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. This system at first glance appears to simply be a way of allowing real time conversations and making rolls afterwards. And that's because it's essentially all it is, seeing as I feel social combat should only be a framework based around character conversations. Not the way it is now where the dialogue etc. is forcably sandwiched in around the poorly designed system itself.
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.
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.
