White Wolf Devlog 4: The Arena
In the new Contest System for the Storyteller system books, both players roll the same Attribute + Ability combination for 'Extended and Resisted', so Subterfuge is used to lie and spot lies, and Investigation allows someone to uncover crime as well as hide it. This has made a number of people online strangely irate, so this seems like a great time to speak about non-obvious system benefits, and why just going with your gut doesn't always produce great results.
First, let's consider the alternative - players enter a Contest with whatever Attribute + Ability pair works best.
Inituitive, Obvious, and Wrong
When some player's highest Social roll is Manipulation + Expression, they will want to use this for all social rolls. Telling the investigator not to bother with you, claiming your accounts are in order, and discrediting a nosferatu in Elysium - all of them prompt the player to use the same combination repeatedly. This causes two problems:
- The remaining Traits become useless if one can just get everything done with the same combination, so characters no longer display that nice, subtle, pattern of strengths and weaknesses.
- Players feel encouraged to make ridiculous arguments to use their favourite combination
There are no rules about whether or not 'Leadership' might be used to convince local anarchs to leave your pad, so the limits of this nonsense are simply storyteller fiat, which places more stress on the Storyteller with every nonsense interpretation.
We may not get rid of arguments or bad-faith arguments, but we can certainly remove rules which incentivise this behaviour.
The Symmetrical Arena
The Attribute + Ability pair which both contestants use is called 'the Arena'. The aggressor decides which Ability to use. The defender decides the Attribute.
At this point, the player whose character has an outstanding Manipulation + Expression score cannot repeatedly hit the same button. When they select 'Expression' to insult someone, the defender may decide their Trait of choice is Appearance.
When others start lying to the character, they select Subterfuge, but the player is free to select Manipulation as their go-to at any time.
Of course, the player will not necessarily want to select their highest Traits - rather, they will want to select the Trait which they think is higher than the opponent. If you and your opponent have Manipulation 4 then that's much less interesting than switching to Appearance when having a cat-fight with a Nosferatu, or anyone with a lower Appearance score.
Rules First, Interpretation Second
Now that players are no longer hitting the same Trait combos repeatedly, we no longer have to worry about those particular bad-faith arguments, because the Contest is defined by the Traits in use. If someone selects 'Expression', then Expression really is what the Contest is about, and if the opponent selects Charisma, then it's about being straight-up likeable.
Instead of interpreting some action, we define the action by whatever the contestants are doing, but this will never lead us to repeat the same Trait combos.
Changing Arenas & Narrative
A single success allows someone to change one Trait in the Arena, which naturally builds a nice narrative flow.
You switch from Finance to law.
Where once you tracked a business's cash-flow, now you're sending in the lawyers to make a pig's breakfast out of their legal compliance issues.
You switch from Subterfuge + Etiquette
"I would like to work together for everyone's benefit", you say, "but I find it hard when you're being so hostile". The room takes note that it doesn't matter who's tales of glory are true - if your interlocutor can't work in the general interest, then nobody in Elysium would work with them. With the room accepting your gentler tone, you have successfully changed the values at play.
You switch from Drive to Athletics.
"He can't drive through the shopping-mall - let's just get out and run!"
Several narrative switches can occur, which builds a natural narrative from the mechanics. Instead of rolling Dexterity + Brawl until someone gets too many penalties, we can craft scene of a fist-fight, then a knife is pulled (switch to the Sparring Skill), switch to Athletics (run away!), switch to Drive (get in, motherfucker!), then back to Brawl.
Valuing Traits
If people can select their own Traits, it's very tempting to get very good at one thing, then just use that Trait for everything. But with a fixed Arena, characters have an incentive to get good at multiple things. A clear split arises here in terms of attack and defence - someone might increase their Etiquette to undermine others in Elysium, and on the street (a fine tactic), but if they put all their dots in that one basket, they'll be on the back-foot when someone starts a row using Expression.
Interpretation
White Wolf books have primed people to think in terms of [ Strength + Mêlée ] vs [ Dexterity + Dodge ], or [ Manipulation + Subterfuge ] vs [ Perception + Empathy ]. It's hard to fight against the instinct to frame things like this, but given the prizes on offer, it's worth the time to consider different pictures and interpretations.
Under the narrative of the Arenas, 'Subterfuge' helps to lie as well as spot lies. Stamina allows one to withstand damage, and tire an opponent out. Every Attribute and Ability are both the sword and the shield.
This is not the case with all Traits however - characters add Bonuses from the Contacts background, or get Bonus dice for having a sword without any reference to their opponent. The Arena does not need to be perfectly symmetrical.
Cleaning Up
This leaves a lot of questions to be answered. How do we deal with Soak? How does Health work?
Those answers are less interesting, so I'll leave the reader to download the book for a more complete answer.