05-08-2022, 07:24 PM | #41 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
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Re: Environmental Talents
A boat without a sail isn't a real boat, Bill. Better to sit and listen to an old salt like me.
Honestly, my experience is quite limited, but I've thought a bit about sailing on rivers. In some areas I sail, the tidal current can reach close to two knots. That doesn't sound like a lot, but you have to think a lot more in those conditions. A river has a steady current. The Mississippi flows at about a knot at the headwaters and more than 2.5 knots at New Orleans. I guess that 1 to 1.5 knots is pretty typical for a calm river. Going upstream must require efficiency and planning. Knowing the behavior of the current and being able to read it from the landscape in unfamiliar areas must be a skill. But, as I said, I don't know much and I didn't grow up on boats. I'm a very casual daysailer. |
05-08-2022, 08:31 PM | #42 | |
Join Date: Dec 2021
Location: Indiana
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Re: Environmental Talents
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I'll let you argue with my stepfather about the definition of a boat. He grew up with the Ohio River literally in his back yard. The river bank was their backyard. He now lives along a smaller river in the area, The Where the Wabash and White Rivers fork together along the Indiana-Illinois border. Last edited by Bill_in_IN; 05-09-2022 at 01:38 PM. |
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05-10-2022, 09:39 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Environmental Talents
So we have multiple environments: small streams, medium-sized rivers, gigantic rivers like the Mississippi/Volga/Rhine, small lakes, huge lakes like the North American great lakes, harbours, enclosed waters like the Mediterranean, open ocean, maybe others. The question is how they should be bundled. Should Lake Superior be considered Sea, on the grounds the problems faced (big storms, etc., but not mud banks or getting tangled up in submerged trees) are similar? Or is this an example of an overlap of Seamanship with River?
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05-30-2022, 02:07 AM | #44 |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Environmental Talents
New draft of this idea. I cut the aquatic environments since they seemed to be more trouble than they were worth and had such a wide variety of narrow applications that they didn't make a natural group. I think I'll change the name of the proposal to Wilderness Talents.
The wilderness environments and their talents include
Some environments will partake of two or more of these categories. To be fully comfortable in that environment the character must have all relevant talents. For instance:
When in an environment for which they have the relevant talent(s) a character receives the following benefits:
When encountering something common in that environment (regardless of whether presently in that environment or not):
If there is no relevant talent in your campaign for a reasonably common skill associated with a wilderness environment then that skill may be given to any character possessing the relevant wilderness talent. e.g.:
If there is a stress associated with the environment then the character may have a limited resistance to it, e.g.:
Sometimes these abilities will stack with another talent. If each talent provides a -1 die modifier then in total they provide -1 die and +2 to the relevant attribute. e.g. a 4/IQ roll to notice something in a forest becomes 3/IQ with Alertness, 3/IQ with Forest, and 3/IQ+2 with both. For all abilities the relevant question is not just whether the character is in the environment but whether the problem is characteristic of the environment. e.g.
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06-20-2023, 10:07 AM | #45 |
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Durham, NC
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Re: Environmental Talents
David,
I am assuming this is meant to replace naturalist, woodsman and tracking talents, not in addition to them. The extra granularity you add with these environment based does make sense and adds realism to the game, for those looking for this. I would suggest a few changes since you are asking for feedback. 1) I don't like the line where some environments may be combined. If Forest and Tropical are two separate things (Forests vs Jungles), then it is cleaner to have just a single environment tag for each locale. If you need a new one for a unique terrain, it just cleaner to have a new tag than making it a combo. 2) Remove Tracking talent from this and still keep that as a separate talent. Just have this as a refinement of Woodsman & Naturalist. Seems to me to be a more one to one swap. Knowing how to survive an environment does not necessarily teach you have to read tracks. Everything in your set of talents takes from Naturalist and Woodsman, so it seems like Tracking was just thrown in. 3) Woodsman talent (ITL 41) covers foraging loosely. It suggests a Woodsman may find some rations each day but not how much. Clearly this would depend on the terrain. It also implies some such action may require an IQ roll of the Woodsman. You will want to have values for each of your terrains for each of these terrain talents. I do this myself since Woodsman leaves it undefined and while you are refining Woodsman, it would make sense to do it. 4) Woodsman talent (ITL 41) also covers exposure but a bit better than foraging. As long as you are defining each environment talent, you could list each's exposure value and even if the IQ role is different (some environments are harder avoid the damage while others are more damaging). Even if you don't change these values, good to have it clearly documented here. BTW, there is a difference between environment and terrain. That is, an environmental talent may cover more than one terrain (desert flatlands vs desert mountains). These may affect exposure values, encounter tables, encounter chances and more. But the flora and fauna will largely be the same, mostly, such that they would fall into the same environmental talent. 5) I don't see how you address Expert Naturalist. Will there be Expert talents for each environmental talent? If so, what are the IQ requirements & costs for each? Good luck. Last edited by Axly Suregrip; 06-20-2023 at 10:26 AM. |
06-20-2023, 11:42 PM | #46 |
Join Date: Jun 2023
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Re: Environmental Talents
What is in ITL is the design philosophy, what you worked out is a variant or optional. Now what? Add fifty spells at IQ 8.
A thumb out of water is still a thumb. What could be done ask the player where his character grew up and where he learned his woodsman talent, and if say on a mountain, then a minus -2 to IQ temporary in a swamp, yes might miss the giant man-eating tree plant, but up in the mountains they called it Yeti, and it could run faster than a human. Now how long is it temporary? well, a day a week a month, or use that thumb five times, literally five rolls of Woodsman in the swamp. I don't know, but it is to have fun and not check the Body Fat table to see how much damage was absorbed, from taking the blow, physics you know, gotta be true. Be true to fun, not bookkeeping. |
06-21-2023, 09:27 AM | #47 | |||||
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Environmental Talents
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Similarly there's Forest (trees) and Marsh (soggy). If you want to be comfortable in a swamp (trees and soggy) then you need both talents. Quote:
Of those, (2) seems much worse than (1). I'm largely happy tolerating (1) because I think the statement "I'm an expert in forests so I know how to track" is close enough to true in fiction and to some extent in reality. Quote:
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environment, split, talents |
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