Mental combat

[Eric Kimball]

Has any game ever dealt with arguments and social relations in the same way most rpg deal with combat?  What I mean when you are trying to persuade some one the persuader uses his con skill, or such, to "attack" the persuadie.  Then the persuadie tries to "dodge" with some skill or attribute like wisdom.  If the "attack" is successful the persuadie looses some mental "hitpoint".  When his "hitpoints" are depleted the persuadie is convinced.

This is a bit of an over abstraction but I have wonder if anyone has done something along these lines?  Thanks for your time.

[Brian Leybourne]

There was a whole thread about that in the TROS forum (here).

Also, the Dying Earth RPG has this as it's core mechanic.

Brian.

[simon_hibbs]

There was a whole thread about that in the TROS forum (here).

Also, the Dying Earth RPG has this as it's core mechanic.

Brian.

As does Hero Wars, both of which were designed by Robin D. Laws.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Two thumbs up for both Hero Wars and The Dying Earth in this regard. They really work. Although I suggest ignoring the wounding rules in The Dying Earth, which add an unnecessary layer of complication.

Many other games resolve any and all conflict using the same system, such that social conflict is handled just as a fight, for instance: Amber, Soap, InSpectres, kill puppies for satan, Trollbabe, Sorcerer (despite the misleading "combat rules" section, which are really just complex conflict rules), Otherkind, Dust Devils, and others. Universalis deserves special mention, I think.

See also Lace & Steel, which employs its card-based duelling system equally well to repartee, i.e. verbal fencing.

Best,
Ron

[Eric Kimball]

Their seem to be a bunch I can look at.  This will help alot.

[talysman]

one game that uses the same mechanics for everything is Risus. it deserves mention because it gives the specific example of a dysfunctional marriage breaking down, using the "combat" system.

[M. J. Young]

Has any game ever dealt with arguments and social relations in the same way most rpg deal with combat?

Going the other direction, and worth consideration, Alyria deals with combat the same way it deals with resolution of arguments and social relations. In a sense, it converts combat into a resolution of an argument--the game mechanic says that players should state what their characters hope to accomplish rather than what they intend to do, then roll the dice. The winner may then describe how he accomplished it, which (depending on factors such as what attributes or traits were involved) may involve physical combat.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do design-wise, but this is worth considering.

--M. J. Young

[Eric Kimball]

[
Going the other direction, and worth consideration, Alyria deals with combat the same way it deals with resolution of arguments and social relations. In a sense, it converts combat into a resolution of an argument--the game mechanic says that players should state what their characters hope to accomplish rather than what they intend to do, then roll the dice. The winner may then describe how he accomplished it, which (depending on factors such as what attributes or traits were involved) may involve physical combat.

That a neat idea but it seems to be playing to the weakness of games instead of their strengths.  The due to their war game roots, rpgs have always modeled combat better than they have modeled social situations (note when I say better I mean in a more gamist way).  Social interactions have usually been resolved sort of nebulouslyway, with single die roles and not much drama.  Granted their have been some Herculean effort by designers to remedy this situation but all an all the most popular games remain war games with talking.

Also player get more excited by physical things than the social aspects.  A sword of flaming vengeance is much more sought after than a seat on the city council.  This to, I think, is due to the war game roots of rpgs and what types of players they attract.

As to what I am doing, the game I am working on does not divide mental and physical characteristics.  So a quick characters has both mental quickness and physical quickness.  As usually the combat systems is detailed with maneuvers and damage type things.  So the idea came to me if I made the "mental combat" identical to the physical one it would keep with the basic attribute premise of the game and save me time and space avoiding writing up a unique social mechanic.  Also their might be the added benefit of encouraging the player to talk an opponent into submission instead of going into a killing frenzy at every opportunity.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Eric,

I don't see a focus on conflict as a weakness in a role-playing game's design, rather the contrary. The weakness is to mistake physical combat for the most interesting or engaging conflict.

You wrote,

Also player get more excited by physical things than the social aspects. A sword of flaming vengeance is much more sought after than a seat on the city council.

I suggest that this is a limited and not-especially-accurate view of "players." You might be surprised at how excited people get about social conflict when (a) it has meaningful emotional consequences and (b) the system actually provides a meaty resolution system to deal with it.

I think that your design tactic, to collapse "physical" and "mental" features into the same descriptors, is a very good one. You'll find it in many recent games which emphasis conflict per se, with combat simply being a subset of conflict.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I think what he's saying, Ron, is that combat centric games often have many layers to the resolution of combat, and asking why social situations can't get the same treatment. Perhaps a game where cobat is handled with a single roll, but a social situation is handled with many.

Wildelf posted something about a d20 supplement he was working on that was headed in this direction recently.

Mike

[Eric Kimball]

I think what he's saying, Ron, is that combat centric games often have many layers to the resolution of combat, and asking why social situations can't get the same treatment. Perhaps a game where cobat is handled with a single roll, but a social situation is handled with many.

Wildelf posted something about a d20 supplement he was working on that was headed in this direction recently.

Mike

That's it in a nutshell.  In most combat systems are expansions of the regular conflict resolution system where most social systems are just the regular conflict system or even an abbreviated version of it.  I have not see (All though I have not read that many games) a social system with "maneuvers", "weapons", "hit points" and compound rounds, or some equivalent level or complexity.

Ron was right however, I was stereotyping players and underestimating their level of maturity.  I hang with a hack and slash group and it sometimes taints my perception of all players.  The success of WW and other games that, at lest in style, focus on the social proves that my gang is the exception not the rule.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Mike, I don't need clarification, thanks. I fully understand Eric's question.

Eric, some of the games I listed - most notably Lace & Steel, Hero Wars, and The Dying Earth - fill your layered-social-conflict bill exactly. My "other games" paragraph is a useful side note only.

Lots and lots of people like playing this way; my advice is to shake the habits and judgments based on your most-familiar-to-you players off your shoulders like a Newfie dog shakes off water, and find the folks whose preferences match yours better.

Best,
Ron

[Harlequin]

While I think that captures part of this discussion neatly, something a couple of posts up caught my attention and raised a little red flag of insight.

Specifically,

So the idea came to me if I made the "mental combat" identical to the physical one it would keep with the basic attribute premise of the game and save me time and space avoiding writing up a unique social mechanic. Also their might be the added benefit of encouraging the player to talk an opponent into submission instead of going into a killing frenzy at every opportunity.

That last sentence points us to one reason why "mental" (meaning by and large social - systems for psychic combat being a whole different kettle of fish) conflict does not quite lend itself to a systematic parallel with combat systems in general, or even the combat system used in the same game.

It's uncommon for a player and the GM to bypass the combat resolution engine and go beat each other up in the kitchen.

At least I sincerely hope so.  Whereas it is not at all uncommon, in fact it's very frequent in this neck of the woods, for players to prefer to immerse themselves as much as possible in the social component.  Even if a given game has mechanics for persuasion and charm, even for reputation and intrigue, they frequently gather the most dust of any mechanism bar none, as the roleplayers choose to interact directly.  Even in situations where the social conflict in question is somewhat obscure to the participants, such as theological negotiations among priest characters, the preference is often to play it out, making details up as necessary, and nodding only slightly in the direction of the rules.  This goes quadruple for LARP, by the way.

Put in the context of conflict mechanics, this actually points out that there if there is any social mechanic whatsoever, there are always two resolution systems functioning in parallel.  Think of it like a boffer-style LARP which also includes a purely stat- and dice-based combat resolution mechanic.  I'm hardly condemning this as bad; there will come situations where the dice are more appropriate, and situations where (as Gary Larson put it) there's something about a good solid mace in your hand...

But this does somewhat complicate the intention to make a social-conflict mechanic which parallels, or supersedes, the physical-conflict mechanic.  You are layering detail onto a ruleset which already has an alternate ruleset - the "just do it" school.  So some portion of any amount of work put into this by the designer will end up "wasted" - or, worse and more specifically, seen as wasted by some players, and (going by local trends here) not a small fraction either.  This has all sorts of ramifications: respect for your game, perceived (in)consistency, player attentiveness when reading those sections, currency issues.

I'm not saying don't make social-conflict resolution mechanics, if your system calls for them; I'm just trying to point out that doing so carries a serious amount of corollary baggage due to the nature of the medium.  If combat systems resonate one way due to gamist pleasures or wargame roots, social-resolution systems resonate another way due to sim-char pleasures and non-wargame necessities.  (Can you imagine a game which forcibly handled all social conflict mechanically?  Okay, so these two PCs get into an argument over ethical treatment of the prisoner... roll to see who wins, and get Elspeth to hug (ie heal) the loser back to full, so we can get on to the climactic squabble scene with the fallen Jesuit.)

Now, there's a productive thought as well as a warning, in this.  Because conceivably, rather than acknowledging the "just do it" school of social-conflict resolution as a parallel "mechanic" and writing the rules-version as best you can, one could in theory make the two mechanics interwoven - even though one of them isn't a mechanic at all in the conventional sense.

TROS pulled this off with interweaving physical-conflict systems and belief/value systems, for example.  Nothing says one couldn't do so for stat-social-conflict systems and player-verbal socialization.  In fact the result would be pretty powerful, and I'm sure if I thought about it for a bit I'd come up with games which already do this to some extent.

Envision an "interweave rating" which describes how entangled two characters are in your conflicts of intrigue.  It's kind of like the range between two characters in physical conflict; it might affect what sorts of intrigue maneuvers were possible.  (You're too close to him to use "Pretend not to notice his intentions" without a serious penalty, but you're at perfect range for "Be overly solicitous.")  By itself, this mechanic would simply be a component of the statted social-conflict system, and nothing else.  Add in a level of rules-weaving, however: each time a character, PC or NPC, has a roleplayed conversation of any kind with another character, raise their Interweave Rating by one point.  Two if voices were raised, +1 if the setting was prominent or public.  At this point, actions which would previously have invoked only the "just do it" method of intrigue resolution, and bypassed the statted method, interact with both.

This sort of design might be exactly the missing link needed to make rules for social conflict, with "combat-system level" detail, satisfying and tactically fun.  In fact the whole idea of maneuvers and so on exists in part because tactics, and Gamism in general, is fun - even to people who normally get their kicks in the N and S worlds, a little Gamism once in a while can work wonders.  Emphasis on the "in part", of course.  But detailing a social-combat system can't be done purely to draw attention to social combat; drawing that mode of combat into prominence is only an ancillary effect of the amount of detail the rules use, the matter of the details themselves imply either Gamist or Sim-Socializing (?) needs.  And if you're going to have either of these in your design, then allowing players to just 'roleplay outside the rulebox' would be tantamount to permitting boffers as an alternate resolution method (player's choice) in, say, TROS.  (Or, more aptly - since TROS has the whole Nar engine thing going, permitting paintballs as alternate combat resolution in Milennium's End.)

Ideas for the rules-interweave, preferably not all at once in the same ruleset:
- Entanglement ratings as mentioned above, which trigger "on a conversation" or some other fairly readily observed phenomenon which happens in the played-out scenes.  Outside-the-rulebox actions have in-the-rulebox reflections, presumably as accurate as feasible.  Cool, that was a fun scene, really intense.  Lemme think... you got your way despite your father, even though your mother chimed in with that thing about your older brother.  Have 65 XP and a "Rebelling" tick.
- Rules which either prohibit, or incur a rules cost, for similar actions taken outside the rulebox.  You simply may not speak to the Dowager - your courtly score is insufficient.  The scene will not be set until you qualify within the rules context - although see "In Time of Need: boosting your courtly score - Boorishness points" on page seventeen.
- A strict rule against resolution of certain things using outside-the-rulebox methods, an avowal to use the stats for resolution - preferably Fortune-at-the-beginning or similar so that this is not unplayable.  As you open your mouth to quarrel with Mercurius, we roll resolution immediately, and all agree to be bound by the result, generating the scene on this basis.  If you accidentally violate this precept - winning an argument without rolling, oops - then to illustrate the breach of social contract, next time we get into combat, everybody else gets boffer weapons, and you get a pair of d10's.  (Grin.)

Okay.  An elaborate social mechanism carries baggage - its interaction with the fact that there is another social layer.  In order to achieve the goal stated in this thread, this must be acknowledged and - if possible - taken advantage of.  'Nuff said.