[DL] Academa: Trivia

[jmb@dwarven.co.uk (John Billings)]

Hi all,

	I've made up these rules for a character who wanted to have 'trivia'
as an Academic accomplishment.  I'm sure most people know someone who
every now and then just knows something seemingly completely at random
that is completely unrelated to their own job/hobby/whatever.  This is
normally from seeing some bizarre documentary on fox/sky/hbo i suppose,
but a player wanted the same ability in deadlands.  This is what i came
up with - it's a bit rough around the edges, and may need tidying.

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Academia: Trivia

A new (?) academic attribute that accounts for the fact that many
academics (and others) learn little bits of aparently useless knowledge
in totally unrelated fields. If a character with this aptitude wants to
make a test against knowing something outside of their normal field,
this is the process:

1) The GM decides if the character has any chance of knowing the piece
   of knowledge at all. This should be based on the given character
   description, and the GM's sense of the appropriateness of it. He may
   decide, for instance that a librarian that has spent his life in a
   standard city library has no chance of knowing anything about 
   something that he wouldn't have encountered in this setting.  

2) An Academia:Trivia test is made to decide if the character does or 
   does not know anything about the subject. This is versus a TN set 
   by the GM based on the above.

3) A success at the above test lets the character make a Academia:Trivia 
   test at -4(-6?) compared to someone who has a directly relavent 
   Academia aptitude. Each raise on the test from 2) gives a +1 to this 
   test.


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comments?  Have i gone over old ground? is it too complex?

cheers,


John