I just got FATE Core and it is awesome! I was surprised, however, to not see a version of Diaspora's Social Combat in Core? Maybe I missed it as I have just done a skim so far. IMO, Disaspora's Social Combat is one of the most innovative structures introduced to rpgs in a long time. For those of you not familiar, it basically encourages you to set up social combat (or really any more ambiguous contest) on a "board" of zones with tokens representing actors, states of being, etc. To win the contest, you need to move the appropriate tokens into the appropriate zones. E.g., end a turn with you and your prospective lover in the "in love" zone which is on the opposite end of a chain of zones from "just friends". Rivals are the other actors trying to do the same thing. It's a really flexible structure that gives players interesting choices as a game while not destroying the resolution dependent on character abilities. For those of you involved in the playtesting, was there any discussion of this?
FATE Core - what happened to Diaspora social combat?
Bagpuss
Legend
I wouldn't have expected something like that to be "core" but I'm more surprised that it isn't in the toolkit either, although there is a social conflict system, and a mention of combat zones, including social zones, but in that case they are more like peer groups rather than dispositions you need to move the target through.
Couldn't find anything like what you describe.
Couldn't find anything like what you describe.
Ratskinner
Adventurer
p54 discusses "Mental or Social Zones" in my System Toolkit draft. I don't have Diaspora to compare it with, though. The toolkit version is pretty sketchy, but gives a few examples of uses not unlike what [MENTION=29013]bert1000[/MENTION] mentions.
I've never actually used such things for my games, though. I haven't had very many players interested in that sort of scene.
I agree that Diaspora's social conflict system rocks.
I have FATE 2.0 (I think), and I'd say the core of FATE is the cycle of Aspects, Compels and Fate Points, Fudge Dice and the skill ladder. Diaspora has some very neat ideas on how to use FATE (the starship combat is a blast as well) but I don't think of them as 'core' - they're the extra goodness that Diaspora brings!
I have FATE 2.0 (I think), and I'd say the core of FATE is the cycle of Aspects, Compels and Fate Points, Fudge Dice and the skill ladder. Diaspora has some very neat ideas on how to use FATE (the starship combat is a blast as well) but I don't think of them as 'core' - they're the extra goodness that Diaspora brings!
Red Dice Diaries
Villager
I can't think of a single game I've run where players have welcomed a social combat system, indeed most of the players I have experience with tend to be opposed or object to the idea if it is mentioned (presumably since they don't like the idea of being manipulated to do things by social NPCs); however if it's in Diaspora then there's no reason it can't be ported over to Fate Core with the minimum of effort if you want to use it in your game 
I'm not familiar with Diaspora. Dresden Files has an explicit social stress track, and you could then use all the other conflict concepts (including zones, etc) from physical combat in social combat.
The typical character-building rules do *not* leave room to be strong in Physical, Mental, and Social arenas. And, while the novels make good use of Social confrontations, for players of an action-adventure game, making oneself strong in Social means being weak in Physical - so you can talk a good game, but get your clock cleaned as soon as punches are thrown.
I expect this is part of why most FATE variants dispose of the Social track. It gives characters too many vulnerabilities.
The typical character-building rules do *not* leave room to be strong in Physical, Mental, and Social arenas. And, while the novels make good use of Social confrontations, for players of an action-adventure game, making oneself strong in Social means being weak in Physical - so you can talk a good game, but get your clock cleaned as soon as punches are thrown.
I expect this is part of why most FATE variants dispose of the Social track. It gives characters too many vulnerabilities.
Red Dice Diaries
Villager
I've also found that, whilst players don't object to getting struck in a combat, they object to their actions being influenced (or stress being taken) from so-called "social attacks."
Celebrim
Legend
In general, my problem with modeling social interactions with combat mechanics is that it ignores why we have combat mechanics in the first place.
The reason we have combat mechanics is to allow us to imagine physical combat in the game, and determine in our minds how this battle plays out and what it's outcome will be - things that would otherwise be difficult for a group to concretely and jointly imagine and agree on what had happened. We don't necessarily need combat mechanics to engage in shared imaginative play, you could come up with a different set of rules for running combat that would look more like conversation, but they are often desirable to have because they are strongly associated with the things we imagine happening in a combat - weapons are employed, combatants move about tactically, attacks are made and so forth. And they also help us have situations where we don't know the outcome. The important thing to see here is that the more granular and detailed this system, the more concretely and naturally we can jointly imagine the action. This isn't to say that more granular is always better because there are practical limits to running a system, but granularity serves a purpose and is linearly related to something valuable.
But a conversation or debate is a very different sort of thing, and attempting to run a social challenge with parallel rules to a physical challenge often runs into problems. Probably 'Dogs in the Vineyard' does it best, by doing things like making stakes customizable instead of having a 'social wound track' and by making physical raising the stakes and trumping social (at least in part). It requires a steady hand by the GM though and some general agreement to not abuse the system though. FATE or True20 on the other hand IMO does it very badly because it just doesn't seem to see why social is different than physical.
And the most important area where they are different is that we can actually play out a social situation jointly and concretely during play, so that we don't require mechanics - abstract or otherwise - to jointly imagine what is going on and what is happening. We might need some sort of mechanic from time to time to arbitrate how various statements are perceived, particularly by the imagined NPCs, but we don't actually need a detailed highly granular system like we need for combat to imagine the particular details of the conversation. The actually gritty details of this social situation are the things that are actually said by the participants, and far and away the best system we have for generating what is actually said is just to let the players imagine and say it.
And this brings up the other huge problem, which is the more granular are mechanics are for running the social combat, the less granular our imagined details of the social challenge will tend to be. Instead of more granularity adding more concretely imagined situations, more granularity makes for less concretely imagined situations. As we turn to mechanics to describe and generate events and outcomes in the social situation, what the player's actually say becomes less and less important until eventually it becomes unnecessary and redundant. In fact, ultimately we start to lose touch with what is actually said, and we instead replace the concrete with a vague narrative: "Sir John makes a cutting remark. Sir Bors is socially wounded and stutters out something that only deepens his embarrassment." Such simulation may be more realistic and true to John and Bors actually do as characters (or not!) but it's certainly counterproductive for fleshing out the scene and dramatic characterization, which will still need the concrete reality of the role played conversation.
My preferred method for social mechanics is to allow (indeed force) players to role-play. Then when I feel that the conversation has reached a sort of 'crisis point', I appeal to the mechanics to determine which direction I will take the NPC as the DM. I joint generally feel the need to impose on the players how they choose to take their conversation, because if I'm doing my job characterizing the NPC well they'll be influenced to act out anyway. It's much more satisfying to taunt a PC into combat, than it would be to roll a dice to see whether the PC is taunted into combat. It's much more satisfying to have an NPC be funny, than roll a dice and say he's funny. It's much more satisfying to have an NPC provoke emotion than it would be to tell the players this NPC is supposed to provoke a certain emotion.
The reason we have combat mechanics is to allow us to imagine physical combat in the game, and determine in our minds how this battle plays out and what it's outcome will be - things that would otherwise be difficult for a group to concretely and jointly imagine and agree on what had happened. We don't necessarily need combat mechanics to engage in shared imaginative play, you could come up with a different set of rules for running combat that would look more like conversation, but they are often desirable to have because they are strongly associated with the things we imagine happening in a combat - weapons are employed, combatants move about tactically, attacks are made and so forth. And they also help us have situations where we don't know the outcome. The important thing to see here is that the more granular and detailed this system, the more concretely and naturally we can jointly imagine the action. This isn't to say that more granular is always better because there are practical limits to running a system, but granularity serves a purpose and is linearly related to something valuable.
But a conversation or debate is a very different sort of thing, and attempting to run a social challenge with parallel rules to a physical challenge often runs into problems. Probably 'Dogs in the Vineyard' does it best, by doing things like making stakes customizable instead of having a 'social wound track' and by making physical raising the stakes and trumping social (at least in part). It requires a steady hand by the GM though and some general agreement to not abuse the system though. FATE or True20 on the other hand IMO does it very badly because it just doesn't seem to see why social is different than physical.
And the most important area where they are different is that we can actually play out a social situation jointly and concretely during play, so that we don't require mechanics - abstract or otherwise - to jointly imagine what is going on and what is happening. We might need some sort of mechanic from time to time to arbitrate how various statements are perceived, particularly by the imagined NPCs, but we don't actually need a detailed highly granular system like we need for combat to imagine the particular details of the conversation. The actually gritty details of this social situation are the things that are actually said by the participants, and far and away the best system we have for generating what is actually said is just to let the players imagine and say it.
And this brings up the other huge problem, which is the more granular are mechanics are for running the social combat, the less granular our imagined details of the social challenge will tend to be. Instead of more granularity adding more concretely imagined situations, more granularity makes for less concretely imagined situations. As we turn to mechanics to describe and generate events and outcomes in the social situation, what the player's actually say becomes less and less important until eventually it becomes unnecessary and redundant. In fact, ultimately we start to lose touch with what is actually said, and we instead replace the concrete with a vague narrative: "Sir John makes a cutting remark. Sir Bors is socially wounded and stutters out something that only deepens his embarrassment." Such simulation may be more realistic and true to John and Bors actually do as characters (or not!) but it's certainly counterproductive for fleshing out the scene and dramatic characterization, which will still need the concrete reality of the role played conversation.
My preferred method for social mechanics is to allow (indeed force) players to role-play. Then when I feel that the conversation has reached a sort of 'crisis point', I appeal to the mechanics to determine which direction I will take the NPC as the DM. I joint generally feel the need to impose on the players how they choose to take their conversation, because if I'm doing my job characterizing the NPC well they'll be influenced to act out anyway. It's much more satisfying to taunt a PC into combat, than it would be to roll a dice to see whether the PC is taunted into combat. It's much more satisfying to have an NPC be funny, than roll a dice and say he's funny. It's much more satisfying to have an NPC provoke emotion than it would be to tell the players this NPC is supposed to provoke a certain emotion.
Problem: Back when you were a kid, did you ever play Cops and Robbers? Didn't you ever have this conversation:
"I shot you!"
"No you didn't! I shot you first!"
While we can play out a social interaction without mechanics, if we do so, then there is no neutral arbiter on the *effects* of the interaction. Which is fine, just so long as you don't expect the PCs to ever achieve or risk anything through these social interactions except by GM Fiat. In, say, the Dresden Files game, it isn't just a question of "how various statements are perceived". In a social conflict in this game, the PC has just at much at risk as in a physical combat. If you get thoroughly trounced in a social conflict, your character (or the NPC) can, in fact, end up *dead*.
Lots of GMs and players would prefer to have some mechanic framed around that, rather than to leave it entirely to fiat. Lots of others woudl prefer to not have such consequences for social engagements. Different strokes, and all that.
This is FATE we are talking about. Not exactly the most granular system out there.
Yeah. I'm not so much on board on the "force" thing. And for the players who don't want to, or are, indeed, not good at it, I'm okay with having a mechanic I can use.
Celebrim
Legend
Reading your whole post, I'm not sure what you were trying to inform me about.
The cops and robbers example to explain RPGs is something I used back in the '80's to survive the occult scare back when people were asking me if I was a Satanist.
"I convinced you to commit suicide."
"No you didn't! I convinced you to commit suicide."
I'm quite aware that some systems make combat in non-physical spheres so mechanically parallel to regular physical combat that the same sorts of consequences are available. What I am saying is that this sort of conflict bears no relation to any of the social interactions we commonly experience, to the point that they would seem supernatural or magical or alien. Social conflict that normally bears the stakes of death is not something anyone normally experiences and certainly nothing that just spontaneously happens because someone chooses to socially attack someone. It's a disassociated mechanic.
In most social interaction we experience the risk is basically only "how various statements are perceived". That of course could cause enormous consequences to our social standing with people in the conversation, and perhaps end relationships or create enemies depending on the sort of conversation we were having. But those such conversations are imaginable and sometimes experienced. Exactly what conversation results in our death merely as a result of the words isn't easy to imagine, where as what sort of physical combat results in our death is easy to imagine. Sure, we can imagine being framed for murder and being found guilty in a trial and our pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears and we receive the death penalty, but resolving all of that lengthy series of events as a single social combat involves something more like a handwave than any sort of associated mechanic.
Are there some people who like this sort of thing?
Probably. But I wasn't asserting that no one would like handwaving away conversations or entire series of events with some sort of tactical social combat system. I was merely trying to explain first why I didn't like it ("In general, my problem with modeling social interactions with combat mechanics...My preferred method for social mechanic...") and by extension explain to the original poster who seems to favor such systems why I thought such systems weren't typically very popular.
The cops and robbers example to explain RPGs is something I used back in the '80's to survive the occult scare back when people were asking me if I was a Satanist.
"I convinced you to commit suicide."
"No you didn't! I convinced you to commit suicide."
I'm quite aware that some systems make combat in non-physical spheres so mechanically parallel to regular physical combat that the same sorts of consequences are available. What I am saying is that this sort of conflict bears no relation to any of the social interactions we commonly experience, to the point that they would seem supernatural or magical or alien. Social conflict that normally bears the stakes of death is not something anyone normally experiences and certainly nothing that just spontaneously happens because someone chooses to socially attack someone. It's a disassociated mechanic.
In most social interaction we experience the risk is basically only "how various statements are perceived". That of course could cause enormous consequences to our social standing with people in the conversation, and perhaps end relationships or create enemies depending on the sort of conversation we were having. But those such conversations are imaginable and sometimes experienced. Exactly what conversation results in our death merely as a result of the words isn't easy to imagine, where as what sort of physical combat results in our death is easy to imagine. Sure, we can imagine being framed for murder and being found guilty in a trial and our pleas for mercy fall on deaf ears and we receive the death penalty, but resolving all of that lengthy series of events as a single social combat involves something more like a handwave than any sort of associated mechanic.
Are there some people who like this sort of thing?
Probably. But I wasn't asserting that no one would like handwaving away conversations or entire series of events with some sort of tactical social combat system. I was merely trying to explain first why I didn't like it ("In general, my problem with modeling social interactions with combat mechanics...My preferred method for social mechanic...") and by extension explain to the original poster who seems to favor such systems why I thought such systems weren't typically very popular.
