On being Feared

[Culture20]

If you’ve ever read the Dragonlance novels, consider Raistlin during the Legends books: Social Regard (Feared; Black robed wizard), Negative Reputation: evil archmage, positive reputation: hero of the lance, tons of positive charisma, positive facial features, unusual appearances (skin, eyes, hair), odious personal habits (coughing up blood)... it balanced out to let him charm or terrorize as he chose.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by hal

Oddly enough, it does beg the question - do those who have social regard (feared) find a small class of people who are immune to their social regard simply because they don't feel fear (such as Unfazeable)?

Yes. Every social advantage (and disadvantage) has people to whom it just doesn't apply. For example a mob boss and a sinister wizard may find their respective social regards cancel out.

[whswhs]

I have not read the Dragonlance books at all. I have read one book by Terry Goodkind, which I found singularly dull and no longer remember. (I prefer to get my Objectivism from the original source.) So I can't comment based on examples from those sources, I'm afraid.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by whswhs

"You can't have your character become a different person."

This is where you must ask yourself, "What she done to be Feared?"

Is this a totally new city where her Regard is due solely to dress? So if she 'dressed down' she could avoid being Feared. Of has she already cemented her terrifying aspect in this cities mind (and thus need a disguise)?

Is her Social Regard due to class? Are all Necromancers Feared (like mob bosses and 1%ers)? Or did she earn this on her own?

Is the Feared attached to dress, accoutrements and culture; or is it ingrained with her face and name?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

This is where you must ask yourself, "What she done to be Feared?"

Is this a totally new city where her Regard is due solely to dress? So if she 'dressed down' she could avoid being Feared. Of has she already cemented her terrifying aspect in this cities mind (and thus need a disguise)?

Is her Social Regard due to class? Are all Necromancers Feared (like mob bosses and 1%ers)? Or did she earn this on her own?

Is the Feared attached to dress, accoutrements and culture; or is it ingrained with her face and name?

All of that is answered by the definition of the advantage! Social Regard is not a matter of what you personally have done; it's a matter of your belonging to a group that is feared, respected, or venerated as a group. So your personal face, name, or past deeds are not relevant. It's assumed that you are obvious as a member of the group to anyone who meets you; there's no frequency of recognition, as for Reputation. I'm prepared to suppose that you may be able to conceal your group membership (since, for example, a member of a priest caste could pretend to belong to some other caste), but I think it would require a Disguise roll or something like that.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by whswhs

All of that is answered by the definition of the advantage! Social Regard is not a matter of what you personally have done; it's a matter of your belonging to a group that is feared, respected, or venerated as a group. So your personal face, name, or past deeds are not relevant. It's assumed that you are obvious as a member of the group to anyone who meets you; there's no frequency of recognition, as for Reputation. I'm prepared to suppose that you may be able to conceal your group membership (since, for example, a member of a priest caste could pretend to belong to some other caste), but I think it would require a Disguise roll or something like that.

Yeah, the advantage seems pretty clear to me. Given examples are very obvious on sight such as age and I think Switchable is ok to purchase for it (or use as a penalty to Disguise rolls) but it should be hard to conceal either actually or through reluctance.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by whswhs

All of that is answered by the definition of the advantage! Social Regard is not a matter of what you personally have done; it's a matter of your belonging to a group that is feared, respected, or venerated as a group.

Then if she wants to stop being Feared, she needs to stop 'appearing' as a part of that group. Easy peasy.



Also, I endorse everyone else whose said, "Just make the flavor of the Reaction based on her being Feared".

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Yeah, the advantage seems pretty clear to me. Given examples are very obvious on sight such as age and I think Switchable is ok to purchase for it (or use as a penalty to Disguise rolls) but it should be hard to conceal either actually or through reluctance.

Actually based on my reading of it, that's a bit reversed.

To me:

To be an advantage, this must be obvious to anyone
who meets you. This is the opposite of Social Stigma (p. 155); membership in a given social group cannot result in both Social Regard and Social Stigma.
...
You are treated well because of what you are, not because of who you are. Think of it as “privilege by association.”

Means it's no harder to Disguise than Social Stigma (would you add extra penalties to a Victorian woman disguising herself as a man?) and should be almost as easy as removing your uniform.

Sure, you can still kinda tell a military person is military out of uniform, but it's not a hard thing to disguise if they wanted to.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Then if she wants to stop being Feared, she needs to stop 'appearing' as a part of that group. Easy peasy.

Sure. But what I'm looking at is whether she would have reason to want to stop being Feared, or to manage the fear more effectively in some way. That's going to determine whether the character is motivated to undertake that sort of change, I think. And I don't want to explain it to the player; I want her to be presented with whatever sort of reactions are natural, and see how she takes them. So the question is what the natural reactions are. . . .

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Means it's no harder to Disguise than Social Stigma (would you add extra penalties to a Victorian woman disguising herself as a man?) and should be almost as easy as removing your uniform.

Sure, you can still kinda tell a military person is military out of uniform, but it's not a hard thing to disguise if they wanted to.

There's a passage in The Peshawar Lancers where the Sikh sergeant is part of a covert ops party, in which he is disguised as—a Sikh soldier, a role, the author observed, that he can play to perfection.

In some cases an Acting roll might also be needed. See for example Huckleberry Finn pretending to be a girl, and getting trapped when a woman tosses a spool of thread into his lap, because he claps his legs together to catch it, rather than spreading them apart. . . .