Let's (talk about the) fight!

[GMMichael]

My poor PCs. After wandering for an hour or two through stinky, dark sewers (formerly elven city streets), they found a huge chamber that was possibly inhabited, guessing by the multiple dim sources of light. The denizens had been alerted to PC presence by the detonation of sewer gas in the previous tunnel, so they waited patiently for the PCs to arrive.

Much like Ned Stark facing a contingent of Lannister soldiers and Jaime, no one wanted to get cut, bled, or killed. Unlike Ned and Jaime, my PCs decided to brawl it out against 10 opponents, without parley.

Question: In a game with somewhat realistic combat, where being outnumbered is decidedly bad, what should a pre-combat look like, in which the opposing sides use words to fight in the hopes of not putting their lives on the line?

Would you be interested in a fight of words, as long as it meant your blood was less likely to be spilled?

Would you rather use a combat system to talk your way out of a fight, or roleplay and hope the GM adjudicates in your favor?

 

[Jhaelen]

I'm usually pretty good at talking my way out of conflicts, but I still prefer systems to GM fiat. E.g. I like it if good roleplaying grants bonuses to skill checks.

IIRC; Burning Wheel has a neat system for 'fights of words'.

 

[Morrus]

I'm of two minds. On the one hand, a mechanical system feels constrained and makes immersion difficult; on the other hand, it supports players who are less extroverted or skilled at acting/speaking. I suspect that a mix of the two is the best answer, but this is one of those things where the answer depends so much on the group and the people involved.

 

[MarkB]

FATE does this pretty well, with both physical and mental stress tracks, and a universal skill system that can easily allow arguments and threats to be treated as attacks versus mental defenses. Earlier versions take the concept further, with a social stress track.

 

[Celebrim]

My opinion is that the best mechanics are one that are associated with the things that they simulate, stimulating the player to imagine the exact scenario that is occurring within the game.

For social challenges, nothing is more exacting - and exciting - than acting out the scene. If you treat the scene as a combat scene fought by other means, you'll actually make it less imaginative and less exciting. It might still be tense, but it will be far more abstract and you'll risk the actual scene not occurring in anyone's imagination and instead solely having the game play (throwing dice, declaring maneuvers) represent the scene.

Once the scene is set through acting it out, it's ok to use a fortune mechanic to determine any doubtable branching points in the conversation. Is the deal accepted? Is the lie believed? Is the NPC frightened? Does the NPC become sympathetic? For those decisions, you can rely on character resources in social skills and so allow the uncharismatic to create the story of being a charismatic and charming character. This creates a situation where often the video transcription of the event wouldn't record a scene of a charismatic character, but the script transcription of the same scene might well be a believable scene of persuasion. All you would need to do is clean it up a bit and hand the script to a thespian with powerful screen presence.

 

[steenan]

I really like how Urban Shadows handle negotiations. On one hand, it has solid rules that free the GM from having to decide if the PCs succeed - something I value. On the other hand, the rules put specific constraints on how they can be used - it's impossible to persuade somebody just with a high roll.


There are several "moves" (rules for specific kinds of actions) that together create a very fun and dynamic social system:
- There is a move for persuading somebody: roll to have an NPC do what you want from them. The catch: you can't trigger this move without a leverage. You need to offer something, promise something or threaten the person you try to persuade; the leverage must be believable and comparable to the stake. And, if your roll isn't very good, you need to give a solid proof of what you promise before the NPC helps you.
- There is a move for tricking somebody. On one hand, you can use it to establish a leverage you don't really have. On the other hand, the bluff can get you out of the current trouble, but it won't stick for a long time. Make enemies at your own risk.
- There is something called "debts". When you do somebody a favor they acknowledge, you get a debt on them. Then you can cash in the debt at any time to have them help you or answer your questions honestly. Cashing in a debt is always a good leverage and offering someone a debt typically is, too, if the other side believes you will repay it.


In a situation described in the OP, it's not clear if the PCs were completely dominated by the enemy force, or not. If they were, they wouldn't be able to threaten the opponents - but they could still offer something of value (eg. information or service), or trick the enemies into letting them go.
If they were outnumbered, but still able to kill a few enemies before going down, threats would work - after all, each individual opponent wants to live. Of course, it wouldn't be possible to threaten the enemies into surrendering (that would need a bigger leverage), but persuading them to let the PCs go would be an option.

 

[GMMichael]

I really like how Urban Shadows...

There are several "moves" (rules for specific kinds of actions) that together create a very fun and dynamic social system:
- There is a move for persuading somebody: roll to have an NPC do what you want from them. The catch: you can't trigger this move without a leverage. You need to offer something, promise something or threaten the person you try to persuade; the leverage must be believable and comparable to the stake. And, if your roll isn't very good, you need to give a solid proof of what you promise before the NPC helps you.
- There is a move for tricking somebody. On one hand, you can use it to establish a leverage you don't really have. On the other hand, the bluff can get you out of the current trouble, but it won't stick for a long time. Make enemies at your own risk.
- There is something called "debts". When you do somebody a favor they acknowledge, you get a debt on them. Then you can cash in the debt at any time to have them help you or answer your questions honestly. Cashing in a debt is always a good leverage and offering someone a debt typically is, too, if the other side believes you will repay it.

That is actually a cool sounding system. It has a metagame framework that still relies on the story. Are the moves extensive enough to require tables or pages of description, or are they relatively fast and easy?
[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] touched on an important point: just as the rules might allow you to become a legendary claymore craftsman, they should also allow you to be a better at words. [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] has it right too - your epic speech that saves the day won't feel too epic if you just roll dice for it. But hey, fighting isn't like rolling dice either - so now I want to have my players stand up during fight scenes, possibly swinging an imaginary weapon when they roll.

To answer steenan's quasi-question: I had four PCs, a combat-trained noble, a bard, a magic-trained noble, and a priest, stuck between a heavy stone door and 10 underworld thugs. In some games, that's not outnumbered at all, because one die roll could mean ending a thug, and one round of battle might change the numbers to 4 on 6. But I made the Game of Thrones reference (in OP) not just for the visual but also for the combat resolution; in our game, combat can be deadly, and even if you win, you might wish you had lost. Threats, bribes, even jokes might have worked, but sometimes it's clear from the GM's chair what the result would be, and sometimes I'd like to have a table in front of me on the GM screen.

 

[Umbran]

FATE does this pretty well, with both physical and mental stress tracks, and a universal skill system that can easily allow arguments and threats to be treated as attacks versus mental defenses. Earlier versions take the concept further, with a social stress track.

Yep. Over in the FATE forum, there's a thread on this very thing...

 

[steenan]

That is actually a cool sounding system. It has a metagame framework that still relies on the story. Are the moves extensive enough to require tables or pages of description, or are they relatively fast and easy?

All the common moves (available to all PCs) together take about one page. Each PC also has a few archetype-specific moves on their character sheet.

The rulebook contains extensive explanation of each move, with examples etc. - it takes about 20 pages in total. But the rules themselves fit on a single page.

 

[Darkness]

Not fond of GM fiat.

If my character is awesome at social things, the mechanics involved should reflect this fact quite a bit - or the opposite, if s/he's seriously bad at this.

With that said, good (or bad) role-playing and use of the facts at hand should absolutely have an effect as well - possibly even a decisive effect, if it's sufficiently good/bad.