Re: What's a Keyword?

From: Roderick Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 09:15:53 -0800

> book. But its implied that one can narrow the culture somewhat. That is
> (and
> to use the example I always do), would it make sense to have the same
> survival skills for a Heortling from Boldhome as it would for a Heortling
> who lives out in the hinterlands? If Boldhome Heortlings can have their
> own
> keyword, then can you tailor down to lower levels of culture? Can you take
> a
> cultural keyword specific to a tribe? To a clan? To a vilage of the clan?
> To
> a subculture of the village of the clan?
>
> Kolating from the Lismelder Village of Spearstand?

If you use the Clan generator from Orlanth is dead, you end up with something that you can consider "modifiers" to a typical Sartarite keyword, but what I think of as a "Clan keyword" - stuff that is known by all members of that clan, and *by which they are known to outsiders* - if you mention that you belong to the Greydog clan to another Sartarite (which would be part of your "introduction boast", they have an instant snapshot of you - you probably hate undead and marsh creatures, there's a good chance that you are humakti or, at least, know a bunch of them, etc.

Taking this idea further; rather than making keywords with extremely fine foci, make more keywords:
"Sartarite", "Lismelder", "Spearstead", "IceSpirit Family".

Now, these "smaller" keywords may only have one or two abilities in them - IceSpirit Family may only have "Walk on Ice" and "Ward against Frostbite" as "non-normal" abilities (though their "Relation to Family" ability would actually move from the "Sartarite" to the "IceSpirit" Keywords, as would "Know Local Area", etc.)

It allows you to seperate abilities by "where" the hero learned them, and even affect reactions - "Lismelder, sure, everyone knows of them, but I ain't never heard of Spearstead". "You're IceSpirit? Couson!"

So my way of dealing with the "smaller focus" is to make layers of keywords that sort of act as filters, rather than try to moosh everything into one.

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