[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

[johndallman]

Honesty [-10*] is a mundane, self-imposed, mental disadvantage with a self-control roll. You have a strong desire to obey the law, and not doing so requires a self-control roll. Keeping to your word matters to you. You can lie where it doesn’t involve breaking the law – Truthfulness is a separate disadvantage – or mislead legitimate enemies in wartime, but those aren’t things you like doing. Honesty appeared at GURPS 1e, and hasn’t fundamentally changed since.

As well as obeying the law yourself, you want others to do so. In a place with no laws, you act as if the laws of your homeland were in force. You assume other people behave in the same way, too, unless you know otherwise; you get an IQ roll to realise that others are being dishonest, unless you’ve previously seen proof that they behave that way. Honesty also comes with a special Reputation bundled in: people who know you are so honest have +1 to all their reaction rolls to you outside combat, or +3 if there’s an issue of trust or honour involved.

You can fight, and even start fights, if you do that in a way that’s legal. You can kill in self-defence or in other circumstances where it’s legal, but you won’t murder. If you need to steal to survive, or for some other great need, you’ll do it, but you’ll attempt to compensate victims later. If you’re arrested for a crime you didn’t commit, you won’t attempt to escape if you have decent prospects of a fair trial. Presumably if the trial is unfair and you’re sentenced, you’re then willing to escape, but not to harm people to do so. If you have a need to break an unreasonable law, you need to make a self-control roll to manage it. If you do that, you need a second self-control roll to avoid turning yourself in afterwards.

A self-imposed disadvantage with a self-control roll is a unique combination. It’s presumably set up that way because laws are imperfect, and sometimes it is necessary for heroes to evade or break them.

Obviously, this disadvantage rules out making a living as a criminal. It’s limiting for use of the Scrounging skill, but not crippling: you won’t steal, but it doesn’t forbid soliciting gifts, buying things cheaply, or salvaging things that have been thrown away. While it isn’t normal for merchants, it isn’t a major problem for them. Indeed, there is a successful UK business that has additional clauses in its Honesty: they always pay bills by the due date, and if they are offered something that is too cheap, such that the vendor could get more for it elsewhere, they’ll say so.

Honesty is a pretty common option on published character templates. Caravan to Ein Arris points out how worthwhile it is for a party to have someone who’s known to be trustworthy, and Discworld golems are very Honest. DFRPG has this disadvantage, but it does not apply in dungeons, Lands of Evil, or uncivilised wilderness, and the same should go for DF. Fantasy: Portal Realms and Infinite Worlds point out that Honesty can be interesting in their styles of setting, while Horror and Magic show how various styles of corruption can erode it.

There are several quirk-level versions in Power-Ups 6, more annoying than virtuous, while Powers uses it as an example of a required disadvantage for powers of Good. The Psi series points out that it’s one of the few ways that psis can seem trustworthy, and many Reign of Steel: Will to Live robots are honest, albeit hostile. Social Engineering has its effects on bribery and on mobs, Steampunk 2 has an investigative automaton which is advanced enough to need Honesty, and Supers explains its incompatibility with vigilantism. Thaumatology has more on virtuous disadvantages and wielding divine powers, and Transhuman Space: Changing Times points out that all the AIs that are deliberately constructed in that setting are required to have Honesty.

If I ever get my GURPS Glorantha plan sorted out, the Lunar Special Operations teams will always have someone with Honesty, to look after the empire’s funds, but it won’t be the party diplomat. How has Honesty made your games more complicated?

[whswhs]

Just as a note, Scrounging is the go to for ragpickers and mudlarks.

[jason taylor]

It would be an extremely burdensome one for playing a Righteous Gentile in Europe during WW2. For instance what if a priest was asked to let a refugee take Mass falsely (assuming he was otherwise inclined to shelter him perhaps even to the point of martyrdom)?

[Culture20]

The mind controller in my supers game routinely afflicts villains with honesty, and they usually just turn themselves in. One commited suicide.

[Refplace]

Combining this with the town has a civilized supernatural power note in another thread.
Clerics of Town could have Honesty as thier Pact disad.

[rkbrown419]

I've tried looking in past discussions of Honesty and not been able to find an answer to this so apologies if it's been answered before. Does Honesty require you to obey the letter of the law when it is being enforced differently. The most obvious example of what I mean would be speeding. In many places I'm familiar with you might have a posted freeway speed limit of between 65 to 70 mph. However, if everyone else is driving between 80 and 85 the police might actually pull someone going the posted limit over for creating a traffic hazard. The law being enforced is that you should go with the flow of the traffic even if it's faster than the posted limit. So does the Honesty disadvantage require you to obey the letter of the law (the posted limit) or the de Facto law (go with the flow of traffic)?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by rkbrown419

I've tried looking in past discussions of Honesty and not been able to find an answer to this so apologies if it's been answered before. Does Honesty require you to obey the letter of the law when it is being enforced differently. The most obvious example of what I mean would be speeding. In many places I'm familiar with you might have a posted freeway speed limit of between 65 to 70 mph. However, if everyone else is driving between 80 and 85 the police might actually pull someone going the posted limit over for creating a traffic hazard. The law being enforced is that you should go with the flow of the traffic even if it's faster than the posted limit. So does the Honesty disadvantage require you to obey the letter of the law (the posted limit) or the de Facto law (go with the flow of traffic)?

There are times I might allow spirit over letter but mostly it should be letter. In your speeding example they would be sure to be in a slower lane.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by rkbrown419

I've tried looking in past discussions of Honesty and not been able to find an answer to this so apologies if it's been answered before. Does Honesty require you to obey the letter of the law when it is being enforced differently. The most obvious example of what I mean would be speeding. In many places I'm familiar with you might have a posted freeway speed limit of between 65 to 70 mph. However, if everyone else is driving between 80 and 85 the police might actually pull someone going the posted limit over for creating a traffic hazard. The law being enforced is that you should go with the flow of the traffic even if it's faster than the posted limit. So does the Honesty disadvantage require you to obey the letter of the law (the posted limit) or the de Facto law (go with the flow of traffic)?

That's actually a case where two different laws are in conflict, the speed limit and the law against dangerous driving. Honestly there aren't a lot of situations where obeying the speed limit actually constitutes "dangerous driving", but if that did happen to be the case then the Honest thing to do is to go with the social consensus.

Provided that is, that the Honest person is actually part of the society.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

It would be an extremely burdensome one for playing a Righteous Gentile in Europe during WW2. For instance what if a priest was asked to let a refugee take Mass falsely (assuming he was otherwise inclined to shelter him perhaps even to the point of martyrdom)?

That situation is interesting. The "law" being enforced by Nazi occupation definitely belongs in quote marks, because most of it isn't technically law at all. A major purpose of the SS and its subsidiary organisations was to replace statute law with the will of Hitler (Source: Anatomy of the SS State, a historical study by four German historians in the early 1960s).

A Catholic priest is presumably breaking canon law by letting a non-Catholic take Mass under false pretenses. Under the circumstances, that seems justifiable to me, but I know I don't really understand Catholicism. Would rationalising it by a pro-forma attempt to convert the refugee be at all helpful to the conscience?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by rkbrown419

I've tried looking in past discussions of Honesty and not been able to find an answer to this so apologies if it's been answered before. Does Honesty require you to obey the letter of the law when it is being enforced differently.

The description is unclear (with the later paragraphs contradicting the initial one), and despite it being asked for literally decades now, AFAIK there's never been any official clarification.

There are people who insist that Honesty forces you to obey anything that might qualify as a law absolutely - you must obey both laws even if they conflict - which I guess means you either cannot drive on this road or must call to turn yourself in to the local police after ever commute.

There are others who insist it's basically Code of Honor (Good Citizen) and you wouldn't need to obey either as long as that didn't create an actual problem for any of your fellow citizens - which probably means going with the flow of the traffic in this case, but might also allow you to encourage everybody to exceed the speed limit even if they initially were not if it was actually safe. Of course if you did exceed the speed limit and hurt somebody, you would presumably turn yourself in for your crime, that if it would have also been unsafe *not* to exceed the speed limit wouldn't excuse you.

It's something that you need to be sure your group is clear on before anybody takes the trait. It *looks* like official publications lean more toward the Code of Honor interpretation - given that it appears as a trait on templates of what are clearly supposed to be heroes and universally provides a reaction bonus, neither of which seem likely for a trait that forces you to robotically obey blatantly evil or hated laws, but the first paragraph of the description certainly does make it seem like that's what it should do.