Boating and other Basic Skills

I've come up with the following idea for handling familiarity with different types of equipment.

Characters can use their general skill with any relevant equipment (drive a chariot, drive an automobile, drive a motorboat), but without at least 20% specialization in that type of equipment (automobile, stick shift automobile), he has to roll for even basic manuevers like a right turn. But if he has 20% in the appropriate specialization skill, then he knows enough to only have to roll for exceptional manuevers.

Actually, the specialization required can be made lower for simpler equipment (automatic transmission) and higher for more complicated equipment (stick shift).

There is the problem of how to divide equipment. The test I use is how readily someone could use it. Somebody who trained with an automobile could drive a pickup truck with little trouble, but would probably need special training to drive an 18-wheel semi safely.
 
atgxtg said:
Timelords handled this by how they broke up the TLs. At first TLs repesent long periouds of time. For example TL 4 (iron age) is set at 0 AD, but TL 5 (matchlock fireaerms) is set at around 1400 AD. As you get closer to the modern age the TLs get shorter. From 1900 to 2000 is 5 TLs (8-12). But prior to 1900 TLs were 100 years apart.

How about each +1 TL adds 10% to the technology (or whatever the ratio is/was for SIZ), so as you go up in TL each level represents more technology.
Of course numerically quantifying both technology and tech levels and then trying to relate them to one another is inherently problematic and largely setting dependent.
I recommend GURPS for its nice and exhaustive treatment of TLs - including varying penalties for using higher and lower TL skills, but I wouldn't want to worry about and keep track of all the details it does.
 
I've decided on a very simple system. There are five tech levels, each based on a major paradigm shift.

I. Archaic. Horses, swords and armor. From the end of the stone age to approximately 1700.

(Yes, I know that armor was phased out as guns became more reliable and easier to use. The tech levels I've defined sort of blend into each other.)

II. Industrial. Science creates ever more powerful and complicated machinery. From about 1700 to about 1990.

III. Cybernetic. Computers become ubiquitous, and technologies make understanding data more important than the physical processes that encode the data. Starting about 1990.

IV. Interstellar. Interstellar drives and other "magic" technologies that are inexplicible to 20th Century science. The difference between level IV and advanced level III is that level III technologies are extensions of what we currently know today in 2006, while level IV technologies require breakthroughs that are not based in our modern science theories.

V. Transcendental. Cultures this advanced are based on paradigms that we can barely imagine today.

For my Ravenloft campaign, I subdivided each into ten divisions. My concept was the "Second Mists" held the Industrial level domains, each one rated for a certain tech level. Would have made for interesting wars, since advanced technology wouldn't work in a more primitive domain.
 
For modern people handling old pre twenty century equipment. How many of you think you could work a spindle? or if put in a blacksmith shop could really make a pair of Horshoes if even given a month to try? We might know that the idea of a sword is put the pointed in into the badguy but unless we have some practice we would be hopeless in a fight with y our average Roman soldier.
 
TRose said:
For modern people handling old pre twenty century equipment. How many of you think you could work a spindle? or if put in a blacksmith shop could really make a pair of Horshoes if even given a month to try? We might know that the idea of a sword is put the pointed in into the badguy but unless we have some practice we would be hopeless in a fight with y our average Roman soldier.

I've used a drop-spindle, I know how to make horseshoes, and given a month would either make the shoes or burn the shop down, and while I'm no slacker with a sword, I'd not want to face a roman soldier, since they seldom fight alone....

Most of my friends, as well, could probably use a drop spindle with only a few moments instruction. The shoes are not terribly hard (other than setting the holes), and fighting with swords has been a hobby of many.
 
TRose said:
For modern people handling old pre twenty century equipment. How many of you think you could work a spindle? or if put in a blacksmith shop could really make a pair of Horshoes if even given a month to try? We might know that the idea of a sword is put the pointed in into the badguy but unless we have some practice we would be hopeless in a fight with y our average Roman soldier.

There is a RPG that does just that sort of thing to the player characters. You right up yourselfves (thanks to nifty guidlenes) and then get bounced around in time. It isn't fun in a battle to begin with, but it's worse if you are the only one for whom "sword" is not a "cultural weapon". :shock:
 
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