OKAY I know what this looks like but it's Not! We aren't trying to kill off Rping. Social Combat is not a wallflower’s manifesto. It’s a way to interact with the game world socially, without the player having to be a social person. Gamifying the act of being convincing. We are aware of what this sounds like, many players and GMs on discord have given us a pretty good picture of how some feel. But why do I have to back my character's social butterfly stats?! That statement could be misinterpreted as a confession but … it's NoT. Hopefully after dissecting the Why, What, When and How of social combat our innocents will be proven.
We'll start at the end, the Motive. Why this, why didn't we just leave it to rping? We wanted the social equivalent of a barbarian clearing out a room with an axe. But with a bard, armored with an impassioned speech. There are games with wizards, warlords and warriors. You can play these classes, these characters; no prior experience needed. The Reason; quantification and gamification of the concepts behind magic, management and murder. We just needed to quantify and dumb down the human psyche. Then gamify the dozens.
How? By causing mental damage, the inflicting of social conditions; Emotions. Weaponization of things character's hold dear; Commitments. You can cause a character to concede. Or Convince them to change their minds; on a specific course of action or idea. Of course the higher their commitments, the harder it is to convince them to go against those commitments. As it should be. There wouldn't be a Batman if he could be talked into killing someone. The gamification part comes from the clever deployment of social gear; terrifying tattoos, envy inducing bling. And well timed use of social technique styles like; Paper Tiger, and Seducor. All of these coming together to form Social Combat
Which leads us haphazardly to the what. What the hell is this "Social Combat". It functions just like combat, hence the name. It's a strike and defend, turn based combat. Where the goal is set by the people in combat. Whether it's wanting a different price for the goods/services. The divulging of sensitive information or just agreeing with/to do what was said; these are all valid goals. Hell, a character's goal could be to simply get the other person to stop or go away. But now you might be thinking: isn't that all handled by RPING!? "Why would I want to take out the Rping and replace it with more rules, you Silly Geese!?!?!?!". Social combat does not remove or replace rping in any way, shape or form. It only comes up in very specific instances. Which might lead you to say, "Then When- oh no".
Gotcha Bitch!
When is our main defense to these roleplay killing allegations. When two parties have come to an impasse, neither is willing to concede their view and one or both parties NEED the other to move in order to continue. This is when you could initiate social combat. Two important pieces there. One: note two parties(persons or groups) have come to an impasse and neither are willing to concede. This means you have most likely exhausted normal Rping and have made little to no headway to your goal. It could be, like stated before; price, information, ideals or actions. Doesn't matter what but someone wants something and the other is standing in the way. A standard situation that would normally lead to combat.
Two piece biscuit: Notice "When you COULD Initiate" doesn't mean you need to. Yes, we made indepth social mechanics that are entirely Optional! You don't need to start a social fight just like you don't need to start a physical one in-game. We wanted to give the players another option to forcing someone into something that didn't involve broken bones and spilt blood.
That's the long of it. We have all the foundational parts up and running. We have a small expanding group of playtesters who are loving and adapting to it. It's causing them to actually do more rping. We believe it's because information has quantitative value in our system, both in and out of combat. Next year we'll have our discord and hopefully cover art ready.
Ethereal Deepdiver & Dev-x | Stock & bull Entertainment LLC
P.S: Next year is right around the corner. We here and S & B wish you goodwill and a fruitful year to come! See you in 2025!