Giving mental disadvantages as results of behaviour?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I'm not surprised by it anymore. There really is a common sort of gamer who sees playing a character with a consistent personality that you didn't get disadvantage points for as wrong, or at least an error in character creation for not insisting on some points for it.

For me, it's not at that level. It's "this campaign is about X; does what you're having your character do contribute to X?" I mean, if I announce a campaign about Silver Age four-color supers, and you build an Iron Age character who deals with criminals by killing them, let along a character who just wantonly kills anyone they dislike, that's not engaging with the campaign premise.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Having Charitable does not just mean that you behave in a way that is generally considered charitable. It means you feel compelled to help "even legitimate enemies" and that you "must offer assistance, even if that means violating orders or walking into a potential trap".

...unless you succeed at your self-control roll! Charitable [-15] means you succeed 75% of the time. Charitable [-7] means you succeed 95% of the time. I think Charitable [-7] is fairly common: you're generally charitable, and there's some chance (or there are some situations in which) you'll be charitable even when faced with personal danger.
Of course most of us never get put into the kinds of dangerous situations that happen all the time in an rpg adventure.

Miep Gies (one of the people who helped Anne Frank's family hide during the Holocaust) was by all accounts a fairly "normal" person, but in extraordinary circumstances her loyalty to the Frank family, her selflessness, her honorable nature, or whatever it was won out and drove her to risk her life for the lives of the Franks. There are many, many similar stories from the Holocaust in particular, because it was an extraordinary time when people's "disadvantages" were tested. I wouldn't exist if it weren't for the kind strangers who were willing to help my grandmother evade the Arrowcross (Hungarian version of Nazis), risking their own lives in the process.

And of course Charitable is probably on the rarer side of my list, with Honesty being more common for example. Respect for the law is fairly widespread in the U.S. (as far as I can tell), especially when you give people self-control numbers that mean they can still break the law on occasion when it's convenient for them, or when it seems like the law is wrong this time around, etc.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Gnome

And of course Charitable is probably on the rarer side of my list, with Honesty being more common for example. Respect for the law is fairly widespread in the U.S. (as far as I can tell), especially when you give people self-control numbers that mean they can still break the law on occasion when it's convenient for them, or when it seems like the law is wrong this time around, etc.

Note that heavily limited disadvantages tend to be quirks. Legalistic is a quirk-level limited Honesty.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Gnome

...unless you succeed at your self-control roll! Charitable [-15] means you succeed 75% of the time. Charitable [-7] means you succeed 95% of the time. I think Charitable [-7] is fairly common: you're generally charitable, and there's some chance (or there are some situations in which) you'll be charitable even when faced with personal danger.
Of course most of us never get put into the kinds of dangerous situations that happen all the time in an rpg adventure.

It is common for people to make occasional exceptions to such character traits even when not in such dangerous situations. Helping your enemies at great risk to yourself is rather extraordinary even if you only do it 25% of the time.

Miep Gies (one of the people who helped Anne Frank's family hide during the Holocaust) was by all accounts a fairly "normal" person, but in extraordinary circumstances her loyalty to the Frank family, her selflessness, her honorable nature, or whatever it was won out and drove her to risk her life for the lives of the Franks. There are many, many similar stories from the Holocaust in particular, because it was an extraordinary time when people's "disadvantages" were tested. I wouldn't exist if it weren't for the kind strangers who were willing to help my grandmother evade the Arrowcross (Hungarian version of Nazis), risking their own lives in the process.

I'm not trying to say that no one has such disadvantages (though the specific examples you mentioned weren't as far as I know a case of helping your enemies, which is one of the more extreme parts of the Charitable disadvantage). However it is also the case that unfortunately a very large number of people did not receive such help. While it is not at all hard to find examples of such deeds in history, most people probably weren't willing to take such risks.

And of course Charitable is probably on the rarer side of my list, with Honesty being more common for example. Respect for the law is fairly widespread in the U.S. (as far as I can tell), especially when you give people self-control numbers that mean they can still break the law on occasion when it's convenient for them, or when it seems like the law is wrong this time around, etc.

I'm not sure Honesty is more common than Charitable (even if we ignore the difficulty of keeping track of the very large number of laws in the U.S. and just consider the most commonly known laws). Speeding for example is very common and Honesty does not only require that you always avoid such things (unless you are in a situation where you both need to break the law and make the self-control roll), it also requires that you do your best to make others do so as well.

It is common for people to ignore laws which are generally considered acceptable to break and someone insisting on nagging the people around them about following those laws tend to be disliked for it.

Also that's not all there is to Honesty. There is also the part about assuming that others are honest unless you know otherwise.

[sir_pudding]

That speeding argument remains ridiculous. Honesty doesn't require that you break more significant laws in order obey the letter of minor ones. You can jaywalk to avoid manslaughter. You can drive the speed of traffic if driving the speed limit in the slow lane would be reckless endangerment.

The disadvantage is written simply, but it is meant to be playable. In real societies there's always some friction between the letter of the law and how it is actually understood to be enforced in practice.

To be at all playable Honesty really requires that you don't willingly break the law in a way that a reasonable law enforcer or court would consider a violation. It would be unplayable if unintended legal contradictions caused you to totally shut down like a B-Movie robot.

Remember the rule about following a base legal standard when you are confronted with a lawless environment. Logically that applies even in civilization when the law is contradictory or ambiguous.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Andreas

It is indeed common for people to be charitable, honest or have a code of honor etc.

However that does not at all mean that they have those GURPS disadvantages! Having Charitable does not just mean that you behave in a way that is generally considered charitable. It means you feel compelled to help "even legitimate enemies" and that you "must offer assistance, even if that means violating orders or walking into a potential trap".

Well yeah. In a realistic setting, you'll provide first aid to them when they're down, try to talk them into surrendering peacefully, testify at a parole hearing about how you forgive them. "Help" is not necessarily "help the bad guy be a bad guy". In fact that would probably be the opposite of a Charitable person's idea of helping.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

That speeding argument remains ridiculous. Honesty doesn't require that you break more significant laws in order obey the letter of minor ones. You can jaywalk to avoid manslaughter. You can drive the speed of traffic if driving the speed limit in the slow lane would be reckless endangerment. The disadvantage is written simply, but it is meant to be playable. In real societies there's always some friction between the letter of the law and how it is actually understood to be enforced in practice. To be at all playable Honesty really requires that you don't willingly break the law in a way that a reasonable law enforcer would consider a violation.

Laws generally make exceptions for situations where following them would cause greater harm like that anyway. However most people occasionally exceed the speed limit even in situations when not doing so would be dangerous. It is very common for there to be commonly accepted behaviour which a diligent but reasonable officer would consider to be a violation.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well yeah. In a realistic setting, you'll provide first aid to them when they're down, try to talk them into surrendering peacefully, testify at a parole hearing about how you forgive them. "Help" is not necessarily "help the bad guy be a bad guy". In fact that would probably be the opposite of a Charitable person's idea of helping.

Sure, but doing so for your enemies even in situations where it would pose significant danger to yourself and when you don't have a duty to act is uncommon. Not non-existent, but rare.

For example consider the bystander effect. Under the right conditions a large majority of people choose to not help even when the one who needs help is not an enemy.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Andreas

Laws generally make exceptions for situations where following them would cause greater harm like that anyway. However most people occasionally exceed the speed limit even in situations when not doing so would be dangerous. It is very common for there to be commonly accepted behaviour which a diligent but reasonable officer would consider to be a violation.

In the case of someone with Honesty or Legalistic accidently speeding and noticing it (although really who games at this level of detail?) they can just slow down without having to make a roll to "turn themselves in" because Honesty isn't a complete lack of understanding of how the world actually works (barring other disadvantages like Clueless) and they know that nobody actually cares (and that they would only be wasting law enforcement time to even report "I noticed I was slightly above the speed limit, and then immediately slowed down").

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Andreas

For example consider the bystander effect. Under the right conditions a large majority of people choose to not help even when the one who needs help is not an enemy.

That link isn't what you think it is.

The specific conditions for the bystander effect are when people are in a large crowd and no one has a clearly defined responsibility relative to the event. Often there is a lot of ambiguity about what the event even is or if it is occurring. Yes people often don't call the police when they hear a scream for help, but they also don't call the police everytime they hear a kid screaming for no real reason. Kids screaming for fun(?) is a way more common occurrence than genuine screams for help (a fact that I have always been unsettled by).

People do tend to react when it is clear to them that they are responsible; in situations where they are reasonably certain they clearly witnessed something, and there isn't anybody else possibly more qualified available; or when someone takes charge and tells them what to do.