With the excep­tion of reac­tion rolls, there are no rules for social inter­ac­tion. Lies, bar­ter­ing, intim­i­da­tion, diplo­ma­cy, and romance are mat­ters left to your wit and to the Book­keep­er’s knowl­edge of NPCs’ wants and moti­va­tions.

For the Book­keep­er, there do exist some soft social guide­lines to enhance the fla­vor of your game. Keep in mind that:

people can hear you

What­ev­er’s said between the play­ers can be heard by near­by NPCs—within rea­son. If Hobart the Idler’s play­er says “I real­ly need to rebuy A deal with death after that gun­shot wound, but it’s so expen­sive,” no one will hear, but if Hobart’s play­er turns to the play­er por­tray­ing Ken Sem­bling of Lee­ward and says “I think we’re going to have to kill this guy,” in front of the guy they intend to kill, the NPC is well aware and will act accord­ing­ly.

people are accepting

The peo­ple of the Coast are large­ly accus­tomed to unusu­al things and peo­ple. They live in strange times, and are nor­ma­tive­ly flex­i­ble and large­ly accept­ing of dif­fer­ence. Cut­ters’ wild ideas, behav­iors, or requests won’t be met with auto­mat­ic dis­gust, fear, or oppo­si­tion unless the cut­ters earned a tru­ly neg­a­tive reac­tion.

Most peo­ple of the Coast are entire­ly nor­mal. They don’t under­stand the world as cut­ters, magi­cians, or schol­ars do, and will con­tex­tu­al­ize fringe behav­iors and facts with com­fort­able com­mon sense or folk­lore long before inter­nal­iz­ing dis­turb­ing truths.

What this entails for game­play is sim­ple: Peo­ple won’t shut down con­ver­sa­tion just because you’re weird.

people can tell what you are

Cut­ters are obvi­ous. No one in their right mind looks the way you do. Every ounce of cut­ter-ness belies your nature: Wear­ing weapons or armor, espe­cial­ly archa­ic designs. Wear­ing back­packs all the time. Wan­der­ing around bedecked in strange gear. Car­ry­ing anachro­nis­tic baubles and bags upon bags of mon­ey, espe­cial­ly. There’s no mis­tak­ing a cut­ter with any­thing else, even a sol­dier: Sol­diers wear reg­u­lar, match­ing uni­forms and gear issued by recent gov­ern­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Unless you inten­tion­al­ly dis­guise yourself—forgoing or con­ceal­ing all your odd­ments and equip­ment and clean­ing up prop­er­ly with the bar­ber­ing skill—you’ll always be pegged as a cut­ter.

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