[3.X] How do you guys handle diplomacy?

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Post by PhoneLobster »

FrankTrollman wrote:Longer than six seconds is good. If we're talking about a fantasy game, no one has clocks that are accurate to the second in any case and having combat rounds be somewhat vague is potentially OK. But people have movement rates. Their attacks have ranges. Things fall and take an amount of time to reach the ground. Having timeframes of individual combat rounds collapse and extend by an order of magnitude or more is clearly unacceptable.

The thing about the Phone Lobster suggestion is that it's stupid. It's obviously, painfully, demonstrably retarded. It doesn't simulate anything
So. You make a motherhood statement about how abstraction is good... then freak the fuck out with a melodramatic grognard rant about how abstraction is bad.

Well sorry, but it's a lost battle on your front. MOST games, even RPG games HAVE abstracted time.

You know what else has abstracted time that DOES shift by orders of magnitude where appropriate to facilitate the situation. Movies ALL of them. In fact lets extend that. All fiction ever.

We know you are DESPERATELY looking for an excuse that talking can't happen in combat. But it DOES, in movies all the time and that DOES require, in those movies that people accept abnormal flexibility in time frames for allowing the talking to happen. And they do. Attempting to pretend otherwise is fucking insane.

You don't have a case here. You argument is LITERALLY that you want to make game design decisions that are bad for the game and good for "realizmz". Realizmz arguments are for fucking idiots the gaming den I had thought had actually established that soundly so WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU MAKING A REALIZMZ ARGUMENT, again and again and again...
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Post by Fuchs »

Abstract combat time seems a good way to stay true to a number of genre conventions, without rigid "first comes talking, then comes fighting, and never shall the two meet" systems.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

The problem (or at least one problem) with abstract time in an otherwise well-quantified RPG like D&D is that an RPG will almost inevitably go outside the rules, and once you're outside the rules, you need to be able to make coherent decisions based on how things are described in-world.

It doesn't need to be just like real life, but it needs to be coherent, comprehensible, and consistently comprehensible. It is not acceptable for a game like D&D to mess with time by an order of magnitude or more, because that is a big enough difference that a player can't know whether it's even reasonable for them to do something when their character should know. Like, can you hike back to town from here in an hour, or will it take all day?

EDIT: Note: we can definitely make the combat round longer, but we have to be consistent about it.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Did you just say you need rules for the bits of your RPG rules your RPG rules don't cover?

It looks a lot like it.

In the mean time the answer to questions like "can I hike back to town from here in an hour" is irrelevant to combat time. Your game rules can have that answer, and many others, or not, regardless of how much you abstract combat time. Even then you are still pulling the actual location of where the hell "here" is and what the hell the distance to town is, and what the hell the terrain is and all the rest out of the GMs ass.

But hey sure. Imagine you can create a "realizmz" satisfying combat "simulation" with accurate times and distances and pretend you will then simply extrapolate that to larger scales and it WON'T generate just more problems. I mean how hard could that be? I mean abstraction in games couldn't possibly be so ubiquitous for really good reasons SURELY you can just turn around and pull a fucking reality simulator out of your ass and run it on table top dice rolls instead of a fictional super computer.
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Post by Fuchs »

The problem is, if you make combat rounds longer, you kill "realism". "I can only shoot my bow once a minute? Are you serious?" etc. etc.

Also, "can I get back to town in one hour" can easily be answered, as long as one doesn't try to reverse-engineer overland speed from movement in combat time. And that can be avoided if you simply do not state how long a combat round actually is.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Fuchs wrote:And that can be avoided if you simply do not state how long a combat round actually is.
Which is the entire point of doing that. Never give realism assholes a purchase. It works very nicely.
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Post by Fuchs »

On the other hand, some People will complain that this gives GMs "too much power" by letting them decide how long a combat actually took in real time, in cases where it matters such as response times or ticking bombs or time-sensitive rituals. Usually they will conveniently ignore that the GM sets those response times etc. in the first place. Some though will demand that the GM should not be wllowed to decide such things, and should randomly roll how long a ritual takes, or how long it takes until the second shift arrives at the combat scene.
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Post by Username17 »

Fuchs wrote:The problem is, if you make combat rounds longer, you kill "realism". "I can only shoot my bow once a minute? Are you serious?" etc. etc.
6 seconds is too short. 60 seconds is too long. If only there were amounts of time that were between those two numbers?
:roll:
Honestly, I can see the argument for any amount of time between 10 seconds and 20 seconds. I'm partial to 12 seconds, because it goes into minutes in groups of an even five.
Also, "can I get back to town in one hour" can easily be answered, as long as one doesn't try to reverse-engineer overland speed from movement in combat time. And that can be avoided if you simply do not state how long a combat round actually is.
That's the opposite of true. Having your system be incapable of telling you how fast your character can move is the literal opposite of easily answering whether your character can get from point A to point B in a specific amount of time. To answer the question, your system needs to output numbers into two variables: time and distance. If you refuse to give a number for either of those variables, the question can't be easily answered because it can't be answered at all.

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Post by fectin »

I like the Exalted-style* variable initiative counts, and think that would work great for DnD. You would have to add tick times to every action though, which is a bit more work than I'm up for.

*In fine WW tradition, every other storyteller game probably uses something which is almost, but not quite, exactly the same. I like Exalted though, so that's the one I cited.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

MGuy wrote: What's more there's been no attempt to distinguish who gets to stay aggressive during the nonaggression event and who doesn't.
...
You can stamp your feet and shout all you want but there's nothing particularly invalid about my interpretation.
There's something invalid about your interpretation.

Assuming that Group X is Hostile, they could a) Attack Immediately or b) Talk for a moment before attacking.

If they choose B, you have a chance to convince them NOT to attack.

If Group X is a bandit group waiting in ambush, option A is they attack immediately. Option B is they leap out of hiding and yell 'your money or your life'.

Option B doesn't mean they like you. It doesnt' mean they're your friends. It just means that they chose to talk before they started stabbing, and they're at least open to the possibility of being convinced to abstain from stabbing you.

Reasons they might choose not to stab you include you do they want (give up your valuables, surrender, leave them alone, etc), you make them like you (Diplomacy, reveal that you're actually their long-lost sibling), or you scare them (Intimidate, Bluff).

But as DSmatticus pointed out, having a social phase doesn't mean that they're going to 'hug it out'.

If it is helpful, you can think of 'talking reaction' as the opponent saying 'You give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now'.

That one's from the Ususal Suspects, but there's tons of quotes expressing just that sentiment.

Fuchs wrote:Abstract combat time seems a good way to stay true to a number of genre conventions, without rigid "first comes talking, then comes fighting, and never shall the two meet" systems.
Here's the major problem with 'abstract combat time'. I decide to give a really inspiring 3 minute speech. At the same time, Mein Enemy is shooting me. If the 'round' was 15 seconds while everyone is shooting, but is expanded to 3 minutes for my speechifying, everyone else is losing out on the equivalent of 11 rounds of shooting. Is there any good 'in game' reason why they can't keep shooting over and over again while I'm speechifying?

Regarding the length of combat rounds, I've been thinking that 6 seconds is too quick for a long time - particularly when combined with rapid-fire bows.

@Frank - 12 seconds is twice as long as the six-second-round, but it appears to only marginally improve the amount of time for 'combat social actions'. I can say 'Drop your Sword' in a 6-second or a 12-second round, but I can't give the Braveheart speech in either. My gut tells me that it'd have to be in the neighborhood of a minimum 30-second round to start seeing 'complex social actions' in combat time.
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Post by Username17 »

DDMW wrote:@Frank - 12 seconds is twice as long as the six-second-round, but it appears to only marginally improve the amount of time for 'combat social actions'. I can say 'Drop your Sword' in a 6-second or a 12-second round, but I can't give the Braveheart speech in either. My gut tells me that it'd have to be in the neighborhood of a minimum 30-second round to start seeing 'complex social actions' in combat time.
That's exactly correct. 10-20 seconds for a combat round improves a lot of things. It allows you to say the "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya..." speech without carrying it between rounds. It allows guards to plausibly ever respond to an alarm before the combat it over. It allows playing for time to be a thing that could actually use up time. But it doesn't let you do real speeches or debates - it's still five 12 second combat rounds just to discover that brad is eating hamburgers for breakfast.

On the flip side of course, long combat rounds get positively stupid. The battle between Gogo and The Bride is less than two minutes long. The Bride gets disarmed, Gogo pops the blades on her kursuri gama, Multiple tables get destroyed, The Bride gets strangled, The Bride breaks Gogo's concentration with a blow from an improvised weapon to the foot and then The Bride lands a killing blow to the side of the head with a nail. This entire fight takes one minute and fifty five seconds, and is honestly fairly languidly paced.

With one minute combat rounds you aren't going to do Gogo vs. The Bride. The entire "fight" would be two rounds. Round one: Gogo Advantage, Round two: Gogo defeated. And basically all the disarming and improvised weapon use and property destruction would just be flavor text that the MC could rant on about when you succeeded at your victory check.

But before the fight, The Bride and Gogo spend about seventy seconds bantering at each other. The Bride asks her to stand aside, Gogo refuses and tells her that she'll kill her. That's a pretty minimal diplomacy phase, and it's more than half the length of a fairly complicated boss fight with a lot of back and forth.

Obviously the social actions you can take during a diplomacy phase are considerably more open than the social actions you can take during a combat phase. Because non-combat diplomacy phases are several times longer than combat phases are. They have to be. Because otherwise you aren't successfully simulating anything.

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Post by virgil »

FrankTrollman wrote:Obviously the social actions you can take during a diplomacy phase are considerably more open than the social actions you can take during a combat phase. Because non-combat diplomacy phases are several times longer than combat phases are. They have to be. Because otherwise you aren't successfully simulating anything.
I guess that means a surprise sniper can choose to interrupt social phases pretty much wantonly, and once they do so, rational debate must end until after the dust is settled?
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Post by fectin »

This isn't an arguement, it's a real question about premises:

Is there a reason other than realism that minutes-long conversations can't happen in combat rounds?
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Post by Username17 »

fectin wrote:This isn't an arguement, it's a real question about premises:

Is there a reason other than realism that minutes-long conversations can't happen in combat rounds?
Verisimilitude. It isn't a question of realism, it's a question of simulation. If two assholes have a three minute conversation while some dude is on fire, the player of the character who set him on fire is going to ask why he isn't fucking dead yet. And there is no in-world answer you can give. Having an extended genteel conversation and then saying "and now back to running around on fire" is fucking retarded. It reduces things to comedy on the level of Loony Tunes.

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Post by DSMatticus »

PL wrote:Did you just say you need rules for the bits of your RPG rules your RPG rules don't cover?
Are you acting like this is a gotcha? Your RPG absolutely should have enough rules to be at least partially extensible to situations you don't cover explicitly in those rules. It's a fucking roleplaying game, and the potential inputs are infinite, and there's no way you're going to cover them all when you are writing the rules. The only way to not have that problem is to either simplify your system to the point that it's abstract challenges can cover all inputs, or limit the space of inputs: i.e. a boardgame.
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Post by Fuchs »

FrankTrollman wrote:
fectin wrote:This isn't an arguement, it's a real question about premises:

Is there a reason other than realism that minutes-long conversations can't happen in combat rounds?
Verisimilitude. It isn't a question of realism, it's a question of simulation. If two assholes have a three minute conversation while some dude is on fire, the player of the character who set him on fire is going to ask why he isn't fucking dead yet. And there is no in-world answer you can give. Having an extended genteel conversation and then saying "and now back to running around on fire" is fucking retarded. It reduces things to comedy on the level of Loony Tunes.

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Or to the level of many action movies, or novels. Verisimilitude is also hurt if you can't simply shoot the guy while he is talking because it's "diplomacy phase" time. Also, verisimilitude, aka realism in your example, is already on shaky ground with levels, hitpoints, and similar abstracted concepts.
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Post by DSMatticus »

MGuy wrote:I already figured that he probably just wanted the SRCD to effect the guards and that the king is pushing for an early end to SRCD.
...
That goes back to what PL was talking about earlier, that Frank shifted 'ordering an attack' onto the list of things RR needed to cover because THAT is how he framed it
...
that Frank shifted 'ordering an attack' onto the list of things RR needed to cover ... andd if a social action you can take is ordering motherfuckers to attack then reasonably that would be on the list of shit you then can't do in combat.
FrankTrollman wrote:If the RR roll gives a diplomacy phase, you might use it to try to stay the King's hand with a diplomatic ploy, threat, or bluff. You might use it to attempt to demoralize people or tell other people in the room to stay out of it - just as the King might spend his diplomacy phase to demand your surrender or to tell other people in the room to seize you. There are a lot of options on the table, and many of them involve posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat.
DSM wrote:He sets up a situation in which PC's are trying to demoralize or otherwise persuade everyone else to stay out of it, and the king is ordering them to do so. You are conflating an opposed social contest with directing minions at all.
...
Frank is describing a situation in which the PC's and the king are engaged in social combat to determine whether the guards participate in the following combat. The next fucking sentence is "There are a lot of options on the table, and many of them involve posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat."
...
One of the possible things you can do in this pre-combat social phase is try to prevent the king's guards from participating in any following combat. You know, like in Frank's example, where he describes the PC's doing that. Obviously, the king wants his guards to participate and will try to convince them to do so, like in Frank's example, where he describes the king doing exactly that.
MGuy wrote:The part that you're not getting is that it doesn't fit BECAUSE it doesn't cover the problem of the king STILL pushing for combat DESPITE the fact he should be in banter mode. The fact that he's not seemingly effected by it and he still wants combat means that he's negating the SRCD.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck, Frank's actual example is one in which a reaction roll buys you pre-combat diplomacy time you might use to prevent the combat: not an example in which reaction roll toggles instantly from stabby to chatting about the weather and hugging it out.
MGuy wrote:It would have to be because Frank said time and time again that he doesn't want social things to happen in combat time
DSM wrote:Are you sure? Are you sure that's something Frank said, and not something PL said Frank said? Because when PL made that claim, I asked him to provide some evidence and he fell flat on his face.
FrankTrollman wrote:Sure, you could do simple intimidations or feints ("Drop your weapons!" or "Look over there!") as part of a 12 second combat turn
Just fucking read. You know how to read. I know you do. The posts are all there. You are wrong about absolutely everything, and that you are wrong about absolutely everything is completely obvious. You are where you are because you have bent yourself into a logic pretzel looking for gotchas that do not exist so you can hateboner at Frank or whatever, but those gotchas are not actually real. Stop using your bullshit assumptions to justify and rationalize your other bullshit assumptions in a vicious circle and please fucking read.
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Post by shadzar »

Fuchs wrote:Also, verisimilitude, aka realism
Verisimilitude = believability.

realism can easily break verisimilitude, and often does. have you never heard someone saying "I see it but i don't believe it!"

the game must keep believability more than it must keep realism, or rather it must suspend disbelief. (see SoD)
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Post by Username17 »

shadzar wrote:
Fuchs wrote:Also, verisimilitude, aka realism
Verisimilitude = believability.

realism can easily break verisimilitude, and often does. have you never heard someone saying "I see it but i don't believe it!"

the game must keep believability more than it must keep realism, or rather it must suspend disbelief. (see SoD)
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Post by PhoneLobster »

FrankTrollman wrote:Verisimilitude. It isn't a question of realism,
Your repeated use of the word "Verisimilitude" when using "Realizmz" arguments fools nobody. If it were genuinely just "believability" we would point at action movies and just call it a day with Frank being firmly wrong. But he talks about "simulation", he talks, lets face it, about Realizmz. And that's bad, we know that's bad we know that argument is the refuge of idiots and assholes trying to justify mechanics that have no other justification and are otherwise bad for the game.

It's a typical "Realizmz" argument plain and simple. And you literally have stated you are using it to justify design decisions that are bad for the game.
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Post by MGuy »

So both Dead and DSM completely ignored the actual problem about it I have. I do not care that the king is hostile. I do not care that the guards suddenly stopped. I did not say that the King suddenly turned friendly. My entire issue isn't that the king is not their friend during SRCD is that he can spend actions trying to get to combat when he should be talking/intimidating/explaining how he's going to execute the PCs during. Neither of you have been able to explain "WHY" the king can keep pushing for combat while others DON'T and why he has an action that includes "Attack them" during a time when he's supposed to be not trying to do that immediately.I especially like that DSM highlighted the very part I was referring to, once again, and then fails to give an answer. The question isn't what can the king do or what the king IS doing. I know that one of the options is "Attack them" I KNOW that Frank meant it as a thing where he urges his guards to attack. THAT IS NOT THE DAMN QUESTION! I fucking pointed out that I KNOW THAT SHIT why the fuck would you then go and copy pastes a bunch of posts that NEVER ANSWER THE QUESTION?!

For fuck sakes DSM you NEED to stop thinking about my question as looking for a GOTCHA. I DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST IT. This particular version of the roll does not offend me. The fact that you are still making this a part of your argument is making you completely whiff past the question I'm asking again and again. So before you get lost again I will give you a single sentence that hopefully YOU can read.

Why does the king still get an "attack them" option during a time space where he should be socializing at the PCs?
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Post by deaddmwalking »

MGuy wrote:So both Dead and DSM completely ignored the actual problem about it I have. I do not care that the king is hostile. I do not care that the guards suddenly stopped. I did not say that the King suddenly turned friendly. My entire issue isn't that the king is not their friend during SRCD is that he can spend actions trying to get to combat when he should be talking/intimidating/explaining how he's going to execute the PCs during.
The 'problem' you have is one of your own creation. Frank did not suggest the King uses an action to end the social phase - he provided examples of the types of things the king might do during the social phase.

So what do you want me to say?

I agree that if your dice say 'social phase' and your GM says 'fuck that, he attacks anyways', you're not using 'social phase' correctly. You're also not using it the way anyone here has suggested.
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Post by MGuy »

He mentions that the King can order the guards to attack. That I get, please let there be no confusion about that, I know this. Why is it that he can? The example with the ambush has the entire group going into parlay mode. Essentially during this thing 'attack them' should not be an option because it would break the SRCD. Thus my confusion. I'm wondering why and under what circumstances can there even 'be' an opposed side when in some cases the entire group is one side and at other times what also should be two opposed groups there is a single person on it acting as a third party. All the guards should already want to attack like the king wants them to. So why is it that when SRCD says he should be posturing toward the PCs does he have an option that is not just 'don't listen to them' but instead 'attack them'.
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Post by Username17 »

DeadDMWalking, multiple people have explained that to MGuy. At length. He won't accept it because he is an asshole. It really is that simple.

No matter how carefully you explain what a social phase is or what it's for, he will come back with the same tired arguments that don't address any of the issues at all. Because he is MGuy and he's a stupid asshole. It really is that simple.

This is why I keep him on ignore. Because he is incapable of actually addressing peoples' points. He constructs elaborate straw castles to populate with straw men and then gleefully burns them to the ground in order to declare himself victorious over... things that have absolutely nothing to do with the arguments he keeps inventing so that he can defeat them. Over and over again. Since MGuy stubbornly refuses to actually respond to things I actually write in lieu of making up arguments to have with himself, I've kept him on ignore for some time. It's just better that way.

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Post by DSMatticus »

MGuy wrote:He mentions that the King can order the guards to attack. That I get, please let there be no confusion about that,
DSMatticus wrote:
MGuy wrote:I already figured that he probably just wanted the SRCD to effect the guards and that the king is pushing for an early end to SRCD.
...
That goes back to what PL was talking about earlier, that Frank shifted 'ordering an attack' onto the list of things RR needed to cover because THAT is how he framed it
...
that Frank shifted 'ordering an attack' onto the list of things RR needed to cover ... andd if a social action you can take is ordering motherfuckers to attack then reasonably that would be on the list of shit you then can't do in combat.
FrankTrollman wrote:If the RR roll gives a diplomacy phase, you might use it to try to stay the King's hand with a diplomatic ploy, threat, or bluff. You might use it to attempt to demoralize people or tell other people in the room to stay out of it - just as the King might spend his diplomacy phase to demand your surrender or to tell other people in the room to seize you. There are a lot of options on the table, and many of them involve posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat.
DSM wrote:He sets up a situation in which PC's are trying to demoralize or otherwise persuade everyone else to stay out of it, and the king is ordering them to do so. You are conflating an opposed social contest with directing minions at all.
...
Frank is describing a situation in which the PC's and the king are engaged in social combat to determine whether the guards participate in the following combat. The next fucking sentence is "There are a lot of options on the table, and many of them involve posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat." [bolding added]
...
One of the possible things you can do in this pre-combat social phase is try to prevent the king's guards from participating in any following combat. You know, like in Frank's example, where he describes the PC's doing that. Obviously, the king wants his guards to participate and will try to convince them to do so, like in Frank's example, where he describes the king doing exactly that.
WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU

The "actual problem" you have is that you are completely misreading an example, and dead and I have "ignored" that problem by explaining to you that you misread the example more than half a dozen times between the two of us! And you just keep fucking repeating yourself over and over and over and over and over. You don't even fucking respond to the explanations and counterarguments as though you understand them yet disagree, you just accuse us of failing to address you and then repeat yourself.

If you can't fucking follow this conversation enough to understand that people are responding to you don't fucking post in it you stupid bag of shit. Just walk the fuck away so the people with more than two braincells to rub together who disagree vehemently but can at least follow English can yell at eachother with some sort of progression (even if that progression is merely finding new things to yell at eachother about). You are fucking useless here if you can't grasp this simple complaint about your reasoning and I want you to go away.
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