Re: drwoning/blue fields

[Keith Klumb <kklumb@expert.cc.purdue.edu>]

On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Greg Mowczko wrote:

> > From: Keith Klumb <kklumb@expert.cc.purdue.edu>
> >
> > I should say that we should keep the drowning issue simple (no offense
> > John, I did like your write up). But that is one of the nice things about
> > AQ no need for 6 manuals, and we are trying to keep it this way.
> > 	The way it seems to be leaning to is that if you are in water you
> > get and oppurtunity to make a swimming check (whatever it may be) and then
> > you have one round to do something else. You might have been lowering
> > yourself into the water off of a boat. You get into the water and realize
> > you can't swim as well as you thought you could (missed check). You now
> > have 1 round to either try swimming again or to grab onto the boat you
> > just lowered yourself off of. If you still aren't swimming after your 1
> > round and you didn't take the round to cast gills, then you begin
> > drowning. You go unconsious one round later and you have x rounds till you
> > are dead (b/c it is documented that if you pull someone out of the water
> > within 5 minutes of them starting to drown they can still be saved, in
> > RL) We'll assume you don't die immediatly after you go unconcious.
> > 	Seems pretty straight forward to me.
> 
> The problem with what you just wrote is you say. "Didn't make your check?
> Your unconcious." I can't go for that. In most cases where someone falls
> into the water and can't swim ( actually can't get air ) they stuggle/panic/
> try to get a grip and swim to where air is. There is no way after 4 seconds
> of not doing what was intended you fall unconcious. That is where the HEA/2
> came into play. I'm fine with increasing the difficulty of the swimming
> check for any attempt after that first fail though.

I see no problem with saying that you are struggling/panicing for x
rounds. I was just proposing a simplified issue. Adjudicating how
difficult a check is is a GMs job. That's not something that we really
need to worry about. We just need to figure out the base line
consequences of failing said check are.

> > 	I'm just going to try and sum up the problems that are being run
> > into with the blue field ideas. The spell essentially takes someone out of
> > our frame of time. Now for sake of gaming ease the planet doesn't move
> > away from them b/c (insert good reason here). Even though in theory in RL
> > that's what would happen, if you are taken out of time you stay still in
> > an astonomical sense.
> > 	Thus this whole gravity issue seems to be everyone making up a
> > reason why you still stay somewhere over the ocean b/c that's where I blue
> > fielded you.
> > 	So I think what the issue is is just how movable or imovable is a
> > blue field?
> 
> Why you stay where you stay when blue fielded? In my mind as I cast the
> spell I would think " I am bluefielding you there " and there is where
> you stay. Now if "there" is on the deck of a boat you go with the boat.
> If you bluefield someone on a ladder can you remove the ladder and not
> them? Obviously you can pull the ladder away and I would rule they stay
> there in the air. This is contrary to the other though. And this is
> where all the confusion is. Stick a kitten in a bag so the cat is supporting
> the bag and bluefield it. The bag should fall through it since it is
> now nothing. Maybe if you can normally just move the object it can't stick
> to it but if the object is not "normally" manually movable it stays stuck
> to it ( ie. cart, ship ). This breaks down though quickly if Enmass is
> brought into the picture. See the problems we are facing?
> 
> 						Greg
Thus why people are assuming that you are latched on to the nearest large
body (ie planet) for the spell. So that way we can stay relative. In all
honesty I don't know a solution to that. More than anything I'm just
trying to get a perspective on this whole thing. The large body sounds
good to me as long as we don't try to go too far and over analyze what we
are saying by this. This would probably take care of 70% of the rulings,
and that's good enough for government work. 

Keith