The Campaign Builder's Guild

I have been considering the idea of a game system in which there are multiple different "Stress Meters" (or HP) for different kinds of stress.  At current, I am manifesting this as a trio: Physical Stress, Social Stress, and Mental Stress.  Since I know there is not much else to go on, I am just looking for input as to the principle at the moment.  Does this seem like a good/bad/somewhere-in-between idea?  Why? 

Physical Stress would function just like we normally think of hit points.  I might take a cue from Storyteller and One Role Engine and separate out Shock and Killing damage.  Shock damage would be wiped clean after a night's rest with no consequences.  Killing damage, however, takes a long time to heal naturally, and either weeks, medical attention, or magic are required to recover from it.  Physical stress would be most commonly taken during combat situations, but also when attempting to survive out in the wild, or pushing oneself to one's limits in feats of athleticism.

Mental Stress would function similarly to physical stress, but would be manifested in contests of wits, battles of will, intimidation and resisting, maybe trickery, and perhaps even magical or psychic battles of the minds.  Filling up with mental shock would be akin to having crammed your mind so full and pressed so hard that you can no longer process information, and either must shut off and sleep or have a nervous breakdown.  Mental killing damage would be the kind of stress that causes enduring madness or potentially, if playing that kind of game, death.

Social Stress would be the final meter.  It would measure the opinions others have of you.  It could represent who is winning an argument or a debate, attempts to convince someone to do you a favor, or make friends.  In some cases mental and social contests can utilize the same skills, and the line between them could be ambiguous, and should be left up to the consensus of the GM and the Players.  Taking shock damage could indicate committing a faux-pas or being embarrassed, whereas killing damage could mean that you have permanently (or at least long-term) lost social standing, and will suffer consequences from that.

It is an interesting concept. Especially that I have not yet encountered a system that utilizes a 'social stress' level.
Call of Cthulhu is an example for a system that uses sanity as some kind of mental stress level and every system has hitpoints

For a look at a system that works on the same principles and uses a similar breakdown, you might want to check out the version of FATE they used for the Dresden Files RPG (it's my impression that Dresden was a fairly heavily modified FATE variant so I'm unsure of whether core FATE is the same - maybe something to ask sparkletwist?)

I've looked into this sort of thing, and come to similar conclusions, and mostly discarded them. I think Physical/Mental/Social is a problematic type of breakdown for stress and damage, because when you get to the point that you have (and I also independently reached, agreeing with you) that social damage is a reflection of reputation and standing, it's weirdly externalized. For me, that felt uncomfortably distanced and abstracted from the character, and I wonder whether there's a better way to reflect it.

I basically feel like if you are trying to look at things naturally in a way that focuses on the character him- or herself, mental and social effects have to overlap a huge deal. Social situations (coercion and persuasion, a fight with a loved one, having to endure the company of assholes, etc.) would cause mental stress under your model, not social stress. (I think this is part of the issue with the NWoD's stat system, which has a "social resistance" stat [Composure] and a "mental resistance" stat [Resolve], and nobody can really explain the practical difference or describe why one applies in a given circumstance and not the other.)

Quote(it's my impression that Dresden was a fairly heavily modified FATE variant so I'm unsure of whether core FATE is the same

FATE Core has not yet been published. Two official new-generation FATE products from Evil Hat games preceded FATE Core: Spirit of the Century, and Dresden Files. They're both quite different, and I'm sure FATE Core will be different from both. It's not quite accurate to call DFRPG a "heavily modified [...] variant" of FATE Core because DFRPG was first, but it is one of the preliminary products Evil Hat used to test and experiment with the system before publishing a more generalized Core product.

As an aside, Spirit of the Century used just two stress tracks: Health (for physical damage) and Composure (for hesitation, intimidation, confusion, and all other effects that would I guess be classified as mental/social under some breakdowns).

Quote from: Luminous Crayon

Quote(it's my impression that Dresden was a fairly heavily modified FATE variant so I'm unsure of whether core FATE is the same

FATE Core has not yet been published. Two official new-generation FATE products from Evil Hat games preceded FATE Core: Spirit of the Century, and Dresden Files. They're both quite different, and I'm sure FATE Core will be different from both. It's not quite accurate to call DFRPG a "heavily modified [...] variant" of FATE Core because DFRPG was first, but it is one of the preliminary products Evil Hat used to test and experiment with the system before publishing a more generalized Core product.

Ta very much for the clarification. My sole experience of FATE is reading Dresden and so I felt it would be wise to disclaim that I'm far from an expert and I was speaking from a position of relative ignorance.

As far as the idea of an internal character-focused interpretation of Social Stress, could it possibly be used to represent self-worth, sense of self and strength of integrity and personality? Deceit would thus be an attempt to damage their integrity and tempt them enough to give in, intimidation an attempt to overwhelm their sense of self and integrity enough to bend them to your will, etc.

Just a thought.

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
I've looked into this sort of thing, and come to similar conclusions, and mostly discarded them. I think Physical/Mental/Social is a problematic type of breakdown for stress and damage, because when you get to the point that you have (and I also independently reached, agreeing with you) that social damage is a reflection of reputation and standing, it's weirdly externalized. For me, that felt uncomfortably distanced and abstracted from the character, and I wonder whether there's a better way to reflect it.

I basically feel like if you are trying to look at things naturally in a way that focuses on the character him- or herself, mental and social effects have to overlap a huge deal. Social situations (coercion and persuasion, a fight with a loved one, having to endure the company of assholes, etc.) would cause mental stress under your model, not social stress. (I think this is part of the issue with the NWoD's stat system, which has a "social resistance" stat [Composure] and a "mental resistance" stat [Resolve], and nobody can really explain the practical difference or describe why one applies in a given circumstance and not the other.)

I see your point, and admit that at the moment they do overlap, and there is a danger of that same problem you mentioned in NWoD.  Or nearly that.  However, most of my settings deal in some way with the concept of honor, and it occurred to me that social "damage" would be an interesting way of tracking honor.  Some embarrassing things like being made the butt of a joke would be something you could shake off by showing everyone how awesome you are, but betraying your king to a foreign upstart is the kind of thing people don't easily forget--or forgive. 

Nemesis has four "Madness Meters:" Violence, Unnatural, Self, and Helplessness.  Each was tied to a stat.  Violence was tied to the body--so was a kind of stress related to fighting, analogous to my physical stress (though racking up notches reflected damage to your SANITY as a result of combat, not physical harm).  Unnatural was tied to the mind, so encountering things that you couldn't rationalize or explain tended to fry your mind and make you go a little crazy.  Or a lot crazy.  That one is a bit more like my standard "mental stress" though more specific.  Self pretty much corresponds to my Hippo's post below:

Quote from: HippopotamusDundee
As far as the idea of an internal character-focused interpretation of Social Stress, could it possibly be used to represent self-worth, sense of self and strength of integrity and personality? Deceit would thus be an attempt to damage their integrity and tempt them enough to give in, intimidation an attempt to overwhelm their sense of self and integrity enough to bend them to your will, etc.

it was Self-worth, and your ability to live with yourself for the things you've done.  It could function as an internalized form of "honor" or at least the effects of breaking your code of honor.  I suppose if honor is seen to be important enough, taking social damage would be damaging to the character's conception of themself.  When your actions result in being hated by those you love, you have to reflect on who you really are, and that can be maddening. 

So perhaps I need to do something to differentiate Mental stress from Social stress; in how their damage is accrued, details of them, and if there are skills that apply only to one or the other, or, should they be situational, WHEN they apply to one or to the other.  But I think I am still on the right track with having all three.  For my purposes, anyway.

I basically like the idea, but I second the criticisms about Mental and Social stress. It's often hard to tell which is which, and, in effect, all it really does is make a character twice as tough in "non-combat combat" as in actual physical combat, but does so in a way that is not transparent and executed strangely.

For what it's worth, in my own (very FATE-like) system, Asura, it takes the SotC approach and has "Hit Points," which measure your physical damage, and "Mind Points," which measure mental damage that can come from socialization, being scared, or outright psi attack.

Quote from: Seraphine_HarmoniumI see your point, and admit that at the moment they do overlap, and there is a danger of that same problem you mentioned in NWoD.  Or nearly that.  However, most of my settings deal in some way with the concept of honor, and it occurred to me that social "damage" would be an interesting way of tracking honor.  Some embarrassing things like being made the butt of a joke would be something you could shake off by showing everyone how awesome you are, but betraying your king to a foreign upstart is the kind of thing people don't easily forget--or forgive. 

...

So perhaps I need to do something to differentiate Mental stress from Social stress; in how their damage is accrued, details of them, and if there are skills that apply only to one or the other, or, should they be situational, WHEN they apply to one or to the other.  But I think I am still on the right track with having all three.  For my purposes, anyway.

Makes sense.

I dealt with the same sorts of issues when brainstorming for an as-yet-unmaterialized Apocalypse World/Jade Stage hack I had some fever dreams about. I eventually concluded that, for my purposes, physical damage to the body and mental/emotional trauma to the mind, and trouble with reputation and social standing, are not analogous situations and cannot be adequately handled by analogous mechanics. Something like deception, confusion, or emotional pain is essentially internal, within a character's mind, while something like reputation or honor is essentially external, because it comes from others' perceptions of you. I couldn't find a way to bring them together with one mechanic that satisfied me.

Maybe you can, though, and either way I definitely want to hear what you come up with because this interests me.