Anyway, lets talk about possible ways to make an actual system and not continue to dump scorn on shitty systems no matter how justified. Fundamentally, your benchmark is MTP. MTP has the advantage of being able to accept any input the social minigame might want to have, which is a big advantage because the social minigame is stuck accepting inputs from a rather high order of infinity worth of potential inputs. It also has the advantage of putting out outputs that at least one person at the table thinks are vaguely reasonable, which as evidenced by most discussions of social minigames, something of a challenge.
The disadvantages of MTP are equally well understood. Unfair results are handed out with a good deal of regularity, and the appeals process for results people don't agree with are less than ideal. And it has little capability to deal with characters who are more charismatic or persuasive than the players. Any system other than MTP should address those points. It should be fairer than MTP, and it should take into account character abilities more than MTP seems capable of. Those are not terribly high bars to meet, and thus the system's real challenge is being able to accept inputs and give outputs that are even remotely as subtle and varied as what MTP is capable of.
Disagree. Characters can get arbitrarily good. The issue is simply the "Skill Challenge" issue, which is that anything that the whole party is being asked to spend time on is something that everyone can participate in. It's actually totally possible to have "shake the bard at it" be the solution to diplomatic challenges, but then those challenges have to be as small and minor as the "shake the rogue at it" lockpicking events.Lord Mistborn wrote: Character can't get too good
Again, disagreement. Players are pretty much OK with losing control, as long as that control loss is explicable, "fair", and temporary. People don't usually flip the table over because they failed a morale test and had to retreat. It's only when the results are "vague" that the players get angry. It feels like they are being puppeted by something that's totally arbitrary, because that is basically what is happening.Players don't like losing control
Pretty much. The outputs have to have a range. They don't have to be (and cannot be) as infinitely fine in their potential resolution as MTP. But they have to provide enough of a range of potential outputs that you can pretend that that is what is happening.It can't be overly binary
You wouldn't think that would be a thing you'd have to say. But apparently it is. People keep coming back to the "social combat" metaphor, and that pretty much goes straight to "rape simulator" with shocking speed. I think "social combat" is just a bad metaphor full stop.No one likes it when the results are morally hidious
-Username17