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

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virgil
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Post by virgil »

PhoneLobster wrote:But apparently we have to assume those limited and simple feint actions include winning the combat by making the other side outright surrender. Or else Virgil will butthurt for the next century, again.

When it suits RR fans to have it one way.

And when it suits RR fans to have it the other the whole POINT of RR is that you can't do anything "significant" in combat, most certainly not go and WIN it or anything.
Holy crap, you scarf those paint chips and glue like cereal, don't you? If someone says "drop your weapons" and the characters comply, you honestly expect that to mean they flinch and just pick it back up again? You can't even see how either of those two interpretations are social actions.
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Judging by the above comment and your rape engine, you apparently want seduction and morale/surrender to fall under the same umbrella in combat and resolution, which is telling of what you'd be like at the pub.
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Post by DSMatticus »

MGuy wrote:He should be in banter mode but has an action he apparently has to spend ordering troops (who are apparently not going to attack) to attack.
The bolded portion of this sentence is addressed by quote #2. Reaction rolls do not output two states, of which one is stabby and the other is huggy. If you are caught in the king's room by his guards, there is a good chance they will stab you/arrest you, but there is also a good chance they will ask you what you are doing. If you cannot produce a satisfactory and convincing answer in the social phase, they will obviously still stab you/arrest you. Suggesting that the guards flip immediately from instant stabby to never stabby and will not in anyway prepare to stabby is stupid. The reaction roll outputs a social combat phase. It doesn't change the fact that you were caught in the king's room and will have to actually accomplish some goals in that social combat in order to avoid a real combat. You are seriously arguing that the police can't follow up failed hostage negotiations with a swat raid, because there exist no situations where talky would be followed by stabby. I have no words.

The italicized portion of that sentence is responded to by quote #1. The simple fact is that that quote does not describe giving orders which terminate the social phase. It describes the PC's and the king engaging in the pre-combat social phase to determine whether or not the guards will participate in any following combat. Are you seriously incapable of grasping that you might demoralize the king's guards such that they do not follow his orders? Because that's the actual text Frank uses - demoralizing or otherwise telling people to stay out of it. How is that incompatible with anything? How is it even difficult to follow? It certainly does not mean "social combat ends when the king says go; GO!"

Those two arguments are the cornerstone of your argument. Nobody is confused about them. They've been responded to a billion damn times, and I really do not know how you don't get that. It's staggering.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

DSMatticus, your interpretation of "telling his guards to seize them" remains as tortured as it was the first time you said it.

Anyways, here's a thing for y'all to stare at in horror: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54959. I'm not sure I like it either; Kaelik's suggestion of having people stay in conversation only while that's the most sensible thing to do, and creating incentives to do so, is nagging at me, saying "you know you'd prefer the only system yet put forth that doesn't force people to act like idiots".
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Post by DSMatticus »

Don't be a dumbass. There is no sane interpretation of that paragraph that leads to "lol social phases are optional" as MGuy claims. The fact that the text itself bothers to set up the example of the king telling his guards to seize the PC's in contrast with the PC's trying to demoralize the guards is just gravy. But I'm sure you're right. That is clearly a coincidence, and Frank has been arguing all along for pre-combat social phases that end when the GM says so. It's the only thing that makes any sense at all, really.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

Who said the interpretation had to be sane? Perhaps Frank made an error in phrasing?

Or maybe he didn't:
FrankTrollman wrote:If you are in a diplomacy phase and want there to be more or less diplomacy phases, you can press for more or less diplomacy phases.
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Post by shadzar »

PhoneLobster wrote:
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
what you fail to understand, well the forums don't have enough database space to list it all...but what you fail to grasp about verisimilitude and believability is that they are subjective. that means EACH person gets to call BULLSHIT when something goes beyond their SoD. there is no one universal verisimilitude than is objectively true.

belief: do you believe in God?

Christian: Yes.
Jewish: Yes
Muslim: Yes
Atheist: No
Agnostic: Who gives a fuck!

there is no single belief that ANYONE agrees upon 100% in the world. Except maybe that you are a blithering idiot.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Foxwarrior wrote:Or maybe he didn't:
FrankTrollman wrote:If you are in a diplomacy phase and want there to be more or less diplomacy phases, you can press for more or less diplomacy phases.
DSMatticus wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:No, you fucking haven't!
I'm not entirely sure why you are still frothing at the mouth and yelling at MGuy on the "Wait, so the king can end social combat?" thing.

I mean. Frank DID just flat out say on this page that "press" to end a social phase early is a thing characters can suddenly do with their mandated social phase actions.

Or is THAT going to require multiple pages of you spazzing out denying he ever meant to say that too?
DSM wrote:But note: even if the king had an actual ability that reduced the length of (or terminated) the pre-combat social phase contingent on his ability to beat you in an opposed test of some kind, that's just him resisting your efforts to stop him from stabbing you in the face by reducing your timetable to do so. If the king and every other NPC in the game had the ability "end social phase, no roll, defense, or counter; gg no re", then yeah, the reaction roll doesn't fucking do anything at all. But that doesn't follow from what Frank said at all, and it makes no fucking sense, and you are a dishonest shit for trying to twist it into that.
I covered that base as an off-handed aside on page 17, noting that a statement to the effect of "there are actions you can take which change the length of the diplomacy phase," would not in fact allow you to score on the goal "the king can take an action that unilaterally and completely bypasses the social phase mechanic." And yet here we are, with you claiming that the former is the latter, up is down, and blue is red. Could you have figured that out yourself with a few seconds of actually considering what your opponents are saying? Certainly, it's pretty obvious that that statement has no consequences for the position held by MGuy. Did you actually realize this? ... Probably. Did any of that stop you from making an obviously stupid argument in the hopes that you might win some ground? Of course not.
I am Sisyphus and this is my hell.

Look, MGuy's reading of Frank's post is that the king has the absolute ability to unilaterally terminate combat by ordering his guards to attack. This makes pre-combat social phases optional by NPC's and therefore pointless. That is his gotcha. Frank saying "the king should be able to attempt social actions which decrease or increase the length of the pre-combat social phase" will not let MGuy claim victory on his goalpost. Because that is not his goalpost. That was never his goalpost. His goalpost is much, much further down the field.

If you actually want to use that later statement as evidence of what Frank meant in the original post, then my explanation is wrong, but MGuy's argument crumbles exactly as if I had been right. If the king can't press the skip button, then five pages of MGuy's bullshit stops mattering instantly. There is no losing for me here.
Foxwarrior wrote:Perhaps Frank made an error in phrasing?
Well, he obviously chose a phrasing that was easily abusable, but I don't actually think he made an 'error.' There are two PC examples. There are two king examples. They're both essentially opposites of eachother. Frank explicitly calls out posturing for bonuses during an ensuing combat. It's not at all hard to deduce by context what Frank is describing, but yeah, if you strip that context and refuse to consider anything in the entire paragraph but that one example on its own, then you can get to PL's gotcha (which is that "oh, so the king has to have a pre-combat social phase to order his minions?! Then what if there isn't one, they sit there with their thumbs up their ass?!"). Fuck, you might even choose to believe that was an actual oversight, but, again, it involves ignoring that the PC example mirroring that one is talking abut demoralizing those very same people/convincing them to stay out of it.

But it's still basically impossible to get to MGuy's interpretation, which is that convincing people to participate in an ensuing combat means... combat starts now because reasons and reaction rolls are pointless.
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Post by Fuchs »

I still haven't gotten an answer from any RR proponent as to how PCs can go from diplomacy to combat if they really do want to kill stuff. Do they need to diplomance the opposition so they can start stabbing them? Or can they simply start fighting? And where's the verisimilitude there?
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Post by DSMatticus »

Fuchs wrote:I still haven't gotten an answer from any RR proponent as to how PCs can go from diplomacy to combat if they really do want to kill stuff. Do they need to diplomance the opposition so they can start stabbing them? Or can they simply start fighting? And where's the verisimilitude there?
Yes, you did get an answer. You got several conflicting answers, in that people don't agree. I personally liked Kaelik's idea, with the caveat that it might end up being abusable: PC's could act to put the social combat into a favorable state and then press quit, preventing their opposition from reversing the damage done. I.e. "I intimidate the guards! Quitsies!"
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Post by Foxwarrior »

Fuchs: In my system, the PCs need to diplomance theirselves in order to attack. I know, it's beautiful.

DSMatticus: I'm happy to hold the position that MGuy was wrong too. But there is losing for you: you just wasted several pages of your life trying to convince MGuy to give up with a terrible argument.
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Post by Username17 »

One thing I don't understand is how butthurt and inconsistent people get when it comes to diplomantic effects on player characters. We all agree that there are powers like Majesty, Sanctuary, Repulsion, and Frightful Presence which can force a character to not attack. Right? Those physically exist, and have for forty years. There should be no argument on that point. Further, those abilities can exist on either side of the DM's screen. Again, there should be no argument there, because it's simply demonstrably true. No one to my knowledge has flipped their shit over the fact that it was physically possible for an NPC cleric to cast Sanctuary or an NPC vampire lord to have Majesty or whatever.

Moving on, pretty much everyone also agrees that combining subsystems to use similar mechanics is a good thing. Further, most everyone agrees that it is at the very least "not fair" if non-magical solutions to problems are dramatically inferior to magical ones.

So really, why are people pretending it's a fucking problem for the Vampire Countess to be able to make a Charisma test to force a diplomacy phase on the players? We all know that no one would bat a fucking eyelash if the Vampire Countess had an aura or spell of Majesty/Fear/Despair/Whatever that forced a diplomacy phase on the player. It's the same fucking thing, it's just a proposal to put all that disparate shit into the same mechanic so people can plan around it.

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Post by Fuchs »

And how can PCs counter this? How can a PC stop the diplomacy phase and start stabbing? Or is this impossible? Spells usually can be resisted with a saving throw, can be SRed, one can be immune to them, or they can be dispelled.

How can you foil a villain's plan to diplomancy until his "summon Orcus" ritual is complete?
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Post by Username17 »

Fuchs wrote:And how can PCs counter this?
Rolling better?

If the Vampire Countess stabs you with a sword and you take damage, how can the PCs counter this!? If you're talking about opposed ability rolls that might not even fucking work, running around with your hair on fire that there's no way to stop it is just being willfully obtuse.

The Vampire Countess rolled some god damned dice to force you into a diplomacy phase and she fucking rolled high enough and now you're going to have to exchange threats and taunts for a minute even though you don't want to. Tough fucking shit. If she didn't roll good enough, you could skip that phase and roll combat initiative right away. But you didn't. Like how Imhotep simply says "I dislike being touched" and the hero spends his diplomacy phase raging.

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Post by Cyberzombie »

FrankTrollman wrote:One thing I don't understand is how butthurt and inconsistent people get when it comes to diplomantic effects on player characters. We all agree that there are powers like Majesty, Sanctuary, Repulsion, and Frightful Presence which can force a character to not attack. Right? Those physically exist, and have for forty years. There should be no argument on that point. Further, those abilities can exist on either side of the DM's screen. Again, there should be no argument there, because it's simply demonstrably true. No one to my knowledge has flipped their shit over the fact that it was physically possible for an NPC cleric to cast Sanctuary or an NPC vampire lord to have Majesty or whatever.
The difference is this. With magic, you're overcoming the character's free will. So if you use dominate or charm to get the PC to betray his friends, it's generally okay because everyone in the game world agrees that the character had no control over his actions, so when he recovers from it, he's no longer considered a traitor.

When you use actual social skills, the character supposedly retains his free will. So if you diplomacy a paladin into turning on his high priest, that's an active decision his character made that is being forced on the character. And when the diplomacy wears off, his character is still a traitor, because in the story, this was a choice he was actively talked into, not mystically forced into. So when the vampire uses diplomacy on your paladin, they're actually changing your character concept from loyal holy warrior to traitor. PCs feel they should have some say when their character concept gets changed in such a dramatic fashion.

Even if you limit non-magic diplomacy to only allow NPCs to do it to stall for time, PCs will wonder why their character is such a fool that he'd stand around while he's on a time sensitive mission and he knows the dark ritual is going to finish any minute. Magic snake charms that entrance your character are fine, but having your brave hero know that he's on a time-sensitive mission and stand there like an idiot anyway without good reason, that's something PCs are going to oppose.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Well, clearly I'm all in favor of PCs being subject to the same social effects as NPCs. It's generally pretty bad to do it any other way.

Off the top of my head the only person around here still openly against the idea as a basic premise of social mechanics is Lago. (edit: And even as I said that someone else ninjas me expressing an opinion on non-magical social that's about the same as fighters can't have nice things.) And I'm pretty sure Virgil is only avoiding it in his failed system because he has some moderate awareness he has put together a monstrosity and wants to save all the social capital he can to keep it on life support at the table.

But. This isn't actually just a matter as you depict it of losing a social contest in a nice standardized rules and living with direct consequences of defeat is it? That's pretty much my set of goals and methods and while it would be nice to pretend you've finally got around to adopting them you haven't actually have you?

Because this is a proposed segregated unique mini-game. That on it's own is more than enough to cause most players to balk. But having an actual hard involuntary mechanic that FORCES them to play the segregated unique mini-game... I'm pretty certain that isn't going to be popular.

Players don't like segregated unique mini-games period. They certainly don't want to be forced into them. And they will see a mechanic that forces them to engage in encounters they do not want to even have and to spend their time at the table playing a different mini-game to the one they as players signed up for as a direct insult and a waste of their limited free time.

The problem with your proposal is not that it forces player characters to do things they do not want to in the form of social consequences for defeat. The problem is it forces the actual players themselves to do things they don't want to in the form of a bullshit unique mini game they will hate.
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Post by Username17 »

Cyberzombie wrote:When you use actual social skills, the character supposedly retains his free will.
Free will is actually bullshit. But beyond that, if I punch you in the face, do you retain the free will to not bleed? If other people do stuff that has effects, and you fail to stop those effects from affecting you, then you're affected. End of fucking discussion.

In Champions, there is a thing called a "Presence Attack" where a character goes boogey boogey at people and they may have to run away or lose an action due to awe or fear. PCs and NPCs alike can do that, and have been able to do that since the game came out in 1981. Thirty three years this system has been in place, and exactly zero fucks have been given about people's "free will" being abrogated. If you're particularly concerned with your character being forced to act or not act by the frightening presence of major villains, buy yourself some fucking presence defense.

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Post by Fuchs »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Fuchs wrote:And how can PCs counter this?
Rolling better?

If the Vampire Countess stabs you with a sword and you take damage, how can the PCs counter this!? If you're talking about opposed ability rolls that might not even fucking work, running around with your hair on fire that there's no way to stop it is just being willfully obtuse.

The Vampire Countess rolled some god damned dice to force you into a diplomacy phase and she fucking rolled high enough and now you're going to have to exchange threats and taunts for a minute even though you don't want to. Tough fucking shit. If she didn't roll good enough, you could skip that phase and roll combat initiative right away. But you didn't. Like how Imhotep simply says "I dislike being touched" and the hero spends his diplomacy phase raging.

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So, it's not a reaction roll that decides her actions, but the GM decides she wants to force diplomacy on the PCs. Or do you roll first to see if she wants to diplomacy, then roll for her "forced diplomacy" to check if she succeeds in forcing a diplomacy phase? And what about ambushing elves? Do they roll to see if they want to roll to force diplomacy on their targets too?
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Post by Fuchs »

FrankTrollman wrote:If you're particularly concerned with your character being forced to act or not act by the frightening presence of major villains, buy yourself some fucking presence defense.
And to what degree can you expect this "social defense" to work? Can you get immune to the point no one can force a social phase on you? What's your chance to avoid a social phase when facing an enemy of your level?
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Post by MGuy »

Foxwarrior wrote:DSMatticus: I'm happy to hold the position that MGuy was wrong too. But there is losing for you: you just wasted several pages of your life trying to convince MGuy to give up with a terrible argument.
It's not that he wasted it. He got angry and spent many pages being a asshat about it because 'reasons'. Hell he successfully managed to get Dead to parrot his posts that terribly missed the point until he realized that he couldn't actually reply to what I'd posted without making his own conjectures and applying his own rulings (what with leader tags and arbitrary group divisions). So he got to expend all that pent up rage and hate in a nice and safe environment.

If his goal was to keep me from getting a 'gotcha' on a system I have no strong qualms with that WOULD be a waste of time. Sure my interpretation 'can' be wrong but the point of it all is that it is unclear. I didn't have to torture any meanings of any words, quote walk backs that differed from Frank's earlier positions, or anything to get it and it was a more charitable reading of it and one that 'could' fit based off of what he's been saying. I mean if there is any internet "victory" to be had it wouldn't be for this and I already got it AND claimed it. It's just a waiting game now for more details about how the SRCD is supposed to work.
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Post by Username17 »

Fuchs wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:If you're particularly concerned with your character being forced to act or not act by the frightening presence of major villains, buy yourself some fucking presence defense.
And to what degree can you expect this "social defense" to work? Can you get immune to the point no one can force a social phase on you? What's your chance to avoid a social phase when facing an enemy of your level?
Why the fuck do you care? Your suggestion was that anyone could just decide to plonk an extra 3 minutes into the world while they called time and had a genteel conversation in the middle of a roiling combat or chase scene and everyone had to fucking tap their feet until it was done whether they were involved or not.

Trying to play gotcha on specific numbers and percents when your own proposal is "100% of the time anyone on any side can call time for a diplomacy phase on their initiative count no matter what other people are doing or what abilities they have. When your own proposal has golems stop fighting, flames stop burning, and stones stop falling whenever anyone clears their throat or takes a swig of Poland Springs, you've pretty much lost any and all ability to be taken seriously when quibbling about how expensive or functional oratory defense is in other systems. You've already set the marginal cost of presence defense in your system to infinity, you don't get to bitch.

Further, there are a bunch of systems being discussed, and the relative value (and thus assumed cost) of presence defense will necessarily be different in the different ones. In Champions, which is a system I mentioned, a d6 of presence attack costs 5 points and comes with 5 points of presence defense so two really scary people are generally immune to each others' fear aura. In some editions of Vampire, Majesty doesn't come with aura resistance, and two characters that inspire awe have difficulty attacking each other.

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Post by Fuchs »

FrankTrollman wrote: Why the fuck do you care? Your suggestion was that anyone could just decide to plonk an extra 3 minutes into the world while they called time and had a genteel conversation in the middle of a roiling combat or chase scene and everyone had to fucking tap their feet until it was done whether they were involved or not.

Trying to play gotcha on specific numbers and percents when your own proposal is "100% of the time anyone on any side can call time for a diplomacy phase on their initiative count no matter what other people are doing or what abilities they have. When your own proposal has golems stop fighting, flames stop burning, and stones stop falling whenever anyone clears their throat or takes a swig of Poland Springs, you've pretty much lost any and all ability to be taken seriously when quibbling about how expensive or functional oratory defense is in other systems. You've already set the marginal cost of presence defense in your system to infinity, you don't get to bitch.

Further, there are a bunch of systems being discussed, and the relative value (and thus assumed cost) of presence defense will necessarily be different in the different ones. In Champions, which is a system I mentioned, a d6 of presence attack costs 5 points and comes with 5 points of presence defense so two really scary people are generally immune to each others' fear aura. In some editions of Vampire, Majesty doesn't come with aura resistance, and two characters that inspire awe have difficulty attacking each other.

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I am asking what you want your system to spit out. I would expect you to have at least a sort of ballpark range for the success chances of your own system.

You also haven't stated if in your system the GM rolls first to see if the ambushing elves wants a diplomacy phase, and then rolls again to see if they manage to force one on the PCs.
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Post by Redshirt »

And even as I said that someone else ninjas me expressing an opinion on non-magical social that's about the same as fighters can't have nice things.
It isn't about the same, because the actors are totally different. Nobody gives two shits if NPC fighters can't have nice things. No one should care that NPC and PC social actions are not perfectly symmetrical.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

I'm on the fence. I think that social action symmetry sounds logical. PCs and NPCs usually should use the same rules. But honestly, charm and domination type effects, along with fear have caused more issues with Players than any other type of effect.

Players have a concept of their character, and forced social actions can conflict with that vision.

Now part of that may be there aren't 'social defenses' included in 3.x. The Fighter, no matter how grizzled and tough, is REALLY BAD at resisting fear effects. If the Fighter has the option to mechanically represent being grizzled and brave and doesn't use them, there's no real issue with wetting himself and running from the Vicious Chicken of Bristol.

I guess if you have symmetry, you have to make defenses something you can invest in. I'm still not sure that it would get universal acceptance (because as much as charm and dominate are things that people think SHOULD exist, people still don't like them being used against them).
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Post by Fuchs »

What happens if the NPC tries to force a diplomacy Phase on an entire party and the diplomancer PC resist while the fighter pc doesn't? Is there still a phase? If no, then that would mean the fighter defenses do not matter, all that counts is that one resists. But then, the PCs might simply get enough henchmen or followers or maybe even summoned help with them so at least one will succeed in resisting a forced diplomacy phase.

If yes, then all the defenses don't matter much since the weakest link decides the outcome - and again, that would make a number of characters liabilities.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

FrankTrollman wrote: One thing I don't understand is how butthurt and inconsistent people get when it comes to diplomantic effects on player characters. We all agree that there are powers like Majesty, Sanctuary, Repulsion, and Frightful Presence which can force a character to not attack. Right? Those physically exist, and have for forty years. There should be no argument on that point. Further, those abilities can exist on either side of the DM's screen. Again, there should be no argument there, because it's simply demonstrably true. No one to my knowledge has flipped their shit over the fact that it was physically possible for an NPC cleric to cast Sanctuary or an NPC vampire lord to have Majesty or whatever.
Here's why.
[*] Having NPCs diplomatize PCs opens up a brand new frontier in laying down shiny railroad tracks. We've had a couple of DMs on these boards who openly salivate at the thought of being able to diplomatize PCs *coughRandomCasualty2Swordslinger* and I see nothing good coming from this.
[*] Even if every DM was reasonable about it, if your diplomacy system generates a plausible but unusual result like pissing on yourself in public pranknet-style or having your militant lesbian/straightjacket/bear character seduced by someone of their non-preferred gender you'll have some players throw a bitch fit anyway. It doesn't matter if the result is realistic or plausible or even likely; once your character trades their loyal warhouse mount they've had for several years for a sack of magic beans, people will demonize the system as 'bullshit randomness telling people how to roleplay their character'.

The reason why people are okay with charm/dominate but not mundane diplomacy is threefold.

[*] The first is, well, mundane diplomacy is mundane. People have odd conceptions about dualism or how they'd defy the implications of the Milgram experiment and they just won't accept mundane diplomacy making them do what they see as 'extreme' things.
[*] Secondly, charm/dominate have a build-in escape hatch as far as characterization is confirmed. The way they're fluffed is that whatever results were generated by these game effects they're not really 'you' and don't reflect anything about your character. No one really thinks that Mindbender King Howard compelling your character to lynch a retarded teenage boy in public with his evil eye means that you're a bad person.

However, if Smooth-Talking Bastard Hannibal Minderbinder convinces your character to lynch a retarded teenage boy in public with his diplomacy, it casts your character in an entirely new light. Your character development from now on is 'willingly murders children if whipped up enough'.
[*] Charm/dominate are exceptional methods of character control. Like once-a-session, if that, methods of an NPC dictating player behavior. If you make it more common than that, trust me, people will start to complain.
I'd like to reiterate. The first time people share a story on the public message boards about a DM who got a paladin PC to participate in a lynch mob or the wizard PC to trade his secret research for some magic beans or for a militant lesbian to sleep with a male chauvinist pig, that's it for your system. It doesn't matter how plausible or well-designed or genre-emulating or how good at generating stories your system is; this becomes ammunition for any competitors or saboteurs or critics to attack your system with until the cows come home. You think the bitching about skill challenges or MMORPG-style advancement is bad? You ain't seen nothing yet, trust me.

If you absolutely want people not to rebel on NPC-on-PC diplomacy, you need to do these things at a minimum.
[*] You need to enable PC-on-PC diplomacy. Not because the game will be any better (it'll make it worse), but because if you allow this special pleading example it'll make your game look like a hypocritical DM-penis waving fest.
[*] Magical diplomacy needs to become the default mode of diplomacy from the very start or at least. It doesn't need to be anything super-flashy or will crushing. A diplomacy engine like Ace Attorney where people use interdimensional chess matches or magically charged jewels to interrogate people would be acceptable.
[*] You need to seed the diplomacy engine in favor of the PCs. And I mean heavily seed. A merchant who gets the PCs to trade their heirloom sword for a worthless treasure map is about worth as much Player Rage Points as convincing an unpopular king to publicly commit suicide.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Wed Jan 15, 2014 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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