05-21-2023, 11:27 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Wet torch
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A long soak might mess up a self-bow, however, and can mess with bowstring/crossbow strings if they get completely soaked. Any degree of wet will cause all kinds of trouble for a traditional composite bow or crossbow due to the water-soluble glues used to glue the laminates together. |
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05-21-2023, 11:40 PM | #42 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2022
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Re: Wet torch
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If a PC fords a river, I presume they are taking precautions. If there is a meaningful decision they need to make, like "Are you taking off your armor?" or "You have too much to carry in your pack, what are you letting get submerged?", I'll ask. But I'm not going to penalize someone who expects their characters to act competently, unless they have Disadvantages (or extreme lack of skill or no time) that would impede simple common sense. Quote:
And no, I wouldn't require a skill roll to take common sense actions for which the PC has skills. That just smells to me of adversarial GMing. |
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05-22-2023, 12:58 AM | #43 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Wet torch
It is reasonable to ask the player what they are going to do to keep their equipment dry. It's not reasonable to just assume that, absent them saying anything, they'll be stupid.
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05-22-2023, 08:46 AM | #44 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Wet torch
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If crossing this river is supposed to be an important challenge, then maybe, but even then since much of the "action" is likely to consist of the players proposing something followed by a dice roll resulting in the GM telling them their characters know that plan won't work before they try it, and even that's subject to falling apart unless the GM actually knows more about river crossings than any of the players, it may not have been the best choice for the highlight of tonight's game session.
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05-22-2023, 09:25 AM | #45 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Wet torch
I think "a super screw-top tinderbox lined with water-repellant substances" could be something dwarves or gnomes or cyborgs offer for enough G$ in a dungeon fantasy setting. And maybe elves or centaurs offer a rain-proof backpack.
Games will vary in how much attention they pay to basic outdoorsmanship, from "everyone's template has points in Survival, Hiking, or Soldier so you are good" to very seriously choosing between fire pistons and strikealights and linen and woollen underwear. In some games, always keeping your fire source well protected from rain and humidity could be a Park. But the scenario in the OP is such an extreme challenge to low-tech firestarters and light sources that I would treat it as a problem for the players to solve not as a routine application of skills.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
05-22-2023, 11:16 AM | #46 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: Wet torch
On one hand, I have been soaked 'to the bone' while hiking without actually going in water, just from rain, and even with modern gear, if something isn't waterproof but just water-resistant, water *will* get into it sooner or later.
So big items, like spell tomes, weapons, clothes and armor, rations,... barring magic, if you go underwater, they will get wet or worse unless you take specific, cumbersome and likely expensive precautions beforehand and you will need material and skill for barrels, for putting a lead lining inside a box, ... On the other hand, tinder, bow strings or similar small things, I have no problem assuming these will stay dry even when submerged if stored in an hollowed horn or calabash with a cork plug sealed with wax, and I would expect anyone with at least one point in a relevant skill (hiking, soldier, most survival skills, alchemy, ...) to do so with no reminder needed (unless they are dead broke or have some other relevant disadvantage). Finding dry tinder (or drying some) to resupply in the wild if/when you run out, that's another story. Torches, they will get wet like any other big item if you travel underwater, unless stored in a barrel or such. For most torches (birch bark, tissue soaked in pitch/oil, ..), drying them afterward will take time and heat (assuming the immersion did not just destroy them, for cheap ones). But waxed-clothe torches like I described in a post above, I suspect they would survive immersion and light up after a quick wipe and maybe a couple small knife cut to expose an inner layer. Last edited by Celjabba; 05-22-2023 at 11:20 AM. |
05-22-2023, 03:35 PM | #47 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: Wet torch
Some of you folks seem to have been blessed with universally sensible players, who always do the right things and always make the right decisions. (That, or you just don't give a damn about resource management, which is of course your right.)
The simple fact that GURPS has advantages like Common Sense and the various SOP perks indicates that the game system makes no such automatic, universal presumptions. But heck, how far do you take your presumptions that the players always know how to operate? Do you just assume that they take the optimum battle stances, with optimal facings and equipment, or do you ask them to tell you how they're arraying ... however experienced they may be?
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05-22-2023, 03:46 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Wet torch
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SOP is for situations where there's a real reason the characters might not do something, typically because it's a practice that is boring, tedious, and rarely necessary. Common Sense is a bad advantage. |
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05-23-2023, 12:01 AM | #49 | |||||
Join Date: Jun 2022
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Re: Wet torch
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However, I grew up playing original and BECM D&D, where you had to Rp your social skills, and as a very socially awkward and tongue tied and shy kid, I was hamstrung to never be able to play the noble Knight who made courageous speeches - because I couldn't do that in real life. One of the things that soured me to D&D early on, and though I grew out of that phase (and into a shrewish and socially savvy political schemer in LARPs), that sourness for that style of play always stuck with me. Why should the Player have to have the skills the PC has? Why does the PC have to have these skills if the GM is going to demand the Player detail them with RP? So, I tossed that adversarial play style right in the circular filing bin. Quote:
And then if the Player decides to detail doing something otherwise, that's different. They want to turn their back on a foe in combat? That's on them, but I won't start them facing a corner if an obvious combat breaks out just because they didn't say "I face my foes..."as part of their RP. In fact, if I think they're making a tactical error that their character would know better than to make (and the other Players aren't saying anything), I'll say something. If they then wish to embrace the 'mistake' (whether it is or not), I'll feel no shame at exploiting it for the NPC's advantage (if the NPCs are tactically smart enough to do so). Quote:
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For instance I probably have an SOP of "EDC 'go kits' are always prepared", because I have a 'go kit' (several of them actually, for different things). Every month I swap out the meds in my go kits (asthma, allergy meds, and pain relief) and check the lighter in my "fire box" to make sure it still has fuel; once every year or two I change out the bandaids (sooner if I actually buy new boxes for the house more than once a year or two), ointment packets, etc; in the last twenty years I've changed the sewing thread twice and my emergency clothes a few times (I've gotten bigger); etc. If I find a better poncho, it swaps out for the one in my main bag, likewise with gerbers, pocket knife, pens, etc. Occasionally I add to or reduce something. Y'all get the idea. Quote:
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05-23-2023, 04:04 AM | #50 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Wet torch
It seems like, this is kind of the same question that's been being discussed in the "Shrewd" thread, about to what extent skills can be used "passively" without having to roll, and from the extent to which people are saying different things there as if they took it for granted that that was RAW, the rules don't say much about that.
Possibly, I've seen some people mention that one way to do this is to allow rolling for whether your character has done something - if somebody argues "My character is a forest elf, he'd know to do that, he does this every day", allow them to make an IQ or Survival roll for whether the elf remembered the thing the player forgot or didn't know about, with the difficulty depending on how obvious the thing is - this can also be used for whether the character remembered to stock up on arrows in town, if the players skipped saying at the time exactly what supplies they bought in town. It seems like, it's a question of a player can either try to work out how to solve a given problem themselves or they can let their character (i.e. character sheet + dice) try to solve it - some GMs insist on particular things being done by the players, e.g. the "you have to RP social skills" rule, some have different rules, e.g. you're allowed to do social skills by dice roll without having to say the whole of the dialogue. It seems like, it's a matter of what your players are interested in - some players are bored by questions about how you make a camp in the wilderness and want to let their characters handle it (or fail to handle it) with a single Survival roll and get back to fighting goblins, others like discussing the details of how it's done and think that that's part of the fun - and even the latter might get bored with it after a while and start just saying "We make camp the same way as we've been doing". Possibly, if people are specifically saying their characters do something and it's something daft, that's different - in that case, they're trying to take the wheel and solve the problem themselves rather than let their character sheet do it, and if they cut firewood with their swords, they cut firewood with their swords.
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Looking for online text-based game at a UK-feasible time, anything considered, Roll20 preferred. http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=168443 Last edited by Inky; 05-23-2023 at 04:11 AM. |
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