Q: Customs skills of the Dinacoli

[Ekadanta]

Hi,

Our group has recently decided to try out Runequest and we're super excited!

We picked playing as the Dinacoli, who speak Tarshite. Do they also get the Tarshite customs instead of Heortling?

 

 

[Richard S.]

They're still close enough to the core of Sartar that I don't think they're customs would be all too different, but maybe they have enough familiarity with Tarshite customs to get that skill at 1/2 value or something like that. Or maybe give them Customs (Alda Chur) which would include elements of both homelands' customs.

Honestly I think that customs skills in general could be treated like languages, with related homelands with similar customs getting the other's at 1/2, 1/5, etc based on similarity.

[AlexS]

I've been doing some thinking about Customs recently, as I'm working with a couple of other people on a resource for supporting efforts to incorporate adventurers' cultural and homeland backgrounds into RQG gameplay in a richer and more satisfying way.

We think there are two problems with Customs in the rules as written.

The first problem is that RQG RAW seems to assume that your Customs are the same as your Culture, and while this might make sense for Sartarites whose ancestors came from Heortland (who will have 'Heortling' as their Customs as well as their Culture) it doesn't work for all groups – including the Dinacoli and other Tarshite speakers of Northern Sartar and the Far Point.

We dealt with this by defining Customs as a combination of an adventurer's Cultural Tradition with the region where their community lives ('Cultural Tradition' is our term for a more specific regional variant of a general Culture like Heortling or Tarshite). 

Thus, for your Dinacoli characters we would use a Customs definition like "Northern Sartar Alakoring Tarshite" ("Alakoring Tarshite" is what we call the cultural tradition of people from a Tarshite cultural background who are not Lunarised but are also not as focused on Maran Gor worship as the Earth Tarshites; the term was inspired by Alakoring's Legacy by Alistair and Edan Jones, which is highly recommended if you are into developing clan backgrounds for your adventurers).

It could be "Far Point Alakoring Tarshite" because the Dinacoli are now part of the Alda Chur Confederation of the Far Point, but since they belonged to the Jonstown Confederation for several generations before the Lunars forced them to join Alda Chur in 1613 I think "Northern Sartar" probably makes more sense in terms of accumulated cultural influences on their Customs.

The second problem with RQG RAW for Customs is that the base skill of 25% seems way too low for an adventurer's knowledge of the Customs of their own community. It also doesn't make much sense for them to have no knowledge at all of other communities' Customs (cf "Adventurers start knowing their own Customs skill at 25%: all others start at 00%", RQG p. 176).

We dealt with this by suggesting that the 25% should be used as a baseline when testing knowledge of the customs of other communities from the same general culture, but that for an adventurer's own cultural tradition (and even more so for their own clan) they should get bonuses to indicate a much higher level of cultural familiarity.

This is similar to what @Richard S. is suggesting, but instead of using the rules on language skills as a comparator we used the RQG rulebook indication of Homeland Lore bonuses when the skill is being tested in relation to an adventurer's local area (cf +30% to Homeland Lore for "adventurer’s tribal center or clan village", RQG p. 179).

Here is the example that we use to illustrate this in the book on which we're working:

Example: Erantha the Fierce was born into the Marantaros Clan, a community whose Cultural Tradition is Earth Tarshite, and grew up in the clan’s lands in the Shakelands Region of Old Tarsh, so her Culture is Tarshite and the skill recorded on her character sheet is Customs (Shakelands Earth Tarshite). If she meets someone from her own Clan, there is a base chance of 60% that she will be able to refer successfully to their shared Customs (Marantaros Clan). If she meets someone from the neighbouring Hendarli Clan, whose Customs are also Shakelands Earth Tarshite, she will use her base Customs (Shakelands Earth Tarshite) skill level of 50%. If she meets someone from the Wild Bull Clan of the Princeros Tribe, who are also Earth Tarshites but who live in the Far Point region of Sartar, she will have a base 30% chance of successfully interpreting their Customs (Earth Tarshite). If she meets someone from the Orindori Clan of Dunstop, who are not Earth Tarshites but Lunar Tarshites, she will have a base 25% chance of using her knowledge of Customs (Tarshite). If she meets someone from the Orlmarth Clan of the Colymar Tribe in Sartar, who are Heortlings not Tarshites but belong to the same Orlanthi Culture Group as the Tarshites, she will have a base 10% chance of successfully using her knowledge of Customs (Orlanthi).

We also concluded that there should be bonuses for understanding the Customs of communities from different cultural traditions who live in the same area, because adventurers will have grown up interacting with them (trading, raiding, attending festivals etc.).

So, your adventurers would have some knowledge of the Heortling Customs of tribes who were their neighbours in the Jonstown Confederation (the Malani, Cinsina, Culbrea and Torkani), as well as of the Tarshite Customs of other tribes from the Alda Chur region. In the current draft of the book we suggest a base value of 20% for the Customs of people from the same region but a different Culture when they belong to a majority group (e.g. Heortlings from the Cinsina Tribe) and 10% when they belong to a minority group (e.g. Telmori from Northern Sartar).

Hope this is useful as a general approach, even if you don't want to get into all the crunch of calculating a range of different Customs base skills!

[Darius West]

On 11/10/2023 at 5:06 PM, AlexS said:

I've been doing some thinking about Customs recently, as I'm working with a couple of other people on a resource for supporting efforts to incorporate adventurers' cultural and homeland backgrounds into RQG gameplay in a richer and more satisfying way.

Consider publishing your efforts on the Jonstown Compendium.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Darius West

[AlexS]

Thanks for the encouragement, @Darius West – we would love to get this material (which started as a resource for our Kethaela campaign) onto the JC, but it keeps growing more complex and ambitious, so first we need to get better at saying 'enough is enough' with the text development and focus on actually getting it into publishable shape!

Ensuring that it gets into a state that is actually enjoyable to read rather than just publishing page after page of dense text also means we will need to find time to invest in a pretty substantial effort of layout, illustration, etc. Unfortunately, the creators on the JC keep setting the bar higher and higher when it comes to presentation as well as content, which is wonderful but can also be a bit intimidating!

[French Desperate WindChild]

Don’t forget that any skill is tested only if there is a crisis. It means that custom your homeland 30% doesn’t mean that you have 70% to make a mistake. 
it is more how subtile/precious/educated is the character (like language) 

of course sometimes you need to test (tell me why our feud with xxx started thee centuries ago)