Andrix/SocialCombat
2nd Ed Social Combat is broken. There's no arguing the fact. The inability to use it in real combat time and the way in which the speed and ticks work in it being some of the most glaring problems with it and the result of these problems is that the system come first and conversations are worked round it. Personally I feel that this is the complete opposite of how it should be. Any conversation, debate or social situation should be allowed to happen with as little interferance as possible and social combat then worked around it. Because of this the system presented below is mostly non-existant; in a sense. It's only meant to actually do anything in terms of resolving attacks and keeping track of things in any circumstances where there may be disputes and a lot of the time, it should be possible to ignore it entirely with the exception of social attack resolution. A lot of this is what people are doing anyway (having conversations and making isolate rolls when needed) but it's merely an attempt at writing them up in a manner that, you know, is actually a set of rules. Oh, and I've tried to bring social and actual combat in line with each other to make them compatible.
Contents
Join Debate
In almost all circumstances there is no roll. In reality conversations don't start with multiple people all trying to talk at once, they start organically with one person opening and other people following on afterwards. Likewise I've never seen this roll implemented in a game organically. Conversations instead should just, start. One person is almost always going to be the initiator of any conversation and there's no compelling reason why it should be otherwise. In circumstances where two people do wish to start a debate or conversation at the same time then and only then is a roll made, and only by the players wishing to talk at that moment in time, not by everyone. And rolling wits + awareness doesn't seem to adequatly reflect this to me. Like combat itself, I'd give players the choice. One wishing to gain the upperhand by shouting the other character down before they've had a chance to start talking properly would roll charisma + presence for example. One wishing to cut in through being more skilled with their tongue would roll wits + socialise.
One of the larger benefits of working this way is that if you strictly keep to the social combat rules as written, you have to know from the beginning that what you're doing is going to result in a social attack so that you can all roll join debates. This allows you to move through a scene and halfway through it decide you want to make a social attack without being constrained by it.
Continuing the Conversation
Ticks and speed are done away with all together. While they arguably work well for keeping track of normal combat, restricting social encounters down to stricter units of time is stupid. A long tick works well if the character is delivering a monologue or playing a short piece of music, but is indequate at representing quick one liners, short exchanges and longer monologues or attacks. Instead, social actions take as long as they take. Whichever person is talking or acting at any given time is considered to 'have the floor' and continues to does so for as long as they want until one of two things happens.
The first is the character coming to an end of their action. At which point any other character who wishes to has the chance to take the floor. Again, in most cases this will happen completely organically, one person finishes talking an another starts as in any normal conversation. In the case of more than one person wanting to cut in after, they roll for initiative as if rolling a join debate as explained above. The winner of the opposed roll is then considered to 'have the floor,' and acts accordingly. Attacks are no longer made in the same way with one action equaling one attack (see below), so any problems that might occur as a result of people being eager to take the floor at the first oppertunity in order to make as many attacks as possible are avoided. This system in most cases will be invisible and simply allow conversations to flow without an adjudication.
The second is if someone attempts to interupt the character. In which case both the person deemed to 'have the floor' and the character attempting to gain it roll an opposed roll as above to try and keep/take control of the debate. The hardest part about this element of the system is the requirement for common sense on the part of the ST. For example, a player is going to get extremely annoyed if another character is allowed to interupt and take the floor 2 seconds into their speech, or if it happens every time they try and talk. Likewise a character shouldn't be allowed to attempt interupting another every second until they actually succeed in beating their opponent's roll. Many STs will be happy to keep control of this in a reasonable way but those who wish for a more formal way of resolving this might wish to impose rules on the frequency with which interjections can be made. Maybe giving every character a number of interuptions equal to their essence that once used up over the course of a conversation or debate are gone for that particular encounter.
There's no reason why a sensible ST can't have multiple social actions goin on at once. For example, one character could be making an attack by dancing or singing while another attempts to sway them by shouting over their act. Without having to keep track of ticks this should be easily done. They just do it at the same time.
Choosing to Make an Attack
When a character actually rolls their social attack is up to the player. They can take as much or as little time to make a point as they want, and can do it with as many breaks in having the floor as they want. The only stipulation is that they must have finished making some form of social action (just ended a part of their speech, dance, performance). This naturally would lead to players making actions as quickly as possible in order to make a high number of attacks. However, characters are only allowed to make social attack rolls with a certain intent/making a certain point, twice per social combat to prevent this. Further to this in addition to the normal stunt bonuses to players who make a certain point well or imaginatively, penalties are placed on those who don't fully develope their attack or rush what they're doing. These work in opposite way to stunts on a -1 to -3 dice scale. For example, a character who turns around to another and shouts, "white is black," then makes their attack would recieve a -3 penalty. Naturally, this doesn't stop a character with a large social pool from making the target think it is so (that's the whole point right?) Anyone who says that, but does so in such a way that would get them a stunt bonus for the manner in which they say it would recieve the stunt bonus in full without the penalty having any effect. (The balance of this aspect of the system could do with being assessed)
Once an attack has been made, if the target has been engaging in social combat with them they get access to their Dodge and Parry MDV and are given the chance to respond in a logical and fitting manner to enhance any stunt bonus their own arguements would give them. Someone who as yet hasn't made any social action would be given a chance to respond as above to make their Parry MDV applicable, or can stay quiet and use their Dodge MDV. This of course is dependent on whether anything is stopping them from responding, like a gag.
Making a social attack does not impose a penalty on your DV. The logic that making an arguement to someone makes you infact makes your viewpoint more fragile is mind bogglingly stupid. Likewise, arguing somthing adamantly would by no means make your dedication to the cause more likely to be shaken and lessen the ability to brush aside influence.
Resolving Attacks
For now these are done the same as they are in the book. This element of the system isn't perfect, due to the occasional ambiguities of what succeeding on a social attack actually does. But for now I have no succinct and easy alternative. That and the system of intimacies, motivations and vitues bolstering you defence etc. has a lot of merit to it. The idea of appearance modifiers being compared to temperance is an interesting one, though evidently apperance - temperance as a penalty won't work, due to the comparative level appearance can be raised to long term comapred to temeperance. Any suggestions would be welcome.
Social And Physical Combat
The whole incompatability between the two systems, is in short, rubbish. A simple way to manage this is to simply have the action of talking, singing or whatever the social action may be as a misc. action in normal combat. Either by itself, or as part of a flurry with attacks and other actions. The player decides whether the larger penalty from the flurry is applied to the social action or the physical action. The speed of said flurry is always the speed of the highest speed value from the physical combat and the social action has no bareing on it. The player does however have to flurry for the entire duration of the social action (though in terms of the physical combat, it counts as a new misc action every time the characters DV refreshes). In the case of short bursts of conversation a couple of sentances long, this would only require the flurry to be made until the players next tick. In the case of longer actions such as monologues or playing a piece of music, it is the ST's decision how long flurries must be maintained for. The alternative to this, in the case of prolonged pieces of speech, is for the social attacking character to make their monologue a few lines at a time, and state at the end of each action that they intend to keep the floor on their next action, and anyone wishing to interupt in between must make the opposed roll to do so.
Guard actions specifically can be flurried with a guard action. In this case the guard action is exactly the same as normal, but takes a -1 DV penalty with the social action taking a -2 dice penalty.
