What is Charisma?

Charisma in most RPGs is based on your ability to get people to like you. However, I have consistently found this a remarkably inaccurate measure of charisma. It just is not too useful to GMs. Let me offer an alternative.

Sure, getting people to like you is part of your charisma. However, physical beauty can make people like you more, but is that what we want as Charisma? Charisma also refers to the ability to make people trust or agree with you. Applied to speech, it means you speak to the audience, maintain good eye contact, choose the right words and the right inflections, and so on. Everyone vilifies Hitler, but they still acknowledge him as charismatic. Why? Because he was able to make you feel his way even if you found it morally unacceptable. You got to see his idea.

This comes up in some of the characters I play. I play Dark Fred in more than a few RPGs. Oh sure, no one likes him. He wears cloaks of human skin, has bloody pentagrams etched into his body, and talks like a psychopath. Thus, he has had traditionally low Charisma scores. However, Dark Fred is still charismatic in another sense. He uses the right inflections and appeals to people's desires and needs. He can make someone think that him stealing from them is a good thing in the end! He can make someone think his failures were incredible successes. People end up RESPECTING him, but still not exactly trusting or liking him. Isn't this also Charisma? Part of this comes from his intelligence. Intelligent people should get some bonuses to charisma, although not necessarily big ones. We all know the pompous or shy nerd who has very little charisma even in my expanded sense. But, to a very large extent, a more intelligent person will be able to come up with better arguments and sound more educated. This will add to his charisma to some extent. Intelligence and charisma are not directly related, but they have a connection.

In short, I find the Charisma attribute of many games to be too narrow. It doesn't tell the GM enough. Granted, some of what I'm talking about is controlled by the player. But suppose I have Nizbel and DF give the same speech. Who will be more charismatic? They're both my same characters saying the same words, but DF has a sort of eloquence. Now, Nizbel has some other speaking advantages (honor, respect, homeliness), but DF would still get rated higher in a speech contest. It's not an incorrect interpretation of Charisma, it's just an incomplete one. I personally find the Rifts M.A. attribute to be closest to what I'm attempting to do.