Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

So far, it looks useful indeed. I had to chuckle when reading the section on complementary skills, because all I could think of was Randolph Churchill's comment about Winston: "My father spent the best years of his life writing his extemporaneous speeches."

EDIT: I might add that I dearly wanted to be on the playtest for this one -- social engineering is essentially my professional stock in trade -- but knew I wouldn't have sufficient time. I'm glad to see it turned out so well.

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

Is there a reason making a good custom avatar and generally not acting newbish can't be represented by making a skill roll to get a reaction bonus? Like say... admin to get a bonus with a red tape monkey?

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

That is a sensible point. The playtest involved a good dose of personal involvement, time and effort —at least for the active members.

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

I've found one odd thing:

You round the average of the Reputations towards ten? That seems a bit... odd, considering the fact that Reputation normally can't be higher than 4. Why not just say 'round up'? Or did you intend to mean 'rounded towards neutrality', which would be 'rounded towards zero'?

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

As a more positive and hopefully less controversial aside, this book has a good index. I know it's minor, but if you want every use of, say, the Politics skill, you can find it in back easily. I assume kudos are for RPK.

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

The latter. Please submit this as an erratum!

Bill Stoddard

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

Done. Happily enough, that was the only error that I've noticed so far.

I would have liked some more Variant Reputation examples to clear some things up, but I'm going to make another thread about that.

EDIT: Check that, there are some minor errors in the bookmarks. For example, Chapter 4's bookmark reads "The Organization• Man". No idea why. It happens on three chapter headings (Chapter 1, Chapter 4, and Chapter 6). If I go to rename the bookmark, the • disappears and turns into an extra space instead. Weird.

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

Actually, Nikki Vrtis usually does the index for e23 supplements -- including this one.

Thanks for the kind words; I'll be sure to pass along the compliment.

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

GURPS indexes are almost always good. My players have already commented on that and the logical structure of the books. Now to find out if they actually like the frickin' rules...

Re: GURPS Social Engineering
 

Please pass along mine as well. Indexes are really important and often overlooked or given shortshrift by other companies. I really appreciate the hard work an attention to detail of a good index.