Lone Wolf Fists: Skills pt. 4, the part I dread

I'm designing out of my comfort zone with social mechanics. Partly because I abandoned them right around the time I stopped tolerating Exalted's overall design in favor of OSR games, but partly because my real-world training in business administration contains so much actual knowledge of social interaction that I fail to grasp their utility (I haven't met many NPCs I couldn't negotiate with).

There's a clear divide in the case of Power or Endurance between the player's capabilities (the "player strength") and their character's capabilities (what I've come to call "avatar strength") . The game doesn't ask players to lift heavy things to prove their character can; you can just roll dice and read the Power chart.

Social and intellectual skills have more "bleed" than that. A player could come up with a clever plan even though their character's an imbecile, for example. A well-crafted argument has real-world persuasiveness.

This bleed makes avatar social capability difficult to design. there are a lot of traps in the design, such as filtering a player's speech through a skill check. 

I hate this: The player speaks in-character and creates a perfectly convincing argument. The GM then calls for a roll; the success or failure of the roll is the sole determining factor of the efficacy of the speech.

Why make the speech? The roll was the important part. Is the speech a special tax on using social mechanics?

Why not let the argument stand? Why use avatar investment as a handicap for player competency?

You understand that this player is persuasive, right? They're just going to charm you rather than your NPCs and if they can't they'll not bother with speaking in-character. You're incentivizing them away from desirable roleplaying with this strategy.

The opposite is just as frustrating; a player makes a roll that achieves a social result, and is then expected to argue in-character to justify the roll. "Your roll persuaded them, but what did you say specifically?"

This is exactly the same; in either case you're handicapping a competent part of the player/avatar dynamic by limiting it to the weakness of the other half.

I prefer an approach that realizes the best of both worlds; sometimes the avatar's competency leads, sometimes the player's.

Under this approach, there's a new problem, but one that I think is fundamental to game design: there is a double-reward for player competency.

Let me explain: say there are two players who make two mechanically balanced characters. Player A is a social dynamo, with impressive charisma and negotiation skills, while player B is socially awkward. Player A's character is a powerful swordsman, while player B's character is a charismatic dilettante with poor combat skills.

Player A can rely on BOTH his player -strength of negotiation and his avatar-strength of fighting, while player B can ONLY rely on his avatar-strength of negotiation. Clearly player A will have a larger potential for overcoming challenges then player B.

There's a clear imbalance here, but there's not a clear solution; it's not even totally clear that a "solution" is required. If, after all, total party competency is used as a measurement rather than comparing individual player/avatar effectiveness, then player A's competencies are a clear asset to the party.

The "filtering through a roll" design above is an attempt to rectify this dilemma, but I feel like it's wrongheaded. Avatar construction and design is simply another player skill; you prioritizing the skill you want to reward in a way injurious to a broader and more natural game appeal.

The fundamental problem of life itself not creating human beings in a comprehensibly balanced way is something that can't really be corrected within the context of an RPG. The best you can do is excise all player skills aside from a very narrow band, and that leads me to Castelvania 2:

The design of the first game challenged you, as a player. It required you to possess or acquire the skills necessary to progress deeper in to the game. But it rewarded you twice for this; first in the slow drip of additional later-game content, and secondly in a constant feeling of earned satisfaction in overcoming challenges with your planning, quick reaction, and real-world game mastery.

Castelevania 2 challenged your investment of time. the longer you played, the easier your avatar could kill enemies, the more mistakes you could make, the more powers you unlocked. In this way, it effectively un-trained your actual skill. You were incentivized to "farm" by repeating challenges of the same difficulty, to lower the challenge as more content was unlocked.

This is a stark example of player strength against avatar-strength. They're beautifully compared poles of the extremes of both.

I prefer to avoid both poles, because I think both approaches to playing a game have validity. In real life, we are not martial-arts superheroes; I have to accept some degree of avatar strength as valid design space, even if my natural tendency as a designer of games is to challenge player skill.

A well-designed RPG does both by embracing the "best of both worlds" approach; sometimes player skill leads, sometimes you need to lift a dump truck and there's just no real-world analog so you use avatar strength.

In an area of bleed like social rules, having a conversation about this is very important. I don't have a solid scientific measurement for "what a human being can accomplish with social skills"" as much as I have one for mechanical things like speed or lifting.

Because of that, the tiers have a more crunchy "what you can make a society do in the short/long run" vibe to them. This should be understood to be a pure expression of avatar strength; these same effects (or even far greater) can be achieved just by speaking in-character.

They're a tool that is used in addition to natural player skill, allowing them another way to overcome challenges. I even advise GMs to allow players to just roll rather than say anything; avatar social capability can lead, and this is a fine and fun way to play.

It's still not "balanced" in the sense of balancing player skill against other players; but then, what game could ever actually do that?

Heart

The skill of empathy, charm, and persuasiveness. When characters need to communicate, deceive another socially, or convince another of an argument, they use this skill. Use Heart when you must:

·         Influence many people at once

·         Lie, directly or surreptitiously

·         Use or shape the rules of culture

Heart Effect Chart

Rank 0 / Mortal: Unrolled Sway the opinion of a single mortal or small group (1-10), tell a white lie, follow social customs in your home culture.

Rank 1 / Capable Mortal: Result 10-19 Sway the opinion of a group of mortals (10-50), convincingly lie through your teeth, shame others in your home culture or follow basic customs in an alien culture

Rank 2 / Peak Mortal: Result 20-29 Sway the opinion of a mortal family/ large group (50-100), maintain a convincing false identity, shame others in a foreign culture or establish customs in your native culture

Rank 3 / Enhanced: Result 30-39 Sway the opinion of a large mortal organization (100-1000), seamlessly replace another person through perfect impersonation, establish customs in an alien culture or become a cultural tour-de-force in your own

Rank 4 / Superhuman: Result 40-49 Sway the opinion of an entire community of mortals (1000-10,000) tell a lie so convincing that another doubts their sanity, become a cultural tour-de-force in an alien culture or be an invisible master of your own, controlling cultural norms and trends from the shadows

Rank 5 / Titanic: Result 50-59 Sway the opinion of a mortal nation (10k-100k), engineer a convincing false reality of lies for a single unfortunate person, “program” cultural norms such that they return to a general template of your design

Rank 6 / Minor God: Result 60-69 Sway the opinion of a mortal empire (100k-1 million), make a lie real through psychosomatic conditioning (you could spread a rumor someone is sick, and they would be so convinced that their health would deteriorate), program a cultural to remain in unchanging cultural stasis indefinitely (the culture would become backwards luddites, rejecting any innovation or deviance from its societal expectations)

…

Rank 7 / Demigod: Result 70-79 Sway the opinion of a mortal civilization (1 million-1 billion), Lie to reality, creating physical changes in the world (you could lie to a plant convincing it that it had been watered, or lie to a mountainside that it is climbable when in fact it’s smooth as glass; this replicates Rank 4 effects from physical skills or weaker effects), program a society to inevitably generate people of certain personalities, skills, and destiny, effectively creating near-perfect generational replacements for people of your choosing

 Rank 8 / Major God: Result 80-89 Sway the opinion of a mortal planet (1 billion-10 billion), lie to Dharma so that you steal another’s destiny (for example, you could take their Zui Consequences for them, paying their kharmic debts with your own effort), program society so perfectly that Dharma recognizes the rightness of your rule (this create a Defining Dharma centered around upholding your society’s ideals)

Roleplaying

Speaking in-character is possible (and encouraged) without any use of mechanics. Characters may debate, bargain, intimidate, bluff, or otherwise interact socially with other characters without ever touching dice. Simply say what your character says, either directly (by adopting their persona and voice) or indirectly (by saying “my character says…” and describing their statements)

If other characters are convinced by their words, then your aims might be achieved through pure roleplaying. This is a viable and fun strategy, especially if you happen to have some real-world negotiation skills!

Keep in mind, however, that the GM is the arbiter of the attitudes, motivations, emotional state, and other social elements of Non-Player Characters (NPCs). It will be up to them if a given NPC is swayed by your words.

NPCs should be portrayed in a consistent, comprehensible way; they tend to pursue their own interests without taking undue risks, as normal people do. The promise of greater reward generally convinces people to take greater risks; a guide might take you through a dangerous shortcut if offered enough payment, for example.

Players have full agency over their character’s feelings, ideas, motivations, and actions. A convincing NPC or other PC might make any argument they wish, but a stubborn player can choose to disagree in character. This is perfectly acceptable, and in fact is quite realistic (intractable people exist, after all!)

Whenever a player wishes their character to use their eloquence, persuasion or deceit in addition to or in place of their own, that is when mechanics should be used. This is also perfectly acceptable; even a socially awkward player might play a paragon of charisma!

Influencing mortal NPCs with Heart actions

Swaying public opinion

Mortal human beings with no Degree are susceptible to simple manipulation through Heart actions.

Large enough crowds naturally contain many different groups with varying ideas; appealing to larger numbers of people becomes exponentially more challenging. This is why the Effect Chart describes ever larger groups of people that can be influenced as one.

Mortals must be exposed to the message for it to take root. It might be a speech delivered in person, a broadcasted message, or even a written message.

Only characters that understand the message being conveyed are influenced. This means that, in addition to the difficulties of broadcasting the message to large numbers of people, lingual or cultural barriers to communication may muddle the message and ruin its persuasiveness.

Those effected by such speech adopt the argument as a moral truth of their universe; the philosophical point made becomes a cultural norm for them. This doesn’t mean that they always act in accordance with their newfound virtue; only that they recognize the speaker’s point as virtuous and desirable.

Heart actions need not be spoken aloud; they can be written, or otherwise communicated. Manuscripts containing powerful persuasive arguments from ancient Heart masters make up the bedrock of most societies, philosophies, and religions.

Lying

All characters are susceptible to lying. Deception is one-way, mechanically speaking; there is no mechanic that uncovers a lie, only one to create it. Falsehoods, once firmly established, tend to remain. However, contradictions and prior knowledge of deceptions can unravel a lie like a whisper in the wind.

NPCs treat lies that convince them as facts; they don’t tend to dispute them and treat those that do as simple-minded or paranoid.

PCs however, are more complex; even though the character might have no reason to doubt a lie, the player certainly does; they know that it’s been generated by a Heart action!

Players are the final arbiter of what their character believes and how they act. A lie might be powerful enough to convince physics and the universe, but a PC may still doubt it. Of course, they’ll be behaving in a way that puzzles NPCs, but its best to let the player balance the harm of swallowing a known lie from the social harm of doubting it.

However, players will not always know that they have encountered a deception. For example, if they meet an imposter, they have no reason to disbelieve their apparent (and false!) identity. How does a GM handle these situations without harming the bond of trust between them and the players?

In the case of an ongoing deception, it’s advised to give the players clues so that they can figure out the deception with their puzzle-solving skills. Three clues are an acceptable amount, delivered over three scenes of interacting with the deception (or faster, if you’re feeling generous).

This gives players a fair chance to uncover the lie, without resorting to violently interrogating every person they meet.

Physical reality and fate are susceptible to lies of Rank 7 and 8 respectively. This peculiarity of deception deserves further scrutiny!

Reality can be deceived, but just barely. A character loudly speaks to rocks and shrubs and weather, and if they achieve a Rank 7 or greater Heart action, they can just bluff physical reality.

This can accomplish minor physical phenomena that are technically impossible; you could make a dry flower grow by convincing it that it had been watered or argue a rock into believing it was metal and therefore creating a magnet.

As a general limitation to this, the phenomena created shouldn’t be a greater effect than can be achieved with a Rank 4 or lower Power, Agility, or Endurance action. This is a broad umbrella, and GMs are encouraged to allow the most creative and entertaining results to stand.

Dharma can be fooled with a Rank 8 result. Here’s how that works:

When you trick destiny with a deception of that power, it thinks that you are the person you proclaim to be. This allows you to temporarily share all their Dharmas, even their defining one. You also pool Zui. This gives you several new options:

·         You can spend your own Zui, or theirs, to punish either them or yourself (if you’re feeling generous).

·         You gain a Kharmic reward every time they earn one (they still earn the reward, you just benefit as well)

·         You can gain Kharmic rewards from following their triggers. You can even get the Kharma from a negative trigger, then spend the resulting Zui to punish them!

You are still limited by the normal rules for Kharma and Zui acquisition (one per scene, per Dharma)

Cultural Norms. Trends, and traditions

The pattern of behaviors that inform a mortals’ daily life are their culture. Cultures can be manipulated by a sufficiently skilled master: they declare their opinion publicly and use a Heart actions of an appropriate Rank. Society disperses the new norm through gossip, word-of-mouth, viral memetics, and other surprisingly rapid and reliable methods.

Culture can be manipulated in the following ways:

Fashions (Rank 1-2): Fashions are short-term trends of behavioral expectations. What to wear, what constitutes acceptable topics of conversation and similar social expectations can be shaped with these actions. Those flouting the fashions are considered uncultured, clueless, awkward, and uninformed, and NPCs will respond to them appropriately.

Norms (Rank 3-4): Norms are long-term behavioral expectations. If a fashion is a fancy hat, a norm is a fancy military uniform. Those acting outside of norms are seen as having committed a serious faux-pas and are considered extremely rude and tasteless. They are generally blacklisted and denied societal advancement and benefits.

Traditions (Rank 5-6): Traditions are norms that outlive the generation that created them. They are held in an almost religious regard. Those violating tradition are considered actively hostile to society, and often face both social and criminal reprimands.

Castes (Rank 7-8): A Caste is a position and social rank both expected and cultivated by society; kings, princes, generals etc are castes. Societies with a caste structure generate talented and capable individuals to fill those castes; once per caste per generation. If the caste member’s life is cut short, they are replaced by the next most qualified individual born in that generation.

If a Rank 8 result is achieved, the GM should work with you to create a suitable Dharma for the caste you create. Those inheriting that Cast will inevitably achieve Degree 1+ from their dalliance with cosmic destiny.

Building Emotional Imbalances in powerful NPCs

Heart cannot directly influence characters of Degree 1+. Such champions of self-mastery are beyond the grosser influence that sways the mortal horde. However, they may be targeted for social influence in a more insidious way.

In addition to striking with fist and blade, characters may use their Heart skill to injure their foe emotionally. This represents powerful but subtle manipulation of the character’s feelings and ideas by a skilled speaker; it is harmful and manipulative, injuring the target’s psyche.

·         This manipulation follows the standard rules for attacks, except the Heart skill is used on both attack and defense.

·         Normal Techniques cannot boost or defend against such manipulation, but Social Gupt Kala can be used instead. Gupt Kala are covered in the Magic section.

Rather than injuring a target’s Health, a successful social attack creates an Emotional Imbalance (or worsens one, see below). It does this by building Aggravation.

·         Aggravation is the emotional equivalent of damage. For every point by which your social attack exceeds the foe’s social defense, a point of Aggravation is generated.

·         Aggravation works “backwards” from health; where health begins as a series of unfilled boxes, Aggravation builds as it is generated. Every 10 Aggravation increases the Emotional Imbalance by 1 Rank

·         Before the first 10 Aggravation, the Imbalance is at Rank 0; this means it does not have any mechanical penalties. Such minor Imbalances are too weak to influence a character’s behavior.

Additional social attacks may continue to build Aggravation on an existing Social Imbalance or may be used to create a new one. A character may have a total of 3 unique Social Imbalances at one time.

Once the Imbalance is established, it behaves in the normal way: see the Imbalances section for full rules on Social Imbalances.