[Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Does Freight Handling cover a situation where a PC and his loyal crew of sailors have to get a cannon weighing some two tons from the beach to the top of a cliff?

Why not? The text says "loading and unloading of vehicles", but if you can lift a cannon or a shipping container up the side of a ship, I don't see why you'd suddenly be ignorant of how to approach lifting it up a cliff. Putting too much weight on the literal word "vehicles" instead of "loading and unload" seems un-GURPS-like. You might well suffer some penalties for lack of proper facilities. Likely, have to spend some time constructing supports for your block-and-tackle at the top. But you'll still know what's required (what rigging, how to arrange it, how thick the ropes must be, how many men, how to organize those men into effective pulling teams...) Seems closer than Engineering, at least.

A ship architect would routinely include those facilities in designs if they're normally a part of ships. He'd know something about them in theory, but might not ever have actually used one to lift anything. (B190: "Note that engineers are designers and inventors; they are not necessarily skilled at the routine operation or maintenance of the things they design!") The RAW approach suggests to me that TL4-5 naval officers do not routinely have Engineer skills. The naval architects are back home in port. (PCs are generally exceptional, of course.)

Certainly, it's not always obvious what the "repair" and "use" skills are for to complete the design/repair/use triad with any given Engineering specialization. "Rigging" seems too narrow to me, compared to the other Engineer specs, to be its own specialization. At TL4-5, it would just be part of Ships -- and an important part! -- just as Engineer includes designing the motive power systems ships at other TLs.

If you want Engineer to be a more practical applied adventuring skill, rather than a more academic design-in-the-office one, then the existing Engineer (Ships) would seem to cover it (along with Civil, Mining, and some others). Certainly, that design / repair / use triad philosophy leads to more skill bloat. If the GM wants to reduce that bloat, then skills like Electronics Repair or Armory ought also to be tossed, with it all covered by specs like Engineer (Electronics) or (Small Arms). Skills like Electronics Operation are trickier, since it's much easier to imagine someone being able to operate equipment they couldn't possibly design. But you could simply drop them, too, and assume that operating equipment is just part of whatever other relevant skills you have. (Electronics engineers can operate oscilloscopes, pilots can operate radios, thieves can operate security and surveillance systems, etc.) You rarely need to operate equipment on an adventure without a goal, and understanding that goal and how to achieve it is part of some other skill, not just a matter of pushing buttons on a box. An IQ roll for anything not covered by a skill would suffice for operating gadgets meant for the general public.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Knot-Tying is the DX/Easy skill of being good at trying knots. It defaults to DX-4, Climbing-4 or Seamanship-4; no skills default to Knot-Tying. It seems awfully specialised as a standalone skill, but I suspect the reason it exists is to give a skill for Escape to have a contest against when someone is tied up; in practice that's often going to be one of the defaults. Failing usually means that the prisoner will get free eventually. Modifiers include High Manual Dexterity and Ham-Fisted, and modifiers for extra time and quality of materials will often make sense. The skill appeared at GURPS 4e.

Knot-Tying appears on a fair number of templates as an option, but the nearest thing to it being a major skill is the "Hostile Extraction" (i.e., kidnapping) skill-set in Action 4: Specialists. That book also prescribes it for sailors, climbers, and mountaineers. DF Scouts with the Bounty Hunter background have good use for it, as have Artificers, and Priests and Holy Warriors of Love. DF2 has quick rules for tying up prisoners of any size, and DF15 uses it for traps and escaping them. Low-Tech has knots to replace locks, and more rules for escaping bonds. Martial Arts uses this skill for trying people up under combat conditions after entangling them, or with the Binding technique, while they're still resisting. Technical Grappling extends Knot-Typing and Binding to use the Control Points mechanic, and Yrth Fighting Styles has the Ars Clemens style, which would make good use of that. PU3 and PU7 have example Talents and Wildcard skills that include Knot-Tying. Powers applies the skill to Binding powers, Thaumatology has a style of Ritual Magic based on knots, and Ultra-Tech smart-rope gives a skill bonus.

What other professions and skills involve a lot of tying? Surgery, Gardening and Carpentry/TL0-3 seem like candidates.

First, knot-tying should cover a few things that don’t sound like knots but at heart are. Besides bends and hitches, knot tying also includes plaiting (braiding) which is a pattern of repeated knots, splices, lashings and whippings (knotting thread or cord lashing style) to keep the ends of a rope from fraying and, at least for seamen, being able to worm, parcel, turn and serve a rope. (fuller explanation: Worming is laying smaller ropes within the grooves of the lay of the main rope (cable) to create a relatively even surface. Parcelling is covering the exterior of the wormed rope with strips of a tarpaper-like substance to waterproof it. Turning and serving is wrapping the parcelled cable with a smaller diameter rope, radially to the cable’s length.) If you want a bit of flavour for the operation, there’s the old mnemonic “Worm and parcel with the lay; Turn and serve the other way.”

A knot-tying skill of 20 may not appeal to everyone but even a knot-tying skill of 14 isn’t trivial. What a lot of moderns don’t understand is that there are more than just the basic four knots taught in Wolf Cubs and Boy Scouts (reef knot, sheet bend, bowline, clove hitch) or even the additional eighteen knots learned up to First Class Scout (guy-line hitch, round turn and two half hitches, sheepshank, timber hitch, angler’s knot, timber hitch, cross lashing, sheer lashing, diagonal lashing, tripod lashing, common whipping, sailor’s whipping, man-harness knot, fireman’s chair, back splice, long splice, short splice and eye splice). A quick check of list of different knots on Wikipedia shows 216 unique knots and I spotted no less than nine rather common knots that were missing entirely from the list.

As for other skills that make at least fair use of knot-tying: First Aid (usually limited to the reef knot [because it lies flat] but it uses that one knot extensively), crocheting and macramé (which are essentially all about knots), pioneering (basically engineering where the structures are made of wood and use rope rather than nails as mechanical fasteners) which is still a practiced trade in some modern militaries, leather-workers would use it to plait leather, ostlers to improvise a hackamore for a horse, carpenters would be unlikely to need it, other than for constructing tripods, though knowing how to create a long splice would possibly be useful to create a longer rope for a block and tackle and a ring splice would be useful for attaching the eye of a hook to the end of a rope. Knowing the parcel knot is useful in a number of jobs (and for bundling your cardboard and papers for the recycling bin).

One unusual use for knot-tying, when splicing is included, is electrician for splicing wires. Which brings up a couple of other points. While knot-tying is usually thought of in connection with rope and, to a lesser extent, lacing leather belts together (for use with wooden gears), knotting can also be used with metal wire ropes. The other point is that a person with high knot tying skill is likely to be aware of the difference in breaking strength between a knotted rope and a spliced rope. A spliced rope will keep 90-95% of its breaking strength. A single knot will reduce the breaking strength to 40-50% of the rated breaking strength (Pioneering Projects Boy Scouts of Canada).

Two things may get missed from the Wikipedia list of knots. First, there are quite a few knots that are decorative and second that there are knots that are variations of other knots. A different site, on the mathematics of knots, distinguished between compound knots (which could be resolved into a combination of prime knots) and prime knots (which cannot be resolved into simpler knots). Unsurprisingly, there are an infinite number of different compound knots; more surprisingly, the number of prime knots is also believed to be infinite (though this awaits proof).

Originally Posted by Railstar

Ever heard of a bank robber knot? A quick release knot that keeps the horses secure but allows a quick escape. Maybe if getting on a horse in a hurry for a chase the Knot-Tying skill would affect how much delay between reaching the horse and taking off.

Not by that name but I would expect that it's the Highwayman's Hitch, or perhaps a variant of it. The Highwayman's Hitch isn't particularly obscure, though not universally known, having appeared in Knotting in the Boy Scout Series from The Boy Scouts Of Canada back in the early 1960s. It is a slip knot but like a good many slip knots, that doesn't mean it's easy. The execution of the knot often is easy once you get the core knot right. The hard part is conceiving the knot in the first place. A good slip knot does its job without slipping undone until you want it to slip.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

What a lot of moderns don’t understand is that there are more than just the basic four knots taught in Wolf Cubs and Boy Scouts (reef knot, sheet bend, bowline, clove hitch) or even the additional eighteen knots learned up to First Class Scout (guy-line hitch, round turn and two half hitches, sheepshank, timber hitch, angler’s knot, timber hitch, cross lashing, sheer lashing, diagonal lashing, tripod lashing, common whipping, sailor’s whipping, man-harness knot, fireman’s chair, back splice, long splice, short splice and eye splice). A quick check of list of different knots on Wikipedia shows 216 unique knots and I spotted no less than nine rather common knots that were missing entirely from the list.

That's a dated list. Scouts has removed most of the knot tying. You can get through the pioneering merit badge (which is the rope merit badge, as it were) without knowing anglers, man harness, fireman's chair, or the short splice.

In many ways this is a reflection of technological advance. Other fasteners that are much simpler and more secure have become common, be they Velcro, Bungee cord hooks, rubber bands, zip ties, Duct tape, or Carabiners.

Additionally, we've stopped using rope. steel cabals, bungee cords, and ratchet straps all perform similar functions to rope, but none of them are a good idea to idea a knot in. Combine that with the cheapness of iron and plastic devices that replace rope, and knot-tying looks like a pre-TL7 skill.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

That's a dated list. Scouts has removed most of the knot tying. You can get through the pioneering merit badge (which is the rope merit badge, as it were) without knowing anglers, man harness, fireman's chair, or the short splice.

In many ways this is a reflection of technological advance. Other fasteners that are much simpler and more secure have become common, be they Velcro, Bungee cord hooks, rubber bands, zip ties, Duct tape, or Carabiners.

Additionally, we've stopped using rope. steel cabals, bungee cords, and ratchet straps all perform similar functions to rope, but none of them are a good idea to idea a knot in. Combine that with the cheapness of iron and plastic devices that replace rope, and knot-tying looks like a pre-TL7 skill.

Knot-Tying isn’t a /TL skill. Yes, it may stop getting used at /TL 8. It was certainly used throughout /TL 7. I saw various people, from the butcher to the lifeguard to the fellow laying out spatterboards for the construction contractor, making everyday use of it. I made use of it. Still, someday, it’ll be a skill that won’t appear on most people’s character sheet, anymore than Lance (couched) (from 3e) would have appeared on the character sheet of most armoured corps crewmen that I knew, not even the Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians) who still carry lances when parading for mounted ceremonies. This isn’t about not bothering to take the Knot-Tying skill. It’s about what can you do if you do take it.

Yes, the list of knots from the Boy Scouts of Canada is probably dated now, but it was never the same programme as that of the Boy Scouts of America and the dating isn’t the important thing. The important thing is that all those different knots would be covered by the Knot-Tying skill. Not everyone necessarily realises that there are even that many distinct knots, each with its own peculiar use. For example, you could use a reef knot or a sheet bend to tie to ropes of equal thickness together and both would hold without jamming when strain is applied, but if the ropes are of unequal diameter, only the sheet bend will hold when strain is applied, the reef knot will come untied at once. The still larger point was that there are far more knots than even those twenty-two I enumerated. The point is that someone with Knot-Tying skill 20- isn’t limited to merely making quick work of this knot (and for some knots he probably can’t make much speed over someone with Knot-Tying 10-), he is also likely to have a vast repertoire of knots and knows exactly which knot best suits the situation and available resources.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Why not? The text says "loading and unloading of vehicles", but if you can lift a cannon or a shipping container up the side of a ship, I don't see why you'd suddenly be ignorant of how to approach lifting it up a cliff.

But if the cliff is nowhere near the vehicle, is it still Freight Handling? Let's say the intrepid sailors would have to maneuver the cannon a mile or so over some terrain before they got to the cliff.

[Celti]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

But if the cliff is nowhere near the vehicle, is it still Freight Handling? Let's say the intrepid sailors would have to maneuver the cannon a mile or so over some terrain before they got to the cliff.

Then obviously they're wrestling it across the deck of a ship of stone, so enormous that birds fly through its very holds.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Celti

I honestly might just call it Engineer (Rigging), with generous defaults from Engineer (Civil, Combat, or Sailing Ship).

Originally Posted by johndallman

I think this may simply be Seamanship/TL and Leadership. The routine tasks that work the same way are

• Loading stores and equipment, where anything too heavy for a man to carry up a gangplank will be hoisted via pulleys in the rigging, swung inboard, and lowered into place.
• Setting up topmasts and topgallant masts. These are removable, unlike the lower masts, which are fixed, and are hoisted via pulleys at the top of the standing mast, swung upright, and stepped in place.

If you can do these things readily, which include getting the guns and carriages on and off the ship, getting guns to the top of a cliff may have a bit of a familiarity penalty, but that's about all. Heavier weights just need longer ropes and more pulleys, for more mechanical advantage.

I'd say that it's obvious that the workers need either Seamanship or an equivalent professional skill that includes team-work on physical labour that makes use of mechnical advantage and Knot-Tying for rigging the system that the officer comes up with. I'd also agree that this should default to Seamanship and that the officer needs Leadership to do it well.

On the other hand, being able to design a system of ropes and pulleys is conceptually distinct from being able to perform each individual task necessary to build and operate it. In fact, it is that conceptual difference that underlies the distinction between officers and enlisted men.

I'm not married to this being the Engineer skill specifically, but I do want to be able to differentiate a young and green naval officer with a technical and mathematical education, but modest abilities at actually tying the knots and rigging, from a veteran bosun who has Freight Handling, Seamanship and Knot-Tying at very high levels, but who'd have to rely on defaults if called upon to design a new system to move heavy weights with the materials the ship has.

This distinction seems to have some application to the real world, even today. My stepfather is naval 'engineer', i.e. the head of an engine room on a trawler, and he didn't actually study engineering at college, but instead mastered an immense amount of different practical repair skills like Electronics Repair, Machinist and Mechanic at a trade school. In his career, he did occasionally perform something that would count as Engineer (Mechanical or Diesel Engine or Ship), but he was pretty clearly relying on defaults or a point or two learned on the job, and not something taught as part of his education.

By contrast, I know mechanical engineers who would never pretend they had a tenth of the ability of an experienced engineering rating on a ship to fix engines, but who have spent much more time learning how to design something that will accomplish a given goal and which they can enable the 'enlisted' engineering ratings to build once they have conceptualised it.

Originally Posted by ericthered

That's a really good question.

I would favor Freight Handling before I would favor knot tying, certainly. Freight handling talked about loading and unloading vehicles, not hauling cannon to the tops of mountains, but then again, the initial proposal of "Engineer (Rigging)" didn't either.

If this was going to be an important skill in a campaign (and I can see it being so), I'd probably make it a specialization of Teamster. Engineer (Rigging) might be a valid specialty as well. Actually, Engineer (Combat) probably should cover it in some settings.

If It just came up, I'd try to get the PC's to scrape together a cocktail of relevant skills, base all on IQ, and use the lowest. For example: Freight handling, climbing, and leadership.

I wouldn't use Climbing. One or two of the seamen who perform the work might need it, to take the first rope up, but the personal climbing ability of the officer designing and directing the construction of a system of pulleys and rigging to move a heavy weight would seem to be irrelevant.

I'm really reluctant to use Teamster, as that has defaults from Animal Handling and it's actually pretty uncommon for naval work details in such circumstances to have access to draft animals.

The sailors themselves are the ones who do the heavy lifting and the purpose of the officer is to design the arrangment of ropes and structures that are necessary to provide mechanical advantage. The sailors build it, with Carpentry and Knot-Tying, and then perform the work with Seamanship. Leadership is necessary to supervise the work, yes, but I'm looking for the skill used to design an improvised system of cargo handling.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Why not? The text says "loading and unloading of vehicles", but if you can lift a cannon or a shipping container up the side of a ship, I don't see why you'd suddenly be ignorant of how to approach lifting it up a cliff. Putting too much weight on the literal word "vehicles" instead of "loading and unload" seems un-GURPS-like. You might well suffer some penalties for lack of proper facilities. Likely, have to spend some time constructing supports for your block-and-tackle at the top. But you'll still know what's required (what rigging, how to arrange it, how thick the ropes must be, how many men, how to organize those men into effective pulling teams...) Seems closer than Engineering, at least.

The red text is a good reason why I think this is not just Seamanship or Freight Handling. It's essentially designing and then constructing new devices that are then used to perform tasks with these skills.

Freight Handling is the skill possessed by stevedores, naval ratings and at high levels, by the bosun and his mates (responsible for stowing the hold).

It's the skill necessary to operate whatever cranes, pulleys or other systems used to load and onload ships at your TL. I agree that it should default to the skill used to design such equipment, but I don't want the skill to use it to be the same as the skill to design it.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

A ship architect would routinely include those facilities in designs if they're normally a part of ships. He'd know something about them in theory, but might not ever have actually used one to lift anything. (B190: "Note that engineers are designers and inventors; they are not necessarily skilled at the routine operation or maintenance of the things they design!") The RAW approach suggests to me that TL4-5 naval officers do not routinely have Engineer skills. The naval architects are back home in port. (PCs are generally exceptional, of course.)

From my knowledge of naval history, experienced naval officers were usually assigned to efforts to design new ship types and many innovations arose from the efforts of captains and first lieutenants at sea. Shipwrights were often former sailors and when they were not, they often designed their ships in close cooperation with serving officers detailed from the Admiralty.

A TL4-5 sea officer should be able to change the rigging of a barque to a snow or make alterations to the sail plan of a ship to compensate for a lost mast or unusual cargo, just as he should be able to rig up a temporary system for moving cannon to the top of a cliff, and I've struggled in my campaigns to determine precisely what skill he is using to do this. Using Freight Handling or Seamanship has the flaw of making the most proficient ratings better at conceptualising new designs than the officers who are meant to do this.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Celti

Certainly, it's not always obvious what the "repair" and "use" skills are for to complete the design/repair/use triad with any given Engineering specialization. "Rigging" seems too narrow to me, compared to the other Engineer specs, to be its own specialization. At TL4-5, it would just be part of Ships -- and an important part! -- just as Engineer includes designing the motive power systems ships at other TLs.

I've always had some trouble with the Engineer (and Mechanic) specialisations as written. At the very least, there should be generous defaults between some vehicle specialisations and some engine types. It beggars belief for a professional from the engine room of a ship to be defaulting at a penalty when working with the same engine used to power a factory.

In real life, 'marine engineers' (who usually aren't engineers) are perfectly capable of working with diesel engines on land, but they are also capable of working with a wide range of mechanical devices. It makes little sense to me to make the distinction based on whether the device can be installed on a vehicle or not, especially once you get into all the electronic devices that may exist on a modern vehicle.

In realistic terms, I'd prefer that mechanics or engineers working on vehicles simply had several specialities of Engineer, probably at higher levels for the engines and mechanical engineering than for the electronic devices.

Originally Posted by Celti

If you want Engineer to be a more practical applied adventuring skill, rather than a more academic design-in-the-office one, then the existing Engineer (Ships) would seem to cover it (along with Civil, Mining, and some others). Certainly, that design / repair / use triad philosophy leads to more skill bloat. If the GM wants to reduce that bloat, then skills like Electronics Repair or Armory ought also to be tossed, with it all covered by specs like Engineer (Electronics) or (Small Arms). Skills like Electronics Operation are trickier, since it's much easier to imagine someone being able to operate equipment they couldn't possibly design. But you could simply drop them, too, and assume that operating equipment is just part of whatever other relevant skills you have. (Electronics engineers can operate oscilloscopes, pilots can operate radios, thieves can operate security and surveillance systems, etc.) You rarely need to operate equipment on an adventure without a goal, and understanding that goal and how to achieve it is part of some other skill, not just a matter of pushing buttons on a box. An IQ roll for anything not covered by a skill would suffice for operating gadgets meant for the general public.

To tie this to the subject of the thread, I see Freight Handling and Seamanship at TL4 to TL5 being operations skills for the wooden and rope rigging and devices made and repaired with Carpentry and Knot-Tying. I'm looking for the skill used to design solutions to field problems, for which the existing rigging and equipment is insufficient without modification or new construction.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Let's say the intrepid sailors would have to maneuver the cannon a mile or so over some terrain before they got to the cliff.

I'd probably still allow it under Freight Handling, just for simplicity. That skill isn't restricted just to vertical motion, after all. Moving cannon long distances overland would normally fall under Teamster. There's nothing in RAW that says your Teamster specialty can't be (Human) instead of (Equines) if your source of motive power is work gangs of men rather than horses or oxen. Might come in handy for an Egyptian pyramid-builder (or henge-builders or Native American mound-builders, etc.) Freight Handling is going to know more about packing and stowing cargo securely; Teamster is going to know more about the care and psychology of your draft animals. Caravan masters or pre-TL6 army supply officers probably have both.

Originally Posted by Icelander

On the other hand, being able to design a system of ropes and pulleys is conceptually distinct from being able to perform each individual task necessary to build and operate it.

How much is really new design, as opposed to simply copying what you had back on ship, because you know that works? Three blocks on top, two on the bottom, three-quarter inch rope (or whatever -- I have zero points in Freight Handling!) works the same in both places.

I do want to be able to differentiate a young and green naval officer with a technical and mathematical education... from a veteran bosun

Under Engineering, there's the existing (Ships) specialty.

From my knowledge of naval history, experienced naval officers were usually assigned to efforts to design new ship types and many innovations arose from the efforts of captains and first lieutenants at sea.

In the modern day, engineering companies routinely include customers in efforts to design new products, and they often have practical suggestions from their experience to incorporate in those new products. The insight into specific real-world problems is quite valuable, but it doesn't make the customers the engineers. You wouldn't fire them all and just go with more customers, for instance. (The customers are even volunteering, while those dratted engineers want to get paid. What a deal!)

For academic disciplines that would also cover the topic, there's also Physics. Most engineering specialties that involve physical objects have statics and dynamics classes in the curriculum (and even some that don't, like electrical engineering). But Engineering (Ships)/TL4 has to cover load-bearing things you can do with rope and wood, as well as things like hull design.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

This distinction seems to have some application to the real world, even today. My stepfather is naval 'engineer', i.e. the head of an engine room on a trawler, and he didn't actually study engineering at college, but instead mastered an immense amount of different practical repair skills like Electronics Repair, Machinist and Mechanic at a trade school. In his career, he did occasionally perform something that would count as Engineer (Mechanical or Diesel Engine or Ship), but he was pretty clearly relying on defaults or a point or two learned on the job, and not something taught as part of his education.

By contrast, I know mechanical engineers who would never pretend they had a tenth of the ability of an experienced engineering rating on a ship to fix engines, but who have spent much more time learning how to design something that will accomplish a given goal and which they can enable the 'enlisted' engineering ratings to build once they have conceptualised it.

That's an ambiguity of the English word "engineer." Its most familiar usage, when I was a child, was to describe the man who sat at the controls of a railroad engine. Such people hardly ever designed steam or diesel engines and probably didn't often repair them either; their skill was Driving (Locomotive). So there is a usage of the word to mean "the person who runs the engines." But there is also a usage to mean "the person who designs the engines."