[Skarg]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

So we end up asking how plausible the following characters are:

• Grew up in the forest, doesn't know how to climb a tree. I would say: not very likely. So I'm comfortable with Climbing being in Forest.
  
• Grew up in an urban environment, doesn't know how to get in a third storey window. I would say extremely likely, so yes, I oopsed there, Climbing shouldn't be part of urban.
• Grew up on the river, or at sea, doesn't know how to swim. I would say highly campaign-dependent. In Mediaeval Europe very likely, in Polynesia really weird. I'll have to modify for that.
• Grew up on the river or at sea, uncomfortable in a boat, doesn't know how to use it and always in danger of tipping it over like a landlubber. I would say quite unlikely, so I'm OK with Sea and River including Boating.
• Grew up at sea, doesn't know how to sail a ship. I would say um. It really depends what the Sea talent represents. Does someone who collects oysters on rocks have it? I need to think about this.

I think these characters don't have the environmental talents, which are supposed to represent practical skills. Can you give an example of a problematic concept?

I think there are both scholar-types who learn lots of information from study, and also people who have most of the survival knowledge to live in a certain environment, without having athletic abilities like swimming or climbing or boating.

For climb and swim I mostly agree and I haven't. Alertness I'm much happier to let go, I'm not sure it represents anything much in fiction. A character who doesn't know the forest but is good at spotting things in a forest because she's just good at spotting things? Not sure I believe it.

It seems to me quite true that some people are more observant than others, without having environmental skills. Many GMs frequently make IQ rolls to see who notices what, even in non-outdoors situations, and I find it useful to have some people noted as being more observant than others.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

I think that removing talents for specific abilities sacrifices the ability to list what characters can and can't do, and I don't see removing them as an improvement.

I guessed that the value you see in it has to do with less to write on character sheets, and on being able to efficiently list that someone has all the abilities you think most or every person skilled in an environment would have. If that guess is right, then I was suggesting that one could use a short notation to indicate that.

For example, if I agreed with your ideas about which talents many people from an environment know, I might write:

Sam: Swimming

Bob: Swamp Survival

Sally: Swamp Survival (+)

To show that same can swim but doesn't have other survival talents, Bob has swamp survival knowledge but doesn't know how to swim, and Sally has swap survival skills and also every other related talent that people in her culture tend to have.