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Gwazi Magnum
2016-06-30, 04:00 AM
Full Disclaimer: I'm working on making my own tabletop system with some friends (hopefully to be sold someday), and during this process there's one part specifically that has seemed to create a bit of a catch-22. And I'm curious as to what others think about this, and how they might tackle this. And yes, this is to hear outside opinions perspectives on a design element, and we could very well be implementing/testing ideas suggested here.*Disclaimer End*

Basically, Social Abilities. Those perks, skills, feats, spells etc that give you an ability to socialise or be a more social based character. This could be giving someone a new way to barter, be better with disguises, having contacts in certain areas that provide them with information etc. By using this stuff you give your players more options to tackle an encounter through social or non-combat means, helping to take away from the "Dungeon Raid, Killing everything" sort of play style.

However, this is where the catch-22 comes in. What about when this stuff becomes used as a crutch instead? Cases where they simply solve an issue through the mechanic rather than bothering to roleplay it out. For example, instead of investigating for themselves they just call the contact. Instead of say earning the contact through a question they simply purchase it through XP, Feats, whatever means the system in question provides? Instead of actually bartering down to a better deal, they just activate their "Sell for 75%" ability and resolve it within seconds?

Now, one could simply remove these abilities outright. But now everyone's basically making a combat character, and now you've made a big incentive or expectation of the players to just go the violent route because that's the only tools they're provided. Or you could simply handwave it as a DM and go "If you want to RP, then RP it and don't rely on your abilities", but then that becomes an individual fix to one group specifically, not a fix to a systems inherent design.

So, what are ways you guys (girls, pyro-fox, mayonnaise etc.) tend to tackle this? Or at least how would you theorise a Mechanical solution to creating social abilities for players to use, but without it becoming a crutch that they hide behind instead of bothering to Roleplay themselves? Or where would you put a proper balance between Social abilties/connections gained through RP opposed to gained through leveling up or backstory?

Vitruviansquid
2016-06-30, 05:03 AM
On one hand, I fully hate the idea of a game having a "social character" and a "combat character" and a "wilderness survival character" and an "investigating character" and splitting the party up by when each character gets to shine. Ideally, you are making a game where all the players get to participate at all sections of the game. So instead of thinking about social abilities as perks accessible to some characters and not others, consider a scenario where each character has a different, but equally valid way of tackling social challenges.

So you need some kind of mechanic to make the player of the barbarian want to go around threatening people, being laconic, and talking in barbarian-ish ways while the player of the cleric dispenses wise advice, gives sermons, and talking in a cleric-ish way.

I think a really good system would be to have a way for each player to declare their characters' general or preferred attitudes in social situations. For example, one character could prefer to use intimidation, another could prefer to use dishonesty, another can prefer to use logic and reasoning, and so on. Whenever the player of that character acts in a way that follows the character's declared attitudes, give them some kind of reward - experience, a "bennie" for a reroll in the session, or whatever fits in your game. Likewise, you could enforce a penalty of some kind whenever the character does something uncharacteristic of their declared attitudes. You could extend this system outside of just social situations, and give them players rewards whenever their characters solve any problems in their preferred way - so the roguish character gains experience or a bennie or whatever whenever he outsmarts someone, the knight for overcoming challenges, the pacifist for making people get along, and so on.

Gwazi Magnum
2016-06-30, 10:22 AM
On one hand, I fully hate the idea of a game having a "social character" and a "combat character" and a "wilderness survival character" and an "investigating character" and splitting the party up by when each character gets to shine. Ideally, you are making a game where all the players get to participate at all sections of the game.

I should have clarified. I wasn't trying to suggest player's would be put into such roles. The System I'm working on is being designed to encourage versatility and dis-encourage mix-maxing or over specialisation. What I was trying to get at is designing whatever social abilities would be in the game overall that any character has access to.


So instead of thinking about social abilities as perks accessible to some characters and not others, consider a scenario where each character has a different, but equally valid way of tackling social challenges.

So you need some kind of mechanic to make the player of the barbarian want to go around threatening people, being laconic, and talking in barbarian-ish ways while the player of the cleric dispenses wise advice, gives sermons, and talking in a cleric-ish way.

I think a really good system would be to have a way for each player to declare their characters' general or preferred attitudes in social situations. For example, one character could prefer to use intimidation, another could prefer to use dishonesty, another can prefer to use logic and reasoning, and so on. Whenever the player of that character acts in a way that follows the character's declared attitudes, give them some kind of reward - experience, a "bennie" for a reroll in the session, or whatever fits in your game. Likewise, you could enforce a penalty of some kind whenever the character does something uncharacteristic of their declared attitudes. You could extend this system outside of just social situations, and give them players rewards whenever their characters solve any problems in their preferred way - so the roguish character gains experience or a bennie or whatever whenever he outsmarts someone, the knight for overcoming challenges, the pacifist for making people get along, and so on.

I'm not sure if an XP reward for acting a certain way really helps the matter. Cause you're more just pushing them to always behave in one manner, and although you do give then XP when they do successfully pull of a social situation, there's nothing there to actually be used when said situation has popped up.

That being said though, the earlier bit on having each player engage with people their own way seems nice. Kind of like a Diplomacy skill, but it's skinned as however your character tends to act or behave.

TheIronGolem
2016-06-30, 10:28 AM
However, this is where the catch-22 comes in. What about when this stuff becomes used as a crutch instead? Cases where they simply solve an issue through the mechanic rather than bothering to roleplay it out. For example, instead of investigating for themselves they just call the contact. Instead of say earning the contact through a question they simply purchase it through XP, Feats, whatever means the system in question provides? Instead of actually bartering down to a better deal, they just activate their "Sell for 75%" ability and resolve it within seconds?

This isn't a "crutch", or something that "takes away" from roleplaying. It is roleplaying. Mechanically-supported social abilities allow players to play characters who are more socially adept than themselves. Take that away, and you're telling shy or awkward players that they're only allowed to have shy and awkward characters.

Furthermore, resolving something like a barter in seconds is a good thing. Presumably you're making an adventure game, not a commerce simulator? Shopping for your hero gear isn't the fun or interesting part of the game; it should be handled quickly and efficiently where possible.

Segev
2016-06-30, 10:56 AM
This isn't a "crutch", or something that "takes away" from roleplaying. It is roleplaying. Mechanically-supported social abilities allow players to play characters who are more socially adept than themselves. Take that away, and you're telling shy or awkward players that they're only allowed to have shy and awkward characters.

Furthermore, resolving something like a barter in seconds is a good thing. Presumably you're making an adventure game, not a commerce simulator? Shopping for your hero gear isn't the fun or interesting part of the game; it should be handled quickly and efficiently where possible.

As TheIronGolem says, mechanical "social powers" are no more crutches than are mechanical "combat powers."

If you want "earning a contact" to be an XP-less thing, make it more akin to getting magic items in D&D 3.5. It's something they do by using their other powers to acquire it, and they keep it as long as they work to maintain it.

The key here is that you want to make what people invoke be mechanics to see how well their PC does at a particular action, not to see if they succeed overall. You don't design combat to be, "Okay, roll Combat, DC 25; if you made it, you kill the enemy." You design it to involve attack rolls, damage rolls, movement, positioning, battlefield control and manipulation, hit points, stats that can be impeded, etc. etc.

What you want to do with social mechanics is think about the methods people use. They don't need to necessarily buy "a contact." Instead, they have the skills to make friends with people, to negotiate for services, to read people for what they want, and to figure out what they can offer to influence people. To build friendships by changing how the other person values them.

So "a contact" might be an NPC that they've done business with in the past, exchanged information (or goods/services for information) and had it work out well, or even somebody over whom they have blackmail because they figured out their dark secret(s).

They use these relationships and hooks to get the NPC contact to give them more information. How they do it, what mechanical tools they use, would depend on the particular contact. "I call the contact" thus becomes at least an opportunity to RP it out. Maybe it's a trivial bit of RP if the contact likes them and doesn't mind sharing the information (and has all the relevant information at hand). Maybe it's more complicated because the contact is scared to talk, or doesn't like them and has to be cajoled, or wants more payment. Or maybe he doesn't have the information they need, and contacting him is just the first step to learning tiny pieces that lead to other pieces.

Like a "combat" where Superman is taking out street gangsters armed with knives, a social encounter with a cooperative friend who is happy to help need never invoke mechanics. (Superman can just be assumed to clean up the gangesters however the player wants to narrate it; the GM can just have the buddy tell the PC whatever he wants to know with a little bit of conversational RP.) Mechanics are there to resolve conflicts, questions of whether a PC has the capability to do something.

If it takes convincing an NPC to do something rather than simply asking, that's where mechanics might be invoked. They might be tasked to help the PC determine why the NPC is reluctant, or what he wants. Or they might be tasked to see if the PC can, through power of words and begging alone (relying on what he thinks are the hooks to the NPC's soul), get what he wants. This may involve guessing, much as hurting a wolfman might involve guessing between using silver or cold iron (is he a werewolf or a wolfwere? Does this NPC value human compassion or greed?).

Finally, I would try to design your system such that social mechanics provide penalties for ignoring the influence, and bonuses for complying with it. This way, if the player of the influenced character (whether PC or NPC) really, really doesn't want his character giving in, he can always choose to suffer the penalties instead.

Going to an extreme, here, if Joe doesn't want his straight all-American high school quarterback seduced by Akio the Omnisexual Bishounen Scion of Captain Jack Harkness, then Joe can choose to have his PC refuse to make out/sleep with Akio. Even if Akio blows him away in social influence mechanics. He'll suffer some pretty hefty penalties due to resisting those powerful urges and temptations, and possibly due to how much he finds them uncomfortable to begin with, but he can choose not to give in.

Jim, playing the cheerleader girlfriend to Joe, however, might be more willing to let her give in to the temptations of Akio; she would get the bonuses promised for the thrill of giving in to the massive social influence, for sating her desires. (The upsides for Joe's PC and downsides for Jim's PC are already likely obvious; they're the same downsides that normally creates the unrealistic prudence and self-control PCs might have without social mechanics. Joe and Jim aren't seduced, and aren't going to enjoy the prurient pleasures promised, but will experience their characters potentially suffering social stigma, enduring pregnancy subplots, STDs or other such things. The bonuses and penalties reflect the short-term gratification angle that is normally not shared by the player.)

Gwazi Magnum
2016-06-30, 12:25 PM
I think there's something I need to clarify, from my own general experience in Roleplaying cause it's possible we've dealt with different player bases and as a result are miss-communicating from different experiences.

Usually when I look at stuff like Social Skills, Feats etc being used it's been following these steps.

Player attempts a Social Action
DM Requires a roll of the Die
Die Roll dictates success or failure

So basically, players have the option of RP. But there's no real incentive to do so, because all they really need to do with roll the die, the acting out is just flavour. Now, I know the response to this is likely "Then those DM's are doing it wrong", and I agree. However, the DM's are doing something wrong that the system allows them to do. What I'm aiming to do, is make it so social encounters aren't as easy as that, but there's actual engagement involved with the social skills and abilities.

Segev actually put's it rather well in his own response in how Combat is a variety of actions put together, that's basically the goal with the Social Abilities.


This isn't a "crutch", or something that "takes away" from roleplaying. It is roleplaying. Mechanically-supported social abilities allow players to play characters who are more socially adept than themselves. Take that away, and you're telling shy or awkward players that they're only allowed to have shy and awkward characters.

I think there's been a misunderstanding. I wasn't looking to get rid of social abilities entirely, I'm looking for ways to make them more engaging and aid in the Roleplay process, rather than to simply roll some dice and bypass the Roleplaying entirely.

That being said though, this is also a limitation of tabletop in general. When playing tabletop with friends you have the ability to act, to get in character, to practice socialising and improve over time. You can't however pull out a sword and suddenly hit a bunch of Orcs, if that's what you want to do you need to be looking at LARPs. As a result, Mechanics more or less have to take over more than Social Skills do, because without said mechanics combat would be neigh impossible, but social encounters could still be done without as many die rolls.

It'd be better if you grabbed new abilities to make it more engaging (which is my goal here), but it's important to remember they are two different playing fields.


Furthermore, resolving something like a barter in seconds is a good thing. Presumably you're making an adventure game, not a commerce simulator? Shopping for your hero gear isn't the fun or interesting part of the game; it should be handled quickly and efficiently where possible.

This varies group by group being honest. I've played in groups that would rather skip shopping, I've played in those where players love to negotiate for better deals and make it an entire mini-quest in itself.


If it takes convincing an NPC to do something rather than simply asking, that's where mechanics might be invoked. They might be tasked to help the PC determine why the NPC is reluctant, or what he wants. Or they might be tasked to see if the PC can, through power of words and begging alone (relying on what he thinks are the hooks to the NPC's soul), get what he wants. This may involve guessing, much as hurting a wolfman might involve guessing between using silver or cold iron (is he a werewolf or a wolfwere? Does this NPC value human compassion or greed?).

So to give a comparison to understand this right. You're talking something like persuasion in Dues Ex Human Revolution? Where you try different methods of negotiation continuously?


Finally, I would try to design your system such that social mechanics provide penalties for ignoring the influence, and bonuses for complying with it. This way, if the player of the influenced character (whether PC or NPC) really, really doesn't want his character giving in, he can always choose to suffer the penalties instead.

Going to an extreme, here, if Joe doesn't want his straight all-American high school quarterback seduced by Akio the Omnisexual Bishounen Scion of Captain Jack Harkness, then Joe can choose to have his PC refuse to make out/sleep with Akio. Even if Akio blows him away in social influence mechanics. He'll suffer some pretty hefty penalties due to resisting those powerful urges and temptations, and possibly due to how much he finds them uncomfortable to begin with, but he can choose not to give in.

Jim, playing the cheerleader girlfriend to Joe, however, might be more willing to let her give in to the temptations of Akio; she would get the bonuses promised for the thrill of giving in to the massive social influence, for sating her desires. (The upsides for Joe's PC and downsides for Jim's PC are already likely obvious; they're the same downsides that normally creates the unrealistic prudence and self-control PCs might have without social mechanics. Joe and Jim aren't seduced, and aren't going to enjoy the prurient pleasures promised, but will experience their characters potentially suffering social stigma, enduring pregnancy subplots, STDs or other such things. The bonuses and penalties reflect the short-term gratification angle that is normally not shared by the player.)

I'm a little lost here, exactly what penalties would this be? Social Penalties? Generic Penalties?
Also, this seems more of a "If an NPC tries to seduce a player" deal, not Players engaging with NPC's in general.


seduced by Akio the Omnisexual Bishounen Scion of Captain Jack Harkness

He'd fail instantly because Jack ****ing Harkness. ;)

Segev
2016-06-30, 02:15 PM
The "bonuses" and "penalties" aspect is the fuzziest, so I'm not surprised it's the hardest to follow. Done well, it should actually link integrally into the other systems and subsystems of the game.

As an example using D&D, imagine if the Bard's "Inspiration" ability weren't actually a class feature that just gave a generic +1 to hit and damage, but was instead a function of the Bard playing on a set of beliefs and values that the party shares. Engaging in the activity encouraged by the Bard (e.g. combat against this particular foe) grants morale bonuses, because they're jazzed to do it and their emotions are in line with their actions.

This mechanic could then be turned to the Bard's efforts to influence people. The innkeeper gets morale bonuses to his Profession checks for the night or something if he gives the Bard and his party a discount, after the Bard socializes with him to talk him into it. The guard suffers morale penalties in the fight to arrest the bard and his friends if the bard influences him with a "don't arrest us" sort of social maneuver (playing on a sense of justice and the innocence of the party, or playing on how the party's actions aren't so different from the guard's own, or whatever's important.)

The guard could continue to try to arrest them, if the DM determined that no, no matter how persuasive the Bard is, the guard just WOULD NOT fail his duty on purpose. However, the bard's influence hits him with a morale penalty, inflicted against anything that goes against the bard's requested course of action. It's stronger the better the bard did at hitting the guard's buttons.

And, of course, if the bard has time, he can try building new buttons to hit, or weakening old buttons he kept bumping into, but the guard would have ability to try to resist that and stronger buttons would be harder to erode AND might get pushed in the process of trying.


Does that make sense? I know it's still very abstract.



The core of the idea is that the "penalties" or "bonuses" would be applied to whatever mechanical tools the influenced character has to work against or towards the influenced course of action.

Sith_Happens
2016-06-30, 03:04 PM
Personally I'd look to Onyx Path for inspiration, the current editions of Chronicles of Darkness and Exalted both handle this sort of thing pretty well. Since I already summarized their respective social systems in a different thread I'll just quote from there:


Exalted Third Edition (EX3):

On your sheet is a place in which to write down any principles or beliefs your character holds; as well as any notable persons, places, or things that they have particular feelings towards (whether positive or negative); and specify on a three-point scale how strongly the character holds each such principle/belief or feels the way they do about each such person/place/thing. These are collectively known as your character's Intimacies.
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Any roll to make someone do, feel, or believe something takes a penalty if it goes against at least one of that person's Intimacies and/or gains a bonus if it aligns with at least one of their Intimacies (if multiple Intimacies apply, take the largest bonus and the largest penalty and stack them).
-
Not only are the above modifiers potentially huge, but there are hard limits on how far you can sway someone without appealing to a sufficiently strong Intimacy, and if you're trying to change their thoughts or feelings (i.e.- mess with their Intimacies directly) then your argument also has to have enough substance behind it.
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Even after all of that, under certain circumstances the target has the chance to spend Willpower to auto-resist, which specifically represents them going "Look, you make a very compelling argument, but I still just can't bring myself to go along with what you're saying" or the equivalent.
Overall, even with the biggest bonuses in the world, trying to make someone your fanatical follower or persuade them to do anything really major will generally require multiple rolls and often plays out almost like a puzzle game; you have to figure out what the best angles are to exploit to make them want to be persuaded, very similarly to Segev's thoughts (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20903621&postcount=109) in the post just before this one regarding the hypothetical L5R example.

Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition:

While there is a high-risk-high-reward option via which to try and persuade someone in a single roll, by default convincing someone to oblige any request they'd normally be inclined to refuse requires multiple separate checks over the course of which you essentially pressure and/or brown-nose them enough that they finally change their mind. The precise number of successful checks required depends on a combination of their stats and certain semi-codified roleplaying factors, while how often you can try depends on their "impression level" which basically represents how willing they are to put up with you and can be improved by a few different methods and well as improved or worsened as befits the circumstances.
What the above two systems have in common is that, while they don't necessarily require you to act out what specifically your character is saying (and I'd look askance at any system that did), they do require you to think about what sorts of appeals you're making, which encourages or at least lends itself well to the sort of "roleplaying" you're looking for.

Cluedrew
2016-06-30, 03:05 PM
Related to the topic On Rolls Controlling your Character (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490944-On-Rolls-Controlling-your-Character) which currently has 9 pages on this and related topics, and depending on what you mean by social you might also want to look at Are there RPGs out there that can actually handle diplomacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?492546-Are-there-RPGs-out-there-that-can-actually-handle-diplomacy). You may have already read both of these but I thought I would point them out.

Something sort of different is the amount of narration that has to go with a move. A lot of social skills (D&D and similar) require very narration and so boil down to "I roll SKILL_NAME". Compare this to combat that has some built in narration, little things like which weapon did you attack with, one handed or two handed. These things are often used in rules to determine accuracy and damage, but still give you enough information that it helps people understand what is going on.

So although you don't need a weapon you still need some method, "I convince them it is a good investment.", "I make them feel sorry for me." & "I call in that favour." might all be accomplished with the same skill (or not), but they show very different methods in terms of roll-playing. And they are all more interesting the "I rolled 27."

VoxRationis
2016-06-30, 03:43 PM
Have you taken a look at the L5R RPG? There are a fair number of class abilities in that system which do specific useful things in social situations (in addition to a more general dice-roll-to-persuade skill system that you may or may not want, as it's a controversial subject), like give you specific information about someone you're talking to.

Vitruviansquid
2016-06-30, 05:08 PM
I'm not sure if an XP reward for acting a certain way really helps the matter. Cause you're more just pushing them to always behave in one manner, and although you do give then XP when they do successfully pull of a social situation, there's nothing there to actually be used when said situation has popped up.

This is not about giving players XP when they succeed, this is about giving players XP when they act like how their characters should act, especially when it actually gets the characters to fail. The design makes the characters react SUB-optimally in social situations in order to gain their bonus. It sets it up where if the clear and obvious solution is for the party to negotiate the mechanics are motivating the barbarian to pick a fight because that's what his character would do.


I should have clarified. I wasn't trying to suggest player's would be put into such roles. The System I'm working on is being designed to encourage versatility and dis-encourage mix-maxing or over specialisation. What I was trying to get at is designing whatever social abilities would be in the game overall that any character has access to.

In this system, there are no "social abilities" that any character has access to. For this system to work, you are going to throw out the idea of rolling dice after you talk for a bonus. If the problem with throwing out all social abilities is that it makes every character want to solve problems by combat, this solution gives the players a reason to do social stuff because they want to gain their bonus XP. This is not "re-skinning" a Diplomacy skill. As you have pointed out in your first post, Diplomacy skill does not motivate people to do actual roleplaying, and should be done away with altogether.

Jelly d6
2016-06-30, 06:08 PM
Gwazi Magnum,

As for the 'more engaging' part, choices are your best friends. In broadest terms, games as media are built on choice-making. Especially when we're talking about mechanics (exactly what mechanics - social, combat or something else - doesn't matter that much).

So, your player should have an array of choices on handling social interactions. Even better when the available choices have more than binary outcomes, i.e. "success" vs "failure". Nope, that would be bland (and unsatisfying for the player even on "success"); we must complicate things a little.

Here comes the concept of risk. Risk is a crucial ingredient for engagement. So, every player's choice should come with the associated risk, and by making the set of approaches and risks diverse enough we'll be closer to our goal.

Now that sounds smooth in theory but implementing the working rules in practice might be quite a difficult task. The idea of boni/penalties suggested above is a great example of how risk (or reward) can realize. The other example I can think of is changing of NPC attitude towards the party depending on the result of checks, with the worst outcome being cutting off the possibility of achieving anything by this method or even alienating the faction NPC belongs to.

Basically, some brainstorming should help. Maybe it's better to focus on mechanical things rather than parsing actual social interactions.

Hope this helps.

Benthesquid
2016-06-30, 07:16 PM
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Powered by the Apocalypse. Basically (and the different systems have different moves) you're engaged in collective storytelling until you hit a point where rolling one of the moves is necessary. So you don't say (for instance) "I want to roll to Scare Him," you say, "I'm going to make the crest on my head stand up, get up in the biker's face, slide my dagger an inch or so out of its sheath, and say 'Do you really want to die today, Martian?'" At that point, either I or the MC will call out the appropriate roll, and depending on the outcome of my roll, the MC will make one of several moves in response. If I just say "I roll to scare him," the MC is more or less instructed by the ruleset to respond, "Okay, so what are you actually doing?"

Also note that you're rarely going to end an encounter with a single social roll in any of the Powered by the Apocalypse game. On a success, what you're more likely to do is gain the upper hand over a social opponent, or force them to make a hard choice.

Gwazi Magnum
2016-06-30, 07:23 PM
@Everyone

A lot of good ideas have been given here that me and the others will need to toss around and think more on. And a lot of these good ideas actually play well with one another which is a nice treat. :)

So before I forget I'd like to give everyone here a big thanks for taking the time to help here, it's definitely helped kick-start some thinking and idea generation that we were running rather dry on right up till now. :)


The "bonuses" and "penalties" aspect is the fuzziest, so I'm not surprised it's the hardest to follow. Done well, it should actually link integrally into the other systems and subsystems of the game.

As an example using D&D, imagine if the Bard's "Inspiration" ability weren't actually a class feature that just gave a generic +1 to hit and damage, but was instead a function of the Bard playing on a set of beliefs and values that the party shares. Engaging in the activity encouraged by the Bard (e.g. combat against this particular foe) grants morale bonuses, because they're jazzed to do it and their emotions are in line with their actions.

This mechanic could then be turned to the Bard's efforts to influence people. The innkeeper gets morale bonuses to his Profession checks for the night or something if he gives the Bard and his party a discount, after the Bard socializes with him to talk him into it. The guard suffers morale penalties in the fight to arrest the bard and his friends if the bard influences him with a "don't arrest us" sort of social maneuver (playing on a sense of justice and the innocence of the party, or playing on how the party's actions aren't so different from the guard's own, or whatever's important.)

The guard could continue to try to arrest them, if the DM determined that no, no matter how persuasive the Bard is, the guard just WOULD NOT fail his duty on purpose. However, the bard's influence hits him with a morale penalty, inflicted against anything that goes against the bard's requested course of action. It's stronger the better the bard did at hitting the guard's buttons.

And, of course, if the bard has time, he can try building new buttons to hit, or weakening old buttons he kept bumping into, but the guard would have ability to try to resist that and stronger buttons would be harder to erode AND might get pushed in the process of trying.


Does that make sense? I know it's still very abstract.



The core of the idea is that the "penalties" or "bonuses" would be applied to whatever mechanical tools the influenced character has to work against or towards the influenced course of action.

So whatever the social mechanic ends up being, one of it's end results is a Morale Modifier? The Modifier acting as an incentive for both players and NPCs to respond in certain ways, and for there to be incentive to attempt socialising first? Plus it prevents an NPC from doing something completely out of character, but for the social bargaining to still have an effect?


Personally I'd look to Onyx Path for inspiration, the current editions of Chronicles of Darkness and Exalted both handle this sort of thing pretty well. Since I already summarized their respective social systems in a different thread I'll just quote from there:

What the above two systems have in common is that, while they don't necessarily require you to act out what specifically your character is saying (and I'd look askance at any system that did), they do require you to think about what sorts of appeals you're making, which encourages or at least lends itself well to the sort of "roleplaying" you're looking for.

I don't think I'll be doing anything requiring players to always act in _____ manner, or rely on _____ personality traits. Because in my general experience, that tends to encourage players to be one-dimensional with their characters, and avoid character growth out of fear that it will interfere with their rewards (ex: Align-Shift Level or Class Ability loss in D&D).

I like the idea of using Will to essentially auto-resist though, but inflicting a sort of Mental Fatigue on the target as a result. And like you said, pairs very well with the multiple roll combat-social sort of system.


Related to the topic On Rolls Controlling your Character (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490944-On-Rolls-Controlling-your-Character) which currently has 9 pages on this and related topics, and depending on what you mean by social you might also want to look at Are there RPGs out there that can actually handle diplomacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?492546-Are-there-RPGs-out-there-that-can-actually-handle-diplomacy). You may have already read both of these but I thought I would point them out.

Something sort of different is the amount of narration that has to go with a move. A lot of social skills (D&D and similar) require very narration and so boil down to "I roll SKILL_NAME". Compare this to combat that has some built in narration, little things like which weapon did you attack with, one handed or two handed. These things are often used in rules to determine accuracy and damage, but still give you enough information that it helps people understand what is going on.

So although you don't need a weapon you still need some method, "I convince them it is a good investment.", "I make them feel sorry for me." & "I call in that favour." might all be accomplished with the same skill (or not), but they show very different methods in terms of roll-playing. And they are all more interesting the "I rolled 27."

I actually haven't ran into these yet, I'll have to read them later. :)
(Can't right now, someone I'm designing the system with his here and I'm kind of leaving him waiting as is to get this reply out).

But from your post here what you're basically saying is use different social 'weapons' where the 'weapons' are different methods and means to interact with people? If so, I can see a sort of weapon-reskin helping with the combat-social sort of deal going on with the above responses.


Have you taken a look at the L5R RPG? There are a fair number of class abilities in that system which do specific useful things in social situations (in addition to a more general dice-roll-to-persuade skill system that you may or may not want, as it's a controversial subject), like give you specific information about someone you're talking to.

I haven't ran into that system yet honestly, I'll have to look at a book or pdf of it later on.
(Like I said above, can't right now. Leaving someone waiting making this reply).


This is not about giving players XP when they succeed, this is about giving players XP when they act like how their characters should act, especially when it actually gets the characters to fail. The design makes the characters react SUB-optimally in social situations in order to gain their bonus. It sets it up where if the clear and obvious solution is for the party to negotiate the mechanics are motivating the barbarian to pick a fight because that's what his character would do.

In this system, there are no "social abilities" that any character has access to. For this system to work, you are going to throw out the idea of rolling dice after you talk for a bonus. If the problem with throwing out all social abilities is that it makes every character want to solve problems by combat, this solution gives the players a reason to do social stuff because they want to gain their bonus XP. This is not "re-skinning" a Diplomacy skill. As you have pointed out in your first post, Diplomacy skill does not motivate people to do actual roleplaying, and should be done away with altogether.

Oooooh I see what you're saying. XD

Similar to a concern I mentioned above, this might be walking a fine line with making players afraid to grow/develop outside their pre-made personality. But at the same time, an incentive to act like their character in General when doing otherwise might be more mechanically sound could go a long way... And I suppose the potential risk here is largely DM dependent.

So, not sure if I'd make it an XP bonus exactly, but a reward of some kind is definitely something I'd keep in mind.

(Also to clarify, I don't want to simply remove social skills outright. Just make them a tool for roleplaying rather than crutch or shield to replace roleplaying with).


Gwazi Magnum,

As for the 'more engaging' part, choices are your best friends. In broadest terms, games as media are built on choice-making. Especially when we're talking about mechanics (exactly what mechanics - social, combat or something else - doesn't matter that much).

So, your player should have an array of choices on handling social interactions. Even better when the available choices have more than binary outcomes, i.e. "success" vs "failure". Nope, that would be bland (and unsatisfying for the player even on "success"); we must complicate things a little.

Here comes the concept of risk. Risk is a crucial ingredient for engagement. So, every player's choice should come with the associated risk, and by making the set of approaches and risks diverse enough we'll be closer to our goal.

Now that sounds smooth in theory but implementing the working rules in practice might be quite a difficult task. The idea of boni/penalties suggested above is a great example of how risk (or reward) can realize. The other example I can think of is changing of NPC attitude towards the party depending on the result of checks, with the worst outcome being cutting off the possibility of achieving anything by this method or even alienating the faction NPC belongs to.

Basically, some brainstorming should help. Maybe it's better to focus on mechanical things rather than parsing actual social interactions.

Hope this helps.

Combined with above suggestions like Will Fatigue or different Social 'Combat' Actions, I can see variety of wins and losses working fairly well. And I definitely agree that if I want to remove the crutch problem I also need to remove the simple "Win or Fail" system that encourages it.

TheYell
2016-06-30, 08:34 PM
A simple step would be to make the mechanics of "going to see a contact" more involved. As in you hire a boy to see him, you leave word with a bartender and come back the next day, you send in a note, you talk to his butler, you tie a rag around a rock and leave it somewhere, you go where he works and wait for him to come over and mutter out the side of your mouth. Deny telephones or emails. Make getting a hold of a contact a conscious effort beyond a die roll. Dashiell Hammett was a working detective and his books are full of this sort of manuevering if you want examples. John Le Carres spies also use elaborate "handwriting" to meet. if your players get to "own" a contact or social resource make them invent this sort of material as part of the price.

Cluedrew
2016-06-30, 09:34 PM
But from your post here what you're basically saying is use different social 'weapons' where the 'weapons' are different methods and means to interact with people? If so, I can see a sort of weapon-reskin helping with the combat-social sort of deal going on with the above responses.You could do that but what I was actually going for was the idea of building "how" right into the abilities. So rather than focusing (at least on some levels) on what is done and merely giving the results, talk about how you get there.

For example: Intimidate *, a skill with which you scare people. But how do you scare them? Threats? Physical presence? Could you pull of an intimidate by making a display of political power or does it have to be physical? Focusing just on the effects answers none of these questions. Focusing on the method does. As a bonus it also gives you more information to adapt it to other situations with.

* I'm just going off of vague memories and a vague notion of the skill right now, I don't have any rules for it in front of me right now.

Arbane
2016-07-01, 01:13 AM
I see Exalted's Intimacies have already been mentioned. I'd also recommend looking at Legends of the Wulin's Art of Intrigue, which is all about affecting peoples' emotions for good or ill. You can get things up so that they have a penalty when going something (scaring a bandit so badly they can't rob anyone), or a bonus when doing something (fighting to protect a lover, for example). The bonus/penalties can be things like dice rolls (or course), luck points, or even XP.

You can't force someone to do something, but you can give them a cookie for going along with it.

goto124
2016-07-01, 01:40 AM
Wait, what penalties for not following along what an NPC wants you to do?

How do you balance the penalties of avoiding an action, and the more indirect penalties of going through with the action?

For example, if I sleep with another person, wouldn't the social stigmas + pregnancy + STDs + many other reasons far outweigh the mechanical penalties of saying 'no' to begin with? In that case, wouldn't saying 'no' have to come with equally heavy penalties? How can this be balanced such that the players don't hate the GM for throwing a seducer at them, which in this case forces them between a rock and a hard place?

I believe there has to more complex mechanics. If someone comes along and uses seduction, there has to be a way to counteract it. Compare with battling: if someone comes along and swings a sword at you, you don't instantly die or lose a limb. You get to defend, or even if you don't, you just lose a few hitpoints. Nothing severe.

No idea what the "cookie for going along" equivalent would be for combat. A truce?

We should just have trial-by-combat to replace all social situations. So much simpler.

Arbane
2016-07-01, 03:21 AM
Wait, what penalties for not following along what an NPC wants you to do?

How do you balance the penalties of avoiding an action, and the more indirect penalties of going through with the action?

You either don't get a benefit, or you suffer a penalty. It's not a perfect solution, I just think it's a vastly better one than 'wow, that was a good bluff check. You believe he's the moon.'




I believe there has to more complex mechanics. If someone comes along and uses seduction, there has to be a way to counteract it. Compare with battling: if someone comes along and swings a sword at you, you don't instantly die or lose a limb. You get to defend, or even if you don't, you just lose a few hitpoints. Nothing severe.

Well, in LoW, you resist Intrigue with the Confidence skill, and anyone else who knows Intrigue can inflame or reduce conditions. And they generally fade over time.
(Besides Intrigue, there's also medical conditions, curses/influences, and prophecies as ways of making things better/worse for other characters.)


No idea what the "cookie for going along" equivalent would be for combat. A truce?

I'm not even sure I understand your question. Fighting is usually what happens when talking has already failed.
(Although LoW has an interesting rule where the end result of combat can be suddenly realizing you're hurt more badly than you thought, reconsidering your career, a burning desire to beat/best/marry your opponent, or any odd effects the players think up and the GM will allow.)

goto124
2016-07-01, 04:49 AM
Social conditions? What are those like? Their effects?


'wow, that was a good bluff check. You believe he's the moon.'


... while he's mooning you :smalltongue:

erikun
2016-07-01, 08:40 AM
Now, one could simply remove these abilities outright.
Idea: remove these abilities outright.

I mean, just look at the social abilities you listed and try to imagine similar combat abilities. An ability that reduces all enemy HP to 75%? Just call an NPC ally and instantly win an encounter? Getting a new treasure or sword or even plot-critical device through spending XP/skill points rather than adventuring for it?

Such abilities would be considered absurd! There is no way you would just hand out such abilities like candy in a combat-focused game like D&D. (Well, okay, wizards have Power Word: Kill and the like, but beyond that...) Such abilities wouldn't see the light of day in a system like D&D, so I see no reason why you would have social abilities that do basically the same thing unless you just want a method to skip the social interaction aspect of the game... which might be the original intent.

On the other hand, if we are comparing social and combat aspects in the game, perhaps take some cues from the combat arena for what is appropriate (and not appropriate) for the social arena. Introduce a feat where the PC can (almost) always get an audience with an important figure in a scene - perhaps at a penalty, for bothering them, but will certainly make them accessable. Allow a successful skill roll that can let the PC bribe a particular NPC, or to arrange a deal where the PC offers/does something in exchange for what they want - rather than a roll being an auto-success to convince them. Make social contracts the equivalent of recruiting hirelings and followers, not just a skill the player puts points into next to their Jump skill.

Rather than making rolls just resolve the scene, make rolls only change the scene. You don't roll to convince the governor; you roll to convince the governor to listen to you. You roll to open up a new option to convince the governor, something the party could do that the governor would want. You roll to offer a different form of payment to the merchant, rather than just being turned down because you don't have enough gold.

Perhaps you could arrange or make rules for social organizations: mechanical bonuses like "10% off purchases from others in the same organization" or even specific rules for each organization, although that would require far less application, since a GM could only use the organizations you come up with or make up their own.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-01, 09:12 AM
You either don't get a benefit, or you suffer a penalty. It's not a perfect solution, I just think it's a vastly better one than 'wow, that was a good bluff check. You believe he's the moon.'

In any game I ever have or ever will run, there will be such a thing as a roll with "infinite difficulty".

Outside of vastly extraordinary circumstances, convincing someone that you are literally the moon would have infinite difficulty.

goto124
2016-07-01, 09:22 AM
Should we aim for the social mechanics to be concrete enough that a computer could run it, aka no human judgement required?

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-01, 09:37 AM
Should we aim for the social mechanics to be concrete enough that a computer could run it, aka no human judgement required?

Are there rules which can encompass every variable and nuance of every possible and impossible social interaction?

goto124
2016-07-01, 09:39 AM
Are there rules which can encompass every variable and nuance of every possible and impossible social interaction?

Combat mechanics don't do that, but many types of combat mechanics can be run by a computer, aka no human judgement required.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-01, 09:48 AM
Combat mechanics don't do that, but many types of combat mechanics can be run by a computer, aka no human judgement required.

And quite often we find holes or failings in those mechanics. For example, the infamous "hit box" issues of many games.

Segev
2016-07-01, 11:51 AM
No idea what the "cookie for going along" equivalent would be for combat. A truce?You really don't need one. Combat is all about taking away the other party's volition through physical force. For whatever reason, players don't feel like their character is being played for them or the like when they're beaten in physical tests and their PC is unable to continue.

The reason it's needed for social mechanics is because social mechanics are about the choices your PC makes, and players generally tend to feel like their PC making a choice other than what the player thinks they "should" is mind control. Social encounters shouldn't always be hostile; combat encounters nearly always are (and I say "nearly" only because I'm sure somebody could find a niche counterexample if I did not).

As to how "give a cookie for going along" can make a player tempted to let his PC be seduced for a night of torrid passion, it doesn't have to be just as good as all the possible negative consequences are bad. It just has to be good enough that the risk of the negative consequences is balanced out in the player's mind. Just like the pleasure of the one-night stand is "worth" the risk of all the bad stuff to the PC. People who engage in short-term-reward/long-term-risk behavior typically use the possibility of the consequences not arising at all to let themselves enjoy it, whether "just this once" or "nothing bad's happened yet" is the case.

Not all players, but many, will accept a +4 bonus on their next day's d20 rolls in exchange for a RISK of a long-term complication, for example.

As for how to make it play with penalties, you can give a short-term morale penalty as the PC mourns opportunities lost (or otherwise feels torn up about what could have been or that he even considered or wanted it). They can be as blanket as the rewards, or more specific; it really depends on the underlying system and how bonuses and penalties make sense in it.


And quite often we find holes or failings in those mechanics. For example, the infamous "hit box" issues of many games.

Be careful with this kind of reasoning. It sounds an awful lot like "because it can't be done perfectly, it shouldn't be done." And given that you're using examples of existing things, if it were turned around, it could be said that you're giving argument for why we shouldn't have combat mechanics, either.

I don't know if that's the case you're trying to make, but I see how it could be read that way. And if it were the case you were trying to make, it's a flimsy one (for reasons just stated).

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-01, 12:04 PM
Be careful with this kind of reasoning. It sounds an awful lot like "because it can't be done perfectly, it shouldn't be done." And given that you're using examples of existing things, if it were turned around, it could be said that you're giving argument for why we shouldn't have combat mechanics, either.

I don't know if that's the case you're trying to make, but I see how it could be read that way. And if it were the case you were trying to make, it's a flimsy one (for reasons just stated).


No, not at all. The statement was made in the context of whether social mechanics in a game could be computerized and remove all human judgement -- and I was giving an example of how it's still very rough for combat and sometimes produces results that human judgement would filter out.

Segev
2016-07-01, 12:32 PM
No, not at all. The statement was made in the context of whether social mechanics in a game could be computerized and remove all human judgement -- and I was giving an example of how it's still very rough for combat and sometimes produces results that human judgement would filter out.

Ah, fair enough, then.

I will point out that computer games often have more engaging social mechanics than tabletop ones, if only because we suspend our disbelief a little higher. The multiple-choice "say this or this or this?" options are more acceptable in that medium, to most audiences.

But that really is a difference in medium, and not something to use as an excuse to try it in tabletop.

Arbane
2016-07-01, 04:13 PM
Are there rules which can encompass every variable and nuance of every possible and impossible social interaction?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess 'no' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems).


No, not at all. The statement was made in the context of whether social mechanics in a game could be computerized and remove all human judgement -- and I was giving an example of how it's still very rough for combat and sometimes produces results that human judgement would filter out.

Step 1: Produce a human-level A.I....

Sith_Happens
2016-07-06, 01:20 PM
I don't think I'll be doing anything requiring players to always act in _____ manner, or rely on _____ personality traits. Because in my general experience, that tends to encourage players to be one-dimensional with their characters, and avoid character growth out of fear that it will interfere with their rewards (ex: Align-Shift Level or Class Ability loss in D&D).

If you're referring mainly to the Exalted mechanics here, players never have to act in accordance with their characters' Intimacies, though there are several carrots offered for doing so such as extra Willpower and even XP (there is also a single stick for not doing so, but said stick is part of Exalted's implementation of fatal flaws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia) and so actually wouldn't make sense to transplant to other games).


Similar to a concern I mentioned above, this might be walking a fine line with making players afraid to grow/develop outside their pre-made personality. But at the same time, an incentive to act like their character in General when doing otherwise might be more mechanically sound could go a long way... And I suppose the potential risk here is largely DM dependent.

One of the key things about Intimacies is that there's a fair bit of text dedicated to emphasizing that they can and should change over time through roleplaying and character development; compare to the D&D adage about Alignment being descriptive, not proscriptive.

Segev
2016-07-06, 01:31 PM
Ideally, hooks (as I've been using the term; Exalted's intimacies are similar if not identical) would have up sides as well as down sides. Sure, they're ways that socialites can tug on you to do things. Or even non-socialites can try. But they also are pillars that anchor you, so you can't be blown around. Getting you to act against a hook would be hard. The biggest thing, though, is that the carrots for going with your hooks should be sufficient to make having hooks be tempting in their own right, from an optimization perspective. If just satisfying a hook's urge lets you be better at whatever you're doing in that service, having hooks which point you in the direction you want your character to go is a good thing. They just also make it harder to deviate if something comes up, and easier to manipulate your character if somebody can make their influence in line with it...even if it pushes your character farther than you'd perhaps like.

That hook that is loyalty to and even love for one or more of the party? It can be used when they're threatened: hostages, blackmail, extortion, etc. You might have preferred to make the choice to further other game goals rather than sabotage yourself or the party, but with that PC in danger, the social character can force your PC to either suck penalties or go along with his influence while he holds the other PC's life/reputation/whatever.

Yes, even if you, the player, can rationally explain "but this other course is the more likely to work," the social NPC's powers of persuasion are such that your PC doesn't think of that or doesn't believe it.

But by the same token, that hook gives you bonuses when helping out the party (and that PC in particular), and it even makes it very hard for the seductress or bribe-offering slimeball to give you penalties that would punish you for not betraying the party as they asked.

Quertus
2016-07-08, 07:04 PM
Step 1: Produce a human-level A.I....

I think I suggested this in a recent, related thread. :smallsmile:


Ideally, hooks (as I've been using the term; Exalted's intimacies are similar if not identical) would have up sides as well as down sides. Sure, they're ways that socialites can tug on you to do things. Or even non-socialites can try. But they also are pillars that anchor you, so you can't be blown around. Getting you to act against a hook would be hard. The biggest thing, though, is that the carrots for going with your hooks should be sufficient to make having hooks be tempting in their own right, from an optimization perspective. If just satisfying a hook's urge lets you be better at whatever you're doing in that service, having hooks which point you in the direction you want your character to go is a good thing. They just also make it harder to deviate if something comes up, and easier to manipulate your character if somebody can make their influence in line with it...even if it pushes your character farther than you'd perhaps like.

That hook that is loyalty to and even love for one or more of the party? It can be used when they're threatened: hostages, blackmail, extortion, etc. You might have preferred to make the choice to further other game goals rather than sabotage yourself or the party, but with that PC in danger, the social character can force your PC to either suck penalties or go along with his influence while he holds the other PC's life/reputation/whatever.

Yes, even if you, the player, can rationally explain "but this other course is the more likely to work," the social NPC's powers of persuasion are such that your PC doesn't think of that or doesn't believe it.

But by the same token, that hook gives you bonuses when helping out the party (and that PC in particular), and it even makes it very hard for the seductress or bribe-offering slimeball to give you penalties that would punish you for not betraying the party as they asked.

I've been thinking about this since our conversations in an earlier thread. For my example of... How do you say... Following my hook... I find the best mechanic to represent it would be replenishing my willpower, and a minor morale bonus to rolls.

Do you believe different pillars - or different people - should get different bonuses for following their hooks?

nomotag
2016-07-08, 11:58 PM
I thought about putting in social abilities to D&D5ed. My thought was to attach the abilities to role-play hooks. Like D&D already has diplomacy check, so my idea was to give out buffs when in character goals were done. A simple one would be the ability to gain proficiency on a chad check if you fed your target a meal they liked. Another idea was to give rangers the ability to remove all their strings (a idea I took from monster hearts) by spending a week out in the wilds.

Basically I just went specific on how the powers worked.

Segev
2016-07-09, 12:55 AM
I've been thinking about this since our conversations in an earlier thread. For my example of... How do you say... Following my hook... I find the best mechanic to represent it would be replenishing my willpower, and a minor morale bonus to rolls.

Do you believe different pillars - or different people - should get different bonuses for following their hooks?

Probably not. At least, not in the sense that there are unique ones for each person. The kinds of bonuses may vary, from replenishing a resource to giving a new one to improving rolls to granting special abilities (which is kind of like replenishing a resource; uses of an ability are a resource, after all). They'd probably vary based on what the influence was and how one gave in to it or indulged or fulfilled it.

What precisely they were would also depend on the rest of the system. They should, after all, interact with it.

In Exalted, "replenish willpower" is a good one. In D&D, a morale bonus to rolls might be appropriate. In L5R, it might even come in the form of extra rolled or kept dice.

goto124
2016-07-09, 02:09 AM
Another idea was to give rangers the ability to remove all their strings (a idea I took from monster hearts) by spending a week out in the wilds.

Do adventurers in a campaign really get to choose where and what sort of environment they go to? Especially for an entire week?

From what I know, the point of Monster Hearts was to make the players feel like their characters are out of control. Might want to be careful about invoking that sort of thing in DnD.

nomotag
2016-07-09, 10:08 AM
Do adventurers in a campaign really get to choose where and what sort of environment they go to? Especially for an entire week?

From what I know, the point of Monster Hearts was to make the players feel like their characters are out of control. Might want to be careful about invoking that sort of thing in DnD.

Ya in between adventures most players have down time to do whatever they want.

I think strings can work fine in D&D. (Well as fine as diplomacy and bluff do.) At least the concept. I kind of think of them as gaining proficiency in bob.

I also had other ideas. Like if two wizards shared a string they could use each other's spell books.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-09, 01:10 PM
Do adventurers in a campaign really get to choose where and what sort of environment they go to? Especially for an entire week?

From what I know, the point of Monster Hearts was to make the players feel like their characters are out of control. Might want to be careful about invoking that sort of thing in DnD.

Since Monster Hearts is a PbtA system, and since I've seen its Principals, Goals, and etc, the point wasn't to make them feel out of control at all.

The point is to make them feel hunted, oppressed, perhaps even overwhelmed, but always very much in control of their own decisions. PbtA systems give players an unusually large amount of narrative authority compared to other systems, and does so via the rules. (A GM who railroads in Monster Hearts is literally breaking the rules of the game to do so.)

Since Apocalypse World and its offspring are noted for having excellent social interaction rules, especially when the Moves Snowball concept is considered, I can actually highly recommend it as a sort of "required reading" for setting up good social systems from the ground up. Obviously, they need to mesh well with the overall system concept, but that goes without saying. It's just a great opportunity to see how more modern systems handle such things.

Quertus
2016-07-09, 04:42 PM
Since Apocalypse World and its offspring are noted for having excellent social interaction rules,

It is? The first time I remember it being brought up on these forums, its proponents seemed unable to agree on which mechanics to use - or the results of using those mechanics - for even a fairly simple social exchange (involving intimidating a PC, IIRC).

From that, I had surmised that the rules must be a Gygax-level train wreck. Your claim that these rules are actually an exemplar runs counter to my preconceived notions, and I therefore ask you to kindly expand upon your stated position.

nomotag
2016-07-09, 06:35 PM
It is? The first time I remember it being brought up on these forums, its proponents seemed unable to agree on which mechanics to use - or the results of using those mechanics - for even a fairly simple social exchange (involving intimidating a PC, IIRC).

From that, I had surmised that the rules must be a Gygax-level train wreck. Your claim that these rules are actually an exemplar runs counter to my preconceived notions, and I therefore ask you to kindly expand upon your stated position.

The rules are... well they are brilliant in that they are simple, elegant , and your not sure if you even understand them. :P I am not sure if I get them myself, but I like them and it is a good place to steal if you want to beef up a social gameplay element. You just have to spend time translating the ideas to different systems though.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-09, 07:42 PM
It is? The first time I remember it being brought up on these forums, its proponents seemed unable to agree on which mechanics to use - or the results of using those mechanics - for even a fairly simple social exchange (involving intimidating a PC, IIRC).

From that, I had surmised that the rules must be a Gygax-level train wreck. Your claim that these rules are actually an exemplar runs counter to my preconceived notions, and I therefore ask you to kindly expand upon your stated position.

Part of the problem comes from people approaching from a D&D mindset while Apocalypse World doesn't come from that background at all.

For one, NPCs can't intimdate PC's, believe it or not. The NPCs don't get to make moves though the MC can make different kinds of moves through them. Intimidating the PC would involve the PC either failing a social roll and the MC making a hard move to counter it (The guy you're talking to pulls a gun on you, and so do the four other guys with him.) or they only get a partial success and so they are faced with a tough choice.

For intimidating when you're not bluffing, use Go Aggro.
If you ARE bluffing, Seduce/Manipulate.

Why the distinction? Because one of the success effects for Go Aggro is that the NPS "sucks it up," aka they receive the threatened actions. If you were bluffing, your success suddenly turns into a failure because the MC chose that response. And one of the rules of the game is that successes MUST fundamentally be successes. Hence the distinction.

It doesn't matter if the GM knows you're bluffing because the roll determines how the scene plays out, with input from the GM as far as specifics go.

Apocalypse World is narrative-heavy in the extreme. Apocalypse World makes fictional positioning an actual part of the rules, and makes the nuances in the actions characters take very important. It is often important to clarify a character's INTENT so that the right move is chosen, not just what they do. (If you're shooting Marble to make her more deader, that's a different roll from if you're shooting Marble to make room for you to rush out the door.)

This reliance upon the narrative is part of what makes Apocalypse World social interaction rules so good. You are quite literally not allowed to say "I Go Aggro on him." If you do, the GM is (by rules) supposed to say "Cool, so what do you DO?" Because that's important to how the rules interact with the scene. If you approach it from the angle D&D uses of "X problem requires Y roll to solve it," along with a "success or fail" results system, then obviously it won't make much sense to you because that's now how the system was built. It views roleplaying as a conversation, and so uses the rules as ways to influence and shape the direction of that conversation.

Also I don't know how you could read that rulebook and come away confused. Vincent makes it really easy to understand, and it's one of the best systems ever at teaching you how to GM it. You just have to do EXACTLY what it says, and not try to bring any of the baggage from other systems with you. It's really elegant so long as you don't try to play it like D&D, because it's a whole different animal.

Cluedrew
2016-07-09, 08:56 PM
Since Apocalypse World and its offspring are noted for having excellent social interaction rules,I've never heard that, but I will say that they are A) better than D&D's social rules and B) good at not taking away from role-playing. Actually that has been one of the strength of... not really the system itself but the mindset that surrounds Powered by the Apocalypse, it tends not to get in the way.

Powered by the Apocalypse* very much has a "narrative" first mindset. FATE I believe is similar, although it approaches it in a different way, and there are probably others. If you want inspiration from existing systems they would probably be worth looking into.

*I keep wanting to call it X World, by no one else calls the system that.

goto124
2016-07-09, 09:42 PM
For intimidating when you're not bluffing, use Go Aggro.
If you ARE bluffing, Seduce/Manipulate.

Why the distinction? Because one of the success effects for Go Aggro is that the NPS "sucks it up," aka they receive the threatened actions.

You are quite literally not allowed to say "I Go Aggro on him." If you do, the GM is (by rules) supposed to say "Cool, so what do you DO?" Because that's important to how the rules interact with the scene. If you approach it from the angle D&D uses of "X problem requires Y roll to solve it," along with a "success or fail" results system, then obviously it won't make much sense to you because that's now how the system was built.

Google can't seem to get me the rules for the AW system (even as it brings up player-made discussions about its social mechanics, none of those discussions make any sense without a basic understanding of the base rules), so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do instead of saying "I Go Aggro on him". Why, by the rules, I have to describe in greater detail what I'm saying.

How does the GM react to my Go Aggro in a manner that requires that description? A DnD style system only needs to see what kind of attack it is (e.g. a Power Attack) and react based on that piece of info ("subtract a number from all melee attack rolls, blah blah..."). The type of attack used will then set some conditions (loss of HP, knocked prone, etc) and the enemy can then react, partially constrained by the conditions (-4 penalty on melee attack rolls when prone, must spend a move action to stand up, etc). Back on topic, I'm still trying to imagine why the GM needs more descriptive info apparently not directly covered by the rules, not helped when I don't even have access to AW rules.

nomotag
2016-07-09, 09:57 PM
Google can't seem to get me the rules for the AW system (even as it brings up player-made discussions about its social mechanics, none of those discussions make any sense without a basic understanding of the base rules), so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do instead of saying "I Go Aggro on him". Why, by the rules, I have to describe in greater detail what I'm saying.

How does the GM react to my Go Aggro in a manner that requires that description? A DnD style system only needs to see it's a "Power Attack" and react based on that piece of info ("subtract a number from all melee attack rolls, blah blah...").

At the apocalypse-world webpage (can't post a link). If you sign in with your e-mail you can download the 1ed book. (They are working on the 2ed book and you can download parts of that too.)

Sith_Happens
2016-07-09, 10:18 PM
From my limited experience with PbtA it seems best described as an elaborate exercise in "How close can we get to being a freeform game without actually being a freeform game," so YMMV greatly on how "good" its implementation of anything is (or even how much it qualifies as an implementation in the first place).

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-10, 03:44 AM
Google can't seem to get me the rules for the AW system (even as it brings up player-made discussions about its social mechanics, none of those discussions make any sense without a basic understanding of the base rules), so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do instead of saying "I Go Aggro on him". Why, by the rules, I have to describe in greater detail what I'm saying.

How does the GM react to my Go Aggro in a manner that requires that description? A DnD style system only needs to see what kind of attack it is (e.g. a Power Attack) and react based on that piece of info ("subtract a number from all melee attack rolls, blah blah..."). The type of attack used will then set some conditions (loss of HP, knocked prone, etc) and the enemy can then react, partially constrained by the conditions (-4 penalty on melee attack rolls when prone, must spend a move action to stand up, etc). Back on topic, I'm still trying to imagine why the GM needs more descriptive info apparently not directly covered by the rules, not helped when I don't even have access to AW rules.

Because that info weighs in to a great deal of decisions the GM has to make. In a D&D intimidate check, you roll and either you succeed or fail, which translates to either "NPC is intimidated" or "NPC is not intimidated."

In Apocalypse World, the Go Aggro move has many, many more possible outcomes on both the dice end and the effects that come into play.

If you fail the roll, the GM gets to make as hard of a GM move as he wants. There are 16 of those, with themes ranging from "deal harm," to "separate them" and "Take their stuff/make them pay."
On a partial success, there are about 6-ish more things that can happen.
On a success, there are 2 things that can happen.

So just from estimation math, a D&D intimidation roll has 2 potential outcomes by RAW.

An Apocalypse World "intimidation" has approximately 24 potential outcomes by RAW.
Guess which one might need greater input than "I do the thing?"

There is a real difference in Apocalypse World between threatening to blow Lug's brain out with your pistol against his head and Threatening to put a bullet in his gut. Because if you succeed on your roll and the GM invokes the "suck it up" response, one of these means Lug dies. The other does not. The specifics matter, as does intention. If Lug is the boyfriend of the hardholder, you can expect to catch hell if he dies, giving the GM greater sway over how awful your life is.

Apocalypse World is far from simplified or freeform. Apocalypse World is very narratively intensive, and relies on fictional positioning to inform the GM of what actionst/moves are the best to make in a given situation.

The Apocalypse World rulebook is 200-ish pages long and for good reason. It's very complex but in an entirely different direction compared to D&D. Its themes require legimitate engagement with the narrative and can be hard to grasp if you're unused to such ideas. But by no means is the system "simple." Risus is simple. Drunkens and Flagons is simple. Apocalypse World is not.

Balmas
2016-07-10, 01:42 PM
Generally, I apply the Apocalypse World rules: If you roll it, you do it. You're not just walking up to the duke and rolling to manipulate him. Tell me what you're doing, because if your character isn't doing anything, then you shouldn't be rolling anything. Are you trying to buy amnesty for them? How do you do that? What are you offering?

As a side note, this works the other way. If a PC does something that sounds like a move, make them roll for it. You seize a shopkeeper by the throat, and tell him that if he doesn't pull out the good mead, you'll burn down the shop. Are you serious with that threat? Alright, roll Go Aggro. You look over the scene to get a good idea of what's going on, your best options? Alright, roll Read a Sitch.

Cluedrew
2016-07-10, 03:09 PM
Why, by the rules, I have to describe in greater detail what I'm saying.There are a couple of reasons, ImNotTrevor already covered one of the big ones (the amount of detail in the resolution) but there is another and that is how Powered by the Apocalypse Moves are used in comparison to d20 Skills.

Disclaimer: I have never read the Apocalypse World rules so I don't actually know if it is in the rules per say. Most of this is based off of what I have gotten from a friend who makes Apocalypse World Hacks. So this is actually about his games and not Apocalypse World.

Powered by the Apocalypse is based off the idea that "the GM/MC decides when you roll". Some people do this in D&D but still it is quite normal for people to say "I open the door with lock picking." It Powered by the Apocalypse you would me more likely to say "I get my lock picks and start working on the door's locks" because the game encourages that, more descriptive, approach.

nomotag
2016-07-10, 04:53 PM
It's also not required that you use all the rules of a system. You can just pluck out the parts you like and adapt them.

Balmas
2016-07-10, 05:52 PM
Google can't seem to get me the rules for the AW system (even as it brings up player-made discussions about its social mechanics, none of those discussions make any sense without a basic understanding of the base rules), so I have no idea what I'm supposed to do instead of saying "I Go Aggro on him". Why, by the rules, I have to describe in greater detail what I'm saying.

Look no further! (http://apocalypse-world.com/AW-basicrefbook-letter.pdf) These are mostly the playbooks, but that's about 90% of what players need. And towards the end, you have the lists of moves and some GM advice.


How does the GM react to my Go Aggro in a manner that requires that description? A DnD style system only needs to see what kind of attack it is (e.g. a Power Attack) and react based on that piece of info ("subtract a number from all melee attack rolls, blah blah..."). The type of attack used will then set some conditions (loss of HP, knocked prone, etc) and the enemy can then react, partially constrained by the conditions (-4 penalty on melee attack rolls when prone, must spend a move action to stand up, etc). Back on topic, I'm still trying to imagine why the GM needs more descriptive info apparently not directly covered by the rules, not helped when I don't even have access to AW rules.

Well, let's start by looking at the rules in question:


When you go aggro on someone, roll+hard. On a 10+, they have to choose: force your hand and suck it up, or cave and do what you want. On a 7–9, they can instead choose 1:
get the hell out of your way
barricade themselves securely in
give you something they think you want
back off calmly, hands where you can see
tell you what you want to know (or what you want to hear)

What option the MC chooses for the character depends on what is being threatened and how you're doing it.

Let's say that Angry Joe needs some information on the whereabouts of Shim Slady, and Big Deadhead has the information he wants.

Option A: Joe storms towards Deadhead's shop, waving around a shotgun and bellowing about how he's going to blow Deadhead's worthless head off if he doesn't tell Joe where to find the bastard who shot his son. Joe's player rolls an 8 on Go Aggro, and Deadhead makes a mad dash for his shop, drops the shutters, and Barricades Himself Securely In.

Option B: Joe invites Deadhead over for lunch. They chat, have fun, share a few drinks, and then Deadhead feels a pistol jammed against his kidneys. "Tell me where to find that slimeball Slady," Joe hisses, and his player rolls an 8 on Go Aggro. Nearly crapping himself in terror, Deadhead gibbers out something about how he hangs around The Red Light. This may or may not be accurate; Deadhead is just trying to Tell You What You Want to Know (or what you want to hear).

Option C: Joe walks into the shop calmly and lays a shotgun on the counter. Calmly, he informs Deadhead that if Deadhead doesn't tell him what he needs to know, he'd better hope that the local doctor can provide cybernetic testicles, because Deadhead sure as hell won't be using the ones he was born with. Joe's player rolls a 10 now, which means that Deadhead can either suck it up or give Joe what he needs. Deadhead caves and points Joe towards a cave in the hills out of town.


It's all the same move, but different situations and different narratives change how the MC responds.

Gray Mage
2016-07-11, 05:44 PM
I like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9606632&postcount=2) houserule of the diplomacy skill. It means that players decisions influence how hard the check is, so some level of interaction/player input is encouraged.

Amphetryon
2016-07-11, 06:18 PM
Look no further! (http://apocalypse-world.com/AW-basicrefbook-letter.pdf) These are mostly the playbooks, but that's about 90% of what players need. And towards the end, you have the lists of moves and some GM advice.



Well, let's start by looking at the rules in question:



What option the MC chooses for the character depends on what is being threatened and how you're doing it.

Let's say that Angry Joe needs some information on the whereabouts of Shim Slady, and Big Deadhead has the information he wants.

Option A: Joe storms towards Deadhead's shop, waving around a shotgun and bellowing about how he's going to blow Deadhead's worthless head off if he doesn't tell Joe where to find the bastard who shot his son. Joe's player rolls an 8 on Go Aggro, and Deadhead makes a mad dash for his shop, drops the shutters, and Barricades Himself Securely In.

Option B: Joe invites Deadhead over for lunch. They chat, have fun, share a few drinks, and then Deadhead feels a pistol jammed against his kidneys. "Tell me where to find that slimeball Slady," Joe hisses, and his player rolls an 8 on Go Aggro. Nearly crapping himself in terror, Deadhead gibbers out something about how he hangs around The Red Light. This may or may not be accurate; Deadhead is just trying to Tell You What You Want to Know (or what you want to hear).

Option C: Joe walks into the shop calmly and lays a shotgun on the counter. Calmly, he informs Deadhead that if Deadhead doesn't tell him what he needs to know, he'd better hope that the local doctor can provide cybernetic testicles, because Deadhead sure as hell won't be using the ones he was born with. Joe's player rolls a 10 now, which means that Deadhead can either suck it up or give Joe what he needs. Deadhead caves and points Joe towards a cave in the hills out of town.


It's all the same move, but different situations and different narratives change how the MC responds.

All that I can really conclude from these examples is that an 8 was an insufficient roll, while a 10 was good enough. I don't get why one approach was better than the others in the context of the rules except for the fact that one roll was better. Could you clarify how the actual rules influenced these approaches, beyond "Joe rolled better in the 3rd example?"

I'm also vaguely concerned, from your description, that the "roll Social" mechanic in AW comes very close to "guess what the MC has decided the right approach is." This mirrors a frustration I've had with games like Apples to Apples and CAH, where your success has much more to do with what the other people at the table consider a good/funny response, socially, rather than which one the individual making "the move" thinks is the best option based on available info.

Cluedrew
2016-07-11, 06:27 PM
All rolls in Powered by the Apocalypse have three main levels:
Miss - 6 or less - Something bad happens
Weak Hit - 7-9 - You succeed, but with complications.
Strong Hit - 10 or more - You succeed and get a little bit extra.
Of course individual rolls may vary what happens at each level, but they all use the three levels and the same number ranges are associated with the three levels as well. And there are a few systems that play with that as well, but that is relatively uncommon in my experience.

So what was different in the third example was it was a strong hit instead of a weak hit (sort of like a critical).

Gray Mage
2016-07-11, 06:36 PM
All that I can really conclude from these examples is that an 8 was an insufficient roll, while a 10 was good enough. I don't get why one approach was better than the others in the context of the rules except for the fact that one roll was better. Could you clarify how the actual rules influenced these approaches, beyond "Joe rolled better in the 3rd example?"

From what I understand it's not that it's better, but that they have different effects and thus influence future events. In option B, for example, he had no way of barricading himself, so through description/planning the player managed to avoid a possible complication.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-11, 08:49 PM
All that I can really conclude from these examples is that an 8 was an insufficient roll, while a 10 was good enough. I don't get why one approach was better than the others in the context of the rules except for the fact that one roll was better. Could you clarify how the actual rules influenced these approaches, beyond "Joe rolled better in the 3rd example?"

I'm also vaguely concerned, from your description, that the "roll Social" mechanic in AW comes very close to "guess what the MC has decided the right approach is." This mirrors a frustration I've had with games like Apples to Apples and CAH, where your success has much more to do with what the other people at the table consider a good/funny response, socially, rather than which one the individual making "the move" thinks is the best option based on available info.

An 8 is a success with complications.
The character succeeded in intimidating the NPC, but the MC chose the "barricade themselves securely in" response. It's not the response I would have gone for since it somewhat stands against the success being a success in this specific instance. In this instance I would have gone with "Give you something they think you want" by having the NPC say he really didn't know anything, but he had some tools you could use to get revenge.

The 10 is a success with no complications, so the MC doesn't make a move.

On a fail, the MC goes to the MC moves and uses as hard a move as he wants. (The NPC attacks you, the NPC refuses to give the information without payment, etc.) I would also mentally consult my Fronts and Threats to determine if a Threat Move is a better option. If Deadhead is a threat, or part of one, then I can use moves according to the type he is.

There's a lot of narrative information informing this scene beyond just what is happening right then, though the MC still needs to know what's happening right then to make sure he picks a response that prompts more moves and continues to intensify the scene.

Amphetryon
2016-07-11, 09:06 PM
An 8 is a success with complications.
The character succeeded in intimidating the NPC, but the MC chose the "barricade themselves securely in" response. It's not the response I would have gone for since it somewhat stands against the success being a success in this specific instance. In this instance I would have gone with "Give you something they think you want" by having the NPC say he really didn't know anything, but he had some tools you could use to get revenge.

The 10 is a success with no complications, so the MC doesn't make a move.

On a fail, the MC goes to the MC moves and uses as hard a move as he wants. (The NPC attacks you, the NPC refuses to give the information without payment, etc.) I would also mentally consult my Fronts and Threats to determine if a Threat Move is a better option. If Deadhead is a threat, or part of one, then I can use moves according to the type he is.

There's a lot of narrative information informing this scene beyond just what is happening right then, though the MC still needs to know what's happening right then to make sure he picks a response that prompts more moves and continues to intensify the scene.
This answer reads as confirmation that the result was all about the roll, rather than the roleplaying. It was the roll, and not the Player's description of how the Character went about using the shotgun to intimidate the informant, that determined the result. I would think that fails the OP's criteria of 'social abilities that don't take away from roleplaying.'

The method chosen may have narrative consequences, and may well inform how the story unfolds as things progress, of course. But that same thing happens in every other roleplaying game I know, including every iteration of D&D.

Cluedrew
2016-07-11, 09:52 PM
To Amphetryon: Have you played it? ... OK I am 99% sure you haven't and were not just asking rhetorical questions. But in my experience it works quite well. It is not perfect of course (lack of difficulty (as in a mechanic, not as it being really easy) and any form of opposed check stand out to me).

Quertus
2016-07-11, 09:58 PM
From what I understand it's not that it's better, but that they have different effects and thus influence future events. In option B, for example, he had no way of barricading himself, so through description/planning the player managed to avoid a possible complication.


This answer reads as confirmation that the result was all about the roll, rather than the roleplaying. It was the roll, and not the Player's description of how the Character went about using the shotgun to intimidate the informant, that determined the result. I would think that fails the OP's criteria of 'social abilities that don't take away from roleplaying.'

The method chosen may have narrative consequences, and may well inform how the story unfolds as things progress, of course. But that same thing happens in every other roleplaying game I know, including every iteration of D&D.

This has thus far been my view of AW. It feels like no amount of preparation, no amount of strategy matters. There is no "thinking" minigame. It all comes down to the dice. Because no matter what you do, or how you do it, you have the same chance of success, and the same chance of something bad happening, than if you tried playing as stupidly as possible.

It feels like Spelljammer crits, where if you were smart enough to make your ship immune to fire, you get a different, worse crit applied to your ship, instead. Or some of the horrible GMs I've had, where the smarter you played, the worse they made things for your character. Tie the rope to your character before trying to climb? The rope causes the fall to deal more damage, and permanently destroys one or more of your limbs.

It feels like, in AW, you can have (maybe) some influence on what type of bad things happen to you, but you cannot affect how likely you are to succeed or fail or have bad things happen to you.

Am I wrong?

EDIT: I suppose, if I'm right, one could argue that there's no thinking to get in the way of the roleplaying...

Arbane
2016-07-11, 10:29 PM
It feels like, in AW, you can have (maybe) some influence on what type of bad things happen to you, but you cannot affect how likely you are to succeed or fail or have bad things happen to you.

Am I wrong?


Yes, you're wrong. Characters DO get stats, which you a dd to the appropriate move rolls, making a 7+ easier.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-11, 10:47 PM
This answer reads as confirmation that the result was all about the roll, rather than the roleplaying. It was the roll, and not the Player's description of how the Character went about using the shotgun to intimidate the informant, that determined the result. I would think that fails the OP's criteria of 'social abilities that don't take away from roleplaying.'

The method chosen may have narrative consequences, and may well inform how the story unfolds as things progress, of course. But that same thing happens in every other roleplaying game I know, including every iteration of D&D.

I don't think the OP was looking for a system in which the dice literally don't matter and it is 100% up to the player to determine success. Because we don't do that for combat, either.

And I don't think that having dice determine success is something they sought to avoid, since that's one of the lynchpins that makes TRPGs into games instead of into improv sessions.


This has thus far been my view of AW. It feels like no amount of preparation, no amount of strategy matters. There is no "thinking" minigame. It all comes down to the dice. Because no matter what you do, or how you do it, you have the same chance of success, and the same chance of something bad happening, than if you tried playing as stupidly as possible.

The same could be said of any RPG. You can always roll a 1 in D&D and fail anyways, despite best-laid plans. One terrible roll is all it really takes.

I have had players play AW stupidly, and ended up getting much worse outcomes than if they hadn't. (It involved pushing an NPC out of a window instead of getting him onto their side. Which made the front the NPC was involved in accelerate much faster and cause things to go badly on a much quicker timetable. There was just as much rolling involved in the bad decision. The difference is that the consequences may not be immediate. The immediate consequence of pushing the guy out a window was a bit of a hubub about how that NPC fell out a window.

Long term it directly led to a thug overthrowing the pseudo-government of their little town and running the PCs and the former leader out at gunpoint.

In this case, it was their SUCCESS that caused them problems. They got what they wanted... the just wanted something really stupid.
The dice determine if you get what you WANT, not if you get something GOOD. If you want to punt a kitten right in front of Devestator, Demolisher Of Bones And Lover Of Kittens, then I'll let you. You will get what you WANT. (A punted kitten) but it will also cause something bad. (Devestator will attempt to remove your spine)



It feels like Spelljammer crits, where if you were smart enough to make your ship immune to fire, you get a different, worse crit applied to your ship, instead. Or some of the horrible GMs I've had, where the smarter you played, the worse they made things for your character. Tie the rope to your character before trying to climb? The rope causes the fall to deal more damage, and permanently destroys one or more of your limbs.

I don't think that's an apt comparison. In a similar situation viewed through Apocalypse World, the former roll would have you fall and take harm. You did not get what you want. (Defined as "getting to the top of this climbable thing.")

The second, on a similar fail, I would have them fall and the rope gets snagged in an awkward way. They don't take harm, but now they're "Pinned Down" (aka stuck) and will need help to get down. You still don't get what you want.

Of course, depending on the situation I may not have them roll to climb. (If nothing is at stake, why would I make them roll? To give them a chance to fail for the giggles?)

Carrying on with the second situation:
On a Partial Success, I might have it so that they get to the top just fine, but their rope got tangled up in something on the way up. They won't have it for the trip down. They got what they want, but now there's a complication. (They can't go back down with the same guarantee of safety)
Or, they make it up but taking the time to tie the rope has led to the thing they're going after being somehow further out of reach. (The person they're chasing, etc.) They get what they want (being at the top of the climbable thing) but there's a complication (The thing they're going after is now harder to catch.)
Or, I can force a choice. "The archers shooting at you are really hammering this cliffside. You can either make it to the top in the nick of time, but suffer harm from the arrows, or you can avoid suffering the harm but you proceed slower and will be further behind." Either way, they get to the top. But this time they choose the complication.
(I had to kind of put new details in there since "climb cliff with a rope" is not, by itself, really the kind of charged situation I would call for a roll on.)

On a success, they zip up the cliff just in time.



It feels like, in AW, you can have (maybe) some influence on what type of bad things happen to you, but you cannot affect how likely you are to succeed or fail or have bad things happen to you.


There are various methods of giving yourself bonuses or taking small penalties to what you are doing, if that's what you're asking about. But overall, that's true of every TRPG ever in the history of mankind. There is no way to plan so thoroughly that no roll, no matter how bad, could turn against you.

Since there are stats, it will make it so that the Gunlugger is better at things that involve violence and strength.
Meanwhile the Skinner is better for social stuff, and the Battlebabe is good at holding things together in the heat of combat. The Savvyhead is really good at making and observing things.

There is a degree of strategy inasmuch as some classes are strictly better at some things than others.

Is it as much strategy as is found in games that are effectively Combat Tactics Simulators? No. Because it is not one of those. Combat is highly abstracted in Apocalypse World, which isn't for everyone. (Seriously, if you like detailed combat and turn orders and Armor Class Bonuses and the like, don't play PbtA systems because they aren't for that.)



EDIT: I suppose, if I'm right, one could argue that there's no thinking to get in the way of the roleplaying...
I don't know if this is meant to be snide or not, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that by "thinking" you mean "strategic planning" or "tactics" or something of the sort.

In that sense, yes. Apocalypse World is more abstracted than other systems because it is built from the concept of "how do we get a bunch of people to come together and have cool things happen" as opposed to "How do we play this war game and roleplay at the same time?" (Mind you, both of these are totally valid ways to play. But they are also VERY different.)

I really hope it wasn't an attempt to be snide, because implying that playing a certain game means you don't like thinking is uncool, dude.

Cluedrew
2016-07-12, 07:07 AM
EDIT: I suppose, if I'm right, one could argue that there's no thinking to get in the way of the roleplaying...You are right in a sense. In my experience Powered by the Apocalypse allows very little optimization. By little optimization I mean you can make the relevant stat higher or lower but that is about it. The reason for this is the systems generally only have one way to do each task so you can't pick a better one (this is largely fallout from being rules light).

You can however pick your method of approach in many cases to allow yourself a better chance of success. ImNotTrevor covered much of that already, but even besides perusing good goals you sometimes can chose between a few methods of approach towards the same goal which will have different chances of success.

Balmas
2016-07-12, 12:28 PM
You are right in a sense. In my experience Powered by the Apocalypse allows very little optimization. By little optimization I mean you can make the relevant stat higher or lower but that is about it. The reason for this is the systems generally only have one way to do each task so you can't pick a better one (this is largely fallout from being rules light).

You can however pick your method of approach in many cases to allow yourself a better chance of success. ImNotTrevor covered much of that already, but even besides perusing good goals you sometimes can chose between a few methods of approach towards the same goal which will have different chances of success.

I would almost argue that the point of PbtA games is not to minmax your character. I mean, it's possible, even if the extent of minmaxing essentially boils down to "Get +3 in the stat you use the most." Instead, I usually find it more interesting to look at what moves people take, what that says about the character. Each character can use the experience they gain to purchase new moves, and every playbook can choose up to two moves from other playbooks.

Harold, the hardholder who was trying to destroy his town? He took moves from the Gunlugger playbook to make himself a beast in one-on-one combat, while also stealing a move from the Maitre'D so that he could poison town members. (It made sense in context.) Gabriel, the gunlugger merc, took Touched By Death and a Battlebabe move that let him get visions of the future. Slick Talk the brainer took a move from a playbook that let her physically retreat into the psychic maelstrom, healing herself and spitting herself somewhere elsewhere.

It's not about how you minmax the character. It's about what you choose to do with what your character that matters.

Cluedrew
2016-07-12, 09:49 PM
I would almost argue that the point of PbtA games is not to minmax your character.If you did, I believe I would whole heartedly agree with you.

Quertus
2016-07-13, 01:00 AM
Given how many intelligent people clearly missed my point, I must not have done a good job of expressing myself. :smallredface: Let me try again.


I don't know if this is meant to be snide or not, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that by "thinking" you mean "strategic planning" or "tactics" or something of the sort.

Let me address this first. Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt. What I meant was a combination of ideas. Some people dislike systems where you stop thinking in character, and are instead forced to think in system terms. They claim that doing so breaks immersion (I agree), and is fatal to role-playing (I disagree). I felt that, for that particular crowd, what I viewed as a negative, a system with no thinking minigame, world be a positive thing, particularly as relates to the OP's inquiry regarding systems which do not take away from RP. Again, emphasis on the fact that I, personally, dislike the idea of a system with no thinking minigame.

But what do I mean by a "thinking minigame"? Hmmm... I mean being able to stack the deck, whether through finesse, brute force, preparedness, or some other option. I mean having some ability to influence the effect of one's actions, both in terms of the list of plausible outcomes, as well as the likelihood of each.

Suppose the PCs are trying to talk a group of bandits armed with various firearms to surrender. If the PCs are roughly evenly matched with the bandits, that's one thing. If the PCs are offering the bandits a lot of money to stand down, that's another. But if the PCs have demonstrated some form of x-ray vision, and are armed with rail guns that can shoot through walls, have demonstrated pinpoint accuracy with these weapons, and have either evacuated the town, or demonstrated a complete disregard for collateral damage, I expect this intimidation attempt to be much more likely to succeed.

Now let's go crazy. If these PCs are also backed up by local law enforcement, the armies of 3 nations, and a 50-mile diameter advanced technology alien warship filled with 8 foot tall teleporting space marines... And have brought in everyone the bandits care about, to plead with the bandits to surrender, and this includes people the bandits didn't believe anyone could find, and even people believed dead for years... And have a telepath speaking directly into the bandits minds, demonstrating that they know the bandits every move, every thought, every secret... And have sent a chronomancer back in time, to get each of the bandits to, as children, agree to a future favor, which the chronomancer, who obviously hasn't aged a day, calls in now... And have offered the bandits more money than they ever dreamed of, plus have researched them to offer whatever else the bandits - both collectively and individually - care about... And have used their prescience to sabotage the exact right ammo shipment, so that the bandits' bullets are 98+% duds, and there's a recall notice in today's paper, alongside other items the party has specifically custom tailored for this scenario (ads for coffins and facial reconstructive surgery, and an interview with the world's best psychic, who talks tongue-in-cheek about how he's going to be dealing with exactly this problem today)... And the group has built up a better than Batman level of reputation, where entire nations have stood down at the mention of their involvement... Well, in that case, I don't expect there to be any rolls, except maybe for which of these incentives the bandits finds more motivating.

Yet it seems like, in AW/PbtA, someone with a -1 (on a scale of -2 to 3?) in the corresponding stat would have a greater than 50% chance of having even that ridiculously contrived scenario go horribly south, and almost no chance of getting the bandits to straight up stand down with no further complications. :smallconfused:


Yes, you're wrong. Characters DO get stats, which you a dd to the appropriate move rolls, making a 7+ easier.

Saying that the party face is more likely to succeed at talking is a good thing; saying that the only way to improve your chances of success is through higher statistics is not, IMO.

It sounds like you're saying that the only way to think my way through a given situation is to choose the person with the highest stats to be the one to make the roll. In which case, no, I'm not wrong about there being no thinking minigame.


Since there are stats, it will make it so that the Gunlugger is better at things that involve violence and strength.
Meanwhile the Skinner is better for social stuff, and the Battlebabe is good at holding things together in the heat of combat. The Savvyhead is really good at making and observing things.

There is a degree of strategy inasmuch as some classes are strictly better at some things than others.

Is it as much strategy as is found in games that are effectively Combat Tactics Simulators? No.

See above.

Also... My gunlugger knows he needs to observe something. He knows he isn't a savvy head, but there's nothing he can do about that. But he can buy some binoculars, caffeinate himself, set up mirrors / video surveillance equipment, alter the environment to make it easier to observe, etc etc etc.


I don't think the OP was looking for a system in which the dice literally don't matter and it is 100% up to the player to determine success. Because we don't do that for combat, either.

Me: AW feels like it's (almost) 100% about the dice rolls, with (almost) no player agency.
You: Do we want it to be 100% up to the player?

Actually, while I don't know that that would be a bad thing, I was looking for a happy median.


The same could be said of any RPG. You can always roll a 1 in D&D and fail anyways, despite best-laid plans. One terrible roll is all it really takes.

Um... No, and no.

First off, mechanically, you don't fail on a 1 in D&D 3.5 when rolling skill checks. An ancient gold dragon / commoner 400 with a +500 to diplomacy can roll a 1 (or, as I like to put it, can "take a 1") on diplomacy, and still turn everyone he meets into a fanatical follower (unless they are immune, such as by being a PC).

But, perhaps more importantly, "you always fail on a 1" <> "you cannot influence your probability of success".


I have had players play AW stupidly, and ended up getting much worse outcomes than if they hadn't. (It involved pushing an NPC out of a window instead of getting him onto their side. Which made the front the NPC was involved in accelerate much faster and cause things to go badly on a much quicker timetable. There was just as much rolling involved in the bad decision. The difference is that the consequences may not be immediate. The immediate consequence of pushing the guy out a window was a bit of a hubub about how that NPC fell out a window.

Long term it directly led to a thug overthrowing the pseudo-government of their little town and running the PCs and the former leader out at gunpoint.

In this case, it was their SUCCESS that caused them problems. They got what they wanted... the just wanted something really stupid.
The dice determine if you get what you WANT, not if you get something GOOD. If you want to punt a kitten right in front of Devestator, Demolisher Of Bones And Lover Of Kittens, then I'll let you. You will get what you WANT. (A punted kitten) but it will also cause something bad. (Devestator will attempt to remove your spine)

I don't know how to make this not sound sarcastic, but... Thank you for addressing that which was not what I was talking about. By explicitly being this up, you provide me the opportunity to clarify that problems you encounter by succeeding are a play style discussion, not a system issue (unless such is somehow rolled into the system).

*backs away slowly*


I don't think that's an apt comparison. In a similar situation viewed through Apocalypse World, the former roll would have you fall and take harm. You did not get what you want. (Defined as "getting to the top of this climbable thing.")

The second, on a similar fail, I would have them fall and the rope gets snagged in an awkward way. They don't take harm, but now they're "Pinned Down" (aka stuck) and will need help to get down. You still don't get what you want.

Of course, depending on the situation I may not have them roll to climb. (If nothing is at stake, why would I make them roll? To give them a chance to fail for the giggles?)

Carrying on with the second situation:
On a Partial Success, I might have it so that they get to the top just fine, but their rope got tangled up in something on the way up. They won't have it for the trip down. They got what they want, but now there's a complication. (They can't go back down with the same guarantee of safety)
Or, they make it up but taking the time to tie the rope has led to the thing they're going after being somehow further out of reach. (The person they're chasing, etc.) They get what they want (being at the top of the climbable thing) but there's a complication (The thing they're going after is now harder to catch.)
Or, I can force a choice. "The archers shooting at you are really hammering this cliffside. You can either make it to the top in the nick of time, but suffer harm from the arrows, or you can avoid suffering the harm but you proceed slower and will be further behind." Either way, they get to the top. But this time they choose the complication.
(I had to kind of put new details in there since "climb cliff with a rope" is not, by itself, really the kind of charged situation I would call for a roll on.)

On a success, they zip up the cliff just in time.


I like a lot of what you said here. I think I would get along with you running a game better than most of the GMs I've had.

But, being me, I've got to focus on the bad. :smallfrown:

Now, this a new idea, so I'm probably gonna fail to communicate it well, but the bolded section feels... "wrong" (odd?)... to me. Like things that should sit pretty squarely in the hands of reality / system mechanics or player agency has been moved into random chance. I cannot evaluate how long it takes to tie a rope, because how long it takes to tie a rope, and whether that will impact this chase, is determined by the result of my climb check. Just like, in a previous example, the fate of my missing... contact?... was determined by my success (failure) on a stealth check. It feels like a serious mechanical disconnect between cause and effect - and one which sits in stark opposition to the far more complex appreciation for cause and effect you seem to expect of the players per your example of being stupid and pushing someone out a window having the logical consequence of accelerating a front and leading to a government overthrow.


There are various methods of giving yourself bonuses or taking small penalties to what you are doing, if that's what you're asking about. But overall, that's true of every TRPG ever in the history of mankind. There is no way to plan so thoroughly that no roll, no matter how bad, could turn against you.

This feels a lot closer to what I was trying to talk about.

Tell me more?


I would almost argue that the point of PbtA games is not to minmax your character. I mean, it's possible, even if the extent of minmaxing essentially boils down to "Get +3 in the stat you use the most." Instead, I usually find it more interesting to look at what moves people take, what that says about the character. Each character can use the experience they gain to purchase new moves, and every playbook can choose up to two moves from other playbooks.

Harold, the hardholder who was trying to destroy his town? He took moves from the Gunlugger playbook to make himself a beast in one-on-one combat, while also stealing a move from the Maitre'D so that he could poison town members. (It made sense in context.) Gabriel, the gunlugger merc, took Touched By Death and a Battlebabe move that let him get visions of the future. Slick Talk the brainer took a move from a playbook that let her physically retreat into the psychic maelstrom, healing herself and spitting herself somewhere elsewhere.

It's not about how you minmax the character. It's about what you choose to do with what your character that matters.

Oddly enough, it feels the opposite from the outside looking in. It feels like the only way to succeed at your intentions is to minmax as hard as possible - and even that will have minimal impact compared to random chance.


You are right in a sense. In my experience Powered by the Apocalypse allows very little optimization. By little optimization I mean you can make the relevant stat higher or lower but that is about it. The reason for this is the systems generally only have one way to do each task so you can't pick a better one (this is largely fallout from being rules light).

You can however pick your method of approach in many cases to allow yourself a better chance of success. ImNotTrevor covered much of that already, but even besides perusing good goals you sometimes can chose between a few methods of approach towards the same goal which will have different chances of success.

See above.

Also, I was more trying to finesse my odds on any given path, but you bring up a good point: PbtA makes it feel more about your stats, and less about the scenario.

For example, a small, unreasonable child should be easily manhandled, but difficult to convince. Yet it feels like, in AW, if I have a Face, I'll have far more success talking to the child or herding cats than I would manhandling the child or escaping a wet paper bag.

NichG
2016-07-13, 03:12 AM
I'm not sufficiently familiar with PbtA games to tell if this applies, but just conceptually...

Another way to have a thinking game is to have a fixed probability random event, but to control who is risking that event and how often. So lets say you have a mechanic called a 'crisis' where the subject of the crisis flips a coin, and if it comes up tails they move one step along a death track, but if it comes up heads then they're fine and they get to react somehow. You could say 'there's nothing you can do in this system to change your odds' and if thats all there is to the game, you'd be right, but there's the unstated decision of 'how do you determine when there's a crisis and who has to flip?'.

You could decide that in any number of ways which could be subject to strategy and control. In that case, the point isn't that you can use stack things to obtain an unfair coin, its that you arrange to flip the coin far less frequently than your opponents have to and as such effectively have a smaller chance of hitting the end of the death track.

So the question would be, in PbtA in the example of the child, if you're a big strong lout and you just want to drag the kid around by the arm, will the MC say 'okay, you do so, no roll required' or are they obligated to make you roll for it? If they can say 'no roll required', then the thinking game components are all about arranging to do things using only auto-successes. Which is very much like D&D - in high op D&D, its all about not actually needing to risk a roll whose outcome you can't guarantee.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-13, 04:13 AM
Let me address this first. Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.
No problem. I try to do that as much as I can.



What I meant was a combination of ideas. Some people dislike systems where you stop thinking in character, and are instead forced to think in system terms. They claim that doing so breaks immersion (I agree), and is fatal to role-playing (I disagree). I felt that, for that particular crowd, what I viewed as a negative, a system with no thinking minigame, world be a positive thing, particularly as relates to the OP's inquiry regarding systems which do not take away from RP. Again, emphasis on the fact that I, personally, dislike the idea of a system with no thinking minigame.

I would not, therefore, recommend Apocalypse World as the first thing you try, because it's logic does not operate on "Winning." The PCs are not trying to win at the apocalypse. The world is a dying husk and they live upon the taut-stretched skin over the planets crumbling bones. This is not a situation where heroes arise very often. "Victory" in Apocalypse World often means simply surviving a very bad thing, rather than preventing a bad thing.

A very key component of Apocalypse World is the concept of the Moves Snowball.

Essentially, every scene should start off somewhat charged and have a good chance of boiling over. Hence, the math encourages getting Partial Successes over Full Successes (and the system fully acknowledges that this is a conscious decision. The players are not prevented from succeeding, but succeeding at a cost is very much part and parcel of Post-Apocalypse media.)
Hence, the most common roll is 2d6+Stat. The most common stat increase is 1.

Since the average roll of 2d6 is 6, and is the most common, this means that MOST rolls of the dice with a stat of at least +1 will be Partial Successes. You will get what you want, but at a cost, most of the time. This allows the Moves Snowball to carry on, and allows situations to get more and more intense, which is what the game is designed to do:
Each scene has its own rise in action and climax, as does the entire game overall. Campaigns of Apocalypse World are short, fast-paced, and very intense. My players now deliberately give themselves harder starting positions because it makes the game more fun. (Because things going wrong is made fun in that system.)



But what do I mean by a "thinking minigame"? Hmmm... I mean being able to stack the deck, whether through finesse, brute force, preparedness, or some other option. I mean having some ability to influence the effect of one's actions, both in terms of the list of plausible outcomes, as well as the likelihood of each.

You can do these, but remember that we're talking about the post-apocalypse, here. Resources are very limited and everyone wants what everyone else has.



Suppose the PCs are trying to talk a group of bandits armed with various firearms to surrender. If the PCs are roughly evenly matched with the bandits, that's one thing. If the PCs are offering the bandits a lot of money to stand down, that's another. But if the PCs have demonstrated some form of x-ray vision, and are armed with rail guns that can shoot through walls, have demonstrated pinpoint accuracy with these weapons, and have either evacuated the town, or demonstrated a complete disregard for collateral damage, I expect this intimidation attempt to be much more likely to succeed.

If this kind of thing worked within Apocalypse World, I would agree. But it's rather outside what a bunch of unusually powerful wastelanders are gonna be able to do. HOWEVER!
If the characters have already demonstrated overwhelming force and the bandits pose no reasonable threat, nothing is actually at stake. So no roll.
Players should only be rolling if something is at stake.



Now let's go crazy. If these PCs are also backed up by local law enforcement, the armies of 3 nations, and a 50-mile diameter advanced technology alien warship filled with 8 foot tall teleporting space marines... And have brought in everyone the bandits care about, to plead with the bandits to surrender, and this includes people the bandits didn't believe anyone could find, and even people believed dead for years... And have a telepath speaking directly into the bandits minds, demonstrating that they know the bandits every move, every thought, every secret... And have sent a chronomancer back in time, to get each of the bandits to, as children, agree to a future favor, which the chronomancer, who obviously hasn't aged a day, calls in now... And have offered the bandits more money than they ever dreamed of, plus have researched them to offer whatever else the bandits - both collectively and individually - care about... And have used their prescience to sabotage the exact right ammo shipment, so that the bandits' bullets are 98+% duds, and there's a recall notice in today's paper, alongside other items the party has specifically custom tailored for this scenario (ads for coffins and facial reconstructive surgery, and an interview with the world's best psychic, who talks tongue-in-cheek about how he's going to be dealing with exactly this problem today)... And the group has built up a better than Batman level of reputation, where entire nations have stood down at the mention of their involvement... Well, in that case, I don't expect there to be any rolls, except maybe for which of these incentives the bandits finds more motivating.

Mission accomplished on the crazy.



Yet it seems like, in AW/PbtA, someone with a -1 (on a scale of -2 to 3?) in the corresponding stat would have a greater than 50% chance of having even that ridiculously contrived scenario go horribly south, and almost no chance of getting the bandits to straight up stand down with no further complications. :smallconfused:

The scale is usually -1 to +3. You CAN get a -2 but you have to try REALLY hard. (Ie, you have to nearly die.)

And as I stated before, AW WANTS things to get more complicated. It's a system designed to make things going wrong be the most fun part of the game. You are supposed to feel on-edge, scraping onward by your fingernails until finally either succumbing to circumstances or dominating utterly.
That's part of the point.



Saying that the party face is more likely to succeed at talking is a good thing; saying that the only way to improve your chances of success is through higher statistics is not, IMO.

Apocalypse World also has a Help/Interfere mechanic, allows you to obtain bonuses if you follow what you learned from a Read a Person or Read a Sitch roll, and some classes also grant different bonuses to their allies in different situations.

There is also an optional rule that allows you to adjust for difficulty, but no group I've ever heard of has ended up using it for more than 1 session because it kinda gimps the system of what its supposed to be doing.



It sounds like you're saying that the only way to think my way through a given situation is to choose the person with the highest stats to be the one to make the roll. In which case, no, I'm not wrong about there being no thinking minigame.

This is why in AW the party is frequently split. Like... all the time. And often they aren't actually a party and are just all people who live in the same town and know one another. They need not even be friendly.

PvP is a bit weird in AW, but it's possible. And fun!



Also... My gunlugger knows he needs to observe something. He knows he isn't a savvy head, but there's nothing he can do about that. But he can buy some binoculars, caffeinate himself, set up mirrors / video surveillance equipment, alter the environment to make it easier to observe, etc etc etc.
Buying Binoculars? I'm gonna "Make Them Buy" and make sure there's a cost. Binoculars are valuable in the post-apocalypse.

Caffeine? Even harder to find. Better be om good terms with the Angel. (Healer/medical class)

Mirrors? Video surveillance? Sure... but again, this will cost you time and energy to set up. I'll throw you a bonus after all this, but is it actually worth it to avoid any conflict and have a really boring game?



That's not really what I'm saying, but I don't agree on the premise either way.
AW relies very heavily on what the players do to determine outcomes. The dice tell us two things:
1. Do the players get what they WANT?
2. Does the situation escalate?

A fail is
1. No
2. Yes.

A partial success is
1. Yes
2. Yes.

A success is

1. Yes
2. No

[QUOTE]
Actually, while I don't know that that would be a bad thing, I was looking for a happy median.




First off, mechanically, you don't fail on a 1 in D&D 3.5 when rolling skill checks. An ancient gold dragon / commoner 400 with a +500 to diplomacy can roll a 1 (or, as I like to put it, can "take a 1") on diplomacy, and still turn everyone he meets into a fanatical follower (unless they are immune, such as by being a PC).

But, perhaps more importantly, "you always fail on a 1" <> "you cannot influence your probability of success".

You can influence your probability of success in AW. Just maybe not in exactly rhe ways you prefer, but you can.



I don't know how to make this not sound sarcastic, but... Thank you for addressing that which was not what I was talking about. By explicitly being this up, you provide me the opportunity to clarify that problems you encounter by succeeding are a play style discussion, not a system issue (unless such is somehow rolled into the system).
Indeed it is, though you did admit earlier that you may not have been as clear as you'd hoped. So I don't really feel bad about being confused.



I like a lot of what you said here. I think I would get along with you running a game better than most of the GMs I've had.

Thank you.



Eh. It's what I could come up with on limited information. All I had was Rope, Climbable Thing, and Desire to Climc Climbable Thing With Rope.
I did what I could.
Though it could be argued that your climbing skill would affect your ability at tying Taut Line Hitches or whatever kind of knot you use for this purpose, but in AW this would probably be an Act Under Fire roll so that's not my concern here.

[QUOTE]
This feels a lot closer to what I was trying to talk about.

Tell me more?

Like I said, utilizing info gained when Reading a sitch/person can give you a +1 when you use that info.

People can help or interfere with your roll (for a + or - 2, if I remember right...)

There is an optional "difficulty" rule but most people dont use it. (It basically lets the MC arbitrarily add or subtract 1 or 2 from the roll.)



Oddly enough, it feels the opposite from the outside looking in. It feels like the only way to succeed at your intentions is to minmax as hard as possible - and even that will have minimal impact compared to random chance.

The system is more fun when things get nuttier. Just the way of things.



Also, I was more trying to finesse my odds on any given path, but you bring up a good point: PbtA makes it feel more about your stats, and less about the scenario.


Again, not really the case since AW is all about escalation and is geared towards that goal. If what you want is a game where the goal is to Win, AW is not for you.



For example, a small, unreasonable child should be easily manhandled, but difficult to convince. Yet it feels like, in AW, if I have a Face, I'll have far more success talking to the child or herding cats than I would manhandling the child or escaping a wet paper bag.
I wouldn't have a Skinner roll for either of the bottom two things.

That, and Skinners are probably not going to be interested in manhandling since they have other ways of solving the same problem. Though I will note that the concept of "Strength" is only pseudo-emulated by AW in the "Hard" stat. Which is basically strenght/constitution/hard-heartedness/grit/meanness all rolled into one.

Basically, as I've said before, Apocalypse World approches RPGs from a VERY different starting point than D&D and other games. Failing in Apocalypse World is exactly as fun as succeeding, and sometimes moreso.

(Also, you get XP by rolling highlighted stats. So if your MC and Fellow players highlight two of your worse stats, you're gonna be making hard choices between having more complications for the sake of dat sweet sweet XP or succeeding more and getting no reward. Again, very different angle. Hard Choices and Complication Good, Success... maybe less good.)

goto124
2016-07-13, 04:44 AM
What social-mechanics-based system would you recommend for a newbie who wants a more... 'heroic' feel? One that makes the players feel like winners doing big things?

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-13, 04:59 AM
What social-mechanics-based system would you recommend for a newbie who wants a more... 'heroic' feel? One that makes the players feel like winners doing big things?

D&D or any other system that is a binary succeed/fail or close to it that allows for huge modifiers and nigh-guaranteed victory in later levels.

Dungeon World also apparently does the heroic thing a bit better than Apocalypse World does. I haven't played it yet so I'm not going to say it definitely is.

I suppose you could also look into Shadowrun and its Contacts system or look into the way The Burning Wheel handles social rolls (but taking into account that The Burning Wheel is very NOT modular.)

goto124
2016-07-13, 05:07 AM
Shadowrun

You mean, big bowl of dice you pour onto the floor, gather from the dining room all the way to the kitchen, then count up?

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-13, 05:18 AM
You mean, big bowl of dice you pour onto the floor, gather from the dining room all the way to the kitchen, then count up?

Yes!

Specifically, I mean the contacts system which I think is a Shadowrun thing but might be a Burning Wheel thing someone ported into Shadowrun somehow without me noticing. (It could happen.)

Essentially you can roll to see if you happen to know someone who would be helpful right then. If you fail, you don't know. If you succeed, you do know someone. The degrees of success determines how much they like you/would be willing to help you.


For Burning Wheel, the primary thing that augments its Social system is its FORK system (Fields Of Related Knowledge) that lets you throw in additional dice if you have skills in things related to what you're doing currently.

For example, if you are holding someone at swordpoint, you can use intimidate.

If you make sure to also flourish your sword a little and make it apparent you know what you're doing with said sword, you can FORK in a die from your Swordmanship skill.

If you happen to be holding up a nobleman and are very knowledgeable about the subject of nobles, you could also FORK in a die from Nobility-wise.

Etc, etc, etc.

The downside is that this creates a need for a very large number of very specific skills (to make FORKing not simply a given in most situations) Which Burning Wheel has. In abundance. In too much abundance, really. It can be overwhelming.

That's part of the problem. To have your social skills be as important/satisfying as your combat skills, they need to be equally deep. You can do this by either having both be equally abstracted (AW style) or equally complicated (Burning Wheel style).

And in either case, you are effectively building both systems as essentially the same thing. (The differences between Combat and Social interaction in both The Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World are pretty minimal when examined as mechanical systems)

NichG
2016-07-13, 05:23 AM
A third choice would be to design things which augment player abilities and roleplay rather than decide outcomes. E.g. you don't have an ability that makes someone believe you, you have an ability that lets you read their mind for a lie that they tell themselves - which you can then use as fodder for constructing roleplay-based interactions that someone without the ability simply wouldn't have the information to pursue.

Augments like that can work against both a rules-lite and rules-heavy background system, because they don't engage with the resolution system but have more to do with providing extra channels of information from the world to the player.

Cluedrew
2016-07-13, 07:40 AM
Given how many intelligent people clearly missed my point, I must not have done a good job of expressing myself. :smallredface: Let me try again.A brief round of applause in everybody who assisted in not escalating the situation.


Also, I was more trying to finesse my odds on any given path, but you bring up a good point: PbtA makes it feel more about your stats, and less about the scenario.You know, you are right in that PbtA* really has no concept of situational modifiers. However usually it works out by narrating the results because the dice tend to give you some leeway. Plus planning and preparation are not really part what Apocalypse World (and many hacks) are about. That being said I have seen some hacks that take that sort of thing into account, but even there the modifiers were limited to the most important ones.

That being said, generally taking the situation into account is one of the main weaknesses of PbtA*. There are only two situational modifiers: don't roll because it is impossible and don't roll because it is impossible to fail. Although this is not a social thing, this is just one of the trade-offs the system decide to make as a whole.

However I still say this results in less optimizing because... well I'm comparing it to D&D 3.5e which has a pretty sizeable optimizing community.

*I give up, that name is too long.

Quertus
2016-07-13, 01:58 PM
A brief round of applause in everybody who assisted in not escalating the situation.

You know, you are right in that PbtA* really has no concept of situational modifiers. However usually it works out by narrating the results because the dice tend to give you some leeway. Plus planning and preparation are not really part what Apocalypse World (and many hacks) are about. That being said I have seen some hacks that take that sort of thing into account, but even there the modifiers were limited to the most important ones.

That being said, generally taking the situation into account is one of the main weaknesses of PbtA*. There are only two situational modifiers: don't roll because it is impossible and don't roll because it is impossible to fail. Although this is not a social thing, this is just one of the trade-offs the system decide to make as a whole.

However I still say this results in less optimizing because... well I'm comparing it to D&D 3.5e which has a pretty sizeable optimizing community.

*I give up, that name is too long.

Kudos to friendly community!

One of my... "favorite character archtypes"... is "statistically inadequate individual who survives by their wits". The entire point of playing such a character is to look for clever ways to succeed despite being... statistically impaired.

For one of my classic instances of this archtype, I was in a group that allowed 2-for-1 trading on rolled stats. So I took 2 points off my strength... to add 1 to my strength. Repeat until my stats were low enough to be to my liking.

Such a character seems to have that "always on the verge of exploding" feel that it sounds like AW runs off of... yet such characters seem to be nearly impossible to run in AW. :smallconfused:

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-13, 02:46 PM
Kudos to friendly community!

One of my... "favorite character archtypes"... is "statistically inadequate individual who survives by their wits". The entire point of playing such a character is to look for clever ways to succeed despite being... statistically impaired.

For one of my classic instances of this archtype, I was in a group that allowed 2-for-1 trading on rolled stats. So I took 2 points off my strength... to add 1 to my strength. Repeat until my stats were low enough to be to my liking.

Such a character seems to have that "always on the verge of exploding" feel that it sounds like AW runs off of... yet such characters seem to be nearly impossible to run in AW. :smallconfused:


What would you do if playing in a system that allowed things like "wits" to be represented in the character's abilities?


Also, I find the above character concept to be fine -- there's a difference between that, and the "intentionally inept character whose concept includes their ineptitude, so they'll never get more ept."

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-13, 05:45 PM
Kudos to friendly community!

One of my... "favorite character archtypes"... is "statistically inadequate individual who survives by their wits". The entire point of playing such a character is to look for clever ways to succeed despite being... statistically impaired.

For one of my classic instances of this archtype, I was in a group that allowed 2-for-1 trading on rolled stats. So I took 2 points off my strength... to add 1 to my strength. Repeat until my stats were low enough to be to my liking.

Such a character seems to have that "always on the verge of exploding" feel that it sounds like AW runs off of... yet such characters seem to be nearly impossible to run in AW. :smallconfused:

They are. Because the CHARACTERS aren't supposed to be constantly on the verge of exploding, the SITUATION is.

Scenes start tense, get complicated, then boil over into craziness.

Characters have their own large sources of risk without needing to gimp themselves on purpose.

All characters of all classes and all levels have (for lack of a better equivalent) effectively 6 HP. Once you're down to your last two HP, you can choose to ignore additional damage in favor of permanently dropping a stat. So I guess you could request to be thoroughly maimed at the start, and most MCs I know would oblidge you, though it removes the small buffer between you and death. This is because once you can no longer be maimed, or at your own discretion, the next time you reach the end of your hitpoints, you're dead.

So if you want to gimp yourself, you totally can. It's just making an already relatively frail character more frail and less capable. Scenes will be more likely to explode, and so will the character.

I wouldn't recommend this for a variety of reasons, first of all being that no one is obligated to help you in the group. So you can expect them to ditch you if you're causing more problems than desired. (The game is fun with lots of complications, as too it is fun to have lots of chocolate. But there comes a point where you no longer want your friend to shove Snickers into your mouth. The amount of chocolate that you had was just right. Now there is altogether too much.)

I guess it could be helpful to paint the purposes of the classes, since they don't fit standard niches and their design goals are things rather apart from "Ranged DPS" and "Tank."

For instance, the Touchstone.
"The Touchstone hopes and fights for a better future that only she can see. If you want to declare yourself an enemy of the world and fight hard to change it, play a touchstone. Warning: you have hope and vision, but violence is all you’re good at."

This class is designed to be a paradox. A good portion of its moveset is supposed to make it have some community-gathering ability, but the only place where the class shines is barfing out the same violence as the rest of the world. So your skills and your goals will always be at cross purposes, by design.

Or The Faceless:
"The Faceless is a giant unstoppable killing machine, but built for tragedy. If you want to barf out violence, grotesquerie, and externalized pain, play the faceless. Warning: you’ll hurt and disappoint the people you care about, for reals."
This is interesting. They built a big violent pseudo-juggernaut class but specifically designed it so that it will cause terrible things to happen as a consequence of what it does well.

There are other examples of similarly strange class designs, such as classes who are clearly stated as designed to be villains, supernaturally passive pacifists, and even cult leaders or psychic creepsters.

It's hard to cover everything Apocalypse World does well and unwell since it's 200+ pages of stuff that is designed to work together and I am trying to summarize a fairly complex system that is simple on its face in a way that makes it difficult to explain fully. It may be best to link videos of people actually playing Apocalypse World, which I can when I'm in a bit better situation for doing so.

Quertus
2016-07-14, 08:40 AM
What would you do if playing in a system that allowed things like "wits" to be represented in the character's abilities?

Congratulations, I think you've set a record: I broke my brain 3 times trying different routes to come up with an answer to this question.

Just imagine me sputtering "I'd just..." " You can't..." "But then..."

Ouch - make that 4 times. :smallfrown:

Suffice it to say, I can't even imagine it.


Also, I find the above character concept to be fine -- there's a difference between that, and the "intentionally inept character whose concept includes their ineptitude, so they'll never get more ept."

Just because my signature character is still tactically inept, after participating in the slaughter of more fantastical creatures than most ecosystems could sustain, doesn't mean that none of my inept characters have gotten / can get more ept. Just as he has a natural aptitude for certain things, Quertus does have a natural lack of talent for tactics. This is further fueled by his continued belief that "he is not a war mage - that isn't his role", and the fact that, in all this time, the only characters who have tried to teach him are ones who, AFAICT, have players whose sense of tactics is worse than Quertus'. :smalleek:

Also, from a purely metagaming perspective, neither myself nor the party would enjoy Quertus as much if he knew what he were doing. So none of us really feel inspired to go out of our way to find some way to make him learn combat skills. :smallwink:


They are. Because the CHARACTERS aren't supposed to be constantly on the verge of exploding, the SITUATION is.

Scenes start tense, get complicated, then boil over into craziness.

Characters have their own large sources of risk without needing to gimp themselves on purpose.

All characters of all classes and all levels have (for lack of a better equivalent) effectively 6 HP. Once you're down to your last two HP, you can choose to ignore additional damage in favor of permanently dropping a stat. So I guess you could request to be thoroughly maimed at the start, and most MCs I know would oblidge you, though it removes the small buffer between you and death. This is because once you can no longer be maimed, or at your own discretion, the next time you reach the end of your hitpoints, you're dead.

So if you want to gimp yourself, you totally can. It's just making an already relatively frail character more frail and less capable. Scenes will be more likely to explode, and so will the character.

I wouldn't recommend this for a variety of reasons, first of all being that no one is obligated to help you in the group. So you can expect them to ditch you if you're causing more problems than desired. (The game is fun with lots of complications, as too it is fun to have lots of chocolate. But there comes a point where you no longer want your friend to shove Snickers into your mouth. The amount of chocolate that you had was just right. Now there is altogether too much.)

I guess it could be helpful to paint the purposes of the classes, since they don't fit standard niches and their design goals are things rather apart from "Ranged DPS" and "Tank."

For instance, the Touchstone.
"The Touchstone hopes and fights for a better future that only she can see. If you want to declare yourself an enemy of the world and fight hard to change it, play a touchstone. Warning: you have hope and vision, but violence is all you’re good at."

This class is designed to be a paradox. A good portion of its moveset is supposed to make it have some community-gathering ability, but the only place where the class shines is barfing out the same violence as the rest of the world. So your skills and your goals will always be at cross purposes, by design.

Or The Faceless:
"The Faceless is a giant unstoppable killing machine, but built for tragedy. If you want to barf out violence, grotesquerie, and externalized pain, play the faceless. Warning: you’ll hurt and disappoint the people you care about, for reals."
This is interesting. They built a big violent pseudo-juggernaut class but specifically designed it so that it will cause terrible things to happen as a consequence of what it does well.

There are other examples of similarly strange class designs, such as classes who are clearly stated as designed to be villains, supernaturally passive pacifists, and even cult leaders or psychic creepsters.

It's hard to cover everything Apocalypse World does well and unwell since it's 200+ pages of stuff that is designed to work together and I am trying to summarize a fairly complex system that is simple on its face in a way that makes it difficult to explain fully. It may be best to link videos of people actually playing Apocalypse World, which I can when I'm in a bit better situation for doing so.

Ok, I think I see my disconnect. It's 2 issues.

The first is metagaming. Metagaming usually gets a bad rap, but a certain level of metagaming is helpful to the flow of most games. For example, unless you are playing in a sandbox, if the GM brings something up, it might be a good idea to evaluate whether it's supposed to be an adventure hook. Similarly, if there's a new player sitting at the table, odds are a new PC will be introduced soon, so it may be a bad time to implement scorched earth, destroy everything you see tactics.

I don't metagame enough. I roleplay what the character would do, without regard for the larger story. Even when I recognize the metagame information, I ignore it. Yes, there's a new player sitting at the table, so that noise in the bushes is probably their character. But Quertus doesn't know that. He just knows that he seems to be the only one in the party to hear the noise (yes, he checked IC), so he summons a small horde of creatures to leap into the bushes and flush whatever out before it ambushes his unaware party members.

In AW, the fun for the players is in things falling apart. But from the character's PoV, there's a problem, and the character is trying to fix / solve / survive it. So, yes, I view things from the character's PoV / make my decisions from role-playing my character's PoV, not from a metagame perspective that failure would be more fun for the game. Usually. There are a few exceptions. For example, since he's lost every wizard's duel he's ever been in, I want Quertus to continue that trend - to the point where I will write "loses wizard's duels" directly into his stat block whenever possible.

So, in that regard, and relevant to the thread topic, it feels like AW would be disadvantageous to RP, if it requires you to metagame away from the character's PoV in order to optimize fun.

The second reason for my disconnect is a bit harder to explain correctly. Hmmm... Big Heroes should, IMO, usually succeed. You describe the gunlugger as every action hero rolled into one, then tell me that the system makes his most ever move make him feel incompetent - he drops his knife, he gets captured, etc.

Sure, it doesn't have to make the character look incompetent - instead the GM could have chosen "you see an ally imprisoned". Two issues: one, a lot of my gaming experience is with horrible GMs, so looking at worst case scenarios is the reasonable approach; two, it's even worse when it's not on purpose. When the GM is always subconsciously choosing to make one particular character look incompetent - it's that kind of subtle bullying that's amazingly prevalent in games, hard to detect, and even harder to fight.

Segev
2016-07-14, 09:40 AM
Congratulations, I think you've set a record: I broke my brain 3 times trying different routes to come up with an answer to this question.

Just imagine me sputtering "I'd just..." " You can't..." "But then..."

Ouch - make that 4 times. :smallfrown:

Suffice it to say, I can't even imagine it.

What's so hard about imagining "wits" being a character stat? Are "wits" not a thing that characters can possess?

I will agree that many games let the player be the one applying his wits directly. But that need not be the case, any more than intelligence, charisma, or strength must be provided directly by the player for the character's actions.

Now, you're never going to successfully make a tabletop RPG where the player's decision-making skills are removed in favor of "playing a better decision-maker." You can go a long way by trying to provide players of PCs with high decision-making talents with far more post-hoc information of what likely consequences will arise (as that's largely how good decision-makers work: they have an understanding of consequences), but in the end, without taking control of the PC away from the player, the player has to make the decisions.

But "wits" can mean a lot of things, including ability to banter, come up with solutions quickly, and create clever tricks and scams.

A "high-wits" character need not be played by a player with similar wit. The player just needs to be able to outline the kind of approach he wants to make. "I want to trick him into admitting his own guilt through word-play that causes him to correct me with facts only the guilty would know," is something a player could come up with without being witty enough to pull it off. "I want to design a Xanatos Gambit which ensures that I either get the evil vizier arrested or that the vizier has to stand up for and vouch for me in open court." How do you do that? Well, it would be nice if you could outline step-by-step moves, and a well-designed system would give moves to enable that. But a "high-wits" character in a less well-designed system (e.g. D&D's social system) could still make a "wits roll" to try to finagle such a plan into being.

I am not as clever as Kid Loki in the (somewhat) recent Marvel Comic arc from Journey Into Mystery, but I could have outlined at least the shape of those schemes, and hoped that my having bought "wits" for my PC would let me enact them in character even if my own, personal description of it didn't seem all that witty.

Sith_Happens
2016-07-14, 12:18 PM
[Snip]

This actually gets back to my ideas on how a good social skill system should work. Namely, the player's choice of what general sorts of things to say should matter but then the character's success in saying those things should be determined (at least almost) entirely by their stats.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-14, 12:27 PM
This actually gets back to my ideas on how a good social skill system should work. Namely, the player's choice of what general sorts of things to say should matter but then the character's success in saying those things should be determined (at least almost) entirely by their stats.

I'd say that a player's good choices should be a bonus, and their bad choices should be a penalty, on such a roll.

However, I'd also say that given how much more capable the character might be than the players, the roll should only gain a bonus from good roleplaying, and not take a hit from bad RP, when a person of average "social oomph" is playing a character who exceptional in that regard.

Quertus
2016-07-14, 12:52 PM
What's so hard about imagining "wits" being a character stat? Are "wits" not a thing that characters can possess?

I will agree that many games let the player be the one applying his wits directly. But that need not be the case, any more than intelligence, charisma, or strength must be provided directly by the player for the character's actions.

Now, you're never going to successfully make a tabletop RPG where the player's decision-making skills are removed in favor of "playing a better decision-maker." You can go a long way by trying to provide players of PCs with high decision-making talents with far more post-hoc information of what likely consequences will arise (as that's largely how good decision-makers work: they have an understanding of consequences), but in the end, without taking control of the PC away from the player, the player has to make the decisions.

But "wits" can mean a lot of things, including ability to banter, come up with solutions quickly, and create clever tricks and scams.

A "high-wits" character need not be played by a player with similar wit. The player just needs to be able to outline the kind of approach he wants to make. "I want to trick him into admitting his own guilt through word-play that causes him to correct me with facts only the guilty would know," is something a player could come up with without being witty enough to pull it off. "I want to design a Xanatos Gambit which ensures that I either get the evil vizier arrested or that the vizier has to stand up for and vouch for me in open court." How do you do that? Well, it would be nice if you could outline step-by-step moves, and a well-designed system would give moves to enable that. But a "high-wits" character in a less well-designed system (e.g. D&D's social system) could still make a "wits roll" to try to finagle such a plan into being.

I am not as clever as Kid Loki in the (somewhat) recent Marvel Comic arc from Journey Into Mystery, but I could have outlined at least the shape of those schemes, and hoped that my having bought "wits" for my PC would let me enact them in character even if my own, personal description of it didn't seem all that witty.

Well, imagine if a character had a "makes good choices" stat that they rolled to, per a previous example, determine whether they befriended an npc, or threw them out a window.

The way I think of wits, it would make about that much sense to mechanize.

The closest I've seen is WoD Mage, where one of the technocracy rotes let the character have come prepared, and have brought whatever mundane equipment they need.

Mechanizing a wits stat in AW similar to the bikers "f'n thieves", that would allow you to make makeshift binoculars out of old coke bottles, makeshift mirrors by shining old bottle caps, make foes attack who you choose in the way you choose by where you stand and what you say... Eh, I guess it could work.

Segev
2016-07-14, 01:12 PM
Well, imagine if a character had a "makes good choices" stat that they rolled to, per a previous example, determine whether they befriended an npc, or threw them out a window.

The way I think of wits, it would make about that much sense to mechanize.

Depends what you mean by "wits," I suppose. But the way I see it, if you've got a "high wisdom," and you're concerned that you can't play it right, then you might appreciate mechanics that allow you to rely on your Wisdom for insight into the consequences of various choices, short and long-term. Which will help you make better choices on behalf of your character.

Ultimately, players are goal-setters. They know where they want their characters to wind up. How much is "the player" vs. "the character" in getting there will vary by system and setting conceit.

Sith_Happens
2016-07-14, 02:19 PM
I'd say that a player's good choices should be a bonus, and their bad choices should be a penalty, on such a roll.

However, I'd also say that given how much more capable the character might be than the players, the roll should only gain a bonus from good roleplaying, and not take a hit from bad RP, when a person of average "social oomph" is playing a character who exceptional in that regard.

I'm... not sure exactly what here is different than what I said?:smallconfused:

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-14, 02:21 PM
I'm... not sure exactly what here is different than what I said?:smallconfused:

Sorry, sometimes I agree or expand, rather than "retorting".

Quertus
2016-07-14, 03:38 PM
I'd say that a player's good choices should be a bonus, and their bad choices should be a penalty, on such a roll.

However, I'd also say that given how much more capable the character might be than the players, the roll should only gain a bonus from good roleplaying, and not take a hit from bad RP, when a person of average "social oomph" is playing a character who exceptional in that regard.

Charismaticly acting out a low-charisma character is bad role-playing, and I think most actors would agree, bad acting. Good role-playing of a low charisma character would be to try to sound unconvincing; good acting would be to succeed at sounding unconvincing.

Saying that you should get a bonus to your roll to convince someone by sounding unconvincing is counterintuitive, but I like it. I doubt any RPGs have implemented such a rewards system, though. :smallfrown:

Sith_Happens
2016-07-14, 03:40 PM
Sorry, sometimes I agree or expand, rather than "retorting".

Obviously don't be sorry for that, just make it a bit clearer next time.:smallwink:

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-14, 03:47 PM
Charismaticly acting out a low-charisma character is bad role-playing, and I think most actors would agree, bad acting. Good role-playing of a low charisma character would be to try to sound unconvincing; good acting would be to succeed at sounding unconvincing.

Saying that you should get a bonus to your roll to convince someone by sounding unconvincing is counterintuitive, but I like it. I doubt any RPGs have implemented such a rewards system, though. :smallfrown:

...

The situation I was describing was about a "low-charisma" player trying to play a high-Charisma character. And, it was good choices giving a bonus, and bad choices a penalty, not the other opposite...

:smallfrown:

.

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-14, 09:53 PM
Ok, I think I see my disconnect. It's 2 issues.

The first is metagaming. Metagaming usually gets a bad rap, but a certain level of metagaming is helpful to the flow of most games. For example, unless you are playing in a sandbox, if the GM brings something up, it might be a good idea to evaluate whether it's supposed to be an adventure hook. Similarly, if there's a new player sitting at the table, odds are a new PC will be introduced soon, so it may be a bad time to implement scorched earth, destroy everything you see tactics.

I don't metagame enough. I roleplay what the character would do, without regard for the larger story. Even when I recognize the metagame information, I ignore it. Yes, there's a new player sitting at the table, so that noise in the bushes is probably their character. But Quertus doesn't know that. He just knows that he seems to be the only one in the party to hear the noise (yes, he checked IC), so he summons a small horde of creatures to leap into the bushes and flush whatever out before it ambushes his unaware party members.

In AW, the fun for the players is in things falling apart. But from the character's PoV, there's a problem, and the character is trying to fix / solve / survive it. So, yes, I view things from the character's PoV / make my decisions from role-playing my character's PoV, not from a metagame perspective that failure would be more fun for the game. Usually. There are a few exceptions. For example, since he's lost every wizard's duel he's ever been in, I want Quertus to continue that trend - to the point where I will write "loses wizard's duels" directly into his stat block whenever possible.

So you DO metagame by trying to continue trends which may not realistically continue.

And again, I'm trying to explain 200 pages worth of system to someone trying to pick it apart without an understanding of it, so a lot of the conclusions you're reaching aren't accurate. I'm not talking about what players are supposed to do. I'm talking about what the game is designed to do.



So, in that regard, and relevant to the thread topic, it feels like AW would be disadvantageous to RP, if it requires you to metagame away from the character's PoV in order to optimize fun.


In my experience with Apocalypse World, my players RP more and optimize less than they did with other systems. So there's some disconnect.



I literally explained that you succeed more than half the time. But you succeed *With Complications.
The complications don't make you fail. You get what you want. You just also have something undesireable ALSO happen.
This is encoded in the rules and the moves, so a GM must literally break the rules to cause this to happen.

Oh, and AW does not have a Rule 0.

[QUOTE]
Sure, it doesn't have to make the character look incompetent - instead the GM could have chosen "you see an ally imprisoned". Two issues: one, a lot of my gaming experience is with horrible GMs, so looking at worst case scenarios is the reasonable approach; two, it's even worse when it's not on purpose. When the GM is always subconsciously choosing to make one particular character look incompetent - it's that kind of subtle bullying that's amazingly prevalent in games, hard to detect, and even harder to fight.

If your GM is denying you successes that you roll and/or is making your character look stupid, you can literally quote in the rulebook several paragraphs that specifically prohibit the GM from doing that kind of thing.

Yes, the GM has rules they must obey in this system. If they do not abide by them, you are no longer playing Apocalypse World and are playing something else.

I would recommend either looking up Rollplay R&D's playthrough of Apocalypse World or picking up and reading the PDF of the book from someone because I think you're using very limited information to draw wide conclusions about a very complex system.

Quertus
2016-07-15, 10:54 AM
Oh, and AW does not have a Rule 0.


BEST. NEWS. EVER. :smallsmile:



And again, I'm trying to explain 200 pages worth of system to someone trying to pick it apart without an understanding of it, so a lot of the conclusions you're reaching aren't accurate. I'm not talking about what players are supposed to do. I'm talking about what the game is designed to do.




I would recommend either looking up Rollplay R&D's playthrough of Apocalypse World or picking up and reading the PDF of the book from someone because I think you're using very limited information to draw wide conclusions about a very complex system.

Ah. I had thought AW was a very simple system. My bad. :smallredface: Explains why you never ran out of ways to improve my understanding of AW. :smallwink:

Watching play examples sounds like a good next step. Thanks!

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-15, 11:36 AM
BEST. NEWS. EVER. :smallsmile:
Yup. AW dictates how it is to be GM'd. And that is how you do it. Don't do other things. Do what it says.
(And 90% of it is not only applicable to other systems, but has noticeably improved my GMing in all systems.)





Ah. I had thought AW was a very simple system. My bad. :smallredface: Explains why you never ran out of ways to improve my understanding of AW. :smallwink:

I have no idea why people insist that is the case. It is not complex in the sense of having a giant mound of rules for everything ala D&D or GURPS, but it's a complex system from an entirely different angle where the fiction of a situation has a lot of importance outside of just affecting rolls.
(And it's a hoot to read. No other rule book throws profanity at you.)

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-15, 11:39 AM
That makes it sound like the GM has no leeway to bridge gaps in the rules or deal with blatantly nonsensical results...

Amphetryon
2016-07-15, 12:14 PM
And it's a hoot to read. No other rule book throws profanity at you.
The first is subjective. The second is both factually incorrect and an interesting way of apparently qualifying what makes the AW rulebook 'a hoot to read.'

nomotag
2016-07-15, 05:13 PM
I think we may have become side tracked by AW. (It might be kind of my fault.) Making good social abilities doesn't seem that hard. Just link them to something in the narrative. Like if you wanted to be really lazy you could do something like elf focus- You roll with an advantage on all cha checks when your speak eleven. More advanced idea I still like the string system because you can do a lot with adding, removing and pulling strings. Leverage- If you steal something someone considers valuable, then you have a string on them.

The block I hit well working on my ideas was I didn't know to what end the abilities worked to. What should you get when you roll a 16 on your cha check?

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-15, 08:44 PM
That makes it sound like the GM has no leeway to bridge gaps in the rules or deal with blatantly nonsensical results...
It gives you the tools to do that without a Rule 0.
You can provide the means for bridge gaps in the rules without giving the GM full leeway to do whatever they want. These are not mutually exclusive concepts.


The first is subjective. The second is both factually incorrect and an interesting way of apparently qualifying what makes the AW rulebook 'a hoot to read.'

Is this a thing that's happening?

*sigh*

Ok.

1. Yes. That is subjective. I don't think I was implying that it is factually, empiracally, a "hoot."

2. I know.

3. It is one aspect of what makes it a hoot.

I think I've officially found the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever had an issue with me saying. >_>

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-15, 09:07 PM
It gives you the tools to do that without a Rule 0.
You can provide the means for bridge gaps in the rules without giving the GM full leeway to do whatever they want. These are not mutually exclusive concepts.


And when the unbreakable rules produce a result that is clearly nonsensical?

goto124
2016-07-15, 09:13 PM
Give an example. AW rules aren't the DnD style of rules, so even AW rules can be fluffed in many ways to give a sensible situation while still sticking to the rules strictly. How did you run into a nonsensical situation RAW?

nomotag
2016-07-15, 11:13 PM
And when the unbreakable rules produce a result that is clearly nonsensical?

There is actually a rule for that. :P One of the rules is to follow the narrative, so if something doesn't make sense in the narrative, then you change so it dose. Also you tend not to actually run into non sense results since you get to pick the results or decided how they take affect. Like one move is to separate, It doesn't say separate by giant sand worm, so you have leeway to make the separation fit with what is happening.

Sith_Happens
2016-07-16, 01:34 AM
And when the unbreakable rules produce a result that is clearly nonsensical?

I'm not sure that's actually possible considering the Apocalypse Engine's "rules" mostly begin and end at "If a PC is trying to do a thing that you aren't sure if they'll succeed or fail at, have them roll 2d6+Stat to see whether they succeed (10+), fail (1-6), or something in between (7-9)."

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-16, 06:25 AM
I'm not sure that's actually possible considering the Apocalypse Engine's "rules" mostly begin and end at "If a PC is trying to do a thing that you aren't sure if they'll succeed or fail at, have them roll 2d6+Stat to see whether they succeed (10+), fail (1-6), or something in between (7-9)."

Lemme fix that.

Apocalypse Engine's Success Determination system is essentially "Roll 2d6+stat. 10+ is a success. A 7-9 is a success with a complication. A 6 and below is a failure and the GM gets to make as hard a move as they want."

Then there's 199 more pages of actual rules. (Seriously how did it get this rules-light keyword attached to it?)

(That and you can and do have PbtA systems without this rolling mechanic because this style of rolling is not what makes it PbtA. It's all the other stuff that does.)

EDIT:
That all in mind, we've been on AW for too long now. It's a good system to draw inspiration from for how to make social interactions that utilize roleplaying in the outcome, have meaningful results, and make social interaction more robust than "one and done." Because it does all three of these things which OP seemed to want.

I'm not saying the system is perfect.

Cluedrew
2016-07-16, 07:31 AM
Agreed, we should move on from Powered by the Apocalypse. However I do have a closing remark and that is try playing a Powered by the Apocalypse if you are confused by it. It approaches role-playing games from a very different angle than D&D and so make choices that word not make sense in the context of D&D but work for it. It is not the only one that does that, FATE I believe is another but I have never gotten to play that.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-16, 07:34 AM
Agreed, we should move on from Powered by the Apocalypse. However I do have a closing remark and that is try playing a Powered by the Apocalypse if you are confused by it. It approaches role-playing games from a very different angle than D&D and so make choices that word not make sense in the context of D&D but work for it. It is not the only one that does that, FATE I believe is another but I have never gotten to play that.

I moved on from D&D and its variants many years ago, it's not a system I like for multiple reasons.

PbtA also sounds and reads like a system I would not enjoy.

Cluedrew
2016-07-16, 07:45 AM
To Max_Killjoy: I am actually speaking of something much broader than the d20 system. I wouldn't call any of the World of Darkness games a D&D variant but they still seem to be built on the same logical underpinnings as D&D. Of course whether that makes it a good system or not (or one you would enjoy or not) is another issue.

Quertus
2016-07-16, 09:00 AM
To Max_Killjoy: I am actually speaking of something much broader than the d20 system. I wouldn't call any of the World of Darkness games a D&D variant but they still seem to be built on the same logical underpinnings as D&D. Of course whether that makes it a good system or not (or one you would enjoy or not) is another issue.

... What logical underpinnings might those be? What other options have been used (by AW or other RPGs), what other options could be used, and how does that impact role-playing?