Social Combat

[RandomCasualty2]

And you know I've done this argument in depth like five times already. And had to endlessly repeat myself each and every time for the slow guys like RC.

We're not slow, we just don't fucking agree with you, and you're slow if you don't realize that.

Your system is bullshit because it doesn't even handle actual social interactions. It literally is incapable of handling any of the social encounters any of us want to model in real games.

In short, your system is ass.

[ubernoob]

//

[PhoneLobster]

PL, you do realize how actual social combat in real fucking life works, right?

So you have these interesting delusions about "real life social combat".

What relevance does that have with the mechanical impacts of your failed scheme to prevent free one sided social check "spamming"?

Your argument in return to me pointing out mechanical impacts is "Hey made up realism that is largely irrelevant to that YAY!"

I don't fucking care if the fighter gets to participate...This isn't a fucking bug. It's a fucking feature.

I'm so sad I couldn't help you stiff over the fighter AGAIN.

Fuck you. Get out of my thread if you don't want to stay in the genre.

That's how you respond to helpful criticism of your mechanics in regards to the goals you yourself set for them?

And isn't telling me to fuck off somewhat redundant when I said I was leaving anyway. You could have you know, just not directly addressed me again.

I totally wouldn't have replied then.

[MGuy]

Quick question. Does anybody or has anyone played a system that had Social system that wasn't MTP that worked well?

[shadzar]

IIRC

1st edition had a chart for social interaction, as well as conditional modifiers and a die roll for the DM to make to see movement on the chart.

Basically it had 3 moods towards PCs.

Hostile, Indifferent, Favorable...give or take some wording specifics these were the three modes.

So the PCs would present a "thing" the current NPC would be checked to see if his mode changed, and respond, and continue on until the PCs gave up, PCs ended up in a fight, or the PCs convinced the NPc of what ever they were talking about.

On the other hand, only magic could alter the PC decisions because they are the players, and the NPC would actually have to present something to change the players minds.

One player doesn't want to take the "save the damsel" quest, then it will be hard pressed for the NPC to get him to.

[PhoneLobster]

Quick question. Does anybody or has anyone played a system that had Social system that wasn't MTP that worked well?

Yeah, my own homebrew one.

Here is my ancient report of my first successful run through with it from back on some other social combat thread.

I've actually run with something resembling this recently. And a social combat came up and was resolved with it and it all worked exactly as planned.

The players wanted this dude to use his army to assist with their unfolding plan to defeat their enemies. They asked him, he said no, they said "do it for Rome" he said no.

So, they busted out the social combat. The party all used their archetypal attacks on available targets. The opponent and his bodyguards threatened and in the end they lost to the party and the party Seducer was the one to take down the enemy leader.

Then the seducer said "Move your army around to our place sweety" and he said "I'll see you in three days baby"

That was perfect. The change over from un mediated rule less RP and back again was as obvious and smooth as I had hoped, everyone understood and followed where the rules began and they left off. No one felt cheated by my reasoning that the guy really didn't want to help them voluntarily. I didn't feel like a bastard for deciding he didn't want to help voluntarily. Everyone got that the guy was now motivated to try and make the seducer happy.

And most importantly of all the story was smoothly progressed due to player input and a good RP reason (in the form of a successful seduction) was given for its progression.

[MGuy]

Can I get a copy of this system?

[PhoneLobster]

I don't publish my stuff.

I'll discuss it in detail and help you out with your own home brew, but my actual material is pretty much personal use only.

[Crissa]

PL, why are you in a discussion where:

A) You don't like the basic premise.

B) Your solution is a black box you will not show us.

That's alot like trolling, isn't it?

-Crissa

[shadzar]

PL, why are you in a discussion where:

A) You don't like the basic premise.

B) Your solution is a black box you will not show us.

That's alot like trolling, isn't it?

-Crissa

That's the kind of person that keeps the DM v player attitude around where there really was never one to taint future gamers into thinking it existed everywhere, because people see these few people up front so much making the false claims of its existence by offering themselves as proof thereof.

Political agenda, while misplaced or unwelcome, isn't really trolling is it?

[PhoneLobster]

PL, why are you in a discussion where:

A) You don't like the basic premise.

B) Your solution is a black box you will not show us.

That's alot like trolling, isn't it?

-Crissa

What?

I am pretty open with my solution. I go into pages and pages of it. Hell I've posted a thread here pretty much covering just a description of it, at some point in the past. (not that I can find the damn thing, it was called "Social Combat to the Social Death" or something wasn't it?)

The only thing I'm refusing to give you is my damn messy old document files of my actual home brew game with all my fluff and other junk in it.

And the main reasons I don't do that is so people don't get all hung up over weird shit like fluff or the other mechanics not relevant to the discussion that happen to also be present in my home brew rules. (and don't tell me they wont, they have every damn time I've even come close to providing that sort of material).

As for the premise Ubernoobs premise wasn't bad. The problem was he is a dishonest and crazy fucker who imediately abandoned his own premise and disregards his supposed goals. Look at his last "point" where he got all pissed off.

He declared an anti spamming goal, proposed a mechanic and got all pissy when it was pointed out the mechanic didn't actually stop "spamming".

I have a great interest in social mechanics discussions. I'm the god damn expert on this topic on this board.

Who else are you going to go to for this? Frank? RC?

About all they will do is tell you to fuck off back to fairy tea party town. You want to talk actual social mechanics it's me or no one.

And when I talked actual social mechanics, like the impact of the fail by 5/fail by 15 rule with Ubernoob he panicked and bug fucked out of here.

So fuck you if you are going to come in here an admonish me for talking directly about proposed mechanics in a topic I have interest in.

I'm getting pretty pissed with you Crissa coming in and being all high and prissy because I've gone and offended you by getting pissed with Ubernoob's "Waaah I changed my mind I like Spamming!" or RCs rape apologies or whatever outrage of the moment you think I should be all too pleased to accept.

So get your damn nose out of my business unless you have anything other than apologetic crap for these guys outrageously shitty behavior.

[RandomCasualty2]

PL, why are you in a discussion where:

A) You don't like the basic premise.

B) Your solution is a black box you will not show us.

Yeah, this is totally classic Lobster tactics.

It's really hard to even figure out what his opinion is on a matter most of the time, but he sure as hell loves yelling at people. It's his tactic to make himself more difficult to attack by playing the black box game. That way he can launch a bunch of attacks from the cheap seats with relative impunity.

It's how he pretty much handles almost every major debate I've ever seen him enter.

[MGuy]

And the main reasons I don't do that is so people don't get all hung up over weird shit like fluff or the other mechanics not relevant to the discussion that happen to also be present in my home brew rules.

You're afraid to present your rules because you're worried about people finding fault in them?

[PhoneLobster]

You're afraid to present your rules because you're worried about people finding fault in them?

Yes. But I am especially displeased when they find fault with some irrelevant tangent instead of the body of rules relevant to the discussion.

Take my damn "How to write no rules" thread.

I presented a nice body of discussion, and even a specific example rules set. (edit: hell, two example rules sets)

And instead I get Murtak and Frank running around like headless chickens using bad, provably false maths to have some stupid shit fight argument over dice rolling mechanics that I damn well asked them not to discuss because it would derail the discussion of the actual bloody topical rules.

And how many times since has someone been talking about something and I've said "well you need to look at my discussion about how to Write No Rules" but then if they do, they have to look at three pages of Frank and Murtak being unable to comprehend basic maths like probability and averages.

I've had enough of that shit. I try to talk only about the topic at hand, even that doesn't work half the time. And giving people a chunk of random shit which merely includes the relevant material is just begging for someone to get in a shit fight because I use things like simultaneous action resolution.

Edit: Oh yeah, and check your damn PM box before you go around calling me a coward in public.

[shadzar]

You cannot take criticism then?

[RandomCasualty2]

And how many times since has someone been talking about something and I've said "well you need to look at my discussion about how to Write No Rules" but then if they do, they have to look at three pages of Frank and Murtak being unable to comprehend basic maths like probability and averages.

Yeah, Frank and Murtak are total idiots who don't understand math and you're the genius.

[Username17]

Phonelobster's rant about probability is Here.

He's still wrong. He goes on strawmaning bell curve aficionados for a while, and then, like always, when people very gently call him on his bullshit he drops a huge drama bomb for no damn reason.

Having discussions with PhoneLobster that involve math in any way are frequently exhausting. He is flat incapable of splitting his personal preferences from mathematical facts. So he doesn't like rolling curved dice, therefore there must be some reason that they are badwrongfun. It's tiresome.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Your system is bullshit because it doesn't even handle actual social interactions. It literally is incapable of handling any of the social encounters any of us want to model in real games.

In short, your system is ass.

No, his systems handles the social encounters he wants it to in a way he wants. Its not ass in any objective sense, its just that everyone else pretty much hates what PL's system handles. That and everyone hates his debate style and the way he keeps claiming the probability thing in his No Rules thread was Frank's fault. It takes two to make a post storm.

[MGuy]

I didn't call you a coward. I asked a question. If I wanted to call you a coward I would have said you were a coward.

[RandomCasualty2]

No, his systems handles the social encounters he wants it to in a way he wants. Its not ass in any objective sense, its just that everyone else pretty much hates what PL's system handles.

Well no. It really is ass because it's mislabeled.

It's like selling a shopping cart as a car and saying it functions well as a car because you redefined what a car is. And while it may well function fine as a shopping cart, it certainly isn't a car and doesn't perform functions that you'd want performed if you wanted a car.

It's not a social system in any shape or form because it can't handle any kind of social actions that happen in game. PL has redefined what social is to be a concept that's completely alien to the rest of the board such that he's not even talking about the same thing we think he's talking about.

It's akin to writing combat rules that can't handle one party trying to stab another with a sword.

[Username17]

That and everyone hates his debate style and the way he keeps claiming the probability thing in his No Rules thread was Frank's fault. It takes two to make a post storm.

Uh... no. I had three posts in the first two pages. And seven over all. Several of them weren't even about probability. Phonelobster had four posts about bell curves on the first fucking page. He got to ten posts on the subject by the end of page 2.

No. It doesn't take two people to make a post storm, it takes Phonelobster going all crazy hat and spamming insults while failing to understand incredibly basic math. Like seriously, addition. Small numbers of posts explaining simple concepts involve responses that are a half dozen posts long of mail fail and vitriol. It's seriously exhausting.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I actually have a hard time telling the difference between PL's writing and RC's. They argue in very similar fashion. But PL seems to be very exasperated here and I don't see what RC has added to the discussion. PL is so angry he has added little...

...Except the entire premise of the second thread that social combat should be combat by maneuvers, not skills that only one guy or other can do.

Which makes me wonder what's wrong here.

-Crissa

[mean_liar]

PL, why are you in a discussion where:

A) You don't like the basic premise.

B) Your solution is a black box you will not show us.

That's alot like trolling, isn't it?

-Crissa

I enjoyed this thread until Crissa pulled back the curtain on the Wizard.