The Woodsman Talent
 

As the rules-set informs in it's current state, all the Outdoor Survival Skills are considered and condensed under the umbrella of the Woodsman talent, and this assumes automatic success in these matters when a woodsman is present.

It is only in the case of an adventure party which lacks a woodsman - *and if they individually fail their 3d6 saving roll* - does any misadventure befall any of the party members when trying to brave the wilderness.

Therefore there is no need for rules governing how, where, and when a party or party member can find and identify drinkable water, edible food, locate a natural shelter, etc while in-play.

The current rules assume automatic success until failure; whereas having a detailed hunting, trapping, foraging, and basic outdoor survival rules-set would assume failure until success was achieved through play.

Is a more detailed and actively played rules-set in this area something that anyone is interested in; or, is the current outdoor survival system - via the all-inclusive woodsman talent - fine the way it is?

Thoughts?

JK

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

There are further rules regarding some aspects of this; they are on pages 23-24 of ITL "Lost in the Wilderness," and being a Woodsman does not guarantee success, they merely roll one less die.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

That's true Chris; but understand that "becoming lost" *may* contribute to the eventual demise of a party; but, being unable to locate drinkable water, find edible food, or locate serviceable shelter during hazardous weather - lost or not - will surely guarantee it.

So what's your feeling on the outdoor survival rules as covered under the woodsman talent - and as asked in the OP?

JK

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

A simple fix, and one I used myself, is to make the Woodsman choose a specialist terrain type; forest, mountain, coastal, plains or desert. The woodsman should therefore be an expert on that terrain only. In other terrains, they might get a bonus depending on task. I never felt the need for the rules to be expanded beyond that but I’m sure they could be if people feel the need strongly enough.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

We need more detailed rules for "life in the wilderness" and possbly a second level "expert" woodsman talent.
It's a not negligible part of adventuring too often negleted by the party that assume they can travel and live outdoor for weeks without any problem if they buy enough rations.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

It’s not a negligible part of the game but whether we need rules for it is a debatability.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Disagree. Piling rules on rules on rules on rules . . . nope. I'd rather see the game kept tight and open to interpretation and expansion by individual GMs. Writing a rule for every little thing is unnecessary.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Mapped travel and wilderness exploration, mapping and survival, night-time guard shifts, and sometimes pursuit, escape, tracking humanoids, outdoor/wilderness stealth & scouting, ambushes and night-time surprise attacks, dangerous river crossing, desert crossing, mountain range crossing, etc., were a large part of our play of TFT.

We would have voraciously gobbled up and used such rules, and wished they would appear, but ended up having to use "GM discretion" (often meaning hand-wave or ignore) for the details of such situations.

I'm still always wanting more such rules (e.g. I'm looking forward to Douglas Cole's new GURPS Dungeon Fantasy project ("Hall of Judgment" - there's a Kickstarter) er, mainly just for the outdoor adventure rules he's putting in it).

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Well, Phil is right in one way, but on the other hand, it would be nice to have some good, tight rules covering things like getting lost, random encounters, and foraging out in the wilderness. As I recall, Barbarian Prince did this very well in only a couple of (small) pages of rules, so it wouldn't be a book-killer...

Over on the "New Skills" page, I proposed a series of "Survival" skills (one for each terrain type) that would improve the possibility of successfully foraging for food and water, and finding your way if lost in that terrain type (and "Streetwise" for a somewhat similar talent for Urban environments, though obviously the issues there would be different in many ways), so I think having some basic rules for this sort of thing would be very helpful -- especially for beginning GMs.

(I'd note that you could also create a "Dungeoneering" or "Underground" talent that would allow players some advantage in finding their way underground, using local resources to make light, etc.)

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Hi ecz, everyone.
I totally agree ecz. I feel that the Ranger Class could use some love. (Stealth, ambushes, wilderness survival, navigation / orienteering, etc.) Because there is no way to get really good at these, there is no way to be really bad, so the easy thing for GM's to do would be to ignore such adventure possibilities.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Not just unnecessary, but actively problematic for some of us. One of the appeals of TFT is that it's rules medium-light (say, 2 of 0-5 level of complexity). Increasing the complexity would be an active deterrent to continued play and further purchases.

Besides, SJG produces a much more crunchy game, using mostly the same basic assumptions: GURPS.

New talents and complexity.
 

Hi ak_aramis, everyone.
I agree with you, but adding a few more talents and spells does not actually increase the rule complexity significantly.

Let me give an example, for the last year or so I've been thinking that the Defend option is underpowered, especially against high DX figures. I've been playing around with new rules to beef it up. (Some of those suggestions are on this forum.)

But let us say that there is a hard to get talent that improves defending. (Expert Defender, which makes people roll an extra die to attack you and if they miss by more than 5, you get a free counter attack, for example.) The basic rules stay lean and fast to play. But once in a rare while, someone with this talent gets a bonus.

This allows great heroes to be distinguished from OK ones, makes better defence based on the skill of the defender, and keeps the base rules clean and fast. Note that new GM's and players are not troubled by these, because they are not something that comes up with new characters.

A second example: if someone tries to jump you in HTH, you make a one die 'HTH Defence' roll. 2/3 of the time you go down in HTH. This is totally random, you can not effect the chance of keeping people out (or going into HTH), no matter how skilled you are. Let us say, that you can learn a talent (Judo) that gives you a +1 or -1 adjustment to this roll anytime you enter, or try to prevent someone from going into HTH with you. Now, if a PC says, "Ugh, it is just random! Dumb roll!", you can reply, "No it is not totally random. This talent will allow you to adjust that roll. You just need the right skill."

I think that adding some talents is a good way to increase the depth of TFT in a very rules light way.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I'd say the travel rules in ITL could be greatly improved with hardly any increase in "complexity".

Also, I expect that almost all players who wouldn't welcome more developed travel rules, are players who will tend to ignore or not even be aware of the existence of the travel rules even if left as is.

Are there players who actually know and use the ITL travel & getting lost rules in mapped campaigns, who also feel the existing ITL rules are a perfect sweet spot, which should not be improved and would spoil things for them if the rules were more developed???

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

That's a fair point Skarg. I do know the rules but don't use them as I prefer to either build the journey into the plot and story more directly, or I'll just gloss over it entirely if it's not germane to the plot.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Not many extra rules. Just something to justify two levels for the woodsman talent. First clear penalties (under the generic form of fatigue points) for the prolonged exposure to hot/cold weather, lack of food or water, forced marches, sleep deprivation. Second how a woodsman in the group can alleviate them.

Consider that any not-lazy GM should create his own rules/tables for any of above events

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I don't want to sound like I am splitting hairs, but if a multilevel Woodsman talent is not already justified, why write rules to justify it?

I don't see the need. I also tried drafting a Survival skill for multiple terrains, and then went back and looked at Woodsman, and found that I had only made it more fiddly. This may be time to repeat the "This is not GURPS" mantra.In GURPS I could create a whole party of "rangers" and make them all different. TFT is not that crunchy. (My goal for TFT is about a 2.5 on a ten-point scale of crunchiness, where GURPS is a solid 8+.)

I think ending Woodsman with the paragraph below does give some of what is being asked for, though.

"Normally, the knowledge of the Woodsman works automatically to protect the party. In very difficult situations, the GM can require a 3/IQ or harder roll from the Woodsman character, to see if they actually know what to do."

--

Added several more "mundane" talents to the list.

--

The proposed Artillerist skill is covered by Engineer, I now see.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I'm for keeping things clean and neat. Maybe, maybe, talents for various areas of the outdoors would be a simple add, but little things add up.

Maybe Woodsman should track more as Survival for all standard non-urban type environments, and in the case of extreme situations, the GM can decide to require a roll or some such, granting someone with Survival a better chance.

When I was introducing TFT to three 14 year olds, one of the comments I heard was "There are too many rules...".

Many teens these days are used to games doing the thinking for them, while they joystick their way through it. We don't want to dumb things down to that level, but for TFT to have a chance at taking hold with the iPhone generation care needs to be taken to avoid destroying what made TFT great in the first place, which is a quick but precise tactical system in a common-sense adventure world.

To complicate it with even more text is to risk losing that advantage.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

We just assumed that a combination of IQ and time spent using the woodsman talent made the difference between different "levels" of woodsman. Not very precise or consistent, but it served our needs.

We always played that the GM's word was law, even to the point of superseding the rules as written (which rarely happened). That was enough to let us wing it through pretty much anything in a way we all found reasonable.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Yes, I have to agree. TFT's simplicity is a hallmark of the game. I see no reason to get more detailed here.

If a GM has a campaign centered heavily on outdoor survival, house rules should be easily adapted to cover any odd situations that need to be covered.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

It's true one of the reasons Woodsman is so basic is that TFT is a simple game. But another is that it assumes most adventures happen underground, in a labyrinth. (Among many other possible examples, see the section discussing horse riding.) In modern non-D&D role-playing, on the other hand, more happens in wildernesses (also cities) than does underground. So Woodsman is more important today than it was when TFT was written.

I find the connection of Woodsman to Naturalist bothersome. It makes gaining any skill in operating in the wilderness quite expensive, and you end up knowing about herbs and whatever, which a lot of woodsman character concepts wouldn't.

As I've said elsewhere, I also like the idea of distinguishing between the local hunter or expert scout, who really knows the forest, versus the person who just knows how to pitch a tent so he won't get scorpions coming in.

If I were writing from scratch I'd be inclined to something like Wilderness (IQ 9, 2) as a prerequisite to environmental expertises Forest, Desert, etc, all (IQ 10, 1). And push Naturalist off to IQ 11 as a more theoretical talent. But I'm far from certain what the best path is starting from the TFT baseline.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

There are plenty of children younger than 14 years old playing D&D 5e. Groups here in Israel use it to teach English. I've played RPGs with 9 year old kids and they've done just fine.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

For me, adding more detailed rules to the game to cover every little situation erases one of the game's strengths. Even character options -- talents and spells, for example -- added too frequently to the game would harm the line in the long run.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Similarly, I suggested Navigate in the other thread, but at this level of granularity it should be a task covered by Captain.

And I agree, I'm happy with TFT at this level of detail.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

At the point where I were detailing crew, I would think the "Captain" talent as described is more like what an officer and potential captain would have, but probably isn't IQ 12. An actual captain would need enough Leadership (no talent for that, only Charisma & New Followers) and crew management ability, Pilot and Navigation or something that also helps find your position on land (which is where it would mostly be used in my games) or while flying magic carpets.

If I were wanting to avoid "complexity", though, these distinctions could/would still exist in my game, but I might not bother to figure out the exact talents (actually, I would, but it's not strictly necessary to write them out). In fact, if there is a memory limit at IQ, captains would start getting into "you have to be a genius and/or not know anything else" territory if you break down the abilities. But the real point, to me, is that you want there to be different abilities possible, and not "well every expert seaman can be just as good a captain as everyone else, and can navigate".

But is seems to me I'd have:

* Expert Seamanship (like current captain)
* Leadership (no Charisma (being charming) needed) - useful on land and can also entitle one to lead followers, not just Charisma (or Charisma can have different flavors besides charming, and charming's more of a gift than learnable)
* Navigation - useful on land
* Pilot / Shiphandler (though maybe this can just be included/combined in Expert Seamanship)

Captain becomes a job not a talent, and would like people to have all of the above.

I'd also add (and did, and I suppose don't need to be listed in the book, but still):

* Teacher (lets you effectively teach/train people in spells and teachable talents you have)

* Scorpion, Catapult, Ballista, Battering Ram, etc (all 1-point combat talents) Because being an engineer means you can figure out such a machine, but it doesn't mean you've trained at hitting things with it.

* Various improved combat talents, but it sounds like that's not in the cards.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I like David Bofiger's position on this, but that's probably because I proposed the "Survival" talents in the first place. Still, I think his comments are germane, and I could easily live with his proposed idea on how to handle it.

I also think he made an important point regarding how fantary RPG playing has changed over the last 40 years -- people are much more into wilderness scenarios than they were back when "the wilderness" was just a hallway leading to the dungeon du jour. I think it would be wise to support that with somewhat more detail than was made available in the past. Heck you guys even did that with Dungeon Fantasy, and if there was ever a game that was all about dungeon crawls, it has to be Dungeon Fantasy!

Regarding actual rules for wilderness adventure, they don't HAVE to be as complex as GURPS, do they? As I said elsewhere, if it could be done in a couple of (small) pages in Barbarian Prince, it could be done in the same space for TFT, and provide some nice guidance to the GM on how to run wilderness adventures. And given the fact that you already have some guidance on wilderness activities, punching it up a bit with few paragraphs on things like foraging, exploring, getting un-lost, and finding water wouldn't be an excessively large burden in the rules, in my opinion.

Needless to say, at the end of the day, Steve and Guy will go with what they think is right, but I sincerely think you'll be missing a bet by not adding a bit more info in the wilderness adventure area.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

How about this? The TFT we get from the Kickstarter stays focused on underground adventures, as the original was (and as the title In The Labyrinth suggests), and we later get a wilderness splatbook. I think I would prefer that. I wonder what Guy thinks?

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I think it's useful to be able to describe a ship's officer or captain, and distinguish them from sailors (including expert sailors). I don't think it's necessary, at TFT's level of resolution, to distinguish officers from captains.

I think this is a mistake in the current rules. The officer isn't spending much time doing seamanship stuff, so he's not going to develop a high level of skill. The idea all captains came up the hawser is just wrong for most nautical cultures. Officers get a lot of practice at giving orders to people who know more about the subject at hand than they do.

Agreed.

I agree most ship's captains would know how to navigate.

I don't think we need this but maybe in a really naval-focused campaign you might want it.

Agreed it's a talent. With the talents IMO being Seamanship, Expert Seamanship, Navigation and Command/Leadership, and the captain expected to have all but Expert Seamanship.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

That sounds like an eminently suitable solution to the issue! (Though I hope at least some info on cross-country travel will still be in ITL -- after all, you have to get there before you can dungeon delve!)

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Many historical captains weren't navigators, but were combat leaders, leaving the navigation to the Navigator and Sailing Master. Especially merchant and pirate captains.

Some weren't even expert mariners, but merely the guy with the funds for the commission. (Which argues for a job without the talent requirements, but a cash-to-buy-in requirement.)

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

ak_aramis is correct. Most captains, even, back in the late renaissance to reformation period weren't actually navigators. Pilots/Sailing Masters were. However, having said that, there isn't necessarily any reason to play it that way on Cidri!

However, if you want to play it "historically" for some reason, I'd say "Captains" (whether on land or sea) should have leadership/command and some suitable skill for their chosen field of endeavor (seamanship, and/or expert seamanship and maybe gunnery, for a sailing ship, for example) since the Captain fought the ship when combat came up. On land, it might be "tactics" though frankly that skill means something entirely different than it does to military people -- so maybe it would be a new skill called "Mass Combat" or "Battlefield Tactics" or something, and then Strategy for higher level commanders...

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Thanks for the reply, David!
Just to clarify, when you wrote "Agreed it's a talent", I think you meant: "Agreed [Captain] is [not] a talent", yes?

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Since you mentioned that bold part, for those who don't relate to why I'd say there is a reason, for players like me, anyway...

The reasons I break out sailing skills when an RPG focus goes on a sailing ship, are:

* Raised on TFT, I like things to make sense and be somewhat like reality.

* It seems clear that swimming, boating, crewing a sailing ship, leading a crew, navigating, and tactics for boarding combat and sailing combat, are all different subjects that could be (and often were/are) learned without learning the others.

* There are interesting situations that arise for considering who on a ship knows or does not know which of these skills, especially when trying to form a crew, plotting mutinies, or figuring out what kind of trouble the ship is in after a combat has killed assorted crew.

* It's more interesting and consistent and believable and therefore to me more immersive and fun.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Allow me to point out that what I was saying is that if you want your "captain" character to have Nav skills (by taking the nav talent), there isn't any reason in the world why you shouldn't do so in TFT, despite the historical record here on Earth.

Naturally, if you want to put some kind of limit on who can learn navigation in your campaign, that's totally cool, and I wouldn't presume to criticize it -- after all, we play the game for fun, and if that's fun for you and your group, then go for it.

On the other hand, if some other group wants to do it differently, well vive la choice and all that...

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

My issue is with having a Captain talent that requires Navigation and/or expert sailing. A Naval Captain talent should be the "Naval Tactics" skill, while a Merchant Captain talent would be essentially about optimizing routing and making better trade deals.

If there are to be sailing based talents, they should, IMO, correspond to the basic work areas - Rower, Topman, Deckhand, Navigator, Helmsman, Cook, and Gunner. These are also the various warrant officers (the term goes back a long way - 16th C or earlier)... Rowing Master, Sailing Master, Bosun/boatswain, Navigator, Quartermaster, Cook, and Master of Guns. Surgeons were also masters.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Actually, I'm in agreement with you -- I don't think "captain" should be a talent -- it's more a job description, and to do it well, you would need a certain number of talents related to the task. My comments above were based entirely on that premise.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I had no trouble creating an entire overland adventure (GrailQuest) before ITL even existed. ITL as it stands wouldn’t restrict me too much, I think. I want to do overland adventures — big maps and lots of adventure hooks built in for campaigning — but I would probably be fairly satisfied with the level of detail we have now.

I’m by no means opposed to a wilderness rules expansion, but — now that I think of it — a short expansion with just a few tweaks and a bit more granularity could be a small one-page double-sided add on to a big-map adventure pack. I think that would be the way to go.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Getting into the weeds? I'd think TFT would take a different tack, but who can say what we will have to go and extrapolate from on until we actually see the new edition of the rules.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Agreed. SO much of the stuff I see in the forums is just adding complexity to a game that was never intended for that level of detail. I don’t object to YOU adding whatever crunchiness to TFT that you need to tell the story you want to tell. I just don’t want it to become more stuff that EVERYONE has to carry on their backs, whether they need it or not.

Not surprisingly, Steve and I sometimes do have different ideas on developing and adding on to TFT. If we didn’t he wouldn’t have hired me. He already HAS Steve Jackson on the payroll and doesn’t need to pay to hear from another guy who only says the same things. But this is one thing where I think the whole creative team on the line is in sync. TFT doesn’t need a lot more rules as part of the core games.

I just deleted several more paragraphs about this because I realized that it speaks to my personal philosophy and desires regarding TFT, and I think I’d rather that go in a separate thread, where I can share a bit of what TFT means to me. Later for that.

I’ll just say for now that I’ll happily talk cool rules expansions all day. I’m a game designer, and that’s all kinds of fun. But as a Line Editor, I share Steve’s philosophy that TFT needs to present a simple, fast-paced and EASY TO LEARN system.

I have already talked to a number of people whose eyes glaze over when they pick up ITL/AM/AW now, and a few who even rated Melee as tl;dr. I want them playing too, which means we have to keep the entry position rules-light. (I wonder if you could recognizably do TFT-compatible play with 2 pages of rules, front and back. An interesting challenge for a “nanogame” version someday, maybe. But I digress again...)

Melee proved that rules-light doesn’t mean you give up depth, realism and versatility. I defy any set of RPG rules to give you a more realistic combat experience with a similar word count.

There will likely be spinoffs where more granularity is offered for the sake of a particular kind of setting or style of game, but they won’t be part of core TFT, and that isn’t where we are going right now.

That’s more of the sort of enhancement I’d have in mind as Steve revises ITL. Something simple that makes the game easier to play while allowing more complicated situations to be directed by the GM in a consistent fashion. A party in the wilderness with a Woodsman doesn’t need to roll to avoid eating poisonous mushrooms or knowing whether a sound in the night is the mating call of a bullfrog or the subtle growl of an apex predator about to spring. He’ll naturally guide them through the mundane stuff.

Put the group in a position where they’re lost in a frozen mountain location for two weeks without supplies, though, and the woodsman’s daily roll to try and find some food may be the difference between a hale and hearty party and a group of adventurers who end up weak from hunger.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I’m sorry, my friend, but that’s exactly what I do not want to do with TFT. Seven Talents (plus second-level Talents for some of those), devoted to sailing? Realistic, but just not appropriate for TFT core. At most, we need a way to say “this character knows the sea” and perhaps “this character knows how to command at sea”. It is likely to be a part of a character’s background that offers a chance for related adventure hooks and interesting relationships to come back and affect play.

If we ever did a TFT-based game that centered on high-seas piracy, with megahex deck plans, cutlassry, diving and drowning, ship’s justice, planks and keelhauling — that game would probably include a bit more granularity as suited the setting. But it would be intended for the people playing that game, and would not be necessary complexity for 99% of TFT players.

I appreciate the enthusiasm for all kinds of settings and adventuring, but it is not core TFT, and that’s what we have to build (and sell) before we can even consider that sort of depth in the line.

Re: The Woodsman Talent --> Make the sea its own thread?
 

Hi all, JLV.
I agree with you. This thread has gone astray from the Woodsman focus, perhaps we would want to make a new Seamanship Talent thread?

But I think that the "Captain" talent should be called "Naval Officer" talent. The Captain would take that, navigation, and hopefully at least basic Seamanship. Then he would be ready to roll.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I agree -- it doesn't have to be a huge rulebook, but there do need to be a few extra things added mechanically, I think. And maybe a couple of new Talents as well.

But, combining all that into a big wilderness adventure pack? Brilliant! ;-)

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

The Woodsman talent could use some improvement just to work better and be clearer. It also seems like an odd place to stick the rules it has, inside a talent description. Seems like such things belong with other rules about travel (currently stuck on the sample map key) and that they should cross-reference each other.

Issues include:

* it says having just one Woodsman seems enough to not suffer from lack of food or shelter (!?!)

* it collapses exposure with lack of food, giving the same effect for lacking one or the other, or both.

* it gives double/triple penalties for rain, swamp, desert & cold, but combined with the above issue, means you might have no problems with such if they have a woodsman or both food and shelter, but if they lose the woodsman and food, then they take double/triple damage even though they have shelter and the cause of the doubling/tripling seems to be about shelter, not food.

* It says you need half or more Woodsmen in your group or else wilderness travel speeds are halved. (If there's a reason for that, I wish I knew it.)

* Since many parties probably do not have 50%+ Woodsmen, the wilderness travel speed section should probably mention the half-speed effect of not having such.

* Woodsman and Tracking and the travel section also want cross-references to the Lost In The Wilderness section, and/or to have all such rules in one place and the talents & other spots just refer you to that section.

I'd say all of these things could be tidied up and improved, and the effect would, it seems to me, make the game easier to play rather than harder, because things would make more sense and/or be more findable and better explained.

I tend to think it'd help to have each terrain and weather type get a sentence or three that includes such things in one central place, and again I think this could be easier to understand, learn, and play with.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Yes, making themed books with extra talents and other resources would be most excellent!

With the attribute cap, new talents is the only way highly experienced characters can continue to grow and people will want to keep playing their favorite character once it gets to 40 (gee, I guess 36 is "over the hill" for TFT characters).

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I'm not arguing you should do it, just saying that if you do, the logical and historical path is to follow the departments. Note that Carpenter is already covered, too — it's the same skillset as ashore. Same with Cook, and Surgeon. (Tho', historically, many ship's surgeons were not competent at all.)

And I concur with your reasoning, too - not that I'd mind a proper naval supplement down the road... provided it's compatible with history. (And that also excludes captains being axiomatically competent - historically, most weren't. It was a political and/or combat position. Which is why the QM and the SM ran the ship day-to-day.)

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Thinking more on this, a list of jobs and existing talents they should require

Basic Seaman should be unskilled.
Able Seaman needs Sailor
Topman: Sailor and Climbing
Lookout: Sailor, Climbing, Awareness
Bosun's mate: Lasso, Sailor
Navigator: Mathematician (for the Astronomy and the calculations)
Carpenter: Sailor and Mundane Talent: Carpentry
Cook: Mundane Talent: Cook
Surgeon: Physicker
Officers: any two of: Seaman, Business Sense, Tactics
Captain: any 4 of: Seaman, Captain, Tactics, Business Sense, Charisma, Strategy
Ship's Warrants: as type, plus Charisma or Whip.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I'll take a shot at justifying Woodsman 2. It's not entirely clear what the difference is supposed to be between Naturalist and Woodsman or how they are supposed to complement each other or what the specific skills of a Woodsman really are. Is the Naturalist more of a biology teacher's knowledge and Woodsman more of military survival instructor/professional hunter type of skill? This fuzziness makes it hard to articulate what should be in Woodsman 2.

I agree that for TFT survival should not be broken into different environments.

I'll just list some missing wilderness skills and see if you think they should be plugged into Naturalist or Woodsman (2?).

Set Wilderness Traps: This is distinct from Mechanician. Mechanicians know how to put spring loaded darts in treasure chests. This is not the same as what Rambo did in First Blood. Mechanician is too high a level of trap building skill and covers too broad a range. But the ability to build a deadfall for rabbits or a swinging spike trap for pigs or men should be available somewhere.

Camoflage: The classic D&D "hide in shadows" thief ability, but in a wilderness setting. Indigenous people have been using this against invaders worldwide for centuries. Perhaps this is covered by Spying, but this should exist in a less costly form only employable in rural settings. This could also cover making a blind, covering a pit of spikes, or otherwise concealing something physical other than a person.

Wilderness Awareness: This is a broader version of the naturalist ability, but for all creatures in a rural area, not just slimes. For instance, prairie dogs have a different alarm call for dogs, coyotes, hawks and snakes. Knowledge of bird and animal calls would make you aware (potentially pretty specifically) of other creatures nearby.

Cross talent skills: Expert Horseman allows training riding animals as if he was an Animal Trainer and healing them as though he were a vet. Could Naturalist or Woodsman make a narrow set of nature based poisons or healing or antidotes as if they were a Chemist? What about Mimic, but only for animal calls? Alertness, but for only 1 point instead of 2 because it only works in rural areas, not town or dungeon (like Wilderness Awareness above).


Aside from the skills above, I can't think of any more missing wilderness skills. But if Naturalist, Mechanician, Thief, Armorer, Seamanship, and Priest all have 2 levels, why not Woodsman?

Right now the only way to become better at Woodsman skill is to bump your IQ. If Woodsman 2 reduced the number of dice or gave a roll bonus you could have people who are great in the woods without having to be geniuses.(especially if you added some of the skills I noted above).

I really think it's reasonable to build up Woodsman a bit.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I think a very simple but powerful addition to the game as-is would be this sort of concrete treatment (and expansion) of the list of jobs. The list in the original ITL is too short and too heavily weighted toward jobs that don't have any connection to real world societies, or have abstract names. It will add a lot over built-in versimilitude to the game if the jobs list sounds like real jobs, has some substantial heft and diversity to it, and connects every job to an obvious prerequisite talent and/or stat.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Re. the original purpose of this thread, I agree with SJ's conservative take on this issue. There may be some precedence for certain skill groups to be represented as a half dozen inter-related things (e.g., the full package of traditional 'Thief' abilities requires 5 or 6 separate talents). But that doesn't mean the whole game has to be turned into this sort of granular approach. I'd mostly leave what is there as it is, and add only things that genuinely expand the scope and/or fun of the game. That is, if a Woodsman is assumed to have a suite of abilities, just say what they are in so many words and leave it at that.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Hi Tenex,
Very nice post, thanks. I especially like Wilderness Awareness.

A huge amount of wilderness survival is about finding water, finding food and staying warm. So a second level of Woodsman should make you better at doing all of these. In particular, you would require fewer hours to provide the basics, so you will have more time for other stuff.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I'd actually be good with a fleshed out Woodsman and no level two. But there are missing abilities, especially camouflage. that should be fleshed out in some woodsy type skill. It seems a bit much to just grant the Woodsman a bunch of extra skills, but maybe not.

However, people, including all the SJG staff, who are arguing against expanding certain skills 'cuz simplicity haven't explained how they can be against an extra level of Woodsman while slavering over UC freakin' 5 and multiple levels of Priest. Priest/Theologian don't even have any articulated abilities in them. Why 2 levels of something with NO actual abilities?

I'm very much for simplicity, but it needs to come with consistency! This new edition is supposed to be about clarifying the rules and eliminating conflicts and inconsistencies while still retaining the simplistic flavor of the original... right? Maybe I'm wrong and there's some other goal. So why so much inconsistency across skills that doesn't seem to be in the works for a fix?

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Maybe hiding and sneaking around in the wilderness could just use the move silent and spy talents? Perhaps we think of them as 'thief' abilities, but there is no reason to have two talents that do effectively the same thing, just inside vs. outside.

More generally, I think 'consistency' is a dangerous goal with a game like this because it will force you into a kind of taxonomic construction of hundreds of talents.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Yeah, I suppose. If you think consistency is a bad thing then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Re: The Woodsman Talent-> Silent MA / Hiding.
 

Hi all,
TFT does not really have a Hiding / Camouflage talent. This would be a boon to Rangers, Thieves, Ninja's, Spies, etc. I think Steve Jackson has added some talents to the new TFT. Hopefully this has not been overlooked.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent-> Silent MA / Hiding.
 

To me, these effects are covered by the existing Silent Movement and Spying Talents and I think adding further Talents would just muddy the waters.

Re: The Woodsman Talent-> Silent MA / Hiding.
 

Hi Chris,
You can play that way, of course, but neither of those talents say anything like that. Further, my understanding is that Spying is being dropped and being replaced with an evasion talent to allow you to break away from pursuit.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

[QUOTE=guymc;2191064] (I wonder if you could recognizably do TFT-compatible play with 2 pages of rules, front and back. An interesting challenge for a “nanogame” version someday, maybe.

Hi Guy, everyone! I think it has already been done by Dark City Games. There Legends of the Ancient World rules which are compatible with TFT are 7 and a half small (5 1/2" by 8 1/2") pages which includes 1 cover page with artwork/credits. This includes character creation, skills, spells, weapons tables and game mechanics. I imagine this would probably fit on 2 full size pages front and back minus the cover art! I must admit the rule system would be pretty hard to grasp without prior knowledge of TFT.


There rules are posted for free on there website. Here is a link;

www.darkcitygames.com/docs/Legends.pdf

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Yup. They win.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

How is 'spying' not a talent for hiding?

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

This can be handled well by a career set...

Gamekeeper: Woodsman, move silent, spy, a ranged weapon, tracking.
Master Ranger: Woodsman, Alertness, Running, Climbing a ranged weapon, a melee weapon, naturalist, tracking
Ranger: woodsman, ranged weapon, melee weapon, naturalist, tracking.
Apprentice ranger: woodsman, tracking, a weapon.

Taking the Roman Church as a model
Mundane Talent: Roman Ritual (1 point)
Clerical talents: Bard, Charisma, Detect lies, Language-Latin, Literacy, Priest, MT-Scribe, Scholar, Theologian.
Acolyte: MT-RR
Subdeacon: MT-RR and one clerical talent, at least a year as an acolyte
Deacon: MT-RR and two clerical talents; at least a year as a subdeacon
Priest: Priest, MT-RR, and two other clerical talents, at least a year as a deacon.
Pastor: Priest, MT-RR, Business Sense, Literacy, one other clerical talent
Bishop: Priest, Theologian, MT-RR, Literacy, and 2 other talents. Mut be at least 30 years old, must have been a priest &/or pastor for at least 10 years.
Archbishop: same as bishop. Only allowed when the extant local archbishop dies.
Cardinal: bishop or archbishop for at least 5 years, or priest or pastor in the metropolitan area of the city of Rome.
Pope: cardinal, make sufficient followers at conclave following death of last pope,

If one wants clergy with magic - the religion should be able to specify a few spells which, once one has the priest talent, can be picked up by heroes at 1 slot each instead of the 3 normally used.

For example, Romans would get Aid at deacon (if the deacon takes the priest talent) as a clerical talent - as the Roman Ritual allows the giving of blessings by deacons from prepared books of blessings. Presbyters and pastors are allowed to wing it... but usually stick to the formulaic ones in the Book of Blessings, anyway.

Career paths like this can be used easily to flesh out a setting.

Re: The Woodsman Talent - Hiding helps them and spies (and others).
 

Hi Larsdangly.
Just read the talent description in the old TFT. It has nothing on hiding or camouflage. It allows you to: 1) Open doors and look thru them with out people noticing the door has been opened, 2) breaking pursuit (even close pursuit) by duking around a corner, and 3) moving inconspicuously so that people do not notice you. (None of which are a good description of what spies do or how they work.)

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent - Hiding helps them and spies (and others).
 

I would say the Talent is not well named, but it's clearly intended to be about sneaking and hiding. The very first sentence is:

"This is the ability to move so inconspicuously that people will look right through you."

That, to me, means to be hidden; whether in plain sight or cover. I also infer that if it allows you to be unnoticed whilst moving it must also allow the same benefit when stationary.

Since the prerequisite is Silent Movement, I always took it to be the next level of that Talent, or the ultimate on stealth if you like.

As you point out, the Talent description lists 3 specific actions, but I never took these to be exclusive.

If we're going to start adding other Stealth/Camoflague Talents, then we need to remove this one to avoid duplication or confusion.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Jobs/skill sets don't address the inherent issues with the individual skills.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Back in the 2000s I toyed with this concept on the Brainiac Webring. I added Negative Talents to the package to keep the point cost down.

However, back then there was no 40pt cap, so you could have characters that reached 45pts. Because of that, they could be something else too, other than just their career. We'll have to wait to see how points, talents and memory work to see if a good packaging job will do what you want.

By the way The Brainiac TFT Archives (https://tft.brainiac.com/) has 20 years worth of TFT talk, insights and rants. What's been going on in this TFT Forum has been going on for two decades.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Yeah, but now we have a chance to influence the creator as he prepares to revise and rerelease TFT.

But thanks very much for the link. I will be perusing that.

Re: The Woodsman Talent - Hiding helps them and spies (and others).
 

Hi Chris,
I think that if Spying is intended to include hiding and camouflage then it should say so in the talent, rather than hoping people assume it does. But do you think that people need to have IQ 13 before they can get good at hiding?

However, the main job of Spying is knowing 'trade craft', which allows you to run spy organizations while making it very difficult for people to notice your activities. I would be fine with making a Hiding talent at lower IQ, and have Spying be involved more in the spy craft side of things.

Warm regards, Rick.

Re: The Woodsman Talent - Hiding helps them and spies (and others).
 

Rick, I agree that the Talent, if it stays, should be rewritten to more clearly state what it does. As to IQ, I always took that attribute to be as much about learning and experience as it was about raw intelligence, so I'm fine with IQ13. However, I'd also be fine with a hiding or concealment Talent at a lower IQ level if that's the way the new rules go.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

The language throughout the talent list (at least the old one...) is a little loosey-goosey, so I always felt I had the liberty to interpret Spying as more or less equivalent to Runequest's Hide in Cover or D+D's Hide in Shadows. Anyway, I have always used it as the game's 'hide' ability.

As for IQ level, I can see why it was rated as it was. An IQ of 13 only seems high because we are used to thinking of it as the 'dump stat' for combat monsters. A ST or DX of 13 is good but not extraordinary, and by the same rights I would say an IQ of 13 shouldn't be thought of as eyebrow raising. If you want a character with pretty good 'tricks', then you should invest significantly in the 'trickiness' stat (IQ)

Re: The Woodsman Talent - Hiding helps them and spies (and others).
 

Or about willpower: IQ also includes it and inconspicuousness probably relies on it.

If there's an attribute TFT needs split it's intelligence-education from perception-willpower. So many characters should logically have one or the other but not both.

Re: The Woodsman Talent - Hiding helps them and spies (and others).
 

Yeah, I'm not a fan of IQ being will power. In my games I'll be using the "middle-valued" attribute, whichever one that happens to be for the character in question, for will power, perception, courage, social adroitness, etc. along with talents to booster them.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

TFT has 3 stats (plus MA), and there is just no way to accept that and move on unless you consider each to be an umbrella category of a variety of things. Effectively, IQ is a measure of how good you are at things that the game stipulates depend on IQ rather than ST or DX. Of course you can make games with more granular stats, and there are literally hundreds of examples to choose from. But that isn't the design of TFT.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

You know, another problem with the Woodsman talent, as written, is the overlap with common life skills in a peasant/medieval/fantasy setting. A peasant in the Middle Ages would have known a lot more about gathering edible plants, constructing a waterproof shelter and starting a fire with primitive methods than the common man today.

I think a lot of modern readers look at the Woodsman skill and think "oh cool". But some/many of the abilities aren't really beyond what a common average IQ 9 peasant should have had back then.

All I'm arguing for here is some useful abilities to be defined in the skill so it isn't so ambiguous.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

I think another argument can be made, purely from a literary view point, that the idealization of "woodsman" was not as common as you might think in the medieval setting.

The fact that many of our stories which date from this time have a unique character identified as "the woodsman" implies that being a woodsman, even then, meant something special.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Yeah, so I agree with this, but that just means the Woodsman talent needs some specifically articulated "advanced" skills because for it to mean anything at all it must go beyond common peasant knowledge.

I believe the common peasant knew how to find common edible plants, snare small game, fix his thatch (or whatever) roof and build a fire without matches.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Woodsman Talent is IQ=11. Average Joe Peasant is probably IQ=10 or 9. Sure they may know some of the things mentioned. And as a generic activity, they probably wouldn't need to worry about rolling when it is within 5 miles of their home. (I would grant them that.)

However, this is a skill that can be used in the woods, mountains, desert... most any domain. (I would grant them finding stuff under normal situations, but only when it is important would I have the Woodsman roll on this skill.)

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Charles, JPG,

So my issue is, aside from "making fire in the rain", the Woodsman skills as articulated in the talent description are pretty benign. "Find edible plants" and "build a camp". This is kind of in the common peasant category.

As far as city dwellers go, even they are going to be making fires in their fireplaces without matches. The nature of a "city-dweller" is also up in the air. City-Dweller in 1200 AD means something considerably different than today, although I confess to not being an expert on the middle-ages or Renaissance.

The written description of Woodsman does not articulate an ability to "survive in a blizzard in the dead of winter without shelter, food, etc."

And as far as "Advanced Woodsman" or Woodsman 2 or whatever... That is the issue being debated. Steve Jackson and others don't think there is a need for Woodsman 2. Furthermore, among those who think it's a good idea, there is no consensus on what the skills should be.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Using the middle-valued attribute (whatever that happens to be) doesn't require any extra stats but makes more balanced characters better at certain things than heavily specialized characters would be. It gives you one "virtual attribute" that the GM can use for things they deem appropriate.

One problem with TFT using IQ for social interaction, courage, perception, etc. is that wizards end up excelling at those things. I think using "M" (middle-valued attribute) fixes the tilt towards wizards and opens up new possibilities without adding any complexity to the game. Because it's the middle one, it only has half the variance of a "real" attribute but it still starts on the hump of the bell curve so it should respond properly to talents. Nils' simulation results had a wide range of M values among participants at all levels of success.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Woodsman talent buys you several concrete benefits during overland travel that are more or less equivalent to what Aragorn does for the Fellowship when they are wandering around in the wilderness. Whatever medieval peasants did or didn't know about nuts and berries, it feels like a good move to have a talent that represents a special level of skill at this sort of thing.

Re: The Woodsman Talent
 

Without belaboring the point, I think people seriously underestimate what a peasant knew about living with the land and the seasons. However, I concede that the peasant would not know about a variety of environments.

I think you've got some good points there. As I think about it I find that I'm not as committed to a Woodsman 2 as I thought, but it would require a lot of clarification of the basic Woodsman talent. I think some of the skills I noted in my post #46 need to be addressed, although those could come in a basic Woodsman talent or a reworked Naturalist.

For clarification, my point about city-dwellers was only regarding firemaking. They are all going to know how to gather dry wood, identify suitable tinder of various types and use a flint & steel. They'll know how to coax a fire to life from a coal, the difference in how various species of wood burn by heat and speed, the uses of dry wood vs. green wood and how to identify a half dozen types of local wood. Everyone in that society used fire on a near-daily basis, city dweller or not.

Part of my problem with the talent is the ambiguity of the skills. It says skilled in living off the land without rations and camping equipment. That's different from "naked into the wilderness". That could be interpreted as meaning a Woodsman needs some basic tools like a knife, flint or more. Those are two different levels of skill or at least an added die to an attempt to do something.