Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Rank-Courtesy Rank isn't really having your Rank ignored, it's having a Rank but with a less flashy title than is customarily attached to that level of organizational influence.

Do you have some examples of the kind of situations where this occurs?

In the organisation I work within, formal titles are almost non-existent, and what matters is "X is in charge of Y" as discovered from the organisation chart, or "A is the person that coordinates B", which you have to find out by asking.

In the UK in general, titles tend to be quite minimalist, since long ones have a strong association with being a makeweight, rather than someone useful, and are thus avoided by everyone.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Rank-Courtesy Rank isn't really having your Rank ignored, it's having a Rank but with a less flashy title than is customarily attached to that level of organizational influence. Which is not to say that people can't end up bypassing the normal Rank structure through stuff like Contacts, but it's not the only way it can occur.

Courtesy Rank in the rules as written is exactly the opposite of that. It's having a flashy title and some minor social benefits that normally accord to a Captain or Colonel or whatever, but not having the actual command authority that usually comes with that rank.

A stereotypical example would be a retired military officer who still retains nominal rank, is still invited to social events and allowed to use officer only privileges on the strength of that nominal rank and can still expect all the little courtesies that a Colonel or Captain would be entitled to from members of his military organisation that aren't actually under his command would give, but does not actually have men under his command.

[jSarek]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Courtesy Rank in the rules as written is exactly the opposite of that. It's having a flashy title and some minor social benefits that normally accord to a Captain or Colonel or whatever, but not having the actual command authority that usually comes with that rank.

A stereotypical example would be a retired military officer who still retains nominal rank, is still invited to social events and allowed to use officer only privileges on the strength of that nominal rank and can still expect all the little courtesies that a Colonel or Captain would be entitled to from members of his military organisation that aren't actually under his command would give, but does not actually have men under his command.

I think he means "Rank Minus Courtesy Rank" here ... which would be close to the opposite of Courtesy Rank.

[Sindri]

I missed replying to the "why buy title if you can choose not to" line before. The reason is because having an impressive official title is very useful in making use of your organization's influenxe outside of it without directly drawing on it's power.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

With a non-unique, non-dominant rank, you've got a rival who falls squarely within your niche, but also absolutely outside the hierarchy of both you and your boss, and the boss' boss and so on. So it's not even about the left hand of an organisation not always knowing what the right hand is doing, but about potential clashes that just cannot be handled within the organisation's structure. That sounds like a significant nuisance.

And when you are dominant but in a field no one cares about tangling with other types of organizations is harder when you come into conflict with them. Players don't care how well their organizations are doing, only what influence their character gets out of it.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

E.g. take your average LAI, who has Low Empathy. It is totally abysmal at stuff that relies on empathy, such as Acting, Fast-Talk, Detect Lies, Psychology etc. . . so when time comes to figure out whether that guy wishing to get an audience with its owner is telling the truth, it looks deeply into the guy's face with its ocular cameras, and uses Body Language instead, relying on its unhampered ability to read microexpressions.

A concept that doesn't make any sense. There's a set of tricks you can do to improve your content independent ability to detect lies. Micro and macroexpressions, eye movements, voice changes etc. Either the character can do them or the character cannot do them. There isn't a choice of approach.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

r you can have a Bad-Sighted or Blind character, who would never even bother trying to learn Body Language (and spending points on it), and focuses on Detect Lies and Psychology instead; by bundling Detect Lies and Body Language together, you're de facto forcing him to spend points on learning both.

The point is that people can't just forgo Body Language. The Blind Character has less information channels than a sighted character and accordingly has a harder time detecting lies. He isn't purchasing anything but "being good at observing people" which always wants as much information as you can feed it.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Or you can imagine a character who has Stuttering or Disturbing Voice, and thus bad at Fast-Talk, but pulls a pokerface just fine (Acting).

The character takes penalties when he is speaking and no penalties when he isn't due to Disturbing Voice. If he wants to just be good at nonspeaking lies he needed to switch to a technique anyway.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Circumstances seems very similar to 'skill used' (e.g. street deal being the circumstances for Streetwise, a high court being the circumstance for Savoir-Faire (High Society) etc.). But yeah, approach is fuzzy; trying to come up with clarification methods.

Not location, circumstantial modifiers that techniques like Agenda buy off.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yeah, making Technique work closer to a very limited Higher Purpose would be neat. (Speaking of the Purpose perk . . .)

Well if you must compare elegant floating techniques to Higher Purpose, I guess it is kind of like that.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I don't know Exalted, but I recall a phrase along the lines of 'if a character has no Intimacies, but a rule demands to pick one, then the character needs to gain one immediately'; that sounds crude, but some sort of accumulation mechanic that is the more quick/easy the fewer Important Things one has, might be a good idea.

I think letting people specify until then untested preferences makes sense.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Could you elaborate further on that?

Any social combat system I can recall has been very fluid about how long everything corresponded to in the world since taking a system that abstract and trying to force everything to work on a standard timescale would make it look absurd.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm pretty sure that 'you must be this tall' mechanic has been seen in Prerequisites of jobs for many skills, including Influence skills. The fact that Savoir-Faire has more focus on it? Well, all Influence skills' secondary uses differ somewhat; why not have SF's be this? It doesn't seem much more distant than other secondary uses of other skills.

Any skill can potentially be used as a prerequisite for a job to make money, this is unrelated. To the actual use of a social skill to do social stuff.

You keep talking about secondary uses but they have nothing to do with this. The secondary use of Savoir-Faire is ettiquette geekery. Maintaining access to environments is a primary use and this is not something that is true of other Influence skills.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What's the difficulty? Setting drinking tolerance aside in the form of Tolerance or Resistance actually smooths out the fact that first points in Carousing do not raise it above HT.

I am discussing Carousing as it is in the normal rules. The difficulty is that it bundles tolerance and socializing and requires hacks to break apart without houseruling that. I am already on record as disliking that bundling.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

At which point a GM can easily say that you aren't really carousing yet, and are using the usual approach instead - after all, you didn't even have time to show off your partying aptitude yet!

That feels like the GM is letting mechanics poison his view of how social interaction actually occurs.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, basing it on Will wouldn't look better neither for stereotypes nor for plausibility.

Where did Will come from? If you want to support stereotypes by default you just break social interaction out of IQ.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Do you have some examples of the kind of situations where this occurs?

In the organisation I work within, formal titles are almost non-existent, and what matters is "X is in charge of Y" as discovered from the organisation chart, or "A is the person that coordinates B", which you have to find out by asking.

In the UK in general, titles tend to be quite minimalist, since long ones have a strong association with being a makeweight, rather than someone useful, and are thus avoided by everyone.

I've already told you I don't have an example for you.

Rank presumes a title structure like the military. If the impressiveness to outsiders of people's official titles are regularly lower than that for a given level of responsibility than anti-Courtesy Rank is a regular feature of the organization.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Courtesy Rank in the rules as written is exactly the opposite of that.

Which is why I said Rank-Courtesy Rank. I'm not talking about Courtesy Rank I'm talking about it's opposite.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Rank presumes a title structure like the military. If the impressiveness to outsiders of people's official titles are regularly lower than that for a given level of responsibility than anti-Courtesy Rank is a regular feature of the organization.

I am thoroughly unconvinced that there is, by default, a general standard in a society by which the impressiveness of titles from different organisations can be evaluated. Case in point: the very different prestige levels of naval and army "Captain" ranks, which many people who aren't connected with or interested in the military are completely unaware of.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I am thoroughly unconvinced that there is, by default, a general standard in a society by which the impressiveness of titles from different organisations can be evaluated. Case in point: the very different prestige levels of naval and army "Captain" ranks, which many people who aren't connected with or interested in the military are completely unaware of.

Then you have a problem with the entire existence of a Nominal Hierarchical Position With Title modifier.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Then you have a problem with the entire existence of a Nominal Hierarchical Position With Title modifier.

I think we're just going to have to disagree about much of this.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I missed replying to the "why buy title if you can choose not to" line before. The reason is because having an impressive official title is very useful in making use of your organization's influenxe outside of it without directly drawing on it's power.

That would usually rely on Imputed Status, I think, since Courtesy Rank is only useful in very limited circumstances. (Which is fair, given its price.)

Originally Posted by Sindri

And when you are dominant but in a field no one cares about tangling with other types of organizations is harder when you come into conflict with them. Players don't care how well their organizations are doing, only what influence their character gets out of it.

I certainly care how Biotech Euphrates is doing!

Originally Posted by Sindri

A concept that doesn't make any sense. There's a set of tricks you can do to improve your content independent ability to detect lies. Micro and macroexpressions, eye movements, voice changes etc. Either the character can do them or the character cannot do them. There isn't a choice of approach.

Why isn't there a choice of approach? If an AI has Low Empathy, it's reasonable that it has penalties to empathic skills. But Body Language is almost pure visual recognition - some of the current software sets can do limited Body Language tricks right now, and they dare not be classified as what GURPS would call AIs.

Originally Posted by Sindri

The point is that people can't just forgo Body Language. The Blind Character has less information channels than a sighted character and accordingly has a harder time detecting lies. He isn't purchasing anything but "being good at observing people" which always wants as much information as you can feed it.

This only happens if you conflate the two skills.

Originally Posted by Sindri

The character takes penalties when he is speaking and no penalties when he isn't due to Disturbing Voice. If he wants to just be good at nonspeaking lies he needed to switch to a technique anyway.

So basically fuse two skills only to bring back one of the differences in an alternate form. Doesn't look good to me.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Not location, circumstantial modifiers that techniques like Agenda buy off.

If you define those three for a Technique, you get things like Agenda (Circumstance) Only To Get Fire Support (Desired Effect) With Whorf Effect Approach? I'm inclined to think that is not what you meant, as that makes Techniques extremely narrow.
Having Approach be the skill chosen, the desired effect be the Request For (Difficult) Aid, and maybe specialise by approach is probably about okay for types of desired effects that are more broad, maybe (i.e. those that I suspected of being munch-bait).

Originally Posted by Sindri

I think letting people specify until then untested preferences makes sense.

That too, but that's not what I think the meant. I think they meant stuff like 'if a Charm makes the target become Fanatical for the Important Thing of highest absolute value, and the target has none, then the GM immediately grants one'. It does have the drawback of forcing characters to be fettered one way or another. OTOH, allowing characters with no motivations whatsoever isn't nice either.
Thoughts?

Originally Posted by Sindri

Any social combat system I can recall has been very fluid about how long everything corresponded to in the world since taking a system that abstract and trying to force everything to work on a standard timescale would make it look absurd.

Exalted does have fixed tick lengths in social combat, which is actually important if you need to do things such as convince Character A about Fact W sooner than Character B can complete doing Y, while Character C will try to covertly slow down B.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Any skill can potentially be used as a prerequisite for a job to make money, this is unrelated. To the actual use of a social skill to do social stuff.

You keep talking about secondary uses but they have nothing to do with this. The secondary use of Savoir-Faire is ettiquette geekery. Maintaining access to environments is a primary use and this is not something that is true of other Influence skills.

Okay, so let's say it's a big use of the skill. Why is it so far apart from other Influence skills that have other Big Uses? E.g. Fast-Talk's lying?

Originally Posted by Sindri

I am discussing Carousing as it is in the normal rules. The difficulty is that it bundles tolerance and socializing and requires hacks to break apart without houseruling that. I am already on record as disliking that bundling.

I'm leery of that bundling, but hey, you're the one who tries bundling lie-detection and body language, even though they have almost opposite approaches to solving the same task. Or then there's the bundling of caring for guns with the skill of shooting guns (RAW). Or the skill of parrying with the skill of striking (some systems have those two as different skills, and it has its benefits).
I suspect any bundling or splitting can make someone unhappy.

Side thought:
Bundling often goes hand in hand with an incentive for GMs to float skills to other attributes. But excessive floating tends to result of a concept being unable to cover all concept-related bases due to not being able to cover all the required attributes (which can, e.g. in WoD, be something like 6 out of 9 attributes). GURPS has only four attributes, and a total of 5 'roll-base-able' characteristics, but it sometimes still shows up. Talents partially help here.

Originally Posted by Sindri

That feels like the GM is letting mechanics poison his view of how social interaction actually occurs.

I suppose one could see it this way, but I think the argument that the character hasn't caroused yet is legit.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Where did Will come from? If you want to support stereotypes by default you just break social interaction out of IQ.

Well, to what would you shift it?

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That would usually rely on Imputed Status, I think, since Courtesy Rank is only useful in very limited circumstances. (Which is fair, given its price.)

Nominal Hierarchical Position With Title should be as useful as Chain of Command or Typical Resources or Special Assets.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I certainly care how Biotech Euphrates is doing!

And I care about the lifespan of my characters. Pricing happens in the context of the cold calculation subset of the player.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Why isn't there a choice of approach? If an AI has Low Empathy, it's reasonable that it has penalties to empathic skills. But Body Language is almost pure visual recognition - some of the current software sets can do limited Body Language tricks right now, and they dare not be classified as what GURPS would call AIs.

Because an alternate approach does not exist.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

This only happens if you conflate the two skills.

What only happens? Because everything I said I'm counting a feature, not a bug.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So basically fuse two skills only to bring back one of the differences in an alternate form. Doesn't look good to me.

... No? Like I said, he needed to switch to a technique anyway.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

If you define those three for a Technique, you get things like Agenda (Circumstance) Only To Get Fire Support (Desired Effect) With Whorf Effect Approach? I'm inclined to think that is not what you meant, as that makes Techniques extremely narrow.
Having Approach be the skill chosen, the desired effect be the Request For (Difficult) Aid, and maybe specialise by approach is probably about okay for types of desired effects that are more broad, maybe (i.e. those that I suspected of being munch-bait).

You don't define each of them for a technique. They are dimensions with which you can describe an Influence attempt and also conceptual categories that techniques fall into. With combat skills we can hit someone (skill) with a kick (approach) in the leg joints (goal) while kneeling (circumstances). Kicking, hitting people in the leg joints and fighting on unstable footing are all techniques. Now it's not a perfect comparison because while Targeted Attack allows you to buy off the "in the leg joints!" penalty it does require specifying "with a kick!" as well but I think it's useful nonetheless.

(The Worf Effect properly speaking is a meta thing and not getting beaten up to influence someone. Unless you are making an obscure pun on the linguist Whorf?)

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That too, but that's not what I think the meant. I think they meant stuff like 'if a Charm makes the target become Fanatical for the Important Thing of highest absolute value, and the target has none, then the GM immediately grants one'. It does have the drawback of forcing characters to be fettered one way or another. OTOH, allowing characters with no motivations whatsoever isn't nice either.
Thoughts?

Meh, I'd just let people pick whatever value for preferences when they come up.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Okay, so let's say it's a big use of the skill. Why is it so far apart from other Influence skills that have other Big Uses? E.g. Fast-Talk's lying?

The point isn't the presence of stuff other than actively trying to influence people under the skill. It's the balance within the actually accomplishing social things category of an Influence skill between active influence use vs not screwing up. Most Influence skills are weighted such that they focus on active influence use. With Savoir-Faire on the other hand I feel that while yes you can use it to Influence people it's firmly weighted on the other end. I see people as buying Savoir-Faire to be able to get access to social environments by demonstrating that they can not screw up and getting a skill that can actively Influence people thrown in like it was a bonus. Fast-Talk is indeed probably the closest of the other Influence skills but I consider it to still be firmly on the active influence use side.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm leery of that bundling, but hey, you're the one who tries bundling lie-detection and body language, even though they have almost opposite approaches to solving the same task. Or then there's the bundling of caring for guns with the skill of shooting guns (RAW). Or the skill of parrying with the skill of striking (some systems have those two as different skills, and it has its benefits).
I suspect any bundling or splitting can make someone unhappy.

Fortunately my house rules only have to not make me and my players unhappy.

I'm bundling Body Language and Detect Lies because I refuse the idea of a generic empathy based method of lie detection not because I feel that and the technical tricks people use to get better at detecting lies are necessarily so similar.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Side thought:
Bundling often goes hand in hand with an incentive for GMs to float skills to other attributes. But excessive floating tends to result of a concept being unable to cover all concept-related bases due to not being able to cover all the required attributes (which can, e.g. in WoD, be something like 6 out of 9 attributes). GURPS has only four attributes, and a total of 5 'roll-base-able' characteristics, but it sometimes still shows up. Talents partially help here.

WoD's system of attribute selection doesn't help either.

Personally I'm not a fan of the bundle a lot and let attributes sort them out approach.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, to what would you shift it?

Why would I shift it at all? I said "break out" and I mean break out.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Nominal Hierarchical Position With Title should be as useful as Chain of Command or Typical Resources or Special Assets.

Problem is, many of those things look okay as an addition to a package, but would be overpowered on their own (at 1/level instead of the 3-5/level that Rank tends to cost as a bundle). Overall, Title right now seems roughly comparable to a Reputation with a very small group, but of course somewhat different.
It probably serves as a buy-in to a large extent for the current Rank bundle, which may be good or bad, depending on how you feel about such bundles.

Originally Posted by Sindri

And I care about the lifespan of my characters. Pricing happens in the context of the cold calculation subset of the player.

Still, the overall power of the organisation can have effects in-game. They're just not as easily game-mechanised.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Because an alternate approach does not exist.

Are you saying that the new (Detect Lies+Body Language) skill should ignore empathy modifiers entirely, or what? You say there is no alternate approach, even though before that you seemed okay with making the different approaches to these two skills into techniques. But techniques run into the problem of starting out no less than and being raisable no higher than some values relative to the master skill.

Originally Posted by Sindri

What only happens? Because everything I said I'm counting a feature, not a bug.

The inability to forego Body Language only happens because you conflate the skill of analysing lies and the skill of analysing body language. Knife and Pistol are two different skills, because they rely on different approaches, even though both are used to kill the enemy; a legless character will have great problem hitting enemies with a knife, but can shoot almost just as well (from a prone 'stance') as a legged one. Ditto with Detect Lies and Body Language and Blindness.

Originally Posted by Sindri

You don't define each of them for a technique. They are dimensions with which you can describe an Influence attempt and also conceptual categories that techniques fall into. With combat skills we can hit someone (skill) with a kick (approach) in the leg joints (goal) while kneeling (circumstances). Kicking, hitting people in the leg joints and fighting on unstable footing are all techniques. Now it's not a perfect comparison because while Targeted Attack allows you to buy off the "in the leg joints!" penalty it does require specifying "with a kick!" as well but I think it's useful nonetheless.

(The Worf Effect properly speaking is a meta thing and not getting beaten up to influence someone. Unless you are making an obscure pun on the linguist Whorf?)

I used Worf Effect as a shortcut for 'I am tough and all, but even I can come into a situation which I cannot handle alone, and this situation is right now, so please help me out'.

Typo caused by being more inclined to think about Sapir and this guy much more often than about the Star Trek character.

But yeah, the analogy with Targeted Attack is what made me think of a full three-dimensional technique, not a technique representing a choice along a single axis.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Meh, I'd just let people pick whatever value for preferences when they come up.

That's an okay-ish solution if that topic never came up before in the campaign, and nothing higes on previous behaviour towards the topic (or lack thereof!).
But what happens if e.g. someone succeeds by a big margin on Psychology/Empathy/etc., figuring out what makes the target tick, in the hopes of later using this information. And also succeeding at a Psychology roll to predict how the target will behave in the future.
At this point, if the target has few to no Important Preferences, that's kinda lame; from a realism PoV, it seems dubious; from a gameism PoV, it seems lame to essentially make psychological insights useless.
At this point, it seems like having a certain minimum number of Important Things would be nice. (Of course, ideally, they should be defined long before this moment.)
Also, IIRC Exalted had some mechanism to make shallower characters more eager to pick up and drop Intimacies; maybe it was related to their Conviction score, not sure.

Originally Posted by Sindri

The point isn't the presence of stuff other than actively trying to influence people under the skill. It's the balance within the actually accomplishing social things category of an Influence skill between active influence use vs not screwing up. Most Influence skills are weighted such that they focus on active influence use. With Savoir-Faire on the other hand I feel that while yes you can use it to Influence people it's firmly weighted on the other end. I see people as buying Savoir-Faire to be able to get access to social environments by demonstrating that they can not screw up and getting a skill that can actively Influence people thrown in like it was a bonus. Fast-Talk is indeed probably the closest of the other Influence skills but I consider it to still be firmly on the active influence use side.

I guess we just see it differently. I see Gaining (and Retaining) Admission to places as part of Influence. After all, you use Streetwise in very much the same way to retain access to the Bad-Guy Bar's back room or whatever. Or . . . yeah, I'm thinking of Job Prerequisites for Influence skills as largely the same effect.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Fortunately my house rules only have to not make me and my players unhappy.

Oh, sure. Though I wonder if the preferences of the group are so unanimous.

Originally Posted by Sindri

I'm bundling Body Language and Detect Lies because I refuse the idea of a generic empathy based method of lie detection not because I feel that and the technical tricks people use to get better at detecting lies are necessarily so similar.

Well, not all social interactions happen by rational methods. Some do rely on empathic ones. Do you consider the idea of ditching the empathy-related group of traits entirely? Because basically this is what it does - affect such skills and occasionally provide an attribute role that can substitute with some differences.

Originally Posted by Sindri

WoD's system of attribute selection doesn't help either.

Personally I'm not a fan of the bundle a lot and let attributes sort them out approach.

Yeah, WoD's a bad execution in general, but sometimes they do have interesting ideas. E.g. GURPS' lack of split of cerebral abilities into Intelligence, Wits, Manipulation and Charisma is considered a glaring gap by many people I've talked to. But I say splitting IQ like that will result in either (a) a price bump that makes the full set more expensive than it's worth or (b) the prices of components so low that putting more than [1] into appropriate skills becomes even less attractive.

(Incidentally, OTOH, despite being a socially-oriented system, WoD basically botched the handling of Appearance. Exalted seems to handle it okay-ish and in an interesting way, but that's a late fix that never reached WoD.)

Originally Posted by Sindri

Why would I shift it at all? I said "break out" and I mean break out.

What, base on 10? That's inelegant, I guess.