How Diplomacy Works

[Pirotess]

Aye the diplomacy sphere sounds like it will fill in as a great between adventures pastime for folks when they arent out raiding for crawling dungeons. Im actually looking forward to it very much.

[Strongjaw]

Ya diplomancy sounds fun and useful.. and something you can do solo for a few minutes if you have no time And the possibilites sem to be limited by the dev's imagination ,,,,,,and that seems to be somewhere way out there ... thank god

[Doddy Curumehtar]

No, adventuring is just something to do when you get sick of being in town doing diplomacy. Get it right!

[Taronn Anvilmarr]

LOL no ur both wrong diplomacy and adventuring are what u get to do when ur sick of crafting!!!

too funny

[Doddy Curumehtar]

More crafting info and some in-game shots of diplomacy in action!

http://www.gamesradar.com/us/pc/game...15182453415024

Don't forget to view all the pages (the tabs are on the left) for more juicy info on the most important spheres: crafting and diplomacy.

[Cobalt Katze]

Very cool. They deliver the goods!

[Aranarth]

This is going to be a lot of fun to try out

[Quester]

I still believe you will be limited in growth within the diplomacy sphere if you can't adventure out of the city you may be alined to.

[Raolinx Aeromancer]

Maybe you will be able to talk your way out of combat. Or if you have a horse you can just run away untill mounted combat makes it into the game.

Rao

[Raolinx Aeromancer]

Some snipits from Sigils Press Day Preview.

Allen 'Delsyn' Rausch of GameSpy Has a few decent crumbs.

"Diplomacy is one of our youngest systems," Williams said. I worked my way through Nalzen's first tutorial and while it was a bit confusing, what I eventually figured out is that diplomacy is a way of affecting the world and completing quests by basically playing a collectable card game. Every diplomat has a series of "cards" that represent a variety of conversational gambits. "Snippet of Wisdom," for example, is a "Reason" card, while "Aggressive Statement" generates "Demand" when players enter into a conversation (called a "parley"), a table appears on screen consisting of a player's point totals, four meters representing various conversational "power levels" and a "conversational flow meter" set at zero. The basic game consists of using various cards to fill up these power meters and pull the flow meter toward the player's side of the table. Each round that the meter is on their side, that player loses a point and sees another line of conversational dialogue. First one to get to zero wins the conversation and finishes another chapter in a story that can range from simple quests to bring a woman's husband home from a bar, to a continent-wide tale of betrayal and murder.

"We're aiming for approximately 300 cards at game launch," Williams said. Players will also be able to parley with each other, although this will merely be the equivalent of PvP dueling at launch with no wider game ramifications. Once players have mastered the basics of card playing, that's where the real excitement of diplomacy begins. Diplomacy is one of the game's two alternative tracks (along with crafting) that, according to Williams, have as many levels, as much content and as intricate a gameplay system as the traditional adventuring/monster-killing route. In fact, Williams could barely contain himself as he described how the Diplomacy system is integrated into the game world.

"Once upon a time, cities were just the places you sold loot, bought new armor and left as quickly as possible," Williams said. "For the diplomat, though, our cities are dungeons." Player characters will have three separate experience and skill point totals, so a hardcore diplomat with 350 out of 500 total skill points might only be a fifth-level sorcerer and a third-level crafter. Characters will also have three separate paper-doll systems for clothing and items that they'll automatically don when using various skills. That means that diplomats don't have to waste time in the wilderness changing into battle gear. There's a completely separate itemization tree for each gameplay track and a whole series of adjustments that need to be made when dealing with city denizens.

By the time my third-level sorceress hit diplomacy skill 30, she had already acquired a "Rod of Wrath" and "Bhaela Ondrak's Ring." The Rod gave a 5 point bonus to her noble presence and the ring gave a +1 to both noble and merchant presence. "Presence" is the measure of how the target of a conversation perceives the character. The old saying "The clothes make the man (or the elf)" was never more true than in Vanguard. Without presence of a specific level, certain characters will not talk to the player, therefore one of the diplomat's major gameplay dynamics will be the acquisition of new and better diplomatic clothing along with more powerful conversational gambits (the cards) to use in those high-level power meetings.

Getting "phat diplomatic loot" is one of the ways that diplomatic characters will have to interact with other players. Some diplomatic clothing can only be found as drops off monsters. If, for example, a player wants to parley with a local kobold chieftain for an "embassy mission," he may demand that the player wear the signet ring of a rival Orc warlord before he'll talk to you. The Orc warlord probably won't want to give that up, so it'll require the diplomat to call in friends with sharp swords. Other pieces of diplomatic gear may require the help of a crafter. If, for example, a local banker wants three letters of credit before he'll agree to something, the player will have to seek out a crafter to help forge the letters -- and perhaps pull in an adventurer to kill the creatures that drop the wax needed to create the special seals on the forgery.

That doesn't mean that diplomats have nothing to offer the other tracks. High-level quests for uber-weapons, really cool dwarven curses that make for killer parleys, and epic-level crafting recipes will only be available from local rulers and powerful NPCs. Getting those will require well-dressed diplomats to even get in the room, along with powerful cards to convince them to drop their goodies. Those conversations may, in turn, be the end of a long chain of quests that require players on all three tracks to cooperate to complete.

Diplomats will also get involved with something called "city politics." City politics are a series of invisible levers that diplomats can push via conversations with influential characters around the city. Depending on how they choose to interact with them, these levers can shift the balance of power for various political parties and cities, causing enormous ripples that have significant effects on the real world. At the simplest level, diplomats can push levers that give citywide bonuses to any adventurers or crafters within city limits.

Theres a bit more But I won't steal ALL there thunder. If you want the rest click the link at the top of the page in the quotes by line.

Rao