Nothing makes me want to leave my hobby forever than the long and painful bickering between players.  When players dig in and refuse to budge from their positions, it turns into several hours’ worth of arguing.  No one wants to look weak and compromise, no one wants to back down.  I’ve had games END because of this.

This is why Burning Wheel kicks massive amounts of ass.  Social combat rules the universe.  The universe I say!  And this is an actual play of why it’s all kinds of awesome.

My weekly Burning Wheel group plays in “The Frozen Vise”, a world falling to the grip of an unnatural ice age.  There are a group of nasty demons attempting to continue this ice age and reduce the remaining Human, Dwarven and Orcish people to small, manageable numbers.  The ice has caused weather instability (think Day After Tomorrow) and has thrown the city-state of Cold’s Reach into famine and discontent.  The characters have partially thwarted the advancing ice by activating a line of ancient mystic towers, which focus the light of the sun and radiate incredible heat.  The demons responded by attacking their society from within, possessing key members and fomenting discord and war.

Wes plays Tyrion, the Arch-magus of the Arcane College.  Wes is a creative and excitable guy with a keen eye for numbers and advantage.  He quite enjoys Burning Wheel’s tactical element. 

Dave plays Dallen, Tyrion’s star pupil and former War Wizard.  Dave really enjoys being along for the ride.  He gets into difficult moral choices, and has his most fun when trying to decide which of them to follow. 

Kyle plays Matthias, a Captain of the Military and heir to the Kingsblood lands, which recently unthawed from the retreating glaciers in the north.  Kyle loves games where he is powerful and capable, able to make a mark on the physical and social landscape of the game.  So long as he has a great deal of freedom to alter the world we’ve created, he’s happy.

Now, this was about bickering between characters.  And to keep things focused, I’ll explain the situation and show how Burning Wheel’s social combat tool, the Duel of Wits, literally saved the day. 

Tyrion and Matthias are both invited to attend a private function hosted by the Warlord, the leader of Cold’s Reach.  They have good reason to suspect that the Warlord is possessed by a demon, and is planning on possessing the attendees as well.  They need a way to get out of the invitation, but they can't just refuse the ruler of the city.  They need a distraction.

Dallen suggests that, due to the starvation and discontent, he could fairly easily rile the peasantry into a full fledged food riot.  This would divert the Warlord’s attention elsewhere and force him to cancel the function, buying them time.

Tyrion hates the idea and suggests that instead they manufacture news of trouble up north, which would allow Matthias to travel there to defend his ancestral land, taking Tyrion along as adviser. 

Matthias is against trouble up north, as it discourages migration of people to his newly claimed lands, but he’s also iffy about the riots, which would cause more damage to the social cohesion of the city.

Now at this point, in times past, we’d have roughly a 3-4 hour argument.  Each player wouldn’t want to back down from their position, and so the argument would go back and forth, forth and back, for hours upon hours.  I’d find new ways to stack dice and work on some Sudoku as they would go back and forth.  This, back in the day, was “good roleplaying”.  Now, that’s looked upon as a complete waste of time and energy. 

Because now we pull out the duel of wits.  Oh yeah.  This mechanic continues to this day to blow my mind.  In 20 minutes (we are still doing a lot of looking up stuff to remember how it all works) the argument was over.  And that 20 minutes made for some of the most awesome role playing of the evening. 

The basics of Duel of Wits is this:  It’s social combat.  You have a health score called “body of argument (BOE)” and the object is to reduce your opponent’s BOE to zero before he takes out your own.  This is done by each player secretly scripting three social maneuvers on a piece of paper, noting what they might say to go with the maneuver.  Maneuvers vary from the straight out attack of a Point to the sneaky attack/defense of Rebuttal.  There are about 7-8 maneuvers, and each one is strong or weak against another maneuver. 

You compare maneuvers, speak your piece and then roll your social skill (adding/removing dice depending on the maneuver matchup). 

Dallen had no intention of winning.  He didn’t have the social skills to match up against the Juggernaut of the Archmagus.  He was aiming for a compromise, which is achieved by reducing your opponent’s argument score.  The lower a score is reduced, the more of a compromise the winner has to give the loser. 

In addition, Dave is a bit on the shy side, and isn’t able to come up with good arguments off the top of his head.  Wes, on the other hand, is quite able to talk fast and loudly to get what he wants.  This system ensures that those who are socially dominant don’t just walk over those that aren’t.  Dave was given time to construct his arguments, put together his maneuvers, think about what to say. 

Meanwhile, Matthias had the option of adding dice to either combatant’s roll, by simply saying his peace and handing either player his dice.  This made him completely engaged to the argument and allowed him to sway the decision either way. 

Now, this isn’t mind control.  Dallen lost and still believed that the riot was the way to go.  But he now has to abide by the winner’s decision, though he got a major compromise to ensure that the news from the north was good news to keep people traveling to the northlands, specifically the discovery of Kingsblood Castle, Matthias’s ancestral estate. 

A few important social things happened here.  First off, because it was a contest decided by skill rolls, Dave was perfectly happy with the outcome.  Dave lost fair and square, and the mechanics even allowed him to get a fair compromise as part of the deal.  Dave lost the rolls, he didn’t have to relent to Wes and back down just because he talked louder and faster. 

Secondly, each maneuver was punctuated with passionate words from both characters, due to some preparation beforehand.  There was extremely intense roleplaying here, and an underlying tension based on the fact that it was anyone’s game.  Though Tyrion had a huge advantage, Matthias was giving Dallen a lot of support and Dallen made some excellent choices in maneuvers. 

Thirdly, even though Dallen and Tyrion were in conflict here, Dave, Kyle and Wes were helping each other out, giving kudos for some excellent arguments, and generally engaging with each other in a friendly manner.

For those of you who haven’t tried Burning Wheel, or haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and buy it.  Or buy Burning Empires, which is Burning Wheel mechanics with an invasion of the body snatchers sci-fi twist!  Or do what I did, and buy both.  Seriously, it’s required reading.  Stop reading right now, and go get these games. 

.. and because I'm an idiot, I forgot to finish the title.  The title SHOULD be "Social Combat is Awesome!".  If a moderator could add that in, I'd be eternally less embarrassed.

Hi Jon-

I'm glad the system worked for you and your group. Moments where everyone works together while in conflict are super-satisfying and fun.

Glendower wrote: Dallen had no intention of winning.  He didn’t have the social skills to match up against the Juggernaut of the Archmagus.  He was aiming for a compromise, which is achieved by reducing your opponent’s argument score.  The lower a score is reduced, the more of a compromise the winner has to give the loser.

Glendower wrote:
Thirdly, even though Dallen and Tyrion were in conflict here, Dave, Kyle and Wes were helping each other out, giving kudos for some excellent arguments, and generally engaging with each other in a friendly manner.

Mayuran wrote:

Glendower wrote:
Thirdly, even though Dallen and Tyrion were in conflict here, Dave, Kyle and Wes were helping each other out, giving kudos for some excellent arguments, and generally engaging with each other in a friendly manner.

Did they reward anyone the MVP or embodiment artha?

Next time you may be surprised, and the social monster will lose the DoW.

Glendower wrote: Speaking of artha, you can spend artha in a duel of Wits, right?  I had a small argument with the players about this, I believed that you could, and they disagreed.  I'm sure Artha during the duel is fine, am I correct?