The Case for Comeliness

[Chris Goodwin]

10 hours ago, Surrealone said:

It doesn't actually say that … and you're not the person who posted what I asked about, so I am forced to ask how you know the intended meaning. Do you read minds … or are you merely making an assumption about the intended meaning of a sentence fragment that is unclear specifically because it's a sentence fragment … or is there some other means by which you know to which the rest of us aren't privy?

 

I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just a little baffled how you can accurately answer for someone else when it comes to that person's intent. (Did the person tell you verbally what he meant, and then you hopped on line and posted it, perhaps?)

 

Seduction Skill appeared in the former four products I mentioned, but not the latter two.

 

Both Greywind and Gnome Body (important) accurately determined what I originally meant from context.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah although it is amusing to me to watch people argue that leaving in an existing Hero stat that has been in the game since the first typewritten pages before 1st edition is somehow excessive or adding too much.

[Hugh Neilson]

10 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

Ok, but when the team goes to Japan do I pay points then? When it becomes useful?

 

And if I, the player, don't know for sure what the utility value will actually be in the future in the game do I pay points now just in case?

 

As a player, I would pay the points as required by default, unless the GM has provided campaign guidelines to tell me different.  As GM, I would look at that point expenditure and expect to make those 2 points useful at some point in the course of the game, or tell the player that he can speak Japanese at no point cost.  More likely the former - it is an important enough element of your vision of the character that you spent the points on it.  If I took the latter approach, and it came up once or twice in the campaign, no big deal.  Just like your background saying you're from Queens might allow me to set up a rivalry with a character from the Bronx, or a pre-campaign connection with another character raised in Queens, or both.

 

10 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

Sure, and I'm saying: That sounds like a reasonable position but I don't really agree.

 

You can use points to describe things. A Doctor NPC should have Doctor as a perk, right? Even tho the NPC will never get any utility of it really (because they're an NPC and won't be on-screen much. Certainly we can just not stat up that NPC Doctor too.

 

The Doctor PC should have the perk.  He should also have a variety of knowledge and professional skills.  The question is really whether they should cost points, and then how much they should cost.  If being a licensed MD will never have any actual in-game benefit, why does there need to be a point cost?  Would you expect to charge points for an accountant being a designated CPA, or a welder having his trade ticket, or would that just be part of his background (and that free Everyman Professional Skill which is allowed for the character's job)?

 

10 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

If a player wants to buy KS: Fine Wines 15- to be a world famous wine enthusiast I can as a GM tell them there's no real need.

But if they want to pay for High Society. Even though I tell them it'll probably never come up...they can.

 

If neither is ever going to be valuable in-game, my answer is that neither should cost points.  You get a character background at no point cost and it generates no significant in-game benefits, or you pay points for elements of your background and they carry in-game benefits.  Feels like this has been said numerous times already.  The player spending points on High Society is telling me "I want and expect this to come up in-game", just as much as his Reputation: Playboy complication tells me he expects that to come up in the campaign.  By agreeing, as GM, that those are worth points, I have agreed that they will come up at some point in the game.  Hopefully, the game runs long enough to build in all of those elements - if it ends after six months, perhaps not every aspect of every character, especially the small ones, will have received screen time.

 

10 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

Also, my way of looking at it: Mechanical stats can have RP effects and RP "stats" and "effects" can have mechanical impacts.

 

If an NPC targeted my PC because of SA (a bad thing despite my paying points for an in-game mechanical benefit) that's ok, right?

 

Sure, with a caveat.  If the PC paid for SA, its benefits should be considerably greater than its drawbacks.  If he only took the complication DF:  Movie Star Handsome, that might work to his benefit on occasion, but should be problematic far more often than it is beneficial.  If he took both, his good looks should be a drawback far more often than if he only took SA.

 

6 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah although it is amusing to me to watch people argue that leaving in an existing Hero stat that has been in the game since the first typewritten pages before 1st edition is somehow excessive or adding too much.

 

Why ever update the game if everything that went before is a sacred cow?  I think at least as many people who would have preferred to retain COM rather than change to SA would have preferred the retention of Figured Characteristics, so we should write that back in too, if only as an optional rule.  I guess it should have both the option for OCV and DCV to be purchased separately, or to only change by their link to DEX and EGO, since both options are likely desired.  And given the many house rules to give COM mechanical benefits, we should include all of those as options as well, right?  Run that down through all of the game rules that have changed between editions (or even from 5e to 6e), and it seems like the books need to be a lot thicker to include all of those optional rules.

 

Or is it only the things you like that need to get continued?

[Toxxus]

8 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Both Greywind and Gnome Body (important) accurately determined what I originally meant from context.  

 

It was pretty clear given the context.  Nice research effort though. 

 

I was so used to using COM since the late 80s that I didn't even realize that it wasn't in the first Fantasy Hero edition.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Toxxus said:

 

It was pretty clear given the context.  Nice research effort though. 

 

I was so used to using COM since the late 80s that I didn't even realize that it wasn't in the first Fantasy Hero edition.

Did you mean Seduction?  COM has been in every HERO System game before 6th edition.

[Toxxus]

19 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Did you mean Seduction?  COM has been in every HERO System game before 6th edition.

 

Oops!  I sure did.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Toxxus said:

 

Oops!  I sure did.

 

Heh.  Thought I'd check. 

 

I did the research (Google spreadsheet) quite some time ago; started looking through PDFs, remembered the spreadsheet, and saved myself a bunch of time.   

[Cassandra]

I will say this.  Most superheroes would have a high COM even if they are characters like The Thing or Hulk.  This reflects the unspoken knowledge that they are heroes and their to help which counters their otherwise unprepossessing looks.

[Lucius]

13 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah although it is amusing to me to watch people argue that leaving in an existing Hero stat that has been in the game since the first typewritten pages before 1st edition is somehow excessive or adding too much.

 

As amusing as seeing someone look at Hero's very long list of Characteristics and say "What this game needs is yet ANOTHER characteristic!" Or look at the two volumes of core rules and say "What this game needs is still MORE optional rules!"

 

Neither character sheets nor rulebooks are infinite.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

What this post needs is a palindromedary tagline

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

As amusing as seeing someone look at Hero's very long list of Characteristics and say "What this game needs is yet ANOTHER characteristic!"

So youre arguing against the addition of Striking Appearance, then?

[Lucius]

5 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

So youre arguing against the addition of Striking Appearance, then?

 

Striking Appearance isn't a Characteristic. It appears only on the character sheets of players who wanted it and paid for it.

 

But if having the last word in a pointless argument makes you feel better, feel free to ignore this post. I already regret making it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary regretted being in this tagline before it was composed.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Striking Appearance isn't a Characteristic. It appears only on the character sheets of players who wanted it and paid for it.

 

Sure, but Comeliness already appears in the rules.  6th edition REMOVED it, this wouldn't e adding anything new.  Striking Appearance was the addition, as I'm sure you are aware.  Arguments that the rules suffer for keeping something that has always been in it as if that's an undue burden of length and complexity are baffling to me.

If you just don't like or couldn't get COM as a stat, that's fine, but make that argument, not absurdities like "this makes the rules too big" or "we shouldn't add new stuff"

[Greywind]

3 hours ago, Cassandra said:

I will say this.  Most superheroes would have a high COM even if they are characters like The Thing or Hulk.  This reflects the unspoken knowledge that they are heroes and their to help which counters their otherwise unprepossessing looks.

 

Hulk looks average with a lot PRE based on size, reputation, and destructive capacity.

[Hugh Neilson]

4 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Sure, but Comeliness already appears in the rules.  6th edition REMOVED it, this wouldn't e adding anything new.  Striking Appearance was the addition, as I'm sure you are aware.  Arguments that the rules suffer for keeping something that has always been in it as if that's an undue burden of length and complexity are baffling to me.

If you just don't like or couldn't get COM as a stat, that's fine, but make that argument, not absurdities like "this makes the rules too big" or "we shouldn't add new stuff"

 

What makes the rules too big, IMO, is adding or retaining things that serve little or no purpose to add or retain.  COM (a characteristic that was not really a characteristic as it had no unique function) was removed.  SA (an appearance-based mechanic that basically did the only mechanical thing anyone ever suggested COM should do, which was modify PRE based interactions where looks should be relevant, and more as it went beyond Pretty and Ugly) was added.  Both, to me, were good moves.

 

Adding "hey, but here are some optional rules if, for some reason, you want to keep it the 5e way but call it 6e" is useless rule bloat, at least in my opinion.

 

"It has always been there" supports neither removal nor retention, whether or not as an optional rule.  Decide whether it is worth the space on its merit.  What would be removed to make room for "optional keeping COM like it was in 5e"?  What makes an optional rule to retain 5e style COM a better inclusion than an optional rule to retain 5e-like Figured Characteristics, or retain Growth and Stretching momentum, or keep 5e style growth, to pick just three off the top of my head?

[Scott Ruggels]

13 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Or is it only the things you like that need to get continued?

 

Exactly so.

 

Finishing up a move had me unboxing and organizing my books and bookshelves. In sorting through I have found every edition of Champions up through the black book with the green lettering. The few supplements I purchased greW  with the size of the rule books they were written for. In a similar time frame AD&D was released with comparatively slim hardback volumes. In the years since, then, the core rules have gone through 4 subsequent editions, but remained the same three volumes. The rules have changed, the writing improved dramatically, as did the interior art. But The size did not change. Also the rules became more streamlined but the base stats  remained consistent. But with Hero, what a clever person could build with 250 a 300 points, now costs double, or more, mostly because of the fine division of skills, and point adjustments. So with all that point inflation, comeliness does away?  I acknowledge I am the victim of the California public school system, and need a calculator for basic math, but I don’t think I am the only one turned away by the added cost and complexity. Even Pathfinder is streamlining their rules to compete with 5e. There is complete, there is universal, but then there is complex. Look at how FGU is doing...  ...oh wait. 

 

This is is why, in introducing new players, I am using Espionage, with some Danger International. I really don’t want to scare them off. 

[Brian Stanfield]

10 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

This is is why, in introducing new players, I am using Espionage, with some Danger International. I really don’t want to scare them off. 

 

I’m teaching new players in the same way: a very basic Pulp Hero campaign is a good way to teach basic gameplay without all the powers rules. 

 

As for rules bloat, this is not unique to HERO. I quit D&D when 2nd edition came out because I had spent the ‘80s collecting all of their crazy books with alternate rules and stuff, and gave TSR all of my allowance in the process. They started 2e with the same basic three books, but immediately followed up with all of the other books with all of the other irreplaceable rules, etc., which is when my naive eyes were opened to how their money scheme worked. I switched exclusively to Fantasy HERO at that point when I realized I could make anything that D&D had with only one book. That’s changed since 4e, where all their supplements came out at a regular pace, but I don’t really mind. Where D&D’s new books add new rules, HERO’s books are truly optional and don’t change the rule set at all. 

 

By the way, just to bring this back around to COM, AD&D tried to make sure Comeliness a characteristic that was different than Charisma. It’s gone now, and I’m not sure when they nixed it, but the debates in the ‘80s were pretty much exactly as this discussion is going. I think they decided that Comeliness was a roleplaying description and not a measurable characteristic with worthwhile effect. 

[Hugh Neilson]

Brian, I think you can trace the RPG Evolution through D&D.  Back in the AD&D 1e days, we had the three books.  We got a lot of adventures, the Deities book (HC), then the Fiend Folio (HC), and maybe another HC monster book.  And all sorts of "generic" FRPG supplements that were clearly AD&D but could not say so due to copyrights.  Then we got Unearthed Arcana - new rules, including that COM stat.  And it sold.  NEW RULES SELL!!!  So we started seeing a lot more new rules.  Because many, if not all, players in the group would buy rules, only a few (the GMs) would buy monster books, and only one needed any given adventure.

 

Then we got 2e, and tons of new rules.  But also a glut of settings (each with variant rules) that cannibalized their own market.  And we got a company in serious financial trouble.

 

Next came 3e, and this was, to me, revolutionary in that it was not what every new edition, for every game, had been to that point.  It was not the same concepts and rules with a fresh coat of paint.  Rather, it was a completely different game.  As were 4e and 5e.  That is a model Hero never adopted - you don't need to buy new books since the old ones remain largely, if not entirely compatible.  I recall early comments on 4e that people could see the core or near-core races and classes that were missing, and know exactly what the "new books" would hold.

 

And, as you note, D&D, which added COM well after Hero was on the market, dumped it not too long afterwards.

[Lucius]

20 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

If you just don't like or couldn't get COM as a stat, that's fine, but make that argument, not absurdities like "this makes the rules too big" or "we shouldn't add new stuff"

 

I'm sure you don't care but arguing "this makes the rules too big" is not an absurdity. Saying it is doesn't make it one. It remains the case that neither character sheets nor rule books can be made infinite. You know that, I know that, we all know that, so no, I don't know why I'm bothering to point it out.

 

I'm sure you care even less but "we shouldn't add new stuff" is as far as I can see a strawman. Who but you is saying that?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary isn't sure why I'm bothering either.

 

 

 

 

[Brian Stanfield]

2 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Then we got Unearthed Arcana - new rules, including that COM stat.  And it sold.  NEW RULES SELL!!!  So we started seeing a lot more new rules.  Because many, if not all, players in the group would buy rules, only a few (the GMs) would buy monster books, and only one needed any given adventure.

Ah yes, Unearthed Arcana. I’d forgotten what it was called. There was also stuff like Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide, which introduced skills for the first time, and things like Oriental Adventures which added new classes, and the race was on. I bought them all, hungrily, and still enjoy looking at them occasionally for nostalgic purposes, but they’re also the reason I fell in love with Fantasy HERO. It was all already in one book, plus a small creatures book (because I was too lazy to create my own monsters, but could have done it all without the extra book). 

 

As as for the Comeliness score in AD&D, I was initially intrigued because I wanted to not only be a dark and daring thief (before they started calling them “rogues”!), but a dark, daring, and handsome thief at a time when I was self-conscious about my looks. But then so did everyone else, so we all had silly Comeliness scores that really did nothing but boost our teenage egos a little bit. In all honesty, it didn’t do me much good to be good looking when my job was to go unnoticed as a thief!

 

I always understood the COM score in Champions because superheroes are almost always incredibly, archetypally good looking. But again, it became a stat that we only really used to make ourselves feel better. The actual number had an effect on our egos, but nothing much more than that. Maybe a little one-upmanship because, you know, we were awkward teenagers. Now I look at it as something that should be role played as part of the character conception, just like having a backstory and a professional skill. They shouldn’t be payed for since they are mostly accounted for in the narrative of a game. As per RAW, if we actually wanted to have more proficiency than a “background” skills, we had to pay for them, but nobody ever did because it rarely came up. As the rules suggest, if my character conception wants me to be a concert pianist, but that won’t come up in game play more than once or twice, then I shouldn’t pay for it. But I should role play the heck out of it. 

 

Likewise, we all just assumed we were archetypally attractive and fit and such as part of our characters. If I played a concert pianist-turned crime fighter, I’d be an attractive concert-pianist-turned crime fighter. We didn’t role play it too much because we would have had to spend all our time sitting around admiring each others’ good looks and never getting anything else done! 🤪 

 

Ok, that last part maybe not so much, but you get my point. Just like we did with the AD&D characteristic, COM was something we didn’t bother wasting points on when in the end it was something that we didn’t even really bother role playing. I mean seriously, who wants to play James Bond, but only average looking who gets rejected by women all the time? If someone did have that concept, it would be a Complication anyway. We just assumed our appearances in our character conceptions and descriptions. It didn’t do anything in our playing from a mechanics point of view. I’ll go on record as saying I’m in favor of dumping it as a Characteristic that doesn’t come into play very often (especially for supers) and introducing it as a Perk for the few individuals who have a character concept that is out of the ordinary from the campaign assumptions (such as “all super-powered characters tend to be super-hot as well”). I have a new Pulp HERO campaign in 6e right now with a couple of players who made a specific comment about how striking their appearances were. I gave them the Perk. But all the players described their appearances in their character conceptions, and expect to role play their appearances in the ways they want/expect them to play in the game. No Characteristic needed. 

 

I will I’ll add one caveat, though: I jumped from Champions 3e to HERO System 6e, so I never went through all the edition changes, nor participated in the Great COM Debate (nor do I want to: it seems to have resulted in more of a scorched earth policy on each side of the debate). I appreciate how people are attached to different editions and their concurrent rules, and they should play those editions, or home brew what they want. No skin off my nose either way. I only offer my COM observations from an autobiographical place to explain why I don’t miss COM. Please (please, please, please) don’t misconstrue it as a judgment on anyone’s preference for or against COM.

[Cassandra]

23 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Hulk looks average with a lot PRE based on size, reputation, and destructive capacity.

 

That really depends on which Hulk we're talking about.  Hulk that can talk would have a higher COM then the engine of destruction in the movies or the Ultimate Avengers.

[Grailknight]

We've pretty much hit all the high points of the Great COM Debate so don't feel like you've missed anything but  some minor flaming.

[megaplayboy]

I can't help but think that some of this relates back to the "fuzziness" of the definition of Presence.  It's a combination of having an impressive appearance, having charisma or gravitas, and being a skilled manipulator.  I think the original thinking behind removing COM was that it's essentially a specialized subset of PRE from this perspective.  And the relative value proposition of SA wasn't only that it could capture attractiveness in mechanical terms, but that other forms of impressive appearance(fearsomeness, e.g.) could also be captured by it.  Theoretically you could break each primary stat into up to 3 sub-stats each, which would make for a pretty unwieldy character sheet.

[Brian Stanfield]

16 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

I can't help but think that some of this relates back to the "fuzziness" of the definition of Presence.  It's a combination of having an impressive appearance, having charisma or gravitas, and being a skilled manipulator.  

This pretty much aligns with how the Charisma/Comeliness debate went with AD&D back in the ‘80s. People were confused by Charisma, and mistook it for “attractiveness” in terms of looks, which it was not (at least exclusively).

 

16 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

I think the original thinking behind removing COM was that it's essentially a specialized subset of PRE from this perspective.  And the relative value proposition of SA wasn't only that it could capture attractiveness in mechanical terms, but that other forms of impressive appearance(fearsomeness, e.g.) could also be captured by it.  Theoretically you could break each primary stat into up to 3 sub-stats each, which would make for a pretty unwieldy character sheet.

I was thinking the same thing, which could really go sideways if you had to start specifying, for instance, different COM scores for different kinds of interactions (COM: male, COM:female, or COM:muscular, COM:curvey, etc. etc.). It gets out of hand pretty quickly, and while it offers a great deal of granularity, it is only nominally useful even in roleplaying. 

[Hugh Neilson]

On 5/26/2019 at 4:03 AM, megaplayboy said:

 I think the original thinking behind removing COM was that it's essentially a specialized subset of PRE from this perspective.  And the relative value proposition of SA wasn't only that it could capture attractiveness in mechanical terms, but that other forms of impressive appearance(fearsomeness, e.g.) could also be captured by it. 

 

I think this is part of Steve's thinking - something that only modifies, or is a limited for of, another characteristic is not itself a characteristic.

[ghost-angel]

If one were to want to make the case for What Do I Look Like (ugly, average, beautiful) in a game with an Effect... well, first you need to ask "Why is this on the Character Sheet? What is it doing?"

 

Point cost or not, if it's written down it should probably affect the system being played in some fashion.

 

In Hero Terms, well, it's traditionally just been a Presence Based Boost with the Special Effect "Looks", or just a throw away RP item. (hence the switch over to the more mechanically defined Striking Appearance, which I've occasionally struggled with reminding some that being Good Looking isn't just about sexual attraction and Striking Appearance comes into play with non-physically attracted situations; especially if the SFX are "intensely ugly" - Marv from Sin City frex /digression)

 

You could probably expand it to do other things, at which point I'd ask - Is Comliness really just a Special Effect of Doing Something Else Mechanically? (especially in Hero where SFX and Mechanics are separate concepts entirely, unlike most game systems.)

 

If not, why is How Good/Bad Looking Am I? on the character sheet, and I don't mean "are you paying points for it or not" aspect, because I fall fully with Hugh on this one - if it's not doing anything Mechanically (in any situation) it should not cost points, period.

 

If it's not SFX  then how are we using this information in game, as long as we're statting it out.

-Will buying Comliness cause penalties to others Perception Rolls (frex, Matrix, the girl in the red dress)

-Will it help with certain social interactions (the standard PRE based boots)

-Will it work in the other direction (PRE based penalties to Other Characters)

-Will it be used to determine how/when RolePlay moments start for certain scenes (frex, the Characters with COM16+ easily get into the Night Club, everyone else needs a Plan; but the street thugs feel more comfortable talking to the rough looking COM6 Character about the Plot Hook, and keep getting off topic with the COM14 character)

 

To really any answer any question on "I'd like to introduce this Component to my game" you really have to answer "What am I actually doing with it?" first and that will inform the decision much more effectively.