Adjusting to a new world

[Michael Hopcroft]

Imagine a situation on which a PC or group of PCs is taken to a different type of world than the one they originated from and have no means of return. For example, you've been in suspended animation for a thousand years and wake up in the year 3007.

 

Two questions come to mind that i was wondering how to address in system (story explanations for how to deal with them would also be helpful):

 

1. The new setting obviously has a different set of basic life skills than the original. Some of your original everyman skills will be useless (familiarity with driving cars does little good if nobody drives them anymore), and the characters will have to learn the new everyman skills of the setting from scratch (even if everyone you meet knows how to use a personal teleporter or programmable food synthesizer, you don't). Is there a way other than spending one's XP to gain the familiarities you'll need to get by?

 

2. Similarly, despite what you see on TV, if you were to suddenly find yourself a thousand years in the future the chances are remote-to-nil that anyone would be speaking your language in a form you understand. Even if something resembling English survives, its vocabulary, grammar, and structure would be very different from what you're used to. Given that you have no choice but to learn the new language through total immersion (if you cannot communicate you're in deep trouble), how long in game time would this process take and what sorts of penalties will you face during this time to your efforts to communicate?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

1. Unless there's a certain amount of handwaving going on, Everyman Skills don't exist for this style of game. What a character knows is on their sheet.

 

2. I've known people who could learn by total immersion enough to get by in less than a month, and become fluent in six months. I've also known people who could barely learn anything through total immersion. For a game, move it at the Speed Of Plot and go with INT Rolls if you want some chance involved.

[OddHat]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

1) As this is a pure mechanics question, it's up to the GM. I wouldn't charge anything myself, but would roleplay it out. At the end of each game session I'd add one or two basic everyman skills to the PCs sheets, based on what the players actually do in game. Alternatively, they could be viewed as dedicated bonus XP for roleplaying learning the skills.

 

2) In real life, learning by full immersion takes anywhere between six weeks to three months for basic conversation skills (basic survival skills can be picked up in a day or two), and becoming fully bilingual can take years. Adults who don't need to use the target language daily to survive often never become bilingual. All of that said, heroes in adventure fiction generally become fully bilingual in hours or days in order to keep the story moving. I'd just let the characters spend a few hours exchanging pillow talk with a beautiful alien princess / locked in a teaching machine / acclimating to translator microbes, and then let them spend some XP on the language, unless functioning without being able to use the language is part of the story.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

1. Spend the XP, or don't have the skills - helps to make the character distinctive anyway. UIf it is a single move to a new environment (and you won't be going back and forth) take a physical limitation 'unfamiliar with world' and when you pay that off you get the local everyman skills for free.

 

2. You haven't got the time or interest in most games to bother learning languages at a realistic rate, so try and set things up so that the locals speak English, or you can be understood in English (or Esperanto, or some other language): translator technology, telepathy, or the local tribe of primitives taught to speak English by a centuries old home entertainment system - they keep on peppering their speech with Jerry Springer references or something.

[SteveZilla]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

1) As this is a pure mechanics question, it's up to the GM. I wouldn't charge anything myself, but would roleplay it out. At the end of each game session I'd add one or two basic everyman skills to the PCs sheets, based on what the players actually do in game. Alternatively, they could be viewed as dedicated bonus XP for roleplaying learning the skills.

 

2) In real life, learning by full immersion takes anywhere between six weeks to three months for basic conversation skills (basic survival skills can be picked up in a day or two), and becoming fully bilingual can take years. Adults who don't need to use the target language daily to survive often never become bilingual. All of that said, heroes in adventure fiction generally become fully bilingual in hours or days in order to keep the story moving. I'd just let the characters spend a few hours exchanging pillow talk with a beautiful alien princess / locked in a teaching machine / acclimating to translator microbes, and then let them spend some XP on the language, unless functioning without being able to use the language is part of the story.

 

Wasn't there an episode of Farscape where John Crichton manually *taught* Aeryn Sun how to speak English, without using the microbes?

[OddHat]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

Wasn't there an episode of Farscape where John Crichton manually *taught* Aeryn Sun how to speak English' date=' without using the microbes?[/quote']

 

Sure, it was part of the story arc and spread over several episodes. We also saw Aeryn practicing scrambled English phrases for a few seasons. Language and learning language were major plot elements in Farscape.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

1. I'd go one of two ways: either say screw it and give everyone the everyman skills of the setting, saying they'd learn all of them given time anyway eventually; or give everyone the everyman skills of their originating setting and make them pay points for new Skills as normal for any character.

 

Other considerations to make would be tech level difference. If the characters already possess certain skills that are used in the destination setting (everyman or not), they'll have difficulty using them, at least at first. Other Skills that may not usually be affected by technology might still be at a disadvantage. Imagine trying to use Skills like Concealment or Stealth in a world where everything is monitored using high tech sensing equipment, or Conversation in a society that's evolved different patterns of speech and language convention.

 

2. This depends greatly on how big a difference between dialects. A thousand years ago, we had something like English, but it wasn't spoken far and wide like it is now. Maybe English is a dead language. Maybe it just merged with enough other languages it's virtually unrecognizable. Maybe it's survived intact (after all, English has remained fairly stable, except for slang, since the first dictionary was written).

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

Imagine a situation on which a PC or group of PCs is taken to a different type of world than the one they originated from and have no means of return. For example' date=' you've been in suspended animation for a thousand years and wake up in the year 3007.[/quote']

 

Buck Rogers, Farscape, et al. Sure. I am now in the throes of imagination. Astound me!

 

Two questions come to mind that i was wondering how to address in system (story explanations for how to deal with them would also be helpful):

 

1. The new setting obviously has a different set of basic life skills than the original. Some of your original everyman skills will be useless (familiarity with driving cars does little good if nobody drives them anymore), and the characters will have to learn the new everyman skills of the setting from scratch (even if everyone you meet knows how to use a personal teleporter or programmable food synthesizer, you don't). Is there a way other than spending one's XP to gain the familiarities you'll need to get by?

 

Sure. First, don't charge XP for everyman skills - these are things than anyone can learn in short order and IMO are not worth the XP. 'Food Synthesizer' is probably about as complex as 'microwave.' Sure, it looks wacky and alien, and different models have buttons in different places, but the point of consumer tech is that it is incredibly easy to use. That's the whole point of Apple & Nintendo - anyone can pick up their device and make use of it.

 

While other things may be tougher - for example, learning to use a PC 1000 years out with holo-displays and three levels of keyboards which all sense where your hands are, or more importantly where you would put your hands to work, is going to confuse the hell outta people even if the idea is intuitive. Then there's the issue of software. Point being, learning curve aside, I wouldn't charge points for this.

 

2. Similarly' date=' despite what you see on TV, if you were to suddenly find yourself a thousand years in the future the chances are remote-to-nil that anyone would be speaking your language in a form you understand. Even if something resembling English survives, its vocabulary, grammar, and structure would be very different from what you're used to. Given that you have no choice but to learn the new language through total immersion (if you cannot communicate you're in deep trouble), how long in game time would this process take and what sorts of penalties will you face during this time to your efforts to communicate?[/quote']

 

Actually, it takes roughly 500 years for language to come around and mutate to the point where two speakers would have difficulty communicating. Shakespeare was written in the 1600s - maybe 400 years ago, and it's called Early Modern English. it's still not only 100% understandable with limited education, more importantly properly acted (if you have the luck of seeing, say the Royal Shakespeare Company in action) it's even more comprehensible, because you have the tone & body language to support the text.

 

Hence, the language is LESS likely to change in 1000 years because so much of it is written, and the exposure is no longer limited - it's now global. Now that we are in a widely literate society, it would take a catastrophic collapse to destroy our mounds of text, held in dozens of formats. While there is a rise of colloquial English, I submit that there are some people who could step onto the wrong street in Philly and have no idea what some of those people are saying, any more than they would in the halls of Academia.

 

Your next question speaks to how long, and the answer seems to be around six months, without mechanical intervention. That's drawn from people who I've known who've done it, and the smattering of Anthro classes I took in college. You'll want to include some sort of device - a guide, a scholar who speaks the PCs version of the language, etc. - to help them close the gap. You might suggest someone purchase 'natural linguist' or similar ability, especially considering that Esperanto is dead, but Spanglish is huge.

[SteveZilla]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

Buck Rogers' date=' Farscape, et al. Sure. I am now in the throes of imagination. Astound me![/quote']

 

Don't forget Futurama!

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Adjusting to a new world

 

Don't forget Futurama!

 

How could I? "Space Pilot 3000" is one of the best old-style sci-fi stories I've seen on TV in a long time. It may have been satire, but it works on its own strengths as well.