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Basic Chunnel posted:This doesn't wash. To my players, compulsion is compulsion - anything that's going to meaningfully cause them to completely sit out control over their own character goes down the same way at the table. It's simply not any fun. That's why I don't use dominate unless it's, like, turning a PC into an NPC permanently to let the player roll a new character. Basic Chunnel posted:That said, if you're not into roleplaying the slow erasure of normal life and happiness from memory, or entropic decay of perspective leading to madness and death, you probably shouldn't be playing WoD / CoD. You should be playing a game more conducive to heroism, grim or otherwise.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:31
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I Am Just a Box posted:Isn't that exactly what the game already describes? At least in the Chronicles of Darkness rulebook, it says that if you allow Social Maneuvering to target PCs, success either offers a beat if the PC complies, or the PC offers a compromise and the maneuvering character imposes a Condition (meaning you get a beat either way in the long run, but either you comply or you deal with circumstances). Possibly? GMC/nWoD 2e/CoD/whatever didn't really appeal to me so I only familiarized myself with the system to the point that I realized that I wasn't going to enjoy it. The social mechanics was probably the thing I looked at the least, because they were big and full of Capitalized Ordinary Words, intended for telling a kind of story I don't usually tell in my WoD games.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:38
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Being magically coerced is ironically a lot less damaging to a player's sense of agency then just being told that an NPC rolled high on a social check and now they're buddies.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:42
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Loomer posted:Lore of the Bloodlines is out, and is a stellar example of why I hate purely in-universe write-ups. It's because of things like this. Weren't the Daughters already explained as an experiment in VIctorian Age Vampire?
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Mar 16, 2017 00:44
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ZeroCount posted:Being magically coerced is ironically a lot less damaging to a player's sense of agency then just being told that an NPC rolled high on a social check and now they're buddies. Right. With Dominate you always have the narrative back door of, "well, it's not me, it's Dominate."
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Mar 16, 2017 00:51
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Mors Rattus posted:...aren't the Toreador one of the core Cam clans? Yep. Of course, the Cam didn't come into existence until what I'm pretty sure most scholars would define as 'way after rome fell, like, so long after you guys, yes, we're even counting the eastern roman empire in that though then it's just 'a while after''. Using the TBH's loyalist Toreador to infiltrate makes plenty of sense. Creating a whole new bloodline that are pretty heavily persecuted by the Camarilla, not so much. MonsieurChoc posted:Weren't the Daughters already explained as an experiment in VIctorian Age Vampire? Along with a couple of other possible explanations. But now we get to have two/three more! One is that the TBH created them as Camarilla infiltrators to slowly drive the Camarilla's rulers mad with their singing, using Toreador stock taught by a Malkavian. The other is that three lovely sisters got embraced by a Malk, a Toreador, and a Ventrue and they all went off and shared their blood a bunch of times and eventually out popped a brand spanking new bloodline. Oh, and the write-up explicitly declares the victorian origin a lie, which it is, and then specifically endorses the TBH story.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:52
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Loomer posted:Lore of the Bloodlines is out, and is a stellar example of why I hate purely in-universe write-ups. It's because of things like this. "Out" or "released to backers"? I tried finding it on DrivethruRPG and it didn't seem to be there.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:56
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Released to backers.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:57
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I don't really follow what's so damaging to roleplay about social rolls. Roleplay is about responding to situations as your character would, and the statement "this guy comes across as trustworthy and what he's saying seems to be truthful and make sense" is no different in the context of a roleplaying game as "a guy with a gun suddenly backflips into the room through the window and he looks mad as hell." It sounds like what you're really angry about is bad STs that don't know how to present social mechanics to players in a way that allows them to "yes and" in response.
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Mar 16, 2017 01:13
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"Yes and" is the GM's job, not the players'. The whole point of it is deference to their motivations and will in proportion to the amount of control you have as a GM. Honestly my personal response would be "why, you're right, traditional RPG combat gives the players too little agency, as well! Let's fix it!" but people are really attached to dice and randomness as a conflict resolution system for some reason. 
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Mar 16, 2017 01:28
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Reene posted:It sounds like what you're really angry about is bad STs that don't know how to present social mechanics to players in a way that allows them to "yes and" in response. This was my concern. And to be fair, the ST rolling a die and telling you some so-and-so your character hates just schmoozed you up and now you are best buds forever is a crappy social mechanic, though I've never encountered that. I see things like contested intimidation checks where if the PC loses the contest they are expected to roleplay backing down. Or a contested subterfuge check with two harpies trying to tease out social secrets from each other, so the PC writes down a juicy bit of gossip they are willing to risk giving up, and if they lose they should portray spilling that bean and if they win they get the lurid details of the Sheriff's feeding 'accident.'
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Mar 16, 2017 02:00
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Yawgmoth posted:This way lies madness and dissolved groups. Let the players make sense motive checks (or whatever) when they feel it prudent, otherwise just RP the NPCs as you would normally. The PCs are PCs and are treated differently for a reason, and that reason is that you are not playing them, the players are. Treating them like NPCs will only lead to them becoming NPCs. HeroQuest has an interesting way it resolves conflicts. First, each side has to declare what they want to happen if they win the contest. This is done to see if there are conflicting goals that actually need to be resolved. They then apply relevant bonuses and modifiers, make their rolls and figure the margin of success. The loser suffers "damage" appropriate to the narrative of the conflict. In social situations, it is usually a loss of face or prestige/power. So, the player may not necessarily have to do exactly what the NPC wants them to, but if they refuse, there is some narrative penalty to the rejection. So, if the NPC succeeds against the player in a seduction check, but the player doesn't want to do what the NPC asks of them, then the GM can narrate a situation where the seduction failed but rumors were spread about the player's character that defame him in circles he cares about. Or maybe the NPC makes a public scene out of it, shaming the player's character and ruining his reputation around those present for the scene.
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Mar 16, 2017 02:26
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:"Yes and" is the GM's job, not the players'. The whole point of it is deference to their motivations and will in proportion to the amount of control you have as a GM. That's something I'm looking forward to seeing how Storypath handles; its system of making outcomes to consequences non-binary is interesting. When you roll on a challenge and succeed beyond the minimum, you get to make interesting things happen. If you fail or someone rolled to do something negative to you, you can say "Yes, that happens" and accept the result, or decide to have your character evade it but with some interesting complication. The example given in the preview, and the one I really liked, was rolling to parkour over a fence while fleeing the police and failing the roll. Option A is simply to accept it and be captured, but Option B is to make the jump but have your jacket get tangled and leave it behind with your ID in the pocket, or to slash open your leg on a sharp bit of fence.
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Mar 16, 2017 02:35
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I think we're conflating badly-handled social rolls with all social rolls. In combat, you don't roll Strength + Brawl and instantly punch your archenemy's head off, and Manipulation + Subterfuge doesn't automatically mean you immediately convince your target that you're the High Pope of Wizard Jesus. A good GM will give you guidelines (she seems trustworthy) and a great GM will reward you for playing along, and good players will realize that those guidelines are guidelines and act accordingly. I absolutely disagree that only the GM needs to play by "yes, and" rules. In a system like D&D where social encounters are just roadblocks on the way to sticking swords in things, sure. But WoD is about character interaction just as much as it is about raining down Celestial fire, which means there's going to be a lot of actual roleplaying involved, and the best kind of roleplaying happens when you're basically just doing dice-assisted improvisational theater. This is, again, entirely up to the GM to run smoothly. "You are now madly in love with this NPC" after a die roll is poo poo storytelling. "Now that you're getting to know him, he's actually kind of weirdly charming" is good. Agency over a player's actual actions remain with the player, who is still absolutely free to say "yes, he is charming, and he's still the rear end in a top hat running the ghoul prostitution ring." Roleplaying is about telling a story cooperatively, and treating the storyteller and players as adversaries instead of allies is a great way to tell really poo poo stories. blastron fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 06:15
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As Soonmot and a few others said, temptation and incentives to do things work far better for social combat when you're trying to affect PCs. Players will gleefully hang themselves on the rope you give them if the rope comes with Fabulous Prizes on the side - or at the very least, be very sorely tempted by things they'd otherwise instantly brush off as suicidal or self-destructive. To give an example, let's structure the same scenario, posed two different ways. Dave the Daeva makes a compelling argument for why you should go slap the Sheriff in the face. His wily ways have convinced you. 1) You must spend a point of Willpower to resist, or you will go slap the man. If you do resist, Dave will be upset with you. This feels lovely, because it's a willpower tax in order to maintain control of your character, and if you acquiesce, you're not really gaining anything so much as you're not losing something - at the cost of doing something stupid and dangerous in-character. 2) If you, the player, go "yes, I will go slap the Sheriff in the face", your character gets a point of Willpower from the sheer inspiration Dave has instilled in them, as they're now full of vim, vigor, and the drive to slap the Sheriff in the face. If you say no, you don't get the Willpower, and Dave will be upset with you. This is an incredibly simplified example, but it should be noted that transactionally, the same thing happens. You gain or lose one net point of willpower depending on your choice. However, framing it positively will make your average player much, much more likely to go with the more interesting story option of slapping the Sheriff in the face, as they're being directly rewarded for doing so. By tying rewards or narrative power to acquiescing to detrimental actions, be they short term or long term, you're encouraging players to think of how to make the story interesting without necessarily being entirely positive or beneficial to their character, and giving an actual reason to agonize over decisions that a detached observer wouldn't even think twice about.
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Mar 16, 2017 08:40
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This is, incidentally, why so many games reward setbacks in the form of either resources for temporary power-ups or permanent character-building resources.
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Mar 16, 2017 08:43
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Maybe every player group is different and what one group is okay with another will not be and there's no universal answer to this problem? Like, I think Yawgmoth and Daeren have the right idea, but I can understand a game where NPCs can persuade/intimidate characters just as they can. I'd never run it that way and never accept being run that way, but if it's working for you, then keep at it.
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Mar 16, 2017 08:51
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My local VTR larp recently introduced social mechanic rules. Basicalpy each skill can give an associated condition. So you can't compel people, but you can make it worth their while
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Mar 16, 2017 09:04
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Reene posted:I don't really follow what's so damaging to roleplay about social rolls. Roleplay is about responding to situations as your character would, and the statement "this guy comes across as trustworthy and what he's saying seems to be truthful and make sense" is no different in the context of a roleplaying game as "a guy with a gun suddenly backflips into the room through the window and he looks mad as hell." It sounds like what you're really angry about is bad STs that don't know how to present social mechanics to players in a way that allows them to "yes and" in response. Yeah, this sounds like the difference between 'the prince has put forward a persuasive argument' and 'the prince has persuaded you'. You, as a ST, are in the business of producing stimuli for PCs to react to, not dictating their reactions (provided they're not meta-gaming or some poo poo).
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Mar 16, 2017 09:45
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Cabbit posted:Yeah, this sounds like the difference between 'the prince has put forward a persuasive argument' and 'the prince has persuaded you'. If I trust my ST to maturely and interestingly handle all the other hard/soft limitations (Disciplines, Frenzy, Lashing Out, Conditions, Combat, Character Death, etc.) to my roleplaying choices, I ALSO trust them to handle any social mechanics in exactly the same way. The... Kavak posted:I'd never run it that way and never accept being run that way ... philosophies really seem problematic to me. I really don't get the player who says "Yes, I accept that you are dominating my PC to never question this person's motives or to follow every command for the night. That you might inflict Entrhalled on my PC or an unwilling Vinculum. That you might use combat maneuvers to rip out my tongue or lacerate me with scars before the big soiree. That my PC can die or go into torpor. That my PC can be tortured or their secrets stolen with Auspex. That if I don't aggressively work toward my beast's frenzy goal, you may step in. BUT - I will only ever accept my PC being tricked, seduced, or intimidated if I, the player, am those things first." Instead I worry its a case of, "I had a bad ST/Experience in the past, so I will fight to have ultimate agency as much as possible in all cases going forward." - When I see that as a total illusion. It makes no difference to me if the obstacle/setback I am facing is a Vampire with Nightmare vs. a Biker Gang driving around my PC and shooting guns in the air. If I get scared off in either case because of a contested roll - all that ultimately changed was flavor. And yeah, I've certainly been talked into things I shouldn't have, trusted people just because I was attracted to them, been intimidated out of a course of action in real life where I don't believe magic is real (sorry Loomer), so why couldn't a PC? But then again, I guess I can see Night10194's escapism argument there. Why do that stuff if it isn't fun for you at all? I just want to be very careful to peel away from the idea that setback/conflict/loss can't be fun.
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Mar 16, 2017 12:39
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Barbed Tongues posted:I really don't get the player who says "Yes, I accept that you are dominating my PC to never question this person's motives or to follow every command for the night. That you might inflict Entrhalled on my PC or an unwilling Vinculum. That you might use combat maneuvers to rip out my tongue or lacerate me with scars before the big soiree. That my PC can die or go into torpor. That my PC can be tortured or their secrets stolen with Auspex. That if I don't aggressively work toward my beast's frenzy goal, you may step in. BUT - I will only ever accept my PC being tricked, seduced, or intimidated if I, the player, am those things first." All of those are done by combat, which the player has a fair chance to fight back, or loving vampire magic, which operates outside normal rules. Social skill rolls dictating (Not influencing or suggesting, dictating) character reactions interfere with the very basics of running your character- deciding how they feel, what they think, what action they are going to take. I think ultimately there's a game philosophy disconnect here that's never going to be settled in everyone's favor, if the last hundred times this argument has occurred in this thread are any indication.
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Mar 16, 2017 13:13
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Kavak posted:All of those are done by combat, which the player has a fair chance to fight back, or loving vampire magic, which operates outside normal rules. Social skill rolls dictating (Not influencing or suggesting, dictating) character reactions interfere with the very basics of running your character- deciding how they feel, what they think, what action they are going to take. Situations where PCs have no chance to fight back / contest / struggle before their actions are dictated for them I don't find very compelling, regardless of the mechanics. Dominate as the vector isn't any more or less interesting than a social conflict to me (sans context).
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Mar 16, 2017 13:23
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:My local VTR larp recently introduced social mechanic rules. Basicalpy each skill can give an associated condition. So you can't compel people, but you can make it worth their while That sounds like a reasonable compromise.
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Mar 16, 2017 13:49
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I wonder if them shoveling out all the CtL stuff in a bundle is a sign that 2e is close. Though I've never played any version, just looking through the 1e and currently available 2e stuff I am already really looking forward to 2e. The freedom allowed by 'any seeming can be any kith' seems really cool. Though some of the balance among the 84 available kiths seems skewed. Then again the current notes aren't the final version so I'm sure they'll iron some of that out before release.
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Mar 16, 2017 14:18
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Given that Changeling 2e lost its dev recently, I suspect it's gonna be a while.
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Mar 16, 2017 14:21
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Aww. Hope whoever takes over doesn't switch back to pigeonholing this stuff. I was rolling random combinations of kith+seeming for character ideas and happened to roll Render+Fairest. At first I had trouble picturing something beautiful that breaks through stuff until I thought: well I'd say a big living jug of delicious and refreshing flavored drink is fairly charismatic...
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Mar 16, 2017 16:18
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Getsuya posted:Aww. Hope whoever takes over doesn't switch back to pigeonholing this stuff. I'm a Heartbreaker. I break hearts. Literally. 
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Mar 16, 2017 17:18
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Getsuya posted:Aww. Hope whoever takes over doesn't switch back to pigeonholing this stuff. You're describing a Daeva from a V:tR larp I used to play. He was a real Prince Charming kinda guy with Max Vigor and a general focus on physical stats. He'd juggernaut his way through problems without thinking things through. A Conan type perfectly chiseled Barbarian would make a good Fairest Render.
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Mar 16, 2017 17:41
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so basically Changeling Gaston
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Mar 16, 2017 17:49
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No one fights like Gaston! No one charms like Gaston! No one hides his psychological scars behind a facade of bravado like Gaston!
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Mar 16, 2017 19:18
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Loomer posted:Lore of the Bloodlines is out, and is a stellar example of why I hate purely in-universe write-ups. It's because of things like this. I got a look at a copy today and went to the Nagaraja section (because the Nagaraja are love) and was quickly disappointed. It seems to think that all Nagaraja are, by necessity, expert serial killers complete with basement-dungeons. When, in fact, a Nagaraja could just ghoul a funeral home worker or mortician to leave out "doggy bags" for her to eat. Or simply work night-shifts in a morgue herself. That's not to say that your average Nagaraja isn't living one bad day away from a headline as the next Chesapeake Killer, but LotB seems to warp them to be nothing but efficient killers, whereas V20 has them as scholars, antiquarians, and ghost-hunters.
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Mar 16, 2017 20:05
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Probably late to the party on this, but the V20 Dark Ages Tome of Secrets is sweet as hell. Just a whole book of "here's more vampire magic poo poo, and also, plot hooks related to how it's all bad and evil" like Lasombra Abyss Mysticism involving digging a deep hole to go meditate in, then eventually building a deep dungeon to meditate in, and PS any weird Abyss horrors you summon within this hole (an "Oubliette") don't disappear at dawn like they normally do, so long as they stay there. And Necromancy does traditional witchcraft poo poo (sterilizes cattle and people, destroys crops, etc.) within an area if you roll too well on it (like...>1 success). Cool book.
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Mar 16, 2017 20:30
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Not World of Darkness, but I personally find it kind of frustrating when people can just 'LOL NOPE' all the character points I put into social skills in Shadowrun. It's about respecting the investment, really: I spent a big chunk of my finite character resources to do a thing, and UNLIKE other systems, It's kind of optional if other PCs want to play along in it. Basically my 20 dice in Intimdiation is worth less than 12 dice in Automatics, because while there's a whole combat system for combat that can be used to resolve inter-party conflict. Getting shot is getting shot, but even when my sheet says that I'm preternaturally scary, there still is a certain amount of 'Yes yes, very cute, go play in the corner now'
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Mar 16, 2017 20:55
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Crasical posted:Not World of Darkness, but I personally find it kind of frustrating when people can just 'LOL NOPE' all the character points I put into social skills in Shadowrun. It's about respecting the investment, really: I spent a big chunk of my finite character resources to do a thing, and UNLIKE other systems, It's kind of optional if other PCs want to play along in it. I hold the somewhat controversial opinion that a game should not assign a value, quantitative or qualitative, to a skill or power unless there's a system that makes actual, tangible, nonnegotiable use of it. A game shouldn't let you have 20 dice in Intimidating people unless you can be as sure of what those 20 dice do as you'd be of what 20 dice in Firearms or Punching Dudes does.
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Mar 16, 2017 21:07
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LatwPIAT posted:I hold the somewhat controversial opinion that a game should not assign a value, quantitative or qualitative, to a skill or power unless there's a system that makes actual, tangible, nonnegotiable use of it. A game shouldn't let you have 20 dice in Intimidating people unless you can be as sure of what those 20 dice do as you'd be of what 20 dice in Firearms or Punching Dudes does. Soften this to "you shouldn't buy totally concrete points with the same pool you use to buy soft/abstract points" and I'd be on board. Also, I don't see the problem if your game gives you concrete systems for manipulating NPCs that don't work on players. Most tabletop RPGs fall apart if you actually try to use the combat rules for PvP anyways.
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Mar 16, 2017 21:17
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Most tabletop RPGs fall apart if you actually try to use the combat rules for PvP anyways. oh. Oh.
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Mar 16, 2017 21:19
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There are in fact, rules for how to resolve being lied to or intimidated, or being in intense negotiations. A great big table of possible dice-pool modifiers, too, so that trying to get an enemy to do something disastrous to them slaps you with an enormous -8 modifier. People just are very fond of the 'You can't use social skills on other PCs!' argument for why rolling to intimidate them shouldn't be allowed.
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Mar 16, 2017 21:22
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Crasical posted:People just are very fond of the 'You can't use social skills on other PCs!' argument for why rolling to intimidate them shouldn't be allowed. There's a reason I specified "nonnegotiable".
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Mar 16, 2017 21:28
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PCs being vulnerable to seduction, intimidation, etc. is basically making them less the property / alter ego of the player and more into game pieces / part of the collective game world to be manipulated by the players as assistant storytellers. This is fine, but it's basically taking a step away from the very concept of an "RPG" and towards some kind of socializing-flavored strategy game (which, in fairness, sounds awesome but isn't really what people tend to sign up for.)
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Mar 16, 2017 21:31
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I bet there's an RPG out there where nobody plays a particular character but each person gets control of a particular element of the narrative, and if there isn't there should be. (On a level more sophisticated than, like, Microscope or something.) e: Or going back to my previous post for a second, a PC in the traditional model is primarily an interface for the player to affect the game world. It's a tool for translating their own desires and experiences through a fictional lens onto the fantasy. Letting other players mess with that is a huge category shift even if it isn't an inherently bad thing by any means. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Mar 16, 2017 |
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Mar 16, 2017 21:33
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