What else can we define as a 'style'?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Mind you it won't be meaningful unless you can think of some relevant perks and techniques or special skills.

Well, the basic "Style Familiarity" (SF) perk for certified professions and academic programmes is functionally akin to a Courtesy Title, License, or Office perk – and even apprenticed and casually taught metiers have a community that you're either "in" or not. In a campaign where violence and deception take a back seat to social interaction and earning a living, being an accepted member of such a group is a meaningful advantage in its own right. By analogy to SF, you'd get immunity to the -3 for lack of Cultural Familiarity when interacting with others in your field, a 1-point Claim to Hospitality with the subset of those people you've worked with, and the right to learn "trade secrets," be they conjuring tricks or patented processes. In modern societies, there's the further advantage – which you could view as replacing the combat benefit of SF – of benefiting from training incentives, seed grants, etc. because you have a résumé and/or certificate that says you're really a member of your profession.

And to be honest, this seems sound.

I'm familiar with the belly dancing community via my wife. Belly dancers all the world over seem to have a network, and giving your teacher's name and showing a few moves can get you in the door. Plus various arts councils and granting agents will provide limited resources for shows, setting up schools, etc. And of course there are "trademark moves" that don't get taught to casual dancers showing up for the beginners' course.

The same goes for physicists. Those of us with graduate degrees can, provided we share a language, interact via the common culture of "being a physicist." The piece of vellum is grounds enough to apply for various fellowships and summer schools. And despite 16 years away from the field, I still have a gang of people who invite me to parties, let me stay at their place, etc. simply because we all have similar pieces of vellum hanging on our walls.

Conversely, no matter how much you practice or self-teach, good luck convincing anybody that just because you have the right knowledge, you "belong." In game terms, that's having all the right skills, and maybe a few of the expected techniques or perks, but not the special SF perk. The SF perk represents witnessed, mentored learning of the right stuff in the right order, often with some variety of formal or informal certification (which may well travel by word of mouth only). Those without it frequently aren't taken seriously, even if they can demonstrate prodigious knowledge. And unlike the fighting arts, most real-world professions don't have anything equivalent to "sparring" where you can whup butt to change minds.