Politicial discussion RPG combat system.

[HappyEngineer]

I would like to design a combat system for political discussion.

For instance, let's say that my character is having a discussion with another politician on stage in front of an audience of scientists. The scientists will have a high skepticism attribute and a low boredom tolerance attribute.

In order to win I need to convince the audience of my views. This is made easier if I have high values in logical thinking and discussion framing. If I attempt to use my ad hominem attack feat I am much more likely to fail in this environment than I would be in front of other audiences.

If I use the same type of attack each time then they will be reduced in efficacy due to the low boredom tolerance of the audience.

If the opponent has higher attributes in the relevant areas (logical thinking and discussion framing) then that will make combat more difficult.

That's the basic idea. I've seen lots of rules discussion in the OOTS forum, so I figured this was a great place to get some feedback.

Can someone give me some guidelines as to how I can formalize these ideas so that I can turn them into a full set of rules for discussion combat?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Brainstorming...

Use a system of momentum swinging back and forth. If the Momentum meter goes negative, that means that your opponent is winning the fight; if the Momentum meter goes positive, it means that you're winning.

Then, you and your opponent have some attribute which governs the value at which you lose the fight. This could be something like Persuasiveness. So if your opponent has Persuasiveness 9, and you have Persuasiveness 5, you lose the fight at -5, and they lose the fight at 9.

Introduce maneuvers into it. 4th Edition D&D is a great model for this. You'd have different "powers" that you could invoke for different styles of arguing, and these powers would take up different lengths of time in a round.

Have "defenses" for each character. An easy trio is Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Respectively: the knowledgeability and respectability/character of the speaker, the ability of the speaker to appeal to the emotions, and the rationality of the speaker's arguments. Different arguing things might attack these defenses differently, to swing the Momentum meter.

That's pretty much all I've got.