Actual Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy

[PhoneLobster]

How do you determine if he opts to do it? Magic Tea Party?

This may be hard to follow, but do try.

The PLAYER in control of the CHARACTER who just WON a CONTEST to determine that the PLAYER retained control of that CHARACTER's actions DECIDES WHAT HE WANTS HIS CHARACTER TO DO.

IF a social encounter IS a contest to determine who is in control of your character's actions and you WIN this means you the player... are in control of your character's actions. How else do you imagine this works?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of what a player is perhaps?

[RadiantPhoenix]

How do you determine if he opts to do it? Magic Tea Party?

This may be hard to follow, but do try.

The PLAYER in control of the CHARACTER who just WON a CONTEST to determine that the PLAYER retained control of that CHARACTER's actions DECIDES WHAT HE WANTS HIS CHARACTER TO DO.

IF a social encounter IS a contest to determine who is in control of your character's actions and you WIN this means you the player... are in control of your character's actions. How else do you imagine this works?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of what a player is perhaps?

Did you notice the part where my twist on the example was a level 1 PC asking a high level NPC for something?

[Username17]

How do you determine if he opts to do it? Magic Tea Party?

This may be hard to follow, but do try.

The PLAYER in control of the CHARACTER who just WON a CONTEST to determine that the PLAYER retained control of that CHARACTER's actions DECIDES WHAT HE WANTS HIS CHARACTER TO DO.

IF a social encounter IS a contest to determine who is in control of your character's actions and you WIN this means you the player... are in control of your character's actions. How else do you imagine this works?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of what a player is perhaps?

Did you notice the part where my twist on the example was a level 1 PC asking a high level NPC for something?

Ugh. You are wasting your time and filling this thread with even more bullshit. Here is how PL envisions his totally sweet and not-at-all batshit insane diplomacy system:

When you engage in SOCIAL KOMBAT, it is to the death. When you, as a lowly 1st level character talk to the barbarian king, whoever "wins" gets everything from the other. Other than that, people do "whatever they want".

So in your 1st level character talks to the barbarian king example, you go talk to the barbarian king about the thing you want him to do. Let's say it's "send a squad of orcish soldiers to put down the necromancer uprising you heard about". Now, the actual results of the Social Kombat are in most cases going to be fairly meaningless for determining whether orcish warriors go arrest the black cloaked rebels. In most cases, you will "lose" and then the king will get you to agree to do everything he wants you to do. So I guess you take a job as a drummer boy in the king's army or start sweeping his floors or something. Whether he sends the soldiers or not depends on whether the NPC barbarian king "wants" to do it or not - which is now 100% magical teaparty based on whether the player sounded convincing to the dungeon master in describing why sending orcish soldiers to stop necromancers was a good idea. But there's a very small chance (probably) that you will actually beat the barbarian king, in which case he gives you all his magic weapons, his kingdom, and a blowjob. And then he probably sends orcish soldiers to do that thing you wanted, or maybe you do because now it's your fucking kingdom.

And this is why I stopped reading PL's rants about diplomacy. He's been spinning his wheels on this "talk fight to the death plus magical teaparty for everything short of complete capitulation" model for literally years. And it's still as shitty and laughable an idea now as it was back when mocking it was one of the few pieces of common ground I found with Random Casualty.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Did you notice the part where my twist on the example was a level 1 PC asking a high level NPC for something?

An NPC is controlled by a player too. Commonly referred to as a DM or GM.

Nothing changes.

Edit: Also I'm at a loss as to what Frank is complaining about this time.

Sometimes Kings decide on their own to send armies to do stuff which random level 1 peasants may or may not have asked them to do and may or may not silently desire them to do.

So what if social combat doesn't even happen? What if the peasant never even gets around to asking? What if the King decides to send troops then? Is that "fairy tea party" and therefore not permissible?

And whats so wrong with victory in a control of your actions contest permitting you full control of your own character's actions?

No really? WTF?

And another thing... it's not like we even have to be talking about my model here. This also applies to the popular "Single roll for a bullshit arbitrary action with bullshit arbitrary modifiers" mechanic. The fact is the 1st level character is unlikely to beat the king at that, the king winning however does not and should not restrict him from CHOOSING to act as he pleases.

Because contrary to Franks ranting and imaginings of my posts he personally admits he hasn't even READ while I do like to talk about my model and it's specific solutions I have come to those conclusions by considering in detail a large number of alternatives and their function, I rather LIKE to talk about social combat in a broad sense and the King's actions being freely chosen when he wins is something that really the vast majority of potential social mechanics SHOULD do.

[violence in the media]

If the NPC king is going to send the orc shock troopers to put down the necromancer rebellion regardless of the outcome of the diplomacy dice, why are we even rolling in the first place?

In the off-chance that 1st level PC succeeds against 18th level barbarian god king on this, most players will feel cheated if they subsequently find out that the troops were going anyway. They'll want their long-shot success to have resulted in some real, tangible benefit.

[PhoneLobster]

If the NPC king is going to send the orc shock troopers to put down the necromancer rebellion regardless of the outcome of the diplomacy dice, why are we even rolling in the first place?

Well... yeah. But it does need to remain at least an option for the King if he wins. Because again, otherwise the player running the character isn't even FULLY in control of that character's actions even on a victory. Which again, is pretty damn unacceptable really.

Now ideally however you would have some sort of mechanic were by you don't even bother rolling before it's a conflict. But unlike my proposed mechanics a lot of social mechanics lack a clear conflict based trigger and very well COULD have you rolling to force the king to take a specific action before you have even determined what specific action he would take without the influence of the roll. Some if not many will have you rolling the moment your character opens their mouth regardless of the kings independent decisions.

[virgil]

Instead of making offense/defense rules for the Diplomacy mini-game be purely the level of the characters involved, why not also include the 'level' of the goal? The village maiden can initiate social combat with the rampaging Bone Lord to spare her family, and actually have a chance to succeed. This is only because the nonhostile family is of inconsequential threat. Were she to ask him to spare someone of greater consequence, then the difficulty would be higher.

This absolutely requires comparative modifiers though based on established traits (vicious people are less inclined to spare lives).

That's part of my problem with a lot of social combat proposals, including PL's, is their all-or-nothing nature. It could be having higher-level characters be unrelatable forces of nature that are indirectly controlled via MTP. It could also be the nature of requests, where the difference in difficulty between giving some money and murdering the family is negligible, making the act of opening your mouth a declaration of war.

[tenuki]

Judging by this thread, I think a pretty good case can be made for attitude roll modifiers that are way off the RNG.

(Yes, I know this isn't a helpful contribution. An apology would be insincere though.)

[PhoneLobster]

...why not also include the 'level' of the goal?

You CAN in fact do that. And many rather successful social mechanics do. It's basically the Arbitrary DC/Modifier scenario. And it is a way to do social mechanics and indeed basically the ONLY way to deal with a specific subset of demands some players make of social mechanics, specifically the "We want appropriately set difficulties for an endless range of very specific actions and contexts" crowd.

BUT. This means that sort of social mechanic needs to be no more important than any OTHER mechanic in the game which is basically pure arbitrary "mother may I" with the GM. Because when you fall back to relying on the GM to pull it out of his ass you really want to reduce the degree to which the game relies on... whatever the GM is pulling out of his ass. This means that arbitrary social goal mechanics are relegate social encounters and social abilities to the realm of "walking a tight rope in a lightning storm wearing clown shoes while attempting to juggle raw eggs and entertain a paying audience" type mechanics. You know. The ones that largely don't even really exist.

That's part of my problem with a lot of social combat proposals, including PL's, is their all-or-nothing nature.

You know, it's been a long time since it came up so I do want to remind you. I didn't just pull the all or nothing thing out of my ass. After numerous attempts with various alternatives, including an attempt to try and "formalize" a functional "specific goal" type system with much consideration I determined that aiming for broad flexible end states that people are calling "all or nothing" is basically an important measure I actually HAD to take in order to make a functioning formalized social mechanic.

In order to remove the influence of MASSIVE, utterly arbitrary and totally unpredictable modifiers from your social mechanics you need to have both fixed and limited contexts and fixed and limited GOALS.

For my fixed and limited contexts... I did what we RPGers did back when we created abstract combat and made the significantly dominant mechanical factor the relative abilities and power levels of the characters involved.

For my fixed and limited goals I select broad "defeat" end states... just like we do in abstracting regular combat.

I mean really commonly combat arguable SHOULD be MORE influenced by your state of mind, whether you have the flu, your emotional motivation to stab that specific guy, your familiarity with his fighting style, and how well oiled your sword sheath is for quick drawing and whether your shoe laces have come undone.

But we don't do that and instead we use character abilities and power levels because otherwise regular combat would be Mother May I.

Similarly the goal of stabbing a guy through the eye compared to filling his torso full of arrows compared to cutting his arms off with an axe compared to smashing his helmet in with a hammer compared to burning him with fire should have a wide variety of massive called shot modifiers and other bullshit that the vast majority of systems avoid and instead leave to after the abstracted mechanic as pure unremarkable fluffy explanations. And we do that because if we set a thousand different specific defeat goals INCLUDING in the context of this discussion a range of partial defeat goals so vast it includes things like "just stabbing him a bit in places that don't matter but make a small amount of cash fall out", we then don't have a combat system that works or matters.

I'm more than happy to see any proposed solution to "specific goal modifiers" that doesn't fall into the only two camps I can manage to imagine, implement, or FIND. Those being...

1) Arbitrary goal modifiers are small arbitrary modifiers that don't matter as much as your combat system, like any bullshit minor "circumstantial" gifted out your GMs ass bonuses in formalized combat games.

2) Arbitrary goal modifiers are potential giant, and as such the only thing that matters and the social mechanic is basically fairy tea party + a roll against a number the GM pulls out of his ass.

Give me a functional alternative to those two and I will be VERY impressed. But as I see it if I don't want to relegate social mechanics to the obscurity and inanity of number 2) I MUST have strict formalized goals and they CANNOT be a list that is Infinity wide and Infinity deep.

[DSMatticus]

This thread is just fucking weird, everytime I dare to look at it.

So, PL, you really are proposing an all-or-nothing social minigame? And then because you don't want commoners to mind control kings, you say the diplomacy system has to be level-based? Okay, so what if, like everyone in this thread seems to be saying, "all-or-nothing" is a terrible f'ing idea? The problem here doesn't seem to be with unlevelled diplomacy, it seems to be with the fact that you want the diplomacy system to produce dominate person as the standard result. Yes, we get it, you think deciding on the level of a task is hard, so it's mechanically easier to just make all tasks the same difficulty. And it certainly is difficult, but your solution is actually worse than having no diplomacy minigame at all. It's really, really bad.

And it's not actually as hard as you say it is for GM's to figure out the level of a task. You can put down a reference table with estimated difficulties (or prices) for specific things, or restrict yourself to 3-5 discrete levels of difficulties scattered with examples, depending on what type of system you want to use. The best way is probably to treat the social minigame like a shopping minigame. There's no way you can haggle yourself to "your entire store for free," so there's no way you can diplomacy yourself to "your entire kingdom for free." You can print up a list of example favors and list them in the SRD just like equipment with prices, where prices are measured in some sort of social currency.

[PhoneLobster]

So, PL, you really are proposing an all-or-nothing social minigame?

Well. Yes. To the limited degree that Charm Person is in fact all or nothing. Which is to say. Not so much, but whatever. Apparently people have decided to define "Charm Person" as the worst thing ever even though it is arguable one of the most widely used and proven social end state mechanics in RPG gaming history. Certainly massively better than the alternatives within the same RPG system. But again. Whatever. Sure. "Charm or Nothing" whatever you want to call it.

And then because you don't want commoners to mind control kings, you say the diplomacy system has to be level-based?

No. That is a separate issue.

It IS however a BENEFIT of applying the level system that it happens to do that. That is a benefit of applying the level system to a wide variety of alternative social mechanics. That is a benefit of applying the level system to ANYTHING that is in fact why we have the level system.

But you don't HAVE to apply the level system to do that, and even the ever popular "arbitrary bullshit" system if decoupled from the level system causes some SERIOUS "Betty Boobs, level 1 Barmaid and Queen of all the North" issues thanks to the lack of SOME mechanic to stop her from getting the King to do what she wants. And the BEST mechanic for that is the STANDARD mechanic for that. The Level system.

The problem here doesn't seem to be with unlevelled diplomacy

Sorry. Unlevelled diplomacy IS a problem in its OWN right. That would go the same for say, Unlevelled shiving. Or Unlevelled pick pocket. Or Unlevelled Stealth.

And it certainly is difficult, but your solution is actually worse than having no diplomacy minigame at all. It's really, really bad.

Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that the simple element of having the social mechanic, WHATEVER social mechanic, adhere to the level system for all the usual benefits... is worse than having NO social mechanic?

Wow.

And it's not actually as hard as you say it is for GM's to figure out the level of a task. You can put down a reference table with estimated difficulties (or prices) for specific things, or restrict yourself to 3-5 discrete levels of difficulties scattered with examples, depending on what type of system you want to use.

OK. Do it.

Go ahead.

I'm waiting. Shouldn't take more than five minutes. I mean I dedicated an extended period of time and thought to it and began to realize there were a HUGE amount of breadth and depth of complexity. But no really. Go ahead. You think I was wrong on that, you think it's EASY to make a comprehensive but usable small list or "guideline" then DO IT.

There's no way you can haggle yourself to "your entire store for free,"

That seems like a needless and rather extreme restriction on a game of high fantasy and god killing.

The outright removal of top end social goals is a big pile of ass. If you do that then you have basically definitively relegated your social mechanics to the realm of not even mattering.

Which is odd. Because if your primary attack line against my suggestion that Charm level broad goals are the best standard to work from. Isn't "well I ALSO want piddling minor stuff" but is instead "Charm level goals should just not exist ever" then your problem isn't with MY system, your problem is with ANY system that does anything more than piddling minor quibbling shit.

where prices are measured in some sort of social currency.

I think a social currency system might be lets just say...interesting. I mean Franks vague example was total ass, but still.

However a social currency system does not in fact solve any major issues with the social mechanics for telling lies and convincing people to do stuff. Even whatever limited values the social currency for real gear system COULD feed into your "DCs for EVERY context and EVERY goal EVER YAY it'll take five mins, no really" system would THEMSELVES be circumstantial, subjective and variable.

[Chamomile]

Trivial: A request which is of absolutely no consequence to the target.
Examples: Asking a wealthy noble for a few copper pieces. Asking a soldier who is not particularly ruthless to spare his life. Asking someone with a watch to give you the time of day.

Moderate: A request which is of some small consequence to the target. Examples: Asking a peer for a small (but not completely insignificant) amount of money. Asking a soldier who is known to be ruthless to spare your life. Asking someone who is not immediately busy to spend 5-10 minutes walking you through a particularly labyrinthine section of the city.

Significant: A request which is of significant consequence to the target, but not a fundamental violation of their beliefs. Roughly equivalent to a charm effect.

Extreme: A request which violates the fundamental beliefs of a target. Roughly equivalent to a domination effect.



No examples were given for the last two because they already lined up with existing game effects. There should probably be another one in between either Significant and Extreme or Moderate and Significant, but it's easy enough in concept.

[PhoneLobster]

Chamomile your list fails on lacking objective valuation of results.

By having context based DCs but not accounting for the objective value of results OR the knowledge of the victims and attackers you create among other things a scenario where you can achieve the most powerful of results... with the lowest of DCs. And will face the highest of most ridiculous DCs... to achieve the lowliest of results.

Allow me to demonstrate with my own selective version of your examples.

Trivial: A request which is of absolutely no consequence to the target. (note example text and text of other entries indicate the "consequence" is the PERCEIVED consequence by the target)

ExamplesAsking the Emperor, for whom such things are free, to give you the best weapons and armour available in town, far above your level.

Asking some guy to please receive a gift that is actually something he wants. And which will act as evidence to implicate him as a massive criminal in about five minutes time causing his entire family to be declared outlaws and executed.

Extreme: A request which violates the fundamental beliefs of a target. Roughly equivalent to a domination effect.

Examples - Asking a very poor peasant to give you his potato.

Asking a racist bastard who hates your kind to give you his potato, EVEN IF HE HAS A MILLION POTATOES.

Asking a racist bastard Emperor who hates your kind to get you the best equipment in town (which is free for him) only you didn't know he is a racist because it was secret until the GM mentioned it, if he mentioned it instead of just giving you a surprisingly high DC considering as far as you knew this exact entry falls under the examples for Trivial.


Now this means that your sample list is objectively game breaking at the trivial end where first level characters break the wealth system and murder entire clans of their enemies with it. And a ludicrously hard way for epic level characters to earn potatoes one at a time at the extreme end.

There should probably be another one in between either Significant and Extreme or Moderate and Significant, but it's easy enough in concept.

Notice how I didn't bother with more than two categories in order to demonstrate the gaping flaw in your list. It is neither a Granularity issue nor a shortage of raw example text that is your problem. The flaw is at a much more fundamental level than that.

edit: I sorta tell a lie. Actually your list IS lacking an entry BEFORE Trivial, since actually the second example I gave for Trivial where you murderize someone with a gift they actually WANT to be convinced to receive is EASIER than the description and examples you gave for Trivial. So I guess by your list that one is either an Auto-Success or "measurably easier than trivial".

Oh and another thing. You are actually including and using some part of your precious RNG for checks that include getting the time of day from a guy who likes showing off his watch. I'm sorry but TRIVIAL hardly BEGINS to describe how a system that makes you roll for actions like THAT is.

[Ice9]

Asking the Emperor, for whom such things are free, to give you the best weapons and armour available in town, far above your level.

Dubious. The consequence is not "spending an insignificant amount from the treasury", but "setting a precedent that random people can ask you for valuable things".

Asking some guy to please receive a gift that is actually something he wants. And which will act as evidence to implicate him as a massive criminal in about five minutes time causing his entire family to be declared outlaws and executed.

Ok, this one is fucking retarded. You're not talking about a diplomacy check at all, you're talking about a bluff check. If the guy doesn't know the downside, why wouldn't he take it? And conversely, if he does know the downside, this would blatantly count as "Extreme", due to the consequences.


But you know what? It doesn't matter whether setting examples is difficult or not, because an all or nothing system is blatantly dysfunctional. As mentioned, it makes opening your mouth a hostile action that people greet by covering their ears and running away (or stabbing you). Or else every single NPC is an idiot, and so is any PC willing to talk to them.

[Chamomile]

But you know what? It doesn't matter whether setting examples is difficult or not, because an all or nothing system is blatantly dysfunctional. As mentioned, it makes opening your mouth a hostile action that people greet by covering their ears and running away (or stabbing you). Or else every single NPC is an idiot, and so is any PC willing to talk to them.

Isn't this a problem in any setting with dominate effects at all? So long as people who are awesome enough at diplomacy to go beyond a charm effect (i.e. people who are just regularly charming) are sufficiently rare and well-known, the risk of the random stranger you're talking to secretly being a high-level diplomat who can talk you into selling the freshly harvested organs of your children are negligibly small.

Also, while Ice cleaned up the Trivial section nicely, concerning PL's Extreme examples: Well, yeah, you can spend a whole lot of effort convincing people who really don't want to give you potatoes to give you potatoes, but that doesn't mean it'd be a good idea or that there aren't better ways to get potatoes.

[PhoneLobster]

Dubious. The consequence is not "spending an insignificant amount from the treasury", but "setting a precedent that random people can ask you for valuable things".

Who says random? Half the people advocating the "magic list" method will tell you you are his first level wife. But joking aside...

Your scenario where you added additional context of precedence AS WELL as personal value being added is get this... entirely correct.

Unfortunately it's existence does NOT negate the simpler scenario WITHOUT the additional context. Nor does it negate OTHER scenario's where the additional context is INSTEAD that the Emperor regards the action as a net public relations gain and is EVEN MORE likely to do it.

You may have noticed I already included a more extreme variant of your extra context for Emperor Gift giver with a bad case of racism as an example of an "Extreme" difficulty already! Yes that's right as claimed I have thought of this already, and oddly enough am a few embarrassing steps ahead of you here.

The existence of significant rewards with significant difficulties in the proposed "magic list" system IS something I acknowledge. But the problem of significant rewards with minimal difficulty REMAINS. The problem of minimal rewards for maximal difficulty remains.

The thing about the exhaustive list intended to cover all contexts is that it IS exhaustive. If you are telling me right now that INSTEAD you propose to just remove all the Emperor Gift Giver contexts and ONLY permit Emperor Gift Giver contexts where by chance additional "contextual" modifiers push the difficulty into the same territory as the reward... then you are telling me you AREN'T running an actual list of exhaustive contextual modifiers, you are REALLY running a system based on objective outcomes where context doesn't matter one shit because the GM will only ever give contexts that match objective value. And then everyone who dislikes my system's discounting of contextual modifiers can go kick you in the nuts because your proposal is even worse at meeting their demands.

You're not talking about a diplomacy check at all, you're talking about a bluff check.

Doesn't matter.

Bluff checks are ALSO presumably a list of contextual subjective examples. So it STILL falls into the Trivial category.

And if "how much he wants to believe" is thrown away and replaced with "how suspicious does this look" you just swap the gift out for a "less valuable and less suspicious thing to give the chump" and roll yourself BACK into the Trivial category again.

If you instead shift the scale for bluffing to the "The bigger the knowledge you hide the harder"... then you game the system back to Trivial by going through an unknowing front man.

Hell in the hidden knowledge method the front man really IS making a diplomacy check and really IS trying to curry favor with a lord with a gift that means he is ACTUALLY likely to genuinely gain some favor, at least for the next five minutes.

If you then give up and try to get around that and declare that Bluff checks run off OBJECTIVE information everyone uses them as universal knowledge detectors. If you run them off objective RESULTS (or information) then you just threw Context out the window again and the three man Context mobs can come and burn you as a witch.

But you know what? It doesn't matter whether setting examples is difficult or not, because an all or nothing system is blatantly dysfunctional.

Prove it.

As mentioned, it makes opening your mouth a hostile action that people greet by covering their ears and running away (or stabbing you). Or else every single NPC is an idiot, and so is any PC willing to talk to them.

Dig up the exhaustive debunkings of those claims I have already presented. ANY of them. There are plenty Read them. Come back. Address ANYTHING I said in my responses. ANYTHING.

Or alternatively demonstrate that you can disprove my claims about the impossibility of the functional "full and exhuastive" magic example list by not making example arguments I already out maneuvered you with examples of in the same post you were replying to.

Then I might have a go at filling you in on my exhaustive analysis on the OTHER "issues", which I strongly suspect I will AGAIN be five steps ahead of you on. But really if you just surrendered you BEST alternative to my methods turns out to be so bad you surrender on proving it can possibly work and resort to "well Someone once said something bad about your alternative and I never read what you said in response!" then I don't see why I need to bother.

Also, while Ice cleaned up the Trivial section nicely, concerning PL's Extreme examples: Well, yeah, you can spend a whole lot of effort convincing people who really don't want to give you potatoes to give you potatoes

Do try to notice that the potato example is there as contrast to opposite end to highlight the primary issue here. Just like the Racist example Emperor was there to ALREADY anticipate Ice_9's woefully incomplete and incorrect argument BEFORE HE EVEN POSTED IT.

Then try fixing the exhaustive magic example list so it works. I'll be with you on the next step, no really it couldn't be possible I've already run through the next three variants already in this very post...

[Ice9]

I don't get what you're trying to say with these examples.

Unfortunately it's existence does NOT negate the simpler scenario WITHOUT the additional context. Nor does it negate OTHER scenario's where the additional context is INSTEAD that the Emperor regards the action as a net public relations gain and is EVEN MORE likely to do it.

Ok, sure, if there's a situation where the PCs are able to get a meeting with a highly generous emperor who's happy to shower them with expensive stuff - then they get expensive stuff. Why is that a problem, and what would you expect to happen instead?

You may have noticed I already included a more extreme variant of your extra context for Emperor Gift giver with a bad case of racism as an example of an "Extreme" difficulty already! Yes that's right as claimed I have thought of this already, and oddly enough am a few embarrassing steps ahead of you here.

You're advocating a level-based system, right? How is the the DM "stealth adding" racism to an Emperor to make things harder any different than the DM "stealth adding" more levels to said Emperor? I think the solution is "don't play with DMs who are dicks."

The existence of significant rewards with significant difficulties in the proposed "magic list" system IS something I acknowledge. But the problem of significant rewards with minimal difficulty REMAINS. The problem of minimal rewards for maximal difficulty remains.

This is just stupid. Using your amazing diplomacy skills to get people who hate you to give you potatoes is a fucking stupid way to get potatoes, and I don't care one bit if it's inefficient. If you're so powerful, just take the damn potatoes from them. Would you also complain that finding a greater djinn, beating it to a pulp, and forcing it to grant your wish for a single potato is also a lot of work for a minimal benefit?

hen you are telling me you AREN'T running an actual list of exhaustive contextual modifiers, you are REALLY running a system based on objective outcomes where context doesn't matter one shit because the GM will only ever give contexts that match objective value. And then everyone who dislikes my system's discounting of contextual modifiers can go kick you in the nuts because your proposal is even worse at meeting their demands.

And then here you're back to saying that it shouldn't be based on the objective value, which I happen to agree with. But what that means is that your potato example is fucking working as intended.

And if "how much he wants to believe" is thrown away and replaced with "how suspicious does this look" you just swap the gift out for a "less valuable and less suspicious thing to give the chump" and roll yourself BACK into the Trivial category again.

If you instead shift the scale for bluffing to the "The bigger the knowledge you hide the harder"... then you game the system back to Trivial by going through an unknowing front man.

Um, ok? Again, why is a problem and what should happen instead? If you hide your tracks really well and then give somebody something innocuous, you can probably frame them for something. Great, sounds accurate.


Unless I'm misunderstanding you (and I might be, because your examples are all over the fucking place), you seem to think that any social stuff should conform strictly to CR and the objective value of the results, and that having what you ask for or how you do so affect that at all is some horrible exploit. However, AFAICT, that's not what anybody but you wants, at all.

See, to the majority of people, the fact that it's easier to ask a rich merchant for 1 silver than a starving peasant for his last copper is a feature, not a bug.

[PhoneLobster]

See, to the majority of people, the fact that it's easier to ask a rich merchant for 1 silver than a starving peasant for his last copper is a feature, not a bug.

Interesting the way your argument shifted from "this list works cause ugh, your examples are wrong and good stuff isn't easy because of fear of precedences or I dunno... something else".

From that to... "Good stuff can be easy! Get over it!".

Well I mean I SUPPOSE if you want giant high level rewards for (literally) "Trivially" easy actions.

I mean NORMALLY we would look at anything that say, broke the wealth by level guidelines (to whatever degree you have them or not), or brought in a character many levels above the party and their opponents to help them or to otherwise command powers well beyond the level of the characters that achieve the Trivially easy act as a as a genuinely game breaking event.

But hey. I SUPPOSE we can throw all that out the door. Every mechanic we have ever built, how FOOLISH of us to ever imagine that the literally easiest actions it adjudicates shouldn't lead to the GREATEST rewards the game can provide?

And this really is actual game breaking stuff. The second you tell your players "Oh yeah the difficulty of acquiring an item off a guy with said item is directly proportional to the subjective value of the item to that guy" the FIRST question they will ask you is "Where is the richest guy in town?". No really TRY this one as an experiment. Take a group of D&D players cold turkey and "play test" this one with them, make sure to drop the subjective item value line, watch them go door to door visiting the rich and famous.

Oh and

Ok, sure, if there's a situation where the PCs are able to get a meeting with a highly generous emperor who's happy to shower them with expensive stuff

While this is largely irrelevant as all ADDITIONAL scenarios are, that's outright misrepresenting the scenario. Quit it with the lies, it doesn't help your case. The Trivial difficulty category specifically described a scenario where "stuff" is "pretty much free" to "a guy" and it becomes "Trivially easy" to get him to give it to you. It does NOT require the personalty trait of "highly generous" presumably THAT is actually EVEN EASIER than Trivial.

It's ALMOST as embarrassing for your argument as the bit where you ranted on about not caring if your system sometimes sets massive difficulties for potato collecting DESPITE the fact that AGAIN that was directly discussed as INDEED being largely on it's own a not altogether important bit of highlighting and contrast for the opposite end of the spectrum by me in the very post you are replying to and quoting multiple times.

You really should catch up to the ACTUAL last post I made with your arguments. It's like talking to someone living deep in their own imagination of what happened in the past.

[Stubbazubba]

And this really is actual game breaking stuff. The second you tell your players "Oh yeah the difficulty of acquiring an item off a guy with said item is directly proportional to the subjective value of the item to that guy" the FIRST question they will ask you is "Where is the richest guy in town?". No really TRY this one as an experiment. Take a group of D&D players cold turkey and "play test" this one with them, make sure to drop the subjective item value line, watch them go door to door visiting the rich and famous.

At which point the rich and famous call the city guard to take care of them, or sick their pet dragon on them, or however the wealthy persons in your setting protect their goods from thieves and beggars. The rich and wealthy do not entertain random murder hobos unless they have a specific reason to. The rich and famous are probably walled off and their servants or slaves or whatever who answer the doorbell tell you no, he's not into that sort of thing, because arming people who aren't working for him could potentially cause problems for his investments.

Basically, the same reason the rich and famous IRL don't give out used automobiles to beggars who ask for them, even though Warren Buffet would not notice the 1-3 grand he just shelled out.

Oh and

Ok, sure, if there's a situation where the PCs are able to get a meeting with a highly generous emperor who's happy to shower them with expensive stuff

While this is largely irrelevant as all ADDITIONAL scenarios are, that's outright misrepresenting the scenario. Quit it with the lies, it doesn't help your case. The Trivial difficulty category specifically described a scenario where "stuff" is "pretty much free" to "a guy" and it becomes "Trivially easy" to get him to give it to you. It does NOT require the personalty trait of "highly generous" presumably THAT is actually EVEN EASIER than Trivial.

No. The definition of "stuff which is pretty much free" is the key here. Highly powerful weapons and armor represents the power to get stuff of a certain difficulty done in his empire. Giving it out to random people is actually incurring a potential cost, because they could be used to damage his infrastructure or armies or other investments. So, basically, unless he has a reason to believe that it will truly be cost-free to him, such as, you're working for him, then no, it's not free. And that's a totally reasonable outcome for this scenario, which is what you want your system to output.

So, even in that example, there's a perfectly good reason that it won't be abused. Unless the emperor is a complete imbecile and has no advisers to correct him (in which case he realistically would be conned out of his dominion easily and quickly), then he will see the obvious potential problems caused by giving out power, even power largely beneath his notice, to people who aren't somehow obligated to use it in the way he wants.

[Username17]

Personally, I am willing to grant the premise that if you set the difficulty to con people out of their money based on the subjective value of that much money to the person, that conmen characters will only bother attempting to bilk money from rich people. having granted that premise, I am unable to see how this is in any way a problem.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

It goes back to a problem I identified earlier that a lot of people are mortally offended by the idea of a lower-level person (whether in actual levels, or a beggar-on-noble conning) getting something substantially over a higher-level person. Not out of concerns for genre emulation or smooth storytelling, but as a principle in of itself.

People will complain much less about the fact that a 19th level Barbarian King or even a well-greased noble can convince a peasant to lop off their own balls for the lulz than the reverse. Which is a huge reason why you can't have NPC on PC diplomacy in the first place (people will vaguely accept being intimidated by the Lich King, they won't put it from it from a peasant gang leader) but it also has huge implications for the rest of your diplomacy game.

[Ice9]

And this really is actual game breaking stuff. The second you tell your players "Oh yeah the difficulty of acquiring an item off a guy with said item is directly proportional to the subjective value of the item to that guy" the FIRST question they will ask you is "Where is the richest guy in town?". No really TRY this one as an experiment. Take a group of D&D players cold turkey and "play test" this one with them, make sure to drop the subjective item value line, watch them go door to door visiting the rich and famous.

How the hell is this any different than your proposed system? In a "social kombat to the death" system, it's still much more beneficial to use your social-fu on rich people, because they have stuff you actually want. And I don't see how "you might be able to con money from nobles" is more game-breaking than "you might be able to socially crush nobles and make them give you everything they own".


I mean seriously, is this your idea of a good social system?
* Getting a starving peasant to give you all their possessions and food - Easy, because it isn't worth very much.
* Getting a rich noble to give you a single gold piece - Much harder, because its total value is higher.

If so, you have different desires than anyone I've met, and I wish you luck with your bizarre social combat system that nobody else will use. Seriously, to anyone I know, even a blatant 4E-style "you cannot gain anything worth more than X gp by using the social combat rules" is less stupid than this.

[ModelCitizen]

Isn't this a problem in any setting with dominate effects at all? So long as people who are awesome enough at diplomacy to go beyond a charm effect (i.e. people who are just regularly charming) are sufficiently rare and well-known, the risk of the random stranger you're talking to secretly being a high-level diplomat who can talk you into selling the freshly harvested organs of your children are negligibly small.

No, because it makes perfect sense for a society to see mind control spells as assault. If you catch someone trying to cast Dominate on you, you could reasonably attack them. A society where people view simply starting a conversation as assault doesn't model anything we know about human behavior. It's ridiculous and the social mechanics shouldn't reward playing like that.

[PhoneLobster]

How the hell is this any different than your proposed system? In a "social kombat to the death" system, it's still much more beneficial to use your social-fu on rich people

Because I DO use a mechanic that ties potential objective rewards to difficulty, and it DOES happen to be the basic character advancement system. Rich people are tough. They are correspondingly tough to their richness. It's the EXACT same Darwinian Feudalism used to widely justify the "why don't we just stab the puny king and take his kingdom?" dilemma here all the time.

It works REALLY nicely in that regards.

If so, you have different desires than anyone I've met

Oh really having a social mechanic that DOESN'T literally break the game is "different to anyone you have met". This is the gaming den that one isn't going to fly.

[Ice9]

The only reason it "breaks the game" is that you buy into the whole "social kombat must be able to do anything or it's worthless" attitude that also creates the "opening your mouth is a hostile act" situation.

You know how most social systems in games work, in actual play? There are fucking limits. Want to walk up and social the king into trading his kingdom for a turnip, with a quick conversation? Fuck you, not happening. At least not with "normal" interaction - maybe you can get some unnatural mental influence type of thing and make people stab themselves by asking them to. But then you're not just a guy who's good at talking, and people do get scared and maybe run away when you open your mouth.