NOISE
Keywords: NOISE, SOUND, HEARING
=== USER MANUAL ===
Description:
Sound carries. What you do makes noise, that noise spreads outward from
room to room growing fainter as it goes, and anyone -- or anything -- still
able to make it out will hear it and know roughly which way it came from.
You never "hear" something happening in your own room. You are standing
right there; you see it happen. Noise is what the rest of the world catches.
What You Hear:
A noise reaches you as a line naming the direction it came from:
You hear footsteps from the north.
A gunshot cracks out from below!
Your blood freezes as you hear a death cry from the east.
The fainter a sound has grown by the time it reaches you, the vaguer the
line. A gunshot next door cracks out; the same gunshot far across the map is
only a distant gunshot. Faint enough, and you do not hear it at all.
Your Observation skill sharpens your ear -- a sharp listener makes out
sounds a dull one misses entirely. You must be awake to hear anything.
What Makes Noise:
- Moving between rooms (see below)
- Speech -- ordinary talk barely carries past the next room
- Shouting -- carries a long way, and gives you away
- Melee -- the clash of a fight
- Gunfire -- very loud, and gives you away
- Explosions -- the loudest thing there is, though it dies off fast
- Death cries -- the scream of something dying
- Doors opening and closing
How Sound Travels:
A noise loses volume with every room it crosses. On top of that:
- A closed door muffles it heavily, but does not stop it. Sound is not
sight -- shutting the door behind you buys quiet, not silence.
- A wall, barrier or barricade stops it dead.
- A soundproof room contains its own noise completely, and lets none in.
- The terrain swallows sound. Open ground carries it best:
Open ground, indoors ... carries fully
Snow, water ............ swallows a little
Forest, jungle ......... swallows more
Underwater ............. almost nothing reaches you
Vacuum ................. nothing carries at all; space is silent
Nothing carries further than 12 rooms, however loud it was to begin with.
Movement Noise:
How loud you are when you move comes down to three things:
your gear x your stance x your Athleticism
Gear -- every noisy piece you have worn adds its racket to the total.
Heavy armor and rattling kit make you loud. Something merely carried in
your pack costs you nothing. Some attachments muffle what they are fitted
to -- a suppressor being the obvious one.
Note that carrying a weapon and firing it are two different sounds. A rifle
is quiet slung over your shoulder and deafening the moment you pull the
trigger, so examine reports both: what it costs you to carry, and what the
world hears when you use it. It is the firing that gets you found.
Stance:
Sneaking ... silent. Sneaking makes no movement noise at all, whatever
you happen to be wearing.
Walking .... normal.
Running .... half again as loud -- and running covers two rooms to the
command, so you make the sound twice as often into the bargain.
Athleticism -- a trained mover is quieter in the same gear, down to half
the noise at the skill cap.
Noisy gear also drags on your Stealth everywhere it counts, not only when
you are on the move. You cannot creep in a suit that rattles.
Being Heard:
Some things out there are listening. A listener hears through walls and
through pitch darkness -- it does not need to see you to know you are there,
and it will come looking for whatever made the sound.
Worse, the loud giveaways -- gunfire and shouting -- do not merely draw
something toward the noise. They tell it who made it, and then it comes
looking for you.
If you would rather not be found: sneak, wear quieter gear, shut the doors
behind you, keep off open ground, and think twice before you fire.
Related Helpfiles: SNEAK, HIDE, TRACK, SCAN
=== END MANUAL ===