[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Curious

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I think to some extent Curious underscores the common issues that seem linked to oldschool design of behavioural (RP-oriented) disadvantages. The issues are:

• All of the carrot is given in advance (points gained upfront), and all that remains after that is a stick. This breeds the "how much can I avoid the trait before being forced to buy it off" mentality, as opposed to "when would more focus on roleplaying this trait make the campaign more fun for everyone". Yes, good roleplayers are less likely to be affected by such a push, but the push is still there.
• The fact that resisting the trait is tied strictly to dice means that even when the player knows the letter of the disad doesn't match the spirit of the character concept, it has to be played, because the price is already paid. To some extent, the Ham Clause softens this issue. OTOH, the default assumption of not even rolling to resist disads somewhat exacerbates the issue.
• For many disads, the downside isn't a constant. Instead, in many cases, taking a disads turns out to be a "lottery of disaster". That is, a disad such as Bad Temper (15) may seem like a near-harmless little quirklike thing . . . until that thing rolls a 16 at the Blood Elven Court and results in being sentenced to death for insulting the regent. Admittedly this is likely to be even more prominent with non-behavioural traits like high-multiplier Vulnerabilities to rare stuff.
• Due to the combination of the way SC rolls work, the way different GMs and players may interpret the trait differently, and the way it's hard to predict what triggers will and will not be encountered [and how often] throughout the campaign, they're even more of a lottery. This of course can be mitigated by micromanaging frequency of encountering triggers through GM fiat, but that has downsides of its own.
• The above is worsened by the fact that just how bad the far-reaching consequences of a failed SC roll are gonna be is effectively impossible to estimate when deciding whether to take the trait.
• Sometimes playing such traits due to a failed SC roll can lead to things that nobody finds fun, neither GM nor players. This of course can be avoided by saying "don't even bother rolling, you auto-resist" in such cases, but it still seems like there could be a better solution.

Due to all this, I'm seriously thinking that behavioural and perhaps other disadvantages may be better redesigned using a scheme similar to reverse Impulse Buys, where a GM can 'bribe' players into activating their behavioural (or other similarly qualitative and 'on/off') disads when it'd be good for the campaign, and the size of the bribe can be scaled to the amount of trouble this gets the PC into (retroactively adding more points if the trouble turned out to be bigger than the GM expected). IOW, I'm wondering how the disadvantageous usage of Aspects can be ported over to GURPS.

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to hear more. (Maybe a scheme where the player can pay points to avoid behavior, the GM can reward points to trigger behavior, or they can choose to leave it up to chance, i.e. the self-control roll?)

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Kromm

One part of me feels it should be worth 0 points because adventurers are supposed to be like this. Yes, yes . . . strictly speaking, this is a more severe case that gets you into more trouble than your companions, who have merely the usual curiosity of adventurers.

I see it as a specific kind of poor impulse control, which comes up often enough to be a real disadvantage. The thing that makes it worth points, to me, is that it deprives you of the cautious option, using planning and careful preparation, for an activity that comes up fairly often.

But I seem to be more willing to do planning than many gamers.