08-20-2010, 02:51 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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When does one use Scrounging?
Scrounging is a cheap skill, but it does not seem to have much that is not covered by other Per skills. When searching corpses for goods is a Scrounging or Search rool necessary to make sure you got everything? What skill is the guy who routinely checks under vending machines for change employing? Scrounging? Observation? Urban Survival?
Scrounging does not seem to be a useful investment of points at all.
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08-20-2010, 03:16 PM | #2 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
It's the go-to skill whenever a plan calls for old planks, a plastic trash can, foil gum wrappers, a lump of horse manure, etc. It'll turn up, say, old fat or used painting solvents when you're in a modern urban alleyway, about to commit arson, and need a makeshift accelerant. It can find you an improvised weapon that won't simply break on the first hit if you're in the woods, a barroom, the kitchen, etc. when the ninjas attack. It'll turn up odds and ends that could cut costs when making repairs or inventions (Gadgeteering even formalizes this). And it's the skill to use whenever you have lots of something – buttons, bullets, screws, whatever – and need just the right one.
Without this skill, you're pretty much stuck using Per at -4. With it, you're using full Per or better. If you raise it enough, you can try rolls at -10 to locate something useful instantly; e.g., spotting an improvised weapon as a free action in combat. Not a game session goes by when players don't use it in my campaign. Of course, I run very think-on-your-feet campaigns where the players brainstorm in the real world and come up with plans that require specific items that are plausibly present but which I don't regard as automatic. If you just assume that sort of stuff is automatic, then Scrounging won't matter much.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
08-20-2010, 03:21 PM | #3 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
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That's definitely Scrounging. Observation is scouting for criminal, espionage, military, or police purposes; it's for spotting guards, security, and counter-observers, and concealed vehicles and strongpoints. Urban Survival is about knowing which saggy floors in old buildings will cave in, deducing whether water found in a city is safe to drink, and locating warm vents to sleep next to. Neither has much to do with finding specific, useful items you have in mind for some plan.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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08-20-2010, 06:56 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
How about the skill exhibited by Radar O'Reilly on M*A*S*H, various characters on "Baa Baa Black Sheep", or the James Gardner character in "The Great Escape", involving coming up with some needed item by whatever means, often via a perhaps complicated chain of trades, and often enough something somewhat underhanded? This could be a particular style of Merchant and occasional other skills like blackmail, but the details come across to me more as a special effect of Scrounging. Characters usually refer to the activity as "scrounging" but of course that doesn't mean much in game terms.
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08-20-2010, 07:05 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
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08-20-2010, 08:14 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Sierra Vista, Arizona
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
Something like that is mentioned on pg 83 of GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces. I've always assumed that such situations would be examples of Scrounging based upon IQ rather than Per.
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08-21-2010, 12:00 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
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Celjabba |
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08-21-2010, 12:09 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
Scrounged items aren't deliberately concealed, although they may be lost in clutter. Search, I suspect, involves a certain amount of "Where do logical thinking organisms keep their stuff? We should look there." whereas the things you find in a Scrounge situation haven't been stored, filed, hidden, or put away. Often they've been just dropped, or thrown in a heap, or abandoned. Logic and convenience don't factor into Scrounge, and Scrounge often involves improvising approximate solutions rather than getting specific items.
Or to put it another way, for narrative-driven games, Search mostly involves things the GM knew were there, Scrounge involves creating solutions out of the generic "background scenery".
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
08-21-2010, 05:36 PM | #9 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
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08-21-2010, 06:19 PM | #10 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: When does one use Scrounging?
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EDIT: I have Absent Minded, definitely the full -15 point version. When I have something in my hand/hands and my attention gets focused on something else and I need a free hand, I literally have no concious awareness of the process of freeing up the hand. It just shows up miraculously empty for me to use. Meanwhile, I've put my car keys in the freezer, my book on top of my computer monitor, and the asprin have been neatly filed in the bookshelf. Everyone who lives with me has to develop some Scrounge just to help me find my stuff. It gets 10x worse if it's something the cat might like, because she might HIDE it after playing with it, and then you have to know to switch from Scrounge (Human) to Search (Feline). I'm pretty sure that's how my car keys ended up in a boot a few months ago - it's just too inconvenient for me to absentmindedly stuff them in a boot, whereas it's right at cat level...
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog Last edited by Bruno; 08-21-2010 at 06:24 PM. |
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