Modelling Tone Deafness & Absolute Pitch?

[JCurwen3]

Tone deafness

Absolute pitch

I thought of doing these with Anti-Talent and / or Talent, but neither seemed to fit. I mean, Talent might work for absolute / perfect pitch (although I don't think Musical Ability cuts it), but I'm not sure a custom Anti-Talent works for tone deafness.

It seemed to me like tone deafness was the hearing analogue of colour blindness, but that didn't take me anywhere.

Thoughts?

[Anthony]

Tone deafness would be an incompetence quirk. Absolute pitch is probably a perk.

[aesir23]

Tone Deafness would be more than 1 incompetence Quirk, though, you'd have to take it for every musical and singing ability. Not that it would necessarily make it worth more than 1 point.

RAW says, "The GM may disallow Incompetence if the skill would be irrelevant to a given character or is unlikely to play a role in the campaign" (Characters 164). Since this is almost always the case with musical skills, I'd bundle them all into a single Quirk:

Tone Deaf (-1)
Also called "Tin Ear" and Amusia. You are constitutionally incapable of distinguishing relative pitch. You receive a -4 on all skill roles against Connoisseur (Music), Musical Composition, Musical Instrument, and Singing. This doesn't affect your ability to hear inflection or intonation in speech, however, and the rest of your social skills are unaffected.

Perfect Pitch (1)
You can automatically identify and recreate specific musical notes. If you have a point in any Music related skill, you can, without a roll, identify a musical note that has been played by name. If you have a point in Singing, you can duplicate that note if it's inside your range. This gives a conditional +2 bonus to Connoisseur (Music) when the GM determines it would matter, and a conditional +2 to Singing when attempting to duplicate another persons performance.
Most people with Perfect Pitch also have at least one level of Musical Ability Talent, often more.

[PK]

Tone-Deafness could be a quirk that gives -4 to Musical Instrument (all except percussion) and Singing. It's similar to Incompetence, just (1) it's a little broader but (2) allows the person to still buy the skills.

Absolute Pitch is best represented with Musical Ability 1.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by PK

Absolute Pitch is best represented with Musical Ability 1.

Not really. It's mostly a party trick that lets you tune an instrument without a tuning fork or similar source of a tone.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by PK

Tone-Deafness could be a quirk that gives -4 to Musical Instrument (all except percussion) and Singing. It's similar to Incompetence, just (1) it's a little broader but (2) allows the person to still buy the skills.

Absolute Pitch is best represented with Musical Ability 1.

I have a bit of musical talent, but certainly do not have anything like perfect pitch.
I can hear myself go off tune while singing, but that doesn't help at all.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Not really. It's mostly a party trick that lets you tune an instrument without a tuning fork or similar source of a tone.

As with most things, it all depends on how you want to treat it. I've heard "perfect pitch" referred to as a gateway to better musical ability all around, hence my suggestion of Musical Ability 1. But for just a party trick version that's good for minor things at most, you could model it as a perk, like this:

Originally Posted by Kromm

I would be entirely fine with calling Perfect Pitch a perk – it's precisely the level of thing that perks were originally conceived to represent (and I have a mental itch that we've already printed it as a perk somewhere, maybe in Pyramid). If you need game effects, call it +2 to all rolls to tune musical instruments or to confirm that they're in tune (or out of tune), and to Hobby Skill (Whistling) (Low-Tech Companion 1, p. 17).

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by PK

As with most things, it all depends on how you want to treat it. I've heard "perfect pitch" referred to as a gateway to better musical ability all around, hence my suggestion of Musical Ability 1. But for just a party trick version that's good for minor things at most, you could model it as a perk, like this.

When I try to click on that link it tells me that I don't have sufficient permissions.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by PK

As with most things, it all depends on how you want to treat it. I've heard "perfect pitch" referred to as a gateway to better musical ability all around, hence my suggestion of Musical Ability 1.

Musical ability will typically require perfect relative pitch, but perfect absolute pitch isn't particularly critical to musical ability. I'd write it up as:

Perfect Pitch
You can accurately recognize specific notes; if you are familiar with music, you can tune instruments (or your voice) without a reference, and can recognize notes when you hear them. In ordinary usage this is not particularly important, since you tune relative to other players, or to a fixed reference source such as a tuning fork, but it may have specialized uses.

[PK]

Originally Posted by aesir23

When I try to click on that link it tells me that I don't have sufficient permissions.

Oops, yeah, I see why -- long story. I just edited my post to copy over the relevant lines.