I was working on some games and stuff, and decided to ramble on my blog about social moves in AW games, because why not.
I was working on some games and stuff, and decided to ramble on my blog about social moves in AW games, because why…
I was working on some games and stuff, and decided to ramble on my blog about social moves in AW games, because why…
Good stuff.
I’ve tinkered with these a lot in my various hacks-in-progress. My favorite wording for the trigger (so far, assuming a typical manipulate move) is “*When you give someone good reason to do, act, or feel as you want…*.” “_Good reason_” being completely informed by the fiction and the characters involved.
Regarding your comment on moves that always grant leverage being dumb: agree completely. I think my favorite alternative is “when you use _ for leverage, take +1 to manipulate/parley/etc.”
Jeremy Strandberg Yeah, those are good wordings, I’d say. You could probably cut out “do” and just go with “act or feel as you want,” even.
Isn’t Read a Person also an important part of the AW social mechanics? Especially when you ask “how could I get your character to __?”
Either yes or it depends on whether you file that under perception moves instead of information-gathering social moves. Like, you don’t need to be social with someone to read them, you could study them from hiding, or whatever.
But yeah, I skipped over the system where you read someone to find your leverage and then use your leverage to manipulate them.
For
RatQueensWorldMercWorld I want to put in the AW style option to use Parley on PCs again. Any potential big problems with that? Using the Manipulate an NPC wording might even be better.For the Workplace like move; why not use “Their player will tell you…”?
I dunno, PCs racking up XP super-fast or ignoring the PCs-working-together dynamic by manipulating each other? Players not using the rules maybe? AW hack geeks like us poo-pooing your rules for not being innovative enough?
I wrote the workplace move in that post in 30 seconds by copying Ritual.
I’m not writing the all-workplace game. Doesn’t interest me at all, really.
Yeah, for DW style game, I’d avoid the XP carrot when manipulating fellow PCs. DW already has a problem (IMO) with leveling to quickly.
I’d prefer something that caused a fictional reaction from the PC, with player choice. Sorta like Go Aggro or I am the Law. Maybe one of the choices could have a mechanical edge (like taking -1 forward).
Awesome stuff!
Heh, like the horror move from Murderous Ghosts? When another PC pressures you socially, choose what you don’t want to happen and roll:
– You sheepishly give in.
– You explode in rage and have a tantrum.
– You say “you’re not my dad” and do the opposite.
etc.
Goody!
This is a really neat summary of a really neat subject – thanks for putting this together. I think it draws attention to an interesting question of consent and agency in game design. For example, you can’t just walk up to someone and make them agree to give you all of their possessions for free. On the other hand however, people aren’t always as in control of their actions as they’d like to believe. Monsterhearts addresses this with the “Turn Someone On” move by saying, “no, actually, you don’t get to decide what turns you on.” This ‘violation’ of the players agency sometimes really bugs people, but I think it is a fascinating look on how reactive and unpredictable our own behavior can be.
I like your “draw someone into conversation” move, particularly because it gives options of both learning things about your target and getting to instill them with a feeling. That last part is particularly haunting to me, as it reminds me of people like Jim Jones/Charles Manson – whose eerie charisma often overwhelmed people’s better judgement.
This whole conversation on social influence/power reminds me of the push/pull discussion on the blog Sin Aesthetics
http://games.spaceanddeath.com/sin_aesthetics/12
which I found through V. Baker’s post here:
http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/147
The whole question of whether social moves are Push or Pull is an interesting design statement in a game, and addressing the subtleties of both (in one move or several) is extra exciting. I mean, people are socially influencial in different ways! One person can be super conniving, another an empathetic and subtle manipulator, another who is simply mesmerizing, and yet another who exceeds at the “hard sell.”
PS: Social influence as a workspace rule is also a VERY neat idea. I could see a specific playbook really rocking that (the Manson?).
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Oh! Ha ha ha. I said I wasn’t interested, but then I realized that I actually DID write a playbook that uses the workspace rules as social influence, just over society, not individuals. I should probably get that game finished at some point.
Jamil Vallis-Walker Vincent has a thing he says (paraphrasing) where in order to write a (good? original?) game you need to have something to say about real life, and you need to have something to say about games. I think that probably goes for each section of a game, too. If you know what you want to say about social interactions in real life, and you know what you want to say about game playing in connection to that, you can end up with some really affecting rpg experiences (Monsterhearts being a good example), but also the various parts of the game don’t all have to (and probably can’t, either) say the exact same thing.
I added some additional comments to the blog post.
Johnstone Metzger, “When you pretend you’re something you’re not, in order to deceive an enemy” just cries out to be a special Bard move.
Also, re: making a statement, this just clicked in my head as to why I have struggled for such a long time with game design: My impulse towards creating rules/settings comes more from excitement in encapsulation of things that from having something insightful to say about real life/the nature of games.
I wonder if anyone else has struggled with this…
It’s more philosophy then science I think.
I now believe it requires intuition, logic, reasoning, and ethics. And a little profanity and sin helps too, I imagine!
Not sure I understand the difference that is “encapsulation.” Do you mean like capturing the feel of genre fiction? Or like you are trying to create a specific mood, feel, or experience, rather than “have something to say”?
You don’t need to have something “insightful” to say when making a game (Class Warfare has nothing at all insightful to say about real life, for example, despite the name), but I do think that having a clear idea of what you’re trying to communicate carries over into clarity of rules, when you get the rules right, and that confusion can make even good rules also feel confused and disjointed.
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Johnstone Metzger, I think rather than encapsulation, I probably should have said “proceduralizing” (which is now a word).
What I’m talking about is laying on structure to all of the things that I want to see (or that possibly could) happen, rather than understanding where rules need to not be.
For example, “there are like 5+ clear ways to manipulate people, hence there should be rules for all of them right!?” Theres a fun there for me that comes from creating a structure/rules set to represent reality. I know that personally, I’m a very structurally minded, procedural person (I love me some spreadsheets). And while this is great and all, in game design my feeling is that I tend to unintentionally pave a railroad right through the fruitful void. “Because, you know, if it’s a thing you want to see in the game, there should be a AW style move around it, right!? How else can you make sure it happens?!”
That’s the struggle I’m running into at least. I have tons of neat ideas/experiences/settings/situations I want to see manifest in a game, but I don’t know where to put rules and where to leave open space. (Or for that matter, how to properly bolt a rule to a theme I want expressed – hence everything I think of now is shaped in terms of AW moves)
Great post Johnstone Metzger, keep ’em coming!