Mental Control Points and Social Engineering

[Plane]

The idea of MCP was introduced in Possessions Under Control (Pyramid 3-83) and unlike the (Body) Control Points of Technical Grappling (which reduced ST and DX of enemies) this IQ (including Per/Will) and DX.

This was obviously designed to explore supernatural mind-control (the Possession advantage) but it got me wondering about another way to penalize enemies already present in the basic set:

Influencing the PCs (B359) says that GMs shouldn't tell PCs how to react when they fall victim to the influence skill of an NPC - instead the margin is used to determine bonuses and penalties to subsequent die rolls involved between the two, as appropriate.

This seems in a lot of ways to mirror mental control points, except rather than supernaturally penalizing IQ or DX by formally doing partial possession of the mind, instead it is being INformally dominated (temporarily) by the use of mundane influence skills.

Page 18 of Social Engineering explores this under Charisma too - defining it as a Talent for an "Influence" Powers set that could include various Afflictions that represent social influences - including IQ and DX penalties, just like we see from Mental Control Points, and Influencing the PCs.

This made me wonder if there's some way to bring these concepts together, could MCP be extrapolated beyond just the Possession advantage and be applied to a wider variety of mundane situations?

I could see it being called something else, since an IQ/DX penalty is universal whereas ONLY being penalized when you work against someone who succeeded in an Influence skill against you is more subjective... so maybe Social Control Points?

[Varyon]

Social Control Points makes the most sense, although having a mechanic called SCP might give people the wrong idea. Rather than a specific penalty against IQ and DX (or ST and DX), it would simply penalize (or give a bonus to, in certain situations) relevant skill rolls... and possibly even relevant Self Control Rolls. It feels like the penalty should scale with the target's Will (those with higher Will are less penalized by accumulated SCP than those with lower Will).

[whswhs]

I must say that I personally deeply dislike the idea of Social Control Points. It seems to assimilate social interaction to combat, and to suggest the idea that things like Influence rolls work by wearing down someone's resistance through persistent approaches. That sort of works for essentially hostile interactions, like bullying someone or confusing them, but it doesn't work for interactions founded on mutual interest or attraction; and even for something like fast talk, repeated efforts to bamboozle someone are just as likely to put them on their guard and make them resistant as to gain their belief.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I must say that I personally deeply dislike the idea of Social Control Points. It seems to assimilate social interaction to combat, and to suggest the idea that things like Influence rolls work by wearing down someone's resistance through persistent approaches.

Social Control Points might make a good alternative to Regular Contests of Skill to model long-term attempts to control a particular institution using skills such as Politics or Propaganda, however, particularly if multiple organizations or people are attempting to gain control. Useful for Illuminati-style campaigns to determine if, say, the Gnomes of Zurich can defeat the Discordian Society to control the IRS.