Game in the Brain

All Social Skills, have grooming and styling as part of the training and knowledge base of a social skill. I’m of the opinion that it should be universally built-in into social skills of any game system. Savoir Fair (Business) means dressing sharply according to your (professional or social) status, and not just how to address the owner of a company (a particular position), or what each title and position means, or how to format a letter of introduction, how to give professional gifts (that don’t break rules of ethics), etc. etc…

If you add Grooming, Styling, and Dress then Social Skills becomes more indomitable to myself and many other gamers who don’t need to deal with Byzantine Social Strata that has made us feel inferior and excluded since childhood lolz. But made into PART OF The GAME the attitude changes and the geek will try to use adaptive learning to make sense of it all using the learning tools of gaming.

So the PC who is a social animal, is able to convert a business casual (Savoir-Fair Business) into party clothes (carousing), attention getting clothes (sex-appeal), or “gangster” (streetwise), etc… or basically their Savoir Faire (High Society) to other mediums or knows how to “clean up” or “dress up” when needed. (note these days even artists who are recluse need to learn dress and personal styling to make believable characters).

Some Notes

• Of course if your defaulting from a Non-social Skill like Psychology or Merchant it does not help with dressing, unless you are defaulting from Connoisseur: Dress IQ/A.  Note that communicating with clothes is as alien as Mandarin to me, I’m learning but its still a language I can barely understand and need my wife to translate. 
• Fashionable is typical for this but I would suggest using Charisma instead with a limitation where its accessibility is in situation where clothes matter (limitation: Accessibility only Dress, Style, and Grooming -40%) . So using charisma over the phone won’t grant the bonus or if the character was not able to Groom-him/herself the bonus is lost.  It gives a new meaning to “Cleans up nice” or Transformative looks while in uniform or Dressed to kill. This assumes Charisma is capped at 2 levels.  
• The Player declares what Social Skill he/she is using to Dress. Multi-Tasking penalty when trying to dress Business Sharp (Savoir-Fair Business) but able to Party (Carousing) etc..
• The reaction bonus from Social Status is halfed in modern setting. The only way to get the full bonus (which is 4) is through the Social Skill Ability Modifier ex. Carousing (E) IQ+2 [4] allows a Rockstar to dress to Party. 
• Formal Clothing are restrictive! Tailoring (use Low Tech Tailoring Rules or just apply Fine or Very Fine Cost modifier) -3 to DX and HT checks (try running or hiking in heels or those pointed hard heeled business shoes). Quality modifier negates some of the penalty.  

Again work is often a source of inspiration-frustration and this is one of those little details that matter when I wish it didn’t.