Some Concerns

I can agree with many of the points you raise here, and come up with both an argument for and against the Social Qualities part of it. In favor of your side, no character in the games has been a blank slate but the player character, who by definition absolutely needed to be a blank slate to work. Every other character had defining characteristics, social qualities that rose above the norm, stuff like that. It's no stretch to say, for example, Naoto Shirogane started off with Rank 5 Knowledge because of her job and history, or Aigis with Rank 6 Courage, which is even slapped onto the Answer directly, with Aigis having max Courage, Rank 3 Charisma and Rank 4 Knowledge. To put it simply, no real character would start off at 0, but to balance things, no real character should be overwhelmingly good at something either. Having a balance is essential here, having someone start off at Max Rank on anything is ludicrous. But this is my suggestion:

In the character creation, give every starting character some Social Quality points to work with so each char is truly unique at the start, and can still build up to be better through RP. This is so someone who isn't a master hacker and has been all their life in their history is suddenly reduced to a pitiful noob just because they entered the plot. This coupled with a strength to raise them could maybe get characters to Rank 3 or on the way there, but not much farther. Everyone in favor, please say so.

So Lost I do agree with you. My character has been taught nothing but technology from her family, and is basically a prodigy with hacking software and stuff like that. Honestly, I think her Intelligence is like rank 4 or 5 based on her history and stuff like that. But of course she would be reduced to someone who doesn't know what to do with things like that. Say the team needs a hacker to assist them in shutting down some system. Based on her history and strengths she should be able to do it, but IC she'd be left to say "well I don't know how to do any of that." Which would suck honestly.
The idea of Social Qualities are definitely cool, in a sense that they would be fun to play with. But we are not in a game, we are not a nameless protagonist who doesn't talk, we aren't blank slates. We start off with histories, personalities, and strengths along with weaknesses. I agree with what Rita said as well, because using strengths for that kind of thing would be handy. I honestly think it would be nice if we get to start out with a select number of social quality points to level up or we can get like three levels of social qualities and put them towards any ones of our choosing if they make sense. It'd be better than starting out with nothing.

Honestly these social qualities don't make a lot of sense to me for a roleplay site... Surely the whole point of roleplaying a character is to develop them and know who they are and what they'd do in certain situations youself and act IC. Having stats to tell you how you'd act IC just seems to take away apart of the whole roleplay aspect of it... Plus I can see some situations where people may do very OoC things just to boost one of their social qualities to help benefit them later. Plus it does seem weird how broad some of these qualities are... Just cause you're good at pickpocketing you know how to hot wire a car?

Development of a characters personality and traits should be something you as the roleplayer keeps track of, knowing your character and knowing how they act... Not just basing them off of numbers attached to their backsides... But that's just my opinion...

I will go through all your points in a second. I will make it my job to dissect them. But I'm starting off with this talk of "prodigies", which I am getting rather tired of.

I implemented the Social Qualities because of these Prodigy characters. If you want to be a prodigy still, then make a strength starting you at a higher rank, or make a strength that allows you to learn in that trade faster than the norm. However, I will no longer be allowing people to start off amazing; especially in Endymion. You will work, THROUGH RP, to prove you're a prodigy at your trade. You will not start off amazing. You know why prodigies are labeled as so? Not because they were born and automatically just knew everything. It's because they had the mind to understand things beyond their set age. So once again, I am completely adamant about this. Make a strength to encompass it. And hey, if you want to start off maxed in a quality, make five strengths to be that way. There's your prodigy there. But for atleast this next plot in Endymion, you will have to show why you're a prodigy not just start off as one.

Now, it's time to start..

Social Qualities:

A character's natural charisma will always be there through personality and how they're created on their application. If you say your character is charismatic, once again from the option above, prove it through roleplay. If you make decisions or show charisma through your rp experience, those points would obviously sky rocket up rather fast. However if you're just putting on your app "He's very charismatic" yet show none of this through roleplay and continue to be a very un-charismatic person in general, of course the Social numbers aren't going to match up to you. However, these Social Qualities do not dictate story or endings in Endymion. They do, however, dictate how some NPCs will view you in the world. Even Demons would be more drawn to someone who beams with charisma. You'd literally have to be trying not to be charismatic with a character to gain no points in this through your social interactions. Making a character is just half the story. If you can't roleplay with your own character to the standards of how you made them; I'm not going to cater to you.


If a character has a mental illness that does not allow them to even participate in a social quality, then Social Quality or not; they'd STILL be limited if it were a regular roleplay. So I don't understand this concern since it literally holds no base considering it wouldn't happen if social qualities were there or not to begin with. If anything, this gives them a free weakness to put down for another strength that could boost another quality up. And not once have I used the word "NEED" in any of these descriptions. It will just make some experiences easier than the norm, but this is not needed to complete tasks.

Your characters are stepping into a new world with new possibilities. With the sudden inclusion of demons, persona users, and the supernatural; their expectations of life would be flipped upside down. So in a sense, alot of people who are put into this new environment would have a refresh on how they interpret the environment and how it interpret's them back.

In Salmane's case, you could have been a hacker all your life, sure. But that doesn't mean you've ever come across an actual demon that uses another means to protect systems from hackers. If you truly want to make this prodigy, focus all your strengths towards it. If not; then work to prove why you're a prodigy not just say it.


Quick Action Sequences (QAS):

Now this is a more valid concern I looked into it. Though I'm not entirely sure why you keep saying these numbers are invisible, I'll still answer this. An ASSW, once find its ego, would be able to feel such emotions as we've seen from Metis, Labrys, Aigis, and every single other ASSW introduced to us throughout the series. That example doesn't really hold any water; especially since Demons are a supernatural presence aswell. It's not as if the example is using a basic human and saying you fear them. No, it's a demon created by foul human emotions from folklore that's been able to twist many things when it comes to the SMT and Persona Universe. ASSW wouldn't even have a database on demons considering they're Anti- SHADOW - Suppression - Weapons.

Regardless of this, there seems to be a misconception. You believe you won't be roleplaying your actions out, but you will be. However, as stated above about the social qualities, this is a new world with things your characters have hardly if ever experienced. If you take me to believe a human would easily bat an eyelash at a demon because they're so badass and courageous, then I'm taking it that their character app must have been focused on them being so fearless. Because people fear the unknown, and in this world, Demons and the supernatural are the unknown. This is why people were so scared and relied on the government to protect them. If someone wants to build their courage to deal with a demon as powerful as that, they can. But they wouldn't start the RP off with such courage to stare down a God of the Old. If anything, it's being more realistic in the sense of your characters. You want to be brave? Then build that bravery through roleplay. By no means is anyone a coward unless they make themselves one; they simply aren't so courageous to jump into the lion's den without worry.

The example used, as seen on the difficulty scaling posted in the dungeon traversal faq, is for a risky dungeon where it specifically says what sort of demons are in that dungeon. I have never said this would be used for "crucial" events, so I'm not sure where you got that from. Its main use is for puzzles during dungeon traversal, not "crucial" events or moments.

If you believe you're making a boring character because of Social Qualities, then maybe it's just a boring character in general. I've already seen plenty of fine applications and personalities that wouldn't be held back because of social qualities. Its main purpose is to add, not subtract from your character. As they go through their journey, of course where they started would continuously raise as they begin to take their steps through the new world of Endymion. That should not take anything away from character creation. If it does, that's because you're letting it, not the Qualities themselves.


Sororities:

This is a side thing for the players to run. If they want to make a club that moves towards a certain Social Quality, let them. It's honestly not a big deal towards me, but if others have a problem with it then the captains of the club can recreate them. However now; this is for them and it gives them some bonuses so I see absolutely no problem from it. It's adding to the base principle of being Understanding or Intelligent. It can transfer over to pick locking because if you become more understanding in general, you'd be able to understand even the concepts of that. That's of course, if you really, DIRELY, needed some sort of correlation between that.


If you have anything else, please put it here. This goes for anyone with concerns or questions. I won't bite entirely too hard,

Wolfie, these Social Qualities will not dictate how your character reacts to environments in roleplay. You are still to roleplay it out. And yes, they are vague because understanding in general is a vague term. Same as intelligence. Both titles can literally swallow anything under them, so Understanding has been translated to hands on, while intelligence is more based around the technical side of things.

As put above, Social Qualities are supposed to add to a character, not take away from them. Thus through your decisions in roleplay the qualities would continue to raise with you. You will not be completely barred from anything. But even then, your character should be naturally growing through the role play. It is not TELLING you how you'd act, but instead taking how you would act and putting points towards it. It responds on how a character is played through roleplay.

If you're asked a question by a teacher in RP and you answer it right; you'd gain some points towards your Understanding. It's supposed to be another way to keep track of growth aswell. Especially since changes in character is an extremely important part of a Persona site.

Well said, I can agree with these points. Starting out a prodigy is naturally insane, nobody should have that, but I believe most of the confusion came from some explanations not being clear enough in the guide. Thankfully, now we have an accurate and clear response to the issues. Thank you for your time, Phi.

Y'all never played a table top rpg

That's alright. If you have any questions or need something clarified I implore you to do it again. Things could have been explained poorly so I'm counting on the members to bring it up so I can clarify unclear things.