[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by kdarc

Social traits are a great thing in GURPS, and one of the things I really like about in contrast to many other RPGs. However, they recently got me thinking about some things and some doubts I have.

In my current fantasy game, the group has this far pretty much stayed in one region (populated by dwarven merchant-cities, province of a large multi-racial Empire) and that hasn't posed any real problems. However, in an upcoming game with another group of players, the plot I have devised takes them across several provinces, each with its own people and culture - and not all of these are part of the greater Empire, so differences would be even greater.

My issue is that many social traits (such as Social Stigma, Social Regard, Legal Enforcement Powers, etc.) are tied to one society. Attitudes differ from place to place. In a setting where one nation treats mages with admiration and respect (Social Regard), another might treat them with hostility and hate (Social Stigma).

How should this be handled? And especially in regard to when players deal equally with several cultures? In the example from above, should a mage from the accepting society buy Social Regard and a mage from the other buy Social Stigma? I don't want my players to feel cheated for buying certain advantages.

This was one of the things that was brought up in the Social Engineering playtest. I don't know if it made it into the final draft though. Bill came up with a pretty nifty way of handling it and after much discussion I thought it came up to a nice build.

Ghostdancer