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Originally Posted by Pursuivant
Any wisdom on how to portray characters or races who make a point of shunning members of certain other groups?
This isn't mere Dislike, nor does it imply any particular hatred of the shunned person/group. Instead, it represents, emotionless, passive community-wide refusal to engage with the shunned, combined with as non-violent attempts to remove them from the community should they not leave on their own.
Historically, think of the Ostracism practiced by the Ancient Greeks, or community-wide shunning or "disfellowshipping" practiced by modern Amish and some fundamentalist Christian or Jewish sects. In those cases, anyone who aids someone who is ostracized/shunned risks suffering the same treatment.
Examples from SF/Fantasy include your snootier elves or ultra-advanced aliens. They don't harm outsiders, but make a point of avoiding them and quickly transport intruders far away from their domains, possibly with their memories wiped. If they need something from "lesser" beings, they take it by peaceful means, usually by teleporting it away, and possibly leaving something that they consider to be of equal value in its place.
I can see 3 ways to handle this:
Code of Honor - Could be built into several existing codes, or it could represent a CoH of its own.
Disciplines of Faith - possibly built into DoF (Ritualism) or (Asceticism) or a new version.
Intolerance - Make Shunning a -50% limitation to Intolerance, because you aren't required to react at -3 to those in the "hated" group. People you shun still react badly towards you, however.
In any case, cost should probably be based on the size and importance of the shunned group, based on Frequency of Appearance, and top out at about -10 points, similar to the more severe versions of the disads listed above.
Conversely, "Shunned by X Group" is a potential Quirk, which represents a very limited Social Stigma.
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First, from my very limited reading on shunning, most groups that practice shunning do
not practice it on groups outside their own, as a general rule. Shunning instead is a discipline practiced on their own group, which makes sense as shunned people who are not members of their group can more easily go elsewhere where they wouldn't be shunned.
For the group that practices shunning, I'd call it a 0-point feature of their legal code.
For someone who is being shunned, it's probably a -3 or -4 Reputation. It's not a Social Stigma, unless part of being shunned involves being painted white, made to wear certain clothes (effectively an "I'm shunned" uniform) or otherwise made instantly recognizable as someone to be shunned by that group. Otherwise, it's a Reputation and affected by both group size within the campaign area and frequency of recognition.
If you're being shunned by Mormons in Utah in the 1870s-1880s, that's barely a quirk if the characters are globe-trotters, a small group if they regularly travel across the U.S.A., a medium sized group if they're confined to the Old West, and somewhere between a large group and everyone if the setting is Utah. [And might be a Secret (possible death) if the Avenging Angels are taking an interest in you, but that's probably crossed out of shunning.]
Likewise the bigger the group practicing the shunning, the less likely the character is to be recognized as someone who should be shunned as he leaves his locality, either because the members that far away haven't heard that he's to be shunned, or they don't know that he's "Herbert Bloggins, who has been declared shunned," and as long as Herbert Bloggins doesn't feel compelled to tell them so …