Actual Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy

[PhoneLobster]

Looks like he is going for the "Apples THEN Oranges" scenario.

I remember an abstracted currency system that worked a lot like that. It's the one from d20modern. And when I say "worked" that's a very generous description of the ridiculous shenanigans inherit in it's design.

PS also now if you have a high social credit rating with anyone you never ever ask them for small favors and doing so is stupidly costly and bad. You very specifically always ask for the biggest favors you can possibly ask for and THEN ask for small favors with remaining small change, anything else is grossly inefficient. Because your currency is worth much more when it's high.

Only it isn't because of apples and mysterious bags. But whatever.

[nikita]

Primitive societies worked around concept of gifts because they had no money but they had plenty of understanding of value. Typically they would divide things to different value bands: let's call them A, B ,C and so on.

When ever you gave item of value A, you expected and received item or service of value A. For example if you give my apple a day for ten years I'll give you a meal a day for 10 years. However, no matter how much fish you carried to someone, it was never going to enough to earn you a boat. Similarly you could not give X amount of fish (value A) for boat (B) but you had to give back item/service of value B.

This way the hand of village chieftain's daughter (keys to kingdom) can only be obtained by doing service to chieftain/village worth it. For example giving enough boats to help kingdom win war or slaying monster that threatened entire kingdom. This is because value of item/service is actually set to a fixed level that cannot be bartered to higher or lower level service/item.

In my mind, the CREDIT is actually how much/how long you can hold out before you must pay back the service/item. I think TRUST should be depiction of how many items of each class you can ask/get/beg before you need to start "paying back" your credit with gifts of your own.

[Swordslinger]

Your system can not generate any diplomatic result other than unconditional surrender of one side.

Charm Person.

Is it unconditional surrender?

Yes, it is. You've turned an enemy into a friend and your friend is willing to help you for nothing in return. It's actually a better result than just killing them, because instead of a corpse and a little bit of treasure, you've increased your manpower.

Now fortunately, charm person can be dispelled and also has a limited number of slots you can burn at a time on it. Diplomacy has neither of these drawbacks. It leads to Shadowrun botnets, where you accumulate an ever-growing army of charmed people to help you out.

As for why your system sucks, it's because that's all it's capable of handling. You negotiate with someone and make them fall in love with you completely. You can't do diplomacy between nations, where two warring kings come to peace talks and establish an uneasy peace. No, in your system one king always becomes the other's puppet, and any story relating to that political scenario is now over. Your system does not allow any kind of compromises or deals, it just means that one of the two guys in any diplomatic encounter becomes the other guy's bitch for absolutely no reason at all.

As Frank and many others have been trying to tell you, Diplomacy does not fucking work that way.

[Username17]

In my mind, the CREDIT is actually how much/how long you can hold out before you must pay back the service/item. I think TRUST should be depiction of how many items of each class you can ask/get/beg before you need to start "paying back" your credit with gifts of your own.

I could see something like that. Where "credit" would be like having a line of credit, where it determined how far in the hole you could go on the whole favor asking thing. Rather than being like store credit, where it was how much you were actually owed.

Truth be told, I'm not wedded to the names of trust or credit, those were just things I pulled out of a hat for discussion purposes. The point is that the game needs to differentiate between people who are willing to trade with you or reward you for helping them and people who are not. And it needs to do this separately from tracking whether or to what degree a character actually owes you favors.

My thought was that you have like three basic categories (which could easily be broken down into more categories for greater granularity). You have the Drow: they don't fucking like you. They won't trade with you, and if you kill a monster that was plaguing them they won't reward you. You have the merchant: he is pretty much neutral. He will trade with you, and if you save him from a manticore he will reward you. And finally you have your historical ally Dwarfy McBeardyking: He will trade with you, and he'll reward you for killing monsters he doesn't like, and he'll do nice things for you in advance. And then you'll pay those favors back in the future or something.

Obviously you could make it more numerically granular by having different amounts of favors that closer allies could offer and have groups that hate you more be harder to win over and shit like that. But the basic three seems to be a simple minimum number of basic diplomatic positions.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

PCs should not spend time diplomacizing each other, but should be diplomacized by NPCs. In Trust & Credit, this is actually fairly easy in that you announce that characters in the same party save each others' lives several times an adventuring day and rack up "maximum" credit with each other on a constant basis. On the other hand, when PCs talk to the vizier about using the kingdom's orb of plot exposition, there should definitely be a non-zero chance that they end up saddled with a side quest. Player characters should definitely be conned into selling their cow for some magic beans.

I'm not really a fan of this paradigm. Not because it wouldn't make a better system if people played along, but it incentivizes people to do counter-intuitive crap so they can retain the illusion of control. Expect to see a lot of players playing racist, sexist, anarchist luddites (even more than they already are) who try to devalue the typical currency of credit/favors as envisioned by fantasy in an attempt to resist what they see as railroading. If going up to the royal court grants them a chance of getting a quest that they as the players do not want but their character does, they'll send courtiers or holograms. Even if you implement an in-universe punishment of offending the king they'll see it as a worthwhile price to pay for playing the characters the way that they 'want'.

Yes, as stupid as it seems, there are players out there who would rather slay every pilgrim and guard patrol and royal procession rather than risk being saddled with a sidequest they don't want but their characters did. And once the latter happens enough time you'll get a lot of unwanted converts to this 'PCs against the world' point of view.

[Swordslinger]

I'm not really a fan of this paradigm. Not because it wouldn't make a better system if people played along, but it incentivizes people to do counter-intuitive crap so they can retain the illusion of control. Expect to see a lot of players playing racist, sexist, anarchist luddites (even more than they already are) who try to devalue the typical currency of credit/favors as envisioned by fantasy in an attempt to resist what they see as railroading.

Well to some degree that shit is unavoidable. If you want to resist seduction, you can always have your character be a eunuch, but eventually people are going to end up drawing the line somewhere.

If your system produces results that are not ridiculously stupid, most PCs will be okay with it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

After the shitstorm the WoF threads created I unfortunately think that the line isn't very long. Even if I was able to show that WoF produced an objectively better result than the other systems people liked (cooldown, Vancian, mana points) the issue boiled down to the illusion of control. And if people were willing to storm the gates over that I can't imagine a system where it says that sometimes your barbarian sleeps with the princess going over too well.

[echoVanguard]

I'm pretty sure that the core idea of "Diplomacy" as presented in 3.X is unworkably bad. For example, in 3.X, you had four social interaction options:

1. Bluff. You could lie to your target that a thing was true, and they could react on the assumption that that thing was true, but if they found out the truth, you'd be boned.

2. Intimidate. The target does whatever you tell them until you're not present any longer, then they become very angry at you. So far, so good.

3. Diplomacy. You permanently shift the attitude of your target in your favor, making them your friend, with no drawbacks and no limits to the results - most of the time, even a failed roll has no negative consequences. This is so incredibly wrong I don't even know where to begin. For one thing, it's way out of scope with all similar effects - even Dominate Monster has a limited duration.

4. You don't use any social skills, and just tell the NPC to do X because of logical reason Y. This is pretty much pure MTP, but still sees a lot of use.

In actual gameplay, Bluff works well for a single compel - it's got a hefty downside if you fail, and can have post-action consequences. Similar for Intimidate. Charm and Dominate have their own drawbacks, since they can be detected with Sense Motive or magical effects and can be dispelled. But Diplomacy has no effective counter, no limit on use, no penalty for a failure, and no limit on duration or number of targets. Pathfinder made a band-aid fix to limit the duration on attitude shifts from Diplomacy to 1d4 hours, but since there's no cost to reapply it and no post-action consequence, it doesn't accomplish much.

To be honest, I don't think it's a good game mechanic to modify an NPC's attitude with one roll regardless of level, any more than it's a good idea to be able to kill an NPC with one attack regardless of level. Ideally, social skills should convince an NPC to take a particular course of action, with attitude changes being a more gradual consequence of the larger social encounter.

echo

[Swordslinger]

After the shitstorm the WoF threads created I unfortunately think that the line isn't very long. Even if I was able to show that WoF produced an objectively better result than the other systems people liked (cooldown, Vancian, mana points) the issue boiled down to the illusion of control. And if people were willing to storm the gates over that I can't imagine a system where it says that sometimes your barbarian sleeps with the princess going over too well.

WoF is a different issue mostly because the restrictions are completely arbitrary and not logical. A good diplomacy system that produces logical results might be something people can accept. That being said producing a system that does that well is going to be hard to write.

[Lago PARANOIA]

A good diplomacy system that produces logical results might be something people can accept.

I disagree with that heavily. Good fiction has produced for us many entertaining and 'logical' results that can be viewed of extreme. In no particular order, smooth-talkers have convinced characters to parade around on the streets butt-naked (twice even), that they were royalty from out of town and are owed rather extravagant favors, to let them have a little bit of primae noctis, and the entirety of Richard III.

Any diplomacy system that can't produce those results is in my mind an utter failure... yet I have a really hard time seeing PCs accepting that their militant lesbian separatist sleeps with the male chauvanist pig and totally enjoys it even though that's what happens in James Bond. It's a total NIMBY situation unfortunately. People have no problem with others doing irrational and self-destructive things by force of word alone and even when it's shown that there's no reason why they shouldn't do it either, hindsight and bystander bias make a lot of what you want out of a good diplomacy system suddenly totally acceptable.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I failed the opposed social check vs charm. Fffffffffffffffffffffffff-!

EDIT: I am trying to draw the parallel between this and saving vs charm effects.

[Swordslinger]

I disagree with that heavily. Good fiction has produced for us many entertaining and 'logical' results that can be viewed of extreme. In no particular order, smooth-talkers have convinced characters to parade around on the streets butt-naked (twice even), that they were royalty from out of town and are owed rather extravagant favors, to let them have a little bit of primae noctis, and the entirety of Richard III.

Any diplomacy system that can't produce those results is in my mind an utter failure... yet I have a really hard time seeing PCs accepting that their militant lesbian separatist sleeps with the male chauvanist pig and totally enjoys it even though that's what happens in James Bond. It's a total NIMBY situation unfortunately. People have no problem with others doing irrational and self-destructive things by force of word alone and even when it's shown that there's no reason why they shouldn't do it either, hindsight and bystander bias make a lot of what you want out of a good diplomacy system suddenly totally acceptable.

That's actually exactly why it's a good idea for it to apply equally to PCs and NPCs. It forces some compromise between PCs and DMs as to what they want to allow, full well knowing that anything allowed by the system may be used on them.

It does mean some of the crazier results like the guy walking around with no clothes will have to be tossed out. But that's fine.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It does mean some of the crazier results like the guy walking around with no clothes will have to be tossed out. But that's fine.

Hell no. If you can't convince someone to do that then you have a boring diplomacy system. People walk around nude in public to make a point (to themselves or others) in real life. Real life has even given us more extreme results like the entirety of the Milgram experiment and prank callers getting McDonalds' managers to sexually assault people. When you throw in wackier things like some of the social engineers being nymphs or people picking up a magic circlet to make their voice really but not automatically compelling or people asking their Fairy Godmother that they were super sexy and popular and getting it... if you're still stuck at a range of results that even real people in real life can easily exceed then your diplomacy system sucks.

It forces some compromise between PCs and DMs as to what they want to allow, full well knowing that anything allowed by the system may be used on them.

Oh, I get it now. You're not in favor of allowing this revision system because it benefits the story, you just want to be able to punish the PCs through some Gygaxian passive aggression. I think I'm done talking to you on this issue.

[Swordslinger]

Hell no. If you can't convince someone to do that then you have a boring diplomacy system.

Then don't make one. If your PCs want a non-boring diplomatic system, they can totally agree to one that works both ways. So long as PC and DM agree to play by that.

If being talked into walking around naked is an acceptable output to the system, then it's an acceptable output and PCs that get that have to accept it. If you want to have swords sometimes cut off people's hands, then you have to risk that your PC's hand may get chopped off by a sword.

Sometimes people don't want it a possibility that Conan gets his hand chopped off, so they remove that potential result from the combat system. Sure, it's more "boring" than a system that features severed limbs and blinding injuries, but whatever, I never see anyone complaining about it here. We've all accepted it's more fun for everyone if those results don't happen.

You can do the same with diplomacy. Compromise and equality.

Oh, I get it now. You're not in favor of allowing this revision system because it benefits the story, you just want to be able to punish the PCs through some Gygaxian passive aggression. I think I'm done talking to you on this issue.

Apparently equality is "passive aggression" now? We don't allow PCs to disregard attack rolls or saving throws, why the hell should they get some free ability to ignore the results of the diplomatic system? Dude, what the fuck?

If people consider the results of the system to be so outlandish or game breaking that they need to outright disregard them, then the system itself is flawed. The answer is to fix the system, not to make it NPC exclusive.

[A Man In Black]

That's actually exactly why it's a good idea for it to apply equally to PCs and NPCs. It forces some compromise between PCs and DMs as to what they want to allow, full well knowing that anything allowed by the system may be used on them.

No, bullshit Gygaxian power races lead to bad feelings all around. You're using the "It's not imbalanced because the GM can use it too!" line of 'reasoning' and that shit doesn't fly outside of Paizo and GITP.

It actually seems like a pretty easily solvable problem on both ends. You don't want small gifts to add up to large favor demands very often, so you just put a cap on concessions where a concession of less than X does not add to Credit Ratings in they are already above Y. It could be a multiplier or a chart or something, depending on where you wanted to draw those lines. And then you want people to do different stuff in diplomatic trust building exercises to win over the Drow - so you put a hard cap on repeated gambits.

PL for all his bile has a decent point. It seems like you get a greater reward (in both Trust and Credit) for giving the merchant an apple and then slaying the manticore than doing it in reverse, and that seems kind of illogical and leads to contrived situations where the PCs are trying to help people but not too much.

Is this based on a misunderstanding, or is there some way you deal with this?

[Swordslinger]

No, bullshit Gygaxian power races lead to bad feelings all around. You're using the "It's not imbalanced because the GM can use it too!" line of 'reasoning' and that shit doesn't fly outside of Paizo and GITP.

No, I'm using the "every other system works on PCs, so why not this one?" line of reasoning.

Dominate person works on PCs, MDJ works on PCs, energy drain, theft of spellbooks and Face stabbing works on PCs. So here's a list of effects that you're allowing to work:

• Remove complete character control
• Permanently destroy expensive treasure the PC needs to compete
• Possibly outright forcing the PC to make a new character.
• Semi-permanent removal of character levels.
• Total inability to use the majority of your class abilities.

So PCs have to deal with all of that but for some reason get a pass on diplomacy? Uh... why?

I get the feeling the answer is probably because the den's holy bible, aka the 3E PHB, happens to say that social skills don't work on PCs because the designers couldn't design a social system that wasn't ridiculously stupid. But fuck it, I'm going to question the word of Jesus Monte Cook anyway.

[A Man In Black]

No, I'm using the "every other system works on PCs, so why not this one?" line of reasoning.

Because of the reasons Lago gave. It's not a matter of actual degree of transgression, just how bad the players feel about the transgression.

[Koumei]

Good fiction...

...happens in James Bond

Uh yeah, there's a big problem here. James Bond doesn't even resemble good fiction.

Although it does teach us that sumo wrestlers can massage their delicates so that they rise back up into the body (to be protected from injury). Not true, but I'm going to guess that it's certainly worth trying for a few hours if you're a guy.

[Swordslinger]

Because of the reasons Lago gave. It's not a matter of actual degree of transgression, just how bad the players feel about the transgression.

But the underlying question is: Why do the players feel worse about this than far worse outcomes?

It's obviously not because their characters are being damaged too badly,
but rather because something of the flavor does not make sense. Or to put it another way, the social system is spitting out nonsensical results.

I don't think too many people would be upset if the super hot succubus seduced their character, but they'd be very upset if some orc wench with a face of more warts than flesh ended up seducing them. People can probably live with the merchant cheating them by a 5% margin on their gem sale. They will rebel at the fact that the merchant managed to get them to turn over their gemstone for a copper piece and totally ripped them off.

So maybe we should look at the root cause here and make the outputs things that PCs and DMs can find acceptable? This worked for every other system in the game.

After all, we don't take the combat system and separate it into rules for PCs and rules for monsters, we find a combat system that works for everyone. And if that involves tossing some results like severed arms because players hate it, then so be it.

[PhoneLobster]

Not true

I used to know a guy who claimed he could do that.

I, um, never confirmed his claims as such...

[A Man In Black]

I don't think too many people would be upset if the super hot succubus seduced their character,

Yes they totally are upset.

Players will almost always revolt if told "You feel this way," regardless of the validity or strength or obviousness of the reasons to feel that way.

[Username17]

PL for all his bile has a decent point. It seems like you get a greater reward (in both Trust and Credit) for giving the merchant an apple and then slaying the manticore than doing it in reverse, and that seems kind of illogical and leads to contrived situations where the PCs are trying to help people but not too much.

Is this based on a misunderstanding, or is there some way you deal with this?

That is 100% a positive thing. Yeah, in d20 Modern the whole wealth system was completely fucked because you got measurably more wealth if you sold your watch and then sold your car than if you did it the other way. And that was bullshit. But if you hand the queen a rose and then go kill the manticore that should get you more social points than showing up out of the blue with a dead manticore and then handing over a rose.

In any sort of social system involving favors, it is desirable that people be mechanically encouraged to do small favors, then medium favors and then large favors. Because that is what people actually do. You hang out and flirt, then you go on a date, then you go out on a date and fuck. That doesn't happen in some other order if your diplomacy system is kicking on all cylinders.

If two people kill a dragon, it is natural and good if "the guy we know and sort of like" gets a much bigger bonus from that than "the guy we never heard of before".

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

That is 100% a positive thing. Yeah, in d20 Modern the whole wealth system was completely fucked because you got measurably more wealth if you sold your watch and then sold your car than if you did it the other way. And that was bullshit. But if you hand the queen a rose and then go kill the manticore that should get you more social points than showing up out of the blue with a dead manticore and then handing over a rose.

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.

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.

[RadiantPhoenix]

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.

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?

[Seerow]

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.

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?

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.