Advice on Mental and Social Conflict

Additional Advice for Social and Mental Conflicts
Many players are more worried about the potential outcome of social  and mental conflicts than physical ones, because they don’t want to feel bullied into playing their character a certain way. If you imagine your character as a really courageous guardian type, for example, it can seem strange to have that character lose an Intimidation conflict with someone and be forced to back down from a fight. There are a few elements for the group to consider when you’re deciding about the degree to which you want to incorporate social and mental conflicts into your games.

The first, and probably most important, is that the concession rules give you considerable leeway to interpret the outcome of a conflict. As with a physical  conflict, you should consider conceding the conflict if you see things not going your way.  If an incredibly chaste character (perhaps a Champion of God) is getting wrecked in a seduction attempt, concession allows you to offer an alternative to actually sleeping with the seductress—maybe taking on a consequence of Doubting My Own Purity for a time, while you work out the issues that the conflict engendered.

The second thing to keep in mind is that no conflict results are really permanent, with the potential exception of an extreme consequence. Almost no one has a personality that’s 100% consistent all the time—the most courageous people are sometimes afraid, the most positive people get depressed, and the most determined people sometimes waver in purpose. Losing a social conflict doesn’t necessarily mean that your character has suddenly, permanently changed. In fact, roleplaying through the outcomes of the conflict gives you the opportunity to develop your character as a more complex individual, even if the ultimate end result is that he doesn’t change much.

Let’s consider an Intimidation conflict for a second. Your character came into this bar to rescue a friend who’s being held in the back room. Not wanting to just bust heads, your character goes in, gets a drink, and starts asking around. This leads to an Intimidation conflict with a thug there, which your character handily loses and gets taken out. You’ve taken a moderate consequence of Shaken Resolve during the conflict. The GM, controlling the thug, suggests that your character leaves the bar because he’s afraid of getting into a fight with the thug and his friends.

This doesn’t have to mean that your character runs screaming from the bar or anything like that. People often play off their emotional responses as being less significant than they really are. It’s not out of scope to take the GM’s suggestion and reply with, “Okay, well…if I leave the bar, I’m not giving them the satisfaction of knowing that my character is that scared. I’ll keep eye contact with the thug and simply reply, ‘Don’t get comfortable and think that this is over. It’s not. Not by a long shot.’ I’ll throw some cash on the bar and back out slowly.”

See? Your character didn’t turn into a screaming ninny, but still fulfilled the dictates of the conflict result. So, now what? Is your friend totally screwed?

<span style="font-family: "AJensonPro-Regular","serif";mso-bidi-font-family:AJensonPro-Regular">Absolutely not. It just means your character is worried about getting into a fight with all those people, so the frontal approach is out of the question. That doesn’t mean your character can’t suddenly change tactics and try to sneak in the back of the bar to do the rescuing. If your character tends to solve problems with his fists and has a low Stealth, it makes the scene a little tenser and potentially challenging.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:normal;margin-left:24px;"><span style="font-family: "AJensonPro-Regular","serif";mso-bidi-font-family:AJensonPro-Regular">The consequence of Shaken Resolve also provides opportunities for roleplay. The rescued friend might ask about the change in tactics (“Dude, I expected you’d trash the place with a smile. What gives?”) or there might be a scene later where your character reflects on what happened (“You know, for the first time in…hell, maybe ever…I think those guys actually got to me. Man, I must be losing my touch.”). And finally, the consequence is going to go away at some point, leaving your character ready to turn the tables on that thug if you should confront him again. At the end of it all, your character is even more the courageous badass, because he got hit with serious adversity and came out swinging on the other side. This can be especially poignant with mental conflicts, where the consequences are more deep-seated and have the potential to be transformative to the self.