Vulcan

Re: Social effects No, he spends the phase at 0 DCV and making a soliloquy. Mechanically he's affected the same as everyone else. Roleplaying he takes it as a challenge and reacts appropriately. Then I'd expect him to be a wimp and RP him appropriately. And be not-at-all-surprised when he gets PRE attacked into uselessness, just like I'd expect a charcter with a 2 PD to get pimp-slapped into unconsciousness. That's what PRE is for, isn't it? Or are we talking about theorectical 'social defenses' for the as-yet unseen social conflcit system? Then (as the player for Gladiator did above) you come up with another reason he looses an action. Rolls on the floor laughing at the absurdity, if nothing else. Or just buy more PRE next time, if it bothers you that much. Or PRE, Defense Only (-1). That depends on the situation, I would imagine. If the two just bump into each other and they start talking, then sure, Grunt the Clobberer will probably be persuaded - unless maybe ConMan is trying to convert Grunt to pacifism. On the other hand, if ConMan has conned Grunt out of everthing he had, including his wife and family, and Grunt is Berserk and coming for payback, he's not going to listen to ConMan's fancy words, and ConMan had better start dodging rather than talking. If Grunt's player is playing his character appropritately, then there should be no problem. If he isn't, then he's guilty of abusing the system and is no better than the GM who sets the PC's up against a villian they cannot even hurt, much less defeat. I suspect statistical analysis will show the people who die falling in the kitchen break their necks or crush their skulls on the edges of counters, while the guy who falls from the third-story window and survives merely landed more-or-less on his feet. Broken bones, sure, but not dead. Look, it has been quantified. And if a player consistently ignores the result of the current social resolution system, they aren't good players - at least not in the context of this system.

Re: Social effects

Re: Social System I think that would be incredibly cumbersome and make roleplaying take just as long as combat - it would really bog down the game, in my opinion. YMMV, of course.

Re: Social System

Re: Social System That is a quite interesting system. Not sure how one would go about generalizing it for all genres, but it is thought-provoking. And since it is first and foremost based on the player roleplaying his character, I actually kinda like it! However, I would point out that it is not a 'new' Social Conflcit mechanic, it is an adjunct to the existing Interaction Skill System.

Re: Social effects Emphasis mine. When the GM dictates character reactions, then there is no reason for the player to be there. Dictating the character's reactions is the whole and entire reason the player is there. When the GM assumes that role himself, the player is totally unnecessary to the situation. And indeed, the GM should get rid of that player - and all the other players too, because what he wants to do it tell a story to my friends, not play a roleplaying game with my friends.

Re: Social effects It breaks me out of the game world. I do not see that as an improvement. Like I said, for combat I work around it. I didn't come to the gaming table to act out repeatedly beating up my friend the GM. (That's what Belegarth is for! ) I came here to play an action-packed role playing game. So for combat, mechaincs are a necessity. For roleplaying, I think mechanics just get in the way. But hey, if that's what floats your boat, go for it. Just don't expect me to join you for it.

Re: Social effects Let's compare apples to apples, not apples to orangutans here, shall we?

Re: Social effects Roleplaying goes on, the player rolls his Interaction skill, the GM judges the results based on the margin of sucess or failure, and more roleplaying ensues. I look at it as the system getting out of the way of the roleplaying, and it is an important feature of the HERO System to our group. 15+ INT perhaps? 15+ PRE? He lacks the Gullible Disad? I defined him as being a shrewd operator and built him appropriately? Which brings up another point - how many points would a character have to spend to have reasonable social defenses in such a system? And wouldn't having to spend those points there make the character a wuss in a physical confrontation? Or are you advocating another round of 'point creep' which can result in bigger and more unbalancing Combat Monsters who go well out of their way to avoid even a hint of social conflict? (Or worse - social monsters who you simply cannot defeat because they talk you into doing yourself in...) A good GM tells the player 'your character is deeply affected by the PRE attack - he looses a phase. How do you react?' Then the player can RP what he feels is appropriate for the effect. "Shocked into inaction" is pretty common. "Stoically braces and stands up to it" is also pretty common. One character with who found everything funny would 'laugh it off' for a phase. "Cowering in fear" is pretty rare, because characters in our group tend to have PRE in the 20's and even if they are 'shocked,' they are rarely terrified. But at all times, even though mecahnically the effects are the same, the player retains the ability to choose how the charcter reacts within the mechanics of the PRE attack. And yes, the same thing tends to happen to NPC's as well. You're comparing physical - which is quantifiable - to social - which really is not. It's beyond apples and oranges to compare the two. So someone should be able to persaude Superman to support Lex Luthor for President then? That is the logical conclusion to where you're going with this. With wiggle room for things like character concept and situational modifiers. Yes, the current rules work quite well for that. You make a good point there. However, (Granted, in my experience rather than as a universal truth) even good GM's tend to use 'hard' social resolution systems to lead characters around simply because the option exists for them to do so.

Re: Social effects Because playing Craven the Coward is probably not going to be a whole lot of fun? Because I gave my character a 20+ PRE I expect him to not wet himself when he's being shot at? Because I didn't take the Abject Coward psych limit? Long and short, this is the HERO System, not the WIMP System. Because there is a system in place already that works quite well? PRE attacks for shock value, Interactions skills for more lasting effects, neither are permanent, and both allow a certain amount of wiggle room for the player to make decisions for the character (PRE attacks may mean he cannot implement those decisions right away, though! ).

Re: Social effects

Re: Social effects Sure. If what I'm trying to manipulate the NPC into doing is that far out of character for them, I have no problem with the attempt to manipulate them failing. That means I was too pushy and it didn't work - just like someone trying to push someone into a situation they really don't want to be in in real life often fails too. After all, seducing a nun should be really, really hard, or even practically impossible.

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED To each their own, I suppose. As I pointed out earlier, if a character spends a lot of time aborting actions for defense, then them having a high SPD is a lot less of an issue.

Re: Social effects I think the problem I'm having with all this is that I see the current rules as being quite adequite for the system. Sure, the Interaction skills are not completely binding on PC's. Guess what? That's actually a good thing. Otherwise the GM can just make a roll, and the PC's blithely have to follow the Pied Piper down the plot railroad whether it makes sense for their conceptualization of their charcter or not. Now if a player is flat out ignoring every roll the GM makes (GM: "She made her Seduction roll by 10, what are you doing to do?" Player: "Yawn and ignore her.") then the player is not doing his job. The player's job is to play his character, based on his visualization of it, in the world that the GM has created and is running. And sometimes, that is going to run a bit counter to the character's best interests. So the player needs to be ready to roll with it - even run with it if he thinks it will be fun - much of the time, in the interest of fair play. That way when he digs in his heels at something he percives as important about his character (going back to the original example - GM: "She makes her Seduction roll by 10, what are you going to do?" the player - whose character is happily married and very dedicated to his wife - now has the wiggle room to stammer out an apology and run home to his wife... or maybe go along with the seduction because he thinks it might be fun to play out some of the tension that would bring to his charcter's relationship to his wife) then the GM can understand and let it ride, because he was a good sport about the last several times the Interaction skill rolls turned against him. All that would be lost if the GM says "She made her Sedction roll by 10, you are heading over to her place to get laid."

Re: Social effects Exactly. And a 'social resolution system' that forces his character to react in specific ways at the GM's whim is not going to solve that. The problem there is with the player, not the game system.

Re: Social effects I'll be commenting on this (via editing) shortly, but I want to read the whole thread first... Edit: Nevermind, Markdoc covered it quite completely in post #16.

Re: Hero Philosophy - SPEED In the campaigns I've been in, the SPD range of the PC's is generally pretty flat. In the high-powered one, 5-6 was the norm with the occasional 4 or 7. The current, lower-powered game the average is 4-5, 6 being considered really fast. Having said that, I think SPD ranges really depend heavily on the genre, the group, and the PC's concept and builds. I tend to build characters with higher SPD than average - but then, my average character tends to be very much on the low side for defenses, so out of (for example) 6 phases, I seem to be aborting on 3-4 of them, so my effective SPD is actually lower than the 4 SPD Brick, who gets to act on all of his phases. That is something to take into account when determining if you should let a character have an above-average SPD. If he's spending all of his time aborting to avoid getting creamed, let him have it.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... It's cool, man, it's a friendly kind of grief. Like a lot of comic book heroines, she's... pretty overdeveloped. And then you expose her to a bunch of gamer geeks, this is kind of the thing you have to expect. Besides, she's

Re: Order of the Stick Because (s)he wants the rest of the Order of the Stick to be there to witness the victory of magic.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Not to mention Darkwing Duck!

Re: Help with gear They'd be better off using M-16's. Or the new Light .50's that are coming out...

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Goliath was from our time?

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? The only thing that comes to mind is 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall...'

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? Ah. And he had no idea what the swords of the era looked like, I assume.

Re: Odd Swords -- Real or Fantasy? I've heard the name, but I have no idea who that is...