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Old 09-17-2018, 01:47 AM   #11
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Default Re: On being Feared

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So you don't think the effect is as severely limiting as if they were slaves, wives in forced marriages, or that sort of thing? That may well be valid. Could you discuss how you might roleplay the employee's attitude, though?
Tough question, its more a I'll know it when I see it kind of thing.
However using the Loyalty Results examples from GURPS Social Engineering, p. 76 a Neutral reaction means they do minimal work to keep complaints to a minimum. If the bonus from Social Regard bumped that to Good change "The NPC likes the PCs and the position" to The NPC fears the PC and will be loyal and work hard.

Your not penalizing the bonus so much as changing the flavor of it.
For Venerated it to polite over protectiveness.
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Old 09-17-2018, 01:49 AM   #12
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And the hirelings will be intimidated. Their interaction will always be flavoured with fear until they acquire the same Social Regard. But that doesn't mean disloyal or even coerced. It just means "afraid of their boss".
Don’t you think it depends on the result from the influence roll? Maybe they have a bad reaction but agree to work with you to damage you. And if it was very good, maybe they are so afraid they feel cohersed even if they are not. These are very fun situations given the disadvantage.
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Old 09-17-2018, 05:01 AM   #13
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Default Re: On being Feared

Note that fearing your Lord and Master is not incompatible with absolute loyalty and devotion. 'God-fearing' is suposedly an attribute of devout Christians, after all.
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Old 09-17-2018, 07:25 AM   #14
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I think it's silly not to allow it to be switchable. Or even to acknowledge that switchable is an innate aspect of the advantage. Consider a noble- there is no reason that they cannot "dress down" in an unfamiliar area and pass as a commoner. Likewise, a priest who is not wearing vestments in an unfamiliar area loses his Social Regard, unless he is identified as a priest.

Also:

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Note that fearing your Lord and Master is not incompatible with absolute loyalty and devotion. 'God-fearing' is suposedly an attribute of devout Christians, after all.
What he said.
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Old 09-17-2018, 09:04 AM   #15
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Why do you ask in the first place? Is she looking forward to being “less fearful”? Or do you want to create a situation “tuned” to her advantage?

Supposing your player has been playing continuously these 4 years, with the same PC, I guess she had room to make “adjustments”... And after 4 years the advantage is still there; so there should be a reason.
This seems like kind of a strange argument. On one hand, I could read it as, "The character was created with the advantage; she should be played with the advantage, including its inconvenient features, and not change it." And that rather seems to say, "You can't have your character become a different person." On the other hand, it could be, "The character has been played with this advantage up to now; she can't start being different now." But it seems to me that trying to become different has to start at some particular time, and if you don't allow the character to take that first step then you are not allowing them to take the journey at all, which reduces again to "You can't have your character become a different person."

And I see that as a limitation on roleplaying. It allows the character to be a type, but not a person.

My take is rather that the character should be able to change, but that the process of change (a) shouldn't be instant or costless and (b) should give rise to interesting roleplaying as the character runs into complications arising from her change of course.

At this point, the player has decided (a) that the character wants to stop being indifferent to respectability and go for a higher-Status lifestyle and (b) that she wants to have people serving her. She hasn't yet dealt with the actual process of recruiting hirelings, or thought about the implications of making them afraid. What I'm trying to do is think through those implications ahead of time, so that when she does take that step, I can present her with the right set of reactions and problems. The "loyalty of slaves" rules are one possible way to approach this, but not the only one. But one way or another, if she is trying either not to make people afraid, or to gain benefits from people that (she will learn) are hard to reconcile with making them afraid, she shouldn't be able to just stop; she should have to make an effort. If this were a trait with a self-control roll, it would involve attempting such rolls and eventually buying the trait off, from (9) to (12) to (15) to quirk-level to gone. Since it's a social trait that reflects other people's reactions, it should involve taking actions that influence those reactions. And since Nergul is smart (IQ 14) but has very few social skills, that's likely to involve rolling against various things at default for a while. In fact, the player has discussed this with me a little, and concluded that her goal is for Nergul to gain a point of Savoir-Faire (High Society)—but if she does, how the skill and the advantage interact will be something I need to have worked out.

acrosome mentions have the character "dress down" as a way of foregoing the advantage. But being able to hide your belonging to a certain category of person isn't always that simple. Consider, for example, the classic bodyguard who puts on a nice suit and looks like a bodyguard wearing a nice suit that hides neither his muscles nor his shoulder holster. It might be possible for Nergul to hide her being a necromancer, but that could take, say, a Disguise roll—and again we have "you have to roleplay it and make some skill rolls." Or maybe Nergul can do the equivalent of the king showing up in a military uniform and being addressed as "general so-and-so" to short circuit some of the protocol; that might be a way to use Savoir-Faire.
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Old 09-17-2018, 10:09 AM   #16
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Don’t you think it depends on the result from the influence roll? Maybe they have a bad reaction but agree to work with you to damage you. And if it was very good, maybe they are so afraid they feel cohersed even if they are not. These are very fun situations given the disadvantage.
Social Regard (Feared) is an advantage,not a disadvantage. And it's not actually an influence roll. It's still a reaction roll unless the Feared person actually used Intimidate with the bonus from Feared. But yes, it depends on the reaction roll. The question was whether hirelings would be disloyal because they rolled high on their reaction. And the answer is "no they wouldn't provided you didn't do things to earn disloyalty like randomly mistreating hirelings." One can love and fear at the same time.
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Old 09-17-2018, 10:31 AM   #17
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(...)
My take is rather that the character should be able to change, but that the process of change (a) shouldn't be instant or costless and (b) should give rise to interesting roleplaying as the character runs into complications arising from her change of course. (...)
That would be my take too.

When I think of this necromancer, I remind of Jack Skelington from Nightmare before Christmas. It is a similar situation. One day Jack decided he wanted to take on the roll of a more colorful beign (Santa Claus)...

He was good, charismatic and cool; but from the human point of view, he also was fearful or scary. And that conception resulted from many years of folklore rooted on “culture”. So, making the advantage switchable sounds like switching on and off a part of folklore. The citizens of Halloween Town (his home) loved Jack because in Halloween Town the monsters had a different culture.

For starters, maybe in your setting there is a day of the year when it is safe talking to necromancers, such as Halloween or Day of the Dead (when some people are permissive with dread and death and/or spirituality).

Another example would be Set from the Egyptian pantheon. He was considered good until the lower and high Egypts became one. But that was the result of the transformation of society. We also have Hades, God of the Underworld. Some see him as a “bad guy” after the rendition the Christian Underworld, or Disney’s Hercules, or Saint Seiya’s saga of Hades. But originally, you could say the opposite, he was a “God of abundance”, because the gifts of nature (food, good, etc.) come from the soil, the ceiling of the Underworld.

The thing is that the idea of “being fearful”, here, changed because people/culture changed. So the advantage itself should not be switchable because it would be like making an aspect of culture switchable (that is what I think towards “switchable”).

So, maybe her transition should be similar to a political campaign. First you have people loyal to you or your cause (maybe people that met you before being a necromancer or fellow necromancers or enthusiasts that come to you with more disposition) and then you need to (even learn to) convince others to accept you... because you show you are good, reliable and give them something in return. Which is a process... And then, one day you become an example that stands enough to change the conception of necromancers until someone says “not all necromancers are fearful”. And that would “buy off” the effect of the advantage.

On the other hand, she could acquire the advantage social chameleon. Would not that be appropriate? And maybe have a modifier to activate it with the savior roll.

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Old 09-17-2018, 10:41 AM   #18
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That would be my take too.

When I think of this necromancer, I remind of Jack Skelington from Nightmare before Christmas. It is a similar situation. One day Jack decided he wanted to take on the roll of a more colorful beign (Santa Claus)...

He was good, charismatic and cool; but from the human point of view, he also was fearful or scary. And that conception resulted from many years of folklore rooted on “culture”. So, making the advantage switchable sounds like switching on and off a part of folklore. The citizens of Halloween Town (his home) loved Jack because in Halloween Town the monsters had a different culture.

For starters, maybe in your setting there is a day of the year when it is safe talking to necromancers, such as Halloween or Day of the Dead (when some people are permissive with dread and death and/or spirituality).

Another example would be Set from the Egyptian pantheon. He was considered good until the lower and high Egypts became one. But that was the result of the transformation of society. We also have Hades, God of the Underworld. Some see him as a “bad guy” after the rendition the Christian Underworld, or Disney’s Hercules, or Saint Seiya’s saga of Hades. But originally, you could say the opposite, he was a “God of abundance”, because the gifts of nature (food, good, etc.) come from the soil, the ceiling of the Underworld.

The thing is that the idea of “being fearful”, here, changed because people/culture changed. So the advantage itself should not be switchable because it would be like making an aspect of culture switchable (that is what I think towards “switchable”).
.
Except of course by successfully disguising what you are. The necromancer who travels to a town where they are unknown and refrains from necromancer couture or displays of that power can ditch their regard at least for a time.
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Old 09-17-2018, 11:02 AM   #19
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Default Re: On being Feared

Have you by chance, read the book series by Terry Goodkind with THE SWORD OF TRUTH? WIZARD'S FIRST RULE, etc?

In it, they have the confessors who probably would get the social regard(Feared) aspect.

In the same book series? Dahilia of the Mord-Sith (or more specifically, the Mord-Sith qualify as a group) qualifies for "Social Regard (Feared) on a personal level. No social laws protect her other than the fact that you can't simply murder her out of hand (where she comes from that is). That the Mord-Sith is a group that is effectively an elite group who train under standards few ordinary people can, just heightens the fearful aspects of their reputation as a group.

So, why not share with us, what makes your player's character "feared" by being a member of an identifiable group? What can members of her group do that causes fear? Turning a man into a guppy (fish) is a fearful power. Changing his voice a little is not. Being able to force a compact upon someone like a geas might be feared, but making them do an involuntary dance for an hour that is embarrassing will not. Being able to point to one person a year saying "You're now the involuntary sacrifice this year to the gods" is scary (and no one wants to risk being rude or what have you to ensure that they or their loved one's won't be singled out for that yearly honor).

The fact that the social regard requires a society to interact with, implies there may be some sort of social compact involved that limits what society can do to the class, or what the class can do to society. Society implies either of laws or customs that are binding on both classes - the socially regarded, and those who aren't socially regarded.

My analysis of the rules as written on page 87 and elsewhere, to me, implies that there is a problem with the wording. To wit: How can you have an automatic successful intimidation effect AND have both possibilities of "bad reaction" and "good reaction" be possible if a bad reaction can only occur on a failed intimidation result?

Game mechanics wise? I think that what I would do in that situation is this: For as long as the player character can be identified as belonging to a socially feared group, they can't make normal reaction rolls, but instead, must utilize the results of intimidation in lieu of reaction rolls. Because it is given in terms of a +3 reaction bonus, what I'd do is this: Rolling reactions with a +3 bonus, treat all good plus results as a successful use of Intimidation, and all other results as failed intimidation roll. For non-combat situations, that results in people fleeing or getting away from the individual in question. For potential combat situations, it can through fear, cause the combat that people in fact, might wish to avoid.

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)?
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Old 09-17-2018, 11:11 AM   #20
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Except of course by successfully disguising what you are. The necromancer who travels to a town where they are unknown and refrains from necromancer couture or displays of that power can ditch their regard at least for a time.
I totally agree. I just wonder if Nergul wants to be like Emperor Palpatine or The Positronic Man.
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