on purpose) I really do not like them. If you use "tactics" in my game, I (as a GM) will never explain to you what you should be doing. Assume Space Warfare scenario: You can have exact numbers about your ships, you can ask me "if we pit this ship vs that ship, will ours win?" and get a decent answer (assuming I know it) or you can get circumstance boni on ocv/dcv and similar things. Also, it will help for not being surprised.

We simulate combat with dice because we really cannot do well otherwise. But that is not true for mind games, which work nicely in our heads. Rolling dice is a crutch when nothing else works well, it's not how things "should" be!

Others have made the substantive responses I would make. As to the issue of "these skills do more bad than good," that has not been my experience in actual play at all, either as GM or player. I have found Deduction, Tactics, and so on both useful and non-abusive in driving narrative and "realistic" in a method by which players not possessing the abilities of their PCs/NPCs with those abilities. As you say, it requires GM thoughtfulness, but I'm not sure I've played in any substantial RPG that didn't require some GM ability in managing these kinds of skills, whether it's done with or without mechanics.

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Sod the GM! I'd rather not do it the way the GM wants, often times it makes things easier! Of course there are the times when it makes it very much more difficult! You gotta know your GM too...

 

 

 

 

This is inspired though.

 

I will make sure that all rolls possible in future are rolled by the players rather than NPCs. I think that I might even look at seeing whether PCs can avoid damage rather than NPCs hitting them.

 

The default position will be that an enemy hits unless the PC avoids the damage - the roll will be the reverse of an NPCs to hit one but it puts all of the dice in the player's hand, so to speak...

 

 

Doc

Very interesting extension. So is the roll by the PC totally normal other than the bonuses and penalties are reversed (i.e., the attacking NPC's bonus is the penalty, the defending PC takes what would have been a penatly to the NPC as his own bonus)? Or are you thinking of other changes in that?

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

As Lucius mentioned' date=' we have here a role playing game, and you can't really stage combats and such, which is why we have detailed rules for doing that. If we had equally detailed rules for the social situations then I'm not sure we'd be role playing so much as playing a really freeform board game. With an imaginary board.[/quote']

 

I don't really get that. Are you saying that introducing social conflict into HERO would cause such enforcement of certain reactions that players wouldn't be able to roleplay? I can assure you that's not the experience I've had whatsoever in games that allow for social conflict.

 

We can already model the irresistable persuader (mind control RSR: Conversation), and role playing coupled with skill rolls works well enough for NPCs.

 

The problem is we can't MAKE other PCs do stuff...

 

Well, I'm not sure I like the idea of social combat because I don't think it is as easily reduced to numbers as physical combat, which really has a tiny number of possible outcomes and a relatively limtied number of strategies and approaches compared to the complesities of social interaction.

 

I think that this can al be fixed, however, using existing mechanics, or something very like them. That and proper preparation.

 

First NPCs.

 

If I am building a VIPER guard, I don;t want to have to give him hight social interactions kills so that the players don't persuade him to nip over the road and buy them some orange sherbert. He's NOT going to leave that post if he's been told not to in most situations, so, first off I need to have an idea of what sort of social interaction he would be susceptible to.

 

He would leave his post if he received new orders. OK, so some sort of bluff might work against him, but he'd have to beleive that the orders were actually coming from someone who could give them; a player dressed in a Viper uniform could march up, tell him he is relieved and order him to report to the Commander. That might work. He could get a message over the radio from 'The Commander' - that might work. Both of those are bluffs that require a bit of set up. If a PC marches up, dressed as Captain Cosmic, and says that he is in fact The Viper Leader in disguise pulling an emergency inspection, the guard is NOT going to be fooled. So, first off this sort of situation requires an appropriate approach. Without that, it is doomed.

 

Second it is a high risk strategy. If the persuade roll (or whatever) doesn't do so well, he may get suspicious. Let us face it this guy has orders to stay there and not let anyone without appropriate ID through, and report all movements through the gate. If yuo are trying to get him to deviate from those orders, he is going to ake his opposed roll at a substantial bonus. If you can somehow work out what the orders were and USE them, he won't. So research can be important.

 

Finally if the GM plain doesn't want you to get in that way, it may eb that the guard checked The Commander out 5 minutes ago, so he knows that the 'orders' are false, and raises the alarm - or tries to.

 

So, with NPCs a GM needs a good idea of what they are 'programmed' to do in game. Anything that works with that may well work, anything working against it...well, is going to have a harder time.

 

The actual success or failure is still based on a skill roll (opposed, probably, by the Guard's PS: Guard skill), and the exact words are assumed to be part of the roll - no silver tongued players running riot - but the approach and set up WILL garner bonuses and penalties that are vital to success.

 

PCs are more difficult, because you CAN require them to act in a certain way as a result of social skills used on them, but they tend to get stroppy if you do. IME the more experienced role players don't have a problem with this, often. usde the skill rolls against them not as compulsions, but to give role playing cues - you believe him - he seems genuine - you think he has an ulterior motive - whatever.

 

One 'trick' here is have the player roll to resist a social skill - if their own roll 'fails' then, IME, they are more willing to go along with it.

 

On a more far reaching level, consider assigning 50 disadvantage points to 'PC personality'. This is a new category, but very much like (and overlapping to an extent) with psychological limitations. The player can define personality flaws; has to. So, for instance, it wouldn't be something like 'stubborn' - that would be a psych lim - but it would be something like 'attracted to red heads', or 'always follows orders without question'.

 

Then if approached by an attractive redhead he is more likely to be fooled, and if given orders he's more likely to follow them - because he has points for them as disadvantages.

 

This personality suite can and should be a dynamic thing, changing with the character over time (not just when it suits), and should be susceptible to appropriate research by others.

 

Moreover, unlike psych lims, you can't get round it with an Ego roll - it IS your Ego in many ways. If you want to overcome your personality the GM might allow you to on a 8-, with appropriate situational modifiers.

 

Of course all this is just a way of selling the idea of comlpiance with NPC social skills to the players, but then that is what social skill use is all about

 

That's a very interesting "Personality Suite" concept, really neat. I've been giving some thought to a redux of HERO to bring in some later-generation concepts as well as, sort of ironically, going back in simplicity to version 1. This could play into that. Of course, this is one of those projects that will probably get done in, oh, say, 2160, assuming of course modern medicine extends my life as promised. (In other words, this is all stuff in my head and I have other priorities I should be concentrating on, so unlikely to happen in the near future, just lately I've been thinking a lot more about it hence my couple posts to this thread)

Re: Musings on Random Musings

That could be a funny skit

Re: Social versus Physical/Mental Conflicts

Some pretty neat ideas, I like the expansion to OddHat's and BNakagawa's in addition to what was said earlier.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Over the past, I don't know, six months, I've tried all sorts of things to improve my productivity. I seriously don't have enough time for all the things that need to get done, and I thought that by tracking and prioritizing it all I could do better at blocking off my time and knocking things off the list. Since the part of my life where I have the most balls in the air is work, that's where I started.

 

So, I've tried creating to-do lists and tracking them in iCal. I've tried various methods of task tracking methods using flat text files or paper. I've tried various software organization tools like iGTD. (iGTD is really good, by the way.) And none of it has made me more efficient or faster at anything, although I suppose I don't forget stuff as often as I used to.

 

What it has done is made me realize what the real problem is: I hate my job. All I do is read and write email, talk on the phone, and occasionally write some marketing crap. I deal with the same peoples' same problems every god damned day. I know what needs to be done to improve the overall situation in my department, but that requires more staff, which I don't have leave to hire. I don't make anything. I don't create anything. When I go home and the wife asks me what I did at work today, the answer is usually that I fought some fire, talked some employee into (figuratively) putting down the gun, or on a really productive day I might have met with a vendor or customer and left a good impression.

 

Now I knew that I might not like the job when I took it, but of course it came with such a significant pay increase that I couldn't turn it down, and now I've gone and rearranged my life, mortgagewise, such that I need an income of about the same level if I want to remain homeful. So I'm stuck, and I knew it might happen. It's just tough when I'm confronted with actual hard evidence that I don't like the core functions of my job.

Sorry to hear this, and I can fully appreciate it (sans the baby pressure). I was able to move laterally - I hope perhaps you can find something as well? Anyway, good luck.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Speaking of rewarding the wrong kind of behavior...

 

Couple of weeks ago, we had a small power outage. During the outage, my UPS died. So the next day I emailed their customer service guys. Standard, "Hey, my UPS died and I think it's still under warrenty."

 

They responded, "What kind of monitor did you have hooked up to it?"

 

I responded: 15" flatscreen.

 

They responded, "OK, well, it can't be that. What kind of printer do you have?"

 

I said: Inkjet.

 

They responded, "OK, well it can't be that. What kind of system do you have?"

 

I said: (whatever kind of system I had, in as much detail as I could gather). Now I have no problem answering these questions -- I understand what they're doing, just trying to troubleshoot the problem.

 

They responded, "What kind of printer do you have?"

 

I said, somewhat bemused that they were asking again: Inkjet.

 

They responded, "OK, well it can't be that. What kind of system do you have?"

 

(Also keep in mind that each email is just tacked on to the top of the previous email, so if you scroll down you can see the entire conversation up to this point).

 

And... I blew my stack. I sent them back a profanity-laced email telling them exactly how incompetent they were, asking me the same g-d questions over and over again instead of telling me what I had to do to fix it, and I demanded that the guy pass me to someone who could actually f'n help.

 

I immediately got a response from a different guy (guessing he was a supervisor or manager) who apologized and send me a Return Authorization number. And I thought, "Finally, a little customer service."

 

But as I thought about it more, I thought, "OK, I've spend the last week being polite and professional, answering this guy's questions promptly and completely and, in one case, giving him more information than he asked for (anticipating that he might need more info). And I got nothing but repeats of the same questions. But the minute I start screaming profanities at them, I get results. Being polite didn't get the job done, but dropping the F-bomb did. So I wonder, the next time I have a problem, should I start out professional and polite, or just skip the middle man and go straight to the profanity?"

 

This is, IMHO, exactly the wrong kind of behavior for that company to encourage in its customers. So I went and bought a new UPS from one of their competitors. F*** 'em.

I've been through this as well and it really galls me, for the reasons stated above in this thread, it teaches the wrong behavior all the way around, both to the customer service people as well as to people who legitimately complain. Sometimes I almost feel I should start super-aggressive and mad because it's the only way to get results, but I don't. To your point here, the whole thing where you get back an email with questions you answered further below in the same thread to tech support is something that REALLY gets my goat.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings

"Nitpick compensates for his limited fighting ability by pouncing on points that are only marginally relevant to the discussion. For example, if his opponent in a sports forum conflict casually mentioned the Cubs' 4-2 victory in the 1908 World Series, Nitpick would quickly counterattack with something like, "4-2 !? Any moron knows the Cubs won the Series 4-1! Someone so ignorant about baseball history can't possibly know anything about salary caps!" Even if the minor point is conceded by his opponent Nitpick will return to it whenever the battle turns against him. Though weak, Nitpick is very tenacious and will never admit defeat. Nitpick is a close ally of Artful Dodger." from flamewarriors.com