11-17-2016, 08:27 AM | #51 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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. |
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11-17-2016, 02:33 PM | #52 | |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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). 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. Last edited by Curmudgeon; 11-17-2016 at 03:32 PM. |
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11-17-2016, 02:50 PM | #53 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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.
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11-17-2016, 03:30 PM | #54 | |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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. |
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11-17-2016, 05:17 PM | #55 |
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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.
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11-17-2016, 07:04 PM | #56 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: USA, Arizona, Mesa
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
Then obviously they're wrestling it across the deck of a ship of stone, so enormous that birds fly through its very holds.
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11-18-2016, 02:56 AM | #57 | |||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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. Quote:
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. Quote:
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. Quote:
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.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 11-18-2016 at 04:50 AM. |
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11-18-2016, 02:57 AM | #58 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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. Quote:
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11-18-2016, 06:32 AM | #59 | ||||
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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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. |
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11-18-2016, 08:15 AM | #60 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Knot-Tying
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