Resistance to Sex Appeal

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm not saying there aren't ways you could get such a person to break their vows. But I'm saying that a set of rules that just lets you say, "I rolled a 6! Dude I pwned your Vow of Chastity!" is not what social interaction rules are for. It would be like having a combat where a single Quick Contest could let the other guy kill you, no questions asked. If you want to get cooperation, you need to do some roleplaying and some tactics. Offer to let the woman's husband out of prison, or to pay for a doctor for her dying child; offer to convert your kingdom to Christianity if the nun will give up her vows. That's the kind of thing you see in classic dramatic treatments of this kind of conflict.

Are there rules in GURPS Social Engineering for long, drawn-out uses of Influence skills where it is necessary to accumulate margin of success through accomplishing multiple sub-goals, possibly with the use of supporting skills to the Influence skill?

An example would be an elaborate con that is run as an adventure, with the characters striving to convince allies of the target of their authenticity for an eventual bonus to the target's roll, with multiple bit players making Acting rolls to give a bonus to the primary Influence skill, with a section on what skills to use to construct a believable 'set' for the performance of the con and what bonuses this grants, etc.?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by gjc8

How often, in fiction, does it happen that someone goes to a bar, gets chatted up, and is seduced into a breaking their holy vow of chastity in the course of a few hours? That's more than enough time for Sex Appeal to work.s.

Of course that only applies to actual attempts to get them into bed. The use of sex appeal to fluster people and penalize their perception rolls or skill use is another matter. Then a roll is appropriate. But so are situational modifiers. It's easier to use sex appeal to penalize IQ/Perception rolls on the guy who is actually hoping to meet women even if he isn't lecherous, than the police officer who there to interrogate you about the string of dead male tourists who have been seen in your company.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Of course that only applies to actual attempts to get them into bed. The use of sex appeal to fluster people and penalize their perception rolls or skill use is another matter. Then a roll is appropriate. But so are situational modifiers. It's easier to use sex appeal to penalize IQ/Perception rolls on the guy who is actually hoping to meet women even if he isn't lecherous, than the police officer who there to interrogate you about the string of dead male tourists who have been seen in your company.

Yes, and a Vow would not prevent sex appeal from having that effect. In fact, a married man who took his vows seriously might be more flustered by a woman flirting with him or coming on to him.

Bill Stoddard

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If they're not going to do what you ask, of course they get the penalty;

If they aren't rolling, how can they lose? And if they don't lose, how do they get the penalty? You said "don't bother to roll".

Originally Posted by whswhs

They may have almost no resistance to giving you anything else you ask for. But letting a face character just walk in, make one Influence roll, and get something that another character has a deep ethical commitment not to give them is not going to produce good roleplaying, and it's not going to be fun for anyone but the face character's player.

GURPS rules currently work this way for PCs, if they lose they must comply, OR take the penalty. They still have to roll to resist though.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's why Interrogation isn't an Influence skill, doesn't involve Influence rolls, is explicitly presupposed to take place under duress (which Influence rolls are not), and can be enhanced by "showing the instruments" and similar moves. There are quite separate rules in Social Engineering elaborating on Interrogation and Brainwashing.

Intimidation is a skill which certainly doesn't presume consent of any kind. In the real world, some people genuinely wish to resist, but when their lives are in danger, prove unable. This is because Will, like ST, is an Attribute that can't be trumped by simply claiming that you are above such concerns.

The idea that PCs exist on some different plane of existence than NPCs without such differences being explicit on the character sheet has always seemed like sloppy game design to me. If players want their characters to be paragons of courage, resilience and indomitability, let them take the appropriate traits. Otherwise, their characters are as vulnerable to being deceived, tricked, seduced, scared or bluffed as any other character with the same traits in the game world.

This is not to say that I believe that a single Quick Contest of Sex Appeal vs. Will ought to be enough to bed anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, social position or compatibility. Let such concerns penalise attempts or even make it impossible to roll unless supporting skills are used to take care of those concerns first. But I believe that such rules ought to exist, if only for those who prefer to prioritise versimilitude over players' supposed need for empowerment.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Are there rules in GURPS Social Engineering for long, drawn-out uses of Influence skills where it is necessary to accumulate margin of success through accomplishing multiple sub-goals, possibly with the use of supporting skills to the Influence skill?

An example would be an elaborate con that is run as an adventure, with the characters striving to convince allies of the target of their authenticity for an eventual bonus to the target's roll, with multiple bit players making Acting rolls to give a bonus to the primary Influence skill, with a section on what skills to use to construct a believable 'set' for the performance of the con and what bonuses this grants, etc.?

It's hard to have "rules" for that, just as it's hard to have "rules" for small unit tactics. There are discussions of some specific cases; for example, the section on politics says that you can determine the outcome of an election with a single Quick Contest of Politics, but that you could spend several sessions on complementary skill rolls, manipulation rolls, raising funds to support the activity, and so on. The mechanics of using skills to support other skills gets expanded big time. Which in itself is social interaction if you think about it. . . .

Oh, and there's an illustrative discussion of several of the classic cons, both short and long.

Bill Stoddard

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Edges

What I was saying is this: While you seem (from your earlier post) to grant certain types of free resistance to people who take certain disadvantages (e.g. free Resistance to Sex Appeal for those with Vow of Chastity), I do not. So in my games, someone with Vow of Chastity is just as susceptible to Sex Appeal as someone who is not.

Of course they're just as susceptible to Sex Appeal as other people. They're also just as susceptible Fast-Talk and Charisma. But it's much harder to convince them to have sex. This is a vital distinction.

Sex Appeal is about more than just sex. It's about using sexual attraction to earn a favor. It CAN be used to get sex, but it can also be used to convince a guard to let you through a security checkpoint, or a priest to let you sleep in the church on a cold night, or a soldier to let slip confidential information during a barroom conversation.

Sex is just another favor. It's a much harder favor to get from someone with Vow: Chastity, because they're much more reluctant to give it. Just like it would be harder to get a soldier with Fanaticism to betray his duty. Or to convince a victorious opponent with Bloodlust to spare your life.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's hard to have "rules" for that, just as it's hard to have "rules" for small unit tactics. There are discussions of some specific cases; for example, the section on politics says that you can determine the outcome of an election with a single Quick Contest of Politics, but that you could spend several sessions on complementary skill rolls, manipulation rolls, raising funds to support the activity, and so on. The mechanics of using skills to support other skills gets expanded big time. Which in itself is social interaction if you think about it. . . .

Oh, and there's an illustrative discussion of several of the classic cons, both short and long.

Bill Stoddard

Such rules need GM adjudication, of course, but there is no obstacle to writing a generic set of rules that allow the accumulation of margin of success over time, is there?

I ask because I do quite a lot of things in play like determining the result of an election, negotiating a large business deal or running an elaborate con. It always involves multiple characters and skills and it is generally the focus of many sessions. The present mechanics are woefully inaquate for it, but I could see how mechanics for it could be written.

A book dedicated to Social Engineering would seem the place to write such rules. I would even go so far to say that if the book were to lack such rules or only feature vague suggestions that boil down to 'use a Quick Contest, but possibly with modifiers for X or Y', I wonder what is in it.

A book called GURPS Social Engineering needs to be much more like GURPS Martial Arts than GURPS Fantasy. It needs to be dense with innovative new rules that make social engineering focused adventures equally interesting and mechanically distinct as combat focused ones.

As for the difficulty of writing rules for small-unit tactics, I refer you to GURPS Tactical Shooting. There are a lot of new rules there. One of the problems with the playtest manuscript, though, was that it was heavy on 'this is how things work in the real world' and much lighter on having these things have game effects. That was fixed during playtest and the result is one of the finest game books I've seen.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Edges

My treatment of self-imposed mental disadvantages do not force PC actions.

You completely did not communicate that.

What I have done is actually give the players more degrees of freedom. Now PCs can break their Vows or Codes of Honor but at a price beyond losing CPs for the session (in fact, I don't dock CPs for this). I have used a mechanic similar to Cannot Kill. If you do have sex and you have a Vow of Chastity, you get a temporary Guilt Complex. A player has the freedom to choose to do this at no other penalty. It could be good for the party and even for the plot. This also means that someone with VoC is particularly vulnerable to Sex Appeal. They are not more vulnerable because they have a lower chance of resisting or because I, as the GM, will dictate player actions. They're more vulnerable because a failure, if it actually led to sex, would have more severe consequences (hence the encouraged purchase of Resistance).

That in itself is not a problem. In fact I would never tell a player, "Your character can't break his marital vows." If the character had such a Vow, and was tempted to break it, and the player roleplayed the struggle with temptation and the surrender and the regret, I might well give extra eeps. On the other hand, if the character just bounced into bed with everyone who asked, I would start taking away eeps for "You took the disad but you didn't roleplay it. It's not free points!"

We might differ in that I would not accept a simple successful Influence roll as good enough reason for someone with a Vow to break it. Influence rolls are basically for short-term persuasion and agreements; if you take a Vow seriously you don't make a short-term decision to break it . . . that's the same thing as not having a Vow, not really. I might look at it otherwise if the person roleplayed the reluctance to break the Vow, and the decreased rolls based on the Influence roll penalty, and the exploitation of those decreases by the seducer . . . in other words, if it were played out as a real fight and not a simple Quick Contest.

A Vow should make it hard to act against the Vow. The struggle with yourself over whether to give in should be like the struggle of the alcoholic to put the whiskey away unopened. Would you call it good roleplaying if an alcoholic just put the bottle away whenever his friends made their Influence rolls?

Bill Stoddard

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I would not do that, because it's tantamount to "Influence roll = Mind Control." I can tell you that it is the official RaW that a PC is never forced to take an action by an Influence roll. Nothing spoils a game for many players like being told "you lost the Quick Contest? OK, take off your pants/turn and run away from the foe/reveal the secret plans." And so GURPS doesn't make you do that.

I agree, although I see no problems with NPC influence-skill rolls causing non-decision-based problems for characters. While he/she may not be foreced into sleeping with someone, a PC subjected to a successful Sex Appeal roll may find themselves at a penalty to perform certain actions, like notice the guy climbing over the wall. A PC subjected to a successful Diplomacy roll (in public) may choose to ignore the argument but may suffer some social penalties as others nearby are swayed.