Teach Lore

[Rabek]

This isn't really a lore, but it's the best word I could think to describe the idea.

Basically, teaching takes flipping forever. Given that most players aren't experts in the skills being taught IRL, it's really hard to find BS to say to fill the roleplay time, given the rule that you must RP the teaching.

My suggestion? Repurpose the City Lore system. Based on your student's skill level, a command will display various suggested things to teach about. Maybe a line or two per rank: inept, capable, master, etc.

So a grandmaster Blacksmith teaching someone who is Inept might get the suggestion: "The most basic tools of a smith is the hammer and tongs, used to hold and beat the metal into place. Heat can be applied to make metal more malleable." Teaching a student who is already a Master might steal a few lines on how to make Damascus Steel from Wikipedia. Using the command should display all the tips your student can handle, like how City Lore works.

I'm sure you could get players to volunteer to write these files.

The biggest benefit for this is element/moon skills and spells for witches, since there's all of one tiny paragraph for each to try to base an entire curriculum on. It's pretty much impossible to teach spells past 2nd circle without deviating from an actual RP'd lesson, since there's no way to BS random tidbits for hours on end.

Edit: To be clear, this is about providing RP prompts and suggestions for teachers in-game. It isn't meant for this to just pop up mechanically to replace RP'd teaching or anything.

[Dice]

Most teaching has a very reasonable speed now - roughly an hour to full pool for somebody of average int, which isn't too bad at all. But spell teaching has its own system, I think, and I agree that high-level spells might take too long. Is it only spells or other things, too, you find so hard?

[Rabek]

Well, for one, the 'hour' thing is heavily dependent on Teach skill these days in my experience. I've been amazed the difference between someone with 11 skill and someone with 45 or so. Multiple times faster with higher skill. Which is good, but it feels like you can't make quite that blanket statement.

For two, craft skills really encourage multiple lessons over time if you can find a teacher. They're so damn expensive. And I'm not sure I could find enough on Jeweling in wikipedia or whatever to teach for an hour, let alone multiple hour-long sessions. I think all skills would benefit from these prompts.

That said, my first post did explain that it's more than just spells. Teaching Element/Moon skills for more than the ten minutes each it takes to give enough for the first spell (given a character with Teach in a learn master slot; much longer without) is nearly impossible. I've got about two or three emotes of material before inspiration runs dry. I haven't even tried teaching magecrafting, yet, but I imagine it'll be even worse to try and explain ICly.

So once again, I think magic skills and spells have the hardest time of it, but I think all skills would benefit from helping teachers out with prompts on what to teach.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

I personally don't think you need to be 'bound' to emoting details if you don't want to or are unsure of what, exactly, the mechanics are of the thing you're teaching. I've had music lessons on Farra where the 'teaching' bit was handled in short sentences within the emotes that left the process itself somewhat bland; so long as you're engaged in the a lesson-derived situation, I think it's fine to emote a chat "between" the lesson itself; in the given example, for instance, myself and the other character queried each other with personal questions between the assumed mechanical instruction.

[Rabek]

Helpfile for Teaching

While teaching, it is expected that you roleplay exactly that - an
exchange of knowledge between the teacher and the student(s) which is
related to the ability being taught.

It is understood that only so much information can be relayed about some
abilities, such as bind. In instances such as these, you should focus your
roleplay on information related to the ability in some way (such as injury
identification, in the case of bind).

If you are found to be teaching or learning an ability while having RP which
is not related to the ability, it is likely that said ability will be lost
by both the teacher and the student(s).

(Subject area: policy Last modified: Sun Feb 13 21:47:40 2011)

Disregarding that, I'm not sure why there's resistance for additional roleplaying prompts on a roleplaying game. I'm not really asking for tips on utilizing the Teaching system. I'm trying to provide a suggestion to help with an area of the game I feel needs it.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

Helpfile for Teaching

If you are found to be teaching or learning an ability while having RP which
is not related to the ability, it is likely that said ability will be lost
by both the teacher and the student(s).

(Subject area: policy Last modified: Sun Feb 13 21:47:40 2011)

I could be wrong, but I believe that Policy is more intended for RPing things like learning sword while going fishing, to prevent abuse. Actively RPing that instruction is going on but interjecting the lesson with chatter unrelated to it doesn't seem like a breach of the intent of that rule.

[Dice]

I'll be honest, my resistance lies solely in the time and effort required to generate this information and code it into the game! I've always handled this fine with a spot of googling on my own and I think that might be a better place to put the onus... though maybe the helpfile there should be edited to be less draconian in wording.

[Jules]

My first thought, actually, was that I might not want my teacher knowing my actual skill level unless I RP informing them of it. And any kind of output with emoting suggestions is going to give that information away in a fashion that could be metagamed. (Not to mention, teaching can happen in a group context.)

So, yeah, not a fan of this idea, though I understand where it's coming from.

(Also, with regard to spells: it does seem to me that teaching them takes longer than ICly talking about them based on what you know from helpfiles and experience. I think it's pretty easy to run out of things to say before the spell is at 100%, even for mid-level spells. Wouldn't mind seeing the learning rates adjusted.)