[Diaspora] Social Combat Maps (1 Viewer)

[Snarf]

Does anyone have examples of maps they've used for social combat?

I have a player that I think would be interested in social combat, but I'm kind of lost when it comes to drawing the map.

I saw three basic map types in the book examples. There was one spacial map that had a room subdivided into zones. There were two maps that were more linear. One looked like a bullseye and the other looked like a string of circles. Has anyone done something interesting with these map types? Or has anyone come up with their own map layouts?

 

[Brad J. Murray]

My experience with the social combat system so far (several years now) is that the simpler the map the better. The complicated part is figuring out who's on the map and what the nodes mean. We had good luck, for example, with a 9-node linked grid for a research problem with four facts as pawns and the team acting as individuals. Getting a fact and a character in a corner node solved the fact. I believe there was a single opposition "character" which was just "how hard the universe is to figure out".

I'm thinking that a supplement that just talks about successful social combat arrangements might be useful. We've had a dud or two from weak map/purpose combinations.

 

[Snarf]

That's an interesting scenario. How did you generate the skill pyramid for The Universe?

I would love to buy a supplement that had a bunch of advice and examples for social combat.

 

[Beeker]

Here's a link to a game I ran that was a one off. We created the cluster and characters and it had a nifty social game at the end.

The Dinner Boarding Party

The big thing about the social mini-game that I've discovered is to make sure either end point makes for a compelling story. It means complete success or total failure or somewhere in between leads the story and the characters somewhere interesting.

And Brad's right, keep the map more simple rather than overly complex. It isn't intuitive but once you just start gaming, it makes a lot more sense in play and than in theory.

 

[Loconius]

I too am interested in this sort of thing. I think programmers that program games that have relationship mechanics in them (like the iPhone "surviving highschool") would be a good source to ask how their graphical representation of their relationship map looked.

Maybe a troubled soul would have many overlapping zones or a walled off individual would have many separated zones that are hard to cross into...

 

[Brad J. Murray]

That's an interesting scenario. How did you generate the skill pyramid for The Universe?

I would love to buy a supplement that had a bunch of advice and examples for social combat.

If I recall we didn't give the opposition a pyramid but just rather a fixed roll of base 3 to resist and move others. You could seed a more convoluted narrative with a few skills and rule not to use the same one twice (say Complicated, Unexpected, and Dangerous).

 

[DrVesuvius]

I think Diaspora Social Combat needs and deserves a lot more discussion and examples. It's one of Diaspora's biggest potential contributions to the FATE cloud (the other being free-form stunts) but has the potential to fall flat and alienate the players if handled badly.

Maps - keep it simple seems good advice, but should every Social Map be a simple straight line of zones? What effects do other simple constructs have (like loops, branches or grids)?

Building opposition constructs - should you always do this, or are there times when you should have 3-4 NPCs all as actors on the map?

Building party constructs - the example from the Diaspora book has a construct character made up to represent the PC party, but the rest of the chapter seems to suggest that this is the exception rather than the rule. If you don't amalgamate the PCs into a single actor, if each PC is able to take an action each turn a single opposition actor doesn't seem to have a chance.

In the social combats I've run, I've given the PCs a single actor on the map with one action per turn, but the players use their own skills, Aspects & FATE points. The players have been very good about voluntarily changing which PC takes the lead each turn, with non-leading PCs giving "assists". This has the advantage of keeping everyone involved in the conflict, but the downside is a slightly lesser version of the "wolfpack" effect which gives the PCs an effective 2-3 shift advantage in every exchange. Between that and some other rules questions, I don't feel that we've been doing it "right".

As you say, it's all stuff that can be refined with practice and experience, but it would be great if we could benefit from the experiences of those who've already run successful Social Combats.

 

[EldritchFire]

Here's a crazy thought, what about using the "map" from space combat? That way, you always know what to expect, and it more closely mirrors another mini-game that most people are familiar with.

I mean, what's a sci-fi game without space battles or chases, right?

Just a thought.

-EF

 

[Tophocles]

It's not a crazy thought at all, and indeed in some of the iterations of another VSCA game, Soft Horizon, that is essentially what was intended. Now that game is currently being re-examined almost from the ground up, but it is possible that some form of the Space map will be presented as a model for any Diaspora social conflicts -- certainly if we pursue this.

Thanks!

 

[Hanover Fist]

I do have one, though it's been so long since the session that I don't remember much about the context anymore. Here it is:

Spoiler: Show

I've been wanting to do more Diaspora-style social combat, but the current direction of the campaign hasn't provided much opportunity.