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Skill for riding a motorcycle: Drive Auto or Ride?


Merudo

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I am in the drive for machines, ride for animals camp. Part of it is for the reasons mentioned, and part of it is because I play Mythras and I like to change Drive to be based on something other than POW. I don’t feel like your car or motorcycle cares about your soul or inner drive, while a horse might be influenced by such. 

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That's true [Numtini], creating extra skill divisions does spread the PC's OS & PI points out, especially if the player wants greater than average proficiency in both motorcycle and automobile... However, another way to look at it [being niche] is, when it's time to run, no-body else is going to take your motorbike when there are cars around! And in this case, bikes are faster in certain situations, if not always...  And can get through tighter gaps... And they are a lot cheaper...  Perhaps worth throwing a few points at...

Edited by Son-of-the-Furies
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1 hour ago, Son-of-the-Furies said:

That's true [Numtini], creating extra skill divisions does spread the PC's OS & PI points out, especially if the player wants greater than average proficiency in both motorcycle and automobile... However, another way to look at it [being niche] is, when it's time to run, no-body else is going to take your motorbike when there are cars around! And in this case, bikes are faster in certain situations, if not always...  And can get through tighter gaps... And they are a lot cheaper...  Perhaps worth throwing a few points at...

Son-of-the-Furies is highlighting another good point here regarding the skill point concern brought up by Numtini. The ultimate goal, from a crunch standpoint, is that we want to maximize player options, while minimizing the chance that artificial spread of skill points doesn't result in a "good at nothing" investigator.  This is exactly why it is important to have the discussion with players before character creation transpires of 1) what skills might be "highlight" skills for a campaign and 2) a generalized discussion of what kind of skills are most useful to players in CoC in general (the Holy Trinity Social/Library Use/Spot Hidden. There isn't a foolproof answer to this because it can be a challenge to predict when a skill roll might be needed.  Right now, all of my players are lamenting the fact that nobody has Navigate, because it happened to come up in our recent game. Not having it didn't derail the story though. At the same time, when they re-speced about six months ago, many of them reduced several of their major skill totals by ten points and put points in Listen. And they aren't regretting that at all.

To help to mitigate this issue of "point waste" versus skill use challenge , I do four things with my groups: 1) give my players options to use related skills at higher difficulties. This is built into the system with KNOW, which is essentially a less detailed backup to a Science specialization. Don't have Science (Geo)? Then its a Hard or Extreme Know. 2) communicate as much as possible with players about ways in which they feel their skills have utility as opposed to just being "dead weight" What can I do as Keeper to help them feel like their character creation choices mattered? 3) after several games, allow a limited one-time "re-spec" of shifting about a hundred points around and 4) remind them of the ability to "hire out" skills of NPCs, where possible.

I think it is important for Keepers to be self aware of what messages they send to players about their character creation.  I do not subscribe to the "too bad, so sad" mentality that aggressively chides players for having the audacity to commit to certain choices. Choice should be celebrated and useful. That doesn't mean every game. The ultimate goal is to find ways to say "yes" to move a narrative along. That isn't to say players should always succeed. They should always have an opportunity for their creativity to drive the narrative.

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Well, I personally think if you are driving something, you control where it goes. I know phrases like a 'Cattle Drive' mess with that distinction, but Driving something to me is controlling it's direction with your efforts.

Ride to me is coaxing it to go where you want. You are on top of it, but you are actually at it's mercy. You can either Drive the bus, or Ride on the bus. You Ride in the back of the car, even if you tell the driver where to go.

So for me, all mechanical vehicles are Drive. All animals... because if they don't listen to you, they will go where THEY want, and you are along for the Ride.... use the Ride skill.

Piloting is then for longer planned out type vehicles like Boats/Ships/Planes/Dirigibles/etc... With those, you often plot out the course, and when you tell it to change direction the change isn't immediate. You also often can simply stop in place. You often must go port to port, and can;t just get on or off safely anywhere you like.

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8 minutes ago, i3ullseye said:

Well, I personally think if you are driving something, you control where it goes. I know phrases like a 'Cattle Drive' mess with that distinction, but Driving something to me is controlling it's direction with your efforts.

Ride to me is coaxing it to go where you want. You are on top of it, but you are actually at it's mercy. You can either Drive the bus, or Ride on the bus. You Ride in the back of the car, even if you tell the driver where to go.

So for me, all mechanical vehicles are Drive. All animals... because if they don't listen to you, they will go where THEY want, and you are along for the Ride.... use the Ride skill.

Piloting is then for longer planned out type vehicles like Boats/Ships/Planes/Dirigibles/etc... With those, you often plot out the course, and when you tell it to change direction the change isn't immediate. You also often can simply stop in place. You often must go port to port, and can;t just get on or off safely anywhere you like.

I like your ride and drive distinction. I think it hits my view as well, though in a less mechanical way. 

I have some small nits to pick with your pilot vs drive, in that power boats are pretty damn easy to pilot, require no course plotting, largely do change direction pretty immediate (at least as much as many larger cars/trucks). Planes can be quite easy to control as well. Maybe piloting is driving things outside if your normal medium? You can’t quite say 3d because boats and ships are really only traveling on the surface but the environment of all of these is outside your normal medium (water, air, space, etc)

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