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

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MGuy
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Post by MGuy »

I know what the king is doing. Why does he get to do it is the question.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

FrankTrollman wrote: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....

This is why I keep him on ignore. Because he is incapable of actually addressing peoples' points.
I haven't put anyone on ignore. And since work is slow, I don't mind trying one more time...
MGuy wrote:He mentions that the King can order the guards to attack.
For your benefit, I have quoted Frank's entire post where you seem to think he ordered the guards to attack. It's right here in my post. Sections of it have also been quoted by DSmatticus. I don't think it means what you think it means.
MGuy wrote: Essentially during this thing 'attack them' should not be an option because it would break the SRCD.
It's not. At least, not in the way you keep pretending. You have a Social Phase, right? Now the social phase has to end at some point. This is part and parcel of the definition of 'phase', included below for your benefit:

phase - a distinct period or stage in a process of change or forming part of something's development.

Okay, since we know we have a 'social phase' and we know it will eventually end, something will happen next. If the social phase went really well, the PCs get what they want. The King didn't attack, or he sucked their cock, or he agreed to let them redeem themselves by killing the Rampaging Beast. Happy day!

But if the social phase ends and it didn't go well for the PCs, the King is going to attack (or at least, his guards will). They won't attack until the social phase is over, because that would be the 'combat phase'.

Now, you might point out that nobody has given clear explanation for how you go from 'social phase' to 'combat phase' if the social phase doesn't change anyone's opinions, but you're absolutely inventing the idea that the King skips or terminates the social phase at his whim. Frank never suggested it. Only you. So if you notice people failing to answer or respond to your question, it is because you are questioning voices in your head, and not anyone you're actually participating in a conversation with. I'm reluctant to try to speak for the voices in your head.
FrankTrollman wrote:There seems to be some basic misunderstanding about the purpose of a RR. Still. I assume it has something to do with the people against it being dishonest asshats, to be honest.

If you encounter the King and he fucking hates you, you still get a RR, because that's social initiative. Just as when and if it comes to a physical combat you still get a combat initiative roll even though he totally declared that he was going to kill you the next time he saw you last week.

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.

But some of them are indeed going to stop combat. Like if you burst into the room and you get a diplomacy phase and you announce that you have kidnapped the King's daughter and they need to do what you say to get her back or something. The thing is that in the real world, situations where people walk into the room and combat starts before anyone has even had a chance to say "drop your weapons" are nothing like ubiquitous. And in-genre they are rarer still because combats without dialog prologue are boring.

There absolutely should be things that you can say during a diplomacy phase (even a short diplomacy phase) that prevent combat. Whatever the equivalent of The Joker pulling out a deadman switch and a suicide vest is for the setting you're in really ought to do it. But the fact that there's a banter phase absolutely should not preclude that a combat happens immediately after. It would be a major failure of your diplomacy system if combat couldn't occur after a diplomacy phase. But the fact that your diplomacy system could have later failure points in no way is even an argument that it shouldn't generate diplomacy phases in the first place.

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MGuy wrote: 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.
If I'm parsing this correctly, you're saying 'the king and his men are treated as one side except when they're not'. That's largely true. From my perspective, the king is the 'leader', and he largely gets to set the starting attitude for everyone (it's easier that way). But he's also harder to convince. When the PC says, 'anyone that lays a hand on me I'll turn into a newt', the king is probably not dismayed. Maybe it's the years he spent as a frog before receiving his kiss, or maybe he's used to being threatened. But for the guards who are sweaty, underpaid grunts who like picking on people who are weaker than they are, being told that their participation will result in them being turned into a newt might be scary.

Take a moment and imagine that you're the guard, standing there in the king's throne room. The king has demanded that these intruders surrender or he'll have his guards kill him, but these intruders don't look scared. They've threatened to turn anyone who interferes with their disagreement with the king into a newt. That will be the end of your guard career - and being a newt sounds like it sucks. And aren't these the guys that killed all those giants that were a problem? Maybe they're telling the truth. Do you really want to attack them? I mean, if you do and you WIN, you might get a raise; but if you do and you LOSE you could die!
MGuy wrote: 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'.
And since the guard isn't a robot, he won't always do what he's been told. Sometimes people deliberately do a bad job. Maybe he waits to see what Bob and Jack are doing, so maybe he waits an extra 6 seconds or holds to the end of the first combat round (once it starts).

That's what 'social combat' is supposed to be for. Usually, we'd expect the guards to follow the kings orders (since that's their job). But we're already positing that these aren't normal circumstances. The PCs are providing some reason why the guards shouldn't do what they're told.

So once the 'social phase' ends, we could end up with 'no combat' because the PCs were able to avoid it completely; we could end up with 'combat' and the guards and king do everything they can to kick the PCs ass, or we end up with 'combat' and the guards decide to sit this one out because they're more afraid/trusting of the PCs than they are of their king.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

MGuy wrote:I know what the king is doing. Why does he get to do it is the question.
Damn it, this was posted while I was replying. Anyway, NO YOU FUCKING DON'T.

When the King says 'seize them', that doesn't have to end the social phase. That's what he's doing during the social phase. If he's really convincing, the guards will follow his orders, even though the PCs provided credible reasons they shouldn't follow orders.

Reminding the guards that they should do what the King says is part of the social phase; actually doing it is part of the combat phase.
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Post by MGuy »

If I'm parsing this correctly, you're saying 'the king and his men are treated as one side except when they're not'. That's largely true. From my perspective, the king is the 'leader', and he largely gets to set the starting attitude for everyone (it's easier that way). But he's also harder to convince. When the PC says, 'anyone that lays a hand on me I'll turn into a newt', the king is probably not dismayed. Maybe it's the years he spent as a frog before receiving his kiss, or maybe he's used to being threatened. But for the guards who are sweaty, underpaid grunts who like picking on people who are weaker than they are, being told that their participation will result in them being turned into a newt might be scary.
So at some point while writing this you realized that my question isn't answered at all in Frank's post but you kept the quote in there anyway to try to make me out to be crazy when you clearly had to go into an explanation that isn't found anywhere in the part of your quote of Frank's speech. I mean fuck you spend the entire time before that reviewing shit I not only acknowledged but that I acknowledge in the very posts that you quoted and you get ALL THE WAY to my actual question having just discovered it THEN you deliver a completely unrelated diatribe that actually addresses it and at no point do you feel the need to review every other thing you said to realize that maybe it's shit I already knew?! Ok whatever.

Now that we've got to the point where we can arbitrarily designate certain NPCs as third wheels what rubric is there for determining that? Is there a 'leader' tag on the King but not on any of the ambushing elves? Why does the king need to remind his troops of their orders in his scenario when no one is doing that for the elves in the ambush. In essence, when where why and how do you designate who and what gets to be third wheels in these social combats? The elves only have orders to go on so who is providing the opposition in their case? Why does the king have to waste his social rounds repeating his orders? Can the PCs elect to only Socialize at specific groups in exclusion to others who are also there?
Take a moment and imagine that you're the guard, standing there in the king's throne room. The king has demanded that these intruders surrender or he'll have his guards kill him, but these intruders don't look scared. They've threatened to turn anyone who interferes with their disagreement with the king into a newt. That will be the end of your guard career - and being a newt sounds like it sucks. And aren't these the guys that killed all those giants that were a problem? Maybe they're telling the truth. Do you really want to attack them? I mean, if you do and you WIN, you might get a raise; but if you do and you LOSE you could die!
Don't know why this is in here. I've said over and over again I think that pushing for surrender is a thing you should be able to do. Guess this is just more talking down to me because 'reasons'.
And since the guard isn't a robot, he won't always do what he's been told. Sometimes people deliberately do a bad job. Maybe he waits to see what Bob and Jack are doing, so maybe he waits an extra 6 seconds or holds to the end of the first combat round (once it starts).
The guard's actions have never been what I questioned. I am unsure why you're spending so much time talking about them.
That's what 'social combat' is supposed to be for. Usually, we'd expect the guards to follow the kings orders (since that's their job). But we're already positing that these aren't normal circumstances. The PCs are providing some reason why the guards shouldn't do what they're told.
Neither have the PCs actions been in question. This is what I'm talking about. Out of this entire post you discover what I've been asking all along then break out into an explanation of things I never questioned. I get all the rest. The part that you had to 'parse correctly' has been the question I've been asking this entire time.
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Post by virgil »

PhoneLobster wrote:Your repeated use of the word "Verisimilitude" when using "Realizmz" arguments fools nobody.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

MGuy wrote: So at some point while writing this you realized that my question isn't answered at all in Frank's post but you kept the quote in there anyway to try to make me out to be crazy when you clearly had to go into an explanation that isn't found anywhere in the part of your quote of Frank's speech.
No. Frank never said that what the King was doing would end the social phase. Everyone got that but you. It was specified that 'many of them involve posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat'. It was never stated that any of them would terminate the social phase.
MGuy wrote: no point do you feel the need to review every other thing you said to realize that maybe it's shit I already knew?! Ok whatever.
Yeah. Cause seriously, I can't separate what you actually know from what you claim to know that is totally false.
MGuy wrote: Now that we've got to the point where we can arbitrarily designate certain NPCs as third wheels what rubric is there for determining that?
This is specifically about my social system. There are two types of groups that PCs might encounter. One is 'homogenous' groups (that's your dozen kobolds, or six orcs), and another is 'mixed groups' - (this might be your dozen kobolds led by a seargeant, or six orcs and an ogre). If the group has a clear leader, and you want to convince the whole group of something, you focus on the leader. If you can convince him (since he's the most difficult to convince) you effectively convince everyone and/or even if you didn't, they'll follow orders.

This is the conceit that if you can convert the Prince to Protestantism, his subjects will be compelled to do so, too.

But you might also realize that you can't influence the leader. Leaders are inherently used to trusting their own judgement. If you find yourself in that particular situation, you may want to try to convince his or her followers.

Example: The leader wants to send his troops into the cave of death. You know that it is certain death. You try to convince him not to do it, but he insists. Unable to convince him, you focus your efforts on convincing each soldier that it is suicide and they shouldn't listen to their leader.
MGuy wrote: Is there a 'leader' tag on the King but not on any of the ambushing elves?
There doesn't need to be a 'leader tag', but the group might have a leader. If it does, focusing on the leader's reaction is probably most important. Since he's the leader, people will GENERALLY do what they're told (unless there is a good reason NOT to - which is what we've been talking about).
MGuy wrote: Why does the king need to remind his troops of their orders in his scenario when no one is doing that for the elves in the ambush.
FrankTrollman wrote: posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat
Perhaps you have a hate-boner for Frank, but you've misinterpreted this one line multiple times. Since it is not an order to attack IMMEDIATELY (as we discussed) neither is it a specific 'command'.

Frank did not say 'the King says "SEIZE THEM".
FrankTrollman wrote: the King might spend his diplomacy phase to demand your surrender or to tell other people in the room to seize you
How do you think he tells them to seize the PCs? It sounds like you're imagining 'SEIZE THEM' as the only form that could take. It's not. There are lots of ways this could be described 'in game'. Countering the social actions of the PCs to ensure that the guards follow their king's orders is how I'd interpret it. But I don't have a hate-boner.
MGuy wrote: In essence, when where why and how do you designate who and what gets to be third wheels in these social combats? The elves only have orders to go on so who is providing the opposition in their case?
If they're a homogenous group, it doesn't matter. If they're not a homogenous group, the social actions are assumed to be directed toward the leader unless the PCs specify otherwise.
MGuy wrote: Why does the king have to waste his social rounds repeating his orders?
FrankTrollman wrote: posturing for a bonus during an ensuing combat
Or, you know, you could have to explain that these particular people should be seized, since not everyone who enters the throne room gets thrown into the dungeon immediately. You know... Actually give orders. Unless the guards can all read his mind.
MGuy wrote: Can the PCs elect to only Socialize at specific groups in exclusion to others who are also there?
What does this even mean? But yeah. Sure, why not. If you're talking to the elves and the orcs, you could say, 'we should join sides and kill these stupid elves'. That would be diplomacy aimed at the orcs and would likely increase the hostility of the elves.

[
And since the guard isn't a robot, he won't always do what he's been told. Sometimes people deliberately do a bad job. Maybe he waits to see what Bob and Jack are doing, so maybe he waits an extra 6 seconds or holds to the end of the first combat round (once it starts).
The guard's actions have never been what I questioned. I am unsure why you're spending so much time talking about them.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Discussions of leaders and not leaders or whatever is a red herring. The specific example is that there are people in the throne room with the king. The PC's do not want them to help the king. The king wants them to help him. Both the king and the PC's are acting towards some other group of NPC's with opposing goals. There is absolutely zero need to model any of what transpires there as a leadership relationship, except perhaps that because the king and the people in the throne room have a positive preexisting relationship based on authority that he gets a bonus. Indeed, the original example is actually as consistent with the king trying to persuade the guests at his fancy ball to assist him as it is with trying to order his own guards.

MGuy can and will drag you into that argument if you let him, regardless of its irrelevance. Whether it's because he's actually that stupid or it's a deliberate misdirection, you're free to decide for yourself, but you can rest assured that if you give MGuy an opportunity to shit all over the conversation he will do so. So don't. Do not indulge him when he accidentally or intentionally derails the conversation. Point out that what he has done is incorrect, and then bring him back to the topic at hand.

MGuy believes that Frank was describing a situation in which the king was ordering people to attack and thereby end the social phase. MGuy is wrong, and Frank was actually very clearly describing a situation in which the king was taking social actions in the pre-combat social phase to persuade those in the room to assist him in combat when the pre-combat social phase ended, in the same way PC's might try to persuade those in the room to stay out of it even once the combat music started (which is in the exact same example). Do not let him weasel out of defending this point by broadening the conversation. He is fundamentally wrong, and no matter how much bullshit he piles on, it is this cornerstone which will not and cannot hold. There is no need to discuss anything else - anything else is something MGuy has built up from this faulty assumption and it topples along with it.

Alternatively, put the stupid fuck on ignore. Not only has he gone this long without realizing his error, he hasn't even fucking realized there's an argument on this exact point. He does not even understand that our posts contain criticisms of his position, and as such does not even understand that he has criticisms he is failing to address (for better or worse). Because he is a stupid fuck. There is nothing of value to be had here. Nothing can be gained by arguing with him so long as his hateboner/ego/stupidity/dishonesty makes him functionally illiterate.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Need I remind people that MGuy's interpretation of the "King tells Guards to attack in social phase" was the charitable one.

He resorted to the interpretation that it seemed to be a combat action/end social phase action because the alternative was my interpretation.

The interpretation that Frank was telling us that the complex social actions we "need" the social phase for included "telling the guards to attack". And as such if you roll the most aggressive RR result of "no social phase" the King paradoxically cannot tell the guards to attack.

And all too often in the flailing foaming wroth at MGuy's interpretation people are saying things which look a lot like they support MY interpretation. Which is bad news for Frank, who helpfully decided to post on the topic without clarifying ANYTHING to ANYBODY about what his original stumbling mess of insanity was supposed to even fucking mean. Other than he petulantly refuses to reply to MGuy at all, apparently the minimal concrete clarifications of Frank's proposal required for critics to be able to even have something to firmly discuss are just too great for the like's of MGuy to comprehend and so no one gets to hear them and they remain immune to criticism.

And while I'm here...
But you might also realize that you can't influence the leader. Leaders are inherently used to trusting their own judgement.
... let me point and laugh at THAT oddball statement and suggest that any social influence mechanic based on "You can't influence leaders they is speshul!" is one based on being a waste of time and a deliberate fuck you to the players.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

DSMatticus wrote:. Both the king and the PC's are acting towards some other group of NPC's with opposing goals. There is absolutely zero need to model any of what transpires there as a leadership relationship, except perhaps that because the king and the people in the throne room have a positive preexisting relationship based on authority that he gets a bonus. Indeed, the original example is actually as consistent with the king trying to persuade the guests at his fancy ball to assist him as it is with trying to order his own guards.
Yes. When someone describes the scenario of the king in his throne room telling "people" to attack the party because they have angered him the go to default scenario is "Seize them! Fancy Ball Guests!", or better yet "Kill them all, neutral third parties!", I mean when someone says the king is telling people to attack the party I NEVER simply assume those people are his guards. I mean WHEN does the king EVER go around telling GUARDS to "seize them!".

Much more sensible to just ignore that scenario and pretend something else was being talked about that might in anyway justify the contorted interpretations required to pretend Frank didn't spend a whole post producing brain fart noises.
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Post by MGuy »

So you've said a few things here, all of which aren't found in Frank's explanations that people have delightfully reiterated time and again that seem to be your own conjectures. You still hold that I didn't 'get' that Frank may have been urging them to attack despite that being one of the things I fucking said it might be when I questioned it in the first place. I mean it's not that I didn't post that several times that may have been what it was but then questioned the validity of such an action when the king shouldn't be in "attack now" mode anymore at all. You hold on to that conceit despite only now you yourself 'getting' what I was asking in the first place and only NOW addressing it at all. You also suggest that I'm the only one who didn't "get it" when I wasn't the only one who questioned his explanation. Apparently the fact that I interpreted it differently and had questions about it which were subsequently ignored and dismissed means that I didn't get the whole thing still. At the very least you're better than DSM who wholesale refuses to acknowledge at all that HE HASN'T even discussed the question I put forth and keeps reposting shit that doesn't even begin to clarify dick then pretending "oh, well the fact that different actors are behaving in a way that totally doesn't follow through between scenarios is not weird at all so ignore it!".

Well, moving on with your take on it.
Frank wrote:the King might spend his diplomacy phase to demand your surrender or to tell other people in the room to seize you
You make a weird argument where Frank didn't specifically say the king says "Seize them" though that's exactly what he suggests the king does in this very line. No part of this line suggests posturing. I might've read it that way if Frank had suggested that the king make a threat to his guards or at least a call to authority but he did neither. It isn't my hate boner that has me questioning whether or not that's posturing is a thing the king could do, nor have I suggested that the king can't posture. It's the fact that this line doesn't suggest that. It describes Socializing at the PCs or giving direct order and so that's the way I took it.

As for the specifics of your Social System I don't know what it is or does so I can't take your word on whether a leader tag exists for Frank's construct. I don't know if it was Frank's intent to describe a situation where the King counts as a separate group from his guards. It seems like it was but as I stated before, and several times afterward, I haven't seen any evidence of that with the other scenario with the elves. The fact is I didn't and still don't know why that is, or how that kind of shit is determined. That's why I'm not sure if a groups of PCs can come upon a group then start arbitrarily dividing up the Social Combat's participants into groups. Like if they come upon a group of soldiers who are all wary of the player's presence and during the social combat they are all one then suddenly the players decide to try to turn the crowd against one of them and claim that that person is a saboteur. Then it is up to that person to defend himself but that person was part of the larger group. So does this divide the group of soldiers into varying parts? Can parts of the group of soldiers just decide to push for combat and be the urging force for the rest of the troops against the PCs despite none of them being a distinguishable leader?

What's more if a group doesn't have a leader then does that change what the PCs roll against when considering whether combat will be drawn? What about groups that are on orders but don't have a "leader" present? Who or what force is urging them on? If we presume not everyone who bursts into the king's throne room unannounced are subsequently subdued and we can assume not every person that walks into the Elf forest is not shot to death then who urges the latter to shoot at all? I don't know. I'm willing to bet you also don't know. So I went with an explanation that was the easiest. My interpretation is that the King has a special social skill that can end Social Combat, a social skill that none of the ambushing elves happened to have. Sure that works against the point of the SRCD but that's why I assumed it was a thing he can urge them to do because otherwise there's no reading of that line that suggested it was anything but a way to cut SRCD down.
Last edited by MGuy on Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by DSMatticus »

PhoneLobster wrote:Need I remind people that MGuy's interpretation of the "King tells Guards to attack in social phase" was the charitable one.

He resorted to the interpretation that it seemed to be a combat action/end social phase action because the alternative was my interpretation.

The interpretation that Frank was telling us that the complex social actions we "need" the social phase for included "telling the guards to attack". And as such if you roll the most aggressive RR result of "no social phase" the King paradoxically cannot tell the guards to attack.
Uhh, no. Your "interpretation" is just another pile of bullshit for a slightly different reason. Frank's examples are mirrored. The examples specifically include the PC's demoralizing the people in the room, and if that were a thing the PC's did then the king would fucking counter that with his social actions. And in order to argue reductio ad absurdum, you are completely ignoring that context in order to claim that clearly Frank thinks giving orders can only occur during the social phase and if no social phase occurs then the guards will sit there with thumbs up their asses as opposed to behaving as they would if the PC's had not attempted/succeeded at demoralizing them.
PhoneLobster wrote:Yes. When someone describes the scenario of the king in his throne room telling "people" to attack the party because they have angered him the go to default scenario is "Seize them! Fancy Ball Guests!", or better yet "Kill them all, neutral third parties!", I mean when someone says the king is telling people to attack the party I NEVER simply assume those people are his guards. I mean WHEN does the king EVER go around telling GUARDS to "seize them!".
I want to point out to everyone the idea that the king is speaking to a neutral third party is in no way essential to my argument, nor is it presented as such. I have been arguing page after page on the same assumption PL has been: that it clearly means guards. But when I point out that a neutral third party would be consistent with the sentence (it is) and is a wonderful example of using social actions during the social phase to convince people to participate in the following combat without ending the social phase (it is), PL latches onto that as though I am suggesting Frank never meant guards and falls back to mocking that as though it's something that was actually said. This is because PL is a dishonest fuckwit who does not argue in good faith. It's making and mocking strawmen all the way down.
MGuy wrote: You still hold that I didn't 'get' that Frank may have been urging them to attack despite that being one of the things I fucking said it might be when I questioned it in the first place.
Clarify. Is your definition of urging them to attack:
1) Convincing them to attack immediately, which interrupts the social combat phase? If so, see any of my fucking posts about how that is not what Frank is talking about. Including this one, where I explain it to PL. Again.
2) Convincing them to attack when the social combat phase ends, which simply means that the king has secured the support of NPC's in the combat that would occur when the social combat phase ends? In which case, you were completely wrong all those times you argued that Frank was saying the king had the ability to skip the social combat phase and go straight to real combat.
MGuy wrote:I mean it's not that I didn't post that several times that may have been what it was but then questioned the validity of such an action when the king shouldn't be in "attack now" mode anymore at all.
Third reminder: this is a completely separate claim from "the king has the ability to end social combat early" (a claim you made repeatedly and have been criticized for repeatedly, exactly as above repeatedly). Arguing that "the king shouldn't even be posturing for benefits in possibly ensuing hostilities to begin with" is completely separate from arguing "the king has the ability to skip the social combat and commence hostilities immediately."

Another third reminder: it's still stupid and wrong. The reaction roll does not switch the king from stabby to huggy. The example being discussed from square one is an example in which the reaction roll outputs brief social combat followed by stabby unless the PC's convince the king otherwise during the social combat. How is this not obvious? How is this inconsistent with anything? How is it not clear that if the guards catch you breaking into the king's room and they don't immediately stab you in the face, they will still ask you to explain yourself and if you fail to convince them not to stab you they'll fucking stab you for breaking into the king's room?

And despite your bitching, these are all the same arguments that I have been making to you since square fucking one. You don't get it. I don't know how you don't get it. It's pretty fucking amazing, to be honest. And you probably won't get it this time either.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

DSMatticus wrote:PL latches onto that as though I am suggesting Frank never meant guards
Indeed, the original example is actually as consistent with the king trying to persuade the guests at his fancy ball to assist him...
You talked alot about the original example the specific example and then justified and defended the example based on a non-default assumption. You don't get to do that if the default scenario makes the entire argument fucking stupid. You don't get to explain "Well it would make sense IF he was the SPACE KING of BACKWARDS WORLD and nothing in the original statement specifically excludes that he COULD be the SPACE KING of BACKWARDS WORLD!".

Also. Your whole "but Frank ONLY meant it as what the king would do to COUNTER persuade!" is a fucking lie. Frank LISTED things different characters might do. He did NOT list them as things they would do to directly counter specific actions "tell other people in the room to seize you" was just something the king might do as a social phase action IRREGARDLESS of what the PCs may or may not be doing.

And again that was not a persuasion action he described it was an instruction a simple order, and fuck you for continuing to misrepresent it.

But that's OK because you are a lying dishonest fucker with no ability to read fucking basic English. You literally are misreading "just as" as "only as a direct counter action to", you deliberately misread "tell people" as "persuade people". There is NO way to reach your "interpretation" without excessive amounts of intellectual dishonesty and you know it.
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Post by virgil »

PhoneLobster wrote:But that's OK because you are a lying dishonest fucker with no ability to read fucking basic English.
Dude, you can't differentiate between "disarm" and "surrender"; where the fvck do you get off thinking you have any credibility with English. You still have yet to fvcking admit your obvious math screw up.
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Post by DSMatticus »

PL wrote:You talked alot about the original example the specific example and then justified and defended the example based on a non-default assumption.
No. MGuy is (or was, fuck if I know if he's retreated completely from that position or not in favor of this "b-b-but the reaction roll says the king shouldn't be a meanie!" bullshit) making the argument that the king has the ability to end the social phase prematurely by ordering the guards to attack. Replacing guards with guests is not there for the purpose of quibbling over whether the king is giving orders. It is there for the purpose of illustrating that deciding whether or not a given NPC participates in the combat that follows the social phase is not the same as ending the social phase prematurely. It's a point that is relevant to MGuy's claims ("Frank had to have meant ending the social phase prematurely"), and not relevant to your's ("Frank had to have meant giving orders to minions"). The substitution of guards with guests is valid for the purposes of addressing MGuy's claims, even though it would be invalid for the purposes of addressing your claims. That is why I at no point brought up the example in response to you, but did bring it up in response to MGuy. But it is also just a clarifying example, and the actual argument holds exactly as well with guards as it does guests. You are trying your best to contort this example into something it is not. Stop fucking doing that.
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.
PL, your entire fucking argument is that it's a coincidence that the two examples Frank gives for the king just happen to be opposites of the examples he gives for the PC's. And that suspicious "just as" in between (frequently indicative of exactly that sort of contrast) is also totally a coincidence. Coincidence, all of it. Lalala can't hear you.

When normal people see a bunch of "coincidences" that point to X, and realize that ~X leads to absurdity while X doesn't, they put two and two together and realize the fucking answer is X. Now, I'm not surprised that you went straight for ~X if there was even the slightest opportunity to do so. Because you have a fucking hateboner and do not make good faith efforts to engage your opponents, so twisting yourself into a logic pretzel in order to criticize Frank is what you will do every time you can. But make no mistake: the fact that you can personally blank out the entire rest of that paragraph and shout "HE SAID SEIZE THEM!" over and over in your head doesn't make the rest of it disappear. And pretending to be a moron and misunderstand fairly obvious statements so you can either force your opponents to defend strawmen or laboriously hold your hand through every fucking step of their arguments is incredibly annoying.

And that's really the whole fucking story. The correct interpretation isn't fucking hard, you are just the sort of dishonest shit who will go out of their way to make arguing with you as hard as possible by twisting everything you can. It's why you refuse to understand Frank. It's why you wanted to pretend "drop your weapons!" meant a disarm debuff. It's why you do all of the dishonest little things you do. You're an asshole.
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Post by TarkisFlux »

This is two pages and a day and a half late, but shit came up and the time to post hasn't really been present. Since it's so late, I'm not going to bother with a lot of the actual reply this would have generated where I go through words and other blah blah bullshit to argue really technical and probably meaningless points.

Except for this one.
DSMatticus wrote:
Tarkis wrote:Frank seems to want to stop at step 2 and call it done though. His actual claim is that you can't have combat actions that influence those things.
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. I'm pretty sure that questions of whether or not combat actions should be able to lead to social combat are red herrings. Again, the real discussion is about whether or not out of combat actions should be able to turn potential future combat encounters into social ones. That's what a reaction roll is for.
At the time, yes, it was a thing Frank appeared to be advocating. Whether that was intentionally or just poor word choice and an uncharitable reading on my part is unclear, and far enough out of date to not matter. He's since changed or elucidated (probably the latter) his position sufficiently that I no longer think its the case. And since that's what I wanted anyway, I'm not mostly fine with that.

But the second part is wrong; asking if combat actions can put you back into the socializing phase is not a red herring or even a mark against RR. It might be tangential to the broader discussion of RR that seems to be not happening here in favor of yelling and example mutilation, but I don't care. I already granted the basic premises of RR and wanted to ask about followups. Since this thread is "diplomacy" and not "RR", it's not that far off.

Anyway, the goal is to provide a mechanical basis for the socializing space before combat, based on clear inputs that PCs can interact with right? Once you grant that having an RR is a reasonable way to do that (which I did), it is a completely reasonable followup to ask 'well, if the RR doesn't go the way the PCs want do they have any other options to drive the game in that direction?'. And if the answer is 'no', I want a fucking reason why not. Maybe I agree with the reason, maybe I don't, but I don't see one off hand. And since I read Frank as making the 'no' claim, I asked.

Frank's answer now seems to be 'probably, if combat rounds weren't 6 seconds. also they're not real combat actions, just things you can say that may or may not have any actual mechanical weight behind them' and that's fucking weird for Frank (and also possibly wrong, people are all over the place in this fucking thread), but it's better than a 'no'. Since a lot of this conversation is being driven by responses to inane drivel, shit flinging, tortured examples, and naysayers (which tends to make these sorts of conversations a mess of poorly chosen wording and half-thought ideas), I expect it would be a lot less weird in an actual system. And I'm willing to give him and anyone else who wants to try to build an RR the benefit of the doubt at that point.
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Post by Username17 »

Tarkis wrote:Whether that was intentionally or just poor word choice and an uncharitable reading on my part is unclear, and far enough out of date to not matter.
Pretty much 100% uncharitable reading on your part. Not as ridiculously uncharitable as MGuy and Phonelobster, but bad enough that I almost put you on ignore too. Tarkis, I never said you couldn't stop combat with actions in combat. Actually, I fairly directly said you could. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that combats can't end, so people acting like there is any sort of debate on that point is a red herring.

The only point relating to "combat ends" effects that is actually under contention is the MGuy claim that having "combat ends" effects in combat precludes the need to have any ability to affect whether combat begins. Which is fucking absurd, but that's his claim. The xenophobic elves example is completely open and shut: they have the ability to ambush you, so obviously you need to be able to affect that in some way. That requires a pre-combat chance to have a diplomacy phase. Mguy's counter argument was seriously "What if you ambushed the elves instead?" which is a completely different - and wholly irrelevant - example.

I'm sorry if some of the discussion seems to be about really basic shit that is on like a kindergarten level - but the fact is that several of the people on this thread are either extremely dishonest or paste-eaters, and we really are having to explain how "before" is different from "after."

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Post by PhoneLobster »

TarkisFlux wrote:Frank's answer now seems to be....
Yeah pretty much something as stupid as that currently.

But I am less charitable that he will go and get it right.

He has had changing and stupid social proposals before. I point you at his social currency and his 1st level barmaids control the actions of 20th level barbarian kings and so on.

He gets told, hard, that he is proposing something unworkable, he denies it until he is blue in the face and just flat out ignores the basic criticisms of why it is unworkable because "fuck you can't hear you lahlahlah".

But the proposals never advance. They never become anything concrete. Just next time around the argument appears he has a new set of insane unworkable proposals and demands (but never hard mechanics anyone could actually pin down, let alone use) to add to the heap, which never shrinks because fuck you Frank will never admit that 1st level barmaid thing was a monumentally stupid demand.

It's almost as if his ideas are fucking stupid dead ends that DO turn out to go nowhere. But god for bid he should ever listen to or engage with the critics who told him that fucking in advance.

RR has already failed in at least 2 or 3 implementations on this board. Frank has no concrete social mechanic at all, not even a concrete RR proposal of ANYTHING sufficiently non-vague that critics would be permitted to actually engage with it without denials about every damn thing he nearly said it does.

If RR can function why doesn't it? Where is the fucking concrete example of a working RR system we are allowed to even SEE let alone talk about? It isn't here now and it WON'T be ever.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

@Frank

With the concept of a reaction roll generating a 'social phase' with some type of 'social initiative', how do you envision it ending?

I could see the King granting a social phase because he wants to demand your surrender, but the moment the PCs start accusing him of being an impostor, ending the social phase would be in his interest. Would the idea be that it would continue until one side decided to end it? Presumably if the PCs tried to 'improve' the King's opinion of them and were successful, the King wouldn't want to start combat music immediately, but if they didn't improve his opinion and he was hostile to begin with, he'll want to start combat when they choose not to accede to his demand.

When the bandit yells 'your money or your life', the PCs might try to generate a more favorable reaction. If they fail, does the bandit go straight to combat (assuming he doesn't have any social actions left that he'd like to try)?
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Post by MGuy »

PhoneLobster wrote:But the proposals never advance. They never become anything concrete. Just next time around the argument appears he has a new set of insane unworkable proposals and demands (but never hard mechanics anyone could actually pin down, let alone use) to add to the heap, which never shrinks because fuck you Frank will never admit that 1st level barmaid thing was a monumentally stupid demand.
I'm pretty much here. At this point DSM has had to re-imagine Frank's original statements so much that I've been reminded of talks I've had with people trying to defend bible scriptures. I honestly could just spend the next few pages not saying a damn thing and at some point Frank will clarify or change his position in some way. I mean it's not like it hasn't happened. I called out that what Frank wanted at this point was different from what people were arguing 'for' at the beginning of this thread. Pages and pages later Frank came out with it and those people have largely shut the fuck up about it. Along with that Frank was all on the "No Socializing during combat!" rag which I treated as utter bullshit because I knew than that it was just a knee jerk response to arguments he didn't feel comfortable addressing. Low and behold here we are with him having walked that claim so far back his supporters are pretending it never happened. Prior to all of this, the FIRST time Frank proposed this RR material, he framed it such that it would set people to angry or merely grumpy and I expressed how stupid the idea was. After many pages of him defending that bullshit look at where we are now a mechanic that just enforces a "Social Phase" that doesn't set people's fuckin' attitudes. Wondrous. So, it really doesn't matter who's defending what right now or how far DSM or even Frank shove their heads up their own asses. Fact is, later it will be different and possibly less stupid. It's all just a matter of time.
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Post by Fuchs »

One could argue that going from "Kill on sight" to "Listen, don't kill yet" is an attitude change already.

Can this be done to the PCs too? Can an NPC force a diplomacy round on PCs? If no, why not? If yes, how? And what if it's just to stall untill the ritual Ends?

For the verisimilitude crowd: Can you use a RR to get a diplomacy phase and then filibuster until the time runs out and your ritual goes off/reinforcements arrive?
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Post by Username17 »

Considering that the anti-RR people are demanding the ability to stop combat for three minutes without even rolling dice every time someone wants to make a speech, I hardly think it's weird that an NPC could roll an RR to force a diplomacy phase. You get to the main boss, and he gives a mad speech before combat starts. How is this weird?

That there should be times when NPCs force players to listen to an extended diplomatic maneuver before they can get to the stabbing is not even under dispute. Everyone agrees that this should happen, the only quibbling is when and how and whether the players might have a chance to prevent it with the right die roll.

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Post by DSMatticus »

Tarkis wrote:At the time, yes, it was a thing Frank appeared to be advocating. Whether that was intentionally or just poor word choice and an uncharitable reading on my part is unclear, and far enough out of date to not matter. He's since changed or elucidated (probably the latter) his position sufficiently that I no longer think its the case. And since that's what I wanted anyway, I'm not mostly fine with that.
Dude. You cannot get from anything Frank said to "combat can't have any social actions." It's not even a matter of the sort of deliberate and painful misinterpretations PL ("Frank is talking about giving orders") and MGuy ("Frank is talking about ending social combat") are doing, which involve taking a paragraph and ignoring literally every word in it except SEIZE and THEM. It's just something that was made completely the fuck up by PL that he then went forced meme on. I've asked for a quote that would lead to such a conclusion several times, and the first answer was a heap of stupid and the second answer lead to literally the exact opposite conclusion.

Frank is obviously against having [the set of all social actions] = [the set of all combat social actions], because... he's said so and he makes fun of PL for doing exactly that (which may or may not be fair, I don't actually know). But it does not follow from that that Frank thinks the latter set should be empty. PL wants it to, but he's wrong. The moral of the story is when PL says things about Frank, just fucking ignore them because 90% of the time he's full of shit.
Tarkis wrote:But the second part is wrong; asking if combat actions can put you back into the socializing phase is not a red herring or even a mark against RR. It might be tangential to the broader discussion of RR that seems to be not happening here in favor of yelling and example mutilation, but I don't care. I already granted the basic premises of RR and wanted to ask about followups. Since this thread is "diplomacy" and not "RR", it's not that far off.
PL and MGuy are not bringing up whether or not combat actions can turn a real combat into a social one because they want to talk about it. They are bringing it up because they are fallaciously claiming that it is a position of their opponents that they cannot, and they want to mock that strawmen (instead of defending their efforts to mock other strawmen). It is misdirection right now, even if there are some other theoretical circumstances which would make it relevant.
MGuy wrote:At this point DSM has had to re-imagine Frank's original statements so much
Hey, when you are such dumbass that someone has to repeat the same thing to you a dozen times before you understand them, you do not get to claim that each and every single time you've forced your opponent to repeat himself through stupidity is a "retreat" or "another re-imagining." If you want to demonstate inconsistency in my position, you can just fucking do that. If you want to hint at vague claims of inconsistency because it took three fucking pages to drill the fact that there was disagreement at all through your head, you can go fuck yourself with something large and uncomfortable.

And if you actually have anything of value to say about how Frank totally meant what you wanted him to mean even though it's a torturously uncomfortable reading that leads to absurd results while the converse is a remarkably comfortable reading that leads to sane results, then you can just say that. If you want to handwavily claim "i'm totes rite guyz,", then you can go fuck yourself with something large, uncomfortable, and dipped in cayenne pepper.
FrankTrollman wrote:That there should be times when NPCs force players to listen to an extended diplomatic maneuver before they can get to the stabbing is not even under dispute. Everyone agrees that this should happen, the only quibbling is when and how and whether the players might have a chance to prevent it with the right die roll.
Social systems should not be symmetrical to that extent. NPC's are not agents of the GM - they just exist and need their behavior modelled and that task falls in part or in sum to the GM, but they are not agents of the GM and moving some of the task of modelling that behavior from the GM to a game system is fine. A PC is the agent of the player, and moving the task of modelling PC behavior from players to game systems is undesirable. Note that I'm not saying PC's should be wholesale immune to abilities or effects with the social tag, but whether or not they choose to hear the villain out before stabbing him to death should be a player call, not a function of the villain's diplomacy roll.
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Post by Redshirt »

Social systems should not be symmetrical to that extent. NPC's are not agents of the GM - they just exist and need their behavior modelled and that task falls in part or in sum to the GM, but they are not agents of the GM and moving some of the task of modelling that behavior from the GM to a game system is fine. A PC is the agent of the player, and moving the task of modelling PC behavior from players to game systems is undesirable. Note that I'm not saying PC's should be wholesale immune to abilities or effects with the social tag, but whether or not they choose to hear the villain out before stabbing him to death should be a player call, not a function of the villain's diplomacy roll.
Yeah, if if I told my players "you can't interrupt him while he monologues, he succeeded on his intimidate check", I think they'd revolt. Now, flavor that as some sort of supernatural power and they'd be much more willing to go along with it, but even then it's walking on thin ice.
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Post by MGuy »

Frank wrote:Considering that the anti-RR people are demanding the ability to stop combat for three minutes without even rolling dice every time someone wants to make a speech, I hardly think it's weird that an NPC could roll an RR to force a diplomacy phase. You get to the main boss, and he gives a mad speech before combat starts. How is this weird?
Wat?
DSM wrote:If you want to demonstate inconsistency in my position, you can just fucking do that.
I have told you that either your counter examples doesn't fit, when you're not answering or even engaging my actual points, how there isn't any clarification on various details, etc etc. So far you've responded with "But they do because I demand that they do", repeatedly posted things that don't answer my question and told me I don't know how to read/learn to read, and continued with this rhetoric that I am against a version of RR I don't really have anything against. You act like you WANT to prohibit any clear, unassailable explanation of what the fuck is going on because Frank actually taking time to say "There is isn't a leader tag" or "This is how sides in the RR are set up" would be an admission of some sort of failure. Anytime I do post on it you won't even engage it. At least DeadDM did and even he had to go off of mere conjectures because he realized the answers to the questions I brought up aren't found in Franks original statements.

So yea, you are full of shit but that's ok. As I said, this always happens every time Frank decides to retreat his head up his ass, and every time he gets supporters and EVERY TIME he at some point changes his mind and the shit changes. If Frank wants to clarify he can. He has already walked back several positions and all I have to do is wait until he either completely walks this one back or clarifies. It's going to happen at some point no matter how much you stamp your feet and yell so continuing to try to engage you, a person who seems bent on making sure it DOESN'T happen, is pointless. At some point Frank will HAVE to answer the question if he ever wants to finish the system.
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Post by Kaelik »

Is this what fighter threads are like for people who don't like arguing about fighters?

Because this is terrible.
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