The Gaming Den

RC, if you want something done, then do it yourself. All this whining isn't producing a *solution*.

Guys, you are missing the point. He's whining because all of our ideas aren't as good as the "solution" he's already come up with.

He thinks every game ever written ever in the course of history, and every game that will be written in the future should all use Magic Tea Party for all social situations that ever arise. Because it's wrong to reward anything but natural charisma in a social situation (just like it's wrong to reward anything besides natural fighting ability in a combat situation?) And because it's wrong to use arbitrary mechanics like dice rolls, 'arguments,' and 'premises' in social situations (just like it's wrong to use arbitrary mechanics like dice rolls, 'maneuvers,' and 'stances' in combat situations?)

Kaelik wrote:Guys, you are missing the point. He's whining because all of our ideas aren't as good as the "solution" he's already come up with.

So he's basically a more intelligent-looking Elennsar? No thanks.

Come on, his position is completely defensible. We can disagree with it on the grounds of *preference* but I don't see any objective counterarguments.

Boolean wrote:Come on, his position is completely defensible. We can disagree with it on the grounds of *preference* but I don't see any objective counterarguments.

We can however say he is objectively wrong for wanting to pay money for Magic Tea Party. Or we can say he has no logical grounds for treating combat and social situations differently in his game except that one of those is obviously stupid, and the other is only subtly stupid.

If his goal is to punish people for not being public speakers, then no, we can't tell him he is not accomplishing his goal. But if his goal is to make a good fun roleplaying game, then yes, it is objectively bad at that to Magic Tea Party all social situations.

Boolean wrote:Come on, his position is completely defensible. We can disagree with it on the grounds of *preference* but I don't see any objective counterarguments.

Sorry Boolean, but his position is NOT defensible unless he agrees that people who are good at martial arts, or can punch him hard on the nose, in real life should receive bonuses to hit and to damage in combat, and people who understand the workings of magic (however fictional we deem it to be) in real life get extra spell slots per day.

Basically, RC's argument conflates character behavior and competence with player behavior and competence. This is not necessarily the case - in fact, very often, people want to play someone who they are not as competent as, or who does not resemble them. However, not everyone has the ability to roleplay a war veteran's understanding of combat and ways to swing a sword, a wizard's extensive knowledge of in-game history, or a socialite's ability to inspire and talk. This is why RULES exist - they allow us to do this precise thing.

What RC wants instead is that ONLY social encounters are down entirely to player competence. This is a bullshit and inconsistent argument in itself, but his defence of it is even more daft, because he claims that rules for social situations in any form "reduce it to dice-rolling and chess", and "take out the interactive element", as well as "reducing gradation of success". These are all complete bullshit as well, because quite simply, by the same argument, combat as-written "reduces it to dice-rolling and chess", and the fact we roll dice for something does not mean that we have no choice in what occurs or that there is no resultative gradation, to say nothing of lacking interactivity. In short, his justification for his viewpoint has so many holes, I doubt a Swiss cheese could compete.

To make matters even worse, he not only calls out in a bullshit manner, he also fails to provide anything constructive. All RC has shown himself as capable of doing is criticising, not presenting anything constructive. I'm calling him out on all the above, but this issue in particular, because I quite frankly hate unconstructive whiners who don't help solve a problem they find, instead expecting everyone else to do it for them. Quite frankly, my attitude to this is, was and always will be 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem'. Furthermore, in this case, the problem doesn't stay on the pages of my rulebooks, but whines at me on a forum wherever I look instead of bloody well SUGGESTING a solution which people can actually critique.

So no, Boolean, his position is NOT defensible, and neither is the fact that he hasn't actually tried to solve all the problems he is so keen to ineptly point out.

Long story short: I second Mister Sinister's point of view. Roleplaying a character of extremely high charisma and superb skills of persuasion can be nigh-impossible. I can honestly say that I couldn't sway the minds of random strangers to help or, in many cases, even get discount on items. This is why we need rules to supplement the roleplaying aspect of the game in some cases.

Honestly, MTP'ing social encounters is fine... as long there isn't a single goddamn social stat or skill in the entire system. Sure. it screws over awkward people, but hey, you could make a case for combat rules screwing over people who can't think tactically or suck at math.

However, as long as D&D has that god damn CHA stat, it better damn well have a rule system to use it with. Otherwise you'll just have bullshit like a party's face that can get away with being a cha 8 figher with no diplomacy/insight/bluff training by just using his own people skills.

While MTP is not the ideal for of social interaction, I have never really seen a game where it handled the social mini-game in even a remotely satisfying way. Therefore I am sympathetic with RC in wanting to just use MTP, it certainly the easiest solution to what is obviously a difficult problem to represent mechanically in a satisfying way.

ubernoob wrote:RC, if you want something done, then do it yourself. All this whining isn't producing a *solution*.

I'm not the one who wants a social system, so there's no reason for me to write one.

The people arguing wtih me are basically saying "yeah, a good social system can do all this awesome stuff and avoid the massive fail that was 3.5 social systems."

And to that I say "show me".

And until someone does, I'll keep going with just roleplaying to resolve social situations. Yeah, it's Magic Teaparty, but as ckafrica says above, existing social systems suck and don't do the things I want them to do, and the system that comes close to producing the results I want is MTP. That doesn't mean I'm not open to other ideas, but I am skeptical that such a system could be created.

Sinister wrote: To make matters even worse, he not only calls out in a bullshit manner, he also fails to provide anything constructive. All RC has shown himself as capable of doing is criticising, not presenting anything constructive. I'm calling him out on all the above, but this issue in particular, because I quite frankly hate unconstructive whiners who don't help solve a problem they find, instead expecting everyone else to do it for them.

I have a system. Magic Teaparty. It exists and it works for me.

I'm calling you out. What's your system?

Do you use the asstastic 3.5 core Diplomacy rules or do you use something custom?

I'm sick of defenders of social systems flocking behind the banner of some perfect system that doesn't exist yet as a reason why social systems should exist. Seriously, if there was a perfect awesome social system out there, I might use it. But I can't think of a good mechanical social system that beats out MTP. This is in fact why I use MTP.

But seriously, what's your solution? I can't use a system that doesn't exist, and 3.5 diplomacy rules are ass.

Sake wrote: Honestly, MTP'ing social encounters is fine... as long there isn't a single goddamn social stat or skill in the entire system. Sure. it screws over awkward people, but hey, you could make a case for combat rules screwing over people who can't think tactically or suck at math.

However, as long as D&D has that god damn CHA stat, it better damn well have a rule system to use it with. Otherwise you'll just have bullshit like a party's face that can get away with being a cha 8 figher with no diplomacy/insight/bluff training by just using his own people skills.

Yeah really, I'm all for just eliminating charisma as a stat. I'd like some kind of basic attractiveness trait or feat you can take, which your DM should use to consider RP situations, but no real numbers, just binary stuff.

Really, I don't much like having many mental stats in the game as it is, simply because I'd prefer to just use the player's mind for solving puzzles. I guess a "knowledge" stat wouldn't be bad for representing how many knowledge skills the character has, but I'm somewhat opposed to a stat like "intelligence." It's okay as a guide for the DM to say how smart monsters are, but for a PC, your PC is pretty much going to be as smart as you play him. I'm all for knowledge skills and perception/insight style skills that help the decision making process, but when it comes to if your PC does something stupid or smart, that should be the player's choice.

RC, Magic Teaparty is, by default, not a system. Furthermore, I was not the one who was busy claiming that such systems couldn't work, and therefore do not need to prove anything to you. In fact, if anything, you need to show me conclusive evidence that such a system CANNOT work without resorting to arguments which my 13-year-old brother wouldn't find laughably retarded.

What the fuck is this "burden of proof" bullshit? If you're going to claim that such a system can work, you need to provide evidence than it can. Unless we're going to play the whole, "You can't prove that there's nothing in this box" horseshit.

To elaborate: FREEZE RAYS CAN WORK; PROVE ME WRONG.

Psychic Robot wrote:What the fuck is this "burden of proof" bullshit? If you're going to claim that such a system can work, you need to provide evidence than it can. Unless we're going to play the whole, "You can't prove that there's nothing in this box" horseshit.

To elaborate: FREEZE RAYS CAN WORK; PROVE ME WRONG.

PR, kindly shut the fuck up. I have never, at any point, whined about what RC whines about, and I'm calling him on it, because I think his arguments are both stupid and without merit, as he criticises without providing a solution. The fact that you don't see that once again shows that you are a retard who is incapable of grasping basic reading comprehension.

The "rp out the scene, then roll to see how diplomatic your character was" system works for me. It's the same as "describe your attack, then roll to see if you hit".

Psychic Robot wrote:What the fuck is this "burden of proof" bullshit? If you're going to claim that such a system can work, you need to provide evidence than it can. Unless we're going to play the whole, "You can't prove that there's nothing in this box" horseshit.

Yeah. My sentiments exactly.

Fuchs wrote:The "rp out the scene, then roll to see how diplomatic your character was" system works for me. It's the same as "describe your attack, then roll to see if you hit".

But where do you get the DC? Is it just magic teaparty with dice?

PR, kindly shut the fuck up.

Furthermore, I was not the one who was busy claiming that such systems couldn't work, and therefore do not need to prove anything to you. In fact, if anything, you need to show me conclusive evidence that such a system CANNOT work without resorting to arguments which my 13-year-old brother wouldn't find laughably retarded.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:But where do you get the DC? Is it just magic teaparty with dice?

DM sets the DC, I'd say. Social encounters are more difficult to deal with than combat encounters simply because there are tons of aspects that need to be taken into consideration that can't be expressed in terms of numbers, lest you get retardation.

DM sets the DC, exactly. And many of the modifiers to said DC can be changed by player action - like another moving into a flanking position makes it easier to attack the target the warrior of the party showing off his legendary sword makes it easier for the bard to present the party as capable and needed. In many cases, it's an opposed roll as well.

And gradual success is also very easy to do - just check by how much a DC was beaten.

Kaelik wrote:The fact of the matter is that the fighting system doesn't reward being strong or dexterous, it rewards being smart. And a good social system isn't going to reward whomever can fast talk the DM the best, it's going to reward the smart person who uses the 'mechanics' of logical patterns to convince someone else.

Some games only reward players based on their mechanical smarts, and some games only reward players based on their social smarts, and some games reward players based on both. These are all valid choices.

The social skills required to play Magic Tea Party and convince my DM that the car salesman would give my PC a 10% discount because of his cheery disposition are in fact different to the social skills required to play Real Life and convince a car salesman to give me a 10% discount. There is a clear difference between character competence and player competence.

I disagree. The social skills are the same, just the details of the task are a bit different.

I actually see nothing wrong with Shadowrun characters making a Negotiation test to get more money for selling the prototype, or making an Etiquette test to find a friend of a friend who can get them some LSD, or making a Con test to convince the guard that they are one of the new hires and are lost. All that shit works fine. Magical teaparty works fine too, if that's what you want to do.

The part of RC's position which is untenable is that he insists that a social system is unacceptable unless it maps exclusively to magical teaparty and uses that as his sole argument that social systems cannot be made. His dismissive "social chess" argument is comical in the face of the fact that he doesn't bat an eye when players including him accept "combat chess" or "computer hacking chess."

Yes, some people prefer to teaparty various aspects of them game. Other people prefer to make things hard and fast in those areas. Things in the game that are teapartied have to be acted out, which rewards people who are out-of-game good at analogous actions. Some people like that. Others don't. But it's really obviously not the only way to do it.

Games that have more elaborate and explicit mechanical subsystems for a portion of the game will favor people who understand mathematics and the rules of the game. Games that have more freeform and less explicit mechanical subsystems for that portion reward people who are good story tellers.

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But regardless of which way you want to go, you have to admit that 4e D&D's social subsystem is a block of fucking pathetic asinine failure. If you're going to go freeform, drop the Charisma stat and the Diplomacy skill - in a freeform social system those don't do anything. If you're going to have a multi-die-roll minigame it needs to actually work.

4e D&D goes for both freeform (Make a diplomacy check: fucking make shit up because there aren't any DCs or even sample guidelines) and explicit (Enter a Diplomacy Skill Challenge: Oh Snap! They don't work!). And because neither system actually works or has sufficient grounding in the rest of the rules to even be explicable, the game fails coming and going.

But it doesn't have to. You could just cut all the social stats out of the game and make freeform immersive roleplaying the actual rules. Or you could have an actually functional skill challenge system that worked at least nearly as well as the Burning Wheel DoW system. Or you could just slap up some DCs and make people roll a die to see what they get out of social interaction and let people use that as a role playing seed or not as they saw fit. There are lots of ways to handle subsystems in an RPG, and like it or not: talking to people is just a subsystem. Just pick one and run with it.

-Username17

Roy wrote:What I want to know, is why the fucking fuckity fuck is RC being a 4.Failtard?

He has always argued that MTP is the best social system, you're just a nubcannon who only got here recently.

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MTP is a perfectly good system for social situations. Likewise its a perfectly good system for combat too. Its not a system I'd pay for but it is workable depending on what you want.

Kaelik wrote:Or we can say he has no logical grounds for treating combat and social situations differently in his game except that one of those is obviously stupid, and the other is only subtly stupid.

Premise: I don't enjoy die rolling in social situations.

Conclusion: MTP social situations.

This is the problem with applying logic to personal preferences, the preference is a premise and the logical action is to follow it. RPGs are a game and playing them in a way that you enjoy is the sensible course of action.

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That said, the social chess part of his argument is stupid since it extends his preference into truth. Which we all know is dumb. A well done social system would look like a well done combat system. In other words abstracted abilities and some way to determine their success. There isn't any reason why this can't be done, Exalted sorta does it but its WW mechanics so the maths is going to be off.

Fuck you, just because I haven't commented on his Fail until now does not mean I have not noticed it until now.

Fuchs wrote:DM sets the DC, exactly. And many of the modifiers to said DC can be changed by player action - like another moving into a flanking position makes it easier to attack the target the warrior of the party showing off his legendary sword makes it easier for the bard to present the party as capable and needed. In many cases, it's an opposed roll as well.

And gradual success is also very easy to do - just check by how much a DC was beaten.

So basically what I'm hearing is that the two systems people use are:

• Magic Tea party straight up (roleplay only)
• Magic Tea party with dice (DM sets DC)

So we can pretty much agree that there is basically no codified system similar to combat. Whether the DM is setting DCs or generating an arbitrary result based on number of net hits on a SR success test, it really doesn't matter. The system is basically magic tea party either way.

So I really don't know what people are getting all bent out of shape about on me. This is just a play style preference of character skill versus player skill and that's it, because we're both using basically no true social system beyond DM fiat. It's just system is DM fiat with randomness and social skill bonuses added and mine is DM fiat period.

So pretty much as I expected, we're all using magic teaparty.

Now I could go on about why I prefer pure roleplaying versus die rolling fro social situations, but I don't even think that's what this debate is about. People seem to think that I'm running Magic teaparty and they're not, but clearly I think we're both running MTP. Just one of us is doing MTP dice variant. You would prefer to say: "You could have convinced the duke if you rolled a 17+" and I would prefer to say: "You could have convinced the duke if you mentioned that helping against the hobgoblins would weaken the dwarven houses position in the region."

And I actually think the dice system is right to use in some cases, especialyl ones where the player doesn't get any active choice. If Troglor the barbarian stares down some orcs, there's probably not a heck of a lot said in that scene, and whether he's intimidating or not should come down to what the character can do, because strategically there's just not much the player can do.

I only oppose using dice when it is used in place of player choice.

I also have a personal problem with the charisma stat in general, because it means that bards are more intimidating than barbarians. Which is just plain stupid. Personally I feel like all heroes of legend should be charismatic. You're just charismatic in different ways.