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Old 08-14-2018, 11:27 PM   #21
Pursuivant
 
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Children clearly do not have Language Talent as written.
Fair enough.

Just fold the ability to learn languages more quickly, but not at a higher level per character point invested, into the limited version of Fast Learner.

Optionally, give kids a Feature or Perk that they speak any language they learn with a Native accent, even if their fluency is less than Native level.

Edit: Not that it's particularly germane to the topic of children as characters, but I have a house rule, roughly based on GURPS 3E China's rules, that you can buy additional "Scholarly" levels in a language at +2 points per level. Each level boosts your effective IQ for any task involving obscure uses of a given language, such as recalling seldom-used words or ideographs and purely language-based tasks like correctly spelling words, and playing word games like Scrabble or crosswords. It could be a Perk, particularly if each level only helps written or spoken fluency, but not both.

Last edited by Pursuivant; 08-14-2018 at 11:53 PM.
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Old 08-15-2018, 11:00 AM   #22
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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While a child's higher-pitched voice might not carry as far as a deeper adult voice, a crying child cries at exactly the right pitch to get another human's attention (literally the same frequencies as nails on a chalkboard). Babies are professionally annoying as a survival trait.
Fun fact: Cats learn to miaow to communicate with humans, each individual cat has to experiment to find miaows that get the results they want with their particular humans. But cats do tend to converge on at least one kind of miaow that hits the same frequencies as a baby's crying, as it gets our attention fast - even if it's supremely irritating.

Usually cats break it out when they want something really bad - our current cat reserves it for important things like "I'm stuck in the closet help help help" thankfully, but I've owned cats that used it for "I want a treat".
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Old 08-15-2018, 11:56 AM   #23
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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Fun fact: Cats learn to miaow to communicate with humans, each individual cat has to experiment to find miaows that get the results they want with their particular humans.
Each of our four cats has had quite distinct vocalizations.
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Old 08-15-2018, 05:40 PM   #24
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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But cats do tend to converge on at least one kind of miaow that hits the same frequencies as a baby's crying, as it gets our attention fast - even if it's supremely irritating.

Usually cats break it out when they want something really bad - our current cat reserves it for important things like "I'm stuck in the closet help help help" thankfully, but I've owned cats that used it for "I want a treat".
Yeah our family cat used it to announce 'Hey, it's time for my breakfast!'. The yowling was centred more around the time of day than his actual level of hunger, because he'd eat one breakfast and then yowl at different family members in the hopes of getting fed again. But the frantic piercing quality of his cries dropped off slightly so an attentive listener would be suspicious and check with others before feeding him.
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Old 08-15-2018, 05:49 PM   #25
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

Our two littermate cats had very distinctive meows.
Shia, born a grumpy old man had a very demanding call. His brother, Timmay, naturally has a plaintive kitten sounding meow. As one would expect, Timmay's call was more effective. Also as one would expect, Shia eventually adjusted his meows to sound more like Timmay's.
Shia still reverts occasionally to demanding, so it seems to take effort and/or concentration to meow like Timmay.
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Old 08-15-2018, 06:16 PM   #26
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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But cats do tend to converge on at least one kind of miaow that hits the same frequencies as a baby's crying, as it gets our attention fast - even if it's supremely irritating.
I am afflicted with a grumpy old lady cat who constantly complains about life at the top of her fuzzy little lungs. It's almost like having a baby in the house.

I realized just what a great trick a crying baby has a few years ago when I could clearly hear and distinguish a crying baby over low crowd/ambient environmental noise at a quarter mile distance. Very few other things in nature sound like a crying baby, and it instinctively gets our attention:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...es-hard-ignore
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Old 08-15-2018, 06:26 PM   #27
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

Cats can also be naturally noisy. We had one that would go into the bathroom and "b*tch". He didn't want human attention, just echoing angry meows.
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Old 08-15-2018, 10:37 PM   #28
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Cougars will often learn to mimic the sound of human babies in order to lure hunters away from any kills or away from their territory. On occasion, they will even use the sound to lure hunters into dangerous areas and survivors will often say that the last thing they heard before being knocked off a cliff or into a river was the sound of a baby crying (or so they say...).
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Old 08-16-2018, 03:58 AM   #29
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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Cougars will often learn to mimic the sound of human babies in order to lure hunters away from any kills or away from their territory. On occasion, they will even use the sound to lure hunters into dangerous areas and survivors will often say that the last thing they heard before being knocked off a cliff or into a river was the sound of a baby crying (or so they say...).
That's actually the leucrotta at work...
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Old 08-16-2018, 07:05 AM   #30
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Default Re: Children - Appropriate Traits?

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Cats can also be naturally noisy. We had one that would go into the bathroom and "b*tch". He didn't want human attention, just echoing angry meows.
Cats like playing with their voices just like humans do. Bathrooms have fantastic acoustics, particularly shower stalls, and so are common targets (particularly for siamese cats who are notorious for being verbal).

We have these turbo-jet-looking floor fans in our house every summer. And every summer our cat spends some time sitting right in front and yelling into them, like a kid yelling into a fan to hear it "chop up" their voice. At all hours of the day and night.

We turn off the fans, cat magically loses interest in them.

This is also a cat that likes the hair dryer and will grab at it to point it at various parts of her tummy, so clearly she's not put off by motor noise. She may be slightly deaf - it would explain why she's generally less skittish than the average cat.
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