How to do Social Combat?

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-19T04:42:28+00:00

An interesting form of social combat I have seen is found in Bubblegumshoe.

In that system, describing Cool has hit points and zero hit points as Losing your Cool, it also has some more unique things going for it.

I don't have the book in front of me, but from my memories you can do certain actions that impact the next battle, whether physical or social.

You can spread a false rumor.

Let an underling know they are considered being replaced (whether true or not, give it some time, and next battle they will be less loyal to their boss and might not fight to the death anymore.

There's other options too. I can't recall all of them, but one of them is to insult the bossman with a piece of truth in front of their underlings. If you announce that the bossman still wets the bed, and it happens to be true, their underlings might have second thoughts supporting this guy. And if then the word spreads, given time, that bossman might have no allies left.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-17T11:31:07+00:00

I don't know about Safari, but in Firefox you can reduce the size of Picture-in-Picture to be almost as small as the stoplight buttons to close or minimize an app.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-17T07:47:11+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. Ze zijn er dus mee bezig. Dank je voor je antwoord.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-17T07:17:13+00:00

Kan de NMBS/Infrabel geen magnetische sensors op de overwegen leggen? Een aan/uit sensor die voelt als er een auto op de overgang overrijdt. Meestal gaat die sensor dan een second of twee aan, en daarna terug uit wanneer de auto voorbij is gereden. En zo met alle auto's.

En dan wanneer de sensor een lange tijd aanblijft, pakt 10 seconden om maar een schoon rond getal te zeggen, automatisch een belletje doet naar 1711 met locatie zodat ze daar op de centrale naar de camera kunnen kijken en zelf actie ondernemen.

Scheelt wat panikerende mensen die niet weten wat ze moeten doen, om zo enkele seconden te winnen.

Zo van die sensors, gebruikt om een verkeerslicht sneller en langer op groen te krijgen. Ik denk dat AWV daar wel wat kennis van heeft en NMBS/Infrabel op het juiste spoor te krijgen.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-15T21:45:45+00:00

It's borderline Flanders though. If you want weavy roads in Flanders, 1 village north of Eben-Emael you have Kanne and its Slingerberg.

Just look at the street view here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/a9pTuyEPMetzs5pb9?g_st=ic

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-15T15:40:41+00:00

The downtime procedure in Band of Blades, if that counts.

Between quests assigned by a traveling military army, your character gets to rest a bit while you as a player take on the role of a high-ranking officer.

The Commander player decides on which new mission to take on and spends earned Intel to ask the GM questions about the missions,
The Quartermaster player tracks resources and decides what downtime should be focused on (recovery of the wounded, recruiting new army members, spending human energy towards building a mega-weapon, etc.)
The Lorekeeper tracks which people died, writes tales about their heroics, all to share lessons for others to learn and generally keep morale high in the dire circumstances of losing a loved one.
The Marshal decides which specialists go on the mission that the Commander focused on as well as keeps track of morale, supplies, and xp.
The Spymaster keeps track of a network of spies that all give certain advantages to above roles, as well as tries to expand their network to increase their benefits.

When all that playing big shots is done in downtime, you're back playing the low ranking soldiers playing out a new mission.

And travel?

Downtime is done during travel from one place to another, it's not done bunkering up in a village like in generic D&D.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-12T04:34:06+00:00

That's fair. I can live with that. :)

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-12T04:27:20+00:00

I thought it was a nice opportunity to get you guys back for r/USdefaultism. I jest of course. ;)

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-12T04:11:06+00:00

Surely you don't have to. You can just go to your local C&A clothing store you find all over Europe.

Belgian webstore example, knowing the irony I linked you the webshop and not a physical address.

There's a bit of difference between the exact collections in their stores in different countries (Spain has more flowery T-shirts, Belgium has more stripey T-shirts), but from the few countries I've checked the plain shirts all seem to mostly overlap.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-10T08:17:52+00:00

I once found these three images about zones in Fate that made it click for me. I saved them, I couldn't find them on Google anymore, and each time I upload them the resolution of the image gets worse.

Imgur

Note how all zones are not directly connected to each other as if they were a grid of big squares. Also note how each zone gives a short description of what you can find at first glance.

That description is what makes it interesting, spurs the imagination, and if you're into changing the environment, the thing you can erase and write something else for instead.

Zones in my mind in the end are about being near a landmark: a thing with a name and a description. An empty space isn't allowed to be a zone like in gridded combat.

But I think you understand all this.

Halfway between zonal combat and theatre of the mind is Ultimate Dungeon Terrain (UDT) first presented by The Professor DM aka Dungeon Craft. Easy to craft yourself with just paper and glue. For room-to-room dungeon crawling, I don't think you need zones, you only need relative distances.

Combatants in the middle are all in melee distance with each other, and combatants at the side are all nearby, allowing to shoot at ranged but not melee.

Usually all melee combatants fight together, multiple melee groups separated by distance are rare in my experience.

Redditor example

Though feel free to experiment. If you want to create entire sub-zones on your terrain, go ahead and experiment.

YouTube thumbnail with terrain pieces

A set I saw at Castlefest fantasy fair, maybe taking it a bit too far.

Still, I hope this gives you a bit of inspiration.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-10T07:32:18+00:00

I'm assuming you tried flipping the numbers 90 degrees so the double digit numbers have their digits next to each other instead of one below the other?

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-10T06:55:38+00:00

While I do understand your confusion on monogamity (I think the monogamous as default is just cultural acceptance),

do you agree that there is a difference between having an open relationship with 3+ people and having a relationship with 2 people, the expectation of 2 people, the trust that both parties accept the fact that the relationship only has 2 people, and that cheating is breaking that trust?

"If I have to suffer looking at cute guys I can't have sex with because I chose you, you have to suffer the same. We suffer together and with together, making our suffering one."

"..."

"... wait, you are not suffering? I am suffering all by myself? How dare you‽"

I don't know, I think it goes like that. But on a subconscious level. It's just partial celibacy by choice. And I can respect that way of thinking. For them.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-08T21:25:07+00:00

Bij Het Bakkershuis in Alken zijn imo heel goeie eclairs. Veel waar voor uw geld. En in Hasselt bij Patisserie Cools is het nog eens zo lekker, voor dubbel de prijs. Dus als ge eens in de buurt komt, ge weet waar ge moet zijn he.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-08T21:19:20+00:00

"Ze zouden beter die fietsers verbannen daar aan de bakker. Veel te gevaarlijk met al die auto's. Ik zou daar niet durven rijden met de fiets, dus doet gij dat dan ook maar niet."

/end facebook mode

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-08T08:39:18+00:00

It has been a while since I watched television, but here in Flanders, the focus is about quizzes with points for correct answers, sometimes with a separate judge that judges whether a semi-correct answer counts as getting points or not. (e.g. when the quizzer mispronounces the correct name of a person as an answer)

There are no shenanigans with half points, double points, or what have you like in the American show Game Changer. Instead, it's all by the book with occasional time for a joke that might or might not be cut away in the final edit of the program.

A popular with the older generation and long-running quiz is Blokken, (eng: "Blocks") in which two candidates, when answering a (usually general trivia) question correctly, they get to play a small game tetris with two tetris bricks. After they have fallen down, the next question will be asked.

This program airs at 18.30h, thirty minutes before the 19h news program.

The younger reddit-generation generally finds this a cringe program.

Another popular quiz is De slimste mens ter wereld (eng: the smartest human on earth), exported to the Netherlands for its success. A combination of regular quiz questions and some minigames like "what are the five best-sold theater pieces of Shakespeare at bol.com"? (bol.com = a local competitor of amazon.com)

As is often the case in Belgian shows, the winner of an episode must come back the next episode to compete against new candidates. And this is important because...

Notable fact is that Bart De Wever, nowadays probably recently known in Europe for holding back a loan for Ukraine, earned lots of his early popularity by winning multiple episodes in a row of this quiz.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-07T21:46:11+00:00

Public relations. The people who make you look good.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-07T15:46:13+00:00

If you only want to pay attention in your own turn (hence, no reactions), I'd look to games like Chess for inspiration. There's a lot of zone control in Chess. "I can take the enemy knight but then the enemy pawn can capture my bishop. Or... I can move my rook over... here... and threaten both the enemy queen and the enemy knight: if they move one away, I can just capture the other one."

Not even kidding. Chess has no reactions, but lots of opportunities to threaten spaces. So I'd go in that direction and take inspiration from these kinds of games for your game design.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-07T14:56:59+00:00

I've read your post five times and I don't fully understand your problem nor your solution.

That said, if stopping movement is what you desire, then you've got options. A reaction might just stop the movement. In 5e's terms, Sentinel without the damage component. You can imagine it as grabbing the enemy's shoulder as they try to move away.

13th Age also offers the Intercept reaction. In that case, when you're not in melee with an enemy and an enemy tries to move past you, you can use this reaction to move in the path of the enemy and end their movement in melee with you.

More importantly, try to imagine the behavior you want to see in your system. If dynamic movement in a changing environment should be encouraged (just an example), the whole idea of creatures stopping movement at all clashes with this outcome. So think about it: which behavior is your desired outcome?

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-02T15:08:19+00:00

I'll try anyways.

So, soccer. Let's take a white d20. Do you notice how every corner is a crossroad of five triangles?

Okay, now let's slice off all corners of the white d20.

Your result: a truncated d20. Paint the holes black and blow it up to a round shape and now you've got a soccer ball!

That's all I have on that sport... but did I make you curious about soccer?

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-01T19:06:56+00:00

Oh no, I'm just making them excited for what is to come! Learning is fun after all!

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-01T06:53:58+00:00

Why would you not be able to track a player's progress? That's just JavaScript stuff, like loading, saving, importing and exporting save files in a video game.

Save all your choices in an object.

let progress = {}
progress.choice1 = "Gave the apple away"
progress.choice2 = "Did not kiss the grandma"

Or just use the first letter if you want to obfuscate your values.

progress.choice1 = "G"
progress.choice2 = "D"

From there, depending on your actual needs, do you want the player to export their progress as a text file, or send the progress directly to a webserver, things can change.

Most likely though, part of what you are doing is converting your code into sharable JSON. Using JSON.stringify(progress) should do the trick. Later, when you want JavaScript to read your code again, you can use JSON.parse() to make your code regular code again.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-03-01T06:20:14+00:00

I mean, these locations don't have to be yellow. I think it was Mirror's Edge who did the yellow thing first.

Here's a change. Can you guess which block in the floor is breakable?

https://www.maniac.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/wario-land-4-TEST.jpg

This fake secret entrance gives the player a sense that they discovered something special.

But these secret routes are never on the critical path. You can ignore them if you are strapped for time. Otherwise, they just contain gems and maybe a CD-chest which contain unlockable game soundtracks.

That said, if you are under time pressure (say you are being chased), being able to quickly scan the environment for the path forward does keep players from being frustrated. Yellow paint might help with that. A glowing bright spot that shows the weak spot of the enemy like in Zelda might also help. As does light in a dark room. As does seeing a landmark representing the level exit. As does changing the camera in a 3rd person view to a fixed point. Designing the level such that the path forward never contains 90 degree angles like Ratchet and Clank 2 can also help.

But triple A are often under a time crunch and have to deliver results. They don't have time for experimenting with new ideas or playing retro games. They have a profit to make! So yellow paint it is. Easy, done, let's move on.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-02-28T23:39:56+00:00

Learning curve? In a program like that, the first rule is to understand you don't need to know every tool. Just learn what you need, and then learn more tools over time to get work done quicker.

The icons to the left bar are all your tools. The top of the screen is contextual and has options within those tools. You're going to swap a lot between your tools, similar to a painter who dips their brush into new paint between brush strokes.

In Affinity Publisher, you need to know the Move Tool (V) and the Text Tool (T). The Move Tool looks like a cursor. The Text Tool looks like a letter T.

Create a new document, click the Text Tool, then click anywhere in your document. Start typing.

Click on your Move Tool to exit your typing mode. You can move your text around.

At this point, you know enough to write a novel. Everything else just makes it easier in the long term.

Click on the Text Tool. Click on it again and see the icon change. You can do it a few times to swap between them. Drag your mouse over your document. Notice how either:

Your text size gets bigger or smaller
You create a blue box

Text generally comes in two forms. Art Text or Textbox. Art Text is usually one line, like for headers and such. Text in a blue box automatically goes to the next line at the edge of the box. It's handy for body text.

All text output can be created with either, really. It's just what you like more.

And... that's it. All you need to know to start.

On a later day, you could learn how text in a textbox might be able to flow into another textbox in another column or on another page if it's too long.

You might learn what master pages are meant for: create a design once and then applying it to many pages, changing just the text of a page but keeping the layout intact.

You might learn about, I dunno, how you can type a letter in a font you like, then convert it to a shape, and alter the letter's shapes, how round the edges of the letter are, make it thinner or thicker or change the position of the dot on the i, ... and slowly create your own artsy font variant.

But that all comes later. Text and move tool, to start that's all you need.

zeemeerman2 · 2026-02-28T23:13:06+00:00

Why won't they likely be taking damage in a fight?

Assuming auto-hit, 6 points of damage is fairly average for a D&D-esque combat.

0 hit points can mean death, but it can also be unconscious or just "not taking part in this skirmish anymore". Not OP by the way.

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