GhostWhoTalks
First time out of the vault
I don't think it would be much of a stretch to include reaction modifiers on an individual basis. Assuming Bethesda does include an AI (and one that allows for the NPC to "remember" things like first impression, style of dress, etc), then I would have no problem going from a town based reaction to an individual reaction. And as we all know a character's charisma score did affect how quickly one became liked by a town.
The reactions of important NPCs could get recorded in your PipBoy as the characters impression of how well the interaction went. Which would alleviate the strain on the player having to keep track of who likes them and who doesn't. And this would allow the player to focus on getting in with which ever group they are wanting to: like the biker gang for the leather jacket sporting bandit wannabe anti-hero or the science community at some large town for the wannabe science geek.
I'm not so sure an appearance stat would work well in Fallout, simply due to the nature of representing appearance in RPG's in general. I've had quite a few discussions in the online D&D forums about how to best reflect an attractive appearance. Even Sex Appeal in Fallout wasn't all appearance. And I think it obvious simply based on how varied the modifiers for the proposed reaction score that presenting an appearance score just doesn't work. Some women like ruggedly handsome men; others like high-society handsome men. So realistically speaking I think an attractiveness score is out the window.
Initial reaction scores can be derived from charisma (and this is something I support since I never felt that charisma had enough value in the previous Fallout games) modified by appearance and communication skills (Van Buren had both deception and persuasion listed as possible candidates, and I like differentiating the speech skill as having more charisma based skills increases the importance of charisma).
The reactions of important NPCs could get recorded in your PipBoy as the characters impression of how well the interaction went. Which would alleviate the strain on the player having to keep track of who likes them and who doesn't. And this would allow the player to focus on getting in with which ever group they are wanting to: like the biker gang for the leather jacket sporting bandit wannabe anti-hero or the science community at some large town for the wannabe science geek.
I'm not so sure an appearance stat would work well in Fallout, simply due to the nature of representing appearance in RPG's in general. I've had quite a few discussions in the online D&D forums about how to best reflect an attractive appearance. Even Sex Appeal in Fallout wasn't all appearance. And I think it obvious simply based on how varied the modifiers for the proposed reaction score that presenting an appearance score just doesn't work. Some women like ruggedly handsome men; others like high-society handsome men. So realistically speaking I think an attractiveness score is out the window.
Initial reaction scores can be derived from charisma (and this is something I support since I never felt that charisma had enough value in the previous Fallout games) modified by appearance and communication skills (Van Buren had both deception and persuasion listed as possible candidates, and I like differentiating the speech skill as having more charisma based skills increases the importance of charisma).