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Boondocker
I was reading December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith (recommended) about an American raised Japanese, and started thinking about how characters bought the Etiquette skill with various specializations to fit into sub-cultures other than their own, and how odd it was that characters weren't considered to have a 'native' etiquette skill. So I thought of this alternate rule (in two parts):

1. Etiquette is no longer a general skill, i.e. it must have a qualifier; Japanese Etiquette, Street Etiquette/Seattle, Corp Etiquette/Mitsuhama that sort of thing. Like dividing Firearms into several skills, this makes more general Etiquette skills.

2. Starting characters begin play with free points equal to their Charisma to distribute among whatever Etiquette skills they wish. Specializations are allowed at regular cost, so a character with a Charisma of 5 could take Street Etiquette 3 and Southern Europe Etiquette/Greece 1/3. Further Etiquette skills could be bought normally with starting Active Skill points.

Any thoughts?
Abstruse
#1 sounds like how Etiquette worked in Second Edition.

The Abstruse One
Talia Invierno
Yes. It was almost as painful bp/karma-wise for a social character as the sheer number of B/R skills are for a tech-type, but I preferred it for realism.

A variant on #2 used to a standard Virtual Seattle starting character rule: every PC began with Etiquette (Street) at 3. As with the house/VS rule tying a bonus native language to IN, tying a native Etiquette to CH makes much more sense.
Zazen
I use #1 already, and I call them knowledge skills for cost purposes so that people can load up on 'em.
Fortune
At one time I was working on a system whereby Etiquette TNs were modified by a character's Knowledge Skills of different aspects of society. For example, if a character had a decent knowledge of Gangs, this would affect his Street Etiquette rolls, or is he knew about Corporations, or the Media, then those Etiquette roll TNs would be lower.

I never got around to pinning down exact numbers and modifiers though.
TinkerGnome
QUOTE (Fortune)
For example, if a character had a decent knowledge of Gangs, this would affect his Street Etiquette rolls, or is he knew about Corporations, or the Media, then those Etiquette roll TNs would be lower.

Why not just encourage PCs to have knowledge skills that they can use as complementary dice for etiquette tests? And apply the same thing for NPCs in opposed tests. Seems like the simplest solution.

Someone who really knows their way around human (metahuman) interaction can probably do okay even in a segment of society they know little about.
Fortune
QUOTE (TinkerGnome @ Aug 29 2003, 01:42 PM)
Why not just encourage PCs to have knowledge skills that they can use as complementary dice for etiquette tests?  And apply the same thing for NPCs in opposed tests.  Seems like the simplest solution.

Because of the fact that if they choose not to have those Knowledge Skills, they would still interact almost as well as someone with them. Complimentary skills at reasonable levels can only add 3 successes to an already successful test, whereas lower TNs for appropriate skills (and higher ones for the lack thereof) is more of an indication of being able to 'fit in'.
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