Gesture Skill

[Flyndaran]

Shoot the tall guy with brown hair, but leave the short brunette to me, and the blond to our ally, Tim.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I thought I was the only one that considered that skill unrealistic. I got lambasted the last time this issue came up.
I felt real world gestures to be a simplistic cultural body language.
Even a "universal" thing like nodding one's head "yes" would easily be confused as a head jerk up which is a "no" in some regions.

It does take cultural unfamiliarity penalties by RAW. Having spent quite a lot of time communicating via a conventional set of gestures, well short of a sign language (UK SF fans in the eighties played a lot of charades) I tend to be fairly strict about adding new concepts to a Gesture communication. If PCs have talked beforehand and know what signals to expect, it works just fine.

[Flyndaran]

But then that's not really a culturally universal Gestures skill. That's a group decided sign language.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But then that's not really a culturally universal Gestures skill. That's a group decided sign language.

The line tends to be blurry. It's sort of like the line between pictograms and ideograms, or between pure onomatopoeia and a word that happens to have an onomatopoeic root. Around here, some things that are considered gestures are actually culturally assimilated signs (e.g. nod for yes, biderectional rotation around vertical axis for no). And then there's the case where a gesture is made 'on top' of a sign, such as making the 'bed' sign in Ukrainian Gesture Language (which would probably be classified as a Sign Language by USA standards) and then making a gesture indicating that the bed is undergoing vertical rhythmic force application. These things intertwine easily, but the skill generally represent having experience with improvisation, and maximal implementation of movements that have a chance of being recognised even without a pre-agreed sign list.

[Flyndaran]

There is no true onomatopoeia, only linguistic approximations.

Real "ideogram" writing is still phonetic. Early forms are more rebus than psychic concept conveyance.

Culturally assimilated signs are why gestures work at all. And there aren't any truly universal gestures. Nods aren't yes everywhere on earth now, let alone among extinct cultures.