The problem with SOC

[aramis]

Wealthy industrialist and kinfolk.
Old Money.
World Leaders, Political
World Leaders, Entertainment*
World Leaders, religious
Any major insterstellar government officials*

* both of these could easily be low soc individuals who may or may not meet their apparent soc by weath.

You could even split soc into "Wealth" and "Culture"... Wealth is exclusivey by appearances, no matter who pays for it, and Culture is the stat; in interpsersonal tasks, use the lower. In publicity & media tasks, use the higher.
But, if your wealth stays below your culture for 5-difference years, lose a point of culture... CGen affects only culture...

 

[hunter]

Folks, don't repeatedly break the rules and then get pissy with the moderators for busting you on it. It will earn you a vacation from the forums.

 

[rancke]

Gents... let's leave the recent politicians out of the discussion to avoid tempting some to political commentary.

Say, for our purposes, no one who was in Rea World offices post 1990. Thanks.

If you'd rather, I'll happily move the thread into the pit, and then we can use even the current in-office types as exemplars... but that's not going to help the discussion any, I believe.

I wasn't referring to Millionaire Gates and President Obama as Bill Gates and Barak Obama the individuals, but as 'one of the riches men on a high-population TL7 world' and 'the leader of a big nation on a balkanized high-population TL7 world'.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Folks, don't repeatedly break the rules and then get pissy with the moderators for busting you on it. It will earn you a vacation from the forums.

As far as I can tell, no one got pissy with the moderator for busting us here in this thread. Which is why this post does annoy me. Hopefully pointing that out does not count as getting pissy with you, Hunter.


Hans

 

[aramis]

It wasn't you, Hans. S4 objected to a warning about politics outside the pit for his jab at the current president.

 

[sabredog]

I'd agree with Aramis - SOC in a non-noble type society would translate to influence. Not money, per se, but at least how good you'd be at networking and the money and power your connections would bring to the table.

Like the philosopher said: it's good to have friends in high places. A SOC of 15 might indicate friends in some pretty high places indeed.

 

[Imperial Planetologist]

I saw a house rule once - can't remember where, might've been CotI, might've been somewhere else - that I thought was interesting: you get a +1 bonus to reaction rolls to someone close to your own Soc, and a -1 penalty is the Soc is more than x steps away from your own. The idea is that the closer you are to your peers, the more likely you are to find common ground.

Let's say that if the difference is within two of your Soc you get a bonus, and if it's more than four you incur a penalty. Your Soc 8 character is attempting to talk up a bartender - the bartender is Soc 5, so there's neither a penalty nor a bonus. Later the character meets up with an SPA inspector, Soc 9 - the character gets a +1 bonus to dealing with the inspector. Finally, the character needs to enlist the help of a port worker to turn a blind eye to a "special cargo" that's going to be loaded on the character's ship - the worker is Soc 3, so the character is going to be at a bit of a disadvantage unless he can bring a skill like Liaison to bear on the interaction.

I don't use this rule myself, so I don't really know how well it works out in play, but it seemed clever to me. The Soc 3 crime lord will regularly gain an advantage in dealing with the residents of the seedier sections of startown, as will the Soc B Imperial baronet dealing with administrators and executives. The crime lord will have less truck with a noble, however, while the baronet is discomfited by the look of contempt in the porter's eyes.

Skills, like Streetwise and Liaison, represent the ability to overcome the disadvantage that dealing with someone from a different station may carry with it. I never tried it around our table, but it did seem like a novel approach.

Btw, losing social standing, including hereditary titles, does happen IRL, and it can happen in my games as well. An unlucky Soc C Other who manages to roll -1 Soc four times on mustering out? That title is gone, and the character is probably fortunate not to be shortened as well.

 

[rsm109]

Like the philosopher said: it's good to have friends in high places. A SOC of 15 might indicate friends in some pretty high places indeed.

And indeed that other characters lower down the social scale might have you as their friend in high places. Maybe even one or all of the other PCs. What if a contact for whatever reason betrays you or otherwise gets you into trouble? What if a promised favour (either by you or a contact) proves more complicated than initially thought? Either way, a good source of adventure hooks.

 

[rust]

Presume a democratic interstellar society, one without nobles. What would some positions in this interstellar state be, to have high Soc?

I tried to figure this out for our setting, and some examples from this set-
ting would look like this:

Khedidja Gerardi is a scientist, a terraforming expert. She founded and orga-
nized the Tashara Colony that is at the centre of our setting and campaign,
and she also developed the terraforming program for Enki II, the planet the
colony is on. She once was one of the elected leaders of the colony, but she
resigned to concentrate on her terraforming projects.

Khedidja, now the "Old Lady" of the colony, has a very high SOC among all
members of the Tashara Colony, probably even SOC 15.
Away from Enki II, she has a very good reputation among the scientists of
the region (at least SOC 10) and is well remembered among the region's po-
liticians for her short career as a government member of the colony (also at
least SOC 10).
However, on distant Terra hardly anyone has ever heard her name or read
one of her scientific papers, and so she would just be an old female colonist
from an unknown planet on the rim (SOC 7 at best).

On the other hand, the Secretary General of the Solar Federation has a high
SOC (at least 15) among members of the Federation's bureaucracy, no mat-
ter where in the Federation they are.
He probably also has a comparatively high SOC (say 10) among the general
population of the Federation, but there his SOC is not higher than that of a
movie star, an industrialist, a famous scientist and one of the many other im-
portant or influential people of this society.
And on remote Enki II, where the Federation and its Colonial Office are less
than well liked, the colonists would treat him just like any other meddling fo-
reigner from the core (SOC 7, with luck).

 

[DaveChase]

Sounds like you use a distance modifier. Like a minus 1 per parsec or something.

Neat, I have seen something similar before but still neat that you are doing it.

Dave Chase

 

[rust]

Sounds like you use a distance modifier. Like a minus 1 per parsec or something.

Not really, it is based more on "relationship" (sorry, I did not find a better
word) than on distance alone.

For example, the Tashara Colony mentioned above has close relations with
Kinsun, the main world of the Sapal Sector, and with Shoona, a trade hub
halfway between the Sapal Sector and Terra. Therefore important people
from the Tashara Colony are well known and have influence on Kinsun and
Shoona.

Chapan, another colony in the Sapal Sector, is closer to the Tashara Colo-
ny than Kinsun, and much closer than Shoona, but there are almost no re-
lations between the Tashara Colony and nearby Chapan. Therefore the Cha-
pani do not know much about the Tashara Colony, and vice versa, and even
one of the Colony Administrators from the Tashara Colony would be rather
unknown and unimportant on Chapan.

 

[coldwar]

My take on SOC is that it repersents your title and succes in life, higher scores thus make you recagnized more than lower ones.

I did read the original post, and why a noble may not be able to talk himself out of a fight with a few thugs in an alley is that due to his standing and lifestyle he isn't as streetwise as the thugs.

Think of things like 17th Centery England, Royalty would find it hard to speak a local tongue nor understand a local tongue of a working class people, thus it works the other way to, a working class man would not be able to speak in such a fluent way that royalty would, so they would take him as a fool, and not even listen to him due to the way he talks and his mannerisms

 

[FreeTrav]

SOC has always been sort of a house rule for me - and perhaps I should try to formalize it a bit better and post it to Freelance Traveller.

At any rate, in general terms:

Your CharGen SOC represents, in effect, your monthly cost-of-living. You can change your SOC by changing your CoL; about a year of living at a different SOC - higher or lover - changes your SOC to that level - but you still have to keep up that CoL to maintain that SOC.

Your SOC also represents a baseline for reaction rolls, as it defines the first impression that someone will have of you - if you live like the local Baron, you'll be perceived as a Baron, even if not the locals' Baron.

Reaction rolls get potentially complicated - SOC comes in 'bands', where anyone in a band will receive a generally similar reaction from any given person in any given situation - but it's not simply a distance-between-bands measurement to determine the reaction roll modifiers; other things, like whether it's a confrontational situation, who wants what from whom, available levels of skills such as Admin, Liaison, or Streetwise, and so on, all come into play in determining the reaction roll. And the bands overlap, too, so you have to determine WHY the character is being perceived as being of a particular SOC...

Sample bands:

SOC B+: Nobility/High Executives/Government Undersecretaries and above/Military Flag Officers
SOC 8-C: Gentry/Low Executives/Sub-Executive Managers/Government Dept Heads/Military Officers/Scholars/Scientists
SOC 6-A: White Collar Workers/Artisans/Highly Educated/Government Bureaucrats/Military Warrant Officers and Technical NCOs ("Spec-4")
SOC 4-8: Blue Collar Workers/Skilled Trades/Low Educated/Government Clerks/Military NCOs and Enlisted
SOC 6-: Nonworkers/Migrant and Seasonal workers/Outcast

There's clearly going to be some context-dependent fuzz; for example, a military NCO who has a high level of education, but is not in a technical assignment (and thus is not a "Spec-4") could be in either the third or fourth band listed. If he further has a sustainable standard of living similar to the local Baron (SOC B), he could be perceived to be in either of the first two bands as well.

Context, of course, is always important. If a Nonworker approaches a Bureaucrat to ask for a job, the reaction will be different than if a Criminal of identical SOC approaches the same Bureaucrat to rob him. And if the Bureaucrat wants information from either the Nonworker or the Criminal, that's two more different reactions.

 

[coldwar]

Goes with my take on it Free Trav.

Its basically showing really what social status you are in, how the dm bands it for modifiers for certain situations is up to them, but as long as you seperate certain classes it works.

And remeber that sometimes it might not work, so just change it without letting the player know, such as a Low ranking Solder addressing a High Ranking Officer in the same unit (ie a Battlalion, they are likely to have the same mannerisms, so neither will look a foll to the other, but that they just earn a different amount and thus have a different lifestyle.

Really SOC is just a guideline for players and GM's to interpert, not a set of rules depending on the game set as I know in T20 it is not a set of Implicated rules so it can be interperted differently and used differently by each and every GM aslong as they keep to that and show its affects to the players, they to will understand how it works in the game they are playing.

 

[Renaissance Man]

As a stat, however, it seems that SOC is of limited value unless it has some "convertability" to and from Imperial society (or whatever interstellar norm there is out there.) Where your SOC comes from local influence, it should "convert" to Imperial society. Likewise, imperial SOC should convert back to the local realm. Maybe not 1-1 or anything like that, but something.

Otherwise, even the most modest form of min-maxing will involve shying away from parochial sources of SOC. This is Traveller after all, not "stay where my SOC is high."

The stat is troublesome because unlike other stats, which are intrinsic, SOC is something that can't easily be "carried with you."