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Old 05-28-2012, 12:12 PM   #11
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by Figleaf23 View Post
Apropos of nothing, I note that the text describing the Sherlock Scan contains a paragraph that incorrectly identifies the process as inductive reasoning.
This is in fact how it is called in psychology. Gathering many clues into a single conclusion is induction.
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Old 05-28-2012, 12:16 PM   #12
Ze'Manel Cunha
 
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
would consider all the following for Patrick Jane in the Mentalist. [...]
Besides that he has Empathy, and possibly Discrim smell. He has identified some perfumes and other things by smell that may warrant that.
I'd give him a really high Per, good IQ, but Per on an exceptional level.

Visualization too...
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Old 05-28-2012, 12:22 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

For the Sherlock Scan, I think this is really just a combination of one or more Perception rolls to notice unusual characteristics with rolls against other pertinent skills to interpret the observations. What makes Sherlock Holmes such a great detective is the combination of his incredibly high Perception with his very broad skill base. Recreating this in GURPS would be expensive (as it should be!) as you would need a high IQ, a few levels of enhanced perception, and at least one point in each of probably dozens of different skills!
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Old 05-28-2012, 12:33 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
I'd give him a really high Per, good IQ, but Per on an exceptional level.

Visualization too...
Oh good call. I meant to add Visualization but forgot about it by the time I was done with the skill list.
And yep, high Per and also editic memory though probably not Photographic.

EDIT: Another new show that has already been canceled was a cop show called Unforgettable. I only saw one or two episodes but the star had a photographic memory and it played out hwo incredibly useful that was to solving crimes.
As to the Holmes example I had a player who built a guy like that in 2E? with photographic memory (the abusive kind back then) and a high IQ and PER.

Last edited by Refplace; 05-28-2012 at 12:37 PM.
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Old 05-28-2012, 02:04 PM   #15
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by cosmicfish View Post
For the Sherlock Scan, I think this is really just a combination of one or more Perception rolls to notice unusual characteristics with rolls against other pertinent skills to interpret the observations. What makes Sherlock Holmes such a great detective is the combination of his incredibly high Perception with his very broad skill base. Recreating this in GURPS would be expensive (as it should be!) as you would need a high IQ, a few levels of enhanced perception, and at least one point in each of probably dozens of different skills!
But that means having to make half a dozen skill rolls on average, each time the character decides to do a Scan. Half a dozen skill rolls per target of the Scan, even.

For more than a year I've been trying to create a good Sherlockian Gaze mechanic for Sagatafl, one that respects the character's capabilitistic individuality without turning into a nightmare of a billion dice rolls, but I haven't been able to come up with anything good.

Requiring a billion dice rolls is a metagame brake on the ability, in that the logistics of performing all those rolls will make the player reluctant to use it in the first place, and in the second place if he uses it a lot, he risks coming under social pressure from the GM and from the other players, for spending a lot of time on it. So that's obviously not a good mechanic.
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Old 05-28-2012, 02:05 PM   #16
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen View Post
But that means having to make half a dozen skill rolls on average, each time the character decides to do a Scan. Half a dozen skill rolls per target of the Scan, even.

For more than a year I've been trying to create a good Sherlockian Gaze mechanic for Sagatafl, one that respects the character's capabilitistic individuality without turning into a nightmare of a billion dice rolls, but I haven't been able to come up with anything good.

Requiring a billion dice rolls is a metagame brake on the ability, in that the logistics of performing all those rolls will make the player reluctant to use it in the first place, and in the second place if he uses it a lot, he risks coming under social pressure from the GM and from the other players, for spending a lot of time on it. So that's obviously not a good mechanic.
This is what ! skills were created for. If there was ever a cinematic Detective!, Mr. Holmes was one.

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Old 05-28-2012, 03:05 PM   #17
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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What's incorrect about it? Inductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that Sherlock Holmes uses; he only very rarely uses deductive reasoning, even though he uses the term 'deduction' regularly.

Induction is the process of arriving at a general rule from specific examples, or at specific examples from a general rule. That's basically what a Sherlock Scan is.
It's the opposite of what a Sherlock Scan is. He uses a process of elimination and arrives at a specific conclusion, not a probable, general conclusion.
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Old 05-28-2012, 03:08 PM   #18
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
This is in fact how it is called in psychology. Gathering many clues into a single conclusion is induction.
The number of data points is not the issue, but Holmes generally relies on much less data than would support inductive conclusions. That's because he used deduction -- the process of reasoning from general data to a specific certain conclusion. Not induction, the process of reasoning from a field of specific data to a general probable conclusion.
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Old 05-28-2012, 03:40 PM   #19
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by Figleaf23 View Post
It's the opposite of what a Sherlock Scan is. He uses a process of elimination and arrives at a specific conclusion, not a probable, general conclusion.
And note that his conclusions are not certain. This is the main departure from deduction.

EDIT: Woops, got my reasonings wrong - inductive and abductive sound too much alike. Sherlock still doesn't use deductive reasoning - his reasoning is abductive. He goes from specific data points to a hypothesis that explains it.

Last edited by Langy; 05-28-2012 at 03:44 PM.
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Old 05-28-2012, 04:15 PM   #20
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Default Re: [Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

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Originally Posted by Figleaf23 View Post
The number of data points is not the issue, but Holmes generally relies on much less data than would support inductive conclusions. That's because he used deduction -- the process of reasoning from general data to a specific certain conclusion. Not induction, the process of reasoning from a field of specific data to a general probable conclusion.
What Holmes does is certainly not deduction in the strict sense, because he cannot possibly have access to the necessary universal truths. I've long suspected that Doyle was using the word "deduction" loosely as a synonym for "systematic reasoning."

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