Social BS

[Grek]

Once again a meaningless semantics argument.

Then stop bringing it up as if "Opt In" vs "Opt Out" was a meaningful distinction.

And opting out means leaving the room or putting wax in your ears or making the diplomancer shut up.

only two available options.

Can you even count, you illiterate shitstain? That's three options, plus "Agree to listen". Four. Not two. Your options when dealing with a conman are as follows in this system:
1. Listen to them and trust that your willpower is strong enough to resist any attempts at trickery.
2. Listen to them, but only for a little while so they can't trick you too badly.
3. Cover your ears. Do not listen to the conman at all. It's just not worth it.
4. STAB HIM!!! ARGLEBRAGLEMURDERFUCK!!!1!!

Guess what? Most normal people are not going to pick number 4.

How do you think they will respond to a system where the only way you can assure a target will stand still and listen to your "opt out" mind control for long enough for it to work major effects on them is to physically beat them up so you can physically restrain them first?

Alternatively you could convince them to listen to you using normal social courtesies, such as:
-Segue into diplomancing during an unrelated conversation.
-Do something that provokes questions, then diplomance people who ask you about it.
-Be an expert on some subject. Diplomance people who seek your advice.
-Give a speech to a large crowd. Someone is bound to listen!
-Tell people that anyone who listens to the sermon gets pancakes.
-Find a merchant. Talk to them during the sale.

But no, if you're PhoneLobster the first thing that comes to mind when talking to someone else is to beat the shit out of them or chaining them in a cellar.

[PhoneLobster]

Then stop bringing it up as if "Opt In" vs "Opt Out" was a meaningful distinction.

You total ass hat. You were the one who did that just one fucking post ago to attempt to dismiss the criticisms I had of lame Opt In social systems.

The only reason both opt in and opt out are now being talked about at all are because YOU fucking had a little melt down about differentiating them.

Four. Not two. Your options when dealing with a conman are as follows in this system:

Those differentiations are largely not meaningful. You still have the choice between opting for no reason to be subject to opposing mental influence OR you use some level of outright physical opposition to just not let talking happen. (and in the process flush your entire social rules set down the toilet and never use it again)

What you actually thought leaving, deafening yourself or stabbing the talker were meaningful differences? ALL of them are "opt out of the social mechanics ever applying in an actual game".

And while some or even all of them might be acceptable responses to social interaction in a functional system, they are not acceptable outcomes when they Voltron together to form "No one ever uses these social mechanics because everyone always opts out because there is no fucking reason to opt in".

Alternatively you could convince them to listen to you using normal social courtesies, such as:

No you fucking can't. You drew a line in the sand and said that if character step over that line and listen to talking then they are subject to potential influence in return for no benefits and it gets worse the longer they voluntarily and for no reason stay on the wrong side of it.

You CANNOT within that system have "convince people to step onto the other side of the voluntary surrender line" because in order for it to function at all they already have to be on the other side of the fucking voluntary surrender line.

To re-iterate because you appear to be slow.

When people can just decide to be voluntarily immune to SOCIAL ACTIONS, you cannot use a SOCIAL ACTION on them to change their mind about that BECAUSE THEY ARE IMMUNE TO IT.

You don't get much more of a simple interaction as that.

So while the situations that force people to listen are marginally diverse they are all definitional physical by nature. The most flattering option available to you is probably "Lock them in a room", but involuntary physical imprisonment isn't precisely all that flattering.

I suppose you could do that thing from the Tick where he grabs Arthur forcibly by the skull then yells at his face about how he believes in him.

You could maybe do that.

[Grek]

The idea here is that most talking ingame is handled by declaration. You say "My character says..." followed by whatever you want them to say and then your character says it, with no other mechanics involved. Other characters react to your words based on their content, as judged by the player playing them. And then, on top of that very basic RP framework, you put in character abilities like the ones listed above that enforce results in cases were people are likely to disagree about what a character would do - like when there's deception involved and one player thinks a character should fall for it an another player doesn't.

Oh, I get it. PhoneLobster thinks that a list of potential diplomancer powers is and has to be the entirety of the social system and that if you include any mechanics at all for talking to people, they have to be an exhaustive list of things your character can do socially even though they haven't been presented as such ever. And also that if you have diplomancer powers, it is impossible to say anything without using such a power and that all communication is merely flavour text for social combat. No, wait. I don't get it. That's retarded and I feel dumber for having listened to it. It's as if you don't understand how TTRPGs work at all.

E: It is now clear to me. Phonelobster took the "Befuddling Tirade" diplomancy power and has forgotten how communicate without making it an ego-based social combat powerstruggle clusterfuck. So I'm going to use my social perfect defense: Ignore Button.

[PhoneLobster]

Oh, I get it. PhoneLobster thinks that a list of potential diplomancer powers is and has to be the entirety of the social system

Oddly, ok, not oddly, you are wrong yet again. After slowly stumbling along the well worn path of poorly conceived social mechanics your new insertion of informal non-binding fairy tea party as an additional layer before formal social actions actually has a direct and almost identical parallel in my own solutions to social mechanics. It is, simply good to have an entirely informal chat layer.

But you DO need to specify that such a layer exists and that is new material for your proposal. Especially in the context of this discussion which revolves around the transition points between different mechanics.

And there is still a very important key difference.

You need a reason to participate in the formal layer. Either it has to be mandatory or there have to be potential rewarding motivations to participate in it for all parties.

And without those reasons, and with the formal layer STILL being purely opt in/out it may as well not exist and your social system begins and ENDS with non-binding fairy tea party amateur drama time.

Inserting the informal nonbinding amateur drama hour only upgrades you from "no one will ever be permitted to open their mouth again" to "no one will ever be permitted to attempt one of your formal social actions". It isn't a big step, it isn't an adequate step and it doesn't deal with the basic criticism of "opt in for no reason" systems being worthless because everyone will just opt out of them.

It sure as hell doesn't deal with your attempt to use social interactions as a means of forcing people to let you use social interactions on them because non-binding amateur drama hour social interactions definitively cannot do that and if it gains separate formal powers to do so that would once again be the implementation of binding formal pre-negotiation negotiation mechanics along the lines of Frank's reaction mechanics.

[Omegonthesane]

While any attempt to get honesty out of PhoneLobster is automatically fruitless, I felt this nugget of special had to be flagged.

You need a reason to participate in the formal layer. Either it has to be mandatory or there have to be potential rewarding motivations to participate in it for all parties.

Any time the other guy spends casting Diplomancy actions is time you can spend casting your own. Thus there is automatically a benefit to not instantly "opting out" if you didn't completely dump Diplomancy.

[PhoneLobster]

Any time the other guy spends casting Diplomancy actions is time you can spend casting your own.

I use basically that sort of reciprocal risk in my own social mechanics and think it's a clear and basic balance point for risk and reward in the same way it is in physical combat.

But.

It hasn't appeared in Grek's proposal, and while I don't think his proposal is complete or well thought out enough for that to be absolutely deliberate it certainly doesn't seem to gel with the trend of his arguments.

And remember that his proposal at it's core is meant to use variable time costs to make the rewards of social actions palatable to people who think they are too good and want to sword people in the face for trying to use them.

If reciprocal risk is being used to make social encounters worth voluntarily entering there is no longer any raison d'etre for Greks proposal. All it becomes is a now entirely needless prenegotiation for stakes (with low stakes/complete opt out trumping) hurdle that still risks dropping the entire set of social mechanics off the bottom of it's bidding war and leaving it there.

[Omegonthesane]

While the plural of anecdote is not data, I feel I should note that the Siren Problem was basically not a thing that happened during intrigues in any of my multiple SIFRP campaigns.

The only time we had someone Switch to Combat was the result of us losing a social combat to convince the leader of one of the various Teams Evil to not invade Westeros.

[Kaelik]

While any attempt to get honesty out of PhoneLobster is automatically fruitless, I felt this nugget of special had to be flagged.

You need a reason to participate in the formal layer. Either it has to be mandatory or there have to be potential rewarding motivations to participate in it for all parties.

Any time the other guy spends casting Diplomancy actions is time you can spend casting your own. Thus there is automatically a benefit to not instantly "opting out" if you didn't completely dump Diplomancy.

What the fuck? No. See, if you haven't completely dumped diplomacy, you have like a 2% of not becoming the sex slave to someone who maxed it. So you would never actually enter the formal layer.

[Omegonthesane]

While any attempt to get honesty out of PhoneLobster is automatically fruitless, I felt this nugget of special had to be flagged.

You need a reason to participate in the formal layer. Either it has to be mandatory or there have to be potential rewarding motivations to participate in it for all parties.

Any time the other guy spends casting Diplomancy actions is time you can spend casting your own. Thus there is automatically a benefit to not instantly "opting out" if you didn't completely dump Diplomancy.

What the fuck? No. See, if you haven't completely dumped diplomacy, you have like a 2% of not becoming the sex slave to someone who maxed it. So you would never actually enter the formal layer.

That's an extreme claim backed by unstated assumptions. I could equally say that if your odds of not becoming the other guy's sex slave in a level appropriate Diplomancy encounter fall below the Stygian depths of 75% then you've completely dumped Diplomancy, and it'd have just as much weight as your exact objection of "if you invest less than the absolute maximum that your current character level allows into Diplomancy then you will autolose practically every Diplomancy encounter".

If reciprocal risk is being used to make social encounters worth voluntarily entering there is no longer any raison d'etre for Greks proposal. All it becomes is a now entirely needless prenegotiation for stakes (with low stakes/complete opt out trumping) hurdle that still risks dropping the entire set of social mechanics off the bottom of it's bidding war and leaving it there.

Would you say that the act of preparing Teleport or Dimension Door every day with the intent of using it to escape combat means that combat with you risks dropping the entire set of combat mechanics off the bottom of the bidding war and leaving it there?

That's not a rhetorical question, it seems to me to be a like for like comparison of being able to flee an encounter without permanent cost.

[Username17]

Discussing things in abstract terms is often useful, but in this case I don't think it is. Let's go to something more concrete: Exalted.

Exalted has a social conflict system which can (if allowed to go on long enough) deliver end states and which will (if used at all) give lasting penalties to the losers which carry on to subsequent action scenes. Also, anyone can end the social conflict at any time by drawing their sword and rolling combat initiative.

Obviously what happens in that game is that any time characters are confronted with enemies that are prettier than they are (in Exalted, the primary numeric rating of how good you are in social conflict is bust size), they immediately escalate to sword combat. And since either side can do this, social conflict pretty much never happens because if you aren't incentivized to skip that shit and go straight to the face stabbing, your opponents are.

There are of course lots of ways to make the game not be like that (minimum numbers of social rounds, penalties for escalating to combat, having negotiations be neutral or positive in all cases, etc.), but you absolutely definitely want your social system to not be like that.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Would you say that the act of preparing Teleport or Dimension Door every day with the intent of using it to escape combat means that combat with you risks dropping the entire set of combat mechanics off the bottom of the bidding war and leaving it there?

No. I wouldn't.

It could escalate to that point if the players really pushed it but it is incredibly unlikely. In anything other than a situation of outright rebellion against the rule set there are certain key differences between physical combat and social encounters under Grek's proposal that make all the difference.

1) You cannot just ignore physical combat, but it is explicitly one of the trumping opt outs that you can just ignore social actions.
2) You cannot trump Physical Combat with Social Actions, but you can trump social actions with physical combat.
3) Physical Combat has no time requirements tied to rewards, even if it is cut short you may get to achieve major things in the time before it is cut short. Not only is this not the case for Grek's social actions, you explicitly don't even get the short time if the targets don't want you to.

Fleeing or avoiding social encounters, turning them into combat encounters and other reactions that span other important minigames and mechanics are certainly something any good RPG should have. And when your reach the point that fleeing a social encounter and fleeing a combat encounter are comparable you are probably at a good place.

But Grek's proposal is not at that place.

[Krusk]

Disclaimer: I'm not Frank.

Whatever, so long as you've got ideas.

Super Dickery.

Not sure I'm clear? Because superman can beat people up, it is hard to convince him not to because (Reasons)?

Some diplomancy systems have this flaw where high-level people are just hard to persuade fullstop. So when Lois Lane offers Supes a blowjob, he replies with "NO! SUCK A DICK!" Social rank doesn't fix that (and in fact introduces more problems).

So I understand the problem I think.

But lets say superman has +20 punching, and +0 talking. Lois rolls up and says "Hey its blowjob time". He says "I get awesome blow jobs constantly, who cares" Representing it being a thing he doesn't even want. She rolls up and says "Oh but I have +0 punching and +20 talking" and makes some checks that are pretty much guaranteed to succeed. Suddenly he is thinking "man, her blowjobs are probably the best, I should get one".

No soup for Superman.

Not sure how this is bad? Superman helps dudes all the time. If you give him free soup he continues helping you. If you don't give him free soup he still helps you just as much. This is because superman likes helping dudes.

That's exactly the problem. A diplomancy system is supposed to simulate real social reactions. People IRL are often nice to others without expecting future reciprocity, because it makes them feel good about themselves for reasons. If characters' simulated feeeeeeelings end up reflecting raw mathematical expected utility in $$, other simulated NPCs end up being dicks to Supes. While in real life, people are generally nice to someone who helps their kitten's grandmother off a tree just because.

I'm trying to explain why this isn't a problem and just outlined it for myself...

Superman needs nothing from someone to help them, but the player isn't superman. The player wants to roleplay someone who doesn't need rewards, and the player needs rewards to encourage them to emulate that, just like a punching player needs rewards for roleplaying punching, even when he himself is not a puncher.

I'll trade you a paper airplane.

This seems like it would fall into the "You get points for doing something someone wants for them" clause of the hypothetical rules. Superman presumably doesn't want a carrot.

Suppose you're Superman, you want a carrot, and you go to the farmer's market. Haggling is covered by diplomancy. So a Friday afternoon at the market goes like, "Oh hi Jack, it's 10 cp for ten carrots. Oh hi Jill, my, you're looking beautiful today, it's 7 cp for ten carrots. Oh hi, Sir Tehpwnzor McAwesome, it's the neighboring kingdom for a carrot, and I'll throw in a potato if you kill the dragon too."

Can't superman either get taken advantage of and pay the neighboring kingdom or he can get better at the social game, and not have +0 anymore.

People see rich people all the time and hike prices up.

[Orion]

I don't understand the big concern about "opt out" degenerate strategies. Is "never talk to anyone" really a valid life choice? Presumably at some point you need to ask for directions or try to buy something or hire mercs or warn the king about an upcoming invasion. If you set it up such that choosing to engage in MTP freeform socializing allows the interlocutor to declare a formal social encounter, I think opt out is not a serious problem.

[Prak]

So, it occurred to me that part of the problem with fixing the social minigame thing is that people playing characters in a game do not act like real people in social situations. In general, people will not walk away from a salesman because it's considered impolite to say "Listen, shut the fuck up," and walk away. They'll totally do it to telemarketers, of course, but that's more to do with not seeing them and the social recognition of telemarketing as terrible, and this is also why people are more willing to say it to conmen when they've realized that's what they're dealing with.

So basically, one tactic for fixing social minigames is to give people a politeness and reputation, and say "if you want to opt out of this conversation, roll against politeness," and then having such occurrences influence your rep because you were a rude dick who told the local priest to shove their wooden holy symbol up their ass. However, if it's a known conman that's trying to social you, the DC for your politeness roll is much lower, and your rep is not adversely affected just by telling them to fuck off.

Now, I fully recognize that's dumb, and am not actually suggesting it, it's just something that occurred to me.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

PhoneLobster's points make sense to me. Sure, I get players who try to talk a king into giving them their kingdom, on the off chance they roll REALLY well. But just the same, I also get the players who think themselves to be Han Solo, and to them, every problem looks like Greedo. BOTH have to be kept in check, not just one extreme or the other.

[Grek]

Krusk: You are misunderstanding all of those.

Super Dickery is about why you shouldn't make the DC to convince someone to do something depend on how strong that person it: if you do that, the strongest will always refuse requests from the weak, regardless of if the weak are asking the strong to clean sewage or accept blowjobs.

No soup for Superman is actually about if you play Superman. Or anyone else who goes around doing good deeds. If your system doesn't allow you to cash in on the gratitude of those you save, players will not like it. The whole "I helped you, so you should help me" deal is essential to a good social interaction minigame.

I'll trade you a paper airplane is about a basic inequality in haggling where one party (the side with the carrot) gets to up their price from a few cp to the destruction of a neighboring city, while the other party (superman) doesn't get to raise his price in exchange. Remember, the cost for a service isn't how much it costs the supplier to provide it, it's how much the buyer is willing to pay for it.

[schpeelah]

I'll trade you a paper airplane is about a basic inequality in haggling where one party (the side with the carrot) gets to up their price from a few cp to the destruction of a neighboring city, while the other party (superman) doesn't get to raise his price in exchange. Remember, the cost for a service isn't how much it costs the supplier to provide it, it's how much the buyer is willing to pay for it.

Not really? Frank's description is pretty clear: it's a potential failing of a system that does take into account relative effort put into the favor (thus dodging Die for Superman), such that people massively more powerful than you will repay your favors with massively larger ones - it is as easy for Superman to destroy a neighborhood as it is for you to give him a carrot.

[MGuy]

Does it matter if you can't get Superman to accept a BJ? I mean, if he doesn't already want one I really don't see a pressing need to fashion a system where lower level characters could make him want one. Him being unmovable from certain positions (IE killing people, doing bad deeds, etc) is a staple of the character. In fact, most 'good' heroes typically are as unmovable as powerful villains when it comes to convincing them to do something they don't already want to do. Usually powerful people are tricked into doing something they wouldn't normally because they think it will already help them advance whatever ideal they already got going. Only thing I'd say is that I'd probably make it tied to 'will' instead of a character's ability to break through walls though.

[Orion]

MGuy,

It depends on how comprehensive your system is. If your social mechanic really only models social coercion then it's fine for Superman to be largely immune. If it models neutral conversations as well, it's more problematic. Consider D&D Diplomacy. What the Diplomacy skill technically does is not talk someone into doing something,what it does is make friends. Every NPC theoretically already has an attitude like indifferent, friendly, or helpful, and diplomacy shifts that.

Just because the player rolls a diplomacy check doesn't mean that the targeted NPC feels pressured, or like the subject of a charm offensive, or necessarily like they are being targeted in any way. In fact, the PC applying the Diplomacy skill may not even be that self-conscious. They may be shrewd manipulators, or they may just be charming people trying to make friends.

In D&D 3.5, the big problem with Diplomacy is that the stats don't scale, so a level 5 diplomancer can talk a Balor into risking its life for him. That's a problem, but Superdickery is the opposite problem. If Diplomacy DCs scale with CR, then it's literally impossible for Superman to enjoy himself at the office christmas party. Anyone who approaches him to chat will be unable to budge him from his default indifference, so he can never make friends.

You can get around this problem by refusing to scale the DCs that hard, or by writing a setting where Superman just is a Superdick, and it's well-known that supers only socialize with other supers and have impatience or contempt for the common man. Or you can leave D&D Diplomacy out of your game, MTP making friends and good impressions, and write more limited social rules for high-pressure, coercive and manipulative encounters. As far as I know, those are the only 3 options.

[MGuy]

What was put forth was that it being difficult to convince superman to change his mind (read: get a blow job) was bad. That said, as far as making people your friend I think that there is also no problem with having Superman be hard for your every day layman to get close to. The DC being high to budge him doesn't mean he can never make friends. It means the opposite. It would be (if his diplomacy scales) 'super' easy for Superman to make you his friend, it just becomes difficult to convince him to become your friend if he doesn't already want to be.

I think the system functions fine if particularly willful people and things take excessively charismatic people to change their position. The way you're making it sound it's as if Superman can never have any want to become friends with someone.

[PhoneLobster]

The way you're making it sound it's as if Superman can never have any want to become friends with someone.

The entire "problem" on that point basically relies on some sort of system where by Superman simply can't want anything unless successfully socially coerced to do so.

As such it's a pretty stupid problem to wring hands over since any remotely sane or even achievable system lets superman want/do whatever the hell he feels like in the absence of successful social coercion.

Even then it's insane because if superman cannot decide he wants to be your friend on his own (and presumably if need be then win at social coercion to make you his friend) then how the fuck the level 1 nobody is allowed to just decide to try and make superman her friend is a complete enigma.

It's not the first time it's been trundled out, but I'm really rather amazed anyone though that slapping a superman suit on it seemed like enough lip stick to sell this particular pig.

[Grek]

The problem isn't that Lois can't convince Superman to do things Superman doesn't want to do. That's an acceptable result. The problem is that Superman is compelled by stupid rules to refuse to do things he would like to do because a lower level person asked him to and then flubbed their diplomacy check. Superman is incapable of being nice because the reaction roll rules dictate he is too high level to be friends with anyone.

[MGuy]

Please don't trot out Reaction Roll rules. Those are stupid. There's no reason Superman 'cannot' do what he wants. There isn't any reason he can't just do things for Lois on request without her having to roll for it.

[Grek]

It doesn't have to be reaction rolls. Any rules that say "If you fail at social combat, the other party does not do what you want them to." and "It is harder to win at social combat against more powerful people." has that problem, regardless of how those two conditions are implemented.

[MGuy]

So just... don't write that? Why would you? Why would you diplomance someone who already wants to do what you're rolling over? If Lois Lane wants to give Supes a BJ and he wants mentioned BJ there's no reason for her to make a roll.