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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8726384" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>So, all that introduction, here is the core of the argument:</p><p></p><p>A) In reality, social encounters aren't very much like combat and are nothing like combat most of the time. </p><p></p><p>A lot of the time people who smith rules for a living end up focused on the best-case scenario instead of the general case. In this case, they had an existing tool they understood really well - combat rules - and so they started looking for examples of social encounters that matched the idea of combat. And sure, if you start out with that as a premise, you can start finding analogies between things that happen in a social encounter and things that happen in physical combat. Maybe you think, "When someone delivers an insult on someone, that's like an blunt attack on them." And so you can start thinking of an argument as being like a combat where each side is making attacks on the other and trying to deliver wounds and then at the end of it they "win" in some way. And as long as you focus on the best case and the sort of scenes where that analogy holds in some manner, then it can if you squint seem like you could adopt combat rules to social encounters.</p><p></p><p>But it falls apart in the general case. Is attacking my ego really the same as attacking my reputation? Is slaying my reputation really the same as killing me? Like while there are some analogies here, slaying my reputation usually only means embarrassing me with respect to a particular group. But if I'm dead from physical combat, it's not something you have to know about in order for it to be effective. Think about all the different consequences of "losing" a social encounter, and how little control that the "winner" necessarily has over those consequences. Thank about things like reaching a mutually agreeable bargain. Think about the various different stakes that can happen in a social encounter. Let's say the thing at the table in question is, "Does the person believe the lie?" Like most of the time in reality I try to lie to someone doesn't work like combat. Usually lies work something like a critical hit that automatically "wins" the encounter, in as much as the hearer normally takes the statement at face value. The more combat that happens in the "Does the person believe the lie?" scenario the less likely it is that the lie is going to be believed. So how with the same combat system are you going to work out "lie resistance" as opposed to "persuasion resistance". And if your answer is something like saving throws, well doesn't that undermine the whole "complex rules for social combat" intention? How many pools of social hit points do we need?</p><p></p><p>Consider also how group dynamics work in a social encounter. Does seduction really work more reliably when eight people attack the target compared to one? Is it really true that the more people who are talking the more persuasive the argument becomes?</p><p></p><p>A lot of people claim that it's arbitrary that RPGs ended up with complex rules for combat. I've argued before that that is not the case. I argue that Combat (and simulations of combat, like sports) are almost unique in the opportunities that they provide for team play where participant has repeated meaningful choices to make. Social encounters allow for a lot of repeated meaningful choices, but they don't actually provide for the same level of teamwork. We can imagine specific cases where teamwork might produce a good outcome, but if we start looking at the general case for combat more is almost always better, whereas in social encounters more is almost always irrelevant. </p><p></p><p>All of this means that all complex combat rules actually offer no real inspiration for a functional system for playing out a social encounter. Remember the goal of the "play it out" people is to produce transcripts of play that feel natural for the situation. Turning a social interaction into social combat turns out not to do that, and the more you try to fit the square peg into the round hole the worst it actually gets. In very limited scenarios yes a combat like mini-game might capture the feel of social encounter as a social combat, but those scenarios are so rare that it almost more encourages the game master to craft the mini-game for the specific scenario without the need for generic rules that turn out in practice to be anything but generic.</p><p></p><p>Ironically, if you did routinely rely on social combat rules to arbitrate your combats, you end up with a transcript of play that looks more like the one Chess produces. This isn't satisfactory to the people who originally embarked on the project.</p><p></p><p>If you look at successful games with social combat, you are looking at something like 'Dogs in the Vineyard' and even then, Dogs in the Vineyard doesn't pretend that social combat is a perfect parallel to physical combat. It has rules that distinguish the two in ways that are congruent with our understanding of how social combat would actually work. And it also feels less like the sort of engrossing social combat you are imagining and more like (though not completely like) the process of play of "work it out by committee". It's still on the spectrum of "play it out" but there are ideas like negotiation of stakes to the scene that are more like consensus and collaboration than what you normally do in "play it out". </p><p></p><p>B) Most importantly, adding complex round by round rules to a social encounter always makes the experience of the social encounter less like the experience of being inside the "movie" or "novelization" of the story rather than more like being in the "movie" or "novelization of the story.</p><p></p><p>Why do we bother to have complex rules for physical combat at all? Why do we bother to have rules for grappling? Why do we bother with things like flanking or stabbing someone in the back? Why do we care whether a player can trip the monster in a fight and working out whether it is harder to trip a brontosaurus compared to a kangaroo? We do we care whether a spear is longer than a sword and whether that should give the spear wielder some advantages? Why do we decide that if we are doing melee combat simulation, we might not care too much about the exact facing of a figure, but as soon as we are simulating jet fighter combat we very much do? Why care that padded armor is not as effective as plate armor against many sorts of attacks? </p><p></p><p>There are a lot of bad answers to those questions that tell us more about the person given the answer than they do about combat rules. I would argue that all the good answers to those questions boil down to that the people creating the complex rules for physical combat felt that those rules would produce an experience and transcript of play that felt more like watching exciting combat in movie or reading about it in a novel than if we didn't have complex rules. In other words, if we have complex rules that we are using in our combat, then what we do in play and imagine about that play more resembles actual combat to us than if we had less complex rules. By adding all this complexity, we are trying to be less abstract and produce more coherent combat that is easier to imagine. What we want after we've resolved the combat is to remember those exciting moments: like when the character jumped on the back of the monster and stabbed it, when the character pushed another character down the stairs, when the character fended away the panther with his spear and well all the concrete stuff that is easy to imagine and evocative to do so. We don't want to remember: "I hit for 5 damage", "OK, now I hit for 12 damage." Complex combat rules are an adaption to try to get the transcript more like we want it to be - cinematic in the way stage combat from one of our favorite movies is, for example. </p><p></p><p>The more detail we add to the system, the more the visualization of the combat in the transcript looks like combat.</p><p></p><p>And we have to do it this way because we don't really have a choice unless we LARP out the combat, and even then that doesn't really work because of the limitations in staging a combat on accurate terrain, limitations imposed by safety of the participants, limitations imposed by the fact we don't actually have flying dragons to play their parts in the combat and so forth. Highly granular combat systems are the closest we can get to cinematic combat in a tabletop RPG. They are the least abstract way to create the transcript. We might concede some granularity and realism for the sake of speed of play (because again, if it plays too slow it won't give us that experience of being in the novel or movie) but we probably would like really concrete if we could manage and still play it out without slowing things down. Because that's what makes things fun to the "play it out" people.</p><p></p><p>But it turns out social encounters are nothing like this. The more details and rules we add, the less the play out like the experience of the social interactions in our favorite movies and novels. The more details and rules we add to a social encounter the more abstract they tend to become when we play them out. "I choose the move Witty Retort" is nothing like actually making a witty retort and having the rule for a "Witty Retort" does nothing to help us imagine a Witty Retort. Contrast that with having a rule for disarming a foe and how that helps us to imagine the foe being disarmed.</p><p></p><p>However, the "play it out" people have a process of play that actually is concrete and conforms very closely to the experience of being inside a novel or movie. And that is, they just act out the social encounter. It turns out that acting out the social encounter is the most concrete and immersive transcript of the play you can have. In fact, it's arguably much more like the experience of being in the novel or movie than even the most detailed combat system creates. Just acting it out using acting ability turns out to be the very closest thing to watching people act a scene out using their acting ability. Go figure. </p><p></p><p>And every time you interrupt it with a rule, no matter how good your reason for doing so, is still a tradeoff from that concrete transcript of play that acting out the scenes in character gives you. So what tends to happen here is that the very people who most wanted immersive and engaging rules for social combat are the most disappointed and least engaged by them, because they find out that in play they are actually working against their own aesthetics of play.</p><p></p><p>Which is why I think almost all systems that encourage you to act out the story in the traditional manner gravitate to a small number of die rolls to arbitrate crucial tests in the encounter with difficulties and stakes that are very elastic and up to the judgment of the GM, and there has been and probably never will be a hugely successful social encounter combat system.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8726384, member: 4937"] So, all that introduction, here is the core of the argument: A) In reality, social encounters aren't very much like combat and are nothing like combat most of the time. A lot of the time people who smith rules for a living end up focused on the best-case scenario instead of the general case. In this case, they had an existing tool they understood really well - combat rules - and so they started looking for examples of social encounters that matched the idea of combat. And sure, if you start out with that as a premise, you can start finding analogies between things that happen in a social encounter and things that happen in physical combat. Maybe you think, "When someone delivers an insult on someone, that's like an blunt attack on them." And so you can start thinking of an argument as being like a combat where each side is making attacks on the other and trying to deliver wounds and then at the end of it they "win" in some way. And as long as you focus on the best case and the sort of scenes where that analogy holds in some manner, then it can if you squint seem like you could adopt combat rules to social encounters. But it falls apart in the general case. Is attacking my ego really the same as attacking my reputation? Is slaying my reputation really the same as killing me? Like while there are some analogies here, slaying my reputation usually only means embarrassing me with respect to a particular group. But if I'm dead from physical combat, it's not something you have to know about in order for it to be effective. Think about all the different consequences of "losing" a social encounter, and how little control that the "winner" necessarily has over those consequences. Thank about things like reaching a mutually agreeable bargain. Think about the various different stakes that can happen in a social encounter. Let's say the thing at the table in question is, "Does the person believe the lie?" Like most of the time in reality I try to lie to someone doesn't work like combat. Usually lies work something like a critical hit that automatically "wins" the encounter, in as much as the hearer normally takes the statement at face value. The more combat that happens in the "Does the person believe the lie?" scenario the less likely it is that the lie is going to be believed. So how with the same combat system are you going to work out "lie resistance" as opposed to "persuasion resistance". And if your answer is something like saving throws, well doesn't that undermine the whole "complex rules for social combat" intention? How many pools of social hit points do we need? Consider also how group dynamics work in a social encounter. Does seduction really work more reliably when eight people attack the target compared to one? Is it really true that the more people who are talking the more persuasive the argument becomes? A lot of people claim that it's arbitrary that RPGs ended up with complex rules for combat. I've argued before that that is not the case. I argue that Combat (and simulations of combat, like sports) are almost unique in the opportunities that they provide for team play where participant has repeated meaningful choices to make. Social encounters allow for a lot of repeated meaningful choices, but they don't actually provide for the same level of teamwork. We can imagine specific cases where teamwork might produce a good outcome, but if we start looking at the general case for combat more is almost always better, whereas in social encounters more is almost always irrelevant. All of this means that all complex combat rules actually offer no real inspiration for a functional system for playing out a social encounter. Remember the goal of the "play it out" people is to produce transcripts of play that feel natural for the situation. Turning a social interaction into social combat turns out not to do that, and the more you try to fit the square peg into the round hole the worst it actually gets. In very limited scenarios yes a combat like mini-game might capture the feel of social encounter as a social combat, but those scenarios are so rare that it almost more encourages the game master to craft the mini-game for the specific scenario without the need for generic rules that turn out in practice to be anything but generic. Ironically, if you did routinely rely on social combat rules to arbitrate your combats, you end up with a transcript of play that looks more like the one Chess produces. This isn't satisfactory to the people who originally embarked on the project. If you look at successful games with social combat, you are looking at something like 'Dogs in the Vineyard' and even then, Dogs in the Vineyard doesn't pretend that social combat is a perfect parallel to physical combat. It has rules that distinguish the two in ways that are congruent with our understanding of how social combat would actually work. And it also feels less like the sort of engrossing social combat you are imagining and more like (though not completely like) the process of play of "work it out by committee". It's still on the spectrum of "play it out" but there are ideas like negotiation of stakes to the scene that are more like consensus and collaboration than what you normally do in "play it out". B) Most importantly, adding complex round by round rules to a social encounter always makes the experience of the social encounter less like the experience of being inside the "movie" or "novelization" of the story rather than more like being in the "movie" or "novelization of the story. Why do we bother to have complex rules for physical combat at all? Why do we bother to have rules for grappling? Why do we bother with things like flanking or stabbing someone in the back? Why do we care whether a player can trip the monster in a fight and working out whether it is harder to trip a brontosaurus compared to a kangaroo? We do we care whether a spear is longer than a sword and whether that should give the spear wielder some advantages? Why do we decide that if we are doing melee combat simulation, we might not care too much about the exact facing of a figure, but as soon as we are simulating jet fighter combat we very much do? Why care that padded armor is not as effective as plate armor against many sorts of attacks? There are a lot of bad answers to those questions that tell us more about the person given the answer than they do about combat rules. I would argue that all the good answers to those questions boil down to that the people creating the complex rules for physical combat felt that those rules would produce an experience and transcript of play that felt more like watching exciting combat in movie or reading about it in a novel than if we didn't have complex rules. In other words, if we have complex rules that we are using in our combat, then what we do in play and imagine about that play more resembles actual combat to us than if we had less complex rules. By adding all this complexity, we are trying to be less abstract and produce more coherent combat that is easier to imagine. What we want after we've resolved the combat is to remember those exciting moments: like when the character jumped on the back of the monster and stabbed it, when the character pushed another character down the stairs, when the character fended away the panther with his spear and well all the concrete stuff that is easy to imagine and evocative to do so. We don't want to remember: "I hit for 5 damage", "OK, now I hit for 12 damage." Complex combat rules are an adaption to try to get the transcript more like we want it to be - cinematic in the way stage combat from one of our favorite movies is, for example. The more detail we add to the system, the more the visualization of the combat in the transcript looks like combat. And we have to do it this way because we don't really have a choice unless we LARP out the combat, and even then that doesn't really work because of the limitations in staging a combat on accurate terrain, limitations imposed by safety of the participants, limitations imposed by the fact we don't actually have flying dragons to play their parts in the combat and so forth. Highly granular combat systems are the closest we can get to cinematic combat in a tabletop RPG. They are the least abstract way to create the transcript. We might concede some granularity and realism for the sake of speed of play (because again, if it plays too slow it won't give us that experience of being in the novel or movie) but we probably would like really concrete if we could manage and still play it out without slowing things down. Because that's what makes things fun to the "play it out" people. But it turns out social encounters are nothing like this. The more details and rules we add, the less the play out like the experience of the social interactions in our favorite movies and novels. The more details and rules we add to a social encounter the more abstract they tend to become when we play them out. "I choose the move Witty Retort" is nothing like actually making a witty retort and having the rule for a "Witty Retort" does nothing to help us imagine a Witty Retort. Contrast that with having a rule for disarming a foe and how that helps us to imagine the foe being disarmed. However, the "play it out" people have a process of play that actually is concrete and conforms very closely to the experience of being inside a novel or movie. And that is, they just act out the social encounter. It turns out that acting out the social encounter is the most concrete and immersive transcript of the play you can have. In fact, it's arguably much more like the experience of being in the novel or movie than even the most detailed combat system creates. Just acting it out using acting ability turns out to be the very closest thing to watching people act a scene out using their acting ability. Go figure. And every time you interrupt it with a rule, no matter how good your reason for doing so, is still a tradeoff from that concrete transcript of play that acting out the scenes in character gives you. So what tends to happen here is that the very people who most wanted immersive and engaging rules for social combat are the most disappointed and least engaged by them, because they find out that in play they are actually working against their own aesthetics of play. Which is why I think almost all systems that encourage you to act out the story in the traditional manner gravitate to a small number of die rolls to arbitrate crucial tests in the encounter with difficulties and stakes that are very elastic and up to the judgment of the GM, and there has been and probably never will be a hugely successful social encounter combat system. [/QUOTE]
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