The River and the Road: Skills (Part 1)

The many things you pick up the way: how to pick a lock with a hairpin, how to throw a long jab, HOW TO IMMOLATE MATTER WITH YOUR MIND.

Today, we do a recap of how Skills work in The River and the Road, and now introduce the first half of the statted out Skills: this means the complete Disciplines section, and the first half of the Styles Section. Coming next: Styles, part the second, as well as Magic. Which is frankly going to be a little weird, in a good way. See you then!

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Skills

The River and the Road has a way of teaching you things, things you might never had imagine you’d learn. This is how the Nomad life changes you: during the normal course of your day and your work, something happens that requires improvisation, and through the course of just trying to get your bit in and done, you wind up learning something. The dock manager that learned the shipment of hard liquor you’re picking up is, in fact, hard liquor, and drank himself unconscious because it’s ‘meant-for-highland-taun-hard’ liquor, and thus could not unlock the stockyard for you- that was where you learned to pick locks. You gained a minor understanding of mechanical devices when following the gears and pulleys of a machine you discerned to be a trap waiting for you, when you realized the end effectors were spikes, in the ceiling above the room you were supposed to enter through. You may have even learned the means to play a magic fiddle that shoots fiery lashes when it hits certain notes, because this is what the River and the Road can send you when you need a solution to a problem, and it’s on you to make what you can of it.

Skills are the things that you come with, and pick up along the way, knowledge that can be applied to situations to solve problems. Skills are learned through events called Learning Experiences, which can either be explicitly triggered as a result of your day-to-day on the River or the Road, or awarded naturally by the Narrator finding reason within the scenario to count for one. This can include having the necessity to learn how to do a thing come up, or from learning a transferable skill as part of learning more specific information- like learning mechanics from disarming a trap you’re standing on the pressure plate of, without injury. This can also be because you earned some time off, and as a result, decided to take time learning something useful.

Skills come in three varieties, representing three different applications: Disciplines, which cover the passive understanding of certain topics, like science and medicine, providing a bonus to any check that can be spun or pitched as being related, and also serving to measure how much you know about that given topic; Styles, which are actual moves that can be performed in the roleplaying or tactical spaces; and Magic, powers which can be harnessed by an individual with the proper insight and practice, which are composed of both passively and actively used aspects, and require Magical Aptitude to learn.

Skills are also rated for your degree of expertise in them, across 3 levels: Basic, Expert and Master. Here’s the way to lay out these degrees of Mastery:

• Basic mastery is the ability to identify function, if not properly name in a specific nomenclature the parts of a system- this is a person that can teach you something about an engine, in addition to being able to maintain and repair an engine.
• Expert mastery is the ability to teach someone untrained about the parts of a system, someone whose knowledge is not total by any stretch, but comprehensive- this is a person that can take apart an engine, examine the pieces, and reassemble it, and provided it was in working order, it’ll work better having given the once over by an Expert.
• A Master has the ability to not simply work with the parts of a system, but revise, innovate and theorize new branches of a system- this is a person who designs engines, including ones that don’t typically work to typical standards and conventions.

A Learning Experience can take someone untrained in a Skill to a Basic level of Mastery. To raise from one level to the next, you have to make a case to the Narrator that you’ve practiced the particular Skill enough, and had a Learning Experience using that Skill that was sufficiently difficult to challenge you- you, as a mechanist disarmed not a trap, but something more akin to a self-destruct device threatening to bring down a castle around you; or you, a weapon-master, using a technique you’ve used many times before, to defeat a greater enemy than you’d ever faced before.

Disciplines

Many schools exist in the Converged Worlds, teaching a wide variety of topics. Some will teach you how to read and write, to know your history and to cultivate critical thinking, and these are schools that people want in their community. Some of them teach how to pick locks, which while useful, is also not the sort of school that people want to have a high student population at in their community. Most folk on the River and the Road have the sort of learning down to keep them apace with each other. It’s the specialty training that tends to vary.

Each level of Mastery within a Discipline provides a +1 Bonus to any checks involving that area of knowledge, and gives your character an appropriate degree of understanding over that topic.

Healing: Knowing how to treat injury and sickness, including the simple but important task of restoring Health lost from combat and dungeon crawling. 

• Used When: Using healing checks to restore Health in and outside of combat, with healing kits or other similar items, diagnosing and treating disease and injury, medically assessing and investigating the living and dead for clues, creating medicines and cures.

Survival: The know-how to survive without the comforts of home when in the wilderness, be it in finding shelter, foraging for supplies, avoiding hungry wildlife, or just finding a way.

• Used When: You’re in a situation with limited supplies, where essentials like shelter and food aren’t guaranteed to be on the table. This includes both finding something that could possibly be food, as well as testing if it actually is, as well as finding water, then making sure it’s drinkable, and building shelter that doesn’t instantly fall down in a slight wind. Can even be more complex, like how to rebalance a pocket of atmosphere so it’s breathable.

Diplomacy: Negotiation when there’s stakes on the line, be it in terms of valuables, people-power, or lives, conducted over a table, over a contract, or over drawn weapons.

• Used When: Someone wants more than you’re willing to pay, or vice versa. When you’re handed a contract that someone seems very eager for you to sign. When someone is threatening to press on a plunger that appears to be connected to menacing barrels and has demands. When two major groups have, literally or figuratively, drawn knives from across a room at one another.

Mechanisms: The understanding of more complex devices that have parts that work in a sequence to perform a specific function, like the sprung hinge of a beartrap, or a lock.

• Used When: There’s a lock in the way, with no key on hand, but a selection of fine tools. Or for dealing with the menacing little bit of resistance in a door that someone identified as a trap. Or when trying to build or repair mechanical devices, machines with gears and cogs, or more complex or arcane components.

Sciences: Knowledge of how the natural world works, in terms of concepts like physics, geology, zoology and meteorology.

• Used When: You need to build a bridge, or a boat, or a protective barricade. Or when you get the rocks for the barricade and they look strange, and you want to analyze what they are. Or when you go get the tools, and discover that the local wildlife is curious and prone to thievery, and need to assess if it’s also hostile. Or as you’re trying to track it, you notice a storm front, and want to tell if it’s heading this way.

Lore: Knowledge of the strange history of the Converged Worlds, in terms of things like regions, monsters, ruins and dungeons.

• Used When: You have been confronted by a force you don’t understand, but have an inkling of what it might be. Something unknown, that appears to have some sort of discernable biology, has emerged and is now threatening you. You have entered a place where the walls are talking, and you might find some clue as to why. There’s writing on the walls, and it might be what all the ghosts in this place are speaking.

Styles

People in the Converged Worlds know many ways to start a fight, and as many ways to end them. A Kith can teach you how to draw a blade and strike through your target in one motion, while a Mereid can teach you not to thrust in for a decisive strike with a spear, but ride it in with your weight behind it. A Taun can teach you how to shoot at sound, rather than a visible target; this is not something to put into practice unless you’re absolutely sure of what you’re shooting at, otherwise, it’s just an advanced hunting accident technique. You’ll find myriads of these fighting styles on the River and the Road, emphasizing the use of certain techniques or weapons. Here, they’re grouped into Styles.

Each level of Mastery within a Style provides a +1 Bonus to noted checks with particular weapon types, including your own hands and feet. You also gain an additional ability that you can use with weapons of that type, either in combat or the roleplay space.

Finesse: A style that emphasizes speedy attacks with light weaponry, as well as moves that allow the attacker greater mobility when moving between enemies on the battlefield. 

Power: A style that emphasizes the use of large and heavy weapons, attacks that fall like hammer strokes, as well as attacks that forcibly smash enemies around the battlefield. 

Reach: Fighting with staves, spears and other weapons that allow you to reach out and jab someone in the head from safety, while using moves that keep you out of harm’s way. 

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Part 2 comes soon, in a condensed addendum to boot.