Wednesday 10 October 2012

On Charisma

John has been talking about stats, and the last one in particular got me thinking about beautiful women Charisma. Let's talk about it. 

The most charismatic guy I ever knew was somebody I shared a flat with in Shonan, just along the coast from Yokohama; both of us had recently arrived in the country and were working together, and we ended up flat-sharing (with A N Other). I'll call him "N".

N was not particularly tall, fairly nondescript although with mildly boyish good looks, and kept himself moderately in shape - he certainly wasn't what you'd call drop-dead gorgeous; yet women loved him. Women like confidence, and N had that in spades - just a natural way of being himself, combined with a certain swagger, a feeling of arrogance. I like to think I do okay with girls, but N was something else; to go out on the pull in Tokyo with him was akin to stepping into a Lynx advert. He was the ultimate wingman too - he was so good with girls there wasn't even a need for him to be competitive. 

But he was a man's man as well. He was everybody's best friend in town, despite the fact he could barely speak a word of Japanese. There wasn't a party that went on that he wasn't invited to. When you walked through town with him every 50 yards or so somebody would stop to say 'hi' - people who you'd think "How the fuck does N know him?" There may - may - have been an element of Charisma Man about him (the noted phenomenon that white men in Asia, because of the exoticism, become more successful than they are "back home") but I don't think for him it made a great difference. He was just a charismatic guy, that's all there is to it.

Charisma isn't about looks. It's above all an issue of confidence, and intelligence too, of a kind: wit, sharpness, proficiency in conversation. Easy charm that lets you be familiar with others without becoming over-familiar. Self-deprecation. Teflon-like imperviousness to social mores which lets you get away with saying anything because you do it with an ironic smile. God knows where it comes from, but you either got it or you don't. 

In view of that, I'd say Charisma is probably the D&D stat which makes the most sense, especially in its modifiers (to number of hirelings, etc.). The other stats are mostly quite incoherent and vague, but charisma undoubtedly boils down to a certain personality trait which I'm sure I'm not the only one who has encountered. Interestingly, it is sometimes argued that charisma is synonymous with sociopathy - in order to be confident and possess that certain swagger, you need to not care about other people so much. I'm not sure how true that was of N, but I wonder if anyone's ever thought of correlating Charisma with alignment: the higher your CHR, the more you lean towards evil/chaotic? 

40 comments:

  1. In my experience ladies men are rarely the same type as is respected and admired by men, that is a leader of men. So I think Charisma is an umbrella just like the other stats and I wouldn't distinguish it as you have done, though I love the mental stats and interpreting them.

    Consider too the difference between the charisma of the pop-star, whatever that is, and that of the soldier who is looked to when the shit hits the fan.

    It is strange to me that writers, who understand people best, have no advantage in charisma in life which suggests to me the attribute is entirely unconscious, a habit of collecting successful pleasing gestures which over time amount to something influential.

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    1. Do you not think that Mick Jagger and General MacArthur had something in common, deep down inside? They may have used their talents for vastly different objectives, but commanding troops and getting everybody in a room to dance seem like almost the same thing to me.

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    2. If they do share some characteristic then that characteristic does not explain their separate influences on different groups of people. Jagger can make people smile and feel cool for a moment by some form of proximity effect but these guys tend to have below average influence in the company of men.

      Generals are more political than charismatic and typically drawn from a tiny elite with no natural talent. I had in mind the special forces sergeant who gets stuck leading a bunch of rangers and marines and they follow him because he is a better man.

      The difference between the man who greases sexual society and encounters and the man who has proved himself better than other men in strength and toughness and discipline and intelligence is stark for me.

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    3. proved himself better than other men in strength and toughness and discipline and intelligence

      This sounds like a person who is respected for the stats other than charisma (speaking from a D&D point of view). Some people are natural leaders, and they don't need to prove themselves better in other dimensions in order to be followed.

      “When Pericles speaks, the people say, 'How well he speaks.' But when Demosthenes speaks, the people say, 'Let us march!'”

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    4. In AD&D leadership appears to be a component of Charisma whereas in real life Charisma is a component of leadership. We are all working with unstated definitions.

      The classical rebuttal to noisms is seen comparing effeminate Paris, good with women, with warlike Hector. I don't think the Greeks would consider Paris 'charismatic'.

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  2. I agree with your assessment of real-life Charisma, but like Kent, I would leave it more of an umbrella in my own game, open for interpretation. What I'd really like to see discussed is Wisdom. Even the original rules didn't manage to describe it. At all. And later explanations seem like they are grasping at straws, or pulling it in multiple unrelated directions. Anyhow... good post! Also, did N play D&D? I'm guessing not.

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    1. Yeah, Wisdom is definitely the most incoherent of the lot. Not sure about N and D&D; I didn't play it at that time either. He was into SF though.

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    2. I always liked the way it was explained in Mentzer Basic: you step outside and feel drops of water falling on you; Intelligence tells you it's raining, Wisdom tells you to go back inside and grab an umbrella.

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    3. 3.0 D&D kind of clarified Wisdom for me in terms of linking it to Perceptiveness. Wisdom makes sense of your surroundings and guides you in your interactions with it.

      As with Mr. Larkin's example above, intelligence represents your theoretical knowledge and ability to think, wisdom measures how effectively you can apply that knowledge or those thoughts to the real world.

      At least as far as I can see it. YMMV

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    4. I agree that wisdom is sort of problematic diegetically. Remember that strength, intelligence, and wisdom were originally only the prime requisites. That is, the only mechanical effect they had was class-based experience bonus (with the exception of languages).

      My own recent personal gloss has significantly changed both intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is cleverness and is most useful to rogue-types and helps with manipulating machines and ancient technology. Wisdom is spiritual/magical acuity, and is used by all spell casters. It's a big change, but I really like it.

      I'm not a fan of wisdom as perception. That leads to odd things like trap-finding clerics.

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    5. I think they use the rain/umbrella analogy in the 2nd edition DMG too. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, though, to me, because it makes intelligence synonymous with knowledge. And arguably working out you need an umbrella when it's raining is exactly the same attribute (knowing what 'rain' is versus knowing what an 'umbrella' is).

      I prefer to think of Intelligence as being rational and Wisdom as irrational. Logic versus gut feeling. IQ versus intuition. That sort of thing.

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    6. To me, the analogy suggests the classic absent-minded professor--a high-INT, low-WIS genius who would leave the house without their head if it wasn't attached to their body. It's not so much about knowing what an umbrella is or is used for, but having the wherewithal to go back and get one.

      I do like the rational/logic vs. irrational/gut interpretation, though.

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    7. as a way of understanding the world I find the distinction between intelligence and wisdom important: intelligence can help you get out of traps that you would've avoided altogether had you been wise. Also, intelligence allows you to recognise good solutions and practices, but _actually applying them to your life?_ That's wisdom (I know a bunch of overweight doctors and health practitioners who smoke - clearly bad choices that they clearly know all about. High int, low wis).

      In a game it's less evident (although I use "save vs wis" as a cue to players that they're about to do something really daft/their view of the situation is different from mine), but I consider Int, wis and cha based magics as working differently:
      Cha magic looks a lot like reliable luck - you get the universe to go along with you (like coincidental magic in mage)
      Int magic is brute force: you've worked out a trick and you apply it in whatever situation
      Wis magic is understanding what the world wants to do and encouraging it - finding that flaw in the rock which will allow it to fall apart.

      In a game it's less evident

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  3. I have always felt that there are three stats in D&D that make no sense.

    Intelligence
    Wisdom
    Charisma

    Intelligence asks the smart player to act dumb and the slower thinking player to be smart.

    Wisdom asks the wise man or woman to act unwise and the unwise to act with prudence.

    Charisma asks the personable to be abrasive and off putting and the off putting to act charming.

    I never felt it quite worked. While the other stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution) represent your fictional character, mental stats such as those described above tend to, for me at least, handicap the player.

    Always prefered West End D6 and other games that have Perception (how well the fiction character perceives its fictional environment) and Knowledge (what the fictional character living in its fictional universe knows or would know that you, the player, don't).

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    1. I've recently begun playing with INT more as a proxy for 'Knowledge' and WIS for 'Perceptiveness'. I think the latter, at least, is the influence of LotFP.

      With CHA, as well as reaction bonuses etc. I also apply a +5% bonus to xp for every +1 modifer (so a character with 18 CHA gets +15% xp). In my games, levelling up isn't just training, it's about increasing the fame/notoriety of the adventurer too, and highly Charismatic characters have an easier time of becoming legends (all other things being equal).

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    2. More often I have someone of startling foolishness playing someone who is, objectively wiser than almost anyone I know. Now that's a nuisance to deal with as meta-game issues.

      But I take your point.

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    3. Similar to DrBargle, when I run D&D I specify that Intelligence refers only to education, and Wisdom only to willpower.

      In real life, two people might say exactly the same thing and yet from one person it sounds like a sneering insult and from another a cheeky joke. I take the Charisma stat as representing whatever determines the difference.

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    4. I would agree but I love playing low wis characters - impetuous, hapless, with a poor sense of self-preservation.

      Who else would go dungeoneering?

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    5. I agree with INT/WIS/CHA not making sense - when I built a homebrew system from the ground up it had no mental stats at all, other than an optional Magic stat for magical power, and that worked great in-play. All that mental stuff can be done perfectly well by the player.

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  4. If I've got a player that's coming to the table with a high Charisma on purpose, I know he/she's got some shenanigans in mind, and they will, in general, be dipping over and under Good/Evil line.

    They also play like they're name level at level 1, so, it may just be the folks I run with. :)

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  5. The problem with Charisma making you evil is that D&D is a game where everyone looks like what they are: evil creatures look like orcs and good creatures look like elves.

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  6. AIR it's not just Exoticism; white men do well with east-Asian women even in majority white countries, just as black men do well with white women. It seems to be from a perception of being more macho, more masculine, due to being slightly less neotenous (all humans are very neotenous compared to most other species). East-Asian women perceive white men as excitingly macho/masculine compared to east-Asian men; white women perceive black men as excitingly macho/masculine compared to white men. This perception has the biggest impact in casual relationships, but is born out to some extent in inter-racial marriage rates too; there are more white man/east-Asian woman and more white woman/black man pairings than there are east-Asian man/white woman or white man/black woman pairings.

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    1. "Slightly less neotonous" means a massive cock, right?

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  7. Non-erect cock size is more to do with cold adaptation heat retention actually. :p The north-east-Asians evolved in the harshest arctic climate, so they have the smallest non-erect cocks.

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    1. Pretty sure that's completely unscientific armchair guesswork.

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    2. I read it; it must be true!

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  8. From what little I've seen, male Asian pop stars seem to be 'pretty boy' types - Leonardo DeCaprio rather than Sean Connery or even Brad Pitt.

    There are lots of expatriate white people in Japan (in Tokyo anyway), and presumably at least some black Europeans and Americans. If Asian women as a whole thought white or black men were sexier, presumably they'd get to be the pop stars.

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    1. PS There are also, of course, 'ultra-masculine' muscle-bound Asian men. But, again, they don't get to be the sex symbols.

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    2. From my experience, at least in Japan, white men are not seen so much as macho and sexy, but gentlemanly and romantic - the stereotype is that they are 'nicer' than the traditional taciturn Japanese guy. That goes for Korean men too, interestingly enough - Japanese men get a bad rep in Japan.

      I think the reason white men in Japan don't end up being popstars is that the ones who turn up in the country tend to be older than most pop stars, are unable to speak Japanese, utterly lack talent, and have no interest in being popstars!

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    3. The 'charisima' of the pop-star which you keep harping on about has no effect on grown men and so has nothing to do with gaming.

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    4. Eh? We've moved on to talking about white men in Japan now. Also, this post is about charisma in-game; so even if you are correct the point is hardly relevant.

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  9. PS The idea that white women all secretly want black men seems to be a feature of pornography aimed at white men - not at either white women or black men themselves.

    It seems to be much more common in products aimed at women for the 'exotic foreign man' to be Latin.

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  10. >>Eh? We've moved on to talking about white men in Japan now. Also, this post is about charisma in-game; so even if you are correct the point is hardly relevant.

    Your post, an anecdote about your pal had almost nothing to do with gaming and when I tried to make it relevant to D&D you had nothing to say because in fact you were really interested about your pal and white guys in Japan.

    The only way your comments would be relevant to gaming is if you assumed we were playing 'X-Factor the rpg'.

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    1. Shocker! Blogger posts about something he is interested in! More at 11...

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    2. What are you on about? I posted about the Charisma stat and what I imagine it represents in D&D - what the kind of person who has high Charisma would be like. Now you're going off on one about how pop stars have no charismatic effect on grown men, which is completely beside the point because even if it's true NPCs who characters in games encounter are not all grown men. Assuming your assertion is true (which it clearly isn't) are there no women or children in your games?

      And your game of choice is AD&D, right? Are there no bards in AD&D? Is there no remote similarity between a bard and a given famous performer of your choice? Fucking hell. Normally when you troll it's amusing, and you can be witty when you choose to be. This is just piss poor.

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    3. >>I posted about the Charisma stat and what I imagine it represents in D&D

      In your games do the players chat up women or go adventuring? Im not criticising you if as DM you want to improve your flirtatious falsetto with a scarf wrapped around your head, however, the Cha stat in Game has to be relevant to what the characters are doing and Cha affects the loyalty of henchman npcs and hired soldiers. I suppose Im suggesting that a collector's fascination with grooming products and the latest dancing palsy is not guaranteed to inspire confidence in mercenary fighting men.

      >>are there no women or children in your games?

      Very few take centre stage. I reject the modern lie ($$$) of the ass-kicking woman. Again, what kind of D&D are you playing where a character with high charisma seeks out women and children to impress? Your game sounds very 21st century and therapeutic.

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    4. My flirtatious falsetto needs no improving - I have it down pat. Most of my games are simply charged with homoeroticism and transgender themes.

      But you didn't answer my question about the bard. And what about Henry V on St Crispin's day? If you're going to cherrypick Paris I can cherrypick good old King Harry.

      As for no women kicking ass...No, they tend not to do so in my games, but they're half the population and having them not comprise half the NPCs in a campaign setting is weird and very primary school indeed.

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    5. Villeins and other rustics make up half the population but don't get much of a look in either Im afraid.

      >Is there no remote similarity between a bard and a given famous performer of your choice?

      No. I don't use the AD&D bard but a general bard would be a poet or storyteller who can strum along for cosy audiences hardly a vain uneducated lunatic screaming for attention and money.

      >what about Henry V on St Crispin's day

      ('Good 'ol' King harry was a cunt for how he treated falstaff). My point is that only a good soldier could make that speech and if some little poofter tried it the men would laugh and head home.

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    6. "Poofter"...now we're getting to the bottom of things. In what sense is somebody like Paris a poofter? If anything he's rather the opposite.

      The point is that King Harry is exactly the kind of person I was talking about - he was a "man's man" but also clearly had a flair for the dramatic and was a natural performer. He was probably also a ladies' man, although he was also a king so the odds were sort of stacked in his favour in that regard.

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