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Old 05-05-2022, 08:15 PM   #31
Shostak
 
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Default Re: Environmental Talents

David, I hope all of our comments and side issues don't put you off your main idea, which I think has a good deal of merit.
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Old 05-05-2022, 08:23 PM   #32
TippetsTX
 
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Default Re: Environmental Talents

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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
David, I hope all of our comments and side issues don't put you off your main idea, which I think has a good deal of merit.
Agreed. My attempts to apply it in a way that better fits my own framework shouldn't be seen as anything more than that. I'm always looking for new ways to provide character specialization and this is a good one.
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Old 05-06-2022, 01:56 AM   #33
Steve Plambeck
 
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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
David, I hope all of our comments and side issues don't put you off your main idea, which I think has a good deal of merit.
My bad as well! David's idea is great. I dove right into speculating about possible mechanics without even mentioning I love his proposal.

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Yes, and while it could be argued that rolling against some kind of difficulty rating (DC in newer D&D editions) w/ level or skill-based modifiers is a more accurate simulation of task resolution, I wouldn't want to replace TFT's attribute-dependant design.
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Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN View Post
If I remember correctly, that would make it more like D&D where you have abilities and life levels that increase those abilities.
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Originally Posted by David Bofinger View Post
Perhaps the natural endpoint of this approach is to eliminate attributes completely. Characters would be defined by their talents. It's not really TFT but I suppose it could work.
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1e AC is the same idea (i.e. something you have to beat), but presented counter-intuitively IMO since lower numbers represent the harder challenge and therefore required a table to convert 'higher is better' die rolls into a success/fail result.
40 years since I played or even looked at D&D as well, but this serves as an encyclopedic reminder of all the things I really, really hated about that game. I'm a bit mortified the challenge-vs-adjustments table I proposed might come perilously close to moving TFT in that direction.

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Would attributes contribute modifiers at all? If not, but they were to continue being used as prerequisites for talents, stats would have value but would be less apt to unbalance the game as they reached higher levels.
A table format like the one I was suggesting, with a test roll against a fixed difficulty, would simply have to have additional modifiers for attributes as well or it would undermine the game. At the simplest, in addition to any adjustment to the roll for applicable talents there could be a +1 for every point of DX or IQ above a threshold, like 11 perhaps. (+2 for a relevant talent plus a +2 for IQ 13 equals +4, or something along those lines).

That, or adjustments for talents are only for cases where the attribute you'd roll against might be ambiguous or irrelevant. Or having the talent unlocks the ability to roll against the attribute without a terrible penalty, but then that's pretty much how we do it already.
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Old 05-06-2022, 08:58 AM   #34
David Bofinger
 
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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
David, I hope all of our comments and side issues don't put you off your main idea, which I think has a good deal of merit.
To quote from the first line in my original post, "I'd like opinions on this". I'm certainly not upset to get feedback. I probably should have thanked people more.
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Old 05-06-2022, 09:04 AM   #35
David Bofinger
 
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Originally Posted by Bill_in_IN View Post
If I remember correctly, that would make it more like D&D where you have abilities and life levels that increase those abilities.
I don't think so. In D&D characters are described by lots of things but most characters are reasonably well-described by a single integer and their class. In TFT they are described by a few integers (attributes) and a bunch of booleans (talents & spells). A game where they were described by just a bunch of booleans instead wouldn't IMO be particularly more D&D-like. More like a card game, maybe.
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Old 05-06-2022, 10:14 PM   #36
Skarg
 
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My actual reason is given in the original post I made at the start of this thread. The third paragraph under "Philosophy" has the core of it. It has nothing to do with brevity of character sheets, though the brevity of TFT character sheets is something I would like to retain. If there is something I wrote in the first post that gave you the impression I was trying to shorten character sheets then please tell me what it was so I can clarify in later drafts.
No, I just don't see value in removing the option to have any of the existing talents such as Swimming, Climbing, Boating, Seamanship, independently of survival talents. I don't think there is any necessary overlap, so I think including those talents inside survival talents is removing possible types of characters, for no gain that makes sense to me.

It does make sense to think many people with those survival skills would also have some other talents. Just not everyone.

If you're worried about talent point costs, then maybe have some discounts to bundle related talents.

As I wrote before, I do like having different survival knowledge talents per environment, rather than one "Woodsman". I also think that outdoor survival skills, naturalist knowledge, and tracking skill, should be different skills without requiring each other, so you can have the scholar who knows more about creatures but not so much how to build fires and shelters or how to manage a group in the wilderness. And while a naturalist or survivalist might have some ability to track, I see really tracking as its own skill (with some overlap, sure, but being a really good tracker doesn't describe every naturalist or survivalist).
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Old 05-08-2022, 01:20 AM   #37
David Bofinger
 
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No, I just don't see value in removing the option to have any of the existing talents such as Swimming, Climbing, Boating, Seamanship
In my proposal as given at the start of this thread none of those talents were removed.

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independently of survival talents.
I think it's a mistake to think of the environmental talents I've proposed as survival talents specifically. Yes, they have survival applications, but they do all sorts of things and there's no reason to see survival aspects as somehow more important than the others. They don't particularly replace Woodsman any more than they do Naturalist, or Alertness, or various other abilities.

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I don't think there is any necessary overlap
This is a link to my reasoning on this subject. Perhaps you have specific thoughts on the examples I give?
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This is not really a quote, it's just an excuse to click the blue arrow icon above.
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If you're worried about talent point costs, then maybe have some discounts to bundle related talents.
As I said earlier, my reason for doing this is given under philosophy in my original post. It has nothing to do with either brevity of character sheets (as you suggested earlier) or talent point costs.

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while a naturalist or survivalist might have some ability to track, I see really tracking as its own skill (with some overlap, sure, but being a really good tracker doesn't describe every naturalist or survivalist).
I can see there's maybe some issue with anyone who knows a forest having a limited ability to track, though really I don't see it as a huge issue since I think nearly all forest expert character concepts would not object to being able to track. I've very often heard a player playing a Naturalist/Woodsman character (or other game equivalent) want to track in a forest; I've I think never heard a Naturalist/Woodsman character's player feel they wouldn't be able to track in a forest because it wasn't their specialty, despite the game system saying they can.

I can see there's an issue with there not being any "expert forest tracker" talent, since there often are such people in stories, but I don't see it as something that really damages the game.

What I definitely see an issue with is that anyone who can track in a desert can also track in a forest. That seems a bit silly. I can maybe live with it, because abolishing the tracking talent would make so many characters obsolete, but I don't like it.

I think what I need is a general rule that if you have the talent for the environment (e.g. Forest) or the talent for the output (e.g. Tracking) then you can perform the task at a modest penalty, and if you have both then you can perform the task at a modest bonus.
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Old 05-08-2022, 01:38 AM   #38
David Bofinger
 
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Default Re: Environmental Talents

Regarding Sea and River talents, which do you think is the better model:
  • Sea costs 2, or 1 if you have River; River costs 2, or 1 if you have Sea.
  • River costs 1. Sea costs 1 and has prerequisite River.
As I see it the difference between them is that the first supports a mediaeval version of Huckleberry Finn - a character who spends time learning skills a seaman would not have - and the second doesn't. Of course there are no paddleboats in (most) TFT rivers so the skills would be different: knowing freshwater monsters, understanding the people of the river, the ability to see an approaching boat, look suspicious, and scream "Prepare to repel pirates!" fifteen seconds before it would have been too late.

The question is: are those skills substantial enough to justify identifying River as more than a subset of Sea? I'm in two minds.
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Old 05-08-2022, 01:10 PM   #39
phiwum
 
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Default Re: Environmental Talents

Seems to me that sailing on a river and sailing on the sea are two quite different experiences. I've never sailed on a river, mind you, so I could be all wet, but sure seems like it would be mighty different.
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Old 05-08-2022, 05:23 PM   #40
Bill_in_IN
 
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Default Re: Environmental Talents

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Seems to me that sailing on a river and sailing on the sea are two quite different experiences. I've never sailed on a river, mind you, so I could be all wet, but sure seems like it would be mighty different.
I concur.

I have been on a decent sized recreational boat on Lake Tahoe and on a 14 ft john boat on a river. I've also been on a 20+ foot Pontoon boat on a river (floating party). Even though I wasn't driving in any of these instances. I can tell you that there were some differences. The river boats are more likely to bottom out unless the sea going boats are in rocky waters.
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