Actual Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy

[Swordslinger]

I don't see it that way. I think it should make a greater positive impact to make a great first impression, then simply maintain that impression by being thoughtful/helpful.

You probably want to have some kind of degradation of reputation points if you do nothing. It should have a time variable that grows rapidly based on the levels.

The guy who brought you a rose once should be something that you forget about in a week. The slayer of the the warlord you may forget about in a year, and the guy who saved your kingdom is probably remembered for a generation.

[A Man In Black]

Hypothetical situation: You have two manticores. Both of them are menacing your town. Each gets slain by a different person:
* A dude you kind of know, he hangs out in the bar sometimes and buys drinks for everyone because he has fucktons of cash.
* A dude you've never met, he just sort of showed up.

Which one are you going to wind up with a better final impression of?

Another hypothetical situation.

* A dude comes to town, buys a round for everyone, then slays the manticore, takes the reward, and leaves.
* A dude comes to town, slays the manticore, buys a round for everyone with the reward, and leaves.

Obviously, the guy who does more (your first example) should be better-regarded, but it feels like first impressions and maintaining relationships are underrated by the core mechanic.

[Username17]

I think I have less of a problem with the fact that rose-then-manticore gives a greater bonus than killing the manticore first than that slaying the manticore eliminates the motivation to bring the queen roses any more, though.

If you wanted, you could have a "what have you done for me lately?" deal where positive social interaction is required to keep positive relations. But player characters should be mechanically discouraged from sending daily roses to the queen because that is too much book keeping.

Hypothetical situation: You have two manticores. Both of them are menacing your town. Each gets slain by a different person:
* A dude you kind of know, he hangs out in the bar sometimes and buys drinks for everyone because he has fucktons of cash.
* A dude you've never met, he just sort of showed up.

Which one are you going to wind up with a better final impression of?

Too many variables to answer that. The dude you never met has the opportunity to make a first impression. Obviously if the dude you never met is a Drow antipalladin who throws the manticore head at your gates and demands obsequiousness, you are not going to be happy.

The guy you are neutral to definitely gets credit for manticore killing. If the new guy shows up and is hated, he gets some fear points for his manticore slaying, and if he shows up and is liked he gets bonus points for the slaying. But that's a question for the reaction test more than the manticore slaying base value.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Honeslty I think the rose THEN manticore thing is not a big deal. It's an eccentric quirk that it would be better to do without. But if you tie everything in a knot to solve it something else is going to end up even worse. And the what have you done for me lately... is really a bad idea in many ways, the first of which is annoying accounting complexity (which there is far too much of already) and the rest of which will be more eccentric quirks and motivations for strange behavior.

The big (est) issues from a basic functionality stand point right now are actually...

1) Currency trading. We know it happens because you can apparently hand off surrender credits to level 1 heralds, somehow, apparently even ignoring their level cap in the process. But there needs to be some serious work on that because it does some hideous weird shit in pretty much any specific implementation I can think of.

2) Never Ask For Small Favors. If someone is your best friend ever because you killed the dragon in their back yard you do NOT stay at their place and have a few free beers EVER because small favors degrade your high level of credit but only massive exploits can set it back to that high level. This is... pretty much exactly the opposite of the intention of the system, and is going to require some more complexity probably in the form of cost free benefits or some OTHER new bullshit unique mechanic to simulate something the players won't care about and won't understand why you are making them do complex accounting for it.

3) Too much complexity. We know you are at least tracking "normal credits" and "surrender credits" and "some other stuff" and you do this for various groups and individuals of a general number as yet not even divulged or speculated on. That's a lot of book keeping. The results had better be awesome, or there had better be some dramatic streamlining, or both.

[RadiantPhoenix]

If we removed the, "over DC 15 always drops your bonus by 1," bit, and only used the numbers based on the relative sizes of your credit rating and what you were trying to get, would that solve problem 2?

[ModelCitizen]

Honestly, I'd probably be more impressed with the guy I never met. The guy whose been hanging around clearly has some attachment to the town and its people, not to mention some self interest in keeping crazy monsters away from his usual haunts.

This random guy though? He just pulled in from anywhere, doesn't give two shits about the town or its inhabitants, but still took the time, effort, and risk, involved with slaying a manticore, without being asked and no reward offered. That's a pretty big fuckin deal. Sure he may be some 20th level adventurer who somehow I haven't heard of before now, who can kill 10 manticores before breakfast without breaking a sweat, but I have no way of knowing that. All I know is random dude shows up and does a pretty good deed totally altruistically. While I'd thank them both equally, I'm personally more impressed with the guy I've never met before.

I think I'd be more suspicious of the stranger. Very few people do things completely altruistically. Just the fact that he showed up to present the dead manticore means he wants something. It might be something acceptable, but for all I know he's making a play to take my cushy job as the King of Town or ride off with my daughter. So I'll buy him free drinks, consider reasonable requests for favors, but I'm still going to be wary of him.

The other guy has already proven he doesn't want my job and if he's fucking my daughter I'm already OK with it. I'm less worried about watching my back around him so I'm willing to do him bigger favors.

[Draco_Argentum]

And that is why if you continue ranting about your objections to the direction I am taking my own diplomacy rules, I am going to put you on ignore for a month. I don't give a fuck what you think about this issue, and you continuing to rant about it is basically spam.

To be fair, no its not spam. When you make your own thread for your own system it'd be spam, this is a general bitching about diplomacy rules sucking thread and hes sure managing that.

Charm also isn't a jizz rag issue IMO either. The problem is that PL holds it up as an example social ability. As we all know its a level one ability, what do level ten characters do in his system? I have no idea, presumably something more powerful. Perhaps Dominate Person?

What we have now is a lot like trying to evaluate Vancian casting without looking at the spell list. Or evaluating Lago's WoF without seeing the ability list.

[Chamomile]

1) Currency trading.

It makes sense to me. If you're acting as a representative of someone who's got a ton of favor/intimidation/whatever, you can use that favor on their behalf. Having lots of favor allows you significant advantages, such that your relatively low skill doesn't matter.

2) Never Ask For Small Favors.

Easy solution to this one. One dragon-slaying favor is worth infinity "have a beer" favors. Even if you use the guy's house as your base of operations for the rest of your adventuring career and then retire to it when you're done, he'll never really care because that's just not a big deal next to slaying a dragon. Though this might wear off eventually with a "what have you done for me lately" type system, in which case "huge favor" just gets downgraded to "large favor" after five years (or whatever), which gets downgraded to "medium favor" after another year, and so on and so forth.

3) Too much complexity.

Do "normal credits" and "surrender credits" have to be different from each other? I don't see a big difference between the Dwarves who do what you say because you killed an invading army and the Drow who do what you say because theirs was the invading army you'd killed, except that Drow might start trying to get rid of you once the effects start wearing off. In this case, you just have a note like "absolutely will not try to harm you" to certain favor levels, and if the Drow fall below that threshold, they start plotting your assassination.

[PhoneLobster]

As we all know its a level one ability, what do level ten characters do in his system? I have no idea

You are just being flat out stupid now.

Charm Person being "level 1" is a completely arbitrary part of D&D specifically. The need for any further advancement in the form of new end point status effects is not in any way an assumption of any system outside of D&D specifically and is only that way in that specific case because of tradition more than anything else.

Charm Person and Dominate are largely different primarily in flavor NOT in power, as I already mentioned PLENTY if you ever read anything I ever posted.

IF you want to progress in power levels with character advancement you make people better at applying their flavored social end state to more and tougher targets using more elaborate tactics and abilities. If you throw around some "and you charm them extra hard when you get there" ability it's nothing but relatively meaningless icing on your flavor cake.

If you had ever grasped for a second the actual nature of the "jizz rag" angle you would actually understand that already. But after how many YEARS of threads like this, you still show no evidence of even having read any of that material because you haven't once even said anything that even interacts with what I have to say about it, let alone shows (or even ATTEMPTS to show, you remain so irrelevant) that I am wrong about this.

[PhoneLobster]

Currency trading....

It does sort of make sense. That isn't the problem. The problem is HOW it makes sense. Because if you are mechanically formally codifying this the trading of favor currency you need to actually write up how that works.

Now I see only really two ways to do this. It works like actual currency and you can exchange it. And things get weird fast with currency speculation, Hercules the investment bank and other weird messes.

Or you can't hand it around as such but people can just claim to be acting on your behalf... in which case the earth is ruled by level 1 Herald con-artists who keep stealing Hercule's social currency. And whenever you save the world you ALWAYS drag along as many wealthy witnesses as possible and force them to watch you so you can cash all the favor points in on the spot to try and head off the social credit thieves.

Easy solution to this one.

And you start entering the ground floor of what is wrong with the d20 modern wealth system.

I have infinite beers. I put them in a stack. I give Infinity beers to someone as a single action. What now? Oh I can't do that? Are you seriously saying that if you give someone who like beer infinity beers as a single action it isn't worth SOMETHING? It sure as heck is worth something, it's probably worth a lot. Which is problematic because I collected those beers for free.

Though this might wear off eventually with a "what have you done for me lately" type system, in which case "huge favor" just gets downgraded to "large favor" after five years (or whatever), which gets downgraded to "medium favor" after another year, and so on and so forth.

Another good reason not to do the what have you done for me lately thing. Surely one of the main points of a system like this is to come back years later and cash in a favor owed. (Assuming you kept all your ancient favor accounting spreadsheets). Having a solid motivation to cash in all favors immediately... is... not beneficial.

Do "normal credits" and "surrender credits" have to be different from each other?

I didn't say they were. Frank implied it. Very strongly.

As such, surrender is a state that has to be bought with Credits racked up during hositilies, and not due to general Trust levels.

Don't expect him to clarify that. But it seems pretty clear you have to label where credits come from because some of them come from "hostilities" and are used specifically for the goal of surrender.

Considering the rather inadequate nature of the samples one can only assume there are other similar cases of credits from specific sources applying to specific actions. This means your social credit accounts owed spread sheet isn't a tally with a total, its an itemized history with recorded sources and multiple sub totals. And on top of that you still have to do it for each character/organization that owes you credits. And every character in the party has a sheet like this, the fact that Frank has kindly exempt PCs from tracking each other on those spread sheets is nice of him, but ultimately a drop in the ocean.

[Username17]

To be fair, no its not spam. When you make your own thread for your own system it'd be spam, this is a general bitching about diplomacy rules sucking thread and hes sure managing that.

No. After the first half a dozen times he brought up the "You need infinity modifiers!" tirade, that was spam. It doesn't even make any sense. We have this thing called "categories" and no diplomacy system is going to need an infinite list of modifiers any more than a combat system is going to need an infinite list of modifiers. We don't need a separate listing for to-hit modifiers based on the target being obscured by smoke, fog, or ink clouds - and by the same token and for the same reason we don't need a separate diplomancy modifier for the target being historical enemies because of Kobold/Gnome, Goblin/Dwarf, or Hutu/Tutsi relations.

So maybe "spam" isn't the right word. But it's fucking retarded and I'm tired of reading it, so I stopped.

-Username17

[Orion]

Is there any reason we can't just implement Frank's system and PL's system at the same time?

[Chamomile]

It works like actual currency and you can exchange it.

Personally, I see this as just being a bad idea which we can safely ignore. So, on to option number two.

Or you can't hand it around as such but people can just claim to be acting on your behalf... in which case the earth is ruled by level 1 Herald con-artists who keep stealing Hercule's social currency.

Why doesn't Hercules tear their head off and put it on a pike as a warning to others stupid enough to try and con the guy who kills dragons for a living out of his favor? I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm fairly certain there are stories where a hero accomplishes some great feat and then someone else tries to take credit for it, and it never ends well for the con-artist.

I have infinite beers.

You have, like, four beers per day. Because even if the peasant whose daughter you saved from a dragon is willing to give you all the beers he has, he does not have that many beers. And if you go around asking the entire town, then thematically we cover that by you telling the townspeople to convert themselves into a brewery to sate your endless thirst for booze. This could be accomplished by bean-counting exactly how many beers the town can produce in a day, but the vast majority of games you can just eyeball it as "however many beers a village could make in whatever timeframe you're giving them to make it."

Another good reason not to do the what have you done for me lately thing. Surely one of the main points of a system like this is to come back years later and cash in a favor owed. (Assuming you kept all your ancient favor accounting spreadsheets). Having a solid motivation to cash in all favors immediately... is... not beneficial.

You want the "what have you done for me lately" effect to expire very, very slowly, but yes, you do want it to expire. It makes very little sense for no one to ever forget a favor.

I didn't say they were. Frank implied it.

Well, okay. So?

[A Man In Black]

After the first half a dozen times he brought up the "You need infinity modifiers!" tirade, that was spam. It doesn't even make any sense. We have this thing called "categories"

I thought you were putting him on ignore to stop arguing about this shit. Most of these arguments are about the specifics of a system that has only been described in basic, sweeping terms. Ignore PL's complaints that you haven't created an entire working system in one go and go back to working on it piece by piece, fucksake.

Is there any reason we can't just implement Frank's system and PL's system at the same time?

Near as I can tell, Frank is making a diplomacy minigame and PL is making a face attack. They're incompatible in that if you have PL's face attack, you have little motivation to play Frank's minigame. I suppose they could be made compatible by limiting what the face attack can accomplish or otherwise making the face attack limited in application.

[Username17]

Is there any reason we can't just implement Frank's system and PL's system at the same time?

Yes. Lots.

Sure, I actually accept that iron thewed swordsmen and battle princesses should have charm person like effects that allow them to attempt to gain love interests in the middle of major battles or when threatened with imminent execution. That shit is important, but it's not a replacement for or even much of an adjunct to the diplomacy system.

More specifically, let's say you had some sort of "combat level" minigame that allowed the victor to completely override the behavior of someone else - like the one PL is talking about where everything is handled via MTP until one of the players shouts "Objection!" and then the social combat music starts and someone wins or loses and then the winner tells the loser what they think and do. Now suddenly "social" players have two completely orthogonal ways of getting cooperation from the Dwarven king. One is that they can try to butter him up to get a favorable favors exchange rate and then do something nice for the Dwarves and get their cooperation, and the other is to shout "Objection!" and start the combat music. Why? From an associated mechanics standpoint, what the fuck is being represented by the difference?

More generally, all of the complaints about PL's system stand whether it's the entire system or a subsystem growing cancerously into the rest of the diplomacy system: diplomacy does not fucking work like that. Now if you wanted, you could do something similar to PL's system for social effects that weren't diplomacy: Bluff and Intimidate spring immediately to mind. But you'd still want some sort of variable effects mechanism, wherein a character could be frightened or completely cowed depending on how intimidated they were. Which means it still wouldn't actually be PL's all-or-nothing system or even be mistakable for it in bad light.

So you're still looking at something more like a Mutants and Masterminds attack with variable effects based on save failure levels, and less like an Intimidation Combat like PL is talking about.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

as a warning to others stupid enough to try and con the guy who kills dragons

Because he never even meets the guy. Because that guy isn't conning Hercules he is conning everyone else. Hercules saves the world and by the time he walks, flys or teleports back to town all his social currency is gone.

All we know about this mechanic is that it can happen and that a level 1 guy can do it do you. To even do the tiresome "beat up the fake" routine this is a bad set up because if level 1 is the entry point for fakes its a boring encounter and one that happens every damn time, because the world is FULL of level 1+ characters. That's even IF you can find the guy. And then you still need to add some sort of social credit refund mechanic to make it even worth your time. Which means now we are also tracking how many credits you USED to have with people too.

And it's not like conning is even hard. This system doesn't even have rules for deception or manipulation at all. Those if handled at all are still just arbitrary bullshit checks, and apparently "not level based". So it is actually really easy to run off with other peoples social credits. Enough so that Hercules himself is a bit of an ass if he goes off and racks up his OWN account when he could just use someone elses if he absolutely needs social credits. And if it's Hercules using all your social credits you are kinda boned, especially if you are a Level 1 Herald...

You have, like, four beers per day.

What village? What a bout a metropollis? Why are you manufacturing a very specific and narrow scenario in an attempt to make an excuse for a basic an GENERAL flaw.

You can get small things for free which you can pile int a stack until they become a large thing with value.

"The village where they only have four beers" does not change this scenario. All it does is make the size of a stack of things that have value at the cash in end of the problem smaller. Because you just cash in your "free" favours at the town down the road where they make like 100 beers a day and then resell the beer stack at places like 4 beer village where the beer value is even higher.

Not to mention the fact that since Social Currency and REAL CURRENCY are exchangeable the "infinite small favors for free" means you get infinite real currency. Creating a system which not only LOOKS like the d20 modern wealth system, but also actually ACTS like it for actual wealth as well as other things.

Well, okay. So?

So... that's apparently the way it works, and that looks like a rather large problem.

[Swordslinger]

Because he never even meets the guy. Because that guy isn't conning Hercules he is conning everyone else. Hercules saves the world and by the time he walks, flys or teleports back to town all his social currency is gone.

Conning someone isn't necessarily going to give you all their social currency. Just because you have a knight working with the authority of the king doesn't mean he'll be treated as if he was the king. The knight might be given free lodging and perhaps a horse if he needs it, but they're hardly going to let him cash the king's entire social currency. And the same is true of the false knight.

So while you could probably try to play it up that you're the friend or brother of Hercules, the villagers aren't going to just turn over everything that belonged to him on your say so alone.

[Orion]

Which again means the Level 1 Herald example needs to go. If we must have it, give high-level characters an ability to temporarily bestows credit and enhanced social skills on an underling who speaks in their name. Otherwise, accept that in a fantasy world with level scaling and teleportation, everything important is negotiated in person by the leaders of the respective parties.

[Chamomile]

Because he never even meets the guy.

He does when he tracks him down and murders him. Society's going to have a cultural stigma where you never let these kinds of slights go unavenged, because that kind of stigma is extremely advantageous to people in power. This means that conning people into thinking you're Hercules and you killed the hydra means that the actual Hercules is guaranteed to be coming after you with all of his resources. The risk is probably not actually worth the reward, particularly since the more of the reward you have, the easier you are to track (if you say you're Hercules and have the local lord give you his castle, the real Hercules is going to know you're the guy in the castle).

What village? What a bout a metropollis?

They have a lot more beers. And if you want to set up a flourishing beer empire out of that metropolis, you can totally do that. But saving the village from a manticore does not give you any credit with the metropolis, and getting credit with the metropolis is a lot harder, because things which are a credible threat to the metropolis will necessarily be much, much more powerful.

You can get small things for free which you can pile int a stack until they become a large thing with value.

At the cost of time, yes. So?

Not to mention the fact that since Social Currency and REAL CURRENCY are exchangeable the "infinite small favors for free" means you get infinite real currency.

No, you do not get infinite small favors, you get favors at the rate at which the village (or whatever) can provide them. If this means you can get tens of thousands of beers every day because you saved a metropolis from a dragon, that's okay because you're at dragon-slaying levels and you don't actually care.

[Swordslinger]

Which again means the Level 1 Herald example needs to go. If we must have it, give high-level characters an ability to temporarily bestows credit and enhanced social skills on an underling who speaks in their name. Otherwise, accept that in a fantasy world with level scaling and teleportation, everything important is negotiated in person by the leaders of the respective parties.

I don't know why the level 1 herald is getting such bad press. This is a world with shapechanging and illusion. You don't have to lie and say you're working for Hercules when you can just actually change into Hercules and pretend to be him. You have monsters whose sole schtick is impersonating people.

Identity theft is a definite risk in fantasy worlds, which is why you could set up all sorts of passwords, sigils and code phrases that people need to know to prove themselves.

Surely you didn't think all those trap-laden vaults and dungeons were for nothing? The fake king probably isn't aware that all the doors are coated with deadly contact poison.

[Grek]

A setup where having a social credit of A gets you X$ in goods and services every Y time until you cash out by downgrading your social credit for a really big favour worth N$ seems perfectly reasonable.

[Orion]

Swordslinger, you actually just presented more evidence against the Level 1 Herald scenario.

Let's say I've decided to try to disguise myself as Hercules and use his reputation as a scary motherfucker to intimidate people into doing my bidding. Like other complex and risky endeavors, my ability to do this should scale by level. The illusions to look like Hercules aren't necessarily at level 1. Even if they are, a level character shouldn't be able to put out the aura of menace and the social dominance required to convince anyone they are Hercules.

In a world of easy identity theft, your ability to accomplish social goals MUST be tied to your level in addition to your apparent identity.

[Swordslinger]

Swordslinger, you actually just presented more evidence against the Level 1 Herald scenario.

The objection to level 1 heralds was that social cred could be transferred so to speak, and someone else could spend your social credit. My point was that this happens anyway, regardless of whether you have heralds or not.

PLs objection isn't based on level 1 guys stealing social credit, it's based on the fact that your social credit can be stolen at all. So PL was saying it was a drawback because it'd be in your best interest to just spend all your credit as soon as you got it, so that someone else doesn't jack it.

Whether the thief is someone claiming to be your buddy from wizard college or is some powerful illusionist actually impersonating you is not all that relevant. PL's point was simply that it could be done.

And there's no way to avoid that, save through good world building. The real world uses security measures like passwords and multiple forms of identification to try to verify you are who you say you are. There is no reason similar measures wouldn't be taken in a world of dopplegangers and illusionists.

Even if Frank's social system isn't even implemented, identity theft is something your campaign world has to deal with regardless, so lets not pretend that this is some problem with his system alone.

[Orion]

So we can both agree that once level 1 heralds are off the table, Identity Theft is no longer a valid objection to the social credit system?

I mean, if your social credit can be stolen by high-level demons and illusions (but recovered when you kill them and expose their deception) that's not a flaw, that's an adventure hook. Sort of like if high level thieves broke into your mansion and stole your spare magic weapons. It's only when any lowbie can jack your credit that it breaks the setting.

[Swordslinger]

So we can both agree that once level 1 heralds are off the table, Identity Theft is no longer a valid objection to the social credit system?

No, because I don't even see how level 1 heralds are all that big a threat regarding identity theft. Good identity theft measures will prevent the low level guy from doing much anyway.

If you're okay with a doppleganger cleaning out all of someone's social cred, I don't know what the big deal is if a level 1 guy decides to claim he's with the king and get a few beers and some lodging. It's probably not even worth the risk just to save a few gold pieces and if he runs into one code phrase or password that he can't answer, he's likely to find himself in the dungeons.

What exactly do you actually expect this low level herald to get away with that's so scary he can't exist?