11-09-2015, 02:24 PM
"Social combat" to me is a contradiction in terms. Combat is about the use of force, and social is about use of words. Combat is about domination, and social is about consent. Combat is predatory, while people form societies for mutual benefit.
I don't know that this applies to anyone here, but there are certainly sects of gamers who feel yapping in character gets the short end of the stick. It's not given equal time in the rules. In practice, a lot of people just like to roleplay it out, so there's no point in building a "high Charisma" character if the player is plenty charismatic. So some people think "social" skills should be handled like combat. Of course this is absurd in the sense that persuasion is all about gaining cooperation, not forcing your will onto another on account of your superior personality. When it's been attempted to treat it just like combat or other skill rolls, it can be rightly criticized as working like in-game mind control.
Many, many, many years ago, bothered by this, I developed certain ideas that would allow for "social skills" to have useful mechanical effects in-game without undermining the free choice of any PC or NPC. The idea is that skill checks could be used to do things like cold read to determine a character's motives. Once known, it would be on the player to use that information to formulate an argument. But a skill check could be used to emphasize that the PC has delivered that argument well (or badly). Or, if the PC has to lie in order to convince another character of something, a check to see how resistant the telling of that lie is to skills such as lie detection. But so long as the player's case made sense, it matched the motives of the character to be convinced, and the words in-game seemed trustworthy, the attempt would work.
Over the past years, I've refined the system. I've read all the books and actually put them into practice professionally as a persuader. In doing so, I've been able to filtered out the 95% of things written that don't actually work at all. What's left is streamlined and, when put into broad strokes, makes for a workable mechanics-driven social interaction in the RPG. My hope is, because this is based in reality, it is naturalistic so that the dice checks can smoothly accompany roleplay. So it will not be jarring to those who believe you don't need such nonsense. But there will be enough crunch to satisfy all the jerk faces who believe in contradictions like "social combat."
What I have is a generic (systemless) method for detailed social interaction. For now, I'm calling it the Charisma Check system because I think that might make a great blog title or something. The Charisma Check system breaks persuasion attempts into five phases: Introduction - Discovery - Presentation - Elaboration - Close.
I don't know that this applies to anyone here, but there are certainly sects of gamers who feel yapping in character gets the short end of the stick. It's not given equal time in the rules. In practice, a lot of people just like to roleplay it out, so there's no point in building a "high Charisma" character if the player is plenty charismatic. So some people think "social" skills should be handled like combat. Of course this is absurd in the sense that persuasion is all about gaining cooperation, not forcing your will onto another on account of your superior personality. When it's been attempted to treat it just like combat or other skill rolls, it can be rightly criticized as working like in-game mind control.
Many, many, many years ago, bothered by this, I developed certain ideas that would allow for "social skills" to have useful mechanical effects in-game without undermining the free choice of any PC or NPC. The idea is that skill checks could be used to do things like cold read to determine a character's motives. Once known, it would be on the player to use that information to formulate an argument. But a skill check could be used to emphasize that the PC has delivered that argument well (or badly). Or, if the PC has to lie in order to convince another character of something, a check to see how resistant the telling of that lie is to skills such as lie detection. But so long as the player's case made sense, it matched the motives of the character to be convinced, and the words in-game seemed trustworthy, the attempt would work.
Over the past years, I've refined the system. I've read all the books and actually put them into practice professionally as a persuader. In doing so, I've been able to filtered out the 95% of things written that don't actually work at all. What's left is streamlined and, when put into broad strokes, makes for a workable mechanics-driven social interaction in the RPG. My hope is, because this is based in reality, it is naturalistic so that the dice checks can smoothly accompany roleplay. So it will not be jarring to those who believe you don't need such nonsense. But there will be enough crunch to satisfy all the jerk faces who believe in contradictions like "social combat."
What I have is a generic (systemless) method for detailed social interaction. For now, I'm calling it the Charisma Check system because I think that might make a great blog title or something. The Charisma Check system breaks persuasion attempts into five phases: Introduction - Discovery - Presentation - Elaboration - Close.