[Basic] Skill of the week: Area Knowledge

[ericthered]

first of all, oops, village was supposed to be neighborhood--

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Where are you pulling those huge bonuses from?

the basic chart describing difficulties: +10 is for automatic actions. When someone has neighborhood level area knowledge of an area containing a castle, I can't see any legitimate situation where they wouldn't know who lives in the castle. I can see an argument for it being 'trival' instead, but I think if you can't give the owner of the castle the neighborhood (80-200 people level) is built around you don't have the skill.

Town level is a little more conceivable that you might not know, but I'm going to call it a mundane task. You get good rolls to figure out or locate guards and cleaners of the castle at that level. Thus the +4 or +5

Also, World is only three steps up from City, not four.

the equation isn't step*-2 its -(2^steps)

(I'd also contest that the owner of a castle is a detail that would fall at the Duchy scope, but that's a minor and fuzzy point either way.)

I agree that depends on setting. This is for a medieval setting where castles are all over the place.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Ok, so modifiers have been asked for.... Size modifiers are going to effect things a lot hear. It seems the fastest way is to identify the level at which something is known and subtract 2 for each level going up or down.

World: -8 (though I honestly would not allow this specialization to be bought in that setting.)

Make it 'known world' and you should be ok, though. (For instance, if said knight was French, and had Area Knowledge(World), he'd be able to answer general questions about England, Scotland, the Germanies, the Italies, Iberia, Byzantium, and North Africa, but wouldn't know anything about Asia, sub saharan Africa, the Americas, or the Pacific.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Those are Area Knowledge Town or Neighborhood scope questions, mostly.

I haven't got those ones either.

[thulben]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Added to my list of things to put into each thread start message.

Brilliant! Thanks for the work so far and I'll be eagerly awaiting the next installment.

[Ulzgoroth]

[QUOTE=ericthered;1781603]the basic chart describing difficulties: +10 is for automatic actions. When someone has neighborhood level area knowledge of an area containing a castle, I can't see any legitimate situation where they wouldn't know who lives in the castle. I can see an argument for it being 'trival' instead, but I think if you can't give the owner of the castle the neighborhood (80-200 people level) is built around you don't have the skill.

Town level is a little more conceivable that you might not know, but I'm going to call it a mundane task. You get good rolls to figure out or locate guards and cleaners of the castle at that level. Thus the +4 or +5c
I don't think I agree with getting a bonus for becoming more local. Nothing in the skill writeup seems to suggest such a thing, and it would be a ridiculously important thing to ignore.

Now, of course, the writeup specifies that the GM shouldn't call for a roll at all for 'ordinary situations', which I'd say knowing your own feudal lord would fall within, but I always disregard such statements because you can't stack 'don't roll' with modifiers. So.

Knowing who lives in the castle should indeed be a rather simple task for any local. Locals have an IQ-4 default for Area Knowledge. So giving them +10 does nicely to make sure hardly anyone who isn't severely addled will fail to answer. I might be inclined to polish that down to +8 or something.

I'd suggest that the castle itself is a Neighborhood scope. The immediately attached area might be Town-equivalent. I don't even know what bounds could be City equivalent...I'm going to find it most convenient to suppose the knight doesn't figure at that level, though.

So I'd suggest scope penalties of Local Village: +0
Local Town: +0
Local 'City': -2
Local Duchy: -4
Nation: -8
World: -16

But +8 at all levels for a final:

So I'd suggest scope penalties of Local Village: +8
Local Town: +8
Local 'City': +6
Local Duchy: +4
Nation: +0
World: -8

This makes it a trivial exercise for anyone who lives in or around the castle, and a coin-toss for anyone within the local political unit. For people who actually have points in wide-scope Area Knowledge rather than just defaulting it, it's easy at the Duchy and doable at the Nation levels, but still very unlikely at World.

...Of course, if you do keep the baseline at City, it suddenly gets awfully easy at the World level. And that's no less reasonable a ruling than the one I chose, that I can see.

Originally Posted by ericthered

the equation isn't step*-2 its -(2^steps)

Hah, quite right. I mixed that up.

Originally Posted by ericthered

I agree that depends on setting. This is for a medieval setting where castles are all over the place.

...How many castles do you figure in the duchy, really?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by johndallman

For example, Area Knowledge (Internet) is probably a valid specialisation in the contemporary world ...

Madness Dossier has two specialties for parts of the Internet: Deep Web and Dark Web.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

...How many castles do you figure in the duchy, really?

50 or so depending on your duchy


which is really the issue in our disagreement: castles aren't at the center of every village, but they aren't really that rare either. They're really cheap as far as ancient fortifications go: they only house your troops, and they're built so you can weather an invasion and remain a threat to a superior force.

No, not everyone has one, but an awful lot of people do. To be able to name every castle in the duchy, or even most of the castles, is a +0, not a +4. Every castle in the nation should be pretty hard.