Re: Cultural keyword type stuff.

From: BEThexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 21:41:08 -0000

• In hw-rules_at_yahoogroups.com, "Roderick and Ellen Robertson" <rjremr_at_s...> wrote:
  >
  >
  > > > Well, If you take the trouble to describe an ability that is
  already
  > > > included in your cultural keyword, then you should also take
  the
  > trouble to
  > > > assign some points to it during character creation, so you
  *will* be
  > better
  > > > at it. Perhaps not Lance Armstrong good, but better than Mary
  Jane who
  > only
  > > > rides to church and back on sundays.
  > >
  > > Bah. That's no sort of justification of the keyword numbers at
  all.
  > > It devalues the whole 'describe your character' central feature of
  > > character generation, if that becomes so markedly subordinate to
  > > post hoc numbers juggling on the one hand, and keyword design on
  the
  > > other. The two having equal status was barmy enough, the keyword
  > > automatically being _better_ is just silly.
  

On this one, I have to agree with Alex. In a way the character creation system is a bit of a smokescreen. Your good abilities, hence the ones you will attempt to use most of the time, come from your key words.

All that loving care you put into a hundred word description? Mostly it provides color.

Now, that was not so much the case with the "choose one ability a 5W and two at 1W" because you could easily say something like "my warrior has 5W in close combat, 1W in ride, and 1W in 'charming smile'".

However, when you are spreading around 20 points, assuming that most of the time you are going to using opposed contests there is strong game-rules reasons to focus on a few abilities and bring them up to what you think are "competitive" levels. Given that it takes four more of your 20 points to just to take a background skill up to key word level, it gets that much more likely that you say "hmmm, no, for his social skill I'll increase his boast instead, it is already in his key word so starts at 17, leaving me four more points to increase my, hmmmm, combat magic."

The rules don't actually stop you from raising a background skill to a "competent" (=1W) level, it just makes it sufficiently painful that you are that much less likely to do so.

Personally if I were to run a game I'd be inclined to stick to the old ability setting system, with the addition of "raise four background or cultural skills to 17" (making them things that you do with equal focus to a key word).

--Bryan