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Con and Specializations

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Dr Adder

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« Reply #30 on: <06-20-16/1755:14> »
Hi,
 what about spec Bribe for etiquette, negotiate, and con ?

Kiirnodel

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« Reply #31 on: <06-21-16/0035:11> »
what about spec Bribe for etiquette, negotiate, and con ?

To me, Bribe falls pretty squarely into Negotiate as far as a specialty goes. There might be circumstances where Etiquette might tell you that a bribe is appropriate, inappropriate, or possibly even expected. But I wouldn't expect that to be a specialization just to "know when it is ok to bribe someone" so it doesn't really fall into Etiquette.

And Con is about being able to convince people of something, once you pull out the cash that kind of stops. At that point you aren't talking them into something, you're just paying them to do it.
"What? I'm not lying! Mr. Franklin here believes me and he never tells a lie. Here, I'll let you ask him [put's bill in their front pocket]. Now, while you're conferring, I'll just be on my way."

With a bribe, you haven't really convinced them of any sort of truth, you've just paid them to not care anymore. Which at that point is a negotiation over price/willingness to accept your bribe. Hence Negotiation specialty.

Kincaid

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« Reply #32 on: <06-21-16/0902:05> »
In addition to being the "social stealth" skill, Etiquette is handy for steering the conversation in a desired direction.  If the wageslave at the bar is watching the game on the trid but you really need him to talk about his father-in-law, you'd roll Etiquette to make the shift in topic seem natural.

Long cons (or medium-range cons) are a lot of fun, but it can be hard to represent them at the table without chewing up a ton of playing time.  If you're in a longer campaign, it's not a problem since you can space it out across sessions, but if I've got a single block of time to work with, I generally represent it through a series of tests.  For example, the classic (overly done?) "seduce the secretary" approach is an Extended Etiquette (probably Corp) Test to get to a point where I'll allow the player to roll Con (Seduction).  Since runs are often limited by a time frame, the player is incentivized to speed up the Extended Test to get through in as few intervals as possible--possibly adding modifiers by buying her expensive gifts, etc.  Whirlwind romances can get expensive.
Killing so many sacred cows, I'm banned from India.

adzling

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« Reply #33 on: <06-22-16/1912:34> »
an extended etiquette or social test, I never thought about that.
cool idea im going to pinch that one kincaid ;-)