My Honest Opinion

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

There are variations. But the default assumption is that PCs are adventurers of some sort, but not necessarily Ronin-style crooks. And so a calibration of disads to an adventury campaign should be considered. Are you saying that in the majority of typical campaigns, the amount of trouble you describe is a fair amount of trouble for 10 points?

It's -20 points of Disadvantage, because Honesty comes bundled with a 10 point Reputation. And it's worse than some -20 points, better than others.

Honesty is fairly comparable to Reprogrammable, in being a -10 Disadvantage that will generally make a character unsuitable as a protagonist in an adventure. Of course, as Honesty comes bundled with a 10 point Advantage, it's even worse than Reprogrammable. It's about as bad as Crippling Shyness or Hoplophobia for an adventurer.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And notice that Kromm, Hackard and/or participated in the making of MH, Action, Mysteries (where That Darn Kid can have Honesty), and probably other books with Honest adventurers, then that seems to indicate that the authors and editors of GURPS don't interpret Honesty the way you do.

I don't really know how much scrutiny goes into the templates in GURPS supplements, but I doubt very much that the editors have the leisure to make sample characters or go through all the implications of how playable the characters would be. That's probably a job for the author. The editors are more likely to check if the character creation rules are followed in the templates and that there aren't errors or layout problems.

That being said, as far as I can tell, the text of GURPS Honesty is substantially unchanged from its first incarnation. The intention may have been for the Disadvantage to represent something that an English-speaker might call 'honesty', but whoever wrote it did not succeed at defining any such thing. Going by the text of the Disadvantage, it is not technically unplayable, nor is it any more severe for its point value than some other Disadvantages, but it does result in characters that are unlikely to be interesting in the role of a footloose adventuring hero or likable in any sense.

I don't really think we need Honesty as a Disadvantage in future editions, but I suppose it could be re-written as an example of Code of Honour combined with a positive Reputation (and if considered necessary, a Delusion about the honesty of others). And if we do, we should probably get rid of the requirement to 'do their best' to get everyone else to follow the law and replace it with a requirement to get everyone else to behave honestly, i.e. not to require the character to attempt to enforce the local law whatever it may happen to be, but rather to act consistently according to his own conception of what honest behaviour is.