Jury Rigging versus Tinkering

[jmanski]

I am running a game for my son and his friend. They Tech heavy scavengers. My son, ever searching to push the boundaries, has his character jury-rigging and tinkering with everything.

This lead to a discussion: Jury Rig is documented (although I tweaked it a bit). But Tinkering....

I'm leaning toward making Tinkering a Technical skill in the vein of Jury Rig but with some differences, notably Tinkering will take more time and will be somewhat less dangerous. We all know that Jury Rig is slapping duct tape and a bit of junk onto whatever you need in a few minutes, but Tinkering seems to be something one does in the down time, spending more time mulling over the item. The two are definitely related, but I see them as separate enough to warrant two different approaches.

Has anyone else had this come up before?
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[Kytross]

In game, what is the stat affect of tinkering? What is he attempting to do to the items?

[garhkal]

To me, they are the same thing.. Jury rigging is what 'tinkerer's call tinkering..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Dredwulf60]

Jury Rigging is about making something that is broken work using whatever is available and any method that works. Meant to be temporary.
The key being to make it work almost as well as it did before it was broke.

Tinkering is modifying something to squeeze the most performance out of it or customize it out of its normal specifications using personal fabrication know-how.
The key being to make it work better than it did, even though there will be some trade-offs.

I am aware this contradicts the RAW Jury Rigging definition and effects, but that's the distinction *I* would house rule between Jury Rigging and Tinkering.

[MrNexx]

[jmanski]

Those were kind of my thoughts as well. I figure I'll simply lower the difficulty for tinkering since it is taking more time. I may even make the failures less spectacular, but then again I may not

Thanks for the input. I'll let you all know how it goes as we workshop it.
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[CRMcNeill]

Late to the party, but my first impression is that "tinkering" is more along the lines of the 1E version of improving ships, where characters spend CP to improve ships instead of credits. It is, perhaps, overly simplistic, but it's a good representation of time spent between missions invested in the care and feeding of a ship or other device.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[jmanski]

Ok, after a few sessions I have done some workshopping and am now mostly happy with the result.

Jury-rigging is RAW. It is something you do hastily or with poor materials at hand (or both).

Tinkering is basically jury-rigging, just more cautiously. I lower the difficulty by 1-2 levels but use the jury-rigging rules. This tends to create a false sense of security (with hilarious results).

My son has taken to tinkering whatever he can get his hands on. So much so I had to buy a notebook to keep track

So far: a rifle has exploded, a pistol fizzled, and a pistol fried a power pack. There are more to come....
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[Mamatried]

I see it as Jury rig is MAKING, and then tinkering is to me MANIPULATING.

I juryrigged this blaster together, from the barrel of a sporting rifle and the trigger and grip from a heavy balster pistol, mixed with bits found here and there, I got this working, but I can not do any tinkering on it.

I have this old blaster, I have tinkered with it, and managed to boost the damage output, reduce the weight some and I put on some cool looking wooden grips.

I can and I have imporived this blaster through tinkering


So to me jusry rigging is making most often very tempirary items or fixes that you do not have the right parts for.

tinkering to me is maipulating the item you have through addinf parts, removing anfd rpelacing them, very similar only that the jury rigging creates a "blaster" while tinering allows you modify your Blaster

[Argentsaber]

[jmanski]

[Totally Not An ISB Agent]

[Whill]

[KageRyu]

I have often used a skill called Jury Rig as a way out of the penalty for lacking proper tools and parts on a particular technical skill check. The way I do this is to set a difficulty for the Jury Rig skill Check based on readily available materials to the player and what is actually needed and how far apart they are. If the Player could then pass the skill check, the penalty to the actual repair skill for lacking proper components would then be ignored. To make things really interesting I allowed for Critical Success or Fumbles here to lead to unique results - for example a fumble may result in the repair seeming to work until some particularly critical moment when it doesn't just fail but fails in a spectacular way causing fresh problems with other systems. Where as a critical success (double the difficulty or more) produces some bonus effect that was unplanned.

Example:
In a D6 game I was running a pilot of a strider (like an AT-ST) had suffered a critical hit knocking out the hydraulics (couldn't move). Obviously there was no spare tanker of hydraulics nearby, or available hoses and clamps. The battle was in an urban center, with a small grocery store across the street. I set a Moderate difficulty, and when the player passed I decided he figured he could patch the hoses with Duct tape (a common field repair) and might be able to use vegetable oil as a substitute for the hydraulics fluid in a pinch. On the downside when it heated up his strider smelled like a lunch wagon serving fries.

I have felt Skills like this are a good way to allow a character to use knowledge the player may not have but the character should.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Mamatried]

I see it this way:

Jury Rig: making a low quality item for limited use
Tinkering: impriving the knife I already have

so I jury rig a knife...from some metal and leather....it is a very low quality knife, and will most likely only have a durability of a few tasks.

I tinker with my knife, making it better for me, like adjusting the handle so it fits me better.
If this was a stiletto I could tinker with the mechanism have it shoot straigt out rather than "fold out and in place"

so to me tinkering is the manipulations of an already created item, and jury rigging is to craft a in the moment item.


I mean I jury rig a knife in the filed from wreackage, I don't tineker it