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06-29-2015, 04:45 PM | #11 | ||
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
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(For those not in the know, these are the special abilities of the Seraphim and the Mercurians, respectively.)
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Rob Kelk “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
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06-29-2015, 05:00 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Renton, WA
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
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Toss in Intelligence Analysis, Forensics, Criminology and Sociology for a solid Profiler! skill. :-) Using Hyper-Competency rules from PU: Wildcard Skills packs a nice cinematic punch. Also, Face-Man!, Spy!, Talker!, Negotiator! to name a few... Last edited by trechriron; 06-29-2015 at 05:01 PM. Reason: ooops |
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06-29-2015, 06:34 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
I recently created a character with the intuitive ability to see the connections between people. She could tell whether two people were friends, lovers, or hated each other. And she could also tell when someone had recently had a connection severed by a breakup or death.
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06-29-2015, 11:55 PM | #14 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
Whoops, mind crossed it with Enthrallment for some reason.
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06-30-2015, 02:22 PM | #15 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
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06-30-2015, 02:27 PM | #16 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
Primarily traits useful in social interactions, or enabling social interactions where in a less cinematic case one would not be applicable (a radical case being Rapier Wit for silly-effective in-combat insults, or Empathy to allow an Influence roll where one normally wouldn't be even allowed to be attempted).
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06-30-2015, 02:54 PM | #17 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
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I'm contemplating introducing a concept called Insight, that one character can have into another, usually after much time and effort, but with some abilities (such as the equivalent of GURPS' Empathy) it can be gained immediately. The problem is, I don't yet have a good idea of what Insight should do, nor if it should just be binary Insight vs not Insight, or be more fine-grained with Insight vs Major Insight, or be divided into Minor/Normal/Major. I think much is gained by drastically reducing certain types of penalties in a falvourful and themed way, in general, but I do admit that it's rather boring. It's usually not, in itself, particularly interesting at all. |
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07-01-2015, 06:47 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
Grasping any conversation where you can see both speakers, or see only one speaker at a penalty. Additional penalty for not hearing them, but Lip Reading compensates. This isn't a language ability, it's more a cinematic use of Body Language. May require an additional skill roll (e.g. Physiology) for really weird species, but it will tell you "The Zgorklyn ordered the human to kill the president tomorrow, but the human insisted on getting drone support, which he got."
In the vein of Cosmic, negating any penalties to a type of social roll coming from the target's personality, beliefs, oaths, situation, and so on. This works best for seduction or bribing, but selling fridges to eskimos (the mythical version, of course - eskimos have fridges like everybody) seems like the typical example. Stuff you do gets routinely credited to others, or to random events like the weather or animal attacks. This is really good for thieves, spies and assassins. Cool stuff others do around you, or even random happenstance, gets routinely credited to you. This is really good for conmen, but also some types of politicians and heroes. Always pass for the smartest person in the room. Your actions of a certain type do not trigger demands of exclusivity from partners. The obvious example is sexual, but this is a pretty cool thing for politicians, mercenaries, journalists, information brokers, spies, or weapons manufacturers that sells to all sides. You can look someone in the eye and play out a scene of what you're about to do to them. They then act in the knowledge of how things would end if this happened, but know you didn't actually do anything - useful for interrogation, threats, blackmail, etc.. The film Hero features the martial arts version. Note that the scene itself provides you no information: if you interrogated them, you only heard something like "lie, lie, lie.. truth, TRUUUUTH!" and they'll have to give you the info again. You can look someone in the eye and play out a scene to gauge how they would react. They are not aware of the events. A cosmic version of Social Chameleon where you never not fit in a social context, and can improvise your way through any conversation just by picking up on clues from others, and actually seem knowledgeable of the subject. |
07-05-2015, 10:35 PM | #19 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
One of mine, that might be relevant to Vicky's project:
Manipulating the mental disads of other characters so that they are made less likely or more likely to trigger. One use is generally friendly, the other hostile - I tend to see it as two different abilities, although some character concepts will want to have both. In a milder form, it's just extreme skill, whereas more stronger forms can be outright magical. Usage also takes some time, several seconds (in GURPS you might make the Sense-Based Limitation mandatory for non-supernatural versions of the ability) of interacting with the target, but can of course be sped up for supernatural versions (which can also get Limitations such as Touch Only, or Only On Co-Religionists). Only some of GURPS' mental disads have Self Control Rolls, which is what you'd be manipulating, so the effect might be somewhat strange compared to in a system where "Self Control Rolls" are very widely used on almost all disads of a mental nature. Also I think the default usage should be that the active user of such an ability should have some idea of what it is he's trying to affect, that is what family of mental disads it is he's exerting influence over to make it more - or less - likely to trigger. Not just "I goad Count Olfert to make all his mental disads, whichever one she has, more volatile" but rather something that's at least directional in nature, defined by a theme. One can then use something like Cosmic to allow for the scattershot "attack", or additional levels of the advantage with a Limitation saying that those levels only work of the mental disad is defined precisely, e.g. the character has to guess correctly that the target has a particular mental disad. There's no precedent in GURPS for what such an ability should cost, but my thinking is that +/-1 to SC rolls is too trivial an effect to be worth all the search-and-handling, so perhaps something like 5 points/level each for Calm Flaw and Goad Flaw, each level either subtracting or adding 2 points to the SC, with some cap for non-magical use of the ability, a -40% Limitation for "User must specify a particular disad upon use", -20% for Aspected (e.g. "Only Pride/Vanity/Bad Temper and related"), and +100% Cosmic for the "scattershot" version ("I'll Goad his disads. I don't now which ones he has, and I don't care, I'll just Goad him..."). Or perhaps even +/-3 to SC Rolls per level? |
07-05-2015, 11:46 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
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Re: Seeking Cinematic Social abilities *short of* mind control / reading / supernatur
One I've been using is here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=114600
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Tags |
cinematic, influence, social engineering |
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