wrote:Well basically. Yeah, I'd rather just do things with DM adjudication so they make sense, instead of a half-assed system that makes the story into shit.
The thing with social stuff is there are so many factors that need to be considered, that it's something that really, only a human can do.
You could say the same thing about combat.
wrote:In the end everything is DM arbitrary. If the DM doesn't want you to kill something, he just pumps up the numbers sufficiently so you can't.
If that argument holds any water then lets just get rid of rules altogether.
wrote:Because doing that will draw the town guard. Haggling with him won't.
But under your system haggling is by definition worthless. So why do it?
A social attack won't bring the town guard either. But it might well cost resources and risk in the form of retaliation from the shop keeper, and if he defeats you he does what he wants with you. Which probably means walking out with a lot of over priced crap you didn't really want.
wrote:Diplomacy on the other hand is not overtly offensive.
It isn't? When the Devil Seductress bats her eyelids and Barbarian Bob sways and giggles and says "Hey guys, why don't we do what the pretty lady says?" From the perspective of his allies that's pretty damn offensive.
And I'd be just as happy to see them draw swords as see them retaliate with threats and lies.
Social combat should be on that level, and if you want to be nice and not use real meaty offensive, and risky, social attacks you just wing it on crappy fairy tea party and no ones PCs or NPCs ever do anything they don't want to.
wrote:like an intimidate ability where you hold a sword to a guy's neck and he does what you say... But these are clearly attacks and will be treated as such by the people in game. And thus I don't' consider them social abilities.
What if the weapon is concealed?
What if he was lying about there being a weapon at all?
What if he isn't even pretending there is a weapon and is just being intimidating?
What if he is so hot dang good he glares at you in silence until you cower in obedient fear?
How is that not obviously an attack?
And how is it hard to envisage being entirely defeated by that fear attack as opposed to agreeing to give him your second favourite wrist watch, and then having to do MORE and different fear attacks for every other conceivable goal under the sun?
wrote:You may arrange a deal you otherwise wouldn't have been able to, or gain access to the castle by tricking a guard, or what not, but it's not going to suddenly kill a big monster for you.
In other words you are suggesting a system for delivering rewards that are nothing but meaningless fluff events that probably would happen anyway.
At that point no system IS the correct answer because its a system about nothing.
Meanwhile I DO want a social system that, yes, even could defeat a big monster for you.
How many times does some hero talk to the big cunning dragon/cyclops/whatevermagogiclocks and out cunning it and trick it into defeat?
Social combat with social defeat at the hands of a Lair archetype delivers that.
Your suggestion delivers agonizing tea party with the GM until you say or do whatever meets his momentary fleeting whims. Or more likely doesn't even come close to delivering at all.
wrote:But that's fucking stupid. It means that anytime you talk to someone that's an offensive action, or could be perceived as such. How do people know if you're talking and using a social attack or if you're just talking for the sake of talking? I mean seriously, where do you draw the line?
How do people know if you are waving a sword around or just missing really badly with a combat attack?
How do people know the wizard just failed to summon fiery death instead of putting on a harmless fire works show?
How does someone tell the difference between you actually HITTING with a sword and driving it through that guys neck compared to pulling the whole caught it in your armpit comedy routine?
Just chatting with the GM's characters is resolved by, get this, just chatting with the GM. Social Combat and offensive actions are distinct as obvious potent threatening attempts at coercion and deceit.
Meanwhile for meta-game purposes are pulled out by players and GMs whenever "whatever the controlling player feels like" just plain isn't good enough.
wrote:In your world, people would just walk around with earplugs all the damn time, because it makes them immune to social attacks.
In my world they had better be in a sensory deprivation tank, as social attacks are sufficiently abstract and diverse as to conceivably attack any awareness.
Much as wearing metal plates doesn't make you immune to combat.
Also inhibiting awareness might reasonably make you WEAKER against some social attacks, and certainly limit your own. AND inhibits engaging in non offensive casual social encounters.
wrote:Seduction is fine, that's something that should be handled in a social system. But convincing the king to hand over his kingdom definitely shouldn't.
I believe it usually goes a bit like...
"Please Conan, stay here and marry me, you can have my kingdom and become a King, ruling over my nation and my body!"
"No, I'm so damn cool I'm off to build my OWN kingdom, a bigger better one, with my teeth. Hot mostly naked princesses/queens/empresses/high priestesses offer me small change kingdoms all the time, maybe I'll come back some day and pick it up with the others. Oh yeah, and you're chucked."
And that's just an ACCIDENTAL fluffy by-product at the end of the adventure because at some point earlier on he used his social attacks on her to get her untie him and toss him a sword off the weapons rack just before the big final show down.
wrote:My system doesn't say you can't take the kingdom necessarily, it just says that it's harder than asking to borrow a gold coin for a meal.
Notably in combination with your risk free, single roll, at least one attempt, its not an attack, scenario that means the kingdom seriously changes hands something like once every twenty times someone says "hello" to the king. Because it encourages the founding of the tradition that the proper greeting to the king (if you can even recognise his ever changing face) is "Hello, can I be King for the next thirty minutes?"
wrote:Because your system says that if that happens that you basically consider it like she just drew a gun on you and tried to kill you. Seriously man... wtf? Does that make any sense to you at all?
Its a game of fiction with conventions that match fiction and not reality.
In reality you do not respond to a guy who waves his fingers at you and screams out "lightning attack" but looks disappointed when it fails to materialize by drawing your guns. But in these games maybe you DO draw guns, heck, maybe you DO THE SAME THING BACK, only maybe your lightning will go off right.
See in story telling about the nasty seductress Black Widow archetype its not about some nice girl you meet in a bar kinda hinting she likes you, but you think she's kind of ugly.
Its about the EVIL black widow leaning in too close to Bob the Barbarian and Bob going all dreamy eyed and Sam the dependable effeminate boy Rogue side kick (who is really the pretty princess Samantha in disguise) screaming out "No Bob, resist, its all lies, remember the princess, Bob, NOOOOOOOOO!"
Possibly with a "*sob* I'm going to kill you Black Widow! AAAAARGH!"
wrote:But here's the thing. The goal of a sword swing is generally simple.
No it isn't.
Are you swinging to strike with the flat or pierce with the point?
Are you attacking a vital organ? Which one?
Are you trying to stun or cripple your opponent, or go in for the kill?
Are you swinging to smash bones and dent armour, cut straight through it, or going for the exposed gap of flesh?
There are like A MILLION different goals when you try to hack someone up with a sword.
And one single "sword attack" that fails to differentiate between them is often considered more than appropriate coverage.
wrote:In your system, all social attacks have one goal. Making the guy into a mindless slave. Well for one, socially, that's incredibly difficult, and second it doesn't represent the majority of social actions people want to take.
Your goal is always the goal of getting your target to do something they wouldn't.
Why try and envisage an impossible to deliver system which differentiates between all the countless different things they might not want to do and just having a simple DOABLE system which says, hey, you use your social skills to put them in a state where you can make them do what they wouldn't IN GENERAL.
Seriously, why should your liar attacks be a great mess of different situational bullshit out of the GMs ass arbitrary fairy party junk when instead they can be abstract attacks that have the goal of making the target believe ALL your lies.
Your goal is always to weave a fabric of lies that makes them do whatever you want to, so why the hell would you instead try to simulate that with all billion different individual specific lies?
wrote:Notice how combat rules have disarm, sunder, trip, etc. When you happen to be trying something other than just killing the target. Well, social rules need that stuff too.
So... social combat should have generic abstracted debuff actions?
That can easily work in a social combat system with the ultimate goal of defeat EXACTLY like it works in regular combat with the ultimate goal of defeat.
Meanwhile its just more arbitrary junk in a system were EVERY social action is a unique subjective contextual action.
wrote:diplomats are considered special ops strike forces.
Wait.
Diplomats ARE considered an alternative to armed conflict.
So er. Yeah?
wrote:You mean the abstraction like D&D does? where everyone has a fixed DC and you make them friendly no matter what. Oh yeah, that really worked well. I think I'd rather just have no system at all.
Abstraction like D&D COMBAT, not its asstastic inconsistent skill system which is a total hodge podge of things that explicitly don't matter and things which are just plain messed up.
People have different abstracted defences based on level archetype and actions, just like combat. It works for physical combat and its the exact same rubric.
wrote:Seriously, social systems with a bunch of abstraction are a whole a big bucket of fail.
No, social systems which try to pin down modifiers for every conceivable individual social action AND goal are fail buckets.
I mean where the hell do you even start?
If every single context is uniquely different then how the hell can my character even have a social archetype or role?
Alternately if its "mostly" fairy tea party then... which bit isn't? How does it mesh? Where do you even start with that?