In the game I just ran, one of the players realized he left a 5 year old girl behind to die. There should be a roll of some kind for this, but it feels bizarre to roll empathy to resist social stress. It's really the opposite - the higher your empathy, the more likely you are to get stressed out over leaving the girl behind.

-Jeff

P.S. She had been possessed by a zombie master, they had tied her up but didn't want to kill her. Then one died, the other ran, and realized the girl was still tied up.

It's an abstraction, dude.

The use of Empathy is a generalized abstraction of what is in reality a non-quantifiable concept and the number/mechanic is just a progression of that abstraction. What is the point of criticizing a quantitative abstraction of a qualitative concept?

Thinking about it overnight, it occurred to me that "confidence" might be a much better defensive stat in social settings. That's the thing that lets you walk out on stage, make decisions that effect a group of people without second-guessing yourself, and so on.

-Jeff

P.S.Yes, it is an abstraction. All RPGs are abstractions, and not perfect. I get that. Lumping lots of stuff into 6 stats is not perfect as well. But that doesn't mean that the game designers and developers can toss any word they want, and in a narrative game like this, the words do have real meaning.

If you know what someone is feeling in a conflict, it's much easier to manipulate those feelings, also Empathy is directly linked to ones ability to judge character and tell if someone is lying, two of the most common things you would do in an apocalypse, I would say that's why its Empathy. And it's definitely better than confidence which is really more of a mental defense.

Not to mention your original example of thinking you left a 5-year old to die would inflict Mental Stress anyway, in my opinion.

... but it feels bizarre to roll empathy to resist social stress. It's really the opposite - the higher your empathy, the more likely you are to get stressed out ...

What if you increased the difficulty to something like needing three or four successes to reflect that the character is so empathic?

What if you increased the difficulty to something like needing three or four successes to reflect that the character is so empathic?

Your stat is your stat, and penalizing someone for having a higher stat by interpreting it as something more than it was meant to be, runs directly opposed to the way this system is supposed to work. A higher stat is supposed to be a batter stat - always. Not just in some circumstances.

the higher the stat=more likely to resist stress.

But you could have him roll 3-4 pos and neg dice to see if/how much stress he takes.

Charger is suggesting raising the difficulty because you have a better stat, that is not how it's supposed to work. Raising the difficulty because it's a Traumatic thing is fine. Difficulty (number of successes needed) should be determined independent of a stats value - every time. The two are not related in the mechanic.

Agree with all the emsqaured is saying and as he mentioned go for Willpower as they are trying to resist the horror and guilt for what they have done.

Even from an abstraction point of view there's no issue of it not making sense this way.

I actually played around with reverse empathy tests in my first session. The issue is, like you said that the higher your empathy is the more likely you are to have to help people in need. I know it's an abstraction but when it came to character creation my players were making themselves so they took all these stats rather literally.

So the example we had in our game was one player meeting his zombified dad and having to kill him. Before starting I made them do all do an empathy test. Passing this test means they're too empathetic and can't attack this turn and failing this test means screw empathising with it and just kill it! Hence reverse empathy test. Rules for passing and failing are exactly RAW the players just wanted to fail rather than succeed.

It worked quite well. Everyone got a little chunk of social stress from the test as the reality of seeing a friends parent die hits them and the friend in question was frozen and couldn't bring himself attack - because he passed the test.

The continued hand-waving of all attribute names as "abstractions" to explain away the contradiction seems lazy to me. All of these could have been named "physical-o, physical-d, mental-o, mental-d, social-o, social-d", but somebody went through the trouble to apply names to these attributes for a reason, and in part it has to do with the narrative. Making your empathy roll means that you both feel and understand what someone else is feeling or thinking (we all agreed with that); succeeding at that in this situation means you personally feel the horror you just subjected some poor little girl to.

As for "empathy is useful in an apocalypse", I do agree, but there's only 6 stats and some things are going to be sacrificed. I'd like a better named social defensive stat that makes sense.

Finally, I thought about reverse-rolls, but then realized people will rightly take lots of empathy 1s as a survival trait. That may even be a good simulation for a lone-wolf, but I think it diverges even farther from the idea of "social defense".

-Jeff

Heres (one of) the thing(s) tho, neither yours nor Gaiduku's scenarios are even social conflicts. They are mental. The source of the Stress doesn't even have any Social Attributes or characteristics. I could see inflicting Social Stress as a part of the Mental Test if you're into that approach (I am) - but in no way are these two examples social challenges. Not even getting into how there's already a mechanism to do what you're trying to do by rearranging things for the sake of rearrangement.

Yeah, I have to agree with emsquared. The Social stats are related to social tests. The scenarios used as examples are full on mental situations. Look at page 21 for a breakdown of the stats:

Willpower (defensive): Willpower represents your memory and mental resilience. Everything from resisting the horrors of the world to recalling specific information from years ago uses Willpower.

...

Empathy (defensive): Empathy is your ability to understand and sympathize with others. From determining whether someone is lying to predicting an adversary's next move, it can be very useful.

Sure they are abstractions, but they are defined terms that mean something in the game. I don't mean to be a stick in the mud. I'm all for changing stuff and making up house rules and stuff, but it just seems like there is a misunderstanding about what the stats are intended to represent.

" Empathy is your ability to understand and sympathize with others. "

If you don't understand and sympathize with the little girl, you really don't care about leaving her behind and there's no affect.

The entire point to the social stats is to explore the degradation of polite, civilized conduct as the world crumbles around you. Realizing that you forgot a little girl should hurt, but perhaps you've been under so much stress that you've become callous and just don't care any more.

I have been thinking about this, and maybe I could see it backwards. Maybe this is one of those "if you can still cry, you are still human" moments. Passing the Empathy test means you let out your emotions and can heal. Failing the test means it doesn't bother you, and further stresses your crumbling sense of social behavior.

-Jeff

I get what you are saying but I'm really having a hard time understanding where you are coming from. There is no social interaction taking place in the examples. Realizing that you left a child to die falls completely under willpower- i.e."resisting the horrors of the world". The examples of social conflict in the book are stuff like talking a hostile person down, convincing someone to do something for you etc.

It seems like a really weird stretch is being made here, like if you had a character make a vitality check to see if they were strong enough to hold a book they are reading- if they pass they have found the answer in the book and know how to do something (i.e. it should have just been willpower roll in the first place).

Again, I'm all for house ruling and making stuff up (I'm not planning on using the six stats in the rulebook at all when I play), but that doesn't seem like what you are going for, and thus I'm concerned there is a misunderstanding about how the stats work.

Let me try it this way - if I left a doorknob behind in my rush to get away, there's be no roll. It has to be something I care about.

You are assuming a feeling to start, "of course leaving a little girl behind would hurt", and then requiring a willpower roll to fight off the anguish. I'm saying that there's no guarantee that leaving a girl behind will hurt at all; that's a function of empathy. In survival situations, people start to value other people less and less, become quicker to violence, and so on.

-Jeff

Ok, well personally I think I wouldn't necessarily require a roll to fight off mental anguish, because as you say there is no guarantee the PCs would care. I would rather not tell players how they feel about stuff like that. I think it is usually better to let the players decide on that kinda thing on their own. And thus, for that reason I wouldn't use empathy for that either. As a few of us have said there isn't really a social interaction taking place in the example of of leaving the girl behind. It is just something the character did.

As written there is no cause for stress to be applied in a situation like that, since, as stated in the rules there are really only two "things" that could happen to cause a roll like that. Either a Conflict or a Task .

A conflict obviously is when two characters are trying actively to do something that causes a conflict between them.

The task being when a character specifically tries to do something, i.e. takes an action which effectively puts them in a conflict type situation with the game environment in some manner.

So I could see your example making sense if the little girl cried and pleaded to be rescued as the PCs started to leave - in game terms here she is making a charisma based attack against the "Heroes" empathy stat, which I think would be appropriate. It is important to note she couldn't force the characters to come back and save her by succeeding, but her very effective pitiful pleading could definitely cause stress and haunt the PCs -EVEN IF they do go back and rescue her- because as written that is how conflict and stress work. I don't think it would be an unreasonable houseruling on the GMs part to say that rescuing her would cancel out the stress caused by her begging, but it could go either way depending on the tone of the game.

I suppose the example could work as a task as well if the player specifically said they wanted to attempt to ignore her pleading, but I would find it pretty unlikely for a player to do that. Tasks are actions PCs decide to do so it wouldn't be supported by the rules for the GM to call for task to ignore her pleading. The GM could however rule that the girl pleading is distracting and thus adds a difficulty die (or several) to a different task the PC is attempting, such as picking a lock or trying to convince somebody to do something for you.

It sounds like what you are discussing is something more like a morale or alignment mechanic of some kind, which could be a cool house rule for sure. I'm really not trying to be a jerk or anything like that, I'm just enjoying this discussion and hope you are too. I'm doing my best to explain the rules to the best of my understanding. I think it is important to do that before deciding what you want to change or house rule (and as I mentioned I am going to be doing a whole bunch of house ruling myself).

It's an old topic, but this interests me too. I don't have my book yet, but would like to know how the Empathy works.

Jeff gave a wonderful example - but I too think that this is not sotial challenge, but mentla. So Willpower should be used, to test if you are able to act logically (to given situation) or break.

But the question is still up. What is sotial challange? What is sotial trauma? And how do you use the sotial defensive skill, Empathy? I agree with emsquared, that the core system should not be changed to handle the social challenge.

A social conflict is when two personalities are trying to achieve opposite/different goals.

Bartering over goods, hostage situations, two people trying to win over the loyalty of one crowd, intimidating someone into not talking to their leader, trying to get someone to believe a lie in the short and/or long term, seduce someone who isn't initially interested, trying to gain someone's trust who doesn't or isn't inclined to trust you, those sorts.

Social Trauma, IMO, is the progression along the spectrum from a natural disposition of Altruism or Philanthropy (believing in the inherent good in people and/or wanting to help others) toward Misanthropy and Sociopathy (believing people are inherently evil and wishing others harm for that reason).

Using Empathy as a Defense means you are trying to determine what the other party to your Social Conflict really wants, or is trying to hide, and/or using that sense to appeal to their concious or subconscious needs to thwart their goal or achieve your own.

Typed that up pretty on the fly but it's about as good as I could explain it. Make sense?

Yes, it made wonderfully sense!

So social trauma is not so much a trauma, but could it be like a fact that is known about that character, that works against him when wanting to persuade others.

It is a tricky to name that skill, which is used for "social defense". So charisma is an attribute how easily he could persuade others to do what they don't want, but the "social defense" is how difficult it would be to persuade him by others to do something he does not want. Yeah, it's like "goodness", or "social status" or something ... yeah, why not Empathy. It means how emphatic are others toward you, not that if you having high empathy to others - it's a tricky, but makes sense!

...So social trauma is not so much a trauma, but could it be like a fact that is known about that character, that works against him when wanting to persuade others.

... the "social defense" is how difficult it would be to persuade him by others to do something he does not want.

...It means how emphatic are others toward you, not that if you having high empathy to others - it's a tricky, but makes sense!

What I was trying to describe was the fluff, the internal process of a person using their Empathy to win a Social Conflict - nothing more than the description of the abstraction, as I understand it. You kind of seem to be taking it as an in-character result that it shouldn't be.

The reason it's hard to persuade someone with high Empathy is because they can read you (infact poker is a great Social Conflict example!), they know what you really want when you say one thing but mean another.

It has absolutely nothing to do with how empathic others are towards you, IMO. Charisma is getting others to feel for you, the way you want them to feel. But if you have a high Empathy, that means you can read people, and if you can read people, it's hard for them to deceive you, or persuade you through their presented personality (charisma), or to do anything to you that involves social mores.

Ok, I started to build upon your explanation my own theory of this - you meant something else

But basically it seems you are talking about "insight" skill - and that would make sense too. But I fail to see how emphaty is about how well somebody understands their true meening/intent. High Empathy would mean, you are a caring person and are able to understand others problems. I don't see how having high Empathy would be good to win arguments.

I provide small example - A is attacker and B is defender with high empathy:

A: I need all the food, my wife is pregnant
B: No, we agreed all get the fair share
A: But pleease!
B: Allright, I feel your pain - take all the food

This would be my logical interpretation of how empathic player would react. But I guess I am taking the Empathy too literaly ...

Empathy means your ability to understand and share the feelings of others, this includes any feeling they don't want you to know. So if someone is nervous you can sense that, if someone is scared you can sense that and if they are trying to conceal those things or any other contradictory emotion to what they are putting on as a front you know they're lying or you know they have another motive than what they're saying.

If that doesn't make sense to you and fit into your conceptualization of a social conflicts defense, then you will go on disagreeing with the terms use forever. But I guarantee this was at least part of the intent of the developers when they chose the word.

Ok, half-sold at the moment. Once I get the book, I will read how it explains it. I'm sure I will get it then