What's so tough about building social systems?

greyorm wrote:

(That social domain is a tough one to deal with.)

How so? (I'm imagining in terms of making social actions more complex and providing mechanical consequences to the results, but please correct me if I am mistaken.)

[glow=red,2,300]WARNING: CONTROVERSIAL RESPONSE.
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This is not aimed at anyone in particular, and is based on the experiences I have had over the past 20 years of table-top gaming, miniatures gaming and LARP (including Boffer, Salon, Costume and Freeform styles).

Roleplaying is typically used as a form of escapism. Escaping into a world where you can be someone else; where you can fight with the skill of a expert fencer without needing to take a lesson, where you can adopt the personality of a 1000 year old vampire, where boys can pretend to be girls for a couple of hours (sure there are clubs where you can do that sort of thing, but there are a whole heap of other risks involved if you take that option).

The commonality is that the game is an escape, and those who seek the escape most are the ones who have trouble dealing with the real world.

This isn't a class in psychology 101, it's just an observation that the most fanatical gamers I've met in a half dozen cities are all the least comfortable in the world around them. Many of them are socially intimidated by the world around them, and many use their gaming as a socially acceptable release with other people who share their nature.

Live Gamers, whether costumers or freeformers, tend to be more socially inclined, and this tends to be reflected in the games being played. While wargamers and crunch fanatics are more happy with playing the numbers and maximising their characters to control the world this way. Trying to develop a crunchy/realistic social system seems to be an oxymoron to me.

[Please discuss other opinions and raise valid points to the contrary if you can think of them].

Me, I can admit I've got problems in this regard. I've got Asperger's. I know the symptoms, and I'd be surprised if a lot of the gamer's I've met haven't got the same condition. As a result I can understand the rules of social engagement, but I don't have the instinctively hardwired into me like a lot of the general populace. If I don't remember to react "correctly" to certain situations, people think there's something deeply wrong or disturbing. Conversely, this give me a slight advantage when playing inhuman character types because I just adjust the social rules I play by to match the new race. I'm not bogged down by trying to overcome the instinctive reactions that most people don't even realise they have.

A lot of folks with Asperger's don't realise they have it, and they just mimic the world around them with a feeling of emptiness and loss. Feeling apart from the world around them because they instinctlively react to things differently. As a result, they try to find an outlet where their reactions won't be judged as quickly by the "in crowd".

I've been trying to develop a social system for a roleplaying game based on my understanding of the rules of social interaction. While some people have said that I've nailed certain concepts, others have simply noted that something isn't quite right. In real life I often miss body-language cues if I'm not careful and I take things too literally, and this sort of thing could easily be missing from my social systems if it hadn't been noted. I guess that's just my lack of full understanding of social intrigues, but then again those people who do understand these concepts at a deeper level, probably take them for granted and don't realise what is actually happening.       

That said, I think one of the biggest hurdles with social emulation is the fact that most of the result from a social interaction is internal. A successful interaction can change the thought patterns of the target, and many players are playing the game because they are seeking empowerment through escapism. They don't want to be subjected to the same effects of petty social cliques that the suffer in real life, so instinctively they rebel against it when the same things happen to their avatar in the game world.

Just my 2 cents, I hope it provides meaningful discourse and not just flames.

V

Dan,
  OK, its not THAT hard. There are at least a couple of approaches:
Social combat: Exalted 2e does this. Its just as crunchy physical combat with maneuvers and everything.
Universal resolution: Dogs in the Vineyard does this. The rules are agnostic to the domain of the conflict. You bid your dice and narrate accordingly.

  I know that a lot of games have fallen flat in this regard, because they rely on GM fiat or are just poorly defined.

  I think that should be part of your design goals too:
1) Define when a roll is required
2) Define exactly how to interpret the results

  It sounds like that is already your goal, so have a little faith in yourself and feel free to move forward with confidence.

  Good luck with your game.

ShallowThoughts wrote:
Social System Goals:
1. Balanced – must not destroy the campaign world, or ability to tell good stories.
2. Meaningful choice – should involve some kind of strategy and depth, not just “roll a single dice and that’s the outcome”.
3. Player and Character Ability – The system should take into account both player choice as well as character ability. This applies to NPCs as well.
4. Inclusive – should involve all players, not just those whose characters are good in social situations.
5. Realistic – Social ability shouldn’t be mind control. It should take into account the personality of the character.
6. Concurrency – The roleplaying and system mechanics should work together, not supercede each other.
7. Fun – The social system must be fun.

Hello,

I typically respond to each person individually, but it’s easier to mix my responses here because it’ll end up being more logical. Please note that all of this is just my humble opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. I won’t bog it down by sprinkling “imho” throughout.

Patrice, you mentioned that I should decide whether our social system is Gamist- or Simulationist-oriented. I’ll start there. First of all, I’ve never really understood the point of a Gamist or combat-like social system. If you want to win, why not just go out and attack something or get into some other competition? You either end up with two different subsystems (combat, social) in the same game serving the same purpose, or you end up with a single system describing both, which violates the idea of a social encounter. I realize the phrase “idea of a social encounter” sounds biased, but I don’t think it is. Vulpinoid approached the idea.

V, I agree with your thoughts somewhat, but I think RPGs are more than just escapism. You used the phrase “empowerment through escapism”, where escapism is just a desirable bonus for us shy geeks. It is the empowerment that is the real draw to RPGs, the chance to excel in a domain that one can’t or won’t excel at in real life due to physical laws, social laws, or one’s own limitations. By this line of reasoning, a social domain in an RPG ought to provide social empowerment within the fictional environment, or else it fails to deserve the title of “social domain”.

A Simulationist social domain sounds like it could get closer to providing this empowerment, but as Patrice mentioned, more system and more rules are often counterproductive. The simulation may get closer to realistic, but the soul of a real life conversation gets crushed along the way, as though the conversation were being generated by an uncanny computer algorithm. Furthermore, dropping system entirely doesn’t help, because then you fail to get the empowerment that an RPG is supposed to be providing. It just becomes wholly dependent upon the players’ natural abilities and you risk falling into the situations V talked about, i.e. out-of-character cliques and social pressures seeping into the game and killing the experience.

So if I’m seeking neither a Gamist, Simulationist, nor Freeform system, what am I seeking? Well, to answer that question, I’m going to bring up another question Patrice asked earlier. If a character has stats for Intelligence or Memory, are the player’s natural intelligence and memory overridden? My opinion is: for us as potential game designers, the question is not valid. It’s like asking whether, during a game of chess, the pawn’s lack of ability to move left overrides the controlling player’s cleverness. No, they are simply the rules of the game, and only serve the purpose of providing boundaries on the space of choices that the player has. So it is with Intelligence and Memory stats. So it is with traditional social domain rules in an RPG. A valid question is then: how will certain stats change the nature of the gameplay experience for the players?

Now, despite the validity of that particular question, it's not what I'm interested in for the social domain of our game. As I hope I’ve made clear, I don’t want to funnel the players’ options into a limited space of finite rules, because this lacks the soul of genuine human interaction, and trying to make that finite space larger with more rules just exacerbates the problem. Instead, I want to turn this idea upon it’s head. I want to funnel a limited, finite space of character descriptions or modifiers (or whatever works) into the players’ limitless conversational space.

Now.. figuring out what this means, and how to actually pull it off.. I’m not certain yet. Thanks for your responses Vulpinoid, Dindenver, Patrice. I love working over these things.

Regards, Dan.

ShallowThoughts wrote:
...and only serve the purpose of providing boundaries on the space of choices that the player has. So it is with Intelligence and Memory stats. So it is with traditional social domain rules in an RPG. A valid question is then: how will certain stats change the nature of the gameplay experience for the players?

Now, despite the validity of that particular question, it's not what I'm interested in for the social domain of our game. As I hope I’ve made clear, I don’t want to funnel the players’ options into a limited space of finite rules, because this lacks the soul of genuine human interaction, and trying to make that finite space larger with more rules just exacerbates the problem. Instead, I want to turn this idea upon it’s head. I want to funnel a limited, finite space of character descriptions or modifiers (or whatever works) into the players’ limitless conversational space...

Now.. figuring out what this means, and how to actually pull it off..

greyorm wrote:
Can you give us an in-game example of how you envision it happening, with as much or little detail as you can muster for any particular aspect of the example? A "this is how I see it playing out" glimpse.

That is sure a different way to go, I think I was a bit mislead by the "finite space and modifiers" expression. You are heading towards something very different from what I've been thinking when I read your message in the first place and, as you state it, you want the player to be the main stage actor of the conversation. Since this is exactly what I try to avoid in my own designs, I don't feel much at ease with the whole idea. I do totally and really respect this choice, though, don't take me wrong, but I understand better why and how my suggestions were quite a few miles away from your target.

Now, to talk about your design as you describe it, it seems to me that what you use to describe the characters is actually Traits. Traits could have influence over the pre-social phase or even both phases. I think, when I read, that the core aspect of the system you describe is about the way of defining the swing that occurs during the social interaction. It reminds me a bit of SPI's Swords & Sorcery (the wargame) diplomacy system. You had a scale, and your goal was to move a counter from one position to another, reaching it meaning success. Of course, as a wargame it used dice rolls and no talking at all, but you could have a scale, or even a map, showing the distance the social impression travelled during the interaction. Now, Traits could bend it a way or another, maybe helping to define starting positions or target positions. Last but not least, if what you want to obtain from dice would imply no math nor reference checks, why would you use dice? This could be tokens, pools, position signalers of some kind, anything. I quite know that you could use dice in a non-math and different way, like fudge dice, whatever, but it sounds like you don't want the rolls to influence the outcome of the social interaction. Am I mistaking myself about what you wrote again?

Let me know.

Hm, hm, hm...that's very interesting. Not sure exactly how to work it out in play, but I like the general idea. I'll give it some more thought, but for the moment, off-hand I can think of possible inspiration in Death's Door.

As I recall, the game's mechanic involves pushing dice back-and-forth during narration/conversations, and other players can award you dice for making a statement they found awesome/poignant/true/tricky/whatever. At the end of the narration, you call for a roll, and whoever rolls best with all the dice they have gained during the conversation, succeeds at the social roll. (Someone please correct me if I'm misremembering the mechanics; the game is currently still packed away somewhere, so I can't double-check my recollections of how it works.)

I think there might be something you can use in there or develop from for your own mechanics.

Here's some rules that I came up with for my Buffy game - http://maddman75.googlepages.com/expandinginfluence

The idea was noted as inspired by Weapons of the Gods, though I'll admit that I've not read that game, and they're more inspired by what someone told me WotG are about.

The basic idea deals with the problem of having the social skills that dictate actions.  The approach I used is that a successful Social action will apply a penalty if the target doesn't do what the social character wants, or a bonus if they do.  This takes care of the Inclusive, Realistic, and Meaningful Choice categories.  By making it a modifier to other actions rather than a dictate, you aren't taking agency away from a player, nor is an NPC effectively mind controlled.  There's strategy and depth, because the social aggressor has to be careful exactly what they are persuading someone to do, and its possible to get around the persuasion or simply accept the penalty.

The amount of the modifier is based on the actual roleplaying, with notes that simply saying "I use my influence skill on them" results in a penalty.  Really roleplaying the encounter will give a much higher modifier.  Some may complain that socially inept people are going to be at a disadvantage.  That really isn't a concern for me.  I mean, should we not have tactical elements in a game because some people are not good at tactics?  Still, a socially inept character with good social skills will be effective even with a token effort toward roleplaying.  This handles the Player and Character Ability and Concurrency requirement.

As for Fun, well its fun when I've done it.

For some examples (I'm an example kind of guy), say there's a huge monster that a character wants to provoke, so the other PCs can get the McGuffin.  He rolls his Influence vs the monster's Brains and gets three successes, throwing rocks and calling the monster uncouth names.  If the monster does anything except a hostile action against the character, he's got a -3 on his actions.  Now the GM could decide that the monster isn't going to attack, he's got no obligation to do so.  But the successful social action has his distraced, so he'll be at a penalty.  He could also do something that doesn't quite fit the PC's plan, maybe throw a boulder toward the PC - a hostile reaction, but he's still guarding the McGuffin.

Hi folks,

I'll definitely be checking out the games everyone mentioned, for inspiration. (The premise for that "Death's Door" sounds particularly gripping.. I love the idea of how it asks for the players'  lists of what they'd want to do before they die.)

Spot on Patrice. Traits are definitely something to consider; I had been working on trying to put something similar to D&D's ability scores in earlier, but I've just recently been considering scrapping that in favour of allowing players to define their own social traits, to be roleplayed as they themselves envision, but affecting the game through regular social modifiers. EG instead of "Charm" and "Appearance" granted to each and every character generated by the system, one player could go with "Dashing Smile" and "Clever Wit", while another could go with "Brutish Appearance" and "Bad B.O." (for a character with poor social mods). (PS .. great idea on tokens versus dice!! The handling time will be precisely zero in that case, until the end of the chat!)

Madman .. while the WotG system (as you've described it .. I haven't checked it out yet) sounds interesting, there's a few things I'm trying to shy away from for our system.

One is the application of penalty by the system itself. By having a penalty applied by the system to a target if the target doesn't do what a social character wants, I think it would feel artificial and irritating for the players (.. I know I would feel that way!). Take an example: a socially adept NPC prince approaches the PCs and asks them for a favour. If they refuse, the prince himself will just decide to move on, but the system hits them with a penalty. Luckily, this dodges GM plot-railroading, but it feels like it is the system that is doing just a dash of railroading.

Instead, if a player's character refuses to do what a more socially adept character wants, the 'penalty' should come from other characters, the environment, or the situation itself, if at all; maybe the prince didn't warn them that the favour would result in saving a town from destruction, or alternatively a great monetary reward for the PCs. In either case, the players are far more likely to feel that they brought the "penalty" upon themselves, so, although they may lament it, they'll feel it to be perfectly justified.

Furthermore, I'm actively trying to avoid a system that gives advantages to players who are inherently social and disadvantages to players who aren't. A player's natural sociability will unavoidably spill over from the player to the character somewhat anyway, and a system like that you've described would merely amplify players' existing personalities. I don't really think the "tactical elements" rebuttal you gave is the same thing; in such a game, the rules are the same for everyone, and the players who are bad at tactical thinking can improve by playing. A social system that amplifies existing personalities would tend to do the reverse.

Okay, now that that's all said .. I'm going to be responding to my own initial post, sort of thinking out loud. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm posting just to "hear" myself post, but I feel I owe it to people who've been active in this thread to put up the conclusions I've reached with their help.

Patrice made that point about swapping about dice and using simple tokens and rating them on a linear scale. I'd already been thinking of a linear scale with the impression points and social velocity. It got me thinking.. this setup really looks like a tug-of-war, which is again not what I'm looking for. (Although, it would be appropriate for a debate.)

I think .. for the kind of conversation you'd want to focus on in an RPG .. it's more like trying to move a boulder from wherever it already is (point A) to some other point B. You know you can't shift a boulder with pure strength alone, so you have to try and engineer a way to move it. If your plans work, the boulder is moved just about where you'd hoped, enough to not bother trying to move it again. If you do really well, or are incredibly lucky, the boulder ends up exactly where you wanted it to go. On the other hand, maybe you miscalculate and it doesn't go where you wanted, or worse, a catastrophe occurs and it rolls over your pet cat. This new description does not resemble a tug-of-war, since the boulder isn't actively opposing your attempts to move it, it just sees no reason to move on it's own. It also doesn't resemble a linear scale, since there are an indefinite number of results which are more or less acceptable to the boulder-pusher, as well as an indefinite number of undesirable results.

I think I can work with this X-)

Sincere thanks again to everyone who's responded!! The inspiration has really been helpful.

Back to more mulling,
Dan Blain.

Heya Dan,

(My name's Raven, BTW. greyorm is just the handle.)

ShallowThoughts wrote: ...but the system hits them with a penalty. Luckily, this dodges GM plot-railroading, but it feels like it is the system that is doing just a dash of railroading.

Hi Raven,

greyorm wrote:
As long as the system isn't saying "You HAVE TO do this", it isn't railroading*, as long as the options for response and outcome are open, even if those options are no longer ideal, such as situations of "You CAN, but there's a penalty."

greyorm wrote:
I suggest system-wrought penalties to social actions may feel like railroading to you because traditionally "what my guy does" in pure role-playing (ie: social) terms is treated with a thoughtless sacredness in the hobby, often due to GMs stifling creative input into the game by players, resulting in those players clinging to what is established as unquestionably an unassailably theirs and outside the GM's control-

greyorm wrote:
This is where "rewarding fun" comes in. Did someone else at the table get jazzed about a suggestion, event, action attempt, or whatever? Then give the acting player a bonus! This method doesn't rely on role-playing talent or storytelling skill and also encourages group engagement with and interest in play and the other players at the table.