maasenstodt wrote:
In my many years of refereeing old school D&D, probably among the most important mechanics to my games has been the reaction roll, which is typically used when the PCs encounter a previously unknown person or creature whose attitude towards them isn't already established, and which is designed to randomly determine that person or creature's disposition towards the PCs. Using reaction rolls has really benefited my games, making them more interesting and less predictable for everyone involved.
The D&D-style reaction tables typically either based reactions on Charisma scores or on things like Race (or a combination of both), which can be a very crude and simplistic approach - you might almost just as well decide randomly, as roll.
People do make snap judgments based on how people look, so you could easily just make a Looks test to see if people warm to you or not, but I think what you're getting at is people's
attitudes. Prejudice is much more likely to inform a medieval person's opinion than what you look like (although that would probably still be a consideration to a certain extent), so maybe we need a series of random tables to determine an NPC's attitudes towards aspects of a character that are likely to influence their reaction.
For example, how does the peasant feel about strangers from out of town (wandering mendicants that stir up trouble, or repositories of stories), magic (good luck if you're obviously a magicker of some description or have an obviously magical mutation, like a fox's eye), gender roles, piety, social status (a knight's social status could count against him in some encounters), and so on? Consider also the PCs' reputations (whether true or otherwise, a PC's deeds may precede their meeting). It can be difficult to condense all of this into a few rolls on a few tables, but if you're up for the challenge, I'd encourage you to post them here 'cos I'd be very interested to see what you come up with.
Good luck!
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