12-21-2021, 12:00 PM | #31 | |||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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Three points in Master Guitarist does give you three points of value - in Guitar talent! You will out-guitar people with only one or two points in Guitar talent! If you're roleplaying someone who chose to develop their guitar skill to a masterful level, then that character presumably felt it was worthwhile, for that character's own reasons. If you're also a clever roleplayer who wants some other adventure-related opportunities to get out of that talent, that's up to your creativity as a player, just as it is to find someplace to use your weapon talents to advantage. Maybe that's why there are more adventurers with weapon talents than there are master guitarists. On the other hand, there are also some clever players, who may figure out that they might be able to do things like create a compelling distraction with a masterful guitar performance, and/or impress various NPCs, and/or get into close range of important people by being entertainment fit for a king, etc. Quote:
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12-21-2021, 05:59 PM | #32 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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12-21-2021, 11:24 PM | #33 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2019
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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Perhaps the GM would allow a goblin with Master Guitarist to be admitted to the Elf Queen's ball, when other goblins wouldn't get past the guards. But this one does because he's a reputable master at a form of something the typical bards can't provide. Or the Goblin King allows a dwarf to work at his palace because he's a master brewer and the court loves his beer. Granted though these would be mostly special case scenarios. But it's hardly unheard of for players to build a new character specifically designed for an upcoming adventure, if the GM has telegraphed what or where that adventure may be. Masters of mundane talents are probably more likely to be NPCs the GM drops into a story as a plot device. We used to occasionally give an NPC to a player to keep for their own when they needed a replacement character in the middle of an adventure. It might be amusing to saddle a player with such a character, just to see if they could create a use for a mundane talent they never would have chosen on their own.
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"I'm not arguing. I'm just explaining why I'm right." |
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12-22-2021, 09:32 AM | #34 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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12-23-2021, 11:52 PM | #35 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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The point is that it's a role-playing game about self-consistent imaginary game worlds that operate as one might expect NOT from min-max game theory, but as makes logical sense. As for penalizing for "no mechanical effect", 1) ITL suggests letting PCs take a point of mundane background talent for no charge, and 2) there ARE mechanical effects of knowing a mundane talent - the GM should acknowledge the knowledge and ability of a PC with such a talent and let them use it as makes sense. Why would that be likely? Seems to me that would only happen if the judges are incompetent to judge a guitar talent contest, or are easily swayed, no? |
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12-24-2021, 07:19 AM | #37 | |||||
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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Who knows? The only guidance is “It’s up to the GM.” And why are they all Mundane Talents IQ 8? Why not 7 or 9? Quote:
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12-24-2021, 12:10 PM | #38 | ||||||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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As I offered a while ago: Quote:
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In fact, I would despise an RPG that achieved point-buy value-equivalence. If 1 point in Baker were as useful for an adventurer as 1 point in Crossbow, I do not want to know much about that silly universe (unless maybe it's a good joke about how silly it is). For people concerned with balance, there is a natural balance effect when you provide many choices with values that reflect how useful and hard to learn talents would actually be. People choose to learn things that make sense for them to learn. And it leads to a world that feels real, and like you can actually experience making choices in that situation, because the values represent how they'd be. Quote:
And perhaps more important, having advanced and rare knowledge is something that many players can figure out uses for in a roleplaying campaign. Of course, if the GM doesn't care and sees no value in Lawyer and/or no need/desire to have them cost more, they can let players start with whatever, as they can anyway. But offering that some talents require more serious effort to learn seems to me like useful data that would be lost (and made more gamey) if simplified to 1 point for everything. Quote:
Even better if there are house rules or Hexagram articles to choose between, but again it's appropriate for the GM to be choosing which such rules to use (or tweak) or not. Perhaps a valuable starting point would be just a more developed list of mundane talents with more levels and a little description of what each entails. Probably there ARE 1-point version of Lawyer and Astrologer but they are limited compared to the 3-point versions (just representing SOME knowledge of those fields, but not very complete knowledge). Again, because it's a peripheral subject, and this lets them all be listed in one concise section. If a GM prefers to be more detailed and consistent, they probably aren't all IQ 8. One GM added a bunch of sub-human talents including Counting I, Counting II, Counting III... The GM isn't limited to determining what happens only based on what mechanics are listed in ITL. |
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12-24-2021, 04:58 PM | #40 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2019
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Re: Mundane Talents and Backgrounds
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IQ 7 Farmhand - cost 1 - income 0 IQ 8 Farmer - cost 2 - Prerequisite: Farmhand - income 15 .........(must own a small farm to earn the income, ..........and be there full time) IQ 9 Master Farmer - cost 3 - Prerequisite: Farmer - income 50 .........(must own a large farm or manage an estate full time) So a new character that wishes to start as a Master Farmer has to spend all 6 of their mundane talent points on that (because of the prerequisites) and can take nothing else. Starting as a Farmer instead only costs 3, leaving 3 points for another mundane talent or 2 at lower levels Starting at Farmhand costs 1, guarantees you subsistence income on breaks from adventures, and leaves 5 points to take some combination of other mundane talents, And this would become the template for any multi-level mundane skills. Of course most or many would only have one or two levels. Keep in mind a PC starting with Master Farmer merely has that as background -- they don't own anything more than any other starting character. In fact, earning the income to buy their own farmland might well be the reason and motive to on risky adventures in the first place. Of course once they get addicted to the income, they might decide to save farming for their old age (if they survive that is).
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"I'm not arguing. I'm just explaining why I'm right." Last edited by Steve Plambeck; 12-24-2021 at 05:07 PM. |
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