Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 05-20-2024, 07:29 PM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Mental Control Points and Social Engineering

The idea of MCP was introduced in Possessions Under Control (Pyramid 3-83) and unlike the (Body) Control Points of Technical Grappling (which reduced ST and DX of enemies) this IQ (including Per/Will) and DX.

This was obviously designed to explore supernatural mind-control (the Possession advantage) but it got me wondering about another way to penalize enemies already present in the basic set:

Influencing the PCs (B359) says that GMs shouldn't tell PCs how to react when they fall victim to the influence skill of an NPC - instead the margin is used to determine bonuses and penalties to subsequent die rolls involved between the two, as appropriate.

This seems in a lot of ways to mirror mental control points, except rather than supernaturally penalizing IQ or DX by formally doing partial possession of the mind, instead it is being INformally dominated (temporarily) by the use of mundane influence skills.

Page 18 of Social Engineering explores this under Charisma too - defining it as a Talent for an "Influence" Powers set that could include various Afflictions that represent social influences - including IQ and DX penalties, just like we see from Mental Control Points, and Influencing the PCs.

This made me wonder if there's some way to bring these concepts together, could MCP be extrapolated beyond just the Possession advantage and be applied to a wider variety of mundane situations?

I could see it being called something else, since an IQ/DX penalty is universal whereas ONLY being penalized when you work against someone who succeeded in an Influence skill against you is more subjective... so maybe Social Control Points?
__________________
what this forum is
(17 March 2020 forum rules from Hackard)
Plane is offline   Reply With Quote
 

Tags
influencing the pcs, mental control points, possesion under control, social engineering

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:13 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.