If a character wants to be a mapmaker will he needs to buy ranks in Aesthetics or in Survival?

Survival is the travel skill, and Aesthetics is for non-utilitarian items.

A map maker could make a map with Aesthetics, but it wouldn't be a useful map.

A map maker can make a map with Survival, but it won't be pretty.

One then the other? both pretty AND useful.

So survival to gather the information and then aesthetic to capture it?

Survival (or maybe even Government) to gather the info to make the map. Aesthetics to make a pretty map. Composition to make a map people can actually read (actually to make a travel diary about making the map, but the joke works).

Each would be a different approach too.

😋

Thanks guys.

1 hour ago, Nheko said:

So survival to gather the information and then aesthetic to capture it?

No. Survival to make a useful map. Aesthetics to make that useful map into a pretty one.

I'd require Survival Earth (produce) to make the map in any useful manner, and Aesthetics Air (Refine) to make a map pretty by refining the useful one.. Possibly by recopying it.

Government Air (again refine) or Earth (recall) would be needed to include political data of use, other than basic names.

On 12/13/2018 at 11:41 AM, UnitOmega said:

Survival (or maybe even Government) to gather the info to make the map. Aesthetics to make a pretty map. Composition to make a map people can actually read (actually to make a travel diary about making the map, but the joke works).

Each would be a different approach too.

So what I'm taking away is that every cartographer for AEG, WotC, and now FFG has failed their Composition roll, but some of them rolled pretty well on Aesthetics.

LOL. It seems to me that good maps are rare in Rokugan. In part by Imperial design. I would be somewhat c autious about PCs generating lots of maps. Though apparently the Miya and the Mantis both make lots of them. I a GM wanted to make mapmaing more difficult they could also limit a would be map maker to using the LOWER of their survival and aesthetic skill ranks...

On 12/14/2018 at 4:22 AM, AK_Aramis said:

A map maker could make a map with Aesthetics, but it wouldn't be a useful map.

So, like an official imperial map? 😉

3 hours ago, narukagami said:

So, like an official imperial map? 😉

The official imperial maps are useful. Just probably not for travel purposes.

10 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

The official imperial maps are useful. Just probably not for travel purposes.

Which brings up something VERY important...

Not all maps have the same purpose. Maps can be made for showing political information, for travel information, for weather information, even for other socioeconomic data. If you can rate it per unit area, you can make a map to show it. Some travel maps don't show correct physical relationships, but are more useful for it anyway - Subway, bus, train, and air route maps often do better by not conforming to the physical relationships, but instead having a length by travel time or even just a network with times labeled.

Does the Culture skill have some play here? Per p156, Culture can be used to procure knowledge about (many things but including...) Rokugan's geography.

Maybe it's a good skill to roll if you're making a map of known territory from memory...but not so useful if you're creating a map of a newly explored area? Not sure where to draw the line, frankly. But it does have the advantage (over Survival) of being a Scholar skill, which IMO is the more appropriate skill category for map-making.

like many RPG, the issue is that you cannot "merge" two skills.

ie: maybe a map should be culture & aesthetic.

like a book about sword smiting should be composition & weapon smiting

Looks like the premises of something called “the art of mapmaking”, same as with Investigation

3 minutes ago, Franwax said:

Looks like the premises of something called “the art of mapmaking”, same as with Investigation

most crafts have this issue of needing to be merged with something else.

like, what skill would you use to write a book about sword smiting ? if you don't use composition you so downgrade that skill...

same as for mapmaking, if you don't use a craft skill (aesthetic probably)... then that makes the craft skills very situational and for "art" mostly...

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

like many RPG, the issue is that you cannot "merge" two skills.

ie: maybe a map should be culture & aesthetic.

like a book about sword smiting should be composition & weapon smiting

The crafting rules require two rolls already; adding further refines doesn't seem to be untoward.

Also, I think it's fair to say especially with the nature of opp spends, nothing saying you can't multi-pass a work. Remembering or gathering the knowledge is one roll, probably a downtime activity - actually physically putting pen to paper another roll, probably another downtime activity. Information not as accurate as you hoped? Accidentally spilled ink all over the first version of the map? Time for a new survey, a new draft. Maybe you sit on the map for a few days and use your skill with a new approach to repurpose or refine your original work into a new piece, or just get what you need to start again. Nobody just bangs out a sword in a day, it's not like we're on assembly lines or machined tools right now. The closest you get is classic feudal mass transcription via monks.

On ‎12‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 10:54 PM, AK_Aramis said:

Which brings up something VERY important...

Not all maps have the same purpose. Maps can be made for showing political information, for travel information, for weather information, even for other socioeconomic data. If you can rate it per unit area, you can make a map to show it. Some travel maps don't show correct physical relationships, but are more useful for it anyway - Subway, bus, train, and air route maps often do better by not conforming to the physical relationships, but instead having a length by travel time or even just a network with times labeled.

This. The 'atlas of Rokugan' maps for much of the empire pretty much showed towns as blobs joined by straight lines of imperial highways on a totally featureless green field.

If I'm going to my destination from town-to-town along the highway and I just need to ask the gate guard which gate I need to leave the city from to get to my next destination, they're good enough. And since that's the nicely organised, orderly and easy to manage way the nobility would like merchants and diplomats to travel, the map is good enough.

If you're planning to cut cross country, it's pretty useless, but then if you're cutting cross country across territory you don't know (i.e. not your own lands) then a nefarious intent is kind of implied...