[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

Sense of Duty [-2 to -20] is a mundane self-imposed mental disadvantage. You feel that you have a duty to help or care for some group of people, ranging from an individual [-2] to every living thing [-20]. You place their interests equal to or ahead of your own, at all times. This disadvantage appeared in the first edition of GURPS, and hasn’t changed much.

A Duty disadvantage is enforced externally; Sense of Duty is based on your own feelings. Behaviour like this is already assumed in the pricing of the Ally, Dependent and Patron disadvantages, so you can’t take a Sense of Duty towards such people. NPCs who know you have a Sense of Duty towards them, or others they care about, will react at +2 when deciding if they should trust you under dangerous circumstances. If you go against your Sense of Duty, the GM may penalise you for bad role-playing, although they should be willing to consider justifications. The Basic Set specifically describes having a Sense of Duty towards adventuring companions, and offers the option for the GM to require it. It also gives the GM license to override character actions under such circumstances, which seems a bit heavy-handed to me.

Sense of Duty is a very common disadvantage option on published templates. The more interesting targets for them include “Alien Masters”, “Assassin Cult”, “Crime Victims”, “Cybernetic Microbes”, “Honest Folk”, “Host Vehicle”, “Lord of the Vines”, “Secret Masters”, “Small Animals”, and “Zombies”. There aren’t many rules additions for this disadvantage, but Fantasy has Sense of Duty to places, rather than people, and Power-Ups 6 has rules for scaling it down to a quirk. Social Engineering has important rules on multiple Senses of Duty, which should be considered before taking them.

Sense of Duty seems like a good way of modelling stable relationships between NPCs, who aren’t eligible to have Allies or Dependents under RAW. It seems possible to have a Sense of Duty towards a mundane job that isn’t a Duty, from personal experience.

I quite often take this disadvantage on my PCs, since I find it easy to play, which is always helpful for disadvantages. How has it been important in your games?

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

Both as a player and a GM, I have never played a game where it was not a hard, non-negotiable requirement to have Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions).

It is a bit heavy handed to be able to override the player on what the character does, but I have yet to run a game where inter-party conflict is wanted, so I am glad that this advantage exists. It puts actual rules to the sometimes unwritten and unspoken rule that the PCs will always have each others' backs and will not betray each other.

Other uses of Sense of Duty come up occasionally, mostly when wanting something self-imposed that is more flexible than a Vow.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

I'm aware of that style, and for certain genres it's reasonable or even essential. But I've run more than one campaign where conflicts between PCs were possible. For example, when I ran my first Mage: The Ascension campaign, the PCs sorted themselves out into two largely antagonistic factions: Wu Lung and Virtual Adept vs. Wu-keng and Akashic Brotherhood.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

There is a big difference between not being willing to harm your companions, not being willing to oppose them, and feeling the need to bail them out of trouble.

I think a party that at least has different goals for how they want they want victory to shake out can lead to some good play. But then I often play shorter campaigns rather than longer ones.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

I've never seen that explicitly but I've also never seen a game where you would not end up doing that so why don't you take it and get the pts?

Of course there are other Disads that people will end up playing but for some reason don't take. Pacifism:Can't Harm Innocents and Greed come to mind.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

SoD(Companions) can be very useful in getting a party to work together for a very short (1 or 2 session) adventure. Whether for complete newbies, strict character sheet based roleplayers or just players at a con who might not know each other and never meet again after the game.

With it, the party won't split up to go do different things without a very good reason to do so (if the GM remembers to poke the players about it). And if it does happen, every member will have a good reason to go help the others if/when needed.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

Sense of Duty is one of those disadvantages I've seen commonly taken by my groups. In DF I require SoD (Adventuring Companions) and allow it to break the rule for max disads.

In general, SoD can prevent party infighting and I find that very useful as a GM.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

Many, if not most, of my PCs have some form of Sense of Duty. But sometimes that's a SoD that's completely unknown to the other PCs or players.

I don't recall ever requiring Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions), but I've been blessed with fellow GURPSians who are more interested in everyone having fun than in "winning" (of course, everyone having fun is a big win).

I personally like it when PCs are sometimes at odds, as long as the players are all enjoying it. While SoD (AC) doesn't completely eliminate that, it does, of course, limit options.

One of my players wisely bought Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) because he has a PC who has Absent-Mindedness, Clueless, Curious, and Easy to Read. While that PC is the smartest one of the group, she almost constantly has to be told what to do and not do--and SoD makes it work. (In case that PC's player sees this, she's one of the most fun PCs I've ever run with).

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

From the Meta sense it sounds like a good idea as in practice if someone wants to be invited to another game they will likely try to fit in anyway.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

If Sense of Duty is required of all player characters, do you even really need to specify Sense of Duty at all? It's not going to be worth points if it's required of everyone. It's just a fact of your game. A 100-point game with a Sense of Duty [-5] requirement is really a 105-point game in disguise.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

Most games I run are 150/45/5, and Sense of Duty does take up 5 points of the disad limit, leaving 40 for optional disadvantages. Plus it is nice to have on character sheets as a reminder.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

Personally, if I require a disadvantage for all PCs, I don't include it in the point limit on disadvantages, but that's a GM call. As long as it's done the same for all players, it can work.

I do agree that having a required disad on the character sheet is a good idea--that's the way I do it. To me, the character sheet defines your character, so any disadvantage should be listed as a part of it. And it does avoid the "But why do I have to play that disadvantage--it's not even on my character sheet!" issue.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

I don't require it, but I do expect that all PCs will have a SoD that includes their party or a Code of Honour that includes not betraying their party, and I could be persuaded to allow a Duty that required that instead as long as I was convinced that the character wasn't going to be trying to duck that Duty.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

My main group* never mandated Sense of Duty (Party), or Sense of Duty (Close Friends/Family) but if a character lacked it, they usually had something else fulfilling a similar role.

A major difference is that we weren't all that worried about the party being betrayed from within. I mean, GURPS is GURPS; as long as everyone handles it appropriately, it is just part of the story, part of the adventure, part of the game. Indeed, Sense of Duty (Party) can actually rob you of some good RPG experiences, given how severe GURPS Disadvantages tend to be. From sticking it to each other in-game, to the now zero-chance a player can serious betray the party robbing certain scenes of their impact... yeah, only make such a thing mandatory if it is a campaign that just cannot handle that much Player/Player Character freedom.

*My only sustained group, and sadly one with which I haven't gamed in about 20 years.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

A Sense of Duty gives the character a moral compass.

Maybe not a very broad moral compass ("Defend my friends") or a very nice one ("Defend people like me and the hell with everyone else") but it does give the character things that they must do or must refrain from doing.

This gives the GM things to test them against and themselves a structure to their lives.

I very rarely play characters without a SoD. But then I am well known to be a bit of a pain especially when associating with more morally flexible sorts.

Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Sense of Duty
 

That's a fairly accurate description of my approach too.

Back in the dim past, before I ever heard of GURPS, I ran a homebrew supers campaign for some time. Early on, one of the players had a character whose secret identity was a thief. She went out on a crimefighting mission, and had an opportunity to steal something, so she went for it—and another character spotted her doing so and used their powers to shut down hers (which made her visible and no longer able to fly). The first player complained about it for months! His view was that he was playing his character concept, and the other player shouldn't interefere; the second player's view (and mine) was that HIS character concept was that of someone who was law-abiding and didn't want to be associated with criminal activity, and that he had already stretched a point by stopping the first character rather than turning her in, and that the first player was trying to prevent him from playing his own concept.

For some campaigns, SoD (party members) is appropriate. But not for all. Especially, in a drama campaign as opposed to an action campaign, it may prevent the drama that's part of what the campaign is about.