xanther
Legendary Pubber
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- Jan 6, 2018
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What rules have you found work the best for each of these situations? Preferably ones that do not require calculation (e.g. adding up this % and that %) or a large table.
(1) Climbing: I do not know if I have ever seen a set of rules for this that makes any sense to me based on lived experience. I grew up climbing all sorts of stuff, trees to the very top, cliffs, rocks, the rough walls...readily doable with the right shoes and easy with climbing shoes. Not a particularly strong kid, but likely dexterous, and certainly never any training to years later and even later before started using ropes.
Yet every set of game rules ever come across on the subject would say what I did regularly was impossible, and should be dead. (For the record the one time I did fall was a failed Intelligence check). Even when what I did was possible, many rules make climbing abysmally slow.
Let's say I have climbing skill. Under TFT for example I can climb 2 yards per minute with handholds, or a yard per 2 minutes without. I can easily debunk that by going to the rock wall at my local REI and climb 2 yards in 10 seconds.
On what makes a difference, would be nice to see rules that use (implicitly at least) an existing classification system.
(2) Jumping: This is another area were the sweet spot of having it matter in an RPG seems elusive because in a lot of jumping a foot is a big difference, between average and world class. The conditions of Olympic jumping sets an upper limit in my mind but not RPG representative. Perhaps parkour sites and enthusiast would have useful information.
Really would like to have rules that could emulate well the scene in LotR where they have to jump, or be thrown. What would really be helpful as well are rules that can work for animals, especially horses, but also big cats and the like.
(3) Swimming: Here is where my personal expereince may mislead me (was full swimming before grade school, was a life guard, on swim team and would often win in my least favorite stroke and so bad in my favorite stroke only got to race that once). There is certainly a huge element of skill to win a race, but again swimming is even more of a small margins meaning the difference between average or world class thing.
People in shape can tread water for far longer than any game have seen, movement speeds are either incredibly slow or superfast if one multiples them out to kph or mph.
Again competitive sports can set an upper limit, but don't believe they are RPG representative. Perhaps data on the performance benchmarks for Navy SEALS would be good as they do this stuff in clothes.
It would be really good to have underwater swimming as that where how far and fast you can go seems to matter most in an RPG.
(1) Climbing: I do not know if I have ever seen a set of rules for this that makes any sense to me based on lived experience. I grew up climbing all sorts of stuff, trees to the very top, cliffs, rocks, the rough walls...readily doable with the right shoes and easy with climbing shoes. Not a particularly strong kid, but likely dexterous, and certainly never any training to years later and even later before started using ropes.
Yet every set of game rules ever come across on the subject would say what I did regularly was impossible, and should be dead. (For the record the one time I did fall was a failed Intelligence check). Even when what I did was possible, many rules make climbing abysmally slow.
Let's say I have climbing skill. Under TFT for example I can climb 2 yards per minute with handholds, or a yard per 2 minutes without. I can easily debunk that by going to the rock wall at my local REI and climb 2 yards in 10 seconds.
On what makes a difference, would be nice to see rules that use (implicitly at least) an existing classification system.
(2) Jumping: This is another area were the sweet spot of having it matter in an RPG seems elusive because in a lot of jumping a foot is a big difference, between average and world class. The conditions of Olympic jumping sets an upper limit in my mind but not RPG representative. Perhaps parkour sites and enthusiast would have useful information.
Really would like to have rules that could emulate well the scene in LotR where they have to jump, or be thrown. What would really be helpful as well are rules that can work for animals, especially horses, but also big cats and the like.
(3) Swimming: Here is where my personal expereince may mislead me (was full swimming before grade school, was a life guard, on swim team and would often win in my least favorite stroke and so bad in my favorite stroke only got to race that once). There is certainly a huge element of skill to win a race, but again swimming is even more of a small margins meaning the difference between average or world class thing.
People in shape can tread water for far longer than any game have seen, movement speeds are either incredibly slow or superfast if one multiples them out to kph or mph.
Again competitive sports can set an upper limit, but don't believe they are RPG representative. Perhaps data on the performance benchmarks for Navy SEALS would be good as they do this stuff in clothes.
It would be really good to have underwater swimming as that where how far and fast you can go seems to matter most in an RPG.