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Old 08-10-2014, 12:58 PM   #31
sir_pudding
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
So you can: I usually use Samatra PDF, which doesn't. The Windows search is much faster, since it indexes in the background.
Yeah, okay. I don't find that it is worth subjecting myself to Windows 8 to do it though. :)
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Old 08-10-2014, 01:02 PM   #32
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

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Incidentally, I picked up that rule by searching PDFs. For this kind of GURPS research, it really is worthwhile to have a search tool that searches across all your PDFS at once. Windows' built-in search was a joke for years, but with Windows 8 it works really well once you get it the filter that lets it look in PDFs.
Interesting, but I'm a Mac guy.

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Old 08-11-2014, 02:12 AM   #33
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

Somewhat curiously (in retrospect), Bicycling is probably the most common of the three skills in our games, and Driving and Piloting are about equal. The former is mostly taken as a 'hobby' skill.
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Old 08-11-2014, 02:24 AM   #34
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

On reflection, I've seen a difference in the way Driving and Piloting get bought. I've seen a number of high DX characters, who weren't transport specialists, put a point each into several specialisations of Driving. Pilots, by contrast, tend to buy one specialisation up to high levels and sometimes buy up defaults in other specialisations.

What this seems to mean is that I'm not seeing characters buy Piloting unless they're specialists in it. Which is probably a due to a combination of "fewer aircraft around than ground vehicles" and "failures on Piloting are really dangerous", but I wonder if this pattern repeats in other groups?
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Old 08-11-2014, 02:57 AM   #35
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
So you can: I usually use Samatra PDF, which doesn't. The Windows search is much faster, since it indexes in the background.
Oh my. You're using a Precursor weapons platform to read PDFs.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

And yeah, Win8 (maybe other versions, not sure) support the iFilter that allows searching through PDFs in Explorer as if they're txt files or the like.
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Old 08-11-2014, 04:33 AM   #36
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

Bicycling is slightly more generous than Driving, in that it allows you to make simple repairs rather than just diagnose the problem. I think that's really more an aspect of the vehicle than of the skill: many of the things that go wrong with a bicycle really can be fixed by the side of the road with a minimal toolkit, whereas this is rather less true of cars. I'd certainly be inclined to give the Driving benefits of map-reading and knowing rules of the road to a character with Bicycling.

John, you may wish to look up the Roper and Michaux-Perreaux Steam Velocipedes, both from the late 1860s.

Kenneth, I know people who think that adult bicycling experience should be a prerequisite for a driving licence, because drivers who've bicycled as adults tend to be more considerate towards cyclists, but I don't know anyone who'd argue that one skill depends on the other. I'd certainly never cycled before I learned to drive.

I'd be inclined to put changing a car tyre and similar simple repairs in under Driving, except that I know that there are people who drive every day who can't change a tyre; they call the breakdown service even when it'll take much longer.

I've driven vans a few times (Ford Transits and similar), and while they're well under the 5-ton cutoff for Automobile I'd definitely say I was suffering a familiarity penalty more severe than when I've driven strange cars. (Perhaps one -2 for body shape, another for the vertical steering column?) I don't think I've known PCs use anything that would tip over into Heavy Wheeled.

In the first adventure of my Madness Dossier campaign I noted that one of the PCs had Driving (Construction Equipment) and that in the real world there was a heavy equipment training and rental site (bulldozers, cranes, diggers, etc.) right next to the old manor house I'd selected as the bad guys' base. The players found out about it, but didn't choose to take advantage of it.

I tend, going against the rules as written, to use multiple piloting skills for different aspects of the same vehicle, especially when it's spacecraft: High-Performance Spacecraft is about orbital and long-distance flight, while Aerospace is about those nasty sticky atmosphere things, and I think it's reasonable to have a pilot who's competent at one and not the other. (And when the ship's hovering on its fusion ram-rockets, that's Vertol.) I do this mostly because I find it an interesting way to distinguish characters.

I ask for a lot of Vehicular Dodges, and I suspect I should apply Combat Reflexes.

As Mailanka points out, anything that's focused on a single character should either go relatively quickly (but not too quickly, otherwise it's just "apply keyword to problem, continue with adventure"), or involve the other PCs. I aim for the latter.

Looking through my character archives, practically everyone in a modern setting has a point in Driving, and some of the Bughunt PCs have Heavy Wheeled (for the APC) and Mecha (for the legged APC). Quite a few of the Reign of Steel PCs have Automobile, since they started working for the government in Zone London.

In my Tempt Not the Stars campaign, three PCs had decent levels of general piloting, while one picked up some Aerospace for emergencies. In the WWII game, two of six have Light and Heavy Airplane (High-Performance hasn't quite happened yet), and one has Contragravity thanks to some dubious Nazi experiments (nobody can use the skill any more, thanks to actions of the PCs at Stalingrad, but he hasn't forgotten it). It was about the same in Crimson Skies, minus the contragravity. Everyone in the Transhuman Space Vacuum Cleaners game had a bit of piloting, because (like driving in most settings) it was an every-day sort of skill. In Bughunt, the aerospace pilot was also a sniper, which worked quite well to keep the character involved after landing (the big ship was handled by NPCs).
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Old 08-11-2014, 08:37 AM   #37
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

I've noticed a strong correlation between player region of residence and method of transportation, and character skills in that direction. For instance, I've gamed entirely in cities, and much of that in a big city (if c. 3.8 million people qualifies) that has bicycle lanes, a bicycle sharing system, etc. I've had plenty of players with bicycles but not cars or driver's licenses, and who leave the city only in trains or planes. Such people see Bicycling as a basic "Of course everybody needs this!" skill but Driving as the skill for the group's wheel man or whatever. And generally, they expect Bicycling to allow a fair amount of stunting: bouncing up and over things, even off walls, because good urban cyclists do this stuff . . . I don't find it especially weird to see a few guys doing Parkour-like moves on bikes in my back alley.
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Old 08-11-2014, 08:49 AM   #38
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

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I've noticed a strong correlation between player region of residence and method of transportation, and character skills in that direction. For instance, I've gamed entirely in cities, and much of that in a big city (if c. 3.8 million people qualifies) that has bicycle lanes, a bicycle sharing system, etc. I've had plenty of players with bicycles but not cars or driver's licenses, and who leave the city only in trains or planes. Such people see Bicycling as a basic "Of course everybody needs this!" skill but Driving as the skill for the group's wheel man or whatever. And generally, they expect Bicycling to allow a fair amount of stunting: bouncing up and over things, even off walls, because good urban cyclists do this stuff . . . I don't find it especially weird to see a few guys doing Parkour-like moves on bikes in my back alley.
I'm in San Diego, a city of about half as many people, and in California. People take it for granted that everyone drives; it surprises people that I use public transportation. Carol has a bicycle for recreation and exercise, but uses the bus and trolley for regular trips also. I think most people have ridden bicycles (I'm unusual in not having learned till early adulthood), but actual skill is rare; most people are getting by on default. Bicyclists complain about discourtesy by motorists (I lately heard Carol's sister and brother, who both ride tens of miles regularly, sounding off about this), and public policy makes some allowances for cycling, but is built around cars.

For example, there is a fairly good, fast light rail system, which I can use to get to San Diego State University—but it doesn't go to the University of California at San Diego, or within miles of it, and apparently there is active resistance to letting the trolley lines onto the campus, which would seem like an obvious amenity for students.

The people who do stunts in the alley behind our building are skateboarders.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 08-11-2014, 10:18 AM   #39
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
I'd be inclined to put changing a car tyre and similar simple repairs in under Driving, except that I know that there are people who drive every day who can't change a tyre; they call the breakdown service even when it'll take much longer.
Minor repairs/basic maintenance was a part of Driver's Ed when I took it back in... 1995? As far as repairs go, changing a tire probably involves at least one ST roll, and that can be a huge factor: people that know how to do it, but just can't do it well. People are used to being more connected now, so it probably just seems easier to swallow your pride and ask for help than to do it yourself; I know as soon as I got a cell phone, as most of my car related issues happened 30 or less minutes from home, I found myself calling my parents more and more because I wasn't very confident (and perhaps not competent) at said basic repairs.

A second person should add a significant modifier to changing a tire, at least in my experience; its really a 2 person job you can manage with one person. Even though none of it is especially cerebral, allowing two smaller people to work together on ST-based skill rolls (because something always seems to be sticking and cards aren't light), to help watch for traffic, to split the few tasks that can be done together, to make sure the car is perched on the jack properly... my first hand experience is that while any one of those is minor, all of them together is huge.

Oh, and as always: average people are average and Driving is an Average skill: 1 point in it means rolling against a 9 for any "average" action. Depending on where you're changing the tire, it might even qualify as "adventuring" conditions (fast, busy freeway, remote areas with wildlife that probably won't investigate but you can't be sure of, bad part of town, etc.).
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Old 08-11-2014, 10:58 AM   #40
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Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
I've noticed a strong correlation between player region of residence and method of transportation, and character skills in that direction. For instance, I've gamed entirely in cities, and much of that in a big city (if c. 3.8 million people qualifies) that has bicycle lanes, a bicycle sharing system, etc. I've had plenty of players with bicycles but not cars or driver's licenses, and who leave the city only in trains or planes. Such people see Bicycling as a basic "Of course everybody needs this!" skill but Driving as the skill for the group's wheel man or whatever. And generally, they expect Bicycling to allow a fair amount of stunting: bouncing up and over things, even off walls, because good urban cyclists do this stuff . . . I don't find it especially weird to see a few guys doing Parkour-like moves on bikes in my back alley.
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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I'm in San Diego, a city of about half as many people, and in California. People take it for granted that everyone drives; it surprises people that I use public transportation. Carol has a bicycle for recreation and exercise, but uses the bus and trolley for regular trips also. I think most people have ridden bicycles (I'm unusual in not having learned till early adulthood), but actual skill is rare; most people are getting by on default. Bicyclists complain about discourtesy by motorists (I lately heard Carol's sister and brother, who both ride tens of miles regularly, sounding off about this), and public policy makes some allowances for cycling, but is built around cars.

For example, there is a fairly good, fast light rail system, which I can use to get to San Diego State University—but it doesn't go to the University of California at San Diego, or within miles of it, and apparently there is active resistance to letting the trolley lines onto the campus, which would seem like an obvious amenity for students.

The people who do stunts in the alley behind our building are skateboarders.

Bill Stoddard
I grew up in a very rural area. Those who weren't old enough to drive used bicycles and those who were quickly got cars, because it was 5 miles to the nearest bus stop into the nearest borough (Pennsy equivalent of small town). My kid sister put some miles on her Big Wheel in the early '80s biking to the swimming hole; I'd be known to put about 10 miles on my bike when I got the urge. However, that was more endurance biking, not fancy stuff, and I'd place what I was doing at default or possibly as part of a Dabbler perk; HT-based Bicycling skill to keep going or ST-based to travel up the big hills, rather than DX to avoid traffic or other cyclists. (Only DX-based rolls I'd say I ever made back then were riding hands-free in a straight line.) We didn't have things that city-folk take for granted: stop lights, cross-walks, or sidewalks.

Since getting my license, I've always needed a car to get where I was going; my current car has put on about 10,000 miles or so in cross-country travel alone, much less driving for an hour or so to get to work. Again, I grew up in a rural area; you needed a car because there is no public transportation out in the sticks. Even when I live in a city (Austin, Vegas, etc), I tend to drive because that's what I'm used to.
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