So two of my players are playing some pregens from the book in my game and they both have the Uncouth trait. As a new gm, how should I handle this particular trait? I understand how some of the other ones are handled (i.e. addictions, etc.) but this one is a little unclear to me. It is a fairly generous trait and I want to make sure that they are inconvenienced enough for their 20 build points. Any ideas?

How are each of them using Uncouth? In my book, it can range from legitimate sociopathy to Turrets to just an intense inability to interact with other people. But, you shouldn't let your players use it as an excuse to be total asshats and get the other players into big trouble.

Besides, it is not really necessary to have to delineate how it works, as there are pretty specific guidelines on how that Quality operates...

Keep the Faith

It's a tough one to make them earn. A good roleplayer will willingly botch social situations because it's funnier that way, but making a player who doesn't want to be Uncouth play it that way... It would be easy to hijack their characters during negotiations and narrate some disgusting or inappropriate behavior. The roleplay angle is mostly comedy, however, and that's something you can't force the players to deliver.

You could also simplify it to a penalty to any negotiations with people who are not similarly Uncouth; alter prices and payouts by %10. That's brutal, and your players *will* hate you for it, but it makes Uncouth an important choice. You could also balance that by having certain Fixers, Johnsons, and NPCs designated as Uncouth, and give the PCs that don't have Uncouth a similar penalty when dealing with those NPCs. You want to be from the gutter? Welcome to the gutter. You could even take it a bit further and have some contacts that flat refuse to deal if someone they don't like is present, necessitating splitting the party, which leads to ambushes when the party's muscle all has to wait outside. This can quickly get very complex, but complexity isn't a bad thing.

Good point, the rules for Uncouth do specify that the characters are Unaware for any social skills they haven't put points in, and must pay double to raise them. I would humbly suggest that the trick is convincing them to enter social situations in the first place; If charisma was going to be your dump stat anyway, why not tack Uncouth on it and just never talk in meetings? I think Fenris is right that it might need to be pointed out in game periodically for it to really be meaningful.

I played in a game where one of the other PCs had the Uncouth flaw. It wasn't done...in what I would consider a correct manner. (In some cases it was portrayed as flat out stupid instead of social incompetence.) But, hey, that's just my opinion. I think there are a lot of ways to keep it salient in-game, especially if the other PCs cooperate.

In the game mentioned above, it got to the point where all of the couth PCs would work together to lock Mr. Uncouth in the car trunk before going in to meet any Johnson. Or for any real social interaction, really. Sometimes they conveniently 'forgot' to mention the meeting location and time. Even the paranoid, twitchy hacker with zero social skills--and what amounted to a phobia of being touched by other people--would lock Mr. Uncouth in the car and do the talking if it meant that Mr. Uncouth didn't get to.

You *would* try to never talk, though. Characters are aware of their flaws. However, that doesn't mean you'll always succeed in avoiding social situations. It's a classic narrative trope.

It's not really that generous of a trait, so I wouldn't worry about it so much. It's often a worse deal than taking Incompetencies in multiple skills, actually, which is really what it amounts to, when it comes right down to it. Basically, the Social Skills are there to get people to do things they wouldn't otherwise be inclined to do. So an Uncouth character can walk up to a Touristville hawker and get himself some greasy fried soy on a stick just fine 9 times out of 10-- those guys don't give a shit who they sell to, they just want to make ends meet. But there's no way in hell the uncouth guys are getting themselves into a fancy restaurant without a reservation. Think little indignities and the inability to lie convincingly. Also consider that sometimes people aren't inclined to leave you alone. This can be a rough thing if you're in the Barrens.

Anyway, the thing to understand is that such negative qualities are operating off the principle that the player is making an arrangement that gives him extra build points in exchange for having other limitations put upon his progression path. It's actually not that great of a deal, in many ways, since due to the way Karma costs curve you can actually get quite a bit of use out of taking your early karma gains and going from Charisma 1 and no skills to 2 charisma and a broken up skill group and a few specializations. At 40 points to buy off and doubled karma prices, Uncouth drastically limits the feasibility of such an option. Still, if you don't think that's a good enough reason to give someone extra build points I really just suggest that you forbid Incompetent and the Infirm/Uneducated/Uncouth trifecta, since there's not really any easy way to play those traits other than just accepting that they've agreed to suck at something almost permanently and move on. As such I allow them in campaigns but forbid them in one shots.

I don't entirely agree. Uncouth mentions sociopathy, and though this aspect isn't necessarily universal to all who take the quality, for those that do it would imply they are perfectly aware of their inability in social situations and simply don't care. The example of Jayne above is a perfect example of someone who is uncouth, knows it, and just plain doesn't care.

I wouldn't say Jayne is aware of his uncouth status, but yes that's an excellent example of social ineptitude. Just as another example for you, my next character is going to be a Fox shifter who was born in a zoo and will be Uncouth. I plan on playing that as asking those pointed questions most people find socially awkward, at most every opportunity she can. Also, double entendres and suggestive comments will fly right over her head, and she'll take most idioms and phrases at face value.

It is one of the most stingy traits for what it does. If you apply everything that the trait does per the rules, the characters would be much more than just inconvenienced for 20 BPs.

Actually, its quite well shown in the quote above where he says "you don't pay me to talk pretty." That to me says he knows he isn't good in social situations.

Since you're uncouth, you probably have absolutely no will to remain silent. "Uncouth but hides it well" would be worth fewer build points.


No, that's exactly what it's for. Uncouth = asshat. 20 BP = gets into trouble, often dragging teammates along for the ride. If the players of the uncouth want to get the other people in trouble, that should be resolved in character, so "you shouldn't..." has no bearing on anything whatsoever. Even if it gets resolved out of character, it's still not really your job to handle it, any more than it is anyone else's.

Redcrow, I should probably have said 'might' instead of 'would', but I meant that one kind of character. There are, as mentioned, different kinds of Uncouth.

Sociopaths are sometimes charming. They have figured out how pretend to be regular human being. And intelligent ones can actually accomplish useful and productive things.

A better example might be Asperger syndrome or similar disorders "that are characterized by abnormalities of social interaction and communication that pervade the individual's functioning".

I dunno, Wind, I'd say the GMs duties include helping the group to work.

Uncouth is spitting in your palm and giving the maitre'd a handshake when he extends his hand for a bribe - not dropping trou and 'marking your territory' on his podium.

Yes, there's asshattery invoved, but taking the flaw does not mean you abandon your sense of self-preservation.

Exactly.

Thanks for all of the input on this topic. I understood that as written, there were mechanical disadvantages built into the 20 bp flaw as MikeKozar concisely pointed out (i.e. characters are Unaware for any social skills they haven't put points in and must pay double to raise them). I was looking for a way to explain how it worked in a role-playing sense to the two new players. I can totally see one of the players using the Jane dialog as an example of how it worked. The other player was having a harder time figuring out how it worked in-character. I guess there are two schools of thought on this:

A) There's already a way to handle this flaw through game mechanics, nuff said
B) There's a game mechanic that handles this flaw but the flaw should probably be role-played out too

How much of a flaw is it really if all of the combat oriented characters can take the flaw with the full expectation to be silent during any discussions where the flaw would actually come into play? Especially if they have absolutely no intention of investing any karma into social skills at a later date. I guess I just feel that a 20 bp flaw should, at the end of the day, affect the game in the same manner of a 20 bp positive quality.

Positive Qualities are only sometimes useful, as well. It's one thing to take 'Unware: Spellcasting' on a character with no Magic attribute; it's impossible, in fact. It's quite another when social interaction is something you have to work to avoid, forever.

As I said, expecting and trying to remain silent all the time is not the same as that actually happening in a living game world.

Unaware and a serious penalty to progressing in an entire skill category is in line with the 20 bp positive qualities. By the RAW, Exceptional Attribute has absolutely no effect from a role playing standpoint, since it just opens up a progression opportunity. Meanwhile, while Uncouth handicaps a progression path AND gives the GM an avenue for requiring Success tests to accomplish things even a 1 Charisma but aware character can do without any trouble.

...like keeping your mouth shut during the meet with Mr. Johnson. That's where Uncouth bites you in the ass. Unless you spent some points getting trained in Etiquette, you DON'T know that you suck socially, and you DON'T know when you shouldn't say anything because anything you say will be wrong.

This is starting to sound like a discussion I've seen before, to wit: If a player takes a Negative Quality and gets points for it, and then the Negative Quality never impacts his character, has the player somehow cheated, or simply planned well?

I'm not going to take a position on that, because I think it misses a more important issue, often quoted as Rule One: Everybody should be having fun. Depending on weather your group is numbers-focused (Powergamers) or story-focused (Roleplayers) you will have a very different definition of the "correct" application of a Negative Talent. From a numbers standpoint, getting your 35 extra Build Points on stuff that won't hurt you in game is basic optimization. From a roleplay standpoint, taking Qualities, Positive or Negative, that don't make your character more interesting is a missed opportunity.

From a GMs perspective, it's easy to look at a quality like Uncouth and feel the need to meddle. If you look at it as a powergamer, then you will want to make sure the player is not getting an unfair advantage because you are not holding them strictly to the rules. If you look at it as a roleplayer, then you don't want them sacrificing character development because they took Qualities they don't intend to ever use.

As a roleplay-focused GM, the solution is simply to put a snake in the room. Whatever weird condition brings the character's Negative and Positive qualities into play, it should come up often. A Natural Linguist should run into a lot of people speaking tribal dialects. Someone allergic to peanut butter is going to get into a disproportionate number of fights in kitchens. This shouldn't be punishment (or reward, for that matter), but including the condition in the story should make the game (and character) more interesting.

As a powergamer GM, you mostly want to make sure that the rules are being followed fairly and consistently. Stopping players from picking Negative Qualities with no negative effects is difficult; by simply picking Negative Qualities that target other archetypes they can quickly rack up 35 points with no loss in power. Fighting them on this is an uphill battle, at best - although some Qualities include text like "not available to non-hackers," this really only makes the fact that all of the other Qualities *lack* that restriction more apparent. RAW does not include any justification for vetoing a Quality choice, and there's nothing that a powergamer hates more then a GM fiat for no good reason. That doesn't stop you from exercising the GM Fiat, or houseruling if you must, but it's probably easier to accept that SR4 includes 'free build points' then to re-write the rules to make the players earn those points.

Does 'Uncouth' need to be fixed? Hard to say. I think if a Quality is an important and interesting part of the character then the game is better, but the most important thing is getting the GM and the players on the same page. Find what's fun for the table and run it that way. Remember, it's always more interesting to play the game then to fight about the game.

No, there's no reason you *don't* know you suck socially. One Uncouth character might be oblivious and loud, and another might be scared silent. It depends on the character, and it's not built in to the flaw.

If you don't know what the rules are, then you don't know whether or not you're breaking them. If you don't buy some kind of skill (generally Etiquette), then as an Uncouth character, you don't know you're Uncouth. Sure, you might be Loudy McTalkerson or you might be Silent O'Tongue-tied, but once you make that distinction, that's who you have to play. Loudy doesn't know that it's time to shut up when the Johnson's meeting backstage during a silent interpretive dance show, and Silent doesn't know that saying nothing could get everyone geeked when the Dragon says, "Everyone agree to that?"

Extreme examples, sure, but the point is that you don't know when you're supposed to be quiet or speak up without Etiquette, so you just do what you always do. You don't know any better.

I have an excellent example of an Uncouth character. I was just running a game with a bunch of Shadowrun (and in two cases, RPG) newbies last night. It was the first New York mission, and as you know, in Manhattan, a degree of subtlety is called for. One of the characters kept hitting on every female NPC there was. Femal NYPD, Inc. officer? Receptionist at the MDC Headquarters? Random corpbrats at the rave? Mara Blaine? Everyone. Every time Lin Yao came up in gameplay, he talked about hitting that, though thankfully this didn't occur when the time actually came. I'm considering letting that character have Uncouth retroactively.

While Etiquette is about knowing the rules, I don't agree that Uncouth necessarily implies that you're unaware of being unaware. It's a roleplaying issue. I'm sure that the unfrozen caveman (not the lawyer ) is aware that he doesn't know what all the flashing lights are, and might choose to avoid them. Or, to attack them, depending entirely on his temperament.

You're right that being unaware of being unaware is an option here, but my point is that it's not quite fair to make it mandatory.

How do you know you're botching a social situation? In the real world, you know by being able to read how the people around you are reacting to you. In SR, reading how people are reacting to something is a Social test. How does an Uncouth character so at Social tests? If you don't have the relevant skill, you're unaware. Can't even try, right? So unless you actually bought a skill to reflect it, no, an Uncouth character, by the rules, has no idea that they're socially inept.

I didn't say they knew they were botching it. I said they know that they have no idea what they're doing.

They know they don't know the rules; they don't think they know the rules.

I'll have to disagree that "A twisted literal reading of the rules say something totally insane" is a reasonable justification for requiring characters to do something totally insane.

If they don't know they're screwing it up, why in the universe would they ever think they don't know what they're doing. Hell, most people who ARE screwing things up think they know what they're doing. Humans, as a rule, have a hugely overinflated sense of their own skill. How many people do you know who will admit to being poor or even average drivers? Everyone thinks they're better than average drivers. By definition, at least half of them are wrong. This is in a system where they know when things are going wrong (near-misses, traffic foul-ups, citations from law-enforcement), and they are still convinced that they are good at it, it's other people who are screwing up. If a person has no way of knowing whether or not things are going well, they'll almost definitely be of the opinion that they are doing well and are a skilled individual in the task at hand.

I wouldn't entirely agree with that point : even if a character won't know why, he's bound to notice if he almost always fail to get what he wants out of social interactions.

He might fail to notice the pretty gal he's hitting on isn't interested, but when she dumps the icecubes from her glass into his pants before turning heels forbiding him to come within sight again, he'll figure out it didn't work as hoped.

In might opinion an uncouth character can know his social skills are abysmal. What he will have a hard time with is figuring out the specifics of what he's doing wrong beyond 'I'm no good with talking'. Others may fail to consider they might be the cause and instead get pissed at 'them snotty jerks who won't listen to me' - but not all will pin the blame squarely on others.

People of small-to-moderate skill think they're better than they are. People of zero skill do not assume they're good at something, and they're perfectly capable of knowing that they have no idea. There's a difference between admitting that you don't know what a widget is, and *knowing* in your head that you've never seen that widget before.

Shifters and Centaurs, for example, are Uncouth; they do not assume they know how to be metahumans. They may *try*, at first, to treat metahumans as they would other animals/centaurs, *or* they may decide that something alien definitely is not a fellow shifter/animal/whatever. Again, it depends.

You're right, but my experience in bars and from talking to women (I know, I'm surprised they'll talk to me, too) indicates that when this series of events occurs, the male in question reaches the conclusion that his social skills are lacking exactly 0% of the time. The actual conclusion reached by the uncouth individual in this scenario is generally that the woman in question is either a "dyke" or a "bitch."



I'm going to refer you to the above referenced example on this one.

In the case of Centaurs and such, I posit that while they know they are unfamiliar with the social cues of mainstream metahumanity, they have no way to know whether they are adapting well or if the people around them are just bigots, and it doesn't matter how polite or correct in form their social responses are. Unless, of course, they buy an appropriate skill to help them with that, as I've been saying all along. In short, it is not just important, but critical that Uncouth characters pick up some minimal social skills at least if they want to make it in the shadows.

Or even worse, "She's totally into me."



Or at the very least, they listen to the Face/team leader when they tell him/her to shut up the moment that he/she says something at a meet.

Listen to the expert and do exactly as told by said expert? What a novel idea... it'll never work, though...

I know, I know. Hope springs eternal, and all that.

You never go full retard in Shadowrun.

Mesh

Asperger's isn't full retard.

Not even close. The 1 Log, 1 Int street sammy probably is, though. I would die happy if I never had to see that character again.

But....But Sloth love Chunk!

I'll also point out that the Etiquette skill is also used to blend in to a social situation and not attract unwanted attention.

So if your players don't have any Etiquette, you can make life difficult for them any time you want.

Yeah. Sad is the Uncouth character who never learned enough Etiquette to at least keep their head down when the gangers are picking fights at the pub.


And, yeah, Asperger's is considered part of the autism spectrum, but a decent number of people diagnosed with it as children cope to the point that they fail to meet a lot of the diagnostic criteria as adults but would still often be considered loners and a bit awkward. Real life is rarely as binary as a diagnosis. Amusingly enough, I was considered a possible Asperger's case when I was a very young child because a general lack of empathy and being a pinch behind in a few motor skills, but as it turned out I ended up being a rather decent athlete, a very good shot and did just fine socially aside from a tendency to get into arguments rather often. A better diagnosis probably would have been "Kind of a jerk."

I wouldn't do this on a regular basis, or even a semi-regular basis, but once every blue moon.

Throw them a Troll Johnson that doesn't trust the pretty dandelion eater or the smooth-skins. He only wants to talk with another of his kind. Obviously this won't work if the meta-types in my example doesn't match up, but you can alter it to whatever fits. Maybe the Bouncer at a club you need to get into is an augmentation addict and wants to talk to the chromed razor-boy, who knows.

I'd at least throw them one run one time where they HAVE to do some talking, but not necessarily all of it and don't make it anything absolutely crucial that be accomplished via social skills.

How long the game runs and how many players you have should determine how often it comes up (can't have one person steal the spotlight too often), but yeah, you need to make sure everything written on the character comes up at least once. You don't want your players in the position of playing the same character for more than three years and having four knowledge skills that never come up, even tangentially (yeah, that happened to me. It sucked).

Easy as pie to come up with some thing that requires the group to split up for a little while.

Face has to handle the district manager (Snap audit) but they also need some one to distract his orc secretary for five minutes so that the team can roll some gear down the hall with out her getting suspicious.
Perhaps the face heard her say she thought he (Mr Uncouth) was cute.

And if you feeling mean, the vict... Mr Uncouth Distraction could end up with her doing all the talking and end up with a date for Saturday night.

Think Lulu, from the STEPHANIE PLUM NOVELS by Janet Evanovich.


Four to Score # Chapter 1, p. 1
"If people were cars, Lula would be a big, black '53 Packard with a high gloss chrome grille, oversized headlights, and a growl like a junkyard guard dog. Lots of muscle. Never fit in a compact space."


High Five # Chapter 1, p. 4
Does filing for Vinnie. She's what is gently referred to as a big woman, weighing in at over 200 pounds, standing five-foot-five, looking like most of her weight's muscle. This week her hair was died orange and came off very autumn with her dark brown skin.



Or....

Break the Face's jaw.

Drug the Face.

Have the face get falling down drunk.

Pull the Face off and have some one come up and make chit chat.

I would like to point out that uncouth IS pretty severe. It treats you as unaware for social skills you don't have. Unaware characters annot default on that skill.

No opposed negotiation. No rolling intimidation - or resisting it. Time for an etiquette check? Failed. The only way to come out ahead with Uncouth is to use karmagen - you get 40 points, pick up the influence group for 20, and intimidate for 8.


For the most part, the roleplayin aspects of being a socially unaware jerk can be achieved by taking Incompetent: Etiquette instead of Uncouth.

I have some examples and roleplaying suggestions for those who wish to roleplay a character with the uncouth quality. Note that I am not stating that I think qualities should or should not be roleplayed, I am simply trying to help approach such disadvantages from a roleplaying stand point.

A point I would like to make is that uncouth does not automatically mean asshat. Popular fiction has provided us with many examples of uncouth characters who are relativley nice.

Uncouth Examples:
Doctor Temperance Brennan (Bones)- Dr. Brennan is perfecly nice and mostly polite despite the fact that she is uncouth. She has a penchant for stating the truth in every situation. She is also fond of verbally expressing her observations and conclusions. She does not do this out of spite, however. As far as she is concerned the world is simply a large experiment that she is observing.

Bosco Albert "B.A." Baracus (The A-Team)- B.A. is another example of a relativley nice uncouth. He has a tendency toward irritation and a willingness to ignore societal niceties, but he is loyal and supportive of his friends. His uncouth status comes more from a dislike of the rules of society etiquette than from asshattery.

H.M. Murdock (The A-Team)- Murdock is kind of a mirror to B.A. when it comes to couth. He tends to disregard social etiquette as much as B.A. does. However his uncouth status more about his tendancy to say whatever the hell he wants coupled with a willingness to be percieved as a complete loon. Murdock is uncouth simply because he's crazy.

Anya Jenkins/Anyanka/Aud (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)- Anya doesn't seem to recognize the difference between personal and public topics. She also has an almost pathological tendancy to tell the truth, especially about her feelings and opinions. When you put those together you get a perfect storm of uncoth. Despite this she is upbeat and quite nice. Yes, I like Buffy, shut up.

Mary Shannon (In Plain Sight)- Mary's version of uncouth is difficult to explain. She tends toward sarcasm and dislikes bullshit. She also has a very low annoyance threshold. Put that together and you get someone who will call anyone out on their bullshit and sarcastically mock anybody. Despite her abrasive personality she is actually rather nice. Sort of. It's complicated.

Thats a good point and one use of Etiquette that I think some GMs overlook is as a sort of "Social Stealth".

The roleplay options are extremely open. The quality is focused more on the results of the action, so the flavor of it can be anything you can imagine, but inevitably the character somehow put's their foot in their mouth. How you want your character to get to that point is up to you. It in no way forces a brutish jerk.

Now I'm tempted to make a character based on the movie Malibu's Most Wanted, but I don't know if I can subject my group to that... Uncouth, Ork Poser... it writes itself though...