Re: Backstory skills

From: Roderick Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:14:59 -0800


>>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?

Or (in my favored model) add a "Roadbuilding Crew" Keyword. (If the Sartarite crew is anything like our Madera County road crew, be sure to add abilities like: "Goldbrick", "Start late, End Early", "Do Half-assed Job", "Not care"...)

If he spent a year at it, then I'd treat the keyword as if he "bought a skill for 1 HP": The KW Ability rating is 13. He can raise individual skills as normal. Another year on it would allow him to raise it via the "Advanced Experience" guidelines on page 178. If he only spent a season on it, I might let him have it at 7 or 8 - he can be a part of a work crew and get along marginally better than a non-Road Crew guy, but he really hasn't "learned the basics".

You can set a "beginning" set of skills if you want, or just add them when the hero needs to use his "Roadbuilding" experience - so you can have:

Occ. KW : Roadbuilder 13 - Pick and Shovel, Cut down trees and clear brush, Carry heavy load, Mix concrete, Lay Stone Roadbed

or just:

Occ KW: Roadbuilder 13.
And when the player says "hey, I know how to dig really well because of my time on the road crew" you use the KW rating instead of the default of 6.

(Of course, you'd have to tailor the skillset - if he was working on typical roads for the Sartar (A relatively level dirt path cleared of threes and brush), he wouldn't get Concrete or Stonework abilitites, but if he was working on one of the King's Roads, then he would.

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

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