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Old 12-14-2018, 08:03 AM   #11
Harald387
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

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Originally Posted by Culture20 View Post
The mind controller in my supers game routinely afflicts villains with honesty, and they usually just turn themselves in. One commited suicide.
Standard afflictions cannot inflict self-imposed mental disadvantages (B36). This includes Honesty, among others (B121).
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Old 12-14-2018, 08:26 AM   #12
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

I think this is one of the most egregiously misnamed characteristics in the whole rule-set. In any putative future edittions, I would recommend subsuming it under the Compulsive Behavior category as Compulsion: Obey Authority or something like that.
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Old 12-14-2018, 08:41 AM   #13
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

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I think this is one of the most egregiously misnamed characteristics in the whole rule-set. In any putative future edittions, I would recommend subsuming it under the Compulsive Behavior category as Compulsion: Obey Authority or something like that.
For one version. That's much of the problem: it's not clear whether the trait is supposed to be a Geas, a Compulsive Behavior, a Vow, or a Code of Honor, and they'd all function differently in the "edge" cases of unclear or unjust laws.
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Old 12-14-2018, 08:41 AM   #14
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
I think this is one of the most egregiously misnamed characteristics in the whole rule-set. In any putative future edittions, I would recommend subsuming it under the Compulsive Behavior category as Compulsion: Obey Authority or something like that.
Agreed. And make a note that it might be bundled with a positive Reputation and list it as a worked example.
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Old 12-14-2018, 08:48 AM   #15
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

I think its more often used as a code of honor or a vow than as a compulsive behavior .


Honesty when taken should probably specify a law or group of laws that the character follows. Transforming honesty into an instance of a disadvantage with adjustable parameters lets you do this, and it helps understanding the failure modes.



That's really were honesty is unclear: the failure modes. for most play, its quite clear, but failure modes are among the most interesting cases, rather than boring boring edge cases.


I do appreciate that some disadvantage representing this is in the book, because its very common, and I know many players look through the book for inspiration on disadvantages or to check if they've forgotten something the character would have.
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Old 12-14-2018, 09:14 AM   #16
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
I think this is one of the most egregiously misnamed characteristics in the whole rule-set. In any putative future edittions, I would recommend subsuming it under the Compulsive Behavior category as Compulsion: Obey Authority or something like that.
Honesty isn't about obeying authority. If an authority gives an illegal order, an Honest person is obligated to disobey.
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Old 12-14-2018, 09:19 AM   #17
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
It would be an extremely burdensome one for playing a Righteous Gentile in Europe during WW2. For instance what if a priest was asked to let a refugee take Mass falsely (assuming he was otherwise inclined to shelter him perhaps even to the point of martyrdom)?
He'd just pretend to give the refugee the host of course. These things are not as big a problem as people insist on making them.
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Old 12-14-2018, 09:32 AM   #18
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

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Honesty isn't about obeying authority. If an authority gives an illegal order, an Honest person is obligated to disobey.
Laws are laws because they are backed by the ultimate authority of the state. If an individual authority figure gives an order that would be illegal to obey, the Honest character would indeed refuse to obey. But when the Nuremberg Laws were enacted in Germany, Honest characters would have been obligated to discriminate against Jews and Honest characters in occupied countries that legally surrendered would be obligated to obey German troops and security personnel searching for 'partisans' or 'enemies of the state', including fugitive Jews.

The Honest character would also be obligated to do what he could to force others to follow the law and avoid any form of resistance after surrender, up to and including informing on anyone he knew to be violating the terms of surrender.

That various actions were retroactively judged illegal doesn't change the fact the were the law for the purposes of Honesty in Germany and occupied Europe. It's not like Honesty includes precognition for future changes of laws.
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Old 12-14-2018, 10:00 AM   #19
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

Honesty is badly named especially with Truthfulness in the mix.

I'd call it 'Law-abiding'.

And it's great fun if you like being all passive-aggressive with the usual bunch of conscienceless mercenaries and murder-hobos who make up most adventurers.

It's not a mental affliction, though I've had players who treat my characters as lunatics when they bring it up. It's a belief in the values of a stable and just society. Even if a society is only mostly just, the rule of law has a purpose.

You could get (and I think I have gotten) some excellent role-playing out of the moment when the Honest character realises that the society he lives in no longer serves the values he holds in his heart and that now everywhere is the wildlands where there is no law.
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Old 12-14-2018, 10:07 AM   #20
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

I can imagine characters turning themselves in to protest unjust laws rather than hiding or lying about it. Like those who vocally protested the Vietnam war going to jail rather than leave the country.
How else would such a person be defined in Gurps other than the RAW Honesty?
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