Social Combat

[Mike Holmes]

I think where you're going with the personal power thing is where it's at. That is, a failure to win on the small scale argument would lead to a drop in personal power on the larger scale.

I'd even get more complicated. Instead of power as an overall rating, I'd go with ratings for relationspip with all named characters of the court. Reputation might be the base, and then the Influence raing for the particular character goes up or down from there based on interactions.

So, my character, Bob the Magnificent, comes to court as a nobody with Rep 0. Bob makes a name for himself by defeating a horde of gols for Count Demoney (that's Demonet) gettting him Rep 5 and Influence 3 (for a total 8 effect) with the Count. Later, Bob accidentally snubs Baron Harpoonen, puting his Influence with the Baron a -10 (for a total of -5 including his Rep). Harpoonen starts a whispering campaign against Bob which subsequently reduces Bob to -2 Rep. When next Bob sees the Count, the Count still likes Bob (Influence 3 - 2 Rep = 1 effect), but warns him that his close relationships with his warhorse is a fact that shouldn't be circulated at court. Bob, a new shade of purple, asks about, and eventually learns that it was Harpoonen who started the rumor, and seeks him out. He calls Harpoonen out on the floor, and they duel ending with Bob skewering Harpoonen in a way that will leave the Baron unable to have children. Might proving right in this particular kingdom, Bob gets his 7 Reputation back, and an additional 3 for having demonstrated the Baron's villainy to the court. The Count now at an effective 13 decides to see if he can't get Bob the Magnificent to marry his daughter Elaine of the Unfortunate Visage.

What's Rep and Influence good for? These add to a character's Social for purposes of gettting people to do what you want. Perhaps for every five Rep+Inf you have on someone, you can roll an additional die on any check to get someone to do what you want. In this case, Bob burns his 3 with the Count Influence to demure on the marriage proposal (not even wanting to risk him insisting).

That sort of thing.

I see people using their meager Influence early on to try and climb, by starting with people who themselves have a little more influence, and trying to get them to get more Influence for them with more important folks. So, Jon the not-so-magificent comes to court, and manages to wrangle a job as an aide to the Barbican Castellan (um, the guy who controls who enters the gate). Using this position, he meets a lot of the court members, and uses his Inf with his boss (no rep at all yet), to introduce him to a Knight named Sir Melvin. Sir Melvin impressed with the castellan's description of Jon's toadying prowess, decides to take him on as his personal furbisher (armor polisher). He then subsequently gets Melvin to talk him up to Shante the Handmaiden of Marquessa Busoom. Shante, one of the prettier girls at court sends word that she'd be amenable to being courted by Jon (who ain't ugly), and, boom, word spreads like wildfire and suddenly Jon has a Rep of 1.

Etc. You could make a whole game outta nothing but this stuff. Just expanding your Inflence base, and using that to get people to help you further expand your base, until you've got the King asking you how many Armies he should send against Smallaria.

OK. who wants to play?

Mike

[Drew Stevens]

Mm.

I'd want to abstract out Reputation and Influence a bit as just the generic Power (name variable) pool.  And I'm not fully sure I grok a good way for the Social level and Courtly level to integrate- they clearly /need/ to, but thus far they don't. (Unless your Social Pool /is/ your Personal Power... maybe those should just always be the same...)

OTOH, recording your relationship with everyone else at Court who is spending their Personal Power (either for or against you) is definitly on the right track :)  I'm just more inclined to have it be recording how much of their Personal Power they've put at your disposal- how, precisely, you use these strings gets abstracted out into the manuvers of Courtly combat.

Hm.  Additional mental note- people should be able to devote personal power to /hating/ someone, too, giving them an effective anti-Peripheral Power (say, rather, giving any opponent they face an automatic bonus).  To help keep rivals quashed, and show the increasing cost of supressing up and comers.

Additional additional mental note- Courtly combat shouldn't have the clearly defined sides and initative of Social/melee combat.  All 'attacks' are declared at once, then all defenses checked, then pools refresh.  The actual activity that carries these results out may be weeks in the playing.   And you wouldn't just target enemies, but also the unaligned and your enemies allies to try and subvert them away from those blackguards and towards your clearly superior cause.

[svenlein]

one idea,

If one side's thesis in an argument is inherently weaker this could be represented by a Terrain roll.

So if one minister wants to convince the king that killing the dragon may be difficult and a powerful wizard should be hired, and another minister says it will be so easy to kill his 3 year old son should do it.  The second minister could have to make a Terrain roll throughout the argument, since his position is going to be harder to defend.  (obviously this is exagerated, but you get the idea hopefully)

Scott

[Callan S.]

I get the feeling I've lost the opportunity to expand on my original post/idea. At least not without seeming a bit of a copy. Sigh.

[Drew Stevens]

svenlin- I like it :)  Bit a bit tricky though, to pre-decide which idea is inherently weaker.

Noon- Not at all.  I'm basically just throwing globs of paint at a canvas- everyone's encouraged to do the same.

[Durgil]

An idea that I had yesterday was how skill and fluency in a particular language, dialect, or even accent could modify the dice pool.  Here in the states the trick to speaking "correctly" is to more or less hide where you're from, but other cultures and languages have a dialect or accent that is concidered proper like the High German.  the speaker speaking in the proper dialect with the proper accent gains a dice or two while the guy speaking like he is from some back water area looses a dice or two.  speakers of different languages, no matter how closely related, should simply not be able to understand one another's speech.

I hope that all makes some kind of sense - I'm from the mid-west. :-)

[Drew Stevens]

Yeah, that actually makes perfect sense :)

While a lot of the social problems associated with a 'lower class dialect' are handled just with the stratification by class already, there should definitly be some additional penelty (or even potentially a bonus!  Think Saxon England after the Normans had taken over, and French beame the language of the educated elite for a while) for speaking another language as your native tongue would be appropriate.

Also, I've got my Riddle now *does his happy dance of ultimate joy* :)

[Durgil]

Yeah, that actually makes perfect sense :)

While a lot of the social problems associated with a 'lower class dialect' are handled just with the stratification by class already, there should definitly be some additional penelty (or even potentially a bonus!  Think Saxon England after the Normans had taken over, and French beame the language of the educated elite for a while) for speaking another language as your native tongue would be appropriate.

I'm glad I could contribute to this great idea!

Also, I've got my Riddle now *does his happy dance of ultimate joy* :)

It is a great feeling isn't it.

[Drew Stevens]

Whee!

Okay, I had a stupidly obvious in retrospect revelation, regarding the larger scale of Courtly social combat, and will be reworking that angle from the ground up- but what it boils down to is that it's not simply the scale that was off, it was the whole model.

The new version will be much more similiar to the personal scale social combat, but taking place at a very different time rate.  Generalized sentiment (the Crowd) will become an equivelent of Terrain (with the unusal flip side that favorable crowds will grant you bonuses- if you play off of them), so that the real focus goes back to a few individuals- the PCs, and the important NPCs.

[Callan S.]

svenlin- I like it :)  Bit a bit tricky though, to pre-decide which idea is inherently weaker.

Noon- Not at all.  I'm basically just throwing globs of paint at a canvas- everyone's encouraged to do the same.

In that case, I'll add this. If your want to expand to larger arguments and debates (like you'd get in a court), I think the same system should be used (A pool, declare attack and defence, etc).

However, in this case the target number your looking for is based on how many small arguements you won, modified by that.

Imagine this: The politician sees the big debate coming...prior to it he goes around to everyone involved to have little discussions with them (I'm pretty sure its not much different in real life). So he wins some discussions, and looses others. These all modify his target number, so when the great debate comes up and its time for his big speach, the previous one on one conflicts have an effect, while the same system can be used for larger effect.

By taking success rates/etc from smaller conflicts and combining them into the system, I'm pretty sure you can just keep going up steps in scale.

[svenlein]

Some situations that would be nice to be able to handle.

Convince someone of something, assuming they don't currently have an opinion.
"Herman Mechler sents me here to deliver this message"
Unless its terribly important this would probably just work by GM fiat.

Sell someone something.
"Step right up, this is genuine, bonified Heff blood.  Cures aches, disentary, the winds, and enhances your love life"

Have a debate with someone.  With possible outcomes of: One convinces the other, one becomes more understanding of the other side, both become more understanding, both become more entrenched in there idea.
example Theological debates

Having a debate in front of a crowd, would have outcomes listed above for the participants, plus the crowd would have outcomes: you convince everybody, everyone becomes more understanding, everyone becomes more radical, you convince some of the people, a combination of these elements.

Courtly rangleings.

Chivalrous Courtship.

I like the idea of having Respect and Influence from people meet.  They are not necessarily corelated:
my friend I have Respect from him and Influence over him.
My servant that i treat badly: i have llow respect from him but i have high influence.
I'm having trouble thinking of an example of high Respect low Influence, if someone respects you they will often take heed of your suggestions.
maybe influence sould only include coersive influence and include influence accorded due to respect.
So a friend would be defined as high Respect low coersive influence.

I'd like there to be some difference between telling a lie and tring to convince someone about a true thing.  I know for me its easier for me to convince someone when I'm telling the truth verses when I'm trying to lie.

[Mike Holmes]

Yes, lying can be difficut. OTOH, one can develop skill in it. And it's a powerful weapon. The real downside to lying, however, is that, if you are caught in a lie, you lose people's trust. Which can mean everything.

Mike

[Brian Leybourne]

Of course, there are already skills covering your ability to persuade people of things, and to lie sincerely. You would need to incorporate those skills into your system somehow.

Brian.

[Mike Holmes]

Of course, there are already skills covering your ability to persuade people of things, and to lie sincerely. You would need to incorporate those skills into your system somehow.

Brian brings up a good point. There are lots of skills that should be incorporated in a variety of ways. Even for some that aren't directly related to persuasion per se, they can serve as a source of authority. Simply, if I know the Geography of Fauth, and you don't, I'm going to have an advantage in persuading people that my rout is the correct one to take.

I'm seeing some sort of "rolling" advantage. That is, you roll your skill roll, and tatke the successes as dice added to the next roll. Thus, in the example, I roll two successes on my Geography skill, and then add two dice to my pool for the continuing social conflict. That sort of thing. Perhaps one such augmentation per "round". Or somesuch.

Lying is cool, because you can simulate other skills with it. "Fauth? I've got a better idea: there's a pass to the North of the one he's pointing out that'll save us two days travel." Sure there is. Just roll lying and add as though the facts were true. OTOH, wait until they get there, and no pass materializes."

There may be much better ways to accomplish this; I'm just trying to get the idea under discussion.

Mike

[Brian Leybourne]

I've been trying to keep out of this one, I find it very interesting, and am looking forward to the results, but it's not something that would usually be my cup of tea. My previous post was just because I saw something that I thought people were forgetting.

But Mike, I just have to respond to your post :-)

The entire system under discussion is based around rolling lots of dice to simulate a discussion and see who "wins". That rankles on me a tiny bit (which also makes me a hypocrite since I was previously arguing in another thread that the game should be based on character skill and not player skill, but that's another story *grin*).

Anyway, my point is that I can just barely accept the "social combat" system as it's being proposed. But now you're proposing rolling a whole other die pool each round (or maybe more than once a round) just to add dice to your other pool (the social combat one) each round?

That's just too many dice, my friend. There has to be a better way than that...

Brian.