FrankTrollman wrote:Now you'd expect a kingdom you're on bad terms with to do one of the first three, and a kingdom you're on good terms with to do one of the last three. But which? PL's diplomacy "system" is to use magical teaparty to determine an answer
Sure it is. And why not. Because after all
that is your system too. My system has very clear methods by which you can switch whatever the target selects in one category, to whatever you select in another. Imperfect sure, but writable as an actual mechanic because there is a VERY clear transition in between magic tea party and the formalized mechanics.
Meanwhile YOUR solution to determine those attitudes, to the VERY limited degree you are prepared to describe it.
Is pure fairy tea party. You demand MULTIPLE if not infinite circumstantial modifiers each and every one of which is bigger than the entire rest of the game (including each other!), in order to generate an
infinite magical rainbow of very slightly differentiated results.
And that means your system is
made out of fairy tea party. You are using the inputs of "any arbitrary crap Frank feels like" in order to get the outputs of "any arbitrary crap Frank feels like". At NO point in your system's process is there an actual formalized and playable game mechanic. And if you have a means of creating one, go ahead and show us, describe even an angle by which you would try this?
If you really want to stick to this Infinite sized List of Infinite sized Modifiers, OK lets see that list. How is it generated that ISN'T fairy tea party? Indeed MORE Fairy Tea Party than my methods of accounting for character motivation and individual agency.
All PL's stystem does is allow you to have the Lich King's
hot daughter fall in love with your character at a dramatically appropriate time.
Alternately you could make the lich king himself fall in love with you (or fear you, or get confused by your lies, or respect your code of honor and friendship or whatever). Then you could ask him for supplies and reinforcements and stuff.
No. My system
doesn't happen to have the granularity to have a
specific roll with specific modifiers to convince a Lich King with, a bad childhood, a dislike of sex with 1st level barmaids, a history of defeated armies by enemy X but not enemy Y, to give me specifically Z amount of supplies (but no more or no less) on a Friday, just after his Birthday.
But that is a
stupid goal to have. It cannot be met, YOUR proposition does not meet it, you just demand it. You NEED to have a work around rather than to try this one head on, and I have a work around and you don't. Sure, give us a solution that WORKS for a head on way of addressing such ludicrously detailed demands as YOU have been making. But seriously, you can't do it can you?
And while I agree that that is an important thing, that has absolutely fuck all to do with diplomacy. Diplomacy is about...
Oh look. Semantics. Last I noticed they were the resort of a person avoiding the point. Also last I noticed this thread is about diplomacy in a fairly specific context. And in that context, even 3.5 Diplomacy, which is much closer to your demands than the Charm model, is STILL closer to my system than your "Infinite sized list of infinite sized modifiers" demands.
Sure, it's an
ass system but there are reasons it isn't an infinite sized list of infinite sized modifiers. Because that is
even more ass so ass, you can't even write it clearly. Even there it was clear that it was by far easier to make broad status changes to a character's motivations than to use
an infinite sized list of specific individual goals.
PL's suggestion is not a diplomacy system, because it does not answer any questions a diplomacy system would answer.
It answers the question of "can I use mechanics to make this person my friend?". It answers that question nicely. It also answers the questions of "when do I do that?" and "what does it do?"
Your system.
answers no questions at all. You don't even HAVE a proposal to deal with this. How DO you answer those questions you want to answer, and why aren't you asking the question I am, which is
should we even be asking those questions, or are they STUPID QUESTIONS?
Swordslinger wrote:The thing is you need modifiers, because there are things you slightly don't want to do and things that you absolutely don't want to do.
A town beggar may get you to give him over a few coins
Frank must be glad to find a strong ally agreeing with his demands to be Swordslinger... anyway...
1) You should NOT be using the diplomacy system for the town beggar to get a few coins. You CAN and SHOULD reserve it for actions which DO matter, like him convincing you to let him live in your house and eat all your food or whatever it is you are panicking about. You shouldn't be using mechanics to simulate LITERAL small change bullshit. And warping, indeed breaking, your higher level mechanics to account for small change bullshit that shouldn't be mechanically resolved will only be a bad thing.
2) Your RNG is only so big. You CAN have circumstantial modifiers. But you cannot as Frank demands have an infinite sized list of circumstantial modifiers which each individually could be so big that they are a bigger consideration than anything else, including each other. And if you have a measurable circumstantial modifier for "Spare a Penny Mister?" then the game is going to be breaking somewhere around about or before "That's an awful nice unicorn you are riding there..."
or setting a cap on what your social system can provide.
You could do that. But it gets pretty confusing pretty fast. One of the big problems being that perceived value and actual value of actions are dramatically different and even if you limit your social system to "Small Change only, no unicorns" it then implodes the second someone has a
secret magic unicorn penny. (well actually there are better examples of this, like the "here hold my bag for me" scenario, but... well... I'm keeping this Penny&Unicorn metaphor to the end).
So sure, you can have various different
general states a social mechanic can put you in. Like Charm and Dominate, or the various attitudes in the 3.x Diplomacy skill. But you have to realize that actually those attitudes do not actually translate directly to a steady increase in
actual effectiveness and power level but more in convenience and flavor. Because no one knows what's in that bag you got them to hold...