Re: drwoning/blue fields

[Steve Ames <steve>]

> 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.

Yep. You want something fair but believable. Tricky stuff. Also want it
deadly enough that people spend the few measly eeps it takes to learn
to swim. I don't think they should be allowed a million checks.

Woa! See I confused swimming and drowning again.

All checks work like this. If you fail them, you fail them. You don't
get to retry until you succeed. Failing doesn't mean you goofed it means
that you _CANNOT_ do something. For whatever reason the conditions are
such that this 2d6 swimming check cannot be made by you. You get a
default and then the swimming (or whatever skill your using) option is
over for you. Time to try something different.

( greg makes the arguable point that you should be able to try again
  next round and just roll more dice, indicating that you are trying
  harder. I mostly agree )

So if you fail your swimming check and its default you cannot try
swimming again (unless circumstances/conditions change in which case
the GM will assign you a new check anyway... this happens whenever
conditions change for the better _AND_ worse). When you fail your
check you get that first mouth full of water that begins the drowning
process. (and you should probably just relax and float at this point...
unless you have so much equipment and such that you can't (which most of
us do *grin*))

But enough for swimming. Drowning is what we're here for. Drowning 
results from a missed swimming check. It also results from falling
beneath the ice, getting ejected from the submarine, having Bruno 
hold your head underwater, you tried out your new concrete slippers
in the deep end, etc... Drowning rules might also be applied to 
strangulation.

Drowning: As soon as the GM declares that you are drowning (usually
	after a failed swimming check or you are held underwater and
	can no longer hold your breath) you have HEA rounds before going
	unconscious. Once unconscious you drift with the currents and
	such and will be dead in HEA/3 minutes.

Quick and concise. Anything other than the above numbers is really part
of a seperate topic and probably seperate checks.

> > 	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.

Negative. The blue field itself (not what's in it) is part of our
physical universe and, as such, falls under its rules. The simple
method would be to just say that the field stays exactly where it is
relative to Jaern (lets forget about space travel for a bit). 

Simple, but bad. This means I toss an area of effect blue-field at a ship.
Its not big enough to take the whole ship but it would get just about
everything on it... and the crew would just float away as I get my new
ship... even if they were below decks.

The scientific method doesn't really apply here since we cannot experiment
_OR_ observe. We can only put together pure theory and lean it in the
direction we want to go. As such we are building the clock not learning to
tell time.

The time spells are good spells. But we need them to function the way
we want them to. I think what we want is for the blue field to stay
with whatever it was moving with, but within certain boundaries (ie
its OK to stay with a boat, but tarzan doesn't stay with his vine).
Then we have to come up with physics to fit what we want and then those
physics will dictate other circumstances that we haven't thought about.

That is the creation process. Tricky but the results are usually cool
as hell.

						-Steve