Defining Abilities. Handy little gimmick?

[Hereward The Wake]

As I said in initial post I like the idea very much. My point was to express my thought that in my experiences of gaming for 22 years, that the players I know would not like to feel too restricted. Madheretic's reply answered my point in a valid way, along lines similar to what I had thought.

Sorry if I was out of order, but I was just pointing out a player response. I thought that was part of the reason for the First thoughts section.

Jonathan

[Ron Edwards]

Jonathan,

When you have an issue with my moderating, your only recourse is to send me a private message, which is like appealing a ticket to a judge. When you post defiantly like this, you basically are striking and cursing the cop when he tickets you. That means you are out of order in the judge's eyes no matter what the cop ticketed you for, rightly or wrongly. You ruined your chance for appeal.

"Sorry" isn't relevant. "I was just" isn't relevant. You should have sent me a private message, and I would have considered your case, period.

Everyone: all further posting to this thread must be on topic. Jonathan, you're included and are welcome to do so. This is Forge moderation, which is not about punishing or removing you.

Best, Ron

[David Artman]

I'm curious whether you have thought of impacts of the various categories on system, beyond relative cost in "build points" at character creation?

For instance, in a given setting, would a Discipline-level ability require a more granular resolution process (more handling, multiple tests, whatever)? Would an Art-level ability yield a product worth more game world currency than a Craft-level, and thereby require more time or better materials? Would a Hobby convey membership in some game world organization, with commensurate influences and contacts? What about a Trade?

Or perhaps the systemic impact is in character attributes (stats)? Do Science-level abilities have minimum stat requirements for, say, Intelligence? Do Art-level have minimum Charisma or Perception stats? It seems to me that such stat requirements would both aid verisimilitude (if that's any kind of goal) and reinforce the depth of the setting, as the category levels of the abilities "select for" (in the Darwinian sense) higher relevant stats. (Ex: A world in which many abilities are Sciences would select for Intelligence, if Science-level ability required high Intelligence.)

As for the suggestion or notion to allow one (perhaps high cost) out-of-category ability per character: that would work to create a very "schticky" feel to the game. Each character would have some ability which he or she is one of the rare few (or the only one) in the game world to approach differently. For instance, if My Guy is the only person in the game world who approaches, say, pottery as an Art rather than a Trade or Craft, I could command the attention of kings with my works! Hmmm.... In fact, that's bringing even more situational elements, emerging out of one simple rule--such "schticks" would be world-rocking, at times, and the very admission of world-rockingness into the game, in turn, sets up storylines or arenas of conflict.

Jeez... from one "gimmick" you are evolving strong setting cues, systemic impacts, and even situation seeds. Keep it up!
David

[Hereward The Wake]

OK Ron

[Madheretic]

Thank you very much for your kind words, Mr. Artman. And for your questions:

I have given some thought to how the category an ability is effects how the ability is used in the game. My individual thoughts on that haven't really gelled together yet, but I think I'm making progress.

Just recently I have worked out a system for Crafts. It is assumed that all characters are competent at most Crafts. Most have a few that they are not proficient enough in to get by on their own for whatever reason. When generating a character, the player choses the Crafts their character is not capable with (there's no score, it's just a yes or no thing). Crafts are never rolled for in the game, but a conflict can be created by bringing up their character failing with a Craft, which then becomes a conflict that must be dealth with using Sciences, Arts or Disciplines.

I really like the idea of having a pool-refresh-type mechanic dealing with Hobbies and Trades. Its pretty obvious Trades would deal with getting back financial resources. As for Hobbies I'm thinking they could refresh some emotional attribute analog that are spent to power Arts. I'm thinking of having Trades and Hobbies have an inverse relationship where increasing one harms the other, forcing players to chose between money and contacts and the me-time they need to keep their character sane.

Arts, Disciplines and Sciences are used for most of the standard resolution tasks. As I've explained previously, Arts have a special connection with the emotional attribute system. For Sciences I'm considering having them not be so much about succeeding at tasks as having narrative authority over what the ability covers, up to dictating the outcome of a conflict. Disciplines I might just leave as a category for abilities that operate in a relatively traditional sense.

At this point I don't see any reason to have stats/attributes. Lifting things and noticing stuff can be abilities like everything else. I'm interested in reflecting the realities you've brought up, but I don't think it'd be worth the trouble of managing that whole attribute-skill tangle.

One big question that's been dogging me through this project is whether or not to go with a set or mostly set ability list, and the closely related issue of whether or not to develop a standard setting. It might seem hard to imagine a setting that could encompass the changes that altering the ability categories represent, but I can imagine using a broadly-defined setting with a lot of details to fill in, such as TSOY's Near.

I'm starting to think I might really have something here. I find I mainly enjoy games with a Narrativist CA. What sort of issues jump out at you guys as things that could be explored using what we've got here?

[LordRahvin]

This is just another gimmick to play with, but I thought I'd throw it out there to see if you are interested.  There has been some questions raised as to when or how you would apply one type of skill as opposed to another type of skill.  For example, if Occult Lore is a science as opposed to a discipline, how and when could you use it.

As a gimmicky way of answering this question, suppose you could narrow the band of activities available.  Let's say, for example that there were 6-8 different types of activities you could do with a particular skill, before we've narrowed it down to type.   Stuff like Learn Knowledge, Apply Proficiency, Impress People, Express Idea; that sort of thing.  You can make a better list, I'm sure.

Now we could assign a numeric range to each type of activity and a die type to each skill.  (Maybe this might need special marked dice as opposed to numbered?) 

The idea, is, for example, a Science die is most likely to get a result of "Learn Knowledge".  If you're not making a test with the intent to learn anything, that die basically came up a failure.  But if you are, then that's one success for "Learn Knowledge".  The advantage of this, is that you could still use the Science die for "Learn Knowledge" and "Gain Resources" tests, but the Discipline and Trade dice will work so much better.  On the other hand, the Trade dice may not even have a "Learn Knowledge" option, but will have other overlaps or perhaps more "Gain Resources" sides. 

Just a thought on how to manage the overlap, and I think players would dig it.  To avoid charts though, you'd need special dice and that can be a bit of a design/distribution annoyance...

[contracycle]

I also think this is a great idea.  But in order to work, the players will need to understand it, and this I think resolevs your setting dilemma.  You do not need one mandated setting, but you need one, and probably more, worked examples.

Something to flag up then to players is how the selection/assignment of abilities to categories is distinct from the setting.  Take the renaissance setting Ron proposed and something you mentioned about duelling not resolving anything - in your approach, duelling is a perfunctory activity and in Ron's its very significant.  This surely must change the emphasis of action, the kinds of action that are going to be critical.  One setting (even with the same characters, even in the same situation) can produce many different emphases and interests in play.

So your rules text should display: multiple rules-arrangements in one setting, and, the applicability of one arragement to multiple settings.  Also note, there is no particular reason that the rules arrangement stays consistent through all play - say you wanted to do something like a Pendragon winter/summer cycle, you could reflect the change in activities by changing the assignment of skills.  Frex Courtly Dance is only a hobby in the summer campaigning season, but a discipline in the court season, while in the winter orthodox swordplay is only a hobby.

To this end, the types of actions you can do, depending on the classification of the ability, may form a quite a bit of systematic bulk.  I think this would be a good thing.

[TroyLovesRPG]

Does anyone ever think about how people actually learn and catalog their knowledge and skills? Start with that I'm sure you'll be able to find something useful that makes sense and doesn't rely on a few ambigous labels. The cost in time that players must spend to learn a new jargon takes away from the pleasure of the game. If skill bookkeeping is the focus of your game then make it foolproof and fun. In the posts there are hints about what a character could learn and how it impacts the game. I think that concept is lost. This topic is now a mad rush to label groups of skills and determine their importance. Does this exercise stem from a valid analysis of lifelong experiences in learning, doing and achieving or is just a rehash of what RPGs have been doing for years?

Truth is stranger than fiction and much more gratifying, too. Learning comes from the desire to achieve. What you learn and what you can achieve provide many connections and its difficult to define a one-to-one relationship between the two. Trying to provide an encompassing matrix showing every possible match is futile and reduces role-playing to lists and check-boxes. In the real world people learn from their family, friends, community, culture, schools, employment, experiences and personal desire. All of the skills, knowledge, physical improvement (or deterioration), beliefs and wisdom derived from the learning experiences cannot be taken lightly. I would entertain the idea that anything the character knows can be relevant in the game. How creative they are in applying what they know is the challenge.

Using a locale setting has great benefits in the effectiveness of that character's experience. Where and how that person learned something is almost as important as what they learned. "Computer use" for example is not some universal skill that somehow magically allows a character to sit at any console and use it. Windows and Macintosh knowledge is separate in many ways. Put a Windows user at an IBM mainframe terminal and they are lost. Of course, trying to map out every real-world example is tedious; however, creating the framework for cataloging and managing skills is a worthwhile endeavour.

Instead of just looking at the skills, broaden your scope to experiences. How are experiences defined and listed? Maybe each experience of major impact has elements that are directly related to the kinds of goals in your game. If your game is immersed in inner-city struggles, then people, locale and circumstance may be the ways to classify those skills, thus indicating their effectiveness in different situations. The skill has a base level then is modified when those elements are present. If Jose learned to drive with his buddies, in the upper east-side behind the wheel of a mustang with manual transmission, then he would gain bonuses when performing under those conditions. Every skill could be classified that way, describing how those skills were learned and giving incentive to role-play.

Jose the tough from the upper east-side has a catalog of skills:
Skill               People                         Locale                 Circumstance
drive 4             buddies                       upper east-side     mustang manual
etiquette 1      elderly (grandmother)     home                   during dinner
intimidate 3     hombres (rival gang)       upper east-side    encounter
leader 3          muchachos (own gang)   upper east-side    encounter
teach 1           Paco (little brother)        upper east-side     family problems
knife 2            hombres (rival gang)       ghetto                  fight
run 4               hombres (rival gang)       ghetto                 when alone
charm 2          Maria (girl-friend)           upper east-side     with gift in hand


Thanks for posting this topic. It has prodded me to use my imagination, too.

Troy

[David Artman]

It is assumed that all characters are competent at most Crafts. Most have a few that they are not proficient enough in to get by on their own for whatever reason. When generating a character, the player chooses the Crafts their character is not capable with (there's no score, it's just a yes or no thing). Crafts are never rolled for in the game, but a conflict can be created by bringing up their character failing with a Craft, which then becomes a conflict that must be dealt with using Sciences, Arts or Disciplines.

How is this not paying to suck? Personally (brace for opinion), I don't find it compelling to generate a character by defining what I can't do. And as it compares to the above idea of characters being folks who "break the paradigm" of the setting's common skill ranking (e.g. I can Duel as a Art, whereas it's a Science in the setting), this "what can't I do" system feels even worse: we've gone from unique personalities to folks who don't know "common" skills that any peasant knows. Blah.

Further, you have arbitrarily forced a certain set of setting assumptions on the players, whereas before you enabled them to build up their own setting, by deciding for themselves what category to which each skill applies. This is, in my opinion, going backwards, relative to the tightly-knit system/setting/situation tool you first evolved.

[Trades and Hobbies as resource pool management elements.]

This is fine, I guess; but it is breaking down the continuum of skill evolution in a setting, by making those two functionally different to the others (rather than different in terms of setting emphasis and color).

One big question that's been dogging me through this project is whether or not to go with a set or mostly set ability list, and the closely related issue of whether or not to develop a standard setting. It might seem hard to imagine a setting that could encompass the changes that altering the ability categories represent, but I can imagine using a broadly-defined setting with a lot of details to fill in, such as TSOY's Near.

I don't like this idea at all: you're heading backwards, it seems. It is COOL that the players' choices about skill emphasis will denote the setting elements and, further, help build a world that makes situations in which they are interested. If you expect that to, then, wrap onto some Typical Tongue-Twister-Named Fantasy/SciFi/Multiverse setting, I think you lose some of the cool customization of the game. Further, a color-fixed setting will, likely, push certain skills into particular categories, even though the players wanted them in other ones. For example, if your setting devotes twenty pages to "the coastal merchant seafaring society," then it won't mean too much when the players set Sailing skill as a Hobby; that seafaring race still has the merchants and the ports and so forth, because of the color-fast setting.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I believe in Separation of System and Setting--a heretic, here at The Forge. Mainly because I believe System Doesn't Matter; and I am a Design What Doesn't Matter proponent. [Knowing that, you may now disregard everything I have so far advised.] That's what made me so much like your skill evolution: it enabled generic-but-actually-tightly-knit settings, using your system. I could play sci fi one week and fantasy the next and history the next (even using the same Skill categories!). I think if you paste-on a Typical Tongue-Twister setting, you will end up with a less interesting game as a whole AND a less meaningful skill categorization system (which was, after all, the point, right?).

But then again, that's my opinion, and like assh---s....

I'm starting to think I might really have something here. I find I mainly enjoy games with a Narrativist CA. What sort of issues jump out at you guys as things that could be explored using what we've got here?

I can't "play to theme" or play for "Story Now" to save my life, unless the system drives me to it. Your system was (still is?) driving me to it, by letting me define the scope of conflicts, the arenas of play, what the setting 'thinks' is important. Don't take that away....

My 2¢, YMMV, HTH;
David

[Call Me Curly]

...the ability of fighting people with swords:
Craft: Swordfighting is a way to make yourself useful in a fight or to avoid being killed.
Art: Swordfighting is as much about style and grace as it is about staying alive.
Hobby: Swordfighting is a sport that (perhaps slightly bloodthirsty) gentlemen play.
Trade: Swordfighting is a job someone might have.
Science: Swordfighting is a scholarly discipline where the fighter who sticks the closest to sound theory prevails.
Discipline: Swordfighting is an endeavor whose outcomes are decided primarily by practice and precision.

These distinctions don't say anything about the nature of Swordfighting.
They are about the nature of Swordfighters!

Imagine a game with a PC whose stats are Craft2, Art3, Hobby3, Trade18, Science16, Discipline8

So those numbers don't just apply to Swordfighting, but to Everything.

That character will see -everything- as a Way To Get Rich, using Sound Methods

Think about how he'll interact with another PC who is Craft2 Hobby17, Art18 Trade4, Science5

Even if they're both sword guys, there's tons of implicit conflict between their worldviews. 
Yet, given their shared low Craft scores, they're unlikely to settle it with a duel!

Story fodder.
That's how I'd employ this train of thought.