Mike Mearls on Social Encounters

[buzz]

Fix that, and players should be willing to accept their characters can have their attitudes adjusted without their permission the same as they can have their physical status.

In the quality social conflict systems I've seen, it's never an issue of an NPC forcibly changing a PC's mind about something. It's more about the NPC making an argument that, for whatever reason, the PC, by losing the conflict, is obliged to abide by.

That's why stake-setting is so important. A player is never putting their PCs attitude up for stake. They're putting up consequences.

This is what I never liked about D&D's Diplomacy rules. It determines attitude, not whether the NPC actually does what you want them to. Ergo, it is bogus to consider flipping that around on the player ("Your paladin now feels warm and fuzzy about the demon king!").

If Diplomacy was about winning arguments and negotiations, then it would make far more sense, IMO. Then it's absolutely fine for NPCs to work their mojo on the PCs.

And if the players don't want to agree to an NPCs demands? Well, they shouldn't be playing out a negotiation in the first place. They should be drawing steel or walking away.

 

[Dragonblade]

So says the kid who refuses to allow himself to be shot in "guns" on the front lawn. IMO, its good design, and bad players who cant accept it.

YOU arent the character. YOU arent swinging the sword. YOU arent dodging the fireball. YOU arent on the floor with your intestines hanging out of you. YOU arent laughing in the face of Strahd. Your character is. The game forces outcomes you might not be happy with all the time. If you want to flip over the table, take your dice and pout, I think it says more about you than the game.

Getting stabbed is as much in your control as getting scared. Or are you going to say "Nuh-uh! I parried that sword thrust" every time your DM says the attack hit?

Totally different. Combat, falling, even failed saves vs. spells etc. These are things that HAPPEN to my character.

Fear and sanity checks are the designers telling me how to PLAY my character. Its a subtle distinction but an important one.

 

[Lackhand]

Totally different. Combat, falling, even failed saves vs. spells etc. These are things that HAPPEN to my character.

Fear and sanity checks are the designers telling me how to PLAY my character. Its a subtle distinction but an important one.

I see where you're coming from, but this is a game with Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma characteristics. It has a Diplomacy score which (currently) can tell the DM how to play his characters, but can't be turned back on the players.

If D&D divorced the personality-shaping aspects of the mental stats from them, then you'd have a better point, I feel.

 

[FadedC]

Apples and Oranges. An attack is something that happens to you largely beyond your control. A fear or sanity check is the game or DM trying to "force" you to play your character a certain way. They are bad mechanics and bad game design.

Hmm....I can't speak for fear checks, but you'd certainly be the first person I've ever heard suggest that sanity checks in call of cthulhu were bad game design. They are probably the most iconic and traditional parts of the game and genre.

 

[Dragonblade]

Hmm....I can't speak for fear checks, but you'd certainly be the first person I've ever heard suggest that sanity checks in call of cthulhu were bad game design. They are probably the most iconic and traditional parts of the game and genre.

One of the reasons I don't play a lot of horror games. If the game is only "scary" because the designers have to bludgeon the players over the head with enforced metagame fear or sanity checks, then its not scary. Heck, if the game is going to run my character for me, I might as well go watch a horror movie.

Truly scary games are hard to pull off, I admit. The GM has to pretty much run the game by candlelight in a dark spooky house and have a good voice for storytelling and RP to really pull it off.

 

[jdrakeh]

I think the social combat rules will be simpler than I thought, but still very useful.

Hmmm. . . that sounds a lot like the logical hierarchy that I laid out in Formless for resolving. . . well. . . everything. While it can't, in good faith, be applied to all actions in D&D (because, really, D&D wouldn't be D&D if it went entirely freeform), I think that the philosophy makes a lot of sense for social conflict resolution.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If you play a character with higher than life charisma you cannot play it out or so low that you don´t want to play it out, a social encounter system comes in quite handy...

but it should only be used for special cases (if you want to know if a bluff succeeds, a reaction to a direct confrontation with something etc...)

 

[apoptosis]

One of the reasons I don't play a lot of horror games. If the game is only "scary" because the designers have to bludgeon the players over the head with enforced metagame fear or sanity checks, then its not scary. Heck, if the game is going to run my character for me, I might as well go watch a horror movie.

Truly scary games are hard to pull off, I admit. The GM has to pretty much run the game by candlelight in a dark spooky house and have a good voice for storytelling and RP to really pull it off.

Actually I dont think the game is supposed to be scary to the players. The players are exploring situations that would be scary to the characters. One way of accomplishing this is to have effects on the characters that would simulate them being scared or losing their sanity.

Not the best way of doing it (once again stake setting is a much better vehicle to do this, similar to social conflict)

 

[LostSoul]

The DM set us up with a jail break. He might expect us to try for a stealth approach, or a 'storm the gates and kill em all' approach. But if I decided to bust out the Disguise, Forgery, Diplomacy, and Bluff skills to simply walk up to the guard and demand that the prisoner is released into my custody, there is a good chance that the DM may not have expected this. With a social encounter system, it will be much easier for this approach to succeed simply because the DM will be able to 'wing it' in a fair way. When the DM has some idea of how to adjudicate a situation, he is much more likely to allow the attempt than if he thinks it will be too hard to do right, and just contrives a reason to have it fail.

What I don't want to see out of these new mechanics is the following situation:

The player rolls using the new mechanics, and gets a success.

The DM says, "You learn that the guards won't fall for your trick."

Or, if the player rolled a failure:

The DM says, "The guards see through your disguise and attack."

I don't want to see that sort of thing. I want to see player intent addressed in the mechanics.

 

[FadedC]

One of the reasons I don't play a lot of horror games. If the game is only "scary" because the designers have to bludgeon the players over the head with enforced metagame fear or sanity checks, then its not scary. Heck, if the game is going to run my character for me, I might as well go watch a horror movie.

Truly scary games are hard to pull off, I admit. The GM has to pretty much run the game by candlelight in a dark spooky house and have a good voice for storytelling and RP to really pull it off.

Yeah as other people have said, the point of horror games isn't really to scare to players. That's almost impossible to do, the most you can hope for is a feeling of suspence. The point is to mirror the fear that the characters feel. A player won't be scared at all if his character finds the flayed body of his best friend friend in his closet, but you can be pretty sure his character would be put seriously on edge by this. A system that enforces that helps ensure that the player at least feels some apprehension and suspense when he decides if he should open the closet.