Social Engineering
 

The only gaming supplement with a whole chapter on mobs, from gathering, to inciting riots, to quelling them.

Pick yours up today: http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/socialengineering/

There's even a section on how to start a fight, using something more subtle than me using my poor Spanish to say that I like your mother.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Yay! Time to finish planning that Birthright game.

Re: Social Engineering
 

:) The first indication that I had that this was out was the Playtester Comp copy notification in my e-mail. Yay!

-P

Re: Social Engineering
 

I am interested in what the 1st day sales will be on this.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Ooooh, been waiting for this for a long time. Bought it, going to read every single word. No skimming on this one.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Bought. Like it. Very useful.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Yeeeeesssss!

I was worried this would come out after my current game. Now I get to use it with my social manipulator.

Re: Social Engineering
 

After reading through it again, I have to say it's very good. This is essentially all the best parts of the DF and Action guidebooks for how to use skills to accomplish certain goals. In this case, it's specifically about social skills. However, it's organized very well, so you get advice on how to stop or incite a riot, how to get a promotion, or how to inspire a crowd or win an election (or conduct a courtship, or a romance). Quite brilliant, really. Certainly has me thinking of plots for my campaign. There are other nifty features, like the discussion of rank, wealth, and status, and some of the most applicable Perks from Power-Ups. This one gets printed, punched, and put in the folder with the best parts of DF and Action. I'll be referencing it a lot.

Re: Social Engineering
 

-- Ten pages in and I can already tell this will be one of my most heavily read GURPS PDFs.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I'm considering getting it once funds allow, but a skim through the preview PDF seems to indicate it'd be of some use to me. Any nitpicks with it so far?

Re: Social Engineering
 

The list of playtesters seems a bit wonky; I can't imagine what I said to merit inclusion on it. Other than that, it's really, really good.

Re: Social Engineering
 

download immediately! Been waiting ages for this.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Going to have to turn my PC upstairs to get this.

I'm intrigued by 'inciting a riot' from my research they more or less happen. They cannot be predicted to a time/place but a general trend of riotous situation. In June a gave a talk on the tendency towards riot and by August I was right. But I had no idea about what was to cause it, where it would happen and how it would unfold.

So I'm intrigued.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I noticed it.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Can't wait to dive in!

Re: Social Engineering
 

And, of course, there'll be reason for GURPS players in general to reference it as SE becomes the rules basis to describe specific societies and situations. Through the magic of advanced PDFs, I've already used it while composing a large rank and status table and other items for GURPS Hot Spots: Constantinople.

Re: Social Engineering
 

-- I'm using it to revise my game rules for Roman social relations and honor :)

Re: Social Engineering
 

Agreed. From the start, I saw SE as a core GURPS book.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I seriously would like to see the forums include a "Like" button. It would make life easier. Ditto to TBC's comment. =)

Re: Social Engineering
 

Thanks a lot, snatched it up and loving what I read so far. Have anticipated this one since it was first mentioned. *bigsmile*

Re: Social Engineering
 

After getting a good look, there isn't as much of the new as there is clarifications and expansions of the old. Mind you, those are good expansions, like what each social skill entails and when an Influence roll happens as opposed to a Reaction roll. What there is of the new almost begs for its own supplement, one that was on the lips of many already.

Re: Social Engineering
 

So frustrated but have to pay rent first then get the book darn it.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Reviewed the Preview page, nice bit on different senses and aliens but it appears this does not cover animals or spirit negations from the TOC and index.
If so that would be a disappointment, I was hoping for some stuff around the social advantages like Indomitable and the non standard empathy and how to work social interactions with and around them.
Still I am sure it much of it will apply just take the appropriate empathy then you can apply much of the rest.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Any hope of this book ever making it to hardback?

Re: Social Engineering
 

I doubt it. Page count is pretty light, but maybe softcover.
Its a real good sized PDF and a very good value.

Re: Social Engineering
 

No. At 88 pages, it's far too short for that. The hardback cutoff is up around 160 pages these days. However, if PDF sales are strong (and they'll have to be very, very strong, as this product was costly to produce owing to its length and crunch), then there may one day be a softback. Compare Psionic Powers or Tactical Shooting, both of which are 88-page softbacks now.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I'm not sure why this would matter at all when determining whether to release it as a softback. Those costs are sunk - they won't increase if you decide to produce a softback. As far as I know, the cost to produce a softback version is primarily dependent on the size of the book - in this case, it's the same size as Tactical Shooting and Psionic Powers, both of which got softback releases. I'd think the cost to produce a softback version of Social Engineering, given the fact that we've already got the PDF version, would be around the same as the cost to produce a Tactical Shooting softback, given you've already got a PDF version. In other words:

Cost to Make Softback = Softback-Specific Price + PDF Price

And you've already paid the PDF price. Thus, the sales volume that would indicate 'this is a good softback contender' should be the same as some other product with a similar Softback-Specific Price, since that's the only cost that should actually matter in the calculation.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Not quite. A PDF's profit is what pays the startup cost for a softback. Until a PDF pays off its own production costs, earns the writer a royalty, and builds up a surplus sufficient to cover printing, shipping, distribution, and retail advertising, there's little chance that we'll consider a softback. If a PDF's production costs are extremely high, then its sales have to be a lot stronger to show the necessary profit.

Re: Social Engineering
 

That's odd. I wouldn't normally have thought a PDF would have to pay for the printing, shipping, distribution, and advertising costs for the softback - I'd have thought you'd attribute those costs to the softback itself, and release the softback when sales figures show that a softback could pay for itself.

I suppose the model you actually use makes sense if you're a bit lacking in cash reserves, but the more 'classic' model would probably earn you more profit in the long-run (if you had the start-up capital for it). Could also be the more 'classic' model I'm thinking of just doesn't work that well in practice, I suppose, though I'd find that a bit surprising.

Re: Social Engineering
 

To expand some, when we produce a PDF, there's no "per unit" cost and no printing or shipping overhead. The basic profit formula is this:

PDF profit = {(PDFs sold)×(PDF price)×[1 - (Author's PDF royalty)]} - (Cost to produce PDF)

When you toss a physical book into the mix after a PDF:

Book profit = {(Books sold)×(Book price)×[1 - (Author's book royalty) - (Distributor's percentage) - (Retailer's percentage)]} - {(Books printed)×[(Printing cost/book) + (Shipping cost/book)]}

We can control some of these quantities, but they aren't all independent variables; e.g., PDFs sold varies with PDF price, books sold varies with book price, books sold has a complicated relationship with PDFs sold, and printing and shipping costs per book go down slightly for high numbers of books printed. This makes it hard, in practical terms, to gauge whether a book is worthwhile. What we can do is minimize our chance of taking a bath. We do this by looking at total profit:

Total profit = {(PDFs sold)×(PDF price)×[1 - (Author's PDF royalty)]} - (Cost to produce PDF) + {(Books sold)×(Book price)×[1 - (Author's book royalty) - (Distributor's percentage) - (Retailer's percentage)]} - {(Books printed)×[(Printing cost/book) + (Shipping cost/book)]}

and setting this condition:

{(PDFs sold)×(PDF price)×[1 - (Author's PDF royalty)]} - (Cost to produce PDF) - {(Books printed)×[(Printing cost/book) + (Shipping cost/book)]} > 0

That way, for any value of this term:

{(Books sold)×(Book price)×[1 - (Author's book royalty) - (Distributor's percentage) - (Retailer's percentage)]}

we don't take a bath. It's quite possible for both of the following to be true:

{(PDFs sold)×(PDF price)×[1 - (Author's PDF royalty)]} - (Cost to produce PDF) > 0

{(PDFs sold)×(PDF price)×[1 - (Author's PDF royalty)]} - (Cost to produce PDF) - {(Books printed)×[(Printing cost/book) + (Shipping cost/book)]} < 0

Thus, we only consider a book when PDF profits can cover all the costs. Sales of print books are far too weak to take risks with them.

Re: Social Engineering
 

No, those are in there. It's important to realize that the TOC only shows what we call A-HEADs, B-HEADs, and C-HEADs -- but the headers in GURPS books go all the way down to E-HEADs. So if something is under enough subheadings, it doesn't appear in the TOC.

Social Engineering does include a discussion of Empathy vs. Indomitable (or being an animal, plant, or spirit), and it does go into Exotic Traits that an alien race might have. The book's focus is definitely on human/human interaction, but other contexts are covered as well.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Thanks for the interesting look into your business model.

I hope Social Engineering sells the many, many copies needed to make a print run worthwhile, if only because I think Social Engineering really ought to be sold in stores alongside Martial Arts and Tactical Shooting, even though I'm a PDF-only buyer nowadays.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Sales figures for a PDF tell us bupkis about how well a book will sell in shops. The PDF and book markets aren't closely correlated. Something can sell like mad in PDF and then rot on shelves. We have to make sure that rot is accounted for in our planning.

On a company-wide level, we have cash reserves. They are not, for the most part, allocated to gambling on GURPS books. So from a GURPS point of view, the cash reserves are close enough to zero that yes, our model makes sense. SJ Games mostly subscribes to the philosophy that each operating unit, product line, and individual product has to be independently profitable, if possible, with minimal slushing between them. It's a harsh model, but one that minimizes risk (yes, at the cost of earning less when a bet pays off).

Re: Social Engineering
 

Thank you very much for that info!
Soon as I can work out the finances I am buying it, that tidbit just means more willing to skimp a few other things :)

Re: Social Engineering
 

I find it funny that one market segment - people that would be willing to buy softbacks but won't buy PDFs - have to wait on those willing to buy PDFs to buy enough that a softback can be printed. I like books and dislike PDFs so I don't get to contribute to any metric that would help in getting a title on paper. I am not saying that it is an unreasonable business decision but it does seem to have a bit of Catch-22 in it.

Re: Social Engineering
 

The inability to determine likely book sales based on PDF sales was the missing factor - I had taken that as a given, when it seems it isn't at all. If you could get a decent estimate for a print book's sales given it's PDF sales, then you might be able to release the dead-tree book prior to the PDF book selling enough to completely pay for it and still have some certainty at recouping those costs. But if you can't determine likely book sales, then you won't be able to do that.

I find it interesting that there's little correlation there, though. I kinda wish I could see a full dataset and see if I could fit it to a regression model, but that's something I find highly unlikely, seeing as you don't usually release sales data for dead-tree format. If PDF sales isn't a strong factor in dead-tree sales, I wonder what are strong factors?

Re: Social Engineering
 

I think the Expanded Reaction Tables are worth the price alone. Specific results for things like Seduction, Confrontation with Authority, and Recreation. Nice.

The Mind of the Mob section makes me want to play out the classic "One riot, one Ranger" scenario. Assuming I did this right, he'd get a +1 for Callous, and a +1 for Displays of Strength (the sawed off double, of course), +1 for Penetrating Voice. With a crowd of 15, it'd be a straight roll of his Intimidation versus the average Will of the lynch mob. He could probably handle, assuming he has Intimidation of 15, up to about 25 by himself. He might use Cutting Out to scare off a few individuals, which would probably warrant a penalty for the mob's Will roll to intimidate the crowd, and reduce the numbers.

It's also a neat touch to include the stats of the mob as a multi-hex "monster," as was done in Horror. We can then find out if the mob disperses from his Intimidation attempt, or how many shots it takes to "break it up" with gunfire!

Re: Social Engineering
 

Re: Social Engineering
 

The method of analysis seems sound. I might allow +2 for the shotgun. Objectively it's going to do a lot worse damage than any ordinary display of strength. And I've read that those barrels seem as wide as a subway tunnel when you're staring into them.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Social Engineering
 

Certainly true. Great book. Well done!

Re: Social Engineering
 

I agree with the eclectic playtester selection. I would have never thought I'd be included. I didn't do much but argue about minor points. The book, however, (looks at e23 price tag) is well worth the money. Special kudos for the layout. This one needed that professional treatment even more than Low-Tech. Tables, modifiers and all nicely grouped and readable - so beautiful. Not to forget hyperlinks and bookmarks. Sometimes it's really hard to got back to old PDFs like Magic.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Good book. Definitely worth the $13.99. But since someone asked for nitpicks:

The stuff on reaction and influence rolls, especially "Expanded Reaction Rolls" and "Expanded Influence Rolls," is really good to have. But seeing it all laid out highlights the oddness of having two parallel systems with mechanics that will often both be useable for the same task, but which differ in subtle but important ways. It seems social engineering was made to be scrupulously consistent with Basic on this, but I don't see why that had to be. Hmmm.

So for example: it's odd that Influence rolls get harder when the target has a higher Will, but nothing similar applies to Reaction Rolls. This could be really annoying when the GM decides some particular NPC should be difficult, though not impossible, to influence with either kind of roll. Something like a generalized version of the "ridiculous reactions" sidebar in Dungeon Fantasy 11 would have made sense here.

Also, the bibliography. It's nice to see Kevin Mitnick name-checked in the text, but why aren't any of his books in the bibliography? Machiavelli is great and all, but I suspect Mitnick would be more useful to most gaming groups. That and the obvious connection to the book's title. Was this a matter of not wanting to be perceived as promoting certain activities? Oh well, the bibliography still looks like it has things I'll want to check out, if I have the time.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Curse you, gall bladder! Why must you vex me so sorely just as this...this... awesomeness is released upon the world! The $160 I spent dealing with the aftermath of your removal would have been spent much better in food and GURPS books than at Sun Chun University Hospital! Now, I must wait a whole week and 2 days! This is a travesty!

Re: Social Engineering
 

Or, to summarize:

Even the most popular GURPS softback will never come close to the profitability of even the worst Munchkin release. SJ Games can release card games knowing that it'll probably make a profit, easily.

Only a few GURPS releases are guaranteed to make a profit when put into dead-trees versions. SJ Games has probably seen way too many releases that didn't produce any profits, so they're being cautious.

Edit: And to summarize further, GURPS (and other RPGs) could be dropped by SJ Games with little effect on their profit margin. Most other companies, these high-risk/low-profit products would be dropped. I'm glad that SJ Games continues to feed my hobby, and completely understand their caution.

So very few of their products get put onto paper? Understandable. I'm glad that we have two new 4E products a month, plus Pyramid, plus the occasional Classic release. We could have much less.

Please, keep up the good work. :-)

Re: Social Engineering
 

It wasn't the primary job of this supplement to radically change the Basic Set rules or create a new game that just happened to share a name. Like GURPS Powers, which generalized and expanded the treatment of psi powers in the Basic Set, GURPS Social Engineering generalized and expanded the mechanics in the Basic Set for social interactions, whenever possible. That is, most of it is effectively a new chapter for volume ii, not for volume i.

As to reaction rolls, the point is precisely that they are not a representation of the target being influenced. The reaction roll is how the target behaves if you don't influence them. A high Appearance or Charisma produces a favorable reaction roll because people do in fact react well to people with those qualities! (Real world application: My girlfriend went to see the film Black Power Mixtape a couple of days ago, and she came back impressed by how physically attractive all those young black leaders were.)

If you want a character who isn't affected by reaction roll modifiers, I suppose you could buy it as a resistance or immunity. Since Indomitable is effectively immunity to influence rolls, which are treated as Common, and influence rolls are a subset of reaction rolls mechanically, I would call immunity to reaction rolls Very Common, worth 30 points. You might want that, for example, for an AI. I'm not sure how it would apply to Resistance to reaction roll modifiers, since you don't normally resist them!

Bill Stoddard

Re: Social Engineering
 

If it can be done in fiction, it should be possible in a game.

Re: Social Engineering
 

All of the above statements are basically true. Until RPG fans are selling out 10,000-unit print runs in a quarter, it's hard to justify print runs in today's climate. The old days when it made sense to print 1,000-2,000 copies and let them sell out over years are gone. They were on their way out when I was hired in 1995, but the writing was on the wall even then.

Re: Social Engineering
 

The split between reaction rolls and Influence is an intentional one. The former is a passive thing -- a reaction bonus means you're generally likable, but not necessarily that you're doing anything actively to earn it. The latter is a contest of skill vs. Will which represents you consciously using training to force a specific reaction from someone -- an Influence bonus is a skill bonus (or TDM).

It's like the difference between a dodge (not helped by training; everyone can do it; represents instinctive movement) and a parry or block (based on skill; easy to raise once you know it; represents a conscious attempt at defense). All are used for the same task (not getting hit!), but with different rules, because they all exist (and are used) in real life.

"Resistant to reaction rolls" is easy -- just give the person a reaction penalty or note that they ignore up to +X in reaction bonuses! Remember, the GM always has the right to simply predetermine an NPCs reactions, so doing anything less than that is always kosher. If Farmer Brown reacts Poorly to trespassers no matter what, then it doesn't matter if Mr. Face has +12 in reaction bonuses -- Farmer Brown reacts poorly. Period. So the GM who likes to roll dice is well within his rights to say that Farmer Brown instead reacts at -2 to trespassers and ignores up to +/-5 in reaction modifiers. That way, Mr. Face still has a chance, where the average person doesn't. None of this requires any special traits, any more than PCs require special traits to reflect their players deciding how they react to things.

Re: Social Engineering
 

To expand a bit on what Kromm said here, this is largely because the U.S. changed the laws on warehoused resources sometime in the recent past (the late 1990s or early 2000s seems about right in my mind). It used to be that books gathering dust in a warehouse were considered a liability; you needed to pay for the warehousing of them, after all, and they weren't making you any money.

Nowadays, books in a warehouse are considered an asset; if you have 2,000 $20 books in a warehouse, that's considered $40,000 in assets, and you need to pay taxes on it accordingly.

This led to a huge incentive to try to print only as many as you could sell reasonably quickly... and to destroy/liquidate any copies you couldn't sell after a fairly short time frame.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Wow. That is stupid.

Okay, I can see the idea behind it, but still.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I think this must have been early 90s, I'm pretty sure it was part of the financial reform package before Sarbanes-Oxley and the Enron/Tyco fallout in 2002, and they seem to come around about every 7-10 years, with the business cycle....

Anyway the effect on publishing is a side effect, the goal here is to kill schemes where you buy an easily liquidated asset shortly before closing the books, removing the cash from your balance sheet, then sell it just after the next fiscal year starts.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I'm down for additional material. I'm sure something I wrote before is in there, but I can't figure out what.

But so far, it's looking good.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Nur?

Either your accountant is lying to you, everything I've learned studying and practicing accounting has been a lie, or that must be a bizarre state-specific thing. Federal (and state, for me) business taxes are based on income, not on assets, and inventory doesn't generate income until it gets sold. Having it sitting on its butt in a warehouse and causing overhead costs actually reduces tax liability, since those overhead expenses reduce taxable income. Basically, spending cash (or increasing accounts payable) in order to build up inventory shouldn't have any effect at all on income until that inventory is sold and generates revenue.

Personally, I'm hoping for the bizarre state-specific thing, since neither of the other two options end well.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Inventory and warehousing taxes are state-specific, yes.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I probably got some of my terminology wrong (my accounting lore doesn't go much above Quicken), but for the nuts and bolts about what's going on, I suggest the extremely informative (and relevant from an RPG publishing POV) article at:

http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/thor.htm

If I'm reading this right, then everything changed in 1979 (!).

One good quote:

"[The ruling] eliminated a tax dodge, and thereby made it more expensive for publishers to carry inventory from year to year. As a result, publishers have cut print runs in order to minimize inventory. They have also become quicker to dispose of inventory -- i.e., pulp it -- before the end of the fiscal year."

There's a bit more info here:

"The economics and accounting practices are complicated, but the result is that publishers suddenly found it much more expensive to hold large inventories year over year."

I suspect that, during RPGs' flush years, it was worthwhile to pay full tax value on assets in the warehouse, since it was reasonably certain to sell them. However, the migration of RPG publishing from an evergreen to a periodical format (again, mid-'90s by my memory) meant that publishers needed to be even snappier to clear items out of their warehouses.

Re: Social Engineering
 

You can't do the traditional thing and find a warehouse just across state lines?

Re: Social Engineering
 

Thank God. I was concerned that when Steven said that the U.S. changed the warehousing laws, he was implying that the asset / inventory / warehousing taxation that followed was also federal.

Edit:
Might depend on the state. In some cases, the state of a company's primary operations (which I'm guessing for SJ Games is Texas) might slap them for all of their inventory rather than just in-state inventory. I know that some states up here in New England do something similar with regards to income (but usually have a compensating credit). Like the tax itself, it depends on the state. And some states are crazy.


Edit 2: In any case, thanks to Kromm and Steven both for helping clear up the situation and assuaging my panic.

Re: Social Engineering
 

In this case, the situation publishers find themselves facing is a national one, thanks to the IRS and a 1979 Supreme Court ruling (see my links, above).

Re: Social Engineering
 

Ultimately, it depends on how a company interacts with their inventory. Although the author's breakdown of the hypothetical financial statements is self-admittedly simplified, at best, and has some things that make me cringe from a mechanical standpoint, some of the non-accounting concepts mostly hold. The article also at least does a good job of clarifying that the federal decision isn't a tax on inventory. Which is a relief.

The "just-in-time" or "lean production" strategy O'Donnell points out isn't something unique to the publishing industry, of course. It's widely taught and practiced across almost all manufacturing industries (and was really popularized by Toyota). For most industries, it's terrific. Unfortunately, publishing (or rather, writing, since the writer is ultimately the one in a squeeze) isn't one of them.


And as an aside, I know people like to demonize the IRS, but they get a bad rap. The IRS didn't and still doesn't have anything to do with this. Congress writes the tax code. The IRS just carries it out and makes sure people follow Congress's rules (which Thor, and evidently many other companies and industries, weren't). It's like blaming the police department or state patrol if you get a speeding ticket—they don't make the rules; they just enforce them.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Been there, tried that. The added expenses (extra personnel, shipping stuff between the two locations, etc.) of having an Austin office and Las Vegas warehouse went a long way toward mitigating the tax savings, to the point where it wasn't worth the headache and hassles.

Re: Social Engineering
 

A few days ago I was reading a travel book, Tim Moore's Continental Drifter. In a small town in the south of France, he notes:

In 1848, the huge bronze statue of Louis XIV on his horse that still stands outside the local McDonald's was saved from a threatening crowd only after someone persuaded them it would be an even more effective insult to replace the royal inscription with one in praise of the sculptor, a local boy. No one seems to know who brokered this unlikely feat of diplomacy -- only in France could a baying mob be prevailed upon to throw down their pitchforks in favour of irony.

Today, Social Engineering arrives and hey presto, there it is -- the Irony technique on page 81. GURPS really can do anything.

Re: Social Engineering
 

LOL very good example.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I must say, I was bemused by how very timely my final vignette, with the police line facing an angry crowd outside a bank, turned out to be.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Social Engineering
 

The logistical challenges of remote operations generally means that it's only practical for very large companies, and probably ones who need to do it for reasons besides taxation.

Re: Social Engineering
 

Lean goes beyond manufacturing, though that's where it was initially popularized; the principle of minimizing work done that isn't producing value is fairly generally applicable (Google is the usual poster child, in most books I've seen, for lean methods outside of manufacturing, and software development is probably the area that there is the most written on it outside of manufacturing, though there's quite a bit on lean elsewhere, including government.)

And I don't know that lean methods are any less good in writing and publishing. Tax rule changes that make "leaning up" the only option to survive because they make the inherent cost of work that is done but not producing value (in the form of inventory) obviously are going to more painful in an industry where there are bigger economies of scale in production and comparatively low warehousing costs, such that keeping a fairly large inventory has a strong incentive (I get the impression that was historically the case in print publishing), but lean methods themselves don't seem to be a bad thing so much as one with limited applicability where there are strong incentives to keep inventory like that.

SJG, with GURPS, seems to be putting out more and better content since they started focussing on smaller units of work with shorter turnaround time, which seems to be good for customers, presumably has improved their profitability compared to what it would be without the change given the same climate, and -- unless they've reduced their pay scale to writers -- would seem likely to be good for writers, too (both because of the increased volume of work available, and because the units of work are smaller which means writers, like SJG, are sitting on less of an inventory of work that has been done but isn't returning value to them.)



Well, the IRS does do more than that, since the IRS has some latitude in determining how to carry out Congress's rules, both in terms of regulatory authority and administrative practice (just as police may use their enforcement powers in ways, including undesirable ways, that are not mandated by the laws they are enforcing.) However, the point that people often fail to distinguish whether the responsibility for a particular IRS behavior is the IRS's choice or that of the Congress is a good one.

Re: Social Engineering
 

I'm almost done reading the book cover to cover, and I'm very impressed. This adds a lot of useful detail to a part of GURPS that was always a bit too vague for my tastes. Great work, guys!

Re: Social Engineering
 

OMG I'm only getting to read this now - shocked it's over 2 years - so many missed opportunities.
Great piece of work.