Re: Broad categories, Hunting

From: gamartin_at_...
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 12:50:38 -0000

> If we had a character who listed 'hunted with uncle' as a piece of
> background info in his 100 words (i.e. not one chosen for the
> keyword) we would probaby give the character a skill of Hunting (or
> even Hunted with Uncle).

Yes, interesting. But, I think a rather implicit caveat that goes with HW abilities is that they are very contextual. When a character takes a cultural ability like Dagger Combat or Spear & Shield, this necessarily includes all sorts of sub-skills that are abstracted by this value. I like the "hunted with uncle" idea, both becuase that was what acutally appeard in the 100 words, and because it provides the context for the numerical rating. As Nick said, it was probably the case that the uncle did the tricky stuff and the character was in an observer/probationary role. The character has a rating based on THAT subjective experience, there is no objective category "hunting". If the character wants to represent anything they may have learned during this time more concretely, they can always take pickups:

Hunted With Uncle: 17
Trapping: 6
Skinning: 6

The key here is that the GM applies the improv modifier from what the character has actually experienced. By knowing what the player means with this description, I think the GM has all the info they need to make plausible judgements for improve penalties (in fact, one might argue that "Hunted With Uncle" gets an improv penalty any time you are not, in fact, hunting with your uncle, who corrects your errors. The penalty represents those uncorrected errors).

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