Charisma should be a skill

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codeGlaze
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Charisma should be a skill

Post by codeGlaze »

... Or something akin to a skill. However your imagined system works.

Naturally charismatic people can simply represent themselves with a frontloaded charisma skill or by picking talents/backgrounds... Whatever.

From a d20 perspective I think it pretty easily fits in that Gray space most of the useful skills reside in. The space of "non combat proficiencies" that can also be creatively used in combative situations.
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Post by OgreBattle »

What is used to resist charisma 'attacks' then, and what are the effects of charisma in this game.
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Re: Charisma should be a skill

Post by Voss »

codeGlaze wrote:... Or something akin to a skill. However your imagined system works.

Naturally charismatic people can simply represent themselves with a frontloaded charisma skill or by picking talents/backgrounds... Whatever.

From a d20 perspective I think it pretty easily fits in that Gray space most of the useful skills reside in. The space of "non combat proficiencies" that can also be creatively used in combative situations.
From a d20 perspective what attribute provides the stat bonus, and how is it any different from diplomacy/bluff/intimidate?

I'm not quite sure what grey space you're referring to. Tumble, and the already existing diplomancy skills? (For feinting and the laughable intimidation ability, and also the '-10 to do it fast for other things (ie, win)'.
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Re: Charisma should be a skill

Post by codeGlaze »

OgreBattle wrote:What is used to resist charisma 'attacks' then, and what are the effects of charisma in this game.
I could see charisma attacks being defended with a will save in d20 terms. Other skills could provide bonuses or possibly act as a stand-in defense if high enough or applicable.
Effects would most likely be boosting/negating morale and/or NPC reactions. Leadership, bartering, asking favors or even convincing NPCs to stop attacking ( /preventing them from attacking).
Voss wrote:From a d20 perspective what attribute provides the stat bonus, and how is it any different from diplomacy/bluff/intimidate?

I'm not quite sure what grey space you're referring to. Tumble, and the already existing diplomancy skills? (For feinting and the laughable intimidation ability, and also the '-10 to do it fast for other things (ie, win)'.
@attributes : I think it'd probably be best to bake in "the greater of these bonuses" as the primary stat-bonus. I could see arguments for INT or WIS as the primary bonus, but you could also argue STR or even CON (hale and hardy is an attractive feature in a leader).

@Gray-areas : Tumble, obviously, is a good example. But yes, intimidate, use rope, slight of hand, jump, balance, ride, use rope, concentration, disable device, handle animal, bluff, perform can all be creatively used in combat. Some requiring more creativity than others.

@diplomacy, et al. : Using a skill-groups variant rule would probably be the most effective use of a CHA skill. With charisma being the umbrella skill.
Worst case scenario, charisma and diplomacy give each other "synergy".

This actually stemmed from mentally separating the combat mini-game from the social mini-game. (Primarily because a decent social subsystem doesn't really exist.)

So that's really the angle I was coming at this from. Charisma as a skill required to be awesome is kind of stupid. Most classes that use it could easily use a different stat as their main focus.

I think the premise could work especially well with DnD specifically because a good social mini-game does not exist. This, imo, alleviates two big sore-thumbs.

1) The primary subsystem people interact with in d20 is combat. CHA is an edge-case combat affecting ability.

2) This allows for easy expansion on CHA if a working social game is ever stitched together, without having to shoehorn shit in up-stream. Because it's not really connected to the combat ability array.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

See the problem here is that you seem to be unable to words good and simultaneously seem inclined to make assertions about d20 and "D&D" that seem to indicate you have somewhere short of no deeper understanding of how it works.

This results in you sending deeply contradictory mixed messages about your premises, goals, and methodology.

Take for example, even your opening sentence...
codeGlaze wrote:Or something akin to a skill. However your imagined system works.
Which is a complete non-sequitur that doesn't even seem to know that even the known existing spectrum of "imagined systems" defines "skill" so incredibly diversely that you just said just short of fucking nothing, hell LESS than nothing.

You also then, and again later, fail to clarify the vague and muddled implication that you want to remove the Charisma base attribute and replace it with... ???

But more impressive, and deeply problematic, is this statement and later "clarification".
codeGlaze wrote:From a d20 perspective I think it pretty easily fits in that Gray space most of the useful skills reside in. The space of "non combat proficiencies" that can also be creatively used in combative situations...
...@Gray-areas : Tumble, obviously, is a good example. But yes, intimidate, use rope, slight of hand, jump, balance, ride, use rope, concentration, disable device, handle animal, bluff, perform can all be creatively used in combat. Some requiring more creativity than others.
Now aside from the fact that use rope really isn't good enough to warrant mentioning twice... your list, and your stated reasoning behind what you think are "the most useful skills" is... bullshit.

The most useful skills in d20 are useful because the skill, or at least a minimum of one important function it performs does NOT reside in a gray space.

The most useful skills in d20 are not useful because of their potential for "creative" use, they are useful because of their boring and predictable predefined formal functions.

The most useful skills in d20 are not that way because they are "non-combat proficiencies that can also be rarely used in combat" they are options that provide direct commonly combat relevant effects. They MIGHT also have non-combat applications, or not, the non-combat bit doesn't particularly matter in rating them as a "good skill" for d20.

Creative use of skills is pure mother may I. It can have value of sorts, but it is NOT the definitive feature of "the good skills" in d20. If anything the more a skill relies on mother may I, the WORSE that skill is. Because mother may I is equally worthwhile or worthless and available on EVERY skill, value and mechanic in the game already for free. It is the predefined formal mechanics tied to certain skills that are the ONLY possible measures of objective comparable value be it good or bad period.

That point on it's own pretty much requires you to provide a multi page thread of ranting about how much you like basketweaving to even attempt to pretend you've justified your scheme for valuing d20 skills. But then you also said...
codeGlaze wrote:I could see charisma attacks being defended with a will save in d20 terms. Other skills could provide bonuses or possibly act as a stand-in defense if high enough or applicable.
Which is very WTF don't you know how these numbers even interact? Don't do that. Never do that.

But it doesn't end there. Because when asked "what the hell is different about this Charisma skill... compared to existing Charisma based skills?" your answer was...
codeGlaze wrote:@diplomacy, et al. : Using a skill-groups variant rule would probably be the most effective use of a CHA skill. With charisma being the umbrella skill.
Worst case scenario, charisma and diplomacy give each other "synergy".
Which tells us god damn nothing about the differentiation whatsogodamnever. As far as I can tell your answer to "what does this skill do different to the existing charisma skills?" was "maybe it does exactly the same thing as all of them at once OR maybe it just doesn't do that!"... :bash:

Then, ultimately, you then end up with this rambling clanger...
codeGlaze wrote:This actually stemmed from mentally separating the combat mini-game from the social mini-game. (Primarily because a decent social subsystem doesn't really exist.)

I think the premise could work especially well with DnD specifically because a good social mini-game does not exist. This, imo, alleviates two big sore-thumbs.

1) The primary subsystem people interact with in d20 is combat. CHA is an edge-case combat affecting ability.

2) This allows for easy expansion on CHA if a working social game is ever stitched together, without having to shoehorn shit in up-stream. Because it's not really connected to the combat ability array.
d20 already HAS charisma skills. They are already somewhat significantly divorced from the combat system. They already do what your proposed skill does, or maybe not, who fucking knows, and all in all baring a few notable flaws in the skills themselves and the overall skill system itself they perform pretty much adequately if your plan for social mechanics is "minor mostly informal after thought".

Your plan to "separate" them from combat is to... make them effect combat? Only just perhaps sometimes in "creative" ways, only even though its "edge case" this "creative" effecting combat thing is the primary (and to some extent only) defining feature?

And this "change" will be achieved... by not really changing anything. Except maybe completely breaking the numbers by rubbing saving throws against skill checks without apparent consideration of what that might result in.

But most importantly, fucking hell NO this does not make it easy to later on turn "Charisma skill" into a working separate social minigame.

Firstly you aren't making any kind of coherent change to start with so "Status quo plus maybe nothing or perhaps WTF?" isn't even really a step anywhere period. But also even if it were you cannot lay the foundational mechanics for a complex and rewarding "minigame" when you don't even have the beginnings of a plan for what that is even supposed to do or look like.

Once you've gotten past the point of "insert minigame here" you need to actually start building the damn thing or GTFO, throwing in a single utterly incoherent mechanic completely at god damn random and calling it a step forward is not actually in any way shape or form a part of that process.
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Post by codeGlaze »

Touche, I neglected to specify that I wanted to remove Charisma from the basic stat array and then also specify that I have no intention of replacing it. Because it's fucking useless and I haven't seen much supporting evidence for MOAR STATS.

I will now proceed to try and be as concise and specific as possible for your robot brain.
Your points are vague!

Yes, beside the main point of demoting charisma to a secondary concern (a skill/talent/sub-stat/etc) I don't have any ultra-specific details I'm married to. I simply believe that charisma is a terrible choice for a main stat in the various RPGs I've been exposed to. Primarily DnD, but its clones and heartbreakers count, as well as RPGs I'm probably not even aware of.

A lot of the leeway in my response derives from the fact that I was spit-balling possibilities as I was thinking things through. I was also trying to keep in mind how TGD often talks in broad strokes about design; and charisma pulling from the same pool as shooty, burny, hitty stat points is fucking stupid in more RPGs than DnD or the d20 variants.

PhoneLobster wrote:This results in you sending deeply contradictory mixed messages about your premises, goals, and methodology.
I will absolutely cede that premise.

Maybe I should have waited and posted an exhaustive essay itemizing every pro and con I carefully uncovered through hours of devoted research. I didn't, though. I instead made a statement that occurred to me after about two hours of fucking around with some other ideas.

I'm relatively certain that at least some people reading the above could tell that I was posting a rough idea and waiting for some feedback or dialogue on the subject.
Bullshit skills!
PhoneLobster wrote:[...]what you think are "the most useful skills" is... bullshit.
Yea... I don't think those are "the most useful skills". So I'm tempted to call "straw man" here.

But in all fairness, you did eventually follow up with this.
PhoneLobster wrote:The most useful skills in d20 are not useful because of their potential for "creative" use, they are useful because of their boring and predictable predefined formal functions.
You are correct. But I did not specify charisma was a good skill. (I know, because I did not specifically specify much.) It's a shit stat and if it replaced diplomacy straight-up would just be a new name for a mediocre skill. Still better than a stat people are putting combat points into.
Wut do?
PhoneLobster wrote:
codeGlaze wrote:@diplomacy, et al. : Using a skill-groups variant rule would probably be the most effective use of a CHA skill. With charisma being the umbrella skill.
Worst case scenario, charisma and diplomacy give each other "synergy".
Which tells us god damn nothing about the differentiation whatsogodamnever. As far as I can tell your answer to "what does this skill do different to the existing charisma skills?" was "maybe it does exactly the same thing as all of them at once OR maybe it just doesn't do that!
Wrong, I led with my preferred idea. It'd be the main category for a skill group.
The rest was just attempting to gracefully degrade.
PhoneLobster wrote:d20 already HAS charisma skills. They are already somewhat significantly divorced from the combat system. They already do what your proposed skill does, or maybe not, who fucking knows, and all in all baring a few notable flaws in the skills themselves and the overall skill system itself they perform pretty much adequately if your plan for social mechanics is "minor mostly informal after thought".
Charisma takes a massive amount of mind caulk to accept as a caster stat or... a stat that affects battle in any meaningful way without resorting to edge cases (that still probably wouldn't hold up). Then it pulls double-duty because, as a dump stat, creates numerous "heroes" that have no fucking charisma. Unless certain types of heroes simply make themselves weaker in one area so they can focus on (what amounts to) fluff, most characters are at a disadvantage for social interaction from the get-go.

Which kind of sucks from an immersion or even storytelling perspective.

Demoting charisma to a secondary pool of points seems like an simple, workable and acceptable solution. It's even expandable without necessarily giving more "power" to (the currently) CHA-focused classes.
PhoneLobster wrote:Firstly you aren't making any kind of coherent change to start with so "Status quo plus maybe nothing or perhaps WTF?" isn't even really a step anywhere period. But also even if it were you cannot lay the foundational mechanics for a complex and rewarding "minigame" when you don't even have the beginnings of a plan for what that is even supposed to do or look like.
Diplomacy and social interactions are pretty much the poster child for "coming soon! (tm)" in regard to functioning mini-games or subsystems.
I posited the idea that maybe moving charisma away from the battle-pool and into a secondary pool might allow for expansion without having to restructure existing PCs/campaigns around a future ruleset.

I don't need to start thinking about some future-dated, maybe-possibly-might-happen, subsystem in order to suggest that something working as-is might allow a future system to hook in a little easier and without causing problems (that maybe only I see as problems).
This all goes a long way to say that, yes, you are right in the notion that I didn't plot out my replies in a well-structured argument.
I, instead, replied with comments as things occurred to me. Which led to me writing things that probably could have been condensed or omitted but, again, I was mentally trying to juggle/head-off scenarios that I felt might come up.

Therefore (assuming a skill-group setup) yes, charisma would probably be a catch-all (umbrella) diplomacy kind of skill/check. With diplomacy giving bonuses in actual diplomatic situations if you put specialty points into it.

If skill-groups weren't being used, replacing diplomacy with charisma might be the way to go.

But fuck CHA as a major stat.
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Post by Voss »

Yes, beside the main point of demoting charisma to a secondary concern (a skill/talent/sub-stat/etc) I don't have any ultra-specific details I'm married to. I simply believe that charisma is a terrible choice for a main stat in the various RPGs I've been exposed to. Primarily DnD, but its clones and heartbreakers count, as well as RPGs I'm probably not even aware of.
Do you have any rationale beyond 'believing?'
I seriously remember having this discussion as a teen during first edition, and it never went anywhere beyond 'something something dump stat'
Which...
Charisma takes a massive amount of mind caulk to accept as a caster stat or... a stat that affects battle in any meaningful way without resorting to edge cases (that still probably wouldn't hold up). Then it pulls double-duty because, as a dump stat, creates numerous "heroes" that have no fucking charisma. Unless certain types of heroes simply make themselves weaker in one area so they can focus on (what amounts to) fluff, most characters are at a disadvantage for social interaction from the get-go.
Ah. It is the same decades-old dump stat argument.

I'm not sure why casting off force of personality requires any more mind caulk than than casting off 'ability to learn' or 'general perception and will.'
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Post by PhoneLobster »

codeGlaze wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:This results in you sending deeply contradictory mixed messages about your premises, goals, and methodology.
I will absolutely cede that premise.
Then just shut the fuck up until you have something, any fucking thing to say.

Stream of consciousness is fine, but present it as such and actually SAY something about anything during the stream. Wait, correction say something SANE.

You are using a fuck load of badly arranged words to say "I suddenly decided Charisma should be less important, for, well, no reason, and in, well, no actual ways".

And since you cannot go two paragraphs while rambling about your genius non-idea to do nothing to move towards nothing without some random spectacular WTFery lets just pick the most choice addition...
I posited the idea that maybe moving charisma away from the battle-pool and into a secondary pool might allow for expansion without having to restructure existing PCs/campaigns around a future ruleset.
That's fucking crazy. Not just because it's not the slippery moving goal post you defended, even at multiple points during your latest mess of a post but also because you are actually trying to say "by changing the rules before also changing the rules characters and campaigns won't have to be changed to match changes to rules!"

Are you drunk? Like REALLY drunk?
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Post by Jason »

I'm a stickler for rules consitency, so if attributes play a role in skill resolution, there needs to be a social attribute among the array. Whether you call that "Charisma" or "Influence" or "Personality" takes no Skin off my back.

Also, from a psychological perspective, "Charisma" is a trait, rather than a skill. While "Emotional Intelligence" serves much of the same functions, is learnable and thus could work as a replacement, it's not covering the cases of "naturally good with People" types. Some People are just good with people without any formal training, whatsoever. As "skills" are trained and aquired in pretty much every single rpg out there (and even by the very definition of the word), I doubt that skills of any kind serve to simulate these types.

I think the bigger propblem arises from "why should I invest in an attribute that I hardly ever use"? The solution should thus be a change of how social skills interact with the mechanics, to provide more meaning to them, rather than removing a social attribute alltogether.

EDIT: to elaborate on my last Point, if an rpg is heavily combat focused, yet still retains nescessary social interaction, add combat applications for social skills as well. That way the invested points are not a "point sink" anymore.
Last edited by Jason on Mon Nov 21, 2016 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Whether Charisma is a dump stat or not depends entirely on what your game is doing or how it's trying to do what it does. If you let people march small armies of tiny men around like the early D&D books said you could - then Charisma is pretty much the best stat once you get to heroic level. Having moar tiny men is worth more than doing an extra point of damage with your sword or whatever the fuck.

Similarly, if your game is about vampires sitting in smoky nightclubs doing political maneuvers on each other and convincing mortals to get chewed on, charisma is probably a lot more important than strength. No amount of strength you get is going to give you more carrying capacity than a cargo van, and no amount of punching is ever going to be as good as convincing the other vampires to punch for you instead of against you.

Charisma is actually only a useless thing in the very limited scenario of basically okaying a roguelike. Indeed, unlike Intelligence and Wisdom, Charisma has real world effects that you could describe. For fuck's sake, what is Wisdom supposed to even mean? And what effect is it supposed to have given that we accept that the character's decisions are made by the player regardless of what their Wisdom score is?

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Post by Koumei »

Once you say "Well charisma is a learnable skill in real life, you just have to go to bars every night and work on that until it feels natural to you", that raises the fact that you can also train up your strength (indeed while there is a "genetic lottery" part of it, anyone who has "being strong" as a defining part of their career spends a lot of time working on that). Or hand-eye coordination or basically any of the other fifty things that all get filed under Dexterity. Is intelligence a learnable skill? I'm kind of curious as to whether Enzo Amore is correct in his assertion that you can't teach someone to be a genius.

And yeah, as a trait thing it's easier to define, and if you're killing one mental stat I'd suggest picking either Intelligence or Wisdom so you don't have arguments about which one a given behaviour is closer to.

As for it not being equally useful, that's an issue of design and deciding what kind of actions people should be doing - and also, there are plenty of characters that have no use for Strength, or for Intelligence, or whatever.
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Post by Mechalich »

Charisma as a dump stat is also a 'don't split the party' artifact. A group only needs one 'face' character, which means that if the party is an eternal unit that is never separated only one character ever talks to people and therefore only one character needs to have any social skills whatsoever because as far as society is concerned the other people are functionally mute.

The balancing function for everyone in the party but the bard (or whatever) dumping charisma to 'social cripple' levels is to split the party and to put the social cripples in situations where they are actually crippled. The problem is that this doesn't happen. Splitting the party sucks, GMs don't ever do it, and the group covers up the weaknesses of the individual. That's a persistent metagaming problem.
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Post by Ice9 »

The main argument I can see against Charisma as a stat is that it's too important, in that the majority of protagonists have it, but by making it stat then only 1/4 or less of the PCs probably will.

Like for example, people make a Barbarian with Cha 8, then they try to intimidate people and fail, and then they complain that Intimidate is broken and should be based on Strength.

But really, the problem is that the characters they're trying to emulate have high Charisma. Conan? High Cha. Kenshiro? High Cha. The Str 18, Cha 8 guy is the huge dude that's part of a gang (but not the leader), and he's just ... there. The camera never focuses on him, he's just that big guy in the background. And then at some point he gets pwned by the protagonist to demonstrate the awesomeness of the latter.

So if you're going for a cinematic feel, arguable all PCs should have high Charisma, and the difference should just be how they use it and what kind of people they can relate to the best.
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Post by Jason »

Ice9 wrote:The main argument I can see against Charisma as a stat is that it's too important, in that the majority of protagonists have it, but by making it stat then only 1/4 or less of the PCs probably will.
If your system has attributes and skills, both (and in my opinion it should), then a social attribute (Charisma/Influence/Personality) is a nescessity. There is an issue, however, that much is evident. In my opinion, however, it's not the attribute itself, but the lack of its integration in the overall design. Social interaction is usually an additional aspect of the system, not an integral one. It's almost like its very own minigame. With its limited scope, however, there is hardly ever a need for spreading out the relevant skills. Unlike combat roles, where you typically find a melee brute, a swashbuckler, a stealthy stabber, a sharpshooter and a wizardly caster, social interactions usually boil down to just a "face", and that's a shame.
Where's the "Battle Commander", where's the "Thug", where's the "Con Artist"? Why bundle them all into just one role? Why not spread out applications? Why not add combat applications for social skills? I know D&D 3.x tried to do the latter with bluff or intimidate in combat, but it felt tacked on as well, clumsy and as a result got hardly ever used in my experience.

Rather than foregoing a social attribute and further relegating social interaction to the sidelines, we should seek new alternatives and broaden the social aspects of the game to encompass its entirety. It's not easy, I am working on that myself at the moment, but I think it will yield a better system, overall.
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Post by Chamomile »

The trouble is, social systems are really hard, and they get harder the more complex you make them. Just getting the Face to work right is a task many games aren't up to, splitting that into 6+ distinct social classes is incredibly ambitious.
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Post by Jason »

Chamomile wrote:The trouble is, social systems are really hard, and they get harder the more complex you make them. Just getting the Face to work right is a task many games aren't up to, splitting that into 6+ distinct social classes is incredibly ambitious.
I noticed that. Still, I keep trying. I realized, though, that if you wish to integrate social skills into your combat system, then it needs to be built around them, or it won't work. Social skills need to be an integral part of combat ressource management or they become merely superficial.
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Post by Starmaker »

Jason wrote:If your system has attributes and skills, both (and in my opinion it should), then a social attribute (Charisma/Influence/Personality) is a nescessity.
...
Social interaction is usually an additional aspect of the system, not an integral one. It's almost like its very own minigame.
...
Rather than foregoing a social attribute and further relegating social interaction to the sidelines
Why? Why x2? :disgusted:

In a system with attributes and skills, in a game which has "social interaction" as a thing you can point your finger at, a dedicated social attribute exists at the expense of combat expertise. Depending on how "social stuff" is handled, you get a group which is incentivized
- either to specialize exclusively in combat and do longsword diplomacy when required
- or have one "face guy" who rolls the charisma check every once in a while (and it doesn't go farther than the obligatory charisma check because the face guy wants to play with the others, too).

If "not social interaction" is a significant part of the game, the social system should either run parallel or not exist at all. A social attribute is the absolutely worst choice.
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Post by Jason »

Starmaker wrote:Why? Why x2? :disgusted:
Simple: if you differentiate them and you have "the face" and "the fighters" then one of two things will happen:

The fighters are bored while the face plays or the face will be bored while the fighters play. It's like shadowrun and the matrix. Either social skills are bought from a seperate pool and don't compete with fighting skills (at which point you either have a bunch of bored clones or a diverse set of social skills for varius occasions) or they force specialization and group task seperation.
It's simply not good enough to have one "face" while the rest sits by bored in each and every social encounter.

EDIT: I might have missed your point, so let me add this: Great stories have both: meaningful social interactions and danger. To relegate the first to just a single roll by just one player is not really doing that justice. Also, if your social system is so superficial it is practically impossible to create meaningful social interactions in your system in general.
Good stories require social interactions and good systems require rules to cover those. If you just tag them on, then no one will enjoy the experience.
That's why I believe they need to be integral to the system as a whole.
Last edited by Jason on Tue Nov 22, 2016 7:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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