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Systems & Settings => Rolemaster => RMSS/FRP => Topic started by: arakish on July 23, 2020, 09:58:23 AM

Title: About "Acute Hearing Talent"
Post by: arakish on July 23, 2020, 09:58:23 AM
In response to this posting (http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=19132.0)...

In actuality, Hyper-Acute Hearing (which I DO possess naturally) needs to be re-evaluated.

In true actual reality, Hyper-Acute Hearing makes sounds sound closer than they actually are.  And this can be a rather severe annoyance.  Such as, hearing a noise that is in reality 20 meters away, but I hear the sound being only 2 meters away, and with me suffering Complex-PTSD (https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/essentials/complex_ptsd.asp), such noises will set of my rather exaggerated "startle" response.

Although having positive modifiers are perhaps the only way to represent any "hyper-acute" sense, for hearing, it works much, much differently.  For vision, you can see objects farther away, but you still "see" those objects at the actual distance.

Hyper-Acute Hearing should also have a "distance" factor added into it.  My problem is with a new house, new yard, new ..., I ain't been pondering this issue.  As aforementioned, Hyper-Acute Hearing can be rather annoying.  I mean, a sound that is 20 meters away, and sets off my exaggerated startle response (Complex-PTSD) because it sounds only 2 meters away.  For me, this is so damned annoying, sometimes I wear ear-plugs just to combat this issue while working outside.

Think Critically about this.

rmfr
Title: Re: About "Acute Hearing Talent"
Post by: RandalThor on July 23, 2020, 09:03:40 PM
Well, in your case there seems to be another character trait affecting the acute hearing trait. In GURPS rules that would be a cost for the Acute Hearing, and a point gain for the PTSD.

I think the thing to determine before all of this is figuring out how detailed/realistic do you want this stuff to be. If I remember correctly, in RM2 all of the "talents" came with a corresponding defect. Personally I am not a fan of that. I like the division between these things in RMSS/FRP: Talents & Flaws. You pick a talent and it works for you in a positive manner, it is an asset. When you choose a flaw, it is a negative trait that makes certain things more difficult to do and/or deal with. But, it should be fairly easy to do if you do like that. So for something like an improved sense, their positive modifier could work as a negative in specific situations (such as trying to resist blinding for bright/sudden flashes for someone with excellent night/low-light vision).

Also, you have to think of how exhaustive do you want the talents/flaws lists to be. If you go for the full gamut of possible human talents you will have a list that is longer than the "bloated" skill list of Rolemaster SS/FRP. Especially if you add in the different possible levels of each talent.

I can totally see where that hyper-acute hearing could cause some problems. Its like the audio version of "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." In Shadowrun, there is a thing called Selective Hearing - it is gained as either cyberware, bioware, or an adept power - that allows the character to not only hear something better, but to pin-point where it is coming from. They can even zero-in on a specific conversation in a place like a bar or diner. (Though, there is a roll to see how well they do, of course.) But I assume, yours doesn't work quite that way.  ;D
Title: Re: About "Acute Hearing Talent"
Post by: arakish on July 30, 2020, 07:07:18 PM
Well, in your case there seems to be another character trait affecting the acute hearing trait. In GURPS rules that would be a cost for the Acute Hearing, and a point gain for the PTSD.

Yep.  But same can be done in RMU with "Trauma" under Other Flaws (perhaps only in my Talent Companion).  I allow players to purchase their Talents/Flaws as desired.  As I am always saying, I prefer players who are going to play to have the characters they want to play.  I have been working on mine own version of the Talent Companion, but it is for my personal use since I could not get permission to publish it since it does use the talents in ICE products.  Although people here and my players have added quite many more talents/flaws, it still uses the ICE talents/flaws.

So for something like an improved sense, their positive modifier could work as a negative in specific situations (such as trying to resist blinding for bright/sudden flashes for someone with excellent night/low-light vision).

That is also something I have always included with any hyper-acute sense.  They all have their advans and disads.

Also, you have to think of how exhaustive do you want the talents/flaws lists to be. If you go for the full gamut of possible human talents you will have a list that is longer than the "bloated" skill list of Rolemaster SS/FRP. Especially if you add in the different possible levels of each talent.

"Ain't that the g__ d___ed truth," said Redd in Shawshank Redemption.

Its like the audio version of "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

ROFLMAOWF

That is definitely one way I never thought of looking at it...

In Shadowrun, there is a thing called Selective Hearing - it is gained as either cyberware, bioware, or an adept power - that allows the character to not only hear something better, but to pin-point where it is coming from. They can even zero-in on a specific conversation in a place like a bar or diner. (Though, there is a roll to see how well they do, of course.) But I assume, yours doesn't work quite that way.  ;D

Actually, if I focus my hearing, yes, I can hear a conversation across the room, providing it is fairly quiet.  Another point for hyper-acute hearing is that it can also make it exceptionally difficult to hear a person talking to you only 1m away.  It all depends upon how much "background noise" there is.  Sometimes called "white noise."  The more background noise, and NOT necessarily loud, the more difficult it is to focus on a person speaking only 1m away.  In a normal speaking voice of course.

More things hyper-acute hearing can allow.  A person's frequency range also increases.  Normally, persons hear sounds in the 2Hz to 2kHz range.  My range is much greater, being able to hear (AND FEEL!!) dog whistles and sub-sonic frequencies (below 1Hz, milli- and micro-).  As I was growing up on the US east coast, I would always hear this "peal of thunder" go across the sky, yet there were absolutely no clouds in the skies.  It was not until my second hearing test the US Navy did that I found out what I was actually hearing were earth tremors most everyone else could not hear and could not feel, mostly in the 1 to 2.5 Moment Magnitude Scale.  And this is ALWAYS normal with person having hyper-acute hearing.

However, you did sum it up:
Also, you have to think of how exhaustive do you want the talents/flaws lists to be. If you go for the full gamut of possible human talents you will have a list that is longer than the "bloated" skill list of Rolemaster SS/FRP. Especially if you add in the different possible levels of each talent.

With hyper-acute (HA) vision, as I said, you can "see objects" further away than normal, but you still see them that far away.  In other words, HA vision is not telescopic nor microscopic like HA hearing can be.  As said, you actually hear the sounds "closer" than they actually are.

The other HA senses I have had no experience with.  Thus, I ain't no advice to give.

O! and there are 14 senses:

How Many Senses?
How many senses do humans possess?  Most will list the obvious five: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell.  In actuality, we have 14 senses.  Here is the list followed by definitions: Visual, Auditory, Gustatory, Olfactory, Tactility, Balance, Temperature, Kinesthetic, Pain, Time, Direction, Haptic, Proprioception, and Mechanoreception.

The Fourteen Senses
Visual (sight) – Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by the objects in the environment.  The resulting perception is also known as visual perception, eyesight, sight, or vision (adjectival form: visual, optical, or ocular).  The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, and are the focus of much research in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and molecular biology, collectively referred to as vision science.

Auditory (hearing) – Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds by detecting vibrations, changes in the pressure of the surrounding medium through time, through an organ such as the ear.  The academic field concerned with hearing is auditory science.

Gustatory (taste) – Gustatory perception, or gustation is one of the five traditional senses that belongs to the gustatory system.  Taste is the sensation produced when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, mostly on the tongue.  Taste, along with smell (olfaction) and trigeminal nerve stimulation (registering texture, pain, and temperature), determines flavors of food or other substances.  Humans have taste receptors on taste buds (gustatory calyculi) and other areas including the upper surface of the tongue and the epiglottis.  The gustatory cortex is responsible for the perception of taste.

Olfactory (smell) – Olfaction is a chemoreception that forms the sense of smell.  Olfaction has many purposes, such as the detection of hazards, pheromones, and food.  It integrates with other senses to form the sense of flavor.  Olfaction occurs when odorants bind to specific sites on olfactory receptors located in the nasal cavity.  Glomeruli aggregate signals from these receptors and transmit them to the olfactory bulb, where the sensory input will start to interact with parts of the brain responsible for smell identification, memory, and emotion.  Often, land organisms will have separate olfaction systems for smell and taste (orthonasal smell and retronasal smell), but water-dwelling organisms usually have only one system.

Tactility (touch) –  The somatosensory system is a part of the sensory nervous system.  The somatosensory system is a complex system of sensory neurons and pathways that responds to changes at the surface or inside the body.  The axons (as afferent nerve fibers), of sensory neurons connect with, or respond to, various receptor cells.  These sensory receptor cells are activated by different stimuli such as heat and nociception, giving a functional name to the responding sensory neuron, such as a thermoreceptor which carries information about temperature changes.  Other types include mechanoreceptors, chemoreceptors, and nociceptors and they send signals along a sensory nerve to the spinal cord where they may be processed by other sensory neurons and then relayed to the brain for further processing.  Sensory receptors are found all over the body including the skin, epithelial tissues, muscles, bones and joints, internal organs, and the cardiovascular system.  Somatic senses are sometimes referred to as somesthetic senses, with the understanding that somesthesis includes the sense of touch, proprioception (sense of position and movement), and (depending on usage) haptic perception.  The mapping of the body surfaces in the brain is called somatotopy.  In the cortex, it is also referred to as the cortical homunculus.  This brain-surface (“cortical”) map is not immutable, however.  Dramatic shifts can occur in response to stroke or injury.

Balance – The sense of balance, or equilibrioception, is one of the physiological senses related to balance.  It helps prevent humans and animals from falling over when standing or moving.  Balance is the result of a number of body systems working together: the eyes (visual system), ears (vestibular system) and the body's sense of where it is in space (proprioception) ideally need to be intact.  The vestibular system, the region of the inner ear where three semicircular canals converge, works with the visual system to keep objects in focus when the head is moving.  This is called the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR).  The balance system works with the visual and skeletal systems (the muscles and joints and their sensors) to maintain orientation or balance.  Visual signals sent to the brain about the body's position in relation to its surroundings are processed by the brain and compared to information from the vestibular, visual and skeletal systems.

Temperature – Thermoception or thermoreception is the sense by which an organism perceives temperature, or more accurately, temperature differences inferred from heat flux.  The details of how temperature receptors work are still being investigated.  Ciliopathy is associated with decreased ability to sense heat, thus cilia may aid in the process.  Transient receptor potential channels (TRP channels) are believed to play a role in many species in sensation of hot, cold, and pain.  Mammals have at least two types of sensor: those that detect heat (i.e., temperatures above body temperature) and those that detect cold (i.e. temperatures below body temperature).

Kinesthetic (movement) – The brain integrates information from proprioception and from the vestibular system into its overall sense of body position, movement, and acceleration. The word kinesthesia or kinæsthesia (kinesthetic sense) strictly means movement sense, but has been used inconsistently to refer either to proprioception alone or to the brain's integration of proprioceptive and vestibular inputs.

Pain – Nociception (also nocioception or nociperception, from Latin nocere “to harm or hurt”) is the sensory nervous system’s response to certain harmful or potentially harmful stimuli.  In nociception, intense chemical (e.g., chili powder in the eyes), mechanical (e.g., cutting, crushing), or thermal (heat and cold) stimulation of sensory nerve cells called nociceptors produces a signal that travels along a chain of nerve fibers via the spinal cord to the brain.  Nociception triggers a variety of physiological and behavioral responses and usually results in a subjective experience of pain in sentient beings.

Time – Time perception is a field of study within psychology, cognitive linguistics and neuroscience that refers to the subjective experience, or sense, of time, which is measured by someone's own perception of the duration of the indefinite and unfolding of events.  The perceived time interval between two successive events is referred to as perceived duration.  Though directly experiencing or understanding another person’s perception of time is not possible, such a perception can be objectively studied and inferred through a number of scientific experiments.  Time perception is a construction of the sapient brain, but one that is manipulable and distortable under certain circumstances.  These temporal illusions help to expose the underlying neural mechanisms of time perception.  In other words time can be perceived or understood as Subjective Time & Objective Time.

Direction – Sense of direction is the ability to know one’s location and perform wayfinding.  It is related to cognitive maps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_map), spatial awareness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_awareness), and spatial cognition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_cognition).  Sense of direction can be impaired by brain damage, such as in the case of topographical disorientation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographical_disorientation).

Haptic (spatial location) – The sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to the body by use of the body.  Gibson and others further emphasized what Weber had realized in 1851: the close link between haptic perception and body movement, and that haptic perception is active exploration.

Proprioception (position) – Proprioception, from Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own,” “individual,” and capio, capere, to take or grasp, is the sense of the relative position of one’s own parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.

Mechanoreception (vibration) – Vibratory sensation, or mechanoreception, is the sense whereby mechanical oscillations are detectable through skin and bone, is usually generated by mechanoreceptors such as Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel disk receptors, and tactile corpuscles.  All three of these receptors stimulate an action potential in afferent nerves (sensory neurons) found in various layers of the skin and body.  The afferent neuron travels to the spinal column and then up to the brain where the information is processed.

Y'awl have fun now ya hear.

rmfr
Title: Re: About "Acute Hearing Talent"
Post by: RandalThor on July 30, 2020, 08:21:41 PM
I have "artillery ears." (I came by them normally, i.e. because I was an artilleryman.) It's hard for me to hear things if there is a lot of background noise, but otherwise it is fine. Which is why I sometimes have issues with hearing dialog in movies and TV shows with lots of loud special effects. Funny enough (though there is likely a very common scientific explanation for it) I can still hear my name, even if it is spoken in a regular speaking voice while a crowd roars around me.

I will definitely be copying that list of senses. Thanks.