Phonelobster's Current Social Mechanics How Do They Work?

[Username17]

At the limit of infinite rules, you'd have a rule for everything. Even obscure and offensive things. With enough rules, you'd eventually write a rule for anal circumference. It's a thing, therefore if you wrote enough rules you'd eventually get there.

But you don't have rules for everything. Your ruleset is finite in scope. It will cover some things and not other things. And your choice of what to cover and what to not cover reflects on your game and also reflects on you as a human being. And if you pipe up to defend a designer's choices, that reflects on you as a player and as a human being.

If your game doesn't have rules for the battlefield morale of groups or for haggling over the price of goods and services, but it does have rules for whether the victims of sexual violence "like it" or not, it means that the designer has made the choice to have your game system give outputs for whether the victims of sexual violence want to go home with their assailants and the choice to not handle morale or haggling. And that says something about the designer. And it is not a good thing. It also says something about every single person who defends that design, and what it says is also not good.

We don't mock FATAL because there's no reason to have a rule for anal circumference. We mock them because the choice to include a rule for anal circumference when there isn't a rule for so many other things that seem like they would be much more important if your priorities weren't completely fucked - strongly indicates that the designers had priorities that were completely fucked. And including a rule for winning over your own victims of sexual violence when you don't have a rule for arguing over the price of a horse indicates the same thing.

Now it's further a problem that in PhoneLobster's system, whether the victim wants to go home with her assailant is merely up to a choice of the attacker's coup de grace maneuver. And it's another problem that stockholm syndrome apparently kicks in after 3 rounds of combat (or less for minor characters). But those are implementation issues. The fundamental issue is that the game system is modeling this shit at all when there's still other things that are far more important in any genre except Japanese rape porn that the rules don't even try to address.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Please note that Frank completely ignores the fact that he was wrong about Shadowrun.

SR4 is according to his own standards "fucked up", since resisting a seduction attempt is affected by wound modifiers (opposed test, not resistance test).

[Almaz]

SR4A:

Seduction is a specialization of con

Con checks are opposed by the target's con or negotiation and Intuition.

Note, it's an opposed test, not a resistance rest.

Wound modifiers apply therefore.

So, SR4A is fucked up?

People who pick at (Blank)'s Favorite Game like it means anything on TGD always baffle me. It's like they forgot the entire point of the misoludist forum board - criticize everything. Especially That Thing I Like. Unless you're shadzar. Or me, since I am one with shadzar, apparently. Besides, the pattern around here is especially hating the 4th edition of the game you are fond of.

Frank calls it a Rape Simulator, I call it a Nanoha Simulator.

Probably still not the correct genre for D&D, but whatever.

The reason Fate fell for Nanoha is not because Nanoha beat her. It was because Nanoha displayed a constant, unwavering commitment to helping Fate, in spite of also fighting her. If Nanoha had been the aggressor, initiating conflict, rather than merely being an obstacle, even once, that might have been fucked.

As it was, Nanoha forced Fate to attack her by not initiating conflict while pursuing her own goals, which happened to include helping and trying to communicate with Fate. Fate could not pursue her own goals, namely "get the jewel seeds so abusemommy will stop actually factually whipping me" with someone who was not just belligerent but interactive. It was a wholesale distraction from her quest - the TSAB (who sought to initiate conflict) fed into her narrative that she was an outlaw on a Mission, Nanoha defied it.

Nanoha did take advantage of the fact that the various ways she beat Fate in combat let her get in more talk-time with Fate, but that's not a bonus - that's being allowed to make the attempt at all. In the end, picking fights with Fate would have made it more difficult for Nanoha to get with her.

Open question whether Precia Testarossa beat Fate into compliance using PhoneLobster's system though, with a probable indication towards yes, so hey! It's got modeling whip-mommies for it?

[Username17]

Please note that Frank completely ignores the fact that he was wrong about Shadowrun.

SR4 is according to his own standards "fucked up", since resisting a seduction attempt is affected by wound modifiers (opposed test, not resistance test).

I know you're incapable of not being a jackass, but I'd really like it if you would refrain from weighing in on rules issues of editions you don't play and never have. There is nothing stopping an opposed test from also being a resistance test in SR4A. In fact, many resistance tests are also opposed tests. The fact that skills are involved also doesn't stop it from being a resistance test.

4th edition Shadowrun's weirdness with wound modifiers actually goes the other way. Your counterspelling doesn't get any worse when you're wounded because counterspelling adds to resistance tests. I know you're just desperate to catch Frank Trollman in a bout of hypocrisy to feed your ego, but:

• Blade is still factually wrong about wound modifiers affecting resistance to seduction in SR4A.
• Even if he wasn't, one game being shitty on an issue doesn't mean it's OK for any other game to be shitty on that issue. A moral wrong being common doesn't make it right.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

SR4A:

Seduction is a specialization of con

Con checks are opposed by the target's con or negotiation and Intuition.

Note, it's an opposed test, not a resistance rest.

Wound modifiers apply therefore.

So, SR4A is fucked up?

People who pick at (Blank)'s Favorite Game like it means anything on TGD always baffle me.

My post was an answer to this:

In Shadowrun, wound penalties are negative modifiers to all actions (except soaking). Social skills are resisted with an opposed roll.

This means that a wounded character is less likely to resist seduction.

Does it mean that Shadowrun is a rape simulator as well?

That's factually wrong. You aren't penalized on resistance tests by wound penalties in Shadowrun. Wound penalties make you worse at negotiating, they make you worse at seducing people, but they don't actually make you any more likely to be seduced.

Having an incentive structure in which punching people makes them more likely to want to become your girlfriend is fucked up. There isn't any amount of lipstick you can put on that pig that makes the spousal abuse simulation part of a game be something other than horrible. If you found such a case in another game, it would mean that there was something in another game that was also fucked up, it wouldn't mean that the underlying idea was somehow OK.

-Username17

Frank claimed Blade was wrong. I simply showed that no, Blade was correct. And then I asked if SR4 was fucked up according to his own standards.

It's not picking at the game - I love SR4 - it's picking at Frank's claim.

[Fuchs]

Please note that Frank completely ignores the fact that he was wrong about Shadowrun.

SR4 is according to his own standards "fucked up", since resisting a seduction attempt is affected by wound modifiers (opposed test, not resistance test).

I know you're incapable of not being a jackass, but I'd really like it if you would refrain from weighing in on rules issues of editions you don't play and never have. There is nothing stopping an opposed test from also being a resistance test in SR4A. In fact, many resistance tests are also opposed tests. The fact that skills are involved also doesn't stop it from being a resistance test.

4th edition Shadowrun's weirdness with wound modifiers actually goes the other way. Your counterspelling doesn't get any worse when you're wounded because counterspelling adds to resistance tests. I know you're just desperate to catch Frank Trollman in a bout of hypocrisy to feed your ego, but:

• Blade is still factually wrong about wound modifiers affecting resistance to seduction in SR4A.
• Even if he wasn't, one game being shitty on an issue doesn't mean it's OK for any other game to be shitty on that issue. A moral wrong being common doesn't make it right.

-Username17

It's not called a resistance test anywhere in SR4A. I know you are desperate not to caught wrong, but please show me where an opposed con or negotiation test is called resistance test in the rules.

[Almaz]

Frank claimed Blade was wrong. I simply showed that no, Blade was correct. And then I asked if SR4 was fucked up according to his own standards.

It's not picking at the game - I love SR4 - it's picking at Frank's claim.

It's not even that - as Frank stated, it doesn't even matter if SR4/A is Wrong For Rape, Wrong For America, or whatever. You can take an otherwise fine game and add rules for shitting on people in it. It wouldn't make those rules for shitting on people any better because they were surrounded by an ostensibly good game, and the rest of the rules wouldn't be appreciably worse other than having a pile of shit in the middle of them.

I mean, everyone else would remember the pile of shit in them more than anything else, and the quality means people would be more likely to defend your ruleset (and, unfortunately, the pile of shit in them) on internet forums, but the shit would not go away, and neither would the rules.

It'd just make them smell and look like shit.

And when people start calling for less shit in gaming, your shit coronet would have to have its shitty filling go too.

If you are seriously doing this entirely to try to prove Frank is wrong, then O-K, but it won't really prove anything about shit in gaming.

[Fuchs]

Frank claimed Blade was wrong. I simply showed that no, Blade was correct. And then I asked if SR4 was fucked up according to his own standards.

It's not picking at the game - I love SR4 - it's picking at Frank's claim.

It's not even that - as Frank stated, it doesn't even matter if SR4/A is Wrong For Rape, Wrong For America, or whatever. You can take an otherwise fine game and add rules for shitting on people in it. It wouldn't make those rules for shitting on people any better because they were surrounded by an ostensibly good game, and the rest of the rules wouldn't be appreciably worse other than having a pile of shit in the middle of them.

I mean, everyone else would remember the pile of shit in them more than anything else, and the quality means people would be more likely to defend your ruleset (and, unfortunately, the pile of shit in them) on internet forums, but the shit would not go away, and neither would the rules.

It'd just make them smell and look like shit.

And when people start calling for less shit in gaming, your shit coronet would have to have its shitty filling go too.

If you are seriously doing this entirely to try to prove Frank is wrong, then O-K, but it won't really prove anything about shit in gaming.

But SR4 has a decent social system. That it can also, for some edge cases, serve as a rape mechanic, doesn't change that the social mechanics work pretty well.

Trying to condemn PL's system solely because in an edge case there's a possible rape simulation is stupid and short-sighted - especially since even "corrected" it won't prevent rape since there are better tools in D&D for rape. What matters is: Does the System work? What Inputs and Outputs are there for a variety of situations? What genre conventions can be done with it?

[Username17]

It's not called a resistance test anywhere in SR4A. I know you are desperate not to caught wrong, but please show me where an opposed con or negotiation test is called resistance test in the rules.

Actually, resistance tests aren't called anything in the SR4A rules. In SR4A, resistance tests don't even have an entry in the index. There is no comprehensive list of resistance tests anywhere, because SR4A is badly edited. Resistance tests are simply tests you use to resist things. No more, no less. Because there isn't even a single sentence in the rules to explain what else they could possibly be.

This is, in fact, a really terrible place to raise your flag to make your last stand to show that "Frank is Wrong" because it's just a part of the SR4A rules that are not explained well. You could claim that only "drain resistance test," "spell resistance tests," and "damage resistance tests" were "resistance tests," but there is zero support for that interpretation in the rules as well. Fuck, in much of the book they call the "drain resistance test" the "drain test" - you really want to claim those are two different things?

The bottom line is that SR4A is badly edited and was put together after Catalyst had driven all the rules people out of the company. So making an argument based on a lack of a page citation in that book is super weak. And when you're making a super weak argument whose conclusion is something appalling about sexual violence, the correct response is simply to laugh in your fucking face.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Resistance tests are pretty much limited to damage, fading and spell resistance tests, and are labeled as such throughout the book. The opposed test in social situations is not called a resistance test anywhere.

That's the same in SR4 too, not just SR4A. So, making an argument about how an opposed test is actually a resistance test doesn't really work by RAW.

[Mask_De_H]

Frank calls it a Rape Simulator, I call it a Nanoha Simulator.

Probably still not the correct genre for D&D, but whatever.

That's not how it works though. Nanoha diplomances and blasts at the same time. She usually has fo fight because the enemy won't listen to her. Even with Fate, the ass-whooping Nanoha laid down wasn't what flipped Fate, it was Precia disowning Fate that did it. The famous "call me a devil" line comes from Vita not willing to back down under the mistaken belief that she had to merk Nanoha for Hayate's sake. The only thing Vita understood in Berserker mode was ass-whooping, so that's what needed to be dished out.

The Nanoha beating girls until they love her thing is a joke.

[Almaz]

But SR4 has a decent social system.

Ehn. . .

That it can also, for some edge cases, serve as a rape mechanic, doesn't change that the social mechanics work pretty well.

I'm not entirely sold on your first statement here, so I'm not entirely sold on the rest either.

Trying to condemn PL's system solely because in an edge case there's a possible rape simulation is stupid and short-sighted - especially since even "corrected" it won't prevent rape since there are better tools in D&D for rape. What matters is: Does the System work? What Inputs and Outputs are there for a variety of situations? What genre conventions can be done with it?

You have a funny definition of "edge case." Talking to people and fighting people are two of the things that PCs do with people more than any other. People spend far less time casting spells and far less time casting any particular spell. Synergies between spells that enhance your ability to bugger someone unlawfully are unfortunate, but require you to consciously exploit them, in some cases incurring multiple saving throws, returning to the "why would you bother" question, and then deciding to do something not specified in the rules (i.e. fuck). Meanwhile, combining talking and fighting, rather than any two specific spells, would rapidly occur, and the rules specifically say you can go with a seduction.

Just because fabricate can make a dildo or an onahole, and then you can use the improvised weapon rules to beat someone to death with it, doesn't mean we need to stat this entire thing up.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, the whole Charm Person = rape thing isn't even the case. If they are charmed, they are your friend, and nothing about being your friend means they are going to have sex with you. Yeah Dominate Person can get to rape if they fail at least two saving throws. But again, it isn't about the fact that you can rape someone, it is that punching them in the face is more likely to result in sex than just asking for sex.

If someone fails an ask for sex check, punching them in the face should not make them more likely to succeed than they just where.

[RadiantPhoenix]

If someone fails an ask for sex check, punching them in the face should not make them more likely to succeed than they just where.

Unless they use the Intimidate skill.

[Dean]

Or makes them Sickened, Shaken, Cursed, Energy Drained, Crushing Despaired, or Feebleminded.

The only way to be certain that there is no offensive spell or action that can reduce your "gettin sexed" defense is if that defense never changes. Like just make it a DC 20 Charisma check to make someone want to bang you. Anything else and you will be able to punch people till they want to bang you.

[Lago PARANOIA]

As I said, you don't need to have hit point damage be bloody at all, so Princess Bride is actually in favor of this system. Dragon ball too had such examples, as a fighting manga. I don't give a damn about fight club, nor do I care about Batman.

Yeah, if you just ignore all of the relevant counter-examples for your claim with the 'those examples make me sad' perfunctory hand wave, then I agreee that you will have a perfect case with no significant contradictions.

Fucking brilliant. Get this guy a plastic debate trophy. With TWO layers of gold spraypaint.

But you are not forced to become friends with this system - it's one option among some. And even less are you forced to make friends after winning a fight - you can always kill the enemy you vanquished off.

No. The problem with 'combat = friendship' mechanics isn't that people become friends after a harrowing fight, it's that when you put them on the same track it becomes the go-to method for sealing friendships. If someone rejects your overtures of friendship or refuses to do a favor for you, the correct response is to challenge them to a fight and beat them up -- then ask a second time.

Which is fucking stupid. Because there have been many more occasions where engaging in melee permanently breaks bonds and/or makes one or both combatants less susceptible to rhetorical arguments. Luke and Darth Vader were talking to each other calmly and civilly in Return of the Jedi until the lightsabers came out, with Luke becoming more aggressive with each second. When Darth Vader made another threatening appeal for Luke to come to the Dark Side, Luke didn't calmly consider Vader's point like he did before; he flipped out and went medieval on his ass. Same thing with Darth Vader and Kenobi in SW3; Anakin becomes more unhinged over the course of the fight and is less likely to listen to his once friend and mentor.

[hyzmarca]

While rules for one on one social interactions are important, I think they can be derived from more general rules for public speaking.

What we really need are rules to determine whether or not you gain a large number of fanatical followers by shouting Nazi rhetoric in the middle of the town square.

[PhoneLobster]

You guys do realize the whole "make friends WITH physical combat" is a misrepresentation right?

This system is built about the option of making friends IN physical combat, and DESPITE physical combat.

Stabbing people first doesn't invalidate your ability to make friends, and hopefully doesn't excessively motivate the bullshit "FINISH HIM! FINISH THEM ALL!" result that Lago and Frank and others seem to find so very moral and palatable. But it's not actually "The go-to method for sealing friendships", there ARE penalties, the "go-to method" is in fact the one without those penalties and that's to avoid swording.

The fact that Lago continues to paint it as "The go-to method" even though a default Friendly attack sees a net -7 for occurring in combat seems, how should I say this, vastly ignorant and dishonest.

[virgil]

The fact that Lago continues to paint it as "The go-to method" even though a default Friendly attack sees a net -7 for occurring in combat seems, how should I say this, vastly ignorant and dishonest.

Seducing someone is easier if you only have to ask once instead of three times, even if that once has a penalty.

Let's also not forget that you still can't really have compromise. Social Combat instantly escalates things the same way pulling out a mind control ray, and there's no in-between. Attempting to weasel around with Deal Breakers makes the whole thing about as flimsy as charm person and core Diplomacy on the definition of friendly.

[Fuchs]

But SR4 has a decent social system.

Ehn. . .

That it can also, for some edge cases, serve as a rape mechanic, doesn't change that the social mechanics work pretty well.

I'm not entirely sold on your first statement here, so I'm not entirely sold on the rest either.

Trying to condemn PL's system solely because in an edge case there's a possible rape simulation is stupid and short-sighted - especially since even "corrected" it won't prevent rape since there are better tools in D&D for rape. What matters is: Does the System work? What Inputs and Outputs are there for a variety of situations? What genre conventions can be done with it?

You have a funny definition of "edge case." Talking to people and fighting people are two of the things that PCs do with people more than any other. People spend far less time casting spells and far less time casting any particular spell. Synergies between spells that enhance your ability to bugger someone unlawfully are unfortunate, but require you to consciously exploit them, in some cases incurring multiple saving throws, returning to the "why would you bother" question, and then deciding to do something not specified in the rules (i.e. fuck). Meanwhile, combining talking and fighting, rather than any two specific spells, would rapidly occur, and the rules specifically say you can go with a seduction.

It is an edge case, unless you play with people who primarly want to have their characters rape NPCs in each session.

Also, the "best way to make friends is to punch them, so it'll happen" only works if the penalties for attacking someone do not make that less likely to succeed than simply trying to make friends without attacking. If there's a constant -7 penalty for such, then why would anyone think it's a good idea to do it? Mechanically, it's not an incentive to do it. Not to mention that people who are willing to go for such a tactic would likely go for mind control spells first and foremost anyway.

But again, there's genre tropes who actually work with such mechanics. Beating someone then making friends is one. Fighting and flirting at the same time is another (See Mask of Zorro, for an example).

[Kaelik]

Or makes them Sickened, Shaken, Cursed, Energy Drained, Crushing Despaired, or Feebleminded.

The only way to be certain that there is no offensive spell or action that can reduce your "gettin sexed" defense is if that defense never changes. Like just make it a DC 20 Charisma check to make someone want to bang you. Anything else and you will be able to punch people till they want to bang you.

Where, besides your own ass, are you getting the say yes to sex defense from? So far, I can't think of anything outside of Dominate Person to actually get someone to say yes to sex in D&D. Because nothing else seems to do it.

Are you making up a stupid rule and then saying that stupid rule is rapey?

[PhoneLobster]

Seducing someone is easier if you only have to ask once instead of three times, even if that once has a penalty.

Only you aren't asking once instead of three times. You are attacking twice and asking once with a penalty for attacking instead of asking three times with no penalties at any point.

The combat bit isn't free. It costs you the penalty on that last social attack AND it costs you the fucking combat attacks themselves in prior rounds. You COULD just be social attacking from the beginning and never face that penalty.

Painting those physical attacks as never happening is just as dishonest as attempts to pretend the penalty they create doesn't exist.

Worse. Prior to skills with commonly available equipment the default NDef is going to end up being about 10. The default SDef before penalties is about 10. If you go pure combat or pure social there are the same number of HP and the defences are about the same and you probably have no attack bonuses. So pure social or pure combat is about equally difficult. Switching from social to physical is also about the same difficulty. But if you switch from combat to social you face a MINIMUM of the 5 point Alert penalty when you do. With another 2 point penalty for friendly if you are armed and dangerous.

If the target character took good or bad traits that actually add to SDef, and there are plenty they will have between 1-4 additional points on SDef and at most MAYBE lose about 1 point on NDef to do that. Triggering Alert at the extremes can even result in pushing you off the actual RNG in the default scenario against targets with the upper end of those traits.

It is clearly the least optimal tactic in the default scenario to switch from physical attacks to social ones. Even with skills designed to attempt to bypass the penalties for doing that you STILL pay a cost of some kind to bypass Alert and the optimal alternative is not having to pay that cost.

In order to actually motivate physical to social switch as strongly as critics claim as an optimal tactic if your goal is social and not scary it pretty much requires you to select deliberately lop sided and rather advanced skill builds for both targets and attackers built with the specific intention of motivating weird edge case behavior.

[rampaging-poet]

Where, besides your own ass, are you getting the say yes to sex defense from? So far, I can't think of anything outside of Dominate Person to actually get someone to say yes to sex in D&D. Because nothing else seems to do it.

I don't see anything in the text of 3.5's suggestion spell that rules out using it to command someone to sleep with you. That wouldn't be a reasonable thing to suggest in combat, but neither is a succubus's suggestion to kiss her again while she drains your life. Still, it does mean that causing penalties to Will saves in 3.5 makes mind-control rape easier. It's certainly less of an incentive than PhoneLobster's system gives for seducing princesses after somebody else beat them up, but it's there.

---

For beating someone up before seducing them to be optimal (i.e. take less rounds on average, exposing you to less attacks in turn), a pretty specific inequality of your relative chances of succeeding at normal and social attacks has to be true. I haven't worked out every possible solution to find where it actually is optimal, but if my math checks out attacking before socializing is only optimal if:

Code: Select all

-2s^2 - 2s + 2sa + 7a > 20

where s is the difference between your seduction attack bonus and their social defence bonuses (before Alert) and a is the difference between your normal attack bonuses and their normal defence bonuses. This should be valid for (a, s) pairs with a contained in [-15, 4] and s contained in [-5, 14].

Other skills on both sides can change the results, but as Phonelobster said they usually have an Energy cost and so aren't usually optimal either. Any skill that doesn't save you at least two rounds per Energy will at best break even with not using that skill assuming energy is valued at the time spent resting to recover it.

Regardless of whether or not this inequality is satisfied, it is definitely still optimal to seduce non-Alert princess that still have injuries from somebody else beating them up. The only way to avoid that with a single damage track would be to make injuries heal quickly enough that nobody ever gets the chance. That isn't the case in PhoneLobster's system because without healing magic injuries don't heal in combat time so one could theoretically swoop in on someone right after they fought someone else. It's still not the fastest way to get the job done because the battle they were just in takes time, but it's less risky in the same way sending somebody else to kill a dragon is less risky.

EDIT: First edit added a quote of Kaelik to show what I was responding to.
EDIT2: While sending someone to fight the princess to soften her up for you advances is less risky for the same reason sending mooks to soften up a dragon is, I want to clarify that I feel the former is much, much more evil than the latter.

[PhoneLobster]

Regardless of whether or not this inequality is satisfied, it is definitely still optimal to seduce non-Alert princess that still have injuries from somebody else beating them up. The only way to avoid that with a single damage track would be to make injuries heal quickly enough that nobody ever gets the chance.

Unfortunately what my system lacks and could probably benefit from is a proper formalized end to the Alert state.

Currently once you are alert in an "encounter" (which could by design extend up to something as large as a whole dungeon) you can pretty much stay that way until the end of it. And once it's over it's strategic time and your injuries are basically healed and your equipment and energy resources basically restored.

That accidentally meets the requirements of not motivating you to swoop in after someone else beats the princess up after alert wears off but before injuries return. But mostly through an oversight in the rules that may be over all more of a bad thing for other reasons than it is a good thing for preventing a bit of a contrived edge cast strategy.

All in all it would probably be a good thing if there were SOME amount of formal combat time in which Alert would wear off if conditions were met. Some amount of time an assassin could hide in the shadows after escaping the guards at which they eventually lose alert so he can sneak off more easily etc... At the moment the only way to remove Alert in combat time is through abilities with action or resource costs or both.

Adding an Alert trigger of "known attacker sighted", even if you limited known attackers to within the last Strategic Turn and some sort of Alert cool off after X rounds without an Alert trigger would for the most part remove the worst of the edge case strategy while providing an actual answer to the fairly important question "so how the hell long does Alert last anyway?".

It would still let people rig elaborate shenanigans where they get one group to beat someone up then run away then pull out another guy or a disguised guy, changing out fast enough to avoid potential in combat healing and resource refresh (for which there ARE a number of options, Energy and item resource ones notably being default options), but slow enough to get the Alert penalty to wear off, and switch to social. But I'm pretty sure that going out of your way to deal with an edge case like that is largely a bad idea.

[MGuy]

Question, I've read through the lengthy explanation here and I'm curious as to how these end states (both friendly and Seduced) play out outside of the encounters. Does being 'seduced' automatically 100% allow you to sleep with the target all the time or is it more of a disposition where-in they are more likely to do so? Same thing for 'friending' someone. After they are friended what 'mechanically' can you do with that or is it pure MTP from there?