Skill System - Organizational help needed

[Egonblaidd]

Actually, it would only make it 5.26 times simpler (but I assume you were speaking figuratively, not mathematically).  But anyway, I guess I'm not really targeting new players.  Those who are experienced gamers, even if it's only videogames, should still be able to get a handle on it, I think, but this is definitely not for those new to gaming of any kind.  And I like complicated things, Age of Empires or Civilization is way more fun than Chess.  However, what you're saying makes sense.  I can make my game quite flexible by allowing either skill groups or subskills to be used for skill tests, depending on how complicated people want the game to be.  I've seen this done in other games, like Warhammer with it's armor rules; either you have armor (be it light, medium, or heavy), or you don't, and it covers the whole body (the simple rules), or different armor protects different parts of the body (i.e. helmets, breastplates, etc.), allowing for differing degrees of protection for different parts of the body (the complicated rules).  Especially since skills aren't exactly the focus of my game, I could accomplish this without much difficulty, I think.

Actually both the skill groups and the subskills have ranks, and those ranks are added together when a skill is used (hence why using one skill advances all skills in the group slightly, since it advances the group itself).  It wouldn't be hard at all to modify things so that only the skill groups could be used, and doing so would not effect the use of all 145 subskills if someone preferred to use them.  I'll look into that.  It took two and a half pages to list all the skills on the character sheet I've been working on, and I think I could fit all the skill groups onto just one sheet.  I'll admit three pages just for skills is a little over the top.

By the way, I haven't... actually.... played... D&D... so I don't really know what exactly the mechanics they use are.  But I've probably played enough of it's progeny in the videogame industry that I have a pretty fair understanding of RPG mechanics in general.  I've tried a few of the D&D computer games, but I never could get into them, on the other hand between Morrowind and Final Fantasy and much in between I've had a wide range RPG experience.  KotOR used the D&D mechanics, didn't it?

[JoyWriter]

Ok, I'm going to take a different tack:

You said that it is important that the conflict system create little details, this is an interesting feature that doesn't always get covered here, you don't just want to know who won, or which player gets to decide how, you actually want the system to decide what happens, so that you can have side effects to explore.

A pretty common source of humour in rules heavy games is when the system amplifies the details provided by the player, in a comically inappropriate fashion. It's like the rules partly go out of control!

In a game based around moral navigation, that phenomena turns into something more interesting, because side effects can create tragedy as well as comedy, providing they are not so absurd as to be funny, and deal with important things to the players.

But again this is not about the skill lists length, but the mechanisms that govern those skill's application.

Onto your specific questions, lockpicking can be under engineering, depending on how you define it! Just as cheat/trick could be under bluff and throwing under athletics. Prospecting could be with orientation, navigation and search, sculpturing under visual art, gnosticism under theology, biology could be with husbandry and drama could be with disguise and bluff.

What I'm trying to say is that you need to work out what you are saying with this list; is it a categorisation of common adventuring familiarities? A university module list? Is it a suggestion of activities you feel are "related" in some indescribable sense? Because until you work out which (or another one), there is no way to answer "is this right or not".

You need a larger standard to decide between systems, and that must either be an expression of your "artistic vision", stuff you worked out from previous games, stuff people have learned about the "messages" that different lists send, or just the result of playing games with people! Otherwise there is no point dwelling on it, unless you consider it some kind of obscure poetic reflection on action; just go with your gut and stop worrying!

If I were you, I'd try some little games with the skills as is. Not full games, just little one-shot games that focus on a different area of the list and find out what it is actually like to play with, that way you can get some feedback in action, and build up slowly to the game you really want to make. There are a lot of other ways to do it, but it makes such a difference to have the wind of reality blowing through and getting the dust off stuff.

[Ayyavazi]

Hey Egon,

Playing D&D is definitely not a prerequisite to designing games. I only had video-game rpg experience when I started making my own games, and I didn't have the benefit of the forge at the time (didn't know it existed). So my early designs were full of complicated math and tons of obscure make-it-up-as-you-go-along rules. They also all flopped. This is not necessarily related, but I think you need to have some pencil and paper rpg experience to design one, but D&D  isn't the only rpg, of course.

That said, you would benefit at least in part from reading the rules, if not playing. Their math for attributes and the bonuses they give to your rolls is more complicated than it needs to be (for a better example of a stats to rolls game, try Legendary Quest). Its skill system could definitely help inform your own. And depending on whether you are reading AD&D, 3.5, or 4th edition, you will get different help on designing spells and abilities for the characters to use. 4th edition in particular does a fairly good job of keeping character choices limited while still having enough freedom to make every choice interesting, which is important for a game with the level of detail you are trying to have.

For example, when a person increases their swimming by a rank in your game, that needs to feel important, otherwise the player isn't going to be engaged. One way to do this is to have a list of "tricks" for each skill, maybe 3-5 that you can learn whenever you gain a rank in the skill. This way, every rank adds something new.

As for the problem of skills fitting into certain sets, why do they need to be in only one? Nothing says that skills can't reside in two or three different groups, and influence all of those groups when they increase in rank. Then again, if you are worried about this becoming a balance issue (that is, you worry it may make certain skills very good choices) then have players decide which group it falls under when they make their character. Sort of like them choosing how they are going about learning it. Just a thought.

Other games that you might want to look into if you have the stomach for it are Gurps and Rifts. The skill lists for those games are fairly comprehensive. Even if you just copy the list and not the applications, you can usually figure out how it would work in your game. But beware of copying skills wholesale just because you can. Characters do not need to absolutely weave baskets underwater while fending off killer fish and debating the meaning of life, unless that is what your game is going to focus on regularly. So try to keep the skill list restricted to things you want the players doing. And include in the Gming section a blurb about the gm informing their campaign ideas from the skills the player is choosing. This reminds the guy running the game that if a player does choose basket-weaving as a skill, its probably a good idea to tie it in somehow.

Cheers!

--Norm