Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen)—a poor simulation of historical sexism?

[Opellulo]

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.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

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.

Dude, WTF? I posted this because of a game I'm planning, you may not find the thread useful but I do. Not every thread on this forum has to cater to your personal tastes.

[Lovewyrm]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

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.

I agree that rules should serve a roleplay game to roleplay and not the other way around, but I think the discussion around it had some food for thought, which could be used to approach the rules in a more creative manner.

Not sure about Michael Thayne but thinking about this disad will probably influence my world building a bit.

[Kaslak]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

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.

Depends what genre are you playing.

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.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I think the primary problem people have with Social Stigma is they want to read it as if the reaction penalty were the disadvantage. That's IMO exactly the wrong way around, and indeed I consider most of the quoted reaction penalties to be pretty nonsensical. People don't react [poorly] to children with Social Stigma (Minor) they react [differently], sometimes better, sometimes worse, sometimes just different, depending on the situation, and it nets out to an inconvenience for children [trying to function as adventurers]. Same thing really for Second Class Citizen. Yes people sometime don't help you as much or scapegoat you (negative reaction sure) but occasionally they'll ignore you to your benefit (stupid one of THEM couldn't possibly be smart enough to be the villain here/nah no worries, even if he saw anything he can't testify....), nets out to usually a small drawback.

The reaction penalty isn't the point of the trait, it's a tacked on add on that works no better than most of GURPS reaction modifiers, which mostly isn't great. I understand you need mechanical rules, because if you leave social disadvantages entirely to roleplay, munchkins claim free points, but [lots] of GURPS social traits aren't really about the reaction modifiers, and don't make a great deal of sense if you try to insist they are.

Great post! Makes me think about using ad hoc modifiers and outcomes for various social traits in specific situations, as a halfway point in between using RAW modifiers and determining attitudes by fiat without a die roll.

[Anthony]

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.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by Anthony

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.

The best method is simply a GM who's on the ball. If, for instance, a player has the notion that (say) Truthfulness magically compels one to tell the exact, full truth each and every time, it's not only time to ask the player to reread the precise text of the disadvantage, but to review the precise text of pp. 120-121.

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.

[Inky]

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.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Inky

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.

The Social Stigmas listed in the Basic Set are explicitly called "examples." It is not an exhaustive list.

[lordabdul]

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.