Social Combat

[MGuy]

Well, the point is that the decision of which branch of that flowchart you go down--do you or do you not believe that the people you've just met are hostile--seems to be something that should be adjudicated by a diplomacy engine.

I don't see why. Why would you need the diplomacy engine to determine the initial attitude of strangers? Why would diplomacy lend you some kind of precognitive knowledge on whether or not what you meet is hostile? Why would it be better to let dice randomly determine how well a social encounter goes before the encounter even begins?

As far as I've ever seen the use of a diplomacy minigame it would be largely the same as the combat minigame. There may or may not be combat if someone or something instigates it or it may be avoided. The GM largely determines whether or not something is after the PCs for whatever reason. I don't think I can care about whether or not the GM then determines whether or not something just simply agrees with me or not.

Basically if I don't care what the GM invents to come after my ass why do I care whether or not his NPCs have motivations beyond my knowledge that allows me to avoid having to play the diplomacy game because they already want to do what I want them to do?

It's like how the entire system punts the question of "How does the NPC react to this particular demand for a concession?" by just having the DM pull a modifier out of his ass. That's the entire crux of the issue, so having that by not a part of the system means that the system just... really doesn't cover very much.

That sounds like hyperbole. We have a Bluff skill no? the modifiers on it are choosen by the GM based on the situation. The modifiers provide guidelines based on what the PCs want people to believe and how willing the listener is to believe it. So why then would I object to diplomacy as a whole working in a similar fashion if I don't particularly have a problem with the way bluff works?

This is part of why "social combat" continues to be a really poor conceit for any subsystem that purports to handle diplomacy. You end up excluding vast and important swathes of what people in the real world think diplomacy is so that you can cram the social interactions you CAN handle into the adversarial format.

Wait... this doesn't make any sense to me. While I don't like PL's system the flow chart seems to cover every possible social situation you'd deem to fall under what you think diplomacy is supposed to do. From haggling [drop the price? -> They disagree -> You press for it -> Social combat] to convincing two different sides to lay down arms while you're acting as a third party [Side A + B want to fight -> You want them to stop -> They don't wanna -> Social combat ensues].

Now HOW social combat rules go will determine whether or not the act of social combat is fun and interesting for the game but PL's flowchart works fine for anything you'd care to use diplomacy for and for all the arguing against it no one has pointed out what it wouldn't work for as far as I can tell. THe only complaint seems to be that the GM gets to determine some stuff and the GM already gets to determine whether stuff exists so I don't know why someone would be afraid that the GM may determine that hostile things in hostile territory see hostile things as hostile and react to those probably hostile things with hostility. If you want the bard to then defuse catastrofuck situations like that then simply make a way for him to temporarily halt hostilities long enough to make the attempt. That seems like a completely reasonable "diplomancer only" ability to have in your game.

[John Magnum]

MGuy, it's NOT their initial attitude. Let's recap:

You seem dangerous lets fight -> Agreed!
No social combat occurs. Situation resolved.

You seem dangerous -> Wait, No I'm Not -> Agreed!
No social combat occurs. Situation resolved.

You seem dangerous -> No I'm Not -> I Don't Believe you...
Social combat triggered, aiming to a friendly defeat outcome (in my systems) or some similar concession in other systems. Situation resolved.

Note that the INITIAL attitude is the same in each case: "You seem dangerous". In the first case, the PCs live with the initial attitude and have a fight. In the second case, the PCs attempt to CHANGE that attitude and succeed, without ever interacting with the diplomacy minigame. It's only when the PCs attempt to change the attitude and fail for non-diplomacy-minigame reasons that the system even kicks in.

[Stubbazubba]

I don't like PL's system simply because the interesting part of diplomacy is already over by the time the system comes online. All his system does is stretch out the "does it work?" question into a whole mini-game, which seems like a waste of time. If that's all you want your mini-game to do, you need a single roll, that's all. If what you want and what they want makes no difference, then you're just rolling for resolution. So just do that and move on.

A true diplomacy mini-game needs to start earlier and continue well after combat begins. I still don't think that the initial attitude should be set by a die roll, but any proactive interaction on either side should begin either the diplomacy mini-game (with intelligible creatures communicating with you), the combat mini-game (with unintelligible creatures attacking you), or both (with intelligible creatures attacking you).

[MGuy]

MGuy, it's NOT their initial attitude. Let's recap:

You seem dangerous lets fight -> Agreed!
No social combat occurs. Situation resolved.

You seem dangerous -> Wait, No I'm Not -> Agreed!
No social combat occurs. Situation resolved.

You seem dangerous -> No I'm Not -> I Don't Believe you...
Social combat triggered, aiming to a friendly defeat outcome (in my systems) or some similar concession in other systems. Situation resolved.

Note that the INITIAL attitude is the same in each case: "You seem dangerous". In the first case, the PCs live with the initial attitude and have a fight. In the second case, the PCs attempt to CHANGE that attitude and succeed, without ever interacting with the diplomacy minigame. It's only when the PCs attempt to change the attitude and fail for non-diplomacy-minigame reasons that the system even kicks in.

I could imagine off the top of my head two situations where the no roll thing makes since. Perhaps the Pcs present proof they they aren't suspicious (reveal themselves to be allies, flash a badge, etc) and in the second situation they just don't have anything. That's something that totally can happen with the Pcs getting a pass without ever rolling a dice.

Second the PCs can just use a bribe. Simply look too nonthreatening to be a menace or some other thing. Perhaps they know a secret safety word. I could easily imagine any of this happening.

[Dean]

So I'm seeing two types of scenario's developing

Scenario's where pre-combat diplomacy is an option:
A: Conflict with intelligent aggressors (Meeting an Ettin in the woods)
B: Conflict with low intelligence aggressors if you have the proper abilities (Stumbling into a Bear Cave with a Druid with Wild Empathy in the party)

Scenario's where pre-combat diplomacy is not an option
C: Conflict with unintelligent aggressors (Zombie attack)
D: Ambush scenarios (Jumped by Goblins who were laying in wait)

People want a lot out of a social minigame and in my opinion a strong system would have several different subsystems and features as follows

1: An Attitude Roll: An initial attitude roll such as the one discussed at great length in this thread. This makes random monsters/npc's in the A and B scenario's have different and somewhat random attitudes when you meet them. Some monsters/npc's may be unusually friendly and some may be unusually hostile but none will automatically begin in attack mode. The chart that determines monster/npc's should have modifiers based on how safe their environment is, how aggressive your group appears, and how much they hate your race/class/religion.
2: A Social Interaction System: A quick light subsystem that functions in non-stressful situations. I think this system should use keywords and be mostly MTP. There should be a single roll you can make to turn the door Bouncer "Friendly" which means he'll let you cut in line. A "Friendly" character gives a character preferential treatment like store discounts, drinks on the house, and free cake. It should also be able to make a Princess "Enraptured" or the Guard Captain "Impressed" which have their own bullshit bonuses. The point is this system should be fast and easy and just make people feel good that it is totally an in-the-system fact that that Princess thinks your awesome.
3: A Social Combat System: A more in depth social system that is meant for stressful situations. In the A, B, or even D situations above this system should be useful. Either as a way of disarming a situation before it begins or to get people to panic, flee, or surrender once it's begun. Social Combat should have moves and maneuvers just like normal combat and the results should be mechanical. So if your character surrenders then your character gains the condition "Surrendered" which would read as follows
Surrendered: This character cannot target any character he surrendered to with an attack, spell (Harmless spells excluded), effect or ability (Harmless excluded again) for 24 hours.
Social Combat should give people the option to not murder opposition but to talk with them instead and have that not be wholly MTP in effect.
4: A Social Trading System: Finally I think there needs to be a system where people trade goods, services, and favors with each other and attempt to haggle for the best deals within those parameters. It would be just the same as haggling for mundane goods with mundane money but you can haggle for EVERYTHING with EVERYTHING. The hard part here is creating a system that has values for carriages, blowjobs, royal secrets and not getting your knees broken all under one roof but if that is possible AT ALL then you could totally create a system where Dragons and Mayors mechanically trade for "Virgins" and "Lack of Being on Fire" respectively. If you put all these things together you could allow people to walk up to a band of Orcs in the woods, get them to talk peaceably (or not), parlay for some medicine for your wounded comrade (or not) and end up trading 8 days rations for the ability to rest there for the night under their guard (or not) and over the course of telling stories over the fire you could make good friends with an Orc named Tark that shares your fondness for archery (or not). It would be wonderful to have a system that could cover all of those aspects storytelling that would fall under the heading of Social systems and to do so mechanically.
PS: I have an idea for the Social Trading system I've been working on for a while, I can write it up if anyone desires.

[PhoneLobster]

People want a lot out of a social minigame and in my opinion a strong system would have several different subsystems and features as follows

1: An Attitude Roll:

Here is the thing. The reason my systems don't do that, is that you are removing player and GM choice from the game.

Removal of such choice by my own system DOES happen, social combats are all, when you boil it down, about disputing player/GM choices and then removing choice from the defeated party.

People, like Frank and others, have a spasm over that all the time. And the thing is the removal of choice IS a cost, but in the dispute based scenarios really has actual and direct game play benefits.

Removal of choice in an attitude roll does NOT have benefits. It IS however still a cost. Worse in some ways, where my version of the cost means SOMETIMES player agency is undermined, an attitude generation mechanic means that player agency is ALWAYS undermined by default and as a standard AND then maybe you further undermine it with active formalized mechanics after that. Maybe.

Sometimes it isn't going to matter, people don't always care about random encounter goblins in the forest being hostile or not and sure, you might as well flip a coin. But in many cases you are basically removing the ability of GMs to insert any sort of sensible or planned encounter and potentially even undermining the players ability to choose how their characters select attitudes in the lead up to encounters.

Worse you discuss using a big ass chart with various modifiers for the attitude mechanic.

Then after all that you get something that basically is not in any particular way discernibly better than just arbitrarily choosing starting attitudes anyway. You end up with the same attitudes, only marginally randomized for no notable reason.

So to quickly sum up. You want something which...
1) Removes player choice
2) Removes the GMs ability to plan encounters
3) Replaces it with a result based on a randomized dice roll
4) Has a big ass chart with modifiers you have to refer to before every damn encounter.
5) Doesn't really do anything special that arbitrarily selecting starting attitudes wouldn't do.

It's pretty much a poster child for "A really poorly designed mechanic".

Abstraction and formalized complex mechanics that undermine player choice need to exist for REASONS. When they don't they ONLY HURT THINGS.

4: A Social Trading System:

What part of that can't be handled better by your parts 2 and 3 and some MTP? Why would you even bother doing anything other than using parts 2 and 3 and some MTP to handle this? Because I see nothing here other than you marching down that same route to the poster child of a really poorly designed mechanic. Worse you are also heading sharply towards "elaborate mechanical replacement for currency full of exploits and insanity' territory at the same time, and that's just pure lose/lose sort of stuff right there.

[Username17]

People want a lot out of a social minigame and in my opinion a strong system would have several different subsystems and features as follows

1: An Attitude Roll:

Here is the thing. The reason my systems don't do that, is that you are removing player and GM choice from the game.

Removal of such choice by my own system DOES happen, social combats are all, when you boil it down, about disputing player/GM choices and then removing choice from the defeated party.

People, like Frank and others, have a spasm over that all the time. And the thing is the removal of choice IS a cost, but in the dispute based scenarios really has actual and direct game play benefits.

Removal of choice in an attitude roll does NOT have benefits. It IS however still a cost.

LoL. No.

Diplomacy, at its core, is an ability whose purpose, whose entire purpose is to keep combat music from starting. If it doesn't have a chance to work before combat music has started, then it is a priori useless.

You might as well say that removal of choice in a stealth roll or a perception roll does not have benefits. It's an ability whose purpose is to modify how and when and if initiative is rolled. If you aren't allowed to roll it before initiative is rolled and people start swinging swords, the ability has been written out of the game as an actual game affecting ability.

Why can't people simply "choose" to not be surprised by sneaking bugbears? For the same reason that people cannot simply "choose" to have a social encounter with them instead of a battle. The nature of the encounter (combat or social, ambush or skirmish) is determined by actual character abilities. Which in an actual game, would be determined in some mechanistic fashion using rules and RNGs and character abilities, rather than admitting defeat and using MTP and a well lubricated asshole for your DM.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Er. That was option three.

If you do it twice it will take too long.

I missed the 'quick' part of your option three (my bad), but I would still like to clarify that in my "option four" it isn't worthless; it can actually get you something, it just figures out if and what it gets you very quickly.

[Stubbazubba]

I hate to defend PL (and only on the 2nd page, ugh), but I think he makes a good point about Reaction Rolls not being much better than GM fiat but requiring a chart, a complicated die roll, etc., etc.

Just make it a rule that 'Hostile' enemies don't attack on sight; they demand you surrender, or pay their toll, or leave, or whatever their demand is, which segues into the Diplomacy mini-game. Only when they are Hostile and the Diplomacy mini-game is lost will they attack.

Random encounter tables should list the initial attitude of different creatures, and these could then be influenced by certain PC abilities or just the appearance of your party. If your party is all Elves and you run into a Drow warband, that should just move it down one. There's no reason to randomize it arbitrarily, given the previous paragraph, though.

That's a cleaner system that doesn't waste table-time or mess up a GM's ability to design an encounter, while still enabling the PCs' abilities and party make-up to influence initial attitude when applicable.

The problem with this is the BBEG's right-hand assassin; if the BBEG sent his mystic assassin to off you before you meddle with his plans again, she shouldn't have to stop and threaten you first, she should be able to just sneak up on you (perception checks failing) and spring at you from the shadows, blades going for your throats and exposed midriffs. She won't be talking first. For some encounters, the DM must be able to bypass the Hostile-but-not-attacky-yet rule, for the sake of the narrative, a sense of verisimilitude, etc..

This 'pass' needs to exist, but not be unlimited (lest every random encounter simply have standing orders to kill everyone they find in X area), though I'm not sure how. You could just say, "By default, the GM can only break the Hostile-but-not-attacky-yet Rule (TM) [1 or 2 or X] times per [session or day or whatever refresh unit you want]." It's not terribly elegant, and any self-respecting old skool DM would balk at that, but it's hassle-free and effective.

[hogarth]

If you invest in a big modifier to diplomacy, then at the very least this should in some tangible way allow you to increase the odds of having non-violent encounters with wary strangers. As stated previously, that was literally 100% of the diplomacy system for 20 years and the game did manage to limp along with that.

The funny thing is that Frank defends the 2E reaction roll system on this basis, but if you actually look in the 2E DMG it says "the DM should totally just arbitrarily pick a reaction and he should only roll on this chart if he's bored or something" (paraphrased).

[MGuy]

The funny thing is, as PL pointed out there is no compelling reason to randomize it. In the thread where this as brought up in the first place Frank could not bring up a solid reason to want a randomized reaction roll other than his insistence that randomness was intrinsically better. Even now Frank is saying that you don't get to choose to play the Diplomacy game when there is nothing that prevents the players from:

1: Having abilities specifically aimed at halting/preventing hostilities to allow diplomacy to be had.

2: Using various skills, other than diplomacy, to preemptively avoid hostilities (stealth, disguise, gather info, knowledge, etc)

3: Having abilities or just being able to use diplomacy after hostilities have already broken out.

Seriously if you want to give the players the option to force abort combat and force start diplomatic situations then the first question you have to ask yourself is what's keeping the players from already doing that?

If your answer is "The GM can be a dick" then that's some sort of reverse Oberoni Fallacy and one that random reaction rolls DOES NOT SOLVE.

If its because PCs don't have a lot of choice in defusing hostile situations when combat is knocking on their door then you should make options for it because by having the option to become a diplomancer that can defuse hostile situations that late in the game you're increasing player agency by allowing them to select to do that instead of relying on it happening at random.

Frank's entire last post is about how if diplomacy doesn't happen before initiative roll it magically ceases to exist and I have to wonder what kind of games he's been playing where that is true at all. It's a case of saying "The GM can be dick and thus will always be a dick and players will never have any choices they can make ever". That doesn't make any sense.

For example he says you cannot choose not to be ambushed by bugbears. That's right, you can't but what you CAN do is gain abilities that might prevent you from being ambushed by bugbears. So logically there should then be diplomacy based abilities that a character can select from that would allow the chance for diplomacy even in hostile environs/situations. I mean don't druids and maybe some PrC or something have abilities where animals/bugs treat you as friendly in the wild?

[Username17]

If you invest in a big modifier to diplomacy, then at the very least this should in some tangible way allow you to increase the odds of having non-violent encounters with wary strangers. As stated previously, that was literally 100% of the diplomacy system for 20 years and the game did manage to limp along with that.

The funny thing is that Frank defends the 2E reaction roll system on this basis, but if you actually look in the 2E DMG it says "the DM should totally just arbitrarily pick a reaction and he should only roll on this chart if he's bored or something" (paraphrased).

The funny thing is that whether a system was or is optional or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether the system in question works when used. And since characters could invest in abilities that interacted with said system, it seems legitimate that groups other than ones I personally played in used them.

I have no idea how you think this is some crazy gotcha or whatever. Table 59 totally exists in the 2e DMG.

-Username17

[Username17]

Even now Frank is saying that you don't get to choose to play the Diplomacy game when there is nothing that prevents the players from:

1: Having abilities specifically aimed at halting/preventing hostilities to allow diplomacy to be had.

2: Using various skills, other than diplomacy, to preemptively avoid hostilities (stealth, disguise, gather info, knowledge, etc)

3: Having abilities or just being able to use diplomacy after hostilities have already broken out.

You are a fucking wanker. And I mean that.

None of those things allow a character by dint of being diplomatic to keep people from starting a fight. The ability to end a fight by talking people down is an interesting enough ability, but it is not and never will be what people want when they want to be a diplomatic character and start a fucking social encounter.

-Username17

[hogarth]

I have no idea how you think this is some crazy gotcha or whatever. Table 59 totally exists in the 2e DMG.

As posted before:

Once the encounter is set and the DM is ready to role-play the situation, he needs to know how the NPCs or monsters will react. The creatures should react in the manner the DM thinks is most appropriate to the situation.

If the player characters charge a band of randomly encountered orcs with weapons drawn, the DM can easily say, "They snarl and leap to the defense!" Selection of the reaction based on the situation ensures rational behavior and avoids the illogical results that random die rolls can often give.

However, there are times when the DM doesn't have a clue about what the monsters will do. This is not a disaster—it's not even all that unusual. When this happens, the DM can randomly determine an encounter reaction by rolling for a result on Table 59.

It's literally telling you not to roll on Table 59 unless you failed to figure out the logical answer yourself, which is exactly what you're complaining about.

[quanta]

Diplomacy, at its core, is an ability whose purpose, whose entire purpose is to keep combat music from starting. If it doesn't have a chance to work before combat music has started, then it is a priori useless.

If all diplomacy does is stop combat music, then fuck it. I don't give a shit whether or not it has a system. What diplomacy should mostly be for is bargaining. The parties involved in the bargaining could be hostile towards each other or not. I mean that's what we pretty much mean by diplomacy in the real fucking world. Bargaining.

Diplomacy should be what your party does when the arbitrate an agreement over mining rights between two dwarven clans just as much as it is what they do when they broker a peace agreement between the drow kingdom and the elven kingdom. Even failure in the first case should not have to mean the combat music starts. And in the second case, the drow and elves could already be at war as you work to broker a peace agreement. But combat isn't always an immediate risk to your characters if they are a neutral party to both the drow and the elves. Even though there are drow and elves 100 miles away stabbing each other, that doesn't mean the diplomats at the table are going to stab each other.

Diplomacy can be useful even if it's no protection against brigands as long as the game is about more than being a murder hobo.

[Username17]

Diplomacy, at its core, is an ability whose purpose, whose entire purpose is to keep combat music from starting. If it doesn't have a chance to work before combat music has started, then it is a priori useless.

If all diplomacy does is stop combat music, then fuck it. I don't give a shit whether or not it has a system. What diplomacy should mostly be for is bargaining. The parties involved in the bargaining could be hostile towards each other or not. I mean that's what we pretty much mean by diplomacy in the real fucking world. Bargaining.

We are talking about Dungeons and fucking Dragons. You are in a fucking Dungeon, and there is a fucking Dragon. Bargaining does not fucking happen unless you can keep the combat music from starting. If your abilities can't keep initiative from being rolled, there isn't a social encounter for you to do any bargaining in.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Because remember, in Franks world when your characters get into a fight with ostensibly allied troops in a forest somewhere they may NOT spend their actions using non fatal or social tactics and dropping their weapons and waving their hands around and telling everyone to calm the fuck down.

That is IMPOSSIBLE in Franks world. The combat music started! So you can't DO that, isn't it SELF EVIDENT!

[quanta]

We are talking about Dungeons and fucking Dragons. You are in a fucking Dungeon, and there is a fucking Dragon. Bargaining does not fucking happen unless you can keep the combat music from starting. If your abilities can't keep initiative from being rolled, there isn't a social encounter for you to do any bargaining in.

Nice avoiding quoting my examples where there is no reason for the NPCs you are bargaining with to consider stabbing you in the first place. And thus diplomacy wouldn't need to prevent them from stabbing you for you to then use it to bargain. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I answered your objection in the fucking post you responded to. But allow me to clarify why you think that's not a valid answer to why diplomacy doesn't need to be able to prevent combat with hostile forces. (Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be able to sometimes, but I take issue with that somehow being considered a requirement for diplomacy to be useful)

Is your position is that in a Dungeons and Dragons game, there is never any reason ever you would want to bargain with someone who is already obviously not going to stab you?

Or is your position that regardless of whether or not your characters are in the middle of a crowded tavern in a large city with laws against murder or deep in the wilderness where no one will hear you scream that there MUST be an initial attitudes roll determining whether or not the NPCs want to stab them on the spot? And that furthermore there should ALWAYS be the risk of NPCs randomly wanting to stab them on the spot?

I think position (paragraph) 2 is defensible since you can add situational modifiers on the initial attitudes roll for area and such, but it still doesn't require diplomacy be able to prevent combat if it's quite common to run into "encounters" that are not combat encounters. I also think that position 2 is a little bit like stating that when PCs travel overland there MUST be a roll on the random encounters table to determine the appropriate encounter.

[Stubbazubba]

Nice avoiding quoting my examples where there is no reason for the NPCs you are bargaining with to consider stabbing you in the first place. And thus diplomacy wouldn't need to prevent them from stabbing you for you to then use it to bargain. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I answered your objection in the fucking post you responded to. But allow me to clarify why you think that's not a valid answer to why diplomacy doesn't need to be able to prevent combat with hostile forces. (Not that I'm saying it shouldn't be able to sometimes, but I take issue with that somehow being considered a requirement for diplomacy to be useful)

I'm gonna switch sides now and defend Frank's assertion about what a Diplomacy mini-game should be most focused on.

In D&D, the opportunity to use Diplomacy in the scenarios you described where you are party to an otherwise peaceful encounter or possibly a third party mediator helping one or another of interested parties are few and far between. Like, at most this probably takes up 5% - maybe 10 - of an average campaign. If that's all your Diplomacy skills, abilities, feats, etc. make you good at, then you have a woefully sad return on those investments.

Yes, I want 'formal' Diplomacy to work well, but the game is largely spent encountering adversaries of varying degrees of hostility, and Diplomacy is only worth investing in if it substantially helps you in those instances, the 70-90% of your typical campaign. If Diplomacy is only very useful in peaceful negotiations, then no PC has a reason to take it when they could be improving their survival rate instead.

Therefore, the Diplomacy mini-game must have a chance of defusing hostile situations both before and after the combat music starts. If it cannot do this, it is a trap option and designed poorly. OTOH, if Diplomacy is good at this but can't handle peaceful negotiations, that's fine; people will still be good Diplomats and peaceful negotiations can be MTP'd. Of course, the ideal is to have a system (or systems) which can handle both, but between the two, combat Diplomacy is far more relevant and important to the game, like, 10, 20x more important.

[Dean]

About Attitude rolls
There is nothing intrinsically necessary about attitude rolls in a social system IMO, it's just one possible option. What is necessary, as Stubbazubba said, is that there must be some mandatory phase where the Social mini-game happens. Some mandatory mechanical step between meeting a bugbear and rolling initiative. If you wanted to not have attitude rolls and simply say "A hostile creature attempts to initiate Social Combat and attempts to make their opponents Surrender, Flee, Disarm, or Trade (and only accepts favorable trades while hostile) before they will engage in combat." then that would also be fine in my opinion. I like attitude rolls because they essentially do that AND create random and different scenario's for the Diplomancer to deal with. Maybe the King will be Angry or maybe he'll be Exhausted, maybe he will be Peaceful or maybe he will be Fearful. It satisfies the need for a diplomacy system to have a mandatory step before initiative AND it provides some ability to randomize the terrain for the Social Combat will take place in.

About Social Trading

What part of that can't be handled better by your parts 2 and 3 and some MTP? Why would you even bother doing anything other than using parts 2 and 3 and some MTP to handle this? Because I see nothing here other than you marching down that same route to the poster child of a really poorly designed mechanic. Worse you are also heading sharply towards "elaborate mechanical replacement for currency full of exploits and insanity' territory at the same time, and that's just pure lose/lose sort of stuff right there.

The thing Social Trading would let you do is -everything-. I honestly think a social trading system would be the most important social mechanic yet made. It would allow you to do most things people actually do through social pressure in the films and books we want to emulate. It would let you talk a mobster into killing his own boss by offering him more funds than the combined values of "Killing someone with no protection" and "Losing a Friendly Relationship". It would let you pledge service to a King if he will send his troops to help the Elves. You would just need the value of "Gain a Cohort:10th level" to be greater than the value of 300 Soldiers. And obviously you would be able to modify the values based on your diplomatic abilities, making the things YOU are trading count as more valuable and the things THEY are trading count as less valuable.
There is of course the bug/feature that players would now be mechanically capable of offering blowjobs to every blacksmith they meet to trade for free bucklers since AC is a statistic the game keeps track of and your pride isn't. But I'm ok with that exploit because people play this game to feel awesome and I doubt fellating potion makers is a part of many people's fantasies as long as we can exclude Severus Snape.

[PhoneLobster]

So. First of all you now want social minigame to be MANDATORY in ALL encounters. WTF? No. No, no, no, NO. Bad choice. Even if your social minigame is good people are going to kick you in the nuts for doing that to them at the table.

Saying "Sorry guys a rival diplomancer turned up he is using social moves in regular combat/he is delaying regular combat with his Emergency Truce Talks ability" is one thing. Since presumably it doesn't happen EVERY combat and with EVERY combatant.

Saying "Sorry guys, you MUST now roll attitudes and social bullshit for every single goblin you ever WANT to TRY and decide to charge screaming towards intending to sword in the face." is not going to go over well.

As for your social trading. Again, no. Again, wtf? You want a "social trading system" that covers LITERALLY everything. You want an abstracted and confusing currency based system that covers everything from blow jobs for potions and cash for career suicidal traitors?

Don't you remember what happened to EVERYONE WHO HAS TRIED THAT on here. It has NEVER WORKED. It has never come close to working. It's pretty much been established. You balance your social mechanics based on character level because you are using a character level based system, if you balance your social mechanics based on subjective value of goals you might as well use fairy tea party arbitrary modifiers out of the GMs ass, because that is seriously better than basically any attempt to formalize that process than anyone has ever managed to present on this forum and they HAVE tried, FREQUENTLY.

Attempts to create an objective currency value for a subjective system have too many variables.

And in the end we seriously DO NOT FUCKING CARE about blow jobs for potions. We DO however care about creating career suicidal traitors, but we do that already with charm person and similar broad status changes to friends and other such existing actual manageable mechanics.

When we get right down to it what we want. What we CARE about in social mechanics is, basically, just the act of turning targets into some form of allies, friend flavored allies, seduction flavored allies, fear flavored allies, honor bound flavored allies and so on. All of the stuff that matters boils down to "Stop opposing me and start helping me" and all of the value that the target can provide and resistance they can offer is best represented by their LEVEL and as such mechanics need to be balanced around THAT not some stupid number you have created representing an actual attempt at an objective valuation of a blow job.

No really that's what it boils down to and that pretty much represents the deep failings of such a system before it even gets off the ground. What IS the objective value of a blow job? You know. The standard objective value, in potions and traitors, of a blow job which is the same fucking value for everyone in every situation? WHAT IS THAT VALUE?

[MGuy]

Even now Frank is saying that you don't get to choose to play the Diplomacy game when there is nothing that prevents the players from:

1: Having abilities specifically aimed at halting/preventing hostilities to allow diplomacy to be had.

2: Using various skills, other than diplomacy, to preemptively avoid hostilities (stealth, disguise, gather info, knowledge, etc)

3: Having abilities or just being able to use diplomacy after hostilities have already broken out.

You are a fucking wanker. And I mean that.

None of those things allow a character by dint of being diplomatic to keep people from starting a fight. The ability to end a fight by talking people down is an interesting enough ability, but it is not and never will be what people want when they want to be a diplomatic character and start a fucking social encounter.

-Username17

Apparently I'm too much of a wanker for you to bother explaining how any of these options don't allow you to start a diplomatic encounter. I mean seriously as far as I know you can start a diplomatic encounter in plenty of non hostile environs and situations. I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are SPECIFICALLY talking about hostile situations because otherwise your complaints wouldn't make any god damn motherfucking sense but given a hostile situation exactly why does none of these solutions fit the bill?

[Username17]

Apparently I'm too much of a wanker for you to bother explaining how any of these options don't allow you to start a diplomatic encounter.

Ending a combat encounter is not the same thing as starting a social encounter. You might as well say that speak with dead is just as good as Diplomacy at that point.

-Username17

[quanta]

I'm gonna switch sides now and defend Frank's assertion about what a Diplomacy mini-game should be most focused on.

In D&D, the opportunity to use Diplomacy in the scenarios you described where you are party to an otherwise peaceful encounter or possibly a third party mediator helping one or another of interested parties are few and far between. Like, at most this probably takes up 5% - maybe 10 - of an average campaign. If that's all your Diplomacy skills, abilities, feats, etc. make you good at, then you have a woefully sad return on those investments.

Yes, I want 'formal' Diplomacy to work well, but the game is largely spent encountering adversaries of varying degrees of hostility, and Diplomacy is only worth investing in if it substantially helps you in those instances, the 70-90% of your typical campaign. If Diplomacy is only very useful in peaceful negotiations, then no PC has a reason to take it when they could be improving their survival rate instead.

Therefore, the Diplomacy mini-game must have a chance of defusing hostile situations both before and after the combat music starts. If it cannot do this, it is a trap option and designed poorly. OTOH, if Diplomacy is good at this but can't handle peaceful negotiations, that's fine; people will still be good Diplomats and peaceful negotiations can be MTP'd. Of course, the ideal is to have a system (or systems) which can handle both, but between the two, combat Diplomacy is far more relevant and important to the game, like, 10, 20x more important.

Needless to say, I disagree on the exact proportions. I only picked examples where diplomacy was overwhelmingly important to the goal of the adventure. Every time you talk to an NPC about a quest is an opportunity to apply diplomacy to negotiate the reward. If your PCs are temporarily working for someone, diplomacy lets you bargain for aid on your task: "Yes, we'll hunt down the evil green dragon, but things will go much more smoothly if we can borrow one of your pathfinders to guide us through the forest." Also, not every potentially hostile encounter needs to default to being hostile. Some encounters may default to being non-hostile and only become hostile if you fail at some other task(s).

Regardless, Diplomacy does not have to be as effective a manner for handling hostile encounters as stabbing things is, just like combat doesn't have to be as effective as diplomacy for handling negotiations. Furthermore, diplomacy doesn't need to be equally strong when averaged over all the game time if being good diplomacy costs a lot less than being good at combat.

For example, in 3e D&D, Diplomacy is one of your probably 3-10 skills for most characters. Maxing it out is an investment, but not a very large one. Even mega-nerfed diplomacy (compared to 3e) that only works in nonhostile encounters (but otherwise works the same) would be pretty good compared to most other skills. And it would still be relevant at high levels (unlike many other skills).

[Username17]

Also, not every potentially hostile encounter needs to default to being hostile. Some encounters may default to being non-hostile and only become hostile if you fail at some other task(s).

And that task is a measure of your diplomatic ability, you ass.

-Username17