What are some good games with social combat mechanics?

That sounds like it would feel super meta and immersion-breaking.

So any time I want to try and convince an NPC of something, I have to include some sort of stake beyond simply failing at the task and the NPC maybe liking me a little less?

Have you tried playing Diplomacy.

Never played it, but isn't that just player-to-player real-life social skill within a rule framework? How do you apply that to NPCs?

>Making decisions about gameplay takes me out of the game

Dogs in the Vineyard's system of Calls and Raises with the ever present option to escalate (if you're willing to deal with the inevitable fallout) plays the best out of any I've tried.

I especially like how the number of dice used to call informs the roleplaying (one die means you turn their argument back on them, two dice means a straightforward answer, three dice means you have to concede the point)

>I want to play a role playing game but I don't want to play the character's role
If you want a game to be as immersive as possible, as many decisions should be made from the perspective of what the character knows, believes, and wants, as possible, and as few as possible should be made that aren't choices the character would make.

Social combat is stupid.

>I want to convince the guard to let me pass
>Okay, but if you lose, the guard gets to make your character do whatever I want

>"I don't understand the system so it's stupid."

>"All these rules just, like, get in the way of my immersion, man."

The GM sets stakes, not the player.
DoW is also only supposed to be used for arguments that are important based on the characters BITs. The rest of the time you just use simple tests/vs tests.

Sounds reasonable.

Are you saying that rules can NEVER be distracting or take you out of the game?

Assuming you are not, then there are rules which are distracting and annoying, and rules which are not. I'm saying the rules you described involve decision-making of a sort that I think would place them in the former category.

You never actually made an argument to the contrary. Instead, you made a post that made it seem like you think there are no decisions that players could be forced to make which would be immersion-breaking, and then you repeated the thing I'd just said, but as if I were Shaggy.

see
>The GM sets the stakes, not the player.

>Are you saying that rules can NEVER be distracting or take you out of the game?

I'm saying that unironically claiming that making decisions about gameplay being a negative in a pen and paper roleplaying game makes you a fag.

Furthermore, acting like the meta surrounding a game does not exist also makes you a fag.

>Furthermore, acting like the meta surrounding a game does not exist
There's a difference between acknowledging that it exists and trying to make as much of the game about the meta as possible.

You're literally claiming that using rules to resolve an expressed intention is bad because it's meta.

No, I'm saying that having players make decisions about which things to do based on rules rather than in-character concerns, is bad because it's TOO meta.

"Do you want to talk to the lady about her husband's murder?"

Character: "Yes. I need to find out what I can."

Player: "Hmm, if I do this, I have to come up with some thing to risk, even if it makes no in-universe sense that failing to get information from her would cause anything else to happen."

This isn't just "Yes, I want to do this because my character would, now what do I do to resolve it?" it's "Okay, maybe I want to do what my character would, but maybe I'd have to risk things my character would have no reason to think would be at risk, so maybe I do the opposite of what makes sense in-universe because this game uses rules that have the potential to actively pressure me to do things other than what it makes sense for my character to do."

>No, I'm saying that having players make decisions about which things to do based on rules rather than in-character concerns, is bad because it's TOO meta.

You have no basis to make decisions upon unless rules exist.

Checkmate, freeformfag.

>freeformfag
>I play GURPS
Also, read the rest of the post. The problem isn't rules. The problem is stupid-ass rules that encourage you to make decisions based on information (there is x risk) which is very close to the OPPOSITE of what your character might believe (there is little to no risk).

>The problem is stupid-ass rules that encourage you to make decisions based on information (there is x risk) which is very close to the OPPOSITE of what your character might believe (there is little to no risk).

So your problem is shit GMs who do not present threats to be as bad as they actually are?

That's a well founded complaint, but completely immaterial to the subject of your statement being stupid.

The risk is pretty obviously that you'd piss the lady off and she wouldn't give you anything at all, and possibly even report you to a superior (if you're a cop or something). This is something your character would know in the fiction, because obviously bringing up a sensitive subject with a stranger carries some social risk.

see >Both sides must agree to the stakes in a dual of wits, if you aren’t willing to accept a loss, you don't have to engage.
>Both sides must agree to the stakes
So this means that you have to agree to stakes that your character may or may not realistically know about.
Yeah, except according to earlier in the thread, you and the GM have to "agree to stakes." Meaning there's an OOC negotiation about stakes going on which is a distraction and doesn't represent anything in the game world whatsoever.

RPGs should just be like Mario Party where every time you want to do something you play a minigame and if you lose then the GM gets control of your character briefly and makes them do stupid things that don't fit the character at all.

I don't know how you experience the passage of time but that's always been my understanding of it IRL.

>YFW

>doesn't represent anything in the game world whatsoever

You mean besides the verbal exchange the two of you immediately proceed to make?

>So this means that you have to agree to staks that your character may or may not realistically know about.

Sure, no argument there. Whether you think that's a bad thing or not depends on how much time you want to spend in the characters' head. That said, it's not as if more trad games don't also have circumstances where you, the player, know something is riskier than your character does, and have him act accordingly.

There are other instances in DoW that aren't as meta where your character may not be aware of the risks - like the person you're talking to has stats that make them better at arguing than you expected, or are especially sensitive about something, so on. Those are more in the style of how your character may not be able to assess the risks to himself.

Still, there's no getting around the meta element of stakes-setting. As somebody who likes social mechanics, even I have to admit they're not immersive. I don't mind that kind of thing because I don't really care about immersion, making me a Bad Player Who Should Get Cancer, but whatever.

Better Angels has a great system that allow you to pretty much attack any stat with your actions. So you can attack their generosity to make them more greedy, their honesty to make them more deceitful, etc, and vise versa

Also seen in A Dirty World if Noir is more to your taste. The stats are all pretty abstract in both cases so you have to do some work to explain how it happens in-game, but otherwise it's a neat system.

Well Dogs in the Vineyard uses the same mechanics for its social rolls as it does for everything else.

I don't know if it counts as social combat but MonsterHearts is quite a good social game (and to preempt this because I seems to come up every time I mention MH, no the GM doesn't get to make your character gay)

Seconding Monsterhearts. I wouldn't call it 'social combat' but it has a very good social influence system.

And to clarify - nobody in Monsterhearts can make you gay, or straight, or bi.
But any PC *can* turn you on, you silly confused teen, you.

10/10 RPG, lets you give someone a confused boner that you can then use as social leverage against them to blackmail them.

Can you explain how that works? It sounds like the "Specials" from AW but those seem to have more of an element of player choice.

I've played a couple of games with social combat (L5R, Burning Wheel, SIFRP) and in each of them we dumped social combat after couple of test runs.
Intricate interaction gets thrown with the bath water when you use clunky social combat.
Trust me, it sounds fun but it just ain't.

buriedwithoutceremony.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Monsterhearts-Reference-Sheets.pdf

Reference sheets are free. Check out the 'turn someone on' move.

>When you turn someone on, roll with hot.
> On a 10 up, take a String against them.
> • On a 7-9, they choose one: give themselves to you, promise something they think you want, give you a String against them.

Strings are a measurement of social influence that you can use in a variety of ways. Almost all the character types have a specific use for them, but in addition:

>You can spend a String on another PC to:
>}Add 1 to your roll against them (choose after rolling).
>}Subtract 1 from their roll against you (choose after rolling).
>}Offer them an experience point to do what you want.
>}Force them to hold steady in order to carry out a certain action.
>}Add an extra harm to whatever harm you’re dealing them.
>}Place a Condition on them.

Legends of the Wulin's Secret Arts of the Courtier is pretty fun to play around with

why you ask?

for the people here who haven't read/didn't understand (it's not very well written) the rules:
>you roll to create conditions on people
>your chance of succeeding is determined by how likely the condition is to already be true (i.e. giving someone clearly very angry a lot of the time the 'bad-tempered' condition would be a really easy roll.
>this condition then provides situational bonuses/penalties to the character depending on their behaviour
>the condition can be modified in a variety of ways by the courtier through the use of different social skills

Did anyone here play with ars magicka debate rules?

well, it's basically something game companies use to market their games to fa/tg/uys

>pbta
please stahp

Heroquest is another possibility. The fact that character damage is reflected by damage to individual abilities rather than an overall health chart means that combat can occur between characters' social abilities with the same impact as when trying to stab each other.