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06-02-2023, 03:18 AM | #41 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Rome, Italy
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
Alternate title: GURPS Disadvantages: an ovecomplex simulation of a situational -2 to skill checks?
I seriously don't understand this fetish of taking the game rules as the starter point for the simulation and not the other way round... To me rules are just helping devices to make the game flow, not hard encoded limits between where move the game.
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06-02-2023, 08:25 AM | #42 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
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06-03-2023, 04:06 AM | #43 | |
Join Date: Apr 2022
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
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Not sure about Michael Thayne but thinking about this disad will probably influence my world building a bit.
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06-04-2023, 01:15 AM | #44 | |
Join Date: Oct 2022
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
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Try to convince me that a one leg character in a martial arts game can be situationally handwaved... "yes you move by ... let's say your speed minus 1 yard... and kick the guy... with the... other leg, using your staff as support... let's say you have a ... -1 to skill?" and I can accept that a precise and consistent statement of what maluses are covered by social stigma is not important in a purely social game campaign. Note that in a pure social game, being one-legged could indeed be handwaved. |
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06-04-2023, 10:53 AM | #45 | |
Join Date: Jan 2008
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
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06-04-2023, 03:11 PM | #46 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
The difficulty of describing exactly when a disadvantage actually comes up is why a number of modern RPGs have gone with a 'you get points when it applies' instead of having a point value at character creation time. My experience is that this has its own set of problems, because "I didn't try to do X because I knew my disadvantages would prevent it from working" isn't very obvious and thus doesn't earn points, but I can't help but feel there might be some hybrid that solves it.
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06-04-2023, 06:31 PM | #47 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
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There are certainly games on the market for the absolutist who needs to be told precisely what to do, in every conceivable situation, discretion-free. I don't believe GURPS to be one of those games.
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My gaming blog: Apotheosis of the Invisible City "Call me old-fashioned, but after you're dead, I don't think you should be entitled to a Dodge any more." - my wife It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. It's that I disagree with what you're saying. |
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06-05-2023, 04:20 AM | #48 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
I'm not sure about any of the following.
Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen) does specifically say how it works, so if that doesn't make sense in the context (e.g. you don't want to give Miss Marple a penalty to attempts to collect gossip) and your players are likely to object to it not working the way the rules say it does, it might make sense to just make up a custom "Social Stigma (A woman in 1930s England)", say, and just use the Social Stigmas in the book as a jumping-off point. How Social Stigmas work is drastically setting-dependent, so it makes sense that you couldn't always use it exactly as it is in the book, though what the book has does a useful job of collecting up some common scenarios. In this thread Social stats for heiress and her Pinkerton/bodyguard there was a bit of discussion of whether a Social Stigma would be applicable for a girl in a Cthulhu campaign set in 1920s America. It mainly came to the conclusion that it would amount to Second-Class Citizen (in terms of being as much of a nuisance as Second-Class Citizen and therefore worth the same number of points - it looked like nobody was actually talking about using the literal flat -1 penalty from Second-Class Citizen). The effects in that setting, as discussed in that thread, might include - * Would not be considered for certain jobs * -1 reaction penalty when trying to convince someone to take her seriously or that she knew what she was talking about (this might only apply to reaction rolls against men, but people with the authority to do things the party needed generally would be men - a woman might listen, but then she'd have the same difficulty trying to get the man in charge to listen!) * Also, -1 reaction penalty when doing things that were considered to be a man's preserve to the extent that it'd be considered weird for a woman to be trying to do them, such as buying guns. So not quite as bad as the flat "-1 on all reaction rolls" from the Basic Set, but counterbalanced by it also having some specific practical things like the jobs thing.
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Looking for online text-based game at a UK-feasible time, anything considered, Roll20 preferred. http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=168443 Last edited by Inky; 06-05-2023 at 04:30 AM. |
06-05-2023, 07:09 AM | #49 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
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06-05-2023, 10:48 AM | #50 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Re: Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?
Lots of interesting points are being made in this thread.
I want to add that the wording of the example Social Stigmata is often pretty poor and/or needs to be taken with a large dose of salt. For instance, by RAW a black person in 18th century America would get Reaction penalties from *everyone* except other black people. Applying that "to the letter" prevents you from *ever* having any white or other non-black NPC who is somehow treating black people like human beings! No NPC secretly helping them escape slavery or whatever... which is obviously not desirable, and not feasible in a game meant to have drama and adventure and action. Reaction modifiers and social interactions are hard to legislate with written rules because so much of it depends on the context... so I'd consider the examples as broad guidelines rather than hard rules. My takeaway is mostly about the scale of the modifier -- that is, how big or small the modifier should be (+/-3? +/-1?) for each price point whenever the GM considers that it applies. Also: the Reaction modifier is the least of my worries. The main reason to take Social Stigma IMHO is about how much it impacts gameplay. Does it make you stand out in only a few situations, with a very occasional "can't do this"? 5 or 10 points! Does it severely limit your movements and actions? 15 or 20 points! I think about how much it will impact the player's choices. 19th century women not being able to vote or run for office is a BIG deal in the real world, but most probably inconsequential in a game, unless you have a lot of political intrigue... so the Disadvantage would be more expensive if that was the case, even though the Reaction modifier would probably stay the same. |
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