Quote:
Originally Posted by Harbinjer
I think the whole idea of the Reference Society is where my problem is.
Your society says I'm ugly? Well, I'm not part of your society, and MY society thinks I look just fine.
It's as if the system had only humans in mind when it was created. Anything to do with multiple points-of-view on Beauty is pasted on (if it exists at all). I'm not even trying to account for personal taste, I just want some different perspective on racial standards.
And if I could do it without creating a lot more paperwork, that would be awesome.
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The idea, as I read it, is that the Reference Society is dominant. In an off-the-shelf Tolkienesque/D&Desque fantasy world, humans live more or less everywhere and have the largest, most economically and culturally impacting society; so a race's Appearance in human eyes is likely to impact them almost every day. An Attractive elf isn't startingly appealing to any other Attractive elf, because to them it's the norm, but they're more likely in any given roleplaying session to meet a human than another elf, so that's how it impacts their character point total.
So in that context, as well as allowing any nonhuman to buy their Appearance up or down from the racial default, I would assume any nonhuman would ignore the default, and tweak higher/lower levels accordingly (ie. a Beautiful/Handsome elf is Beautiful to humans, merely Attractive to other elves, and gets no Appearance modifier with other nonhumans).
In a campaign without a single dominant Reference Society, no race gets a Racial Appearance trait, and Appearance only applies to other members of the same race as standard unless they have the Universal modifier.
(As a fun thought exercise, run a campaign where the dominant Reference Society is nonhuman and humans have a negative Racial Appearance...)
EDIT: Oh, and "assimilated to human standards of beauty" could be a Quirk for a nonhuman, allowing an elf who, by dint of having been raised by humans, sees all other elves as Attractive -- or heartbreakingly, an orc raised by humans who sees himself as Ugly...)