GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics

[Evil Roy Slade]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

I'd make that Stereotypical lawyer. There's a difference.

Not even that. "Ham-fisted", for example, according to Characters, means, "You have unusually poor motor skills... You are also a messy eater, can’t tie a necktie properly, and so on. At the GM’s option, you get -1 per level of this trait on any Influence or reaction roll where being tidy or well-groomed would matter." "Cold-Blooded" means "Your body temperature fluctuates with the temperature of the environment."

I know several lawyers (including two or three who are gamers), several dozen lawyer jokes, and have seen several hundred (at least) portrayed in fiction. I am trying to recollect any notion of them being categorically clumsy, being sloppy eaters, being poorly dressed, or stiffening up below room temperature. Perhaps elsewhere these are traits associated with the study of law.

If Ciaran felt the need to write an unfunny vitriolic post unrelated to the topic at hand, he might have been further ahead to make a post saying, "Lawyers are bad people, hurf durf, amirite?"

In any event, courtrooms have been staples of drama for many centuries, including in some of the time period covered by Low-Tech (although admittedly adversarial courts come towards the end of that period). It seemed odd to have judges but not lawyers or their TL 2 predecessors, orators.