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Old 06-20-2016, 07:51 AM   #81
safisher
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
The core definition of Survival is as the ability to live off the land; and a failed Survival roll means you suffer 2d-4 injury. But you can't live off the land on a gas giant or an ice world, and the environment there will inflict a lot more than 2d-4 injury per day; in fact it will kill you almost immediately.
Survival (Gas Giant) is a legit skill per Basic Set. The skill roll is to avoid serious injury in the wild, for you or your group. It's fairly generic in that way. It might mean you avoid a slope which could cause a nasty fall, or it might mean you eat poison berries, or sit on a fire ant nest, or whatever. In an utterly alien terrain you avoid utterly alien pitfalls -- whatever they might be.
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Old 06-20-2016, 08:01 AM   #82
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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Survival (Gas Giant) is a legit skill per Basic Set. The skill roll is to avoid serious injury in the wild, for you or your group. It's fairly generic in that way. It might mean you avoid a slope which could cause a nasty fall, or it might mean you eat poison berries, or sit on a fire ant nest, or whatever. In an utterly alien terrain you avoid utterly alien pitfalls -- whatever they might be.
Survival (Gas Giant) is not a legit skill. Survival ($GasGiantTerrainType) ((A specific gas giant planet)) is implied to be a legit skill, though no examples of gas giant terrain types exist.

The Basic text also pretty strongly suggests that an Earth creature couldn't have such a skill, considering that a land-dwelling critter supposedly can't even have aquatic habitat survival skills. I would reject that if the creature in question has access to technical means of making the environment in question survivable, but the Basic Set doesn't indicate that.
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Old 06-20-2016, 08:14 AM   #83
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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Survival (Gas Giant) is a legit skill per Basic Set. The skill roll is to avoid serious injury in the wild, for you or your group. It's fairly generic in that way. It might mean you avoid a slope which could cause a nasty fall, or it might mean you eat poison berries, or sit on a fire ant nest, or whatever. In an utterly alien terrain you avoid utterly alien pitfalls -- whatever they might be.
Of course it is. But a legit skill for who?

Per the basic set:

You must specialize by terrain type.

Land-dwellers may choose from Arctic, Desert, Island/Beach, Jungle, Mountain, Plains, Swampland, and Woolands. They may not take any of the eight aquatic specialties. They get defaults for Tropical Lagoon and River/Stream, but the rules don't allow them to put points into these specialties.

If you have survival for a terrain type on a particular planet, you get a default for that terrain type on a different planet; for example, if you have Survival (Desert, Earth), your Survival (Desert, Arrakis) or Survival (Desert, Geta) will default to it at -4. However, this requires that the two planets be of the same planet type. You get no default for Survival (Desert, Mars) in a cosmos where Mars is actually a small rock world with minimal atmosphere.

The Basic Set says that there is such a thing as Survival (Radioactive Wasteland), but as Roger points out, it's specifically the skill of knowing how to survive in a radioactive wasteland without special equipment.

So, from this, I would take it that a being native to a gas giant could buy Survival for some environment of that gas giant, and then would have Survival for comparable environments on other gas giants as a default at -4. They would not have a default for Survival in any terrestrial environment. Nor would any terrestrial being have a default for Survival in any gas giant environment. The Basic Set doesn't say explicitly that the gas giant dweller can't buy the Survival skill for terrestrial environments; but given that aquatic organisms can't buy land skills, and vice versa, and that gas giant environments are more different from either land or water terrestrial environments than either is from the other (after all, there were water creatures that adapted to life on shore, and vice versa, but there is no credible way for a gas giant creature to adapt to life on Earth), it makes sense that gas giant creatures can't buy Survival for any terrestrial environment. And, mutatis mutandis, terrestrial creatures can't buy it for any gas giant environment.
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Old 06-20-2016, 08:20 AM   #84
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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Survival (Gas Giant) is not a legit skill. Survival ($GasGiantTerrainType) ((A specific gas giant planet)) is implied to be a legit skill, though no examples of gas giant terrain types exist.
Ok, let's say its Survival (Desert, Gas Giant) or whatever. It says "In settings where it is possible to _visit_ other worlds" which is very clearly the situation for say, space explorers, scouts, astronauts, etc. and not natives on their homeworld and terrain. I'm going to assume the original post, which was about Survival (Desert, Rock World) is answered. But whatever the case, GURPS Space uses Survival on the templates for rangers, colonists, explorers.
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Old 06-20-2016, 08:26 AM   #85
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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The Basic text also pretty strongly suggests that an Earth creature couldn't have such a skill, considering that a land-dwelling critter supposedly can't even have aquatic habitat survival skills. I would reject that if the creature in question has access to technical means of making the environment in question survivable, but the Basic Set doesn't indicate that.
There are two different ways to take this. One is to say that if you have, say, Environment Suit (Diving Suit) or Scuba, and can function underwater, you have made yourself into an aquatic creature by technological means and can therefore start buying aquatic specialties of Survival. The other is to say that you're still in too alien an environment, and you need other skills: Swimming to maneuver, the suit skill to avoid drowning, Fishing for acquiring food, and perhaps Penetration Diving (in GURPS Underground Adventures) for finding your way around in caves or sunken wrecks.

I think that's mostly a GM judgment call. Though I might say that the difference is that if you put on the equipment and can live in the water indefinitely, including eating, excreting, sleeping, and perhaps even reproducing, you've become sufficiently native to buy Survival, but if you put on the equipment for a short-term stay and have to come out to take care of biological needs, you haven't.
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Old 06-20-2016, 08:28 AM   #86
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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Ok, let's say its Survival (Desert, Gas Giant) or whatever. It says "In settings where it is possible to _visit_ other worlds" which is very clearly the situation for say, space explorers, scouts, astronauts, etc. and not natives on their homeworld and terrain. I'm going to assume the original post, which was about Survival (Desert, Rock World) is answered. But whatever the case, GURPS Space uses Survival on the templates for rangers, colonists, explorers.
All of whom are normally visiting other worlds of the same planetary type. That's characteristic of a lot of classic SF.
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Old 06-20-2016, 09:19 AM   #87
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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It seems important that it's a Per skill. That is, the key ability is the ability to judge where the fish are. Kipling portrays that in Captains Courageous, with the fishing boat owner who's good at that—and wants to get to fishing grounds secretly so that all the other boats don't follow him, as they will, because their captains know who's good at finding fish.

The use-of-tools aspect seems rather less important.
I would guess the skipper needs fishing (industrial trawling) so that he can correctly interpret where to trawl, other hands might only have ship operating skills and/or some kind of food-tech skill for dressing the catch.

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All of whom are normally visiting other worlds of the same planetary type. That's characteristic of a lot of classic SF.
Realistically, this might work if you have a setting where precursors of some kind terraformed lots of planets to the same spec ... otherwise you'll need a new skill for the radically different biota on each planet.
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Old 06-20-2016, 05:32 PM   #88
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Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Fishing, Survival and Urban Survival

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All of whom are normally visiting other worlds of the same planetary type. That's characteristic of a lot of classic SF.
That's not the case, and is besides the point anyway. I assume the skill is like other GURPS skills in that they can be learned if they are taught to you.

Having been to a military survival school (in Panama), and having a held a scuba license and a Hazmat specialist license in the past, I see nothing related between the two. The environment, and the protective gear you wear in it, are totally different issues. Knowing the lay of the land, the hazards in it and how to avoid them, as well as understanding the basic skills necessary to acquire water, food, and shelter, is very different from donning and maintaining protective gear used in a specific environment. It goes without saying that if the environment will kill an unprotected human, then of course you need a protective suit. But if the suit will allow you to go into that environment, you need to learn to survive out there, if for any other reason, than to preserve your suit's protective abilities! The NBC suit the US Army uses has a charcoal filter -- if you sit down on wet grass, you'll compromise the suit's effectiveness. When and where you might encounter such grass is a matter of other training. Jungle saw grass, cactus, black palm, and such will do a number on a MOPP suit, for instance.

But whatever the case, GURPS Space 3e says this:

Colonist
The hardy folk who carve new lives out of the wilderness of a virgin planet. They may be part of a religious or ethnic group, sponsored by a government, part of a commercial venture, or on their own. Survival is the most important skill here.


The new specialty types that seem to be confusing everyone came from Transhuman Space, where the extra detail for dolphin characters, etc. made sense. That's really the extent of the mystery there.

From 3e:
This is the ability to "live off the land," find good food and
water, avoid hazards, build shelter, etc. A different Survival skill is
required for each type of terrain, including:
Desert Woodlands
Plains Jungle
Arctic Island/Beach
Mountains Swampland
Radioactive (no default use)
One successful roll per day is required to live safely (if not comfortably) in a wilderness situation. One person with this ability can
look after up to ten others. A failed roll means each member of the
party takes 1 die of injury. Modifiers: -2 on an unfamiliar continent or
planet; up to -5 for extreme weather conditions; -5 if you are
wholly without equipment.
This skill also gives an "eye for country." It can be used to pick
the best direction of travel to find flowing water, a mountain pass, or
whatever other terrain feature is desired - assuming that it exists.
This is also the skill used to trap wild animals. (A city-bred thief
could use his Traps ability, but he's used to different game . . . so
the roll would be at a -5.) Make one roll for each trap set. It takes
about 30 minutes to improvise a trap from ordinary materials, or 10
minutes to set and hide a commercial steel trap. Pit traps for large
game, of course, take several hours to dig.
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