[Diaspora] social conflict questions

[Andrew Codispoti]

We used Diaspora's social combat system last night with a group of
players unfamiliar with Fate. This was also my first time refereeing a
social combat, so I ran across some questions for the designers in
particular and those more familiar with Fate in general.

We're playing a fantasy game,  so the skill list is a little
different. The scenario was this: four PCs are drinking in a tavern
when a verbal fight breaks out between a group of town militia and a
group of the knights of a military order newly arrived in the area.

The map was sort of diamond shape, with five zones on a home row,
three zones each on the rows above and below that, and a single zone
at the vertical ends. The top zone was "respect" and the bottom zone
was "disgrace." These values referred to the attitude of the townsfolk
present in the tavern. The idea for the knights and for the town
guards was to end up in "respect" while pushing the other party
towards "disgrace." The PCs' objectives varied.

Each PC had a token, as did the Lieutenant of the knights. Each group
of mooks (the knights and the guards) had a token.

The knights and guards started the conflict and the PCs became aware
of it from across the room. Therefore I placed the knights and guards
towards the right side of the middle row, and the PCs on the left (to
indicate social distance).

First question we ran across was: what skill to use to move? It's not
called out in the rules (as far as I can see) so we decided that if we
could justify the movement by describing it as a use of a certain
skill, that was fair.

At one point we wanted to model a character getting up and walking out
of the tavern. Actually, one of the PCs watched the combat for a
moment, setting up obstruct on the square they were in, and then
decided they wanted to walk out. I suppose we could have modeled this
as a concession, but instead the player got the idea to start throwing
up more and more obstruction on their square, increasing the distance
between the conflict and their token, but still leaving it on the map.
This was meant to give the idea that they were planning to leave, they
were packing up their kit, they were moving towards the door, etc.

If a player wants a character to walk out of a situation, how do you
model this? I liked how this player handled it because it meant a
concentrated move could break down the obstruction and bring the
character back in to the conflict, but it did play a bit of havoc with
our perception of the physical situation ("did she make it out the
door yet? is she still packing?").

We seemed to model most actions with Obstruct, Move, or Move Another.
We were putting up walls, we were moving the other party or our own
tokens towards Respect or Disgrace. There were a few attempts at
Maneuver, but we were a little unsure in the narration. What sorts of
Aspects do you use Maneuvers to place during a social combat? And does
it happen very often, as compared to Move or Move Another?

I'd welcome your thoughts on the map and on the decision to start the
PCs off on the opposite side of the map from the rest of the conflict
(this did mean that some of them were more interested in staying on
their side of the whole situation than in jumping in, so we ended up
with a few active players while most sat at their table quietly
drinking).

Altogether we had a great time, but we did have to stop a few times
and discuss what was happening. I think this was mainly due to the
abstract nature of social combat, and that it just takes a bit of
getting used to.

--
Andrew