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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8727385" data-attributes="member: 6696971">If a social conflict system (or any system) is actually well-and-explicitly designed around intent/goal-resolution, then a GM appending a rules/resolution-driven "and" or a complication which feels like it nullifies the intent/goal of your fairly won conflict...then the problem is either (a) with the GM (not following procedures or rules) or (b) with the player's cognitive framework not onboarding what intent/goal-resolution entails.To bring in a few "D&D-likes":* Like if I'm running Torchbearer and we're in a Convince conflict and your side wins...but its my right to get a compromise out of your side because of your Disposition loss...well, I can demand something from you or change the fiction in certain ways...but that way cannot overturn the intent/goal of the conflict.  It must honor it...full_stop.* If I'm running Stonetop, your job as a player is to suss out an NPC Instinct and then use that as leverage to press or entice that NPC, and say what you want them to do.  If they have reason to resist (that reason could be the fiction accrued in play to date or that your request "doesn't play ball with their Instinct"), we go to the dice.  The result spread is as follows:10+ they either do as you want or reveal the easiest way to convince them.7-9 they reveal something you can do to convince them, though it’ll likely be costly, tricky, or distasteful.Ultimately, if play yields that we're in agreement and all issues are resolved (you've convinced them or paid their cost), they're going to do what you want them to do.  They aren't going to do something "what you want them to do - adjacent" and they certainly aren't going to do "what you want them to do yet in a way that undermines the point of having them do what you want to do in the first place."  This isn't like "Wish" in Traditional D&D.  The GM can't just Calvinball their way into ultimately screwing you over via some grotesque parsing/interpretation of your stated Wish.  There is the intersection of deeply constraining rules and principles that underwrite compromises in Torchbearer and there is the same thing happening with Persuade in Stonetop (and AW and DW) which GM's not only must abide by...but are encouraged to abide by (because the games deliver on the goods if you do abide by them and they break down if you do not...soooooooooo...abide by them!).  The "convinced them" or "paid their cost" provisions in Stonetop don't come without constraint and best practices.  There are a host of constraints on what those might be (and certainly chief among them being "they cannot violate the point/intent/goal of what you want them to do."  Now in Stonetop, the GM is principally constrained to be a fan of the characters...but that doesn't entail "curating play so that the players are basically cosplaying/LARPing their preconceptions of their PC."  Its quite the opposite (its about you and I and everyone finding out about your character through play rather than mapping a preconception onto play).  Play is meant to be a crucible for finding out who you are (about your relationship to your Instinct.to the people of Stoneop and its neighbors and the mythology/to your playbook).  So, any given Persuade move might yield you having to prioritize one thing over another and, in that process, reveal who you are (what hills you will die on and where you will compromise).  [HR][/HR]As is, 5e's Social Interaction module (clearly cribbed from Apocalypse World) is actually quite a good piece of design (I said it was my favorite 8 years ago or whatever, and it remains that today).  Its got a Pictionary element to it where you're trying to suss out NPC needs/nature and then use that as leverage downstream to "solve the puzzle."  Its just that the BIFTs component of the game is far too discrete and lacking in sufficient bite (but, it was intentionally designed to be that way).</blockquote>

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