Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony
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Social mechanic

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Prof. Charles Hoofington
sidhe3141
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Social mechanic Empty Social mechanic

Post  sidhe3141 Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:38 am

(rough draft for this mechanic)
You can enter a discussion with any creature or creatures you can communicate with, as long as they are willing and able to listen and respond to you. You start a discussion with a goal (something you are working towards), 25 resolve points, and 5 cool points. These work sort of like hit points, but are a bit different.

Resolve
Resolve measures your determination to complete a goal. Damage to resolve is called doubt. When you reach 0 resolve, you replace your Goal with one that the character (or effect, if you're dealing with something like an enchanted poppy field that makes anypony in it just want to sleep) who dropped it to 0 decides (within reason), and gain 1d4 resolve.
You regain all resolve after you have been out of discussion for 15 minutes.

Cool
Cool measures your character's composure and general ability to ignore doubt. When you take doubt, you subtract your cool from it. Damage to cool is called stress. If your cool drops to 0, you become stressed out, which has a few harmful effects:
  • If you are stressed out, you cannot take further stress. Each time you would take stress, you instead take a blanket -1 penalty to all skill checks, and rolls for damage, stress, and doubt. This penalty lasts until you regain cool.
  • While stressed out, you take the most direct approach possible to reaching your goal. You cannot attempt to negotiate if you can just take what you're after, and deception attempts automatically fail.

You regain all cool after you have been out of discussion for 1 minute.

Goal
Your goal is a sentence describing what you are working toward, and what actions you plan to take after the discussion. This can change during the discussion as a result of losing resolve. After the discussion, you act on your goal.

Discussing
Discussion works much like combat. Initiative is rolled the same way, and characters take turns using their talents to inflict stress and doubt. You start with 4 PiPs, like in normal combat, and can use them to power talents. However, special moves never take effect, and there are, as yet, no status conditions other than stressed out.

Talents
You get the following talent for free. It does not count against your total of 8, nor against your 5 equipped.
[0]Talk
Make a Persuasion check, opposed by your target's Perception. If you succeed, choose one: Your opponent takes 1d8 doubt, or your opponent takes 1 stress.

In addition, you can take any of the following talents in your talent pool:

[+1]Calm Center
You regain 1 cool.

[+1]Redouble
You regain 1d8 resolve.

[-1]Prank
One target takes 2 stress.

[-1]Some Things Are Worth Fighting For
One ally regains 1d10 resolve.

[-2]Do You Know Who I Am?
One target takes 1d10 doubt. You regain 1 cool.

[-2]Nuisance
All characters other than you take 2 stress and 1d8 doubt.

[-4]Meditation
All allies regain 2 cool and 1d10 resolve.

[-4]Cutting Words
All foes take 1d10 doubt and 1 stress.

[-8]Deprogram
This talent can only be used on a creature that has changed its goal due to lack of resolve in the past 24 hours. You offer the creature a chance to return to its original goal. If it does, its goal changes to what it was before the most recent time the creature reached 0 resolve, and it loses all doubt and stress. If the creature chooses not to return to its original goal, the PiPs and action are wasted.

Discussion in Combat
It is entirely possible that you may end up having to talk someone down or trying to goad an enemy into doing something unwise. In this case, run a combat and a discussion at the same time. All talents take the same time, whether they are used for discussion or for combat, unless stated otherwise; and PiPs are interchangeable. In addition, any combatant in a discussion may take a point of stress to end a single effect that a save can end, or may gain hit points by taking an equal amount of doubt.

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Post  Prof. Charles Hoofington Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:11 am

First thought- oh hey, social combat.
Second thought- this is quite awsome.
third though- this is realy awsome

On combat- making pips interchangealble is risky, as a cany player could just spam redouble when talking to a nonhostile npc before droping a high powered high cost attack, however i can not think of a good alternative, beyond keeping them seperate, and yet we have evidence of the two being used together in the first episode- dash vs the shadow bolts.

Also, i feel there should be a bonus for roleplaying your discusion (a small one however as not every one is a great debater) because that helps build immersion into the game and is quite fun both for the speaker and the other players watching. However, peopel like myself who cant adaquatley roleplay a debate (heck, i have trouble holding a real life conversation!) might feel slighted by this. Maybe leave it to the PH on a case by case thing.
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Post  SilentBelle Sun Aug 12, 2012 12:20 pm

The problem I have with this system is that it relies very heavily upon the character's persuasion skill, which makes sense as it's a verbal war-zone. Also it seems like this type of encounter will take awhile, and I wonder at it's effectiveness when you have one party trying to convince one single NPC by means of this system.

Also shouldn't there be a way to make the conversation come to a stand still? Since I know that many debates in real life, in fact, I'd argue most debates, end with no side giving in. What if you put a 'Turn limit' on the encounter. That way, suppose the party got into one of these encounters and they are doing a steady job, keeping all their allies in good condition, but after 10 turns they only managed to 'defeat' 1 opponent. Then the skirmish of words concludes and out of the group of people they had been arguing with, there's now one that's willing to listen to them/help them out.

I like the concept, but it's kind of delving into the territory of mixing the out-of-combat and the combat section. I don't know if persuasion as a skill merits a whole 'battle system' of it's own. Still I want to see where this idea goes and what the rest of the community thinks of it.
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Post  Ramsus Sun Aug 12, 2012 2:27 pm

Hmmm, personally I prefer just RPing when it comes to talking to people but, sometimes you really do just have no idea what your character would say (as they have better Pesuasion than you do) so, it'd be pretty useful for situations like that. SilentBelle's idea about a turn limit on it is great (heh, I've even experienced that myself in fact haha).
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Post  Stairc -Dan Felder Sun Aug 12, 2012 3:50 pm

I think this could make a great supplement. I know I wouldn't use it in my own games, since the more people treat a conversation like a product of dice rolls - the less immersion there tends to be (as mentioned above). Also, I like to use roleplaying as a form of variety in the gameplay experience - too much combat-like-elements and things can get monotonous over hours and hours of a session.

That said, this is a cool concept and would be great to see as a supplement. It could also be used just in crucial conversations in roleplay *only* campaigns which almost never see combat, to give them the same variety that normal sessions have in terms of gameplay. With that in mind, such a system could be fantastic. sunny
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Post  Flutterknight Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:08 am

This actually kinda reminds me of Diplomacy from Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.
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