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Old 10-25-2016, 02:58 PM   #40
Andreas
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Default Re: Giving mental disadvantages as results of behaviour?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Remember too that the Legalistic quirk isn't absolute. You may ignore the spirit of the law, you get a 12 or less suppression roll and it lacks Honesty's requirement to turn yourself in entirely.

Even full-on Honesty isn't absolute in that sense depending on your Self-Control roll.
Sure, it does not at all seem unlikely that some quirk level version of Honesty is somewhat common.

Well, the Honesty advantage says that you get to make a self-control roll if there is a “need” to break the law. It is not at all clear that you get to make such a roll for a trivial reason such as poker with your friends.

Quote:
Assigning them an appropriate role in advance works. I believe even addressing them directly works. Well, yes that's why the bystander effect exists. I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing that the cause is primarily a lack of basic empathy rather than an information problem. If you give people the right information the effect significantly diminishes.

Sure, most people aren't Albert Schweitzer. Most people probably don't even have the Responsive quirk (though I'd argue it's probably fairly common, probably at least as common as Insensitive). It doesn't follow that most people don't possess some level of basic empathy. People on average have been shown to react negatively to images of suffering, for example.
I'm not trying to say that the bystander effect won't be reduced when the observers have good information about what is happening or that people in crowds lack empathy. People in the crowd who don't help might very well feel bad about it. However empathy is not the only reason people help each other (not wanting to get a bad reputation another reason) and following the crowd is a behavior that often comes naturally. For some people the thought of standing out by making a different decision than the crowd around you like that can even seem intimidating.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I'm arguing that the intent of Honesty is not to make an unplayable disadvantage that requires the character attempt to turn themselves in for speeding or shut-down completely when they realize that the law requires two conflicting courses of action or something. IME, the intent is much more straightforward then a lot of people seem to characterize it.
Well, while I agree that it would be overly pedantic to require that you turn yourself in for a trivial crime that most likely won't result in a conviction even with your confession, what is left is still enough to make the disadvantage pretty much unplayable for many kinds of games. It would for example be very hard to deal with the Honesty disadvantage in many kinds of Monster Hunter games. Honesty is not alone in that regard, plenty of other disadvantages are unsuitable for many kinds of games. Pacifism: Total Nonviolence for example.

Last edited by Andreas; 10-25-2016 at 03:01 PM.
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