The King's Stammer

[Dusqune]

I don't like the Stuttering disadvantage. Disturbing Voice already says that mechanically it is identical to the -2 given by Stuttering, even if the flavor is different. I'm very much for using one disadvantage to represent something mechanically even if the flavor doesn't match, so I have no problem personally lumping it all under Disturbing Voice and saying that if it mechanically just gives you a -2 to reaction rolls, it's Disturbing Voice.

However, I would like to model a homebrew rule to represent what was done in The King's Speech. My understanding (if I haven't been told wrong) is that the actor gave a very good impression of real stammering in real life. That wasn't just some -2 to reaction rolls, that was crippling. If he got too worked up he couldn't even speak much less use a social skill.

To me, this is easily represented by a self-control number representing the severity of the stammer. Handle it like Klutz for a part, maybe? Make a roll to get through the day without something incredibly embarrasing.
In actual roleplayed 'scenes,' I would rule that the character must make a self-control roll when any other self-control roll is made and when the character gets overly emotional (the exception being anger in which case the stammer can be completely ignored for that outburst (although you still have to deal with the effects of letting your Bad Temper get ahold of you)). If the roll is failed, the character cannot speak at all, giving a -4 to reaction rolls; if the roll does not fail, then the character stammers, giving the -2 reaction roll from Vanilla Stuttering.
A roll would also have to be made for every use of one of the skills listed under Vanilla Stuttering just to proceed on to actually making the skill roll. Failing this first check would count as a critical failure of the skill. Success allows one to roll at the skill -2.

Modifiers would apply. I'd say bonuses of up to +4(?) for familiarity with a person in a one-on-one, private conversation, or for when you are around family or something. Minuses would be applied for circumstances such as when taunted about the stammer.

I would also suggest that it is often combined with Shyness and that a level of Shyness should be (but is not required to be) bought relative to the self-control level of the Stammer (e.g., -20 level of Shyness to go with the Stammer self-control roll of 6). I imagine it's just a natural reaction: you have a stammer, you don't interact with people to hide it, it becomes habit.

It's a brutal disadvantage--maybe a bit too brutal, but I was trying to model it after what is seen in the King's Speech movie. I mean, his character was completely ineffective on a social level--why can't we model that with GURPS?

So, here's the questions:
A) Does it need to be toned down?
B) What should I price it at?

(This gives the whole movie a new perspective: It's George running around trying to get enough character points to buy his Stammer self-control down and his Public Speaking up!)

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Dusqune

However, I would like to model a homebrew rule to represent what was done in The King's Speech.

BTW, you shouldn't take that film as an authoritative model. It took horrible liberties with the facts, esp the treatment timeline. For example, the headphone gimmick was shown to be 100% effective on the first use, entirely solving the problem of giving speeches on radio.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

BTW, you shouldn't take that film as an authoritative model. It took horrible liberties with the facts, esp the treatment timeline. For example, the headphone gimmick was shown to be 100% effective on the first use, entirely solving the problem of giving speeches on radio.

I haven't watched the movie, but Delayed Auditory Feedback, if that's what you're referring to, has been known to work very well for some people who stutter. Not all, and even those who use it are strongly advised not to use it all the time, because otherwise the benefit disappears entirely.

A few years ago, I was told about one stutterer who worked in an airport, even as an announcer or something, and he'd use his DAF gear at work, then take it off when he got home.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Dusqune

I don't like the Stuttering disadvantage.

Me neither.

I have an important NPC in my Ärth setting who has a severe stutter, and first of all I need to have some idea how that interacts with verbal-component spellcasting. Secondly, GURPS fails completely at reflecting that Stuttering is a variable handicap. Completely fluent one moment, blocked to the point of speechlessness the next.

So that is one area where I've cooked up my own stuff for Sagatafl, without stealing from GURPS at all.

Note that in terms of effect vs point cost, GURPS is fine. Stuttering is -10 CP, and gives you a -2 Reaction Roll modifier, and IIRC a minor penalty to some skills. There's nothing wrong with that.

Except that, as you no doubt would agree, it completely fails to even attempt to modify how this particular speech disability actually functions. It's not even trying.

Originally Posted by Dusqune

However, I would like to model a homebrew rule to represent what was done in The King's Speech. My understanding (if I haven't been told wrong) is that the actor gave a very good impression of real stammering in real life. That wasn't just some -2 to reaction rolls, that was crippling. If he got too worked up he couldn't even speak much less use a social skill.

To me, this is easily represented by a self-control number representing the severity of the stammer. Handle it like Klutz for a part, maybe? Make a roll to get through the day without something incredibly embarrasing.

I don't think using the Klutz mechanic will be particularly good simulation. Then again rolling once per day to see if something incredibly embarassing happens, rubs me the wrong way for Stuttering.

In Sagatafl, it's one of few cases where rather than simply fiating the amount of compensatory points for a disad (based on my intuitive prediction of the expected degree of overall suckiness), I'll actually break the disad down into component parts and add a point value to each.

Like you, I offer several degrees of Stuttering. Specifically Mild, Severe and Crippling.

Any character has a Fluency Roll, but for normal people, it's so high you simply do not have to roll, unless you're giving verbal testimony in front of a Viking Age thing (where any stumbling over words is assumed to be a sign of lying). Usually a Fluency roll of 10, meaning 10d12 are rolled to determine the current situational fluency, but players are free to define their characters as 9d12 or 11d12 instead. It makes no difference. And don't bother rolling (except in front of a thing court).

A Mild Stutter gives a Fluency roll of 5d12, Severe of 4d12, and Crippling of 3d12.

During most of the time, the character is simply assumed to be stuttering as his normal level, that is a Severe one will stutter severely, and so forth. When he's around friends or colleagues or relatives, we don't need to know how fluent he is.

But any time it's important, such as when meeting another person for the first time (making a first impression), attending a social function, giving a speech or a lecture, or talking on the phone to someone who's not a close friend or relative, you make a Fluency roll, against an appropriate RD, to see what the current situational Fluency is.

So, most of the breakdown of "suck factors" consists of:

1. The Fluency roll, since this suggests the average degree of fluency (or lack thereoff), and therefore the RD penalty to social skill use, and the First Impression Modifier (contingent upon speech being used during that first encounter, although of course refusing to speak will be seen as extremely odd in many situations, and so give a potentially even worse penalty).
2. A Distinctive Feature of the Auditory type (you won't "stand out describably", as long as you keep your mouth shut).
3. Some kind of Impression Roll Modifier that only pertains to whether the character is percieved as intelligent or unintelligent (that's one general mechanic I'm still struggling with. Character traits that influence only certain kinds of First Impressions).
4. A further "suck factor", based on how common word-based magic is in the world, and on how likely it is that the character would have learned it if he had not had the speech disability (a neat but somewhat complicated mechanical derivation called Mage Factor). This is zero for an average person, in a fantasy setting, and will be zero for everyone in a non-fantasy setting (or in a fantasy setting with no learnable verbal-component magic).

Originally Posted by Dusqune

Modifiers would apply. I'd say bonuses of up to +4(?) for familiarity with a person in a one-on-one, private conversation, or for when you are around family or something. Minuses would be applied for circumstances such as when taunted about the stammer.

Don't forget phone conversations. Also, preparation and knowing one's material really well can give a positive modifier, e.g. for a lecture or job interview. Or for that matter just speaking to more than one person.

The stuttering community is probably overly enthusiastic when it comes to recruiting famous dead people, but one widespread story is that Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during WWII, had a serious stutter, but worked around it in politics by preparing himself really well, reading up on all relevant material, and trying to anticipate how debates would develop.

But do be prepared to pile on modifiers, both positive and negative. Stack the deck right, and that king (I've forgotten his name) will be so fluent nobody can hear he even has a speech impediment. Or stack the deck the other way around, and he won't be able to speak at all.

There was a TED video a week or two ago, by a German or Austrian guy, about cellular phones and the large amount of data stored by phone companies. He had what I'd describe as a mild stutter (mildest kind in Sagatafl term, or actually slightly milder than that, although we can presume he knew his stuff well). It was quite hearable in most sentences that he had a stutter, but he seemed to handle it well. I'll post a link later, if I get around to it, because it's good to have some examples to point at.

Originally Posted by Dusqune

I would also suggest that it is often combined with Shyness and that a level of Shyness should be (but is not required to be) bought relative to the self-control level of the Stammer (e.g., -20 level of Shyness to go with the Stammer self-control roll of 6). I imagine it's just a natural reaction: you have a stammer, you don't interact with people to hide it, it becomes habit.

That's fine as long as it remains a suggestion. Then it's very realistic. But don't make Shyness mandatory.

Originally Posted by Dusqune

It's a brutal disadvantage--maybe a bit too brutal, but I was trying to model it after what is seen in the King's Speech movie. I mean, his character was completely ineffective on a social level--why can't we model that with GURPS?

Yes, real-world stuttering is very brutal. It's not as brutal as being Blind, and it'd be hard to argue that it's not at least slightly less brutal than being Mute, but the suck factor is great.

Arguably it should give rather more than -10 CP, but with drawbacks piled on top to make it proportional to that higher point value.

Also note that GURPS isn't about modelling people. It's what attracted me to GURPS in the first place. It looked like it was about modelling people, and at first glance it could actually model a lot of quite distinctive fictional characters that I had made up, for a setting for written stories. But as I kept making up a wider variety of more intersting and more distinctive and unusual characters, I outpaced GURPS' ability to model. Severely.

Originally Posted by Dusqune

So, here's the questions:
A) Does it need to be toned down?
B) What should I price it at?

A. No, not at all. You just need - as you've already implied that you'll do - to offer multiple degrees of Stuttering. I've opted for 3, but you can well opt for 4, using the standard GURPS progression of SCRs. Although it'd be kinda offensive if you called them SCRs.

B. Proportionally to the total suck factor. The current Stuttering is priced correctly. It's just really bad simulation, ignoring the variability that's an intrinsic part of the disability, and ignoring many of the suck factors that are present in real world stuttering.

So define what it does, then post your suck element breakdown in here, and ask what amount of compensation each suck element should be worth, and if there should be a further "negative synergy" component added to the point value (which will probably only amount to -1 or -2 CP, but every little helps).

IIRC Mute, unable to speak, is -30 CP, so that's your absolute ceiling. Even the worst, most absurdly cripplingly degree of Stuttering (trigger toll 6-or-more) has to be worth less than -30 CP. But -25 CP is defensible. Mute people don't get reaction roll penalties. People with extreme degrees of stuttering do.

(It's a wonder they never try to pass themselves off as totally mute - I'm pretty sure I'd have heard of that if it is at all common, but I haven't, so I conclude that it isn't.)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

There was a TED video a week or two ago, by a German or Austrian guy, about cellular phones and the large amount of data stored by phone companies. He had what I'd describe as a mild stutter (mildest kind in Sagatafl term, or actually slightly milder than that, although we can presume he knew his stuff well). It was quite hearable in most sentences that he had a stutter, but he seemed to handle it well. I'll post a link later, if I get around to it, because it's good to have some examples to point at.

Malte Spitz. Nearly 10 minutes of video, and not a lot of stuttering, but it is present subtly, in almost every sentence, even though there are no genuine blocks lasting for at least several seconds.

Do keep in mind, though, we're seeing him in a particular kind of situation.

He's not speaking his first language. He's talking in front of a huge audience. He probably knows he's being recorded and that the video will be put up on the web. I doubt he can see their reactions well, due to the lighting situation, giving a lot of fun, nice potential for wondering what they're thinking, if he's boring them, if they can even hear through his accent, or if he's being too technical and losing them that way. Angst, angst and more angst.

But chances are that he's well-rehearsed and has made extra sure he knows all his stuff.

If he's a cool customer he'd have timed himself from home, and known that the speech would ideally last between 9 minutes 30 seconds and 10 minutes 30 seconds, but asked for a time slot of 12 or 14 minutes, just to be sure he has the time to finish it, even if he stutters worse than expected (that alone, knowing there's enough time, is worth at least a +1 bonus in GURPS terms, to the roll).

We can conclude (unless we fail our PER roll, or our IQ roll) that yes, he has a speech impediment. But we cannot, based on this video, know how he handles social situations. How he handles meeting new people for the first time and making a first impression. And that is rather more important, in an RPG, than how well or poorly he can handle giving a lecture at a high-profile place such as TED (and even the most common speaking-to-lots-of-people situation in an RPG, an Ars Magica magi or companion teaching a classroom, tends to involve less than a dozen people, not thousands of people). But while we cannot know, we can make a more or less educated guess at it.

[Anders]

If it's so bad he can't speak I'd model it as Mute and slap an Accessibility limitation on it.

[Flyndaran]

Real people have good days and bad days for nearly any handicap. It's not just stuttering.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Real people have good days and bad days for nearly any handicap. It's not just stuttering.

Real people perceive themselves as having good or bad days. People who stutter objectively have good and bad days, in terms of measurable degree of fluency. Heck, even good and bad hours.

For a lot of disads, it's perfectly reasonable to define them as a static and unchangeable modifier, but it isn't reasonable for Stuttering.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Real people perceive themselves as having good or bad days. People who stutter objectively have good and bad days, in terms of measurable degree of fluency. Heck, even good and bad hours.

For a lot of disads, it's perfectly reasonable to define them as a static and unchangeable modifier, but it isn't reasonable for Stuttering.

My crippling anxiety is objectively different on different days allowing different levels of normal behavior.
Nothing living is truly static for very long, unless you are talking about things like missing limbs.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

My crippling anxiety is objectively different on different days allowing different levels of normal behavior.
Nothing living is truly static for very long, unless you are talking about things like missing limbs.

*nod* Absent Minded, whatever it is that covers my neurologically based blindspot, Parkinsons, even Alzheimers produce varying results from day to day. A cancer patient can get varying drug side effects from the same dosage and scheduling from day to day.