Recently I was listening to Ellen J. Langer’s book Mindfulness,  when right in the introduction she talked about a condition called mindlessness. Briefly put, it’s the “the lights are on but nobody’s home” syndrome, where we aren’t paying attention to what is going on around us and respond to stimulus is in an unthinking manner.

For example, the author described an experiment which involved a subject requesting the use of a Photocopier machine at the library. The subject would go up to someone using the machine and tried to persuade that person to let him use the machine to zap one copy. For one test, the subject asked, “Excuse me, may I use the photocopier machine I am in a hurry”. For test B, the request was phrased as “Excuse me, may I use the photocopier because I want to zap something”.

Interestingly, the experiment showed that (in a nutshell), people respond to both requests, without noticing that in test B, the explanation is rather nonsensical – the subject didn’t give a good reason why he would need to use the photocopier now. The author suggests that unless we are paying attention, our mind would “auto-complete” sentences if its structure is correct.

Another experiment involved a memo that was passed about in an office. It was written, “Please return this memo to room #02-02″. If you think about it, this is  rather strange memo – why would you write a memo, put it on someone desk only to request him to pass it back to you? Despite this, almost everyone who got the memo comply with the instruction.

Futility Closet has this story where a man managed to take over an entire city hall just by appearing up in a captain’s uniform.

These examples fit well into what the skill Fast Talk seems to be. You hinge on that people would not pay attention to your full sentence and make assumptions about your motives and credibility base on how you answer or talk to them. If you want to role-play as fast-talking, devious rogue, those are the examples you should follow!

When What You Say is Judged by the Whole World

Recently I have joined StackOverflow, a site dedicated to programming. There you have a reputation score. Any question and answer you post can be voted up or down. If your answer is voted up as useful, you get a plus to your reputation. Moreso if your answer is accepted; likewise, if your question is up-voted, you get reputation. As your reputation grows, you gain admin access, ability to edit, introduce your own tags and so on.

Suddenly looking through list of unanswered questions, or popping in to help out a newbie, becomes addictive. I suppose this is a trait for some role-playing gamers – advancement, seeing increment in points and reaping in achievements. Then one day I take a step back and examine my action. Why isn’t there social reward in pen and paper role-playing games?

Why I Prefer a +3 Sword  over being a Nobleman

Say what you like, when it comes down to pen and paper games, the main conflict is still combat. Magic, stealth, physical brute force and anything else that can bring down the enemy fast is more important than anything else. Some games recently, such as Weapons of the Gods, the new A Song of Ice and Fire and Artesia, introduces the concept of social rank. For other games, however, being a nobleman means nothing when in the 9th level of the Dungeon of Doom.

While I have my own views on what a social conflict should be like in a pen and paper game, it is understanding why social rewards in current role-playing games is still in its infancy. You need to come up with rules for it. Like it or not, formal rules always give assurance, proves to the player that it is worthwhile the trouble and explicitly states how being the Captain of the Guards help when you need to hunt down cultists in a shadowy forest (even in Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing 2nd, vague rules are given for leadership, and nothing is touched on what you gain if you become a noble).

Of course, there is always GM’s fiat, but that is an informal contract. Some gamers (many indeed) don’t like that, if the threads on the social aspects of Exalted on RPG.NET is anything to go by.

Yes, I like to Mention Fate Again

Fate 3.0 has the Aspect mechanics, and recently it has found its way into a number of upcoming games. Aspects are modifiers that you can tap into for extra help in times of need and they could represent anything from being a princess to having strength that rivals Hercules.

As Spirit of the Century (which uses Fate 3.0) starts the character as pulp fiction heroes, there is little room for advancement in stats and skills. However, there is Aspects. One of the forum posters at RPG.NET makes the suggestion of allowing a group of victorious heroes to put their own Aspects into the world. Suddenly, “Noble prize winner” is an attractive thing to get. You need funding to build your next prototype aircraft? Tap into that aspect and say that your reputation precedes you. You are the “Captain of the Guards”. Well, next time you need to intimidate some goons at a tavern, that’s a handy aspect to tap into, either to awe them by your authority or to psyche yourself by thinking of them as raw recurits.

Really Formal Social Achievements

However, Fate 3.0 walks the line of GM fiat and formal rules. Some people have issues with that. After all, whether an Aspect could do what you want is up to the GM to decide.  For players accustomed to D20 and other high-crunch games where rules are formalised, something more concrete is needed.

Of course, this would mean that social conflict is another form of viable conflict for the game. The players must be assured that while they are climbing the social ladder, not all their games would take place in the dark depths where being allies with the Guild of the Alchemists means nothing.

(In Fate 3, if you have the Aspect “Ally of the Alchemists”, you can try to use it in a situation, say to naturalise a poison, by saying “Well I am an ally of the Alchemists; so they taught me something about this sort of stuff”. Of course, this requires a Fate Point and the GM to allow the player to do it).

Resolving this problem is going to be lengthy. For OGL D20, the GM may introduces ad hoc feats. “Hero of the Middlelands” feat, for example, may  grant the character +2 to Diplomacy and Information Gathering in the correct region. The “Guard Captain” feat give a bonus to Intimidation and the like. Perhaps GM-designed feats could help. I am looking forward to what other ways this could be done.

Social Conflicts and its Nature

Pen and paper RPGs tends to be personal. One to one combat, spell duels, confronting a devious trap and navigating a dungeon. However, social conflicts are more than just debates, persuasion and bribery. I believe if we enlarge the scope of social conflict, social status becomes more important. I would like to explore this part more in detail.

Introduce the Meta-Plot Slowly

There are some games which are 100% crunch and 0% fluff – then we have the opposite where fluff takes up so much room that it becomes as much as a required reading as rules. Nobilis suffers from this – what with Mythic Earth, Prosaic Earth, Lord Entropy, Ash Tree, the Bright and Shadowed Realms and more besides, fluff takes up about 70% of the book while the rules could be summarised on two sheets of A4 paper (with really small fonts).

What I have experimented for my first Nobilis game is to dish out the Meta Plot in small servings. Sure, I give an overview of the Vlade Bellum, what’s an Imperator and estates, but I save the rest for further espiodes. Sometimes in a setting-rich game there is a temptation to throw everything at the players – it may be wiser to focus on a particular aspect and as the players get their bearings, introduce more and more elements of the settings. For the first game I introduce the group to a “dead chancel” – which press in the point of what happened to estates that are erased out from creation and bring home the Vlade Bellum. They don’t have to deal with Lord Entropy or his bunch of Cammore for a while.

Get the Group to Create the Meta Plot

Spirit of the Century has a fantastic idea which I will be using for all my other games – getting the player to plot the backstory of their characters and having them star in each other’s story. For my fantasy homebrew of SoTC, I called each story a “novel” and have each character stars in them with another one as the “co-protangonist”. First, the player will offer ideas for how they will fit in the Meta Plot. The game was set in Titan (the Fighting Fantasy setting) and I briefly describe, on  a map, the important places, their culture and what significiant events have happened there. As the players plan their character’s origins, what they did during those significant events, how they end up meeting each other, who are their nemesis and so on, the players are describing how they fit into the setting’s Meta Plot. You, as the GM, could take chances to explain what’s relevant to their character instead of doing an information overload on all of them.

Second, the players come to owe that part of the Meta Plot – they created it and described how they would fit into it, anyway! That in SoTC yo would get Aspects for Meta Plot is a nice touch too.

Fast Forward Time

Sure, the status quo is this and that now, but what will happen in a hundred years time? Turning the clock ahead of the cannonical “present time” of the setting allow you, as a GM, to customise the material to your taste. Going backwards could be problematic as you need to make sure the latter events still happen, which call for research – unless you are ready to “reboot the setting” as in new Star Trek movie. In a hundred years time, a strong kingdom could become a weak one, the Great Old Ones are just a step away from being freed, a great war is on the verge of happening and a new weapon technology has shifted the balance of power.

You can also try to find an epoch in the settings where not much material was given – such as what Bioware did with Knights of the Old Republic – and fill in the gap yourself. There is also a geographic shifting – such as in Lord of the Rings Online, the attention is paid to all the lands mentioned in the novels but never visited by the Fellowship, such as Angmar, the Forsaken Inn, Oatbarton and so on.

History Lies

In the Chinese manhua “The Ravages of Time”, which gives a radical re-interperation of the events found in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the author basically says that “History lies” . That is one way to treat the Meta Plot if you need to loosen it up. They are, after all, just one version of the world according to the author of book. Add in new details, behind-the-scene facts and now-you-know-it truths.

Don’t Let Meta-Plot Stands in the Way of Fun

Nit-picking, canon walling and meta-debating are just waste of time when one rather be gaming. A game ought to be fun. Consistency can be resolved when the game is over, through email or forum – facts can be added, motivations could be altered. Saying “Drizzit would never do this!” while in a game (and while encountering the famous drow ranger) is akin to reducing the NPC and the Meta-Plot to just a black and white straitjacket. If we think of Meta-Plot as just the point of view of one person, not the entire record of a world or a person, the GM would have more fun planning and the players would be kept on the toes more often.

One way to have the right balance of Meta-Plot, to me, is to understand its purpose. To sum up the next article I have in mind, the Meta-Plot is to:

• Gives direction
• Influences design
• Influences the artefacts used in the game
• Provide plot hooks for adventures

Getting a Paladin to Lie

Quick question: how do you get a paladin to lie? To scheme and to plot destruction? Simple, play a game of Saboteur – a card game which has the meta-plot of you are dwarves mining for gold, and there are good dwarves and bad dwarves. Good dwarves want to get to the gold, bad dwarves don’t want the good guys to find the gold. Meanwhile, some players will get cards that allow them to check one of the three possible locations to see if the gold is there. Then that’s where the fun start.

I have friends whom I could entrust a million dollars with (and still would) yet they have lied their way smoothly through the game. Yet we all just burst out into laughter, lambaste each other with mock threats, and think that no harm is done, because the meta-plot encourages it. Heck, why you have a card that labels you “You are the bad guy, the BAD GUY!”, no one blame you for going along being a sneaky, underhanded, lying bastard…in a game.

Relying on the Kindness of Strangers

I think one of the commonly held consensus is that you find all types of people on a MMO – with varying levels of maturity, level-headedness, consideration and so on (psst…it just my politically correct shorthand for saying that there are jerks on most MMORPGs). While there are those who make the news on being rabid min-maxer, griever and whiners, I find this is not so much of the case for Lord of the Rings Online. On chat channels, you find people giving away free stuff. I run past a Captain and usually one out of five will give me a free buff. When I was playing the Loremaster I will too randomly debuff mobs and heal – not so much now because this reduces the XP gained by the other player, but there’s a spirit of helpfulness in the air.

Why so? I think it is because the game is Lord of the Rings, and the meta-plot is that “You are the free people of Middle Earth. The enemy is Sauron” and unlike World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online, the bad guys are not fully playable (oops my bad, I should have say “the other side”). Everyone other player-character you come across online is automatically your ally in the war against Sauron. (For those who find this terribly dull and boring, there’s also monster-play mode, where you can play as a monster PC and kill hero PCs that come challenging you on your turf). Sometimes, I think the lack of real PvP in LOTRO contributes to the atmosphere. After all, in Tolkien’s novels, the stuff that heroes are made of are the like of Aragorn and Faramir (who wouldn’t even claim the One Ring for his own if he finds it by the roadside, according to the novel, not the movies). The meta-plot enforces that, and I feel, somehow subconsciously cause people to act this way. Yeah, sure there still people who make life difficult for other people, and not to say you don’t find friendly behaviours on other MMOs or MMOs with PvP, but just that the meta-plot of the game contributes to behaviour.

Take a look at Age of Conan and its meta-plot – it is deliciously cartered for PvP gameplay, and Warhammer Online for its Realm vs. Realm mode. Why isn’t there a duelling arena in Lord of the Rings? Because it doesn’t fit the Meta-Plot, but an arena is not out of place in Age of Conan. Likewise, you can’t cramp Lord of the Rings’ “Spirit of Default Cooperation” into Warhammer Online because there exists natural enmity between the races, which again is encouraged by the Meta Plot.

(One thing what if one day Lord of the Rings incorporate a full-featured “other side of the fence” play, such as you can play as orcs or wargs? Even still, according to the Meta Plot, that conflict would only take place at high levels area, such as Mordor, because the novels didn’t let them in further than Gondor, to consider the northern border).

“Forget about saving the world! Let’s retire and start an inn!”

There’s one type of game in the Pen and Paper Roleplaying World and it is called the Railroad. The GM led the party by the nose through every bends and tunnels, with the players’ actions having little impact on the plot. I’m thinking of re-using this metaphor for the Meta Plot. It is not a railroad, but a railway, a system of railroads put together. It limits and directs.

For example, in Nobilis, despite characters being god-avatars, there are many storyline limits placed on them. They have to be loyal to their Imperator, for without him their powers would fade. They have to protect the innocent, or else bad-ass Lord Entropy and his human cronies would make your life miserable. You do not simply crush enemies with brute force or brainwash everyone directly. The author called this “inelegant” – an indignant player may say, “GM fiat!” or simply “Shrug, just because Miss R says so”.

There are games, which exist on the other side of the spectrum, does not have any meta-plot – or it is so “high level” that players are not affected by it unless they earn 10+ levels. In a normal game of Dungeons and Dragons, you could forsake a quest and start an inn, depending on your alignment (and if you are willing to take a shift, who cares?) In Dragon Warriors, you do not simply start an inn – you have to gain permission from the lord, etc. etc. etc. It’s not like Baldur Gates (the PC game) where two adventurers just decide to settle down in the middle of nowhere and start an inn. Who collect taxes from a fighter and a druid anyway? Who dares to, in Dragon Warriors, if the landlord of an inn is reputed to be a slayer of monster and his wife is someone who could cause trees to move?

I find when running tightly plotted game that the Meta Plot is useful because it weeds out “meaningless” options. As mentioned, I did run into the scenario where the PCs got rich enough in between missions that they are considering just fleeing to somewhere and retire – though they did say it in jest, I don’t doubt that there are players out there who did just that. The Meta Plot is useful in this regard – it gives direction even for the players.

However, for sandbox style of play, the Meta Plot can be like a Constricting Ring. Take Nobilis – with the war going on, other NPCs who are waiting to suck your estate dry so that they can stay in the war and Lord Entropy’s cronies snooping around to make sure you don’t break any of his laws, it’s hard not to step on anyone foot, much else say “Screw my Imperator! I going to explore the Ash Tree!”

A Meta Plot does not have to be elaborate – Nobilis has a finely weaved one, so much so that some people can’t keep up with it and some people loathed it (it’s like having a Ferrai but being told that you can’t drive more than 40km per hour in it) . Spirit of the Century has a simple one – the Century Club, and it is free-form enough for many styles of play, but provides a certain direction for the GM and the PCs. Of course, anyone who feel that just being told “You just have to be the good guys” is bad would too dislike the Meta Plot for Spirit of the Century (hey, it’s the same for me when I read “You just have to be suffer for being a good guy” in Vampires!)

Transcending the Meta Plot

The GM is alive, the rules are dead. The Meta Plot is already published on paper, but you can still write on. It is possible to transcend the Meta Plot, but it requires the cooperation of the GM and the player. It is much easier for a new game or setting than one with an established canon, like Star Wars or Star Trek (which is why I always avoid GMing games based on licenses; I felt constrained by the fan-base!)

Take for example, Nobilis – there are places where Lord Entropy won’t snoop and many other unexplainable things in the fluff itself (such as the Lady of the Third Age). If the players are itching for some massive destruction I could always bring them to an alien world, or a empire erased out of time or even to just good old Mythic Earth. Alternate dimensions are good for canon-heavy games (Star Trek just rebooted itself with a “When-Canon-Sucks-Hit-This button), and for historical fantasy, they just have to take a ship and find a culture that suited them (there are evidence that ancient China might be a matriarchal society instead of a patriarchal one).

Sometimes, however, the game is the Meta Plot – like Dogs in the Vineyard or Don’t Rest your Head. However, I do think it is possible for an enterprising GM to modify the Meta Plot to meet his needs.

I will talk more about this next time, where I hope to give an example of how I use a custom Meta Plot in a sandbox-style fantasy world to provide more direction, how it influences the details of design for games and some commonly useful Meta Plots.

So far, conflicts in RPG has been largely physical in scope – combat and mass battles. Combat in RPG is a very well developed area – from D&D’s tactical take to more cinematic offerings such as Fengshui, Weapons of the God and the upcoming Spellbound Kingdoms.  Recently, another form of conflict has entered the fray – social conflicts.  Instead of armour and physical weakness, you look out for secrets which will give you an edge-up over your opponent – who has the most influence on him? What does he value the most?

Those conflicts, however, are largely tactical. When I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and a Song of Ice and Fire,  I am wondering if there is a way to have political conflicts, a match in strategies and so on. Conflicts that take place over a vast area, instead of being confined to an area.

Two games promise that…REIGN and House of the Blooded; I have to admit I have yet to read them, but they give me a feeling of “hands-off, top-down”, which I am not sure if it is the mood I want. If players are going to role-play as emperors, rulers or guild leaders, maybe they should be playing RISK, Age of Empire (the board game) or something else? What good does role-playing add to these types of large scale conflicts?

One idea to consider is what if the player goes against each other?

For another project, I have been charged with the task of a prototyping a real-time strategy game. One of the important feature about such games is usually the fog of war, and more so in this project. How do I go about preparing a board-game prototype with a fog of war? When it is the next player’s turn, even if he putting down some tokens face down, you know that he is doing something. Worse still, without computers, you don’t even know if he is cheating.

There is a problem with such a players vs. players RPG with an epic scope is that  the GM has to hide secrets. This may be acceptable for play by email, but how much more fun is this than Diplomacy? Is the GM just the piece of barrier like in a Battleship game? Secondly, if the players are present and they are the enemies of each other — well, is this the way people want to spend an evening relaxing? There’s a fine line in presenting a challenge and grieving when it comes to the game table, especially for a RPG where there more actions possible than a board game.

One idea I have been toying with is to mix board game mechanics with RPG resolution.  Actions made on a marco level influences the players while they are role-playing, and those high-level decisions may generate random encounters, influences reactions of NPCs and avaliability of allies. Of course, the GM must be quick to adapt as well! If the board game level indicate that the city which the party is supposed to be visiting is under siege, and it wasn’t so before the campagin start, then the GM must be fast enough to adapt to the new environment.

Then there is this other approach. “We have this inspiration, let see what is the best way to present it as a game”, or sometimes “With this genre, and with this inspiration, let see what is the best approach for this game”.

I come to see the “inspiration” as the Meta Plot. In “plain speech”, the Meta Plot is the Plot of the Plot for the game. It’s like the horror of the Warp for Warhammer 40K, the Melkor-Eru conflict in Lord of the Rings, or something as down to earth as World War II. Sometimes, a technique to skin your game and to come up with game mechanics is to use a Meta Plot as an inspiration.

Not all Games without Meta Plot are Badly Designed

Before going on, I have to emphasis one thing – games without a Meta Plot as inspiration driving their design are not automatically badly designed. For instance, Super Mario Brothers lack a Meta Plot in a grand sense of thing, nor is there one for Tetris, or I suspect for Final Fantasy I (the Final Fantasy games franchise is an interesting case study of “We have these cool mechanics; the plot and story is a seperate deal!”

The point is that a Meta Plot can be the inspiration for game mechanics and game design. Its influence can trinke all the way up to User Interface Design, quest designs, music, gameplay elements and even marketing/packaging. Could it? Let’s see.

Meta Plot and the Pen and Paper Continuum

Let begin with the pen and paper RPG world first. I have been gearing up to run Nobilis, in which each player represents an “avatar” of a concept on Earth, be it horses, communication, reading, katanas or even just blankets. The game is thick with Meta Plot – and the Plot is basically that Destroyers from Beyond Creation have come to erase out all Creation, and that includes the foundational concepts such as nature, animals, war and everything else. This Meta Plot supports the diceless game mechanics. Characters are assured of their success in any task unless opposed. This is a different take from most pen and paper RPGs which require you to make a roll to see if you succeed or fail at a challenging task.

The Meta Plot may inspire the game mechanic or the other way round, but I personally think that one thing is for sure – the Meta Plot and the game mechanics (and other design elements) must be in harmony. A big complaint of Exalted is that you never feel like the supernatural heroes which all the “fluff” (or backstory Meta Plot) makes you out to be. Or that Call of Cthlhu D20 is not as grim as its Basic Roleplaying incarnation because D20 (a generic “RPG engine” spined off from D&D 3.5) tend to gears toward heroic role-playing and characters created with the system starts out as better combatants.

Spirit of the Century, emulating pulp fiction, use the Fate 3.0 rules to allow players to create larger-than-life characters for their first adventure. We are talking stuff like Nobel prize winning scientist, ace pilot who has flew countless sorties or even a trained and skilled deadly martial artist who can floor a dozen. In fact, there is a complaint that characters in Spirit of the Century are virtually invincible, but hey, it fits the tone of the pulp fiction.

Don’t Rest your Head seems to follow “Meta Plot influences Game Design” pattern. You play as an insomniac who has been “Awakend”, granting you special abilities. However, you are also sucked into the City Awaken, a dimenison removed from normal world and is something out from a nightmare. There are rules for being exhausted – when you get more and more exhausted, you perform better and kick more ass, but there’s also a chance that you can get even more exhausted. That sounds like a good deal, except that when you are exhausted beyond a limit, you sleep and become a normal human being again, and you attract the attention of monsters who can’t wait to feast upon your helpeless body.

If we instead try to shoehorn this idea into, say D20 and GURPs, it will still work, but the mechanics presented in Don’t Rest your Head has the elements of exhaustion built right into its mechanics – you roll a number of D6 equal to your Exhaustion each time, with a 5 or 6 counting as a success. But if the higher dice roll is an Exhaustion dice, you gain 1 more point of Exhaustion (basically, there are other type of dice rolled at the same time, such as Discipline and Madness). Using another system to emulate this would be contrived.

Right, I think this article is kind of getting lengthy, and there is still a real life Flu I have to fight off. So I will just end with a “To be Continued…” here. Next up, I will pen (type?) down my thoughts on the Meta Plot and its drwbacks and how it fits into computer and board games.

Having the power to vote your own party members, such as the virtual democracies in Eve Online, sounds very enticing. Allowing players to take the law into their hand in a free-form games sound fun. Instead of “you cannot be a bad guy”, it becomes “you can be a bad guy until other players stop you”.

Yet, including social mechanics like these introduce changes to the game’s challenge.

The Hour is Later than You Think

This problem exists before MMOs come along, in the form of social conflicts and rules for table-top RPGs. Usually, the general advice is to give a bonus to skill checks for the player who narrate his actions well. For a social conflict or social skill check, it would be how well he role-play. But what if the player has a poor Charisma stat but is a good speaker? Which one has a higher weightage, on the spot role-playing or mechanic?

Is this a big deal? Say a character with obvious social flaws, perhaps a Charisma of just 3, and is trying to persuade a rival guild leader to an alliance. He speaks eloquently and flawlessly; he has a sound win-win proposal. He has just done something to impress the guild leader. If the GM let him succeeds, then he effectively has a Charisma of 18 or more.

What about a player with Charisma 18, but isn’t so imaginative? Should such people be confined to brutes and warrior rules because of a real life aspect? Isn’t role-playing about being someone else in imagination?

Most modern pen and paper RPGs have come up with ways to deal with social conflicts, making it a legal part of the game – Weapons of the Gods have conditions, Spirit of the New Century has Aspects and Tagging and Exalted has formal rules for social conflicts. Perhaps this could serve as a model for MMO games too?

Typical RPG Challenges and Social Challenges

First, a typical RPG’s challenge involves analytical skill, resources management and situational awareness. You plan a build, equip your gear and learn skills, most of the time that is the bulk of the challenge (analytical and resources management). When you take to the battlefield, you see if your build is effective. Situational awareness comes in for a few classes, such as the crowd control and debuff groups, who have to stay on their toes.

Second, social mechanics include another set of skills all together – emotional intelligence, communication and like it or not, deceit. Who can forget about how the biggest alliance in Eve Online went down because someone basically was an insider? Now in eSingapore on eRepublick, there is this drama going on about how the joint chief of staff, a certain individual named William Shafter, moved to eRussia with the bulk of the country’s weapons and money. Now the president and the former chief of staff are bickering back and forth.

When you move the game’s emphasis (chance of success) to the former (the typical RPG skill-set), social mechanics may become a moot point. It’s like someone who is a grandmaster at Chess and taking on 20 beginners in a Chess marathon. It’s no sweat to him. He has the best build, a good situational awareness, a mastery of the game mechanics. Even if there is a bounty on him, most players can’t take him down. He is protected by the system. Sure, he may have trouble joining parties or guilds, but does he need to?

Expand that to a guild – imagine you have a guild of kick-ass people. They run afoul of the current norms (remember the Funeral Massacre of World of Warcraft?). Say people want to punish them. Blizzard can’t do it – their Terms of Service does not have anything for ruining a social event. So the players have to take it into their own hand. But let’s the players are so good, have the best equipment, do well at the auction house, or maybe they buy gold (not saying they are, but just saying they have a complete mastery of the game). Who can do anything to them?

Social mechanics is a moot point then.

Let’s examine the second point, where social mechanics has a larger weightage.

You have shifted the emphasis on challenge to something softer, less deterministic and that is going to piss off some people. Take for example, Facebook’s RPGs where in PvP, one of the decisive factor is whether you have 501 clan members. In games where you elect people by voting, social capital comes into play, and that is a different skill set from most RPGs.

Some people like to win due to their skills. Careful planning of their resources, analysis of the mechanics and min-maxing to win. They may dislike social mechanics for it feels like “boot-licking” and “whoring for attention”. Some people find all this stressful and play games to precisely to avoid these. Some people, however, wants those feelings and social interaction throughout. It’s not a case of “this is better than that” but “apples and oranges”.

Consequences of Social Mechanics: Be careful for what you ask for

However, social mechanics does add an unpredictable dimension to the game, yet for most people, who are working and face office politics and social pressures in the real life, do they need more in their entertainment?

Second, in a social environment, the majority sets the rule. If people can get away with crime, which often pays if not for the law, you get lots of griefing. If you could rob a character of his item instead of farming of it, without any consquences, while most of the people are doing it, will you? The ToS says you could; the game mechanics encourage you to do it and society agrees that “hey, it’s just a game!”. Chris Crawford actually wrote in this book, The Art of Game Design, that computer games could also be “blowing raspberries” at social norms and the law, for they allow you to partake in acts frown upon in the real life. The success of GTA, IMHO, proves the point. Why would you want to be honourable, law-abiding and etc.?

Third, you have to put in the incentive to build trust, and that may be the only reason why people don’t steal from their friends (but it’s still okay to steal from others, right?) Darkfall now has this problem where crafters are afraid of trading outside their own guild in fear of being PKed the moment they talk to a stranger, and has try to fix it with a patch. Do you have this sort of game environment (some would say yes, some would say no, so keep this in mind when designing your game).

Defintely, a middle-ground could exist. Don’t make the social mechanics the end all and be all. It could be a perk for those who communicates well and likes social interaction. It shouldn’t infringe on players who wants no part of it. And the social mechanics should extend beyond killing or defeating the player to punish him.

For example, Dynamic Drive, a technical forum where people helps out each other with programming questions, has a Thanks feature where posters can thank other for helping. GameDev.net has a rating system. LOTRO has a hidden social mechanic too – if you are hugged (through the emote) by 100 different players, you get the title “The Beloved”. If you are saluted 100 times, you get to access the emote “sword salute” (the typical kissing the sword gesture before a battle or duel, like what Aragorn did in the Fellowship of the Ring Movie).

Indeed, if you want to include social mechanics into your games, I think that the reward should be social and off another nature all together, not loot, XP or money, but recognition, respect and significance, which is what drives people who are interested in social interaction.

To Socialise or Not To?

There’s no real right answer here; the answer is whether the mechanics are suited to the theme and design of your game. You will draw different types of players, encourage different behaviours, norms and culture through the mechanics you include in your game.

By running a terrific atmospheric game where players get to shine. To get players to shine, the opposition must put a good fight. I want to see what my players would do when hard-pressed and I am anticipating what sort of tricks they would pull. Sometimes what they do make me sigh, sometimes they make me laugh, but most of the times, they astound me. That is where my fun come from.

Just to name an example. When doing a homebrew game with Ars Magica spontaneous magic rules slapped on top of it, a mage decided to use the Control ability and the element of water to create ice shields that circle around him. That got a laugh out from me. But later on he astounded me. I have sent a couple of demonic creatures after them, and just because they are cloaked in fire, it didn’t mean that they are weak against the element of water. So I had one of them purposely step onto a pool of water to demonstrate this fact.

The same mage player said “I want to hover droplets of water, and have them completely surrounding  the demon”. I was thinking, “Hey, dude, I just give you a clue. Water don’t work on those guys!” However, the next round he took my breath away with “I want to transform those droplets into ice shards and have them all impale the demon.”

It is those moments, cinematic time-freeze scenes of players’ ingenuity, that I want to see while GMing. So to do that I throw all sort of challenges at them. Social challenges (how do you get invited to a dwarf’s mining mine? A player with alchemical skill begin to brew his own ale), combat challenges (how do you take down a boss who is immune to all damage on every turn which is a prime number?), infiltration challenge (you are disguised as servants of a great lord, and have to break into his vault during a big party – how?) and each time when the players come up with something unconventional, I smile inside.

Hence, achieving total party kill is not my idea of fun, and perhaps this is why I tend to prefer Fate than other rules-heavy games.  Even for encounters, I purposely design them such that the it not just another fight on the table-top. Thre would be terrain to take advantage of, critical enemy weakness, or the fight takes place in a strange situation.

Of course, the game rules must be able to support those ‘surprises’. I like to see the players’ actions supported by the rules, not restricted by them. So far, Fate seems to be the best fit, but I believe that it is a mindset one have to adopt. Some games, however, refinroce the mindset of “the rules didn’t touch on it so you can’t do that”. As such, I tend to shy away from crunch-heavy games that feel like table-top MMOs or anything that could be achieved more easily through other means. Dungeon crawls are light in my game – I don’t get much fun from them when compared to complex social challenges or obstacles. Games like Descent and Runescapes emulate the hack and slash elements of RPG and also have the social interaction between players, with less preparation time. Lord of the Rings Online feed my MMO addiction. So I want to keep my games focused on what gives me the most enjoyment – players entertaining me, while they are entertained by my challenges.

That’s why I am a GM. I love to present a challenge, and see how the players solve it.