Actual Anatomy of Failed Design: Diplomacy

[Username17]

What's the problem with Level 1 Heralds? Yeah, if Hercules is supposed to be getting the golden fleece, a first level forger can show up ahead of him and convince people that he is there to pick it up for him. Alternately, a first level beguiler could cast change self, pretend to be Hercules, and pick it up "in person". These are both extremely possible and make good stories.

You're going to need a set of rules for Bluff anyway, and "stealing other peoples' social currency" sounds like a pretty reasonable thing to do with it. As Swordslinger pointed out: in a world where change self is a first level spell and Changelings and Dopplegangers exist, people getting things that are owed to other people is inevitable. It should probably be codified rather than trying to figure out some bullshit by which it's impossible.

If dopplegangers are limited in how much they can con out of people by their level, then the fact that they are duplicating specific people doesn't even matter. They lose 100% of their scariness. The entire point is that they have the position and prestige and power of whoever they are emulating. Which is why they take over the Mayor or the King and not the Stablehand.

And once you accept that the rules have to accommodate that, why would you run around with your hair on fire that non-magical con artists want to use forged letters or plausible sounding stories to cash in the favors that people owe other people? Of course they would do that sort of thing, it's even genre appropriate.

-Username17

[Stubbazubba]

Hence your homeland's ancient allies wouldn't believe some dirt-covered hobos who walk in and want the Dwarf Kingdom to go to war against the Demon Lord, because there have been several incidents where old alliances like that were used as a justification for a favor to a con artist. There would have to be some proof that had been secretly agreed to by the King of Homelandia, but of course, he lies ill and unconscious, so you either A) Convince the Royal Vizier of Homelandia to send you into his fever-dream to find out the secrets Inception-style (which sounds awesome), or B) You have to prove yourselves to the Dwarf King by recovering the Amulet of Truth, long ago stolen from their holy temple and taken deep into the heart of the earth by an unspeakable evil (also cool, if a little more cliched). I agree that folks should be able to make this their schtick, and make it worthwhile at a low level. Security and privacy would be an issue, and it's one the PCs will come up against, and deal with. It'll significantly influence how you approach world-building, but in a good way.

[Foxwarrior]

Trust and Credit looks like a good way to model healthy, mutually beneficial social interactions, and identity theft, but how are you supposed to model other cons, like "give me your money now, and I'll give you this much more valuable thing later"? As it is, when they give you their money, you are compelled to return the favor when they ask it of you. Do you avoid this effect by having negative Trust towards them and then pretending you don't?

How do you make an ingrate in this system?

[RadiantPhoenix]

I think there was some mention of morale penalties if you change your mind. If you don't intend to to pay from the beginning, of course, you have to Bluff.

[Username17]

How do you make an ingrate in this system?

A couple ways spring to mind. The first is that a fake offer would be a bluff gambit that would have a difficulty based on how much virtual currency you were promising and if it failed you'd piss the target off and if it succeeded you'd still piss the target off as soon as they figured out they had been had (but you would have gotten whatever thing you bargained for and time to run away). But you could also do a thing where you could declare pacts void at any time and if you did so you'd suffer some kind of personal consequences.

-Username17

[Orion]

Impersonation is attempted theft of social credit. Doppelgangers only need one reason to impersonate the king: because he has all the social credit. If you only allow a high-level doppleganger to imitate the king, he will still choose to do that, because he gets no benefit for imitating the stable boy, because the stable boy has no credit.

Level-appropriate con artist skills should let you steal or fabricate level-appropriate Credit, just like level-appropriate business skills should generate level-appropriate profit.

[fectin]

So, this sounds a lot like FantsyCraft's Reputation and Renown.

Either that system is fine and dandy, or it is fundamentally flawed. If the one, why reinvent the wheel? If the other, why reinvent the same flawed system?

[Username17]

Impersonation is attempted theft of social credit. Doppelgangers only need one reason to impersonate the king: because he has all the social credit. If you only allow a high-level doppleganger to imitate the king, he will still choose to do that, because he gets no benefit for imitating the stable boy, because the stable boy has no credit.

Level-appropriate con artist skills should let you steal or fabricate level-appropriate Credit, just like level-appropriate business skills should generate level-appropriate profit.

That's fucking retarded. You don't have to be high level to loot a high level character's corpse when they are dead. You don't have to be high level to pick up a high level character's money pouch when they are in the bath or asleep. Why the fucking hell would you have to be high level to get people at the bank to give you a high level character's money with a forged note? That doesn't make any sense.

So, this sounds a lot like FantsyCraft's Reputation and Renown.

I know there's this great meme floating around about how everything we ever talk about implementing was implemented badly in Fantasy Craft, but seriously: what the fuck? This isn't anything like Reputation and Renown. Reputation is a currency you use for personal advancement and Renown is like V:tM Generation in that it caps how much you can acquire and spend in their stunted social minigame.

Trust & Credit isn't even remotely like that. Trust is similar to 3e "NPC Attitude" in that it measures an NPC's social condition with your character, and Credit is a medium of exchange comparable to Fallout's virtual bottlecaps. Seriously, there is basically no overlap with what I am talking about and Reputation and Renown. Whether R&R was good or bad is a discussion I don't think we have had on this board, but the system I'm talking about shouldn't be confusable with it even in bad light, so I don't know what difference it would make.

-Username17

[Orion]

High level characters don't bathe, they Prestidigitate. Many of them don't sleep, and if they do sleep they do so surrounded by wards and alarms and preferably in a dimension low-level characters can't even access.

High-level characters don't keep their wealth in banks because they have bags of holding for that. If they did use banks they would staff them with golems and bound demons. Or they would just have a standing policy of "Shoot a few dozen arrows at anyone who tries to make a withdrawal. If it's me, I'll be fine."

[Foxwarrior]

High-level characters don't just let anyone impersonate them. They have a standing policy of "Before granting me any favors, make sure to stab me in the stomach with a greatsword/ask me to fly 200 feet into the air and then plummet into a vat of lava. If it's me, I'll be fine."

[Username17]

While high level characters (some of them anyway) could do all kinds of crazy crap to defend themselves from the depredations of con men, in actuality they normally don't. Seriously: when was the last time you saw an actual player character do any of that stupid shit?

What they normally do is announce to the world that they will personally teleport to and face-stab anyone they find out is messing with their shit and hope it works out.

-Username17

[Orion]

I've personally played PCs who used Prestidigitation rather than bathing. I've played PCs who got random PrC features or magic items that prevented them from sleeping. Every group I've played with has had at least one PC who made a point of covering everything with Alarm, Magic Mouth, or Glyphs of Warding.

I haven't personally played a PC who stored their shit in a crazy bank full of ghost, golems, and monsters but now that I've thought of it I wish I had. Frankly, we should have "a bank" as a common high-level dungeon complex, since high-level dungeons are generally so difficult to justify.

[Username17]

I've personally played PCs who used Prestidigitation rather than bathing. I've played PCs who got random PrC features or magic items that prevented them from sleeping. Every group I've played with has had at least one PC who made a point of covering everything with Alarm, Magic Mouth, or Glyphs of Warding.

One character per campaign is hardly showing that every high level character is immune to 1st level criminals - quite the opposite. However, you are correct that my hyperbolic demand was "any", so I guess you win.

I haven't personally played a PC who stored their shit in a crazy bank full of ghost, golems, and monsters but now that I've thought of it I wish I had. Frankly, we should have "a bank" as a common high-level dungeon complex, since high-level dungeons are generally so difficult to justify.

Actually yes. Banks and treasure storage vaults are one of the few things in the world that is actually justified being a weird maze full of crazy traps and magic glyphs and shit. So as a "dungeon" location, it makes a lot of sense. Bonus points: the dungeon is seriously across the street from the tavern.

-Username17

[fectin]

So, this sounds a lot like FantsyCraft's Reputation and Renown.

I know there's this great meme floating around about how everything we ever talk about implementing was implemented badly in Fantasy Craft, but seriously: what the fuck? This isn't anything like Reputation and Renown. Reputation is a currency you use for personal advancement and Renown is like V:tM Generation in that it caps how much you can acquire and spend in their stunted social minigame.

Trust & Credit isn't even remotely like that. Trust is similar to 3e "NPC Attitude" in that it measures an NPC's social condition with your character, and Credit is a medium of exchange comparable to Fallout's virtual bottlecaps. Seriously, there is basically no overlap with what I am talking about and Reputation and Renown. Whether R&R was good or bad is a discussion I don't think we have had on this board, but the system I'm talking about shouldn't be confusable with it even in bad light, so I don't know what difference it would make.

-Username17

I don't know about the meme part; I don't care. I didn't say it was similar to reputation because of peer pressure, I said it because the thing you're describing looks a lot like Table 4.27: Favors on pages 188-189 of FantasyCraft (first edition). You have to have a minimum renown (like trust) to get any given class of favor, and it costs reputation to do so (like credit). Granted, they abstract it to one value for reputation, and three values for renown, but saying that a system has "more bookkeeping than FantasyCraft!" isn't exactly a strong selling point.

Contacts are prizes, and have a value which is also called Trust. Trust autogenerates a persuade result against that contact. Persuasion has it's own table, but it looks about like DnDs Bluff table.
Essentially, when you buy a "contact," you actually buy that NPCs' automatic support in progressively more important things. So if you slay the dragon, and get the king as a contact at trust 2 (25 base result automatically), he'll just let you borrow/take swords from the armory, because he has a bazillion mundane swords, so there is no risk to him (+4), you're offering him nothing (-4), against a DC of his resolve (??), modified by his disposition (+whothefuckknows, it's FantasyCraft). Oh, and it's social, so it's modified by the difference in your appearances. Probably.

[A Man In Black]

Actually yes. Banks and treasure storage vaults are one of the few things in the world that is actually justified being a weird maze full of crazy traps and magic glyphs and shit. So as a "dungeon" location, it makes a lot of sense. Bonus points: the dungeon is seriously across the street from the tavern.

Yeah, if you don't have the sense not to shit where you eat.

[hyzmarca]

High level characters don't bathe, they Prestidigitate. Many of them don't sleep, and if they do sleep they do so surrounded by wards and alarms and preferably in a dimension low-level characters can't even access.

High-level characters don't keep their wealth in banks because they have bags of holding for that. If they did use banks they would staff them with golems and bound demons. Or they would just have a standing policy of "Shoot a few dozen arrows at anyone who tries to make a withdrawal. If it's me, I'll be fine."

Bags of holding don't pay interest.

A savvy high level character will have a diversified investment portfolio.

This includes giving large sums of money to kings who then have to do whatever you tell them because this is a medieval fantasy series where there is no such thing as financial bailouts and no kingdom is too big to fail.

[tzor]

Bags of holding don't pay interest.

Interest? What's that?

Seriously, in all the 1E games I was in (from a bunch of RPI college students) we never even got to a capitalist state. Banks generally charged fees in order to keep your money safe and secure. High level banks did maintain systems that allowed you to deposit in one city and withdraw from another city (which also required a small fee). No one had a system for accumulated interest for simply depositing money; you needed to actively invest to get a return.

[tzor]

Bonus points: the dungeon is seriously across the street from the tavern.

Kingdon of Drakkar (which was actually derived slightly from Brad's AD&D campaign); where there was a bar and a few merchants next to the dungeon entrance. Of course, the bar charged double the normal drink price. The whiskey actually stunned you and you got the *WOWZA* message (but it gave you a few points of experience). The better bar was on the other side of town, where the secret entrance to the thieves guild was located.

[Username17]

I don't know about the meme part; I don't care. I didn't say it was similar to reputation because of peer pressure, I said it because the thing you're describing looks a lot like Table 4.27: Favors on pages 188-189 of FantasyCraft (first edition). You have to have a minimum renown (like trust) to get any given class of favor, and it costs reputation to do so (like credit). Granted, they abstract it to one value for reputation, and three values for renown, but saying that a system has "more bookkeeping than FantasyCraft!" isn't exactly a strong selling point.

I just don't see it. You don't have renown points, you don't buy anything particularly like renown points. NPC attitudes affect your ability to collect Credit, which I guess would be a little bit like Reputation, except that the Credit points clear out after you do your negotiation rather than collecting in a giant undifferentiated bank account.

There is a thing people have been doing of late in which they try to make analogies to FantasyCraft no matter how round or square that peg and hole is for the thing being discussed. I don't understand that. FantasyCraft has a lot of ideas in it, but it's basically just that: an incoherent list of a lot of ideas. They didn't invent the idea of NPC Attitudes or Social Currency, and their implementation of those things is really weird and specific and actually extremely unlikely to be particularly similar to anything anyone else comes up with.

The Trust levels in particular are a whole lot like the NPC Attitude in the 3E DMG - which means that among other things they are basically nothing at all like FantasyCraft Renown Points.

Contacts are prizes, and have a value which is also called Trust. Trust autogenerates a persuade result against that contact. Persuasion has it's own table, but it looks about like DnDs Bluff table.
Essentially, when you buy a "contact," you actually buy that NPCs' automatic support in progressively more important things. So if you slay the dragon, and get the king as a contact at trust 2 (25 base result automatically), he'll just let you borrow/take swords from the armory, because he has a bazillion mundane swords, so there is no risk to him (+4), you're offering him nothing (-4), against a DC of his resolve (??), modified by his disposition (+whothefuckknows, it's FantasyCraft). Oh, and it's social, so it's modified by the difference in your appearances. Probably.

Yeah... that doesn't sound like what I'm talking about at all.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm bumping this for another poster's sake, but one thing I want to clarify on earlier because it's been awhile is:

Even though it's logical, balanced, and creates good stories you cannot have direct NPC-on-PC diplomacy. For several reasons.

1.) As we've seen from the 'mind-hacking' threads, people have ingrained dualist crap for their prejudices even when they explicitly reject it. Yes, even though Charm Person and Dominate Person extract even more control from a player than most diplomacy systems, people don't derp out about it as much. That's because diplomacy by nature is non-magical and people are all at the idea that they can have their actions and prejudices changed by something as mundane as someone talking to them or showing some leg.

2.) People vastly overestimate how much of a handle they have on their thoughts and behavior. Many players would be okay at being informed that they find the Vampire Princess underpants-creamingly attractive, but not that she convinced them to leave half of their equipment as a gift. Seems extreme, yes, but as we've seen from the Milgram experiments and Pranknet, people will do some totally crazy things at the behest of a disembodied voice. When you throw things into the mix like nymphs and dragons, it's logical that an NPC could diplomatize someone into doing something yet more extreme. But even when we show definite proof that someone in a lab coat can convince a stranger to shock a cute puppy to death for no reason in real life, if you try to put that into the game people scoff at the very notion.

3.) A lot of people, including yours truly, get highly offended at the idea of lower-level people exerting more than a token influence on higher-level people. But as we've seen from 3E D&D, a diplomacy system where a 1st-level NPC barmaid can't convince an 18th level barbarian king to sleep with her is a failure. But when this is applied to PCs, you will have people who will totally rebel and go 'this is fucking bullshit' when their character is conned into buying a +1 longsword at an inflated price by a mundane merchant even though they'd be totally okay with being conned by Hermes.

4.) The potential for horror stories or GM abuse is immense. I'm aware that the vast majority of campaigns won't abuse this mechanic. But you only need one story of 'the king convinced our PCs to go on this sidequest even though the players didn't want it' or a 'the cult leader diplomacied the rogue into gleefully sacrificing a couple of children' before the entire gaming community rebels against your system.

5.) Related to the above, you'll always have Knights of the Dinner Table-ish tales of players roleplaying deaf, illiterate, rage-filled, prejudiced Luddite bigots in order to maximize the chance of playing the way they 'want'. Who cares if it makes them unhappy, it's well documented on these boards that people would rather have the illusion of control than actual happiness. If your system gets a reputation of encouraging this counter-intuitive behavior it will become a mockery in the eyes of the gaming community. This effect cannot be understated; Bear Lore and Bloody Path caused a huge amount of damage to the reputation of 4E D&D and they were minor things in the grand scheme of things.


For this reason, even though there's no fluff, gameplay, or logical reason why NPC-on-PC diplomacy can't be allowed or balanced, you cannot have it in your game. It'll be a marketing disaster.

[Libertad]

For this reason, even though there's no fluff, gameplay, or logical reason why NPC-on-PC diplomacy can't be allowed or balanced, you cannot have it in your game. It'll be a marketing disaster.

You can still do force PCs to do stuff with magic like Dominate Person and mind control stuff. Players can still get pissed, but the limited duration and the "oh crap, I've been enchanted!" feeling afterwards seems to put a damper on it.

Heck, head honcho bloodsuckers in Vampire games do this all the time to PCs, often abused by GMs forcing the party onto the railroad tracks.

Gamers seem to tolerate magical manipulation more than conventional diplomacy/seduction.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yes, it all boils down to dualist mind/body assumption crap. I mean, you still wouldn't want to implement NPC-on-PC diplomacy in the game because of the other assumptions, but that by itself is a non-starter. It completely derailed Shadowrun-style brain hacking even though that game is straight-up a genre where people accept the idea of computer programs killing them in their minds or drive-by possessions.

[Libertad]

I think it also has to do with the fear of loss of control. Nobody likes a game where players are little more than an audience watching the DM narrate a "my way or the highway" novel disguised as a gaming session. Any rules which would take away PC control would make players shy away from the system in case the group's DM is that type of guy.

[PhoneLobster]

Even though it's logical, balanced, and creates good stories you cannot have direct NPC-on-PC diplomacy. For several reasons.

What total fucking bullshit Lago.

Total. Fucking bullshit. Your list of "reasons" is almost entirely irrelevant to your main point, THAT should be a clue you are talking out your ass.

I mean individual the points themselves are also largely made out of ass, but let me pick THIS one in particular...

But as we've seen from 3E D&D, a diplomacy system where a 1st-level NPC barmaid can't convince an 18th level barbarian king to sleep with her is a failure.

... for being an example of utterly ass faced moronic but scrapingly dumb bullshit on your part.

That "point" was brought up on this thread and FAILED TO BE DEMONSTRATED OR EXPLAINED IN ANY WAY AT ANY POINT.

It is NOT remotely necessary for 1st level barmaids to seduce barbarian god kings. There ARE higher level alternatives. Your argument holds no more than claiming that first level barmaids should be able to surprise shiv barbarian god kings to death.

Frank said it, so you lick it up like a puppy, but I remind you. NO ONE HAS DEMONSTRATED THE BARMAID THING.

Everything else you say is crap too. But I pick that one out just as an especially extreme example of how very very very poorly thought out and backed your ENTIRE position on this is.

[Lago PARANOIA]

???

Low-level or out-and-out mundane people tricking god-kings and actual gods is a huge thing in mythology.

I mean, Aladdin (movie version) flat-out bluffed two all-powerful genies twice without any kind of magical aid. Hades, Lord of the Dead, is so well known for bringing people back to life with a sufficient sob story that at least two video games have reused that plot point. Hell, even Yahweh himself has let himself be talked down from ridiculous killing sprees with a begged plea from his minions. The idea of some peon being able to trick or convince or cajole or even threaten something vastly more powerful than them is a trope more ingrained into fantasy than friggin' magical weapons.

Your assertion thus doesn't make any sense to me.