Game Setting Idea - Diplomacy vs Effectiveness

[Adarchi]

Thesis: players may be more or less effective given their choices while developing their character, perhaps they could be rewarded for not trying to min/max during development.

Inspiration: Occasionally someone will share a useless "cocktail party fact" (or maybe they're spreading urban legends) to make conversation such as "the proper way for a couple to enter a room is for the man to to the left of a lady. The reason is so that the man's sword arm is not free thus signifying that he does not expect to need a sword with the present company." What if this encouragement of sub-optimal combat was a form of social grace?

Setting: The players walk into town and are astounded to see that most men are carrying [weapon your PCs despise the most] and they are embellished with gold and precious stones. The PCs walk up to a guard to get some intel when the guard turns a deep shade of red and inhales deeply. After awhile he turns to the weakest character in the group and bows gracefully, completely ignoring the other players. Then the guard says "please tell this... person that if they wish to insult me further they soon eat my [crappy weapon]."

The PCs continue to make social blunders until they get hauled before a tribunal. At that point the focus shifts to the PC who most regrets his character build / has the most obscure skill / is generally weakest in combat and the NPCs act very deferential. They then state that only a really powerful warrior would have said skill / weapon, and to be traveling with such crude people who would wield [a very decent weapon] like common brutes!

Combat weak PCs should get major bonuses to bluff, intimidate, and other speech checks in this society. The concept is that they expect the most powerful people to hide their prowess. Only people who lack combat skills would "pretend" by using an "easy weapon" or other displays. Duels would be the most common form of combat using ceremonial weapons and politeness would be demonstrated by showing how uncombat ready you were. Possible common forms of politeness:
-sword arm unavailable
-using a dull / useless version of an already poor weapon
-keeping your back to someone to show respect while they talk to you
-Wearing armor is generally frowned upon on unless it has large gaps in all the wrong places or is otherwise useless. (super small shields, helmets made of grass, etc)
-No one closes their doors all the way, even at night
-Locks are usually left with the key still in it
-swords glued into the scabbard
-swords are comically small
-crossbows are missing firing mechanisms
-bows are widely held but no one carries arrows

In general, the more useless something is, the more polite this society considers it. Bonus points to the DM if a) he can find some reason that bandits still stay out and b) the players constantly need to run here after a battle before they can put their weapons away.

[Vulpinoid]

It could be argued that quite a few well balanced game systems already do this.

But it's certainly a way to bring balance into those systems where such an equilibrium doesn't exist.

The other way to completely avoid this type of situation is simply by informing the players what will be generally expected from their characters over the course of your story. If you tell them up front that the game isn't going to be combat heavy, but they all build tanks....then they get exactly what's coming to them if they walk into a town like this.

If you told them that there would be heaps of combat and they built characters accordingly, then walking into a town like this would be a jarring experience and the players would be justified in complaining about it.

In a good system, combat weak characters shouldn't get a dedicated bonus in this type of town, because they should already be getting a bonus somewhere else in exchange for their lack of combat skills.  Instead of making a "bonus", ensure these other skills are used more often in the town, or provid larger rewards for characters who use these other skills over the more traditional adventurer's method of violence.

Just an idea...

V

[Egonblaidd]

It's true that most RPGs are built around combat, but quite a few do make allowances for other types of skills and character archtypes that aren't combat oriented.  In these cases it's the fault of the GM for not using more scenarios where those archtypes are more useful.  For example, let's say the PCs are given a quest to slay a dragon.  Well, the fighter types are all gung-ho for going and getting themselves killed, so the NPCs quickly explain that no known weapon can harm the dragon.  This dragon is something of a legend, though, so the scholar type cracks out the books and starts doing loads of research on this dragon, and discovers that the dragon has a particular aversion to a certain crystal, which further research indicates that the only surviving example of this crystal is in the royal treasures of this one king.  So the party trots on over there and the diplomat type does his thing in order to convince the king to part with his beloved jewelry.  Once done, the tradesman type fashions a weapon using the crystal that can be used to slay the dragon.  NOW you kill it.  Or maybe it's just another dragon, and the scholar, diplomat, and tradesman drag along behind the fighters while they merrily go to slay the dragon.  It's the GM's fault if violence can solve all of the party's problems.  Also, there should be consequences to engaging in violence in certain settings, like cities, so other methods should be strongly encouraged in order to achieve the party's goals.  Another thing you can do is make combat particularly nasty, so that even those who are competent at it will only use it as a last resort because there is a good chance they could die or get maimed.

[JoyWriter]

I suppose those choices (such as weapon choices) need a reason to exist: If someone is disadvantaging themselves by using them, obviously most would not. Is it their father's weapon? In fact it could be made so a cultural history actually builds up in such a weapon as power, or simply provides a culture with it's own localised feats/specialisms/bonuses.

But as you have suggested, it could be that the stupid and unwieldy but cool looking weapon (a classic player trap), is actually a ceremonial or "civilised" weapon, and people walking about with barbarous axes will not be trusted, because of their foreignness amongst other things.

Actually, looking at the ceremonial/cultural elements of weaponry, and looking more at system design rather than patching, perhaps that is a way to diversify weapons instead of damage types: If you have two large double handed slicing weapons, perhaps the difference between a zweihander and a katana is what it means to those who see it.

There is a desire I think to quantify the obvious "different-ness" of those two weapons in damage dice or the equivalent. Perhaps giving one a special ability or tweaking the stats so that one is more reliable but lower damaging.

I think this should be seen as misdirected complication; they are different simply because they come from different cultures, and emphasising their cultural roots may be a good idea. One idea I have had for an rpg book is to split the rules for armour, weapons etc, and the purchasing rules. Now the only way to make this valuable, and not a waste of peoples effort, is to focus on embedding commerce as much as possible into the various cultures of the setting, so a blacksmith in one town would sell differing things from a sacred-knife maker in another. So from multi-purpose blades of farmer/warriors to specialist ornate weapons made for duels; in this way you could have interesting buying/selling without ever getting into the commercialist upgrade cycle of magic weapons etc, although with D&D 4 type mechanisms that could be added as an over-layer via some "infusion" market.

This has a dual feature; it doesn't get into the relative effectiveness of weapons from times or places that never came into contact (nicely dodging that almost metaphysical discussion), and it makes min/maxing harder by taking out of that arena stuff that should never really have been in it.

More broadly, if you don't like min/maxing, change your classes:

It is almost impossible to remove over-specialisation from a group, but one advantage of a level system or otherwise structured build process is that it allows you to force players to consider a region of their character that they had not previously considered: Instead of fighter, you could have raider, guardsman, ranger or gladiator, all with links to the setting and it's cultures, giving players a context to inspire their actions in almost every situation. But in doing this you have to make the extra levels of detail more accessible, because someone just wanting to be "a fighter", may pick at random if overwhelmed by choice, only to find they actually preferred guardsmen to ranger.

I think that such ideas about politeness have a lot of value, but using them purely as a corrective for a distorted system; that just produces another kind of distortion. Whereas the social and mechanistic approaches could sit side by side, and produce extra depth instead. If the social is merely a form of control and not an expansion of meaning, then there is no incentive for the mechanically focused player to engage with it, and you defy your own objective! But if these things offer them potential for more finessed interactions, then they are more liable to be interested.

[Egonblaidd]

I think, if I understand you correctly, you are saying to make all weapons the same (to a degree).  For example, you could have three weapons, an arming sword, a katana, and a scimitar, all with the exact same stats.  Similarly, you could have a zweihander, a zanbato, and a claymore, all with the same stats.  The differences would be more cultural, more of an in-game difference than an out-of-game mechanical difference.  And this make a lot of sense.  It is essentially what I'm doing in my own RPG.  Magical weapons do exist, but they are rare and not found it shops (except as a method to advance a plot).  Gear is not so much a method of character advancement as a material need for the characters.  Those without weapons acquire one quickly or die, and gear can be taken away with no warning (such as being captured and thrown into a dungeon, without weapons and armor, of course).  You can't save up enough gold to buy a sword that is better than what you have, but you might be able to get a new crossbow that you could use at the start of fights to even the odds before charging into melee (since they take a while to reload).  Now, there should be a difference between a club and an axe, and possibly different "quality" levels of gear that translate into slight damage increases, less weight, and higher durability for higher qualities, but nothing drastic.  You can't upgrade your "Bastard Sword of Ogre Slaying +8" into a "Bastard Sword of Ogre Slaying +9".  I haven't even played D&D so I don't know exactly how they handle their gear progression, but I don't have "gear progression" in my RPG, either you have the gear or you don't.

Now, whether or not the differences in similar weapons are capitalized on for the story is up to the GM (and to the players, somewhat).  That sort of thing can't be written in to the rules or it becomes just another mechanic.  Since combat mechanics are almost a must for RPGs that have combat, what you can do is make combat deadly (I think I said this in my other post), so that the players are afraid to engage in anything even close to a fair fight.  Of course, when combat is necessary the players need to be able to come out of it alive and well, provided they act in an intelligent manner ("Der, I pick up a stick and hit da sleeping dragon").  Once your players accept that legs, like pants, are optional then they'll be a bit more careful about how they go into combat.  The other side of this is to make non-combat skills actually useful.

[Vulpinoid]

Now, whether or not the differences in similar weapons are capitalized on for the story is up to the GM (and to the players, somewhat).  That sort of thing can't be written in to the rules or it becomes just another mechanic. 

How do you propose players or GM capitalize on the differences if there isn't some kind of mechanic to define differences?

If it's not in the rules isn't it just ad-libbed through the story? Where do you put the limits on such ad-libbing? Isn't this just another potential reason to put some kind of mechanic in place?

Just some questions...

V

[Egonblaidd]

I guess it depends on whether the RPG is Gamist or Narrative.  The Gamist needs mechanics in order for something to truly have some kind of effect in game, while the Narrativist can work better with fewer rules, focusing on story and plot and how different factors effect those things.

Let's say the PCs walk into a bar, and there's some snobby young nobleman there.  Now, let's assume one of the PCs is using a katana; a fairly exotic weapon for a medieval European fantasy setting.  If this is a Gamist game, that player is using a katana because it has the best stats, and who is the nobleman to argue or criticize?  If this is a Narrative game, then the slightly drunk nobleman might start making insulting remarks about the exotic weapon, which could lead to a fight with the nobleman and/or his toadies.  And let's face it, few, if any RPGs have been pure Gamist, there has always been a Narrative aspect.  A pure Gamist RPG would be such that the NPCs were aware of all the intricate mechanics involved in the game, so a king might send you to get that Bastard Sword of Ogre Slaying +8 "because that extra eight damage will increase our chances of driving out the ogres from 58.7% to 84.2%" (the king probably picked up this skill from playing World of Warcraft) (even computer and console RPGs, or eRPGs as I'll call them, aren't completely Gamist, though as a general rule they tend toward that direction).  To a Narrativist, an adventure could be to go and get a sword that is just as good from a meta-game mechanics standpoint, and yet has some kind of importance to the plot.

Honestly, I think Gamist RPGs would tend to cause a greater focus on combat over diplomacy since a lot of effort is put into the combat mechanics, making them easier to exploit, and therefore easier to use to solve your problems than diplomacy.  Rules-lite Narrative RPGs would be much more conducive to equal parts diplomacy and combat, since the story takes precedence over the mechanics.  If the story calls for a fight, you fight, if it calls for negotiations, you negotiate.  Generally things won't be quite so clear cut, but with a good GM and good players the players should approach the situation from the most intelligent standpoint, fighting when there is a clear tactical advantage against the enemy and negotiating when they need information or suspect a peaceful resolution is what is expected for the story.  If the combat mechanics are to convoluted then the game almost becomes about the combat, and how the players can manipulate the numbers to beat their opponents.  If combat was resolved by flipping a coin, then the focus would shift to narration; what happens during the fight (how do you win or lose?), what is the bad guy up to, how are the PCs connected to the plot?  Combat as a game mechanic becomes uninteresting, so that interest can be focused on the story.  In a sense it's like the difference between reading a book and playing a game: in a book it is usually assumed that the hero triumphs in the end, what the reader wants to know is how it happens, what the story is that leads up to that point; in a game the battle itself is a fierce struggle with an undetermined outcome and the players and observers are interested in each move that is made in order to bring one player closer to victory as the fight each other.  It's the difference between listening enthralled at a description of a battle, and leaning forward to see the numbers on the dice, ignoring the description, only focusing on how many more hits it will take to kill your opponent.

Anyway, if the mechanics are such that one sword is much the same as another, then players will try to obtain gear they feel suits their character, or that they like stylistically, adding to that character's personality and giving the GM another resource to draw from for the plot.  Why does the one character choose a katana over an arming sword or a scimitar?  Does it have something to do with that character's background?  Is there something there that can be used to advance the story?  Perhaps an adventure based on that character's background, people he knows, places he's been?  How will people react to this character that could deter or advance, or, at the very least, enrich the story?  I mean, yeah, if it's a Gamist RPG you need rules for something to actually have an effect, but for a Narrative game anything that pops into the GM's (or player's) head goes, to a degree.  Maybe one character has scars, a missing eye, and uses a cruel looking sword with spikes and stuff on it, and frequently intimidates people to get what he wants, while another character has the exact same attributes, skills and gear, but is clean and well dressed, with an elaborately decorated sword embellished with gold and sliver, and deals primarily with nobility, using his charismatic skills to get what the party needs.  If the player can convince the GM that his character's ruthless appearance should give him a bonus to Intimidate tests, or his clean and classy appearance should give a bonus to Charm tests when dealing with nobility, then a mechanical bonus will be given for something that only matters from a narrative context.  However, the GM can also use these facts about the characters to progress the story.  Maybe some drunk sailors want to "bust up the prettyboy" or the local authorities don't like that one ruffian's look, and so throw him in jail.

To sum things up, in a Gamist game, everything needs to have some mechanical difference, or else it is the same, while in a Narrative game the players and GM both can us in-game details in the game, whether it is getting some kind or arbitrary mechanical bonus or as a source of plot material.