The fallacy of the balanced character

[whswhs]

@RogerBW

GURPS’ Sex Appeal skill is one that’s had to be carefully defined; in 3e “the ability to impress the opposite sex” and “if you are not willing to ‘vamp’ someone to get what you want, you won’t have this talent or want it”, and that latter phrase is still in 4e. Now, thanks I believe in part to @whswhs, it’s regarded as one of the cluster of interpersonal skills, broadly “get someone more favourably disposed towards you by hinting at sexual availability” as distinct from say “by threatening them” [Intimidation] or “by baffling them” [Fast Talk]. There’s no suggestion that actually hopping into bed is a part of this.

Well, that was in the Published Rules. I just put it in BOLD TYPE and pointed at it. And discussed the implications: You can use Fast Talk to get someone into bed (the classic guy with a line), or Streetwise (bad boy or girl hotness), or Diplomacy (a reasoned discussion of mutual advantage), or you can use Sex Appeal to get someone to betray their country (the honey trap).

[Agemegos]

@DrBob

Yes indeed. I loathe players who treat social skills as mind control. The most distasteful version of the mind control is when a player uses Seduction to mind control every woman NPC he meets into sleeping with him. (And yes, every iteration of this I’ve witnessed has been male player, male character, female NPC).

I have come across one woman who did it, with a female character, to male NPCs. She even supposed that vulvar mind control ought to work on a politically-important middle-sized god in one of my fantasy campaigns, and argued with me that I was portraying him wrongly when it didn’t. She wasn’t a very experienced RP gamer, and she chose not to play for long in my campaign.

But usually, yes. It is far, far more often as you say.

[Agemegos]

I think that if you are going to do a lot of one sort of scene, or if one sort of scene is going to take a lot of time to resolve (like combat in games with finicky combat rules) then maybe everyone needs a way to keep busy in that sort of scene. Whereas if another sort of scene is going to be uncommon or quick then maybe it’s okay to have some characters specialised in shining in it and others who don’t take significant part.

And then there are scenes like the chase sequence in JB007, in which the specialist driver gets to strut his or her stuff driving opponents to death, and everyone else gets to amuse themselves firing guns at helicopters and so on.

I think that somewhere around here it’s worth mentioning that sometimes some players have an agenda for their character that does not consist of being heroic or effective. They enjoy playing and want to play a vivid and consequential role in the story, but don’t particular want to lay down the smack on the oppo. I remember, for example, a friend of mine who often preferred that sort of thing once particularly specified that he want his character to be like John Hannah’s in The Mummy (the slightly comic brother of the female lead) — and not because of a point budget that wouldn’t let him be any better. He thought it would be fun to drive the plot a little a a semi-comic agent of chaos, and was not keen to look heroic at every turn and lay waste the foe.

[whswhs]

@Agemegos

He thought it would be fun to drive the plot a little a a semi-comic agent of chaos, and was not keen to look heroic at every turn and lay waste the foe.

In a friend’s Dragaeran campaign, I played Bertran, a Dzur hero who was otnay ootay ightbray. (In fact I named him for Bertie Wooster, after deciding that he was Tazendra’s nephew and realizing that Tazendra was well fitted to fill the role of Bertie’s terrifying aunts.) He was constantly being left behind by the other—much brighter—PCs, and saying things that made his confusion unmistakable. Playing him was a blast!