Drive skill

[dryburgher]

Does driving a cart or wagon use the drive chariot skill?

Does this give experience to drive chariot?
 

[Psullie]

On the character sheets this is just listed as Drive, so I would use it for any vehicle drawn by draft animals. 

[g33k]

I consider a couple of real-world cases:  the race-car driver & the long-haul trucker.

Their equipment (and the operation thereof) are different enough, with different-enough objectives, for me to think these may qualify foe the "half skill" rule, e.g. a trucker with Drive(Semi) might have half that skill for Drive(racecar).

I think the chariot-driver and the wagon-driver may a similar case... but I confess that I don't actually know enough to be sure.

Barring other input, I will probably HR it that way,

Edited November 27, 2018 by g33k

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, dryburgher said:

Does driving a cart or wagon use the drive chariot skill?

It should use a Drive (Wagon) skill, and not the same as Drive (Chariot).

[Lord High Munchkin]

I would rule that it depends on the animal.

A chariot driven by horses uses the same skill as a wagon pulled by horses. A wagon drawn by oxen would be at half skill

[womble]

Hmm. Driving a two wheeled vehicle in a 'stressful/risky/consequential' situation (which is what the skill addresses: you don't need any skill to mooch along on the bench of a wagon) is different from driving a four-wheeled vehicle. Driving sat on a bench as opposed to standing in the car is different. Driving different numbers of animals, and different animals is different. They should all be different skills.

But practicing driving an ox cart in combat should be difficult and risky, because once oxen get to needing actual 'driving', you're in a world of peril, not easily left again.

I think you could assume that the training to harness of different beasts tends to mean they respond to the same command inputs and usefully divide it into chariot-driving (covering any number of beasts, standing in a two-wheeled car built for speed) and wagon driving (2 or 4 wheels, sitting on a bench, 1-2 animals) and 'coach driving' (4 wheels, 4-plus animals - controlling each animal individually to get the best result - it's pretty specialised, and might not even exist in Glorantha).

 

[g33k]

5 hours ago, womble said:

Hmm. Driving a two wheeled vehicle in a 'stressful/risky/consequential' situation (which is what the skill addresses: you don't need any skill to mooch along on the bench of a wagon) is different from driving a four-wheeled vehicle. Driving sat on a bench as opposed to standing in the car is different. Driving different numbers of animals, and different animals is different. They should all be different skills.

But practicing driving an ox cart in combat should be difficult and risky, because once oxen get to needing actual 'driving', you're in a world of peril, not easily left again.

I think you could assume that the training to harness of different beasts tends to mean they respond to the same command inputs and usefully divide it into chariot-driving (covering any number of beasts, standing in a two-wheeled car built for speed) and wagon driving (2 or 4 wheels, sitting on a bench, 1-2 animals) and 'coach driving' (4 wheels, 4-plus animals - controlling each animal individually to get the best result - it's pretty specialised, and might not even exist in Glorantha).

 

I see there being 2 main sorts of beasts -- draft beasts, who are mostly placid & patient, but with tons of endurance; and race/battle beasts with lots of fire & spirit.  I think handling them is very different.  I don't really think a carter who knows placid draft-horses will have a terribly hard time driving with placid oxen, or placid zebras.  Similarly, a driving a chariot with a brace of battle-hardened sables, or warhorses, seems largely similar to me.

I think the high-speed racing & combat operation is fundamentally different from calmly transporting goods/people/etc; mostly, you don't GET racing/battle behavior from normally-placid draftbeasts (but as @Womble notes, when it happens it happens in a VERY dangerous way).

I don't know when brakes/skids/etc became common IRL, or if they exist in Glorantha...?  So far as I know, this is mostly a transport-oriented feature, for handling hills & holding the cart for loading/unloading, etc.

I honestly don't know enough to be sure if the seated-vs-standing driver is a Big Deal, or a trivial variation.

But again, I don't think RQ needs all these niceties... Drive(Chariot) & Drive(Wagon) look like enough, to me (with a 1/2 skill for the other Drive, at need).  I don't think the "Coach" needs its own skill.

YGMV

[Lord High Munchkin]

I used to work for the local farm museum as a "agricultural vehicle restorer" (involved a bit of animal handling, and knowing your animals was key).

Position of the driver matters hardly at all - it really is the animal; with that goes different harness types and so on (an ox is hitched in a very different fashion to that used with a horse and its harness). Harness is a major thing, you are always adjusting and sorting it out.

Now, I do think chariots are different to carts and wagons (but far more similar than to ox-carts and wagons) - but that can be just handled by halving the skill. There shouldn't be separate skills.

[M Helsdon]

A chariot is a very different vehicle to a cart or wagon, unless it is being driven very very slowly. Where the cart and wagon are robust and heavy, a chariot is light and as robust as it can be, given its need to be driven at speed over relatively rough terrain, and to navigate a battle field, where rapid changes in direction are required to avoid hazards such as enemies and dead bodies.

This is why chariot drivers are 'paid' so much - theirs is a specialist skill.

 

 

Edited November 29, 2018 by M Helsdon

[M Helsdon]

Accidental post.

 

Edited November 29, 2018 by M Helsdon

[Lord High Munchkin]

True, the structure of the vehicle is different - but the method of "driving" is similar, but different to goading on oxen.

[womble]

I disagree that chariot driving is very similar to driving a cart. How many carts need you to tie the reins around yourself and use your bodyweight/position to guide/control your draft beasts?

[Lord High Munchkin]

My main point is that both ancient horse-driven chariots and wagons use the “throat and girth” harness (as in the chariot drawing - OK, outside China that is). This utilises a fair bit of tack and reins. Oxen use yokes and no tack.

Controlling and driving a vehicle via reins is substantially different from having to use a whip, or actually walk holding the yoke of an ox-cart.

A chariot-driver would be frustrated and slowed driving a wagon, while attempting to drive an ox-cart, they would be seriously hindered (hence 1/2 skill - actually I’d go for 1/4).

[womble]

11 hours ago, Lord High Munchkin said:

My main point is that both ancient horse-driven chariots and wagons use the “throat and girth” harness (as in the chariot drawing - OK, outside China that is). This utilises a fair bit of tack and reins. Oxen use yokes and no tack.

Controlling and driving a vehicle via reins is substantially different from having to use a whip, or actually walk holding the yoke of an ox-cart.

A chariot-driver would be frustrated and slowed driving a wagon, while attempting to drive an ox-cart, they would be seriously hindered (hence 1/2 skill - actually I’d go for 1/4).

And a wagon driver would be substantially unfamiliar with driving a vehicle using their body as an anchor for the reins/the reins to anchor them in the car.

The number of times in the grand canon of all RQ games of any edition where someone leading an ox wagon/cart by the head of the lead animal needed to make a "Drive" roll is, I submit, so vanishingly small as to make having a skill to manage it very close to pointless; most times it'd be a 'handle animal' roll, so 'Herd' or 'Animal Lore' in RQG. You can lead draught horses by the head, too... It's more 'leading' than 'driving'; in fact the word 'driving' implies being behind the beast in the first place. Actually, Herd seems like a good stand-in skill, since it's about getting domestic beasts to go where you want when you're not riding them or sat on a vehicle behind them.

Sure, there might not be much commonality between rigging the harness for oxen  and for 'others', but if you're having to rig ox harness under pressure, then you're being pursued by a very particular kind of adversary...

[drablak]

4 hours ago, womble said:

Herd seems like a good stand-in skill

I agree with this and it's how I'd handle it. There shouldn't be a skill check unless the driver had to control the animals because of some reason (a predator, fighting, etc.) and in those cases I think Herd makes sense as your trying to control/manage the animal.