Re: (TFT) House Rules Survey: Learning new schtick

[Thorn <edt@dopey.ne.mediaone.net>]

Michael Taylor wrote:
> 
> >>>Anyone?
> 
> The current rule seems pretty realistic to me. If you took a high school
> French class and then never went to France, you'd not only forget the
> langauge, but all the money you spent on books would be wasted and the time
> you spent in class would also be wasted.

I knew there was a reason I resented public schools!  All those years,
making me squander XP half-learning schtick I was never going to 'finish
learning'...

At 1000 EP an abandoned schtick, the languages are the real sinkhole;
Latin, French, the Spanish I went back and learned later, the Russian I
studied covertly while sitting in Spanish class.  Ah, Beh, Veh, Geh... 
nope, that's all.  I can still write my name, but I think I learned more
Russian from Clockwork Orange.  All those math classes just were part of
learning Mathematics, I guess, and so not wasted.  I think those 12
years of English apply toward Literacy, though I might have had that in
three years...  Might I be a Scholar, then?  If so, might all those
other wasted skills have applied toward Scholar?  And if so, were they
ever actually wasted, or did they lurk unspent until enough tiny bits of
data and skill accumulated that applied toward a named schtick, at which
point they were spent to gain it?

XP that represents money and time seems to conflict with the rules,
since the rules already track money, and time.  XP is a mechanic, tied
to combat damage and dice rolls, neither of which ever logically leads
to such skills as Diplomat, Literacy, etc.  It's just a mechanic, points
for power-ups, as though playing a video game.  It's just a mechanism
for controlling advancement.  The three slots work fine for dungeon
crawls that fade to black as the party leaves the dungeon, but in a
broader campaign, sometimes a character just will not be able to
continue a study.


> Then if you went back to college after you were 30 years old and took
> French again - you wouldn't get the *full* benefit of all the time and
> studying you did in the origional class.

Right, in a system with increasing stat costs, those points 'lost' in
the 12th grade, which were at that point maybe 1/5th of the cost of a
stat, are now worth far less than that fifth.  The degree of inflation
depends on how many stat points the character has gained in the interim.


> Doesn't EP stand in as a shortcut for having to keep track of the time and
> money for learning?

Maybe in games that are run that way, but not to my experience.  If I
had to hire a teacher, I'd never get away with telling the NPC my XP had
paid for it.

> Making the penalty an even 1000 EP for everyone clears up most of the
> problems and keeps bookkeeping and finagling and arguing to a minimum.

No it doesn't.  It changes the problem.  The player still has the option
of finishing the unwanted study, then forgetting it, thus avoiding any
XP penalty.  It defies any logic that taking a longer time to abandon a
study, calling it 'learning then forgetting', rather than abandoning, be
more efficient.


> Changing "Majors" *should* result in a minor penalty.

A penalty of time and money?  Yes.  You have to spend more of both.  But
a penalty of what was learned?  I can't agree with that.
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