BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
APP is surely in the eye of the beholder!
And very susceptible to increases in medical technology.
And very susceptible to increases in medical technology.
Rules Only: Adding new characteristics.
- Thread starter mike wightman
- Start date
My personal desire: if not adding a stat for Charisma, some standard rules addressing scale factor to Social Standing. My scenarios involve the clash of cultures like primitive worlds suddenly opened up to advanced societies or high tech "gods" crashlanding. Societies that don't care about your status like an Alien Empire or rival empire on low tech balkanized worlds which are not in any contact with anything beyond their solar system or even their own planet...
Charisma would fit, but I dislike the word
Hero Games, including Traveller Hero, uses Presence -- the ability to project a sense of ease, poise, or self-assurance, especially the quality or manner of a person's bearing before an audience.
But if that doesn't suit your tastes, Hero Games and Traveller Hero also use Comeliness -- the quality of being attractive or pleasing in appearance.
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Hmmm to me things like Leader or Deception or Carousing or Persuade or Liaison covers bearing in differing situations.
But this brings up a thought- perhaps we need emoSkills. These would be behavioral characteristics that the character tends towards, without necessarily being a useful persuader skill.
Petulant-2. Rage-1. Wheedling-0. Agreeable-3. Passionate-2. Cynical-4.
I’d say characters start at 18 with 4 emoSkills, then add 1 per term.
The emoSkills would be add-on DMs to a task, but possibly negative rather then positive.
Rage gives strength/damage bonus to melee/brawling but hurts persuasion tasks. Wheedling helps broker but is bad for leader rolls.
Then interaction fun as say agreeable and cynical emotions get on each other’s nerves, affecting reaction. Passionate and Rage may complement or cause fights depending on whether they are opposing.
I just came up with this, so it’s not even half-baked. Just a thought to play with.
BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
Just think of the stats of a two year old...Petulant=2, Rage=3, Wheedling=3, Agreeable=3, Passionate=1,Cynical=0?
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Psionics
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
In an expansion of his "Idiot NPCs" article from Cepheus Journal #012 (the expanded article will be appearing in the forthcoming issue of Freelance Traveller), Neil Lucock suggests Presence (Pre). The distinction between SOC, CHA, and PRE can be summarized as follows:
SOC: This defines where and how you fit into the hierarchy. It says nothing about how you are perceived as a person. Within the US social system (such as it is), Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump all have high SOC.
CHA: This is a 'measure' of how others perceive you. If there was a single question that best expressed the role of CHA, it might be along the lines of "When people meet you, do they 'automatically' like you?" The more 'yes' your answer, the higher your CHA. Barak Obama and John F. Kennedy both had high CHA; Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both have low CHA. Prince Harry's CHA is higher than his father's. Elon Musk has moderate CHA, higher than Bill Gates or Donald Trump, lower than Joe Biden, and much lower than Barak Obama or John F. Kennedy.
PRE: This is an indirect measure of how you perceive and present yourself. The single question would be along the lines of "When people meet you, do they tend to respect you?". A person with low CHA can nevertheless have high PRE; Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump are both examples of this; Dan Quayle and Kamala Harris both have low PRE.
SOC: This defines where and how you fit into the hierarchy. It says nothing about how you are perceived as a person. Within the US social system (such as it is), Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump all have high SOC.
CHA: This is a 'measure' of how others perceive you. If there was a single question that best expressed the role of CHA, it might be along the lines of "When people meet you, do they 'automatically' like you?" The more 'yes' your answer, the higher your CHA. Barak Obama and John F. Kennedy both had high CHA; Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both have low CHA. Prince Harry's CHA is higher than his father's. Elon Musk has moderate CHA, higher than Bill Gates or Donald Trump, lower than Joe Biden, and much lower than Barak Obama or John F. Kennedy.
PRE: This is an indirect measure of how you perceive and present yourself. The single question would be along the lines of "When people meet you, do they tend to respect you?". A person with low CHA can nevertheless have high PRE; Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump are both examples of this; Dan Quayle and Kamala Harris both have low PRE.
Sometimes it takes a clarifying term to make these things, er, clearer (?). Such as Physical Agility or Manual Dexterity. But I understand your preferenceI want to add a perception characteristic because rolling to spot something occurs in just about every session of every rpg I have ever played, and in some games there is a perception skill, in others it is a talent, while in some it is a characteristic.
To my mind if perception is a critical ability that is necessary then it should be a characteristic in its own right.
Int - reasoning, Perception - noticing things, Determination - another name for willpower.
And again, in a lot of games something like willpower or determination keeps coming up on a session by session basis.
So I am going with
physical Strength Agility Endurance mental Intelligence Perception Determination Education Charisma Social Status
The reason for agility rather than dexterity is I prefer the word agility
I was always taken with the Coolness Under Fire skill in 2300AD, but wondered from observations and experience why some people were better at this than others. It occurred to me that breaking up Intelligence (raw cognitive reasoning associated with problem solving capacity) and Wits (quickness of thinking and the ability to come up with solutions rapidly) could be a better way of breaking up those two aspects of sapiency. Having Wits also went some way to giving a CUF capacity to help regulate initiative in personal combat scenes.
Surviving mental stress is the other thing I like to model. Grumpy old men get that way for a reason, as with broken young people coming away from dangerous and stressful roles. I used the SAN stat in T5 for this. So between WITS and SAN and that seemed to round things out for our game.
Krikkitone
SOC-12
Your examples for “CHA” seems more like “Reputation”…ie how loved/hated someone is regardless of their place in the hierarchy (although people higher in the hierarchy will have stronger responses both for and against them reputationally).
And it seems that Reputation would be more important than Cha anyways. Cha(as you describe it) is only the first impression reputation is everything they know about you before and after.
Maybe Cha is the characteristic…but there is a reputation modifier to all tasks using it (modifier changes based on who you deal with…based on what they know about you)
Your Presence examples also have the problem of dealing with leaders v vice-leaders…but Presence seems like a good modifier for some Soc type tasks (how well you use your Soc to get what you want).
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
REP, if it existed as a characteristic, would actually be a secondary characteristic, a 'follow-on' for both CHA and PRE (and possibly SOC, but less so). The thing about REP, though, is that (much more so than CHA or PRE) it is context-dependent - using myself as an example, I have at best moderate CHA or PRE, but I've established myself in my office as having good solid knowlege of our use of computing, and of seeing solutions to problems while the problems are still in the 'is the canary acting funny?' stage (vs. 'the canary has keeled over' stage, which is often abbreviated to 'crisis'). That gives me a high REP on technical matters; my REP from discussion of sportsball matters is ... lower.
In contexts where a character doesn't already have REP established, SOC, CHA and/or PRE would more-or-less establish the baseline that REP develops from.
Ultimately, where Traveller has used SOC as a modifier for interpersonal tasks, it's often probably more appropriate to use REP, modified by PRE or CHA (or both), but that'd be 'house rules'.
My examples used the names of prominent people simply because those are people that would be recognized by the majority of readers here, and - whether they agreed with my evaluations or not - they'd at least be able to see 'where I was coming from'.
I believe Determination was in MegaTraveller as END + EDU or maybe EDU + INT. I don't remember.
Perception could be called
Acumen: keenness and depth of perception, discernment, or discrimination especially in practical matters.
Also, PSI is an additional characteristic.
Those could all be used for different circumstances, so there’s likely need to be a clear understanding of what each of those characteristics would achieve given the character couldn’t just rely on their reputation
I use the Silhouette stats now almost religiously. The scores match perfectly to Traveller so I can move back and forth between the rulesets without too much work.
AGILITY
APPEARANCE
BUILD (Str)
CREATIVITY (INT)
FITNESS (END)
INFLUENCE
KNOWLEDGE (EDU)
PERCEPTION
SOCIAL
WILL
AGILITY
APPEARANCE
BUILD (Str)
CREATIVITY (INT)
FITNESS (END)
INFLUENCE
KNOWLEDGE (EDU)
PERCEPTION
SOCIAL
WILL
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
That's a few times Influence has been included, and I think I prefer it over the word Charisma.
physical - Str, Dex, End
mental - Int, Per, Det
social - Edu, Inf, Soc
physical - Str, Dex, End
mental - Int, Per, Det
social - Edu, Inf, Soc
I use SOC as emotional intelligence and base stat for any interaction skill- which could be charisma types like Leader or Carousing or Persuasion but also not nice like Intimidation or Interrogation.
IMTU I use Persuasion as a catch all for things like Recruiting or Bribery, and Deception for Forgery but with broader use (core skill for Actors, Diplomats, Spies, Politicians, etc).
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
How does "determination" work with respect to a task and intelligence and education? That is, if you have a character with low intelligence / education and some task requiring both while having lots of determination, does that character increase the chances of failure, even repeated failure trying to do that task?
That would be the reverse of someone who was intelligent and well educated with determination trying to do the same task. They would learn from mistakes and eventually, likely, get it right.
On the other hand, you have some hammer mechanic that's low brow and uneducated, but highly determined who thinks the solution is to bash it some more with a bigger hammer...
How would you work that out in terms of tasks and the game?
That would be the reverse of someone who was intelligent and well educated with determination trying to do the same task. They would learn from mistakes and eventually, likely, get it right.
On the other hand, you have some hammer mechanic that's low brow and uneducated, but highly determined who thinks the solution is to bash it some more with a bigger hammer...
How would you work that out in terms of tasks and the game?
You could use the roll for the physical regimen in CT, that’s a roll for the workout for four years get +1 in all physical characteristics temporarily task.
Otherwise you could use the relevant skill level as number of saving rolls you can make to recover from a situation. That isn’t measuring pure stubbornness, but more knowledge about how to fix things and a surety that there is a way back from previous experiences.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I don't use tasks. I use situation saving throws which involve positive DMs based on
characteristic
skill
career experience
tools/equipment
while negative DMs are based on
environment
target action/movement
characteristic
skill
career experience
tools/equipment
while negative DMs are based on
environment
target action/movement
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
So a situation resolution may involve Int (reasoning), Edu (knowledge) or Det (stubbornness/willpower). The player describes their character's actions and I or the player decide if a characteristic is appropriate and high enough to rate a DM.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Idiots can be just as determined as geniuses...
It isn't so much about stubbornness as it is about believing you can accomplish some task.
