This thread rapidly went off onto a tangent about social mechanics and how they can be designed/work in play, so I thought I'd start a new thread.

A lot of what I have to say about this is already in the courtier chapter of Imperial Archives : not reducing complex interactions to a single roll, incorporating modifiers based on circumstance, etc. As I said in sndwurks' thread, I am personally opposed to trying to create a social interaction system that would be equivalent to the combat system, with "damage" and "wounds" and so forth; I want it to be more free-flowing than that. But, as others have said, there are so many variables that can affect social interactions and their results that codifying them all into actual numbers is a pain in the neck: "okay, if he just insulted you that day he's at -1k0 to ask a favor, but if he's been rude to you for at least a week that's -2k0, and if it's more than a month it's -3k0; if your clans hate one another, then those penalties acquire a kept die as well" -- no. Just no. It's an abyss we'd never climb back out of.

So what do I think a good social system would do?

It comes back to what I said in IA about modifiers. At the time, I noted that there are several ways to adjust a roll:

*Add or remove rolled or kept dice from the active character's dice pool
*Add or remove rolled or kept dice from the dice pool of the resisting character
*Apply a bonus or malus (e.g. +5 or -5) to the total of one roll
*Grant Free Raises, or require Raises to be called

The more I think about it, the more I feel that a good social system would not quantify these modifiers, but would instead focus on what each type of modifier means .

Let's take the flat bonus as an example. We could say that this modifier applies when you have a skill or other stat which is relevant to the topic at hand: you can add your Honor Rank to your Sincerity (Honesty) totals, your Meditation Rank to Etiquette totals when resisting emotional manipulation, your Battle Rank when delivering an Intimidation attempt threatening military action. This encourages synergy and gives a clear-cut answer to the question of "how much should this help?" You don't have to list every potential combination; just give some examples and let each group decide how generous they want to be with such bonuses, and whether in this one specific instance it really makes sense to add your Kenjutsu to your Divination roll.

A penalty to the dice pool of the agent could reflect circumstances of personal antipathy which act against the character before he even opens his mouth. How bad of a penalty? Well, it depends on the characters. Your Kharmic Nemesis should have a much harder time getting your help than the guy who accidentally spilled tea on your kimono at last Winter Court. On the flip side, a boost to the dice pool of the target can reflect circumstances that aren't about who's talking to them, but rather the target's own nature: a happily married character gets a boost against seduction attempts, and someone following direct orders gets a boost against being persuaded to do something against those orders.

I don't have the time right now to work through all the angles of this, but it's enough to show what I mean. Rather than trying to litigate individual numbers, lay out a set of tools and talk about what each one represents.

Once you've done this, it opens up possibilities for how to handle the old "mind control" argument and deal with players who don't want to let their characters be influenced. Agent rolls Investigation to figure out what kind of argument/pressure/etc would be persuasive to Target; Target's player describes something they think is appropriate, and the subsequent interaction reflects both mechanically (an adjusted Courter / Awareness vs. Etiquette / Willpower roll) and socially (the dialogue used IC) the agreement that Agent is taking a genuinely persuasive approach. (Or a really terrible one, if they failed that Investigation roll.) If you have a player who never admits his PC might have a vulnerable spot, or refuses to go along when the vulnerable spot he chose for himself gets used against him . . . well, then, you have the same kind of player who would adjust their combat tactics to account for the invisible character his PC doesn't know is there. And that's not a problem you solve with rules.

OK I didn't see this thread before responding to the other so I will copy/paste the relevant portion of my response:

I know I said in the other thread that I think the system works as is. That said, if you're going to do social mechanics, I think there are some things that are needed, and yes, some things that could be improved upon. Such as:

1. Honor/Glory/Infamy/Status: Been mentioned elsewhere, but what these mean/do should be thoroughly laid out. Status in particular. What does status 4.0 let me do in my home province? Can I get the assistance of a shugenja if I need one? Some soldiers? A courtly advisor? Can I secure an invite to the next big party? How does it change if I'm outside my home, in a friendly court? Or a rival court? Etc. etc.

Also, said it before (along with others) and I'll say it again- Infamy should be independent from glory. While on the topic of Glory, laying out how one's reputation, good or bad, impacts social interactions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. As is, if your infamy gets high enough as a courtier, you can get to the point where you're 'as infamous' as the Lord of the Shadowlands. What does that mean? That people should cut you down in the street? Seems doubtful.

2. The ability to make people do things- It's this simple- courtiers need to be able to do stuff. People may complain about mind control, but the fact of the matter is, if your bushi can stab people, your shuggie can throw fire, your monk can punch through brick... then your courtier should be able to socially/emotionally manipulate people. In order to prevent abuses, sometimes these sort of mechanics really need to be cut and dry. The courtier beat you with a roll, you now do/believe/think [x]. Otherwise, many players will come up with convoluted reasons their unique little snowflake interprets the situation differently, in a manner that's beneficial to their character and/or in line with what they want to do.

3. A reliance on multiple stats- This is where I think the system is flawed. Everything being based on awareness and willpower doesn't sit well with me. There are other mental stats and I think it's time for perception and intelligence to get a bit more love.

Going to say more later but for now, things to do. There's a lot that can/should be said on this subject. Look forward to seeing people's thoughts on it.

Kinzen, I haven't read Imperial Archives yet, but from what you are saying, I'll have to check it out.

Generally though, I like what you have laid out a lot with one caveat. Modifiers help the roll more accurately reflect the circumstances of what is going on, but the result still boils down to something some people will call "mind control." Modifiers do a great job of rewarding players for roleplaying well or thinking of things they can use to gain advantage in a situation before the roll. But adding modifiers to a roll doesn't help players roleplay well following the resolution. It doesn't help the players roll with the punches so to speak.

In combat situations, losing or winning combat helps the players continue to roleplaying. If you lose, you are typically wounded and unable to continue fighting, if you win, you typically can press your advantage.

So for me, I like social systems that both reflect the circumstances of the situation (modifiers, etc.), and facilitate further roleplay (experience points from failed rolls, restrictions on further actions, benefit for accepting the proposed consequences, force the players to escalate the conflict, etc.).

A lot of what I have to say about this is already in the courtier chapter of Imperial Archives : not reducing complex interactions to a single roll, incorporating modifiers based on circumstance, etc. As I said in sndwurks' thread, I am personally opposed to trying to create a social interaction system that would be equivalent to the combat system, with "damage" and "wounds" and so forth; I want it to be more free-flowing than that.

I think a ''social combat'' system wouldn't be a bad thing in itself. However, I know many players resent such a system, while others expect something similar in RP-Heavy games. I does open up a lot of possibilities to differentiate courtiers, just as the many aspects of combat allows to differentiate bushis.

It made me think, however, and while this is highly un-tested, I would like to offer a very alpha-build of what could be, IMHO, a simple way to implement a social combat system.

Let's take the actual combat system as the basis instead of building something from the groud up. We can divide social mechanics into two broad categories

-The Court

-Opposition between two courtiers

1.

The Courts, where a bunch of courtiers make deals at the same time, is a perfect setup for a Winter Court play-by-board multiplayer game, but is hard to replicate around a table with only a handful of players, usually all in the same team. So the Court, using this optional rule, would play in a manner very similar to a skirmish where Rounds would instead be known as Days (or half-days, or hours, depending on the scope of the court). I will be using 4e edition rules, since we have absolutly no idea what the 5e edition will look like and even if there will be one.

Initiative: School Rank/Perception. Actions in a court are very hard to order, since they pretty much all happen at the same time over a long period of time. Thus, initiative is used for declaration instead. The lowest roll must declare his action first following by the second lowest, etc. while the rolls are made in the opposite order, but occuring simulanously.

Attack: Courtier/Awareness: When a courtier makes an attack roll, he must beat his opponent TN to be convinced . He may call raises as normal on this roll to increase his damage or to perform special maneuvers. He may take the Attack of Full Attack Stance as normal.

TN to be convinced: A character's TN is equal to 5*Willpower, plus an armor bonus equal to the highest of his Glory, Status or Honor. He may take the Defense or Full Defense stance as normal (For full defense, the courtier rolls Etiquette/Willpower)

Damage: Under normal circumstances, a courtier deals Intelligencek1 in damage when succesfully convincing his opponent. Before rolling damage, however, he must decide how he wants to undermine his opponent.

-For every five points of damage, he may remove 1 point of social advantage from his opponent.

-For every five points of damage, he may add 1 point of social disadvantage from his opponent.

-He may try to change an opponent's opinion of himself from Hostile to Cautious, Cautious to Neutral, Neutral to Helpful or Helpful to Friendly. You may not change an opponent's opinion more than once during a single Court.

-You may try to convince your opponent. What is allowed depends on your opponent's opinion. For example:

Hostile: Go to war, accept a duel, leave the court in disgust, etc.

Cautious: Listen to a proposal, Transmit a message to his superior, Accept a hostage exchange, etc.

Neutral: Accept a trade agreement, Stay neutral in another social conflict, Attend a formal event, etc.

Helpful: Grant boons and gifts, Accept a marriage proposition

Friendly: Accept a formal alliance, Accept a clearly disavantageous deal to help you, etc.

However, the target may always decide to ignore you. He loses face and loses 1 point of glory for every five points of damage you dealt. In addition, any remaining actions he tries against you this Day (if any) are ignored.

2.

When two courtiers are opposed, either in a rethoric contest, trying to convince a third party or any similar situation, the conflict is resolved like a Duel instead.

Assesment: Investigation/Perception

Focus: Etiquette/Willpower

Strike: Courtier/Awareness

Damage is dealt exactly like in the Court. If it's a race to decide which courtier manages to convince someone first, the first to strike wins. If time is not an issue, the highest damage wins.

Ahahahahaha I figured out how to make this forum give me the code view of quotations, rather than the WYSIWYG view! I am much happier now.

1. Honor/Glory/Infamy/Status: Been mentioned elsewhere, but what these mean/do should be thoroughly laid out. Status in particular. What does status 4.0 let me do in my home province? Can I get the assistance of a shugenja if I need one? Some soldiers? A courtly advisor? Can I secure an invite to the next big party? How does it change if I'm outside my home, in a friendly court? Or a rival court? Etc. etc.

Also, said it before (along with others) and I'll say it again- Infamy should be independent from glory. While on the topic of Glory, laying out how one's reputation, good or bad, impacts social interactions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. As is, if your infamy gets high enough as a courtier, you can get to the point where you're 'as infamous' as the Lord of the Shadowlands. What does that mean? That people should cut you down in the street? Seems doubtful.

2. The ability to make people do things- It's this simple- courtiers need to be able to do stuff. People may complain about mind control, but the fact of the matter is, if your bushi can stab people, your shuggie can throw fire, your monk can punch through brick... then your courtier should be able to socially/emotionally manipulate people. In order to prevent abuses, sometimes these sort of mechanics really need to be cut and dry. The courtier beat you with a roll, you now do/believe/think [x]. Otherwise, many players will come up with convoluted reasons their unique little snowflake interprets the situation differently, in a manner that's beneficial to their character and/or in line with what they want to do.

3. A reliance on multiple stats- This is where I think the system is flawed. Everything being based on awareness and willpower doesn't sit well with me. There are other mental stats and I think it's time for perception and intelligence to get a bit more love.

Some of what you say is stuff I ranted about discussed in IA. Courtly hierarchy is completely unclear; I wouldn't lay it out as "Status 4 lets you do X," because the guy who's the Minister of Trade should be able to do different things from the guy who's Minister of the Governor's Household. But just talking about what being a minister means , and the different spheres of the bureaucracy, would solve a lot of that in a less cookie-cutter fashion. I also am very much a proponent of involving Perception and Intelligence (and the physical Traits, too) a lot more.

People keep bringing up "Infamy should be independent from Glory" -- I'm not sure why. It already is independent from Glory. You can have both, and the only place they interact is that you add them together to see how recognizable you are. That they should both do more than simply affect recognition, I agree; that was another thing I went into, and wanted to see in 5e.

Generally though, I like what you have laid out a lot with one caveat. Modifiers help the roll more accurately reflect the circumstances of what is going on, but the result still boils down to something some people will call "mind control." Modifiers do a great job of rewarding players for roleplaying well or thinking of things they can use to gain advantage in a situation before the roll. But adding modifiers to a roll doesn't help players roleplay well following the resolution. It doesn't help the players roll with the punches so to speak.
In combat situations, losing or winning combat helps the players continue to roleplaying. If you lose, you are typically wounded and unable to continue fighting, if you win, you typically can press your advantage.
So for me, I like social systems that both reflect the circumstances of the situation (modifiers, etc.), and facilitate further roleplay (experience points from failed rolls, restrictions on further actions, benefit for accepting the proposed consequences, force the players to escalate the conflict, etc.).

What modifiers do for the resolution is clarify and give context to what has just happened. An NPC comes to ask me to do him a political favor and, to sweeten the pot, offers to get me assigned to a more advantageous duty at court. That isn't just a +2k0 to his roll; that's me understanding why my character would agree to this, which gives me a foothold for roleplay other than "he asks me to do this and for some reason I agree." Or, to pick a more coercive example: he threatens to ruin the marriage negotiations for my friend's love-match. Now it isn't just "he scared me into doing it . . . somehow;" I know how he scared me, and (if I'm the one who proposed that as suitable leverage) I've already agreed that it's an effective tactic in this situation.

I'm not against more concrete systematization of the results; for example, I've proposed that the mechanical effect of Intimidation could be to impose a dice penalty on subsequent actions which are not in compliance with the intimidator's wishes, which is in line with how people often behave in the face of such things in real life. But I will say that I am extremely opposed to the "you get XP for going along with it" approach: all of my encounters with situations where players earn XP unequally have been bad. As a GM, I give flat XP per session, with bonuses to the whole group if the session was especially good; I don't do individual bonuses for RP or using your Disadvantages or whatever. Anything else, in my experience, leads to certain players pulling away from the rest of the pack, which makes their PCs more effective than the others, which not only unbalances the game mechanically but makes it less fun overall.

Of your other suggestions, many of them sound to me like stuff that's already present, just not in explicit or numerical fashion: "restrictions on further actions" sounds like the mind control everybody complains about ("what do you mean I can't attack him just because he scared the crap out of me?"), so does "force the players to escalate the conflict" ("I don't want to challenge him to a duel, even though he's successfully provoked me into doing just that!"), and "benefit for accepting the proposed consequences" is at least in part the kind of thing I'm trying to build into the interaction itself: if you do what this guy is asking you to, then you get whatever gift or favor he's using to persuade you. (I say only in part because, as your XP example shows, the benefits don't have to be IC.)

1.
The Courts, where a bunch of courtiers make deals at the same time, is a perfect setup for a Winter Court play-by-board multiplayer game, but is hard to replicate around a table with only a handful of players, usually all in the same team. So the Court, using this optional rule, would play in a manner very similar to a skirmish where Rounds would instead be known as Days (or half-days, or hours, depending on the scope of the court).

I had a proposal about this on the old boards, but I took it further. A skirmish involves a small number of people and lasts for a minute at most; if you're talking about lots of people doing something over a period of hours, you use Mass Battle. Similarly, a conversation is a small number of people in a short period of time; if you're looking at large groups of courtiers wheeling and dealing over a period of days, I think you need something modeled on the Mass Battle rules, not the skirmish rules. Very short version of what I proposed is that there would be a Politics skill (comparable to Battle), a "commander" (the courtier in charge of whatever large-scale thing is happening -- a trade negotiation or whatever), and "heroic opportunities" would be scenes in which a PC has some kind of potentially useful interaction with an NPC (e.g. flattering them with a poem or intimidating them into backing down on a certain point or whatever). For Court-level maneuvering, I feel like that's a better model than the moment-to-moment detail of skirmish/conversation.

2.
When two courtiers are opposed, either in a rethoric contest, trying to convince a third party or any similar situation, the conflict is resolved like a Duel instead.

Assesment: Investigation/Perception
Focus: Etiquette/Willpower
Strike: Courtier/Awareness

Damage is dealt exactly like in the Court. If it's a race to decide which courtier manages to convince someone first, the first to strike wins. If time is not an issue, the highest damage wins.

Eh . . . the thing is, a debate does not flow anything like a duel. Iaijutsu duels are about staring intently at somebody until your spirit has focused and you're ready to make that single, perfect strike. That just isn't how people usually talk. I'm very much of the camp which says that if a conversation is important, it should not be resolved by a single roll; instead it should be a back-and-forth of various kinds of rolls (Etiquette, Courtier, Sincerity, Investigation, Lores relevant to the topic at hand, Intimidation or Temptation if you're that kind of courtier, etc). I didn't like the official taryu-jiai rules being iaijutsu with a paint job on top; I wouldn't want to see social matters treated the same way. That just turns shugenja and courtiers into bushi of a different sort, rather than modeling what makes their field of specialty interesting and distinct.

derp wrongpost

Ahahahahaha I figured out how to make this forum give me the code view of quotations, rather than the WYSIWYG view! I am much happier now.

That comment got me looking again, and I found the little switch icon...

Eh . . . the thing is, a debate does not flow anything like a duel. Iaijutsu duels are about staring intently at somebody until your spirit has focused and you're ready to make that single, perfect strike. That just isn't how people usually talk. I'm very much of the camp which says that if a conversation is important, it should not be resolved by a single roll; instead it should be a back-and-forth of various kinds of rolls (Etiquette, Courtier, Sincerity, Investigation, Lores relevant to the topic at hand, Intimidation or Temptation if you're that kind of courtier, etc). I didn't like the official taryu-jiai rules being iaijutsu with a paint job on top; I wouldn't want to see social matters treated the same way. That just turns shugenja and courtiers into bushi of a different sort, rather than modeling what makes their field of specialty interesting and distinct.

The same problem that Courtier Techniques seem to smack into... entire conversations, plots, etc, resolved in one roll.

Eh . . . the thing is, a debate does not flow anything like a duel. Iaijutsu duels are about staring intently at somebody until your spirit has focused and you're ready to make that single, perfect strike. That just isn't how people usually talk. I'm very much of the camp which says that if a conversation is important, it should not be resolved by a single roll; instead it should be a back-and-forth of various kinds of rolls (Etiquette, Courtier, Sincerity, Investigation, Lores relevant to the topic at hand, Intimidation or Temptation if you're that kind of courtier, etc). I didn't like the official taryu-jiai rules being iaijutsu with a paint job on top; I wouldn't want to see social matters treated the same way. That just turns shugenja and courtiers into bushi of a different sort, rather than modeling what makes their field of specialty interesting and distinct.

The same problem that Courtier Techniques seem to smack into... entire conversations, plots, etc, resolved in one roll.

My principle has always been that techniques should mostly be about doing stuff better or more easily than the guy who doesn't have the technique. (I say "mostly" because there's also a place for "you can do something nobody else can even attempt" -- but that should be used sparingly.) So I'm okay with techniques allowing you to short-cut the complicated dance, when the circumstances are right. But in terms of existing implementation, well, it's kind of like what I was saying about artisan techniques a while back: if you design techs without first laying out the basis for how stuff operates normally, you end up with a mess. So in essence, I think the concept is fine, but the execution needed to be done better.

Pasted from the other thread:

Eh . . . the thing is, a debate does not flow anything like a duel. Iaijutsu duels are about staring intently at somebody until your spirit has focused and you're ready to make that single, perfect strike. That just isn't how people usually talk. I'm very much of the camp which says that if a conversation is important, it should not be resolved by a single roll; instead it should be a back-and-forth of various kinds of rolls (Etiquette, Courtier, Sincerity, Investigation, Lores relevant to the topic at hand, Intimidation or Temptation if you're that kind of courtier, etc). I didn't like the official taryu-jiai rules being iaijutsu with a paint job on top; I wouldn't want to see social matters treated the same way. That just turns shugenja and courtiers into bushi of a different sort, rather than modeling what makes their field of specialty interesting and distinct.

The same problem that Courtier Techniques seem to smack into... entire conversations, plots, etc, resolved in one roll.

My principle has always been that techniques should mostly be about doing stuff better or more easily than the guy who doesn't have the technique. (I say "mostly" because there's also a place for "you can do something nobody else can even attempt" -- but that should be used sparingly.) So I'm okay with techniques allowing you to short-cut the complicated dance, when the circumstances are right. But in terms of existing implementation, well, it's kind of like what I was saying about artisan techniques a while back: if you design techs without first laying out the basis for how stuff operates normally, you end up with a mess. So in essence, I think the concept is fine, but the execution needed to be done better.

Combat -- has a full framework that Bushi Techniques work within.

Social Interaction -- has much less framework, so that Courtier Techniques are disconnected

Arts -- basically no framework, Artisan Techniques "work" in a vacuum.

Pasted from the other thread:

I'll respond here because I think it fits better in this discussion, and replying in two places will only become confusing.

Who needs stubborness wounds? And why are people focusing on Courtier as mind control?

Because the latter is a common complaint about any kind of offensive social ability in any game.

And not only do I think a social combat system is a good idea, it fits pretty much perfectly in this model! You don't ever need to convince someone to believe what you want them to believe -- you need to shame them into compliance by showing the superiority of your position or your self. Every social combat round is a contested roll where you and your opponent try to get the upper hand in the conversation. Loser takes a social hit. And in a face-saving-obsessed society of courtliness, you don't wear someone down by attrition, you go "negative implication -- veiled insult -- plausibly deniable barb -- devastating Oscar Wilde-level comeback." Your face is mostly fine until the last hit, when you're humiliated. As you get closer to your last hit, you'll be more tempted to bow out and surrender, which would mean admitting your opponent is right. It doesn't matter if you actually convince anyone -- what matters is that they agreed you were right rather than lose face.

Given that persuading people you're correct is a thing that happens all the time in real life, I wouldn't want what you describe to be the default method of modeling social interaction. (It reminds me of one of the things that really annoyed in me in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series: every group of women apparently operated by somebody in the room being the hardest hardass who could browbeat everybody into doing what she said. Nobody ever seemed to get their way through emotional appeal or sensible logic or any strategy other than social force.)

Having said that, I could see there being a "duel" equivalent built along the lines of what you describe. That's sort of what the Emerald Empire version of Court Battle was supposed to model, though it didn't work very well. I'd personally be happy with three levels of social systems: "duels" for oppositional debates, "court battle" for large-scale factional maneuvering, and something in the middle for normal interaction.

One of the primary benefits of having a social combat system is not resolving things in one roll. In this model, you are rolling dice as the conversation goes on (and making the conversation's path go one way or the other depending on how well you do) instead of having a conversation and then making a roll to see if it worked. And the "saving face" model fixes the "mind control" problem entirely: you can stuck to your guns as long as you want, so long as you're willing to look like an absolute jackass for doing it. I think we all know at least a few people who will do just that.

Like I said, though, that flattens out social interactions into only a model based on overt force. It doesn't allow for instances where my character meets a New Best Friend or receives an offer too good to pass up, or anything else of that sort.

Why not simply make the different areas that a samurai might go into, such as combat,social situations, the courts, or the supernatural, roughly the same basic system except focusing on different skills? The only real difference between the situations should be the skills associated, the "perks" a character possess, and time.

Why not simply make the different areas that a samurai might go into, such as combat,social situations, the courts, or the supernatural, roughly the same basic system except focusing on different skills?

Because that assumes those things are all color swaps on the same underlying patterns of behavior. I think that's a bad description of how people actually work -- I've sparred in karate and I've had debates with people, and they ain't at all alike -- and abstracting behavior to the point where you can use the same fundamental rules to cover all those things squeezes all the flavor out of them.

And you know, I run into enough people in real life who think all social interaction can be mapped to combat memes, I don't need it in my games too...

The danger is going the Shadowrun way, with mechanics si different from one aspect to the other it feels like different games. (To be honest, 4th and 5th made an excellent job solving this issue)

Why not simply make the different areas that a samurai might go into, such as combat,social situations, the courts, or the supernatural, roughly the same basic system except focusing on different skills?

Because that assumes those things are all color swaps on the same underlying patterns of behavior. I think that's a bad description of how people actually work -- I've sparred in karate and I've had debates with people, and they ain't at all alike -- and abstracting behavior to the point where you can use the same fundamental rules to cover all those things squeezes all the flavor out of them.

If you try to model all forms of combat and all forms of conversation as the same system then yes, you squeeze the flavor out of them. If you push the forms of combat in this genre and antagonistic conversation in this genre in the same system, you can enhance the flavor of both.

An attrition-based "trading blows" system of social combat doesn't work for L5R, but the attrition-based system of physical combat doesn't really work for it either, in that it isn't built to its own strengths and makes all sorts of weird cases. A system where normal combat and social maneuvering both go for the same sort of feeling an iaijutsu duel is supposed to evoke supports the atmosphere of the setting and the flavor of a samurai's life being balanced on a razor's edge, where everything is peace and tranquility but if you screw up it becomes an incredibly bloody and incredibly brief horror show. It doesn't say that all fighting and all conversation are color swaps of the same underlying patterns -- but for a samurai , fighting and conversation are the same pattern of feinting and observing, two people appearing to do no harm to one another with light offensive efforts, until one of them slips up, shows a slight weakness, and is devastated for it.

From design standpoint, you want different aspects of the game offer slightly different type of gameplay, so people don't get bored while switching "character types". If your Combat is different from Social Thingies, player who switches from Heavy Combatant to Heavy Socializer will feel refreshed and won't get tired of material as quickly as if it was just color paint job on the same mechanics. Kind of like how in Strategy Games, each faction should offer different type of gameplay, to sustain itself longer.

Who needs stubborness wounds? And why are people focusing on Courtier as mind control?

Because the latter is a common complaint about any kind of offensive social ability in any game.

Then it's a huge misconception of the roll of a Courtier. The only mind control in L5R comes from Maho spell or some Oni Power, not from a simple courtier. You want to see very nice courtier fight, go watch movies based on Three Kingdoms or other movies of the same style, there's a lot of them and you'll see how they are archieving their goal. You do not force your way of thinking to someone, you blackmail them, you convince them, you make a deal with them, you seduce them, you back them in their own corner, you intimidate them, you turn his allies against him but you cannot mind control them. There's a huge difference between mind control and every method I've just said. A courtier's battlefield isn't done in seconds, it's the work of lots of hours or even days.

It is not an easy task to be a courtier, it's, in fact, the hardest task of the game, but also the most influencing. While a bushi fight in a battle and the shugenja deals with kami, the courtier creates alliance, declares war, makes treaties. If you're a player and you feel that your impact to the game is minimal, maybe you should discuss about the situation to the storyteller. If you're a storyteller and you feel like your players aren't doing much of those things, talk with them and encourage them to do so, heck even throw them in a Winter Court where they will have to solve a conflit or their clan will go to war against another clan if needed.

I'm not against a Courtier dueling system, but let's start by removing the misconception of a courtier being able to mind control someone... If the storyteller asks to resolve a social roll to solve a problem. The result shouldn't be: "The loser will accept and happily like the accepted solution [Enter_Fallout_Happy_Face_Here]." but more like one of them: "The loser will accept it with a grudge.", "The loser thinks it's a compromise but would have like something else.", "The loser conceed the solution but will take revenge on it.", "The loser don't want to lose face and conceed." and so on.

People are not talking about that. They are talking about direct consequences of player (or npc) failing their social skill roll, something that happens at the table pretty much every game. "Mind control" is (very annoying and tv-tropes style loaded term) a shorthand for "If X happens, then character has to do Y", which leaves many people unhappy.

At least in part it's about the loss of player agency to a single roll -- whether it's a "puppet" spell or a courtier with gobs of dice, it still has the same effect as "mind control".

People are not talking about that. They are talking about direct consequences of player (or npc) failing their social skill roll, something that happens at the table pretty much every game. "Mind control" is (very annoying and tv-tropes style loaded term) a shorthand for "If X happens, then character has to do Y", which leaves many people unhappy.

Mind to explain why it's bad? It's part of the game. It's fine in a combat for a bushi to get hit and die but it's wrong for a courtier to fail and have to suffer the consequences? In the two situations I've said, one lost his character while the other don't and have other chances to come back.

I wonder why it's a big deal? Maybe I don't find that a problem because I've played Vampire the Masquarade where you have Dominate as a power and it's pretty much "Do this ****" and you have to comply, of course the system prevent any orders directly life threatening, but it's part of the game and it's a common power. But it's not the case in L5R.

oWoD Dominate was a terribly-constructed power, and in fact one of the very reasons I cringe at "control other player character" abilities.

No, it's actually bad for player character to get hit once and die, because it turns combat into "each time you delve into this activity, you have 30% of ending the game" stuff, which means that your GM is either softballing it, making encounters that are largely in your favor, etc. L5R usually fought that with having "down" rank, which pulled character out of fight but didn't kill it outright, and existence of advantages/disadvantages that flat out said "no, you don't die". Having a culture where people usually don't go ahead and finish off your defeated, knocked out samurai, because if you live, it's "Fortunes will", kinda helps too.

I'm of opinion that RPG games should have such safety triggers built into them, and turning them off should be a variant choice. Instead, LOTS of RPG games are written like they are computer games...where yeah, your character died, Reload last autosave, go again.

There is a ton of difference between "your character got hit once and was left for dead, but managed to survive and is now shamed, LIVE WITH IT!", "your character got hit once and was taken prisoner", and "your character was hit once, go and roll up a new character".

And yeah, Vampire the Masquerade was terribly written system. It is popular, sure, but it's popular actively against being terribly written game, not because of it.

EDIT

I like Great Destiny / Dark Fate, because they offer you one "get out of jail free" card per session, which means they are awesome for a) creating dramatic scenes where your samurai gets dramatically cut and then falls off to the river, to wake up day later with his wounds knitted by local hedge healer, and b) they allow you to slip up once per game, but won't protect you if you REALLY went out of your way to die twice.

EDIT2

By the way. People always talk about how lethal L5R is, but it's more of a Exploding Dice lottery than anything else, and the way how we seem to always remember big random things as more common than they are. Your katana has Xk2 damage. This means that, unless a dice explodes, your maximum damage is 20 (ok, less than 20, because if you rolled 20, two of your dice exploded ). What does it mean? 20 is a lot, isn't it? Starting character doesn't have much more life than this!

Well...

Wearing armor will reduce that by around 5, and spending a Void Point will reduce that by 10, for 15 in total. This means that more often that not, you can literally reduce a sword hit to "whatever" or even "0 damage" by Voiding it out.

People are not talking about that. They are talking about direct consequences of player (or npc) failing their social skill roll, something that happens at the table pretty much every game. "Mind control" is (very annoying and tv-tropes style loaded term) a shorthand for "If X happens, then character has to do Y", which leaves many people unhappy.

Mind to explain why it's bad? It's part of the game. It's fine in a combat for a bushi to get hit and die but it's wrong for a courtier to fail and have to suffer the consequences? In the two situations I've said, one lost his character while the other don't and have other chances to come back.

I wonder why it's a big deal? Maybe I don't find that a problem because I've played Vampire the Masquarade where you have Dominate as a power and it's pretty much "Do this ****" and you have to comply, of course the system prevent any orders directly life threatening, but it's part of the game and it's a common power. But it's not the case in L5R.

Because the way combat is supposed to go, the bushi is removed from play after multiple rolls instead of a single one, had a chance to take out the people killing him over the course of those rolls, and most importantly if and when he goes down he is not then forced to actively work against the things his player wants to do.