The Taste Test, How the hell should it work? Options

[hyzmarca]

Taste: Perhaps the most important of all human senses. Without taste, no one would ever buy expensive gourmet foods and we'd all be eating cheap cardboard-tasting crap, putting millions of professional chefs into the poorhouse and destroying the global economy.


Taste is also important to an investigator. I have been watching Due South, the television series about a Mountie who came to Chicago on the trail of his father's killers and, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture he remained, attached as liaison with the Canadian Consulate. (Note that there were actually two Due South series, one Canadian/American co-production co-starring David Marciano and a Canadian revival a year later with David Marciano replaced by Callum Keith Rennie and containing a great deal more homoerotic subtext)
One important thing about Benton Fraser, RCMP is that, being a consummate Mountie, he tastes things. He tastes mud, he tastes used chewing gum, he tastes scat, he tastes all sorts of things. And by tasting, he obtains valuable insight. Tastes can be clues. We can learn much from tasting things.

And, of course, we can't forget the classic police drug identification trick, lick the finger, dip the finger in the white powder, and taste what sticks to the finger.

Yet, there aren't really any rules for tasting stuff. We know that taste tests are perception tests, of course, but beyond that, what exactly? There don't seem to be any taste modifiers or taste thresholds.

GMs don't put out tasteable clues very often and PCs don't taste things very often. The Taste Booster goes unused, for the most part, and no one ever takes Improved Taste as an adept power.

Why is this prey tell? why is it that PCs don't lick the mud from a hired thug's shoes in order to determine the location of the antagonist's hidden base? Why don't GMs put taste-clues everywhere? Can it be the lack of good tasting rules? Or are good tasting rules in short supply because no one bothers to taste things?

GMs don't place tasteable clues around the place often enough

[bogomips]

[mfb]

the lack of taste rules is one of the many crimes perpetrated on us by the decision to go with a fixed-TN system. i can't count the number of times i railed at Synner about the lack of taste rules, and he kept telling me "no, mfb! we can't have both taste rules and get rid of combat pool!"

[FriendoftheDork]

I find this thread in horribly bad taste. :)

[Buster]

I think the OP meant to discuss the sense of smell, i.e. Olfactory Boosters, etc. You can only taste 4 things: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Everything else you "taste" is actually smell. If you'd like to learn more about things that smell, consult your local wikipedia. :D

[FriendoftheDork]

Well I have actually had a perception test to recognize the taste of goo with that of a food product... I think I gave it threshold 2. I don't really feel I need any more rules for this.

[Stahlseele]

i know EXACTLY why nobody bothers with the ADEPT Stuff that gives you better taste/scent . . 'cause you can'T shut it off . . and as a runner you get to smell such lovely things like the sewers from up close . . dead bodies some days old . . and don't forget about orcs as your co-runners . . i built many a street sam with the CYBER improvements, 'cause i could allways say:"i don't WANT to know what's in there and i don't WANT to know exactly WHAT i am smelling and how AWFUZLL it smells/tastes" . . so i just switched it off or paid a little more to have the option of simply dampening smell/taste of certain things . . our wolverine adept complained LOUDLY every time he had to go into the sewers . . i just shut off my sense of scent and taste and i was fine to go . . it's usefull for detecting poisons of all kinds and for remembering people of knowing who has been where . . but if it would not come with an OFF switch i would not get it into my body ^^

[Cochise]

[hyzmarca]

[Cochise]

[Stahlseele]

aaand . . we are back to square one!
if i remember correctly there was a sentence in the description of this one chem-tech-cyber-thingie that basically said:"it does not have to be enough to harm the character to get recognized" of course not in those exact same words . .

[Cochise]

[Stahlseele]

1D6 . . on 1 and 2 you get poisoned . . on 3 and 4 you get the usual drug effect . . on 5 and 6 it's not even a good trip but just something that tastes horribly *g*

[pbangarth]

[Moon-Hawk]

I thought the "tasting" the white powder trick was actually a test to see if your lips/tongue go numb, and not actually having anything to do with flavor. I have no idea what cocaine tastes like, but I know it is an unbelievably effective analgesic.

Hey, anybody ever see Meet the Feebles, when that one guy snorts a nose-full of borax? That was nasty, even with puppets.

[Dashifen]

Taste is a Perception test; see page 117. There's no modifiers for taste, so feel free to invent some of your own if you need them. There is, interestingly enough, a modifier for scent based perception tests.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Wait, so the thread is complaining about GM's not having more mud that characters can lick off the boots of NPC's? You GM most often, don't you Hyzmarca?