Alternate Interaction Skills

[Comic]

I'd like to suggest some alternate 3 pt. PRE-based Interaction Skills, inspired by my Gen-Z social media maven, Professor Pedantic.

 

Please give them your consideration, and share your thoughts:

 

1. While the good Professor has Bureaucratics and Oratory, he's also online, and his Presence comes across in his Tweets and blog posts. Web Presence isn't just an expression. There's a real skill to it, and a characteristic quality to those who succeed. Of course, it only applies to the social media audience. But with it, a good maven can have the same effect as Oratory, Acting, Persuasion, Charm, or Streetwise in that world.

 

2. Not Professor Pedantic's bag, and representative of another generation, Graffiti Artist is a 3 pt. skill highly complementary to Streetwise, and from the same world. How to read tags and throw ups, how to get and give respect through street art, a bit like urban Tracking, this too is a skill of Presence, primarily, the High Society of the spray paint set.

 

3. Courtesy, an Old World skill not just of High Society, and prized even by the lowly -- as for those who have nothing but their dignity, their dignity is worth all the more. This PRE-based skill can bring a confrontation down from a conflict to a negotiation, and those with it can generally analyze better whether -- and perhaps why -- aggression cannot be avoided by reading their targets.

 

4. Propaganda, while often regarded as sleazy and lowbrow, has its practitioners, its knowledge, and its effectiveness whether spoken, in illustration or written. Sneaking propaganda into ordinary communications undetected as such is part of the skill. It's a bit like Trading, except it is the trading in fallacy and isms.

 

5. Journalism. Noble, courageous, just and true, the real journalist embraces ideals of finding information some want hidden, and telling it in the public interest, with clarity and balance. This PRE-based skill is a bit like Streetwise, Trading, Social Media, and the opposite of opportunistic Propaganda.

[bubba smith]

not bad at all

[Christopher]

1. Isn't a tweet or blog post just a written down Oratory check? I see online as simply expanding the ways you can make social checks.

You can make a persuasion check via a telephone line, via voicechat. So why not via a E-Mail, videorecodring or Blog? Or just good old radio/tv?

Maybe a bit of penalty, since you cannot actively react to the audience in many cases.

 

2. I would propably consider this a part of streetwise. What is right is highly localized on the street, as opposed to the more global/interconnected high soceity.

 

4. Propaganda sounds like a prime example of Oratory on a non-verbal medium.

 

 

The biggest question is actually: Do theses skills have enough seperation to existing skills AND enough effect in the specific campaign to warant a seperate 3 point cost.

Hard to say without knowing the role of Social Interaction checks in your world/under the specific GM.

[Comic]

1. Isn't a tweet or blog post just a written down Oratory check? I see online as simply expanding the ways you can make social checks.

You can make a persuasion check via a telephone line, via voicechat. So why not via a E-Mail, videorecodring or Blog? Or just good old radio/tv?

Maybe a bit of penalty, since you cannot actively react to the audience in many cases.

 

2. I would propably consider this a part of streetwise. What is right is highly localized on the street, as opposed to the more global/interconnected high soceity.

 

4. Propaganda sounds like a prime example of Oratory on a non-verbal medium.

 

 

The biggest question is actually: Do theses skills have enough seperation to existing skills AND enough effect in the specific campaign to warant a seperate 3 point cost.

Hard to say without knowing the role of Social Interaction checks in your world/under the specific GM.

 

You raise important questions of intergenerational culture. To a degree, I agree.

 

O tempora; O mores. What had been Oratory set down for others to read -- or in the case of Youtube or Vines to see and hear -- may have been simply Oratory before now. Certainly, those skilled at the one have a decided advantage in the other. But is this not just evidence of high PRE, applicable Interaction Skill Levels and Striking Appearance talent?

 

Look at how this has played out in elections: candidates on all sides with equal Oratory have decidedly unequal result when one side has superior Social Media skills. The question for me isn't, "is there such a thing as a social media skill?" It's "is social media skill based on PRE?" It's not Computer Programming, clearly: we all know some with the one skill but not the other; further, we know of some with a clear upper hand in such skills connected to a characteristic who are absolutely lacking in the other.

 

The same question applies to Graffiti, which comes with its own special knowledge and is a worldwide phenomenon. While rap might be a specialized form of Oratory, and Gangsta Rap of Streetwise, following all the rules of that skill, it's clear that Graffiti is a very different thing. The question isn't "is there such a thing as a graffiti skill?"; clearly there is. It's, "is Graffiti PRE-based?"

 

Forms of the same question apply to Advertising as distinct from Acting or Trading; anyone familiar with Mad Men's Charmers and Traders might see how such a separate skill might be popular with supervillain organizations who care nothing for seduction nor for negotiating prices. Anyone familiar with the news likely sees reports about this skill used to recruit for real life terrorist groups. If you know WKRP in Cincinnati, you know Advertisers do not always have Charm. (Though Mad Men is more accurate in depicting the skills of Advertising, WKRP had a more accurate picture of the general practitioner of the art.) While Marketing might be an INT-based skill, and Merchandising likely is INT-based too, Advertising persuades a mass audience not individually targeted, and with means clearly outside the traditional definitions of Oratory.

 

I'm not suggesting the core Interaction Skills in RAW aren't adequate in general, and couldn't be used in combinations to model similar skill outcomes; I'm suggesting that depending on the granularity you're after in character definition, expanding Interaction Skills to list such ideas is clean, clear, and when well-described, balanced.

 

The idea of a Courtesy skill has for me the entertainment value of watching players who lack it in real life roleplay what they imagine it might be in their characters. That would be a fascinating social experiment.

 

Propaganda is a field a lot of people think they know, but perhaps a GM who has Googled (a social media skill, or an intelligence skill?) "Techniques of Propaganda" will find there's a lot more to it than just shouty guys flaming away, whether on stage, in print or online. Advertising's covertly psychotic cousin propaganda has different goals and methods as a tool not of persuasion but manipulation and attack. I have in mind a flame-based supervillain with trollish regeneration with scads of points in Propaganda as being particularly troublesome in a long-running campaign, making real trouble for characters with social complications.

 

Similarly, in previous cultures there may have been Interaction skills that are either meaningless now, or fold rightly into existing skills, as they have lost their cultural weight and import. Scalds telling the epic of Beowulf in a past time might have had Storytelling as a separate skill -- a means of obtaining lodging and food, pay and influence while communicating.

 

C'mon. Admit it. You'd love so see some players try to roleplay Courtesy.. a lot more than you'd want to see them attempt Charm.

[Lucius]

I'd like to suggest some alternate 3 pt. PRE-based Interaction Skills, inspired by my Gen-Z social media maven, Professor Pedantic.

 

Please give them your consideration, and share your thoughts:

One serving of thoughts, and a side order of consideration, coming up.

 

 

1. While the good Professor has Bureaucratics and Oratory, he's also online, and his Presence comes across in his Tweets and blog posts. Web Presence isn't just an expression. There's a real skill to it, and a characteristic quality to those who succeed. Of course, it only applies to the social media audience. But with it, a good maven can have the same effect as Oratory, Acting, Persuasion, Charm, or Streetwise in that world.

My Trollop character has Conversation with a Limitation, "Online only" to represent being adept at "social engineering." Conversation is an information-extracting Skill. Admittedly, this is coming in from an angle to what you're talking about - exerting influence, not extracting information.

 

2. Not Professor Pedantic's bag, and representative of another generation, Graffiti Artist is a 3 pt. skill highly complementary to Streetwise, and from the same world. How to read tags and throw ups, how to get and give respect through street art, a bit like urban Tracking, this too is a skill of Presence, primarily, the High Society of the spray paint set.

Painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, illustration, and all other visual arts and crafts, are also used to communicate and express ideas. If you would base these on PRE, then Graffiti should be too. If you would base them on something else, DEX perhaps, then Graffiti is the same.

 

Banksy isn't practicing a fundamentally different kind of skill than Michaelangelo, he's just practicing in a radically different context.

 

 

3. Courtesy, an Old World skill not just of High Society, and prized even by the lowly -- as for those who have nothing but their dignity, their dignity is worth all the more. This PRE-based skill can bring a confrontation down from a conflict to a negotiation, and those with it can generally analyze better whether -- and perhaps why -- aggression cannot be avoided by reading their targets.

Bears thinking on, thank you.

 

 

4. Propaganda, while often regarded as sleazy and lowbrow, has its practitioners, its knowledge, and its effectiveness whether spoken, in illustration or written. Sneaking propaganda into ordinary communications undetected as such is part of the skill. It's a bit like Trading, except it is the trading in fallacy and isms.

Persuasion is the Skill to convince someone of something true. Persuasion is the Skill to convince someone of something false. A difference in the truth value of a proposition, or in your moral motivation for wanting to propagate it, doesn't mean you have to be using a different Skill.

 

 

5. Journalism. Noble, courageous, just and true, the real journalist embraces ideals of finding information some want hidden, and telling it in the public interest, with clarity and balance. This PRE-based skill is a bit like Streetwise, Trading, Social Media, and the opposite of opportunistic Propaganda.

We already have Skills such as Conversation, Streetwise, etc. that, among other uses, are used to find stuff out. A journalist should have these Skills. But then, as you point out, they need a way to get that uncovered information out to the public in a form they'll hopefully care about. I would make this a Professional Skill, and while I'm not sure I agree, I can see an argument that it should be PRE based.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks a lot of this sounds like PS

[Balabanto]

This has all the earmarks of a slippery slope. As much as I want to say "Yeah, this has some validity," there's a certain amount of issues to adding too many overlap skills to the game.

 

Complimentary skill rolls, for one.

[Anaximander]

I would use complimentary skill rolls for most to those ideas, also since most of those ideas are primarily specialized versions of skills that are already available, though there may be room for a new talent like Media Savvy that would apply as a kind of Striking Appearance for media based interactions.

[Lucius]

For what it's worth, I'm inclined to think there should be a PRE based Leadership Skill.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Animal Handler: Palindromedaries

[Comic]

One serving of thoughts, and a side order of consideration, coming up.

 

 

My Trollop character has Conversation with a Limitation, "Online only" to represent being adept at "social engineering." Conversation is an information-extracting Skill. Admittedly, this is coming in from an angle to what you're talking about - exerting influence, not extracting information.

 

 

Painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, illustration, and all other visual arts and crafts, are also used to communicate and express ideas. If you would base these on PRE, then Graffiti should be too. If you would base them on something else, DEX perhaps, then Graffiti is the same.

 

Banksy isn't practicing a fundamentally different kind of skill than Michaelangelo, he's just practicing in a radically different context.

 

 

Bears thinking on, thank you.

 

 

Persuasion is the Skill to convince someone of something true. Persuasion is the Skill to convince someone of something false. A difference in the truth value of a proposition, or in your moral motivation for wanting to propagate it, doesn't mean you have to be using a different Skill.

 

 

We already have Skills such as Conversation, Streetwise, etc. that, among other uses, are used to find stuff out. A journalist should have these Skills. But then, as you point out, they need a way to get that uncovered information out to the public in a form they'll hopefully care about. I would make this a Professional Skill, and while I'm not sure I agree, I can see an argument that it should be PRE based.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks a lot of this sounds like PS

 

 

You've cited many of the inspirations for this idea.. including your own character!

 

Propaganda is to Persuasion as Transform is to Telekinesis. Persuasion takes a subject and tries to move them. Transformation takes a subject and tries to change them.

 

With Persuasion, you can make a person believe something that is false and convince them to act on it. With Propaganda, you can make it impossible for a person to even conceive of some particular truth, and convince them that people attempting to speak that truth are their deadliest enemies.  While you might be able to get some of the same effects with each in the long run, Propaganda propagates, turns the target into a hub repeating the propagation itself; Persuasion has a single target (Oratory a mass audience) that may be persuaded of an idea and motivated to act but are not transformed by it into repeaters incapable of even hearing contrary views (until counter-propagandized or deprogrammed). The problem with Propaganda compared to Oratory is immediacy. You may not see the effects of Propaganda across an audience for weeks or months, while Oratory can get immediate results.

 

I think they're different. Otherwise, why do we have Transform and Telekinesis?

[Comic]

This has all the earmarks of a slippery slope. As much as I want to say "Yeah, this has some validity," there's a certain amount of issues to adding too many overlap skills to the game.

 

Complimentary skill rolls, for one.

 

To my thinking, any number of specific 3-point characteristic-based skills for complements isn't a problem, but exactly the point of Champions, the infinite game.

 

By and large, it takes a huge investment to get complementary skills with any mathematical advantage to a specific roll, and in the case of those rolls they are entirely at the discretion of the GM as to whether to allow the supplemental rolls.

 

I don't see the slope as anything but uphill against advantage, except where it works as it ought, to well-define what a character is good at, and adapt to a changing world that didn't exist when the game was first designed?

[Lucius]

You've cited many of the inspirations for this idea.. including your own character!

 

Propaganda is to Persuasion as Transform is to Telekinesis. Persuasion takes a subject and tries to move them. Transformation takes a subject and tries to change them.

 

With Persuasion, you can make a person believe something that is false and convince them to act on it. With Propaganda, you can make it impossible for a person to even conceive of some particular truth, and convince them that people attempting to speak that truth are their deadliest enemies.  While you might be able to get some of the same effects with each in the long run, Propaganda propagates, turns the target into a hub repeating the propagation itself; Persuasion has a single target (Oratory a mass audience) that may be persuaded of an idea and motivated to act but are not transformed by it into repeaters incapable of even hearing contrary views (until counter-propagandized or deprogrammed). The problem with Propaganda compared to Oratory is immediacy. You may not see the effects of Propaganda across an audience for weeks or months, while Oratory can get immediate results.

 

I think they're different. Otherwise, why do we have Transform and Telekinesis?

Maybe what you're looking for isn't a Skill, but a Power?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says maybe I should be looking for my pants