Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
You can buy better quality clothes and accessories and take on the appearance of higher Status. You can use Fashion Sense (your own or someone else's) to boost your appearance. That provides room for a modest bit of crunch.
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But you never make tradeoffs between something comparable to, say, damage vs. Acc vs. RoF vs. magazine size.
It all largely boils down to 'get +x to your QC roll under Y circumstances'. There's no meaningful choice of tactics once you engage someone in a conversation. You don't choose whether to go all-out or approach cautiously. You don't choose whether to try a straightforward monologue or a sneaky approach that relies on surprising your opponent. You don't choose between bringing one well-thought-out argument hoping that it'll be good enough, or many small ones hoping that a few will chip away the opponent's confidence. You don't choose whether to defend against enemy persuasion using logical dissection of his arguments, emotional denial of his arguments, searching his words for signs of manipulation, or just letting the enemy's plea crash against your assertive ego. Most of these things are either less tactically meaningful than the choices in tactical physical combat, pre-chosen for the player/PC in accordance to the situation, or not present at all.
The Manipulation mechanic is probably the closest thing to a tactical choice in SE.
I know that SE was never meant to be a mirror of physical combat. I'm also not saying that it's a bad product (it's one of my favourite books).
But let's face it: GURPS' social mechanics' gamistic component is much 'flatter' than that of physical combat, or of spaceship-design etc.