Archery, please! I like archery, but I find chess boring. There’s no point in taking a skill I’ll never use when I could be really awesome at something I actually enjoy.
Wow, everybody’s going for the archery!
I admit, archery certainly has the Errol Flynn-Legolas going for it. But it just never comes up that often. When do you happen to be walking past an archery range and somebody says to you, “Wanna take a shot?” and you just flip a bullseye? But I go places where chess is being played, and I must say it would be deeply cool to have somebody ask me for a casual game and whip a few asses. You can keep a chess board in your pocket, or play computer chess.
I’ll take the chess.
Mastery of Archery please. Although it does make my character conception a bit muddled. Having the proportionate strength and speed of a lemur, AND a master archer? That’s just asking for a retcon.
Still, the damn deer keep killing the peonies, and the chest freezer won’t fill itself. So archery it is. Plus, winning archery bets is a lot cooler than winning chess bets, plus you can win the bet in a minute or two, rather than after an hour of chess playing that nobody except another expert will notice the expertness of. Master archery everyone sees thunk into the bullseye, and proclaims you bowmaster. Chessmaster, not so much.
If nothing else, there’s pattern-recognition, deep logical chains, memory, and attention span, all of which would certainly be helpful. Beyond that, I don’t know. But I seem to recall seeing studies that mental exercise in any intellectual endeavor helps improve mental performance across the board.
And as an aside, you really need to get your smarter sister to hang out here (assuming she doesn’t already).
I know she lurks from time to time.
If I can kill the better chess players from a distance, well, sooner or later I will be as good a chess player as I need to be.
The cops have guns. Guns beat bows. That is what gun and bow mean.
Green Arrow lied to all of us.
How many chess players have police escorts? How many chess tournaments have a heavy security presence? How many cops can shoot me with a pistol from 200 yards away?
My first feeling was to go for 90th percentile in both. But on reading through the thread I think I’m going to go for archery.
Okay then. I’m just gonna take your weapons and book you some holosuite time. You’ve got some … issues … to work through.
You. Take. That. Back.
Damn… superior… chess masters… thinkin’ they’re better…
Anyway, I’ll win bets in archery bars and buy my own bow and arrows, eventually.
If you say so.
:: cancels holosuite reservation, spends money on ice cream ::
I’ve always wanted to try archery, actually, and I do suppose it would quite helpful not to have everybody who’s done it for years laughing at my attempts to pull the string while keeping the arrow pointed in the right direction. Besides, I imagine there’s a good reason they didn’t need a chess player in the fellowship.
After all of the archers eliminate all of the chess players will they start going after each other based on chess skill?
At that point I guess the ones who chose both skills will be taken out first since they’ll have the superior chess skills but won’t be quite as good at archery as the ones who chose just archery.
The culmination of all this will be a world in which the best archer will also be the best chess player. He will have superb archery skills but will be at best mediocre at chess. Odds are that someone in the archer group doesn’t even know chess, in which case he or she will be the only one remaining.
Skald, you’re creating a world without chess! Was that your intent? Have you really gained anything? Assclown! :mad:
This would make a wierd video game.
I don’t think anyone has asked this yet, so: These percentiles are relative to what population? If we’re talking about (say) the entire US population, I suspect you could reach the 90th percentile in archery with only a couple months practice.
:: checks manual for imaginary product ::
In both cases, the population is the set of people who actively pursue the avocationin question.
I find this very interesting. For one of the amulets, you chose a human, from the real world. The other is modeled after a fictional character, with superhuman abilities. Chess at the level of Bobby Fischer is an amazing feat, but it’s not superhuman. Some of Legolas’ feats, both in the books and in the more well-known film series, would very nearly qualify as supernatural. I don’t just mean extra-human, I mean damn near breaking the laws of physics. He consistently puts arrows through the eyes of orcs, in the dark, in a jostling crowd, while on unsteady ground. This is not a human capability. One of the amulets will make you an extraordinary human, the other makes you superhuman.
This makes it a very easy choice from my point of view. I’ll take the archery amulet.
Enjoy,
Steven
:eek: