Vulcan

Re: Social effects Okay, let's start with some definitions. When I refer to a 'hard' social system, I mean one where when a social skill is used sucessfully, the character is affected and thinks what he is being influenced to think is correct, and therefore must act accordingly. There would need, therefore, to be numerous rules to account for the vast variety of psych limits, player/GM attitudes, and the inherent vagarity of social interaction in the first place. When I refer to a 'soft' social system, I mean one where there is some wiggle room for both the GM and the Players to judge if and how much the character believes what he is being influenced to believe and play appropriately. Personally I prefer a 'soft' social system works best with the 'rock hard' physical system in HEROs, since having a 'hard' social system would drag an already rather slow-running game out quite a bit - in addition to the philosophical differences I have also stated. So to add a 'hard' social system on top of the 'hard' physical system, and a game that already has a reputation for being vastly over-complicated just gets a worse one. A hard system presented as an option, or in a supplement? Sure, have at. I'll bend that far. A hard system as a default rule? I don't think so.

Re: Social effects Yes, but in the examples given, it always seems to be the core aspect of the situation that is given the roll. So Jack believes that Lily has fallen and now, based on that belief, doing anything other than shooting her is acting out of character. Even if the player thinks that Jack would believe in her no matter what, because the roll says that Jack honestly believes she has turned. Let's look at it another way: Lily has succeded mightily on her persason roll against Darkness, and is acting in a way that an old deciever finds convincing. Jack is seeing the exact same thing, and does not have half the experience in deception and corruption - he's little more than an overgrown feral child, after all. By any sane standard, Lily's acting should have him convinced as well, even without Puck hissing in his ear to shoot! But Jack's player believes in Lily's essential goodness, and believes that she won't, in fact, do what she is saying. Reducing it to a roll and saying 'Jack believes Lily has turned' takes the choice out of the player's hands, because if Jack truly belives she has, then he has no choice but to shoot to save the world.... And damns it instead, because the dice said so.

Re: Social effects Well, I do recall saying several times in the 6E discussion (and a couple times here, I think) that if such a system were to be included in 6E as a clearly optional rule that I would have no problem with it. I kept getting back 'I want it as a core, default rule, not an option,' from one particular poster. That kind of makes me a bit... stubborn. I am willing to compromise; why isn't this person?

Re: Social effects There being a world of difference between a walking stick - even an elaborately carved one - and a sword; in that one is a... stick, and the other a lethal weapon with no other real purpose in that setting. He would never have been able to pull of getting Glamdring into the hall instead.

Re: Social effects The problem is that when you use dice to resolve a conflict, you have reduced it to a binary solution: you made the roll, or you didn't. So all the shades of maybe-maybe not that are present in social interactions are lost in the yes/no mechanics of the die roll.

Re: Social effects Another good summary of my entire point. Hard sysytem or soft, if the Players and GM are not willing to work together in a reasonable manner, there is no reason for any of them to be there.

Re: Social effects This is an excellent point, and assuming that a 'social confict system' sticks closely to these levels of comparison, I actually might not mind such a system. What I have experienced is that social conflict systems tend to very quickly escalate to the Killed / Convinced to do something that makes the character unplayable (including no longer wanting to play that character) level very quickly. A system that corrects that flaw I might actually consider 'playable.'

Re: Social System Thanks, Mark, that's EXACTLY the point I've been trying to make all along. The existing system works just fine; I see no need for extensive changes. If you want optional rules for 'more detailed resoultion' then that's your perogative. I look at the current system as 'supporting intensive roleplaying,' which is exactly how I like it. YMMV, of course.

Re: Conan vs. Elric

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? That's the hardest part of coming up with anything original nowadays. Even if you've never heard of something that sounds like what you're trying to do, there is so much fantasy/sci-fi fiction out there that it's likely that someone else has already done what you're thinking of.

Re: The Enterprise Project Wow... just... wow. Someone has waaaaaaaayyyyy too much time on their hands. I'm kinda jealous that they have that much disposable income too....

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Obviosuly he was a hobbit Phsyical Adept.

Re: Social effects End of the day, if the GM is telling me what my character feels/does, then what am I even doing there?

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Oh, yes, the kris has all the same sort of legends about it that the katana does for the Japanese, or Excalibur for the English. It might make for a fascinating side-plot for the blade to talk to your protagonist in her sleep...

Re: Social effects The smart husband pulls a 'Living Daylights' and spares his wife... but then, not everyone is smart, are they?

Re: Social effects The rules of Vampire - specifically the granite-hard social rules - make that sort of thing the norm. Heck, it's even encouraged in one of the books! That's why I don't play Vampire any more, and I resist attempts to bring such things into HEROs. You should go check it out. It's pretty well thought out and manages to be thorough without becoming too 'hard.' On the other hand it also looks a bit cumbersome for my tastes - but then, I think the 'fast and loose' system of the current rules works perfectly.

Re: Social effects Bad play encompasses both bad players and bad GM's. If I hadn't intended to include bad GM's, I would have just said 'bad players.' Well, if it's going to be a specific and encompassing 'hard' system, then it's going to have specific examples for modifiers, isn't it? Otherwise it gets vague and both the GM's and the players can nerf the system through 'soft' interprettions, and that isn't what you seem to be looking for. The rules are not supposed to prevent abuse - that is the job of the participants, because what I might find abusive might just be the way you play. And so long as you are having fun and I don't have to put up with it, that's fine. But that's why (for example) Transimensional has a Stop Sign on it, because it can be abused (for exampe, I EDM to another dimension and use Transdimensional attack to fight from a position of total immuntity...), At any rate, if the rules you are proposing cannot even claim to be better that the rules that exist... what's the point? No, I wouldn't allow it (granted, from my Point of View) to be abused. Super-skill builds are not supposed to go into MP's because then they get too cheap for the effect they are giving. Granted, nothing in the rules prevents this, but then, that's the job of the GM, isn't it? Then why does the social system need to be 'hard' in the first place? The point of a hard social system is for one character to be able to force a certain type of reaction out of another character regardless of the intent of the player of that character. In short, it not only makes the abuse possible, but the abuse is almost the whole point of it! So rolling some dice and saying 'the dice say you're going to do it that way' is somehow better?

Re: Social System That's a really nice, well-thought-out system. Not sure I'd enjoy playing it, but I have been wrong about such things before. At any rate, nice job, Sean! Have some rep.

Re: Social effects No, it does not. That is because the villians cannot Persuade the heroes to help them rob the bank, like once happened in a Vampire game I watched. (Yes, it was done with skills, not Dominate. And the GM for that game runs one heck of a Champions game, so he wasn't a bad GM, just using a bad system.)

Re: Social effects In the HERO System, it is not the place of the rules to prevent bad play. Otherwise every option in the rules that could used in an abusive manner would be removed or have pages of special exceptions. Why? Because one man's 'bad play' is another's 'good clean fun.' Preventing bad play is the job of the GM and the players, because the definition of bad play changes from group to group. Besides, a 'hard' mechanic results in bad players taking actions that get them the most bonuses to what they are doing, not 'what would be in character.' But if your proposal is 'equally bad,' then what is the point of changing to something different? Now if I saw a specific mechanic that looked better than what we have now, then I would be interested in taking a closer look, maybe playing with it a bit in miniseries games, see if there are any big flaws in it waiting to happen. But changing things just to change things without regard to improvement does not strike me as all that great an idea. If I am GMing a game and a player comes to me with that 'super-skill' in a MP, without 'Requires Skill Roll' and their character not being a mentalist, they are not going to get my approval. YMMV, of course. Likewise, I would not do it as a GM, either. Because that tends to be the result in other systems with a 'hard' social conflcit system. Social skills cost no more than other skills, and can be used as a blunt intrument to force PC's to do the bidding of other people in the game, period. True enough.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Yeah, there's really only so many ways you can take a long piece of metal and make it effective at inflicting penetrating trauma on the human body. Out of curiousity, have you consiered giving your protagonist a kris-style blade?

Re: Social effects And that is true in the existing 'soft' social interaction system that exists now. If you want 'hard' effects, buy Mind Control with appropriate limitations... and pay the extra points for it.

Re: Social effects The one absolute that should be in the HERO System is that the PC is under the control of the player. If the GM can take control of the PC, then what is the player there for? And the equally bad player who inappropriately resists every Interaction skill that comes their way is the primary objection to to not having a 'hard' social conflict system (as opposed to the 'soft' social conflict system currently in the HERO System). We're both talking about bad participants here. We're just arguing over which one is worse, and needs to be reigned in by the rules more. Granted. Yeah, but that's a power, and likely a lot more expensive than a 3-5 point skill. Unless it's bought as a 'super skill' in which case there is that 'Requires Skill Roll' limitation, where you take a -1 penalty to the roll for each 10 AP of power, which can make the roll really unreliable unless you also spent a boatload on the skill... Oh, wait, I mentioned this in my arguements against needing a new social conflict system back in the 6E thread - we already have this mechanic, it's been tested extensively and is not abusive, so why do we need a new one?

Re: Social effects That's in the nature of Wolverine, not the nature of the HERO System. I thought the 'no absolutes' meta-rule referred to, well, things actually in the rules... Granted. Personally I think otherwise, but sure, I can see how you would have a different opinion. If that's appropriate for the character in question, yes. Frankly I doubt most of us play such... antisocial characters - the point of the game is roleplaying, after all, which is hard to do if your character doesn't interact with anyone. You may be right there. But the proponenets of a 'hard' social conflict system always seem to trot out the 'PC's can ignore the roll all the time' argument. And a player who does that is just as quilty of being a bad player as the GM who uses such a system to railroad his players is of being a bad GM. So we're both looking at bad participants in the game as our reasons to support/oppose a 'hard' social conflict system. Perhaps our argument isn't about the system, it's about the bad participants...

Re: Social effects No, he likely won't be. But I'll at least grant him bladder control until something like Cthulu shows up... Can he be surprised, shocked, or jolted out of an action by a scary PRE attack? Sure. Can he be intimitated? Let's see the situation, perhaps he will be. Will he grit his teeth and act like a hero afterwards, no matter how scared he is (barring Mind Controls to the contrary)? Yes, because that's what a real hero does. He controls his fear, rather than let the fear control him. Like I said, a scary PRE attack can jolt him out of an action. I, as the player, decide whether he acts heroically or unheroically. The dice don't tell me my character 'runs screaming like a little girl.' If a system can force charcter attitudes and actions, sooner or later it can force inappropriate attitudes and actions. You really can't make Wolverine act scared - he may hesitate in the face of PRE attack, but he's not going to act scared. Period.