RE: Backstory skills

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 12:53:24 -0600

>From: "Joerg Baumgartner" <joe_at_...>
>
>Childhood expertises can be astonishingly high skills, and aren't
>necessarily forgotten as adults.

This is a fascinating and true point. I was astonished to find, when I became an adult that I was already better than many adults at certain things. On the other hand, I wouldn't say that I was as competent as these same adults. The difference? Experience. HQ emulates this well, by giving experienced characters bumps in their augmenting ability. It's not neccessarily that they're an expert in thing X, but they've been around, and so may manage to outdo you based solely on that breadth of experience.

That's not to say that there aren't some virtuosos that can only get to the level their at by studying as an adult, too. Simply that it's relatively rare. Put another way, the adult world is full of "journeymen" with only occasional masters.

>Parent (and other cohabiting adults') occupations will be reflected in a
>character's abilities, even if said character never pursued that career. A
>child growing up next to a red-smith's forge and castery will know a lot
>more about fixing superficial damage to metal items than an adult from a
>potter's household.

I usually allow the player to augment with their relationship to said blacksmith parent. If the relationship is high, then they probably spent more time together at the forge. If the character is estranged from his father, and always has been, then that's likely not the case.

>I think part of the question is how much "being a member of community X"
>(or "having been...") imparts keyword-like basic skill levels, or modifies
>the general cultural or occupational keywords.

Indeed.

>So, if my Heortling hunter has a year of road-working as experience in his
>back-story (possibly the result of say a prince asking for work force
>rather than cattle for tribute), how do I formulate the skill package
>aquired during that activity? Make Cement might fall into this. Getting it
>at cultural keyword level would be sufficient for the back-story, how to
>account for that?

This is precisely where I wouldn't allow the ability to be in the keyword. If it's true that all Heortling hunters do road-working, then yes. But if it's happenstance, even if a group of heortling warriors had this experience, it's not part of what makes the group archtypal. Instead all of them would take the skills as "other" abilities, and that would be an example of how they vary from the norm.

>I'd definitely add Fonrit, Safelster and all the major seaports. Urban is
>not just defined by size, but also by admitting a certain degree of
>otherness, whether home-made or imported.

I think that Urban mostly has to do with close living conditions that force different norms. Where, interestingly, you care less about the people around you, usually, because it's impossible to know them all well.

Mike



Your Hotmail address already works to sign into Windows Live Messenger! Get it now
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://get.live.com/messenger/overview

Powered by hypermail