Social Combat

[Daeruin]

Apparently my comment was a discussion killer. Sorry to be so negative. I think social combat systems are hard to do right, and they are underappreciated. It would be a difficult task to come up with a really good one. I've worked on it off and on for a few years and have never come up with anything that I love.

[Marras]

I agree that creating a social combat system is not all that easy. I have tried to do one myself using a very lightweight version of BW system adapted to my own. I am not all that thrilled about the outcome, either

I have understood that Agamemnon was actually arguing for social combat instead of opposing the idea. I could have misunderstood it, of course...

[Daeruin]

You are right. I also think Agamemnon was arguing for social combat. I realized my comment was poorly worded, and I have revised it. I totally agree with what Agamemnon was saying.

[Agamemnon]

It's always a good day when people agree with what Agamemnon was saying! I think the most likely way for this to work as it stands now is that we will leave social combat as part of the Full Contest mechanics, with notes on how it should be run using those rules. This may not be the final ruling on it, but it should hold us over until the beta comes out. That way we are spending our dev time working on getting things finished rather than worrying about adding new things just yet.

Once the beta comes out, we can revisit whether we think that a full fledged social combat system is needed. I'm a fan personally, but it's ultimately more about what you guys think than anything.

That's not to end the discussion, mind you. Feel absolutely free to continue discussing the idea and pitching ways for it to work or setups for mechanics. It might be that by the time the beta comes out our little budding community here will have found the perfect solution.

[Siggi]

Once the beta comes out

I keep hearing it again and again...

[higgins]

Once the beta comes out

I keep hearing it again and again...

Yes, you do keep hearing that.

All those pesky little rumors...

[Daeruin]

I have a minute and wanted to make a comment about this that I didn't have time for earlier. I don't intend to let this drop if I can help it!

In physical combat, TROS made some very specific decisions. One of those was not to have hit points. TROS treats wounding and death very concretely. The only way to die is to actually bleed to death OR to receive too much organ damage (stab to the heart/lungs, crushed head, decapitation, etc.). Each successful strike deals a real wound that's described in detail. Instead of dealing in abstract hit points, TROS breaks wounds into shock, pain, and blood loss. There are numbers to represent these factors, but they're based in real, concrete things.

I would like to see a similar rubric applied to social combat. I'm not totally sure what form it would take. One of the problems with social scenarios is that they aren't physical, so it's harder to get concrete. But we can try. For example, instead of a successful social maneuver reducing some abstract number down a certain number of points, it can have an actual, immediate effect on the target. For example:

• changing their relationship (for better or worse)
• changing their perceptions (of the speaker, of themselves, of someone else)
• causing emotional reactions (losing their cool, laughing, staggering back in fear)
• changing their beliefs about something specific (I no longer believe X, or I no longer doubt X)
• making a concession (fine, I'll do X, but...)

In other words, real THINGS that happen, even if they are mental things. And these would be things that happen with EACH success, to varying degrees. If you're going to have a social combat system, especially in a game that emphasizes choices and player/character intent (spiritual attributes), that means the results of the system have to matter. The stakes for every success or failure need to be real.

That's the direction I would want to see a social combat system go. What concrete effects can you think of that would be a result of social interactions? Let's go beyond the simple scenario of two people trying to convince the king to make a certain choice.

[higgins]

Now THAT is intriguing to me!

You've got us torn between finishing up beta and discussing this now

[hector]

So basically, what you're suggesting is immediate effects, which may or may not be permanent depending on how successful you are? I can sort of see that working, to an extent, but one question I would like to ask is this: what is the incredibly manipulative person, who the target knows is incredibly manipulative, tries to change the target's opinion, and instead of engaging in polite conversation, the target decides to headbutt said manipulative person?

If you've ever played, or even read through, dogs in the vineyard, you'll notice that conflict basically scales; if you're losing a verbal conflict, you can escalate it to fisticuffs, then to knives or clubs, or if things are going really badly, just draw iron and threaten to start blowing holes in the other guy. I feel like this needs to be an option, just because the inability to do so basically reduces characters who aren't magnificent bastards into the lapdogs of those who are. And quite frankly, a lapdog is no fun whatsoever to play.

[Daeruin]

I totally agree, hector. I don't like social combat as mind control, and I have some ideas on how to reconcile that with immediate social combat effects. They're not incompatible. I might have time this weekend to post again.

[Agamemnon]

I have a minute and wanted to make a comment about this that I didn't have time for earlier. I don't intend to let this drop if I can help it!

In physical combat, TROS made some very specific decisions. One of those was not to have hit points. TROS treats wounding and death very concretely. The only way to die is to actually bleed to death OR to receive too much organ damage (stab to the heart/lungs, crushed head, decapitation, etc.). Each successful strike deals a real wound that's described in detail. Instead of dealing in abstract hit points, TROS breaks wounds into shock, pain, and blood loss. There are numbers to represent these factors, but they're based in real, concrete things.

I would like to see a similar rubric applied to social combat. I'm not totally sure what form it would take. One of the problems with social scenarios is that they aren't physical, so it's harder to get concrete. But we can try. For example, instead of a successful social maneuver reducing some abstract number down a certain number of points, it can have an actual, immediate effect on the target. For example:

• changing their relationship (for better or worse)
• changing their perceptions (of the speaker, of themselves, of someone else)
• causing emotional reactions (losing their cool, laughing, staggering back in fear)
• changing their beliefs about something specific (I no longer believe X, or I no longer doubt X)
• making a concession (fine, I'll do X, but...)

In other words, real THINGS that happen, even if they are mental things. And these would be things that happen with EACH success, to varying degrees. If you're going to have a social combat system, especially in a game that emphasizes choices and player/character intent (spiritual attributes), that means the results of the system have to matter. The stakes for every success or failure need to be real.

That's the direction I would want to see a social combat system go. What concrete effects can you think of that would be a result of social interactions? Let's go beyond the simple scenario of two people trying to convince the king to make a certain choice.

Uncanny. I was just thinking about this exact same thing the other day (in between heaving gulps of nyquil - caught myself a nasty respiratory infection). The problem I bumped into was figuring out how the moving parts work. How does one quantify these actions? How does one measure their results? It's perplexing

It only gets weirder when you take into account that the relationship of the speaker to the person being spoken to has a significant impact on the thing as well. If I stab you in the kidney, it doesnt matter how you feel about being stabbed or about the person stabbing you, you're going to bleed (and probably die).

If on the other hand, I make a persuasive argument about XYZ, regardless of how well I roll, there are other factors: Maybe you didn't like me in the first place. No matter how persuasive, if you made up your mind before I started speaking, you might just get more angry rather than anything else (ever watched people talk religion or politics?). If I'm known to be a liar and a cheat, even if you believed what I said was true, you might assume that my argument was false because you didn't trust where I was going with it. And of course the opposite might apply: It doesn't matter how poor my argument is because I'm either telling you what you want to believe in the first place, or I have a nice set of tits and you'll go along with anything if it means I might bed you.

So any kind of quantification seems to want to have some kind of "resistance" figure built in -- not just about how strong willed you are, but all of the other factors above as well. Ironically, this may have been where AD&D social rolls were more savvy than we thought, as charisma did not determine your effectiveness at persuasion (that was all roleplayed) but rather, the starting disposition of the person you were trying to persuade.

So basically, what you're suggesting is immediate effects, which may or may not be permanent depending on how successful you are? I can sort of see that working, to an extent, but one question I would like to ask is this: what is the incredibly manipulative person, who the target knows is incredibly manipulative, tries to change the target's opinion, and instead of engaging in polite conversation, the target decides to headbutt said manipulative person?

If you've ever played, or even read through, dogs in the vineyard, you'll notice that conflict basically scales; if you're losing a verbal conflict, you can escalate it to fisticuffs, then to knives or clubs, or if things are going really badly, just draw iron and threaten to start blowing holes in the other guy. I feel like this needs to be an option, just because the inability to do so basically reduces characters who aren't magnificent bastards into the lapdogs of those who are. And quite frankly, a lapdog is no fun whatsoever to play.

A lot of games have that kind of option to change the venue. Dogs is known for it. Chronica Feudalis basically says if you lose a social conflict, you can take it to a physical conflict instead. Burning Wheel has that "Murder most foul" rule. So we definitely want something in there.

I will say though, I have an idea. I probably need to kick it around with higgins before it will take a real shape, but it is an idea none the less.

[Siggi]

The problem I bumped into was figuring out how the moving parts work. How does one quantify these actions? How does one measure their results? It's perplexing

It is perplexing to say the least! Just a couple of examples here.

I'm now running Game of Thrones, a published adventure called "Peril at King's Landing". There was a scene in which the party encounters three minor nobles who are envoys of the king. The envoys start to pick at the adventurers, accusing them (wrongfully) of murders and other crimes. At that point the book explicitly states that it's a good point to run an Intrigue scene (social combat here is called Intrigue). And the social combat followed: one of the party members started a fierce argument with the envoys, accused them of spreading false rumors, of contemptible conduct, whatever. His arguments were so strong that the envoys backed off, mumbling excuses. The scene was spectacular but we didn't even start to use Intrigue rules - everything was just roleplayed. Would it be possible for the character to achieve the same result if we'd used the rules? Maybe. Would it be more fun if he would play it the way: "Now I use this action and roll my Persuasion agains his Intrigue Defence"? I doubt that.

I'm not trying to say here that social combat rules are crap or something. It's just an example of a situation when I, as the GM, could call for a test, but I didn't, because the roleplaying and the players's arguments were convincing enough.

There's another story. A friend of mine was GMing for a group of first timers (who were a bit drunk at that point ). Their characters were trying to convince a guy to help them out. My friend told me that they tried badly: they pleaded, they tried to buy him, etc. And there was a lot of hilarious roleplay. Little did they know that the guy was the main villain of the story and just couldn't agree to do what they wanted. I believe that in this kind of situations social combat rules may fail to work.

[Marras]

Even if Bastards will have a social combat system it doesn't force anyone to use them as you have noticed with Game of Thrones

Of course social combat should not be mind control (you might have spells for that but I don't know what kind of magic system Bastards will have). So yes, you should be able to escalate conflict to physical combat. In addition to that you should be able to "retreat" from social combat by refusing to listen to your opposition before (next) set of rolls is made. Of course this might not be possible in all situations like when you try to persuade a local noble to do as you want instead of what your opposition wants as in that situation you would basically surrender the case. But if someone tries to smoothtalk his way inside a house the guard might just refuse to listen and tell to beat it (and if that is not enough, actually beat the loudmouth to pulp if so inclined). But these demand some stats or something that define when NPCs are willing to listen and when they can just bluntly say piss off.

Will Bastards have some sort of reputation system? If so, it could support social combat like if you have a reputation of a telling a truth, you could have an upper hand in debates. In addition to that, what are you willing to do to keep that kind of reputation? That could open a whole new can of scenario hooks.

Initial disposition could be rolled, maybe based on reputation and other things. Then you could try and drag that towards more and more to your favor. Of course resistance rolls should be rolled as well depending on how firmly the opposition wants to keep their head.

[Daeruin]

A few brief notes to Siggi. Of course you can easily "wing it" with social combat. Many LARPers do the same thing with physical combat and can't figure out why anyone would want a physical combat system as complicated as TROS or Bastards. If you're like that with your social combat, cool. As Marras said, if you don't like the social combat system, you don't have to use it. But obviously some of us want one. Don't rain on our parade, man! I would suggest trying to wrap your head around why some of us want social combat and trying to make constructive comments to help out.

One of the awesome things about TROS combat was that Jake figured out exactly where to put the right level of detail and where not to. TROS has a single combat maneuver for Master Strike and just three possible stances (in the core rulebook, at least). And yet if you've studied HEMA at all, you know that in the German longsword tradition there are five Master Strikes and five basic stances. Each master strike is meant to "break" one of the five stances, and knowing this is one of the basics you have to master in order to ever fight well with a longsword. Yet TROS completely glosses over this fact. On the other hand, TROS puts a lot of detail into figuring out wound locations and how armor fits into that. It can get fairly tedious to keep track of how much armor you have, what type, and where, and then figuring out the final wound result after a strike.

I don't see social combat as being all that different. Yes, there will have to be some kind of resistance figured into it, much like armor in physical combat. Things like your levels of trust, loyalty, and love for the person you're interacting with, along with your motivation, make a huge difference in a social conflict. And that will vary from person to person, just as armor varies from person to person. I can't see a decent social combat system getting away without dealing with that. Characters will need to have some social attributes, and you'll have to keep track of character relationships. The system couldn't be realistic otherwise. Maybe there's a way to do that without a ton of book keeping. That would definitely be the ultimate goal.

Here's another thing I've been thinking about. I really like the idea of focusing less on what you can make another character do or think, and more on how you can change a character's emotions and how they are perceived by others. In the thick of a verbal altercation, you might coerce a character into agreeing to something, but you can't magically force them to actually do it, nor can you change a character's thoughts or beliefs. In other words, it would always be up to the player whether their character followed through with the results of a social conflict (and that would include escalating to violence if desired). But the player would not be in control of the psychological fallout of it, nor of how others perceive their character's actions. Can the character deal with the fact that he always looks like the village idiot in conversations? Does he start to build up anxiety or phobias of certain situations? Does he build up a reputation as being stupid and stubborn, stupid and honorable, or stupid and traitorous?

Another quick thought. It might be helpful to take some great, powerful scenes of social conflict from literature and try to block out what it might look like in an RPG—what actions are being taken, what are the tactics being used, what are the characters' motivations and relationships, etc? Try to make it a bit more abstract and go from there.

[higgins]

Yes, there will have to be some kind of resistance figured into it, much like armor in physical combat. Things like your levels of trust, loyalty, and love for the person you're interacting with, along with your motivation, make a huge difference in a social conflict. And that will vary from person to person, just as armor varies from person to person.

We've tossed around a few ideas back in our virtual office as well, but this part is yet the most elusive one for me. Barring the complete write-up of a social relations map with individual rankings, how would you really accomplish that?

Also, just to toss another idea in as long as we're discussing social combat, I've always been a huge fan of stepping stones.