So, some of you may remember some fairly extended debates that essentially boiled down to certain negative qualities being:

a) horrendously crippling to an extent that is completely absurd
b) completely different mechanically than the way they are described

uncouth and uneducated were two examples of such skills. in case you were wondering, they're still horrendously crippling, and they still don't make any sense.

an uncouth individual cannot default on social skills (ie cannot lie and is not even aware of the possibility of lying, cannot negotiate and is not even aware of the possibility of negotiating... ie can only accept initial offer or reject it - cannot intimidate people, cannot order people around, cannot understand the concept of either of those things happening, etc...) unless they learn the skill (which costs double, and in very short order will cost substantially more just to be able to use the skills that they should be able to use than it would have cost them to just not have the quality in the first place).

and uneducated once again means that you essentially don't know anything about anything. if you are not specifically trained in it, you don't even have the faintest idea of how anything works. you're not uneducated, you are anti-educated... you would have to have spent your entire life being brainwashed with all kinds of inaccurate information, and while that makes for a slightly amusing character concept it really doesn't make any sense at all for a standard quality to exist.

what's worse is how much you gain for these massive crippling flaws. 14 karma for uncouth (about 1/3 of what it was worth in SR4, and it was an outstandingly stupid idea to go near it even when it was 20 BP) and 8 karma for uneducated. seriously? 8 karma? what is this, some kind of sick joke? these qualities are like some kind of cruel noob trap designed to destroy the gaming experience of any sucker foolish enough to actually pick them up thinking that it will be anything remotely like what it says in the description.

why catalyst? why? there have been several threads where these qualities were discussed. what could possibly have possessed you to think that someone who is incapable of even imagining the possibility of lying or being lied to could ever be a viable human being, let alone a shadowrunner?

about the only good thing i can say is that at least infirm is gone. i would have preferred to see it merely changed to something reasonable (given that previously, the quality meant you could not jump, climb, swim, etc. not just that you couldn't do them well, mind you - you literally couldn't do them at all unless you were specially trained in those activities, making it more reasonable would not have been difficult). but i'd rather see it gone than see it come back exactly the same.

edit: and dagnabbit, i've just had my attention drawn to the absurdity of incompetence. it now applies to a full skill group, which is absolutely awful, and is only worth 5 karma. really? 5 karma? i could vaguely see some skill groups making sense for this, but what skill group is worth 5 karma? the only way this could ever *not* a complete disaster is if you're choosing it in something you would never in a million years use anyways.

I just read Uncouth. Wow, I really can't believe this. The way it's written leads me to me to believe such an individual wouldn't survive in the shadows. They might barely survive as a ganger. Uneducated isn't great, but not nearly as unplayable as Uncouth. I've known people that are Uncouth as described in 5th edition, and bad things happen to them, such as being fired. That can often mean a bullet to the brain in the shadows.

I hadn't really read that section until I saw this thread. LOL. Yeah, I see what you mean. I suppose they are supposed to be obviously terrible in every way as an RP thing?

Had an uneducated, illiterate hillbilly adept in a game I played. He was amazing at driving a truck, but damned if he knew how they worked. (Needless to say, he didn't get benefit from AR). It's not that he's incapable of fathoming the mere idea of fixing a car--it just wouldn't occur to him that he had to stop if his wheel blew out. Assuming the car eventually came to a stop due to the forces of nature, he might realize something looked off when he stepped out to take a smoke (let's call it a Perception test). "Ahh, sheet, done fucked up the wheel again."

Replacing the wheel would be an act undertaken with a stick or slamming it fruitlessly with a wrench he found in the back seat. Calling for help on his commlink was out of the question, since he needed to make a Logic test to simply figure out how to work the icons and call his friend. (Hacker buddy eventually wrote him a custom Accessibility-style program with big friendly pictures. That allowed him limited access but doing new tasks that involved any sort of technical creativity or adaptability--such as adding a new contact or changing an existing contact's number--was out of the question).

Not realistic at all, but it was fun and added a lot of flavor to our game. The game's a team effort after all, and the character's inexpertise was problematic, but not crippling.

To put this in perspective, both of these qualities put together are worth less than having a corporate-born SIN. Good Lord.

Unplayable < SINner? Hmmm. That might be a bit of an issue.

I can think of a few concepts those crippling effects might be fine for, as well as some games. For a default run of the mill SR game, it's not so useful, I grant. Reminds me of the villain's brother in Lockout. Suicidally stupid. Kept alive simply by the intervention of his brother. So a joint concept with another PC is a good start for something like that.

"Remind me why we use him?"
"He's good at blowing shit up, remember."
"But he's a moron, otherwise."
"Yeah, but he's my brother."

That all said, I'd never use either one.

-Temperance

Actually, I had found another quality that I disagree with how it was handled. Quoted from the notes of the review i'm working on(for the record, the majority of this review is POSITIVE, but that doesn't mean I'm not without an issue here and there.)

Sensitive System they seemed to want to try to bring back the 'old way' IRT mages...but I'm not sure if I agree with this, since in SR2-3, it made more sense since magically active folks were much less likely to cyber up in those days, but in the later years, even the magically active have found the want to get cyberware, as well-thus I'm not sure if that's needed. Not taking 'ware is a real decision for a magically active person these days, and thus I don't think they needed an extra disadvantage above and beyond it. In fact, it hurts them DOUBLE now, and they don't even get more for it(they have the Drain drawback AND the double Essence loss drawback and they don't get more Karma for that? That doesn't seem fair to me.)

Makes sense to me. Fair doesn't enter into the picture. Negative qualities are optional. You aren't forced to take sensitive system. Previously it was free points for the cyber-free mage. Now the loophole is closed and there's a cost to those points. Actually, this is a good thing. Now sensitive system is a meaningful choice for the cyber-free mage, instead of a no-brainer.

For the cybered mage? To me, sensitive system was never a choice. So I'd find a different flaw. Which is what SR5 is telling you now.

-Temperance

The fact that bioware is also completely off limits makes this quality even unviable for bioware focused streetsam, who frequently took this quality in the old edition.

Good point. I noticed that, but I was unaware that bioware focused street sams frequently took the quality. I've just never had that experience.

-Temperance

Given how blatantly overpowered cyberware scanners were in 4e (don't know about 5e yet), a bioware focused Streetsam generally had less direct power, but had the advantage of passing most checkpoints without a problem.

Ah! Different gaming paradigms entirely then. For my table, scanners haven't been all that prevalent and I don't remember us ever being off guard.

-Temperance

So your players never travelled outside the city except by driving I take it then. And even then you had chances of being checked.

Again it varies by gaming table, but I have noticed a distinct loss of significance of the R and F rating for gear among quite a few groups.

Granted most of that gear is exactly what the runners need, cyber and otherwise, but the risk it entails in possessing these is rarely played up much and it does lose some of the flavour in a way.

Not so edgey I guess.

I generally use it as a roadbump when the runners need to sneak into Corp Country. They usually operate in the Barrens, which is nearly a free-fire zone, but out in Beaver Cleaverville, they pay more attention.

Except when the companion book comes out and people want to play fairies and shape shifters and uneducated comes along as a requirement. I have fun picking on the fairy in my group now just trying to answer his com. It'll get allot worse with this wording.

I am so gonna use that now to describe some areas.

There's 'Fair', and there's 'Balanced.' It doesn't necessarily have to be fair(though I prefer it is, negative qualities and all), but IMO, it should be balanced. It doesn't feel balanced to me...but, once again, I suppose this is a case of different tables, different experiences.

For us, mages with cyber was a very real decision. It was rarer when we *didn't* have a mage that took some cyber. But yeah, definitely a case of different experiences coming in, for us, it was never free points anyway.

But, well, that's the nice thing about houserules, they can fix things that one doesn't like.

(My personal favorite incarnation of it was the older version where it was worth more to a non magically active character, but magically active folks could still get something for it but they did likely want to give up augmentations. Plus, sometimes what a magical person decided at the beginning, wasn't what the magical person wanted to do later on, and then they'd be saddled with buying off the flaw for even more resources if later they were like 'damn, Joe can sling spells and now thanks to that muscle augmentation, he hits even harder. But my body doesn't like cyberware too much...wonder if there's something I can do to fix that?')

It's funny, in every SR game previous to my current one, we've always stayed in Seattle (with small driving side trips to the neighboring territories). I'd like to see more world hopping, but my fellow players and usual GMs are homebodies. I mean that literally. Since we all live in the Seattle area, it makes for easy references.

The current game is a nice change of pace. We're in Miami, Florida. And we work for Lone Star's vice* squad, so security checkpoints generally aren't a problem. (Yes, the Miami Vice jokes pop up all the time.) There's something to be said for being quasi-dirty cops. Well, they are. I'm playing their criminal stooge.

* - Not sure if they have the contract canonically, but that's what the GM is running with to emphasize the racist cop vs city/criminal tension. While the characters aren't racist, management and fellow cops are.

-Temperance

Sounds like a fun setting.

Sooooo... who gets to be Tubbs?

You know, the review I'm whomping together is kinda in two parts; the second part I'm making up characters of all 3 types(Street, Regular, and Prime) and going over how I feel they worked out. (Our own 'prime' will work great with the prime, I think, though we do nix the Availability limits period and run with the 'just make sense' rule, but I'm not going to make a houseruled character for a review.) Since the Sensitive System discussion, I realized the last time any of us played a magically active character with zero cyber was...well my friend had one in 2006, and I have my Bear shifter. So for the 'Normal' character I'm actually making up an adept with no cyber, simply because I haven't done it in awhile.

Careful, you're in Michael Weston's stomping grounds.

Not really too broken up about this. SR3 was just fine without Qualities in the core rulebook, and when they got added into the default ruleset in SR4 the result was an endless wave of min-maxed stupidness. I'm glad they made Incompetent worse - as it was before, it was basically free points. Yeah, I'm incompetent at automotive repair...big whoop, I'm a street sam.

Drawbacks should be inconvenient, and drawbacks work a lot of points should be *really* inconvenient.

Incompetent was only good because the majority of game tables neglect the notoriety rules.

I do think that's another issue with some qualities. Now, when it comes to the sides of 'qualities or no', I'm firmly on the side of 'qualities', and firmly on the side of qualities costing-and granting-points, no two ways about it. That being said, I do think some qualities work better with some of the oft-not-used rules into play. I mean I'll be honest-we often only used the PA/Notoriety rules under extreme circumstances. A table that followed them to the letter would likely indeed see Incompetence a bit less. (For the record, I tend to be a bit of a bigger fan of qualities that are a little more cut and dry; Allergies, Addictions, things of that nature.)

Yes, but in 2075 he is in his 90's so as long as you don't do runs on the retirement homes (SeniorRun GO!) you should be ok.

But he WOULD make a hell of a good contact/advisor.

Ah, but just look at how tough and capable just his elderly mom is. And there's leonization. He has no cyberware, so he's a prime candidate. And well, it's Michael Weston, heheh. That's what they mean by Supowerpowered Prime Runner. Probaly a good example for maximum Edge attribute.

Nah I took him as a contact for NYC missions... him, Fiona and Sam moved to Brooklyn.

Leonization requires a DNA sample from your youthful self.

Well he used to be a spy, so they have one. Sounds like another great excuse for a heist episode. And I think Sam is going by Chuck Findley these days.

You might note that the Sprawl Ganger is neither Uncouth nor Uneducated. He's a cut above the normal ganger, who's well aware that if you're stupid, you're gonna wind up in prison.

Mind you, my table currently has a Dwarf Merc who, against my advice, is running with a Charisma of 1 and not a single social skill, including Etiquette. When you default to 0 dice, your day just isn't a good one.

.

Well, note that the Sprawl Ganger has the skills and attributes of a shadowrunner, since it's an archtype. He's more an elite ganger that is leaving the lifestyle and moving up to better things. What I meant was that Uncouth as written would have a very hard time fitting in as anything but a ganger. In fact, jobs like common ganger are made just for this type of personality. Being belligerent? Check. Got your zipgun and scavenged bludgeon? Check. But most other jobs this person couldn't hold, and it's mainly due to how the quality is written. Even someone with 1 Charisma has the option of just not opening their big mouth and sitting quietly as his team negotiates a run.

Temperance's scenario is one way around it, the George and Lenny thing. The person basically needs a keeper.

None of the drawbacks are worth a lot of points. Total drawback points in a standard campaign is 25 karma, that is 3-4 one night mision runs. Something you can earn in a month of gaming is hardly a lot of points.

I'd expect to see more of that in 5e with the priority system, C and below is 16 or less attribute points. If you want to be good in your area you will have ones. My real issue with the uncouth negative quality is your inability to defend as almost all the defenses are skill based.(most of them should be judge intentions attributes tests, with the skill providing a dodge like extra defense, but oh well). He believes all lies no matter how outlandish they are. That is unrealistic on way too large of a scale.

IMO, Attributes C is pretty handy if you're playing a meta. You can make a human work with it, but they're going to be quite average(in base skills; you could go 'average attributes, bought up with cyberware' for example if you took Resources high). But, well, C is the 'average' priority, so I'd expect an 'average' amount of whatever. If I went about, say, a Street Sam Human with C(assuming I took Resources A to load on cyber), I'd probably run with:

Body: 4
Agility: 4
Reaction: 3
Strength: 3
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 3
Logic: 2
Willpower: 3

And then just get some Reflexes to bump Reaction to 5 or so, some Bone Lacing to help Body, some Muscle Augmentation/Toner to boost Strength and Agility, and could end up with a pretty respectable 6(+1d6(3d6) reaction, 3(5) Str, 4(6) Agility, and then, since if he was a Mundane Human Sam, I'd have taken Skills B and do some skills pumping with some specializations. This dude with a 6(+2) Pistols/Semiauto and 6(+2) Blades(Swords) would be rolling up 14 dice. Not bad, really, though if I was going for a 'numeric minmaxed Sam', I'd go Attributes B, Skills C.

Going, say, Dwarf Mage with Attributes C, you could clean the hell up, since Dwarves just got more awesome with an extra Body bonus. Like:

Body: 4(1)
Agility: 3(2)
Reaction: 3(2)
Strength: 3(0)
Charisma: 3(2)
Intuition: 4(3)
Logic: 4(3)
Willpower: 5(3)

Pretty awesome for Attributes C. Nothing under 3, and while he might be a 'flimsy' dwarf he's still able to arm-wrestle the average human into a draw and is sturdier on top of it.

I'm actually finding the priorities pretty well set up, myself, in terms of what you get. The three sample characters I'm making to go with the review have some varied attribute priorities and such. I haven't tried E, yet, though. (EDIT: And i just have an idea for E that actually works out pretty awesome.)

You can do the old Elven Mage with Attributes E, if you want to draw from ancient tomes.

Me, I see Uncouth as a false disadvantage. It's a freebie. And So I hate it.

Every uncouth PC you'll ever see will have charisma 1 and no social skill. It's a dubious choice but it has already been rewarded; the ressource you did not invest in those arwea have been invested elsewhere. Such a PC will have higher stats and skills in his area of expertise.

And now he takes Uncouth on top of it. He was already never going to succeed at any social test. With Uncouth he is never ever going to succeed at a social test. He obviously did not care to invest in social skills at normal cost and was thus going to pay a cost of 0 karma over the course of his career. Now with Uncouth he'll have to pay twice that.

Wee, what a disadvantage. The player obviously does not care one bit about social interactions, already reallocated all ressources he might have invested in this aspect elsewhere, and now he's telling the GM: ''Could I get some further rewards from my dubious choice without encurring any additional disadvantage? Thanks.''

---

This problem of false disadvantge is common in most RPG. I also dislike things like getting freebie from having an enemy (which I am happy to see is not in SR5, but I bet could be in the companion). It's another false disadvantage. If a PC tells me he has enemies built in in his background, I'll be happy to use them, to build run around them or use them as complications. But if the PCs have no enemies at creation, am I not going to send them on run or add complications?

So are they going to get shot at less or more if they take Enemies related disadvantage? I don't know about other GM', but in my experience it will make no difference at all. This is not Carebear the RPG. It's Shadowrun. You go on dangerous mission and often things go FUBAR no matter what. If you tell me that the local Oyabun is your sworn enemy, I'll use him as a frequent opponent and complication, because obviously you want to be involved in that kind of stories, but if you don't provide me with such plot hooks, you'll get enemies and complication of my own choosing, that's all. So RPG Wise, it's not a real disadvanntage. If anything, it's an advantage because it makes the story center around your PC and gives you additional chances to earn karma for good roleplaying over your team mates.

There are plenty of other such false or dubious disadvantage. You can tell by the fact they are overly popular with players. They ain't stupid, they can tell a free lunch when they smell one.

charisma 1 with no social skills is not as bad as uncouth. not even close.

there are modifiers. and i guarantee, the next time that guy pulls out a gun and threatens to kill someone if they don't give him the information he needs, and your answer is "roll an intimidation test... oh wait, you can't, he's not intimidated, no matter how many modifiers you pile on" he will quite suddenly develop a desire to boost his ability to intimidate...

but if you *really* want to persuade him to invest, just have people lie to him every now and then. no matter how stupid the lie is, he will believe it, and cannot even *attempt* to not believe it, until he starts investing.

other bonuses include informing the player that he has just wet himself from terror due to that little kid who intimidated him (he can't roll to resist), having to always take the worst offers possible (he can't negotiate), and always obeying orders (he can't resist leadership).

charisma 1 and no skill is bad, but at least it can be fixed relatively easily. mix in uncouth, and i assure you, once you show that player what they have done to their character, one of two things will likely happen:

1) they will get rid of that character as fast as possible
2) they will do everything in their power to be able to defend against lies, intimidation, leadership, and negotiation.

either way, the supposed problem of a character who has 1 charisma and no social skills getting a "free ride" out of uncouth has been fixed. and if it hasn't, well, sooner or later he's probably going to get pulled over by a cop. at which point, his inability to use etiquette will mean that he doesn't fit in, and his inability to resist intimidation will quickly result in him spilling his guts to the police officer, and getting a nice free criminal SIN and probably a few years of jail time. also, given he can't resist his lawyer's negotiation attempts, assuming he ever does manage to get out of jail, he will probably be so deeply in debt that he will spend the rest of his life as his lawyer's slave. which he will believe is perfectly legal, because once again, he can't even understand the concept that someone would ever lie.

there is a world of difference between 0 and unaware, even for someone who has a default dice pool of 0. modifiers to many social skills are not hard to get, if you put a bit of effort in. and once your player realizes that they are not playing a total badass who doesn't care what anyone thinks, but rather are stuck with a mentally handicapped person who has difficulty asking if you could please pass the salt, the allure of uncouth will vanish very quickly.

You're forgetting the funnest option. Fails all rolls against seduction . Even against Shirley the Ghoul streetwalker.

That pretty much covers uncouth (although it also covers why the damn quality is not a playable negative quality in the first place). This is assuming there have been no major changes to how social skills affect PCs in SR5, of course.

For the enemy flaw, if you want every flaw to "count" and everyone gets targeted by antagonists in the normal course of the campaign, make it an annoyance instead of extra spotlight time. Have his tires get slashed, his safehouses get bombed, his date with a hottie get interrupted by a gang of thugs delivering a message from you-know-who. Have him get sniped, and wounded, right before or after the run. Don't drag the rest of the group into this character's problems, just have the PC with the flaw get targeted.

Social skills are not mind control, and are generally a one-way street in most games (including Shadowrun). They work against NPCs and don't work in reverse. If you don't believe a lie then the character doesn't, if you don't want to get bedded by Shirley your character wont. The character may not be able to use game mechanics to check validity or themselves seduce Shirley outside of roleplaying the encounter but player agency is very important.

In a well designed RPG the main reason why it is desirable for things like enemies, dependents, day jobs etc to exist is that essentially you are bribing the player to come up with plot hooks the GM can use in the game. It also can provide a direction for the game, assuming there isn't too much craziness allowed in (like characters having allies with the guys hunting the other characters).

Things like uncouth are role-playing modifiers. Given how absurdly it seems to be written up it's unplayable. If every game a random street bum can get the uncouth sami to give up their clothes and guns by essentially asking for them, well, I think that will stop being cute pretty quick.

err... no.

if the player completely screws up a negotiation roll, they don't get to magically not get paid less due to some special immunity to social skills. if they fail a check to see if someone is lying, then they believe that person is telling the truth. if they fail a check to resist being intimidated, they are scared. the player can act as if they didn't fail the test, at which point you remind them why it's not nice to metagame (typically by never earning karma for roleplaying), but if they fail their test to resist seduction by the ghoul street walker, than they think she (or so the player hopes) is a wonderful attractive person that he would like to get to know better and pursue a relationship with. how the player acts on that information is the player's choice, but that doesn't change the fact that his character has those feelings.

also as a result, whether the player acts on those things or not, the character is going to get a reputation... and prospective employers are probably not looking to hire your shadowrunner who suddenly finds that his street name has been changed to "tinkles" due to his morbid fear of a local bully to the point of wetting his pants. on multiple occasions.

Err yes. You seem to be conflating times when you need to use mechanics to succeed at a task and roleplaying.

A character with Uncouth or other disabling trait isn't going to negotiate. Problem solved.

He may not be able to use mechanics to test validity, but if the GM tells him something and the player doesn't believe it then it doesn't matter what crazy roll the NPC made - the character doesn't believe it. He may make a roll and say the character feels something but the player is the one with the reigns that can go "nope."

You do realize that the Social skills in Shadowrun almost usually specify NPC, right (andwhen they don't its pretty clearly an active use against a non-player)? You do realize that rolling dice and then forcing a player to do something stupid with their character is anti-fun and will likely lead to bad feelings? You're free to run a game where the GM can just roll dice and mind control your characters for giggles, but he probably won't keep players.

Well, good thing that characters are not influenced in that way, otherwise it sounds like griefer's paradise.

ummm... no, actually. the rules state that you usually (ie not always) won't need to roll social skills for roleplay between player characters (and if it isn't always not needed, then obviously it can work on player characters just fine). it says absolutely nothing about player characters getting some sort of fantastical immunity to being the target of those skills. in fact, in almost every case, when discussing mechanics, when discussing what "you" can use the skill for (note: GMs are also going to be reading the book), they mention targets, not NPCs.

your PC doesn't get a magical lie detector just because you feel like it. your character doesn't get a magical power to not be intimidated, just because you decide so. you decide your actions. the DM tells you what information is available to you. if the GM tells you that the NPC is telling the truth, you don't get to decide he's lying. if the GM tells you that you that someone is scary, then they are scary.

of course, you can just metagame, in which case the GM should be completely within their rights to deny you any bonus roleplaying karma (and, if it's severe enough, to dock karma from your character. at the very least, until you've been docked enough added karma to buy off the flaw which you are so obviously abusing by acting like it doesn't exist). but if YOU decided to make your character uncouth, then it's time to suck it up and deal with that fact.

the GM would be an ass to not mention what uncouth entails. but the player would be an ass to choose it and think that it isn't going to mean anything, when the quality clearly says otherwise.

*should* uncouth be changed or removed (since, in it's present state, it is pretty much unworkable)? i would say yes. does that change what the quality says it does right now? no, it doesn't. right now it is completely brokenly stupid just how badly it screws over the character, particularly since it very clearly does not do what most people would expect.

personally, i think it should be more like gremlins. i think that would do a much better job of fitting the intended design. but that's not what it does. it makes you unaware in several skills unless you buy them (at double cost), and that means that:

"This is something other than having no ranks in a skill—this
is a special level of ignorance. You haven’t the first clue about
this skill."

and

"You can’t default the skill,
and it never really occurs to you to even use it to solve your
problems."

if you don't want to have that applied to you in all social situations, then don't take the damn quality that gives it to you in all social situations. this is not rocket science. if you want to be able to attempt to lie when a police officer asks you where you're going, don't take the quality that makes it impossible for you to lie. if you want to be able to tell when someone is lying, don't take the quality that make it impossible for you to tell when someone is lying. if you don't want to be intimidated, don't take the quality that makes it impossible for you to resist intimidation. if you don't want to be bossed around, don't take the quality that makes it impossible for you to resist being given orders. if you don't want to always be offered the worst price possible for everything (such as when you go to buy things from your contacts or hire their services), then don't take the quality that makes you unable to negotiate.

and if you're not prepared to roleplay the side-effects of being someone with such a disadvantage, don't take the quality that gives that disadvantage. just like you don't take any other negative quality and expect that the drawbacks don't apply to you.

You are absolutely right that social skills aren't mind control. And I was being somewhat facetious with my Shirley example in an attempt to be humorous.

Otherwise, Pornomancers would indeed be like Enchanter Magicians and control everyone with their sexiness. There are hard limits, such as doing something that makes a security guard lose his job. (Glyph schooled me on this in another thread when I was struggling with my first Pornomancer player character)

There is a gray area though. Lies and seductions do work on Player characters. (Unless your playstyle dictates otherwise) But first, the seduction would have to be appealing to the character, which the Shirley character doesn't qualify for probaly. Second, the character has to believe he isn't doing something that hurts his team or violates other major beliefs. But otherwise, yes an Uncouth character is a prime target for seductions, lies, and intimidations.

The child intimidation I believe is ridiculous though too. It's just too extreme, like the Shirley example. There needs to be some kind of believable threat, be it simply a beefy ork or Human adult with a club, the sly hint at blackmail, or the lie that you are backed by someone powerful.

well, yes. the child has to generate a hit to intimidate, which is fairly unlikely in practice unless the child happens to be some sort of prodigy (ie actually has both a decent level of skill and a decently good charisma to back it up). the subject (ie our uncouth street samurai) is probably physically imposing, and probably has a weapon on him most of the time, which means anywhere from -3 to -5 dice for someone trying to intimidate him. and at least after the first attempt, it's safe to say that our theoretical street samurai will feel at minimum unfriendly towards the bully, and quite possibly hostile (although why not liking someone would make it harder for them to intimidate you is beyond me, and i probably wouldn't apply those particular general modifiers to intimidate).

with that said, it does leave tons of room for anyone even remotely competent at charisma skills to intimidate the theoretical street samurai, who will most likely get a smaller "physically imposing" modifier than he would get vs a child. for example, if he encounters a couple of human gangers with knives, he's probably screwed as far as intimidate goes.

I kinda like the idea,

Child : "Oi, gimme your creds for an ice cream!"
Uncouth Runner "No!"
Child rolls 2dice+EDGE and generates a hit or three
"Gimme your creds or I'm gonna get (Dad/big brother/bigger kids etc.)
Uncouth Runner : "Here! please take all my stuff and call me Tinkles!"

I'm with Jaid on the GM uses mechanics tell the Character what she knows, the player then decides how to work with that information into some RP

That said, the GM should have had a frank and honest discussion about the NQ prior to game, and set the expectations that go with it.