Game in the Brain

In the Cepheus Engine SOC (social stat), it can be attributed to either charisma, clout, or social station. In my experience of storytelling, I rarely encounter players who don’t want to separate their influence ability from their social station. If a player had a character with a high social station and others felt they had no choice but to obey, players with basic empathy would feel uncomfortable. In D&D, the baseline for characters was typically equal, and charisma was the stat for influence. Charisma was the Intelligence to be credible or to set a mutually beneficial arrangement was preferable over just having social station. Players who knew their station forced cooperation and coerced their lessers played the abuse as part of their character, with the “might makes right” rationalization.

As someone writing about different social levels in different technological settings, I propose using TL (technology level) and SOC for a star system, such as Earth in the 2020s, which is TL7 and TL8 in Mneme. SOC levels below -2 represent those below the poverty line of the world, which is the HDI below 0.6 and those below 2 USD/day by some metrics (such as the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.). -2 represents the working class of the world, and -1 represents the lower middle class of the world. When using USD as a measure, the Human Development Index can be useful for correlation. For most of the world, 50-100 USD/month in-kind is SOC-2, up to 100-200 USD/month. However, monetary value doesn’t always work as some people can barter favors and community credit to get more value than its USD value. SOC-1 is 200-400 USD/month, and SOC-0 is 400-800 USD/month. SOC 1 is considered working class in developed countries, while SOC 2 is considered lower middle class in developed countries, at 1600-3200 USD/year or 20-40k USD per year. Every doubling is considered a higher SOC level, so SOC levels 10-20 are possible.

Of course, the full TL is accessible at SOC 2 and higher. With cutting-edge and bleeding-edge tech options, SOC 10-20 have access to disposable bleeding-edge tech. There are a significant portion of the population at SOC-2, depending how poverty is measured 70% of the world fall at SOC-2 and below. It is possible that of this 6 billion people 1B are what can be considered below SOC-2 – particularly at an exploited state like victims of human trafficking or debt traps.

keeping mind the context of the world tends to oversimplify to the most extreme, its hard to imagine it as a spectrum – like a probability table or ecounter table. Of course when we mentally explore the global circumstance – we look at extremists as their are the symptom of critical mass of some societal problems. They’re tips of icebergs of problems. Looking at the table below with SOC 1 and below representing billions, to SOC 2 and above millions, and highest levels as Elites being hundreds. 

Being a game – we pierce the Legal loopholes and look at Liquidity and Clout, the ability to determine the course and use of resources.