Boolean wrote:which the GM might be loath to give away in magic tea party.
Well first of all he shouldn't just be loathe to give things away for no reason at all. If he is being anything other than a dick then he is loathe to give them away for RP reasons (which is the whole reasoning behind the trigger for my own social combat system) or he is loathe to give them away for mechanical reasons (which isn't exactly changing just because you have a "roll to screw up the GMs game plan" ability).
I have 30 "social hp" and so does my opponent. We swing back and forth with "social longswords" dealing 1d8+cha damage, or whatever. Whoever gets reduced to zero social hp gets mindslaved.
People always get hung up on the mind slaved bit. I want to again make this clear.
You are "just" inflicting a major sweeping and general motivation on a character. Like him being your very good friend.
I accept the "mind slaved" line to a degree because the boundary between
having some social influence over, and owning anything of his you care about or being able to throw his life away on a whim is incredibly subjective and hard to judge.
So while I can sit here and argue the ten different ways that being "very good friends" is different to zombie mind slave it's really just cosmetic since there are a hundred different ways in which it can be functionally the same.
I just want to be clear on a few tiny quibbles of difference.
A sweeping motivation requires further RP to actually exploit. Zombie mind slave only requires instructions.
A sweeping motivation is a mildly enforceable instruction that can be given to a player that lets them continue to control their character as long as they obey the new instruction.
And as one of a small set of motivations you can describe in some detail various limiting factors, such as say the kinds of events which can cause the state to come to an end. Like a "very good friend" catching you stabbing him repeatedly in the back with a sword.
But it doesn't do anything for the above-mentioned scenarios.
Largely I think because the mentioned scenarios are basically the cause of an indecisive player who isn't prepared to simply determine and commit to a course of action they feel would be appropriate for their character to take on his own judgement.
It's
entirely OK for a GM to say that a lesser Raven noble just will accept your word (because you are so famous or he is a secret fan or something), or not. Arbitrarily. That's fairy tea party for you. The fact that the guy is even there and even has eastern holdings or troops he could deploy there is basically pure fairy tea party anyway.
So it is similarly OK for the GM to either fairy tea party that guys actions or specifically set him up as basically a social combat encounter in the same way that he arbitrarily could have set him up as a
regular combat encounter by fairy tea partying his default degree of co-operation to "Kill them all!".
Assuming we don't want to magic tea party them (I certainly don't)
This I really don't understand. It's a type of event largely defined as an isolated single in character decision. It's OK not to have to roll a dice in order to make all such decisions, it's OK to just... decide.
Honestly I'd be pretty happy with that. Basically it's just your original proposal, but with the possibility of less significant results because I want the social system to be used for more trivial things than you feel it should be used for.
I hold to my arguments regarding the large set of potential goals and modifiers that will require and the issue of rewards vs risk and complexity costs that are raised.
something pretty straightforward that can be accomplished in one round of social combat. "Let me through this door," for instance.
The "get past the guard" encounter is commonly raised as one that is inappropriate to rule over as either negligible fairy tea party and also inappropriate to rule over as a deeply important life changing event.
I suspect people haven't put a lot of thought into the implications the whole encounter has for guards and other involved parties.
Why is the guard even set to guard duty if his social abilities make him a complete push over who cannot function as a guard?
How is letting you through
not a concession of massive value in the order of his wealth, his job, or his life? His entire character is defined as "guy who doesn't let you through to some place so important it couldn't be tea partied". I'm assuming he is at the very least risking, if not guaranteeing, some pretty big consequences for letting you in anywhere he wouldn't have decided let to under his own volition.
If he is capable of instantly realizing he is socially outmatched and his very purpose
as an armed check point guard who exists for the very reason of providing violent resistance to the breaching check points... If that is the case, why doesn't he just physically attack you rather than spontaneously surrendering or "readying a social attack and cowering with his tail between his legs"?
And isn't it fine, and indeed in keeping with the investments and kind of source materials this encounter comes from if once a big deal has been made of "making friends with check point guard number 5" that you might indeed meet him again and have him let you by, do you favors and otherwise become an ongoing contact?
And heck I could probably keep going.
Probably you don't have to, though you might if it doesn't feel satisfying without rolling some dice.
I can deal with that. You don't have to roll for everything. And instituting an "individual RP decision making roll" which this basically is. Is probably gratuitous.
But again, just because actuall having your 10th level fighter kill 100 orcs would be dreadfully boring doesn't mean the rules shouldn't cover it.
But rules don't need to cover whether the hundred orcs are present in the first place. Or if they are hostile. Or if you want to fight them.
Rolling instead of deciding those terms of the encounter and story events for the 100 orcs encounter is the same as rolling instead of deciding if the Raven Lord of western Territory feels like being trusting or feels like requiring social combat today.
And also having him flip back and forth with whether or not he trusts me on an issue by issue, one liner by one liner basis which neither meets my goals and decisions as a player NOR the goals or decisions of the opposing player, I'm not hip with that jive either.