No Mentals, No Socials

[Lmns Crn]

So I feel like I keep running across this kind of system lately (Steerpike's Asura-based Rugged System, all the Amber Diceless I've been reading through lately, a crapload of little indie amusements I'll never have time to seriously contemplate, etc.). The premise is always more or less this:

There are no stats for a character's thinking and being clever; the player is expected to do those things. There are no stats for a character's being persuasive or charming; the player is expected to do those things.

There are pros and cons, of course. There always are. I think the cons are immediately apparent to those of us who were raised on systems with smartness stats and charismatic stats (i.e., probably all of us). Mental and social stats are a handy tool for players who want to play characters who are smarter or more persuasive than the player is. I don't think I could play, for example, a brainy Progenitor in a system where I didn't have mental stats as a crutch-- they're a handy tool with which to brute-force your way to an end result that seems smarter than it really is. (I say "seems" because it's all illusory: under most systems, playing a character with Intelligence One Million doesn't actually help me-the-player come up with smart solutions to difficult problems, it just obliges those problems to lay down and surrender to my stupid solutions.)

Removing these sorts of stats seems to have some interesting ramifications.

For starters, it screws with the division of labor. By leveling the playing field, you no longer bring anyone along because they're "the smart one" or "the face of the group", because these social/mental obstacles are now equally overcomable (that's so not a word) by all characters (and hopefully, nearly so equally overcomable [nope, still not a word] by all players). I think it forces your division of labor within the group (if you have a group, and if you have a division of labor within it) to be based on other things. Perhaps these other things are character stats of a different sort ("we have an earth mage and a water mage, so we should hire either an air or a fire mage while we're in town") or less concrete, less tangible things-- secret knowledge, relationships, blackmail, all manner of delightfully untidy motives.

Perhaps more interestingly, though, it forces you to be in character a lot more, and it forces you to confront problems directly, without dice or stats as a buffer between players' brains and in-game issues. When there's no "I roll to solve the riddle of the ancient temple and outwit the death traps", you actually have to solve the puzzles yourself. When there's no "I roll to convince the king to lend me a legion of soldiers", you actually have to state your case, lay out the same points your character would, and make a convincing argument. This can be incredibly satisfying when it works. (It can also be incredibly work-intensive for the person running the game, because you have to create all this stuff for players to actually navigate, not just set some difficulty targets for somebody's Solve Puzzle roll.)

I really hate to use a word like "immersion" because of how thoroughly abused it's been over the years, but if you're looking to remove as many barriers as you can between the players' thoughts and the events of the game, this seems to be a pretty effective way to knock down a few.

I have some more thoughts on this subject, but I'll save them for later, because this post is already too long.

[LordVreeg]

No, you are right that in any situation, the less the system intrudes into the play, the less mechanical barriers, the better the cnahce for the immersed mindset.  I first dealt with it back in the 80s with Friends who LARPed.  The more minamilist trhe game system, the less rules intruded, the more the game flowed and people stayed in character...
Until combat started...or until someone cast a spell...or indeed, tried to do anything that their character was supposed to be able to do that was different from what the player could do.

Because that is what rules are.  A physics engine; that transforms the players stated actions at one end and translates them into the game world.  You mentioned the smart stuff or the social part, but the same thing happens to being the strong guy or the healthy guy in a larp...it's just that in an RPG, it is a social and mental game, so when you remove the rules in those areas, you can increasew immersion...at the expense of using those attributes.  So that is always the cosmic trade of in using a physics engine...it allows you to play things you are not, at the expense of having a filter.

Now, that 'Physics Engine' also has a varying degree of granularity.   And to some degree, the greater level of consistency and granulaity, the 'thicker' and more the impermeability of that engine. 

When there's no "I roll to solve the riddle of the ancient temple and outwit the death traps", you actually have to solve the puzzles yourself. When there's no "I roll to convince the king to lend me a legion of soldiers", you actually have to state your case, lay out the same points your character would, and make a convincing argument.

See, this is not so right.  You make it out to be an 'either/or' proposition...when there are many shades of grey.
In GS, we use a"declare-roleplay-roll-recover" system...where the player declares their basic intent and what skills they want to use...then they roleplay it out.  The GM adjudicates the roleplay and the effectiveness, and then, normally about 2/3 of the way through (or when the use of a skill is critical in the process) they roll based on the skill and any roleplay bonuses.  Then the GM and the players work off the results in the recovery phase, and often, it leads to another set of 'declare-roleplay-roll-recover'.

"This is why some of the skills are so low.  Adventurers live in a difficult world, where they are trying to overcome adversity.  Unlocking a door in a dungeon, to use an absolute trope, with the light issues, the lock being an alien design, worrying about noise or someone attacking you...that is difficult.  But difficult is what is assumed as normal, unless the quality of the lock is better which would decrease the chance, or maybe it is in an area that is totally cleared out and considered safe, which might slightly increase the chance, maybe by 10%.  And that same average lock, in the adventurer's own house in the light of day, with all the time in the world, might be +20%.  It would have to be an easier lock to increase the chance more than that.

Another piece of advice is to use the roll to describe the success or failure. So a really good roll represents a very competent, perfect job, while just barely making the roll could be described as a difficult, painstaking attempt.

The last piece of advice is to err in favor of roleplaying.  If a PC is using the CC roll to avoid roleplaying, especially in a social situation, penalize them.  Tell them that it wasn't believable if it wasn't.  But on the other side, maker sure that superalative roleplay is rewarded.  Skills are supposed to encourage roleplay, not used to avoid it"
So it has always been my belief and end goal to create a system where the skills are used to support the roleplay, not to replace it.  Just more grist for your mental mill.

[Lmns Crn]

Whoa, I don't mean to misrepresent this as a false dichotomy, I'm just using simplistic examples because my post was already running long. Clearly there's a continuum between "stats do everything" and "stats do nothing", and I can't think of any examples that are all the way over in that extreme "stats do everything" end of the spectrum for mental and social issues (but I would guess those might be rather boring games, indeed). My real point, which I think is still quite valid, is that any function of the dice, stats, and other trappings is function that is shifted away from player actions. If your "smartness stat" and related die roll only contributes about a 20% share to the solving of the puzzle or whatever (an estimation that, I believe, is a pretty conservative one overall), then the player is only responsible for doing 80%. These sorts of situations are typically zero-sum, aren't they?

I've got to be brief right now because I'm on my way out, but you've clearly done your share of thinking on this issue and I am eager to pick the conversation up again later.

[Nomadic]

Whoa, I don't mean to misrepresent this as a false dichotomy, I'm just using simplistic examples because my post was already running long. Clearly there's a continuum between "stats do everything" and "stats do nothing"

Certainly. Personally I'd say that I like to make the players put in an effort. You can't just roll the dice you have to act our your attempt. For example you might first state your case to the king or lay out a plan to solve a problem. Your roll after this reflects your characters abilities in how they might differ from your own while I still will give you a penalty or bonus to your roll based on how good or bad I think you did yourself. Best of both worlds, but that's worked for me in the past (might not work as well for others). Anyhow just my 2 cents.

[sparkletwist]

I think this "player skill" vs "character skill" thing can happen on a lot of different levels. Combat is one of the cases that is frequently held up where things are much more dependent on the roll, but, on the other hand, other games like to put tactical decisions in the hands of the player. Moving your token around on a tactical grid is one strong example, but even something as simple as choosing a battle stance or a martial arts technique or whatever, like many game systems nowadays seem to present players with, is also a case where player skill can enter in. In the realm of computer RPGs-- not that this is really what the topic is about-- but in that realm, things like reflexes and aiming can also be put more in the hands of the player.

I'm also a fan of the hybrid approach of roleplaying and then seeing how it shapes up by testing your skill. If you're trying to convince the king of something, it seems to me the player should first make a convincing case, not necessarily anything brilliant or anything but something in-character and enjoyable for the other players and GM, and then the social roll tells how much the king actually liked it. The Asura system has something called Mind Points (MP) which are basically like HP for mental/social combat, and they make a good tool in something like this: if the king loses all his MP first, he's convinced. If the players lose all their MP first, the king isn't convinced and he ends the royal audience.

As to the issue of playing a "smart" character, I've thought about this a lot, because, as your example of using a Progenitor implied, playing a character more capable than the player in many ways in Asura is going to be pretty much the standard case. A lot of this is based on esoteric knowledge, which can be glossed over; it's easy enough to throw around some fake techno-babble and pretend like the brilliant engineer knows exactly how the starship engine works. On a related note, characters who are supposedly supernaturally perceptive or insightful can just be given more detailed description by the GM, i.e., you can break the "show don't tell" rule a bit in order to provide some direction without really beating the player over the head with it. More abstract ingenuity is a bit harder. One way around this, at least in some cases, is to allow the players to work together when the characters might not be able to. Essentially, they can communicate and work out a strategy out-of-character even when, in-character, there would not be time or opportunity to. In-character, they're assumed to be thinking of all of this stuff themselves. Specifically for Asura, I do have something of a way out, here, in that Asuras are expressly based on the gods of Greek myth, superheroes, and other sorts of figures where showing all-too-human failings is as important to their character concept as their super-ness. So, in general, a way that even "super smart" characters can be flawed might help make them more playable, too.

[Nomadic]

Going off on a tangent here (sparkle's talk of combat made me think of this) but I have considered the use of a system for my setting wherein I as the DM plant objects, terrain, and other environmental factors into any areas where I plan on having an encounter. A clever person can take part of these things to give themselves an edge in battle (bringing a chandelier down on an enemy, using a broken table to shield you while you bullrush someone over a cliff, tossing a bag of chalk dust in someone's face, etc). Of course not every person has the right mindset to see these things and so there's the option to have combat based knowledge roles for those of us without a quick tactical mind. If you succeed I might give you something that your character might have thought up for using their surroundings to fight for them (heck, if you fail I might do this, I'll just give you a bad idea instead).

Anyhow kind of getting off topic here but I see the balance of person actions vs dice actions as an issue of proper mixture and not one or the other. A quality mixture will create a quality playing experience. Players get to RP while still able to deal with attributes that are different from those they might have in real life.

[Lmns Crn]

That's less of a tangent than you think. I'm interested in using this thread to discuss unusual game mechanics (or, perhaps more properly, unusual lacks of game mechanics). I'm not so interested in a rehash of the same old thing that everybody already does by default.

I am also not looking for the "one universal best way" to do things, because I don't think such a thing exists. We use different sets of game mechanics not only to cater to different preferences, but also to represent, foster, and evoke different sorts of things. I'm interested in exploring new options (new to me, at any rate) and learning what I can from them.

Anyway.

I think it's interesting trying to compare this statless, "your character can do just what you can do" idea to combat, because sooner or later everything in gaming gets compared to combat, but it's difficult to make the comparison really a valid one without a combat procedure of "grab a nerf weapon and fight the GM." Personally, I'm not too interested in going that far.

I think that it works a little more naturally to dispense with mental and social stats and let players' thinking and speaking become characters' thinking and speaking, because thinking and speaking are things we already do when we sit down around the gaming table. (If you happen to game in an environment where all players are breaking out into fights all the time, I might recommend you dispense with physical/combat stats for characters, and let the outcome of player scuffles determine the resolution of in-game conflicts, since you're fighting already. Just be careful.)

Anyway, on the subject of unusual social/mental mechanics (i.e., those that don't compare a numerical stat [with or without dice] against a numerical difficulty in a pass/fail sort of way), particularly mechanics that are as invisible as possible during actual gameplay:

- the set-up - I think this was from Castle Falkenstein, but I can't remember precisely where I heard this. One of the various options for building a clever, witty character came with the option to submit a bunch of lines to the GM ahead of time. You list some lines you have a prepared comeback response for, and the GM puts those lines in the mouths of antagonists during the course of the game. Then you zing 'em with your perfect, timely retort. That's all!

Let's be honest: I like this for several reasons. Most relevant is that it's one of a class of "alter reality to make a character smarter" types of game mechanics that is really not that rare at all (everybody, at some point or another, has secretly changed around the details of a whodunit [or whatever] to render a player's hunch correct, right?), but it really has no value whatsoever besides characterization-- establishing that a character is witty by actually letting them do witty things. It's purely ornamental: like wildflowers, fondant, or my degree.

- allies as assets - This is found in various games to varying degrees, but I think it works best in games with a lot of NPCs and a lot of intrigue, especially in the sorts of situations where it's difficult to know who to trust. Buying up allies during character creation (or whenever) is a lot like an externalized social stat; allies are assets with a social connection to the character, but separate from the character. (Even in a game without social stats, buying up a bunch of allies is a potential way to represent a social character indirectly-- someone with many allies is probably well-liked, or at least well-connected.)

Amber Diceless does an interesting thing where the more powerful and costly an ally is, the less control the player has when defining who or what the ally is. The most powerful allies' identities are even secret from the characters (and players) whose allies they are, and discovering the identity of one's benefactors during the course of play is not a guarantee.

[Kindling]

Fondant is not purely ornamental. It is also delicious.

And I love the idea of the set-up! I kind of suspect my players might find it a bit cheesy, though, but it's a really cool idea.

[Lmns Crn]

I'm still searching a game where it seems appropriate. (Perhaps something swashbuckly...)

[sparkletwist]

The set-up sounds like the sort of thing that would be really fun a couple of times and then get pretty stupid really fast. Swashbuckly might work, though; it'd be like the sword fighting in Monkey Island.

[Weave]

The set-up sounds like the sort of thing that would be really fun a couple of times and then get pretty stupid really fast. Swashbuckly might work, though; it'd be like the sword fighting in Monkey Island.

I'm with Sparkle on this; even though it does sound pretty cool I think it would get old real fast.

The "buying your allies" thing, however, intrigues me! I'd be interested in hearing more about that. You said Amber Diceless uses that?

[sparkletwist]

A lot of systems use the "buy your allies with points" thing. Most White Wolf games do in some form or another, which kind of goes along with the "lots of NPCs and lots of intrigue" I guess. Might as well have one of the GM-wank NPCs on your side...

[Xeviat]

Looking at my usual cast of characters, removing mental/social stats would likely lead to stagnation in my games. I have two players who are very socially-ept in real life, and would then end up often to always playing social characters since it would be the most effective thing for them. I have another player who is rediculously quiet, and he'd never get to play a social character again (he has played one before, and we used a process like Vreeg's "declare-roleplay-roll-recover" system).

See, my group has taken the exact opposite approach to removing Mental/Social stats. We let NPCs use social skills against the players, and use that as "director's notes" for our roleplaying. Long ago it was decided that if a wizard could charm/dominate a PC, then a bard could bluff/diplomacy/intimidate a PC.

[LordVreeg]

Looking at my usual cast of characters, removing mental/social stats would likely lead to stagnation in my games. I have two players who are very socially-ept in real life, and would then end up often to always playing social characters since it would be the most effective thing for them. I have another player who is rediculously quiet, and he'd never get to play a social character again (he has played one before, and we used a process like Vreeg's "declare-roleplay-roll-recover" system).

See, my group has taken the exact opposite approach to removing Mental/Social stats. We let NPCs use social skills against the players, and use that as "director's notes" for our roleplaying. Long ago it was decided that if a wizard could charm/dominate a PC, then a bard could bluff/diplomacy/intimidate a PC.

Yes to this, online and live...
Social skills and spells have to go both ways if you use them.