The Problem of Social Systems [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Martin Greywolf

2017-05-17, 08:15 AM

A lot of GMs ignore the social rules if the players roleplayed the conversation well, but that's not an option for everyone. If someone isn't super theatrical or persuasive IRL, that shouldn't preclude them from playing a character who is.

What almost anyone forgets here is that this is only half of the story. If a PC has zero ranks in diplomacy, it should, by this logic, mean that he is almost incapable to convince anyone of anything. To some degree, this is how it should be - if a PC didn't put any ranks in stabbing people with sharp sticks, then he should be really bad at stabbing people with pointy sticks, same as convincing people.

What you need is not only a system that can reward PCs with ranks in diplomacy, but one that also "punishes" PCs with no ranks in that skill. What this usually needs is a social chunky salsa rule - if the offer is too good to pass up, the NPC bites - otherwise you may end up with PCs without diplomacy running into roadblocks.

As was pointed out to me recently, there isn't really an equivalent to "roll initiative" for a social encounter. There is no formalized system of rounds, and it's not always clear when a single roll will represent an entire conversation or a single exchange.

Uh, yes there is. At least in FATE. Generally, there is no reason why you couldn't have social initiative and act according to it. I have used FATE's social conflict several times from both sides and it was always fun, coming up with arguments and counter-arguments. You have to tailor your responses to the mechanics, but the same thing is true when it comes to combat.

For single roll vs full fledged combat, well, FATE has an advantage there, since it explicitly gives you rules for dividing any acticity, social or physical, into three levels of fine detail (overcome roll, contest and conflict), and long and short of it is that you pick the one that best represents how invested the PCs are - if they want one shot discount, single roll, if they want to get more money for a job that is this session's quest, that's a contest, if they are trying to talk down legate Lanius at Hoover dam, conflict.

You can apply this to practically any system that has both one-off skill checks and social combat, really.

People aren't familiar with them yet and it's not always clear when we're just having a conversation and when we're Engaging in a Social Conflict.

So tell them. "OK, guys, you're trying to convince this guy to do a significant thing, we start social combat. Roll for initiative." This is arguably THE most important role of the DM during play, deciding what mechanic to use when.

The other side of this is that the way we play RPGs makes social mechanics inherently kind of awkward. We're sitting around tables having a conversation that describes and represents people having a conversation. Saying "I make an impassioned plea" doesn't carry the same kind of weight as "I swing my sword in a wicked arc," since you're describing something you could already be doing right then and there. (Obviously, the solution is to make a game system where you roll a die and then wrestle to determine whether you managed to lie to the palace guards.)

Oh believe me, combat is massively awkward too, most people just don't notice because they have no idea of how fighting with a sword works. That aside, though...

I have a simple rule for all of my games, regardless of system - if you can't figure out how to apply your skill, you can't do it. If you say "I swing my sword" while having your arms tied behind your back, I obviously won't let you do it. Same goes for social actions - if you can't think of an argument that could sway someone, tough luck.

On the flip side, if you CAN think of an argument, I don't demand of you to make an eloquent John Galt speech on the spot - that's what the skill is for. So, someone with a high diplomacy will make an awkward sentence work. Obviously, this is not perfect, but then and again, it doesn't have to be, and indeed, can't be.

I hate social mechanical systems in role playing games. Mostly, I avoid using them and try and get the players to role play more then roll play.

This is a well known fallacy. Just because dice are falling does not mean there is no roleplaying going on. Not having a social skill actually limits your roleplaying because it gives you no indication as to how good your character is at dealing with people. You can just go and say "He's good", but then you're basically fixing a broken part of the system.

If you don't want social mechanics, then all right, your game, but a decent system needs them for the same reason it needs combat mechanics - what doesn't get used should be a choice on the part of the group playing, and all aspects of the system should hold up equally well.

Anyways, as I said, I use social mechanics more and more as I play and DM, and I can see no appreciable decrease in RP, quite the opposite.

Complex social rules fall apart quickly, unless your in a very simple game...

No, badly made social rules fall apart, no matter how complex or not.

And no matter how good social rules are, there will always be areas where they don't fit perfectly. Again, this is one of the DM roles, deciding what happens when you enter weird zones of the rules. Honestly, combat rules are no better, hell, the whole concept of initiative and turns flies in the face of how melee combat works. There's a reason why there are three timings in Lichtenauer tradition of longsword, and why every one of those has its own advantages and disadvantages, and some techniques only work in some timings and you have to switch what you're doing constantly because your opponent is doing the same thing to you.

Also, AoOs on withdrawal from combat are incredibly stupid.

So say they ''want to'' be a ''cool social swashbuckler'' and ''somehow'' use the fact that they know ''Lord Doom is lying'', but they can't do it for real in a role-play sense. So, you could toss in more rules and have the player ''roll along'' and just say ''You trick Lord Doom and embarrasses him and impress Lady Aressa'

So go into more detail. Yes, this is a bad way to go about it, but there are better ways to do it. How about...

"Hm, I want to find out what he's lying about."
"Okay, how do you do it?"
"Well... let's see, I say 'Oh, we both know that's not quite true, is it?' and hope he slips up."

Then rolls are made and either Doom falls for it and says that he had no idea about the troops being there, really, or catches on and keeps the ignorant facade, as determined by the roll. If the player can't think of the way to use that lying, well, tough luck. Or allow other people at the table to advise him - not only does social PC player feel useful, there was group participation in this debate, and the player himself learned a trick he can use at a later date, becoming a better RPer in the process.

You can have some memorable exchanges this way, since it often forces you to come up with multiple arguments and counter-arguments, and gives you an overall sense of how you're doing. I just recently had a rather memorable political negotiations where my PC and nobleman's daughter were trying to browbeat the nobleman himself into going along with a specific alliance while also going along with his daughter's lesbian marriage. I'm absolutely certain that debate would be at least a little anticlimatic without the social combat mechanics present there.

CharonsHelper

2017-05-17, 08:27 AM

Grod_The_Giant

2017-05-17, 08:38 AM

What almost anyone forgets here is that this is only half of the story. If a PC has zero ranks in diplomacy, it should, by this logic, mean that he is almost incapable to convince anyone of anything. To some degree, this is how it should be - if a PC didn't put any ranks in stabbing people with sharp sticks, then he should be really bad at stabbing people with pointy sticks, same as convincing people.

What you need is not only a system that can reward PCs with ranks in diplomacy, but one that also "punishes" PCs with no ranks in that skill. What this usually needs is a social chunky salsa rule - if the offer is too good to pass up, the NPC bites - otherwise you may end up with PCs without diplomacy running into roadblocks.
I think a lot of this can be avoided by good general skill system design. 3.5 D&D runs into this problem because you could have a 20+ point spread of Diplomacy bonuses; something like Fate avoids it because the spread is so much smaller and can be tightened even more by Aspects and the like.

Uh, yes there is. At least in FATE. Generally, there is no reason why you couldn't have social initiative and act according to it. I have used FATE's social conflict several times from both sides and it was always fun, coming up with arguments and counter-arguments. You have to tailor your responses to the mechanics, but the same thing is true when it comes to combat.
...
You can apply this to practically any system that has both one-off skill checks and social combat, really.
The trick, then, is getting both GM and group used to doing that. And figuring out when a conversation has gotten to the point where social combat is necessary.

(And, I mean, actual "social initiative" is not great in my experience-- it winds up structuring the conversation in weird ways that, due to the fact that we're literally having the conversation in real time, feel much more unnatural than similar abstractions for combat. But that's another bit)

I like having social rules for specialized things like lying, intimidating, and negotiating. But - I can't say that I'm a fan of general "diplomacy" or "persuasion" rules.

Largely this is because they should vary so greatly depending upon who you're talking to, your history with them, and all sorts of other things which, in mechanical form, seem like they'd be a hot mess.
A good system should certainly take things like that into account. And they can, at least. Fate's Aspects can be used for this sort of thing, especially coupled with a high enough base DC to require them. And Exalted 3e ties "intimacies" into persuasion quite (ahem) intimately-- if you want to persuade a guy to do something, you have to be able to point to one of his core beliefs/bonds/whatever, and the more important the favor, the more important a bond you need to bring in.

VoxRationis

2017-05-17, 11:11 AM

In the campaign I'm currently playing in, I've found there is a particular kind of niche which I feel is important to have social rules for, regardless of one's personal philosophies on allowing or disallowing players' eloquence. This niche is for long- to medium-term social interactions: gathering information (which mercifully is already a skill in 3.5 D&D), mingling, flirtation, ingratiating oneself as a forgettable person to avoid official suspicion, etc. Having to roleplay your character's attempts at chatting up bar patrons for an evening is a waste of everyone's time, and even though talking to random people is something many people are generally passable at in real life, in my experience we all tend to fall flat on our faces when it comes to translating that to a tabletop setting. Being able to resolve it quickly with a roll makes everyone's life easier.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-17, 11:14 AM

I figure that some sort of social rule should come into place once something is at stake.

This might not be much fun for the bards in my party, because nothing is really at stake when he tries to get into the barmaid's frock and so I'll usually just say "Yep, you run off to galavant with the barmaid. What is everyone else doing?" I don't have time to waste and it's as important a detail as what the bartender looks like and deserves equal time investment.

Now, if the bard is flirting with a shopkeep to get a discount, that merits a roll. Something minor is at stake. We don't need to drag it out, just roll.

If he's seducing the mayor's wife to get information about the cult, I'll step it up a bit. We'll engage a little more closely because there is more at stake.

So on and so forth.

Segev

2017-05-17, 11:25 AM

My own views on social mechanics are influenced by Exalted, both 2E and 3E, though I think it has some failings. The core idea, though is solid: model character motivations in terms of things they value, things they want, and their emotional urges and drives.

The ideal social mechanical system, to me, would "take turns" in the same way any conversation does. When somebody RPs (or just describes) their character's words and approach, the system invites them to say, "I'm trying to figure out what Sir Flouncy wants in a girl," for instance. The character in question may be thinking that he will then try to find such a girl to use her to manipulate Sir Flouncy in some fashion, or perhaps, after finding out what she thinks Sir Flouncy is looking for, she'll say, "Okay, now I'm going to portray that kind of girl to try to get him to like me more."

As with combat or physical skills, the player can describe the efforts in greater or lesser detail, depending on the player's mental vision of what's going on and ability to imagine what could work. Dice are rolled to determine how well the player's gameplay moves work, however.

"Now that Sir Flouncy thinks I'm a fake - darn my bad roll - I'll try to play THAT up and get him to reflexively want to dislike things I propose. So first, I'll play up his distaste for me and my opinions, and work on solidifying that. ...okay, that's done? Good, next, I'll propose the same idea I know our party's enemies are planning as their agenda. I'll talk it up and deliberately clumsily 'manipulate' him as if I think he'll support it on my say-so. That should get him to be inherently opposed to it by the time he hears about it from our foes."

And then appropriate persuasion rolls occur, again.

So the idea is that you can do RP at any level you're comfortable with, from "I make a persuasion roll" to detailed acting-out of the persuasive effort (followed up or preceded by a quick mechanical summary of what you're going for, just as a detailed description of a flourished attack still needs "I roll to hit" somewhere in there).

But the gameplay is actually gameplay. You're making tactical decisions based on known information (or on trying to acquire it) to play up or down a character's view on things until they are in a position to be persuaded to take particular action.

Anonymouswizard

2017-05-17, 03:22 PM

My personal thoughts:

A social conflict system is always a great idea, but should not be the only method. Convincing the guard to let me past is not the same thing as navigating a court trying to spread rumours and plant ideas.

A social conflict system requires some form of initiative, just like a physical conflict. Just like physical conflict how this is decided doesn't matter as long as it's consistent, physical initiative could be based off of Dexterity or Wisdom but what's actually important is that it enforces everybody who wants to act gets to act (for this reason 'round the table initiative' feels like the best system when you want to be fast, and I've also seen 'all PCs then all NPCs' work out alright). Do what Fate does and base it off a skill, make it literally a die roll, or whatever, but it should be there just so you don't get someone taking every other turn.

Then what really matters is that there should be an end point, whether this is 'runs out of social HP' or 'decides to concede' (I love what Fate does, where you can choose to concede in order to avoid being taken out and losing your say in the outcome). Then the winner gets what they want, and the loser has to deal with any consequences that they received (in Fate I'd be highly likely to go for something like 'nasty rumours', then then I also like to have a separate stress track for your reputation being attacked*).

Note that in a large enough social conflict your position in space could matter. Maybe I decide that this round (which are equal to a week or whatever) I want to be in the king's court trying to get his ear, while you're in my hometown telling everyone how I slept with a Duke's daughter and won't even marry her. So there should be at least simple rules for who you can affect based on where you are (but of course, you being somewhere else doesn't make you immune).

* Modified by contacts, because it makes the most sense to me.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-18, 07:16 AM

This is a well known fallacy. Just because dice are falling does not mean there is no roleplaying going on. Not having a social skill actually limits your roleplaying because it gives you no indication as to how good your character is at dealing with people. You can just go and say "He's good", but then you're basically fixing a broken part of the system.

I'd guess ''fallacy'' is a typo and you wanted to put the word ''fact'' there. Really, it is very basic:

Player: "My character Ogon talks to the guard and ask him about his wife and kids and how long he has been a guard and what his favorite drink is. After a couple minutes I ask him if I can pass and even offer him a couple gold coins to buy his next drink " DM-"the guard agrees and lets your character pass" is Role playing.

Player: "I rolled a 17'' DM-"Your character convinces the guard to let them pass'' is roll playing.

So go into more detail. Yes, this is a bad way to go about it, but there are better ways to do it. How about...

"Hm, I want to find out what he's lying about."
"Okay, how do you do it?"
"Well... let's see, I say 'Oh, we both know that's not quite true, is it?' and hope he slips up."

Then rolls are made and either Doom falls for it and says that he had no idea about the troops being there, really, or catches on and keeps the ignorant facade, as determined by the roll. If the player can't think of the way to use that lying, well, tough luck. Or allow other people at the table to advise him - not only does social PC player feel useful, there was group participation in this debate, and the player himself learned a trick he can use at a later date, becoming a better RPer in the process.

You can have some memorable exchanges this way, since it often forces you to come up with multiple arguments and counter-arguments, and gives you an overall sense of how you're doing. I just recently had a rather memorable political negotiations where my PC and nobleman's daughter were trying to browbeat the nobleman himself into going along with a specific alliance while also going along with his daughter's lesbian marriage. I'm absolutely certain that debate would be at least a little anticlimatic without the social combat mechanics present there.

The problem with all of this is your assuming an at least normal person who understands social things and can role play. So what about all the people that ''can't '' do that?

Like:

Player-"Hum, the dice and DM told me Lord Doom is lying, but I don't know what about."
DM-"What do you want to do?"
Player-"Um, I don't know"

See, when you jump to the player being an amazing person with a deep understanding of human social interactions, your not talking about the player who ''can't'' do anything social ever. The 'other player' only has two choices: ask the for help or roll some more...if there is a rule for it.

And to say ''well, you made the roll and know Lord Doom is lying...but if you can't figure out what to do with that information...Tough Luck'' is a bit harsh. Why not just step back and say ''Sorry Jimmy, you can't do social stuff in the game. Just play with your fidget spinner until we call your name"?

And sure having Jimmy ask for help...every couple of minutes...works...sort of. The game quickly becomes ''the adventure where everyone helps Jimmy'', but if that is ok with everyone, you can do that.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-18, 09:28 AM

I'd guess ''fallacy'' is a typo and you wanted to put the word ''fact'' there. Really, it is very basic:

Player: "My character Ogon talks to the guard and ask him about his wife and kids and how long he has been a guard and what his favorite drink is. After a couple minutes I ask him if I can pass and even offer him a couple gold coins to buy his next drink " DM-"the guard agrees and lets your character pass" is Role playing.

Player: "I rolled a 17'' DM-"Your character convinces the guard to let them pass'' is roll playing.

Watch and be amazed as I blow this false dichotomy out of the water using your own words.

Player: "My character Ogon talks to the guard and ask him about his wife and kids and how long he has been a guard and what his favorite drink is. After a couple minutes I ask him if I can pass and even offer him a couple gold coins to buy his next drink "
DM-"Ok. Lets see if that's enough for him to let you through."
Player: "I rolled a 17''
DM-"Cool! Ogon convinces the guard to let them pass''

This is both. Behold and tremble. This is pretty much how most social interactions at my table go down.

That you can't do both is so blatantly false you may as well have told us that of you're eating Turkey, you can't possibly eat mashed potatoes IN THE MIDDLE OF THANKSGIVING DINNER.

The problem with all of this is your assuming an at least normal person who understands social things and can role play. So what about all the people that ''can't '' do that?

Like:

Player-"Hum, the dice and DM told me Lord Doom is lying, but I don't know what about."
DM-"What do you want to do?"
Player-"Um, I don't know"

See, when you jump to the player being an amazing person with a deep understanding of human social interactions, your not talking about the player who ''can't'' do anything social ever. The 'other player' only has two choices: ask the for help or roll some more...if there is a rule for it.

And to say ''well, you made the roll and know Lord Doom is lying...but if you can't figure out what to do with that information...Tough Luck'' is a bit harsh. Why not just step back and say ''Sorry Jimmy, you can't do social stuff in the game. Just play with your fidget spinner until we call your name"?

And sure having Jimmy ask for help...every couple of minutes...works...sort of. The game quickly becomes ''the adventure where everyone helps Jimmy'', but if that is ok with everyone, you can do that.

Being unconvincing is not the same as being 100% unable to read any social cues at all, ever. I work with teenagers that have severe mental illness and most of them can tell if I'm frustrated or tired or happy, etc. Most of them would do just fine at a table as far as social stuff (It's all their other behavior that would make them wildly unsuited to it)

So yeah. Two entirely baseless, hollow arguments.

I'd say I expected more but at this point?
Eh. Pretty standard contrarianism as usual.

Segev

2017-05-18, 09:58 AM

Not to mention that this same false dichotomy could be applied to, say, acrobatics:

Player: My character takes a running start and leaps up, lassoing the stalactite overhead to swing across the chasm.
DM: Sounds good; you make it across

Player: I roll a 17 to jump across the chasm.
DM: Okay, you make it.

Altair_the_Vexed

2017-05-18, 09:59 AM

Simplest solution I ever found: roll the dice, then role-play the result.

I've blogged on this topic, ages ago.
http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/playing-roles.html

Segev

2017-05-18, 10:15 AM

Simplest solution I ever found: roll the dice, then role-play the result.

I've blogged on this topic, ages ago.
http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/playing-roles.html

Feasible, as far as it goes, but equally applicable to a system where combat is determined by a single "combat skill" roll against the DC of the enemy encounter, and then you role-play how you won or lost based on whether you beat the DC.

Altair_the_Vexed

2017-05-18, 10:37 AM

Feasible, as far as it goes, but equally applicable to a system where combat is determined by a single "combat skill" roll against the DC of the enemy encounter, and then you role-play how you won or lost based on whether you beat the DC.
There are games that do that, you know.

Most games I've played in have stages of success built into the social skills. in games where combat is resolved by multiple checks, back-and-forth, so should social conflict!

For example: D&D 3.x has the Friendly to Hostile track. It then buggers it up by allowing you to shift someone from one end of the track to the other in a single skill check - boo! Rubbish.
A success on Diplomacy check should move the target only one step at a time, maybe two at most - oh, look: that's what Pathfinder does. Much better.

A Song of Ice and Fire RPG has a similar step-based mechanic - and adds extra ways and means to get your way: coercion, seduction, bullying, persuasion, convincing... all different approaches with differing results.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-18, 11:54 AM

Watch and be amazed as I blow this false dichotomy out of the water using your own words.

Right, I guess you can ''combine both'' by having the player do some pointless role play for a couple minutes...and then ignore all that, roll play and roll the dice.

In your example, all that role playing is pointless, right? If the roll was a low roll, as DM, you'd just be ''the guard does not let you pass." Right?

And if you do give a bonus to the roll for good role playing...and note you did not say you did...but that hurts poor Jimmy even more:

Poor Jimmy has his head down and says ''Um, I talk and stuff past the guard and stuff''. So does Jimmy get a bonus for..um..''trying to role play''?

Being unconvincing is not the same as being 100% unable to read any social cues at all, ever. I work with teenagers that have severe mental illness and most of them can tell if I'm frustrated or tired or happy, etc. Most of them would do just fine at a table as far as social stuff (It's all their other behavior that would make them wildly unsuited to it)

Well, sure...''everyone can do everything'', and especially ''everyone you know in the world''. Old arguments too. I guess you just have to ''imagine'' that at least some people in the world, like we will just say a trillion people or so, can't handle just about any social interactions...not even role playing in a game. You might have never met such a person in your small social circle, but that does not mean they don't exist.

Not to mention that this same false dichotomy could be applied to, say, acrobatics:

Except physical activities are direct and simple and can be represented very well with a roll. Social stuff is way too complex for rolls, unless it is very, very simple. Also roll playing social things is very boring: "My character rolls an 11 and talks to the guy'', ''The guy rolls a 9, so he does not talk to you back'' ''Roll to see what you talk about...." "I rolled a 77, and on table e3 that says we talk about the weather.''

Floret

2017-05-18, 12:47 PM

Except physical activities are direct and simple and can be represented very well with a roll. Social stuff is way too complex for rolls, unless it is very, very simple.

Uhm... no, they aren't. Like, Physical activities are incredibly complex, involve tons of muscle groups, different areas of the brain, and so on. How well a physical actions goes depends on a ****ton of factors.
Now, that is not to say that we cannot reduce that down to a single roll, for simulation, and ease-of-use purposes. Sure we can!

But the flipside of that, is that we can do the same to social things. After all, social stuff can be very simple and direct, if looked at from the right perspective. A truly charismatic socialite doesn't actually think any more about what they say and how to reach their goal of "talk person into thing" than an athlete does about how they jump to reach their goal of "jump over chasm".
You can overthink everything, and careful analysis might help bridge skill gaps, but social stuff is not ultimately any different than other things, we as gamers have just come to accept oversimplifications for physical actions, (sometimes) on the pretense that "We can do social stuff at the table." In reality, of course, we aren't in the equivalent situation of the character, not even much more than in combat, but because of superficial similarities between "Character talks" and "Player talks", many people seem to like to pretend they can accurately play out the social encounters.

Which, of course, if that's the way you like to play? Great! Awesome, good for you! But it still is ultimately way off what happens ingame.
Which is one of the reasons I personally like social mechanics oh so very much. They acknowlege that the game situation and the character's skill are fundamentally different from the player's, and put the decision how well the character's actions worked out where I feel they belong: On the game-level, not the player-level.

(As many other people, I prefer to combine this rolling of the dice with roleplaying. Sometimes roleplaying that doesn't make a difference on the dice. My players know that. They still roleplay. Mainly because they like roleplaying, it is fun for them, and fun is the ultimate goal, I think. Making the roleplaying "pointless", from a mechanical standpoint, has never stopped anyone I've ever met from doing it, and if it DID, that just means that person probably just doesn't like roleplaying very much, and should probably not be forced to do it.)

Segev

2017-05-18, 12:47 PM

In your example, all that role playing is pointless, right? If the roll was a low roll, as DM, you'd just be ''the guard does not let you pass." Right? In your example, the roll is pointless, right? If the player RPs something convincing, you, as DM, would just be, "Okay, he lets you pass." If he didn't convince you, you'd just be, "Nope, he doesn't."

Why bother having a character sheet?

Except physical activities are direct and simple and can be represented very well with a roll. Social stuff is way too complex for rolls, unless it is very, very simple. Also roll playing social things is very boring: "My character rolls an 11 and talks to the guy'', ''The guy rolls a 9, so he does not talk to you back'' ''Roll to see what you talk about...." "I rolled a 77, and on table e3 that says we talk about the weather.''
*error noise* Nope. Wrong. Physical activities aren't direct and simple. There are umpteen different factors that can apply. Heck, my "role playing" example involved tool use and specific interaction with the environment, where my "roll playing" example did not.

Now, maybe you'd let the guy who said, "I lasso my rope into the hook on that stalactite," to have a bonus to his acrobatics check. What's this? You just managed to combine role play and roll play into one thing, where both are rewarded! The player's role playing choice to determine a way to better achieve his goal led to a higher chance of ultimate success! But didn't guarantee it, because hey, there are still numerous intangibles about the PC's physical capabilities.

But the same applies to talking your way past the guard. If the RP'd discussion with the guard touches on things that are persuasive to the guard in general, it might lead to a bonus to roll to get him to let you pass. "I roll intimidate; 17" might work if the DC was 17 or lower, but if it's 18 or higher, it'd fail. "I talk to him about his kids, naming them by name, commenting on their favorite activities and where they are right now, and then I mention how much they'd miss their father if he weren't around to protect them...as he isn't...while guarding this door...and keeping the dangerous people OUTSIDE of said door..... I roll intimidate; 17." The DM might just say, "Yeah, go ahead and take a +4 circumstance bonus for pushing the right buttons. He'd much rather risk losing his job than risk you killing him or - worse - hurting his kids. That makes the DC 20."

And voila, you've got role playing in HOW you go about making your intimidation influencing the roll playing of seeing how well your PC delivers it. It turns out, by that 17, he wouldn't have delivered most threats convincingly enough...but by playing on the man's children and his fears for them, the PC broke him.

Cazero

2017-05-18, 01:20 PM

Uhm... no, they aren't. Like, Physical activities are incredibly complex, involve tons of muscle groups, different areas of the brain, and so on. How well a physical actions goes depends on a ****ton of factors.
And if anyone has any doubt about that, I suggest googling QWOP.
It's a game about walking on flat ground in a straight line using only 4 buttons. Walking in real life is even more complicated.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-18, 03:53 PM

In your example, the roll is pointless, right? If the player RPs something convincing, you, as DM, would just be, "Okay, he lets you pass." If he didn't convince you, you'd just be, "Nope, he doesn't."

Why bother having a character sheet?

Well, in my game we would not bother with the roll at all, so it would not be there to be pointless. Though, of course, the player is role playing a character to convince a character I'm role playing..so it's not ''him'' and ''me''.

The sheet is for roll playing things, like combat.

*error noise* Nope. Wrong. Physical activities aren't direct and simple. There are umpteen different factors that can apply. Heck, my "role playing" example involved tool use and specific interaction with the environment, where my "roll playing" example did not.

It's odd that everyone thinks physical activities are so complex and simple....yet I never see a thread about how poor Jimmy ''can't swing a real sword'' so he needs some ''super complex rules to roll some dice to pretend to swing a sword''.

Now, maybe you'd let the guy who said, "I lasso my rope into the hook on that stalactite," to have a bonus to his acrobatics check. What's this? You just managed to combine role play and roll play into one thing, where both are rewarded! The player's role playing choice to determine a way to better achieve his goal led to a higher chance of ultimate success! But didn't guarantee it, because hey, there are still numerous intangibles about the PC's physical capabilities.

I'm all for combining the two....but not ''fluff meaningless role play'' and then we ''follow the almighty dice''.

Grod_The_Giant

2017-05-18, 04:25 PM

Okay, one can resolve all conversations and such without touching a die, just as one can devolve the entire game into freeform roleplay if one really wanted. However, given that I think most of us can agree that what's written on your character sheet should have at least some effect on what your character can do in-game, maybe we can put the freeform arguments aside?

The broad questions are, I think:

What mechanical elements should be included in a social system?
How can a system best strike a balance between allowing organic conversation and allowing the character's abilities to influence things?
How can said mechanics be best integrated into actual play?

Segev

2017-05-18, 05:47 PM

Well, in my game we would not bother with the roll at all, so it would not be there to be pointless. Though, of course, the player is role playing a character to convince a character I'm role playing..so it's not ''him'' and ''me''. Well, no, it is "him" convincing "you." But now it's "him" convincing "you" that "his character" should convince "your character." Or "the NPC," which, you being the GM, is your character for this purpose.

It still is all about his real-world ability to persuade YOU, just the topic of what he's persuading you to do shifts.

The sheet is for roll playing things, like combat.I assume, then, that you discourage players from building characters with stats like Charisma or skills like Diplomacy or Bluff, or their equivalents in whatever system you run, unless they have explicit combat effects.

It's odd that everyone thinks physical activities are so complex and simple....yet I never see a thread about how poor Jimmy ''can't swing a real sword'' so he needs some ''super complex rules to roll some dice to pretend to swing a sword''. Not at all! The lack of complaint in these sorts of threads is because those rules already exist. The combat rules are far more complex than social rules tend to be. They encompass far more tactical decisions than simply "I roll Diplomacy at him and hope this one roll is high enough."

I'm all for combining the two....but not ''fluff meaningless role play'' and then we ''follow the almighty dice''.Good thing that's not what anybody (except you, in your false dichotomy) suggested, then! We're all in agreement: combining the two with a system that allows for more in-depth tactical decision making can lead to a more enjoyable RP experience.

The broad questions are, I think:

What mechanical elements should be included in a social system?
How can a system best strike a balance between allowing organic conversation and allowing the character's abilities to influence things?
How can said mechanics be best integrated into actual play?

The best idea I have had or seen regarding social system implementation is to have it be incentive and disincentive based. Ultimately, you don't want to be dictating to a player, "Your character does what I say he does." But you do want to model the character's urge to do so if he is socially manipulated into that position.

Ideally, it would be integrated deeply with the rest of the system, but regardless, the ultimate rewards and penalties might be in the form of an expendable resource, or they might be straight-up bonuses and penalties to actions going with or against the final "do this" command. This allows for a gradient of influence, from mild to overwhelming, without absolute limits and without making it ever technically mandatory.

But that guard you have so seduced that he can't stop thinking about you even when he forced himself to stay on duty rather than heading off to the hotel with you has so much penalty from distraction that he doesn't notice your rogue friend leading a pink and purple pachyderm in full plate right past his post.

...or that guard gives in and goes with you, abandoning his post and getting whatever rewards your social inducement offers that represent the carnal pleasures he (thinks he) will get but which the player of said guard will not find tempting since, well, I assume you're not offering the GM sexual favors IRL.

The best way to balance organic conversation with actually bringing in the mechanics is to break it down into gameplay moves where the moves naturally map to the conversational points. Maybe even suggest them. If you're trying to gather blackmail information, you might first case the room for people who might know something. STrike up a few conversations, telling the GM your goal is to ferret out those who have the info you want, and offer some of your ways of bringing up the topic. You've already RP'd even if you don't act out the specific lines by detailing what your character IS DOING to try to get the info he needs, and now you have a roll to see how well he does. Next, you explain the kind of information you're looking for, and maybe what story you tell to try to get it.

Once you have that info, you can try working your real target. Having decided to use blackmail material is, too, RP. You could have tried other approaches. Seduction, bribery, simple flattery and faux friendship...getting him drunk enough to have loose lips...

The ideal system, thus, has sufficient levers to pull on characters' personalities and ways to build or break down likes and dislikes. This creates a gameplay strategy and tactical element.

Only then, when you have done all you can to lay out the board with the levers in place you want, do you pull them all on the moves to try to influence BEHAVIOR and elicit ACTION. That, too, might even be layered, come to think of it: get somebody to like you and he already might suffer penalties to execute you; add in a specific plea to worsen them and...yeah.

Worked into d20, it'd probably be best done with some sort of "morale points." Worked into a new system, you want to design it with the social, morale, and emotion subsystems integrated in a way that makes them useful to the action elements so that they're all interconnected.

Floret

2017-05-18, 07:33 PM

Good thing that's not what anybody (except you, in your false dichotomy) suggested, then! We're all in agreement: combining the two with a system that allows for more in-depth tactical decision making can lead to a more enjoyable RP experience.

To be completely fair: I DID suggest that I sometimes play like this, because while I like both roleplaying as well as dicerolling, I can do both without mixing them.
Mixing them WOULD, however, be a nicer system, certainly.

The best idea I have had or seen regarding social system implementation is to have it be incentive and disincentive based. Ultimately, you don't want to be dictating to a player, "Your character does what I say he does." But you do want to model the character's urge to do so if he is socially manipulated into that position.

Ideally, it would be integrated deeply with the rest of the system, but regardless, the ultimate rewards and penalties might be in the form of an expendable resource, or they might be straight-up bonuses and penalties to actions going with or against the final "do this" command. This allows for a gradient of influence, from mild to overwhelming, without absolute limits and without making it ever technically mandatory.

This makes me think of FATE's idea of (In the case of FATE only in a draw) "Succeeding at a cost". One might implement this idea here, either just for players to avoid them feeling control of the character taken away from them (Note: This is a thing I am more neutral on than (ime) most other people, but ideally would not do, just am willing to deal with for the sake of lackluster social mechanics having impact, and impact on players.). Or just for everyone, because more options might lead to more interesting gameplay.
So, your character can always resist the temptations of the pretty bard trying to seduce them, but if the bard is really good at seducing, and your character ...not that good at resisting; deciding he fails nonetheless requires some cost.

Now, most of that cost is, because this is FATE, narratively - extra complications, unforseen difficulties, having to make a tough choice, the likes. But there are also "take damage"; give an opponent a boost; or place an aspect on something (That will be likely to bite you).
(I do realise this is pretty much exactly what you are proposing, but I thought drawing the comparison to a system doing something similar might be worthwhile^^)
Of course, the more mechanically detailed the system, the better this has to be scalable. Fate gets away with the way it does things, because it is rules-light, and because the situation this applies will never have differences in the roles, and have it be relevant just how big those are. On the other hand, since the system we are looking at here, is more focussed, so a list of (mechanical, as well as narrative) consequences could be constructed more concisely. As you said, it should be deeply integrated.

Martin Greywolf

2017-05-19, 02:41 AM

I think a lot of this can be avoided by good general skill system design. 3.5 D&D runs into this problem because you could have a 20+ point spread of Diplomacy bonuses; something like Fate avoids it because the spread is so much smaller and can be tightened even more by Aspects and the like.

Well yes, but that goes for everything, doesn't it? If you have a well thought out skill system, you need to do less hoop jumping to use it properly. For wide spreads specifically, I'd probably use situational bonuses heavily, something that was actually suggested by Rich Burlew on this very site, but I think we can all agree that DnD skill system falls apart after a while in normal play, and very quickly once you start to chase

The trick, then, is getting both GM and group used to doing that. And figuring out when a conversation has gotten to the point where social combat is necessary.

Well, yeah. Rule of thumb is to use it every time you can at first, and to tell players you want to try it out, so would they please remind you to use it. That said, though, this is a people problem, not a system problem, and it needs to be solved as such - a player attacking his fellow PCs for no reason is not a fault of combat mechanics, after all.

(And, I mean, actual "social initiative" is not great in my experience-- it winds up structuring the conversation in weird ways that, due to the fact that we're literally having the conversation in real time, feel much more unnatural than similar abstractions for combat. But that's another bit)

Eh, I found reasonably easy workaround. Don't stick to argument-counterargument structure religiously. Allow one round to have, for example argument-counterargument-argument, you can switch who has the initiative that way.

That said, this is easier to do in FATE, since it has static initiative - no changing of who goes first, just pick a good point in the conversation, after about two or three sentences, to make the roll.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-19, 07:39 AM

It still is all about his real-world ability to persuade YOU, just the topic of what he's persuading you to do shifts.

Now, it is possible you play the game in a different way then I do. You sound like when you DM you make every character ''you'', and that is fine, but not the way I do it. When I DM I role play each character as that character, and there is no ''me'' in the character at all. I'd make an immature anime loving President hating rap music listening to inner city deliqiuient....but that is so not me, but I could play that character up to 11.

I assume, then, that you discourage players from building characters with stats like Charisma or skills like Diplomacy or Bluff, or their equivalents in whatever system you run, unless they have explicit combat effects.

Yes, for the most part.

The ideal system, thus, has sufficient levers to pull on characters' personalities and ways to build or break down likes and dislikes. This creates a gameplay strategy and tactical element.

.

But what about poor Jimmy sitting at the table spinning his fidget spinner who can't even ''fake by the rules'' social stuff?

Zombimode

2017-05-19, 08:24 AM

But what about poor Jimmy sitting at the table spinning his fidget spinner who can't even ''fake by the rules'' social stuff?

Poor Jimmy finds himself in the same Position as poor Jonny over there who finds himself completely overwhelmed by even the simplest tactical or strategic challenges, the same as poor Julius over there with no head for numbers at all. Their misery is only surpassed by poor Jenny whose spatial visualization ability is so undevoloped that she Drops out at any description more involed that "featureless plain" and poor.. uhm.. Jeff who lacks any kind of imagination and creativity.

Face it, roleplaying games, just like most activities, are not "inclusive". They require certain skills and if your abilities lack in those regards and you are unable or unwilling to learn than you should do something else instead. (Do note that different games have different requirements, so just because you suck at, say, D&D 3.5 doesn't mean you can't Play Vampire or so)

CharonsHelper

2017-05-19, 08:27 AM

Poor Jimmy finds himself in the same Position as poor Jonny over there who finds himself completely overwhelmed by even the simplest tactical or strategic challenges, the same as poor Julius over there with no head for numbers at all. Their misery is only surpassed by poor Jenny whose spatial visualization ability is so undevoloped that she Drops out at any description more involed that "featureless plain" and poor.. uhm.. Jeff who lacks any kind of imagination and creativity.

Not to mention poor Zombimode who has trouble coming up with creative names. :smallbiggrin:

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-19, 08:28 AM

I like having social rules for specialized things like lying, intimidating, and negotiating. But - I can't say that I'm a fan of general "diplomacy" or "persuasion" rules.

Largely this is because they should vary so greatly depending upon who you're talking to, your history with them, and all sorts of other things which, in mechanical form, seem like they'd be a hot mess.

IMO, that's a big part of the problem with social rules... social interaction is so full of context and nuance and variation based on who the participants are, that it makes most any physical challenge seem simple in comparison.

Segev

2017-05-19, 10:43 AM

Now, it is possible you play the game in a different way then I do. You sound like when you DM you make every character ''you'', and that is fine, but not the way I do it. When I DM I role play each character as that character, and there is no ''me'' in the character at all. I'd make an immature anime loving President hating rap music listening to inner city deliqiuient....but that is so not me, but I could play that character up to 11.Nope, you again missed my point.

I don't care if you're playing every NPC as "you" or if you're the best method actor the world has ever seen, the game being played at your table as you have outlined it involves the PLAYER of the PC convincing YOU as PLAYER of the NPC, that the NPC should be convinced by what the PLAYER of the PC has the PC saying.

It actually doesn't measure anything about the PC's social capabilities nor your NPC's actual personality, except insofar as knowledge of what YOU think the latter is allows the PLAYER of the PC to tell you what levers of the NPC's personality should be tweaked by the PLAYER's PC's choice of words and deeds.

It still remains that the PLAYER is convincing YOU. He just isn't convincing you that YOU should agree. He's convincing you that the NPC should.

Yes, for the most part.Well, at least there's that, then. Nobody is wasting resources on stats that aren't allowed to be used.

But what about poor Jimmy sitting at the table spinning his fidget spinner who can't even ''fake by the rules'' social stuff?Zombiemode covered this pretty well. If Jimmy can play the combat subgame, he probably can play the social subgame I'm advocating. If he cannot, well, that's a different, somewhat bigger problem with his ability to play whatever RPG is being discussed.

IMO, that's a big part of the problem with social rules... social interaction is so full of context and nuance and variation based on who the participants are, that it makes most any physical challenge seem simple in comparison.It can be. This is why I always mention having a better-detailed mechanical mapping of the characters to be used in any social subsystem. It gives you the environment and terrain and such to work within.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-19, 06:08 PM

Social situations have contextual complexity, but the core functions of conversation are pretty simple.

Heck, according to Conversation Analysis (the study of how human beings have conversations, inckuding 1 on 1 or group conversations, business, political, medical, and legal conversations all included) social interaction has a closer tie-in to RPG structures than actual combat. In a conversation, there is a turn order. It's not talked about and humans set it up pretty automatically, but there are turns.

Physical combat does not have turns of any sort.

And, what is more, most rules in RPGs follow the same general rule:
Just enough complexity that you can adjust to specifics.

A social system can do the same thing.

I'm sure there is a list of basic conversation actions somewhere out there. I could probably come up with a pretty basic list.

Assert (seeking conceptual agreement with the speaker)

Persuade/Dissuade (seeking action or inaction from the listener according to speaker's intent)

Inform (impart information)

Inquire (acquire information)

Entertain/comfort (seeking to improve the mood of the listener)

Insult (seeking to worsen the mood of the listener)

It may be because I'm tired, but I'm not really thinking of any forms of social interaction that fall severely outside of these 6 basic categories, and the last two could pretty easily fold onto Persuasion.

I mean, feel free to suggest other additions or situations that don't fit. I kinda think this has some legs...

Koo Rehtorb

2017-05-19, 06:20 PM

I will never stop talking about Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel. The social actions there are:

Avoid the Topic: The speaking player must veer off topic, even to the point of sounding desperate or ridiculous.

Dismiss: This maneuver is used for the cataclysmic and undeniable conclusion of an argument. If a character fails to win the duel via his Dismiss action, he [loses his next action]. Scripting a Dismiss adds +2D to the dueling skill as the character loudly declares that his opponent knows absolutely nothing about the topic at hand and, furthermore, he’s a fool and a dullard and shouldn’t be listened to any further!

Feint: Using a Feint, the speaker leads his opponent on into a trap. He lures him to think he is discussing one point, until his hidden barb is revealed. Only works vs Feint and Obfuscate.

Incite: With an acid tongue and biting wit, a character may attempt to distract or dismay his opponent.

Obfuscate: The player attempting to Obfuscate must present some non sequitur or bizarre, unrelated point in an attempt to confuse or distract his opponent.

Point: This is the main attack of the verbal duelist.

Rebuttal: The player first lets his opponent make a Point (or Dismissal). He then refutes the arguments made while making a fresh attack.

flond

2017-05-20, 07:12 PM

Ignoring some of the other things, I'd like to talk about the fact that Social Systems are a good fallback for things we don't want to play out. Things you may want to have in your game as a valid option, but isn't something you want to actually go though.

On the lighter side this include things like "This is a simple encounter, let's just roll because we have only 4 hours" but...fundamentally, I think it can go further than this. On the darker side, if your PCs are engaging in programming, that's not something you want to actually play through, best just leave it to the dice. On the more benign side...there's...rhetorical action. That is, when the goal is not to make the other person agree with your decision, but to accept what you want, because continuing to engage with you is not actually enjoyable, or bearable. Semantical arguments, inability to leave, aggressive rhetorical tricks and simple nagging, all of these are things that aren't...actually fun to play out, but might be an important part of a characters methodology. (Burning Wheel is actually a really good example of this. Fundamentally, when someone loses in BW, it doesn't mean they're convinced, it means they've been rhetorically skewered and can't, for at least a moment, justify not going along with the compromise.)

Knaight

2017-05-20, 07:21 PM

It's odd that everyone thinks physical activities are so complex and simple....yet I never see a thread about how poor Jimmy ''can't swing a real sword'' so he needs some ''super complex rules to roll some dice to pretend to swing a sword''.
It's almost like the criticism doesn't exist because swinging a sword isn't the default in any system (except maybe boffer LARP which actually involves roleplaying and not just people smacking each other).

I'm all for combining the two....but not ''fluff meaningless role play'' and then we ''follow the almighty dice''.
That example wasn't fluff meaningless role play. It indicated the general approach being taken, it will affect how the guard acts in the future, and it almost certainly affected the difficulty. The choice to get in through having a friendly conversation with the guard rather than intimidating them into submission has a repercussion on all future interactions with said guard, and that's without getting into how the guard is liable to retaliate somehow with a more hostile interaction.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-20, 09:03 PM

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-20, 09:32 PM

And if someone refuses regardless of perceived justification?

Then the test should not have happened at all and if you participated knowing you wouldn't accept the outcome, you're being a raging phallus.

Simple.

Thrudd

2017-05-20, 10:42 PM

And if someone refuses regardless of perceived justification?

The results of the dice in this case tell you what happens, not specifically why it happens. Success means you get what you want - it's for the GM to decide the why's and how's of the NPC's state of mind that led to them acceding to the character.

Once a mechanical system is chosen to represent social interaction, players and characters no longer have the ability to refuse to abide by its results. If the dice say you agree, then you agree. How much sense that makes will depend on how good the rules are at simulating actual social interactions. Chances are, not great unless it is highly abstracted/low detail-granularity.

flond

2017-05-20, 10:56 PM

The results of the dice in this case tell you what happens, not specifically why it happens. Success means you get what you want - it's for the GM to decide the why's and how's of the NPC's state of mind that led to them acceding to the character.

Once a mechanical system is chosen to represent social interaction, players and characters no longer have the ability to refuse to abide by its results. If the dice say you agree, then you agree. How much sense that makes will depend on how good the rules are at simulating actual social interactions. Chances are, not great unless it is highly abstracted/low detail-granularity.

This yes. Fundamentally, most of these systems are either a "agree to abide by the resolution first." (Burning wheel is good for this. If neither character is willing to go to the table, we say they argued fruitlessly, no one gets what they want. Next scene), or a Carrot and stick method (you don't go along with a social agreement despite being handily beaten, -5 to your reputation, or a level of fatigue.)

Or, in a hypothetical system that would likely not see play, you can't refuse. No matter what happens outside the high pressure situation, your character lacked the resolve, and at that moment, gave in. Maybe they themselves later wonder why they were so weak.

Floret

2017-05-21, 03:34 AM

It's almost like the criticism doesn't exist because swinging a sword isn't the default in any system (except maybe boffer LARP which actually involves roleplaying and not just people smacking each other).

Yet even in LARP I have never seen anyone complain "No, my character is just better than I am, please give me rules". This might be because I mostly play on Events without rules (Well, without rules for character skills. Social Contracts still exist, and some rules for safety reasons edge into influencing character skills, but I digress). But I would suspect it to be because in a Larp, one of the fundamental conceits is that, excepting things literally impossible for all players (Magic, mostly), your character's skills are tied to you, the player. So if you can't pull something off other people can? Tough luck, mostly.

A conceit that Tabletop RPGs don't really hold - we have stats, and character sheets, and describe actions rather than playing them out.
I always feel the discussion about social skills comes in a large part from a place of people who in some ways want to "go as close as possible" to the ingame situation, and eschew rules "as far as possible", and so pretend that talking things out at the table is (sort-of-close-enough) to the situation happening ingame.
And there is, in the end, a fundamental conflict between this impression, and the desire for immersion that it supports; and the people who value and like the rules, and would like their character's skills to be completely uncoupled from their real-life ones.
Both are valid, but I don't think discussing this is really productive - fundamentally, two different opinions clash here.

Now, since I am firmly on the "I like rules" side (Because for immersion I have Larp, with an immersion potential far surpassing anything Tabletop RPGs could ever pull off :smalltongue:), I'm much more interested to just discuss HOW to do Social mechanics, not IF, since, let's face it, we're not gonna convince anyone here.
For that, let's maybe get back to the (imho) very good list of questions Grod the Giant asked earlier this thread:

The broad questions are, I think:

What mechanical elements should be included in a social system?
How can a system best strike a balance between allowing organic conversation and allowing the character's abilities to influence things?
How can said mechanics be best integrated into actual play?

As for the first, "Have some way to not be mind-controlled by a lost roll, but have it cost something" was a thing suggested by Segev.
"Different approaches being possible" was also up there, lists existing by ImNotTrevor and Koo Rethorb.

I'm sure there is a list of basic conversation actions somewhere out there. I could probably come up with a pretty basic list.

Assert (seeking conceptual agreement with the speaker)

Persuade/Dissuade (seeking action or inaction from the listener according to speaker's intent)

Inform (impart information)

Inquire (acquire information)

Entertain/comfort (seeking to improve the mood of the listener)

Insult (seeking to worsen the mood of the listener)

It may be because I'm tired, but I'm not really thinking of any forms of social interaction that fall severely outside of these 6 basic categories, and the last two could pretty easily fold onto Persuasion.

I will never stop talking about Duel of Wits in Burning Wheel. The social actions there are:

Avoid the Topic: The speaking player must veer off topic, even to the point of sounding desperate or ridiculous.

Dismiss: This maneuver is used for the cataclysmic and undeniable conclusion of an argument. If a character fails to win the duel via his Dismiss action, he [loses his next action]. Scripting a Dismiss adds +2D to the dueling skill as the character loudly declares that his opponent knows absolutely nothing about the topic at hand and, furthermore, he’s a fool and a dullard and shouldn’t be listened to any further!

Feint: Using a Feint, the speaker leads his opponent on into a trap. He lures him to think he is discussing one point, until his hidden barb is revealed. Only works vs Feint and Obfuscate.

Incite: With an acid tongue and biting wit, a character may attempt to distract or dismay his opponent.

Obfuscate: The player attempting to Obfuscate must present some non sequitur or bizarre, unrelated point in an attempt to confuse or distract his opponent.

Point: This is the main attack of the verbal duelist.

Rebuttal: The player first lets his opponent make a Point (or Dismissal). He then refutes the arguments made while making a fresh attack.

Now, for some other context, I personally also came up with a list of social Skills, based on "what do I want get from this person"
1. Get people to believe you ("Sincerity")
2. Get people to do things ("Enticing")
3. Get people to like you ("Charisma") (Maybe a second for disliking)
4. Get people to believe things ("Psychology")
Since this is goal-based, it doesn't differentiate between "threatening" and "nice" "get people to do things." A fifth skill for Pushing people around (Intimidate?) might work, and might even be rolled in with the "make people dislike you" skill, depending on how detailed you want such a system to be.

Question 2 has been talked as "roll first, act out second" and "act out first, then roll", with a differentiation based on whether the acting influences the roll (As bonuses or penalties), or just the fluff around it. For it influencing, there would need to be a system detailing how, with good guidelines. It will always be in some part GM discretion, but let's make as little of that as possible. Make their jobs easier.

Question 3 has been largely put aside, as far as I can see. How do we "activate" social combat? When?
For a system I am writing I came up with (Certainly as the first person ever to have this idea :smalltongue:) a concept of "Fight-initiating actions". Actions that, if done, will start a switch to the initiative system (In this case, Attacking someone; drawing your weapon in front of the enemy; or being discovered in a hostile area. Since the initiative system isn't round based, it is quite easy to just continue talks within it, but the situation is now at least on edge). Something similar might be constructed for Social interactions, as help for GMs and players, certain actions, that when done, will initiate social combat/Initiative/call for a roll. Spontaneous suggestions would include a personal insult being flung; ending an argument (not any sentence, of course but something like "why things are this way"; "why you should do this", "Why things should be this way", etc.); or maybe opening a court session. Other ideas welcome.

Have I missed something?
...Ohhh boy this got long.

Cluedrew

2017-05-21, 11:05 AM

Every time I see one of these threads I can't help but signing, because there isn't really an answer to this. Well I suppose there is, but we couldn't sort out all the details and qualifiers in Its not my Fault: Its what the Dice said my Character Would Do. Which I think may have had the highest word count of any Giant in the Playground thread ever.

So you want to make a good system for social interaction. What standards are you using for good? Is detail more important that simplicity? Are you interested more in the character traits or the social maneuvering? Are all the characters expected to have a role in social situations or does it limit itself to particular archetypes? Do you want player skill or character skill?

After you have answer these and other question, then you can start figuring out what your good social system will look like. Then you can start making it. Its not simple, none of game design really is but social rules seem to have much less history and hence less refinement overall than, say, physical combat.

NichG

2017-05-21, 12:16 PM

One mistake that I feel is at the root of a lot of the difficulties in making mechanical systems about social situations is the assumption that the structure of social interaction should essentially be the same as the structure of combat - e.g. that the correct metaphor to use is one in which there is a winner and a loser and the winner has their way. Once you've projected things down into that single aspect, almost anything you can come up with after there involves some form of removing agency from a character, and often also runs afoul of neglecting reason and motivation.

One of the reasons mechanics are relatively easy to build for combat is that the combat metaphor sharply separates the intent to act and the ability to act, and then more or less exclusively concerns itself with the former. That is, the loser of a fight may still want to go and kill the other side, but their ability to achieve that outcome is based on things which can be degraded by the actions of others - e.g. they can be knocked unconscious or killed, denying them the ability to actually do anything no matter what they might want. So you can represent the victory of one side's agency over the other by explicitly representing the ways that things get done, and then allowing those ways to be mechanically eroded.

The direct social analogy of that wouldn't be convincing someone of something or negotiating with someone, it would actually be more like two sides each trying to sway a crowd - the agency of the other side that you attack isn't their desire to control the crowd, its things such as their credibility, the alignment of the emotional state of the crowd with their desired outcome, etc. It would be much easier to make a social combat system for that which wouldn't feel oppressive. But it would be limited to very specific kinds of circumstances - arguing a case before a jury, controlling a mob, etc. You couldn't use it to model convincing the king to give you a better reward or convincing someone to believe a lie, which is the kind of stuff that people more often actually imagine doing

So I think the more interesting route is to actually abandon the combat metaphor altogether, and ask - what is most real social interaction actually about? I would say, rather than a head-to-head conflict of ideas (which rarely actually results in someone being convinced), social interactions are more about information and mood.

Information can take the form of being able to predict or anticipate someone ('finding information'), but it can also encompass reputation and influencing the default assumptions others make about you or others ('spreading information'). Mood ties well into what Segev was suggesting with incentive-based systems - small talk and gifts doesn't make someone give you their house, but it does mean that socially reciprocal actions they take might become more effective at building reputation. Blackmailing someone threatens them with permanent penalties if they don't comply, and skill at threats amplifies those penalties rather than directly checking 'will they give in?'.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-21, 12:32 PM

flond

2017-05-21, 01:42 PM

Except that social interaction is not combat... you can't actually force someone to do something just by "talking better" (no matter how right, persuasive, or proper one thinks they are, the other can still just say "nope"), and doesn't come down to a simple result of a winner and a loser.

Except that it happens all the time. People agree to things they don't actually want to agree to all the time, and it does tend to look a little like combat. The key point is that it only happens in situations where both sides don't have an easy way to disengage. And "proper" argumentation isn't really something that has to do with it. In this sort of situation, the primary methods are direct stress to the other person's patience, character and feelings. (I don't actually RECOMMEND anyone do this outside the context of dramatic rpgs, but even in fictional dramas you see this.) The biggest example of this is for example, when characters are debating where to go next. It's fundamentally unwise to split up (splitting the party can be death!), there's likely to be exactly one winner (the plan that happens), and a decision needs to be made. In this sort of situation it can easily become a test of endurance. Fundamentally though, the key thing here is that it needs to be important enough that neither side is willing to disengage.)

Morty

2017-05-21, 01:54 PM

A core element of any good social system is to tell is when it's even applicable. Which is also its greatest advantage over the "just RP it and roll once" method.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-21, 03:13 PM

Cluedrew

2017-05-21, 04:34 PM

To Morty: I like that. It feels like it shouldn't be an issue, but stories of dimplomancers hint that it might be.

there is not 'half trip' or 'sort of trip'As in a stumble or stagger?

I think the part of the reason people have issues simplifying social interactions is they forget just how simplified combat it. "You just punch the guy or not, its not complicated." Yes it is. Where are you punching? Punching someone in the neck has a very different effect than slamming your fist into their ribcage. Do you get in a solid hit, a glancing blow or an even blow that doesn't have much power behind it because you couldn't wind up properly. Are they wearing anything with edges? Avoid that, you might cut your hand.

And it is boiled down to a single binary result. We do it all the time. Now it doesn't mean you should, I like more nuanced results myself, but it most certainly can be done. And they do it by using the binary result as an intermediate. You don't role to win or lose a combat, you role to inflict damage. Similarly you shouldn't role to win or lose a debate, you role to change the mood, present an argument or control the flow of conversation.

A lot of rules overly simplify social skills it is true, but that doesn't mean that any "actuate" social rules would be impossibly large.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-21, 04:48 PM

Except that it happens all the time. People agree to things they don't actually want to agree to all the time, and it does tend to look a little like combat. The key point is that it only happens in situations where both sides don't have an easy way to disengage.

That the sort of thing you're talking about here can be the way that some social interactions work out, doesn't in any way change the fact that social interaction is not inherently or usually win-lose, zero-sum, or combat-like. People compromise. People actually start out with the same goal and cooperate in figuring out how to achieve it, and then in doing it. Etc.

And "proper" argumentation isn't really something that has to do with it.

I didn't post anything about "proper argumentation". Here's that part of the sentence again:

(no matter how right, persuasive, or proper one thinks they are, the other can still just say "nope")

flond

2017-05-21, 05:11 PM

That the sort of thing you're talking about here can be the way that some social interactions work out, doesn't in any way change the fact that social interaction is not inherently or usually win-lose, zero-sum, or combat-like. People compromise. People actually start out with the same goal and cooperate in figuring out how to achieve it, and then in doing it. Etc.

I didn't post anything about "proper argumentation". Here's that part of the sentence again:

Sure they do, but they don't always. A social combat system is (or at least should be) the system to resort to when compromise AND demurring aren't actually on the table anymore. Generally, social systems are like combat systems. They show up in specific situations for specific things one wants to mechanize, and you don't swap to them unless circumstances warrent. (And the reason you swap to them is because either a)It's more fun then playing through that thing or b)you like rules toys (which really just defaults to a).

And with regard to "proper argumentation" you sure seemed to. Which tends to be a problem with non-social systems, they tend to lead to images of characters that talk smoothly and trick people into permanently agreeing with a result. That's not in my opinion, the basics for socialization that benefits from mechanization. Socialization that benefits from mechanization is either a)too long to roleplay normally or b)about fundamentally putting pressure on someone to do something they don't agree with.

veti

2017-05-21, 06:17 PM

There's a couple of assumptions in the OP that I don't think have had enough thought put into them.

The way simpler systems work, you can make an argument or tell a believable lie or have a literal army intimidating someone, but if you roll low it doesn't work, or you can go the opposite direction and descend into farce if you roll much better than seems sensible.

Assumption 1. This tells us that whatever the social system you're talking about is, it doesn't make anything like enough allowance for circumstance modifiers. I think D20 is inclined to be this way, because it's got this inbuilt assumption that "1" must be a dismal failure and "20" a glorious success, even if the player's stated goal is wildly implausible in the circumstances.

My answer to this is that DMs need to be much more prescriptive when they determine the range of plausible outcomes. Expecting an elite guard to abandon his post outside the royal palace, just because you've got a +70 Bluff modifier - is like expecting to kill him in one hit, just because you've got a +70 Attack roll. It doesn't work like that. No matter what you roll, he knows his duty and he's not going to be just talked past so easily.

A lot of GMs ignore the social rules if the players roleplayed the conversation well, but that's not an option for everyone. If someone isn't super theatrical or persuasive IRL, that shouldn't preclude them from playing a character who is.

Assumption 2. Should dice provide an alternative to roleplaying? I don't think that's as self-evident as you seem to think. If you could explain exactly why you feel this is a "should", then we could examine this assumption and see if we really want to adopt it.

Chauncymancer

2017-05-21, 11:26 PM

Yet even in LARP I have never seen anyone complain "No, my character is just better than I am, please give me rules". I would suspect it to be because in a Larp, one of the fundamental conceits is that, excepting things literally impossible for all players (Magic, mostly), your character's skills are tied to you, the player. So if you can't pull something off other people can? Tough luck, mostly.

Actually, I have just today come back from a LARP where both Parry and Dodge were special abilities: A number of times in 12 hours you could declare "My character is better at combat than I am, They Dodged/Parried your attack, even though I didn't."

Martin Greywolf

2017-05-22, 02:44 AM

I'll say this again: much like in actual combat, you only get to roll in social combat if things make at least some goddamn sense.

If you waltz up to me and say "I cut clean through his rapier with my greatsword" in a Witcher-like semi-realistic game, I'll tell you that swords aren't lightsabers and to try something else.

Likewise, if you try to go "I convince him he is a gerbil", I'll simply not allow you to roll in the first place, because there is no roll there, the action is simply not possible - at least not with diplomacy alone.

This one rule means that your social mechanics don't need arbitrarily large penalties for unreasonable requests, you simply will not allow a roll if the request is unreasonable. That doesn't necessarily make diplomacy useless, while "You are a gerbil" is unreasonable, "We are foreign dignitaries, so you better let us pass and not say a word to anyone" is perfectly okay.

Just as an aside, melee combat at the level where everyone knows what he's doing does actually have turns, it's just that they are somewhat different from TTRPG turns. You have windows of opportunity to act that you can use (one major window is at the start before anyone has done anything), and you have three timings (before, during and after) you can place your reaction into. If you mess up and pick the wrong window, you get stabbed if your opponent sees it. No one bothers to use this system because it is not very good at telling stories and because it is more complex than your standard one and requires you to pretty much learn fencing theory.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-22, 07:19 AM

Not to mention poor Zombimode who has trouble coming up with creative names. :smallbiggrin:

Well, for my example, Jimmy was a real gamer:

Setting the Wayback Machine for a couple years ago:

So the special care facility all ways had a problem keeping the patients occupied with something to do. Game were them perfect thing as a great many of them, even with all sorts of mental issues, would suddenly focus and play a game with little trouble. And the staff was all in it for playing games like Checkers or Candyland, but there were always games they did not like/want to play/know how to play that the patients wanted to play. So they came up with the idea of letting normal folks come in and play games with the patients. Risk was one of the games. Enter Jimmy. Jimmy loved Risk, and would not want to play much else. No one on the staff liked/wanted to play/knew how to play. Then enter me, would agreed to come in and play Risk with Jimmy. And while Jimmy was a near uncontrollable terror most of the time, when you pulled out a Risk board he would sit down and play and not act up mostly(unless you took over Iceland for some reason, that was his ''trigger country'').

So one day when I got there someone else was already playing Risk, and they only had the one game. Jimmy was all ready upset. I had a 1E retro clone in my car and thought, well why not try that. I made Jimmy a dwarf fighter and he loved going dungeon crawling. So, suddenly, Risk was out, enter D&D. A couple weeks later Jimmy's mom suddenly bought him the rulebook. This was not to shocking as Jimmy often walked around with the Risk rulebook and read it often, still I always wonder how mom ever found a copy of the game (guess she just goggles it and bought it online?). And Jimmy reads the rules, cover to cover. And when the dwarf character dies, Jimmy is ready with character number two: a human wizard. And Jimzar the Wizard entered the dungeon. And Jimmy was focused, serious and knew the rules..like at a rules lawyer level. I still remember when he suddenly was like ''I shoot a lighting bolt right here'' and he pointed to a wall over and away from the monsters. It was not just a random shot though, the game had a 45 degree bounce for line type spells so you could ''play pool'' with them. Jimmy was taking a shot at the monster leader ''around'' the tanks in front. Like I said, he knew the rules. For the whole summer Jimzar adventured through dungeons, alone or with a couple others.

Then like most good things ''something suddenly happened". And people were no longer allowed to come in and play games. We could not even visit or say goodbye.

NichG

2017-05-22, 07:26 AM

Combat, or physical action in a game is very direct...the character does it or not. There is not much room for anything else. If an elf goes to trip and orc, they succeed or they don't...there is not 'half trip' or 'sort of trip'. And even things like saving throws are ''this effects your character or not'', even if it's only half the effect or damage.

But social stuff is not that direct...you don't convince a guard 100% to believe you, so it's hard to have a ''does or does not'' winner or loser. And worse even if you do ''win'' or ''convince'' a NPC they won't just be a zombie robot that does as you want. And mechanically you can only have a couple things listed..unless your rule book is 10,000 pages.

And that goes right back to the acting out problem.

I guess I miscommunicated. The point of my post was that treating social systems like combat is a bad idea that almost everyone falls into doing, and that creates the 'zombie robot' problem.

There's a huge set of things you could do with social interaction that don't consist of 'get the other person to do as I want' but which are still useful or potent to do. Figuring out if someone is hiding something, finding out information that would let you predict their choices, decisions, and strategies, establishing a reputation that makes it difficult to make accusations against a character stick, or one which makes a character more vulnerable to accusations, imposing a mood, etc.

The nice thing about most of those is that they augment roleplay rather than replacing it. The mechanical ability that lets you know if someone is hiding something feeds into the conversation where you try to figure out what it is. The mechanical ability that lets you predict how someone would respond to an overture ('is this guy bribable?') feeds into the confidence to attempt that overture without worrying that it will just fail outright or backfire somehow. The reputation manipulation gives you a stick and a carrot to make threats, but then you still have to ask for the right thing and make sure there's enough mutually assured destruction that you can force negotiation. Focusing on augmentation means that its okay to only have a handful of distinct social abilities, since they don't have to do everything or model every possible interaction - they just have to modify the situation in ways that are sufficiently interesting and potent that players feel empowered by them.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-22, 08:12 AM

Sure they do, but they don't always. A social combat system is (or at least should be) the system to resort to when compromise AND demurring aren't actually on the table anymore. Generally, social systems are like combat systems. They show up in specific situations for specific things one wants to mechanize, and you don't swap to them unless circumstances warrent. (And the reason you swap to them is because either a)It's more fun then playing through that thing or b)you like rules toys (which really just defaults to a).

So you're suggesting multiple mechanical systems for social interaction?

And with regard to "proper argumentation" you sure seemed to. Which tends to be a problem with non-social systems, they tend to lead to images of characters that talk smoothly and trick people into permanently agreeing with a result. That's not in my opinion, the basics for socialization that benefits from mechanization. Socialization that benefits from mechanization is either a)too long to roleplay normally or b)about fundamentally putting pressure on someone to do something they don't agree with.

In context, "proper" was about the person making the argument feeling that their position was the "proper" position -- logically, morally, ethically, legally, socially, or whatever. No matter how "proper" they think their position is, that won't actually force the other person to agree or cooperate or go along... the other person can always just say "nope".

I guess I miscommunicated. The point of my post was that treating social systems like combat is a bad idea that almost everyone falls into doing, and that creates the 'zombie robot' problem.

There's a huge set of things you could do with social interaction that don't consist of 'get the other person to do as I want' but which are still useful or potent to do. Figuring out if someone is hiding something, finding out information that would let you predict their choices, decisions, and strategies, establishing a reputation that makes it difficult to make accusations against a character stick, or one which makes a character more vulnerable to accusations, imposing a mood, etc.

Exactly what I've been trying to get at -- social interaction has a lot more modes than "force this person to do what I want them to do" / "force this person to think what I want them to think". Most social interaction isn't adversarial, isn't zero-sum, isn't winner vs loser.

The nice thing about most of those is that they augment roleplay rather than replacing it. The mechanical ability that lets you know if someone is hiding something feeds into the conversation where you try to figure out what it is. The mechanical ability that lets you predict how someone would respond to an overture ('is this guy bribable?') feeds into the confidence to attempt that overture without worrying that it will just fail outright or backfire somehow. The reputation manipulation gives you a stick and a carrot to make threats, but then you still have to ask for the right thing and make sure there's enough mutually assured destruction that you can force negotiation. Focusing on augmentation means that its okay to only have a handful of distinct social abilities, since they don't have to do everything or model every possible interaction - they just have to modify the situation in ways that are sufficiently interesting and potent that players feel empowered by them.

That sounds like the start of a better approach than things that typically happen, which end up looking like mind-control in all but name -- "my character has this skill against which your character has no defense, and I rolled well, so now you're stripped of control over your only way of interacting with the world of the game, and any sort of player agency, ha ha".

I'll say this again: much like in actual combat, you only get to roll in social combat if things make at least some goddamn sense.

If you waltz up to me and say "I cut clean through his rapier with my greatsword" in a Witcher-like semi-realistic game, I'll tell you that swords aren't lightsabers and to try something else.

Likewise, if you try to go "I convince him he is a gerbil", I'll simply not allow you to roll in the first place, because there is no roll there, the action is simply not possible - at least not with diplomacy alone.

This one rule means that your social mechanics don't need arbitrarily large penalties for unreasonable requests, you simply will not allow a roll if the request is unreasonable. That doesn't necessarily make diplomacy useless, while "You are a gerbil" is unreasonable, "We are foreign dignitaries, so you better let us pass and not say a word to anyone" is perfectly okay.

In general, that's a rule I've always applied as a GM, and that I hope is included in any game system I'm going to be playing/GMing.

The notion some gamers (and designers) push -- "anything is possible, just roll well enough!" -- fills me with visceral loathing. I don't care if someone make a 1-in-1000000 roll, they're never going to convince the target of the roll that he's a gerbil. Characters who are nominally normal human beings are never going to jump over a 50-foot wall and land on the other side. Etc.

Just as an aside, melee combat at the level where everyone knows what he's doing does actually have turns, it's just that they are somewhat different from TTRPG turns. You have windows of opportunity to act that you can use (one major window is at the start before anyone has done anything), and you have three timings (before, during and after) you can place your reaction into. If you mess up and pick the wrong window, you get stabbed if your opponent sees it. No one bothers to use this system because it is not very good at telling stories and because it is more complex than your standard one and requires you to pretty much learn fencing theory.

Even if the players don't learn fencing theory, I wish more game designers would at least take some lessons or otherwise put some study in before putting pencil to paper on combat mechanics design for their games. Even to an amateur observer / would-be scholar like me, it's plainly obvious that many game designers have never held a sword or a firearm in their entire life, and get their notions of combat entirely from Hollywood and cartons.

CharonsHelper

2017-05-22, 08:51 AM

The direct social analogy of that wouldn't be convincing someone of something or negotiating with someone, it would actually be more like two sides each trying to sway a crowd - the agency of the other side that you attack isn't their desire to control the crowd, its things such as their credibility, the alignment of the emotional state of the crowd with their desired outcome, etc. It would be much easier to make a social combat system for that which wouldn't feel oppressive. But it would be limited to very specific kinds of circumstances - arguing a case before a jury, controlling a mob, etc. You couldn't use it to model convincing the king to give you a better reward or convincing someone to believe a lie, which is the kind of stuff that people more often actually imagine doing

I have actually thought before that that sort of thing could be an interesting game. Probably a video game rather than a tabletop one, as it'd likely end up having a single leading role.

Some sort of democracy game. Maybe in a sci-fi setting to keep from being too divisive and/or preachy. Plus - then you could have various alien groups acting badly when things go against them without seeming to vilify actual groups or seem racist etc. (someone would still probably say it - since I've heard the theory that having orcs/goblins be bad-guys is racist - but it'd be less so)

Plus - much of the gameplay could be traveling from planet to planet to convince various voter groups.

Segev

2017-05-22, 09:05 AM

That sounds like the start of a better approach than things that typically happen, which end up looking like mind-control in all but name -- "my character has this skill against which your character has no defense, and I rolled well, so now you're stripped of control over your only way of interacting with the world of the game, and any sort of player agency, ha ha".

It is a delicate thing to set up, because you're absolutely right: "My character is socially skilled enough to take away your control over your character" is not fun. It's fascinating to me (and I say this with no implied judgment that this is "wrong" as a mind-set; I even share it) that it's more acceptable to have your character's agency removed by physically destroying or disabling the character than it is to mentally/socially manipulate the character.

"My character beats yours until he can't move in this scene" denies agency just as well as "My character convinces yours not to lift a finger in this situation," and yet the latter raises most players' dander far more.

It is why I prefer to pile on the penalties and bribery-bonuses to make actions more enticing or harder to pull off, rather than flat out saying "your PC is not allowed to do that," when social rules are to be invoked. "My character is so persuasive that yours is filled with crippling doubt and indecision if he tries to act in this situation," doesn't prevent you from acting, but it does give a massive debuff. So if you choose to act, it may not help as much. But you still tried, if that is important to you that your character would, no matter how torn up about it he was by the social character's Hannibal Lecture.

VoxRationis

2017-05-22, 10:16 AM

It is a delicate thing to set up, because you're absolutely right: "My character is socially skilled enough to take away your control over your character" is not fun. It's fascinating to me (and I say this with no implied judgment that this is "wrong" as a mind-set; I even share it) that it's more acceptable to have your character's agency removed by physically destroying or disabling the character than it is to mentally/socially manipulate the character.

"My character beats yours until he can't move in this scene" denies agency just as well as "My character convinces yours not to lift a finger in this situation," and yet the latter raises most players' dander far more.

It is why I prefer to pile on the penalties and bribery-bonuses to make actions more enticing or harder to pull off, rather than flat out saying "your PC is not allowed to do that," when social rules are to be invoked. "My character is so persuasive that yours is filled with crippling doubt and indecision if he tries to act in this situation," doesn't prevent you from acting, but it does give a massive debuff. So if you choose to act, it may not help as much. But you still tried, if that is important to you that your character would, no matter how torn up about it he was by the social character's Hannibal Lecture.

I'm not a big fan of Hannibal Lecture as a trope. It's silly that characters would even give a moment's thought to the words of someone who is actively identified as an opponent.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-22, 10:29 AM

I'm not a big fan of Hannibal Lecture as a trope. It's silly that characters would even give a moment's thought to the words of someone who is actively identified as an opponent.

It's a trope that needs to die, along with most other variants of "weaponized wordiness".

Morty

2017-05-22, 12:21 PM

People do silly and outright stupid things with great frequency, particularly if under the influence of someone persuasive. How viable it is for an NPCs' oratory skills to determine the PCs' actions is one thing, but people acting against their best interest under the influence of a skilled liar and manipulator isn't exactly uncommon.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-22, 12:24 PM

People do silly and outright stupid things with great frequency, particularly if under the influence of someone persuasive.

Far more so in fiction, than in real life.

Or rather, no one I know is that damn stupid.

Segev

2017-05-22, 12:46 PM

I'm not a big fan of Hannibal Lecture as a trope. It's silly that characters would even give a moment's thought to the words of someone who is actively identified as an opponent.

The counter-trope, "Shut up, Hannibal!" is equally valid, but the reason both tropes exist is because they DO have some root in reality. People CAN be talked into doubting their motivations, the righteousness of their causes. The more common, realistic implementation is to use it to wind somebody up so that they get mad and, in a fit of rejection, do something they wouldn't normally do. The trick lies in fooling the victim into accepting a premise without examination, and manipulating them into defending it.

For instance, talking to a noble knight who condemns murder, the "Hannibal" might challenge them on it, stating that the knight kills people, too, and that the knight's judgment of who's to die is just as arbitrary as a serial killer's. The unexamined assumption here is that all killing is murder.

Or, perhaps you wish to undermine a philosophy, so you claim that a pillar of that philosophy is disproven by this new experiment you can perform. Because you haven't performed it yet, but you have solid reason to assert the results will be as you predict, you can get defenders of that philosophy to ignore the premise you've asserted, and instead refute the RESULTS you expect to get, positioning them so that they are defending a straw man of your construction.

Not going to go deeply into this, but this is what leads to the Young Earth Creationists: anti-Christians claimed that evolution disproved God's divine act of creation, and knee-jerk Christians leapt to assert that evolution is evil and false, never thinking to challenge the assertion that evolution in any way disproves the Biblical account.

The point I'm making here has little to do with whether they were right or wrong to accept that premise. The point is that they did accept it without challenge, and that in so doing they allowed themselves to be positioned by those who debated the other side as defending a straw man rather than their real, core beliefs.

If anybody has a non-religious example, I'd appreciate it. This is just the best one I've got.

In any event, filling somebody with doubt based on undermining their belief system is not unbelievable. Even from "a known villain." And it's not the only way to do it. The rich man might bribe the middle class accountant to do something he knows he should not, but the bribe would pay for his wife's medical bills for a life-saving operation. Acting to undermine that could have huge penalties to his actions. The fasting monk might not give in to the temptation of the delicious baking bread being offered by those who wish to make him break his taboo, but the reminder of his hunger could nevertheless make him less effective than he otherwise would be in the moments the foes need him distracted.

The point being that, unless you want to argue that characters should never be more socially adept than the players are capable of personally manipulating the GM into being, some form of mechanic is required, and that mechanic needs to have teeth, but it shouldn't go so far as to be out-and-out usurping the player's control of his PC, at least no more than injury can.

NichG

2017-05-22, 01:11 PM

Generally the manipulative stuff that actually works involves playing to what the person already wanted to do or wanted to believe at some level. Going too far outside of that envelope ends in suspicion or defensiveness, which more or less takes the form of 'I'm not even going to think about what you're saying anymore, I'm just going to repeat myself until you go away'.

This is why I keep coming back to information. The correct model of manipulation is, to me, not figuring out the magic words that get someone to do what you want but rather figuring out what things you could probably get a particular person to do and then strategically choosing from that list to best suit your needs. It shouldn't be 'I roll to convince the guard that I'm the king', it should be 'I roll to figure out what I could convince the guard of'.

flond

2017-05-22, 01:48 PM

So you're suggesting multiple mechanical systems for social interaction?

"Wait, this system has different rules for Combat AND Chases. Why would you ever!?"

Because maybe. But probably not. And probably not anything too complex outside the first one. My argument is that there are social engagements that benefit some games when mechanized. And that many of these are because they are fundamentally viable actions in a drama that are unfun to play out. (Realistically about the only thing I'd expect to see mechanized beyond 1 or so rolls in most games is a "Social Combat through sheer endurance" system, used when a decision has to be made and everyone's been bouncing around the point for too long/arguing at wind/this argument can't be stopped but can't go on. Because rolling dice is way more fun than that. And anything that takes actual time. (I.e. installing agents/developing organizations/long term spy work/etc). Because you can't fundamentally simulate long work on a 1:1 level.

Segev

2017-05-22, 02:40 PM

CharonsHelper

2017-05-22, 02:43 PM

Flattery, bribery, promised rewards, intimidation, extortion, blackmail... these can get people to do things they wouldn't normally want to, and many of them can be achieved simply through social interactions.

I agree - but I think that that sort of thing can be mechanically defined within narrower 'negotiation' and 'intimidation' mechanics rather than broader 'persuasion' or 'diplomacy' rules.

Segev

2017-05-22, 03:15 PM

I agree - but I think that that sort of thing can be mechanically defined within narrower 'negotiation' and 'intimidation' mechanics rather than broader 'persuasion' or 'diplomacy' rules.

I really don't think so. Salesmanship, marketing, these things are used to alter people's desires, to influence what they (think they) want. And they broaden this whole mechanical subsystem into full-on persuasion. Diplomacy is little more than marketing oneself or one's cause/organization so that people like you/it/them enough to be more willing to hear you out when you sell them something.

"Selling" and "bribery" are essentially the same thing in broad terms of quid pro quo. Add in "companionship" (not necessarily of any salacious kind, either) as a commodity, and you have everything from seduction to party invitations to "being in the in crowd" added in.

The precise breakdown of traits to invoke can vary from system to system, but a full social subsystem must include persuasion as a whole.

But it also should have it be something more nuanced and precise than "I roll a die and make this character convinced to do my bidding."

A good party in a combat engages in all sorts of battlefield control, ranging from placing impediments to posting blockades, and then takes tactical advantage of these to maximize their ability to hit targets and to pick meaningful targets.

A good social character should need to (and have mechanics supporting) manipulate desires, whether discovered or implanted through marketing/salesmanship/diplomacy, so that he can get the target into a position where his propositions are within reason. So he can choose whether to bribe, intimidate, seduce, coerce, cajole, guilt-trip, beg, or simply ask as a favor by bartering on their liking of him. And have each be meaningful choices, depending on the target and the relationship of the characters.

But Silver-tongued Bob should absolutely be able to turn people who dislike him into people who enjoy his company, either in short-term situations or in a longer-term "winning them over" sense. And he should also be able to capitalize on somebody's adamant refusal to like him, to cling even to hatred of him, to manipulate them into making choices he wants out of reverse psychology or simple provocation and knowledge of how the patsy will act when provoked. ("I will insult you and your mother and your friends in subtle ways that can pass in this social group until you hit me, so that I can use your violent nature against you in the court of public opinion," is a common variety of this.)

veti

2017-05-22, 07:12 PM

I'm not a big fan of Hannibal Lecture as a trope. It's silly that characters would even give a moment's thought to the words of someone who is actively identified as an opponent.

And yet they do. All the time. Taunting is a thing.

So is "hostile" propaganda, i.e. propaganda designed for the consumption of one's enemies (although most propaganda is aimed at one's friends, or the as-yet-uncommitted).

NichG

2017-05-22, 08:58 PM

People can be bribed to do things they would not have normally wanted to do. Heck, remove the illicit element from it: I bet many janitors don't want to be mucking about with vomit and less savory human bodily fluids that they nevertheless must clean up from time to time, but it's their job, and they value being paid (or even professional pride) more than they don't want to have to deal with the stuff.

That TN guy may not LIKE killing people, but push him far enough with a big enough reward or something he wants desperately enough, and you might be able to get him to do it. (Whether that pushes him over into Evil or "merely" is a big step in that direction is a matter for DMs and players to discuss.)

Little Billy probably didn't want to get his best friend in trouble by ratting him out, but Billy's mom threatened him with punishment and parental ire and invoked Power Word: Middle Name, and Billy folded like an empty paper grocery bag.

Flattery, bribery, promised rewards, intimidation, extortion, blackmail... these can get people to do things they wouldn't normally want to, and many of them can be achieved simply through social interactions.

Heck, coming back to the ubiquitous romance and seduction motivation, how often do teenaged boys do things they NEVER would have otherwise done just to impress a girl?

In all of these cases though, there's some angle which corresponds to the person's normal behavior and then just pushes it a bit further. The janitor is susceptible to being paid to do things they don't want to do because of some aspect of their life that makes them need money while simultaneously not offering better options for work. If you tried to convince a Fortune 500 CEO to muck around with vomit, you couldn't use the same hook that you would use to convince a janitor to do so. If you tried to use professional responsibility or the promise of pay or something like that to convince that janitor to donate his worldly possessions to you, it'll run counter to his actual motives and is going to fail.

Little Billy has a pre-existing relationship with his mother built up over time, be it fear of punishment or desire to impress or make her happy or whatever - if a stranger tried getting him to do something by using his middle name, they might be able to get him to pause in shock for a moment or hesitate reflexively, but its not going to work the same way. A kid of a slightly different age will see those priorities shift, and may well respond to trying to pull on that maternal bond in exactly the opposite fashion, throwing a tantrum or running off or sulking or digging their heels in with a lie.

Teenaged boys trying to impress a girl are already going into the situation with the expectation of doing something outside of their usual behavior to make an impression - pushing that just a bit further is again playing parallel to what they already were going to do. Some things could be sold that way because they play into that, but if you tried to sell 'lend me $20, that will really impress her!' or even 'Help me steal the exam questions from the teachers, that will really impress her', its just not going to work.

I guess what this comes down to is that I don't think success or failure in these situations is much if at all influenced by the skill of someone in presenting the manipulation. It's not like if you phrased your elevator pitch for a janitorial career shift just a bit better, you could in the end sway the Fortune 500 CEO to take a salary drop of two orders of magnitude. And if the pay is good and the janitor-to-be needs it, they will take the job because it makes sense for them to do so regardless of how well you phrase it. So modeling success or failure as a probability modified by a skill given a fixed set of terms of exchange seems wrong. Rather, what the skill should be doing is to more accurately inform the persuader of what avenues of persuasion the target would actually be open to. The CEO pretty much just can't be convinced to quit and become a janitor, but they could be convinced to attend a costume party or give a big donation to charity or be distracted from their business dealings by news about their daughter's new shady boyfriend - because those are all things that at some level they were ready to do, but just needed it to be made salient to them.

More generic short-term responses, such as hesitation, confusion, doubt, etc, I could however see being covered by a simple skill. There the responses are broadly shared enough that everyone will have some hook to create it - everyone has some situation where they need to take a bit longer to think about what to do, everyone has the potential to experience surprise, uncertainty, etc.

CharonsHelper

2017-05-22, 09:10 PM

Rather, what the skill should be doing is to more accurately inform the persuader of what avenues of persuasion the target would actually be open to. The CEO pretty much just can't be convinced to quit and become a janitor, but they could be convinced to attend a costume party or give a big donation to charity or be distracted from their business dealings by news about their daughter's new shady boyfriend - because those are all things that at some level they were ready to do, but just needed it to be made salient to them.

While I don't think that that would be a good fit for every game, that could be an interesting mechanic in a system more about manipulation such as a heist game. The skill doesn't convince people, it tells you what sorts of things might be able to persuade them.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-22, 09:43 PM

In all of these cases though, there's some angle which corresponds to the person's normal behavior and then just pushes it a bit further. The janitor is susceptible to being paid to do things they don't want to do because of some aspect of their life that makes them need money while simultaneously not offering better options for work. If you tried to convince a Fortune 500 CEO to muck around with vomit, you couldn't use the same hook that you would use to convince a janitor to do so. If you tried to use professional responsibility or the promise of pay or something like that to convince that janitor to donate his worldly possessions to you, it'll run counter to his actual motives and is going to fail.

Little Billy has a pre-existing relationship with his mother built up over time, be it fear of punishment or desire to impress or make her happy or whatever - if a stranger tried getting him to do something by using his middle name, they might be able to get him to pause in shock for a moment or hesitate reflexively, but its not going to work the same way. A kid of a slightly different age will see those priorities shift, and may well respond to trying to pull on that maternal bond in exactly the opposite fashion, throwing a tantrum or running off or sulking or digging their heels in with a lie.

Teenaged boys trying to impress a girl are already going into the situation with the expectation of doing something outside of their usual behavior to make an impression - pushing that just a bit further is again playing parallel to what they already were going to do. Some things could be sold that way because they play into that, but if you tried to sell 'lend me $20, that will really impress her!' or even 'Help me steal the exam questions from the teachers, that will really impress her', its just not going to work.

I guess what this comes down to is that I don't think success or failure in these situations is much if at all influenced by the skill of someone in presenting the manipulation. It's not like if you phrased your elevator pitch for a janitorial career shift just a bit better, you could in the end sway the Fortune 500 CEO to take a salary drop of two orders of magnitude. And if the pay is good and the janitor-to-be needs it, they will take the job because it makes sense for them to do so regardless of how well you phrase it. So modeling success or failure as a probability modified by a skill given a fixed set of terms of exchange seems wrong. Rather, what the skill should be doing is to more accurately inform the persuader of what avenues of persuasion the target would actually be open to. The CEO pretty much just can't be convinced to quit and become a janitor, but they could be convinced to attend a costume party or give a big donation to charity or be distracted from their business dealings by news about their daughter's new shady boyfriend - because those are all things that at some level they were ready to do, but just needed it to be made salient to them.

More generic short-term responses, such as hesitation, confusion, doubt, etc, I could however see being covered by a simple skill. There the responses are broadly shared enough that everyone will have some hook to create it - everyone has some situation where they need to take a bit longer to think about what to do, everyone has the potential to experience surprise, uncertainty, etc.

Indeed.

Sometimes I wonder if the way social "superskill" is presented in bad fiction and highly-edited "reality" TV, and the way certain professions - like marketing - grossly overestimate their own impact, and the way certain sorts of people grossly overestimate themselves and present this to others as if they're superhumanly charming ("I can score any chick in this place if I want"... and then they filter the 9 of 10 fails out of their own memory), and the way charm seems like a mysterious superpower to some people (who tend to be over-represented in the gaming hobby), combine to create for some a deeply exaggerated sense of what social manipulation can actually accomplish.

All too often, people who think they're awesome at manipulating others fail because they fundamentally misunderstand what the person they're to manipulate actually wants -- they have a model of how people work, but plenty of people don't really fit into that model.

Steam has all these "features" and games on sale and whatever to try to entire people into installing, and the lock on so many new games to "force" them into installing. But what if someone hates the idea of having to install an otherwise completely unnecessary DRM/spyware/bloatware "game manager", like Steam or Origin, in order to play a game? No amount of sales and special offers and incitement with "features" is going to get that person to install Steam, no amount of being locked out of new video games, is going to carrot or stick that person into installing Steam... because what they really want is to not install Steam. They want privacy and anonymity and control over their own computer... more than they want to play the games.

flond

2017-05-23, 01:55 AM

Indeed.

Sometimes I wonder if the way social "superskill" is presented in bad fiction and highly-edited "reality" TV, and the way certain professions - like marketing - grossly overestimate their own impact, and the way certain sorts of people grossly overestimate themselves and present this to others as if they're superhumanly charming ("I can score any chick in this place if I want"... and then they filter the 9 of 10 fails out of their own memory), and the way charm seems like a mysterious superpower to some people (who tend to be over-represented in the gaming hobby), combine to create for some a deeply exaggerated sense of what social manipulation can actually accomplish.

All too often, people who think they're awesome at manipulating others fail because they fundamentally misunderstand what the person they're to manipulate actually wants -- they have a model of how people work, but plenty of people don't really fit into that model.

Steam has all these "features" and games on sale and whatever to try to entire people into installing, and the lock on so many new games to "force" them into installing. But what if someone hates the idea of having to install an otherwise completely unnecessary DRM/spyware/bloatware "game manager", like Steam or Origin, in order to play a game? No amount of sales and special offers and incitement with "features" is going to get that person to install Steam, no amount of being locked out of new video games, is going to carrot or stick that person into installing Steam... because what they really want is to not install Steam. They want privacy and anonymity and control over their own computer... more than they want to play the games.

And, fundamentally I'm ok with this. But I feel that a good social combat system in one way or another allows someone to say no. Just with consequences. (In Burning Wheel, those consequences are "social combat doesn't happen. The scene is over because it's fruitless for all sides.), in other games the response is that you get a penalty. If you're fine with taking that, it's fine. But the purpose of the mechanics are to keep such things out of the ooc discussion.

Morty

2017-05-23, 04:09 AM

NichG

2017-05-23, 04:51 AM

I'm really not seeing how any of this runs counter to the viability or necessity of a proper social system.

Convincing people to anything with a high enough roll is going to happen if there are no social mechanics beyond "RP and roll", if the GM doesn't put their foot down. A good social system tells us what the characters want, and how it helps or hinders attemps at persuasion.

It suggests that some of the difficulties in designing a proper social system are based in assumptions going in as to what kinds of outcomes a social system should be able to produce. If you assume that the role of the system is to 'determine whether or not you successfully persuade a particular NPC of a particular thing', even the most clever design centered around that premise is going to go to a different place than if you assume that the fundamental role of the system is something different.

Or to put it another way, imagine that you designed a combat system starting from the premise that the goal of a combat system is to determine for each participant the cost to them for achieving their objectives in the fight, rather than to answer the question of 'who wins?' or 'which objectives are achieved?'. The result would be very different than the kinds of combat systems we tend to encounter, and in fact in a lot of ways it would just fundamentally not feel like combat. But it might be a really good fit for giving the feel of negotiation, an economic system between super-powers, an auction, etc.

The implicit assumption that persuasion should be the concept at the core of a social system is what's being questioned here.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-23, 06:40 AM

I guess what this comes down to is that I don't think success or failure in these situations is much if at all influenced by the skill of someone in presenting the manipulation. It's not like if you phrased your elevator pitch for a janitorial career shift just a bit better, you could in the end sway the Fortune 500 CEO to take a salary drop of two orders of magnitude. .

I'd guess you don't work in sales or some other social type business. The skill of the manipulator is paramount. Really, the whole ''sale'' or ''action'' depends on the manipulator. Every day, people are conned out of money, property, and other things. And it is very possible to say ''get a millionaire to give up their money'', ''turn someone into a criminal'' or make them think ''whatever you want.''

But social interactions are not ''just'' persuasion....they are, well and endless pile of words. Some times it is persuasion, some times a person is fooled, sometimes the person lets them self be fooled, sometimes the person choses to go along, sometimes the person does not listen, and you can go on forever.

NichG

2017-05-23, 07:06 AM

I'd guess you don't work in sales or some other social type business. The skill of the manipulator is paramount. Really, the whole ''sale'' or ''action'' depends on the manipulator. Every day, people are conned out of money, property, and other things. And it is very possible to say ''get a millionaire to give up their money'', ''turn someone into a criminal'' or make them think ''whatever you want.''

But social interactions are not ''just'' persuasion....they are, well and endless pile of words. Some times it is persuasion, some times a person is fooled, sometimes the person lets them self be fooled, sometimes the person choses to go along, sometimes the person does not listen, and you can go on forever.

Saying 'I'm going to get this specific person to buy into my spiel' is a far less successful strategy than massively blanketing a large number of targets with something moderately tuned to them and then just letting 99% of them go. If you want to get a millionaire to donate a large amount of money, don't just choose a random millionaire and try to work them, figure out which millionaire is behaving in a way that suggests they're looking for something to spend on. Or, if you want to make a living playing poker, don't try to figure out how to beat the best player, figure out what tables the best players are at and avoid those.

Success rate is as much about picking the battles as it is actually being able to follow through. In cases where the context varies more, like interacting with others, the balance leans most strongly towards picking the right mark. Look at high-pressure sales for example. You could say 'wow, those people are good at selling things!' but even the ones who are good at it are going to have less than a 10% success rate on cold calls. I'd expect something around 3%. From looking at online advertisement numbers when I was trying to sell Travelogue, the best internet storefronts have at most about a 10% conversion rate of people who actually wanted to buy the thing in the first place. So 90% of people who said 'I am going to buy this software' changed their mind on the way to checkout, even for highly optimized sites.

Darth Ultron

2017-05-23, 12:02 PM

Success rate is as much about picking the battles as it is actually being able to follow through. In cases where the context varies more, like interacting with others, the balance leans most strongly towards picking the right mark.

Agreed.

This is after all what predators, and salesmen do.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-23, 12:23 PM

Saying 'I'm going to get this specific person to buy into my spiel' is a far less successful strategy than massively blanketing a large number of targets with something moderately tuned to them and then just letting 99% of them go. If you want to get a millionaire to donate a large amount of money, don't just choose a random millionaire and try to work them, figure out which millionaire is behaving in a way that suggests they're looking for something to spend on. Or, if you want to make a living playing poker, don't try to figure out how to beat the best player, figure out what tables the best players are at and avoid those.

Success rate is as much about picking the battles as it is actually being able to follow through. In cases where the context varies more, like interacting with others, the balance leans most strongly towards picking the right mark. Look at high-pressure sales for example. You could say 'wow, those people are good at selling things!' but even the ones who are good at it are going to have less than a 10% success rate on cold calls. I'd expect something around 3%. From looking at online advertisement numbers when I was trying to sell Travelogue, the best internet storefronts have at most about a 10% conversion rate of people who actually wanted to buy the thing in the first place. So 90% of people who said 'I am going to buy this software' changed their mind on the way to checkout, even for highly optimized sites.

Agreed.

This is after all what predators, and salesmen do.

Where it breaks down is when people look at what predators and salesmen do to targets that they'd pulled in with a wide net or specifically identified, and treat that as the standard for all social interactions between all people, not between skilled predators and carefully selected targets.

Segev

2017-05-23, 01:29 PM

In all of these cases though, there's some angle which corresponds to the person's normal behavior and then just pushes it a bit further. So? That's part of the point I'm driving at in designing a social system: you want it to be such that you have a detailed enough playing field to examine the targets' "normal behavior" and drives and motives, and have part of the gameplay choices be what levers to pull, buttons to push, and enticements to give.

Teenaged boys trying to impress a girl are already going into the situation with the expectation of doing something outside of their usual behavior to make an impression - pushing that just a bit further is again playing parallel to what they already were going to do. Some things could be sold that way because they play into that, but if you tried to sell 'lend me $20, that will really impress her!' or even 'Help me steal the exam questions from the teachers, that will really impress her', its just not going to work.Teenaged boys can be persuaded to do something to impress a girl without the boy going into the situation even realizing a girl to impress might be involved, and sometimes without realizing that his sudden desire to prove himself is related to the fact that he's now aware a cute girl is watching.

The point is not that he's expecting to try something stupid to impress the girl. The point is that the enticement of a girl's good impression can change the bounds of what he's willing to do.

I guess what this comes down to is that I don't think success or failure in these situations is much if at all influenced by the skill of someone in presenting the manipulation. It's not like if you phrased your elevator pitch for a janitorial career shift just a bit better, you could in the end sway the Fortune 500 CEO to take a salary drop of two orders of magnitude.I agree and disagree. I agree that it's not just "I have a way with words that just makes people do irrational things." I disagree that that's what a well-designed social system is attempting to model, either, however. (Aside, perhaps, from out-and-out magical mind control.)

If you could frame your argument better, you COULD convince the CEO to at least consider a janitorial career shift. But "framing it better" isn't merely changing the inflection, nuance, or flamboyance of your tone. It isn't merely saying the same thing with "better" words. No more than "If only I could have swung my sword a little better, I could have overcome that werewolf's DR," is true. While, yes, bigger numbers on the dice would do it, when you bring in, say, Sneak Attack, you're doing more than just "rolling better." You're engaged in tactical maneuvers to exploit specific abilities you have or weaknesses of the werewolf to do more damage and overcome that DR.

Likewise, "framing the argument better" involves making better tactical moves. Convince the CEO that he can't trust anybody else to lay hands on the top secret notes he wants to get to his R&D department, and that they're in the vomit-strewn garbage dumpster, and you might just persuade him to muck about in said dumpster to find them.

This involves knowing what he wants, playing up his fear and distrust of anybody else getting his hands on them, deciding if this fear should be played upon directly or through reverse psychology, and offering him a means to achieve that goal that involves him mucking about in the dumpster.

The skilled manipulator can figure out what motivates this CEO, what his fears and hopes are, and can play on them, magnifying or diminishing or redirecting them until the CEO's current mental state is one where mucking about in the dumpster seems a semi-reasonable idea.

And if the pay is good and the janitor-to-be needs it, they will take the job because it makes sense for them to do so regardless of how well you phrase it.Phrase it with an emphasis on the hazards - used needles, gross vomit, etc. - and it becomes something that needs far more incentive than if you phrase it minimizing these things and emphasizing "intangible" benefits (no, I can't think of many right now).

Engineering it with social pressure is another skill: build up an audience to support the idea, and suddenly there's the need not to be embarrassed or shamed by the crowd that can be played upon. (Whether or not this works on any of you, fellow playgrounders, it is a real force on some people.)

So modeling success or failure as a probability modified by a skill given a fixed set of terms of exchange seems wrong. Rather, what the skill should be doing is to more accurately inform the persuader of what avenues of persuasion the target would actually be open to. The CEO pretty much just can't be convinced to quit and become a janitor, but they could be convinced to attend a costume party or give a big donation to charity or be distracted from their business dealings by news about their daughter's new shady boyfriend - because those are all things that at some level they were ready to do, but just needed it to be made salient to them.Agreed. Though I wouldn't say "can't be convinced to become a janitor," so much as "can't be convinced without having some paradigms shifted."

More generic short-term responses, such as hesitation, confusion, doubt, etc, I could however see being covered by a simple skill. There the responses are broadly shared enough that everyone will have some hook to create it - everyone has some situation where they need to take a bit longer to think about what to do, everyone has the potential to experience surprise, uncertainty, etc.Sure.

But make no mistake: I am not advocating a "simple skill." I am advocating an entire subsystem.

NichG

2017-05-23, 02:11 PM

If you could frame your argument better, you COULD convince the CEO to at least consider a janitorial career shift. But "framing it better" isn't merely changing the inflection, nuance, or flamboyance of your tone. It isn't merely saying the same thing with "better" words. No more than "If only I could have swung my sword a little better, I could have overcome that werewolf's DR," is true. While, yes, bigger numbers on the dice would do it, when you bring in, say, Sneak Attack, you're doing more than just "rolling better." You're engaged in tactical maneuvers to exploit specific abilities you have or weaknesses of the werewolf to do more damage and overcome that DR.

Likewise, "framing the argument better" involves making better tactical moves. Convince the CEO that he can't trust anybody else to lay hands on the top secret notes he wants to get to his R&D department, and that they're in the vomit-strewn garbage dumpster, and you might just persuade him to muck about in said dumpster to find them.

This involves knowing what he wants, playing up his fear and distrust of anybody else getting his hands on them, deciding if this fear should be played upon directly or through reverse psychology, and offering him a means to achieve that goal that involves him mucking about in the dumpster.

The skilled manipulator can figure out what motivates this CEO, what his fears and hopes are, and can play on them, magnifying or diminishing or redirecting them until the CEO's current mental state is one where mucking about in the dumpster seems a semi-reasonable idea.

"Who are you? Get out of my office, I'm calling the guards!"

To me, 'I want to figure out how to get the CEO to become a janitor, I use my skills to chart the path' is on par with 'I want to figure out how to hit that monster from 30ft away with a melee attack with my 5ft reach, I use my attack bonus to overcome the extra difficulty'. It's an error of type - the answer is, you don't do that, instead you walk up and hit the monster from 5ft away The skilled manipulator's main degrees of freedom in achieving some kind of beneficial outcome lay more in skillfully choosing the goal than in skillfully charting the path.

The kind of round-about plan you came up with to convince the CEO is something that only works in fiction which is predicated on the idea that the authors need to make it happen, so they conveniently give the victim the idiot ball for that scene. That's a valid way to design a game, but it can be a big contributor to social mechanics seeming forced and mind-controley: Of course the CEO trusts someone - even accepting this premise that there's conveniently a bit of corporate espionage that he's already engaging in, that you know about, and that he's on speaking terms with you about, if he's going to hand this off to R&D in the end he at least trusts his R&D department. And if he doesn't, the research does him no good just sitting in a safe in his office.

On the other hand, putting aside what you as the manipulator want to achieve, just defining the CEO as a character will automatically create a set of things that the CEO could reasonably be moved to engage in, just on the basis of the CEO actually being a character who needs to interact with the world. Even if you can't convince him to do arbitrary thing X, you could discover that it doesn't take much to get him to have a second or third drink after work, that he's been researching recent construction companies for some new property development and if you were to show up with some plausible credentials in that guise it'd get you at least a first meeting without suspicion, that his wife likes the opera, etc. If your goal is 'humiliate this guy', making him muck around in a dumpster is a less skillfully chosen plan than, say, arranging for him to get drunk at the opera, have a case of mistaken identity, and make a scene in front of his wife.

The premise I'm being resistant to here has to do with how players using the system would be guided (explicitly or implicitly) into thinking about how to frame their intent to use the system. If it tells them 'pick what you want the mark to do and (use complex subsystem) to figure out how to make the factors line up' then that's going to lead to the same tensions that you often encounter when players feel like they're asking 'mother may I?' to the DM or are encountering a lot of 'no, that just doesn't work'; or alternately, DMs who get annoyed with a system because it tends to encourage players to mechanically introduce nonsensical things to a story. On the other hand, you can design a system around the idea that 'what your abilities will do is give you the way to finding workable plans amidst the bad ones'. That encourages a different play-style which I think would in the end be much truer to what actual social interaction feels like, or even what actual manipulation feels like.

Segev

2017-05-23, 02:21 PM

The premise I'm being resistant to here has to do with how players using the system would be guided (explicitly or implicitly) into thinking about how to frame their intent to use the system. If it tells them 'pick what you want the mark to do and (use complex subsystem) to figure out how to make the factors line up' then that's going to lead to the same tensions that you often encounter when players feel like they're asking 'mother may I?' to the DM or are encountering a lot of 'no, that just doesn't work'; or alternately, DMs who get annoyed with a system because it tends to encourage players to mechanically introduce nonsensical things to a story. On the other hand, you can design a system around the idea that 'what your abilities will do is give you the way to finding workable plans amidst the bad ones'. That encourages a different play-style which I think would in the end be much truer to what actual social interaction feels like, or even what actual manipulation feels like.

The idea is to make designing the CEO as a character a process that includes mechanics for what "him as a character" means. To remove it from the nebulous realm of "I guess it makes sense he'd like that, and if you roll Diplomacy or Sense Motive I might tell you if I like you and you roll high enough," and into a more concrete realm where this information has specific mechanics for how to discover it.

It moves it out of the realm of, "Okay, you said something that I thought was personally moving for me, which I translate as 'obviously' being inherently moving to the CEO that I control, so he's swayed by it," and into the realm of mechanics which tell you that pulling on that lever on his personality with this result on the die roll to do so has this explicit impact on how he views you, your proposition, or about taking actions related to or opposed to something you suggest.

There's no "nonsensical" thing being introduced. The whole point is to put mechanics behind the elements you say you want, so that the elements you say you want don't rely on the player manipulating the GM into thinking the GM should allow the NPC to be persuaded.

As you said, it's specifically to make it so that "I roll higher number on my attack to hit the guy 30 ft. away with my sword" isn't what you're doing. Instead, you're discovering that the guy is standing over there, and learning that you can, in fact, move things around so that you're within reach of your sword.

NichG

2017-05-23, 02:55 PM

The idea is to make designing the CEO as a character a process that includes mechanics for what "him as a character" means. To remove it from the nebulous realm of "I guess it makes sense he'd like that, and if you roll Diplomacy or Sense Motive I might tell you if I like you and you roll high enough," and into a more concrete realm where this information has specific mechanics for how to discover it.

It moves it out of the realm of, "Okay, you said something that I thought was personally moving for me, which I translate as 'obviously' being inherently moving to the CEO that I control, so he's swayed by it," and into the realm of mechanics which tell you that pulling on that lever on his personality with this result on the die roll to do so has this explicit impact on how he views you, your proposition, or about taking actions related to or opposed to something you suggest.

There's no "nonsensical" thing being introduced. The whole point is to put mechanics behind the elements you say you want, so that the elements you say you want don't rely on the player manipulating the GM into thinking the GM should allow the NPC to be persuaded.

As you said, it's specifically to make it so that "I roll higher number on my attack to hit the guy 30 ft. away with my sword" isn't what you're doing. Instead, you're discovering that the guy is standing over there, and learning that you can, in fact, move things around so that you're within reach of your sword.

Simplest way to demonstrate is to design I think, so here's a simple explicit example of a system designed the way I'm thinking. Maybe it'll make it clearer.

- The set of things a given NPC can accomplish in the abstract is sorted into types of Engagement. Each type of Engagement comes with a thing that it allows the NPC to make happen, which has a point rating based on how potent it is.

- Each engagement comes with Hooks - concrete things the NPC is expected to respond to in order to enable that Engagement. Hooks have a point rating based on how big of a deal they are (adds points), and how many conditions or protections there are around the Hook being discovered or exploited (subtracts points).

- A character with the correct abilities/access to Engagements of other NPCs/etc can use them to satisfy some conditions of Hooks, such as uncovering information necessary to use them effectively (e.g. a blackmail hook). Other conditions are tied to particular exchanges (e.g. it may represent a certain quantity of money exchanging hands for a bribe, gains in a negotiation, etc), or particular contexts (requires a pre-existing relationship of a certain type, a particular status, a particular job or business relation, etc). In addition, character skill at manipulation directly translates into the number of Hooks they are directly informed about upon initially encountering the NPC.

So a CEO might have the Engagement 'make decisions for their company' with the Hooks 'please the board of directors', 'eschew ethics for profit', and 'coverup bad PR'. 'please the board of directors' is a low point value Hook because the prerequisite is basically being on that board or controlling someone on that board, so it's hard to activate. 'eschew ethics for profit' is high point value because of how broad it is and how it opens the NPC up to followup vulnerability. 'Coverup bad PR' is middling, because the specific thing you can get out of it is basically the CEO's (and company's) silence on an issue, but it can't be pushed to, say, murder. The CEO may also have the Engagement 'Family', with hooks involving spending time with their family (letting a character control their movements and schedule to some degree) and placing their family above other priorities (vulnerability to kidnapping or blackmail primarily).

Since all Hooks have preconditions and constraints as to where they apply, knowing a hook doesn't let you automatically pull it. But it lets you know that if you satisfy those constraints, you're guaranteed to be able to pull it in those ways.

Okay, so the point of this is, the system explicitly does not give you any way to convince an arbitrary person about/to do an arbitrary thing. However, it also explicitly guarantees that there are always things that a person can be convinced to do, and gives you explicit guarantees about what would determine if it can be done. So the emphasis is on making good use of what is possible rather than choosing a goal and bulling through or failing.

CharonsHelper

2017-05-23, 03:05 PM

On the other hand, putting aside what you as the manipulator want to achieve, just defining the CEO as a character will automatically create a set of things that the CEO could reasonably be moved to engage in, just on the basis of the CEO actually being a character who needs to interact with the world. Even if you can't convince him to do arbitrary thing X, you could discover that it doesn't take much to get him to have a second or third drink after work, that he's been researching recent construction companies for some new property development and if you were to show up with some plausible credentials in that guise it'd get you at least a first meeting without suspicion, that his wife likes the opera, etc. If your goal is 'humiliate this guy', making him muck around in a dumpster is a less skillfully chosen plan than, say, arranging for him to get drunk at the opera, have a case of mistaken identity, and make a scene in front of his wife.

I'd argue that to have a system do this well, you'd need a book of example characters in a sort of social bestiary. Maybe with each social target rolling on a small table just before he's deployed so that it doesn't get repetitive.

Segev

2017-05-23, 03:25 PM

I think the "engagement" system looks a little too rigid.

Think about it: combat systems aren't set up so that there aren't creatures you can't use certain combat abilities on. You can always TRY to grapple them, for instance (though it may not be a good idea).

A CEO who you could never, under any circumstances, convince to "Go see a movie with me" because he has no Engagement to "see movies" is not a very realistic character.

What if Alice wanted to win herself a rich husband, and was trying to convince the CEO to like her? Does he have to have an Engagement of "wants a trophy wife" to even let her in the metaphorical door?

Were I do adapt that system as presented, I'd have Engagements be goals and drives and urges, and playing on them to achieve an arbitrary design would be how you manipulate or persuade the CEO.

"Wants to run a successful business" might be played upon by Alice by having her present herself as a helpful sounding board. She builds up an Engagement of "Likes to use Alice as a sounding board" through that, and later works on "likes spending time with Alice." Gradually or quickly, depending on her skill and his predilections, working towards him having a general "Likes Alice" engagement. Which she could then play on to get him to want to marry her.

Is she likely to be able to pull off "met him this morning; he's proposing by lunch time?" No. Not at all. That's silly. But if she's really good, she might manage a whirlwind romance ending in a wedding in a few weeks, perhaps.

The "gameplay" would involve identifying where he is and what things she can play on, and using those to build herself a "path" to the desire and action she wants him to have. The mechanical stat-sheet numbers would tell her how well she could play on those levers and buttons. How quickly she can build Engagements (if at all), and how hard she can lean on them to get desired actions out of the CEO.

kyoryu

2017-05-23, 03:38 PM

While it's not as systemized as what you're talking about, the Fate Toolkit goes over some more in-depth social stuff in a way similar to what you're talking about:

https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/social-conflict

jayem

2017-05-23, 05:17 PM

Or if you really want the CEO to explicitly go skip diving for some bizarre reason.

You can't just bribe him with [the possibility of ] food (unlike say a hungry person). But...

You might be able to convince him it's an initiation for the masons or other photo op (dependent on impersonation skills).
You might be able to convince him it's good publicity (dependent on basic persuasion)
You might be able to cry about losing something and how grateful you'd be (dependent on various charm based characteristics and actions).
You might be able to straight off pull rank (dependent on having a higher rank).
You might be able to arrange some rivals to approach, just as you pass the skip (dependent on reasoning).
You might be able to convince him to take something de-inhibiting (which might be an easier challenge).
[You might be able to convince him you saw something really valuable there (bluff skills)]

[and of course there's the full on Monte Cristo option]

And if the GM's decided, even subsconsiously, nope the guys not going skip diving whatevs, no amount of Roleplay will get past (his character will shift to match the GM's objective of not going skip diving).

kyoryu

2017-05-23, 05:21 PM

In all situations, you need to figure out what the other person wants, and then basically to give it to them.

Alternately, you need to psychologically hammer them to the point where they break down and give in.

Segev

2017-05-23, 10:12 PM

Don't underestimate what a talented fast-talk artist can trick you into, either.

NichG

2017-05-23, 10:29 PM

I think the "engagement" system looks a little too rigid.

Think about it: combat systems aren't set up so that there aren't creatures you can't use certain combat abilities on. You can always TRY to grapple them, for instance (though it may not be a good idea).

A CEO who you could never, under any circumstances, convince to "Go see a movie with me" because he has no Engagement to "see movies" is not a very realistic character.

What if Alice wanted to win herself a rich husband, and was trying to convince the CEO to like her? Does he have to have an Engagement of "wants a trophy wife" to even let her in the metaphorical door?

I made it rigid specifically to force a change in the premise of what that social interaction is there for. It's meant to punish a pattern of thinking that goes like: 'this guy, I absolutely must get this guy in particular to do this particular thing'. Here, its rather about either finding the guy who can be convinced to do the particular thing (find someone whose Engagements matches the intended behavior), or changing the particular thing into one appropriate and tuned to the particular guy.

Can you convince this CEO to go see a movie with you? Actually, its funny you chose that, because there's at least two ways to do it in the Engagements I gave. One is to get their kid to go see the movie and then pull the Hook about spending time with their family. The other is to become a member of the board of directors and say 'lets go see a movie and talk business after'. What you can't do is just say 'hey, lets go see a movie' really, really skillfully.

If Alice wants a rich husband, she can actively search for people who do have an Engagement with a hook 'wants a trophy wife' or analogous things like 'wants an heir' or 'satisfy family demands'. That'd be a good use for something like D&D's Gather Information skill - find an NPC with a specified hook, but you don't get to specify the NPC.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-24, 07:18 AM

I made it rigid specifically to force a change in the premise of what that social interaction is there for. It's meant to punish a pattern of thinking that goes like: 'this guy, I absolutely must get this guy in particular to do this particular thing'. Here, its rather about either finding the guy who can be convinced to do the particular thing (find someone whose Engagements matches the intended behavior), or changing the particular thing into one appropriate and tuned to the particular guy.

Can you convince this CEO to go see a movie with you? Actually, its funny you chose that, because there's at least two ways to do it in the Engagements I gave. One is to get their kid to go see the movie and then pull the Hook about spending time with their family. The other is to become a member of the board of directors and say 'lets go see a movie and talk business after'. What you can't do is just say 'hey, lets go see a movie' really, really skillfully.

If Alice wants a rich husband, she can actively search for people who do have an Engagement with a hook 'wants a trophy wife' or analogous things like 'wants an heir' or 'satisfy family demands'. That'd be a good use for something like D&D's Gather Information skill - find an NPC with a specified hook, but you don't get to specify the NPC.

I like where you seem to be going.

One can find someone who can be made to do a specific thing.
One can find things that a specific person can be made to do.

What one cannot do is make any specific person do any specific thing. No matter how nice the roll, no matter how many points are spent, mundane social interaction cannot force everyone to do anything. Social interaction is not a superpower, and it's not magic.

Segev

2017-05-24, 04:07 PM

Oh, sure, finding somebody who already is inclined to go with what you want is often the easiest path. When that is an option, great.

But people can change, too. People can be won over. People can be persuaded to take on new likes. People can be disillusioned with causes and even with hobbies.

If you can't find a better target more amenable to your designs, you should still have at least potential to work anybody around.

No guarantees, and it might be beyond your capability, but the mechanics shouldn't say "nobody could possibly do it."

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-24, 04:24 PM

Darth Ultron

2017-05-24, 05:08 PM

No guarantees, and it might be beyond your capability, but the mechanics shouldn't say "nobody could possibly do it."

But why don't? Do you really think anyone can be convinced to to anything? Would you be willing to say anyone could convince you to do anything? Even something you were very much against?

I guess saying ''you would need to roll 100 on a d20'' is saying it's ''possible'', is that what your talking about? Like a monster might have an AC of 100, but it can still be hit?

And a great many things should be impossible from just a conversation. You won't turn a paladin into a assassin over a quick cup of tea. But, sure, you might turn them to the dark side with a ton of work.

But, mechanically, you'd need a huge set of rules. To just say ''if a person does not want to'' they get a +2 to resist, really does not cut it.

Segev

2017-05-24, 05:37 PM

That's where we disagree... there are some things that some people simply can't be convinced to do, or made to feel, no matter how well even the most capable hypothetical character might roll.It really isn't about "high rolls," not at the front end of it.

If you've got a character who absolutely, positively will not do X, then no amount of high roll will get him to. But what you attack isn't "Do X," then; what you attack is the pillars that support this adamant refusal.

There's no way Bender would ever trust the new model of a robot. The program to make him "compatible" with it didn't "roll high." It created scenarios which he lived through that altered elements of his drives and passions until it worked him into a position where he COULD be persuaded to like that new robot model.

But why don't? Do you really think anyone can be convinced to to anything? Would you be willing to say anyone could convince you to do anything? Even something you were very much against? "Anyone" of "anything?" Probably not. A sufficiently skilled manipulator with sufficient access to me and the right evidences and willingness to manipulate my environment properly? Maybe. The trick would be convincing me that something I currently find unacceptable is, somehow, acceptable.

Hypothetically, I might be adamantly opposed to taking that which belongs to Alice to give to Bob, no matter how much Bob bribes me to do it. But if Bob were to somehow convince me that it really belongs to Bob, and were to offer me compensation for my services as a repossessor on Bob's behalf, then he might convince me to take the item from Alice and give it to him.

Now, Bob would have to convince me that the item really WAS his. How he goes about this also involves a combination of skills and "moves," whether it involves forging evidence, out-witting me, or simply earning my trust so strongly that I don't doubt it when Bob makes the claim. (How he'd earn that trust probably involves building up a friendship and generally showing me through experience that Bob is trustworthy. And then probably providing a plausible narrative as to why it definitely is his and Alice stole it.)

This works even if I'm a big believer in respect for property ownership, because he's worked around the "It's Alice's; I won't steal it" absolute barrier by removing "It's Alice's" as a defense against the request.

I guess saying ''you would need to roll 100 on a d20'' is saying it's ''possible'', is that what your talking about? Like a monster might have an AC of 100, but it can still be hit?Again, it's not necessarily about "rolling high enough." If you're using a melee weapon to attack a creature out of your melee reach, it doesn't matter if you roll greater than 10[sup]10[sup] as a final result on a natural 20 on your attack roll; you're not hitting that creature. You have to either make a ranged attack or move into melee range before you have a CHANCE at it.

Likewise, if somebody is absolutely not going to be convinced of something, it should be based on things you can attempt to undermine or manipulate or erode in value to him. No, you can't just "roll high" to convince him, but you can maneuver him to a position where it is no longer an impossible thing to ask of him.

And a great many things should be impossible from just a conversation. You won't turn a paladin into a assassin over a quick cup of tea. But, sure, you might turn them to the dark side with a ton of work. That is what I propose: that you can put the work in to corrupt the paladin until he is "dark side" enough that he might just be that assassin for you.

But, mechanically, you'd need a huge set of rules. To just say ''if a person does not want to'' they get a +2 to resist, really does not cut it.You mean, like we have a huge set of rules for combat?

I agree. It would have to be a real, fully-developed subsystem.

Floret

2017-05-24, 05:46 PM

No guarantees, and it might be beyond your capability, but the mechanics shouldn't say "nobody could possibly do it."

That's where we disagree... there are some things that some people simply can't be convinced to do, or made to feel, no matter how well even the most capable hypothetical character might roll.

The question is how to balance this. How many things are there that how many people simply can't be convinced of? You seem to think quite a lot, Max; Segev considers that number quite a bit lower (as do I myself). Sure, we disagree, and (with the methods available over a forum) will likely not convince the other side. But where do we go from here?
(Not saying this is the case with you, but these things are prone to sampling bias: If you have been successfully convinced, it very often doesn't look like you were convinced of anything, or that someone worked their diplomancy. If someone tried and failed, it is often much more visible that an attempt of persuasion occured. Also, if I remember correctly, both Segev and I would include "suggesting to your friend you might want to see a movie with them" or "ask a generally willing person out" in "this is technically persuasion at work". Just... rather easy, with little resistance. "Every action you would not have taken, were it not for the input of someone else, was something that could be seen as something you were persuaded/manipulated into doing" is at least my personal view, for discussions on "what should social systems in RPGs be capable of".)
And then there is a whole other question: How many things are there that hom many people SHOULDN'T simply be convinced of? Because we are not really talking about world simulators, but about RPGs. Just because something isn't an accurate representation of how things are in real life, doesn't necessarily mean it can't work that way in a game, to provide more interesting gameplay and more options. (I for one love mechanics like Rolling on Edge in Shadowrun to determine setting details I hadn't previously thought about. Sometimes player's might just have a lucky day, and if I hadn't determined if some NPC likes something... they just might?)

But why don't? Do you really think anyone can be convinced to to anything? Would you be willing to say anyone could convince you to do anything? Even something you were very much against?

Not Segev, but given we had this discussion before pretty much in his camp regarding this: Basically, yes. But.
It might, in the more ingrained cases, require immidiate threats to life or health, large quantities of money (or something else that I really desperately want), or long times of manipulation, torture, brainwashing or gaslighting.
Depending on the tone of the game, I would consider these perfectly possible actions the game system should be able to handle - with appropriate in-world repercussions.

But, mechanically, you'd need a huge set of rules. To just say ''if a person does not want to'' they get a +2 to resist, really does not cut it.

Yes, you would. That is the entire point and the core of the proposal: To give Social interactions rules with the complexity, depth and variety rivaling that of combat in most games, to "better" (However you want to define that, e.g. "more accurately to real life", "more interestingly gamistically") portray social interactions mechanically.

Actually, I have just today come back from a LARP where both Parry and Dodge were special abilities: A number of times in 12 hours you could declare "My character is better at combat than I am, They Dodged/Parried your attack, even though I didn't."

Huh. So appearantly this exists in some Larps (Though that technically doesn't qualify as "someone asked for it", just that it exists). It runs somewhat counter to everything I know and love about Larp, but my limited experience might influence my perception in that regard worse than I thought it might.

Segev

2017-05-24, 05:58 PM

Just to back Floret's point up: Yes, I would definitely categorize, "Let's go see a movie!" as a use for the social system. I would also categorize, "Let's go see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2!" as such, particularly if the other person(s) in the group all are debating which movie to see.

"Guys, we all like the marvel movies. Only some of us like romances, like Bob and Alice want to go see, and only others of us like animated family features like Jim wants to see. So we should go see GotGv2, since all of us like that kind of thing," is an effort at persuasion. It's trying to use reasoned argument combined with appeal to friendship ("You don't want to force people who don't like romances to sit through it, do you?" is implicit), but it is an effort at persuasion.

If it came to mechanics, the character making that argument would be appealing to whatever Engagement or Intimacy or Hook or whatnot that includes "liking Marvel movies" and "friendship with the group" as levers on which he's pulling.

It probably isn't a HARD one to pull off, assuming he's right about people being fine with GotGv2, but if Alice and Bob were dead-set on that romance, then it might be harder given that they have a contrary urge pulling them towards it.

Cluedrew

2017-05-24, 06:02 PM

That's where we disagree... there are some things that some people simply can't be convinced to do, or made to feel, no matter how well even the most capable hypothetical character might roll.You can fool some people all of the time, you can fool all people some of the time. But you can't fool all people all the time.

Introducing a social system includes placing appropriate limits. I don't even think it would be particularly hard to implement. Some harder things would be the level of detail right and allowing for organic character growth are harder, although still solvable (I hope).

flond

2017-05-24, 06:56 PM

But why don't? Do you really think anyone can be convinced to to anything? Would you be willing to say anyone could convince you to do anything? Even something you were very much against?

I guess saying ''you would need to roll 100 on a d20'' is saying it's ''possible'', is that what your talking about? Like a monster might have an AC of 100, but it can still be hit?

And a great many things should be impossible from just a conversation. You won't turn a paladin into a assassin over a quick cup of tea. But, sure, you might turn them to the dark side with a ton of work.

But, mechanically, you'd need a huge set of rules. To just say ''if a person does not want to'' they get a +2 to resist, really does not cut it.

Admittedly, I tend to feel that this falls into the realm of "don't roll for stupid things". Much as I prefer the entirely voluntary Burning Wheel. Apocalypse world's approach of "you need a valid hook to roll" works too.

Yes, this makes the social system a little bit more fuzzy but eh. Fundamentally it's nice to have something that presents a bit of tension and a bit of objectivity.

Mr Beer

2017-05-24, 07:51 PM

I run GURPS and there are a variety of socially relevant skills and reaction modifiers available. I usually get the player to make a roll, I apply situational modifiers and if their explanation of how they are attempting to influence the other party is clever/convincing/amusing, then they will get a bonus.

So points in relevant skills, advantages or talents will make the character better at influencing other people, but being clever about it or roleplaying well, makes it more likely to succeed.

Since everything costs points in GURPS, it makes sense that someone who forgo utility in one area in order to be better at influencing people, should be objectively better at doing so, regardless of their roleplaying ability. But at the same time, roleplaying is rewarded.

Bohandas

2017-05-24, 07:58 PM

As was pointed out to me recently, there isn't really an equivalent to "roll initiative" for a social encounter. There is no formalized system of rounds, and it's not always clear when a single roll will represent an entire conversation or a single exchange. For a game system to be usable, you need to be able to apply it--or ignore it--in consistent ways.

Ypu need to check out the CRPG Last Word (http://www.twelvetiles.com/LW/lastword.html), it actually has mechanics for all of this.

kyoryu

2017-05-24, 08:08 PM

The other thing a good social skill should model is influence *over time*. It's very likely you can't get someone to immediately agree to something, or change their view, but you can slowly shift it over time. If you want someone to change political allegiance or religion or something, it is incredibly unlikely that they will do that after a single conversation. However, you can plant a seed, that future and later conversations can take advantage of to shift thoughts and beliefs over a long period of time.

As a trivial example, I highly doubt my wife would have married me if I asked her the first time we met, no matter how persuasive I was.

NichG

2017-05-24, 10:08 PM

It really isn't about "high rolls," not at the front end of it.

If you've got a character who absolutely, positively will not do X, then no amount of high roll will get him to. But what you attack isn't "Do X," then; what you attack is the pillars that support this adamant refusal.

There's no way Bender would ever trust the new model of a robot. The program to make him "compatible" with it didn't "roll high." It created scenarios which he lived through that altered elements of his drives and passions until it worked him into a position where he COULD be persuaded to like that new robot model.

If we take a system with rigid constraints like the Engagements and Hooks one, this can still happen. However the metaphor that it forces you to use to conceptualize ways in which it's likely to work is fundamentally different.

That is to say, assuming 'any adamant refusal must be supported by some set of factors; factors can be attacked to weaken them' which suggests a mindset centered around getting the mechanically strongest 'attack' you can so you can erode the pillars as quickly as possible and thereby get to the point you want where the person doesn't make adamant refusals anymore. In D&D, you can bypass DR by carrying around a golf bag of swords of different materials, but most players will realize that in the long run it's simpler to spend your resources to just increase your overall damage output by 10. In combat, generally the way things work is that you don't have the opportunity or inclination to scout out your enemies before you might be tested to see if you can defeat them, so the mindset and habits tend towards general solutions over bespoke ones. Encounters that regularly thwart those general solutions tend to create friction with the players and engender the feeling that they are being specifically blocked from using their abilities.

On the other hand, if we instead have the metaphor of an impenetrable wall with a few cracks and soft spots in it, the focus immediately has to be 'lets find the crack' not 'lets get a bigger wrecking ball'. That encourages approaching manipulation and social interaction from the mindset of the player needing to think about the target rather than needing to think about themselves and their abilities. In the combat analogy, if you just told a character that their enemy was too big to be damaged to death they'd cry foul. But if you said 'the enemy is actually a dungeon - attacking the walls doesn't really do anything except let you move through those areas; but there are core areas, and damage to the core areas can bring down the beast' then you shut down the line of thinking that goes 'okay, I just need to do more damage to the walls' by explicitly saying what will work.

In terms of the Engagements/Hooks thing, it turned out that in the end, yes, it was possible to convince the CEO to go to a movie. Some of the ways would in fact require a lot of surrounding context to be put into place. But as a necessary (rather than convenient) condition of doing so, the person doing the convincing has to understand 'what would make the CEO go to a movie?'. Normally (e.g. in a system without social mechanics at all), understanding that would be something that the player would have to use their own abilities to do. In a system that uses 'forcing' style mechanics, the system is saying 'actually, understanding this is unnecessary for either you or your character'. My attempt with the Engagements/Hooks system was to find something that would say 'understanding the mark is necessary, but the system provides a way to let the character do the understanding and then transmit that understanding to you as the player'. It keeps the necessity of understanding in place, which in my mind is the absolute prerequisites for the results having any level of guaranteed self-consistency.

Segev

2017-05-25, 09:13 AM

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-25, 09:46 AM

NichG

2017-05-25, 09:47 AM

You say "it's easier to just up your damage by 10 than to carry around a golf bag of swords," but in practice, that's not how players see it. Players certainly will take the +10 damage! But then they'll still want that bag of swords so that they don't have to "pay" that 10 damage due to DR, and instead are doing a net +5 or +6 damage even if they're not doing their "best" damage.

I've never seen players ever bother with any material other than adamantine for a weapon in D&D. Instead they'll upgrade their +Strength item, upgrade the enhancement bonus on their go-to weapon, use things like Power Attack to turn the +hit into more +damage, and in the case of more hardcore optimizers muck around with things that get them X-stat-to-Y bonuses (such as Slippers of Battledancing) or straight out multipliers. In general, if you have a system which says 'you can do things the complicated way with lower numbers, or the simple way with higher numbers' then in every case I've seen, players instantly gravitate towards just making their numbers high enough to do things the simple way all the time.

Similarly, the difference between "find and identify the pillars you have to shift" and "find and identify the cracks you have to go through" is small. And my proposed solution doesn't remove the latter as an option. Honestly, designed right, the latter would be the EASIER option under most circumstances. Less reliable in the long run, if only because it often requires stronger levels of immediate manipulation and potential trickery to twist agreement out of the specific cracks, but certainly faster.

As a whole, gamers have some very deeply held traditions and biases about how they expect things to work. If you're making a system in which some of those expectations will be wrong, its better to just make it explicitly impossible rather than making it hard in order to attempt to disincentivize it, because the immediate message that people will get on encountering the system is 'this system makes this check way too hard!' or 'I haven't yet found the optimization that the designers expected everyone to use/gotten to the level that we need to be at to do this quest' rather than 'I should try do this some other way'. It's not like that's a foolish mindset even - every game runs on unspoken expectations, like 'when you're suddenly put in an encounter with monsters, the DM probably isn't trying to TPK the party'. So when you change those expectations, you have to be really crystal clear and explicit about it.

Leaving the option to do it the old way means that people won't easily learn how the new way works.

And my point with the 'old way' and 'new way' here comes back to what I was saying earlier, that the major problem leading to really crappy social systems seems to me to be the view that social interaction is basically an alternate form of combat. Thus the emphasis on designing around conflicts, use of social or manipulative 'force', etc. To find an better alternative, I think you need to make a really clean break.

Segev

2017-05-25, 10:21 AM

I see people try to do this "then you must shift the other person's pillars" thing in conversation when they realize they're not getting what they want or changing the other person's mind.

I don't know if they think it's some sort of clever conversational judo, or something... but it pretty much comes off as transparent, annoying, etc.I'm not sure I follow. Can you try to elaborate or rephrase, please?

I've never seen players ever bother with any material other than adamantine for a weapon in D&D. Instead they'll...I have. It usually involves knowledge of what they're going to face, or is something the ammo-user does, but I have seen it. And once they have the "werewolf weapon," they don't tend to sell it, because now that they have it, being unprepared for future encounters feels off. They'll typically hang on to them until their primary weapon has reached the point that they do more damage even with the DR with the primary than they would with the specialized one.

Yes, players tend to focus on the bigger numbers first, but in real play, they also focus on what works in the game they're playing.

As a whole, gamers have some very deeply held traditions and biases about how they expect things to work. If you're making a system in which some of those expectations will be wrong, its better to just make it explicitly impossible rather than making it hard in order to attempt to disincentivize it, because the immediate message that people will get on encountering the system is 'this system makes this check way too hard!' or 'I haven't yet found the optimization that the designers expected everyone to use/gotten to the level that we need to be at to do this quest' rather than 'I should try do this some other way'.I've...not really seen this to be the case, in practice. Heck, "I haven't found the optimization the designers expected" is often the lead-in to "oh, I should be doing it THIS way." Because optimization isn't just "bigger numbers." It's technique.

IF optimization were just bigger numbers, we wouldn't have caster supremacy as an issue in D&D. Most of the things casters do that are unassailable by non-casters are "different ways" to solve problems, rather than just bigger numbers.

Leaving the option to do it the old way means that people won't easily learn how the new way works.You're viewing this as some sort of teaching exercise. I'm viewing it as a game subsystem that is to stand in its own right.

The fact that there are mechanics to use existing hooks (i.e. "working through the cracks") is all that's needed to get people to look to it. Making characters into adamant-willed caricatures who can't ever evolve as people (nor ever be persuaded by any means other than the 2-3 hooks built into them) leads to greater problems of verisimilitude every bit as bad as "I rolled umpteen bajillion on Diplomacy so now he's my mind-slave."

And my point with the 'old way' and 'new way' here comes back to what I was saying earlier, that the major problem leading to really crappy social systems seems to me to be the view that social interaction is basically an alternate form of combat. Thus the emphasis on designing around conflicts, use of social or manipulative 'force', etc. To find an better alternative, I think you need to make a really clean break.
I'm really not viewing it as combat. I'm viewing it as a game, which may be competitive.

It might seem "combat" like when the player of the character doesn't want the character to feel, believe, or act in the way you're trying to persuade the character to act, but that's unavoidable unless you want to remove mechanics entirely and make it just a game of players using real-world social skills, pressures, etc. on each other to convince each other to want the character to do what you want to claim he should.

That meta-"game" exists in most RPGs already, precisely because of the lack of a social subsystem, and leads to frustration over either feeling bullied into having to give in or feeling angry that so-and-so is just refusing to "play in character" by doing what YOU think they should do. That metagaming weasel.

Just like rules for combat avoid the "I hit you!" "No you didn't!" arguments, rules for social interaction avoid the arguments over what is really believable that a character feels, believes, desires, or does.

Now, because "what he does" is the sole agency a player has in the game, we shouldn't let social rules (barring, arguably, magic) usurp that, but that's another topic.

Persuasion is one of two things: Acting on existing desires, drives, fears, etc. to convince somebody they are serving those hooks by acting a particular way, or acting to add, subtract, or change drives, fears, desires, etc. so that the character now has the right ones to let you act on them to convince them to act in their service.

I suppose the point I'm getting at, then, is this: You're arguing for the same final play that I am. I'm arguing that the game should be deeper than you are, however.

The layer I'm advocating doesn't actually control behavior directly. The layer you're advocating does. (Or at least, it allows the handing out of rewards and penalties associated with particular behaviors.) I support that layer's existence.

The layer I'm advocating lets you get under the hood and modify the layer you're discussing, rather than leaving that layer as adamant and unchangeable, with no depth to the character beyond a 2-3 bullet-point list of traits.

NichG

2017-05-25, 11:39 AM

I've...not really seen this to be the case, in practice. Heck, "I haven't found the optimization the designers expected" is often the lead-in to "oh, I should be doing it THIS way." Because optimization isn't just "bigger numbers." It's technique.

...

You're viewing this as some sort of teaching exercise. I'm viewing it as a game subsystem that is to stand in its own right.

A game system basically is a teaching exercise. It's trying to communicate a way of regarding what is possible that creates the space for certain kinds of reasoning, even if the players have no prior real life experience in that kind of reasoning. If I e.g. make a game about the politics of a succession war, part of the goal is for players to be able to feel comfortable reasoning about the world that it presents - making sensible plans, etc. Good game mechanics serve to align the way the players think with what should actually work in the world of the narrative. So system design necessarily considers how the elements of the system are going to interact with where people are coming from.

I run a lot of homebrew systems, and play in quite a few 'first time with this system' campaigns, and this issue of mixed messages causing a fallback to previously learned habits is a pattern I've seen repeated quite a bit. Spoilering examples because its a big tangent.

I think a really good set of examples of this showed up in a campaign of The Strange that we had (based off of the Cypher System). Cypher system breaks with several fairly strongly-held expectations:

- Character powers are not constant, but rather come and go in the form of very common one-use objects. The tradition that this tries to break with is the idea of the primacy of the character 'build'. If Cyphers are where most of your power lies, then presumably you can't make a standard operating procedure or a particular character build, but instead you would have to constantly adapt your strategy during play due to your current set of opportunities. Except that there are various ways around this buried in the system in the form of specific character options in splatbooks and the like. What we found is, players just don't tend to use their Cyphers; they don't trust or rely upon the availability of more Cyphers in the future. As a result, in a system where we should be changing Cypher loadouts on a per-game basis, we mostly had static collections for runs of 5-6 sessions, and instead relied more on the few powers we did get from character build.

- Character baseline preformance does not really increase, but instead you can spike your performance higher and higher as you advance, by spending points from a pool. Someone totally untrained but high level would by default do really poorly at something, but could spend points to do really well on a single instance of that task even if its something completely esoteric. The GM in particular found this one difficult and was always asking people 'do you have a skill involving X' in order to figure out who might plausible attempt things (because the system does still have skills, after all) - but the skills are actually only a small contributor mechanically. So again, the system split its messages - 'what matters is resources, not build... (but here's a way to kinda do it with build)' and that made it harder to adapt. It wasn't quite as hard for the players to start using this mechanic, but it did take a few sessions before players realized that they should basically be spending at least a little Effort before almost every roll, rather than just rolling reflexively.

- XP is intended to be split 50/50 between character advancement and dramatic editing types of uses. The dramatic editing uses are extremely good - things like making multi-use items in a game where items are almost entirely one-use affairs and are the bulk of character power. But XP was almost never used for non-advancement purposes (and I've heard this issue crop up in other groups adapting to Cypher system games). So again, mixed messages mean that players default to what their expectations inform them of.

For another example, I made a system where the conceit was that you didn't become more resilient as you became stronger (e.g. leveled up), but that no matter how strong an attack was you could always avoid it at a constant cost from a resource pool. So the guy with a dagger who tries to slit the throat of a high-level adventurer will kill them in one shot if the adventurer doesn't spend the 3 points or whatever to dodge it - which the adventurer can basically always do as long as they have points. What this should have meant is that the point pool would be treated like HP, and if you were down to say 5 points, needed 3 to dodge, and were facing two opponents, that would be the message that if you don't fall back you're going to die next round. But because attacks actually did do damage to stats (but such that most of the time, two hits with your average weapon would kill anyone), I had a player misinterpret their toughness and get themselves killed based on the fact that just because they had been forced to spend a bunch of points to avoid multiple attacks so far, they had not yet taken damage.

And for an example that went the other way, I made a system of modifications to D&D that introduced a series of abilities that had a kind of Rock-Paper-Scissors interaction but with the environment playing a role. For example, a Speed ability which made someone unhittable unless you could somehow interfere with their vision so they couldn't move without tripping/colliding/etc; an Avoidance ability that mean that the first thing each round to try to make contact with their body would be perfectly avoided with a 100% chance - whether that's a raindrop or a fireball; etc. They were basically impossible to brute force through, so the players started carrying around things like smoke bombs so that they could have the proper counters. I think it also helped that one of the players got one of those abilities fairly early on, and everyone could see otherwise threatening encounters completely fail to touch them because they didn't possess a workable counter.

The fact that there are mechanics to use existing hooks (i.e. "working through the cracks") is all that's needed to get people to look to it. Making characters into adamant-willed caricatures who can't ever evolve as people (nor ever be persuaded by any means other than the 2-3 hooks built into them) leads to greater problems of verisimilitude every bit as bad as "I rolled umpteen bajillion on Diplomacy so now he's my mind-slave."

I'm really not viewing it as combat. I'm viewing it as a game, which may be competitive.

It might seem "combat" like when the player of the character doesn't want the character to feel, believe, or act in the way you're trying to persuade the character to act, but that's unavoidable unless you want to remove mechanics entirely and make it just a game of players using real-world social skills, pressures, etc. on each other to convince each other to want the character to do what you want to claim he should.

See, this is the thing. It's not unavoidable. The way to avoid it is to change the premise of the initiator of the social interaction.

If the initiator assumes that it is a reasonable thing to 'make' someone else feel, believe, or act a certain way, then you get stuck with this outcome. But if we change the way that social interaction's purpose is perceived, then we avoid this problem because the initiator doesn't go in assuming that the question to be answered by the system is 'can I persuade this person of this thing?'. The problem is the habit of seeing NPCs or other PCs as obstacles to be overcome, rather than resources which make certain things possible that would not be without them.

That is to say, the conceit that I am trying to present is the idea that there is no such thing as purely competitive socialization. Any social competition is a competition over control of a larger scale cooperation. The reason is that if it ever becomes purely competitive, the person who is being persuaded can simply slam the door in the other person's face. Someone who refuses to socialize at all has no Engagements and no Hooks, but that also means they have no power either. It is the willingness to take on vulnerability in exchange for influence of that larger-scale cooperation that makes competition possible in the first place. Yes, this is clipping out some hard-coded realities of humans - we would have difficulty turning it all off 100% - but in any game system we make abstractions for sake of clarity.

I suppose the point I'm getting at, then, is this: You're arguing for the same final play that I am. I'm arguing that the game should be deeper than you are, however.

The layer I'm advocating doesn't actually control behavior directly. The layer you're advocating does. (Or at least, it allows the handing out of rewards and penalties associated with particular behaviors.) I support that layer's existence.

The layer I'm advocating lets you get under the hood and modify the layer you're discussing, rather than leaving that layer as adamant and unchangeable, with no depth to the character beyond a 2-3 bullet-point list of traits.

Of course characters can have more depth than the list of their Engagements and Hooks. That list is simply the contact that they make with hard mechanics. Create an opportunity to gain some kind of social influence, tie it to some responsibilities, and if an NPC decides to take you up on that - congratulations, you just imparted them with an Engagement and a few Hooks. The hard line is that the mechanics give you a promise that there are certain things you can do without question - if you meet the conditions of a Hook, you can pull that Hook and get the promised outcome. The mechanics give you absolutely no guarantees outside of that boundary. That doesn't mean that nothing happens outside of that boundary, it's that anything that happens outside of that boundary is formally within the agency of someone other than you at the table.

Combat rules don't say 'the enemy will walk up and attack you'. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, or that it isn't a likely outcome. If a squishy mage steps out in the open, maybe that'll bait the enemy to expose themselves, and maybe it won't. But because it lies outside of the envelope of the mechanics, that says that both of those outcomes are equally valid to have happen. By excluding the adoption and abandonment of Engagements from mechanical direction, it explicitly says that those things are not covered under some abstraction of character ability, but rather belong to the decision of the player (or GM) who has responsibility over that character.

Ideally, that should be taken to mean that for those things any question of believability is off the table. What the character does in those circumstances should be taken to be the character's controller communicating or deciding something about the character, rather than them correctly or incorrectly playing them.

Floret

2017-05-25, 02:23 PM

I see people try to do this "then you must shift the other person's pillars" thing in conversation when they realize they're not getting what they want or changing the other person's mind.

I don't know if they think it's some sort of clever conversational judo, or something... but it pretty much comes off as transparent, annoying, etc.

If they fail, sure, it comes off as that (Or as "what is that guy on about?"). If they succeed, it usually just registers as "Huh, I never thought about it like this", "Thanks for pointing that out" or something alike. And while this changes the perception of these sorts of things (And, keeping in mind, most persuasion isn't harmful in effect or intent), it is important to view those as what they are - essentially two results of the same action, based on varying skill (or situational awareness, or willingness of target, etc.). Because only if we know what we want to model - for me, social interaction/manipulation in its entirety, not just "the kind of social interaction people try but IRL fail at" - the modelling can work.

A game system basically is a teaching exercise. It's trying to communicate a way of regarding what is possible that creates the space for certain kinds of reasoning, even if the players have no prior real life experience in that kind of reasoning. If I e.g. make a game about the politics of a succession war, part of the goal is for players to be able to feel comfortable reasoning about the world that it presents - making sensible plans, etc. Good game mechanics serve to align the way the players think with what should actually work in the world of the narrative. So system design necessarily considers how the elements of the system are going to interact with where people are coming from.

This sounds to me like a rather strange way of framing it. I think this comes down to two factors:
1. It takes rules as a means to an end. And while that should certainly be true, I think the end it focusses on is "simulation" more than anything - which means that rules that exist primarily for the sake of interesting gameplay (And those should not contradict the world, certainly) are completely off the table. Gamistic satisfaction ("Does this feel good to play")might not be a goal of yours, or even something you abhor, but I don't think it can be completely discounted as irrelevant while designing.
2. While game systems do not exist in a vacuum without other game systems, and I do think it has merit to consider "what do other systems do" while designing, I don't think one can fault a game system for players playing it like another. That sounds, to me, like developing a part of your system not to make it fit in best with what you want it to do, but instead for... well, for what? To make it more palatable to the group of people who are too ingrained in old systems and unwilling or unable to learn new ones and accept their premises?
I mean, take FATE for example. Works... rather differently from most "classic" TRPGs, and most newcomers might not play it to its full potential because of that. But I do not think this should be taken to change the system, but maybe invest time to explain the mechanics better, instead of diluting the intended play experience. Basically: "Learning by doing" is a great way to explain mechanics in any game, but it is not the job of the mechanics themselves to explain themselves, but rather of the game manual or GM. At least from my perspective.

Of course characters can have more depth than the list of their Engagements and Hooks. That list is simply the contact that they make with hard mechanics. Create an opportunity to gain some kind of social influence, tie it to some responsibilities, and if an NPC decides to take you up on that - congratulations, you just imparted them with an Engagement and a few Hooks. The hard line is that the mechanics give you a promise that there are certain things you can do without question - if you meet the conditions of a Hook, you can pull that Hook and get the promised outcome. The mechanics give you absolutely no guarantees outside of that boundary. That doesn't mean that nothing happens outside of that boundary, it's that anything that happens outside of that boundary is formally within the agency of someone other than you at the table.

Well, but what is there to speak against having a system for a player character to create Engagements and hooks? Like, great, you can have set ones and whatever you can convince the GM that it makes sense (Or that the GM decides). But I think there is value in having a system on top of that.
For one, the GM can still say "Nah, makes no sense that this engagement might ever be created". There can still be much of the same area of control over the system. On the plus side, if the GM is unwilling to just decide, or torn between just saying yes or no, involving player skill in it is, I feel, a good way to give the players more agency, and help the GM improvising.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-25, 02:38 PM

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-25, 03:03 PM

No. It just comes off like that, full stop, before it has any chance to succeed or fail.

You are now asserting that nobody has ever led you to change your mind due to new information or correcting a faulty previous assumption. That, in effect, you would be the worst Juror of all time because you would come to some conclusion early on in the trial and all attempts thereafter would be ignored as annoyingly trying to change your opinion/perception of what happened. But here are the phenomena that disprove your perception:

People change political parties.
Juries change their minds according to presented evidence.
People gain new insights into people they dislike.
People learn new ways of looking at situations to better their mood. (This is part of a therapist's job. To help people have a healthier perception of the bad things that happen to them.)

These things are rarely instantaneous, but can be caused by a single person and repeated exposure. I myself while working in car sales changed a person's mind from wanting to buy a dodge Charger (a terrible car for her situation) to buying a Nissan Altima. And this person had been adamany about buying the Charger a week before.

Segev

2017-05-25, 03:59 PM

Let's say Jim is friends with Bob, and believes Bob to be a good guy. Bob can generally get Jim to stand up for him if people malign Bob, because of this. Bob can also get Jim to do him favors (and does reciprocate at times).

Alice shows up and wants to convince Jim not to help out Bob in Bob's latest "harmless eccentricity." She starts off with some dire imprecations about Bob being up to no good, and Jim just blows that off because it's nonsense. Bob's a good guy.

Now, Alice could try to hook into that "Bob's a good guy" thing and lie to Jim, telling him she believes Bob is being used by Baron McNasty to do something evil and that Jim should refuse to help Bob with this because Bob would regret it if it succeeded. Or, she could act on her belief that Bob is actually Baron McNasty in disguise and go out and find proof positive that Bob's plan is vile, and show the evidence to Jim.

Under the rigid Engagement system, there is room to argue that Jim could not be persuaded to believe Alice's evidence, because he trusts Bob and Bob says "nope, fake."

One could also interpret Max_Killjoy's objections to having the pillars of belief shifted to mean that if Max were Jim, it would be impossible to convince him that Bob is NOT a good guy and that Bob's plan involves doing horrid things to nice people even if Alice were to get video evidence of Bob gloating about his plan while torturing an orphan's pet puppy in front of him. Because that would involve having to roll some measure of social skill to convince Jim that this evidence is real enough to shift that pillar of belief away from "Bob is a good guy."

Now, you might say, "That's awfully extreme. Alice isn't using persuasion mechanics, here. Max_Killjoy's character Jim is persuaded by the plain evidence!" And perhaps you're right; this is an extremely obvious case.

But evidence is rarely that cut-and-dried. Just how much evidence does Alice have to get to convince Jim that Bob's actually a bad guy? Does Alice's skill in presenting it, does her ability to project sincerity, does even her choice in how to approach the issue impact Jim's decision-making?

I contest that it does, for 99% of people. Probably more. Coming at it with a scolding attitude and smug superiority invites skepticism, whereas presenting it in a way that builds the conclusion naturally in Jim's mind historically has a better chance of convincing most "Jim"s that the evidence is conclusive. Call it manipulative or call it clear presentation, but the fact that presentation method impacts the likelihood that the evidence will be received in the manner intended is true. It takes far more incisive logic to pick apart evidence presented well (but with a bias towards a potentially false conclusion) to find flaws in its reasoning, and similarly more emotional distance to pick apart poorly-presented evidence to realize that it may, in fact, have merit.

And this is just one example of a case where moving an underlying pillar of belief applies.

Coming to like somebody more than when they were a random stranger you just met, or coming to dislike somebody you'd previously thought was your friend, also requires shifting these pillars. For most people, it is not true that no amount of effort on another person's part can cause you to like that person better. Whether that other person is willing and able to put that effort in is another story. But they potentially could.

Floret

2017-05-25, 06:01 PM

What ImNotTrevor and Segev said pretty much answers all I could and lines up with how I think about the topic.

NichG

2017-05-25, 08:40 PM

If they fail, sure, it comes off as that (Or as "what is that guy on about?"). If they succeed, it usually just registers as "Huh, I never thought about it like this", "Thanks for pointing that out" or something alike. And while this changes the perception of these sorts of things (And, keeping in mind, most persuasion isn't harmful in effect or intent), it is important to view those as what they are - essentially two results of the same action, based on varying skill (or situational awareness, or willingness of target, etc.). Because only if we know what we want to model - for me, social interaction/manipulation in its entirety, not just "the kind of social interaction people try but IRL fail at" - the modelling can work.

I disagree with that analysis, because it turns the skill into something magical - this ineffable factor which you either have it or you don't. I find that point of view to be very limiting - it precludes trying to understand why someone failed to be persuaded. I'd assert that almost all of the time, there is a concrete 'why', and that 'why' was that the person who attempted the persuasion failed to correctly understand the person they're talking to and so chose to attempt to persuade them of something which they cannot be persuaded of.

To put it another way, its not about the speaker, its about the listener.

Someone skilled at persuasion can for example recognize when a given conversation is hitting a wall and causing the other person to entrench. At that point, they don't just speak better, they change what they are trying to achieve. If this was at a meeting or something like that, they might switch from trying to convince the person they're talking with to trying to disengage them and start up some conversation with the rest of the room, because its obvious that no matter what they're not going to make that first person budge.

Or as another example, when giving information, they can realize what a person would do upon receiving and verifying a certain piece of information, and then provide that or withhold it in order to shape their behavior. But that only works with the specific things for which the listener is receptive to external information. It's a mistake to assume that because you see someone convince someone with a piece of information at one point that anyone could be convinced of any arbitrary thing by that same process. Ultimately, by making that mistake, most of the time the attempt is going to fail in the form of one of two common disengagements: 'I don't believe you' and 'I don't care'.

This sounds to me like a rather strange way of framing it. I think this comes down to two factors:
1. It takes rules as a means to an end. And while that should certainly be true, I think the end it focusses on is "simulation" more than anything - which means that rules that exist primarily for the sake of interesting gameplay (And those should not contradict the world, certainly) are completely off the table. Gamistic satisfaction ("Does this feel good to play")might not be a goal of yours, or even something you abhor, but I don't think it can be completely discounted as irrelevant while designing.
2. While game systems do not exist in a vacuum without other game systems, and I do think it has merit to consider "what do other systems do" while designing, I don't think one can fault a game system for players playing it like another. That sounds, to me, like developing a part of your system not to make it fit in best with what you want it to do, but instead for... well, for what? To make it more palatable to the group of people who are too ingrained in old systems and unwilling or unable to learn new ones and accept their premises?
I mean, take FATE for example. Works... rather differently from most "classic" TRPGs, and most newcomers might not play it to its full potential because of that. But I do not think this should be taken to change the system, but maybe invest time to explain the mechanics better, instead of diluting the intended play experience. Basically: "Learning by doing" is a great way to explain mechanics in any game, but it is not the job of the mechanics themselves to explain themselves, but rather of the game manual or GM. At least from my perspective.

It's not so much about simulation as it is creating a game where playing with the mechanics of the game actually ends up making the player better at social interaction as a whole, by addressing a core misconception where holding that misconception makes all forms of social interaction unnecessarily difficult.

The thorny thing is, the players who already understand this well can basically just RP persuasion effectively. So then how do you get players who don't understand this onto the same page? You can't do it by just saying 'try to persuade via RP' because they don't feel confident in doing that. If you try to do it with a system that lets people brute force the social interaction with character abilities, then those players will never actually get better at thinking about how to actually accomplish persuasion - the system gets in the way of improvement in that case. So instead you need a system which breaks down the ineffable aspects of persuasion into explicit pieces that have clear relations, so its possible to step back and think 'what would work according to these game rules?' rather than 'what would work on a real person?'. If the game rules are well-crafted so that these things are similar, then by getting better with the game rules, someone will also learn how to get better at the real thing.

Learning to make your Diplomacy modifier hit +40 on the other hand is not going to teach you anything about how to be diplomatic.

Well, but what is there to speak against having a system for a player character to create Engagements and hooks? Like, great, you can have set ones and whatever you can convince the GM that it makes sense (Or that the GM decides). But I think there is value in having a system on top of that.
For one, the GM can still say "Nah, makes no sense that this engagement might ever be created". There can still be much of the same area of control over the system. On the plus side, if the GM is unwilling to just decide, or torn between just saying yes or no, involving player skill in it is, I feel, a good way to give the players more agency, and help the GM improvising.

It's a mixed message - it says that the game system wants players to deal with NPCs by using their character skill to craft Engagements. That distracts from what the system is trying to convey.

To put it another way, lets say I wanted to make a system that was going to (in a gamist sense) be all about spatial relationships and positioning. So having things with specific, finite areas of influence is important to keep that gameplay rich. But then someone says 'well you've got this system of reaches and areas and stuff, why not let players design custom weapons that modify their areas of influence?'. By doing so, I would be saying 'you can do well by understanding maneuvering and spatial positioning, or you can do well by assembling the weapon with the 'best' area of influence'. As a result, I have a game which isn't really clear about what it's about anymore, and I risk one or the other part being lost because one method is just objectively better/simpler/more aligned with player preconceptions than the other.

Let's say Jim is friends with Bob, and believes Bob to be a good guy. Bob can generally get Jim to stand up for him if people malign Bob, because of this. Bob can also get Jim to do him favors (and does reciprocate at times).

Alice shows up and wants to convince Jim not to help out Bob in Bob's latest "harmless eccentricity." She starts off with some dire imprecations about Bob being up to no good, and Jim just blows that off because it's nonsense. Bob's a good guy.

Now, Alice could try to hook into that "Bob's a good guy" thing and lie to Jim, telling him she believes Bob is being used by Baron McNasty to do something evil and that Jim should refuse to help Bob with this because Bob would regret it if it succeeded. Or, she could act on her belief that Bob is actually Baron McNasty in disguise and go out and find proof positive that Bob's plan is vile, and show the evidence to Jim.

Under the rigid Engagement system, there is room to argue that Jim could not be persuaded to believe Alice's evidence, because he trusts Bob and Bob says "nope, fake."

One could also interpret Max_Killjoy's objections to having the pillars of belief shifted to mean that if Max were Jim, it would be impossible to convince him that Bob is NOT a good guy and that Bob's plan involves doing horrid things to nice people even if Alice were to get video evidence of Bob gloating about his plan while torturing an orphan's pet puppy in front of him. Because that would involve having to roll some measure of social skill to convince Jim that this evidence is real enough to shift that pillar of belief away from "Bob is a good guy."

Now, you might say, "That's awfully extreme. Alice isn't using persuasion mechanics, here. Max_Killjoy's character Jim is persuaded by the plain evidence!" And perhaps you're right; this is an extremely obvious case.

But evidence is rarely that cut-and-dried. Just how much evidence does Alice have to get to convince Jim that Bob's actually a bad guy? Does Alice's skill in presenting it, does her ability to project sincerity, does even her choice in how to approach the issue impact Jim's decision-making?

I contest that it does, for 99% of people. Probably more. Coming at it with a scolding attitude and smug superiority invites skepticism, whereas presenting it in a way that builds the conclusion naturally in Jim's mind historically has a better chance of convincing most "Jim"s that the evidence is conclusive. Call it manipulative or call it clear presentation, but the fact that presentation method impacts the likelihood that the evidence will be received in the manner intended is true. It takes far more incisive logic to pick apart evidence presented well (but with a bias towards a potentially false conclusion) to find flaws in its reasoning, and similarly more emotional distance to pick apart poorly-presented evidence to realize that it may, in fact, have merit.

I would say that under no circumstances can Alice realistically expect to be able convince Jim. That is to say, there is no strategy or skill or plan of action that Alice can construct independent of Jim given that evidence which guarantees success. That is in essence what a mechanic does - it says, if you put together all the factors such that the rules say this works, then it works.

Some Jims will have a philosophical commitment to the truth, and so can be convinced by evidence. Some Jims will have a commitment to staying out of trouble and will take the evidence as reason to fear that they might get caught up in things and so, whether they're convinced or not, they'll act convinced just to satisfy that need. But on the other hand, some Jims will put loyalty above reality, and saying anything that suggests something wrong about Bob will turn that Jim into an enemy no matter how skillfully it is presented - because those Jims ultimately want to be loyal to Bob more than they want to be ethical. And some Jims will categorically hate being used in the social schemes of others and the moment that a stranger mentions a non-stranger they'll entrench and disengage.

The most important factor that determines whether Alice can use evidence to convince Jim to go against Bob is not Alice, it's Jim.

Now, if for every possible Jim, Alice picked the strategy that worked on that Jim, then you're going to hit a much higher rate of convinced Jims. But as a necessary condition of doing that, the method that ends up being used will be different in each of those cases, and it will necessarily have consequences that extend beyond just the success or failure of the attempt. Some Jims could only be convinced by the inclusion of others that they trust into the conversation, meaning that Alice will have to deal with those people too. Some Jims may need to have a sufficiently personable relationship with Alice before they'll take anything she says seriously, meaning that that relationship will be a thing regardless of what happens with Bob. Some Jims will need to see Bob do something wrong with their own eyes, meaning that Alice has to involve Bob in the convincing process. Some Jims need to be bribed, and so Alice will end up with less money and Jim with more. Some Jims will need to be threatened, which opens Alice up to future legal vulnerabilities. Others will need to be blackmailed, which can have its own reprecussions.

I would assert that looking at this situation as 'I must get Jim to believe my evidence' is a fundamental mistake about the nature of persuasion.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-25, 09:12 PM

Some Jims will have a philosophical commitment to the truth, and so can be convinced by evidence.

As a side note, I would suggest that being convinced by the best evidence available, independently confirmed, does not fall under the umbrella of having been socially manipulated.

Some of the descriptions in these threads of what posters want to count as "social manipulation" just dilute the term to meaninglessness.

jayem

2017-05-26, 01:30 AM

I would say that under no circumstances can Alice realistically expect to be able convince Jim. That is to say, there is no strategy or skill or plan of action that Alice can construct independent of Jim given that evidence which guarantees success. That is in essence what a mechanic does - it says, if you put together all the factors such that the rules say this works, then it works.

Presumably it would include a die roll (in sim). So you'd not guarantee success or failure*, just guarantee a chance of success. Which obviously in real life would be reflective of chaotic and hidden variables rather than true randomness, just like combat.

*except in the extreme cases.

Floret

2017-05-26, 04:46 AM

Starting now, as the thread is seeing more and more longer posts, I will take the approach of "everything I quote comes in spoiler tags", to make posts more readable. Headline of the tag is mine, everything else in there unchanged.

I disagree with that analysis, because it turns the skill into something magical - this ineffable factor which you either have it or you don't. I find that point of view to be very limiting - it precludes trying to understand why someone failed to be persuaded. I'd assert that almost all of the time, there is a concrete 'why', and that 'why' was that the person who attempted the persuasion failed to correctly understand the person they're talking to and so chose to attempt to persuade them of something which they cannot be persuaded of.

To put it another way, its not about the speaker, its about the listener.

Someone skilled at persuasion can for example recognize when a given conversation is hitting a wall and causing the other person to entrench. At that point, they don't just speak better, they change what they are trying to achieve. If this was at a meeting or something like that, they might switch from trying to convince the person they're talking with to trying to disengage them and start up some conversation with the rest of the room, because its obvious that no matter what they're not going to make that first person budge.

Or as another example, when giving information, they can realize what a person would do upon receiving and verifying a certain piece of information, and then provide that or withhold it in order to shape their behavior. But that only works with the specific things for which the listener is receptive to external information. It's a mistake to assume that because you see someone convince someone with a piece of information at one point that anyone could be convinced of any arbitrary thing by that same process. Ultimately, by making that mistake, most of the time the attempt is going to fail in the form of one of two common disengagements: 'I don't believe you' and 'I don't care'.

No. It doesn't turn it into something magical, it simply turn it into a skill. Just because different skill levels produce very different outcomes, doesn't mean one cannot train it, learn it and get better with practice. (For another example, an unskilled musician will produce very different emotions in people than a skilled musician does, but that doesn't mean music is just some "magic" that you have or have not.)
And, if this is all exclusively about the listener - why then, are there people that are more or less persuasive in the real world? Like, if only the listener is important, how do you explain the fact that, the same argument brought forward by two different people has the chance for different reactions? (Sure, biases on the listeners part concerning facts about the speaker might also play a part, but even if you control for that...)
Finding the right spots and noticing when people entrench is absolutely part of the skillset of a skilled persuader, and perhaps the most important part, but there are ways to change people, and to change their opinions, even though they will, as several people have mentioned, take more time than just tickling the right spots.

It's not so much about simulation as it is creating a game where playing with the mechanics of the game actually ends up making the player better at social interaction as a whole, by addressing a core misconception where holding that misconception makes all forms of social interaction unnecessarily difficult.

The thorny thing is, the players who already understand this well can basically just RP persuasion effectively. So then how do you get players who don't understand this onto the same page? You can't do it by just saying 'try to persuade via RP' because they don't feel confident in doing that. If you try to do it with a system that lets people brute force the social interaction with character abilities, then those players will never actually get better at thinking about how to actually accomplish persuasion - the system gets in the way of improvement in that case. So instead you need a system which breaks down the ineffable aspects of persuasion into explicit pieces that have clear relations, so its possible to step back and think 'what would work according to these game rules?' rather than 'what would work on a real person?'. If the game rules are well-crafted so that these things are similar, then by getting better with the game rules, someone will also learn how to get better at the real thing.

Learning to make your Diplomacy modifier hit +40 on the other hand is not going to teach you anything about how to be diplomatic.

Okay, I admit I was wrong about what I thought you were getting at.
That being said... what? Or, more precisely: Why, or to your last point: So what?
This holds Social systems in RPGs to a standard no other system in TRPGs is being held to. The combat system doesn't teach me combat; the climbing skill doesn't teach me climbing, and any chase sequence system sure as hell doesn't make me better at running away from things, any more than assassins creed does (And quite possibly less). So why should social systems be the exception here? We aren't running a "Persuasion 101" class, we are playing a game with friends.
On top of that, for there to be any possible learning effect, it requires the GM to be the best person at Persuasion, or to at least have a deeper understanding of it than the rest of the people. Because you cannot learn from a person that doesn't know things you don't. Just as, while one might learn tactic from the more tactical combat systems out there? Nothing better than what the GM can pull, because otherwise, you aren't actually practicing and have no chance to grow with the challenges.

Out of interest, what do you think is this "core misconception that makes all forms of social interaction unnecessarily difficult"? Because, since I disagree with you, I seem to hold it, but I have yet to encounter any real core difficulties social interactions supposedly holds.

As a side note, I would suggest that being convinced by the best evidence available, independently confirmed, does not fall under the umbrella of having been socially manipulated.

Some of the descriptions in these threads of what posters want to count as "social manipulation" just dilute the term to meaninglessness.

I disagree. I very clearly define the term with "Everything a person does, that they would not have done without the input from someone else" (Excluding, of course, (physical) reactions to physical actions such as starting to bleed when stabbed; and of course excluding butterfly effects). This is not meaninglessness, I would argue; and I would also argue that it holds a better core for building systems on than a vague "People talking to others to make them do things". We need a clear definition that covers every case we want to adress; yet excludes the cases we don't want.
Do you have an alternative definition? How would you sufficiently differentiate persuasion from some of the broader applications of the term brought forward?

Presumably it would include a die roll (in sim). So you'd not guarantee success or failure*, just guarantee a chance of success. Which obviously in real life would be reflective of chaotic and hidden variables rather than true randomness, just like combat.

*except in the extreme cases.

This. Just because something is declared possible via the game system, does not declare it a guarantee; it just declares it possible.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-26, 06:24 AM

I disagree. I very clearly define the term with "Everything a person does, that they would not have done without the input from someone else" (Excluding, of course, (physical) reactions to physical actions such as starting to bleed when stabbed; and of course excluding butterfly effects). This is not meaninglessness, I would argue; and I would also argue that it holds a better core for building systems on than a vague "People talking to others to make them do things". We need a clear definition that covers every case we want to adress; yet excludes the cases we don't want.
Do you have an alternative definition? How would you sufficiently differentiate persuasion from some of the broader applications of the term brought forward?

For starters, it can't lump together raw intimidation, and deceitful manipulation, and openly cooperative decision-making between two people who want to come to a mutually happy course of action, and one person changing their position based purely by objective facts presented by another person having nothing to do with the second person's "charm" or "personality".

This isn't just a game system question -- those are fundamentally different sorts of human interaction.

NichG

2017-05-26, 08:04 AM

No. It doesn't turn it into something magical, it simply turn it into a skill.

...

There are things which we must call skills because we can't resolve them into something where understanding is useful. In the musician case, the ability to properly play notes - finger movements, etc - is hard to resolve or explain further than 'well, the better musician practiced more' or 'the better musician has more talent' - non-transferable explanations, basically. Understanding it doesn't let you hit notes any better. So its just a skill.

Then there are things wihch people do skillfully, but which can be broken down and understood in an independent and objective way, in such a way that obtaining that understanding actually transfers some of that ability. For example, musical composition. A composer could learn it by practice or intuition, but it's possible to take the composer out of it entirely and understand from the point of the song itself, why it works as it does and why it achieves the effect that it does.

The perception that persuasion is like the former rather than the latter inhibits peoples' ability to become better at persuasion, because its very easy for them to conclude 'it just takes something that I don't have'. That's the 'magic' I was referring to - the belief that there is nothing left to be understood and that it should just come down to some ineffable innate 'ability'.

Okay, I admit I was wrong about what I thought you were getting at.
That being said... what? Or, more precisely: Why, or to your last point: So what?
This holds Social systems in RPGs to a standard no other system in TRPGs is being held to. The combat system doesn't teach me combat; the climbing skill doesn't teach me climbing, and any chase sequence system sure as hell doesn't make me better at running away from things, any more than assassins creed does (And quite possibly less). So why should social systems be the exception here? We aren't running a "Persuasion 101" class, we are playing a game with friends.

Unlike combat or climbing or chases or assassination, we have the world's most nuanced system for resolving social interaction available to us at no real personal risk - actually socially interacting. Why don't we just use that? Well, generally what it comes down to is that the players each have a different level of comfort or skill at it, which gets in the way if the unconfident player wants to play the social manipulator. So instead, we need a system in place to make that possible. But that often comes at some cost of nuance. As a result, I require a lot more to sell me on the benefits of a social system that I do to sell me on the benefits of a combat system. It puts me in the position that when I see the kinds of social systems that games have, I'd generally rather not have one at all. But that's not because its impossible to have a good one, its just that all of the ones I've seen have been worse than just not having one. So to engage with that, I'm trying to construct one which would satisfy me.

The primary design element to do that is to make one such that over time, the players become more confident and more skilled at social roleplay, so that the quality which is achieved ends up actually being higher than what one would have seen just by muddling through. That means that the system should make thinking about social situations clearer and easier - it should make it easier to learn.

On top of that, for there to be any possible learning effect, it requires the GM to be the best person at Persuasion, or to at least have a deeper understanding of it than the rest of the people. Because you cannot learn from a person that doesn't know things you don't. Just as, while one might learn tactic from the more tactical combat systems out there? Nothing better than what the GM can pull, because otherwise, you aren't actually practicing and have no chance to grow with the challenges.

If you want to learn good tactics from a tactically poor GM, use asymmetric encounters where you're under-powered compared to your enemies. I've definitely had players teach each-other and myself things at tables where I was the GM, including a player who was very good IRL at social manipulation.

But in this case in particular, it's even better: the one who is teaching isn't the GM, but the system itself - in the same way that chess or Go can teach you certain ways of thinking about things even if you just play out variations with yourself. It's a framework to make certain things which happen socially less mysterious and more explicit, while also factoring out confounding elements.

Out of interest, what do you think is this "core misconception that makes all forms of social interaction unnecessarily difficult"? Because, since I disagree with you, I seem to hold it, but I have yet to encounter any real core difficulties social interactions supposedly holds.

It's the perception that the correct model for social interaction is that one picks a target, determines a goal, and then (and only then) uses 'skill' in order to achieve the goal given the target. As opposed to taking seriously that picking the target and determining the goal are mutable elements in the broader context of pursuing interaction.

Or to put it another way, seeing someone succeed at persuading someone else and not realizing all of the things that the person could have attempted to persuade that person of but decided not to because it simply wouldn't work.

Segev

2017-05-26, 10:40 AM

To put it another way, its not about the speaker, its about the listener. It's about both, actually. The listener has triggers, hooks, likes, dislikes, drives, and a streak (however broad) of stubbornness, and where he digs in his heels and what motivates him is something that is all part of the speaker's job to figure out.

The question is at what level we abstract these things.

As most social "systems" currently work, we're abstracting them as if we said, "A defender has agility, weapon skill, armor, and combat strategy, and the attacker has to figure these things out and use his own skill with his weapon and his own tactical acumen to get around that often enough to beat up the defender," and then made it a "Melee Skill Roll" against a fixed DC to see if the attacker wins the fight.

D&D alone breaks down the combat abstraction to have an AC, a to-hit bonus, damage rolled, hit points, saving throws, and a whole tangled mess surrounding grappling, tactical movement, etc.

What I'm advocating is breaking down social subsystems into representing the actual points of interest for the listener as well as the speaker's ability to discern and play off of them. But a complete person can be slowly (or sometimes not-so-slowly) brought around to new interests, or caused to lose faith in something, so we need mechanics for that, too.

I would personally abstract the precise means of presentation of facts, evidence, lies, innuendo, etc. to the "skill roll," just as combat abstracts the precise motions and timing of maneuvering a sword past a foe's shield and over-extended weapon to the chink in his armor with an attack roll.

However, what the target wants/fears/cares about is still the hook the speaker is trying to play upon.

(And, I don't know if you believe in "love at first sight," but if it's a trope that is to be considered valid for a given game, then some measure of instant-engagement-building should be feasible. Though I would render it rare.)

Someone skilled at persuasion can for example recognize when a given conversation is hitting a wall and causing the other person to entrench. At that point, they don't just speak better, they change what they are trying to achieve.Sure. But that is also possible to represent by a skill. And no, they don't need to change what they're trying to achieve, only how they're trying to achieve it. Depending on where the abstraction level lies, this may mean the speaker gets information about what would work better, or it may mean that the speaker is assumed to have found the "right" approach thanks to the high roll.

If this was at a meeting or something like that, they might switch from trying to convince the person they're talking with to trying to disengage them and start up some conversation with the rest of the room, because its obvious that no matter what they're not going to make that first person budge.Maybe. But that could just as easily be represented by not being able to roll well enough to meet a given DC as it could "nope, sorry, you didn't guess the right hook/the GM didn't provide a hook that can achieve that."

Or as another example, when giving information, they can realize what a person would do upon receiving and verifying a certain piece of information, and then provide that or withhold it in order to shape their behavior.Sure.

But that only works with the specific things for which the listener is receptive to external information.No, it just works better the more receptive the prospective listener is to external information. It takes more skill to present external information in a way that doesn't seem "external" or "forced" on the listener if he'd object to it. There's a lot of persuasion that comes in the form of "Make him think it's his own idea." And that really is a skill.

It's a mistake to assume that because you see someone convince someone with a piece of information at one point that anyone could be convinced of any arbitrary thing by that same process. Ultimately, by making that mistake, most of the time the attempt is going to fail in the form of one of two common disengagements: 'I don't believe you' and 'I don't care'.Nobody's making that mistake, except you insofar as you assume that's what people are describing.

The thorny thing is, the players who already understand this well can basically just RP persuasion effectively. So then how do you get players who don't understand this onto the same page? You can't do it by just saying 'try to persuade via RP' because they don't feel confident in doing that. If you try to do it with a system that lets people brute force the social interaction with character abilities, then those players will never actually get better at thinking about how to actually accomplish persuasion - the system gets in the way of improvement in that case. So instead you need a system which breaks down the ineffable aspects of persuasion into explicit pieces that have clear relations, so its possible to step back and think 'what would work according to these game rules?' rather than 'what would work on a real person?'. If the game rules are well-crafted so that these things are similar, then by getting better with the game rules, someone will also learn how to get better at the real thing.

Learning to make your Diplomacy modifier hit +40 on the other hand is not going to teach you anything about how to be diplomatic.Why do you keep assuming, despite my repeated statements and detailed explanations to the contrary, that that last sentence adequately describes what I'm getting at?

The whole goal is to translate the real social nuances that people skilled at persuasion can utilize into game mechanics so that people skilled at playing a game can move them like game-pieces, in the same way that combat translates real physical nuances of swordplay into game mechanics so that people skilled at playing a game can make gameplay moves within the mechanics to simulate that swordplay.

I would say that under no circumstances can Alice realistically expect to be able convince Jim. That is to say, there is no strategy or skill or plan of action that Alice can construct independent of Jim given that evidence which guarantees success. That is in essence what a mechanic does - it says, if you put together all the factors such that the rules say this works, then it works.I never suggested that Alice's plan should be independent of Jim. I have said quite the opposite.

If Alice wants to persuade Jim via a hook or engagement or whatever that he currently lacks, she will need to play on ones he has to build new ones until she gets him to the point where he has the hook she wants to use. It's probably easier, for one-off effects, to play to existing ones. That alone encourages finding ways to use existing ones rather than "brute forcing" it.

Add in that you can't "brute force" it if you don't have an "in" to make that new engagement or hook, and it gets even less accurate to use that phrase.

Some Jims will have a philosophical commitment to the truth, and so can be convinced by evidence. Some Jims will have a commitment to staying out of trouble and will take the evidence as reason to fear that they might get caught up in things and so, whether they're convinced or not, they'll act convinced just to satisfy that need. But on the other hand, some Jims will put loyalty above reality, and saying anything that suggests something wrong about Bob will turn that Jim into an enemy no matter how skillfully it is presented - because those Jims ultimately want to be loyal to Bob more than they want to be ethical. And some Jims will categorically hate being used in the social schemes of others and the moment that a stranger mentions a non-stranger they'll entrench and disengage.And each of those could be undermined, except possibly true blind loyalty to Bob that goes to sycophantic, self-destructive, would-die-for-him obsequiousness. It's up to Alice to figure out what the nature of Jim's feelings for Bob is, and how to attack it.

The most important factor that determines whether Alice can use evidence to convince Jim to go against Bob is not Alice, it's Jim.Yes and no. Alice needs to have the skill to ferret out the nature of Jim's friendship with Bob. Alice also needs to have the skill to present her case in a way that Jim would be receptive to. That can mean that she doesn't ever speak to him directly about Bob, but instead works a conversation around until Jim finds himself accidentally bad-mouthing Bob. It could mean that Alice presents situations that evolve until Jim realizes he is uncomfortable supporting Bob. It could mean that Alice doesn't mention Bob at all, but just attacks the favor he's asked of Jim, so that Jim's now only thinking about and focused on that "favor" and its consequences and costs.

At some level, this is abstracted into Alice's mechanics. Either they are such that the GM tells Alice's player what she can figure out about Jim, or they are such that Alice's player states what she wants to do and the GM lets her roll; if Alice rolled well enough, her choice of approach was good (possibly strategically and tactically tested to see what worked before moving in for the metaphorical kill).

I would assert that looking at this situation as 'I must get Jim to believe my evidence' is a fundamental mistake about the nature of persuasion.I assert that looking at it as, "It's hopeless to convince Jim because he doesn't have a hook that cares about anything but his friendship to Bob," is making Jim a caricature rather than a character, and a system which doesn't support deeper influence is a bad system.

Sure, if Jim doesn't want to believe it or doesn't care, that means the evidence isn't effective. But at some level, "I try to attack the troll with a club," is ineffective because it doesn't MATTER, and you have to decide whether to use a torch, a fireball, a vial of acid, or find a way to remove his regeneration (there are spells for that).

Alice may find that trying to build in Jim an appreciation for truth takes too long.

But if Alice's goal is to drive a wedge between Jim and Bob, then that shouldn't be fundamentally impossible because Jim is incapable of having his Engagements changed. It might be difficult, and she might have to figure out a good way to do it, but it should be FEASIBLE, with enough time and effort and skill.

Some of the descriptions in these threads of what posters want to count as "social manipulation" just dilute the term to meaninglessness.

For starters, it can't lump together raw intimidation, and deceitful manipulation, and openly cooperative decision-making between two people who want to come to a mutually happy course of action, and one person changing their position based purely by objective facts presented by another person having nothing to do with the second person's "charm" or "personality".

This isn't just a game system question -- those are fundamentally different sorts of human interaction.
Call it something else, then, that's broader, because the point is to develop a subsystem that encompasses all of those things. If they're achieved via different stats and approaches, much the same way grappling is achieved differently than hitting with a spear is achieved differently than damaging orcs with a fireball, that's fine. Great, even.

But they're all about influencing behavior and beliefs. Drives and desires. Fears and cravings. Choices.

Floret

2017-05-26, 05:57 PM

For starters, it can't lump together raw intimidation, and deceitful manipulation, and openly cooperative decision-making between two people who want to come to a mutually happy course of action, and one person changing their position based purely by objective facts presented by another person having nothing to do with the second person's "charm" or "personality".

This isn't just a game system question -- those are fundamentally different sorts of human interaction.

1. Isn't it? I mean, again, at least I am not aiming for world simulator, I am aiming for a game system. That should simulate in some respects, but I don't care much about accuracy in that regard.
2. Sure, they are different enough that you can differentiate them. But, as Segev already mentioned: All of those are on some level part of "social interactions where multiple outcomes are possible", and would in the end have to be part of the subsystem. Call them something else, if you like, I find "manipulation" works rather well as an umbrella term, but then again I am not a native speaker.

There are things which we must call skills because we can't resolve them into something where understanding is useful. In the musician case, the ability to properly play notes - finger movements, etc - is hard to resolve or explain further than 'well, the better musician practiced more' or 'the better musician has more talent' - non-transferable explanations, basically. Understanding it doesn't let you hit notes any better. So its just a skill.

Then there are things wihch people do skillfully, but which can be broken down and understood in an independent and objective way, in such a way that obtaining that understanding actually transfers some of that ability. For example, musical composition. A composer could learn it by practice or intuition, but it's possible to take the composer out of it entirely and understand from the point of the song itself, why it works as it does and why it achieves the effect that it does.

The perception that persuasion is like the former rather than the latter inhibits peoples' ability to become better at persuasion, because its very easy for them to conclude 'it just takes something that I don't have'. That's the 'magic' I was referring to - the belief that there is nothing left to be understood and that it should just come down to some ineffable innate 'ability'.

This distinction is fundamentally artificial, and does not represent any real fact in the world. I mean, sure, some people have more of a talent for certain things, might start out at a higher level or pick things up quicker. But... have you ever learned an instrument? Because it is perfectly possible to break this playing down in an independent and objective way. Instrument teachers do it all the time, when they teach their kids how to move the fingers, what things can help with orientating where they go, to listen to tones better, how to perform certain special actions etc. (The specific list of things might be coloured by my experience with Cello)
Every single skill in this world can be broken down, studied, looked at closer, and this extracted knowlege be used to learn it. Persuasion is, in this respect, no different to anything else, true. But nothing is. Not even "art" skills.

Unlike combat or climbing or chases or assassination, we have the world's most nuanced system for resolving social interaction available to us at no real personal risk - actually socially interacting. Why don't we just use that? Well, generally what it comes down to is that the players each have a different level of comfort or skill at it, which gets in the way if the unconfident player wants to play the social manipulator. So instead, we need a system in place to make that possible. But that often comes at some cost of nuance. As a result, I require a lot more to sell me on the benefits of a social system that I do to sell me on the benefits of a combat system. It puts me in the position that when I see the kinds of social systems that games have, I'd generally rather not have one at all. But that's not because its impossible to have a good one, its just that all of the ones I've seen have been worse than just not having one. So to engage with that, I'm trying to construct one which would satisfy me.

The primary design element to do that is to make one such that over time, the players become more confident and more skilled at social roleplay, so that the quality which is achieved ends up actually being higher than what one would have seen just by muddling through. That means that the system should make thinking about social situations clearer and easier - it should make it easier to learn.

Two reasons against this.
One, the perception that social interactions at the gaming table can ever represent what is actually happening in-game with anything but the most vague degree of accuracy - not enough, for my tastes. (Seriously, if my character wants to charm an NPC I am not going to do the same things with the GM as I would with a real person I wanted to charm. Because of course not. Just as, if I want to Intimidate someone, I am not going to scare their player ****less. Even the "risk-free" ends at the point any character involved is trying unethical actions.) On top of that, the location, climate, and tons of other factors influencing social situations simply are different.
And - I don't want to give some sort of replacement for the people who just can't pull it off. For me, TRPGs should fundamentally separate player and character skill, and for that, I need systems, that ideally should be fun to play. Sure, playing out conversations can be fun! But I don't see it as the be-all and end-all, or even as something that has to stand in contention with having mechanics.

If you want to learn good tactics from a tactically poor GM, use asymmetric encounters where you're under-powered compared to your enemies. I've definitely had players teach each-other and myself things at tables where I was the GM, including a player who was very good IRL at social manipulation.

But in this case in particular, it's even better: the one who is teaching isn't the GM, but the system itself - in the same way that chess or Go can teach you certain ways of thinking about things even if you just play out variations with yourself. It's a framework to make certain things which happen socially less mysterious and more explicit, while also factoring out confounding elements.

I highly doubt that a book or text can teach social interaction beyond the basics. There needs to be praxis, and if the goal is to teach social skills, there needs to be a competent teacher, that goes beyond just the book.

It's the perception that the correct model for social interaction is that one picks a target, determines a goal, and then (and only then) uses 'skill' in order to achieve the goal given the target. As opposed to taking seriously that picking the target and determining the goal are mutable elements in the broader context of pursuing interaction.

Or to put it another way, seeing someone succeed at persuading someone else and not realizing all of the things that the person could have attempted to persuade that person of but decided not to because it simply wouldn't work.

But generally, this is how social interaction is approached. You don't simply think "Let's get SOMEBODY to do SOMETHING". People have specific goals in mind. If, for that goal, there is a choice of person, great! Then picking the target is of course important, and is something a skilled socialite can do.
But if that is not an option? Then you work with the target you have, and in the end, either succeed or fail. But, as a famous GM often says: "You can certainly TRY."

I think you are describing something as a linear interaction, which can work in all and any direction, and somehow miss that for any manipulation to be attempted? There has to be an intent, and that intent usually has a specific goal, and often a specific person. It might well run into more problems than just getting SOMEONE to do SOMETHING, but that would have to be represented by the system and should not be a reason against a system in the first place.

NichG

2017-05-26, 11:36 PM

This distinction is fundamentally artificial, and does not represent any real fact in the world. I mean, sure, some people have more of a talent for certain things, might start out at a higher level or pick things up quicker. But... have you ever learned an instrument? Because it is perfectly possible to break this playing down in an independent and objective way. Instrument teachers do it all the time, when they teach their kids how to move the fingers, what things can help with orientating where they go, to listen to tones better, how to perform certain special actions etc. (The specific list of things might be coloured by my experience with Cello)
Every single skill in this world can be broken down, studied, looked at closer, and this extracted knowlege be used to learn it. Persuasion is, in this respect, no different to anything else, true. But nothing is. Not even "art" skills.

I'm not going to push back on this point at the detail level because this is broadly compatible with where I want to go with it: that you don't have to just stop at 'he's just good at persuasion', because an instance of persuasion can be broken down into factors which don't require some ineffable quality that can't be understood OOC.

Two reasons against this.
One, the perception that social interactions at the gaming table can ever represent what is actually happening in-game with anything but the most vague degree of accuracy - not enough, for my tastes. (Seriously, if my character wants to charm an NPC I am not going to do the same things with the GM as I would with a real person I wanted to charm. Because of course not. Just as, if I want to Intimidate someone, I am not going to scare their player ****less. Even the "risk-free" ends at the point any character involved is trying unethical actions.) On top of that, the location, climate, and tons of other factors influencing social situations simply are different.
And - I don't want to give some sort of replacement for the people who just can't pull it off. For me, TRPGs should fundamentally separate player and character skill, and for that, I need systems, that ideally should be fun to play. Sure, playing out conversations can be fun! But I don't see it as the be-all and end-all, or even as something that has to stand in contention with having mechanics.

We have different goals from playing then. I am generally looking for an things which allow me as a player to come as close as possible to experience what it's like to be that character, rather than to accurately portray a specified character while keeping myself separate. So a system that lets me actually mentally get into the mindset of a spy or an investigator or a diplomat is better than one which gives me the tools to model a spy or investigator or diplomat while keeping my distance.

But generally, this is how social interaction is approached. You don't simply think "Let's get SOMEBODY to do SOMETHING". People have specific goals in mind. If, for that goal, there is a choice of person, great! Then picking the target is of course important, and is something a skilled socialite can do.
But if that is not an option? Then you work with the target you have, and in the end, either succeed or fail. But, as a famous GM often says: "You can certainly TRY."

I think you are describing something as a linear interaction, which can work in all and any direction, and somehow miss that for any manipulation to be attempted? There has to be an intent, and that intent usually has a specific goal, and often a specific person. It might well run into more problems than just getting SOMEONE to do SOMETHING, but that would have to be represented by the system and should not be a reason against a system in the first place.

This response 'people have specific goals in mind ... you work with the target you have and in the end succeed or fail' is exactly the kind of thing I mean by that misconception. You don't have to have specific goals in mind. You don't have to actually accept that you are restricted to a particular target and must just do the best you can. By abandoning both of those beliefs, you become much, much better at pulling things off - not just in socialization or persuasion, but in all sorts of endeavors.

For example, I was an academic for a time, and everyone in my professional circle to one or other degree made their living asking other people to donate money (in the form of applying for grants). In the extreme case of this, I met someone who could fairly reliably pull in grants to start new research institutes (so a larger scale of funding that most researchers are normally dealing with). His explanation for how that worked was that it was more about going into situations while keeping an eye out for the opportunity to make small pushes that could have big effect, rather than choosing something and focusing on that thing. That might mean that even though he really wanted to make research X happen, instead he'd make a place for research Y which wasn't X but had something to do with X - but as a result, the funding opportunity and chance of success are a hundred times higher, because he shifted his goal in the interaction in favor of one that was actually most achievable while still providing some utility towards what he actually wanted.

In a tabletop RPG, the myopia of having to deal with the thing placed in front of you is encouraged by the way that encounter design tends to work: enter a room, there are monsters, fight the monsters. Can't fight the monsters? Well the DM shouldn't've put them there! There's a guard in front of the door saying we can't have an audience with the king? Well, we have to persuade the guard to let us have an audience with the king of course! When maybe what the group should be doing is to persuade the king to summon them for an audience, or get some other government functionary to just give them the information they wanted without having to go through the ruler of the land, or get someone else to go in front of the king as their proxy, or ...

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-27, 07:05 AM

1. Isn't it? I mean, again, at least I am not aiming for world simulator, I am aiming for a game system. That should simulate in some respects, but I don't care much about accuracy in that regard.

The game mechanics need to "feel" sufficiently like the thing you're depicting, or for some/many players, it's going to generate dissonance and push them out of the flow of the roleplaying experience.

2. Sure, they are different enough that you can differentiate them. But, as Segev already mentioned: All of those are on some level part of "social interactions where multiple outcomes are possible", and would in the end have to be part of the subsystem. Call them something else, if you like, I find "manipulation" works rather well as an umbrella term, but then again I am not a native speaker.

"Manipulation" in the context of interpersonal interaction implies an adversarial interaction, involving coercion, deceit, etc.

This distinction is fundamentally artificial, and does not represent any real fact in the world. I mean, sure, some people have more of a talent for certain things, might start out at a higher level or pick things up quicker. But... have you ever learned an instrument? Because it is perfectly possible to break this playing down in an independent and objective way. Instrument teachers do it all the time, when they teach their kids how to move the fingers, what things can help with orientating where they go, to listen to tones better, how to perform certain special actions etc. (The specific list of things might be coloured by my experience with Cello)
Every single skill in this world can be broken down, studied, looked at closer, and this extracted knowlege be used to learn it. Persuasion is, in this respect, no different to anything else, true. But nothing is. Not even "art" skills.

The "skills as magic" distinction does, however, apply to how some gamers perceive certain skills. In the context of this discussion, some gamers seem to look at social skills as magic, or a black box. At the risk of being harsh, some gamers struggle with social interaction, and therefore on some subconscious level treat high social aptitude as a sort of magical ability that can accomplish anything if you just "roll well enough". And because it's harder to offer up concrete examples of the limits (compare to "how far can a person jump" or "how far can someone throw this stone" or "how much can a person lift" or "what's the range on this cannon"), and fiction is full of nonsensical examples of weaponized talk (hero talks at the villain until he wins just by talking, charmer talks her way past the guards to a Top Secret facility, or the like), the problem is exacerbated.

Knaight

2017-05-28, 04:33 AM

"Manipulation" in the context of interpersonal interaction implies an adversarial interaction, involving coercion, deceit, etc.

That's connotation more than denotation though, and a lot of that is because it's comfortable not to think about the extent to which that overlaps with friendly interactions.

Or, to quote Schlock Mercenary (which I know you're fond of), "All conversation is psychological warfare".

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-28, 08:18 AM

That's connotation more than denotation though, and a lot of that is because it's comfortable not to think about the extent to which that overlaps with friendly interactions.

Or, to quote Schlock Mercenary (which I know you're fond of), "All conversation is psychological warfare".

It's a sentiment I happen to not agree with.

I happen to think that it's possible for 2+ people of good intent to have a conversation that's not laced with ulterior motives, withheld facts or falsehoods, searching for levers, traps and gotchas, leading questions, etc.

E: which may be why I have so little patience for when people pull that crap in these discussions.

Segev

2017-05-28, 10:36 AM

There need be no ulterior motive for it to still be persuasion. If I want to go see Big Hero 6 with a group of friends, I am not being deceitful and I have no ulterior motives when I consider presenting it as a super hero movie to my friends who like super heroes, a family movie to those who like that sort of thing, and a movie set in "San Fransokyo" to the anime fan.

What elements I emphasize has no hidden motive, but can have a big impact on whether I persuade a given friend to come to the movie with me.

Floret

2017-05-28, 05:53 PM

I'm not going to push back on this point at the detail level because this is broadly compatible with where I want to go with it: that you don't have to just stop at 'he's just good at persuasion', because an instance of persuasion can be broken down into factors which don't require some ineffable quality that can't be understood OOC.

Uhm, sure, you will see no argument from me there. But... what point exactly are you making, then? Because noone actually argued that there is something just incomprehensible, "magic" about persuasion, just that it is something that people... do, yaknow? Just like people can swing swords, or smith armor, or pick pockets, all of which can be abstracted as a skill in RPGs.

We have different goals from playing then. I am generally looking for an things which allow me as a player to come as close as possible to experience what it's like to be that character, rather than to accurately portray a specified character while keeping myself separate. So a system that lets me actually mentally get into the mindset of a spy or an investigator or a diplomat is better than one which gives me the tools to model a spy or investigator or diplomat while keeping my distance.

Meh. I have found the immersion gainable from TRPGs to be somewhat lackluster, and like to focus on what I feel are much greater strenghts of the system.
I mean, I somewhat get how people get immersion from TRPGs, and I wouldn't say "kill all immersion", I am just willing to sacrifice it for things that I feel they do better - satisfying gameplay, the ability to play something that is just beyond your capabilities, etc.
Seeing this difference in goal it is certain that we might have different opinions on how to achieve the ideal gamestate. (Which might even vary. I like different games for very different purposes and reasons, and imagine you might do something similar).

This response 'people have specific goals in mind ... you work with the target you have and in the end succeed or fail' is exactly the kind of thing I mean by that misconception. You don't have to have specific goals in mind. You don't have to actually accept that you are restricted to a particular target and must just do the best you can. By abandoning both of those beliefs, you become much, much better at pulling things off - not just in socialization or persuasion, but in all sorts of endeavors.

For example, I was an academic for a time, and everyone in my professional circle to one or other degree made their living asking other people to donate money (in the form of applying for grants). In the extreme case of this, I met someone who could fairly reliably pull in grants to start new research institutes (so a larger scale of funding that most researchers are normally dealing with). His explanation for how that worked was that it was more about going into situations while keeping an eye out for the opportunity to make small pushes that could have big effect, rather than choosing something and focusing on that thing. That might mean that even though he really wanted to make research X happen, instead he'd make a place for research Y which wasn't X but had something to do with X - but as a result, the funding opportunity and chance of success are a hundred times higher, because he shifted his goal in the interaction in favor of one that was actually most achievable while still providing some utility towards what he actually wanted.

You become better at pulling THINGS of, sure. But, generally not what you want to pull off. Look, my point is: If you have, as your goal "get with person X", then the fact that you might, if you were willing to switch things up, get with person Y, is completely irrelevant for you.
Likewise, if you goal is "get in bed with someone", the ability to gain a competent chess partner for the evening might not appeal to you, at all.
So, in short: Of course a willingness to compromise widens your chances to achieve at least something, generally speaking. This is not something I would debate.
What I WOULD debate is that, at least in my experience, people aren't that willing to compromise - or only somewhat. (One could model such things as "partial success", if one uses very simplified scales; Intimidating the goblins enough to sheath their weapons, but not enough to make them run, for example. There are games that do that) So, sure, encourage people to think in broader terms, and use skills for reading people to discern what you may be able to get from them liberally! But... when it comes to social interactions, usually there are goals involved that are more specific.
And, in some cases, compromising undermines the whole reason you were doing something to begin with. Do you want to get with a person because you love them? Then why in all hells WOULD you compromise?

In a tabletop RPG, the myopia of having to deal with the thing placed in front of you is encouraged by the way that encounter design tends to work: enter a room, there are monsters, fight the monsters. Can't fight the monsters? Well the DM shouldn't've put them there! There's a guard in front of the door saying we can't have an audience with the king? Well, we have to persuade the guard to let us have an audience with the king of course! When maybe what the group should be doing is to persuade the king to summon them for an audience, or get some other government functionary to just give them the information they wanted without having to go through the ruler of the land, or get someone else to go in front of the king as their proxy, or ...

That is not a problem I have experience with. I have never played in a game system that really thinks about things in terms of "encounter", or ever had players unwilling to think outside the box (Sometimes in ways requiring me to rewrite basically everything on the fly. Fun evenings!) or in more complicated or convoluted ways.
So, I don't think designing games just to combat a problem certain specific players have with thinking outside the box and in any but the most direct way is really necessary, or even much possible - it is much more a problem with the people playing, than it is with the game itself.

The game mechanics need to "feel" sufficiently like the thing you're depicting, or for some/many players, it's going to generate dissonance and push them out of the flow of the roleplaying experience.

Sure. I might be more lenient on things? Like, FATE Accellerated, for example, definitely goes too far for me (even though that, too, tries to simulate something).
Different people will have different thresholds.

"Manipulation" in the context of interpersonal interaction implies an adversarial interaction, involving coercion, deceit, etc.

Hm. Doesn't sound like I missed something, but for my feeling it is, as Knaight pointed out, just a connotation, and not actually part of the denotation. So... I mean it in the most value-neutral way possible, and only use it due to lack of a better, more connotationally neutral term; but I still feel the need for a term to use, and it is the best I have found as of yet.

The "skills as magic" distinction does, however, apply to how some gamers perceive certain skills. In the context of this discussion, some gamers seem to look at social skills as magic, or a black box. At the risk of being harsh, some gamers struggle with social interaction, and therefore on some subconscious level treat high social aptitude as a sort of magical ability that can accomplish anything if you just "roll well enough". And because it's harder to offer up concrete examples of the limits (compare to "how far can a person jump" or "how far can someone throw this stone" or "how much can a person lift" or "what's the range on this cannon"), and fiction is full of nonsensical examples of weaponized talk (hero talks at the villain until he wins just by talking, charmer talks her way past the guards to a Top Secret facility, or the like), the problem is exacerbated.

I haven't really seen anyone in this discussion treat social skills as anything close to magic, or unexplainable. And, sure, some gamers have their share of problems with social interactions, that happens. But I don't think it is really the job, place, or even much within the capabilities of RPGs to teach them social skills, or teach them how persuasion works.
The only thing I have seen, and am myself guilty of is considering social skills a fair bit more powerful than some other people in the discussion seem to think they are. I personally have my reasons for believing that - and my explanations for why the other side might have their perspective, perfectly in line with my worldview, but I am sure you have a similar explanation for mine, and we won't really get anywhere debating who is in the right.

It's a sentiment I happen to not agree with.

I happen to think that it's possible for 2+ people of good intent to have a conversation that's not laced with ulterior motives, withheld facts or falsehoods, searching for levers, traps and gotchas, leading questions, etc.

E: which may be why I have so little patience for when people pull that crap in these discussions.

There need be no ulterior motive for it to still be persuasion. If I want to go see Big Hero 6 with a group of friends, I am not being deceitful and I have no ulterior motives when I consider presenting it as a super hero movie to my friends who like super heroes, a family movie to those who like that sort of thing, and a movie set in "San Fransokyo" to the anime fan.

What elements I emphasize has no hidden motive, but can have a big impact on whether I persuade a given friend to come to the movie with me.

1. What Segev said
2. It is really, really hard, to find a clear line to draw on where ulterior motives begin (In many examples not so much hidden, but... still very clearly a purpose to the interaction, which would make it fall under the label of "manipulation/persuasion" as I would define it). Seriously. If I really like a person, and therefore want to spent time with them, so I try to arrange a meeting - does that count as ulterior motives? I clearly want something from that person, and I kinda want it for my own benefit, even though I am very certain the other person will benefit as well. What about a booty call to a friend with benefits? Does that count as ulterior motive? We are still well within the real of "mutual enjoyment" and "good intent", but there is a rather clear motive? Then what about chatting to someone in a bar, with similar purposes, who is receptive to the advances - is this now an ulterior motive?
For a different topic, is a meeting I arrange with a professor for the purposes of discussing ideas and progress on a coursework ulterior motives? They gain... pretty much nothing from it, and I do - but it is perfectly moral for me to try and arrange that, isn't it? And if I pull some arguments for why earlier might be better, despite their busy schedule - is that now not good intent anymore?

Point being, where do you draw the line? Because there clearly is some point at which it veers into "not okay/immoral/evil", sure. But that point, from my perspective, is way beyond the point where "I am pulling strings to achieve goals, if really consciously or not" begins. Any discussion in which I am not merely imparting information (And sometimes even those) has some motive behind it, and whether or not I achieve this motive, will in some parts be depending on my abilities to convey it in a way that the other person finds agreeable. There is no malicious intent needed for this to be true.

Psikerlord

2017-05-28, 08:41 PM

NichG

2017-05-28, 10:38 PM

Uhm, sure, you will see no argument from me there. But... what point exactly are you making, then? Because noone actually argued that there is something just incomprehensible, "magic" about persuasion, just that it is something that people... do, yaknow? Just like people can swing swords, or smith armor, or pick pockets, all of which can be abstracted as a skill in RPGs.

The point was about the necessity of adding something like a success check once the details of the listener and the argument have been decided, as well as what doing that suggests to players. If you have one system where e.g. making a well-chosen argument to a person who ultimately wants to agree is worth, say, a +10 to the check - but other ineffable factors such as Charisma and abstract 'skill' and the die roll contribute +/- 30 to the check, you're communicating that what's going on is more about those ineffable factors than about the choice of argument and goal.

So when earlier you suggested that you might as well let people try even when the argument is bad, the reason to not do that is that ultimately suggests that the argument and the listener are not actually the factors that ultimately decide things, but rather some kind of inherent awesomeness of the way the character said it which can't be grasped by those outside of the game.

If you make the perfect argument and fail, or make a terrible argument and succeed, I'd argue that's the kind of thing that makes it feel like characters have lost their agency - because the player whose character is being convinced can look at it and say 'come on, its obvious this is a stupid deal, my guy isn't that dumb' or 'come on, this fundamentally goes against what my guy believes in'. Whereas, if the system works by getting players to give away knowledge of what their character could be convinced of, then no matter what happens it's going to be compatible with how the player is developing their character.

Meh. I have found the immersion gainable from TRPGs to be somewhat lackluster, and like to focus on what I feel are much greater strenghts of the system.
I mean, I somewhat get how people get immersion from TRPGs, and I wouldn't say "kill all immersion", I am just willing to sacrifice it for things that I feel they do better - satisfying gameplay, the ability to play something that is just beyond your capabilities, etc.
Seeing this difference in goal it is certain that we might have different opinions on how to achieve the ideal gamestate. (Which might even vary. I like different games for very different purposes and reasons, and imagine you might do something similar).

Yeah. Generally for just inherently satisfying gameplay I tend to either go for computer games or for very simple abstract games like Go - the first because the automaticity makes it possible to have richer gameplay mechanics without the tediousness of actually resolving things by hand, and the second because the rules become minimally tedious. Tabletop games offer an open-endedness that neither of the others can approach, and that open-endedness is necessary for me to really feel as though everything about my character's thought processes and actions could potentially matter, which is I think is essential for immersion (once I start thinking things like 'no matter what I do, its going to end up being some modifier to some roll' then I tend to lose immersion and stop bothering to be creative or engaged)

You become better at pulling THINGS of, sure. But, generally not what you want to pull off. Look, my point is: If you have, as your goal "get with person X", then the fact that you might, if you were willing to switch things up, get with person Y, is completely irrelevant for you.

...

What I WOULD debate is that, at least in my experience, people aren't that willing to compromise - or only somewhat.

You can't always get what you want. Wanting too much, too specifically means that you will generally fail at being satisfied. The skill in this sort of thing is in actually realizing why you want something, and then using that to obtain flexibility in actually achieving something useful. I agree that people often aren't that willing to compromise. I would just say however, this is the lion's share of why they often fail at things, or feel as though things are unfair or impossible.

That's also why its important to make a system where it's crystal clear about when compromise is necessary and not give mixed messages. I've encountered many players and groups of players that would choose to fail and get nothing rather than to compromise and get something, because they ultimately can't shake the belief that there must be some way to do things without compromise.

I'm perfectly fine with a system where, if someone can't compromise at all in a social interaction, they fail 100% of the time unless the other person already wanted what they're trying to persuade them of. Social interaction is, fundamentally, about compromise - if the other person doesn't get something from talking with you, they can easily choose to just not speak with you at all. If you enter that kind of situation believing that compromise is an inherently unnecessary thing, you're going to get stonewalled all the time and constantly fail (because, after all, in that point of view there's no reason your target should compromise either).

That is not a problem I have experience with. I have never played in a game system that really thinks about things in terms of "encounter", or ever had players unwilling to think outside the box (Sometimes in ways requiring me to rewrite basically everything on the fly. Fun evenings!) or in more complicated or convoluted ways.
So, I don't think designing games just to combat a problem certain specific players have with thinking outside the box and in any but the most direct way is really necessary, or even much possible - it is much more a problem with the people playing, than it is with the game itself.

In my experience, the 'thinking outside the box' is more local scale 'lets collapse the ceiling on him rather than fighting him' kinds of things instead of 'actually, maybe we don't even have to go to this dungeon'. The general arc of it is that the players get into some situation, they find that they don't like the trajectory that the situation is on if things were to follow the standard sequence, so they try more and more creative things to try to escape that sequence. But usually the underlying premises and goals are left alone.

It's absolutely critical to design systems with player behavior in mind, or you get muckups like how D&D's designers thought that people would play wizards primarily as blasters.

Floret

2017-05-29, 07:07 AM

Best social system I know of:

You roleplay the conversation first. GM either straight up adjudicates result, or if result is uncertain, assigns a modifier (+1, +2, adv/disad or whatever) depending on what's said. Then roll.

So you get both player skill and character skill in the mix.

Unless you want player skill out of the mix, which is generally my goal. Nothing against roleplaying a conversation out, and maybe even give a modifier - but generally, I want the fact that a character has social skills cost as much investment as the fact they have combat skills (So a player that is OOC very capable but refuses to pay the points will not get far; what makes your character powerful should be somewhat balanced by the points you invest in them); and I want players who aren't able to OOC be able to pull off social things. (If the fact is general, I do advise them to maybe not play a socialite, and have never had someone insist. Heck, for my 5 Rings campaign heavy on socialisation and rhetorical manouvers I just didn't invite some of my regulars, knowing they might not be comfortable with that level of talking. But even someone generally capable can have brainfarts - sure, their characters might as well have, but they are supposed to be capable, are in a very different situation than the players. And characters are not, and should not, in my view, be bound by the player's skills. Not in TRPGs.)

The point was about the necessity of adding something like a success check once the details of the listener and the argument have been decided, as well as what doing that suggests to players. If you have one system where e.g. making a well-chosen argument to a person who ultimately wants to agree is worth, say, a +10 to the check - but other ineffable factors such as Charisma and abstract 'skill' and the die roll contribute +/- 30 to the check, you're communicating that what's going on is more about those ineffable factors than about the choice of argument and goal.

So when earlier you suggested that you might as well let people try even when the argument is bad, the reason to not do that is that ultimately suggests that the argument and the listener are not actually the factors that ultimately decide things, but rather some kind of inherent awesomeness of the way the character said it which can't be grasped by those outside of the game.

If you make the perfect argument and fail, or make a terrible argument and succeed, I'd argue that's the kind of thing that makes it feel like characters have lost their agency - because the player whose character is being convinced can look at it and say 'come on, its obvious this is a stupid deal, my guy isn't that dumb' or 'come on, this fundamentally goes against what my guy believes in'. Whereas, if the system works by getting players to give away knowledge of what their character could be convinced of, then no matter what happens it's going to be compatible with how the player is developing their character.

But just because the skill is abstract, it doesn't mean something ineffable is going on? Just... that it has been abstracted into a skill. RPGs abstract all the time, for everything, just to different degrees (FATE more so than Dark Eye, for example)
Also, people IRL can be surprisingly deaf to arguments, no matter how logical or good. To pretend that "good argument" is the be-all and end-all of all social interaction calls into question many political decision made... ever, really. Calls into question all the people who make utterly dumb decisions by not talking to each other. There is simply much, much more to this than merely the simple facts presented, and deciding to abstract it doesn't make it "magic".
(Minor example, rather recently I spent 3 months agonizing about whether or not some former friends still liked me after a situation involving mutual acquaintance blew up. Rational argument said and says I should have just called, but... I didn't. Because people are not just pure logic, and emotion is a messy thing.)

But well. The main argument comes down to immersion again - and I, for one, am perfectly happy to say "yeah, what you said IRL was a bit crude, but you do have the skill, and none of us really are in the situation our characters are, so... yeah, your character didn't ACTUALLY say it like that". Or even "yes, your argument was good, but they are simply very, very apt at deflecting these things/While you talked very confidently, the fact that you stumbled over the hem of your clothes while moving during the speech kind of dampened your point and called your competence into question." (Something the player runs no risk of whatsover, but the character well does. The situations are not equivalent, and I really don't like to pretend they are by just playing out social interactions without involving the game mechanics.

Yeah. Generally for just inherently satisfying gameplay I tend to either go for computer games or for very simple abstract games like Go - the first because the automaticity makes it possible to have richer gameplay mechanics without the tediousness of actually resolving things by hand, and the second because the rules become minimally tedious. Tabletop games offer an open-endedness that neither of the others can approach, and that open-endedness is necessary for me to really feel as though everything about my character's thought processes and actions could potentially matter, which is I think is essential for immersion (once I start thinking things like 'no matter what I do, its going to end up being some modifier to some roll' then I tend to lose immersion and stop bothering to be creative or engaged)

Well. For satisfying immersion, I go to Larps, where there are (close to) no rules, and the situation I am in as close as possible to my characters, if one takes things as "real-person safety" into account. What I have experienced there, where I have my full brain capacity to get into character, am actually feeling and seeing everything around them and don't have to imagine that while sitting, just gets me closer and deeper into things than TRPGs ever could.
And, yes, Open-endedness is an incredible thing RPGs can offer! One of the other reasons I play them. The things you mention ring true to reasons why I play - just not because they benefit immersion, but... well. Because I value them for themselves, mostly.
And for the point of "some modifier on some roll" - that is a problem of the specific system, not one looking for gameplay - generally, what I experience in TRPGs, decisions made by players are/should be essential to what happens. (And, the more varied the gameplay, the more likely it will be something entirely different than "just some modifier")

You can't always get what you want. Wanting too much, too specifically means that you will generally fail at being satisfied. The skill in this sort of thing is in actually realizing why you want something, and then using that to obtain flexibility in actually achieving something useful. I agree that people often aren't that willing to compromise. I would just say however, this is the lion's share of why they often fail at things, or feel as though things are unfair or impossible.

That's also why its important to make a system where it's crystal clear about when compromise is necessary and not give mixed messages. I've encountered many players and groups of players that would choose to fail and get nothing rather than to compromise and get something, because they ultimately can't shake the belief that there must be some way to do things without compromise.

I'm perfectly fine with a system where, if someone can't compromise at all in a social interaction, they fail 100% of the time unless the other person already wanted what they're trying to persuade them of. Social interaction is, fundamentally, about compromise - if the other person doesn't get something from talking with you, they can easily choose to just not speak with you at all. If you enter that kind of situation believing that compromise is an inherently unnecessary thing, you're going to get stonewalled all the time and constantly fail (because, after all, in that point of view there's no reason your target should compromise either).

Compromising too much can also lead to failing at being satisfied.
Like, yes, I agree: Compromise can help things happening along. This is how compromising works - give people things they want, and they are more willing to give things in return. But if a compromise veers too far off what you actually wanted, even after contemplation, acting as if a compromise is the solution is being dishonest.
People are more than mere logic, and some things simply cannot be divided down.
(Also, there are ways to circumvent logical thinking even more. If you put your initial bid above what you actually want, the "compromise" you get might just be exactly what you want. Time pressure can make people prone to bad decisions, etc. Now, of course, those things are at the very least sketchy, but sketchy RPG characters have a right to exist.)
And I would not be fine with a system that includes a 100% failure rate in such a situation, or at least applied very carefully. High, nigh-on impossible? Sure.

Maybe an example from the 5 Rings campaign. A member of court is suspected to have orchestrated a murder, and maybe also a murder attempt on the PCs. Obviously, accusing him would mean political death. And he would never admit to it, getting him to do that would, indeed, be probably impossible.
Now, inviting him over for an evening of polite conversation, marvelling at a painting (that had been shown to other members of court for great approval) and sake, a general nice distraction from the boredom of a winter encased in a snowstorm. Something one could turn down, but only under difficulty, if presented right - the social conventions of the country do their part.
Now, if in this situation, the sake is a bit more powerful than usual (Spiked, actually), the conversation very carefully veering into topics where the guy might (And, did, due to the setup being successful) let things slip that were while somewhat harmless in and of themselves, in the context of the suspicions painted a picture clear enough to make their boss intervene. (The fact that the courtier seduced the guy afterward, while the "victim" was sleeping from the combined facts of "spiked sake" and "Having someone over" and while rummaging through his things found a somewhat interesting piece of paper which didn't say anything - but had a cifer used in a different, suspicious case - didn't hurt, of course.)
Did the group compromise here? Because, the focus on the target was just as present. They did their best to erode his defenses, with ideas I cannot find fault with - neither from a gamistical standpoint (A tense situation, with interesting choices with meaningful consequences for how things went), nor really a "this isn't how people work" one.

In my experience, the 'thinking outside the box' is more local scale 'lets collapse the ceiling on him rather than fighting him' kinds of things instead of 'actually, maybe we don't even have to go to this dungeon'. The general arc of it is that the players get into some situation, they find that they don't like the trajectory that the situation is on if things were to follow the standard sequence, so they try more and more creative things to try to escape that sequence. But usually the underlying premises and goals are left alone.

It's absolutely critical to design systems with player behavior in mind, or you get muckups like how D&D's designers thought that people would play wizards primarily as blasters.

The example above may also serve as an example of what my players tend to come up with. The only thing presented was "Someone at court is a murderer". They searched out info for who might qualify; then came up with ideas on how to eliminate suspects; then arranged for the most likely subject to end up in a situation where they might compromise themselves enough for their boss to intervene.
And this is one of the less "out-there". In Shadowrun, they once completed a run by arranging a meeting between two people that were not part of my original writeup at all, in a place that also wasn't part of my writeup. I still think this is a problem with the players, or maybe even with the way the GM presents things, than with the system not "encouraging thinking in broader terms".

Maybe I also don't see the problem because usually my players do think about what kinds of hooks a person might have to be moved to do what they want (Which is something I tend to do as well with my characters, in the rare instances I get to play.). Like, they don't just have one method of begging, but choose their approaches depending on what they (think they) know about a person, or situation. Granted, if I have not decided if a person has a hook of a certain direction, and it isn't answered by personality, I find having the players roll on Edge/Void/Whatever is used in the system for "luck", to see if I will be lenient in determining the fact or not, to be a much more satisfying and productive way of dealing with things than just stonewalling everything that isn't in line with the facts I had thought about.
Because, in the end, if you insist on "finding the gaps" you put there, you tend to make players hesitant to try things, to be creative, and to think outside the box, and veer them towards thinking "what might the GM have thought how this is solvable". Not answering what they think might be the best way, but what they think I think might be the best way, and in the end this leads to less interesting games.

I don't quite think that the problem you describe is due to designing for player behaviour, but instead due to not designing thoroughly enough. Search your system for exploits, and playtest outside of your circle, with people with different playstyles. Magic often falls prone to that, by simply not thinking the possibilities through, a class might end up being much more powerful than imagined, simply because there was a more efficient way to play that class than the one the designers intended. (CRPG example: Guild Wars 2's dungeons were perfectly balanced, and challenging for groups with tanks, healers and damage dealers. But... somehow it was forgotten to try the method of "everyone does as much damage as possible", and with that strategy suddenly the metagame was dead, pure damage the norm and the content more or less a joke difficulty-wise.)
But other than "check for minmaxing options you might not want", I don't think situations like these can really teach us much.
Maybe this falls under "design for player behaviour", but I really see "Design in a way that the system actually does what you think it should" as the issue here. And as the issue that should be focussed on.

NichG

2017-05-29, 08:47 AM

But just because the skill is abstract, it doesn't mean something ineffable is going on? Just... that it has been abstracted into a skill. RPGs abstract all the time, for everything, just to different degrees (FATE more so than Dark Eye, for example)
Also, people IRL can be surprisingly deaf to arguments, no matter how logical or good. To pretend that "good argument" is the be-all and end-all of all social interaction calls into question many political decision made... ever, really. Calls into question all the people who make utterly dumb decisions by not talking to each other. There is simply much, much more to this than merely the simple facts presented, and deciding to abstract it doesn't make it "magic".
(Minor example, rather recently I spent 3 months agonizing about whether or not some former friends still liked me after a situation involving mutual acquaintance blew up. Rational argument said and says I should have just called, but... I didn't. Because people are not just pure logic, and emotion is a messy thing.)

Not about the facts presented or rationality per se, but about the argument being the thing that the recipient wants to hear or is ready to believe. It's a good argument for that listener, not for a different listener.

The reason to not abstract goes back to what Segev and I were discussing earlier. If you look at something like combat, there's a richness in the system because you don't abstract too violently. You have to care where characters are positioned with respect to each-other, what their ranges are, etc. In a social system, if you just abstract to a kind of roll -> pass/fail mechanic, then the details of 'why' that worked are lost, and that in turn limits the richness and connectedness of the outcomes. It also limits how much the individuality of the participants in these situations can shine through. If your particular brand of conviction and your particular pecadilloes are summed up as '+5, -7' then they don't really matter - they're just fluff, since the numbers are all comparable objects. But if your vulnerability means you're always getting seduced, but the other guy's vulnerability means he's always getting lured to gamble, and you really let those distinctions be solid, then the experiences of those two characters will be very different. Just like the archer and the fighter will feel different from each-other in a combat involving a battle mat and obstacles and so on, whereas if you abstract away spatial relations the distinction tends to get lost.

Compromising too much can also lead to failing at being satisfied.
Like, yes, I agree: Compromise can help things happening along. This is how compromising works - give people things they want, and they are more willing to give things in return. But if a compromise veers too far off what you actually wanted, even after contemplation, acting as if a compromise is the solution is being dishonest.
People are more than mere logic, and some things simply cannot be divided down.
(Also, there are ways to circumvent logical thinking even more. If you put your initial bid above what you actually want, the "compromise" you get might just be exactly what you want. Time pressure can make people prone to bad decisions, etc. Now, of course, those things are at the very least sketchy, but sketchy RPG characters have a right to exist.)
And I would not be fine with a system that includes a 100% failure rate in such a situation, or at least applied very carefully. High, nigh-on impossible? Sure.

The whole 'this DC is impossibly high' thing is almost always a bad DM habit; a cop-out of not wanting to actually be on record for saying 'no' but actually wanting to say 'no'. Any finite difficulty isn't a difficulty, its a challenge. I only ever tell a player 'this is nigh-on impossible' when what I really want to communicate is 'high levels of optimization are okay and are encouraged in this campaign'. Whenever I've made or encountered ridiculously high DCs in campaigns (100s to 200s range for D&D; a couple 100s in 7th Sea and L5R), the players always eventually manage to hit them. The lesson I've learned from this is, setting very high DCs is how you tell players to step up their game. It makes the conditions for success concrete, and gives them a reason to push to that extreme when they might not have had one before. The absolute worst is when you do this in a system where there are no consequences for failure - that's just asking for ten minutes of the player rolling repeatedly until they get it.

If that's not my intent, I always, always say 'this is outright impossible' rather than just making it hard. And if I am going to do that, it's good to also explicitly outline the conditions which determine possibility or impossibility so that the player can reach that determination on their own (which makes it so that I'm not just shutting down their idea because I didn't like it, but rather that they're trying to work out how to achieve something in a well-defined scenario).

Maybe an example from the 5 Rings campaign. A member of court is suspected to have orchestrated a murder, and maybe also a murder attempt on the PCs. Obviously, accusing him would mean political death. And he would never admit to it, getting him to do that would, indeed, be probably impossible.
Now, inviting him over for an evening of polite conversation, marvelling at a painting (that had been shown to other members of court for great approval) and sake, a general nice distraction from the boredom of a winter encased in a snowstorm. Something one could turn down, but only under difficulty, if presented right - the social conventions of the country do their part.
Now, if in this situation, the sake is a bit more powerful than usual (Spiked, actually), the conversation very carefully veering into topics where the guy might (And, did, due to the setup being successful) let things slip that were while somewhat harmless in and of themselves, in the context of the suspicions painted a picture clear enough to make their boss intervene. (The fact that the courtier seduced the guy afterward, while the "victim" was sleeping from the combined facts of "spiked sake" and "Having someone over" and while rummaging through his things found a somewhat interesting piece of paper which didn't say anything - but had a cifer used in a different, suspicious case - didn't hurt, of course.)
Did the group compromise here? Because, the focus on the target was just as present. They did their best to erode his defenses, with ideas I cannot find fault with - neither from a gamistical standpoint (A tense situation, with interesting choices with meaningful consequences for how things went), nor really a "this isn't how people work" one.

I'd say they compromised: rather than convincing the villain to confess, they convinced him to drink a cup of liquid. Once drugs (or knives, or mind control magic, or ...) come into it, it's no longer a question of persuasive arguments. The thing they realized is that they didn't need to get the villain to confess, they only needed to get him to drink, and that they had the ability to make drinking sufficient to get them what they ultimately wanted.

Now as to whether or not its how people work, that comes down to the NPC. I'd say that the fact that this works tells me some very specific things about the NPC, which I would consider preconditions for this plan actually going off the way it did. Those things are now true of that NPC, whether you intended them to be or not. For an NPC, that's generally not a big deal, but if this was a player's character I could see them rightfully pitching a fit about it if those things were incompatible with how they imagined their character.

Specifically, if I put myself in the mindset of the villain. Things we start with, that aren't part of characterization:

- I am already worried about these people enough that I tried to have them killed
- I have a social station that obliges me to observe certain protocols in order to maintain it (this would be an Engagement/Hook pair in the system I described, btw - in an L5R society, violating hospitality traditions would surely come with an Honor hit at the least, and if I'm relying on that Honor in order to be above accusation in this trial...)

Now, the part that could be a problem with characterization: I'm being invited by the people I tried to have killed, who are investigating me. Of course I can't refuse without becoming vulnerable to accusation, so I have to do something. Your version of this character went with basically no counter-plan in mind, no backup or protections, no caution at all, and treated it as if he was in control. That suggests a character with a good dose of moustache-twirling megalomania, or a character who is answering a deeper insecurity with the need to behave as if they're untouchable even in situations where they're obviously vulnerable. These aren't uncommon villain archetypes, but they're not mandatory aspects for a villain to have.

My villain, for example, might instead do the following: It's obviously a trap and I can't refuse. So I accept, but with a plan to turn the invitation against my enemies. This means that I'm going to go there with the plan of finding some excuse to be insulted by their hospitality, so that I can either force them to let me leave and have an solid excuse to deny further contact with them or even lodge complaints about them if their investigation gets closer to me, or so that they escalate and I can get a second to duel them in my stead and actually kill them off in a legitimate fashion. To do this, I'm going to bring a guest whom I can be offended on behalf of. Perhaps a co-conspirator who will play up the situation, or just someone with a little known trigger which I will make sure is hidden. This also gives me a way to disincentivize them from simply outright killing me when I arrive (e.g. claiming self-defense or somesuch), since there would be a secondary witness. I don't know specifically that they're going to poison the sake, so its not like I'd be able to anticipate and defend against that in particular, but I'd go expecting some kind of move on their part which might make me generally cautious about things. If I brought a co-conspirator, odds are that once I started to get loopy they could see this and make an excuse for us to leave before our enemies got anything out of me. It's quite a different characterization - calculating, paranoid, and a bit psychopathic rather than egotistic and theatrical, but that's a kind of villain that can exist too.

I would be pretty put out if my villain PC suddenly had to hold the idiot ball through no specific vulnerability of his own, just because the others rolled well on their planning check. Because that actually alters that villain's characterization in an important way.

The example above may also serve as an example of what my players tend to come up with. The only thing presented was "Someone at court is a murderer". They searched out info for who might qualify; then came up with ideas on how to eliminate suspects; then arranged for the most likely subject to end up in a situation where they might compromise themselves enough for their boss to intervene.
And this is one of the less "out-there". In Shadowrun, they once completed a run by arranging a meeting between two people that were not part of my original writeup at all, in a place that also wasn't part of my writeup. I still think this is a problem with the players, or maybe even with the way the GM presents things, than with the system not "encouraging thinking in broader terms".

Maybe I also don't see the problem because usually my players do think about what kinds of hooks a person might have to be moved to do what they want (Which is something I tend to do as well with my characters, in the rare instances I get to play.). Like, they don't just have one method of begging, but choose their approaches depending on what they (think they) know about a person, or situation. Granted, if I have not decided if a person has a hook of a certain direction, and it isn't answered by personality, I find having the players roll on Edge/Void/Whatever is used in the system for "luck", to see if I will be lenient in determining the fact or not, to be a much more satisfying and productive way of dealing with things than just stonewalling everything that isn't in line with the facts I had thought about.
Because, in the end, if you insist on "finding the gaps" you put there, you tend to make players hesitant to try things, to be creative, and to think outside the box, and veer them towards thinking "what might the GM have thought how this is solvable". Not answering what they think might be the best way, but what they think I think might be the best way, and in the end this leads to less interesting games.

Different experience from me. I find that players are hesitant when they don't have a clear way to evaluate the chance of success of something. Often, one player being hesitant means that the group becomes hesitant as a whole. In the worst cases I've e.g. seen a player propose a completely workable plan, then have another player shut it down based on an imagined problem with it, and then the entire party dynamic gets frozen with a 30 minute debate. I tend to have a 'tyranny of the individual' rule when that starts to happen - once I notice it, I go around the table saying 'okay, what do you do right now?' so that people don't feel like they have to justify what they want to do in order to try it and see what happens.

When the scenario is sufficiently clear that evaluating feasibility is actually in the players' hands, then I find that my players tend to be more daring. They can work out a plan and know without having to ask me (or others at the table) whether it should or shouldn't work.

Now, what you don't want is for there to be secret reasons why things will hit hard failure. If there are hard failures, put them in the open - that way it won't feel like being stonewalled, it will just feel like that's the scenario. I don't feel stonewalled when I can't change the range of my melee attack just by rolling really well on an attack roll, because that's just how things work. If I were told 'this creature has a power that makes the first melee attack each round miss' then I'd accept that more easily than if I were told e.g. 'You rolled a 93? That's a miss.'

Maybe this falls under "design for player behaviour", but I really see "Design in a way that the system actually does what you think it should" as the issue here. And as the issue that should be focussed on.

An indie (computer) game studio I follow had a bunch of posts about game design when they were working out the kinks of a strategy game. What they found from player reports is that there was a fun, easy way to do things, but that you could gain a slight (basically negligible) advantage by doing something tedious instead - and as a result, players felt compelled to do the tedious thing even though it made the game un-fun for them. It's not that it was game-breaking to do that thing, it's that the game communicated to the players 'this is how a skilled player should play', and that was at odds with the way that the developers had anticipated people playing - meaning that the game felt tedious even though there was nothing explicitly forcing it to do so.

It's that kind of thing. It's not just stuff being broken, its that the way a system is set up encourages a certain line of thought. You want to be on the right page about where that line of thought is going, or you're going to have dissonance when it comes to actual play situations.

Segev

2017-05-30, 11:33 AM

Best social system I know of:

You roleplay the conversation first. GM either straight up adjudicates result, or if result is uncertain, assigns a modifier (+1, +2, adv/disad or whatever) depending on what's said. Then roll.

So you get both player skill and character skill in the mix.

Would you say, then, that the best combat system would be:

You roleplay combat first, describing every blow and counter-blow and tactic used. The GM either straight up adjudicates the result, or, if it's uncertain, assigns a modifier (+1, +2, adv/disad or whatever) depending on the description. Then roll a single "combat skill" check.

Would that be an ideal combat system, to you?

The reason to not abstract goes back to what Segev and I were discussing earlier. If you look at something like combat, there's a richness in the system because you don't abstract too violently. You have to care where characters are positioned with respect to each-other, what their ranges are, etc. In a social system, if you just abstract to a kind of roll -> pass/fail mechanic, then the details of 'why' that worked are lost, and that in turn limits the richness and connectedness of the outcomes. It also limits how much the individuality of the participants in these situations can shine through. If your particular brand of conviction and your particular pecadilloes are summed up as '+5, -7' then they don't really matter - they're just fluff, since the numbers are all comparable objects. But if your vulnerability means you're always getting seduced, but the other guy's vulnerability means he's always getting lured to gamble, and you really let those distinctions be solid, then the experiences of those two characters will be very different. Just like the archer and the fighter will feel different from each-other in a combat involving a battle mat and obstacles and so on, whereas if you abstract away spatial relations the distinction tends to get lost.This is touching strongly on what I'm aiming for. It's a lot easier to get the chronic gambler to play a game of chance wherein you can get him in a compromising position (indebtedness, a trap, simply get him to let slip information while he's focused on the game...) than it is to get him to simply do you the favor you want him to do by brow-beating him with conversation, or by offering to sleep with him, or by promising him concert tickets.

Meanwhile, the lush would be far more easily bribed to talk by offering him a fine, strong wine, than he would be convinced to join a gambling game.

Heck, just as a really simple example, let's say you want to get by a guard.

If he's a lush, offering him a fine, strong drink will likely see him sloshed within the hour and make slipping by him either trivial or at least a lot easier.

If he's a chronic gambler, you might be able to either distract him with a game of chance or get him indebted enough (or use the friendly game to get him to like you enough) to let you by.

If he's a lech, it's probably easier to seduce him away from his post for some debauchery - or at least some heavy petting in that alley over there.

Again, these are extremely simplistic examples. More complex characters will have more hooks and motives and drives to play with, and which have to be overcome.

I'd say they compromised: rather than convincing the villain to confess, they convinced him to drink a cup of liquid. Once drugs (or knives, or mind control magic, or ...) come into it, it's no longer a question of persuasive arguments. The thing they realized is that they didn't need to get the villain to confess, they only needed to get him to drink, and that they had the ability to make drinking sufficient to get them what they ultimately wanted.
See, I don't see that as "compromising." That's just taking a different approach. It backs up my claim that "getting what they want" isn't, actually, impossible. This courtier has as a desire "don't let them prove I'm the murderer," but that doesn't make him immune to any effort which would cause him to slip up and reveal it.

Now, if the party were insistent on getting his confession, they could go about it a couple of ways: they could torment and torture and intimidate him until he was so terrified that he would confess to ANYTHING (including the truth) to make it stop; they could torment/torture/whatever him until he threw himself on his master's mercy and tearfully confessed just to convince his master how dire the threat was (or confessed in blubbering panic); they could work on him and work on him until he had such a change of heart that his pure guilt made him confess.

Most of these, especially the last, would be ridiculously hard. Possibly impossible.

But the "possibly impossible" is due to a high DC, not because the GM is afraid to say "no" when he really means it, but because it's just that hard to do. And it may not be "a high DC" so much as "a series of really hard-to-pull-off actions over a long period of time, any one of which if failed foils the whole attempt or at least requires starting over from a long ways back."

But if their goal was to get the murderer to stop wanting to murder THEM, blackmail might work (at least in making him stop trying), as might actively befriending and allying with him. If his motive for murdering them becomes overwhelmed by his motives for keeping them alive, his behavior will change even if he won't confess.

In this case, their goal was revealing him. So they took actions that played on his nature.

Of note, to me, is the seduction action: in L5R, seduction is one of those skills that mechanically does nothing. It just tells the player of the target character that his character "feels desire." Whether the character acts on that desire is up to the player. Entirely. So a GM or a player can no-sell the most sexy seductress ever every single time. Good RP would suggest you shouldn't, but there's no consequence to doing so (and often great benefit in avoiding whatever cost the sexytimes would inflict upon your character).

I would prefer there to be actual mechanical rammifications to turning down (or accepting) the seduction, based on how well the seductor rolled and potentially what hooks in the target character were played upon.

I put myself in the mindset of the villain. Things we start with, that aren't part of characterization:

- I am already worried about these people enough that I tried to have them killed
- I have a social station that obliges me to observe certain protocols in order to maintain it (this would be an Engagement/Hook pair in the system I described, btw - in an L5R society, violating hospitality traditions would surely come with an Honor hit at the least, and if I'm relying on that Honor in order to be above accusation in this trial...)

Now, the part that could be a problem with characterization: I'm being invited by the people I tried to have killed, who are investigating me. Of course I can't refuse without becoming vulnerable to accusation, so I have to do something. Your version of this character went with basically no counter-plan in mind, no backup or protections, no caution at all, and treated it as if he was in control. That suggests a character with a good dose of moustache-twirling megalomania, or a character who is answering a deeper insecurity with the need to behave as if they're untouchable even in situations where they're obviously vulnerable. These aren't uncommon villain archetypes, but they're not mandatory aspects for a villain to have.With just those considerations, he would drink almost none of the sake, and would not be seduced. In fact, the temptations of the sake are non-existent for the GM, as are the temptations of the flesh. And the GM has determined that the concerns of the character are as you listed, which doesn't include any desire for pleasurable drink nor pleasurable...ahem...company.

Even if the character would normally enjoy pleasurable activities, the objective examination is that risking it is not worth it. The social skill comes in plying the target NPC with "just one more drink" and with a sense that "a little won't hurt" until he's taken far more "little" steps over the line than he realized and he's lost control of the situation. But none of that can happen without convincing the GM that it "should." And the GM has no way of gauging this other than an arbitrary "well, did they roll high? Is that high enough to count?"

Different experience from me. I find that players are hesitant when they don't have a clear way to evaluate the chance of success of something. This is quite true. In real life as well as in gaming. I think people game because they have a BETTER grasp of chances of success in game situations. Which is another reason having well-defined mechanics makes things easier to decide.

If you can evaluate Murderous Courtier-san to learn his hooks, that gives you a move you can certainly make to discover potentially-useful future moves. Knowing his hooks, you can have a firmer grasp of the chances of success of any given course of action, and can plan accordingly. You can strategize how to build up or knock down hooks and drives, and how to capitalize on them.

Now, what you don't want is for there to be secret reasons why things will hit hard failure. If there are hard failures, put them in the open - that way it won't feel like being stonewalled, it will just feel like that's the scenario. I don't feel stonewalled when I can't change the range of my melee attack just by rolling really well on an attack roll, because that's just how things work. If I were told 'this creature has a power that makes the first melee attack each round miss' then I'd accept that more easily than if I were told e.g. 'You rolled a 93? That's a miss.'Generally good advice. Again, knowing he's got absolutely no interest in your seductress tells you that you are not going to succeed at getting him to do her any favors...yet. She has to figure out how to make him interested, possibly using existing hooks.

The truth is that the unspoken hook a seductor uses is "(practically) everyone likes sex." They also play on typical sexual preferences.

People who genuinely lack those hooks are incredibly rare. Some have them less strongly than others, and some have them as overriding as any addiction, but those without them entirely are rare in the extreme, and probably should have special note made of it in their mechanics.

Likewise: food/hunger temptations. Really, anything to do with appetites.

An indie (computer) game studio I follow had a bunch of posts about game design when they were working out the kinks of a strategy game. What they found from player reports is that there was a fun, easy way to do things, but that you could gain a slight (basically negligible) advantage by doing something tedious instead - and as a result, players felt compelled to do the tedious thing even though it made the game un-fun for them. It's not that it was game-breaking to do that thing, it's that the game communicated to the players 'this is how a skilled player should play', and that was at odds with the way that the developers had anticipated people playing - meaning that the game felt tedious even though there was nothing explicitly forcing it to do so.

It's that kind of thing. It's not just stuff being broken, its that the way a system is set up encourages a certain line of thought. You want to be on the right page about where that line of thought is going, or you're going to have dissonance when it comes to actual play situations.Valuable knowledge.

But I still say that saying, "There's no way to introduce a new preference, like, dislike, or emotional tie," fails because it makes for unrealistic people. I think if you make the hooks clear enough and design the rules such that USING hooks is how things get done, the fact that using existing hooks is faster than building new ones will lead people to realistic efforts to use the social system.

If you can bribe the lush security guard with wine, why would you decide you instead need to bash your head against the wall of convincing him to take up gambling as a hobby in order to lure him away, eventually, with the promise of a game of chance? Just offer him the wine.

NichG

2017-05-30, 12:28 PM

See, I don't see that as "compromising." That's just taking a different approach. It backs up my claim that "getting what they want" isn't, actually, impossible. This courtier has as a desire "don't let them prove I'm the murderer," but that doesn't make him immune to any effort which would cause him to slip up and reveal it.

In the specific context of talking about persuasion mechanics, it is compromising. That is to say, the characters in that story didn't make a successful persuasion attempt to get the courtier to slip up and reveal their crime. They instead made a successful alchemy attempt to create a truth serum, thereby changing the thing that they needed to persuade their target to do in order to obtain what they ultimately actually wanted.

That kind of case would still play out the same way if I were to say 'persuading the courtier to confess is impossible' - because the crafty players realized that they didn't have to persuade the courtier to confess, they just had to persuade the courtier to drink a cup of sake. So rather than butting their heads up against the infeasible direct method of 'c'mon, confess!', they changed their immediate goals and thereby made the persuasion attempt fall along the lines of what the courtier couldn't reasonably refuse.

In other words, this is the desired mode of play.

Even if the character would normally enjoy pleasurable activities, the objective examination is that risking it is not worth it. The social skill comes in plying the target NPC with "just one more drink" and with a sense that "a little won't hurt" until he's taken far more "little" steps over the line than he realized and he's lost control of the situation. But none of that can happen without convincing the GM that it "should." And the GM has no way of gauging this other than an arbitrary "well, did they roll high? Is that high enough to count?"

A system with explicit guarantees creates a space that doesn't have this sort of ambiguity, while still allowing characters to act according to whims or subtle points. What it does is to say 'within the explicit guarantees, the GM doesn't need to be convinced for something to work; outside of it, the decision of whether it works or not is entirely up to the controller of the character you're trying it on'. So basically, if you try to seduce a character who doesn't have a 'vulnerable to seduction' flaw, their player can still decide to have the character go for it - but by putting it outside of the mechanics, it says that it's entirely their option as to whether their character happens to be enough of a lech for it to work.

Or to put it another way, it recognizes explicitly that there are aspects of a character which are undecided, and grants the agency to make decisions about those aspects to the controller of the character rather than to the person attempting to forward a manipulation. If someone tries a seduction, they are asking an honest question 'can your character be swayed by this?', permitting the other controller to decide that aspect of their character. The answer is allowed to be either 'yes' or 'no' with no judgement made by the system of one being more correct than the other.

By tying social powers and influence to mandatory vulnerabilities, you make sure that almost every character has some ways in which they can be shifted. But it's up to the controller rather than the interlocutor to present what those will be - to choose the nature of that character.

But I still say that saying, "There's no way to introduce a new preference, like, dislike, or emotional tie," fails because it makes for unrealistic people.

If a character's controller voluntarily accepts the new preference, like, dislike, or emotional tie, then the character can acquire such a thing even if there are no mechanics for it. If you try it and the character's controller goes for it, congratulations! But by not having mechanics by which an external agency can force that issue, I'm explicitly giving the right to make that decision to the character's controller. If a player says 'my character is an asexual hermit, and the fact that you dared try to talk with him means we're enemies now' then you may not think that character is particularly realistic, but I'd rather the system respect and support the controller's choice of characterization than another player's judgments about realism.

Letting it happen but with an impossibly high DC is the mixed messages thing again. It's saying that the system is okay with it - that its a valid mode of play - as long as you sufficiently minmax your check. I'd rather just say 'it is not a valid mode of play to try to override a character's characterization'.

Segev

2017-05-30, 12:34 PM

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-30, 12:52 PM

No, "If the character's player voluntarily accepts it" as the only way to get it done is the same as saying, "If the player of the persuading character is persuasive enough to convince the player of the persuaded character to allow his character to be persuaded."

It removes mechanics entirely.

It takes it from being a game and into being a social exercise for the players, where they have to convince/persuade/trick/manipulate/whatever each other, rather than having their characters do it to the other characters.

First, it doesn't have to have intricate social mechanics to be a game.

Second, I'd rather risk it "not being a game", than risk allowing players (or the GM) to violate the agency of the player when it comes to their character's personality, fears, goals, desires, aversions, etc.

Third, there's no difference in actual effect between allowing other players (or the GM) to impose in that manner upon a player's PC, or allowing the mechanics to impose in that manner upon a players's PC.

NichG

2017-05-30, 01:52 PM

No, "If the character's player voluntarily accepts it" as the only way to get it done is the same as saying, "If the player of the persuading character is persuasive enough to convince the player of the persuaded character to allow his character to be persuaded."

It removes mechanics entirely.

It takes it from being a game and into being a social exercise for the players, where they have to convince/persuade/trick/manipulate/whatever each other, rather than having their characters do it to the other characters.

Only if the players are for some reason refusing to actually use the hook system which does give them explicit mechanics for convincing people.

If they use the system, they don't have to persuade anyone OOC of anything. If they want to try to do it themselves they can - and anyone at the table has the right to say in response 'my character is not having any of that, use the mechanics or get lost' if they want.

It's like someone deciding to stunt during combat rather than use the attack mechanics. It might work. You can try. But if you go outside the system, you no longer have any guarantees.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-30, 03:33 PM

First, it doesn't have to have intricate social mechanics to be a game.

Second, I'd rather risk it "not being a game", than risk allowing players (or the GM) to violate the agency of the player when it comes to their character's personality, fears, goals, desires, aversions, etc.

Third, there's no difference in actual effect between allowing other players (or the GM) to impose in that manner upon a player's PC, or allowing the mechanics to impose in that manner upon a players's PC.

You acquiesce to having your character messed with in ways you may not always like the moment you allow random numbers to determine outcomes.

I see no real difference between declaring that your character is unaffected by well-structured and well-delivered arguments, and declaring that your character is unaffected by punches to the face.

They both make the character boring in their own ways. A character who never changes positions and never compromises and is never convinced to act against their own interests is boring. They suffer from a sort of Dudley Do-Right complex and are, in the end boring. Because we love characters for their struggles, not their achievements. A character with no internal struggle is exactly as boring as a character with no external struggle.

Superman is never threatened by anything. As a reader, I never feel like superman is in any real danger of any sort. He's boring.
Superman also never flinches in his decisions or moral stance, making him doubly boring. It is telling that two of the most popular depictions of Superman involve him being a "bad guy." In Injustice, where he becomes a straight-out villain (more popular but dumber because it has thr exact same problem from the other end) and Superman: Red Son, where Superman lands in Siberia instead of Kansas and is raised as a communist. The second of the two is actually interesting, because Superman has moral struggles for a change. He follows Stalin but understands that the dictator's methods are not what he claims to stand for. Superman genuinely wants what is best for his fellow men, but his methodologies and philosophies about it are from an entirely different worldview. His actions get called into question not only by others, but himself. Others speak words that influence his thinking and actions, and this is wildly important to his character.

It is the only Superman story that did not bore me 3 pages in, and he faces no real physical threats.

So, frankly, I enjoy when my characters are influenced. I make the rules about how it plays out and what my character thinks about all this, but I will play to the mechanical outcome even if it is begrudging and will eventually have some comeuppance inflicted.

TL;DR
Static characters that hold their central beliefs and never, ever compromise and are never, ever made to doubt and never, ever experience internal struggle are boring to me.

NichG

2017-05-30, 08:45 PM

You acquiesce to having your character messed with in ways you may not always like the moment you allow random numbers to determine outcomes.

I see no real difference between declaring that your character is unaffected by well-structured and well-delivered arguments, and declaring that your character is unaffected by punches to the face.

They both make the character boring in their own ways. A character who never changes positions and never compromises and is never convinced to act against their own interests is boring. They suffer from a sort of Dudley Do-Right complex and are, in the end boring. Because we love characters for their struggles, not their achievements. A character with no internal struggle is exactly as boring as a character with no external struggle.

Doesn't follow. We're talking system design here, which means that we're exactly discussing which aspects of a character should be messed with and in what ways. You could have a system where the players make no decisions and everything including the party's goals and strategic choices is based on die rolls. You could have a system where the only die roll is to determine who moves first, and everything else is up to fancy. Or, a system where the only die roll determines who moves first and everything else is a deterministic game of chess.

The recent discussion hasn't been about whether characters should be affected by things or not, it's been about defining mechanically what constitutes a 'well-structured and well-delivered argument' that is capable of hitting home. It's not 'should characters be immune to punches?', its 'should punches require being within 5ft of the target to have a non-zero chance of hitting?'

An internal struggle that consists of 'people in the world with high enough scores in persuasive skills to be able to force certain kinds of agreement' isn't actually an internal struggle anyhow. It's just a particular form of external struggle; one which I find to be particularly unsatisfying when it's being forwarded as a good way to have the sort of things character self-doubt brings to other fiction. I already have someone walking up and punching a character to provide that kind of struggle, having a refluffed version where the punching is done with words doesn't add anything. Having something that ultimately isn't just another flavor of punching on the other hand, that's where there might be something worth consideration.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-30, 09:41 PM

Doesn't follow. We're talking system design here, which means that we're exactly discussing which aspects of a character should be messed with and in what ways. You could have a system where the players make no decisions and everything including the party's goals and strategic choices is based on die rolls. You could have a system where the only die roll is to determine who moves first, and everything else is up to fancy. Or, a system where the only die roll determines who moves first and everything else is a deterministic game of chess.

The recent discussion hasn't been about whether characters should be affected by things or not, it's been about defining mechanically what constitutes a 'well-structured and well-delivered argument' that is capable of hitting home. It's not 'should characters be immune to punches?', its 'should punches require being within 5ft of the target to have a non-zero chance of hitting?'

An internal struggle that consists of 'people in the world with high enough scores in persuasive skills to be able to force certain kinds of agreement' isn't actually an internal struggle anyhow. It's just a particular form of external struggle; one which I find to be particularly unsatisfying when it's being forwarded as a good way to have the sort of things character self-doubt brings to other fiction. I already have someone walking up and punching a character to provide that kind of struggle, having a refluffed version where the punching is done with words doesn't add anything. Having something that ultimately isn't just another flavor of punching on the other hand, that's where there might be something worth consideration.

You forget that I was responding to someone making the argument that they should be able to ignore/deny any social roll outcome and/or won't touch systems which contain such.

Maintaining that context is important.

Yes, there is discussion to be had about mechanics and how to do it, on which I prefer to take the lighter approach to basically everything. It's easier on me and my players, and since we're a fairly chill bunch who value hijinks, shenanigans, drama, and cool happenings more than strict and unyielding character accuracy at all times, we have a blast.

My ideal system is pretty much what Apocalypse World does. Any negotiation that isn't a threat involves making an offer. Your roll determines how effective your bargaining is. Maximum success can mean that you even wriggle out of actually holding up your end of the deal.
With PCs, it functions based on treats for the player if they acquiesce. Saying yes means marking XP, and/or saying No means unhighlighting a stat (making it much harder to gain XP this session. And if it happens twice, makes it impossible.) The roll determines whether you deliver the carrot, the stick, both, or neither. What the other player does is up to them. All mechanical consequence is meta. The narrative layer consequences... maybe not.

NichG

2017-05-30, 10:55 PM

You forget that I was responding to someone making the argument that they should be able to ignore/deny any social roll outcome and/or won't touch systems which contain such.

Maintaining that context is important.

Yes. You were responding to Max_Killjoy's point which was in response to Segev's points, which had to do with choosing where to put the line and whether or not a specific form of manipulation needs to be included in a system. When taking Max's comments in that context, your response felt like a non sequitur to me.

My ideal system is pretty much what Apocalypse World does. Any negotiation that isn't a threat involves making an offer. Your roll determines how effective your bargaining is. Maximum success can mean that you even wriggle out of actually holding up your end of the deal.
With PCs, it functions based on treats for the player if they acquiesce. Saying yes means marking XP, and/or saying No means unhighlighting a stat (making it much harder to gain XP this session. And if it happens twice, makes it impossible.) The roll determines whether you deliver the carrot, the stick, both, or neither. What the other player does is up to them. All mechanical consequence is meta. The narrative layer consequences... maybe not.

I don't like the PC vs NPC part of that (due to the nonsensicality that arises from the bargainer being more important than the offer). But I agree that incentive-based systems are a reasonable approach for PC vs PC. However, I think its possible to do better, since incentive-based systems are still kind of one-note in that they're still approaching things from the point of view of a conflict resolution mechanic, and ultimately I think the non-conflict aspects of social interaction are much richer than the conflict-based aspects, and are handled poorly by such things.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-30, 11:12 PM

I don't like the PC vs NPC part of that (due to the nonsensicality that arises from the bargainer being more important than the offer). But I agree that incentive-based systems are a reasonable approach for PC vs PC. However, I think do its possible to do better, since incentive-based systems are still kind of one-note in that they're still approaching things from the point of view of a conflict resolution mechanic, and ultimately I think the non-conflict aspects of social interaction are much richer than the conflict-based aspects, and are handled poorly by such things.

One of the worst things about most social resolution mechanics I've seen is that they assume an adversarial, zero-sum, win-lose situation -- that all social interaction is conflict, that all social interaction is about power, about one person imposing an action, belief, decision, whatever, on another person.

This can be seen underlying the surface even in some systems that are supposedly not built upon it.

flond

2017-05-30, 11:19 PM

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-30, 11:33 PM

Yes, because once again those are the times you want a system.

1) When the rules encode only conflict into the mechanics, it leads some/many players to see through that lens and view all interaction as conflict.

2) I disagree with the notion that mechanics and rules are only for conflict and need only account for conflict.

3) I disagree with the idea (largely Edwardian, but espoused by others) that "conflict resolution" (only roll when there is conflict, identify the abstract narrative conflict and roll to resolve that, never roll unless failure is at stake) is superior to "task resolution" (identify the specific discrete thing that the character wants to attempt, and roll to determine whether they succeed, and/or the speed of completion, and/or the degree of success, depending on the setting and game circumstances).

flond

2017-05-30, 11:48 PM

1) When the rules encode only conflict into the mechanics, it leads some/many players to see through that lens and view all interaction as conflict.

2) I disagree with the notion that mechanics and rules are only for conflict and need only account for conflict.

3) I disagree with the idea (largely Edwardian, but espoused by others) that "conflict resolution" (only roll when there is conflict, identify the abstract narrative conflict and roll to resolve that, never roll unless failure is at stake) is superior to "task resolution" (identify the specific discrete thing that the character wants to attempt, and roll to determine whether they succeed, and/or the speed of completion, and/or the degree of success, depending on the setting and game circumstances).

1. That sounds like their problem.

2. This was my bad. I meant this specifically in the realm of "social interaction" fundamentally, I think that non-adversarial social interaction generally doesn't need an arbitration (or at least, any arbitration of non-adversarial social interaction probably is only going to be involved in a fundamentally thematic context (e.g. a narrative game like Chuubo's where talking about your feelings gives you XP). Outside of that, I think social rules are a useful abstraction. A way to avoid something unpleasent or unuseful.

3. This is irrelevant to this discussion. I am using conflict in its more general sense. (I prefer conflict to task resolution in the GNS sense. But I also prefer very different games to you I suspect.)

NichG

2017-05-30, 11:53 PM

IME, the thing systems actually provide is to concretize aspects of how the world will work. That allows for planning, and also provides channels which guide the players' way of assessing a situation - both in terms of their options, and in terms of explaining causality - what does it 'mean' that you are Dexterous, what does that do?

So if you only have systems for conflict, your game will primarily be about conflict. If you only have systems about cooperation, that's what your game will focus on.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-31, 12:35 AM

Yes. You were responding to Max_Killjoy's point which was in response to Segev's points, which had to do with choosing where to put the line and whether or not a specific form of manipulation needs to be included in a system. When taking Max's comments in that context, your response felt like a non sequitur to me.

I was responding only to the idea of the line laying at the particular extreme of "social influence is never permitted ever on my character," and illustrated why I disagreed.

I don't like the PC vs NPC part of that (due to the nonsensicality that arises from the bargainer being more important than the offer).
I will state that in the rules you do need a sensical offer that would actually appeal in some sense to trigger the roll. Offering to pick someone's nose for them in exchange for all of their Barter will get you laughed at or shot, depending on who you're offering this to. (Basically, the system has a "do what makes sense above all else" clause.)

But I agree that incentive-based systems are a reasonable approach for PC vs PC. However, I think its possible to do better, since incentive-based systems are still kind of one-note in that they're still approaching things from the point of view of a conflict resolution mechanic, and ultimately I think the non-conflict aspects of social interaction are much richer than the conflict-based aspects, and are handled poorly by such things.

AW doesn't really have rules for anything that isn't rooted in conflict, entropy, or danger. Or all three. This is mostly a stylistic choice. But then again the Seduce/Manipulate roll kinda skirts that line. It never says they have to be directly opposed to you. You use it to make relatively benign deals, too. It just triggers when you offer someone something in exchange for them doing something you want them to do. Other PbtA systems have their own particulars, but if I wanted to build a deeper system I'd build from this base rather than a 3.5-esque combat system emulation but for social interaction. I like my conflicts resolved in maybe 3-5 rolls, tops.

(I should also mention that most rolls in AW have between 3 and 18 distinct possible outcomes, not including the vague ones like "prepare for the worst." The roll for intimidation, for instance, can resolve in any of 16 different ways in first edition, if I remember my counting right.)

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-31, 12:40 AM

Psikerlord

2017-05-31, 02:45 AM

Would you say, then, that the best combat system would be:

You roleplay combat first, describing every blow and counter-blow and tactic used. The GM either straight up adjudicates the result, or, if it's uncertain, assigns a modifier (+1, +2, adv/disad or whatever) depending on the description. Then roll a single "combat skill" check.

Would that be an ideal combat system, to you?

Definitely not! But in my book, combat is completely different to social interaction, and treating them differently is how it should be.

Floret

2017-05-31, 05:02 AM

Since I was too busy the last few days, only some broader points to not bog down the discussion too much. Segev and ImNotTrevor answered many of the things I would have anyways.

The reason to not abstract goes back to what Segev and I were discussing earlier. If you look at something like combat, there's a richness in the system because you don't abstract too violently. You have to care where characters are positioned with respect to each-other, what their ranges are, etc. In a social system, if you just abstract to a kind of roll -> pass/fail mechanic, then the details of 'why' that worked are lost, and that in turn limits the richness and connectedness of the outcomes. It also limits how much the individuality of the participants in these situations can shine through. If your particular brand of conviction and your particular pecadilloes are summed up as '+5, -7' then they don't really matter - they're just fluff, since the numbers are all comparable objects. But if your vulnerability means you're always getting seduced, but the other guy's vulnerability means he's always getting lured to gamble, and you really let those distinctions be solid, then the experiences of those two characters will be very different. Just like the archer and the fighter will feel different from each-other in a combat involving a battle mat and obstacles and so on, whereas if you abstract away spatial relations the distinction tends to get lost.

Sure. Different levels of abstraction. No argument from me here. And I would much rather play with a system that has consequences beyond just the numbers, sure. Very often this is the job of the GM, to track what is being done, and it can be divorced from the numbers: A gun to a guys face might add +X to a persuasion roll, and will matter just as much as a charming face for the roll itself and for the persuasion being done; but beyond that have very different ramifications story-wise (And mechanics-wise, as those consequences lead to different checks, difficulties for follow-up rolls, etc.)
But yes, this is why I, as Segev, am arguing for a system with a bit more depth than just a pass/fail.
What I still don't see is what this has to do with whether social skills are magic or not (They're not, we all agree), or even with the scope of what can be accomplished by them.

I'd say they compromised: rather than convincing the villain to confess, they convinced him to drink a cup of liquid. Once drugs (or knives, or mind control magic, or ...) come into it, it's no longer a question of persuasive arguments. The thing they realized is that they didn't need to get the villain to confess, they only needed to get him to drink, and that they had the ability to make drinking sufficient to get them what they ultimately wanted.

Now as to whether or not its how people work, that comes down to the NPC. I'd say that the fact that this works tells me some very specific things about the NPC, which I would consider preconditions for this plan actually going off the way it did. Those things are now true of that NPC, whether you intended them to be or not. For an NPC, that's generally not a big deal, but if this was a player's character I could see them rightfully pitching a fit about it if those things were incompatible with how they imagined their character.

Specifically, if I put myself in the mindset of the villain. Things we start with, that aren't part of characterization:

- I am already worried about these people enough that I tried to have them killed
- I have a social station that obliges me to observe certain protocols in order to maintain it (this would be an Engagement/Hook pair in the system I described, btw - in an L5R society, violating hospitality traditions would surely come with an Honor hit at the least, and if I'm relying on that Honor in order to be above accusation in this trial...)

Now, the part that could be a problem with characterization: I'm being invited by the people I tried to have killed, who are investigating me. Of course I can't refuse without becoming vulnerable to accusation, so I have to do something. Your version of this character went with basically no counter-plan in mind, no backup or protections, no caution at all, and treated it as if he was in control. That suggests a character with a good dose of moustache-twirling megalomania, or a character who is answering a deeper insecurity with the need to behave as if they're untouchable even in situations where they're obviously vulnerable. These aren't uncommon villain archetypes, but they're not mandatory aspects for a villain to have.

My villain, for example, might instead do the following: It's obviously a trap and I can't refuse. So I accept, but with a plan to turn the invitation against my enemies. This means that I'm going to go there with the plan of finding some excuse to be insulted by their hospitality, so that I can either force them to let me leave and have an solid excuse to deny further contact with them or even lodge complaints about them if their investigation gets closer to me, or so that they escalate and I can get a second to duel them in my stead and actually kill them off in a legitimate fashion. To do this, I'm going to bring a guest whom I can be offended on behalf of. Perhaps a co-conspirator who will play up the situation, or just someone with a little known trigger which I will make sure is hidden. This also gives me a way to disincentivize them from simply outright killing me when I arrive (e.g. claiming self-defense or somesuch), since there would be a secondary witness. I don't know specifically that they're going to poison the sake, so its not like I'd be able to anticipate and defend against that in particular, but I'd go expecting some kind of move on their part which might make me generally cautious about things. If I brought a co-conspirator, odds are that once I started to get loopy they could see this and make an excuse for us to leave before our enemies got anything out of me. It's quite a different characterization - calculating, paranoid, and a bit psychopathic rather than egotistic and theatrical, but that's a kind of villain that can exist too.

I would be pretty put out if my villain PC suddenly had to hold the idiot ball through no specific vulnerability of his own, just because the others rolled well on their planning check. Because that actually alters that villain's characterization in an important way.

Sorry, I appearantly didn't make the example clear enough: The guy didn't actually set assassins on the PCs - just someone from the same organisation. That was - wrong - conjecture on the PCs part, but my fault in presentation here on the forum.
He was also specifically tasked with finding out how much they already know (Unknowing that the PCs had been attacked. Low-level members and stuff). The PCs actually masked their investigation of him pretty well, amongst other things by inviting other people over for similar things as they did him (Which I did abstract to a contested roll between their "Courtier" and his "Investigation" skills, granted, because I saw no use in playing those out, and they were only to manipulate him). So at the point of the meeting, he saw an excellent opportunity to feel them out, and was simply underestimating them. His guard was listening at the door, and he did try to get the PCs to talk, but... his sake was simply way more powerful than theirs, he unable to detect the toxin, and so one thing led to another. (Also I rolled just terribly on his rather sizable defense pools. Several contests came down to a difference of 3 or less points, still, but as I said at the table: "The dice seem to know the guy is ****faced").
...Which details are important for telling a story so it can be fully comprehended one often realises way after the fact.

But, okay. If this falls into the area you label "compromise", I kinda see your point? Though I don't see a clear distinction between this and the "shift the pillars" approach Segev mentioned. Like, what you described as compromising sounded very different from the concrete example, and I am no longer sure we are discussing different things, instead of just calling them different things.

Different experience from me. I find that players are hesitant when they don't have a clear way to evaluate the chance of success of something. Often, one player being hesitant means that the group becomes hesitant as a whole. In the worst cases I've e.g. seen a player propose a completely workable plan, then have another player shut it down based on an imagined problem with it, and then the entire party dynamic gets frozen with a 30 minute debate. I tend to have a 'tyranny of the individual' rule when that starts to happen - once I notice it, I go around the table saying 'okay, what do you do right now?' so that people don't feel like they have to justify what they want to do in order to try it and see what happens.

When the scenario is sufficiently clear that evaluating feasibility is actually in the players' hands, then I find that my players tend to be more daring. They can work out a plan and know without having to ask me (or others at the table) whether it should or shouldn't work.

Frequent questions of "what do you do" help when the game slows down, yeah. But this is just general GMing, and not really only applicable to planning, I find?
If the game gets bogged down in 30 minute debates, I think the GM could probably do a better job at keeping the pace. Sure, if the players feel they have all the time in the world, they might overthink things. The trick is not giving them that time, but still enough they don't feel rushed into things.
Whatever the case, while I can see the problem being solved with what basically amounts to a drop-down menu of options, I see no real way in a truly free game to solve this issue other than player and GM coordination. It might be a compatability problem, or one with expectations! If the GM wants a very loose-hands off playstyle, and the players would like a more railroady experience, this can get messy.
But I genuinely think that whatever the problem here is, a game system can only do so much (or, not so much) to solve it.

An indie (computer) game studio I follow had a bunch of posts about game design when they were working out the kinks of a strategy game. What they found from player reports is that there was a fun, easy way to do things, but that you could gain a slight (basically negligible) advantage by doing something tedious instead - and as a result, players felt compelled to do the tedious thing even though it made the game un-fun for them. It's not that it was game-breaking to do that thing, it's that the game communicated to the players 'this is how a skilled player should play', and that was at odds with the way that the developers had anticipated people playing - meaning that the game felt tedious even though there was nothing explicitly forcing it to do so.

It's that kind of thing. It's not just stuff being broken, its that the way a system is set up encourages a certain line of thought. You want to be on the right page about where that line of thought is going, or you're going to have dissonance when it comes to actual play situations.

I'd still define that as broken, as in "not doing what it is supposed to". The system is supposed to reward the way the designers want you to play, to make the game fun. If it doesn't do that, and there is a "better" way to do things, the system no longer functions as intended, i.e. has broken.
And thus, I'd still see "Design the game with care to make sure it does what you want it to do" as the core problem at hand. People gravitating towards the most "optimal" way I would see as an argument why you should be very careful to do that, not as a different issue.

With just those considerations, he would drink almost none of the sake, and would not be seduced. In fact, the temptations of the sake are non-existent for the GM, as are the temptations of the flesh. And the GM has determined that the concerns of the character are as you listed, which doesn't include any desire for pleasurable drink nor pleasurable...ahem...company.

Even if the character would normally enjoy pleasurable activities, the objective examination is that risking it is not worth it. The social skill comes in plying the target NPC with "just one more drink" and with a sense that "a little won't hurt" until he's taken far more "little" steps over the line than he realized and he's lost control of the situation. But none of that can happen without convincing the GM that it "should." And the GM has no way of gauging this other than an arbitrary "well, did they roll high? Is that high enough to count?"

Precisely why I like the dice to decide that thing. I am simply not in any way close enough to a situation where I can sufficiently judge if what is happening ingame would be enough to convince my NPCs (or PCs) to go along with things. While the words might be the same, the setting isn't, the situation isn't, and in many aspects for good reasons. I know how much my judgement differs between "sober" and "drunk as all hell", or the myriad of other factors at play here, so how would I dare to claim I can sufficiently judge the effects of those on an NPC when I am not actually facing them? Many social things make this worse, as playing them out at the table would actually be, while maybe not impossible, kinda wrong to do. I don't actually want my players to seduce me IRL for their characters to have a shot at seducing my NPCs. I don't want my player to get me drunk (I wouldn't be a good GM anymore). And even if I did that, I cannot reach the equivalent situation, lacking (in this case) the painting, the poison, the setting, the cultural priming, the time to play out the entire evening, the fact that the player and his character are just utterly different from one another, and so on and so forth.
So, no. I don't want to arbitrate that based purely on my rather lackluster simulation of the situation at the gaming table. I want the rules to do that for me, just as they do in any other situation we are not equivalently playing out (Which, at the table, is every situation.)
(Though I would add that I did set the concerns of the character as "I am bored out of my mind at this winter court", so drinks and... company were definitely in there at least to some degree.)

Of note, to me, is the seduction action: in L5R, seduction is one of those skills that mechanically does nothing. It just tells the player of the target character that his character "feels desire." Whether the character acts on that desire is up to the player. Entirely. So a GM or a player can no-sell the most sexy seductress ever every single time. Good RP would suggest you shouldn't, but there's no consequence to doing so (and often great benefit in avoiding whatever cost the sexytimes would inflict upon your character).

I would prefer there to be actual mechanical rammifications to turning down (or accepting) the seduction, based on how well the seductor rolled and potentially what hooks in the target character were played upon.

Funnily enough, while it certainly is not the ideal way to do things (as especially doing it on PCs might amount to a bit too much mindcontrol); I don't actually play the rules this way. If my players roll well enough on a seduction the target is actually susceptible to? Yeah, sure. I just give it to them, why not. (Which is why I had the courtier's player roll on Void as the nearest thing to a "luck/universe is on your side" stat to determine if murderous-courtier-san was actually into guys, since I had not set any details concerning this beforehand (but not for the sake). After the temptation attempt started, since there was no attempt to feel it out further. Which he turned out being, but I often don't feel like arbitrating these things in a vacuum.)

Take as another example of this, a game system without any rules for non-lethal attacks / damage.

How many players will stop to consider something other than lethal attacks?

Dunno. In Shadowrun (Which SHOULD have rules for pretty much everything but appearantly consistently doesn't) my players constantly do things that require me to make up rulings on the fly, for things that they want to try, that have little to no base in what the rules permit.
I think this is an issue of perspective: If you look at the rules, and then decide from that list of options what to do; or if you describe what you do, and then the GM or general consensus say which rules to apply. Usually I play with the latter. Now, I will admit that the setting, in part by the powerlevel the rules allow, sets a certain expectation for what players might try. But I have rarely seen anyone not try anything because there were no rules for it. (I have seen them try things BECAUSE there were rules that explicitly put it on the table, yes; and have done that myself quite often, but never in the negative)

Definitely not! But in my book, combat is completely different to social interaction, and treating them differently is how it should be.

But why treating them differently in this way, requiring rules, the player sacrificing power in other areas for their character being competent at it, and straight-up GM arbitration and control as the be-all and end-all in one case, but not in the other?

NichG

2017-05-31, 06:50 AM

Since I was too busy the last few days, only some broader points to not bog down the discussion too much. Segev and ImNotTrevor answered many of the things I would have anyways.

But, okay. If this falls into the area you label "compromise", I kinda see your point? Though I don't see a clear distinction between this and the "shift the pillars" approach Segev mentioned. Like, what you described as compromising sounded very different from the concrete example, and I am no longer sure we are discussing different things, instead of just calling them different things.

The 'shift the pillars' approach might be something like the following:

The PCs want the Courtier to voluntarily confess in front of his daimyo in public. The Courtier, obviously, doesn't, for a variety of reasons (he's been complicit in this organization, he'd probably be dishonored and if lucky asked to commit seppuku, etc). So the PCs decide to work the Courtier over and amp up his feelings of guilt, so that the guilt tilts the balance and he makes a confession. They do this by e.g. having people close to him ask questions about what he's involved in or seem disapproving, conspire for there to be events in his life in which he sees others become relaxed and unburdened by letting go of their secrets, sending people to whisper in his ear while he sleeps 'confess, confess, confess!', or whatever.

This is 'shifting the pillars' because it tries to change an underlying factor about how the Courtier makes decisions - e.g. it's attempting to alter the NPC's actual motivations. As opposed to the 'find the cracks' approach which takes the NPC's motivations as given and then tries to find a way such that the NPC, in acting in accordance to their motivations in their way, will incidentally allow the PCs to obtain something they want as a side-effect. It's the difference between getting an alcoholic to do stuff by offering them alcohol and getting someone who isn't an alcoholic to become one so that you can then get them to do stuff by offering them alcohol.

My argument was that by making rules for shifting the pillars like this, even making it very hard to do, you're saying that its how you want players to play. I don't want players to play that way (and in the broader point, I'm arguing that players trying to play that way funnels the social dynamics into a particularly limited mindset that ultimately gets in the way) - so even if 'sometimes, realistically, a character will have their pillars shift', I think its bad game design to add it as a mechanic rather than just leave it as one of those details that the character's controller can use to express growth.

Floret

2017-05-31, 07:11 AM

The 'shift the pillars' approach might be something like the following:

The PCs want the Courtier to voluntarily confess in front of his daimyo in public. The Courtier, obviously, doesn't, for a variety of reasons (he's been complicit in this organization, he'd probably be dishonored and if lucky asked to commit seppuku, etc). So the PCs decide to work the Courtier over and amp up his feelings of guilt, so that the guilt tilts the balance and he makes a confession. They do this by e.g. having people close to him ask questions about what he's involved in or seem disapproving, conspire for there to be events in his life in which he sees others become relaxed and unburdened by letting go of their secrets, sending people to whisper in his ear while he sleeps 'confess, confess, confess!', or whatever.

This is 'shifting the pillars' because it tries to change an underlying factor about how the Courtier makes decisions - e.g. it's attempting to alter the NPC's actual motivations. As opposed to the 'find the cracks' approach which takes the NPC's motivations as given and then tries to find a way such that the NPC, in acting in accordance to their motivations in their way, will incidentally allow the PCs to obtain something they want as a side-effect. It's the difference between getting an alcoholic to do stuff by offering them alcohol and getting someone who isn't an alcoholic to become one so that you can then get them to do stuff by offering them alcohol.

My argument was that by making rules for shifting the pillars like this, even making it very hard to do, you're saying that its how you want players to play. I don't want players to play that way (and in the broader point, I'm arguing that players trying to play that way funnels the social dynamics into a particularly limited mindset that ultimately gets in the way) - so even if 'sometimes, realistically, a character will have their pillars shift', I think its bad game design to add it as a mechanic rather than just leave it as one of those details that the character's controller can use to express growth.

Alright. I see the distinction.

But I don't think it does say "this is how you play this" actually, or it at least runs counter to your example about game design earlier: That players will go for the most effective route.
If now, as per a well-designed game, shifting the pillars is immensely difficult - theoretically possible, but time-consuming, prone to failure and setbacks, but theoretically still possible, yes, it puts it onto the table as an option. But if, at the same time, feeling out a character, trying to find their "hooks", and then taking a maybe slightly different approach is just easier, while yielding the same results? Why would the players go for the difficult thing?

To reach that sweetspot, it is important to design in such a way, of course, that passive character skill alone will never be enough to crack a person; never enough to just shift their pillars without much issue, no matter how advanced the character becomes. To make the high DC beatable only by stacking multiple tests, and, like, all the situational modifiers being arranged very, very carefully.
This way, you leave it possible, but it will never really run the risk of just becoming the go-to approach. The modifiers could probably person-specific as well, requiring a good deal of the work you would for just finding the hooks and using them. But if you really need to shift a person's pillars, for whatever reason - just no way you see to act on the hooks, or, more likely, because you want that person primed for additional stuff worth the extra investment and risk? It is still an option.

As Segev said: You can probably get a drunk addicted to gambling, but if you want to just distract them from their duty - just go offer them the bottle. If, however, for some reason you need them to gamble, or cannot ever possibly offer alcohol to anyone? There is still room to act. It's just gonna get difficult, risky, and probably messy.

NichG

2017-05-31, 08:01 AM

Alright. I see the distinction.

But I don't think it does say "this is how you play this" actually, or it at least runs counter to your example about game design earlier: That players will go for the most effective route.

If now, as per a well-designed game, shifting the pillars is immensely difficult - theoretically possible, but time-consuming, prone to failure and setbacks, but theoretically still possible, yes, it puts it onto the table as an option. But if, at the same time, feeling out a character, trying to find their "hooks", and then taking a maybe slightly different approach is just easier, while yielding the same results? Why would the players go for the difficult thing?

There's difficult as in 'I have a lower numerical chance of success' and difficult as in 'this method requires more thought and planning'. The 'shift the pillars' thing is extremely familiar because its the same kind of simple brute force that e.g. D&D's mechanics for persuasion use - pick what you want, roll against a number, done. A player who is not confident about being able to navigate social dynamics is going to be drawn towards the simple, powerful option even if it has a higher cost, because ultimately, as a brute force solution, the 'shift the pillars' thing requires a lot less mental effort and consideration on the part of the players.

From a game design point of view: my purpose with introducing this system was to introduce a new way of thinking about how social dynamics can run, and to give concrete examples that could be thought through to explore the consequences of thinking of social interaction in a primarily non-conflict-centered way. Its self-sabotage to go and put the old stuff back in too. If I want to get people to think about what NPCs need and want, I don't serve that purpose by adding mechanics which allow players to simply ignore it.

To reach that sweetspot, it is important to design in such a way, of course, that passive character skill alone will never be enough to crack a person; never enough to just shift their pillars without much issue, no matter how advanced the character becomes. To make the high DC beatable only by stacking multiple tests, and, like, all the situational modifiers being arranged very, very carefully.
This way, you leave it possible, but it will never really run the risk of just becoming the go-to approach. The modifiers could probably person-specific as well, requiring a good deal of the work you would for just finding the hooks and using them. But if you really need to shift a person's pillars, for whatever reason - just no way you see to act on the hooks, or, more likely, because you want that person primed for additional stuff worth the extra investment and risk? It is still an option.

And now, doing this, we've basically put a ton of extra design effort and detail into a tack-on subsystem that is explicitly intended to not be the way the game is played, all in order to make sure that in fact that ends up not being the way the game is played.

Better to ask 'why are we trying so hard to keep this around at all?'

Segev

2017-05-31, 10:52 AM

One of the worst things about most social resolution mechanics I've seen is that they assume an adversarial, zero-sum, win-lose situation -- that all social interaction is conflict, that all social interaction is about power, about one person imposing an action, belief, decision, whatever, on another person.

This can be seen underlying the surface even in some systems that are supposedly not built upon it.First off, I will apologize; I was speaking in short-hand earlier and did not specify (again) that my preference is not for "you WILL do this because he rolled well enough," but rather "you gain this bonus if you go along with his persuasion/suffer this penalty if you resist his persuasion," with the magnitude of bonus or penalty based on how well he ultimately performed in the mechanics of the system. (Whether this is equivalent to a single "damage roll" or "skill roll" modified by hooks/preferences/whatever, or is a result of a complex sequence of "moves" in the mechanics of the system.)

Like it or not, though, all social interaction is an expression of power or control. This need not be hostile, but again, if Alice, Bob, Claire, and Dave are trying to decide where to go for a double date, with each having slightly different preferences, shifting the preferences of the others by enticing them with descriptions of why Bob's idea is the coolest and most enjoyable, or why Claire's idea is the most mutually agreeable... these are efforts to get people to compromise their personal preference for group enjoyment OR to change their minds as to what they think sounds best. Appeals to novelty, to security (knowledge that they had fun last time they did this), to fairness ("We did what Alice wanted last time!"), to stubbornness ("Sorry, Claire, but I can't stand your favored activity, so you'll have to do it without me if you three choose to go") etc. are all perfectly valid, not necessarily hostile things, but they're still persuasion and still about influencing others' choices. That is a form of power over others.

There's no escaping this, even if you abandon mechanics and "just RP it."

Definitely not! But in my book, combat is completely different to social interaction, and treating them differently is how it should be.Sure. But are you saying social interaction is less complex than combat? That it is less dependent on the people involved in the social dealings, and that there's only a single measure of success such that people are either good or bad at it, with no nuances?

Social subsystems can be complex in the way combat subsystems are complex while still being handled quite differently. In fact, Exalted 2E demonstrates well that treating it too much like combat makes for a clumsy system.

The 'shift the pillars' approach might be something like the following:

The PCs want the Courtier to voluntarily confess in front of his daimyo in public. The Courtier, obviously, doesn't, for a variety of reasons (he's been complicit in this organization, he'd probably be dishonored and if lucky asked to commit seppuku, etc). So the PCs decide to work the Courtier over and amp up his feelings of guilt, so that the guilt tilts the balance and he makes a confession. They do this by e.g. having people close to him ask questions about what he's involved in or seem disapproving, conspire for there to be events in his life in which he sees others become relaxed and unburdened by letting go of their secrets, sending people to whisper in his ear while he sleeps 'confess, confess, confess!', or whatever.

This is 'shifting the pillars' because it tries to change an underlying factor about how the Courtier makes decisions - e.g. it's attempting to alter the NPC's actual motivations. As opposed to the 'find the cracks' approach which takes the NPC's motivations as given and then tries to find a way such that the NPC, in acting in accordance to their motivations in their way, will incidentally allow the PCs to obtain something they want as a side-effect. It's the difference between getting an alcoholic to do stuff by offering them alcohol and getting someone who isn't an alcoholic to become one so that you can then get them to do stuff by offering them alcohol. This is a good summary of my take on this notion.

My argument was that by making rules for shifting the pillars like this, even making it very hard to do, you're saying that its how you want players to play. I don't want players to play that way (and in the broader point, I'm arguing that players trying to play that way funnels the social dynamics into a particularly limited mindset that ultimately gets in the way) - so even if 'sometimes, realistically, a character will have their pillars shift', I think its bad game design to add it as a mechanic rather than just leave it as one of those details that the character's controller can use to express growth.That argument is logically self-inconsistent.

You assert that, "If A is presented in the subsystem, you are telling players that A is how they do things, and they will default to A."

But if I have two things, "foo" and "bar," present in my subsystem, I can claim that either is "A," and that thus "obviously" players will default to that one and ignore the other.

So, applying your logic, I could say that even if both "shift the pillars" and "use the hooks" are present in the mechanics, players will default to "use the hooks" since they'll see it and that is what they will assume is the "intended" use.

The... framework, I guess, of the model I see here looks more like this:

All characters have a set of "hooks." Hooks can be used to influence choices - "do (not) do this thing, and you will get rewarded/not punished to a degree based on the hook being invoked and how good I am at invoking it."

Typical approaches to end-result social influence ("Get the target to behave the way I want in this instance") will typically involve:

1) Learn the target's hooks. (If you already know them, you can possibly skip this step)
2) Invoke those hooks.

If you have no way of doing (2), or if you are playing a longer game and want to get a more reliable hook or few into them, it might look like this:

1) Learn the target's hooks.
2) Invoke those hooks to embed/create new ones, or to erode others
3) Invoke the new hooks/enjoy not having the removed hooks impede invocation of others for specific actions.

In essence, having "identify hooks," "shift pillars," and "invoke hooks" as different options doesn't make "shift pillars" the default. It makes "invoke hooks" the default, because that's the end-game move for any final use of social influence. "Shift pillars" is an unneeded complication if existing hooks work.

NichG

2017-05-31, 12:43 PM

First off, I will apologize; I was speaking in short-hand earlier and did not specify (again) that my preference is not for "you WILL do this because he rolled well enough," but rather "you gain this bonus if you go along with his persuasion/suffer this penalty if you resist his persuasion," with the magnitude of bonus or penalty based on how well he ultimately performed in the mechanics of the system. (Whether this is equivalent to a single "damage roll" or "skill roll" modified by hooks/preferences/whatever, or is a result of a complex sequence of "moves" in the mechanics of the system.)

Like it or not, though, all social interaction is an expression of power or control. This need not be hostile, but again, if Alice, Bob, Claire, and Dave are trying to decide where to go for a double date, with each having slightly different preferences, shifting the preferences of the others by enticing them with descriptions of why Bob's idea is the coolest and most enjoyable, or why Claire's idea is the most mutually agreeable... these are efforts to get people to compromise their personal preference for group enjoyment OR to change their minds as to what they think sounds best. Appeals to novelty, to security (knowledge that they had fun last time they did this), to fairness ("We did what Alice wanted last time!"), to stubbornness ("Sorry, Claire, but I can't stand your favored activity, so you'll have to do it without me if you three choose to go") etc. are all perfectly valid, not necessarily hostile things, but they're still persuasion and still about influencing others' choices. That is a form of power over others.

There's no escaping this, even if you abandon mechanics and "just RP it."

It's maybe about 50%. At the least, you're forgetting about cultural signalling (shibboleths, fashion, conversational and organizational ack signals, reflexive body language), information-centric interactions (which can exist even in a purely passive mode, such as making ones-self available to observe gossip), and distribution of cognitive workload (using someone as a sounding board to clarify thoughts; talking to manage one's own emotional state; getting someone else's opinion on something in order to check for mistakes or biases; etc). Even of the 50% that has control aspects, I'd say less than half of that consists of intention directed towards creating a desired action. For example, communicating to cooperate on a task which requires synchronization is mentally framed as 'I want us to succeed' instead of 'I want them to take the action now that lets us succeed' - the indicator of that is interaction which does not explicitly address a particular call to action but instead works to increase the efficiency of collaboration in general.

For example, if I let someone know that I'm a fast programmer and a slow writer, its not associated with a specific action I want them to take, but rather than in the abstract I want to give them the tools to know how to work with me efficiently (there is something I want out of it, but only in the abstract sense of the space of situations that I and the other person might end up in). There's also situations where control is ostensibly involved but the one who initiates the social contact is actually asking to be controlled ('I don't know what to do about this, help me out here!').

The problem with taking the mindset of seeing everything as control is that because of the emotional valence of the word 'control' (rather than, say, 'effect') it immediately puts things in mind of the adversarial side of things - conflict, tension, etc. But that's a tiny fraction of the actual space of interesting social interactions; its even just a fraction of the space of social interactions which could involve some sense of the word 'control'.

That argument is logically self-inconsistent.

You assert that, "If A is presented in the subsystem, you are telling players that A is how they do things, and they will default to A."

But if I have two things, "foo" and "bar," present in my subsystem, I can claim that either is "A," and that thus "obviously" players will default to that one and ignore the other.

The argument is 'If I want players to do A, then a system in which I present them with A will better achieve that goal than a system in which I present them with A and B where B can be used in place of A'.
The further observation is that 'when players are more familiar with B than A, that makes B more likely to be used in place of A.'

The... framework, I guess, of the model I see here looks more like this:

I think we have two disagreements then. One is a point of design - whether to use incentive-based design or guarantee-based design. I don't have that much of a problem with incentive-based design, but I find it vulnerable to certain logical absurdities (making ones-self available for others to initiate social interactions with you is almost always a strictly bad decision mechanically; if the system allows buffs as well as maluses, its still better to surround yourself with loyal characters who will proc those buffs on you at no cost rather than risk trying to obtain them from people who actually want something serious in return). In addition, the incentive-based mechanics are fairly high risk for the players who invest in them, because they can be completely shut down in terms of what they actually are trying to accomplish by someone who is willing to take the penalties to spite them.

There's a lot of convoluted design iteration one could do to address that, and I'm not saying its unanswerable, but it leaves me with a current preference for the guarantee-based design, which essentially moves the trade-off to happen in advance of the social interaction rather than after it. The idea there is, if the king wants to shut themselves in their chambers or the recalcitrant individual wants to spite the persuader, they actually have to surrender social power in advance to get that level of immunity and can't just do it when its convenient - which means that the shut-in basically can't be the king, the merchant can't really get away with refusing the talk to anyone for fear that they might try to haggle and still manage to do business, etc. The guarantee-based mechanics essentially protect both parties in an interaction, which I like - fewer unpleasant surprises with people's powers not working or sudden debuffs because you mistakenly let a stranger talk to you, which means less paranoia and defensiveness all around the table.

Anyhow, since this is mostly a point of design, perhaps its less important here in terms of establishing the sorts of social interaction which I'd want to focus on.

The second point is I think more problematic, and it has to do with the generality of what a hook should be able to accomplish. The impression I get from your framework is that you see a hook as being something where, once you've found a way to pull on it, you can attach it to an arbitrary clause and an arbitrary (in the sense of being unrelated to the hook) penalty - something along the lines of 'I will give you this alcohol if you give me 5 gold. Otherwise, lose 1xp', 'I will give you this alcohol if you kill your brother. Otherwise, lose 1xp', 'I will give you this alcohol if you develop a passion for card games. Otherwise, lose 1xp'. That's why, in your framework, using a hook to create a hook is a reasonable strategy.

The way I'm trying to frame things on the other hand sees engagements and hooks as something like the concept of an affordance - that is to say, its something about one's environment which offers to be used. The social affordance of a merchant is to make it possible to exchange coin for goods - their presence enables a thing to be done which could not be done otherwise. An Engagement is an affordance for the holder: 'I'm king, so I get to tell armies where to go', while a Hook is an affordance for the people who surround the holder: 'He's king, so he has to listen to our complaints'. In that framework, it only makes sense for a given Hook to be usable for a certain subset of outcomes, because pushing it outside of that becomes a non sequitur - the merchant may be socially obligated to file paperwork about sales and sell things to anyone who enters their shop and so on, but that same obligation just does not connect at all to the merchant for example being influenced to become a soldier or fall in love.

It would be possible to find someone with a hook that allows you to get them to accept other hooks, but it wouldn't be something you could plan on. In fact, planning on it would be likely to end in disappointment when - even in your framework - the victim realizes that any temporary penalty is worth it in the immediate present to avoid making it easier for that person to inflict bigger penalties on them in the future and just eats the penalty to shut down the persuader. So to me, the long game is just different. It's about relative positioning rather than rewriting the situation. You can't and shouldn't expect to make the merchant your lover, but you can become (or influence) the tax man.

Max_Killjoy

2017-05-31, 12:48 PM

Like it or not, though, all social interaction is an expression of power or control.

And that's where we're never going to agree. Ever.

Any theory that claims all social interaction about power and control is wrong. The people who look at the world as comprised only of winners and losers, dominance-submission, zero-sum, control and power, studs vs wimps, champs vs suckers ... well, the biggest example of that kind of jerkarse is in the news a lot right now, let's leave it at that. It's the world-view of bullies, thugs, sociopaths, and con-men.

When I'm trying to find a compromise with a friend as to where we go to dinner or what movie we might watch or whatever, that's not about power and control, that's about two people trying to find a mutually satisfying compromise, or even something they both really like.

Any social interaction mechanic based on the mistaken notion that all interaction is about power and control, is going to be inherently and fatally flawed -- because it will produce both gameplay feel and ending results that are immediately recognizable as disconnected from how actual people interact.

Segev

2017-05-31, 05:10 PM

NichG

2017-05-31, 10:09 PM

Your counter-examples of social interaction that are not about control are quite good and valid. You're right: I wasn't thinking about them.

I will reframe my position thusly: all forms of social interaction that I can think of a reason why you'd need mechanics to represent are about controlling others' actions to some degree.

Sounding boards... maybe that's something that you could find a reason why mechanics would be helpful, but I suspect that would get wrapped up in other mechanics elsewhere. In D&D, for example, it might be the RP form an Aid Another action on a Knowledge check takes. Bob isn't really knowledgable about the subject Alice is discussing, but he can make a DC 10 (and has a rank so he can nod intelligently rather than blankly at her technobabble), so he adds a +2 for being a sounding board.

Sharing information about your capabilities is something I'm neither sure how you'd represent mechanically, nor to what end; that really is something you just RP because there's nothing to it other than saying, "I can do this, but not that." To me, there's a clear reason why there's nothing to mechanize, and I hope it's equally clear, because it's one of those things that's like trying to explain what the sky being blue means to somebody else. Either they can see the sky's color and they get it, or they can't and it's just words.

The reason I focus on mechanizing social interaction surrounding persuasion (both to develop new interests/erode undesirable ties, and to take particular actions) is that this is where the social character should have ability the player may not when it comes to getting another character (player or non-) to do things that, objectively, are not optimal absent a social sub-system that gives different incentives.

Mechanics generally only apply to resolving conflict: Can your PC accomplish an action which, absent mechanics, might be controversial?

I disagree with the position that mechanics only apply to resolving conflict or disagreement about reasonableness at the table. That, like the rest of this, takes a fundamentally adversarial view of the relationships between players and GM, which I think is counterproductive and pretty narrow. Take something like spell lists for magic-using characters - they provide a wealth of inspiration for players in terms of setting out ideas about what kinds of things are possible in the setting, as well as giving players something concrete to hold onto to shape their own plans. Systems with a lot of structure to them like the combat system establish a kind of feeling or mood of what acting is like - much the way that different control schemes for computer games might convey the feeling of your character in the game being slow and powerful, or fast and twitchy, or responsive, or... A well-designed system can convey an impression of 'what it is like' at a level that's a step further than just description.

So when I'm thinking about a player who has a socially-skilled character, what I want the mechanics to do is to convey a feeling to that player of what it's like to be a socially skilled person. Much like a beefy fighter with a ton of hitpoints and ways to shrug off most things can makes one feel a bit of what it's like to be tough and brave, and a wizard with a zillion options who can grasp incredible power if they choose the right one can give the feeling of what it's like to be crafty and wise.

Given that, the way I might mechanize those other forms of social interaction would be to break down what exactly it is that they provide, psychologically, and then represent those things as explicit objects in the rules. E.g. at a simple level, the ability to interact socially for mood control could easily be a mechanic which allows someone to negate morale or fear-based penalties. At a more complex level I could have mechanics similar to Long Live the Queen, where a character's mood would even constrain the kinds of action that can be taken (with tradeoffs for every mood), and then social interaction provides a way for characters to choose their mood and thereby toggle between those sets of mechanics. It wouldn't be about conflict but about getting players to proactively think about their character's mood.

In terms of the information gathering case, it can absolutely be mechanized. Look at D&D's well-intention Sense Motive skill. The implementation has serious problems, but the idea is 'by way of my character's skill, I can obtain certainty about some things which otherwise I'd have to guess about' - such as whether someone intends you harm or if they're lying or ... You can use the mechanics to get information which would otherwise be inaccessible or costly/risky to obtain. And you could take things much, much further than just this kind of Sense Motive stuff. A very simple example of something that would be along these lines and would be mechanically powerful would be that you could gain the ability to predict what a target character would do in a given situation. E.g. you listen to some gossip about Mr. X, make a roll, and as a result know that for example Mr. X would send assassins over anyone he sees as threatening his daughter. Or that Mr. X would cast Invisibility as his first action in a fight. Or that Mr. X will always go after the target he thinks he can crush decisively (be it socially or in combat). Those are things which you can't really get without some kind of mechanization.

In terms of pushing information or making others aware of your abilities, the mechanization of that would center around capturing the feel and consequences of advertisement. So e.g. your character arrives at court and you want to be included in some schemer's juicy plans to intervene in the succession. You could try to force your way in by going up and saying 'hey, are you trying to assassinate the king? No? Okay, how about you?'. Or you could spread the word that you have some skill with alchemy and see who comes knocking at your door. In that case its a matter of control but not one of conflict - you want the result of other characters' investigations to return specific information about you, because the consequence of that serves your aims (getting brought into plots, being consulted on certain plans of action before its too late to get involved, having opportunities to do business, or even setting a trap to bait certain kinds of people).

The 'affordance' picture provides a very broad frame in which to put these various details. Each character who exists in your social radius represents a set of options that is now available to you that would not be available without that person. Those options could consist of 'I can get them to do something' (control), but they could also consist of 'I can use them to regulate my own mood', 'I can use them to perform better at some task', 'I can use them to acquire or test knowledge', etc. Defining what kinds of affordances there are is like making the spell list for a wizard in a way - its creating a set of specific things to inspire the player as to what could be possible. And as many of those affordance-givers are actually motivated to provide the options they provide, framing everything as conflict is unnecessary - the merchant wants to sell you stuff, the friend wants to cheer you up, etc.

ImNotTrevor

2017-05-31, 10:45 PM

I also disagree that mechanics only activate with conflict. Conflict is a subset of what triggers essentially every game mechanic that isn't entirely Meta:
Uncertainty.

We go to the mechanics when we don't know what will happen, and the outcome matters. We don't roll dice to walk down the street unless the outcome is thrown into question and/or the outcome has meaning.

Even when we have players roll for stupid things like sneaking through empty rooms where no one is there to see them, the potential comedy of a fail is the meaningful outcome.

Uncertainty with purpose seems, to me, to be the driving force behind mechanics coming into play.
Conflict resolution systems focus wide, task resolution systems focus narrow, but the same general thing is happening.

NichG

2017-05-31, 11:17 PM

Uncertainty with purpose seems, to me, to be the driving force behind mechanics coming into play.
Conflict resolution systems focus wide, task resolution systems focus narrow, but the same general thing is happening.

If you include 'uncertainty about how the world works' perhaps... Otherwise, What's the uncertainty when a wizard casts a light spell or a teleport?

There is also perhaps the uncertainty of 'how will you solve this?' - e.g. in chess there's no question about how the knight moves, but there is still a question of what the players will choose to do with that.

ImNotTrevor

2017-06-01, 01:43 AM

If you include 'uncertainty about how the world works' perhaps... Otherwise, What's the uncertainty when a wizard casts a light spell or a teleport?

There is also perhaps the uncertainty of 'how will you solve this?' - e.g. in chess there's no question about how the knight moves, but there is still a question of what the players will choose to do with that.

Teleporting is still Meaningful, and has very obvious effects that significantly alter a situation. It's not ONLY uncertainty. I expand to Uncertainty and/or Meaningfulness a little ways up.
(Though the degree to which you interact with Teleport as a mechanic is... as close to none as you can get. Tick off a box, do what the paragraph says, done. It's barely a mechanic at all, and more of a "thing you can make happen if you have a box to check off." A mechanic, in my mind, involves some amount of actual interaction.)

And the movement of Chess Pieces is also meaningful. (Also the mechanics we use for Chess and the mechanics we use for TRPGs are, for the most part, very different animals outside of grid movements.)

NichG

2017-06-01, 02:02 AM

Teleporting is still Meaningful, and has very obvious effects that significantly alter a situation. It's not ONLY uncertainty. I expand to Uncertainty and/or Meaningfulness a little ways up.
(Though the degree to which you interact with Teleport as a mechanic is... as close to none as you can get. Tick off a box, do what the paragraph says, done. It's barely a mechanic at all, and more of a "thing you can make happen if you have a box to check off." A mechanic, in my mind, involves some amount of actual interaction.)

And the movement of Chess Pieces is also meaningful. (Also the mechanics we use for Chess and the mechanics we use for TRPGs are, for the most part, very different animals outside of grid movements.)

I think I'd focus on meaningfulness rather than uncertainty then.

I actually take the mechanics of chess and go and things like that to be better inspiration for TRPGs than dice games, because they're examples of how to make rules which despite being deterministic and simple have very deep and rich consequences. Even if it doesn't mean literally using chess rules, as an example of how to design deep systems I think there are useful lessons to take from them. The random factors of things like dice serve a psychological need that exists in TRPGs but not as much in strategy games (amplifying the sense of tension), but they aren't what actually makes the decisions and playouts interesting.

Floret

2017-06-01, 04:20 AM

The argument is 'If I want players to do A, then a system in which I present them with A will better achieve that goal than a system in which I present them with A and B where B can be used in place of A'.
The further observation is that 'when players are more familiar with B than A, that makes B more likely to be used in place of A.'

But at least at the current point, noone is actually saying shifting the pillars should actually be equivalent to using the hooks.
For one, we both said using the hooks should be necessary to shift them in the first place (meaning it could never replace it); and also said it would have to be much more difficult.
Basically, to have something that might, in an utter pinch be used as a lackluster replacement, but primarily serves as its own thing, another option for "things one can do". I want players to be able to not only short-term get NPCs to do things, but also be able to long-term change their opinions. Both of those should require to consider the person in question. I don't really understand why you see such a big danger in there?

I think I'd focus on meaningfulness rather than uncertainty then.

I actually take the mechanics of chess and go and things like that to be better inspiration for TRPGs than dice games, because they're examples of how to make rules which despite being deterministic and simple have very deep and rich consequences. Even if it doesn't mean literally using chess rules, as an example of how to design deep systems I think there are useful lessons to take from them. The random factors of things like dice serve a psychological need that exists in TRPGs but not as much in strategy games (amplifying the sense of tension), but they aren't what actually makes the decisions and playouts interesting.

I would actually argue against that being a good example with many useful lessons.
Because, for a situation like chess, where every action you take has certainty of (direct) result, for there to be any game means there has to be an adversarial relationship, that one might find interesting, but I don't think serves TRPGs in general really well. Because any challenge comes from being able to outwit your opponent, and even the most non-adversarial you can get is probably a situation like chess puzzles, which would mean the GM is essentially presenting everything as a puzzle, with one or few solutions, as there is no degree of success, only certainty.
(Generally, I like this sort of mechanic, and even once started work on a Wargame with chess-like certainty in it. Heck, I have a TRPG/Storytelling game that has one dice roll per session, but that one IS indeed adversarial, with the other player as an opponent that you actually do want to beat.)

And I would argue that this uncertainty, and the risk involved is indeed at least a good part of what makes TRPGs interesting. More specifically, while I would agree that for the decisions players make uncertainty isn't that important, for the way it plays out, though? It probably is.

One more thing: I would argue that, while uncertainty is not the be-all and end-all of all mechanics, it is the be-all and end-all of all situations where a diceroll should take place. I mean, that is the reason we roll dice in the first place, right? So I do find it a useful perspective for mechanising social interactions.
Because while it isn't, or shouldn't always be about control, as Max quite rightfully pointed out, there is always some degree of uncertainty involved in it. There might be situations where the intended action is impossible, or the defense against an argument is impossible (Which the mechanics should represent accurately in such a case. I really don't like games, TRPG or otherwise, just saying to me "this is impossible", but if you WOULD involve the mechanics, it would certainly be very possible. 5Rings once statted up one of the founding Kami. "Insight Rank so much higher as to be meaningless" is a very nice statement for a god's statblock, if you must have it, but the only one in there, so I can calculate that it should be about 20something. Which, granted, is insanely high, but still not "so much higher". Video games do this much more often, with "you can't save this character, but only because the cutscene freezes you in place", or similar things, but I digress.), but in those situations I would argue the roll should simply not take place.
(Generally doesn't happen in systems I play, mostly because I detest addition-system-mechanics, where you add a diceroll with a modifier. It just too easily makes either the skill or the diceroll irrelevant. Come to think of it I really like uncertainty.)

So, involve the mechanics for social interaction if there is any question as to how the results play out. Maybe also take a page from FATE and say "only involve the mechanics if it makes an interesting difference whether or not something succeeds", yes, but the mechanics themselves should have some degree of uncertainty involved. Social interaction might not be about control, but it certainly isn't like chess.

NichG

2017-06-01, 04:57 AM

I don't really understand why you see such a big danger in there?

Because its hard enough to get people to understand a different model of social interactions than they're used to without slipping hints of the old model back in. The fact that this keeps being such a persistent point, that people in this thread seem to have difficulty imagining how a system that doesn't include it could function properly, just underscores that. See back when I introduced the example of the CEO, and Segev's response was 'under that system, there's a thing that would be reasonable to get him to do which is now impossible' - but, if you actually looked at the setup, it was entirely possible to do - just not the way one would be used to doing it in games like AW or D&D.

I would actually argue against that being a good example with many useful lessons.
Because, for a situation like chess, where every action you take has certainty of (direct) result, for there to be any game means there has to be an adversarial relationship, that one might find interesting, but I don't think serves TRPGs in general really well. Because any challenge comes from being able to outwit your opponent, and even the most non-adversarial you can get is probably a situation like chess puzzles, which would mean the GM is essentially presenting everything as a puzzle, with one or few solutions, as there is no degree of success, only certainty.

I actually do think that most of what the GM does in terms of setting design is just a much more complex version of chess puzzles or tsumego. Unlike those puzzles, there can be a much wider range of outcomes and solutions, but I think that the certainty aspect is absolutely a positive thing, if not essential. Having that certainty makes it possible for a player to sit back and think about how to go about something on longer timescales and larger scales than a probabilistic situation in which any chain of conditions longer than a certain amount is likely to go wrong somehow. The other thing I'd add, that chess puzzles and the like don't have, is for it to be an incomplete information game - that is to say, finding out information is as much a part of solving the puzzle as planning out a sequence of moves.

Unlike chess or go puzzles, since you can have many different win conditions for different people, there's no need to build the puzzle around a single imagined solution. So you can even put forth situations which require interesting navigation without an answer in mind about how it could possibly be solved; as long as the potential space of moves and interactions is big enough, the players will find something.

If you present a situation with three kingdoms vying for a contested territory, each with different cultures, goals, forces, important figures, etc, then that's essentially just a puzzle to be solved - one in which there are many solutions, and a given ending state is not valued the same by everyone at the table - but still a kind of puzzle. When you think of it that way, it doesn't have to be adversarial at all.

And I would argue that this uncertainty, and the risk involved is indeed at least a good part of what makes TRPGs interesting. More specifically, while I would agree that for the decisions players make uncertainty isn't that important, for the way it plays out, though? It probably is.

One more thing: I would argue that, while uncertainty is not the be-all and end-all of all mechanics, it is the be-all and end-all of all situations where a diceroll should take place. I mean, that is the reason we roll dice in the first place, right? So I do find it a useful perspective for mechanising social interactions.

...

So, involve the mechanics for social interaction if there is any question as to how the results play out. Maybe also take a page from FATE and say "only involve the mechanics if it makes an interesting difference whether or not something succeeds", yes, but the mechanics themselves should have some degree of uncertainty involved. Social interaction might not be about control, but it certainly isn't like chess.

The hooks/engagements thing I presented doesn't actually require dice, though you could use them if you want. I think randomness in game mechanics is kind of like salt for a meal - it can pep things up, but its not a replacement for having something substantial underneath. In that sense, I think conflating uncertainty (in the sense of randomness) with mechanics is a big mistake. Uncertainty is something you can add or manipulate with mechanics, not their reason for existence.

As for me, I generally find that I can do without the randomness entirely.

Segev

2017-06-01, 11:00 AM

I think people are misunderstanding what I meant, which probably is my fault. Let me try to clarify:

Mechanics are needed to answer the question, "What can my character do?" or "Can my character do X?"

In the very specific context to which I was replying - social interaction - there is little to no question that your character can, in fact, talk to a rubber ducky or another character about a problem and use them as a sounding board. There is little to no question that the sounding board can serve that purpose without having to roll any dice or even query his character sheet, unless you're looking for something relatively specific in answering the question of whether the speaking character is better able to achieve something after having used that sounding board (hence my suggestion of, perhaps, Aid Another mechanics applying).

"Conflict" need not be adversarial between (N)PCs. It is simply the question of whether your character can or cannot achieve something.

Mechanics are needed when that question arises. "Can my character climb that fence?" Roll Athletics/Climb. "Can my character cross that chasm?" Roll jump, cast fly, point out that he has wings, etc. "Can my character persuade that bar maid to sleep with him?" Engage the social persuasion system. "Can my character beat up that troll?" Engage the combat system. "Can my character get to the other side of the city in time to warn the Princess that she's marrying the evil prince in disguise?" Check the speed of his method of transport vs. the time until the vows are made. Point out that he can teleport. Point out that he's never seen the chapel before (making teleport less reliable). Etc.

NichG

2017-06-01, 11:47 AM

The flip side of using mechanics to ask the question 'can this character do something?' is to say 'mechanics contain that which enables a character to do things that they could not do otherwise'. So you can say 'the mechanics of teleport answer the question of whether I can get across the city quickly' or you can say 'the mechanics of teleport grant a character the ability to get across a city quickly'.

So you don't need a mechanic to use a rubber ducky as a sounding board, but you could have a mechanic that makes using a rubber ducky as a sounding board do something different than what you would get just by RPing it out.

Similarly, you don't need a mechanic to hear gossip and figure out what it means; but you could have a mechanic that means that hearing gossip enables you to have not just the information contained in the words, but a guarantee as to whether those words were true or not; or the ability to accurately determine where the subject of the gossip is going to be at 9:47pm next Tuesday; or ...

A mechanic in the hand of a player gives them the ability to do more than just influence the answer to a question 'can my character do X?', it also lets them choose to assert 'my character can do X' when that assertion serves their goals.

Segev

2017-06-01, 02:52 PM

Knaight

2017-06-01, 02:56 PM

Certainly. As indicated by my response to the sounding board issue, a lot of those would seem to be wrapped up in DIFFERENT sub-systems' mechanics, is all.

...

If you want more complex mechanics for other "social" activities, sure, go ahead, but you don't shoe-horn all physical activities into the combat subsystem, nor try to expand the combat subsystem to handle all physical activities. Similarly, don't try to force a social persuasion/manipulation subsystem to cover all activities that might possibly be termed "social" and then claim it's impossible to make a social subsystem. By that argument, one could have said it would be impossible to make a "physical" subsystem.
Chronica Feudalis provides a good example of this. There are four subsystems, three for mostly physical interactions (Combat, Chases, Subterfuge), and one for a mostly social interaction (Parley). Notably it addresses a specific social interaction that can benefit from a subsystem, much the way that the other three address a specific mostly physical interaction that can benefit from a subsystem. Not everything needs them, and there are generic skill check mechanics for that.

Beelzebubba

2017-06-01, 06:16 PM

I would love a system that lets uncharismatic people *feel* like what it means to be charismatic.

As in, they can invoke some mechanism like the Gumshoe system with other characters, and get a certain number of 'automatic successes' in winning arguments or getting their way. So, no matter how the player says it, it works.

I could see it being done with cards, where you have a certain number of 'resists' or can only have your opinion shifted so far, based on the type of argument being made, and some rules built around the personalty traits of a character - i.e. a character with the flaw 'coward' would be very difficult to talk into a battle where the odds are against the team, but the 'fatalist' or 'courageous' would be a lot easier. And high Charisma gave you a lot more of those 'pushes' or 'resists'.

Doing it that way would really force a different relationship with the players to the characters - I think it might make some role-play truly for the first time ever - but it would be fun to try to build, I think.

NichG

2017-06-01, 08:18 PM

Certainly. As indicated by my response to the sounding board issue, a lot of those would seem to be wrapped up in DIFFERENT sub-systems' mechanics, is all.

Yes, teleport grants an ability the character wouldn't have without it. But it still is about resolving the conflicts involved in him being where he wants to be rather than where he is.

You don't use combat mechanics to resolve a foot race; you probably just compare movement speeds. Or you make an appropriate sort of skill check.

The social subsystem being discussed need not encompass every kind of "talking to other people" possible. Perhaps it is more fitting to say that the social mechanics being discussed are focused on conflict resolution for the same reason that combat mechanics are: that's where we need this complexity.

If you want more complex mechanics for other "social" activities, sure, go ahead, but you don't shoe-horn all physical activities into the combat subsystem, nor try to expand the combat subsystem to handle all physical activities. Similarly, don't try to force a social persuasion/manipulation subsystem to cover all activities that might possibly be termed "social" and then claim it's impossible to make a social subsystem. By that argument, one could have said it would be impossible to make a "physical" subsystem.

I view the attempt to represent the social interaction aspects of a game into just another form of conflict between characters as essentially being shoehorning them into the wrong subsystem. Fundamentally, social interaction is much more about cooperation than conflict. If overt conflict exists between two parties, that's the point at which social interaction between them stops and begins to become infeasible, not where it starts. To me, all this obsession about conflict resolution and social conflict systems is as if someone decided to design a movement system that was based on some sort of competitive game with the GM. It's sad, because it suggests this impoverished world view where the only interaction one can have with another person deserving of mention is to exert dominance over them.

Segev

2017-06-02, 09:19 AM

I think you're losing sight of what's being attempted, here, with that, NichG.

If you don't have a conflict resolution element to social interaction rules, how do you determine if Bob convinced Charlie to betray King Dave for Bob's rebel cause?

Unless Charlie was already going to betray King Dave anyway, Bob had to somehow conflict with Charlie's prior plans to continue to serve King Dave's interests.

Even if you've no social system at all, and just RP it, that's conflict: it's a conflict of the player's ability to convince the GM that Bob's words are sufficiently persuasive (or that the argument or enticement the player has Bob make is such) to overcome any reluctance the GM thinks Charlie would have.

If you introduce mechanics, it's already not "cooperative" just because Charlie isn't already planning to betray King Dave.

If you have a social system that resolves the question of how persuasive Charlie finds Bob's arguments, bribes, or whatever, then you have something that works whether it's a somewhat cooperative "Charlie was planning to - or at least looking for an excuse to - betray King Dave, and Bob just persuaded him to do it by joining Bob" or it's a more combative "Charlie was planning on remaining a loyal servant of King Dave, but Bob presented arguments or bribes or threats or something which put enough pressure on Charlie's loyalties that he chose to drop them in favor of Bob's preferred action."

But the fundamental thing you typically need mechanics for is the latter, because otherwise you can't ever play a persuasive character who meaningfully achieves something that the GM wasn't going to have happen anyway, per a pre-scripted event.

NichG

2017-06-03, 01:57 PM

I think you're losing sight of what's being attempted, here, with that, NichG.

If you don't have a conflict resolution element to social interaction rules, how do you determine if Bob convinced Charlie to betray King Dave for Bob's rebel cause?

Unless Charlie was already going to betray King Dave anyway, Bob had to somehow conflict with Charlie's prior plans to continue to serve King Dave's interests.

That doesn't follow.

Charlie wants to achieve X goal (gaining wealth and power, etc), and currently lacks a direct way to do so.
Bob wants to achieve Y goal (having King Dave get overthrown), which would be actualized if Charlie took action Z (betraying King Dave). Bob currently has access to X (wealth and power).
If Bob provides X in exchange for Charlie doing Z, that doesn't conflict with Charlie's goals. It causes both Charlie's goals and Bob's goals to be achieved at a higher level than either of them could manage on their own.

Therefore, it need not be conflict at all.

The mistake is assuming that the right way to think about this situation is for Bob to somehow beat Charlie over the head with words until he does what Bob wants even though it goes against what Charlie actually wants. Doing so, even if it's not logically impossible, is just a bad way to approach the situation. Because it is such an easy trap to fall into and leads to a sort of stubborn lack of imagination or actual thought about the motives of the people you're trying to persuade, I think it should just automatically fail.

Do you still need mechanics then? Well, even if the characters could automatically achieve success by offering Charlie what he wants, in practice the players don't always correctly evaluate that. So there is still an aspect of character ability which can matter - that is to say, the ability to accurately judge just what kind of deal Charlie would accept. And so in that sense, the mechanics can still be useful in providing players access to ability that they lack OOC but that their character has.

RazorChain

2017-06-03, 09:40 PM

I view the attempt to represent the social interaction aspects of a game into just another form of conflict between characters as essentially being shoehorning them into the wrong subsystem. Fundamentally, social interaction is much more about cooperation than conflict. If overt conflict exists between two parties, that's the point at which social interaction between them stops and begins to become infeasible, not where it starts. To me, all this obsession about conflict resolution and social conflict systems is as if someone decided to design a movement system that was based on some sort of competitive game with the GM. It's sad, because it suggests this impoverished world view where the only interaction one can have with another person deserving of mention is to exert dominance over them.

This is mainly the nature of RPG's, you certainly can include a cooperation skill to check how well you work with others. But social interaction is full of conflicts, I have conflicts almost daily at work where I try to push my agenda, push my ideas etc. Of course I also cooperate and compromise but that's only because I'm not allowed to make all the decisions.

This depends on how you run a game. I'm a minimalist in the rolling dice department. If a character has a decent skill of Savoir faire or Etiquette then I see no need to roll unless there is an obstacle or a conflict or something at stake. If you have Ride Horse skill then I don't make people roll for mounting/dimounting or a ride on a lovely day. Therefore I only make people roll when there is an "obstacle" or something that blocks their path. Some roleplayers love to roll dice, I'm not one of them.

NichG

2017-06-03, 10:23 PM

This is mainly the nature of RPG's, you certainly can include a cooperation skill to check how well you work with others. But social interaction is full of conflicts, I have conflicts almost daily at work where I try to push my agenda, push my ideas etc. Of course I also cooperate and compromise but that's only because I'm not allowed to make all the decisions.

This depends on how you run a game. I'm a minimalist in the rolling dice department. If a character has a decent skill of Savoir faire or Etiquette then I see no need to roll unless there is an obstacle or a conflict or something at stake. If you have Ride Horse skill then I don't make people roll for mounting/dimounting or a ride on a lovely day. Therefore I only make people roll when there is an "obstacle" or something that blocks their path. Some roleplayers love to roll dice, I'm not one of them.

I tend to dislike rolling as well. The point here though is that players actually tend to have trouble finding the cooperation or compromise path. As a result of that OOC inability, they fail to navigate social situations successfully even where conflict is unnecessary. So having mechanics can be used to augment the player ability, rather than impose additional ways to fail.

I'd say that if you find yourself in open conflict in a social interaction, you've already failed. Once things reach that point, people entrench and no matter what you say or do, it becomes much harder to get anything done. The place where you could succeed or fail was the point at which the situation could have avoided becoming a direct conflict, not once you're actually butting heads.

E.g. the fact that this thread was going to be a six page monster was decided in the first or second post. After that, the probability that Segev or I would significantly shift the other's position became almost zero. The 'failed skill check' on each of our parts was back there where there was still discussion about making mechanics to solve a problem together, when that mode shifted into a debate format. What's left now, even if the interactions take the overt form of a persuasion conflict, is actually more the 'sounding board' type of interaction. We won't likely persuade the other, but we both get to walk away with a sharper understanding of our ideas.

Floret

2017-06-04, 08:43 AM

Unlike chess or go puzzles, since you can have many different win conditions for different people, there's no need to build the puzzle around a single imagined solution. So you can even put forth situations which require interesting navigation without an answer in mind about how it could possibly be solved; as long as the potential space of moves and interactions is big enough, the players will find something.

If you present a situation with three kingdoms vying for a contested territory, each with different cultures, goals, forces, important figures, etc, then that's essentially just a puzzle to be solved - one in which there are many solutions, and a given ending state is not valued the same by everyone at the table - but still a kind of puzzle. When you think of it that way, it doesn't have to be adversarial at all.

The hooks/engagements thing I presented doesn't actually require dice, though you could use them if you want. I think randomness in game mechanics is kind of like salt for a meal - it can pep things up, but its not a replacement for having something substantial underneath. In that sense, I think conflating uncertainty (in the sense of randomness) with mechanics is a big mistake. Uncertainty is something you can add or manipulate with mechanics, not their reason for existence.

As for me, I generally find that I can do without the randomness entirely.

How is that a puzzle. Really. How?
Like, it is a scenario, that you can interact with, and change, but a puzzle by definition requires being solvable; and here... there is nothing to solve. People will make their own goals. I am really trying to understand, but what you describe is just so far off from anything I would even remotely consider comparable to a puzzle, that I cannot even comprehend how you got the thought.
And what does that have to do with something being adversarial? I mean, really, what I said is that a puzzle isn't adversarial; but that if you want absolute certainty of action, yet still uncertainty of result (Which would be why you aren't watching a movie), you kind of need people playing against one another, with differing goals that are in some way incompatible (Otherwise just everything runs smoothly into all the goals).

I view the attempt to represent the social interaction aspects of a game into just another form of conflict between characters as essentially being shoehorning them into the wrong subsystem. Fundamentally, social interaction is much more about cooperation than conflict. If overt conflict exists between two parties, that's the point at which social interaction between them stops and begins to become infeasible, not where it starts. To me, all this obsession about conflict resolution and social conflict systems is as if someone decided to design a movement system that was based on some sort of competitive game with the GM. It's sad, because it suggests this impoverished world view where the only interaction one can have with another person deserving of mention is to exert dominance over them.

You mean like systems for chase sequences (A very direct conflict in every sense of the word)? Or for resolving the question of "Is my character there in time" (A conflict in at leas the sense Segev is using the word)? Which are, incidentally, the only places outside of combat positioning that (At least to my thinking and memory of any system I've ever played) mechanics should be or even are concerned with movement.
"Conflict" is used in a much broader sense here than just "direct confrontation and dominance". If I am, for example, trying to get my boyfriend to get out of bed so we aren't late for an appointment, this isn't about me exerting dominance. There is still a conflict there: Between his desire to continue sleeping, and my (and his) desire to be on time.

"Conflict" need not be adversarial between (N)PCs. It is simply the question of whether your character can or cannot achieve something.

This depends on how you run a game. I'm a minimalist in the rolling dice department. If a character has a decent skill of Savoir faire or Etiquette then I see no need to roll unless there is an obstacle or a conflict or something at stake. If you have Ride Horse skill then I don't make people roll for mounting/dimounting or a ride on a lovely day. Therefore I only make people roll when there is an "obstacle" or something that blocks their path. Some roleplayers love to roll dice, I'm not one of them.

I love rolling dice, and yet I still only ever call for it for two reasons:
1) Uncertainty on the part of "Do the characters accomplish this thing, and how successfully do they do it"
2) Uncertainty on the part of my improvisation, in which direction I want something to go in. Often, if one of the outcomes would be lucky or convenient for the PCs, have them roll on their "luck"-stat/Fatepointstuff, if present in the game (Edge; Void to some extent; FATEpoints; etc.); or, if it is purely just "I need a detail not set before, but have no strong feelings either way", just a dice of roughly appropriate sides.

I'd say that if you find yourself in open conflict in a social interaction, you've already failed. Once things reach that point, people entrench and no matter what you say or do, it becomes much harder to get anything done. The place where you could succeed or fail was the point at which the situation could have avoided becoming a direct conflict, not once you're actually butting heads.

E.g. the fact that this thread was going to be a six page monster was decided in the first or second post. After that, the probability that Segev or I would significantly shift the other's position became almost zero. The 'failed skill check' on each of our parts was back there where there was still discussion about making mechanics to solve a problem together, when that mode shifted into a debate format. What's left now, even if the interactions take the overt form of a persuasion conflict, is actually more the 'sounding board' type of interaction. We won't likely persuade the other, but we both get to walk away with a sharper understanding of our ideas.

Meh. I don't quite agree; or rather, I'd go even further and say that this thread was never gonna end up anything else but a discussion, and there wasn't really any chance to convince people of thei
I also would say that this is a poor example for social mechanics. Because, really, most anything a socialite can do, apart from choice of words (Including the very important tone, gestures, facial expressions) just... falls flat over a forum. And especially the more morally questionable tactics useful in an open conflict situation do. I cannot put time pressure on anyone, cannot remove their ability to clear out their thoughts, cannot make people feel threatened or unsafe, cannot appeal to their desires in any way, etc. So this really doesn't prove anything.
So, sure, we are clearing up confusions in our own minds. And, really, even you have given me a better perspective on certain things and why I feel about them the way I do. But you aren't gonna convince me of the broader points, no, just as in reverse, but that really doesn't represent the situations discussed... pretty much at all, really.

The point here though is that players actually tend to have trouble finding the cooperation or compromise path. As a result of that OOC inability, they fail to navigate social situations successfully even where conflict is unnecessary. So having mechanics can be used to augment the player ability, rather than impose additional ways to fail.

I am still very hesitant to draw any conclusion from this other than "design your system in a way that does and encourages what you want it to do and encourage". If you succeed at that, players will either realise the "good/best/real" way, and play that way, so yay you, you designed a system that does what it shall! (Not that easy, looking at a grand number of games decidedly NOT doing that)
Or the player's won't realise the "good/best/real" way to play, and instead play their own way. This is sad, because your design goal wasn't met, and people aren't on your page as to how they want to play their games, but... other than that? They probably have a reason to play this way. Maybe it's just more fun for them. But really, designing systems to "teach/train" players to play a certain way I am incredibly doutful about being a goal to strive for, because... why? Why do this? You can't force people to have fun (in a specific way). You can only offer them what you think is fun, in the most concise and best way possible, and then hope they agree. The rest is social contract.

NichG

2017-06-04, 10:40 AM

How is that a puzzle. Really. How?
Like, it is a scenario, that you can interact with, and change, but a puzzle by definition requires being solvable; and here... there is nothing to solve. People will make their own goals. I am really trying to understand, but what you describe is just so far off from anything I would even remotely consider comparable to a puzzle, that I cannot even comprehend how you got the thought.

It's a puzzle in the sense that its a situation which requires some form of 'figuring out' or exploratory thinking in order to find paths through, but where those paths exist ahead of time and can be verified by the person solving the situation rather than the person posing the situation. So the DM doesn't have to provide any kind of adversarial opposition, as that is built into the complexity of the situation itself. The uncertainty of the result is the question of 'can the solver figure out how to get what they want?'.

If there's a binary outcome like 'success/failure', that doesn't make for very interesting gameplay. But it's possible to create puzzles with multiple levels of success or even ones which ask questions of the solver in terms of their priorities.

For example, take life-and-death puzzles in Go, where you're trying to make a group of stones live (or kill it). For simple ones you can have pass/fail type solutions, but as they get more complex you can have things like 'seki, lives in gote, lives with ko, lives in sente, ...'. Those mean that you succeed, but by sacrificing different things at the level of the rest of the board - seki means your stones stay on the board but in a situation where neither side can actually make the final move in the sequence without losing the group so they're worth no points, lives in gote means you make the group live but you surrender initiative; lives with ko means that you make the group live but the opponent may be able to force you to sacrifice points elsewhere on the board in exchange; lives in sente means that not only can you make the group live, but you can seize initiative while doing so. So a player who is more clever might figure out the solution that lets them live in sente, while a worse player may still manage to find a sequence in which their group lives, but must be satisfied living in gote or dealing with a ko, or can at best pull off a seki. And in some cases, the ko may actually be better than just living straight out. Just because there's a rich space of outcomes doesn't make it any less of a puzzle - all of those sequences can be evaluated without strictly needing another player there supplying adversarial pressure.

If we now talk about a TRPG, the different tradeoffs may not just be different levels of extent of victory, but could be questions about what characters really care about and what they're willing to sacrifice to achieve it. The uncertainty there isn't 'will they succeed or fail?', its 'what will they trade?' - it comes from the things about that character which their player has not yet answered. Uncertain, but not requiring a direct adversarial stance or any randomness.

You mean like systems for chase sequences (A very direct conflict in every sense of the word)? Or for resolving the question of "Is my character there in time" (A conflict in at leas the sense Segev is using the word)? Which are, incidentally, the only places outside of combat positioning that (At least to my thinking and memory of any system I've ever played) mechanics should be or even are concerned with movement.
"Conflict" is used in a much broader sense here than just "direct confrontation and dominance". If I am, for example, trying to get my boyfriend to get out of bed so we aren't late for an appointment, this isn't about me exerting dominance. There is still a conflict there: Between his desire to continue sleeping, and my (and his) desire to be on time.

An example of questions of movement that aren't about conflict: access to things such as the Planeshift spell. Having Planeshift gives a player the ability to bring a large number of different things into the narrative that would be impossible or difficult without it. It's not there to answer a go-fish question from the DM of 'do you succeed?', but rather confers certain powers over the course of the story. Getting the airship in a console RPG has a similar feeling. The opening of possibilities gives the player the opportunity to think to themselves 'what do I wish to do?', and to explore where that leads. The fun of that doesn't come from receiving push-back, it comes from the feeling of potential. Things don't have to be about conflict in order to be interesting.

Now, there's a lot of literary tradition and theory focusing on conflict as a primary driver of things, but keep in mind that that's all about designing passive media. Someone who reads a book might imagine what they would do in a character's place, but (outside of writing fanfiction) it's hard to really get the payoff of exploring it and seeing their decision matter. In an RPG though, whatever decision you make can matter, so you have access to a wider repertoire. And even in books and movies and such, sense of wonderment is still a thing.

I am still very hesitant to draw any conclusion from this other than "design your system in a way that does and encourages what you want it to do and encourage". If you succeed at that, players will either realise the "good/best/real" way, and play that way, so yay you, you designed a system that does what it shall! (Not that easy, looking at a grand number of games decidedly NOT doing that)
Or the player's won't realise the "good/best/real" way to play, and instead play their own way. This is sad, because your design goal wasn't met, and people aren't on your page as to how they want to play their games, but... other than that? They probably have a reason to play this way. Maybe it's just more fun for them. But really, designing systems to "teach/train" players to play a certain way I am incredibly doutful about being a goal to strive for, because... why? Why do this? You can't force people to have fun (in a specific way). You can only offer them what you think is fun, in the most concise and best way possible, and then hope they agree. The rest is social contract.

Ultimately the reason is that it's more fun to play with people who play well and have confidence in their play. 'I use a good argument on the guard' is, frankly, boring - that player is not really adding much back in to the play environment with their presence at that moment. I'd much rather have a player who brings to bear a lot of OOC ability and actually comes up with something that everyone at the table can understand as clever. But it would be unreasonable to expect players to just automatically be awesome at everything. So if you can make a system which helps players learn ways to be clever that they didn't possess before, then it means that over time the level of play at the table can steadily improve.

Max_Killjoy

2017-06-04, 12:23 PM

I tend to dislike rolling as well. The point here though is that players actually tend to have trouble finding the cooperation or compromise path. As a result of that OOC inability, they fail to navigate social situations successfully even where conflict is unnecessary. So having mechanics can be used to augment the player ability, rather than impose additional ways to fail.

Which is why I've wondered aloud if maybe social prowess being quasi-magical (in terms of what it can accomplish and how) in an RPG system doesn't trip any alarms for some gamers -- because real-world social prowess seems a little magical to them.

I'd say that if you find yourself in open conflict in a social interaction, you've already failed. Once things reach that point, people entrench and no matter what you say or do, it becomes much harder to get anything done. The place where you could succeed or fail was the point at which the situation could have avoided becoming a direct conflict, not once you're actually butting heads.

Yeap -- once people realize or even unconsciously sense that they're in a social conflict or get the feeling of being "under attack", they tend to dig their heals in, and the odds of the other person getting what they wanted go way, way down.

Mechanics are needed to answer the question, "What can my character do?" or "Can my character do X?"

In the very specific context to which I was replying - social interaction - there is little to no question that your character can, in fact, talk to a rubber ducky or another character about a problem and use them as a sounding board. There is little to no question that the sounding board can serve that purpose without having to roll any dice or even query his character sheet, unless you're looking for something relatively specific in answering the question of whether the speaking character is better able to achieve something after having used that sounding board (hence my suggestion of, perhaps, Aid Another mechanics applying).

Two things that come to mind here:

* Do characteristics, skills, and other mechanisms in an RPG system exist to describe what a character can do, or define what a character can do?

* How strictly can the principle of "only roll when something is in question or at risk" be followed before you end up with forcing the GM to inadvertently telegraph information to the players that they're characters shouldn't have, deflating tension, etc? Example -- if the GM knows that the players have a 30 minute window in which there's no chance of them being caught in the vault they've just entered, but the players don't know that, does that "only roll when" ideal end up deflating the tension of "a guard could be by any minute and catch us making the switch" by (for lack of a better term) forbidding the GM from requiring or making any rolls?

"Conflict" need not be adversarial between (N)PCs. It is simply the question of whether your character can or cannot achieve something.

Mechanics are needed when that question arises. "Can my character climb that fence?" Roll Athletics/Climb. "Can my character cross that chasm?" Roll jump, cast fly, point out that he has wings, etc. "Can my character persuade that bar maid to sleep with him?" Engage the social persuasion system. "Can my character beat up that troll?" Engage the combat system. "Can my character get to the other side of the city in time to warn the Princess that she's marrying the evil prince in disguise?" Check the speed of his method of transport vs. the time until the vows are made. Point out that he can teleport. Point out that he's never seen the chapel before (making teleport less reliable). Etc.

Which sounds like using "conflict" as a term of art. And this is the problem with terms of art.

When someone uses the word "conflict", I think of an adversarial situation of opposed goals, sinking into win-lose territory, in which there is a high risk of "zero sum" becoming the least-bad possible outcome. What I do not think of is "situation in which dice must now be rolled or other mechanism of the game must be engaged".

There's a significant space in which the situation is not one of conflict, but is one in which game mechanics could or should be engaged. And there are situations that are certainly conflict, in which the mechanisms might not even be needed, because the outcome is in such little doubt beyond the decisions of those involved.

(Example -- and please let's not spend 5 pages playing "fixate on the example and try to teat it down", the spirit of the example is what's important here -- three PCs have an NPC -- without armor or weapons or obstacles to hide behind -- covered with firearms from 10-15 feet away or so, fingers on the triggers, so that the NPC has no hope of closing the distance or running away before he's filled with hot angry things moving fast. If the PCs decide to kill the NPC, then the NPC is dead. There are no dice to roll, there's no chance the NPC gets in an attack or gets to escape. This is certainly a conflict situation, but it is not "conflict" as the term of art is used to mean "dice need to be rolled, or something".)

ImNotTrevor

2017-06-04, 12:48 PM

It
An example of questions of movement that aren't about conflict: access to things such as the Planeshift spell. Having Planeshift gives a player the ability to bring a large number of different things into the narrative that would be impossible or difficult without it. It's not there to answer a go-fish question from the DM of 'do you succeed?', but rather confers certain powers over the course of the story. Getting the airship in a console RPG has a similar feeling. The opening of possibilities gives the player the opportunity to think to themselves 'what do I wish to do?', and to explore where that leads. The fun of that doesn't come from receiving push-back, it comes from the feeling of potential. Things don't have to be about conflict in order to be interesting.
I wouldn't call Planeshift a mechanism in much the same way that I wouldnt call a Police paint-job on a car a mechanism in the car. Yes, the police paint-job grants authority to do certain things with this car. Just like having Planeshift in your spell list grants the authority to break the usual rules in this specific way. There is no engagement or action here except to look at a checklist. "Are all these requirements met? Yes? Then it happens."

I don't know if I have a better word for it than it being a Rule rather than a Mechanism, but everything I know about Mechanisms in TRPGs is that they are interactable. You can't interact with Planeshift. Only its checklist, specifically by way of making it harder to cast to make it fizzle, but a more satisfying mechanic would allow enemy spellcasters to fiddle with one another's magic in more advanced ways. Maybe changing the destination of the shift, for instance. Not a simple yes/no. With such a system in place, yeah I'd call Planeshift a mechanism. As its stands... it's permission. And if you must insist that it IS a mechanism, at least admit it has all the depth of a half-empty puddle.

Now, there's a lot of literary tradition and theory focusing on conflict as a primary driver of things, but keep in mind that that's all about designing passive media. Someone who reads a book might imagine what they would do in a character's place, but (outside of writing fanfiction) it's hard to really get the payoff of exploring it and seeing their decision matter. In an RPG though, whatever decision you make can matter, so you have access to a wider repertoire. And even in books and movies and such, sense of wonderment is still a thing.

There is an entire philosophy (that has research to back it) that states conflict is necessary for humans to be happy. Things we have to fight for make us more happy than things we just get.

If your goal is to avoid conflict always, TRPGs are not for you. You've been showing examples of pseudo-mechanisms that don't involve conflict as ways of showing you can do social systems without conflict, but here's the problem:
Your examples are all permissions to do a thing if conditions are met. Which means that if you ported them 1-for-1 into a social system, you just turn socialites into spellcasters that only affect alliances and opinions. And I don't mean by theme. Just by how they work. A list of ways they can change someone's mind if conditions are met is ridiculously powerful, ridiculously simplified, and will cause all the same frustrations and complaints that Dominate Person does.

I'm not asserting that this is your goal, but as far as non-conflict examples go, they are very poor ones. If you can find a mechanism in any system that involves no conflict and takes more than one full page to describe, I'll concede the point. But I sense you won't be able to.

Ultimately, the reason is that it's more fun to play with people who play well and have confidence in their play. 'I use a good argument on the guard' is, frankly, boring - that player is not really adding much back in to the play environment with their presence at that moment. I'd much rather have a player who brings to bear a lot of OOC ability and actually comes up with something that everyone at the table can understand as clever. But it would be unreasonable to expect players to just automatically be awesome at everything. So if you can make a system which helps players learn ways to be clever that they didn't possess before, then it means that over time the level of play at the table can steadily improve.

This is solved like this:
"You can't say 'a good argument.' Tell me the gist of your argument. What are you trying to convince him of?"

"Well I want to convince him that we are messengers from another land and we urgently need to see the king."

"I can work with that. Roll it."

Or, if they are entirely socialy inept:

"You can't say 'a good argument.' Tell me the gist of your argument. What are you trying to convince him of?"

"That we can pass."

"And what will you tell him has granted you this permission?"

"Uh... another king."

"So you'll tell him that a foreign king has sent you to talk to this king? Is that what you're getting at?"

"Yes."

"Alright. Roll it."

The system can't teach people. People have to teach people. A system designed to teach people will only work on a small group of said people. And even then, not particularly well.

NichG

2017-06-04, 01:50 PM

I wouldn't call Planeshift a mechanism in much the same way that I wouldnt call a Police paint-job on a car a mechanism in the car. Yes, the police paint-job grants authority to do certain things with this car. Just like having Planeshift in your spell list grants the authority to break the usual rules in this specific way. There is no engagement or action here except to look at a checklist. "Are all these requirements met? Yes? Then it happens."

I don't know if I have a better word for it than it being a Rule rather than a Mechanism, but everything I know about Mechanisms in TRPGs is that they are interactable. You can't interact with Planeshift. Only its checklist, specifically by way of making it harder to cast to make it fizzle, but a more satisfying mechanic would allow enemy spellcasters to fiddle with one another's magic in more advanced ways. Maybe changing the destination of the shift, for instance. Not a simple yes/no. With such a system in place, yeah I'd call Planeshift a mechanism. As its stands... it's permission. And if you must insist that it IS a mechanism, at least admit it has all the depth of a half-empty puddle.

I'd say Planeshift has a lot more depth than, say, Climb or Move Silently or Spot. With Planeshift, a player gains access to and can make use of the properties of basically any plane out there. Want to be young for events a hundred years in the future? Find a slow-time plane and go there. Want to melt something that can't be melted by mortal fires? Planeshift to the Plane of Fire. Wondering how your dead aunt is getting on? Lets go to Bytopia and ask.

In terms of what that means for the types of solutions that a player has access to, the directions they can move the story in, etc, Planeshift has much more depth where it matters than rolling for attack or checking to see if you successfully snuck past that guard. Both the complexity of situations which can be resolved, and the depth of knowledge and thought which need to be leveraged to resolve them are much higher for Planeshift than for most other mechanics.

There is an entire philosophy (that has research to back it) that states conflict is necessary for humans to be happy. Things we have to fight for make us more happy than things we just get.

If your goal is to avoid conflict always, TRPGs are not for you. You've been showing examples of pseudo-mechanisms that don't involve conflict as ways of showing you can do social systems without conflict, but here's the problem:
Your examples are all permissions to do a thing if conditions are met. Which means that if you ported them 1-for-1 into a social system, you just turn socialites into spellcasters that only affect alliances and opinions. And I don't mean by theme. Just by how they work. A list of ways they can change someone's mind if conditions are met is ridiculously powerful, ridiculously simplified, and will cause all the same frustrations and complaints that Dominate Person does.

I'm not asserting that this is your goal, but as far as non-conflict examples go, they are very poor ones. If you can find a mechanism in any system that involves no conflict and takes more than one full page to describe, I'll concede the point. But I sense you won't be able to.

You just gave the example: spellcasting in D&D. It takes half a book to describe, and there's no question or uncertainty in whether a caster can successfully use a given spell, even if some spells engage conflict mechanics when directed against a target. The longest spell descriptions in D&D are in fact generally the ones that don't simply do something to a target but instead bring about some fairly complex change in world-state which requires explanation of how to adjudicate it with respect to other things. Spells like Gate require a lot of rules text but are not centered around conflict.

A better example though would be Nobilis. Almost every power and ability you can have in Nobilis has the caveat: 'if you use this against anyone worth talking about, it simply automatically fails'. There is conflict in Nobilis but the mechanics almost exclusively avoid attempting to provide a direct resolution method.

Worse examples (as in, less interesting mechanics) but ones which still qualify in terms of page counts...
- D&D: the mechanics for designing an epic spell, the mechanics of designing, pricing out, and crafting items. Stuff like Stronghold Builder's Guide, ship-building rules in Stormwrack (and in 2ed Spelljammer)
- 7th Sea: Ussuran shapeshifting magic in 7th Sea uses a few pages and is all about things it lets you do. Porte, from the same system, is a similar story. The Invisible College invention rules.
- Rules for background advantages in Abberant and Adventure! - stuff like having political clout, having a lair, having minions, etc.

This is solved like this:

That doesn't actually improve things, its just the DM playing the person's character for them.

The system can't teach people. People have to teach people. A system designed to teach people will only work on a small group of said people. And even then, not particularly well.

Of course the system can teach. You just have to look at how tutorial systems have changed in the last 10 years in computer games to see how much of a difference the system design makes in terms of transmitting a skill to a player. Some time around Portal, development teams started to get the idea of introducing mechanics one at a time and making the mechanics build off of each-other. You then got a slew of games that played with various kinds of increasingly sophisticated player augmentation - stuff like X-Com's cover cues to Invisible Inc's break-down of sight-lines and alertness. Compare the learning curve of newer games with things like Street Fighter (where you had to just mash buttons randomly over and over to discover the patterns to do special moves).

Now we have things like KSP which has taught a generation of gamers orbital mechanics.

There's even low-level neurological improvements to things like reaction times, memory capacity, etc from games of the right form. There's a lot of detailed millisecond-level data in Osu! plays where the average newcomer has something like a 20-30ms awareness of relative timing, but someone who has played for awhile ends up down at the 10-15ms range.

Not to mention games like Chess and Go, which have been used extensively to hone tactical and strategic thinking.

Floret

2017-06-04, 02:11 PM

It's a puzzle in the sense that its a situation which requires some form of 'figuring out' or exploratory thinking in order to find paths through, but where those paths exist ahead of time and can be verified by the person solving the situation rather than the person posing the situation. So the DM doesn't have to provide any kind of adversarial opposition, as that is built into the complexity of the situation itself. The uncertainty of the result is the question of 'can the solver figure out how to get what they want?'.

If there's a binary outcome like 'success/failure', that doesn't make for very interesting gameplay. But it's possible to create puzzles with multiple levels of success or even ones which ask questions of the solver in terms of their priorities.

Yeah, sure, puzzles with multiple solutions and different degrees of success are possible, no question (And thanks for explaining the Go terms, that might have been a rather long google search!)
But: A puzzle still, inherently, requires a solution. A goal to work towards. The question "How well can I achieve this goal" comes afterwards. As soon as there is no goal, not even a general one, I don't think it can be called a puzzle. If the players go ahead and define their own goals, they aren't taking on puzzles created by the GM. In the broadest sense of the word they might be setting puzzles up for themselves? But I think that really stretches the usability of the comparison too thin to have much left to work with.

I mean, designing an RPG with chess/go-like, entirely non-random mechanics might be an interesting challenge and idea. If you come up with something, please show me, I'd be thrilled to read it (Though maybe not as much to play it), but I am still kinda convinced that if it works, it will, by default of play, involve a rather antagonistic GM.

Ultimately the reason is that it's more fun to play with people who play well and have confidence in their play. 'I use a good argument on the guard' is, frankly, boring - that player is not really adding much back in to the play environment with their presence at that moment. I'd much rather have a player who brings to bear a lot of OOC ability and actually comes up with something that everyone at the table can understand as clever. But it would be unreasonable to expect players to just automatically be awesome at everything. So if you can make a system which helps players learn ways to be clever that they didn't possess before, then it means that over time the level of play at the table can steadily improve.

Why would it be unreasonable, though? If you want to enjoy a game, play it with people that play it in a way you can enjoy. There is little unreasonable, from my view, about "Hey, I like you, but you aren't quite cut out for the style of game we are aiming at here/I don't think you'd really enjoy the gamestyle we are going for". For a high-intrigue high-social court game? As much as I ramble on about the importance of social rules and their place in game systems, I just wouldn't invite people who didn't have at least a good bit of confidence and talking skills. Just as I wouldn't invite a drama player into a group of min-maxed murderhobos. Both playstyles I can see the fun in (The former more so, but preferences), with proponents of both styles I can have very much fun, but not everyone will, and having a player in a game they are unfit for is probably neither fun for them, nor for you.
So for my Dark Eye campaign, I just asked different people if they wanted to join than for my 5 Rings game. Was that really unreasonable, from your perspective?

(Also what ImNotTrevor said. I don't believe you can make a system that, in and of itself, teaches players much in that regard.)

Which is why I've wondered aloud if maybe social prowess being quasi-magical (in terms of what it can accomplish and how) in an RPG system doesn't trip any alarms for some gamers -- because real-world social prowess seems a little magical to them.

I wonder, actually, if that is just a fallacy. Like, some people might just be okay with things working differently in games than they do IRL. Some people just might just be actually convinced social skills and prowess can pull off more than you seem to think - their experiences of the world are different, or maybe just their framing and view of it is. I happen to fall into both of these categories.
But, as much as this will sound corny and somewhat self-defeating: There is a reason I mostly play socialites in TRPGs as well as in LARPs, and do so successfully. This reason is not to do with there being mechanics in my games for that,. I still advocate for social mechanics. I still want them in games. And I would actually mind it if my TRPG socialites got their successes just because of my irl-talking. I like my dicerolls; and I like feeling like the points I invested, sacrificing combat power, a hand for gardening or whatever else a system might offer, actually meant something beyond a vague "yeah, alright, you are allowed to just talk IC". I like playing someone that just isn't myself, and not be bound by any abilities I, as a player possess (or don't).

Or, in other words, not that I think you are doing it? But be careful not to write of any criticism of your perspective in this regard as "the other's just don't have a clue what they are talking about". We just might.

Two things that come to mind here:

* Do characteristics, skills, and other mechanisms in an RPG system exist to describe what a character can do, or define what a character can do?

* How strictly can the principle of "only roll when something is in question or at risk" be followed before you end up with forcing the GM to inadvertently telegraph information to the players that they're characters shouldn't have, deflating tension, etc? Example -- if the GM knows that the players have a 30 minute window in which there's no chance of them being caught in the vault they've just entered, but the players don't know that, does that "only roll when" ideal end up deflating the tension of "a guard could be by any minute and catch us making the switch" by (for lack of a better term) forbidding the GM from requiring or making any rolls?

This is going to come down to preferences and perspective, but for me? Define.
Because ultimately, there is no greater reality behind any character, or the world, nothing that is inherently "true" about the world. What is possible in a setting is not described by the rules, the rules lay out how that world works, what is possible in that world, and what the characters can accomplish in that world. They are, in a good way, more "real" than anything else about the characters - which is not to say they are more important, or that being real is a matter of quality here, but it is something more hard, more measurable.
Or, maybe from another perspective: You can describe that your character is able to fight with swords, and that they are reasonably good at it. This is the description of the character, but it is done by the narrative (In lack of a better term). The actual definition; how good exactly they are, is done by the rules.
A rule defines and sets what the description of the character actually means. And the character's prowess at swordfighting will never differ from the rules; as long as there are rules for swordfighting in the system used. How would it? By the player saying "No, the rules don't count, I am badass, even though I can never actually win anything once the mechanics get involved"?

As for the second question... Pretty well, at least in my experience. Players can make themselves awfully tense and crazy by just narration alone. I mean, what would the players even roll in waiting times?
The situation you present raises an interesting case, though: I, as a GM, would not require any rolls whatsoever in that scene, no. If a player, though, asked for a roll, I would probably have them do it - to keep up the suspense, even though I knew there was nothing there to detect. I have done that before, actually. Now, I could argue something about uncertainty of the player, but I think it actually might be a valid point that I had not considered.

That doesn't actually improve things, its just the DM playing the person's character for them.

Is it? How? By asking questions the player hadn't thought about in detail? Asking questions for clarification? All the actual input that influenced the situation in these examples still came from the player.

Of course the system can teach. You just have to look at how tutorial systems have changed in the last 10 years in computer games to see how much of a difference the system design makes in terms of transmitting a skill to a player. Some time around Portal, development teams started to get the idea of introducing mechanics one at a time and making the mechanics build off of each-other. You then got a slew of games that played with various kinds of increasingly sophisticated player augmentation - stuff like X-Com's cover cues to Invisible Inc's break-down of sight-lines and alertness. Compare the learning curve of newer games with things like Street Fighter (where you had to just mash buttons randomly over and over to discover the patterns to do special moves).

Now we have things like KSP which has taught a generation of gamers orbital mechanics.

There's even low-level neurological improvements to things like reaction times, memory capacity, etc from games of the right form. There's a lot of detailed millisecond-level data in Osu! plays where the average newcomer has something like a 20-30ms awareness of relative timing, but someone who has played for awhile ends up down at the 10-15ms range.

Not to mention games like Chess and Go, which have been used extensively to hone tactical and strategic thinking.

But notice how tutorials teach? The core is "learning by doing". Forcing people to have comprehended parts of the mechanics before they get more complicated.
This is, aside from specific adventure design, not feasible in RPGs. And while at a PC, there is a game system that understands the rules perfectly for you to learn from - something equivalent is needed for RPGs to fill the same role. (This is important: The game needs to understand things better than you, but in a TRPG, the response isn't coming from the system - its coming from the GM. And it will, always, inevitably, come in some part from the GM, who needs to fill in the role of "understanding perfectly".)
I think you are transferring a concept over into TRPGs that needs a LOT of factors to work that you just aren't considering. And TRPGs and Computer games are really different beasts in that regard.

NichG

2017-06-04, 10:39 PM

Yeah, sure, puzzles with multiple solutions and different degrees of success are possible, no question (And thanks for explaining the Go terms, that might have been a rather long google search!)
But: A puzzle still, inherently, requires a solution. A goal to work towards. The question "How well can I achieve this goal" comes afterwards. As soon as there is no goal, not even a general one, I don't think it can be called a puzzle. If the players go ahead and define their own goals, they aren't taking on puzzles created by the GM. In the broadest sense of the word they might be setting puzzles up for themselves? But I think that really stretches the usability of the comparison too thin to have much left to work with.

The key point is that a player can evaluate their own success or failure independently of the person who proposes the puzzle. That's the bit that lets you avoid it become actively adversarial.

I mean, designing an RPG with chess/go-like, entirely non-random mechanics might be an interesting challenge and idea. If you come up with something, please show me, I'd be thrilled to read it (Though maybe not as much to play it), but I am still kinda convinced that if it works, it will, by default of play, involve a rather antagonistic GM.

I think the best use-case for this would be making an RPG system for heists. If you look at movies/stories about heists, they generally require extensive planning on the part of the protagonists. A system with a high degree of intrinsic randomness makes that impossible, because once you have a sequence of contingent factors small probabilities of failure compound into big ones. So for a heist RPG, the uncertainty would come in the form of things that the players failed to scout out or take into account correctly rather than things which are just unknowable in advance because they're random in nature.

Probably to keep up the tension, the GM should have something similar to 7th Sea's 'drama dice', where during every heist they get to add a specific small number of surprise factors of their choice during the run - so that would be a little adversarial, but constrained. Or you could do fancy stuff like having each character have a 'curse' which obligates the GM to add a specific kind of surprise factor every so many games (so the guy with 'hunted' means that a special investigator might show up; the guy with 'debts' means that someone in the associated criminal organization might put the screws on them during the heist and add a secondary objective or speed up the time table, etc). That way, the players could even decide the ways they feel would be most interesting to be opposed.

Why would it be unreasonable, though? If you want to enjoy a game, play it with people that play it in a way you can enjoy. There is little unreasonable, from my view, about "Hey, I like you, but you aren't quite cut out for the style of game we are aiming at here/I don't think you'd really enjoy the gamestyle we are going for". For a high-intrigue high-social court game? As much as I ramble on about the importance of social rules and their place in game systems, I just wouldn't invite people who didn't have at least a good bit of confidence and talking skills. Just as I wouldn't invite a drama player into a group of min-maxed murderhobos. Both playstyles I can see the fun in (The former more so, but preferences), with proponents of both styles I can have very much fun, but not everyone will, and having a player in a game they are unfit for is probably neither fun for them, nor for you.
So for my Dark Eye campaign, I just asked different people if they wanted to join than for my 5 Rings game. Was that really unreasonable, from your perspective?

I'll admit, this statement is more about hedging against a thread derail than asserting a belief. Telling someone 'you aren't good enough to join my game, so we don't need to consider your abilities' isn't a good way to have a conversation with them, and often in this kind of thread on these forums the conversation breaks down because someone shows up and says 'well, I'm not that good, are you excluding me then?'. So this is me getting out ahead of that point and saying 'look, regardless of someone's skill level, there's actually a way to break down what's expected in terms of social savvy into something that can be understood via logic rather than via people skills'.

I don't think its unreasonable to pick your players. But I do think that for a forum discussion like this you can't really do that; there are going to be people without confidence in their social skills but who wish to play a bard, and 'that wouldn't cut it at my table' isn't really an answer for them. And besides, you may not always be able to find a group of perfect, skilled players to play with - new players have to come from somewhere, and that involves learning the understanding and skills and styles that they're going to carry with them through their future gaming career.

Is it? How? By asking questions the player hadn't thought about in detail? Asking questions for clarification? All the actual input that influenced the situation in these examples still came from the player.

In the style of those examples, the DM has to basically keep asking until the player says something that has a possibility of being reasonable. That means, even if the words come out of the player's mouth, the DM is asking leading questions to get them to the nearest reasonable plan. Doing this kind of thing can be necessary in some cases, but I think it should be minimized. When a player is on the receiving end of this once or twice it feels helpful, but if it starts happening every single time then it ends up stealing the feeling of accomplishment. Generally when I find that I've had to do this as a DM, it means that I screwed up somewhere earlier - either making something too obscure or getting the difficulty wrong or not giving players enough leads or tools to call upon or pacing things too quickly so that the players aren't actually clear about what's going on.

Doesn't mean leave them out in the cold when it gets to that point, but I definitely don't think that you should design with this in mind as a good outcome.

But notice how tutorials teach? The core is "learning by doing". Forcing people to have comprehended parts of the mechanics before they get more complicated.
This is, aside from specific adventure design, not feasible in RPGs.

Levels and progression design serve this purpose in RPGs. A Lv1 character has fewer moving parts than a Lv20 character. A progression system also orders the kinds of adventures which are feasible for characters to undertake as a function of time spent playing, which takes care of a lot of that 'specific adventure design' in a natural way. Narrative arcs tend to include a phase where things are built up anyhow, so its not a huge imposition to have a difficulty curve - its a good fit for what you'd do anyhow to make the pacing feel natural.

And while at a PC, there is a game system that understands the rules perfectly for you to learn from - something equivalent is needed for RPGs to fill the same role. (This is important: The game needs to understand things better than you, but in a TRPG, the response isn't coming from the system - its coming from the GM. And it will, always, inevitably, come in some part from the GM, who needs to fill in the role of "understanding perfectly".)
I think you are transferring a concept over into TRPGs that needs a LOT of factors to work that you just aren't considering. And TRPGs and Computer games are really different beasts in that regard.

One way to help with that 'perfect understanding' requirement is to design rules with clarity and simplicity in mind, and to separate things which are rules from things which are advice or suggestions or exposition or flavor. You can understand the rules of Chess or Go or Magic: the Gathering 'perfectly' (or at least, well enough to obtain a consistent outcome) - of course there may be ambiguous or contradictory situations, even in a ruleset like Go (such as details of Japanese scoring vs Chinese scoring, or situations like triple-ko, or ...), but they're rare enough that its generally an academic point among experts in the game rather than a serious issue for new players. And it's not like the M:tG rules are so simple - collectively, the rules text across all M:tG cards is probably bigger than most TRPGs.

It's not like computer games are such different beasts. It used to be the case that CRPGs primarily existed by emulating tabletop mechanics, because doing so produced a much richer and more interesting system than the stuff programmers would come up with in isolation. But computer games have had a much faster design cycle and much more detailed feedback from their player bases, so I think they've really pulled ahead in terms of design sophistication and understanding of players. So I think it would be a good time to see that inspiration start flowing the other way - there are a ton of new design ideas that are in fact quite transferable, as long as you focus on the reason behind the design rather than the specific rules themselves. And honestly, in terms of the major TRPGs at least, I think we're quite mired in just repeating minor variations on what we've already done. When I think about the games I've heard people talk about as being innovative in the area of TRPGs, it's all stuff that's 5+ years old: Nobilis is 18, Burning Wheel is 15, My Life With Master is 14, Dread is 12, Apocalypse World is 7, etc.

So, bring on the computer game design inspirations!

ImNotTrevor

2017-06-05, 12:14 AM

I'd say Planeshift has a lot more depth than, say, Climb or Move Silently or Spot. With Planeshift, a player gains access to and can make use of the properties of basically any plane out there. Want to be young for events a hundred years in the future? Find a slow-time plane and go there. Want to melt something that can't be melted by mortal fires? Planeshift to the Plane of Fire. Wondering how your dead aunt is getting on? Lets go to Bytopia and ask.

In terms of what that means for the types of solutions that a player has access to, the directions they can move the story in, etc, Planeshift has much more depth where it matters than rolling for attack or checking to see if you successfully snuck past that guard. Both the complexity of situations which can be resolved, and the depth of knowledge and thought which need to be leveraged to resolve them are much higher for Planeshift than for most other mechanics.

This is depth of application, not depth of Mechanism. Plane shift itself is as deep as a puddle. You can just do a lot with it because it is a broad set of permissions.

You just gave the example: spellcasting in D&D. It takes half a book to describe,
The actual mechanism of Spellcasting take only a few pages, and they involve uncertainty and conflict. So that disqualifies them outright.

What takes half a book is listing individual spells, which aren't interactable mechanisms. They're permission checklists.

and there's no question or uncertainty in whether a caster can successfully use a given spell, even if some spells engage conflict mechanics when directed against a target
antimagic fields? Interruption? Conflict and spellcasting meet on the success of casting all the time.

. The longest spell descriptions in D&D are in fact generally the ones that don't simply do something to a target but instead bring about some fairly complex change in world-state which requires explanation of how to adjudicate it with respect to other things. Spells like Gate require a lot of rules text but are not centered around conflict.

A better example though would be Nobilis. Almost every power and ability you can have in Nobilis has the caveat: 'if you use this against anyone worth talking about, it simply automatically fails'. There is conflict in Nobilis but the mechanics almost exclusively avoid attempting to provide a direct resolution method.

Worse examples (as in, less interesting mechanics) but ones which still qualify in terms of page counts...
- D&D: the mechanics for designing an epic spell, the mechanics of designing, pricing out, and crafting items. Stuff like Stronghold Builder's Guide, ship-building rules in Stormwrack (and in 2ed Spelljammer)
- 7th Sea: Ussuran shapeshifting magic in 7th Sea uses a few pages and is all about things it lets you do. Porte, from the same system, is a similar story. The Invisible College invention rules.
- Rules for background advantages in Abberant and Adventure! - stuff like having political clout, having a lair, having minions, etc.

That doesn't actually improve things, its just the DM playing the person's character for them.

At what point did that DM make a suggestion as opposed to regurgitating information the player came up with back to them?

Of course the system can teach. You just have to look at how tutorial systems have changed in the last 10 years in computer games to see how much of a difference the system design makes in terms of transmitting a skill to a player. Some time around Portal, development teams started to get the idea of introducing mechanics one at a time and making the mechanics build off of each-other. You then got a slew of games that played with various kinds of increasingly sophisticated player augmentation - stuff like X-Com's cover cues to Invisible Inc's break-down of sight-lines and alertness. Compare the learning curve of newer games with things like Street Fighter (where you had to just mash buttons randomly over and over to discover the patterns to do special moves).

Now we have things like KSP which has taught a generation of gamers orbital mechanics.

There's even low-level neurological improvements to things like reaction times, memory capacity, etc from games of the right form. There's a lot of detailed millisecond-level data in Osu! plays where the average newcomer has something like a 20-30ms awareness of relative timing, but someone who has played for awhile ends up down at the 10-15ms range.

Not to mention games like Chess and Go, which have been used extensively to hone tactical and strategic thinking.

Systems can teach THEMSELVES, they can't teach you social skills.
Increases to reaction times aren't taught by the system, they're a byproduct of extensive play.
Chess and Go don't teach their own strategy. They provide an environment to learn strategy. These are two different things.

NichG

2017-06-05, 01:20 AM

This is depth of application, not depth of Mechanism. Plane shift itself is as deep as a puddle. You can just do a lot with it because it is a broad set of permissions.

The rules for placing a go stone aren't complicated, but the game that results is very deep. Depth of application (in your terms) is the thing that matters.

The actual mechanism of Spellcasting take only a few pages, and they involve uncertainty and conflict. So that disqualifies them outright.

What takes half a book is listing individual spells, which aren't interactable mechanisms. They're permission checklists.

antimagic fields? Interruption? Conflict and spellcasting meet on the success of casting all the time.

Those are fairly rare corner cases. You can go entire campaigns without seeing an antimagic field and it makes little difference in how your caster plays. Interruption only matters in combat, which is about conflict, but is irrelevant for all of the myriad things out of combat casting can do.

A permission checklist is a type of mechanic. Chess is just 'a permission checklist'.

Systems can teach THEMSELVES, they can't teach you social skills.
Increases to reaction times aren't taught by the system, they're a byproduct of extensive play.
Chess and Go don't teach their own strategy. They provide an environment to learn strategy. These are two different things.

The way you make a system that teaches is to make something where the 'byproduct of extensive play' is an increase in a particular target competency.

Floret

2017-06-05, 05:58 AM

The key point is that a player can evaluate their own success or failure independently of the person who proposes the puzzle. That's the bit that lets you avoid it become actively adversarial.

Sure, I never doubted that part - what I said was that UNLESS it is a puzzle, OR has uncertainty, it will probably veer into being adversarial.
And, sure, in many cases, if you know the goal, you can judge yourself if you succeeded a puzzle. But for it to be a puzzle, the goal has to be part of the proposition, otherwise it looses all resemblance to one.
Look, for (sort of your) example: Three states are heading towards war; the situation is set up, the GM doesn't care which way things go and is willing to go along with player plans. The players decide on a goal: Make one of the three states disappear in the coming times. They, because there is no uncertainty of action, then go about doing this, ticking checkbox after checkbox, until they are finished, and the state ground up between the two others.
What you have here, is basically a storytelling game, with a list of allowances for the types of actions any character can take determined by rules. You might still have an RPG, but one suited for probably a different purpose than most RPGs.

So... I take it back, probably doable. Possibly not my jam, probably still more fun if the GM actively tries to play their cards right to foil the players' plans. Considering the GM not just constantly going "sure, you get that" (because how boring would that be), and with everything being guaranteed to either work or fail (Or the different degrees of it), it puts a lot of strain on the GM to arbitrate reasonably, fairly and interestingly, and, with different degrees, also an incredibly precision.

I think the best use-case for this would be making an RPG system for heists. If you look at movies/stories about heists, they generally require extensive planning on the part of the protagonists. A system with a high degree of intrinsic randomness makes that impossible, because once you have a sequence of contingent factors small probabilities of failure compound into big ones. So for a heist RPG, the uncertainty would come in the form of things that the players failed to scout out or take into account correctly rather than things which are just unknowable in advance because they're random in nature.

Probably to keep up the tension, the GM should have something similar to 7th Sea's 'drama dice', where during every heist they get to add a specific small number of surprise factors of their choice during the run - so that would be a little adversarial, but constrained. Or you could do fancy stuff like having each character have a 'curse' which obligates the GM to add a specific kind of surprise factor every so many games (so the guy with 'hunted' means that a special investigator might show up; the guy with 'debts' means that someone in the associated criminal organization might put the screws on them during the heist and add a secondary objective or speed up the time table, etc). That way, the players could even decide the ways they feel would be most interesting to be opposed.

Interesting idea. I might argue that Shadowrun, which has a lot of randomness, is at its heart somewhat of a heist game. And it works quite well with that randomness. If Plan A fails, trying to make extra sure Plan B or C does, and to have contingency plans is always needed. Some of the greatest and tensest moments of those games have happened due to having to deal with the fallout of a small step not working quite as intended.

I'll admit, this statement is more about hedging against a thread derail than asserting a belief. Telling someone 'you aren't good enough to join my game, so we don't need to consider your abilities' isn't a good way to have a conversation with them, and often in this kind of thread on these forums the conversation breaks down because someone shows up and says 'well, I'm not that good, are you excluding me then?'. So this is me getting out ahead of that point and saying 'look, regardless of someone's skill level, there's actually a way to break down what's expected in terms of social savvy into something that can be understood via logic rather than via people skills'.

I don't think its unreasonable to pick your players. But I do think that for a forum discussion like this you can't really do that; there are going to be people without confidence in their social skills but who wish to play a bard, and 'that wouldn't cut it at my table' isn't really an answer for them. And besides, you may not always be able to find a group of perfect, skilled players to play with - new players have to come from somewhere, and that involves learning the understanding and skills and styles that they're going to carry with them through their future gaming career.

Sure, for them, it isn't. But while I am saying that to players IRL (Never actually did, I invite players personally most of the time, and just don't ask those I'd think might not be cut out for it. But I would.). And, sure, learning and stuff. Decide what you want from a game, and if you think your fun would still work with new players, great! Do your best to lure people out of their shells, help them get along. But be sure about if this is what you want from the experience.
For games without a style of play that requires certain base levels of player ability to really be fun (and even for those), I am aiming for systems myself. Where we disagree is that this point has to include some incredibly good simulation that accurately portrays all nuance of social interactions (somewhat exaggerated).

In the style of those examples, the DM has to basically keep asking until the player says something that has a possibility of being reasonable. That means, even if the words come out of the player's mouth, the DM is asking leading questions to get them to the nearest reasonable plan. Doing this kind of thing can be necessary in some cases, but I think it should be minimized. When a player is on the receiving end of this once or twice it feels helpful, but if it starts happening every single time then it ends up stealing the feeling of accomplishment. Generally when I find that I've had to do this as a DM, it means that I screwed up somewhere earlier - either making something too obscure or getting the difficulty wrong or not giving players enough leads or tools to call upon or pacing things too quickly so that the players aren't actually clear about what's going on.

Doesn't mean leave them out in the cold when it gets to that point, but I definitely don't think that you should design with this in mind as a good outcome.

Asking players to clarify what they mean or how they want to go about things does not play their character. The plan still came from the player, albeit only when promted by the GM to actually give one more detailed than a description of "I do X".
In my experience, having to ask these sorts of questions is not the result of being too obscure or of pacing, but of ideas and things always being more obvious to yourself than to others. So sometimes players phrase their ideas in ways that seem complete to them, but leaving out things they either think are obvious, or forgot to think about - that just... happens.

Levels and progression design serve this purpose in RPGs. A Lv1 character has fewer moving parts than a Lv20 character. A progression system also orders the kinds of adventures which are feasible for characters to undertake as a function of time spent playing, which takes care of a lot of that 'specific adventure design' in a natural way. Narrative arcs tend to include a phase where things are built up anyhow, so its not a huge imposition to have a difficulty curve - its a good fit for what you'd do anyhow to make the pacing feel natural.

Sure, somewhat - but "Lv1 can do less than Lv20" is still a good bit off from "you have to actually use the walking mechanic to be able to progress to the point where the game explains the jumping mechanic; and the jumping mechanic before they teach you how to hit things with sticks".
To design an RPG with the minutia of this sort of tutorial, there need to be additional requirements. Starter characters to be quite a bit less capable than they usually are, for example - even a starting character in most games just way outclasses any CRPG's tutorial section. To restrict players in ways that they actually have to use the mechanics at least sometimes, until they have figured them out. And possibly even for everyone else to wait until the others have learned their mechanics; to not disrupt the learning opportunities of those that haven't quite figured it out (One problem with GW2's tutorial).

One way to help with that 'perfect understanding' requirement is to design rules with clarity and simplicity in mind, and to separate things which are rules from things which are advice or suggestions or exposition or flavor. You can understand the rules of Chess or Go or Magic: the Gathering 'perfectly' (or at least, well enough to obtain a consistent outcome) - of course there may be ambiguous or contradictory situations, even in a ruleset like Go (such as details of Japanese scoring vs Chinese scoring, or situations like triple-ko, or ...), but they're rare enough that its generally an academic point among experts in the game rather than a serious issue for new players. And it's not like the M:tG rules are so simple - collectively, the rules text across all M:tG cards is probably bigger than most TRPGs.

It's not like computer games are such different beasts. It used to be the case that CRPGs primarily existed by emulating tabletop mechanics, because doing so produced a much richer and more interesting system than the stuff programmers would come up with in isolation. But computer games have had a much faster design cycle and much more detailed feedback from their player bases, so I think they've really pulled ahead in terms of design sophistication and understanding of players. So I think it would be a good time to see that inspiration start flowing the other way - there are a ton of new design ideas that are in fact quite transferable, as long as you focus on the reason behind the design rather than the specific rules themselves. And honestly, in terms of the major TRPGs at least, I think we're quite mired in just repeating minor variations on what we've already done. When I think about the games I've heard people talk about as being innovative in the area of TRPGs, it's all stuff that's 5+ years old: Nobilis is 18, Burning Wheel is 15, My Life With Master is 14, Dread is 12, Apocalypse World is 7, etc.

So, bring on the computer game design inspirations!

Let yourself be inspired by Computer games? Sure! Keep in mind the differences of medium? Also sure! Computer games just work under different circumstances, which make them somewhat more difficult to transfer. I mean, speaking of card games, look at Hearthstone. It has mechanics in there (especially concerning random effects) that you don't really see in regular TCGs - but for good reason. To have them would slow down the game way too much, would put a strain on the players of remembering all sorts of things, that a PC can simply track without issue. Having an independed calculating machine at your disposal does change what is possible in quite some ways. Be careful not to underestimate that difference, or the strain transferring some of those mechanics might have on playability.

(Also, slight tangent: I wouldn't call Card text rules per se; just as I wouldn't do that for spells or even specific weapon or monster stats. Dark Eye (A game I have seen clearly distinguishing in this regard) calls this sort of thing "Crunch" - not rules themselves, but things that use the rules; things you use to apply the rules; but not rules themselves. A rule is "How do I hit someone and deal damage/How do I cast a spell". Crunch is "How much damage does my sword do/What's the effect of the spell". They feel a good bit distinct, for me, and it might be useful to differentiate them.)

The way you make a system that teaches is to make something where the 'byproduct of extensive play' is an increase in a particular target competency.

I still remain rather doubtful that it would be possible to design a game in such a way that it increases this particular competency just by the way it was written, without requiring competent people to play with.

Max_Killjoy

2017-06-05, 08:25 AM

Levels and progression design serve this purpose in RPGs. A Lv1 character has fewer moving parts than a Lv20 character.

Of all the reasons I hate levels in RPGs, I hadn't thought of this one. Hand-holdy tutorials and overly-"helpful" software (including games) aggravate me to no end. I wish they'd spend less time on that, and more time on actually functional Help functions that answered questions in a useful manner (and didn't want me to connect to someone's website).

CharonsHelper

2017-06-05, 08:38 AM

Of all the reasons I hate levels in RPGs, I hadn't thought of this one. Hand-holdy tutorials and overly-"helpful" software (including games) aggravate me to no end. I wish they'd spend less time on that, and more time on actually functional Help functions that answered questions in a useful manner (and didn't want me to connect to someone's website).

Wait - you hate games having a slower learning curve to make it easier to learn?

Max_Killjoy

2017-06-05, 09:06 AM

Wait - you hate games having a slower learning curve to make it easier to learn?

I don't learn well that way anyway, and I hate what I have access to being restricted because someone has a notion in their head to be "helpful".

Just give me full access and an real actual functional manual, and I'll figure it out, starting with the things that I need the software to do, or the things I enjoy most about the game. This is why I'll always have a fondness for HERO, and "a strong and abiding dislike" for D&D in all its incarnations.

The game Black & White... I actually never could get into it because every time I wanted to start a new game, there was no way to skip or speed through the insipid tutorial stages.

Segev

2017-06-05, 10:13 AM

That doesn't follow.

Charlie wants to achieve X goal (gaining wealth and power, etc), and currently lacks a direct way to do so.
Bob wants to achieve Y goal (having King Dave get overthrown), which would be actualized if Charlie took action Z (betraying King Dave). Bob currently has access to X (wealth and power).
If Bob provides X in exchange for Charlie doing Z, that doesn't conflict with Charlie's goals. It causes both Charlie's goals and Bob's goals to be achieved at a higher level than either of them could manage on their own.

Therefore, it need not be conflict at all.Is it thus guaranteed that Bob can persuade Charlie with any level of trade, to do anything at all for it?

Of course not. We have a question of how MUCH of Bob's access to wealth and power must he offer to Charlie in order for Charlie to agree to whatever it is Bob wants him to do.

Negotiation is a social interaction, and it is even competitive. Bob wants to give as little as he can get away with (if only to have more to hold out to tempt Charlie in the future), and Charlie wants to get as much as he can with as little effort and risk as possible (if only to have more safety and energy to pursue more wealth and power with in a shorter period of time).

The mistake is assuming that the right way to think about this situation is for Bob to somehow beat Charlie over the head with words until he does what Bob wants even though it goes against what Charlie actually wants. Doing so, even if it's not logically impossible, is just a bad way to approach the situation. Because it is such an easy trap to fall into and leads to a sort of stubborn lack of imagination or actual thought about the motives of the people you're trying to persuade, I think it should just automatically fail. Why do you keep coming back to "beat Charlie over the head with words?"

I've repeatedly stated that there's more to it than "rolling high enough to phrase it perfectly." Certainly, there's skill in presentation, but WHAT is being presented has weight, too.

If Bob walks up to Charlie, spits in his face, and proceeds to call him every offensive term he can think of that would offend Charlie, and also offers him access to his wealth and power in return for a service while gloating about how much more wealthy and powerful he, Bob, is than Charlie and telling Charlie how he should be grateful to lick the mud off of Bob's boots, let alone be given the privilege of doing this task for Bob AND get a reward of access to Bob's wealth and power, which Charlie (says Bob) totally doesn't deserve but Bob will offer out of the generosity of his heart... Do you think Charlie is as likely to accept the job as if Bob approaches him respectfully, speaks of the task Bob needs done and how due to Charlie's skills Bob would be willing to grant Charlie access to the sumptuous luxuries Bob is displaying at the meeting (and even pampering Charlie with), should Charlie just undertake this simple task for him?

Same material offer, but the presentation is totally different. And if Bob is really good, he can read Charlie well enough to frame it in a more tailored fashion, as well.

But that's just the "roll to see how well you present it." And you can make it more detailed if you want to play off of a hook specifically to tweak it harder.

The core of the subsystem would involve Bob working to discover Charlie's hook "wants wealth and power" and then playing off of it with the wealth and power he has. But there's still conflict in determining just how persuasive Bob's offer is compared to whatever task he wants Charlie to undertake. The precise amount of wealth he must offer, the precise terms of the task and what constitutes "completion," even convincing him to do it rather than stay with (say) Charlie's sick mother who needs his help that weekend.

Unless Bob is guaranteed to get Charlie to do what he wants no matter what he offers nor how he offers it, there's conflict. Now, maybe they are so much in agreement, and the deal so good that you don't feel a need to roll, as both would totally be fine with the deal they're agreeing to and have no conflicting drives nor motives. But if Charlie has even a slight conflicting motivation, Bob needs to persuade Charlie to go with Bob's plan rather than that other motive.

Which is why I've wondered aloud if maybe social prowess being quasi-magical (in terms of what it can accomplish and how) in an RPG system doesn't trip any alarms for some gamers -- because real-world social prowess seems a little magical to them.No more than physical prowess being quasi-magical (in terms of ability to achieve physical feats that the players never could due to being unathletic couch potatoes) makes sense. Why, sure, with a high enough Disable Device, Robin the Rogue can pick any lock in existence! How? Quasi-magic, of course. Never mind that in the real world he'd need highly specialized tools that are not included in "lockpicks," if the players knew anything about the skill of lockpicking and safecracking.

If you abstract a complex thing down to a single roll on a single skill, of course it starts seeming "magical." You're ignoring that there's a ton of abstracted-out choices, actions, and such in favor of a really simple to use and adjudicate mechanic. (Roll die, add bonus, see if it beat target number.)

Combat would seem quasi-magical, too, if it were treated the way social systems are. "Roll Fight skill! You beat the dragon's DC 35! You win the fight!" How? Well, he's just that good at fighting, obviously. No need to explain how he overcame the dragon's hide with a butter knife; he just did!

I'm quite specifically advocating for a social subsystem which removes abstractions to the point that it seems no more "quasi-magical" than combat.

Two things that come to mind here:

* Do characteristics, skills, and other mechanisms in an RPG system exist to describe what a character can do, or define what a character can do? Both. I get that you've got a bit of a distinction here, but it's a fine one, and the real answer is that mechanics waffle between the two.

"Describe" is probably more overall accurate, if only because TRPGs explicitly strive to allow the GM leeway to allow for actions that the rules don't define but which seem reasonable for the characters, given full-context information about what the characters are and how they do what they do in-setting.

* How strictly can the principle of "only roll when something is in question or at risk" be followed before you end up with forcing the GM to inadvertently telegraph information to the players that they're characters shouldn't have, deflating tension, etc? Example -- if the GM knows that the players have a 30 minute window in which there's no chance of them being caught in the vault they've just entered, but the players don't know that, does that "only roll when" ideal end up deflating the tension of "a guard could be by any minute and catch us making the switch" by (for lack of a better term) forbidding the GM from requiring or making any rolls? You're confusing things here.

"Only roll when something is in question or at risk" is referring to not calling for rolls when a failure just means you roll again, and again, until you succeed, or just means that an NPC walks by and solves the problem. Rolling when the GM wishes to give the illusion of risk or obscure where "real" risks are is not the same thing. The GM is going to let them succeed (or not announce any result at all) no matter the roll for those obfuscating rolls.

"Only roll when something is in question or at risk" is advice not to force rolls that you WILL make have meaning when the failure is pointless. (Like I've said before, I have a GM who has a tendency to ask for 2-3 rolls on 1-3 skills from 1-3 characters for a lot of actions that should be simple matters of, "We do this," because she likes to introduce confusion and failure...and she doesn't get why the players start joking about how incompetent "professionals" seem to be.)

Which sounds like using "conflict" as a term of art. And this is the problem with terms of art.Not really. It's using "conflict" because I don't have a better word. Give me a better word that doesn't require a paragraph of definition every time I use it and encompasses what I mean, and I'll be delighted to use it. I love precision in speech.

When someone uses the word "conflict", I think of an adversarial situation of opposed goals, sinking into win-lose territory, in which there is a high risk of "zero sum" becoming the least-bad possible outcome. What I do not think of is "situation in which dice must now be rolled or other mechanism of the game must be engaged". Okay. What word would you recommend?

I feel almost like you're moving the goal posts, here, though I'm sure you don't see it that way. You objected to "conflict" as a term after introducing it with a broad-seeming definition. I'm happy to use the words that make sense to you, but I dislike it when I use the language I perceive you using, and then find the definitions change underneath me to "prove" that I'm "wrong" when they're really now attacking a straw man I never supported.

I'm sure the fault lies with my communication skills, but now that you understand that I mean we need to engage mechanics to determine how effective a given persuader is at getting the most of what he wants vs. conflicting drives others he seeks to persuade might have, can we discuss that rather than the straw man of "beating people over the head with words?"

(Example -- and please let's not spend 5 pages playing "fixate on the example and try to teat it down", the spirit of the example is what's important here -- three PCs have an NPC -- without armor or weapons or obstacles to hide behind -- covered with firearms from 10-15 feet away or so, fingers on the triggers, so that the NPC has no hope of closing the distance or running away before he's filled with hot angry things moving fast. If the PCs decide to kill the NPC, then the NPC is dead. There are no dice to roll, there's no chance the NPC gets in an attack or gets to escape. This is certainly a conflict situation, but it is not "conflict" as the term of art is used to mean "dice need to be rolled, or something".)Eh, sure. And if Bob and Charlie, from NichG's discussion above, really do have no reason NOT to work together, no dice need be rolled there, either.

But holding this up and saying, "Because this can happen, there's no persuasion involved unless you're quasi-magically mind-controlling Charlie into doing something he wouldn't have otherwise done," is not a good argument.

And, by the paradigm I'm espousing, even if Bob is talking Charlie into something he probably would have said he'd never do before he met Bob, Bob's avenue to achieving that persuasion is a lengthy one that is more than "beating Charlie over the head with words." It involves playing off Charlie's existing hooks to erode those that are in the way and build new ones until Charlie is willing to do that kind of thing, then making it something Charlie can be talked into doing, or something he actively wants to do.

CharonsHelper

2017-06-05, 01:48 PM

The game Black & White... I actually never could get into it because every time I wanted to start a new game, there was no way to skip or speed through the insipid tutorial stages.

Well - yeah. That's an example of it being done really ham-handedly, but that doesn't mean that it's still not a useful tool when done well.

Segev

2017-06-05, 01:52 PM

I loved the concept of Black & White...but controlling that accursed beast was next to impossible for me. I tell it to rescue drowning worshippers, and the stupid thing EATS them, setting my worship and alignment back a huge chunk and setting IT to being trained to eat more of them, even though I punished it for it. >_<

Having a creature that is your only way of achieving a mission goal that you can't prevent from taking explicit action that ruins that goal is really annoying, at best. It doesn't matter how hard I tried to avoid letting it do any sort of evil act; it would eat those stupid drowning villagers!

NichG

2017-06-05, 10:24 PM

Is it thus guaranteed that Bob can persuade Charlie with any level of trade, to do anything at all for it?

Of course not. We have a question of how MUCH of Bob's access to wealth and power must he offer to Charlie in order for Charlie to agree to whatever it is Bob wants him to do.

Negotiation is a social interaction, and it is even competitive. Bob wants to give as little as he can get away with (if only to have more to hold out to tempt Charlie in the future), and Charlie wants to get as much as he can with as little effort and risk as possible (if only to have more safety and energy to pursue more wealth and power with in a shorter period of time).

This is a question of the variance versus the mean. Charlie may take 10% more or less, but the thing that's going to be most relevant to Bob in the end isn't whether he saved a bit of coin, its that he managed to get the king betrayed. Sure you could make mechanics to resolve that +/- 10%, but 'just because there could be a variance' isn't a good reason to do so. You could as well make haggling and economics mechanics which require sequences of dice rolls every time you want to buy an item - for local availability of the item, for competitiveness between local merchants, for haggling, etc - but the relative difference between what a character actually spends and the average is going to shrink with time anyhow, and putting all those rolls and modifiers in means that players can't just take care of purchases themselves off-screen anymore.

One thing I've taken away from recent boardgame and computer game innovations is that small discrete resources make the tradeoffs and strategies much clearer than continuous resources. If Bob has 1 Wealth and Charlie has 0 Wealth and transferring 1 Wealth to Charlie buys a Betrayal (and transferring 1 Wealth to Sigmund buys a Ship, and ...) then it makes it clear what ability Bob is sacrificing in order to get Charlie to commit a betrayal. If on the other hand Charlie is charging 0.96 (which might be bargained down to 0.87), but buying a ship is 0.65, except if you travel 2 days and haggle with a fisherman and deal with a slightly broken-down vessel in case its 0.43... well, buying a betrayal from Charlie would still prevent Bob from doing all of that, but now you have to juggle a lot of detail to see that that's true.

Since the aim for me in this case is clarity, there's good reason to favor abstracting away the sources of variance and just modeling the mean.

Why do you keep coming back to "beat Charlie over the head with words?"

I've repeatedly stated that there's more to it than "rolling high enough to phrase it perfectly." Certainly, there's skill in presentation, but WHAT is being presented has weight, too.

It's as to whether the 'what' factors should act as modifiers or constraints. I'm arguing that the 'what' factors should act as constraints - if they're not there, it shouldn't matter how skilled the presenter is because the thing they're attempting is literally impossible - in the way that in the combat system, if you're using 5ft reach to attack someone who is 10ft away, it doesn't matter what your to-hit roll is.

But you've been arguing a position where if someone were to have sufficient skill or a sufficiently high roll, even if the outcome doesn't make sense it should still be possible for it to succeed. This means that the 'what' factors are modifiers - and can be masked out by sufficiently high numbers - rather than true constraints. I'm referring to that sort of case as 'beating someone over the head with words' because at that point success is only happening because the person being persuaded has been made irrelevant to the proceedings by high skill or a high roll.

You could of course have modifiers that are so big as to make it actually impossible for any character in the system to overcome them, but that's pretty awful design.

Eh, sure. And if Bob and Charlie, from NichG's discussion above, really do have no reason NOT to work together, no dice need be rolled there, either.

I think the subtle point here is that (I at least) am arguing that the bulk of the game play can take place in terms of things where no dice need to be rolled (either because things are automatic or impossible), and still be interesting and non-trivial. To achieve that end, its important not to conflate mechanics with 'conflict' or 'uncertainty', since those are actually not the elements which create the interesting gameplay.

Segev

2017-06-06, 09:22 AM

NichG

2017-06-06, 09:17 PM

The "bulk" of most game play doesn't involve invoking mechanics, because nobody questions that you can buy things for the prices they're listed for sale, nor that you can walk from point A to point B under normal circumstances, nor that you can sit in the tavern and drink ale, nor that you can ask questions and get answers provided nobody is trying to hide anything about the subject and they know those answers. (We do start edging into mechanics if it's not definite who would know those answers, or you're starting to look for people with somewhat specialized knowledge - in D&D, Gather Information and/or Knowledge checks, for instance.)

What I'm talking about is stuff which uses mechanics but where those mechanics have no uncertainty. In D&D, it's stuff like 'okay, if we want to find out where the demilich's phylactery is, maybe we can Legend Lore the demilich's city of origin, Teleport to its ruins, Hindsight to watch it being created - but we'll need a caster level boost to pull off the time interval, so lets go and acquire some Karma Beads and do a temporary retrain to get Elder Giant Magic, (plus we can get some rats and use Greater Consumptive Field to pump it up if the DM is permissive) - then follow the tracks of history to find where it was hidden'.

Having said it, it would be pretty boring to play that out with e.g. dice rolls thrown in just so things have a chance to go wrong. But the process of looking at the situation and coming up with those kinds of plan (or just going and doing each step without tipping your hand ahead of time) is actually a big part of the game. Saying 'I rolled, and you teleport to the wrong city, sleep to regain your spells and try again tomorrow' or 'I rolled and this merchant doesn't have any Karma Beads, you'll need to find another' gets in the way rather than adding anything.

But if you need to determine how far off the "mean" and how many "standard deviations" out Bob's bribe can be to get Charlie's help, you also need to know how much is the "mean." And then you are invoking mechanics, probably, to determine if Bob's words are persuasive enough to push Charlie "that far" off the mean, or if Charlie's negotiating skills are good enough to push Bob "that far" above the "mean."

You don't 'have to'. Replacing the variance with zero is fine. If the mean is large, whether Bob can tweak that value a little bit is fixating on the wrong part of the interaction. If the mean is small, then even if you're making a large relative error in the amount that must be paid, you're going to make a small relative error in the amount that Bob's resources are changed (since the mean is small) - e.g. it's going to effectively be free for Bob so there's no need to worry about just how free it was.

In both cases, the mean is directly determined by Charlie's player (not the character) establishing in advance of the negotiation what Charlie wants and what Charlie will or will not do (this done in a way specified by some set of mechanics) and then (possibly also via a separate mechanical consideration) being made to commit to following through with it when those things are offered.

Your fear, as you've expressed it, is that the option to do that last paragraph will mean players will default to it. They won't even try to use existing hooks to persuade. But that's literally impossible: the existing hooks are all they have to play the "shift the pillars" game. If they are having to use existing hooks anyway, the path of least resistance would be to use those hooks to get what they want directly, unless that just isn't feasible. Because using existing hooks to add, subtract, or change hooks still doesn't get you what you want until you go and use the NEW hooks.

My fear is that there's a strong bias in the design philosophy I'm hearing towards making it so that the initiator of the social interaction is the one who has agency towards determining the outcome, while relegating the receiver to a sort of defensive position. In the various counter-suggestions I've heard in this thread, it seems like they're all centered around trying to preserve that structure or to preserve the illusion of that structure in cases where I've proposed mechanics that flip it around.

To make it concrete, I would say that in combat (where physical external factors are being brought to bear to directly shut down agency) the one who initiates things has the agency to choose the direction of play - if you try to hit someone with a sword or throw a fireball or wipe their mind or whatever, those choices all belong to the person whose turn it is to act.

But in social interactions, what I would like to see is the reverse - the one whose turn it is to act exposes a vulnerability (a 'need') and is basically baiting the one being petitioned to take action with respect to that revealed vulnerability. So the one who initiates an action is more like the defender than the attacker. The thing which ultimately makes that make more sense to me is that if one side of a discussion needs something and the other side doesn't, the side that doesn't will just walk away - more to the point, if you have mechanics that penalize the side being asked for something for saying no, the mechanically optimal thing to do is for someone who doesn't actively need something to simply withdraw from society, which is nonsense.

And from a gameplay perspective, giving control of the flow of play to the 'defender' means that all social interactions are guaranteed to preserve characterization and player agency. All of the attempts to build social mechanics I've seen seem to center around trying to figure out how to take away agency in a way that players will accept, as if that removal of agency is a necessary component of having social interactions at all. But the point here is, you don't actually have to remove agency at all - you can make complex social interaction mechanics which mediate different levels of social skills while at the same time 100% preserving the agency of all involved.

ImNotTrevor

2017-06-07, 11:23 AM

Preamble: I'm a few days late and very busy. Bear that in mind if I'm otherwise behind on where we are.

The rules for placing a go stone aren't complicated, but the game that results is very deep. Depth of application (in your terms) is the thing that matters.
Placing a Go stone is part of a larger mechanism of play. A Go stone can be interacted with by other Go stones. It's worth noting that placing a go stone by the definition I'm using below is not a mechanism. Go itself is the mechanism. The Go stone placement is a rule or rule-guided action, but not a mechanism.
(Stil pointing out that games like Go and Chess are entirely foreign animals to what a TRPG does, in mechanics, purpose, execution, and utter lack of a fictional layer.)

Those are fairly rare corner cases. You can go entire campaigns without seeing an antimagic field and it makes little difference in how your caster plays. Interruption only matters in combat, which is about conflict, but is irrelevant for all of the myriad things out of combat casting can do.

A permission checklist is a type of mechanic. Chess is just 'a permission checklist'.
The closest I can come to for a working definition of what I mean by a Mechanism is this:

an assembly of moving parts performing a complete functional motion, often being part of a large machine; linkage.
But let me translate this a little more into game terms:
A Mechanism is made from multiple game rules that create something that is interactable, and can be engaged with to produce results. Results of mechanisms in TRPGs should be uncertain, even if many of their constituent parts have certain outcomes.

This is why I don't consider spells to be mechanisms. They're rules, sure. But they aren't mechanisms because they aren't really interactable and they're just individual pieces of the "spellcasting" mechanism. (It's also worth noting that the absolute certainty of action afforded almost exclusively to Spellcasters is part of what makes them incredibly OP.

The way you make a system that teaches is to make something where the 'byproduct of extensive play' is an increase in a particular target competency.

There are no games outside of Typing Games and Math Games where this can be claimed to be accomplished as a direct goal.

I know from watching NBA games, for instance, that playing a team sport is not necessarily going to give you good teamwork skills by proxy. And I know from actually playing Football that no coach is stupid enough to hope you learn teamwork by proxy. You get teamwork hammered into your head at every practice in a loud and angry tone of voice. In essentially no game or field that should theoretically teach teamwork by proxy is that process trusted to produce adequate results.

I currently work in psych, and we teach basic social skills to teenagers. Games are not sufficient to teach social skills. I've been part of therapy plans to help kids. I've used multiple techniques to teach social skills. A game can, at best, nudge. But the moment that system falls apart or behaves oddly (which they all do at some point), the lesson is tossed into uncertainty and human intervention must step in.

This is why systems don't teach anything other than themselves. Typing games and math games can work because typing and math ARE the mechanics, and have objective results to measure. (Typing speed and correct answers) this means they can be mechanised.
Teamwork and Social Interaction are non-objective and not really measureable. (How much teamwork did The Steelers show in their last game? How many metric teamwork units?)This means they can't be mechanised.

A game or system can supplement or highlight other teaching. It can't do it for you. We still have teachers and therapists for a reason. We tried to learn everything via game and TV for a while there. It didn't work.

PhoenixPhyre

2017-06-07, 11:38 AM

This is why systems don't teach anything other than themselves. Typing games and math games can work because typing and math ARE the mechanics, and have objective results to measure. (Typing speed and correct answers) this means they can be mechanised.
Teamwork and Social Interaction are non-objective and not really measureable. (How much teamwork did The Steelers show in their last game? How many metric teamwork units?)This means they can't be mechanised.

A game or system can supplement or highlight other teaching. It can't do it for you. We still have teachers and therapists for a reason. We tried to learn everything via game and TV for a while there. It didn't work.

I just want to say AMEN to that. I have yet to see a "gamification" system for teaching anything that beats the old methods. People need direct, repeated instruction and practice to learn a new skill. In fact, most of that practice can't really be the same as the desired mechanic, as you have to break down the individual pieces and learn them to perfection.

NichG

2017-06-07, 12:18 PM

Preamble: I'm a few days late and very busy. Bear that in mind if I'm otherwise behind on where we are.

Placing a Go stone is part of a larger mechanism of play. A Go stone can be interacted with by other Go stones. It's worth noting that placing a go stone by the definition I'm using below is not a mechanism. Go itself is the mechanism. The Go stone placement is a rule or rule-guided action, but not a mechanism.
(Stil pointing out that games like Go and Chess are entirely foreign animals to what a TRPG does, in mechanics, purpose, execution, and utter lack of a fictional layer.)

The closest I can come to for a working definition of what I mean by a Mechanism is this:

an assembly of moving parts performing a complete functional motion, often being part of a large machine; linkage.
But let me translate this a little more into game terms:
A Mechanism is made from multiple game rules that create something that is interactable, and can be engaged with to produce results. Results of mechanisms in TRPGs should be uncertain, even if many of their constituent parts have certain outcomes.

The addition of uncertainty to this definition is totally arbitrary, and as far as I can tell looks like an attempt to create tautology based on redefining terms: 'RPGs have to be about uncertainty because by definition a mechanism includes uncertainty and RPGs are made of mechanisms'. I would say in response, using your definition, 'mechanisms (as ImNotTrevor defines them) are not an essential component of TRPGs'. Using this definition would create misunderstandings with anyone else who wanted to come into the thread and participate in the discussion because usually the term 'game mechanic' is not taken to have that extra meaning.

That is to say, the thing you're talking about isn't what the word 'mechanic' means in the context of games; a mechanic is just a modular bit of the rules. That's the way I've been using the word, and I will continue to use it as such. I would suggest choosing another term which more clearly relates to uncertainty to refer to the thing you want to - maybe 'checks' or 'tests' or something like that.

So I'd reiterate: 'checks and tests are not mandatory components of a TRPG'. Nobilis is probably the best example of a TRPG that eschews them entirely, both in the sense of uncertainty from a random process and in the sense of uncertainty by direct comparison against hidden information.

There are no games outside of Typing Games and Math Games where this can be claimed to be accomplished as a direct goal.

Kerbal Space Program begs to differ - thanks to KSP, lots of people with no formal training in orbital mechanics know how to adjust an orbit, how to plot a Hohmann transfer, how to exploit the Oberth effect to save fuel, which side of a body to pass on in order to exploit a gravitational slingshot to leave orbit or to achieve a free return trajectory, etc. Not to mention (for those who try spaceplanes) how to design for aerodynamic stability (center of lift vs center of mass positioning, how to arrange control surfaces to maintain control authority even when there's a center of mass shift due to fuel consumption, ...). If you had a choice between taking a physics class or playing Kerbal to learn this stuff (and, having done both myself), I'd say your time would be more efficiently spent playing Kerbal. A hundred hours of Kerbal and it'll be intuitive to you; a hundred hours of Physics lectures and homework and you'll still be trying to derive the special cases where you wouldn't have to evaluate an elliptic integral to figure out your burns.

Games like Transport Tycoon and Factorio teach you tons about logistics and organization, because they aggressively put you in situations that demonstrate the meaning of the term 'technical debt'.

If you want to learn circuit design, there's Shenzhen I/O. If you want to learn assembly language and parallel computing patterns, there's TIS-100; for robotics, game AI, etc, things like Core Wars and Screeps.

Flight simulators are used to train real pilots, because it's not actually that hard to make a game that helps someone learn, and its much cheaper and less dangerous to do it that way than to always have every pilot learn only using the real machine.

And that's just talking about the games which actively set out to try to teach a specific high-level skill. When we include things that have positive transfer to broad skills, the list becomes huge - almost every game out there teaches something to one degree or another, ranging from hand-eye coordination to strategic thinking to memory to reading people. Blackjack will train memory (via card counting). Poker, reading expressions. Go, emotional detachment and accurate valuation of exchange, and memory (again) - dan-level Go players can generally recreate a 120 move game they just played accurately from memory. Chess, short term memory efficiency via chunking in order to improve search depth. MMO raid play will teach something about coordination.

It seems like you're trying to apply a double standard here. You're saying 'if it doesn't completely replace all other forms of learning something, it might as well not teach you anything'. But by that standard, classes and human instruction are also useless - sitting in a classroom having someone instruct you on teamwork is not going to substitute for going and trying to work with a team any more than MMO raids would make it so that a teacher who has studied teamwork in detail has nothing to contribute. Both the teacher and the MMO are better than not studying in any form, and together is better than just one or the other alone.

ImNotTrevor

2017-06-07, 04:34 PM

The addition of uncertainty to this definition is totally arbitrary, and as far as I can tell looks like an attempt to create tautology based on redefining terms: 'RPGs have to be about uncertainty because by definition a mechanism includes uncertainty and RPGs are made of mechanisms'. I would say in response, using your definition, 'mechanisms (as ImNotTrevor defines them) are not an essential component of TRPGs'. Using this definition would create misunderstandings with anyone else who wanted to come into the thread and participate in the discussion because usually the term 'game mechanic' is not taken to have that extra meaning.

That is to say, the thing you're talking about isn't what the word 'mechanic' means in the context of games; a mechanic is just a modular bit of the rules. That's the way I've been using the word, and I will continue to use it as such. I would suggest choosing another term which more clearly relates to uncertainty to refer to the thing you want to - maybe 'checks' or 'tests' or something like that.

So I'd reiterate: 'checks and tests are not mandatory components of a TRPG'. Nobilis is probably the best example of a TRPG that eschews them entirely, both in the sense of uncertainty from a random process and in the sense of uncertainty by direct comparison against hidden information.

Chuck the second half, then.

In my opinion, a spell is to the Spellcasting mechanism as a gear is to a clock.

A clock is a mechanism. A gear is not a mechanism. It is a part that goes into a mechanism, and becomes part of the various interactions that make a mechanism into what it is. But isn't a mechanism by itself.

Mechanisms are first and foremost defined by being made of multiple moving parts that accomplish something. A spell is a single moving part.

By this, chess on the whole is a mechanism. A knight is not.
Go is a mechanism. A single stone is not.

Maybe the metaphor makes my position clearer.

We get the term Mechanism in gaming from its more common use, meaning it is of a similar nature. If it were nothing like mechanisms in the concrete world, we would call it something else.

Kerbal Space Program begs to differ - thanks to KSP, lots of people with no formal training in orbital mechanics know how to adjust an orbit, how to plot a Hohmann transfer, how to exploit the Oberth effect to save fuel, which side of a body to pass on in order to exploit a gravitational slingshot to leave orbit or to achieve a free return trajectory, etc. Not to mention (for those who try spaceplanes) how to design for aerodynamic stability (center of lift vs center of mass positioning, how to arrange control surfaces to maintain control authority even when there's a center of mass shift due to fuel consumption, ...). If you had a choice between taking a physics class or playing Kerbal to learn this stuff (and, having done both myself), I'd say your time would be more efficiently spent playing Kerbal. A hundred hours of Kerbal and it'll be intuitive to you; a hundred hours of Physics lectures and homework and you'll still be trying to derive the special cases where you wouldn't have to evaluate an elliptic integral to figure out your burns.

So you qualify to work at NASA by playing Kerbal, or does it impart the very basic framework of things you can pretty much do in semi-realistic orbital mechanics?
Note also that this is still, at its core, an applied physics (math) game. You don't know more than the general bits of orbital mechanics, and NASA would laugh in your face if you listed "Kerbal Space Program" as experience. I've played the game myself, and I would not describe myself as knowing how to put a rocket into orbit no matter how many times I've done it in KSP anymore than I know how to properly mine coal from spending hours playing Minecraft.

Games like Transport Tycoon and Factorio teach you tons about logistics and organization, because they aggressively put you in situations that demonstrate the meaning of the term 'technical debt'.
These will teach you their own rules and you could pick up the basics of logistics, maybe, but I doubt they will do so anywhere near the level of even a basic youtube primer video on how Logistics work.

If you want to learn circuit design, there's Shenzhen I/O. If you want to learn assembly language and parallel computing patterns, there's TIS-100; for robotics, game AI, etc, things like Core Wars and Screeps.

I highly doubt that any of these games will allow you to turn around and program a robot or write a computational program with 0 other experience.

Flight simulators are used to train real pilots, because it's not actually that hard to make a game that helps someone learn, and its much cheaper and less dangerous to do it that way than to always have every pilot learn only using the real machine.
Simulators aren't games. They're simulators. And their use is limited.

And that's just talking about the games which actively set out to try to teach a specific high-level skill. When we include things that have positive transfer to broad skills, the list becomes huge - almost every game out there teaches something to one degree or another, ranging from hand-eye coordination to strategic thinking to memory to reading people. Blackjack will train memory (via card counting). Poker, reading expressions. Go, emotional detachment and accurate valuation of exchange, and memory (again) - dan-level Go players can generally recreate a 120 move game they just played accurately from memory. Chess, short term memory efficiency via chunking in order to improve search depth. MMO raid play will teach something about coordination.
I think you're mixing up games that benefit from certain skills and that can give a good place to practice certain skills, and games that TEACH skills. Poker doesn't teach you anything but its own rules. All of the bluffing techniques are written outside of Poker. They aren't part of the game. They just help you play it. Chess has textbooks, yes. But textbooks teaching you how to play chess strategically are not chess teaching you how to strategize.

It seems like you're trying to apply a double standard here. You're saying 'if it doesn't completely replace all other forms of learning something, it might as well not teach you anything'. But by that standard, classes and human instruction are also useless - sitting in a classroom having someone instruct you on teamwork is not going to substitute for going and trying to work with a team any more than MMO raids would make it so that a teacher who has studied teamwork in detail has nothing to contribute. Both the teacher and the MMO are better than not studying in any form, and together is better than just one or the other alone.
One has a longstanding history of being excellent at what it is meant to do. (Teaching)
The other has a neato side-effect that is not necessarily the intended outcome. (MMO Raids)
MMOs reward cooperation. They don't actually teach you what cooperation looks like or how to do it. So you have to learn it by proxy, rather than actually learning it.

NichG

2017-06-07, 08:53 PM

...

I had a response in detail to this post, but what I'm realizing is that almost everything I was responding to was some flavor of semantic argument-by-redefinition - from stuff about the etymology of the term 'game mechanic' to the introduction of a category 'simulator' for games that teach (because of course a game can't teach a real skill or else it would be a simulator, and a simulator can't be a game too!) to a very particular definition of 'teach' that seems to almost tautologically require the involvement of an instructor. So I don't think there's actually a useful conversation for us to have here.

Segev

2017-06-08, 01:52 PM

My fear is that there's a strong bias in the design philosophy I'm hearing towards making it so that the initiator of the social interaction is the one who has agency towards determining the outcome, while relegating the receiver to a sort of defensive position.I think you're actually falling victim to an unexamined assumption here: that there is always a clear "initiator."

Let's take Catwoman trying to seduce Batman into letting her go from a thwarted theft. Obviously, she's trying to create or play upon his heterosexuality and any feelings he might have towards her, specifically. But by the same token, Batman is trying to talk her into coming quietly and possibly laying hooks to try to eventually turn her away from her life of crime.

Catwoman may cleverly play upon that to try to use THAT to get him to let her go.

Is Catwoman the "initiator" of this? No more than Batman is, really; they both have goals, long- and short-term, some of which are in conflict, and both are trying to talk the other into playing it the way they want to.

NichG

2017-06-08, 08:17 PM

I think you're actually falling victim to an unexamined assumption here: that there is always a clear "initiator."

Let's take Catwoman trying to seduce Batman into letting her go from a thwarted theft. Obviously, she's trying to create or play upon his heterosexuality and any feelings he might have towards her, specifically. But by the same token, Batman is trying to talk her into coming quietly and possibly laying hooks to try to eventually turn her away from her life of crime.

Catwoman may cleverly play upon that to try to use THAT to get him to let her go.

Is Catwoman the "initiator" of this? No more than Batman is, really; they both have goals, long- and short-term, some of which are in conflict, and both are trying to talk the other into playing it the way they want to.

That's fair; you could do a system where both parties essentially have the option to veto the interaction entirely, either by disengaging or escalating. IIRC Burning Wheel has something like this. So in the Catwoman vs Batman situation, if we run it that way, then if Batman thinks he has more to lose by being persuaded to let her go than he has to gain by convincing her to cooperate, he can just shut down any attempt at seduction outright. I think we could work with that, but to be honest I can see players getting annoyed if NPCs they want to persuade aggressively use the veto. And I think without the veto in some form or other, it wouldn't actually provide what I'm asking for.

Koo Rehtorb

2017-06-08, 08:22 PM

That's fair; you could do a system where both parties essentially have the option to veto the interaction entirely, either by disengaging or escalating. IIRC Burning Wheel has something like this.

In Burning Wheel either party can call for a Duel of Wits. Either party can also reject the Duel of Wits, but if they do the person who rejected it has to immediately leave the scene.

NichG

2017-06-08, 08:56 PM

In Burning Wheel either party can call for a Duel of Wits. Either party can also reject the Duel of Wits, but if they do the person who rejected it has to immediately leave the scene.

In that case, I'd say there's still going to usually be an aggressor/initiator and a defender since someone can start the Duel in a situation where the only thing the other party needs is actually just to remain in the scene - the party walks up to a guard and says 'engage in our persuasive banter or leave your post', for example. So that wouldn't actually work for what I'm asking for.

ImNotTrevor

2017-06-08, 10:03 PM

In that case, I'd say there's still going to usually be an aggressor/initiator and a defender since someone can start the Duel in a situation where the only thing the other party needs is actually just to remain in the scene - the party walks up to a guard and says 'engage in our persuasive banter or leave your post', for example. So that wouldn't actually work for what I'm asking for.

Something as simple as persuading a guard does not invoke that rule.

Battle of Wits is for very involved debate and conflict.

Segev

2017-06-09, 09:08 AM

NichG

2017-06-09, 10:54 AM

A "veto" is hard to implement. I mean, can you "veto" combat? Can you "veto" any other form of two characters interacting?

Even escalating from discussion to combat shouldn't end the ability of the other person to engage in psychological warfare. Nor to try to persuade you to stop fighting. These actually would amount to the same thing by the system I prefer, since I wouldn't want to allow mind control "You WILL stop fighting" to work. Instead, a persuasive character would levy increased penalties on continuing to fight him as his persuasion makes your character have less and less heart in it (or otherwise be less and less able to focus on the fight properly).

One problem with viewing all social interaction rules as "combat" is that it can lead to players perceiving invocation of the social rules as an attack that justifies instant escalation. This is a problem I have seen in Exalted 2E games, where the social combat rules are such that players (and GMs) feel that characters ALWAYS will spend willpower to no-sell an effort to persuade them, and many will see that as an overtly hostile act and attempt at mind control that justifies a murderous response.

Yes, this is the difficulty. That's potentially a reason to take as a given that there will be an initiative asymmetry, and therefore the need to design around that.

But if we want to try to design in the direction of no-initiator, we do need to take the no-sell veto seriously as something that will happen when someone tries to get something for nothing. I don't think its impossible to design around that, but... feels like thin ice, where its easy to make design mistakes that lead to malfunctional systems.

The way I might approach it is to impose an indeterminism of 'who?'. That is to say, create spaces in which characters go and (before knowing who they're going to deal with) offer up a vulnerability in exchange for a goal. Then, following that, anyone who can supply movement towards that goal can cash out the offer within certain bounds. One way to do this would be if, say, each character had a set of values, and a character who wants something can offer to take action against one or more values against obtaining that thing. To make an offer, a character must state the maximum they are willing to compromise each value they expose, as well as the 'current offer'. If a character wishes to change that threshold during negotiations, they must also expose an additional value - so if a player misjudges how much they actually want something, they can be provoked to escalate. Mechanical abilities can determine the maximum offers and the held-out values and things like that, or (if we rate things on a point scale) might tweak the number of points that are offered or extracted. They might also provide means for a character to renege on a deal or things like that.

This sort of keeps the no-initiator structure, and also has the property that anyone participating basically gives up their veto. You can still have a totally asocial character who just abstains from all social interaction though, and with this take (as opposed to Engagements/Hooks) it's not much of a penalty. You also run the risk that characters basically avoid engaging the system because of the vulnerabilities it exposes and just arrange to get what they want in other ways, so the system could end up being unused - probably actually what would happen with this version.

I'm not really happy with this design to be honest...