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Old 10-14-2016, 01:44 PM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Skill of the week: Sex Appeal

Sex Appeal is the HT/A skill of influencing those attracted to your sex. The only default is HT-3, meaning that everyone gets +2 to the normal default for an HT/A skill. It isn't "Seduction" skill, although that's certainly one thing you can do with it, but the art of motivating people via their sexual reactions to you. There's a thread that discusses that aspect in more detail here. The skill appeared at GURPS 1e.

As normal for an Influence skill, a success gets you a positive reaction -- Sex Appeal is unique in giving you a Very Good reaction -- and a failure gets you a Bad reaction. The skill takes cultural familiarity modifiers, and has a lot of other modifiers: it is boosted by Smooth Operator talent and Voice, and penalised by Clueless, Low Empathy, Neurological Disorder, Oblivious, Shyness and Stuttering. Appearance modifiers apply, and are doubled if they're negative.

As usual for Influence skills, Social Engineering has plenty of extra detail about what this skill can and can't do in a game, and who it does and doesn't work on. While almost anyone might cultivate it, it's rarely a primary skill on published templates, and it has distinct limitations as a primary social skill. Caravan to Ein Arris has someone who thinks she's a femme fatale to demonstrate that.

Action gives Sex Appeal to face-men and has guidelines on using it; AtE gives it to several types of trader. Banestorm students study it, and Bio-Tech has upgraded humans (and upgrades for baseline humans) that improve the skill. In DF, it's Bards who use Sex Appeal, with some competition from priests of life and tavern wenches; Fantasy applies it to bards, barmaids, courtesans, dancers, satyrs, selkies ... and Lilith herself. Aristocrats, charlatans, grifters, romantic vampires, and succubi use it in Horror, while Madness Dossier boosts it with Innate NLP talent, and Elvis loa get to enjoy it. Lands out of Time's Jungle Princesses use it, and Magic's Artemis elixir helps resist it. Dungeon Magic's Echoists and Mirror-Mages learn it as part of their styles, while Martial Arts: Gladiators use it, less formally, to appeal to the crowd. Monster Hunters use it for getting information, while fancy dames can use it for confusion in Mysteries. The Power-Ups series has perks, talents, wildcard skills and even an example impulse buy for Sex Appeal. Back to School has an example of using Sex Appeal to boost students' interest in a course, which is a great way to get into trouble in formal education systems, and Space reckons the skill is entirely species-specific.

That last point may make sense in an SF campaign where the aliens are very alien, but is less reasonable for "rubber forehead" aliens, and makes no sense in Tolkien-influenced fantasy. It comes down to who finds who attractive, and what attracts negative reputations for unorthodox practices. That really is setting-specific.

I've made very little use of this skill in games. One character who had it, because he was good-looking and Lecherous, discovered rapidly that a female PC in the party was also good-looking and Lecherous, so they were both quite happy.

What situations have you made worse -- or better -- with Sex Appeal in a game?

Last edited by johndallman; 10-14-2016 at 01:49 PM. Reason: Formatting
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