grauenwolf
Banded Mongoose
How does Charm work in Traveller Companion? It's mentioned, but there's nothing about how you would get your initial Charm score or what affects it. (Honestly, it feels like the section is an outline or early draft.)
How does Charm work in Traveller Companion?
- Thread starter grauenwolf
- Start date
The current edition of Traveller has a bit of an issue where all Dukes are super charismatic and all gutterpunks are socially dysfunctional because the DRM for social activities is SOC. And that's obviously not actually how real people work. The way Charm is written the Companion is for it to be a direct substitution for groups where you are playing in a setting that doesn't put the same focus on aristocracy and/or you just want to have uncouth nobles and charming street urchins be possible.
For instance, I don't have the characters' rolled SOC determine their standing. The character that is a noble is because she successfully enlisted in the Nobles career. And she's "only" a knight because that's all that her career really justified (ie she didn't get to the higher ranks of the career). All of that is totally independent of her SOC (or CHArm if you use the Companion terminology).
For instance, I don't have the characters' rolled SOC determine their standing. The character that is a noble is because she successfully enlisted in the Nobles career. And she's "only" a knight because that's all that her career really justified (ie she didn't get to the higher ranks of the career). All of that is totally independent of her SOC (or CHArm if you use the Companion terminology).
shammond42
Banded Mongoose
The problem here is that lots of the references to SOC during character creation are (at least implicitly) about social class rather than charisma. Navy commissions and mustering out benefits, Noble entry requirements. Furthermore, some careers where you would want to be able to increase CHA, don't have a way to increase SOC (Rogue for example). I think if you really want to use CHA you need to tweak the careers to really integrate it.
That seems like a lot of work up front. I'd probably sort it out on the fly. When a player picks a career for their Treveller, negotiate what tweaks are necessary to remove SOC and add CHA.
That seems like a lot of work up front. I'd probably sort it out on the fly. When a player picks a career for their Treveller, negotiate what tweaks are necessary to remove SOC and add CHA.
Yeah, all the stats in the Companion (Wealth, Morale, Charm, Luck, etc) would require significant impacts on the character creation system to fully utilize properly.
The SOC/CHA issue is just a core flaw of later editions of Traveller. In original Traveller, SOC didn't directly correspond to the social skills and a high SOC could be a bonus in some situations, but a penalty in others. When later editions standardized the stat bonuses, it got a bit wonky in a few cases, even though it was overall much easier to use.
I find that just letting charm replace SOC in Chargen works okay-ish, other than just eliminating the automatic noble entry for high SOC/CHA stat. Those places that have +SOC modifiers, your character's savoir faire is a close enough proxy for the actual political status, imho.
And the rogue career doesn't get to improve their social skills stat either way, so *shrug*
The SOC/CHA issue is just a core flaw of later editions of Traveller. In original Traveller, SOC didn't directly correspond to the social skills and a high SOC could be a bonus in some situations, but a penalty in others. When later editions standardized the stat bonuses, it got a bit wonky in a few cases, even though it was overall much easier to use.
I find that just letting charm replace SOC in Chargen works okay-ish, other than just eliminating the automatic noble entry for high SOC/CHA stat. Those places that have +SOC modifiers, your character's savoir faire is a close enough proxy for the actual political status, imho.
And the rogue career doesn't get to improve their social skills stat either way, so *shrug*
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Since charm is a softish skill in persuasion, psychology/human, art/performer, diplomacy, deception, investigate, leadership, carouse, persuade, and steward.
I think it was on this board I heard about reversing the positive and negative modifiers for Soc in some circumstances. And if not here, ... some other Traveller board. Trying to Persuade a belter or a planetside, low tech scavenger of something, nobles roll at a minus, low Soc characters roll at a plus. Admittedly an outside the book solution, but I thought not too uncommon given it's not mine.
Then another partial workaround is for the GM to mix up what stats you call for with what rolls. Intimidation might be Persuade + Str, while getting a favor from a Belter might be Persuade + End (from him sizing you up for what he respects, not literally badgering him forever). This is arguably RAW (under Which Characteristic? in Skills and Tasks), but they don't quite spell it out to the fullest so it's easy to default to the listed stats for skills. The limitation to this one is it takes some GM fiat or players just think up some reason their best stat always applies to everything, but it's still a thing I've used infrequently.
After wrestling with it myself, I've rationalized Soc as not simply social standing as we understand it today, but a mix of caste, command presence, and honor/trustworthiness in almost a Pendragon stat sense. So a 12 Soc character gets his bonus in most circumstances not so much because belters find him likable personally as because even the 2 Soc belter can assume he always pays his debts, or he'd no longer be Soc 12. (And, in my game, break enough big promises and that becomes true.)
Rolled or derived?
Then another partial workaround is for the GM to mix up what stats you call for with what rolls. Intimidation might be Persuade + Str, while getting a favor from a Belter might be Persuade + End (from him sizing you up for what he respects, not literally badgering him forever). This is arguably RAW (under Which Characteristic? in Skills and Tasks), but they don't quite spell it out to the fullest so it's easy to default to the listed stats for skills. The limitation to this one is it takes some GM fiat or players just think up some reason their best stat always applies to everything, but it's still a thing I've used infrequently.
After wrestling with it myself, I've rationalized Soc as not simply social standing as we understand it today, but a mix of caste, command presence, and honor/trustworthiness in almost a Pendragon stat sense. So a 12 Soc character gets his bonus in most circumstances not so much because belters find him likable personally as because even the 2 Soc belter can assume he always pays his debts, or he'd no longer be Soc 12. (And, in my game, break enough big promises and that becomes true.)
Rolled or derived?
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
In a society that takes hierarchy seriously, and possibly legally, Social Standing becomes a hard characteristic that can exert force.
So, more intimidation.
Charm is getting the other guy to do things somewhat voluntarily and happily.
So, more intimidation.
Charm is getting the other guy to do things somewhat voluntarily and happily.
alex_greene
Guest
Okay, I made a thread about this a while ago, pointing out the inadequacies of SOC, and proposing a charisma or empathy stat.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
People either use SOC as a dump stat or confuse it for CHA use.
SOC works as intended when players are roleplaying.
SOC works as intended when players are roleplaying.
