Michelle Lyons
Explorer
You would place composition under Perform? I mean, performance surely would be. Anything in front of an audience would be. But composition is the creation of the work, not the execution thereof.
Is poetry/lit Craft? No. Perform? No. What?
- Thread starter Scaramanga
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dcollins
Explorer
See several posts above. In pre-modern societies, story-creation was practically always done in the context of performance. Performers were likely not literate and usually without access to paper for hundreds of years. Only much later were the stories/songs put in written form.
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Creating it? Craft.
Being able to recite it well, make the poem come to life, make everyone feel the words to their bones? Perform.
Perform is making other people enjoy it somehow. Even with the worst poem in the world the best person with perform might be able to make it seem golden.
To actually make a great poem that anyone would love, that you have to actually make.
Craft.
Being able to recite it well, make the poem come to life, make everyone feel the words to their bones? Perform.
Perform is making other people enjoy it somehow. Even with the worst poem in the world the best person with perform might be able to make it seem golden.
To actually make a great poem that anyone would love, that you have to actually make.
Craft.
Let the player choose depending on how he sees himself writting the poetry.
Craft is Int based. A wordsmith using craft has something meaningful to express and finds a clever, innovative or unique way to express it. (Shakespeare)
Perform is Cha based. A lyricist using perform has an ability to write lines and phrases that are catchy and pleasing to the ear. (Eminemem)
Profession is Wis based. A writer using profession is dedicated to his work; starting, stopping, editing, revising and generally working on it every day until he is satisfied with it. (?? Emily Dickenson ??)
You can find plenty of real world examples of writers using all three methods. Ask your player how he wants his work to be viewed and suggest an appropriate skill from there.
Craft is Int based. A wordsmith using craft has something meaningful to express and finds a clever, innovative or unique way to express it. (Shakespeare)
Perform is Cha based. A lyricist using perform has an ability to write lines and phrases that are catchy and pleasing to the ear. (Eminemem)
Profession is Wis based. A writer using profession is dedicated to his work; starting, stopping, editing, revising and generally working on it every day until he is satisfied with it. (?? Emily Dickenson ??)
You can find plenty of real world examples of writers using all three methods. Ask your player how he wants his work to be viewed and suggest an appropriate skill from there.
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Knight Otu
First Post
I'd actually liken it to writing up the musical notation of the song. You're putting down the base recipe that others can use to recreate your song (show, play etc...). Certainly not every performance of "Romeo and Juliet" uses Shakespeare's Perform result. Remember I'm not saying that Perform does not work - I'm just saying that, if it were an important part for my games, I would use Craft. For all practical purposes, Perform works fine, but I simply feel Craft would be the better choice if it happens to be important enough.The Souljourner said:
Apothecary - Possible. I suspect, however, that the skill is meant to cover the storage and sales aspects as well, making it broader than a typical Craft skill.Len said:
Brewer - Yep, but see below.
Farmer - Nope, Much broader than just creating anything.
Lumberjack - Maybe my definition is off, but what does a lumberjack "create"? Felled trees?
My suspicion is that the Profession skills also include crafts where you really cannot make the creation process much faster by being better at the skill. Where a master smith might be able to finish his blade faster than the apprentice, does the same hold true for brewing? Melting down ore? Again, that is just my suspicion, not a general rule.Len said:
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
I don't believe this for a moment. Even if you want to write off Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Marlowe, John Bale, the authors of Gorboduc, etc as examples of early modern playwrights, and restrict ones' self to the Greek comedians and tragedians, Homeric poets, Hesiod et al, the Icelandic saga-writers, and others, it beggars belief to suggest that all compositions were composed impromptu in the context of a particular performance and were only written down hundreds of years after the fact.
In fact, in at least some cases, there is fairly conclusive evidence that this is not true. The greek tragedians and comedians were certainly literate. Aristophanes, for instance was a contemporary of Plato and Socrates (and a noted enemy of Socrates). The famous greek plays were generally composed for a festival in honor of the gods and were prepared and rehearsed for a significant period of time before the actual performance. After that, as I understand it, they were generally not performed again. Even if one supposes that the playwrights did not create their plays in writing but versified mentally or verbally and simply told the actors what to say when, that would not be consistent with the notion that they were impromptu renditions created on the spot in the context of a single performance. Furthermore, the fact that we have copies of them in written form suggests that someone quite early on found them worth recording. That our earliest manuscripts date hundreds of years after the time of their writing is not a testament to long times passing before they were recorded but rather a testament to the frailty of ancient documents. (IIRC, we don't have any copies of Plato's work dated within even 500 years of when he wrote them but that doesn't suggest that Plato didn't write them down). Similarly, the works of poets like Sappho and Anaximander and philosopher/poets like Hesiod suggest that things were put down in written form quite early.
In Roman society, the plays of Seneca--not meant for public performance--are another indication that plays were most likely composed before performance and set in written form quite early in parts of the pre-modern world. Plautus's plays while performed publicly are also available in written form and it is likely that they were in written form from the beginning.
Other forms of literature are less likely to have been written down. The sagas first originated in oral tradition and were passed down for a goodly period of time before becoming fixed in written form. The apparent emphasis on impromptu poetry (as illustrated by Skarphedin or Cormac the skald) as well as their prose form makes it plausible that they may have been composed in the context of performances. They, however, are the exception rather than the rule. Music was, without a doubt, often composed in advance. Caedmon's hymn and the various surviving chants and other examples of church music demonstrate this. I don't doubt that some popular music was composed impromptu in the context of a performance but I seriously doubt that this was the general rule. Even when the music was not written down, it is likely that the minstrels were playing with melodies and examining rhyme schemes far in advance of any actual performance. There's no reason to suppose that being pre-modern obviated the need for practice and composition.
In fact, in at least some cases, there is fairly conclusive evidence that this is not true. The greek tragedians and comedians were certainly literate. Aristophanes, for instance was a contemporary of Plato and Socrates (and a noted enemy of Socrates). The famous greek plays were generally composed for a festival in honor of the gods and were prepared and rehearsed for a significant period of time before the actual performance. After that, as I understand it, they were generally not performed again. Even if one supposes that the playwrights did not create their plays in writing but versified mentally or verbally and simply told the actors what to say when, that would not be consistent with the notion that they were impromptu renditions created on the spot in the context of a single performance. Furthermore, the fact that we have copies of them in written form suggests that someone quite early on found them worth recording. That our earliest manuscripts date hundreds of years after the time of their writing is not a testament to long times passing before they were recorded but rather a testament to the frailty of ancient documents. (IIRC, we don't have any copies of Plato's work dated within even 500 years of when he wrote them but that doesn't suggest that Plato didn't write them down). Similarly, the works of poets like Sappho and Anaximander and philosopher/poets like Hesiod suggest that things were put down in written form quite early.
In Roman society, the plays of Seneca--not meant for public performance--are another indication that plays were most likely composed before performance and set in written form quite early in parts of the pre-modern world. Plautus's plays while performed publicly are also available in written form and it is likely that they were in written form from the beginning.
Other forms of literature are less likely to have been written down. The sagas first originated in oral tradition and were passed down for a goodly period of time before becoming fixed in written form. The apparent emphasis on impromptu poetry (as illustrated by Skarphedin or Cormac the skald) as well as their prose form makes it plausible that they may have been composed in the context of performances. They, however, are the exception rather than the rule. Music was, without a doubt, often composed in advance. Caedmon's hymn and the various surviving chants and other examples of church music demonstrate this. I don't doubt that some popular music was composed impromptu in the context of a performance but I seriously doubt that this was the general rule. Even when the music was not written down, it is likely that the minstrels were playing with melodies and examining rhyme schemes far in advance of any actual performance. There's no reason to suppose that being pre-modern obviated the need for practice and composition.
dcollins said:
dcollins
Explorer
See "oral history" and its relation to storytelling and epic poetry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
First things first. You're confusing pre-modern with pre-literate.
The Periclean Athenians were pre-modern but not pre-literate. The Romans were also pre-modern but not pre-literate. In fact, excavations at Masada show that even in the hinterlands of the empire, enough of its population was literate (in multiple languages) that written receipts for things as trivial as wine bottles were sometimes written. So, if (as is obviously the case), composition was not a written process in pre-literate societies, it does not follow that composition was not a written process in pre-modern societies. (For that matter, what you mean by pre-modern isn't exactly clear either).
Furthermore, it is important to realize that the world doesn't all live in the same era. The Roman senatorial class was very largely literate as the works of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cicero, et al demonstrate. Ovid's metamophes, Juvenal satires, and the exchanges between the Christian apologists and their pagan rivals also demonstrate a highly literate subculture in the Roman empire. It may well be that some of Rome's subjects were illiterate (though the works of slaves like Plautus and Epictetus and the evidence from Masada, etc. and the apparent wide distribution of Christian scripture should give us pause before concluding that the mass of the Roman citizenry was illiterate). It is almost certain that many barbarian tribes were pre-literate cultures. But that doesn't mean that Rome was any more than the tragically enforced illiteracy of African slaves in the early years of the American Republic made the United States a pre-literate society. It is quite possible for a visual/written and an oral society or sub-culture to co-exist simultaneously.
Finally, while many oral cultures are able to retain amounts of information that now seem amzing to us and that explains the apparently intact transmission of epics like the Illiad from the time of their composition to the time of their recording, that has no bearing at all upon the method of their composition. Just because Homer's listeners could repeat his epic verbatim to their children does not mean that Homer himself composed it when, one day around a campfire, someone asked him, "so what was up with that Achilles dude and the fall of Troy?" In fact, the kind of memory implied by the strong existence of oral traditions makes extensive pre-planning and composition plausible without writing.
The notion that all pre-Shakespearean artists simply came up with their masterpieces impromptu in the context of a particular performance does not hold water and the facts of oral history and pre-literate cultures don't lend much support to the notion.
The Periclean Athenians were pre-modern but not pre-literate. The Romans were also pre-modern but not pre-literate. In fact, excavations at Masada show that even in the hinterlands of the empire, enough of its population was literate (in multiple languages) that written receipts for things as trivial as wine bottles were sometimes written. So, if (as is obviously the case), composition was not a written process in pre-literate societies, it does not follow that composition was not a written process in pre-modern societies. (For that matter, what you mean by pre-modern isn't exactly clear either).
Furthermore, it is important to realize that the world doesn't all live in the same era. The Roman senatorial class was very largely literate as the works of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cicero, et al demonstrate. Ovid's metamophes, Juvenal satires, and the exchanges between the Christian apologists and their pagan rivals also demonstrate a highly literate subculture in the Roman empire. It may well be that some of Rome's subjects were illiterate (though the works of slaves like Plautus and Epictetus and the evidence from Masada, etc. and the apparent wide distribution of Christian scripture should give us pause before concluding that the mass of the Roman citizenry was illiterate). It is almost certain that many barbarian tribes were pre-literate cultures. But that doesn't mean that Rome was any more than the tragically enforced illiteracy of African slaves in the early years of the American Republic made the United States a pre-literate society. It is quite possible for a visual/written and an oral society or sub-culture to co-exist simultaneously.
Finally, while many oral cultures are able to retain amounts of information that now seem amzing to us and that explains the apparently intact transmission of epics like the Illiad from the time of their composition to the time of their recording, that has no bearing at all upon the method of their composition. Just because Homer's listeners could repeat his epic verbatim to their children does not mean that Homer himself composed it when, one day around a campfire, someone asked him, "so what was up with that Achilles dude and the fall of Troy?" In fact, the kind of memory implied by the strong existence of oral traditions makes extensive pre-planning and composition plausible without writing.
The notion that all pre-Shakespearean artists simply came up with their masterpieces impromptu in the context of a particular performance does not hold water and the facts of oral history and pre-literate cultures don't lend much support to the notion.
dcollins said:
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