[Social Engineering] Skill-based Cold Reading / Sherlock Scan?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Goober4473

This is only the case if the investigation scenes aren't terribly important to the game, and especially if only one character in a large group makes all of the rolls.

Consider that in combat, making 7-8 rolls per character over the course of the scene is pretty normal, and sometimes a lot more are made. If the focus of the game is investigation, then having that many rolls while investigating will be perfectly acceptible. All the better if they can be split between players, as they discuss the scene and pass information back and forth (for instance, passing gathered info to the psychology expert to construct a psychological profile, which leads the group to investigate somewhere they wouldn't have thought to look, etc.).

Just so.

If it's reasonable to compress action into fractions of seconds for tactical combat, it's reasonable to do the same for detailed social maneuvering. After all, whether we measure by game-mechanical effectiveness or dramatic relevance, a successful Influence attempt is often as important as a successful infliction of violence.

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

But Holmes also had a lot of skills not covered by any reasonable Detective!, and furthermore, simulating Sherlockian Gaze via distinct skills means that characters can acquire the ability to do it in a gradual fashion that makes sense from the in-character perspective.

Sure, Sherlock spent a lot of points on various skills that didn't appear, at first, to have direct application to anything. One way might to model them as a bunch of Hobby skills: essentially Hobby: London Soils, Hobby: Tobacco Ash, and so on.

I think that his rant about the need to only keep useful information in the "attic" of his mind implies some sort of CP optimization and choosing skills that are only useful for his career.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Goober4473

This is only the case if the investigation scenes aren't terribly important to the game, and especially if only one character in a large group makes all of the rolls.

What investigation scene? There is no investigation scene. You've fundamentaly misunderstood what this thread is about.

THis thread is not about the thing that Sherlock Holmes does.

This thread is about a specific one thing out of the several different things that Sherlock Holmes does.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Just so.

If it's reasonable to compress action into fractions of seconds for tactical combat, it's reasonable to do the same for detailed social maneuvering. After all, whether we measure by game-mechanical effectiveness or dramatic relevance, a successful Influence attempt is often as important as a successful infliction of violence.

But there is no detailed social maneuvering in a Sherlockian Gaze.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex

Sure, Sherlock spent a lot of points on various skills that didn't appear, at first, to have direct application to anything. One way might to model them as a bunch of Hobby skills: essentially Hobby: London Soils, Hobby: Tobacco Ash, and so on.

I think that his rant about the need to only keep useful information in the "attic" of his mind implies some sort of CP optimization and choosing skills that are only useful for his career.

I consider it more likely that the geocentricism was a thing that Doyle included in his very first Holmes story, and which he later regretted.

Of course any character obsessed with crime-solving to the degree that Holmes is would dismiss true trivia (such as sports results - most of us would regard social gossip as trivia, but of course to Holmes the doings of important Londoners were sometimes of great importance), but it is not realistic for any genius detective to dismiss hard scientific fact.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

But there is no detailed social maneuvering in a Sherlockian Gaze.

Have you seen an episode of House? A lot of them involve the process of arriving to a solution for the mystery du jour through what amounts to 45 minutes of social manipulation*, tresspassing, breaking-and-entering by proxy (and in person, when nearing the end) in order to obtain a bunch of information about a random stranger. This information is then analysed for the kind of vital clues that allow for the successful use of Diagnosis skill and which was denied to other doctors, relying as they do on mundane medical records and patient interviews for their information.

Unless 'Sherlockian' narrowly interpreted to mean 'something that Sherlock Holmes does on a regular basis' and not 'something remniscient of Sherlock Holmes', we kind of have to acknowledge that there is a wide body of fiction that attempts to present the information-gathering part of social engineering as an interactive process, while retaining the 'Oh, wow!' aspect that makes great detectives so cinematically amazing.

If you're only interested in modelling the skills used to gaze at strangers, you can do as I suggested in my initial post in this thread and optionally skip the interactive part. This will yield much less information and make any analysis potentially faulty, but in a cinematic enough game, it might be viable and, indeed, all that is needed. And the rules support it just fine.

Edit: Come to think of it, though, even some examples of Sherlock Holmes using his famous gaze involve interaction with the subject. He'll subtly elicit confirmation of his theories by asking apparently innocent questions, he'll engage in some apparently meaningless shibboleth behaviour in order to a get a closer look at the target's sleeves/manners/hair under hat/anything else.

A key point about the use of skills to elicit information is that in a classic Holmesian gambit they are subtle enough to appear to be nothing worth noticing. But he's still actively gathering data in order to confirm or deny his reasoning, using social skills like Acting, Savoir-Faire or others.

I think that nearly all well-done fictional and all well done 'real' examples of amazing detective skills are mostly a matter of getting the target to reveal much more than he thinks he is doing. That's a function of social skills as well as observation and analytic skills.

*Usually callous and jerk-ish, sometimes illegal.

[kenclary]

Some of this has already been said...

For Sherlock's scan, depending on the particular portrayal, I'd give him IQ 15 or so; Per 16-18; a handful of points in Forensics, Observation, Body Language, and whatnot; and Enhanced Time Sense.

ETS is what lets him do it so quickly.

[Flyndaran]

ETS would allow him to perceive the things that his other skills analyze, like micro-sounds in footsteps, or micro-expressions, micro-etc.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I consider it more likely that the geocentricism was a thing that Doyle included in his very first Holmes story, and which he later regretted.

Of course any character obsessed with crime-solving to the degree that Holmes is would dismiss true trivia (such as sports results - most of us would regard social gossip as trivia, but of course to Holmes the doings of important Londoners were sometimes of great importance), but it is not realistic for any genius detective to dismiss hard scientific fact.

The hard scientific facts involved in astronomy probably have far less application to solving crimes in 19th century London than sport results. Knowing whether Hard Luck or Pretty Lady came in third in the afternoon race at the tracks, not to mention the closing odds on them, could after all be useful during a conversation where you subtly check whether someone recognises and calls you on deliberate errors about the results and thus might cast doubts on the veracity of a subject's alibi for the day without ever seeming to doubt his story.

Holmes primarily solves cases by reading people, talking to people and even pretending to be other people and to do that, anything that people might care about, talk about, know about or want to hear about is useful. To the extent that any knowledge can be said to be of no use, however, would be the kind that never would come up in any reasonable conversation.

Assuming that there is no significant controversy about the relative position of Sun and Earth in Holmes's society and no plans to interact in any way with things orbiting other things for the next human life span either, why would Holmes have given the matter any thought at all? People wouldn't expect him to talk about it and would probably not ask him about it. Nor would it affect anyone's alibi, motive or means of murder or other crime.

After all, he remarked that he'd try to forget the fact to make room for something more relevant to his trade, not that he didn't understand the concepts involved or that he might not have been exposed to this factoid before. While it's conceivable that being ignorant of this in his ideal future might harm his impersonation of Copernicus some day and thus make it impossible to catch the Obsessive Historical Scientist Cosplayer Killer, it's far more likely that it would never impair him in his work.

If he truly could arrange facts in his memory like that, he could likely imagine literally millions of factoids more likely to help him in his daily work.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Icelander

After all, he remarked that he'd try to forget the fact to make room for something more relevant to his trade, not that he didn't understand the concepts involved or that he might not have been exposed to this factoid before. While it's conceivable that being ignorant of this in his ideal future might harm his impersonation of Copernicus some day and thus make it impossible to catch the Obsessive Historical Scientist Cosplayer Killer, it's far more likely that it would never impair him in his work.

If he truly could arrange facts in his memory like that, he could likely imagine literally millions of factoids more likely to help him in his daily work.

Presumably, he would be able to quickly learn and retain facts pertinent to astronomy (or other branches of physics not usually of interest to consulting detectives) should it be important to a case.