Actual Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy

[Swordslinger]

You can't make assumptions like this in the game, because if you say things like 'well, this guard is technically bribeable but I don't think you PCs have the stones to pony up the money' the PCs are going to rise up and meet your challenge. And then what?

Then you let them bribe the guard, obviously. The guard is going to take the money and say "So long suckers!" and head off. If the PCs are going to expend those kind of resources to get by a low level guard, then great. But most PCs in practice will never do that because it's easier to just kill the guy.

But if they want to expend that much on bribery, the DM should absolutely let them.

That is a problem with the diplomacy skill. The solution would be of course to limit the amount of static modifiers someone can get to it so that if someone wants a really outrageous result (like getting the king to offer half the kingdom) they either need to fight tooth and nail for every bonus or leave the dice to lady luck. I can understand your dismay at some stinky, violent hobos convincing every King they encounter to hand over the kingdom by dint of a large diplomacy modifier bulge, but would you feel the same way if they packed on the modifiers?

The problem is that all these modifiers are going to end up being ad hoc anyway, so you're not really designing a social system so much as just having the DM hand out arbitrary bonuses for stuff and calling it a system.

And why do that anyway? Lets be honest, you don't want the king handing over his kingdom period. Maybe he may surrender if the PCs use a show of force, but he's not going to nicely hand it over without good reason. If my best buddy asked me to hand over my life savings, the answer would be no. I don't care how nicely he asked or whatever. the answer is just no.

I don't know what kind of utopian ideal you're under, but almost no one is that good. Occasionally a good and memorable NPC will slip through, but seriously, read a game log or an afterplay. Even when a DM prepares really hard they're pretty much shooting in the dark.

I think you've just had some bad DMs. While it's true that nameless characters should have some mechanics to better handle them, the main NPCs should be pretty well fleshed out to the point that the DM at least has an idea of what they're like.

Some NPCs just aren't going to be able to be negotiated with. That's fine, talking shouldn't be able to solve every problem.

So which one of the people should get their way? Even if the DM or Bard was 'right' it's not going to make the hard feelings go away. When you have a broad issue on which the players and DM would likely disagree on, you need to have an outside arbitrator or risk the game devolving into a 'bang, you're dead!' 'uh-uh, you missed!' argument.

You're turning a molehill into a mountain here. The PCs play their characters, that's understood. If an NPC goes up and offers a PC's barbarian an offer on a magic sword, the PC has the right to say yes or no. The same goes for a DM's NPCs. When the DM is playing the king of the dwarves, he decides what the king says and what the king does. It's called roleplaying.

And generally in games I've seen it's a two-way street. If the PCs play characters that never get seduced, never have any exploitable personality flaws and never do anything beyond being mindless kill bots, then the NPCs tend to respond in kind to them.

[MGuy]

No Lago. I said what I meant. The fact that its been said (and not argued) that the mechanic is not necessary in many cases really is pushing me away. You responded as if you caught me up but you didn't. My position on it not being necessary (and completely useless) for DnD is pretty clear. It is only further cemented when its said that it won't be necessary in many cases. I'm tired of the discussion of the mechanic and I don't have anything else to say about it that I haven't said. I'm more interested in seeing rules on actual Diplomacy and not this Diplomacy preliminary I'm seriously never going to use.

[violence in the media]

And why do that anyway? Lets be honest, you don't want the king handing over his kingdom period. Maybe he may surrender if the PCs use a show of force, but he's not going to nicely hand it over without good reason. If my best buddy asked me to hand over my life savings, the answer would be no. I don't care how nicely he asked or whatever. the answer is just no.

Just to address this point, I think that sometimes we do want this sort of thing to happen. It's the idea of affording the PCs the possibility of pulling a con job, as opposed to them just running in all Manowar album cover style and killing everyone for their kingdoms. Sometimes people want to play roving bands of gypsies that fleece the populace and don't want to bathe in the blood of their enemies.

From a player and MC perspective, I'd rather have some sort of impartial resource to help determine whether a given scheme is going to succeed or fail. As a player, I don't want the MC deciding that "you don't want the king handing over his kingdom period." As an MC, I don't want to facilitate or cockblock a player plan arbitrarily.

Sometimes, you just want to be able to be tricksy, or know exactly why being tricksy failed or wouldn't work in the first place. And you really don't want those reasons to ultimately be, "because I said so."

[Chamomile]

Which again means we need a solid, working social mini-game. See several above posts on why this is way harder than a combat mini-game.

[violence in the media]

I wasn't disagreeing with you.

[Stubbazubba]

One of the biggest differences between combat and diplomacy is that combat is totally one dimensional. The combat goal of the PC’s is to drive the HP of their opponents to zero. The goal of the opponents is to drive the HP of the PC’s down to zero. It’s perfectly linear and symmetric.

You might think you could work diplomacy by creating the diplomatic equivalent of HP; let’s call it morale, because that is what Stubbazubba called it. But the goal of diplomacy is not to drive the opponent’s morale down to zero. The goal is to get them to do something. So now you have added a second dimension to this problem. That “something” could be anything. That something could be somewhat agreeable or drastically disagreeable to the opponent.

But we still haven’t got the combat model yet. We have someone poking a weapon at a defenceless opponent until he dies. Combat is symmetric. So if the PC’s are trying to get the opponents to do something as well. And that means that if they lose the diplomatic mini-game the opponents get what they want.

“That’s right. I sold the family cow for these ‘magic’ beans!”

So now you have several dimensions. You have the goals and their alignment with the person you are imposing the goals on.

You want to bribe a paladin … FAT CHANCE.
You want to bribe an underpaid guard … DOABLE.

Each one also has a different level or morale; I’m guessing the paladin has more than the guard.

Each one has a different goal they want from you. The Paladin might want repentance, the guard more gold.

We can now see the biggest problem with diplomacy. Most designers give up at this point as it being not only too much work to implement, but too much work to explain.

Well, this is the Gaming Den; if it's doable, it'll happen here.

It sounds like it comes down to two elements; a character's goals and a character's commitment to them. There might be two different PC skills/abilities that affect these things independently (thus creating more opportunities for team-based social interactions ala good cop/bad cop). Commitment is linear and is represented nicely by Morale or any HP stand-in, though it'll be different from HP in that you just want to get the character in the right Morale range for what you want him/her to do, which could be lower or higher than where they are now. It's the goals and/or desires that are really the trick. Fortunately, assuming we are still operating within the framework of the D&D paradigm, then we don't have to reflect all the nuanced intricacies of the human social climate; all we have to do is create a reasonable number of social archetypes or 'classes' and define what they do better or worse than others.

RL calls, I'll have to return to this later to throw around some sample social classes.

[Swordslinger]

Just to address this point, I think that sometimes we do want this sort of thing to happen. It's the idea of affording the PCs the possibility of pulling a con job, as opposed to them just running in all Manowar album cover style and killing everyone for their kingdoms. Sometimes people want to play roving bands of gypsies that fleece the populace and don't want to bathe in the blood of their enemies.

If you do want a con job to happen, it's probably going to entail a lot of RP based planning, as opposed to just a series of skill checks. The PCs stealing the kingdom is a major plot point and as such the trickery involved in getting it should involve more than "I maxed my bluff skill and cast glibness."

I'm fine with an adventure based on a con, but the majority of setting up your con should be doing stuff like using illusions to fake an incoming invasion or breaking into the archive of lineage and writing up a fake scroll claiming the real king is a fraud or something similar. There are good adventures that can come through conning people. Turning it into a 4E skill challenge is a terrible way to do it.

From a player and MC perspective, I'd rather have some sort of impartial resource to help determine whether a given scheme is going to succeed or fail. As a player, I don't want the MC deciding that "you don't want the king handing over his kingdom period." As an MC, I don't want to facilitate or cockblock a player plan arbitrarily.

As a DM (and hopefully a PC too), you want the world to make sense. If the plan is illogical and has no reason to work, you absolutely do want to cockblock it. If nobody at the table understands an NPCs motivation for doing something besides "I rolled a 19", that's a godawful story.

If you want to see examples of cons done right, watch an episode of Leverage. That's about more than just straight diplomacy. It takes a great plan, faked credentials, theft and muscle to pull off a big con, and more importantly it takes a whole group instead of one guy with a high diplomacy score.

That's what you want to be modelling in D&D. A big con is actually an adventure with a story, not just a single scene where a PC hopes to roll a 20.

[Stubbazubba]

Indeed. A con is not a single act, it is a quest.

The Italian Job is similarly a single thieving job, but all the bits that it entails amounts to a very entertaining adventure.

[Archmage]

If you do want a con job to happen, it's probably going to entail a lot of RP based planning, as opposed to just a series of skill checks. The PCs stealing the kingdom is a major plot point and as such the trickery involved in getting it should involve more than "I maxed my bluff skill and cast glibness."

Consider:

If you want to win a major boss battle, it should really involve a lot of roleplaying, as opposed to just rolling high on a bunch of attack rolls. Defeating the Evil Overlord is a major plot point and as such the trickery involved should involve more than "I maximized my to-hit modifiers and used my most damaging attacks."

You're arguing against the wrong thing. The real problem with 3.5e/4e style "diplomacy" or "skill challenges" is that there's no thought or player choice involved other than "pick best available modifier and roll high." The fact that the subsystem is boring as written does not mean that it's impossible to write a more interesting subsystem where conning the king into handing over his kingdom is as interesting to play out mechanically as the final showdown with the Evil Overlord.

[Ice9]

I'm fine with an adventure based on a con, but the majority of setting up your con should be doing stuff like using illusions to fake an incoming invasion or breaking into the archive of lineage and writing up a fake scroll claiming the real king is a fraud or something similar. There are good adventures that can come through conning people. Turning it into a 4E skill challenge is a terrible way to do it.

+1 to that, actually. I've been in games where somebody maxed out Diplomacy and used it on everything - it was rather dull. Generally what happened was a series of trivially easy and uninteresting victories, followed by the DM switching to something uncommunicative like fungus monsters.

Even if you fixed the numbers so that victory was not guaranteed, it would be a lackluster method for anything major.

The fact that the subsystem is boring as written does not mean that it's impossible to write a more interesting subsystem where conning the king into handing over his kingdom is as interesting to play out mechanically as the final showdown with the Evil Overlord.

Possibly, but I have never seen a social conflict system that came close. The final showdown with the BBEG isn't just a single battle, there's (at least) finding his location, getting inside, and dealing with minions, in addition to the battle itself. Also potentially doing research, making preparations, and initial skirmishing to get information or weaken the defenses.

I guess if you're at a high enough power level, you could consider taking over one kingdom to be just a "random encounter", not a major part of the campaign. But still, there will be something major that people want to use diplomacy on, and "as exciting as a basic combat" isn't going to cover it.

[quanta]

If you do want a con job to happen, it's probably going to entail a lot of RP based planning, as opposed to just a series of skill checks. The PCs stealing the kingdom is a major plot point and as such the trickery involved in getting it should involve more than "I maxed my bluff skill and cast glibness."

Consider:

If you want to win a major boss battle, it should really involve a lot of roleplaying, as opposed to just rolling high on a bunch of attack rolls. Defeating the Evil Overlord is a major plot point and as such the trickery involved should involve more than "I maximized my to-hit modifiers and used my most damaging attacks."

You're arguing against the wrong thing. The real problem with 3.5e/4e style "diplomacy" or "skill challenges" is that there's no thought or player choice involved other than "pick best available modifier and roll high." The fact that the subsystem is boring as written does not mean that it's impossible to write a more interesting subsystem where conning the king into handing over his kingdom is as interesting to play out mechanically as the final showdown with the Evil Overlord.

Uh... fighting the Evil Overlord, even in just strictly that part of the battle, should probably be more interesting than that. The game is definitely way less fun when you can succeed through sheer numerical I HAVE MORE FLAT DPR than the overlord. There should be control effects, movement, buffs, etc. Currently, most social interaction systems lack any analogue to this sort of thing.

[Avoraciopoctules]

So it seems like we've been discussing reaction rolls a lot in this thread, and I certainly think the idea could make relatively unscripted dungeon crawls a lot more interesting, but I don't think I have a very clear picture as to how this would actually work.

Could someone give an example as to how they think this might play out in an actual game? Lets say the PCs are a posse of treasure hunters looking for the Crown of the Demon Lord, and they've decided to get to Hell Keep by going through Demon Cave, home to the dreaded Cave Demons. The Cave Demons of Demon Cave are a varied and somewhat fickle lot, and though most of them will see humans as a source of delicious entrails, many are interested in things like treasure, conversation, and self-preservation. Aggressive or cautious approaches tend to be good for getting through an encounter without fighting, but generally 1 of them is definitely the better option.

So, PCs are cruising through the dungeon, and Mister Cavern wants to generate 1 or more Cave Demons. How do you determine their reaction to the PCs? How do the PCs try and engineer a shift in attitude? Most importantly, how many tables should you be rolling on if you are willing to make this a significant part of the game?

[Chamomile]

Well, if I'm hashing something out on the spot, let's say 1-12 they immediately move to attack, 13-18 they mostly just want to you to leave them alone because they're tired or just lazy, 19-20 they try to strike a deal with you. d20+CHA when the players enter, if you have swords drawn you get a -2 to reaction but +2 to initiative, if you have swords sheathed but are generally cautious, no modifiers, if you're...I dunno, giving off really chill, peaceful vibes or whatever, you get +2 to reaction and -2 to initiative. The roll determines what mood the Cave Demons are in today, the CHA and the bonus from your approach modify it.

So if the Demons roll, say, a 10, then they're pretty bored, in the mood for killing something but not significantly so, and a decent CHA combined with a friendly approach will push them into "whatever, just don't mess up my house" mode. If the next pack of Cave Demons rolls a 1, then they're in a really, really bloodthirsty mood because it's been ages since they killed something or they're the new guys who want to prove they can totally kill adventurers to all their buddies or their boss has been getting on them about their adventurer kill quotas. Regardless, there's basically nothing you can do to win them over unless someone's sporting a CHA of 30 or higher.

Reaction rolls work well in this situation. The Cave Demons don't have a preset personality anyway so you aren't ceding any GM agency to the dice, and the randomization allows for more variety without putting a greater burden on the GM.

[violence in the media]

@Swordslinger, Stubbazubba--I was thinking of shows like Leverage and White Collar, but also fairy tales where the protagonist engineers a situation that gets the king to give him half the kingdom. You're right that we don't want such a thing to be a 4e style skill challenge (because those don't work and are terrible), but we also don't want to default to realism/common/making sense or whatever. Why? Because we don't all know or agree upon what that entails. I've never swindled someone out of their life savings, so I don't really know what steps I'd have to take. Chances are, my MC has never done so either, but what he envisions is going to be different from what I imagine is necessary, and having to play Gygaxian guessing games is only going to make the whole thing more frustrating.

The combat comparison is apt, because you want to point at some sort of mechanic and be able to say, "Dude, look, I succeeded. Let me have my victory and spoils." This isn't even about the MC being a deliberate dick, as people can make mistakes or be dicks unintentionally.

Example:
PCs: "How does this thing have 150 hit points? We're only 4th level!"
DM: "Oh shit! I'm sorry guys, my mistake. I should have been telling you about the Damage Reduction/Fast Healing/How I Failed At Basic Subtraction. Yeah, he's dead."
PCs: "No problem."

If you give people some sort of understandable mechanic or dice roll, as opposed to touchy-feely tea party, it makes things a lot smoother. The group can laugh and imagine how the Bard's inspiring speech was less epic than described or IRL delivered when he rolls a 1 on his Makin' Speeches check. It's frustrating to flub things like that, but it's better than the MC arbitrarily deciding that the speech doesn't move the populace because of GIANT FROG. It's way more acceptible to hear that you can't use your Talkin' skill right now because the reaction roll (or whatever) was particularly bad than to have it rationalized by the fanaticism/discipline/bloodlust of the target. In the first instance, all of the little things we don't specifically track happened to conspire to deny a particular tactic; in the second instance it's the MC setting a slider to NO.

[Chamomile]

If you give people some sort of understandable mechanic or dice roll, as opposed to touchy-feely tea party, it makes things a lot smoother. The group can laugh and imagine how the Bard's inspiring speech was less epic than described or IRL delivered when he rolls a 1 on his Makin' Speeches check.

Regardless, this is still only tangentially related to reaction rolls. Right now my group's Diplomacy "mini-game" is Magical Tea Party not because I think it's better than any system, but because it's better than the system D&D 3.5 gave me and every system I've come up with so far. Can we please keep the focus on actual Diplomacy mini-games?

[Stubbazubba]

Of course, violence, any truly decent diplomacy system is going to tell you how difficult it is to achieve X and how to improve your odds, either by lowering the difficulty or how to gain modifiers. I never meant to sound like Italian Job was about DM fiat, it's about utilizing many tools (i.e. varying skill-sets, situational modifiers) to build up to making an impossible task doable on a good die roll.

I'm developing a system right now which is at least a step in this direction. It builds on the NPC Attitude system already present in D&D 3.5, but then adds another layer called Morale, which is how strongly committed to said Attitudes NPCs are. More when it's in a somewhat finished form.

[Swordslinger]

You're right that we don't want such a thing to be a 4e style skill challenge (because those don't work and are terrible), but we also don't want to default to realism/common/making sense or whatever. Why? Because we don't all know or agree upon what that entails. I've never swindled someone out of their life savings, so I don't really know what steps I'd have to take. Chances are, my MC has never done so either, but what he envisions is going to be different from what I imagine is necessary, and having to play Gygaxian guessing games is only going to make the whole thing more frustrating.

Sure, but the same is really true of anything in the game world. And this is absent from real world experience because you're not playing in the real world. What would the layout of an ogre fortress look like? Nobody is qualified to answer that question. What would it take to convince the dwarf king that you're a friend? Same thing, this is a fantasy world and as such everything is going to be what your DM envisions.

But so long as your DM remembers that you're supposed to be telling a good story, it's all good. As far as guessing games as to what to do, I propose that what we think of now as social skills be converted into social knowledge checks to potentially tell you what might be needed to accomplish a given social goal. It does take quite a bit of knowledge to plan a takeover a kingdom, because this is a rather epic undertaking.

[Stubbazubba]

You're right that we don't want such a thing to be a 4e style skill challenge (because those don't work and are terrible), but we also don't want to default to realism/common/making sense or whatever. Why? Because we don't all know or agree upon what that entails. I've never swindled someone out of their life savings, so I don't really know what steps I'd have to take. Chances are, my MC has never done so either, but what he envisions is going to be different from what I imagine is necessary, and having to play Gygaxian guessing games is only going to make the whole thing more frustrating.

Sure, but the same is really true of anything in the game world. And this is absent from real world experience because you're not playing in the real world. What would the layout of an ogre fortress look like? Nobody is qualified to answer that question. What would it take to convince the dwarf king that you're a friend? Same thing, this is a fantasy world and as such everything is going to be what your DM envisions.

But so long as your DM remembers that you're supposed to be telling a good story, it's all good. As far as guessing games as to what to do, I propose that what we think of now as social skills be converted into social knowledge checks to potentially tell you what might be needed to accomplish a given social goal. It does take quite a bit of knowledge to plan a takeover a kingdom, because this is a rather epic undertaking.

Gather Information is another tool which is designed to help you know how your GM thinks a problem should be solved, and if you don't even have enough info to make that work, then your GM needs to give you a little more detail when he gives you the quest, otherwise it's not really a plot hook.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, now that everyone's stopped being stupid, let's go back to the original point of this thread.

One persistent problem with diplomacy, especially in fantasy settings, is that there's no real benchmarks for how far personal skill can take you. I mean it's fairly obvious that Pussy Galore McBeguiler the legendary Enchantress should be able to cause a stirring in Ares' groin and convince him to do her a favor, but even a low-level commoner has been able to pull off the stunt.

The problem with that of course is that people are simultaneously offended by Pussy Galore being able to convince king being able to give up their kingdom just from a 5-minute chat while also being offended that Aladdin never stands a chance at doing so while also being offended if Pussy Galore can't just regularly convince the Guard Captain to suspend bail for a couple of pickpockets.

My tentative suggestion for solving this problem is to make the RNG for diplomacy fairly small, mostly making it manipulable by circumstantial modifiers (that the player has a chance to control). Levels only add a modest amount of automatic RNG fuckery, their real purpose is to break the cap of how much of a circumstantial bonus that you can add on top of that. So Aladdin and Pussy both have a chance, even at the outset, of convincing the king to part with half of his kingdom--but Aladdin can only get so much out of trying to stack circumstantial modifiers in his favor. Pussy Galore can stack much more but if she decides just to punt without doing some manipulation she can get more favorable results.

[PhoneLobster]

The problem with that of course is that people are simultaneously offended by...

Do you remember back in one of the old social combat threads. That one time. At band camp. Where RC put forward an argument that went.

1) I hate social mechanics that let you convince a King to let you control his kingdom.
2) I instead want to play in a game where you take his kingdom by convincing all the neighboring kings individually to let you control their kingdoms and then go to war with him.
3) There-fore social mechanics that control a kingdom are bad! Except when they are good, which is apparently also when they are non-existent.

That same thread where he pulled a "you should take over the royal court by making all the key positions in the court into your allies, only any mechanic that creates allies is bad! And at no point should the position of "King" be a potential ally in that strategy, because that would be fucking crazy!".

I think Lago some arguments just need to be ignored as the wild rantings of people clutching like idiots at any and every random half thought out totally contradictory straw they can get their hands on, all to justify their own irrational belief that "Grrr! Social mechanicz bad for game about 'social intrigue'! For no reason! Me Smash social mechanics! Me do social things instead! Grrr!"

Seriously. When someone hates Pussy Galore doing social stuff but loves Aladin doing it, then turns around and Okays the Pussy again, apparently at random. You don't even bother considering their view point in your design process.

[Swordslinger]

My tentative suggestion for solving this problem is to make the RNG for diplomacy fairly small, mostly making it manipulable by circumstantial modifiers (that the player has a chance to control).

A bigger question would be the one where you ask why you have an RNG for Diplomacy in the first place. Are the PCs also going to be bound by this RNG that's going to restrict their characters actions when a succubus tries to seduce them?

I don't see how having characters act randomly is helping the game. It just seems like a verisimilitude killer.

[Archmage]

It just seems like a verisimilitude killer.

So does the fact that players can just kind of choose for their PCs not to be seduced, ever, because "my character wouldn't do that."

[RadiantPhoenix]

If you really really don't want PCs to get persuaded out of house and home or suchlike, just say something like, "all PCs are expected to have [X]," where X is some thing that makes you immune to standard social combat and all [mind-affecting] abilities, then let them actually get that thing. Call it something like, "Incomprehensible and Completely Unreasonable Mad Thing," or suchlike.

[PhoneLobster]

A bigger question would be the one where you ask why you have an RNG for Diplomacy in the first place. Are the PCs also going to be bound by this RNG that's going to restrict their characters actions when a succubus tries to seduce them?

I don't see how having characters act randomly is helping the game. It just seems like a verisimilitude killer.

[Username17]

While the thing where people get upset that diplomancers have a chance of getting their tricks to work (which is random), but also get upset if diplomancers can always get their tricks to work (because it's too good) is stupid - there really are lists of non-crazy demands that people actually have.

If you have a character who has diplomancy as a thing, people are actually offended if you can't simply seduce minor characters whenever you want. If you have a character named "The Black Widow" or something, people expect them to be able to seduce guards and bank tellers and shit in order to advance the plot. However, if said character seduces major characters, that is potentially destabilizing. Which is not to say that it should not happen: evil temptresses getting the king to allow them to run the kingdom through sexy time and poison words is totally part of the genre. The issue is that any time you take a major plot-changing action that there should be some sort of cost or risk to it, or players are just going to repeat it for credit. That's just a law of RPGs in general. If you can expand your empire for free just by saying so, as a player you're going to do that.

And yes: people do want Aladdin to get half the kingdom upon winning the adventure and defeating the evil sorcerer. And they want the Countess Belvane to seduce her way to controlling the kingdom through wiles. They want both of those things. They just don't want the player of Belvane to go out and announce that she's taking over five more kingdoms while there is a bit of downtime.

That indicates to me the desire for some sort of diplomatic credit that people earn for various stuff that they can spend for various things. The Countess is higher level and has a diplomancy specialty so she gets free diplomatic cred that she can spend to seduce minor characters whenever she wants. But she still has to invest effort into actually getting enough cred with the king to get the kingdom.

But yeah, shit like this:

A bigger question would be the one where you ask why you have an RNG for Diplomacy in the first place. Are the PCs also going to be bound by this RNG that's going to restrict their characters actions when a succubus tries to seduce them?

I don't see how having characters act randomly is helping the game.

Is not worth even worrying about. If people condemn modifier-influenced random results of actions in a role playing game, they are simply not making any sense and you should ignore them completely.

-Username17