[Social Engineering] Hinting, Elicitation, and Fortune Telling

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The Tonsor's Son by Michael John Grist.

Nice. Beats my intended reference to the Haircut spell.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

That's a good point. If the skill is going to show up as more than background flavor, you have to answer the gamist question "why is it worth my points?"

From a purely gamist perspective? Fortune-Telling is a colorful substitute for Fast-Talk, Interrogation and Psychology that requires a special setup in order to be useful. Its' not worth the points.

Fortune-Telling, IQ/A +3 [12]

vs

Fast-Talk, IQ/A +0 [2]
Interrogation, IQ/A +0 [2]
Psychology, IQ/H +0 [4]

... results in Fortune-Telling coming out as being more expensive and less useful than the alternatives. You take it because its' an appropriate background skill or because you aren't permitted to take the useful skills.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

From a purely gamist perspective? Fortune-Telling is a colorful substitute for Fast-Talk, Interrogation and Psychology that requires a special setup in order to be useful.

It is not a substitute for Interrogation. Interrogation assumes a coercive situation in which the person being questioned is not free simply to walk out, but is in some measure a prisoner. That's precisely why there have been so many requests over the past few years for a skill suited to questioning people socially, without duress—which is what Elicitation is meant to provide, in part.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I would hesitate to do that, because extracting information from people in this way might be a primary task of Fortune-Telling, the way hitting people with your fists is a primary task of Karate (and therefore there is no karate technique of "Fist Blow"). After all, the information in Fortune-Telling has to come from somewhere.

Bill Stoddard

I apologise, but I have to disagree with the way you interpret that.

The intent of not allowing Fist Blow for Karate is to avoid people buying the majority benefit of the Skill for the price of a Technique. This already runs into problems because you can buy up, and even buy above Skill+0, various formally-not-primary things, like Kicking. And that results in people being able to kick better than they are able to punch.

But with Fortune-Telling, it's even worse: Elicitation is a somewhat-obscure technique for most influence skills which essentially improves a skill's primary application (replacing a Reaction Roll) in a very narrow scope. But this results in a case that e.g. Diplomacy or Fast-Talk (rather versatile skills that you should never go without) being easily improved to the point of being better than the extremely narrow Fortune-Telling.

BTW, there's actually very little reason to ever use an Elicitation penalty with an absolute value other than one's level of Elicitation. E.g. at 5 levels you simply roll your Influence vs. Will-5.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It's worthwhile because it gives you an built-in approach. The mark comes to you and basically asks to be conned.

That's not how I've seen fortune-tellers work outside TV shows. The basic routine is for a (typically gypsy-looking) person to walk up to a stranger and say (rough translation), 'Young man/girl, put some gold on your hand, and I will say what it foretells'. Of course, most resist such a blatant approach, but it's kind of the same shotgun approach of panhandling; once the exchange starts, well, usually it's some sort of success.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It is not a substitute for Interrogation. Interrogation assumes a coercive situation in which the person being questioned is not free simply to walk out, but is in some measure a prisoner. That's precisely why there have been so many requests over the past few years for a skill suited to questioning people socially, without duress—which is what Elicitation is meant to provide, in part.

Erm.

GURPS Basic, pg 196:

or Interrogation or Psychology (by asking the subject leading questions under the pretense of telling his fortune).

Modifiers: +1 for Sensitive or +3 for Empathy (p. 51); any Charisma bonus; -3 if using Fortune-Telling in place of Fast-Talk, Interrogation, or Psychology.

Social Engineering doesn't appear to change that. Am I missing something in SE?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But with Fortune-Telling, it's even worse: Elicitation is a somewhat-obscure technique for most influence skills which essentially improves a skill's primary application (replacing a Reaction Roll) in a very narrow scope. But this results in a case that e.g. Diplomacy or Fast-Talk (rather versatile skills that you should never go without) being easily improved to the point of being better than the extremely narrow Fortune-Telling.

People pay you to read their fortunes and they aren't going to suspicious of your motives for talking to them in the first place. You can't use Fast-Talk or even Diplomacy if they won't talk to you at all.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That's not how I've seen fortune-tellers work outside TV shows. The basic routine is for a (typically gypsy-looking) person to walk up to a stranger and say (rough translation), 'Young man/girl, put some gold on your hand, and I will say what it foretells'. Of course, most resist such a blatant approach, but it's kind of the same shotgun approach of panhandling; once the exchange starts, well, usually it's some sort of success.

That's not the way it works here. They advertise and people pay them for readings, amateurs set up at parties, and there will be usually be a tent or two at a fair (oh, and phone pyschics too!). What you describe sounds like using Fortune-Telling as a complimentary skill for Panhandling.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That's not how I've seen fortune-tellers work outside TV shows. The basic routine is for a (typically gypsy-looking) person to walk up to a stranger and say (rough translation), 'Young man/girl, put some gold on your hand, and I will say what it foretells'. Of course, most resist such a blatant approach, but it's kind of the same shotgun approach of panhandling; once the exchange starts, well, usually it's some sort of success.

In real life, over here, they have stores or shops that you walk into -- possibly by appointment -- where you pay them and they talk with you for a bit. Or you call them over the phone (and their service places the charges on your phone bill directly). Someone walking up to you and doing that is likely to get funny looks and potentially have harassment and/or solicitation charges placed against them.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

In real life, over here, they have stores or shops that you walk into -- possibly by appointment -- where you pay them and they talk with you for a bit. Or you call them over the phone (and their service places the charges on your phone bill directly). Someone walking up to you and doing that is likely to get funny looks and potentially have harassment and/or solicitation charges placed against them.

We have those too, but they're precisely the ones who get into TV shows, have assistants with Propaganda making advertisements for them in newspapers/TV/etc., etc. The trickiest ones tend to get spotlight and 'win' in the Battle of ESPers on TV (though I suppose there's also a lot of bribing involved).

Kinda the level of job difference comparable to those between a computer operator (Computer Operation) and a high-class computer administrator (COps, CProg, ES(Computer Security) etc.).

[Ulzgoroth]

So for a fortuneteller who attempts to recruit clients on the street, I'd suggest fortunetelling for any actual session of fortunetelling that goes down (assuming they do anything beyond looking at a hand and throwing some fortune-cookie lines out) plus a skill set for identifying and approaching marks.

Or depending on how simple the exercise and the representation you want is, it could just be a curious style of panhandling.