[Basic] Skill of the week: Carousing

[Ulzgoroth]

There was a thread not too far back about Carousing, its HT basis, and whether it's really about drinking.

I'd summarize it as the intention being that it's really about culturally-appropriate drugs and hard partying, but not everyone is on board with that. (I'm in the latter group, for clarity.)


If you wanted to distinguish black American cultural familiarity...well, there's more than one black American culture. There's the New Orleans-cluster, and there's at least one significant black immigrant population (Haitian), in addition to the more general black American culture (assuming that's taken as singular...) The latter is most closely tied to American white culture, I'm pretty sure.

Using 'negro' to refer to black people in the USA is generally not taken well.

(I have no idea what modern Native American culture is like, really, aside from 'bound to be more than one significantly distinct thing'.)

[RogerBW]

Going by my character archives, it seems that typically around half the party has Carousing, the proportion drifting up with higher point values. That makes it quite unusual; most skills I've checked have been things that only one or two members of a party have, with a few being near-universal.

I only remember one PC (an Elizabethan mage) actually getting into a drinking contest; that's something I should do more often.

I admit I'm prone to use it as a proxy for "how effectively do you manage your drinking", but I think I should shift more into "how effectively do you manage your partying" — i.e. do other people think you were being a lively friendly sort of person, or were you sitting off at the side?

[Not]

Guidance from Basic has it that familiarities should be defined broadly, and offers "East Asian" as a possibility. The TL5 world probably has room for about half a dozen. In the modern world, I might put US and Japan in the same one.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Not

Guidance from Basic has it that familiarities should be defined broadly, and offers "East Asian" as a possibility. The TL5 world probably has room for about half a dozen. In the modern world, I might put US and Japan in the same one.

The lower the TL, the more diverse and non-mixed CFs are likely to be. Anyway, less than 10 is kinda bad from a game-mechanical standpoint.

Here's the list:

Originally Posted by Kromm

We have never published such a list, but behind the scenes, we use this one:

1. Latin American (Mexico and parts south)
2. Anglo (the U.K. and its English-speaking former colonies, including the U.S.A.)
3. Western European ( "the Continent")
4. Eastern European (the former Soviet Bloc)
5. North African (from the Mediterranean coast south to the Sahel)
6. Sub-Saharan (specifically as contrasted with North African)
7. West Asian (from the Mediterranean east to Iran)
8. Central Asian (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and so on)
9. South Asian (dominated by India)
10. East Asian (China, Japan, Korea, etc.)

Of those, I'd say you could afford to break up Latin American and South Asian further, and Sub-Saharan a lot further, if the campaign requires it. But if you want an even 10 to hit Cultural Adaptability on the head, this list works well enough.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If you wanted to distinguish black American cultural familiarity...well, there's more than one black American culture. There's the New Orleans-cluster, and there's at least one significant black immigrant population (Haitian), in addition to the more general black American culture (assuming that's taken as singular...) The latter is most closely tied to American white culture, I'm pretty sure.

There is also immigrant African—I have the impression that, particular, a significant share of this is from areas like Somalia. This may be part of the Near Eastern cultural familiarity, though; at least, there appears to be significant Muslim influence.

Bill Stoddard

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I admit I'm prone to use it as a proxy for "how effectively do you manage your drinking",

I want to add the explicit mention that a carousing Roll can substitute for the HT roll when determining the degree of Intoxication as per Campaigns p.439. That's not mentioned in the Skill text.

I'm fine with the HT basis. Whether it's drinking or dancing or staying up late the key to successful carousing (from an rpg perspective) is being the last one standing and being able to remember it all the next morning.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Not

Partying all night is physically taxing. And it often involves singing, if you're Australian or Welsh. HT makes sense.

I wouldn't call it singing, though.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Carpentry. (But yeah, I was envisioning Enthrallment skills grouped under Captivate, like High Manual Dexterity got into the same thread as Arm DX.)

? Carpentry comes after Carousing :?

In our games, Carousing was usually the go-to interaction skill in 'social affair' situations, although we sometimes had to make do with other social skills, since people didn't always remember to get Carousing in character creation.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

? Carpentry comes after Carousing :?

In our games, Carousing was usually the go-to interaction skill in 'social affair' situations, although we sometimes had to make do with other social skills, since people didn't always remember to get Carousing in character creation.

Woops. Apparently I somehow managed to scan the list from the bottom up. Sorry!

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Zeta Blaze

IMO American Indian is between 2-3 familiarities at that resolution one for most of North America one for South America and possibly one for Mazoamerica.

At the level of the CF list produced by Kromm, at TL 5 you'd be looking at easily 6 CFs just for North America. I'd break it out as Arctic (Including Inupik, Yupik, Dené, etc.), East Coast (East of the Mississippi), Plains (From the Mississippi to the Rockies, roughly), Northwest (Most of the West Coast, going north until you hit the Arctic CF), Southwest (Pima, Apaches, Navajo, etc; this extends into what's now Mexico as well), and Central American (the rest of Mexico down to the Yucatan; basically all the Nahuatl family languages). I don't know enough about South America to do a similar breakdown, but you're probably looking at another 3-5 there.