Talent/Spell of the Week: Business Sense

[larsdangly]

I like this and the other social-interaction talents, and of them all I think this one might be the best written, RAW, because it has clearly 'game-able' features to it beyond a reaction roll adjustment.

Re. house rules for application of this specific talent, my prejudice is to find ways to use what talents PC's and NPC's have on their sheet, as often and as broadly as seems reasonable, because it promotes more balanced game play and more interesting characters. A 'Marco Polo' style traveling merchant is a much more interesting idea for a character than 'cage fighter living outside the law', which has been done to death in every FRPG known to man. What that means in practice for me is off-the-cuff table rulings that allow people with the talent to gain a modifier (e.g., to reactions) or advantageous die roll (e.g,. 1 die reduction in an IQ roll, typically the talent getting a 3d roll while those without it roll 4d. This could mean recognizing objects, knowing things, finding certain kinds of people like underworld fences, etc.

More generally, I think the game would have been wise to not have cut the old leadership/followers talents, add another 2-3 talents of this kind, and to introduce further 'game-able' features to those social interaction talents that exist, all of which promote better roleplaying and more varied and nuanced characters. Also, some broader concept of social status/hierarchy would have been a welcome addition. But that's water under the bridge.

Do people know whether treatments of these issues that include optional additional talents are appropriate for Hexagram articles, or do they avoid that sort of thing?