The social system you use for the game shouldn't be an edge case opt-in thing. The state of the world should be an invariant with regards to how often you use the social rules rather than MTP. For whatever society you create, the system should do what the Tomes do for the D&D setting. (One consequence of this principle is that there can be no exceptions along the PC/NPC divide in the basic rules. I for one think NPCs influencing PC opinions of them runs contrary to the whole idea of tabletop roleplaying, but PCs still occupy the same niche in the world as equally statted NPCs.)
Super Dickery.
Krusk wrote: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".
And then when Supes offers to reciprocate,
she tells him to GTFO. Replacing character level with skill level doesn't help, in either case opposed diplomancy rolls mean that a more powerful character is more likely to rebuff genuine offers of nice things for no reason. If the diplo system can't handle gifts and tribute without exploding, it doesn't fucking work.
No soup for Superman.
Krusk wrote: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.
The player doesn't need roleplaying rewards, nor they roleplay an artificial thought-experiment personality which must never ever receive any rewards or benefits or anything that can be construed as such as a result of their actions. The player roleplays an
altruist, which is a simple concept that people do in fact often play: you just do "good" and don't care about whether the person you help today is kind of a douche or not. In fact, it's concept-defeating and borderline-insulting to such a player to assume it actually secretly does matter for them. (Character advancement and other such stuff isn't in the picture, we're talking social systems.) If my char is helping everyone regardless of their pre- or post-help opinion of him, I don't secretly want everyone to fall in love with him anyway; I as a player actually need some mundane douchebags in the world so my character's personality can stand out.
HOWEVER - Under maximized raw utility, every other character in the world must necessarily
become kind of a douche to the altruist, because, from the public's points of view, every scarce resource they might spend on the altruist is better hoarded or spent on people whose opinion they might actually influence.
I'll trade you a paper airplane.
Krusk wrote: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.
It isn't the issue of having enough plusses but the translation of the subject matter of the deal into numbers to which those plusses might apply. If the core principle is "relative value", the whole world somehow functions in such a way that more powerful people (who aren't necessarily better at negotiation) pay more for everything in absolute terms. Powerful people constantly being taken advantage of in every single negotiation (unless they brush on on How To Win Friends, in which case prices merely stay
the same) doesn't depict any sane shared world.
Krusk wrote:People see rich people all the time and hike prices up.
Sure, but rich people
don't have to like it. If the diplomacy system underlying your world makes it so that you always have to pay in kingdoms, then
that's how the world works, for some reason. You can't say it's "unfair" and seek a better deal, because there are
no qualitatively better deals:
everyone thinks it's kingdoms or gtfo, unless you're a real charmer.
If diplomacy
forces characters to do things via "but thou must!" unspecified constraints, superheroes would be skulking in the shadows with earplugs and magically induced dyslexia in order to avoid accidental social interaction with mundanes. If diplomacy works on a conceptually lower level by simply making you believe a particular course of action is in your best interests, colossal frog is colossal.