Me:
> > you can be sure that the ingredients you get from the shop
> > are disease and vermin free (no food poisoning and such
> > possible)... etc.
>
> (Laughs manically) Really? I've been the victim of some fumbles along
> just these lines. If you seriously believe that, I suggest you do
> some
> reading before you next cook or store meat. (Off-topic, yes, but I'd
> like to hear from you again! If you need more details on basic
> kitchen
> hygiene, we'll go to private email)
Well I did refrain from pointing out that I live here in Finland where one doesn't get prion-proteins from meat and suchlike. ;) But really, at least in Finland, if you bought it from a store, it's very hard to poison yourself with it.
> > So you don't need to have a mastery in cooking, and if you are like
> me,
> > and mostly cook for yourself and don't pursue it as a qourmet
> artform
> > you propably don't have a mastery.
>
> Well.... maybe I do have tendencies along those lines, but I see what
> you're saying. If you're only doing something for your own benefit,
> you can live with the failures, and the non-lethal fumbles. But when
> you're doing something for the clan's benefit, you'd better know what
> you're doing.
That too. But I think (by the combat examples and suchlikes) that a mastery is just that, you are really good at what you do when you have the mastery. Every orlanthi carl knows how to fight, but they don't seem to have a mastery in it.
> > When somebody says fumble, people tend to think of RQ, and cutting
> one's
> > own head off with a poleaxe.
>
> One of the sillier examples, it has to be said.
But your examples of cooking fumbles were just as extreme. Food poisoning and charred ruins, instead of just getting food with way too much salt or a funny taste. (A friend runs an excellent game with H�rnmaster, and in that system you can easilly have a 14% chanse of a fumble... and he has a nasty habit of interpreting them all too RQ:ishly)
> > Getting a fumble result is relative to the
> > task at hand, and it's difficulty.
>
> "Appropriate to" rather than "relative to", perhaps?
Hmm... parhaps indeed. Relative = related to, I was thinking. Appropriate is better.
> > A riding fumble doesn't mean your
> > horses head suddenly explodes,
>
> Quite. The result has to be at least possible! I suppose you could
> bang your own head on an overhanging branch with lethal results.
True, but I wouldn't think that happens on a straight fumble. If it has a 5% chanse (like on the d20), then it should be something that happens to people more than once in their lives. I usually have the fumblee roll another die for the severity.
> > nor does a cooking fumble mean that you
> > manage to poison your guests.
>
> Sadly, I know people who do manage this (non-lethally
It does happen, yes. But not 5% of the time, I think we'll agree?
> so far) on a 1:20 chance. (no, this doesn't mean that I ate their
> food
> 20 times). And if you don't call it a fumble, what do you call it?
That sure is a fumble, but not all fumbles are that severe.
> > Under normal circumstanses (in RL), if you fumble your cooking the
> > food just tastes bad. Usually it is still edible, at least on the
> > standards of a hungry person with nothing else to eat.
>
> I'd call that a failure, not a fumble.
But if the system gives a large(ish) number of fumble results, then one should consider the meaning of the fumbles more closely.
Critical = Excellent success success = You manage, more or less on your normal level failure = Something went wrong, not up to your expectations Fumble = Something seriously wrong
> > Did you people use the old RQ language and craft skills by rolling
> > on the skills every time somebody tried to do some simple craftwork
>
> Yes. At least, if the result mattered. Mending armour or a bridge,
> getting paid for the end item. That's what the rules are there for.
Hmm... the rules didn't work all too well like that, did they? I used them more to measure the quality of the persons work. If somebody had smithing 50%, and he was making horseshoes. If the player rolls 60%, then the task took longer than he tought, or the quality isn't all that great. But to get that 50% with RQ the person had to have spent a lot of experience on smithing. So he definitely should be able to forge horseshoes, and not fail 50% of the time.
> >, or speak their native tongue?
>
> If the circumstances were unusual, or the result was critical, yes.
> (Remember RQ had that idea of adding your skill and that of the
> person
> you were trying to talk to: the given skill values are about half
> what
> you roll against.) Again, that's what the rules are there for.
>
> > Hopefully not.
>
> So what on earth *did* you roll for? Combat only, or did you apply
> the same idea to that? "A bunch of trollkin attack you, but this is
> nothing unusual, and you win."
The combat rules are mostly hit or miss rolls. Most of the non combat rolls aren't. If you want me to build you a ropebridge across a stream I can do it, tho my skill is propably only something like 20%. It will just take quite a long time for me (havent done it in 10 years). If I roll well, I manage it rather fast (for my skill level), if I roll badly, it can take days.
Things like the language skill% and crafts were used as indicators to the persons skill. And indeed, if the smith was forging something difficult, from rare metal or under a time limit, then we'd roll more on the succeed or fail principle.
> > Herding 12 is quite enough for somebody you send out to watch over
> > the sheep. A skill of 12 means that he has experiense doing the
> thing, and knows quite a bit about it (it's not that hard).
> > You really don't need a mastery in sheep herding.
>
> Don't you? I've never tried it, but I know there are national
> competitions in sheep herding ("One man and his dog" or some such
> name), and presumably the extra skill is considered worth having by
> the sheep farmers who go out of their way to acquire it.
It's a contest, a form of sports. They don't need a rationalized reason. I'm sure people have masteries in sheep herding, but a shepard boy does not need one to be able to do his job.
> "Sheepless Nights" actually uses this sort of skill, so let's take a
> look.
> A bunch of kids aged 8-12 have Shepherd 13
> A "proper" shepherd has Shepherd 3W and Herd 13W
Was that the character that had been doing it most of his life?
> > I think Greg is just wrong, and hasn't really tought out what he
> > said at the Convulsion.
>
> This would not be unusual, but it did actually fit with the published
> rules, and made sense. You *don't* fumble at your profession, unless
> there are extra minuses on the roll.
I'd say you don't need to roll if the conditions are normal and you have the skill above default. If I had made my RQ players roll for riding every time they set off, all the characters would have died falling off their horses (even the ones with riding 70% or 80%).
> > > Looking at the Rules, p120 tells me that making a Journeyman
> >> quality item starts at 1W: a Masterwork starts at 1W2.
>
> > I'd definitely say that one makes ones masterpiece at 1W.
>
> Well the rules are, for once, specific, and they seem to disagree.
> Anyone else get a different interpretation out of that bit?
-Adept
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