[Rq-rules] *** JUNK MAIL ***Re: Farewell to CON and thoughts on APP

[Simon Phipp]

Tom Cantine:
> I've always been troubled a bit by traits like APP, which are in real 
> life pretty darned subjective, notwithstanding that there's also a 
> large degree of consensus within a community as to who's attractive and 
> who isn't. 

Of course, APP is totally subjective. But, given the same species and culture, if you asked 1000 people to rate someone's attractiveness between 3 and 18, you'd get a reasonable average score that would equate to APP.

I'd give someone from a different culture a modifier of +/-5 to APP, depending on their physical appearance. Someone from a different species might get +/-10 to +/-20, depending on the species involved. 

So, someone from an Earth culture might view large people as being physically attractive, as they eat well, are healthy and are affluent, other cultures might rate the slim warrior type as more attractive, as they are fit, can hunt and provide for a family. So, a fat person from the second culture would perhaps get a +5 APP in the first culture, whereas a thin person from the second culture would have -5APP in the first culture.

Similarly, a woman with tusks might have a -5APP penalty in human culture, but trolls might see her as fairly attractive and have a +5APP.

> So the approach I would like to take is to break up the 3d6 
> of APP into separate components, a racial (species), cultural and 
> individual component. Each character would record on their sheet only 
> the first two; the individual component is subjective, "in the eye of 
> the beholder", and rolled up for each viewer. The reaction of each 
> viewer would always be determined by the sum of all three values, but 
> certain values can be limited by the viewer's unfamiliarity with the 
> species or cultural norms.

Perhaps, but that's probably going a bit too far for me. Most people will view a person as having rougly the same APP. That doesn't necessarily mean they will react favourably to them or even desire them. There are a lot of women that I can see as being very attractive but not desirable ion the least.

> (Maybe the unnatural beauty of certain beings could be simulated by 
> rolling their subjective reaction score on something more than 1d6? A 
> dryad is supposed to have APP of 2d6+12; this is the equivalent of 
> saying that they naturally max out the racial and cultural values 
> appropriate to the viewer, whoever they encounter, which makes sense, 
> and then they get a subjective value of 2d6.) 

Perhaps. I think that Dryads are naturally attractive to all species, except perhaps trolls. They certainly wouldn't get any species negatives, but don;t need any adds either.

See Ya

Simon
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