Self-imposed mental disadvantages and training

[johndallman]

Social Engineering, p12, has rules for training people in desirable disadvantages, at the usual rate of 200 hours per (negative) point.

The only occasion where I've been in a game where this game up, it didn't seem workable. This was a TL11 Royal Navy in Space campaign, where all the PCs started by going through officer training at the service academy. The course was designed to add Code of Honor (Naval Officer) and Sense of Duty (relevant Navy), like most such courses. That’s [-20], which is 100 weeks of normal training.

That seemed like an awful lot, and was clearly not viable in a course that only lasts a year. British service academies are not universities, and only teach officer and service skills, but there’s a fair amount of that to get through.

The GM decided to waive the training time for disadvantages, and allowed us to take (and spend) the disadvantage points over the year. This seems reasonable for self-imposed mental disadvantages, as per B121, where (it seems to me) what’s really required is the commitment over time, altering your thinking.

Spending the points had to be done in a plausible way. This wasn’t strictly defined, but advantages the could be discovered or developed were much preferable to points in skills.