Flat Black: Status in the Imperial Service

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Courtesy Status is for titles without reaction modifiers or real access to power. This is the reverse. Tomi Eichberger doesn't have a title of any sort, but really does have proximity to power and influence.

As Courtesy Status can get you invited to events, without having a Reaction modifier like 'real' Status, I thought it might fit. She has the access, but not necessarily the clout, because Imperials don't appreciate that sort of throwing around of Status.

[martinl]

If Imperial Status maps poorly to GURPS status, it seems illogical to try to create a table mapping. Instead, define what Imperial Status means in terms of other GURPS advantages, write it up, and then make a table for that. I'm pretty sure the GURPS House Rule Suppression Commandos have closed the antipodal office due to budget constraints.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Courtesy Status is for titles without reaction modifiers or real access to power. This is the reverse. Tomi Eichberger doesn't have a title of any sort, but really does have proximity to power and influence.

In short, Contacts.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

T

But I would like to get a set of Status rules for the Empire that works correctly.

Rank=Status. Your character in addition to her own Rank also has Contacts with people with high Administrative Rank.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

In short, Contacts.

Contacts are limited to one town.

Rank=Status.

That produces bizarre effects, including people having huge positive or negative reaction modifiers to their own siblings, spouses etc.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by martinl

If Imperial Status maps poorly to GURPS status, it seems illogical to try to create a table mapping. Instead, define what Imperial Status means in terms of other GURPS advantages, write it up, and then make a table for that. I'm pretty sure the GURPS House Rule Suppression Commandos have closed the antipodal office due to budget constraints.

That's what they tell you! Fact is, we put brown snakes in their sock drawers.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Contacts are limited to one town.

<sigh> No. They aren't. They're limited to one town or one organization. You can take the FBI as a group contact and have it all over the United States. You can take the UN bureaucracy as a group contact and have it all over the world.

That produces bizarre effects, including people having huge positive or negative reaction modifiers to their own siblings, spouses etc.

Why would anyone need to make a reaction roll to their siblings? They've already got an established relationship. But actually I'm wrong. Rank is not status. Rank is just rank. There is no such thing as status in your setting.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<sigh>

Temper! I don't care for being patronised.

No. They aren't. They're limited to one town or one organization.

B.44 says "of one particular town". The character in question has contacts throughout the upper class of the entire interstellar empire. And a name to conjure by.

Why would anyone need to make a reaction roll to their siblings?

Because it is the standard GURPS mechanic for resolving a wide range of situtations.

There is no such thing as status in your setting.

Hmm. There is definitely such a thing as status in the setting. It's not much like GURPS Status, but then, GURPS rules for Status include some prominent features that are very odd indeed.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Temper!

B.44 says "of one particular town".

It's an either/or thing. Either you have contacts all through a generic social stratum of a particular municipality like "crime", "espionage", or "rich people" OR you have contacts all through a given organization that can be as big as the GM likes. Group Contacts is second only to Zeroed as the most widely misunderstood advantage.

Hmm. There is definitely such a thing as status in the setting.

If it exists, you've given no hint as to what it is. Wealth doesn't matter. Status symbols don't matter. Rank doesn't matter except to your subordinates.

So what does separate the upper classes from the lower classes?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

So what does separate the upper classes from the lower classes?

As I said in the OP, service and family tradition of service, especially in the branches that bear directly and obviously on the Mission.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

The society of IDJ is in fact characterised not by conspicuous consumption but by conspicuous service. The class of people with the lowest prestige are those who don't even have the basic decency to work for the Empire, such as performing artists, free-lance providers of personal services, free-lance content providers, and merchants vending comforts and luxuries. (Of course a personal reputation for furthering the Mission on your own initiative can cancel out the reaction penalties here. Famous authors of Empire-affirming journalism and fiction are not disdained.) The class of people with the highest prestige are those who do important work directly concerned with preventing war, plague, famine and massacre, especially if danger and privation are involved. The least-regarded occupations are routine functions in the bits of the Eichberger Trust that earn the money to keep the whole thing going and jobs in the Home Office that keeps IDJ habitable; work for the Colonial Office delivering health and development aid ranks next; dangerous service with the Navy, the Marines, and the Commission for Justice next; and the political direction of the Empire highest of all.

There is an element of social class to the whole thing, though it is slight compared with some societies and mobility is both easy and rapid. Imperial servants recruited from the colonies often feel that the natives of IDJ are looking down their noses at them, and that they are concentrated in low-prestige jobs in the Colonial Office assistance departments or in the enlisted ranks of the Navy. People whose families have a long history of naval service are proud of that tradition and tend to share a feeling of fellowship with others with similar traditions. Proudest among these are those whose family tradition of naval service goes back to the space navy of the Republic of Mayflower, who may sometimes say that their families were naval officers "when Tom Eichberger was a merchant with poor business ethics". And highest of all you have the Imperial Family, a set of a few hundred related people who have their children raised from childhood to rule, and who dominate appointments to the Imperial Council and Board of Trustees.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

As I said in the OP, service and family tradition of service, especially in the branches that bear directly and obviously on the Mission.

"service" is rank. "family tradition of service" is social regard or reputation.