Class: Mediator

The Mediator
		Oration
Level	Special	Expertise Die	Knacks	Skills
1	Liaison	1d4	1	4
2	Mediation	1d6	1	6
3		1d6	2	7
4	Mediation	1d6	2	8
5		1d6	2	10
6	Mediation	1d8	2	11
7		1d8	3	12
8	Mediation	1d8	3	14
9		1d8	3	15
10	Mediator Talent	1d10	3	16
11		1d10	4	18
12	Mediator Talent	1d10	4	19
13		1d10	4	20
14	Mediator Talent	1d12	4	22
15		1d12	5	23
16	Mediator Talent	1d12	5	24
17		1d12	5	26
18	Mediator Talent	2d10	5	27
19		2d10	6	28
20	Mediator Talent	2d10	6	30

 

Ah, mediator. Social combat. Let's talk about this for a minute, shall we?

So a functional social combat system is one of the many "holy grails" of TTRPG design. There's been a whole lot of attempts at this sort of thing, and... ultimately, they all fall short.

While I could go into the various systems I've looked at - and there are quite a few out there, though they're less systems and more frameworks - let's talk about the "why" of doing this.

Phoenix Wright, or: Social Combat is the Game

One thing that I've started doing when contemplating these massive subsystems is this: what would a game with only this subsystem look like?

I've been taking this approach in my contemplations for exploration, lately, and honestly it's a really good idea. You want it to be fun, you want it to be engaging, you want it to be something that could be the whole focus of an entire campaign. If you're going to do that, the subsystem has to stand on its own: which means it needs to be every bit as complex and engaging as combat.

Ultimately I think what happens is that the variability of goal-states overwhelms the systems written for this sort of thing. Combat is simple: the goal is almost always the same, it's easy to understand, and it's easy to execute. Exploration is a bit trickier, but I think is ultimately doable, and a game with nothing but exploration would be... well, it's Ryuutama but without the weird Japanese feel going on, with more robust mechanics.

Social, though? What's the goal? What's the point?

Well, let's try to break it down. Combat's goal is "kill the other guy." Exploration's goal is "get from here to there." Social, then, might be "make people do what I want."

Bear with me, trying to consider a counterexample.

Reinventing the Wheel, or: We Already Did This

So it literally just occurred to me that we've already done this.

Yeah, Journey has a functional social combat system. It never really got all that fleshed out, but the core of it - the actual mechanics - are done, and having seen them in action before, it works out pretty well. There are some trouble spots, but maybe we can remedy those as we go, hmm?

What I'm stuck a bit on at the moment is how initiating social combat goes, and when it gets used, that sort of deal. Essentially, social encounters happen a lot more, and a lot more readily, than combat: we can't be getting into something this involved every time players want to haggle over the price of a sword, it would get absurd.

So what I'm thinking is that there is sort of like, an "opening salvo" you do for social combat: unlike combat where we roll for init when somebody draws their sword, we don't engage the social combat system until someone has made the first attack, and only if the target "survives" and you decide to try to push the issue.

Example: Bob the Bard wants to buy a sword at half price. He makes a social attack against Recette the Merchant; if he "hits" and reduces her $SOCIAL_HP to 0 or less, then he succeeds and we don't go into social combat. If he fails to bring Recette to 0 $SOCIAL_HP, he can either choose to stop pursuing that argument or press on into social combat.

Talking about Things, or: Making This Work Mechanically

So we have a system. Cool.

Couple problems, though. For one, it was written for Journey, meaning that all of its mechanical inputs are Journey. We need to fix that. For another, my thoughts on game design have come a long way since we wrote that stuff, and it could bear some simplification.

My thinking about all these skill subsystems is that each will have two derived stats. There's a rhyme and reason to that, but I won't go into it here.

So for social, I'm thinking style and clarity. Taken from here:

Style: Style is the manner in which you communicate your arguments. This is the most basic part of debating to master. Content and strategy are worth little unless you deliver your material in a confident and persuasive way.

Clarity: The ability to concisely and clearly express complex issues is what debating is all about. The main reason people begin to sound unclear is usually because they lose the “stream of thought” which is keeping them going. It is also important to keep it simple. While long words may make you sound clever, they may also make you incomprehensible.

This whole thing about two derived stats is similar to the "everybody gets two" style of game design we used for Journey, and it's here in a similar manner. For social, style is the base building block; clarity improves your stuff and makes you better.

Hmm, then we have the whole "expertise die" which... if I recall correctly that was some kind of like, hey, this task is in your wheelhouse, so you are better than other folk are, but honestly that's supposed to be represented by having skills, rather than just raw rolls? So I'm a bit perplexed, overall the general approach seems a bit haphazard right now, like I'm working from multiple design patterns simultaneously.

Clocks, Clues, and Conditionals, or: Integrating Setting and Mechanics

Here's the thing about social combat: it's a lot more fluid than most other subsystems.

Like, a domain management system, you are trying to abstractly model kingdom management: sure you might get into something like Civ, where you're micromanaging buildings and unit production, but at the end of the day it's all about the numbers. "We want better money production," you say, "so we'll set up a commercial district and build a bank."

Social, on the other flipper, is way more... integrated? In terms of how it interacts with setting elements. For instance, let's say you want to buy a sword at half price. The merchant knows you're an adventurer, and likely to spend more money later: it's an investment sort of thing, right? So you haggle (social combat) and convince her to part with it for half price. But she's expecting a return on her investment: how do we reasonably model this?

We're going to pull in a bit from Blades in the Dark, I think.