Journey to Lands Far Far Away (OOC)

Ugh, that’ll teach Lille to try to chat with bears first thing in the morning :P Well, only the second worst roll.. hardly an auspicious beginning. I saved Dex for in case things went poorly, and here we are... time for bear charades!

3... What character would you like to play next?
😁

Would you prefer to have this be a 'failure of Wild' and an inability to 'talk' to the bear as suggested above? Or should be go with your being able to communicate (somewhat) but the bear having its own problems that need to be dealt with.

I don't have any ideas yet, we can come up with something appropriately fun once we know what sort of complication we are wanting. We don't want to make it so big that it distracts from the current story, but it may disrupt your plans to to go hunting for instance.

Bear Problems sounds like the most interesting to me. At the height of summer, bears should be reasonably well fed but other issues could come up. Fear of the mists, displacement from regular territory, too many bee stings in the last honey raid, group camp is right next to the bear’s fav feeding spot... just a few things that came to mind.

One part of me wants to utilize that epic Dex score as often as possible, but I will have to wait until later to think up a way to do that, if possible. Loss of hunting time/space is a reasonable complication. "Sorry I didn’t bring any dinner tonight, I was busy with bear therapy and cuddles" :P

We can run Lille's scene from the morning [ref] concurrently with the scene from the night before [ref], they should both end around the time everyone is ready to move on with the story.

Awwww, I made a friend....

Humphrey should know by now, you want a classy lady, you gotta treat her classy.

Wow I guess I just had to "shout" at the bear. Even just as a Cha roll that’s 11, quite the opposite roll. Maybe I won’t have to start rolling up a new character... yet ;)

Or... what you have just determined is that 'the better way to talk to animals is through body language and acting'. This makes sense, it is a key component to how they communicate with each other. It is also embarrassing if your friends see you, and that can be the (ongoing) cost for the earlier 'Miss'.

What do you think? If this is the case, then we can use this roll to resolve both, and your 12+ provides you with some benefit.

I feel like the narrative supports something different. After I failed at Lille’s "normal" communication, you said that there was a strange buzzing in the bear’s mind. To me, that suggests that the mental trick was only failing because of extenuating circumstances. Under other conditions, it would probably still be normally effective. The no hunting penalty still makes sense, because loudly whacking the tree scared off all the game for a mile. If it need to be severe, she can fail at hunting both food for the group AND herself as well.

If the high result gets me an extra benefit, either Lille could have successfully removed the buzzing, or received some clue about its source or the mists or whatever.

Agreed. That was originally part of it, I was offering a simpler option if you wanted it. We still know that body language is better, but not necessarily the only way.
Yes. All hunting would be affected by your spending time helping the bear... but the 12+ may lead to alternate food... if you can solve the problem. Assume you have establish basic communications, talking is hard but you can 'talk' without needing more rolls (until you do).

QuietPanther, there are some Doby level clues in that last post. :)

Remember that Wild is not 'telepathy' it is being able to talk to animals. You can't 'read their minds', but they also don't use language like humans do, so you may be interpreting your understanding of all your senses as something like ESP: you understand the meaning of the bird-song and the pheromones and scents of a bear, and the that can be hard to translate into mere words.

I noticed my character doesn't have any sort of blanket/bedroll on her itinerary. This was an accidental oversight on my part. She definitely would have been carrying one of these. May I add that and subtract... a silver? ... from my savings?

Is the bear headed towards the mists, or where they occur at night? How close to sunrise are we now? Do the mists end at the first sign of daylight or at sunrise? I missed those details, but Lille would likely know them.

By all means. We can always fix such oversights if they have not played an important role in the story.

I don't see blankets or bedrolls in the Equipment section, though. Maybe they are assumed to be part of the 'tent' and camping gear? Maybe most people use cloaks that are part of their clothing? We don't pay for clothing, and you are an outdoorsy person, so we can just assume you have what you need already.

You tell us if you use your cloak or if you have blankets, or if you make do in the pleasant summer night air.

We have traveled for hours [ref] since leaving the area of the mists, consider them a thing of the past (though your characters can't know the extent, so they may still be worried).

@karabooo, by 'Bhavanti' [ref], did you mean 'bacha posh'? Theo would not be any more familiar with that term either, but I am unfamiliar with 'Bhavanti' being used in this context.

It’s a made-up word for a made-up culture. But it’s basically the same as bacha posh, yes. I just added a couple small differences for flavor.

Gotcha.

It is a real Hindu word, though. Has some 'wife' connotations but in mainly about 'time'. We can ignore that if that has no bearing on our situation.

Yeah, I noticed that when I was making up the word, but I thought to myself... you know what? It kinda works. They are to be regarded as male "at present," but will ultimately play the role of female/wife.

Cool. :)