> I thought the "proper" way to deal with this to give improvisation
> penalties to the broad skill when used in place of any of the
> specific skills that the "specialist" might have in it's place
Something like that *might* work for me. But then you'd have the problem that the broad "Hunting" ability and the specific abilities in the occupational "Hunter" keyword become fairly interchangeable -- and unless HP costs change radically, it'll still be cheaper to improve the former than everything in the latter. Not good.
> If my 100 words includes "...And in his youth he went hunting with
> his Uncle..." and want a Hunting 13 as a result, what do you do?
Maybe give him a few typical Hunter abilities, not the whole lot? Most people probably want stalking, tracking, and/or hiding; Uncle probably did all the tricky stuff anyway. The Kallai example in the rules suggests that you don't limit yourself to only put words from the 100-word essay onto the character sheet: there is some room for flexibility, here.
>> Hunting is not a defined ability in Hero Wars, either.
> Ha! neither are Tracking, Stalking, Hiding etc etc. There are
> no "defined" abilities, just abilities. You merely have to decide
> whether a particular ability is relevant or not, and how much so,
> to any given situation.
OK, I'll be more specific: we have a list of abilities which Hunters all get, and "Hunting" is not one of them. I suggest you're likely to have a better experience if you try to achieve *some* consistency with the "standard" abilities (in published keywords), rather than shooting off at a tangent and inventing new over-broad categories.
> One of the strengths of HW is that players can invent any
> abilities that they like, rather than being forced to pick from a
> narrow list.
Yep, but when the player invents an (abusively) over-broad ability, the Narrator should have a toolkit for handling it.
> I don't recall seeing "Shear Sheep" in any keywords - does that
> mean that no one should be allowed to invent that ability?
Nope, but in my game I'd look at Shepherd occupational keywords and see if something more appropriate springs to mind.
> But I don't necessarily see a problem with Hunting 19 (Tracking
> +3) - especially if the Narrator additionally has the option to
> apply an Improv penalty when the skill is used for a more specific
> ability
Yeah, but I don't want the extra rules overhead of classifying what these "broad skills" (which may well duplicate existing keywords) can and can't be improvised to do. If Stalk, Hide and Track (plus others) all equal Hunting minus 3, wouldn't you be wasting your time buying them individually instead of as a "broad skill", if broad skills only cost 3x what normal abilities do?
> I don't see why you shouldn't allow further specialisation of
> "normal" skills
Robin Laws had something like this in an early draft, IIRC. And I do like the similar system found in Ars Magica (and even Vampire), where you can write in one thing your stat/skill/ability gets a bonus to deal with. Which didn't depend on a list of things you could write in, I believe: it was completely free and open.
Cheers, Nick
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