Re: What's a Keyword?

From: Roderick Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:53:04 -0800

>> The question that the example is supposed to be asking is, "Suppose we
>> have
>> two characters, both putatively from the same culture in an in-game sense
>> of
>> the name of the culture, but who actually come from substantively
>> different
>> cultures...do we give them the same Homeland Keyword, or do we tailor it
>> to
>> the actual experience of the character in his local culture if it
>> actually
>> varies at that gross level?"
>
> Last reply on this: tailor it.

My reply: Add another layer of Keyword to filter.

All heortlings do X, Y and Z.
All Warriors do A, B, and C.
All Boldhomers do F, G, and not X and Z only at -5 and D instead of A .

A _Heortling_ _Warrior_ from _Boldhome_ does (A at 6), B, C, D F, G, Y and (Z-5) once you get all his keywords sorted out. He may also know J, K, and L, which are not typical abilities of any of the keywords, and are genereated by the list method or his 100 words.

How many peiople make up a "keywordable entity"? I'd say family sized. (It's a trick answer - The trick is "how many in a family?"). It's *not* an individual, it's a bunch of people. Whether that bunch is 5 or 5,000,000 is immaterial. It *could* only be two - there are celebrations and rituals that my wife and I share as part of "our Family" that could be keywordable, especially if we had kids. We also share the rituals of our seperate families (Just ask her about the "Robertson traits", like Loud and Opinionated!), our community, our state, our political party, our nation, and humans, as well as the abilities that we *don't* share with our families, states, nations, etc.

I think part of the consideration for "keywordability" is the function of these abilities being passed on to others, both in the same generation, and in succeeding ones. A Culture is all about passing on abilities and personality traits. A Heroband that is just formed has no real "keyword" to it, but as time goes by and the heroband experiences stuff, the abilities start accumulating. Events get passed on as part of "Myths of Our Heroband". Some abilities get taught to all members of the band soon after they join - We all learn tracking, because "<No-shit-there-I-was voice>back in '06 we lost our tracker and almost were wiped out by...</No-shit-there-I-was voice>".

How many abilitis make up a keyword? As few as one, as many as you want to put on your charcater sheet. Can a human breathe Air? Yes. That's an ability, though one that rarely comes up during the game. They can See with suitable light, Walk, Talk, Hold things with their opposable thumbs, etc. They also cannot Breath Water, See in Infrared, Fly, Talk with Telepathy, or Hold things with telekinisis. We don't normally put those things on our character sheet, since we can all assume them. (I'm also assuming that these are *human* abilities without the use of magic, or the presence of a handicap to the contrary). If you really want to put all that on your character sheet and clutter it up, go ahead. Same with male & Female keyword abilities like "Bear Child" and "Grow Beard". Sure, you can put it on the sheet, but I, frankly, think it's clutter to no real purpose.

Should the Homeland keywords have gender distinctions applied? Yes, I think they absolutely should, and that they should have when they were written. But not the "Bear Child"/"Grow Beard" type of abilities, because those aren't cultural abilities, but human fe/male ones. And those I'm perfectly happy to leave "invisible" - not needing to note them on the sheet.

RR
He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad R. Sabatini, Scaramouche