While enjoying a beer out with The Wife Saturday night, I received a message from a buddy of mine. Deb advised me that Ross Payton and his crew over at Role Playing Public Radio were talking about me. Or at least the subject of my previous two YMH columns concerning the use of social skills against a fellow player’s character.
“Have you checked it out yet?” She asked. “Ouch… They’re a bit harsh toward the end.”
I hadn’t, so I downloaded it, listening on Sunday while digging out the flower beds.
The RPPR folks took the position that grown-up role players settle matters of disagreement through role playing free of a dice mechanic. Player vs. player conflicts should be settled through acting out the drama and perhaps meta-game it a bit to resolution. As you know, I disagree.
Character’s have attributes, skills, and other abilities with a measurable value. A player character’s ability to throw a stone has a metric. A PC’s talent at swordsmanship has a gauge His intelligence, strength, and dexterity all have a scale.
If you wish to have your character punch another, Ross Payton has no problem allowing you to roll your Brawling skill along with appropriate dexterity and strength bonuses. If you want to charm or persuade your fellow player character, let’s do that through role playing with no dice mechanic to support or enhance the play.
My character had a Persuasion skill, a rating that provided him a certain degree of competency in this regard.
It is strange to me that those as deeply engaged as the RPPR guys are in a hobby utilizing dice mechanics to determine most outcomes would find it so extremely objectionable to use such a mechanic to resolve – or at least guide – the outcome of an in-game discussion.
RPPR’s round table suggested that only those players who dislike each other, are engaged in stale games, or are immature would possibly think that a dice mechanic would ever be desirable in player character v. player character disputes. “The reason why we’ve never gotten into a situation like that,” Cody noted, “Is because we’re fucking adults… we’re potty trained and college educated.”
I can accept the humorous tone in which the comment was made, but it strikes me as narrow-minded to discount PC-on-PC social combat systems such as found in Luke Crane’s Burning Wheel. I can also accepts that the game we were playing that day, Wild Talents, did not have a social combat system. But my pre-generated character provided me by the GM had a social skill on it that I was prevented from using against another in-game character.
I’m sorry. That sucks.
Now for some intelligent conversation on the subject, go check out this week’s Podge Cast where Luke, Adam/David, and Eric discuss the issue at length. It’s the best discussion on the topic yet, and I’m not saying that because they mostly agree with me. Best conversation I’ve heard on social combat between two players I’ve heard… well… since the last time they talked about it.
If you’re counting, that’s four podcasts that have taken up this discussion:
I’ve been reading over Wild Talents (The Essential Edition) for a gaming I’m about to run. I found it humorous when I read the following paragraph:
Example: Persuasion
In an extended social contest, each side attempts to sway the opinion of others by building arguments in debate or gaining influence in conversation and public appearances. The GM must decide how much influence one character must gain to overcome the other. Obstacles are unlikely, unless other parties get involved.
Players oppose each other’s rolls with counter-arguments, sly innuendo or tactful libel, depending on whether it’s a courtroom debate or a series of competing media appearances.
It goes on with the example, but I found it humorous that only 27 pages into the book does it discuss the Extended Contest of Persuasion. I know this example isn’t the same as the scenario everyone’s been discussing and I am also aware that this scenario isn’t necessarily PvP. That’s not my point.
My point is that not only does Wild Talents handle social conflict, it specifically calls out to it in an example. That tickles me. Haha.
/flex
I’m with you on this one Aron. I won’t add anything beyond that as Rob & Iskoot summed up my thoughts exactly in the original comments thread.
Personally? I find it a bit ironic that Aron is suddenly the spokesman for Players’/PCs’ Right To Free Will. His history as a GM tells a totally different story. One of my all-time biggest complaints as a player in his games was how he constantly thwarts his players’ efforts at thinking outside the box…and then, when it’s time for the grand climax, more often than not his NPC’s step in and wrap everything up the way he wants it to end, with no input from his players.
I’ve put off bringing this up, but if Aron WON’T let the subject drop, I feel like it needs to be pointed out. He’s a fun guy to play with, but he wouldn’t last a week as a player in a game run by someone who GMs exactly the way he does.
The great thing about having a friend such as Deb is that you never know when she’ll surface to attack.
Not sure how to respond to this, Deb, other than to say that you’ve never gamed with me across the table. Only PBeM. I don’t believe any of my live, F2F players – either at cons or my home group – share the same complaint.
I’ll agree that there’s truth to your observation about my use of NPCs in past PBEM games. I even recall feedback from players in that regard. I like to think I have corrected that behavior, but since I haven’t run a PBEM in almost two years it’s hard to say.
Glad you had fun, though.
Tsk tsk. You don’t love me for my tactfulness any more than I love you for your kindness. That wasn’t an attack, it was an observation, and an accurate one.
You only get to whine so long about some other GM doing something that you did in EVERY GAME I EVER PLAYED WITH YOU before you get called on it, is all I’m saying.
Yet you continued to play, and ask me to run more games. So apparently I didn’t steal too much of your fun.
I also didn’t write blog post after blog post complaining about it. The fun I had in your games was worth the aggravation of having to deal with your GMing quirks. I chose to stay in your games, and having made that decision I chose not to complain (except occasionally in offlist emails or IM’s to you personally) about the issues I had with your gaming style. Let me say that again: my complaints were private and addressed to you, not public and aired to the world at large. Because at the end of the day (well, most days) your games brought me more enjoyment than aggravation, and I appreciated the effort you put into them.
If you don’t like Ross Payton’s style, don’t game with him again. Problem solved. But surely even you can see the irony in the nature of the complaint you have against him.
Rob you’re misreading the persuasion skill write up: it’s about persuading an audience of NPCs when debating with someone else. It doesn’t mention anything about forcing another PLAYER to do what you want because you rolled better than he did.
That’s my rule for social skills in regards to players – you can’t control another player character outside of a supernatural power. No ifs ands or buts.
“It is strange to me that those as deeply engaged as the RPPR guys are in a hobby utilizing dice mechanics to determine most outcomes would find it so extremely objectionable to use such a mechanic to resolve – or at least guide – the outcome of an in-game discussion.”
You can’t see the difference between characters making important decisions and combat? What is the point of gaming if we don’t even get to make decisions for our own characters?
I try to never have a single solution to any game I run and I never force players into any particular resolution – they get to make their own decisions. You can’t force someone else to make a major decision that you want. At that point, you’re basically playing the game for them. Fuck that noise.
First off, kudos to digging out those flower beds. Totally badass.
“Now for some intelligent conversation on the subject, go check out this week’s Podge Cast where Luke, Adam/David, and Eric discuss the issue at length. It’s the best discussion on the topic yet, and I’m not saying that because they mostly agree with me.”
Let’s face it, that’s EXACTLY why you’re saying it’s the best discussion on the topic yet.
Listen up, scrote, and let’s look at some bare bones facts that the incomparable RPPR folks forgot to mention: 1) You’re a douche (maybe they touched on that.)
2) As your header so astutely puts it, this topic won’t die. I think the main reason for this is because you want to continue to debate something that is such a moot point. It was one ruling at the end of a CONVENTION game. Ross shut you down because you tried to rob a player of free will, but he also shut you down so he could just end the fucking game and move on with his life.
3)I think you said it best yourself: “I can also accepts that the game we were playing that day, Wild Talents, did not have a social combat system.” Wild Talents doesn’t have a social combat system, therefore, you can’t impose your persuasion on another PC. Had you been playing a game that featured a social combat system, then Ross would be in the wrong. You can’t impose rules from one game to another. Are you the kind of guy who tries to play Monopoly with Twister rules? You: “Left foot blue means I get to take Boardwalk and Park Place!” GM: “That makes no sense and you can’t do that.” You: “WAAAAH WAAAAAH!!! I’M GONNA BLOG ABOUT IT NOW!!!! AND THEN I WILL DO IT AGAIN!!!!”
You know who else makes up their own rules to win in a game? Children. You: “Pew pew pew! I shot you with my laser!” Some other asshole kid: “No you didn’t! I have an anti-laser shield!” You: “Well, I have a gun that shoots through laser shields!” SOAK: “Well, I dropped a laser-jamming grenade earlier, but you didn’t see it.” You: “My gun was made by Tony Stark and it is immune to anti-laser grenades.”
I certainly hope you’re not reading this as you planting flowers because I’m sure it’s gonna be hell on those petunias.
Btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u84d7nY8pQ
Ross, I think Tim actually put a rather fine point on it in your episode when he said that the character is your avatar. The way you and your co-hosts used the terms “player” and “player character” interchangably—even here, when you first say about “characters making important decisions” and “force players”—really gets to the heart of the issue. Is your PC an avatar for you? Is he just you with a sword? Or is he a character in a story?
If he’s just you with a sword, if he thinks like you and is just as smart as you and all the rest, then I agree with you completely. With that, we should remove social skills entirely, because my character is always as smart, as personable, as charming, and as well-spoken as I am. If you put social skills in, you’re laying a trap for players. Having them in suggests that they’re meaningful, but it’s really just a trap to put your points in. The guy with the sword will get to roll his sword stat to hit another player, but the guy with the Diplomacy skill will just get hosed.
But if these are characters in a story, then they may be smarter or dumber than their players. They might fumble their words because they’re not as well-spoken as we are, or they might express a point more eloquently than we can, because dude, it’s late, and I’ve got to go to work tomorrow morning. If that’s the case, then we should absolutely roll social skills to influence one another. If you roll successfully, and the player didn’t want to go that way, those can be some of the best moments in gaming, because we’ve just learned something about this character, something even the player didn’t know. This argument doesn’t make sense to you, the player, but it makes sense to your character. Why is that? What is it about your character that we didn’t see before, that this now brings to light?
It’s no more playing the game for someone else than when another player rolls his Strength to bonk me over the head, so I’m unconscious for the next hour of gameplay. Characters influence each other. That’s what stories are all about, right? If the fact that these are fictional characters doesn’t influence the game, then why are we even playing it? We could dispense with the fiction that the characters matter and just discuss hypotheticals directly.
You can’t see how taking control away from a player of their PC and giving it to another player is a really bad idea?
I can, but that’s not the issue, now is it? We’re not talking about taking control away from a player of their PC and giving it to another player. That’s just hyping the situation up rhetorically to avoid dealing with the actual issue. We’re talking about where the fact that one player wanted to play a dunce and another player wanted to play a smooth talker comes into play.
I suppose you’re right if the players spend their time trying to PVP instead of working together. I don’t play or run games where this is an actual concern. Do you really have that much PC on PC fighting?
What you want is a way for players to outright control other PCs OR have the GM coerce players into giving up control of their character.
You know, no one’s brought up the other players in the scenario. No one wanted to debate Aron. No one wanted to be persuaded or ‘let the dice decide’
So any social combat system wouldn’t have worked because the other players wouldn’t have agreed to it. At least that’s how it works in Burning Wheel’s Duel of Wits.
“I can, but that’s not the issue, now is it? We’re not talking about taking control away from a player of their PC and giving it to another player. That’s just hyping the situation up rhetorically to avoid dealing with the actual issue. We’re talking about where the fact that one player wanted to play a dunce and another player wanted to play a smooth talker comes into play.”
Why should the dunce be forced to do what everyone else wants to do, Dunces still have free will to choose what they want to do.
Just cause Aron didnt wanna do something he wasent being forced to do what everyone else wanted to do, why should the dice decide that everyone else should do what Aron wanted to do?
The dunces of the group didnt say hey I wanna roll to see if I can convice Aron to do something incredibly stupid like sit in a toilt while I piss on him.
As I stated befor, the most I feel it should go if the DM wants it to happen because it is in the end the DM’s Call, if they were able to roll, all the DM should do diffrently is say “He makes a good point but you still have free will to do what ever you want.”
I’m with Cody: You need to grow up, Aron.
Read your Greg Stolze:
“Why does ‘fearsome warrio’ get a whole
chapter devoted to it when ‘compelling public speaker’ does not?
Here’s why: Fighting is the lowest common denominator. A fist to the face is a language everyone understands. So too in gaming. A player who doesn’t have the verbal skill to engage in a legalistic duel of wits can still stack his character to dominate in combat—and it’s a lot easier to drag the courtroom down to a brawl than it is to elevate a fist fight into articulate discourse.”
The way I see it, this holds true with any system use, not only combat. You wanted to do something, the other players didn’t, so you wanted to use a mechanical system to force them towards your choice and the GM shut you down.
Get over it. Complaining about games is awesome, I love doing it myself. Gaming stories, especially horror stories, are one of my favorite parts of this hobby. I like it when the stories are entertaining. Your story is not entertaining.
Grow up.
Isn’t this getting kind of ridiculous?
Both viewpoints are valid, DEPENDING ON THE GROUP AND CIRCUMSTANCES. If the entire group is alright with allowing their characters to be swayed by a dice roll, awesome! If they aren’t, then Ross’s approach is great.
This was a con game, right? At the end of the game? Just wrapping up? Was this experience SO horrible that there had to be three seperate blog posts detailing how you’re right and everyone else is wrong? (specifically referencing the second one, in which you tell KitB and Happy Jacks they’re wrong about THEIR OPINION)
And the ultimate point. AT SOME POINT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN, not drama fuel!!! You didn’t like your experience or Ross’s style? DON’T PLAY WITH HIM ANYMORE. The beauty of this whole genre of social gaming is that there are no hard set rules! Do what you like! There are enough people interested in RPGs these days that you can find a group for whatever your tastes are.
Can’t we just get along and agree to disagree? This is petty.