Social Conflicts

Not every conflict that the characters engage in is going to be about beating up or killing someone. People have conflicts all the time in a more nebulous, but often more common, realm—the facedown at the bar, the aggressive dare, the guilt-fueled suggestion; conflicts of interest are played out on the social level all the time. Words and other types of influence are used as weapons to further the agenda of one person over another person or over whole groups of people, and those who are most skilled at it can sometimes be far more damaging than a thug with a gun.

Social conflicts occur when the opposing agendas of two or more characters are resolved without physical violence, calling upon a different set of skills and trappings to resolve them. The damage done by these conflicts can be highly variable, ranging from simply instilling a false sense of security in the loser to ruining his public reputation and hurting his relationships.

The' *'***skills** mainly used to attack in a social conflict are Deceit, Intimidation, and Rapport; those three and Empathy could all be used to make social maneuvers. Empathy and Rapport are most commonly used to defend. This list is not exhaustive, however, and depending on the context of the interaction, there might be situations where another skill (such as Conviction or Contacts) may seem a better fit.

The social stress track is modified by the Presence skill, representing the resilience of a character’s persona to hostile influence.

### **Zones and Movement**

In many situations, the use of zones and movement won’t be very important to social conflict, given that most social conflict requires that the characters be able to interact with one another socially. Measuring that can be fairly abstract— can someone seduce someone else over a cell phone? How do you measure their “distance” in that regard? In these cases, it’s okay to ignore issues of movement; just assume everyone is in the same zone for every exchange and can affect everyone else equally.

Of course, sometimes the social conflict will be taking place within the context of a physical space, such as a large party or ball, where being gathered in certain places at certain times can influence who has the ability to affect whom. In these cases, physical movement can be used normally—just keep in mind that, in a social context, different things can take on the function of barriers with just as much reality as physical ones. High society gatherings (and the supernatural gatherings that also contain their trappings) are famous for this kind of thing—you just can’t walk across the room until you’ve politely extricated yourself from a lengthy conversation with the gossipy socialite by the punch bowl or get a word in edgewise with the lord of the manor until you’ve spoken with all his influential hangers-on.

### **Attacks, Maneuvers, and Blocks**

Social conflicts tend to vary more than physical conflicts do in terms of what constitutes the nature of an attack or maneuver, and they require that the participants be very clear about the nature of the conflict and what the conflict is intended to do. Intimidation has little place in a conflict about trashing an opponent’s reputation, but a conflict about winning the favor of a particular patron might open up several avenues of attack depending on the resources of each participant. Likewise, someone trying to provoke an opponent into hostility probably won’t use Rapport.

Ultimately, a good guideline is that an attack is any action meant to directly take someone out of the conflict in one way or another, and a maneuver is any action meant to provide a situational advantage to make those attacks more effective. Taken together with a clear picture of what the conflict is about, this can help provide a guide for what kinds of skills can be used. Take the simple example of a facedown in a bar between two potential combatants. Each individual is interested in forcing the other to back away from the fight. It’s pretty clear, then, that Intimidation is the primary skill that’s going to be used here for attacks, and either Conviction or Presence is going to be used to defend. One possible maneuver is for one of them to use Rapport to get some of the other bar patrons on his side, allowing him to place an Outnumbered aspect on his opponent— this makes future Intimidation attacks more effective, forcing the opponent to deal with the reality that, if he presses forward, it’s going to be an uneven and dirty fight.

Something more abstract, like damaging someone’s reputation with a certain person or group, might involve attacks of Contacts and Deceit from all parties involved, with Presence or Rapport acting as a defensive skill to measure how well someone is still liked in the face of accusation. Maneuvers would contribute to whatever might help make the false reputation seem true—Contacts to spread rumors extra wide, Resources to bribe people to lie, and so on. The use of blocks may not be appropriate in all conflicts—as an action type, they’re meant as a preemptive measure against certain actions and, as such, can be slightly more difficult to incorporate into a social conflict scene. It’s easy to picture spraying gunfire at a door to keep someone from walking out, but what “blocks” do you put up against a seduction attempt at Club Zero?

Still, clever players might find ways of establishing an extra layer of defense via a block based on the situation, such as using Rapport when first meeting the Club Zero bartender: “Hey, I’m designated driver for my friends tonight, so don’t let anyone buy me any drinks, okay?” The potential seducer is going to have to find another tactic in order to proceed there, or risk an awkward moment.

### **Stress and Consequences**

As with parsing out the combat actions, figuring out what stress and consequences mean in a particular social conflict can take some wrangling and, as before, looking at the nature of the conflict is the best place to start. Remember that consequences are meant to represent the outcomes of a conflict that “stick” to the participants— as soon as the scene’s over, anything recorded as stress is really just narrative color. In terms of consequences, the easiest way to represent the effects of social conflict is through negative emotional fallout—aspects like Stressed Out, Crappy Mood, Nervous, Edgy, and Guilt-Ridden can all come into play later in dynamic and colorful ways. Another potential option is to let the consequences reflect changes in how other people perceive the character after the conflict shakes out. If a character’s reputation is ruined, representing that with a Smeared Name aspect can lend mechanical weight to what might otherwise be just a narrated effect.

Sometimes, the most important effect of a social conflict comes from the new circumstances the event brings into the character’s life—if a character has a significant other, falling for a seduction attempt could create Relationship Doubts or something similar. Play around with any and all of these types of consequences to give your social conflicts a far reaching impact on play.

### **The Role of Assessment**

Assessment actions have a unique place in social conflict as compared to physical conflict—they allow you to learn your opponent’s aspects, which can often mean the difference between victory and defeat in social conflict. It’s one thing for a stranger to try to get your blood up with random insults, but a stranger who is able to attack the ideas that you most hold dear represents a clear and present danger. Normally speaking, you use Empathy to “read” an opponent in this way, and such attempts are commonly resisted by Rapport. See the respective skill descriptions on the **Skills**  page. Any aspects revealed by this process can be tagged and invoked in social combat actions; as such, they act sort of like “permanent” maneuvers (in that, once revealed, they can’t be “un-revealed”) and are very potent tools.

Keep in mind, also, that certain social conflicts will open up the potential to use other skills for assessment as well. If you are trying to woo an investor away from a potential competitor, for example, you would do well to use Investigation or Resources to uncover any financial woes the competitor might be having and to use that information at the bargaining table.

Also see **Advice on Mental and Social Conflict**.