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Old 01-21-2015, 03:11 PM   #11
Sindri
 
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I've been meaning to post here, but somehow forgot the thread after reading it for several times.
It happens. I'm glad you did end up posting though.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I consider it that making it look cool might be a job for Propaganda, while the planning phase would greatly benefit from Intelligence Analysis for efficiency.
I would have put Propaganda as one of the skills used to design a strategy with other skills used to see if the various parts can actually accomplish what the strategy needs from them. You have Public Speaking if you are speaking, Writing for written material etc. Public Speaking is generally an important part of "adventurer propaganda" but there's normally a lot of stuff going on besides the spoken parts.

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One is very verbal (voiced-text-oriented), the other is very mimics- and somewhat voice-modulation-oriented (but not as much as Mimicry).
That's a description of the differences (Though I'm not sure how accurate it is, it doesn't include the important short term vs long term division.) but it's not a reason why they need to be different skills. It seems like a level of skill granularity that divides Fast-Talk and Acting would also divide other social skills.

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When was the last time someone had to lie about an emotionally uninvolved thing in an adventure that it mattered that s/he isn't caught lying? That's something of a mutually exclusive condition. Either it's important (e.g. whether A killed/conspired with/slept with/knows B), or it's not important (in which case it is not emotionally straining on the liar).
Well that was mostly me trying to put together rules that make more sense to me in a general world sense than designing PC relevant stuff. However keep in mind two things. First analyzing the truth of someone's statements often begins by checking what results you get with trivial things that the person has no reason to lie about. Second having emotional weight for the liar and being important to the person being lied to aren't the same thing. Someone (such as a pathological liar or someone who would be mildly inconvenienced by telling the truth, is telling a plausible story and has no reason to think the subject might be able to call them out on it) might lie without emotional weight behind the action about something a PC actually cares about. It should also be harder to detect lies of someone lying as part of a general attempt to support false information than to detect lies when someone thinks they are actually in danger of being found out or concerning a topic that they feel guilty about.

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But Detect Lies is largely analysis of things like sentence structure adjusted for the situation in which it is delivered/constructed.
Is it? I thought it was analysis of things like voice shifts and eye movements.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
(Intelligence Analysis is a different thing altogether, it's more of a spy/military skill, not a psychological one.)
It seems to me that content analysis of a large amount of material fits under Intelligence Analysis among other things. When you have access to something like dozens of letters you don't have to approach things from the individual psychology angle.

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If you're toying with Influence Rolls shifting reactions by MoS instead of outright overriding reactions (by MoS or otherwise), then you can handle it by making Sex Appeal shift reactions by MoS×2 instead of ×1, which is about comparable to the difference of the delta from Neutral to Good and the delta from Neutral to Very Good.
It's a good approach. I wonder if that would end up overstating it's efficacy though.

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I'm currently keeping an eye on the diplomatic representatives are saying lately. Notably, I think I grew very familiar with Lavrov's style, to the point that I see his attempts at Fast-Talk and Acting as much less effective than they were a year ago. And this is from rather small exposure!
How broadly do you think this applies? Only to Lavrov, to any graduate of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, to any diplomat? The last seems unlikely but I could see the second as being true.

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"Impressive to onlookers" and "impressive choreography" seems to suggest Performance.
And/or Group Performance but that doesn't have the right specialty.

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Somehow, making a caper impressive doesn't sound like choreography to me. I'm more inclined to imagine the effects of John Dillinger, particularly in the film. Or the Third Row Saints from Saints Row III. Both seem closer to propaganda, particularly the latter.
I was imagining exploits like those of Arsène Lupin style kaitō and Lelouch.

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Old 01-21-2015, 03:35 PM   #12
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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Originally Posted by Sindri View Post
That's a description of the differences (Though I'm not sure how accurate it is, it doesn't include the important short term vs long term division.) but it's not a reason why they need to be different skills. It seems like a level of skill granularity that divides Fast-Talk and Acting would also divide other social skills.
I'm unsure. You could also argue for pulling Fast-Talk into Diplomacy (talky!), or into Public Speaking (too!).

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Well that was mostly me trying to put together rules that make more sense to me in a general world sense than designing PC relevant stuff. However keep in mind two things. First analyzing the truth of someone's statements often begins by checking what results you get with trivial things that the person has no reason to lie about. Second having emotional weight for the liar and being important to the person being lied to aren't the same thing. Someone (such as a pathological liar or someone who would be mildly inconvenienced by telling the truth, is telling a plausible story and has no reason to think the subject might be able to call them out on it) might lie without emotional weight behind the action about something a PC actually cares about. It should also be harder to detect lies of someone lying as part of a general attempt to support false information than to detect lies when someone thinks they are actually in danger of being found out or concerning a topic that they feel guilty about.
Well, Compulsive Liars should pay for a higher lying skill if they want to explain their success with their pathology. (And those who just make fools of themselves because they're bad liars shouldn't have a bonus bundled in.) Though Compulsive Lying does negate the polygraph, which makes it an interesting choice for a Controllable Disadvantage for a spy or criminal.
My point is the 'simple careless lie' TDM probably should only come up in situations where the roll doesn't matter much anyway.
If it's something worth lying about convincingly, then it's worth worrying about.

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Is it? I thought it was analysis of things like voice shifts and eye movements.
Where did you get that idea? Body Language is for stuff like posture or eye movements. Detect Lies is about all sorts of lie-detection, of which voice only accounts for something like 2 levels of TDM (i.e. you're at -2 against text).

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It seems to me that content analysis of a large amount of material fits under Intelligence Analysis among other things. When you have access to something like dozens of letters you don't have to approach things from the individual psychology angle.
There's more than one type of content analysis. Intelligence Analysis is mostly strategic in scale, Detect Lies is mostly individual. You wouldn't apply unmodified Sociology to interpreting a single individual's behaviour - you'd use the Psychology default (and vice versa). Likewise with Detect Lies and Intelligence Analysis, but the two are even further apart, it seems.

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It's a good approach. I wonder if that would end up overstating it's efficacy though.
It's a skill that essentially has its efficacy halved from the get-go, as it works against roughly half the population. Having it be doubly effective in exchange for that (either through providing Very Good Reactions on a success, or shifting reactions through 2×MoS) just about brings it back to normal. Without being able to get Very Good reactions, the skill becomes a useless point sink. (More annoyingly, without the double effect, being sexually appealing becomes no longer the best way of being sexually appealing, and that's outright absurd.)


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How broadly do you think this applies? Only to Lavrov, to any graduate of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, to any diplomat? The last seems unlikely but I could see the second as being true.
Well, now that you mention it, it seems to apply to Lavrov, Churkin, maybe someone else of their school, I don't remember; interesting, the same style seems to apply to Russian-school journalists. For comparison, Tymchuk ([in]famous Ukrainian volunteer-propagandist and military journalist) has a totally different style, though I think I've gained familiarity/resistance to that too.
So it's probably more realistic to have multiple variants of each style listed in Civil Arts. Probably the simplest way to handle it is to spawn one extra style variant in each Cultural Familiarity of the setting, maybe several. That gives a number of styles roughly comparable to the number of styles in MA.

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I was imagining Kaitō exploits in the tradition of Arsène Lupin and Lelouch's exploits.
Not acquainted.
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Old 01-21-2015, 04:24 PM   #13
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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I'm unsure. You could also argue for pulling Fast-Talk into Diplomacy (talky!), or into Public Speaking (too!).
You could, but that would also immediately strike me as a granularity mismatch.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Well, Compulsive Liars should pay for a higher lying skill if they want to explain their success with their pathology. (And those who just make fools of themselves because they're bad liars shouldn't have a bonus bundled in.) Though Compulsive Lying does negate the polygraph, which makes it an interesting choice for a Controllable Disadvantage for a spy or criminal.
My point is the 'simple careless lie' TDM probably should only come up in situations where the roll doesn't matter much anyway.
If it's something worth lying about convincingly, then it's worth worrying about.
I'm not talking about a bonus for people with Compulsive Lying. They wouldn't have a bonus when lying about something that has emotional weight for them they'd just choose to engage in lies that are easier to pull off when people without Compulsive Lying wouldn't.

I agree though, that a TDM for simple careless lies isn't going to come up on a regular basis.

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Where did you get that idea? Body Language is for stuff like posture or eye movements. Detect Lies is about all sorts of lie-detection, of which voice only accounts for something like 2 levels of TDM (i.e. you're at -2 against text).
It just seemed obvious to me that Detect Lies would cover the actual methods people train in to improve their detection rates without instruments absent posture and facial expressions. If it was supposed to represent being able to just know that information was a lie without using bugs in the methods of human lying or background information to conclude that something has to be false it should have been marked as cinematic. Also keep in mind that as far as I can tell being able to use Detect Lies on text is entirely absent from Basic and only added/explicitly extended later.

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There's more than one type of content analysis. Intelligence Analysis is mostly strategic in scale, Detect Lies is mostly individual. You wouldn't apply unmodified Sociology to interpreting a single individual's behaviour - you'd use the Psychology default (and vice versa). Likewise with Detect Lies and Intelligence Analysis, but the two are even further apart, it seems.
Intelligence Analysis allows you to "deduce enemy plans and capabilities, evaluate the accuracy of information, rate the reliability of sources, etc.". It seems clear to me that it's a reasonable approach for analyzing individual scale data as long as there is enough of it to work with.

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It's a skill that essentially has its efficacy halved from the get-go, as it works against roughly half the population. Having it be doubly effective in exchange for that (either through providing Very Good Reactions on a success, or shifting reactions through 2×MoS) just about brings it back to normal. Without being able to get Very Good reactions, the skill becomes a useless point sink. (More annoyingly, without the double effect, being sexually appealing becomes no longer the best way of being sexually appealing, and that's outright absurd.)
It's also frankly a rather bad approach for PCs. It should have it's niche but if it's really attractive rather than an unusual tool in the toolbox for a dedicated social expert I feel like something's gone wrong.

I also think that Social Engineering was a bit excessive in it's "influence skills are methods not results" message. It's a good message but while you can "seduce" someone without Sex Appeal I don't feel that "being sexually appealing" should be accomplishable with other skills.

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Well, now that you mention it, it seems to apply to Lavrov, Churkin, maybe someone else of their school, I don't remember; interesting, the same style seems to apply to Russian-school journalists. For comparison, Tymchuk ([in]famous Ukrainian volunteer-propagandist and military journalist) has a totally different style, though I think I've gained familiarity/resistance to that too.
So it's probably more realistic to have multiple variants of each style listed in Civil Arts. Probably the simplest way to handle it is to spawn one extra style variant in each Cultural Familiarity of the setting, maybe several. That gives a number of styles roughly comparable to the number of styles in MA.
That seems reasonable to me.

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Not acquainted.
Unfortunately I never actually played played a Saints Row game and I don't recall having seen many movies involving Dillinger.

By the way I'm surprised that Haruhi beat out Code Geass for the token anime spot in the Social Engineering bibliography television section.

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Old 01-21-2015, 04:37 PM   #14
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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It just seemed obvious to me that Detect Lies would cover the actual methods people train in to improve their detection rates without instruments absent posture and facial expressions. If it was supposed to represent being able to just know that information was a lie without using bugs in the methods of human lying or background information to conclude that something has to be false it should have been marked as cinematic. Also keep in mind that as far as I can tell being able to use Detect Lies on text is entirely absent from Basic and only added later/explicitly extended later.
Basic Set never said it doesn't work on text. It's the Detect Lies skill, not the Voice Analysis skill. The -2 for a different medium was added in SE.

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Intelligence Analysis allows you to "deduce enemy plans and capabilities, evaluate the accuracy of information, rate the reliability of sources, etc.". It seems clear to me that it's a reasonable approach for analyzing individual scale data as long as there is enough of it to work with.
The closest thing, reliability of sources, still seems too far to me. Intelligence Analysis seems to be focused on whether a vague collected infosource is reliable/accurate, which is not the same thing as deceiving/truthful.

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It's also frankly a rather bad approach for PCs. It should have it's niche but if it's really attractive rather than another tool in the toolbox for a dedicated social expert I feel like something's gone wrong.
Well, it should be a strong tool in the box. Humans, and typical fictional races too, seem to be strongly wired towards sexual attraction, no matter the season. If it's no better than Fast-Talk given its 50% applicability restriction, there's no point in using it.

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I also think that Social Engineering was a bit excessive in it's "influence skills are methods not results" message. It's a good message but while you can "seduce" someone without Sex Appeal I don't feel that "being sexually appealing" should be accomplishable with other skills.
Well, having a single subset of Reaction Table results strictly linked to a single skill is overly restrictive.
I'm not sure whether you're falling back into the common misconception that Sex Appeal is the getting-laid-skill. It isn't.

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Unfortunately I never actually played played a Saints Row game and I don't recall having seen many movies involving Dillinger.
The one where he's played by Depp is the one I meant. As for Saints Row, I haven't played the first two, and people say they're very unlike #3, but #3 does get the 'Bankrobbers teh Rockstarz!' attitude up to eleven.

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By the way I'm surprised that Haruhi beat out Code Geass for the token anime spot in the Social Engineering bibliography television section. xc
Not acquainted either.
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Old 01-21-2015, 05:30 PM   #15
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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Basic Set never said it doesn't work on text. It's the Detect Lies skill, not the Voice Analysis skill. The -2 for a different medium was added in SE.
It wouldn't have occurred to me that a detect lies skill needed to have a specification that it didn't work on text. Given GURPS's often eclectic names for stuff I assumed that Detect Lies was the term for Voice Analysis and Other Good Stuff That Isn't Body Language.

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The closest thing, reliability of sources, still seems too far to me. Intelligence Analysis seems to be focused on whether a vague collected infosource is reliable/accurate, which is not the same thing as deceiving/truthful.
Well yeah. If you give someone typed material they can tell you how consistent the writer is and speculate on whether inconsistencies are explainable as mistakes rather than deliberate falsehoods but unless they have some psychological insights about them they aren't going to be able to directly conclude that they are lying unless it's rather obvious. Advanced methods of finding out whether someone is lying in text and in person are very different from each other.

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Well, it should be a strong tool in the box. Humans, and typical fictional races too, seem to be strongly wired towards sexual attraction, no matter the season. If it's no better than Fast-Talk given its 50% applicability restriction, there's no point in using it.
Should it? The wiring is strong so under the right circumstances it's powerful but I feel like it should occupy a similar place to Intimidation which has it's niche but is also hardly a standard tool for social experts.

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Well, having a single subset of Reaction Table results strictly linked to a single skill is overly restrictive.
I'm not sure whether you're falling back into the common misconception that Sex Appeal is the getting-laid-skill. It isn't.
There's a difference between "getting laid" and "being sexually appealing". You should be able to get in someone's pants with a variety of skills but "I'm sexually appealing so you should sleep with me" should be a Sex Appeal exclusive.

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The one where he's played by Depp is the one I meant. As for Saints Row, I haven't played the first two, and people say they're very unlike #3, but #3 does get the 'Bankrobbers teh Rockstarz!' attitude up to eleven.
I'll check it out to see what you mean.

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Not acquainted either.
We're having a hard time finding pop culture in common huh Mr. Wolf's Rain avatar.
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Old 01-21-2015, 08:37 PM   #16
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

The bank robberies in Public Enemies weren't the sort of thing I had in mind. They seemed to be mostly typical bank robberies.

I'm thinking about capers like the opening moments of Daughter of Twenty Faces where we learn that Twenty Faces has given advance notice of the theft and what object he intends to steal and then he sneaks an airship above the house, floods the room with smoke bombs hidden in various decorations, reveals himself as having been disguised as a policeman in the room the entire time after being ordered to hold on to the object, has his airship rip the roof off the room, drops the ammunition that he removed from everyone's firearms after they try to shoot him, walks across what is presumably a strategically positioned sheet of bulletproof glass so as to appear to be walking on air, snaps his fingers to have the roof fall back down on the room in such a way that the ceiling crumbles and releases incriminating items and has himself pulled up into the airship.

Ignoring the precise details this is the sort of thing I had in mind for capers. A caper involving a ton of different parts that all unfold smoothly with dramatic timing and where a huge amount of attention is devoted to making an impression that isn't really at all helpful in terms of actually stealing something.

Also I forgot that Social Engineering also has Genshiken under Television.
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Old 01-22-2015, 04:38 AM   #17
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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It wouldn't have occurred to me that a detect lies skill needed to have a specification that it didn't work on text. Given GURPS's often eclectic names for stuff I assumed that Detect Lies was the term for Voice Analysis and Other Good Stuff That Isn't Body Language.
Thing is, Body Language starts the skill description that it's about interpreting facial expressions and body posture. Detect Lies starts the skill description with saying that this is the ability to tell when someone is lying to you. Body Language has a medium-based restriction spelled up front. Detect Lies doesn't mention one in the skill description.

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Well yeah. If you give someone typed material they can tell you how consistent the writer is and speculate on whether inconsistencies are explainable as mistakes rather than deliberate falsehoods but unless they have some psychological insights about them they aren't going to be able to directly conclude that they are lying unless it's rather obvious. Advanced methods of finding out whether someone is lying in text and in person are very different from each other.
Detect Lies is assumed to work against a single-source and usually single-datum (you're detecting whether a given individual is lying). Intelligence Analysis explicitly works with data, and smacks the user with a -3 penalty if data comes from a single source.
Clearly all that indicates that Intelligence Analysis is not meant to be used for detecting lies in a letter from a friend, while Detect Lies is spot-on, both based on lack of restriction in Basic and with the new slight penalty in SE.

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Should it? The wiring is strong so under the right circumstances it's powerful but I feel like it should occupy a similar place to Intimidation which has it's niche but is also hardly a standard tool for social experts.
Intimidation's only saving point is that it's reasonably easy to get a +4 TDM under hostile conditions. Otherwise it's a skill I've found almost useless under most circumstances: it gets penalties for using it to get help or the like, and there are (somewhat not stated in RAW in theory, but commonly enforced by GMs in practice) penalties after using it.

Basically, if you make Sex Appeal lack its double impact, it becomes even worse than Intimidation: you can't use it against about half the population but pay 100% cost for it, can't get quick-and-easy TDMs, and when you finally succeed, it's no better (without the double impact in RAW or ×2 MoS in houserules) than succeeding with any other skill. That basically hamstrings PCs whose concept is James Bond/Jessica Rabbit social-wise, because they become characters with a significant drawback but no strong side in their primary modus operandi.

E.g. I played a diplomatic face character in THS:Eggshell. I had a point in Intimidation and one in Sex Appeal too (and Attribute Substitution:IQ too). I used the former once, and the latter never. Even so, relying on being a likeable character was usually more desirable than trying to influence others into liking the character.

Right now, a new character concept for a different game does in fact call for using Intimidation and Sex Appeal. And I'm already not quite looking forward using this build: Intimidation will probably get me into more trouble at least as often as save from trouble; Sex Appeal is too runs the risk of getting a Bad Reaction, but at least it is the only semi-reliable way of getting a Very Good reaction. But I still find it better to load more points into Reputations that benefit those two skills than raising either of those skills. Take away the double impact, and I'll consider throwing away influence skills and loading those points into modifiers directly.

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There's a difference between "getting laid" and "being sexually appealing". You should be able to get in someone's pants with a variety of skills but "I'm sexually appealing so you should sleep with me" should be a Sex Appeal exclusive.
Hmm. I'm now seeing the ambiguity of terms sued both by me and you. So I'll try to recap a bit:
We seem to agree that seduction/romance can be achieved with more than one skill.
But you seem to have some sort of opposition to the idea that being sexually appealing is good for other ways of manipulating people?

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We're having a hard time finding pop culture in common huh Mr. Wolf's Rain avatar.
Wolf's Rain, Neon Genesis Evangellion, X, Joshikousei, Tenchi Muyou, Memories, Agent AIKa, Slayers, RahXephon, Time of Eve, Macross Plus and one episode of Macross Sentinels, probably some things I forgot. Not those Geass things.
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Old 01-22-2015, 07:41 AM   #18
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

I largely agree w/ Vicky about how the skills work as written. But I also think that the skills and the actions they encompass need to be revised and consolidated.

As written, I'd use Body Language or Detect Lies as my go-to lie detectors. Psychology might also work-- but note that academics are no better than amateurs at catching lies in my experience. (I think it's telling that studies of police officers show that they're on average no better at detecting lies than the general public, but are more miscalibrated in the sense that they think they're far better than they are.)

In specific contexts, certain skills seem likely to either substitute or complement the main skills above. Interrogation, obviously. Merchant, Diplomacy, or Streetwise in situations specific to those skills.

Now with all that said, I think we need to rethink which skills should be applicable. Everything from this point on are proposed house rules.

When detecting a lie, you're really looking for cues that something is amiss. The first line of defense is Empathy (which IMO is a Per skill rather than an advantage). Can you catch visual/audible/phrasing tics that give away the game? Next, you might look for internal inconsistencies in their story-- the domain of Interrogation. Finally, you look for external inconsistencies in the story, comparing the testimonies of multiple people, separating natural errors of memory from intentional falsehoods, and reconciling testimony against physical evidence. Intelligence Analysis.

In that model, low levels of Empathy, Interrogation, and Intel Analysis are available to anyone as a natural consequence of social experience. High levels suggest formal training as a psychologist, policeman, or intelligence officer (perhaps these are social styles similar to martial arts styles).
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Old 01-22-2015, 01:40 PM   #19
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Thing is, Body Language starts the skill description that it's about interpreting facial expressions and body posture. Detect Lies starts the skill description with saying that this is the ability to tell when someone is lying to you. Body Language has a medium-based restriction spelled up front. Detect Lies doesn't mention one in the skill description.
I can see that reading, I've just been trying to describe how I got my impression of what the skill should cover.

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Detect Lies is assumed to work against a single-source and usually single-datum (you're detecting whether a given individual is lying). Intelligence Analysis explicitly works with data, and smacks the user with a -3 penalty if data comes from a single source.
Clearly all that indicates that Intelligence Analysis is not meant to be used for detecting lies in a letter from a friend, while Detect Lies is spot-on, both based on lack of restriction in Basic and with the new slight penalty in SE.
I agree. That's why I mentioned dozens of letters before. I'd only allow Intelligence Analysis when you have access to a whole corpus to work with.

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Intimidation's only saving point is that it's reasonably easy to get a +4 TDM under hostile conditions. Otherwise it's a skill I've found almost useless under most circumstances: it gets penalties for using it to get help or the like, and there are (somewhat not stated in RAW in theory, but commonly enforced by GMs in practice) penalties after using it.

Basically, if you make Sex Appeal lack its double impact, it becomes even worse than Intimidation: you can't use it against about half the population but pay 100% cost for it, can't get quick-and-easy TDMs, and when you finally succeed, it's no better (without the double impact in RAW or ×2 MoS in houserules) than succeeding with any other skill. That basically hamstrings PCs whose concept is James Bond/Jessica Rabbit social-wise, because they become characters with a significant drawback but no strong side in their primary modus operandi.

E.g. I played a diplomatic face character in THS:Eggshell. I had a point in Intimidation and one in Sex Appeal too (and Attribute Substitution:IQ too). I used the former once, and the latter never. Even so, relying on being a likeable character was usually more desirable than trying to influence others into liking the character.

Right now, a new character concept for a different game does in fact call for using Intimidation and Sex Appeal. And I'm already not quite looking forward using this build: Intimidation will probably get me into more trouble at least as often as save from trouble; Sex Appeal is too runs the risk of getting a Bad Reaction, but at least it is the only semi-reliable way of getting a Very Good reaction. But I still find it better to load more points into Reputations that benefit those two skills than raising either of those skills. Take away the double impact, and I'll consider throwing away influence skills and loading those points into modifiers directly.
Well I'm going to give Sex Appeal something, I'm just a little bit wary of whether double impact is too much. Balancing lower applicability with greater potence risks making Sex Appeal the standard skill whenever it is applicable for someone who is an expert in all the Influence Skills.

I think you are underestimating Intimidation a bit. Aside from providing an alternate route to social ability for the large unattractive character (Which shouldn't really count.) it has an important niche as the go to skill for talking to people who don't and aren't going to like you.

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Hmm. I'm now seeing the ambiguity of terms sued both by me and you. So I'll try to recap a bit:
We seem to agree that seduction/romance can be achieved with more than one skill.
But you seem to have some sort of opposition to the idea that being sexually appealing is good for other ways of manipulating people?
I agree that Influence Skills are methods not ends and specifically that Sex Appeal is not the skill for getting into people's pants or even the skill of getting stuff while also getting into people's pants. I do think that Sex Appeal should be the only skill for increasing your actual sexual appeal rather than your chances of getting laid. Diplomacy can help in the later but it can't stir up passions or increase your perceived hotness.

Sex Appeal can be used to manipulate people and it has it's niche but Sex Appeal as a primary social modus operandus is, in my opinion, mostly a role for NPCs who can afford to bypass the subject limitations by spending time finding a legal subject, don't mind allowing themselves to be pidgeon holed somewhat as the Sex Appeal person in people's mind and are fine sticking to a strategy that works instead of spending a lot of effort really learning other social skills. PCs on the other hand often need to influence the person in front of them right now and don't want to allow themselves to be perceived as the Sex Appeal person.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Wolf's Rain, Neon Genesis Evangellion, X, Joshikousei, Tenchi Muyou, Memories, Agent AIKa, Slayers, RahXephon, Time of Eve, Macross Plus and one episode of Macross Sentinels, probably some things I forgot. Not those Geass things.
Well I can't fault a list that includes Slayers.

I'd recommend Code Geass to someone with as many Social Engineering tagged threads as you have. Certain aspects of the plot also have significant NGE influence.

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Originally Posted by wellspring View Post
When detecting a lie, you're really looking for cues that something is amiss. The first line of defense is Empathy (which IMO is a Per skill rather than an advantage). Can you catch visual/audible/phrasing tics that give away the game? Next, you might look for internal inconsistencies in their story-- the domain of Interrogation. Finally, you look for external inconsistencies in the story, comparing the testimonies of multiple people, separating natural errors of memory from intentional falsehoods, and reconciling testimony against physical evidence. Intelligence Analysis.
Empathy is quite cinematic however if you are going to include it turning it into a skill makes rather a lot of sense.

I believe that normally Interrogation is supposed to be for actual interrogation not just inconsistency checking.

I'd only allow Intelligence Analysis when you have a large corpus to work with. The methods used in Intelligence Analysis don't really scale well to the small scale.
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Old 01-22-2015, 05:36 PM   #20
Icelander
 
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Intimidation's only saving point is that it's reasonably easy to get a +4 TDM under hostile conditions. Otherwise it's a skill I've found almost useless under most circumstances: it gets penalties for using it to get help or the like, and there are (somewhat not stated in RAW in theory, but commonly enforced by GMs in practice) penalties after using it.
The way I want social skills to work is that every social skill is a different tool and using a different tool than what the situation calls for should carry a significant penalty. A social engineer should be capable with all tools, even if he specialises in the use of some more than others, but a character who is not otherwise great at social situations can be very good at one social skill without being stepping on the toes of a character meant to cover the 'social engineering' niche.

Accordingly, I've found that with penalties for inappropriate social skill for a situation strictly enforced, Intimidation is very useful, without being a replacement for Fast-Talk or Diplomacy.

The combat monster with high Intimidation can use it to save himself the trouble* of massacring a horde of less-competent foes in a battle and instead get them to flee or even, on a very high margin of success, to surrender to him.

The social engineer, meanwhile, uses Specious Intimidation (Fast-Talk assisting Intimidation) to intimate that the charitable PC** will cheerfully slaughter anyone who resists him, while using Public Speaking and Propaganda to spread the idea that no harm will come to common soldiers and slave followers who surrender and Diplomacy or Savoir-Faire (High-Society) to negotiate the terms of official surrender for the leaders of the opposition forces.

Intimidation can't replace Diplomacy or Savoir-Faire (or vice versa), but it sure is a nice complementary skill.

*Not to mention the nighmares that would follow, as said PC is actually highly sympathetic to all his fellow creatures and regrets very much when he has to harm people. This, obviously, is not something that a successful use of Intimidation advertises to his foes.
**Who does not speak the language of his foes, which the social engineer is 'interpreting' to him and vice versa, while inserting details of his own on both sides.
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