Pricing of Delusion [Basic]

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I was just curious how one would price certain Delusions in their GURPS games? For example, 2.5% of Americans firmly believe that the world is flat and that it is the center of a (very small) Universe. The guidance in Basic concerns the reaction penalty that it causes, thus the confusion about pricing the Delusion. In my own life, I would consider a self-professed flat-Earther to be an individual who has lost complete touch with reality and react accordingly (at the very least, getting away from them very, very quickly, so the equivalent of a -3 or greater reaction modifier), but I am not sure that my reaction is representative of the average character in a contemporary GURPS setting.

So, in the case of such a Delusion, what severity would you give it? Would it be a Severe Delusion, where anyone who declared their belief would suffer a -3 reaction penalty and be considered an individual to be feared and/or pitied? Or would you consider Delusion (Flat Earth) to be a less severe Delusion?

The pricing of a Delusion should be based not how crazy an idea is in your opinion but on how crazy they behave in response to that idea. If they can usually keep their mouth shut about unless they believe they have a sympathetic audience and it isn't costing them time or money or putting them in danger, it's just a quirk. They have it under control.

If they feel like they have to spread their Delusion to everyone they talk to or do things like filing court cases or investing a lot of effort into trying to prove their Delusion, then it becomes a 5 or 10 point. If it leads to them walking into a pizza parlour with a gun and demanding that the operators show them the basement, then it's a 15 point.

It's also worth bearing in mind that such a contention may just be a specific symptom of a different disadvantage. For example religious or political Fanaticism or a Duty or Sense of Duty.

[Otaku]

In the modern world, a "Flat Earther" probably doesn't receive a strong reaction penalty, at least in the United States of America. As even Basic makes clear, it is what you do in the name of your Delusion that affects its pricing. I've never met an sincere "Flat Earther", though I've bumped into a few trolls claiming to be such a thing...

...which is relevant because it could affect how "bad behavior" is perceived. A sincere Flat Earther may be mistaken as just someone goofing around, at least at the minor levels. This isn't going to affect the overall value of the Delusion, but it is still worth remembering for the sake of verisimilitude, and remembering there may be some "accidental" reaction bonuses from people who enjoy "trolling" others.

Of course, once it starts affecting how they operate to the point people take notice and find it odious, or even threatening... yeah, it starts being a lot more than a Quirk.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I was just curious how one would price certain Delusions in their GURPS games? For example, 2.5% of Americans firmly believe that the world is flat and that it is the center of a (very small) Universe. The guidance in Basic concerns the reaction penalty that it causes, thus the confusion about pricing the Delusion. In my own life, I would consider a self-professed flat-Earther to be an individual who has lost complete touch with reality and react accordingly (at the very least, getting away from them very, very quickly, so the equivalent of a -3 or greater reaction modifier), but I am not sure that my reaction is representative of the average character in a contemporary GURPS setting.

So, in the case of such a Delusion, what severity would you give it? Would it be a Severe Delusion, where anyone who declared their belief would suffer a -3 reaction penalty and be considered an individual to be feared and/or pitied? Or would you consider Delusion (Flat Earth) to be a less severe Delusion?

I can't see many occasions for most people where it would be relevant to their life. I suppose if one intends to be an astronaut...

Even Vikings who thought the world a disk surrounded by a dragon eating it's tail seem to have navigated perfectly well.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Otaku

A sincere Flat Earther may be mistaken as just someone goofing around, at least at the minor levels. This isn't going to affect the overall value of the Delusion, but it is still worth remembering for the sake of verisimilitude, and remembering there may be some "accidental" reaction bonuses from people who enjoy "trolling" others.

It's nearly like someone who genuinely believes in the flying spaghetti monster. It would take murderous expressions of fanaticism towards His Noodly Appendage to convince most people it's genuine.

On the other hand: it's probably the other way around for ironic/troll people expressing other fringe memes which actually have enough serious proponents to scare people: like goofing around about upsetting stuff like racist/sexist beliefs, or historical revisionism.

We could definitely divide "reaction penalties due to compulsion to express meme A" and "believing meme A".

If you don't ever talk about the latter it will only penalize you in reactions if you get telepathically scanned, or if there's ABSOLUTELY no other way to explain certain actions...

Or maybe if someone is asking you questions and you have to lie to hide your belief in meme A it will be harder to convince them using Fast-Talk compared to using Fast-Talk to defend the truth.

[kirbwarrior]

The comparison to OPH is very important. For instance, being a vegetarian is -5pts due to the slight inconveniences of finding the right food with the possible social slights of having to turn down offered food. However, I've definitely met vegetarians who scream "Meat is Murder!" and throw cups of technically legal liquids in people's faces.

Believing the earth is flat just because you don't know better and aren't sure if others are correct can easily be -1. Laughing at people who try to show 'facts' and 'logic' to prove you wrong while you actively share the gift of knowledge door to door is more. Trying to intimidate scientists into spreading 'proof' about a flat earth is likely -15 and probably more from other mental disads.

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by Plane

I need to remember these two to bring up any time survey-worshipers annoy me :) Do you recall the years/names of them?

For the fictional food, try just running the names through a search engine. The second form of error is more anecdotal I'm afraid; that form of question is fairly common on modern surveys, especially paid internet ones.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Why shouldn't imaginary food score higher than those real items?

From my own experience I can say that cranberry juice is vile. In reference to military foos the lime bean was part of the C-ration universally known as the "dreaded ham & lima beans" and eggplants are high fat vegetables and thus give you the worst of two worlds.

A response of "I'm not sure what that is but it has to be better than x" is fairly predictable for sufficiently unpleasant values of x.

The survey included an option for 'I have never tried this food'. While the three fictional foods were more likely to be 'never tried' than any other, they did get some responses.

[transmetahuman]

I'm curious whether you'd all use the same pricing criteria for Affliction: Delusion (something that has been used to represent telepathically or magically altered memories). There are huge parts of someone's life that would only be brought up at all in extremely rare situations, so they'd be unlikely to cause any reaction modifier at all - especially if the subject doesn't keep in touch with anyone from those parts of their life.

Affliction: Delusion: "You had a huge crush on me in high school that you've never gotten over" seems like a lot of potential utility for an 11 point ability (Affliction 1 + quirk level Delusion).

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by transmetahuman

I'm curious whether you'd all use the same pricing criteria for Affliction: Delusion (something that has been used to represent telepathically or magically altered memories). There are huge parts of someone's life that would only be brought up at all in extremely rare situations, so they'd be unlikely to cause any reaction modifier at all - especially if the subject doesn't keep in touch with anyone from those parts of their life.

Affliction: Delusion: "You had a huge crush on me in high school that you've never gotten over" seems like a lot of potential utility for an 11 point ability (Affliction 1 + quirk level Delusion).

Affliction: Delusion: "You had a huge crush on *a random person* in high school" would be afflicting a quirk.

Affliction: Delusion: "You had a huge crush on *me, the affliction caster* in high school" would likely be used to affect the target daily live, so I would price it as minor or even major.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by transmetahuman

I'm curious whether you'd all use the same pricing criteria for Affliction: Delusion (something that has been used to represent telepathically or magically altered memories). There are huge parts of someone's life that would only be brought up at all in extremely rare situations, so they'd be unlikely to cause any reaction modifier at all - especially if the subject doesn't keep in touch with anyone from those parts of their life.

Affliction: Delusion: "You had a huge crush on me in high school that you've never gotten over" seems like a lot of potential utility for an 11 point ability (Affliction 1 + quirk level Delusion).

The large amount of potential utility means it's not a quirk. I mean someone's not going to do that to someone and not take advantages of them. Nor in fact would I allow someone to afflict a quirk or a perk. The minimum would be a 5 point delusion. Or you could just do it with Conditioning.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by RyanW

It would mostly depend on their behavior. If they quietly doubt the prevailing science but go about their daily life more or less as usual, it's probably just a quirk. If they crash science conferences with false credentials in order to speak Truth to the sheeple, it's a bit stronger. Delusion is largely a special case of Odious Personal Habit.

This is important, and in fact is spelled out fairly clearly on B130, where a single sample Delusion - that "everything colored purple is alive" - is shown being eligible as a Quirk, a Minor Delusion, a Major Delusion, or even a Severe Delusion, depending on what influence it has on the character's actions (ranging from patting purple things and saying "Hello" to them on the Quirk end, to attacking purple things on sight on the Severe end).

Some Delusions have social penalties above and beyond their normal reaction penalties, of course. Such have an additional Social Disadvantage, such as Social Stigma, Reputation, or similar.