anyway my point was story telling is pretty much a human universal, and poetry helps you remember the words. Many many more people can tell stories without training, not so much cut a peice of wood (which I also could not be trained to do..)
Bob
taught or not taught, if you consider accomplished poets, it is rare that their first works are their best
No, not a new set of Abilities for every saga. You just detail whatever you need, as always. Look at the corebook Abilities: they do what you need for this saga? Yes? Good. No? Adapt if possible, if not, that's life. Craft, Profession, Area Lore, Organization Lore and Language are pretty much this: create as many as needed for your saga (within reasonable limits).
Didn't get the point with this. I don't see a problem with what you stated, and don't see how this ties into the rest of the discussion. Is it that with overspecialized Abilities learning and teaching become more difficult? If so, then I totally agree.
There is nothing that can't be taught. There are only good teachers and bad teachers. =9
Of course, not everyone has interest in poetry
But can we even say that they are human
And not some kind of pottery
In a weird subway?
(Wait, I think I have the Ability Block flaw for pottery... poetry not, my poems are perfect, thanks.)
Jokes aside, you can surely become a better poet or better storyteller (heck, at least half of the time I invest as a game master is to learn and practice how to be a better game master, and part of that is being a better storyteller).
Anything is only as easy to teach as the student is interested. I don't think many students have interest in poetry or storytelling (or writing), just as many don't have interest in math or history or other subjects.
I do not see this as a problem. Most of us are not professional storytellers. But I believe we can still tell a story we know (remember, repertoire is covered by Lore) in a reasonably entertaining fashion. While we'd be worse than a professional, we'd be comparatively much better than at something we are really clueless about (for me, chirurgy).
In other words, every human is something of a storyteller.
The problem is that any job has lots of facets. Some of those facets, such as coordinating underlings, or haggling, should be "portable" between jobs. If you split a job into multiple abilities - most of them "common" ones such as Leadership or Area Lore - this portability can be represented correctly in terms of characters teaching each other, moving from one job to the next, etc. If instead you have a different ability for every job, portability becomes either 0 (if the abilities are different) or 100% (if they are the same).
Actually, I think it should be an almost supernatural feat to write a book that teaches you in 6 months complete fluency in a Language you did not know.
OTOH, you could consider Profession: Ship Captain as a social status / reputation. You wear the correct props, acts the proper way, therefore you are taken as a true captain and your words have weight.
A Mercenary Captain plays a different role, even if he uses the same Abilities to lead his troops. Isn't the same idea present in C&G, where you have to spend for appearances and match those of your social status?
After having listened to countless students and professors presenting their work and what they have achieved, I know that this is bollocks. Most people do not know to select the elements to make the story entertaining. Most people try to say too much. Some people do this really well. They have plot and characters and plausible chains of consequences. I cannot see why this cannot be learnt.
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No. Maybe in soap operas or children's games, but that isn't how things work in the real world. Putting on the captains clothes and acting like a captain does not give you the skills to be a captain, and the crew will realize this very quickly.
Depending on the stakes of the situation they might even arrange for an accident for you to preserve themselves. This apparently happened a lot in Vietnam with officers who were fresh out of training and too full of themselves to develop the hands on skills and pay attention to people who had been in country where the men felt their new officer would put their lives at risk needlessly.
Notice this is not quite what I said. Maybe you can find a more skillful term for "acts" as action, not as acting.
Even if you have "Leadership + Bargain + Area Lore", you can't play the game of ship captain if your Seamanship is lacking. Profession: Ship Captain is how make all those skills work together well enough that your crew will follow you.
On the other hand profession: sailor combined with area lore and leadership could just as easily describe a ship's captain without having to have a separate professional ability fr ever position on the ship, and doesn't seek to replace leadership and area lore by merging them into a more highly specialized professional ability.
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I thought you meant that "Ship Captain" should be a social status, just as the Outlaw Leader Social Status Flaw. It could be also represented through virtues such as Temporal Influence or other similar V&F. The difference between a knight and a soldier is, after all, the virtue Knight.
There are also the Merchant (free) and Mercenary Captain (Minor) social virtues, which are quite similar to that. They could be used with a combination of Abilities (including Profession: Sailor) to represent several kinds of ship captain.
Minor variants of existing V&F are easy to introduce and quite appropriate, IMHO.
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So maybe Profession: Ship Captain should be an hyper-specialization, working the same way as faerie sympathies. This way you could have score 3 for Bargain and still have an effective score 6 for Bargains that match your profession.
Or somehow give an Ease Factor step when you evaluate the difficulty of an action.
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I suppose if you want to make faeries or faerie sympathies far more common, perhaps a guild of masons that can initiate a faerie sympathy? Otherwise you are essentially suggesting that humans should have roles the same way faeries do...