"The sumotori train in fighting without weapons, but it is a way of entertaining the nobles. I would not wish to fight one, however. Most bushi use their swords, and those who are not hope one day to be samurai."
You don't really have much in the way of conversations beyond what is on the page, because your command of the language is so limited that when you can communicate it all gets written down.
You will improve; it will take time.
--M. J. Young
"That's odd. Most of my martial art style is unarmed.
Maybe if you watch me preform my style, you could tell where it is from"
He indicates that he does not know enough about fighting styles to know one from another, other than that sumotori fight without weapons and no one else does.
--M. J. Young
there goes my plan to convince him I'm not a Bushi. I'll just wait until I can speak Japanese like a native
"That's interesting...I would like to continue training. Can I use the first two hours after sunrise to train?"
OOC: I'm not going to be doing much besides learning Japanese, helping the old man,
practicing my style, and running. Can we do a training montage to the point where I have low professional Japanese?
That's a long montage.Can we do a training montage to the point where I have low professional Japanese?
If we assume that your teacher makes half his teaching rolls and never botches, you'll improve by two intensities every seventy-five days. You are currently at 1@3, so we're looking at 1@5, 1@7, 1@9, 2@1--300 days of practice to reach low professional level. Also, that last bump from 1@10 to 2@1 requires intensifying the training program--doubling it in two ways. That's not a problem, but it is something I will need to consider.
If we're going to fast forward through ten months, we need to give a lot more thought to what happens in those ten months. I would hate to put it all on a GE roll and get a really bad roll which has your teacher dying and you being blamed for his death (unlikely as that is, I keep these things in mind). I also would rather not have us talking about what you would have done when winter came after we've skipped it.
The other "cost" of acceleration is that things that are obvious in slow play--like whether you're learning herbalism or improving your cooking skill--are lost in the rush.
So let's pick up the pace but not as fast as that. We'll take it in twenty-five day increments and assume that we're starting in the equivalent of mid-July. (After twenty-five days your teacher rolls his teaching skill check; if he succeeds you advance one intensity; if he fails you do not, but twenty-five days later you do so without his roll. If he botches, you don't advance and you don't automatically advance in twenty-five more days, but he will get a roll at that time.)
So you are learning Japanese, practicing your martial arts style, and running for cardiovascular exercise. He does not have rice paddies and mostly sees patients, either who come to him or who ask him to come to them. What else will you be doing in what remains of July into early/mid August?
--M. J. Young
I'm going to try to learn the old man's herbal medicine and do some strength training also.
The strength training is going to consist of a lot of push-ups and sit-ups, and whatever I can find to do weight training with.
You have rocks and firewood. You get some of your exercise with the firewood.
By mid-August you are starting to settle in as an assistant to the herbalist, finding and compounding medicines under his direction, and beginning to understand what treatments are needed.
Your other training and practice is going well.
I will be tracking events in twenty-five day intervals; post to let me know you're still with me, and include anything you want to add or do during that time.
--M. J. Young
I'm here.
...
Nothing to add.
Summer is drawing to a close, and the trees in the heights are starting to turn, although the valleys below are still green.
Your Japanese is improving, as are your medical skills. The others are a slow effort, as you have no guidance in them, but you feel you are benefiting from the work.
--M. J. Young
Does the old man get his herb from his garden or does he search for them in the forest?
In ether case I want to help and learn how to do it.
The herb are a mix of home-grown for the most common and foraged for the more challenging. He does show you how to identify what he needs, and tries to help you learn the names of each as part of your training.
Your skill in diagnosis and treatment is improving markedly; your other skills not so fast, but still improving.
Autumn has definitely arrived, as the tinge in the leaves spreads down the slopes into the valley and the heights are heading toward brilliant colors.
--M. J. Young
I'm here.
...
Let's continue.
In my spare time I ask the old man if he has heard about anyone using ki to heal or do other thing. What he has heard about Onmyodo (Japanese style magic) and the Onmyoji (court magicians).
I'm trying to find out if he has heard about anybody using something that looks like magic.
He laughs at your ideas about magical or ki healings, or about any magic at all. It is all trickery, he says, like the thief who cuts your coin string and quietly catches your money in his sleeve.
The weather stays fairly mild, although the color is sweeping across the valley by now and it is not only the nights that are a bit chill. The firewood stockpile is growing as the old man gathers more and stacks it alongside the hut. He also patches the walls with clay-like mud from the stream from which you get your water.
Your martial arts training is paying off; you've definitely improved.
I had been tracking training with the bo stick and the tonfa, but I note that neither of those weapons appears on your equipment list. I see that a bo stick is easily obtained, but I'm not certain of the tonfa, and so I thought I'd better ask whether you were or were not practicing these skills with the others.
--M. J. Young
As you said, a bo stick is easy to find, so I will train with it.
For the tonfa, I would have to find a tree with two limbs that are at right angles to the trunk and carve them into the correct shape.
if I did that, I practice with the tonfas I made,
Otherwise I ignore them.
It took me a moment to figure out why you needed to find one tree with to limbs at right angles to the trunk, given that the weapon looks like this, but then it struck me that you need to make two; but then, you probably can do that by finding two similar trees. Or have I misunderstood?
It's certainly within the realm of possibility that you might find such trees, assuming you look; and you could then carve them into the desired shape, assuming you have the tool and the skill. I see a listing for a Bowie knife which could be used for whittling/carving; I don't see a skill listed for use of it, but that could be an oversight.
Should I start rolling dice for your chance to find such trees, and if so what skill ability level do you think you have with the knife?
--M. J. Young
start rolling.
I would say I have an average amateur skill level.
Sorry. Within several miles of the hut there's mostly old timber, saplings regrowing from a fire, and stands of bamboo--no trees which present with the kind of branch structure you're seeking. Nothing like that is in the firewood, either.
Any other ideas on that count?
--M. J. Young
I'll ignore the tonfa training for now.
Instead I'll find or make a bo staff and continue training.
The trees are now bare at your elevation, and you've had a few flurries. Your host has brought in the rest of his herbs and vegetables, dried as much as he can, and built a substantial pile of firewood. You can see color in the valley below, but most of the fields and rice paddies are starting to appear barren as well. Wagon trains have been moving through the pass, with armed soldier escorts. The herbalist ignores these, and they pay him no attention.
You show marked improvement in your diagnostic skills, despite the fact that patients are coming less frequently.
--M. J. Young
Let's continue.
You've had mild weather; the herbalist comments on it. There have been a few flurries and some light rains, but in the main it's remained autumnal, not wintry, even in your mountain pass. The wagon trains have stopped; apparently the harvest is in for the present.
You continue working on everything, showing improvement in your Japanese and your Medical Treatment skills.
--M. J. Young
Let's keep rolling.
Snow settles into the pass; traffic ceases. You could trudge through, or ride a horse, but a wagon would not make it. Patients stop coming, and there's not really any way to hunt for medicine, but the herbalist continues your instruction in caring for the medicines and the patients, and in the language.
Running in the snow is prohibitive, as it is over a foot deep in most places, over two in some; the best you can manage is a loop around the house, which helps tamp down the snow near the woodpile. Still, you manage to maintain your exercise program. Although you're using more firewood, the herbalist says that thus far the winter is mild and if it holds you will have more than enough to reach spring.
You continue your training as well. The days are short, but there is less to do. Mostly meals are rice with dried herbs. You melt snow for water more often than drawing it from the stream, but it is sufficient.
--M. J. Young
Let's continue.
The snow deepens as winter closes the pass. Your running is much more difficult, and your feet are always soaked and chilled when you return. The herbalist goes outside only for firewood and water, and is concerned that you are going to make yourself sick from the cold and wet.
You continue improving your medical treatment, partly in treating your own chills.
Your back kick, power front kick, and roundhouse kick have improved as much as they are going to under your present training program; you'll have to find ways to train them more strenuously if you expect the practice to do more than maintain your current level of ability in them.
--M. J. Young
I going to take an break from gainful physical exercise until the snow clears out.
During this break I will try to construct a punching bag. Does the old man have a large section of canvas or some other tough cloth?
By "gainful physical exercise", does that include your martial arts practice as well?
Your host has very little that is not in use for something; the only heavy cloths he has are the blankets that are keeping you (plural) warm at night.
--M. J. Young
OOC: Yes, It includes my martial arts practice.
Let's continue.
Snow continues to keep the pass closed, but it does not prevent you from getting outside to bring in water and firewood. The winter is passing.
Your diagnostic skills and language skills continue showing improvement.
--M. J. Young
Let continue
The snow comes down hard over the next month; when you can get to the woodpile, you bring in extra wood, which is now being dried and stored in the cramped hut. The roof is sagging under the weight of the heavy snows, but the herbalist is confident that it will hold.
You improve in your treatment skills.
--M. J. Young
Let continue
You're snowed in for a couple weeks, but it starts to melt, crocuses begin to appear through the white, and then for a couple days the road is a streambed from the melt from higher up and the world turns brown with patches of white here and there and bits of green starting to flourish on branches and on the ground. It's pretty muddy in most places, but you manage. Rains come every few days, washing away the snow and increasing the water flow. The stream is muddy, and you have to draw water long enough in advance of the need to let it settle for a few hours to get the silt out of it, and then ladle it off carefully so as not to stir it afresh.
Your diagnostic and linguistic abilities continue to improve.
--M. J. Young
I'm restarting my training program.
Is doubling the number of kicks and throwing the kicks at twice the speed count as
double doubled training?
That's a good shot at it, but the problem there is that I can only allow one "doubling" that has no play effect. That is, let's assume you're working on the kick about three and a half hours a week, when you combine all your sessions. Now you want to double the speed of the kicks, which means you'll do them faster but still within the three and a half hours, and you want to double the number, which means you'll do more but still within the three and a half hours; and at some level I'm thinking that the only way you can do twice as many kicks in the same time is by doing them twice as fast, so you've really only doubled one thing. Still, even if you were to say that you were going to do twice as many in that time and wear ankle weights, I wouldn't have a tangible effect on the character.
The easiest and most obvious thing to double is the practice time. Given that there is skill overlap (you practice the style and the kicks as part of the same session, and thus you practice longer than you would for any one skill but not as long as you would for all the skills individually) you wouldn't have to add the base time (sixty hours in one hundred days) for each kick, but a reasonable increase based on the amount of overlap--in this case, since they're all kicks, I could see an increase of about half the time for each, a total of ninety hours over one hundred days for the three kicks.
Of course, we've not really defined how much time you have put into practice for the martial arts. Let me do a bit of open math here to get something of an understanding of how much you're practicing. Here are the skills, with their current skill ability levels, and the number of hours over one hundred days you would be expected to spend working on them to benefit; then we'll find a formula to total them and break them down to your weekly practice:
- 1@7 Aggressive Running Frontal Power Boost B3@10 uses one attack RS=+DC to next forward kick-based attack (Power Front Kick), on failure fall for damaging damage: 60
- 1@7 Aggressive Running Side Slide B3@10 uses one attack +RS=SM to next side-arc kick-based attack (Side Kick, Flip Kick): 60
- 2@3 Eli's Style B7@1 Fast Aggressive Weapon-utilizing style, kick- and punch-based, RF2, +10 Att SM +10 Att Dam Mod: 120
- 2@3 Back Kick B7@1 basic attack on opponent directly behind: 120
- 1@5 Bo Stick B7@1 RF1 damaging two-handed: 60
- 1@7 Elbow Strike B7@3 base dangerous attack at close range RF1 -10SM: 60
- 1@10 Back Kick B7@3 base dangerous RF1 -10SM, +10 opponent attack SM: 60 to now, 120 to continue
- 1@10 Power Front Kick B7@3 base damaging -10SM: 60 to now, 120 to continue
- 1@7 Flying Side Kick B7@3 base dangerous RF1 -10SM, on failure lose balance and forfeit next attack: 60 to now, 120 to continue
- 1@10 Roundhouse Kick B7@3 base damaging RF1 -10SM: 60 to now, 120 to continue
To double the time spent on these three kicks, you would have to add almost an hour a day to this. I'll also note that your load will increase again when other skills reach that maximum amateur line (1@10), including the work you're doing in Japanese and herbalism.
Thoughts?
--M. J. Young
I would probably double the time spent on those kicks and try to do the kicks twice as fast.
Let's see how much time I'm spending on training
4.7 martial arts practice
~1 extra kicking practice
1.25 strength and stamina training
1.25 herbalism and Japanese training
0.25 focused Japanese training
____________________________________
8.45 Hours Total
That's an acceptable amount. I think we can add the extra time for professional herbalism and Japanese easily.
What else would constitute a significant doubling?
The only other thing that I could think of would be to spend resources to build something to aid with training
That's an excellent question.
Speaking generally, the first thing that comes to mind is the consumption of expendable resources which have to be replaced. If you're going to go through twice as many bullets or arrows, or break twice as many boards, those are acceptable.
In some cases, ramping up the difficulty is a good choice--doing the tightrope practice blindfolded. (That doesn't work for martial arts, though, because fighting blind is a martial arts skill and if you're not fighting an opponent the blindfold isn't that restrictive.)
In some cases, embracing risk can be part of it. If you're practicing rock climbing, I would take free climbing as harder than using pitons and lines, provided there's a roll for whether you fall and suffer injury (and for how severe the injury might be--we have a bod botch injury table that's useful for everything from "amazingly unhurt" to "completely demolished yourself to zygote").
Similarly, success at the use of another skill could be a way of increasing the difficulty of practice, if they're reasonably correlated: I have to practice as if in a weightless environment, so unless I have a weightless environment available, I have to levitate. (If you do have a weightless environment available, or conversely one in which you can increase gravity, that might work as a limitation given that you can only practice there.)
The point is that there has to be some impact on what else your character can do based on the fact that he's doing this. I could see giving "doubled" (or perhaps under the right circumstances "tripled") status for practicing martial arts while balanced on a pedestal or jungle gym, provided it means you have to be "home" to practice and thus are limited in your travels elsewhere.
See, if you say simply "I'm going to strap weights to my arms and legs and do twice as many kicks in the same amount of time," I can see that this would be a double doubled training program, but really it hasn't changed anything substantial unless I penalize you somewhere for it (like, this is so exhausting that you have to reduce other physical activity to maintain it).
So you're going to add an extra hour of kicking practice and try to do the kicks twice as fast, with the result that you are doing four times as many kicks during each practice session. Does that sound right to you?
--M. J. Young
Yes, that is correct.
The weather breaks and clears, and in less than a week you have gone from winter to spring. On warm days, of which there are quite a few, your host opens the cottage to the fresh air. Traffic through the pass resumes, and patients start arriving again. This means the diet improves, as they bring more than rice for his care. You also get more hands-on practice in the care of patients.
Your Japanese is improving. Your mentor says that he would like to see you increase the time you spend on this, and also to learn the letters. He does not have much paper, but you can use charred sticks from the fire to write on stones from the pass.
You also resume your physical workout, pushing harder now.
--M. J. Young
let's continue