Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole
There's definitely a blog post or three in this, but the one that springs to mind is very much "let's walk through the possible mechanics that already exist in GURPS, and figure out how to use each one."
Doing it as attack/defense/damage is one way. Regular and Quick Contests another. Reaction rolls a fourth (and likely the strongest given the outcomes desired).
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Yes, and Social Engineering provides options using regular contests, quick contests, and reaction rolls, and also using other abilities to aid them—by perceiving the other person's motives, by deceptive manipulation, by analogs of deceptive attack such as Irony, and by simple complementary skill rolls, for example. I'm just not convinced that you can run social interaction by an analog of combat mechanics without making it totally abstract and detached from the actual beliefs and motives of the people involved.
My working approach to mechanics, I should say, is to ask the player, "What are you doing?" or "What are you trying to accomplish?" and then look for a mechanic that fits their description. I don't usually give them a list of mechanical options and ask them to focus on that; that moves the game too far away from narrative for me. It rather makes me think of Hero Wars, which had a single mechanic for resolving everything and called for the players to first play out the abstract contest, determine who had won, and then go back and make up a narrative to fit. What I'd prefer, as far as possible, is to first do the narrative, figure out where to apply game mechanics for success or failure, victory or defeat, within the narrative, and thus have "who won" emerge from the storytelling (which emerges from the world description, but that's a different discussion).
I certainly won't say that other people shouldn't engage in abstract social combat if that entertains them. But to me it sounds about as exciting as eating unseasoned cheap tofu.