The problem of social systems

[Orion]

When you sit down and say "my fantasy heartbreaker will have a social system," you've already gone badly wrong. People think of a "social system" as something analogous to a "combat system" but really it would be more akin to a "physical system." Nobody thinks that farming, jumping over things, and stabbing people should all use basically the same rules. Similarly, haggling over the price of a horse, forming a lasting friendship with the elven king, and fast-talking a guard into letting you through are not remotely similar to each other and shouldn't use the same mechanics. So, you're definitely going to want to write up a number of "social systems," or as I prefer to call them, "social mechanics." The main reason you do this is to make sure you're spending game time and complexity on things that are worth the attention, but making more specialized mechanics also gets you around the objections in the OP. It's ok if the Bard auto-wins a minigame with a limited payout. A minigame that people would rebel against if it applied to them or to the Elf King, could be acceptable if it only applies to groups and purpose-built extras. And so on. It sounds like a lot of work, but the good news is that we can cut down on the problem by raiding other mechanics from all over our system.

When you sit down to write a particular mechanic, you should start by specifying what its outputs are. That's step 1, because it tells you how complex it can be, how deterministic it can be, and whether it should be a group or solo activity. Then, look at what mechanics you already have that generate equivalent outputs and see if you can steal or modify them. Let me give you an example: Haggling. The problem with having a Haggle skill is that it would come into play during a shopping scene, and the game typically doesn't have shopping scenes. The default approach is to mark off some money and add items to your sheet, without naming the shopkeeper or describing his storefront at all, let alone assigning him motivations. So a Haggling mechanic that asks us to write up stats for each shopkeeper is a non-starter. The purpose of Haggling is to save your character some money, and that's just not worth playing as a scene. Fortunately, your game probably already has a mechanic for getting money, like Perform, or Profession. If you have any mechanic at all for earning money during downtime, then Haggling is good to go. You just let people have Profession: Haggler. So let me throw out a bunch of systems I would want to see in a fantasy game.

• Wheeling and Dealing. I should be able to make money during downtime in an abstract way by engaging in commerce. If I'm buying gear, we assume I'm negotiating discounts. If I'm not buying anything, then I'm just making money buying and re-selling something.
• Currying Favor. Let's say you have a mechanic for running a business. You have some numerical stat you can put on a business to describe how profitable it is and how much time you invest. Periodically, a problem arises and you have to go kill someone to keep your business running. There's no reason "keeping the elf-king happy" couldn't just be a business. As long as you put the time in at his court, you get a steady flow of elven magic items and artwork. Periodically the king asks you to go kill a dragon, and if you don't do it your "profits" are reduced. repeated failure to give a shit about his requests leads to your business "closing."
• Collecting Ransom. If you want to cut down on bloodshed, you want your characters to take hostages. Hostages are treasure, and are handled however your game handles treasure. The goblin chief you captured could have a fixed gold value based on his character level or an arbitrary one based on his rank and personality. Either way, the players get collect X gold worth of shit from the goblin treasure list. If you want you could add things like "stop raiding the outlying farms" as a possible purchase.
• Recruitment. It might be hard for PCs to change the behavior of established characters, but you can let them go wild defining the behavior of people they haven't met yet. Go ahead and just say it's DC 15 to get laid in a bar, and DC 20 to get a boyfriend with a week of effort in a city. Introducing a new character who is in love with you doesn't step on people's toes the way seducing an existing character would.
• Heck, go ahead and have a rape simulator. A lot of iconic villains are basically rapists. Vampires, Faeries, Evil Enchanters, and Succubi all want to break your will, and they generally want to do it in combat. There's nothing wrong with letting weapons stack with words as long as we're explicitly in the realm of magic rapists.

[Lokathor]

Thinking about this, I don't think "eliminate fiat entirely" is necessarily a possible or useful thing. It's been pointed out that if we let MC set initial attitudes and personality traits, then they can basically fudge the outcome to whatever they want. That's true. It's also true about the existing combat system - MC can decide that the bag of 50 silver is guarded by a half-dozen Solars, and he can decide what tactics, backup plans, preparations, and items they have.

This is important to hang on to.

The combat system has rules for general combat and then goes on and on about special situations and special abilities and terrain and lighting and all sorts of things. Then the actual placement of monsters, terrain, lighting, and all that is fiat. No one gets upset that the MC determines monsters and terrain, so you can't very much get upset that the MC also determines part of the social mini-games.

[Orion]

You can keep 3E-style Diplomacy if you strongly limit its effects. Say it only allows you to improve reaction one step. Nobody cares if the Bard can reliably talk the orc raiders into a brief parlay. Nobody cares if he can extract help from people who were already friendly. You can straight let Diplomacy go off the RNG and not care, as long as other mechanics do the heavy social lifting. You could even use it to model building long-term positive relationships. The Elf King starts as Unfriendly and you talk him up to Indifferent. After you go up a level, let a month go by, or do a major quest, you can roll again to bump him to Friendly.

[PhoneLobster]

This is my understanding of what is being said there:

1. There are ways in which MTP is a great social resolution system

He argued specifically that a partial replacement of MTP that only replaced MTP in areas where MTP failed wasn't good enough unless it also extended to areas MTP was good at, then replaced it there, and did a better job.

That is batshit. If I present a partial replacement of MTP that replaces only areas where MTP has severe failings. And MTP DOES fall down severally on combat integrated social actions that eliminate enemies and create of allies, then it is a superior system.

If the ONLY social mechanic I had presented was the one minor action that integrates a simple social action for reducing alarm in the combat system I would have improved on MTP's failings... and failed Frank's insane test because it didn't also do something MTP did well better.

It's a fundamentally flawed test. Replacing the failings of MTP and deliberately NOT interfereing with the success of MTP is what he is fucking complaining about He actually hates my use of a strict MTP/formal division and is creating a deeply flawed argument to try and attack the basic concept of partitioning formalized rules while keeping MTP for the rest!

[Saxony]

How about I put forth an idea here. All social interaction in an RPG should be entirely magical tea party, because no one really understands sociology and certainly the players of RPGs do not. Is there merit to that claim, or a watered down version of it?

No.

No.

Alright fair enough.

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.

I don't really see the flow of logic here.

You're going to have to back up and tell me your failure point. Because it really seems pretty obvious. Nevertheless, I guess I can break that down a bit for you...

Thanks Frank. That makes more sense. I guess your supporting arguments were a bit long in trying to be explanatory, but I guess I agree with your conclusion.

[Hicks]

talozin, my last name is Hicks. I was inspired to use my last name because Frank's name is actually Frank Trollman. Me, Frank, and Orion all use our real names.

To Ice9, in D&D a wizard of 5th level or higher don't give a fuck about some thugs encircling another thug on a chair. The only reason the wizard hasn't killed all of them in a single breath is because they are individually and collectively not a threat or he wishes to pandering to his own sense of morality. The only way to humble a wizard is if he is summoned to a court of a priest king or wizard king because his and their skills cancel out. Then it is a function of how much leverage can be wielded against the ruler's reaction.

But all that is immaterial. We are not talking about D&D specifically, but of an abstract system that has yet to be specified. I propose that a random reaction roll is used to set NPC dispositions, which can be altered with leverage and a successful skill check.

[Dean]

Issues

Character can't get too good

Technically yes, but generally wrong. Obviously if character can at-will dominate equal level opposition they are too good but that's a more general balance concern and not specific to the social game. If characters can on average "Charm" equal level opposition, "Suggest" things to low level opposition, and "Dominate" very low level opposition then you're fine.

It's perfectly fine for every 10th level adventurer to be able to diplomacy any beat farmer they meet out of their life fortunes because no one cares and they could take it anyway if they wanted. What matters is how they can affect 10th level opposition.

Players don't like losing control

THIS is true and important. The only real thing you are allowed to do in a tabletop rpg is make your character's choices and other people making them for you is not ok. The social mini-game's effects need to be immediate and current to be acceptable. I'm fine with a horse merchant swindling me out of 50 gold, or even my horse but I am NOT ok with being diplomacied into BECOMING a horse merchant. I don't want to play that game so I'm not going to do it. Like damage or magical status effects Diplomacy powers need to go off NOW, effect you NOW, and then be done. Whatever effects people have on you can't include getting to play your character for you.

This means dominate or quest abilities can't really happen but that's fine. Dominate is factually better than the ability to instant-kill someone so you REALLY should only be able to do it on drastically lower level opposition. This means the only time players could get dominated would be as some sort of bullshit unfair encounter the DM railroaded you into to make you some DMPC Wize Wizard's bitch. But that DM would be an asshole so you quitting his game early is actually a feature not a bug.

No one likes it when the results are morally hideous

No, morally hideous is fine what's not ok is when the results are absurd. I'm fine with the system allowing you to punch people (even puppies and princesses) until they give you what you want. The problem comes in assuming that everyone who gives you what you want is your friend. This can be fixed with some simple keyword based social rules. For instance "If you intentionally deal damage to a character they become your Enemy" add in that the "Enemy" tag has a few negative effects on various aspects of the social game and then it becomes clear that if you punch the witness into giving you info it may work but he won't like you. And if you punch the princess into giving you lay-down-kisses it may work but she won't like you. It's not our job to write rules that police people's intentions, that's absurd. When you write combat rules that allow stabbing you've allowed the stabbing of pregnant women in your game YOU MONSTER. Except... you haven't and if someone stabs a pregnant woman in a game that is that single crazy persons fault and not whoever wrote the weapon table.

So to clarify we don't need to make the rules moral, just sensible. This means stabbing people shouldn't make them like you, but I'm perfectly fine with it making them do what you say. Cause that's sensible.

[violence in the media]

It's perfectly fine for every 10th level adventurer to be able to diplomacy any beat farmer they meet out of their life fortunes because no one cares and they could take it anyway if they wanted. What matters is how they can affect 10th level opposition.

I feel that it needs pointing out that a lot of players that will happily Diplomacy an NPC into giving them every last possession will balk at killing the NPC to achieve the same end result.

The first situation has no perceived cost or consequences that can't be papered over with some social-darwinist bullshit. The second situation results in potential in-game consequences--as well as the hairy eyeball from all the other P/Cs that just watched you stab a dude for a sack of turnips.

[hogarth]

No one likes it when the results are morally hideous

No, morally hideous is fine what's not ok is when the results are absurd.

Yup.

If I'm playing James Bond in the James Bond RPG, then I don't really have a problem with wrestling with a female bad guy turning into a seduction. And if I'm playing Bugs Bunny in the Toon RPG, then I don't have a problem with fast-talking Elmer Fudd into marrying me in a fraudulent, inter-species, transvestite wedding ceremony.

But if James Bond is dressing up like a woman and marrying Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny is smacking aroud women and then fucking them, something is wrong with the incentives in your game.

[talozin]

talozin, my last name is Hicks. I was inspired to use my last name because Frank's name is actually Frank Trollman. Me, Frank, and Orion all use our real names.

That was a joke playing off the fact that one of the central characters in Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber" is basically as you have described your younger brother, and his own older brother is named "Bleys". I admit that as jokes go, this one was kind of obscure, and by kind of I mean "very."

[Desdan_Mervolam]

If I'm playing James Bond in the James Bond RPG, then I don't really have a problem with wrestling with a female bad guy turning into a seduction. And if I'm playing Bugs Bunny in the Toon RPG, then I don't have a problem with fast-talking Elmer Fudd into marrying me in a fraudulent, inter-species, transvestite wedding ceremony.

But if James Bond is dressing up like a woman and marrying Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny is smacking aroud women and then fucking them, something is wrong with the incentives in your game.

If your player is struggling with an opponent of their preferred sex and they request a mechanic to turn it into sex, that's one thing and something that is entirely between you and your player. If you're playing a morally repugnant character (And everyone involved knows this and signed off on it ahead of time) you should be able to perform morally repugnant actions (Perhaps with some sort of gloss-over filter so people don't have to listen to your character's rough-sex rape adventures because really. Playing a villain can be fun but it's not an excuse to be a dick in real life)

If the rules say that the best way to get that person to have sexytimes with you is to smack them around until they no longer are in a position to oppose your will, the fact that this is a problem shouldn't have to be said

[hogarth]

If the rules say that the best way to get that person to have sexytimes with you is to smack them around until they no longer are in a position to oppose your will, the fact that this is a problem shouldn't have to be said

I certainly agree that it's a problem unless you're playing "Bizarro S&M Universe RPG".

[Dean]

If the rules say that the best way to get that person to have sexytimes with you is to smack them around until they no longer are in a position to oppose your will, the fact that this is a problem shouldn't have to be said

It does have to be said, and it is then wrong. You're conflating several subjects and issues into an emotional response and muddling your ability to view them clearly. Let's break this up into the separate relevant pieces of information that you're commenting on.

We want rules to seduce people
Totally true, I actually have an interest in playing debonair swashbuckler characters and to me it would be a valuable part of a robust social system for my character to show up to a joust, wink at the princess, and have the DM factually tell me that by the rules she's totally into it.

We want rules to intimidate people
Also true. I'm interested in being Batman and making people so afeared of me they do what I want. I'm interested in being able to dangle criminals off of ledges and crush impressive objects in my hand to make people realize they do see things my way after all.

People who want to describe having character sex at the RPG table are violating norms.
True but I genuinely don't give a fuck because we are talking about fictional people who I'm not playing with. It just creates a sense of discomfort unrelated to the actual matter at hand of creating good rules.

People who want to describe their characters raping others at the RPG table are violating mores.
Also true and again I genuinely don't give a fuck. If a character chose to perform and then started describing a rape in one of my DnD games I would motherfucking ragequit but I don't care about hypothetical people using valuable rules I want in ways I don't like. The most resource effective way to mechanically seduce a princess in DnD RIGHT NOW is to cast "Dominate" on her because that shit just works that way all day. How many times has that happened at your table? None because you don't play with psychopaths and if it happened you'd fucking quit. The only game mechanical way to get blowjobs from people in DnD is Dominate (cause diplomacy sure doesn't mention that!) and yet somehow not every game has devolved into a mind-control rape simulator. I'm fine with people using sensible rules I write for horrible things because I don't get to decide how hypothetical people act.

The Best Way
Your use of the "The Best Way" is loaded and I don't think you realize it. If you can schmooze your way into making people like but it's easier to beat people into liking you then is that a problem? Because beating people might be faster and more reliable and still not necessarily be The Best Way. The Best Way for PC's to interact with any magic mechant would be murder or domination but I have never seen that while I have seen lots of haggling (which is MTP in DnD I know). What I'm saying is just because murdering the merchant gets you gear for less money, which is supposedly what you wanted, it doesn't mean that's the best way. I think it is sensible for the social game to allow lesser or slower rewards than a brute force combat solution (haggle being less efficient than murder and seduction being less efficient than rape) because it has lower risks. If you swindle a merchant into losing some money you get some of his magic items and there are no consequences. If you murder him you get all his magic items but the consequences are plausibly much higher.

This makes the social game the lower risk, lower reward brother to the combat game. Which I want. The only place where this breaks down as Violence In The Media makes reference too is a situation where Man A can both TOTALLY swindle and TOTALLY murder Man B. Where man B has no recourse to negotiating or taking his things back by force. This is where you could have characters walking into enemy kingdoms and just socializing literally everything the King has into their own pockets. And THAT IS FINE. Seriously. If a PC is so much higher level than that King that he can both totally social-dominate him AND can kill the King and all the forces he can bring to bear then I don't fucking care about what just happened. That is the equivalent to Cthulhu showing up in your living room and demanding ALL OF YOUR CEREAL! You give it to him. It doesn't matter that PC's can beat up lower level opposition with no challenge in either the social or the combat game what matters is that they can appropriately deal with equal level opposition.

[MGuy]

The Best Way
Your use of the "The Best Way" is loaded and I don't think you realize it.

I think you're neglecting to remember that via PLs system talking to someone in a friendly manner is almost exactly the same as stabbing them. The only thing is that a friendly wink has end state: Charmed and stabbing them has end state: dead. That's the thing and that has very bad implications. That means while your allies are curb stomping a target you just have to give them a friendly wink when they are about to die and they are your friend. That means when you beat, burn, and blow up a target, as long as you finish them off with a friendly wink, all is forgiven and they are your friend. This isn't something that's a result of someone being 'higher level' than someone else. That's just what people can do in the system in general. It is not a matter of whether someone can make a rape simulator out of it. It's that it handles just about every social encounter as one since punching someone in the face advances negotiations further than a well timed joke.

[Dean]

I'm not defending PL's system. I think it creates results which are absurd which is what I'm saying is unacceptable. I'm saying that the reason it is unacceptable IS because it's results are absurd and not because they are morally reprehensible. I have no problem with rules that allow morally reprehensible behavior as long as the rules themselves have explicable inputs and outputs.

[dkfather]

I'm not defending PL's system. I think it creates results which are absurd which is what I'm saying is unacceptable. I'm saying that the reason it is unacceptable IS because it's results are absurd and not because they are morally reprehensible. I have no problem with rules that allow morally reprehensible behavior as long as the rules themselves have explicable inputs and outputs.

This is a perfectly reasonable requirement for a game. It is, in fact, a tenant of modernism. For example:

Reasonable Input >>> [Black Box] >>> Reasonable Output

For example: Order >>> [Black Box] >>> Obeys Order

I am a colonel. >>I use leadership to give an order to a private in a game>> [The private has no "armor" against my order, they are not a grizzled old sergeant who will question my order even as they pretend to obey, nor do they have a warning about fake colonels on the loose] >> they do what I say.

The main issue is predictability in the real world. If I give an order to a private, and he decides to rectally insert a squirrel in response, the response makes no sense to the request.

In the good old days there was no system. A game master tugged on the black box using common sense. No squirrels because the private obeyed the fake colonel in most circumstances.

[MGuy]

While I think that things like Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate are reliant upon a lot of MTP to work I don't think that the game benefits from just leaving a blank space in place of a framework.