Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Star Power - Appearance Knack

Star Power - Appearance Knack - No Prerequisites, but available only to characters whose appearance represents beauty.

Less than a minute after you get out of the water, your hair and clothes are dry. Bloodstains fade from your Italian suit in moments. You could crawl out of the crater at ground zero, and be ready for a debutante ball minutes later. Bullet-holes and rapier-pricks in your waitress uniform look as fashionable as this season's plunging neckline from a name designer. Your perm is as permanent as you'd like, and your 'do won't do anything you'd rather it didn't.

In short, nothing can stop you from looking hot for more than a scene. As soon as you're alone, or the camera cuts, your body and fashion returns to its beautiful apex. Mechanically, you are able to eliminate one dot of penalties to any social roll for each dot of Legend Rating you have, provided such penalties are caused by stains, holes, wrinkles, or general disheveledness. This affect is free if you're alone and off-camera, but may be invoked on cue via a Speed:3 (DV-1, Diceless) action (representing straightening your collar, running a comb through your hair, or similar preening) and a point of Legend.

8 comments:

digital_sextant said...

Pardon my pedantry, but this is written like it's something you'd post or publish, so with my copyediting hat on...

It should be:
"your body and fashion returns to its beautiful apex."
No apostrophe.

:D

rbbergstrom said...

Thank you. I'll fix that.

digital_sextant said...

My post was so tentative because of an amusing incident in college.

First, a word about me: I like to be corrected. If I'm in error, I like to know that I'm in error so I can not be in error.

A good friend feels the opposite, I was to learn.

In college, a good friend was using a word incorrectly. I think she was using one word instead of its close analog. It wasn't a HUGE deal, but it was the sort of thing that I thought some people would notice and thus she would be wrong to those people. Verbal language errors are often very detrimental to the way we're perceived. I corrected her and she got VERY upset. She said it made her feel stupid to be corrected. I said, "So you'd rather be wrong always than be corrected once?" She said yes and I haven't corrected her on anything since.

Hence, until I know how people feel about being corrected, I say things like "Pardon my pedantry, but this is written like it's something you'd post or publish, so with my copyediting hat on...". :D

rbbergstrom said...

No problem.

Apostrophes often end up where they don't belong when I type quickly.

There are also several words I repeatedly spell incorrectly. Most involve inappropriate assignment of doubled consonants or the transposing of two vowels from adjacent syllables. That whole "i before e" thing screws me too.

For a long time, I felt very insecure about this. Then, I read an article about why frequent contributors to magazines and on-going series tend to have particular editors assigned to them long-term. Turns out, I'm not the only one who makes the same mistakes again and again.

So please, feel free to correct me any time a particular mistake catches your attention - and if I ever seem pissed about it, rest assured there's a very good chance I'm just pissed at myself.

digital_sextant said...

Cool. I myself always have to look up restaurant and many other words.

rbbergstrom said...

Edited: it used to add dice equal to your Legend to Appearance rolls. Now it reduces penalties (from any social roll) by your Legend.

rbbergstrom said...

Edited again: Now the penalty reduction is based on dots of Epic Appearance. In addition, I added the Speed:3 option to invoke it mid-scene.

rbbergstrom said...

Edited yet again: Changed the penalty reduction back to "by your Legend" from "by your Epic Appearance". Having lots of Epic App is still it's own reward, but this allows for a just a little gorgeous PC who still cleans up real good. Also, it scales more in line with penalties that are likely to be applied at Demigod/God level.