11-17-2014, 01:12 PM | #21 | |||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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You especially don't need to do that if you have the sort of significant circumstantial modifiers that will make future historians point you out in an attempt to refute the Great Man theory. Nor is it manipulative for people with Charisma to leverage that into other social traits. They are legitimately well suited to handling responsibilities that require deft social skills. Furthermore they are good at social interaction and people like doing things that they are good at and when someone who is good at something spends a lot of time doing it, it's not surprising if they pick up additional traits related to that. Quote:
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11-17-2014, 02:34 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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If your answer is "yes," then you live in a lot surlier area than I do, and Yankees aren't notorious for being chummy with strangers. Even though I have an offbeat accept locals find unusual, I'm used to having my questions answered, to having shopkeepers treat me respectfully, and to strangers giving me directions. I don't know ... what's your motivation behind those higher numbers? Is it as I expect, and you're tired of having high-reaction mod PCs steamrolling social interactions, and want to nerf that?
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My gaming blog: Apotheosis of the Invisible City "Call me old-fashioned, but after you're dead, I don't think you should be entitled to a Dodge any more." - my wife It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. It's that I disagree with what you're saying. |
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11-17-2014, 02:48 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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11-17-2014, 03:42 PM | #24 | |||||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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There are people with a, what you seem to be calling (and I do not exactly disagree) a cynical approach. They're likely at home with Skinner & Co., and are inclined to see social interaction as a purely push-here-get-result-there thing. Then there are the incorruptible-pure-cuteness sorts of people, who go through life almost never caring to adjust their social interactions . . . and even our indomitable friendly neighbourhood sociopath tends to like them and come to their help in times of need, without being asked to (unlike for his other close acquaintances). Manipulation and Influence isn't necessarily about asking people to do something that is bad for them. It's more about the approach, about deliberately replacing what they want to do with what you want them to want. Actively changing moods. Stepping outside the bounds of natural reactions. Applying skill and finesse and technique to social interactions. Adding art or engineering towards that that started out as primal and untamed. It need not necessarily be bad. Quote:
As for the theme of refuting the Great Man Theory - actually, it more sounds like an attempt to make individual traits by which characters are differentiated less differentiating them. Quote:
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across the board nerf of social characters; if someone throws points at being social, said someone will now throw lots of points, and instead of having a Gorgeous Character, a Charismatic Character, and a Pleasant-Sounding-and-Famous Character, you'll get all your faces trying to stack all the traits, because having one trait even at superhuman levels is rather unimpressive. |
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11-17-2014, 05:13 PM | #25 | ||||||||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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What "theme"? There's no theme. The point is that people who acquire a lot of followers for whom circumstantial bonuses are contributing a large percentage of their bonuses are going to be the sort of people historians interested in refuting the Great Man theory will tend to point to not proving that viewpoint right. Quote:
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Furthermore we want our specialists to desire having all the traits. A swordsman doesn't buy superhuman strength and then consider fighting to be handled and he shouldn't. The way to get people to only buy some of the social abilities is to push back against having "a face character" who does all the social interaction as a reasonable party strategy. If social abilities are important everyone should be able to contribute just like everyone needs to be able to contribute in a fight. People have "a face character" because if you can have one person handle all the social stuff it's wasteful to have more than one person have the abilities to do that, but generally in play everyone would like to be able to talk to the NPCs. A nerf isn't necessarily a bad thing. Social traits are seriously cheap for what they do if the characters actually get a chance to use them properly. Having one trait at superhuman levels is only unimpressive compared to the overpowered normal rules. Having superhuman beauty is a powerful tool not an "I win" button for social challenges. |
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11-17-2014, 09:20 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Ottawa, Canada
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
If the issue is the frequency of extreme results occurring on random rolls, instead of expanding the table and thus requiring all other reaction-affecting traits and mechanics to be modified, why not just change the roll for an initial random reaction? Instead of 3d6, maybe you roll 2d6+3 (from 5 to 15), or even 1d6+7 (from 8 to 13).
"Extreme" reactions are then solely determined by GM fiat... typically explained away by adding some sort of Intolerance or attraction trait to the NPC so that he reacts that way to the PC(s) in question. |
11-17-2014, 09:29 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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11-18-2014, 02:48 AM | #28 | ||||||||||||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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There's a way to describe people for whom some approach is part of their personality to the point of always using it: the Inappropriate Manner quirk for skills and the Mind-Numbing Magnetism quirk for descriptors such as 'talkative' or 'poetic'. Quote:
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On one hand, nobody wants to have 20 enumerable reaction levels for all the half-dozen or so classes of reaction results (trade, romance, request for information, request for aid, combat etc.). On the other hand, human-scale ranges of traits should have a reasonable noise-to-signal ratio. About 50% roll results fall within the 8-12 range (inclusive), which is roughly a noise range of ±2, 50% of the time. But it takes a change of ±3 or so to achieve a measurable change of reaction. But the difference between a person whom others find unremarkable (Appearance:Average) and one people are attracted to (Appearance:Attractive) is +1 . . . and the problem is, already that is too low a modifier to achieve a noticeable differences in the outcomes on the table of attraction. Reputation -4 is the level of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. In practice, it's not particularly bad in RAW, and even less so under the house rule table. Quote:
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But having one trait at the human maximum level should be a Big Deal. Having several is an even bigger deal. Quote:
Same with social traits: it's good to have all sorts of characters, those who stack up one primary traits, those who disperse between several, those who go for one-trick ponyism, those who focus on skills, those who get a bit of each, those who fill a certain narrow social niche quite well while not being face characters in other social niches etc. Quote:
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11-18-2014, 02:50 AM | #29 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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11-18-2014, 04:57 AM | #30 | |||||||||||||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Reaction Table House Rules
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They're absolutely not approaches. Approaches in some sense conflict but charisma and influence are additive not alternatives and a lot of the time you can't even replace one with the other during a period of time because only one is a possible tool. Quote:
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Please give me the benefit of either assuming I'm not stupid or refraining from trying to snipe cheap rherotical points. My point was that it was not automatically unethical for someone with strong social abilities to decide to leverage those into more social traits. Quote:
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Last edited by Sindri; 11-18-2014 at 05:08 AM. |
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house rules, influence skills, reaction modifiers, reaction rolls, social engineering |
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