Social Combat

[Agamemnon]

That's another great example.

Will Bastards have any sort of social combat system? (Maybe that question should be in its own thread.)

The basic resolution of any "vs" skill check (which we refer to as Contests) is pretty simple, two parties roll their skill and the successes on either side cancel out. It's exactly what you'd expect.

In addition though, we've added another more elaborate option that we've called a "Full Contest." Without getting into a full discussion of the mechanics here (as they would require us to explain some other mechanics first, outside the scope of this thread), it essentially allows for a series of opposed rolls with successes carrying over from round to round until one party or the other has gotten a significant enough lead to "win" the contest.

This has proven to be very handy for a few different situations, with chase sequences being the most notable. We've also considered using it for Social Combat, and it works pretty decently.

The question we have been quietly debating among ourselves has been: Is that enough? Or do we need a full social combat system on par with our melee, with maneuvers and the like?

Since we have a slowly growing audience here, maybe we should turn it over to you. What do you think?

[hector]

Personally, I think that's plenty enough.

[Daeruin]

I would LOVE to see a full-featured social combat system. A number if other games have tried to do it, but none of them have felt right to me. It's hard to do. IMO you can't just tack on whatever mechanics you already have for some other subsystem. I think the audience for a dedicated social combat system is fairly narrow though, so I wouldn't blame you for deciding not to do it.

[hector]

OK, so as I understand it, the idea behind a social combat system is to try and get characters to do something they don't want to do, right? Thing is, this seems like the kind of thing that's easily accomplished by saying what you want to say, the GM coming up with a difficulty based on what you're saying and how the NPC is likely to react, and then you roll. If you want to know how they're likely to react, well - that's why in Pathfinder "Sense Motive" isn't called "Detect Lies". Between PCs, the player character on the receiving end can just as easily assign the difficulty levels, or else the players can just do things the old fashioned way; no dice involved.

So bearing in mind that you can pull this off in a pretty freeform way, what exactly is the attraction of a social combat system?

[Marras]

Social conflict would be a great subsystem as that seems to be part of the genre (like in Gentlemen Bastards books).

In social conflict name of the game is manipulation. How can you make someone do what you want him to do? What does the it take to make that happen? To have this deep interaction it really needs quite a lot of prep work to create NPCs detailed enough for that.

Another thing to consider is how much you can force PCs actions? Is it feasible to use such a detailed system to bribe a guard or is intended to persuade a king to do something while another party is saying something else?

[Agamemnon]

OK, so as I understand it, the idea behind a social combat system is to try and get characters to do something they don't want to do, right? Thing is, this seems like the kind of thing that's easily accomplished by saying what you want to say, the GM coming up with a difficulty based on what you're saying and how the NPC is likely to react, and then you roll. If you want to know how they're likely to react, well - that's why in Pathfinder "Sense Motive" isn't called "Detect Lies". Between PCs, the player character on the receiving end can just as easily assign the difficulty levels, or else the players can just do things the old fashioned way; no dice involved.

So bearing in mind that you can pull this off in a pretty freeform way, what exactly is the attraction of a social combat system?

My default reference point for a social combat system is actually from Burning Wheel, so I'll argue from that perspective. While it is the kind of thing that one could handle with a single skill roll or opposed skill roll based on what you're trying to do, the same could be said for melee combat. The idea behind creating a social conflict system is the same as creating the dedicated system for melee - you're choosing to focus and expand on an area mechanically to make the action more interesting mechanically.

If we were going to have some kind of social combat system, my first impulse is that it wouldn't be all that different than what we're doing in melee. Two sides would face down and the person speaking would select a maneuver based on debate (Provoke, Accuse, whatever). The defender might select a defense (Deflect, Deny, Rebut, etc). The neat thing is that before dice would be rolled, you'd actually have to role play the arguments. I can't just say "I Provoke with 6 dice" or whatever. You'd have to role play the argument. "Your proposition is as seedy and ill-conceived as your harlot of a mother!" The other party would have to role play their defense in turn, and then the dice would be rolled to see who was gaining/losing ground.

The attraction is the same with the attraction in melee - it's simply far more interesting to play out as a sub-system or a minigame than it is to simply decide a difficulty and roll. More than that though, it becomes extremely useful to handle conflict between players. In a game that urges characters to follow their personal motivations, those motivations are almost guaranteed to come into conflict. If I can steam-roll over your character with a single roll, then its not only boring - it feels cheap and cheating. And if one handles things "the old fashioned way" then chances are such conflicts will never be resolved at all, as players tend to be extremely reluctant to let other people influence their characters. Creating a mechanical means to settle conflict within the rules does wonders to keep such disagreements in character.

In my Burning Wheel experience, I have noticed that their Social Conflict system actually comes up in play more than the melee combat system.

That said, for me the question simply comes down to whether or not the Full Contest setup is sufficient, or we really need to make a whole sub-system around it.

[hector]

*nods* I see. In that case, again, an extended contest makes perfect sense to make sure that PCs aren't forced into situations based on a single die roll. I suppose it also depends on the desired result and how resistant to said result the person on the other side is. I just don't see that it needs a codified system beyond that.

[Marras]

I have never actually played Burning Wheel but I own it and have read it to the degree of prepping to run it. In general the social conflict in BW is great and one of the reasons I got interested in it in the first place. So, if you happen to make social combat system to Bastards and the system in BW would be the basis for it, I wouldn't think it a bad idea.

In a sense if you can mechanically force someone to do as you want (to certain degree anyway) without magic it is very powerful mechanic and I agree that if you go there you should accept the risk of it turning against you. But how it can be done is a big question. Concessions etc. like in BW might be OK, but are they in line with other parts of Bastards?

Personally I like that there are mechanics for social combat as it creates a totally new arena for conflicts thus broadening what is engaging in a game in addition to physical combat.

[Siggi]

As for me, I never really appreciated social combat systems. Maybe that's because old games lacked such rules...

Come to think of it, why do we need all these rules and dice anyway? Probably, to simulate some actions that we can't actually do. So we have rules and we have stats. The characters can do a lot of things that we players can't. What we can do is roleplay, and make decisions and solve in-game mysteries. What I liked about The Riddle of Steel is that the authors dropped such stat as Intelligence. The players are making decisions, not their characters; the players are trying to solve riddles with their own brains.

Now I'm trying to lead to the idea that the social interaction and social conflict are things that the players actually *can* do themselves. And, in my opinion, that's what roleplaying is about! Why roll the social combat scenes - isn't it better to roleplay them? And the GM's decision on the consequences of a social combat scene should be based, above all else, on the player's roleplaying and arguments and all. The GM can still have doubts about the outcome and that's where the dice come in handy. But the test should be strongly augmented by the actual roleplaying.

Now, that's what I think. I'm not saying that it's the only "right" way to play such scenes though. As a GM, I am good at creating and roleplaying interesting NPCs, but other GMs may have difficulties with that (as I have difficulties with inventing interesting plots). Another problem is that social interaction is so complicated that it's quite hard to create really good, interesting, well-balanced rules.

On the other hand, while reading this thread I thought that it would be fun to play a game that is all about social combat - something about rococo France maybe. Anyone heard of such games?

[Agamemnon]

Now I'm trying to lead to the idea that the social interaction and social conflict are things that the players actually *can* do themselves. And, in my opinion, that's what roleplaying is about! Why roll the social combat scenes - isn't it better to roleplay them?

This goes back to one of those fundamental game design arguments. Old School style games were very heavy on this. In Basic / AD&D, your charisma at best allowed you to modify the starting disposition of the person you are dealing with, and it was up to you to roleplay from there. With this model, we assume that the criteria is "things the player can't do are skills, and things the player can are roleplay" and that drastically changes the way balance works in the game. In AD&D, balance effectively means "all characters are equally useful at dealing with dungeons."

That's fine when combat and dungeoneering are the sole focus of your game. However, it imposes some distinct limits on what kinds of characters can become viable. If your character concept is "I want to be a smooth-talking con artist" then you had just better hope that your roleplaying skills are superb and that the GM wants to cooperate with you. Failing actual mechanics, you're relying on GM fiat for your cons to succeed. That's before we talk about conflicts within the party. I've never seen "I made a good argument and have 18 Charisma. You should listen to me" go over well.

But then you have another interesting situation, and this is the one that I think makes the strongest argument:

We don't require players to actually participate in HEMA to play swordsmen. Outside of my personal group, I don't think anyone who plays sorcerers actually dabbles in the occult. I couldn't vouch for how many thieves in my group actually can pick locks, but I've got a fair idea. So why would I require someone in my group to actually be a smooth-talking con-man in order to play one?

That's the ultimate rub. It's well and good to say "players can roleplay these things, we don't need rules" but literally no one can role play a character who is more socially adept than the player is. No one can pretend to be smarter than they are with any efficacy. It's not physically possible. While I'm always going to require someone to roleplay along with their die rolls, it seems singularly unfair to allow the hundred pound guy to play Conan the barbarian as a successful character based on die rolls but to evaluate the shy guy's swindler solely on the basis of his ability to successfully talk the talk.

That's just my thinking on the matter.

At the end of the day, regardless of what we do, once the beta is in your hands you can do with it as you please. Modify it to your taste.

[hector]

Still, you can always have a lever for more old school type gameplay; if there's social combat, it's easy enough to have one for just using extended contests, and even one for doing things entirely old school (since they basically involve just not using certain mechanics).

Thing is, when it's between players I feel like it depends on how you want to deal with PVP in your game to begin with. I mean, when is a big argument between PCs something that makes the game more interesting, and when is it just leaving the other players with nothing to do when the GM has to spend the extra time to deal with it? And when it's not between players, a decent GM can handle such things through a combination of role playing and skill checks.

[Marras]

Still, if there is a social combat system present in the game it is one more tool for the GMs that want to use it (I am probably one of those) but you don't actually have to use it if you don't want to.

Personally I would use that kind of system (depending on how 'heavy' it would be) on the very important and interesting situations. Some situations would only need a single skill check and other might just need some roleplaying and no dice rolling at all.

[higgins]

So, I guess I should weigh in here as well.

Needless to say, BW is the reference standard as far as social combat is concerned. I own BW, I've read BW, but I've never really played it. That said, I've seen the GenCon 2011 demo run by Luke Crane and... it was just too metagamey for my tastes.

As such, I subscribe much more to the Dogs in the Vineyard camp. People will roleplay the verbal conflict out. If one of them insists on a roll (regular or Full Contest, doesn't matter), then that roll is granted and the result is binding. If the losing side of the contest is not happy with the result, he can escalate the conflict and "resolve" the issue by physical violence.

[Marras]

I am not familiar with the Dogs. Anyway it has it's advantages (based on your description) because it can be handled purely by roleplaying. Still, there is this possibility that you can roll it out because even shy and verbally not so talented players should be able to play smooth talking characters as Agamemnon said. That escalation to violence sounds familiar from Burning Wheel.

I have seen in my games (and in games run by my friends) that it is usually characters of the same few players that really run the show as they are most vocal and better at persuading other players (even GMs) to do as they want them to do.

[Daeruin]

As to the question of why there should be a social combat system:

If your character concept is "I want to be a smooth-talking con artist" then you had just better hope that your roleplaying skills are superb and that the GM wants to cooperate with you. Failing actual mechanics, you're relying on GM fiat for your cons to succeed.
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We don't require players to actually participate in HEMA to play swordsmen. Outside of my personal group, I don't think anyone who plays sorcerers actually dabbles in the occult. I couldn't vouch for how many thieves in my group actually can pick locks, but I've got a fair idea. So why would I require someone in my group to actually be a smooth-talking con-man in order to play one?

That's the ultimate rub. It's well and good to say "players can roleplay these things, we don't need rules" but literally no one can role play a character who is more socially adept than the player is.

The attraction is the same with the attraction in melee - it's simply far more interesting to play out as a sub-system or a minigame than it is to simply decide a difficulty and roll.
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The idea behind creating a social conflict system is the same as creating the dedicated system for melee - you're choosing to focus and expand on an area mechanically to make the action more interesting mechanically.

I totally agree and I think Agamemnon's points speak for themselves. If anybody disagrees and doesn't think those are important parts of an RPG, fine, but please try to make the rest of your comments constructive or just leave it alone. Sorry to be so frank, but I've wasted too much time arguing about social combat with people who don't seem to get it. It's not worth it to either party.

If we were going to have some kind of social combat system, my first impulse is that it wouldn't be all that different than what we're doing in melee.

I agree strongly with this statement, as long as it's understood to mean that social combat is not very different conceptually and that it shares the same overall design goals. However, social combat cannot be the same mechanically. The combat system of TROS was designed specifically to model actual historical combat and thus it has a unique, dedicated system. In my opinion, social combat deserves the same treatment if it's going to work well.

A number of people have mentioned Burning Wheel's social combat system (the Duel of Wits). Personally I think it's . . . I was going to say "awful" but I'll settle for "not optimal and not in line with the statements above."

The first thing you do in BW's Duel of Wits is to determine a Body of Argument, which is a static number that the opponent has to whittle down to win the argument. This is essentially the same mechanic as hit points and it doesn't have any more place in a good social combat system as it does in martial combat. The scripting system of BW has always been a pet peeve of mine, and thankfully I don't see anyone arguing for it here. Another problem with BW's system is that it allows ties, the result of which are that the players have to agree on a compromise with no mechanic to guide what compromise is reached. That defeats the whole purpose of having a social combat mechanic to me. You may achieve a Pyrrhic victory, but you can't just say "Oh we tied, now we'll talk it out and agree!" That's what the mechanic is for in the first place.

These are pretty major flaws in my book. I admire Luke Crane for coming up with the Duel of Wits, but in a lot of ways it feels like a rough draft or a tacked-on system. It can work, but it's just not very sophisticated and definitely not what I would look for in a social combat system. It doesn't even compare to the detail and sophistication of Jake Norwood's combat system.

The social maneuvers themselves are decent and just about any social combat system will probably have something like them. The idea of maneuvers is definitely something we can take from the martial combat system.

Sorry that I can't post much more than that. Real life has me crazy busy right now.