How do noblewomen learn to dance well?

I was burning up a practice character by converting a PC concept from another game in progress. She’s a youngest noble daughter of a poor French House who slummed away her lack of social obligations, and fled to the Spanish Main to avoid debtor’s prison and joined a pirate crew. (It’s a Savage Worlds game, so that’s pretty in-genre.) She’s about to get into a formal ball situation while impersonating the missing daughter of the governor of Port-de-Paix.

After burning her up, I realised I somehow didn’t get her Dance. I wasn’t going to reburn her (it’s just a practice burn), but I combed back through all the LPs that I could have taken for the concept to see what I missed but none include Dance. In fact, in the Noble and Court, the only noble LP that does have Dance is Lord! She has a tonne of skill points from Young Lady, Student, and Criminal, but can’t learn to dance without spending general points. (And she needs ’em for Foreign Languages and Stealthy to fit the SW genre and concept.)

She’s got mad Etiquette, but can’t dance to (literally) save her life. If she was a character burned for a real game I’d probably revise the concept a bit and drop Stealthy to get Dance B4 and a chance to conduct herself well at the ball. But I’m still surprised noblewomen can’t Dance except with general points.

Do noblewomen who can dance with grace and style just dump most or all of their general points into Dance? I thought that maybe it’s just that not everyone in nobility or at Court are decent dancers, so those who can must sacrifice those precious general points. But that Polite Dance Ob 2 seems like it should be a thing most ladies can hope to easily manage out of burning unless you’re deliberately making a noblewomen who’s unskilled or so-so at dancing (for those delicious tests at court). And Lord has Dance, so it’s expected that noblemen can dance without burning their general points. Or is the equivalent Lady LP (not Young Lady) just missing a skill the LP should have? (I’m looking at BWG here, so I don’t know if this is one of the LPs amended in BWGR.)

Have I about got this right? Are noblewomen who are half-decent at polite dancing just the exceptions who devoted themselves to it?

3 Likes

My bad. You’re right. Total miss on my part. Just add the skill to Young Lady. You won’t break anything.

8 Likes

No, it’s cool. There are lots of emergent nuances in the Lifepaths and this could have easily been one. It did make me rethink my assumptions about every Lady being light on her feet!

Thanks! I’ll make a note for my players. Young Lady is possibly my favourite LP already.

2 Likes

Agreed. Young Lady has the best leads and most of the coolest lifepaths have Young Lady as one of the possible required lifepaths (my personal favorite being Crazy Witch)

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.