I've got the Gathering Storm. Picked it up a couple days ago. The adventure looks pretty good, and it's got lots of great little bits.

My favorite part is the "Creative Thinking" talent. That is, assuming it works the way I think it does. It's a Focus talent that reads:

• "Exhaust this tlent to choose and equip a new talent that you possess of any type in this slot; that talent remains equipped until Creative Thinking recharges."

There's two ways to parse that statement. One is "pick a talent of any type and put it in this slot". The other would be "pick a talent of any of the types that fit in this slot, and put it in this slot". I'm guessing the former interpretation is the correct one, but it could have been phrased better. I'm not 100% certain this is what they meant for it to do, more like 98% certain. I may be reading things into it based on my desire to not have previously purchased talents be rendered unusable.

Interpreting it the first way, this lets you use any talent you have. So if you used to be a Soldier and now you're a Student, you can exhaust this Focus talent to temporarily use one of your old Tactics or Reputation talents. I'm pretty happy with that as a solution to the "lost talent slot" conundrum that can come from career changes.

So, the question is, do you agree or disagree with my interpretation of the talent?

Is there any reason NOT to let PCs use Creative Thinking to access previous talents of other types? The only good argument I can think of is that it makes careers with Focus slots much better advanced choices for the long-term characters. That's not necessarily a problem, but it is a little weird. Before this came along, you wanted to pick secondary careers that matched your original slots. Now, you want ones with the same slots or Focus.

Well... if it didn't allow you to temporarily slot in a talent of a different type, what would be the point of it?

As written, you can slot a talent of any type.

There's no real reason to interpret it any other way since a) the instructions don't reference the type of talent slot Creative Thinking is already occupying, and b) as Fnord pointed out but did not elaborate on, normally you can swap a talent that isn't recharging out with another of the same type as a maneuver anyways.

I suppose you could interpret the card as saving you the maneuver, but at that point you are both stretching the wording of the talent and watering down its effects to an almost useless level.

And as for it making characters with Focus slots better than others... well, at least for the beginning of my game I plan to have a rule that once one person has taken a card (action, talent, whatever) it's no longer available to be selected by others. Granted that's not a standard, official rule, but I like the idea of requiring character differentiation. But that's an issue for another thread.

fnord3125 said:

I play the same way, and I've heard from others who do as well; it seems like it isn't uncommon to require the "only-one-of-anything" rule.

Or two, in the case of the improved defences

Haggard said:

Thank you for being my sanity test. Sounds like you agree with me about the most likely interpretation of how the card is supposed to work.

I have Creative Thinking and I socket it in to the Focus slot on our Intrepid Explorers party card.

One of the other players, who doesn't have a Focus slot on his Career, exhausts the Creative Thinking card. Does he pick one of his talents, or one of mine, to put with it? I'd think he picks one of his.

So he puts one of his Tactics talents in the slot, or maybe even a Trick. Either way, it now sits in play until the Creative Thinking is done recharging. (And per the rules talents on the Party cards only refresh when we spend fortune points on them)

Kinda weird, huh?

The whole idea of socketing talents of the party sheet is a bit wierd, but we explain it away as one or more of the party (depending on whose talents are socketed) taking the lead in organising and controlling the party.

That way when you socket you talent to the party sheet you are effectively giving orders at the appropriate time to ensure the party act well in unison (that's why everyone gets to benefit from your talent). You're limited to socketing a few talents at a time (governed by sockets on the card), because if everyone was shouting and giving orders, everyone would get confused so you need a clearly defined leadership structure with only a few leaders at any one time.

When you use that kind of fluff to explain away the mechanics then the situation you bring up isn't that weird....

The leader of the party uses their creative thinking to realise that characters X's knowledge of tactics suits this situation perfectly and shouts a quick order for everyone to listen to character X's instructions and tell's character X to lead the group out using one of the old formations he learned while in the town militia (or whatever..).

Having to spend fortune to recharge creative thinking is a little bit meta gamey, but that's true regardless of which card is socketed to the party sheet.

Good points all around. Thanks for your help and input, folks.