Flamepunk: Social Combat

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Overview of Social Combat

This section describes rules for social conflict.

Using Social Combat

When and how to use social combat

Social combat is an acquired taste, but the general idea is it allows greater simulationism for social characters in the group. Why should the fighters and runners get all the dice-crunching fun?

The default purpose of social combat is when two or more characters are interacting with a specific goal in mind, and need to use their cunning, charm and force of personality to get their way.

Its generally not something you need to pull out for everyday conversations and day-to-day social interactions - this is best covered through just roleplaying - instead, its reserved for actual conflicts of personality, where characters want different things but can't just agree to differ.

Seduction, intimidation, persuasion, coercion and mroe can all be covered by social combat.

Social Combat Goals: "Defeat Conditions"

Core to social combat is the idea that each character has a target, and has a goal to the social combat.

Example goals:

• Seduce the Hadar ganglord, so that he is willing to tell you things that he wouldn't otherwise.
• Discredit the arguments of the prosecution lawyer, so your client walks free.
• Interrogate a suspect so that he tells you where his blazer buddies are.
• Convince the inquisitor interrogating you that you know nothing, so he'll leave you alone.

Social combat always requires an extended period of time, and continuous social interaction over this time

If you succeed in social combat (i.e. you reduce your target to 0 Will Points) then you achieve your objective.

The Passive Social Combatant

Sometimes, someone is trying to convince you of something, but you have no goal yourself.

In these circumstances it is reasonable to set a "passive goal", such as:

• Get this guy to leave me alone and stop harassing me.
• Walk out of here with my dignity intact, but without it looking like the other guy has won the argument.

With a little thought you can change most passive goals into active ones. The other alternative is "terminating social combat" as described below.

Intrinsic Resistance

Its sensible for players and GMs to set fairly low key and attainable goals for their characters.

If the GM deems that a character is trying for a particularly difficult goal, then he can assign a degree of intrinsic resistance. A lot of this is an ad hoc call by the GM.

Examples:

Intrinsic Resistance of 1

• Intimidating a ganger when he is front of his friends.
• Befriending a rich (but not especially prejudiced) Guilder, when you are the wrong social class.

Intrinsic Resistance of 2

• Convincing a heterosexual man to kiss a woman he is not at all attracted to.
• Convincing a miser to lend you money.
• Befriending a racist, when you are the wrong colour.

Intrinsic Resistance of 3

• Convincing a heterosexual man to engage in penetrative homosexual acts.
• Convincing an honourable soldier to betray his squad.
• Convincing a Church fanatic to spit on the altar of the holy flame.

Intrinsic Resistance of 4

• Convincing a happy man that he should commit suicide.
• Convincing a Church fanatic to burn down his local temple.

Intrinsic Resistance acts as a Dodge Defence on every social attack you make on that character, which is cumulative with their normal defence.

Intrinsic Resistance can be countered to some degree with tools or circumstantial factors. For example, the Church fanatic is more likely to spit on the altar if you have a gun to his head, and a character will be more likely to do things which are repugnant to him if you are holding his beloved family to ransom.

Intrinsic Resistance cannot be reduced to below 0, however.

Initiative and Combat Rounds

Order of Action

The same rules for determining initiative are used in social combat as for physical combat:

• Actions are declared then immediately resolved when it is a character's turn.
• The character with the most dice left in his action dice pool acts next.
• If action dice pools are drawn, then players act before non player characters.
• If players are drawn in action dice pool, then they can decide who goes first.
• If the above factors do not tell you who goes next, the GM arbitrarily decides, taking into account drama and expediency.

A character can choose not to act when his turn comes round by "setting aside" one or more dice. These set aside dice cannot be used for the rest of the round, but are returned to the player's dice pool at the end of the round.

Ending the Round

Once all characters in the combat have no dice left in their action pool, the round ends.

Each character moves all set aside dice back into their action dice pool, then recharges a number of action dice equal to half their Focus rounded up.

For player characters this will generally be three action dice.

A player's action dice pool cannot exceed their Focus from this.

System Permutations

Special Effects and Non-damaging attacks

... Examples: