Skyfall

[Mourglin]

My goals for this thread are two fold. First I wish to answer two inter-related questions I have been wrestling with for weeks.  In order to present these questions to you I feel that I must first lay out my internal arguments concerning them so that you will better visualize the problem I see.  Secondly, I will give you a short background about Skyfall what it's about and what I want to see in the end when the system design is nearing its final stages.

Skyfall is a fantasy RPG in an early stage of development.  The name is derived from a myth story that pertains to the creation of the world that I have been working on.  This myth story and much of the world setting will be interwoven throughout the rules.  The rules will reflect a very modest level of Heroism.  Players will not reach supreme levels of power.  The world will be low populated, wild and magic will be feared and scarce.  The basic mechanics of the system are as follows:


Classless
Leveless (I'll get to how this will work in another thread if necessary)
A D100 or Percentage based skill resolution system (2D10).  Where skills will range from 1-100.  Checks against these during game play will be used with % dice.  
Magic will be rare and restricted (a discussion I am not ready to delve into yet)
Combat will be dangerous and there will be risk.  There will be no traditional "Hit Points" used.
Traditional Races you are used to seeing with an emphasis on humans.

From a marketing perspective, Skyfall will likely be 1 core rule book that will have everything needed for GM's and players alike to play (300-400 pages).  I may change my mind on this, but I have been in an ANTI-D20/D&D mentality since I quit playing D&D back in the early 80's.  Additionally I don't care to churn out companions or guidebooks that need to be purchased in order to make a character complete.  I am leaning away from the traditional trio of books: A Players, DMG and Monster book in favor of one rule book.  Even though Skyfall will have the world story wrapped in the rules, a true world setting book will probably be in order with a nice map.  Ok now on to better things.

 Much of what I am contending with has been hinged upon the scaling methods that the system itself will use.  After reading further about this you may be saying, "this is far to general for anyone to provide help", but please here me out and I will give you what I think is relevant to what I currently have issues with.  

Stats:
Each statistic or attribute will have a base value of 10.  Generating stats will use 2D10 + Base for a range of 12-30.  This range falls within what I have deemed a total range (for humanoid sized characters/specis) from 0 to 40.  Let me further state that I want to allow a small percentage of stats to be moved up during the character generation process, (more on this later).  In addition stats can move further up through skill developement thresholds and as the GM wishes to award (with great reservation and discretion) to the players for very significant achievements and goals fullfilled.  The wide range that stats can reach or fall after all considerations are taken into account, will span between 0-40.  I have created an unreachable level that moves further up the scale to 45.  This exclusive range will be for the few historical/NPC heroes of legend.  Characters such as Conan, the Gandalf's or the Fingolfin's of the world may have stats falling between 40-45.  The point of this is to keep the players well beneath the legends of the world.


Here is my main problem:

I believe that there ought to be some reasoning in the scale.  I want to have a humanoid limitation that all players and more or less critters such as orcs, goblins, and the like e.g., [man sized] creatures will fall under.  This way creatures of great size and strength like Dragons, Demons, Titans and Giants will fall well beyond the humanoid stats scale of (0-40)   This leaves me with a 41-100 to span the rest of the worlds creatures.  Is there enough space to represent the big and small the strong and weak of the worlds creatures with a 1-100 scale?  I suspect it can be done but I begin to ponder a Stat Bonus chart of sorts.  Could this scale of stats be good enough so as not to use a cross referenced chart that gives "results" of said stat.  It would be easier to have a 100 mean 100 in a stat without having to look up what a 100 gives you.  Does this make sense?  *If* the number value of the stat itself would imply more meaning than having to refer to some chart I believe that would save me a step and add less complexity.  

Second problem:

Character ranges are from 0-40.  Using a % based skill system, which includes combat, how much should the stat itself be represented when looking at the overall skill % total.  I have between 1-100 for all skill.  My gut feeling is that physical/mental prowess should not claim more than 25% of a total skills value, but I am not confident in this assessment.  Allow me to illustrate an example and I promise to finish this post with that.

Lets suppose we have a hero that is the greatest swordsman of all time.  Lets say his skill is perfect at 100%.  He is one of a kind and none are better.  Looking at this individual, I have to ask myself, what are his relevant or contributing stats to sword fighting and how much are they contributing to his 100% skill.  Personally I feel that time in service/expertise holds far greater an impact on overall skill.  These things are hard to quantify but are necessary for me to proceed further IMO.  

For now lets say the relevant stats are:

Strenght & Agility both at 40 or near it.

I could only assume that this individual would be at the 40 mark on these in addition to being the best of his class in order to reach the zenith of perfection.  I have to quantify this somehow because it will more or less dictate the stats range (which may have to be adjusted) to take this latter issue into account.  I have found myself asking myself: "well why don't you compare two people, one is at physical perfection the other is average in all respects". Have them do the same task, and then see how much better the peak individual did as opposed to the joe average guy performed.  Quantifying this would answer the 2nd question, and in turn tells me if my stat range is to much or to little within the context of a D100 % based skill system.   Until I can wade through this academic argument, I don't see myself able to incorporate the other work I have done so far.  The question of stats must be answered and I need to have confidence in my decision.

Best

John

[Kryyst]

Reminds me a lot of Warhammer FRP.  They have a level less percentile system.  For physical things such as strength, toughness, wounds, attacks, they use a 1+ scale instead of the percentile range.

I think that if you want to limit your self to your straight percentile scale without having it open up so you could have something with a strength of 150 for example then unless your idea of the strongest thing in your game only being about 2.5 times stronger then the average human you'll have to have some kind of scaling chart.  

So strength for example since it's pretty easy to measure.  If every poing of strength is 5 lbs that would mean a human could lift from 0 - 200 lbs.  Maximum anyone could lift is 500lbs on a straing 0-100 scale.  If however you think that something with 100 strength should be able to lift more then 500lbs then you may have to scale it...
So at 0-40 you can lift 5 times your strength
40-60 7 times your strength
60-80 10 times your strength
80-100 15 times your strength 15 lbs
or something like that

So if you are fixed on the straight percentile I think you'll run into limits on certain things.

No to go back to warhammer.  The scale is often the problem in that it is limited by this aspect.  You quickly can max out a stat and then it kinda gets dull because the percentages flatline.  So if you max out a value then even a 50% penalty still leaves you with a 50/50 chance of success.  The other problem is not necessarily the one you'll face, but it suffers from another side effect as well.  In combat for example stats far outshine weapon statistics so that a naked dwarf with high stats can do far more damage, and resist more damage then an average knight in platemail with a 2-handed sword.

[Mourglin]

Kryyst,
 I agree that it's really not possible to fit both ends of the stats scale into a 1-100 range, without going to a cross referenced chart, which I might add was my first logical choice.  There are a few reasons I want to avoid going over 100, one is a perception I have that stats begin to lose meaning and relevance when the numbers get ridiculously high.  Say for example a Dragon has a 1000 strength does that really mean much to a player or a GM?  How much better is a 1000 than 900 or even 800.  The spread becomes to much and any individual number loses value.  
  I just wanted to avoid jumping that high for the sake of not getting stats into the 3 and 4 digit values.  I think aesthetically it takes away from the game but I can't really explain why, only that its a hunch or a feeling I have.  So the alternative that I see now is a traditional chart that goes along with the stats.  
 Sometimes I feel as if all the games I have played, or read about seem to suck me into their gravity well of design.  One that I can not escape no matter how hard I try.  It seems such a daunting task to be unique in some fashion yet retain a good sense of realism.  I don't want to take pieces of all the games I play and mish mash them into Skyfall.. that would be a mistake.
 Another option to consider is a multiplying effect, much like what Champions used, where a 20 stength is 2x as strong as a 15.  So every 5 points gains you twice the benefit.  I have not picked up a Warhammer FRPG in years (I used to own a copy) so I don't remember how the mechanics worked.  Seems based from your reply that they adopted a similar method but made the curve less steep as what Champions did with the +5 equalling a 2x improvement (at least as far as Strenght was concerned).  Even so I am still skeptical as to whether a Dragon could fit inside the 1-100 scale.  I envision a dragon being at least as devastating to men as the biggest T-Rex would have been to early man.  You just die or run and hope for the best.  I will toy around with some scaling and see how the numbers run.  Wasn't it Dragon Quest that really put the respect back into Dragons and made them something to fear rather than something to ride.  Alas I have again gone on a tangent, forgive me.


John

[Shreyas Sampat]

It seems like if you're going to set each stat to a fixed range, to get unlimited scaling, you're going to have to appeal to additional stats and stat interactions.

For instance, humans may be set at the exact centre of the Size scale, having a Large trait of 0 and a Small trait of 0. The Large and Small traits are multiplicative or divisive factors that affect whatever might be relevant.

So suppose that a dragon is the upper limit of Large - it has Large 100. A dragon with the same Strength score as a human can lift 100 times as much, because his lifting ability is multiplied by his Large. Similarly, a butterfly with the same Strength score and Small 100 can lift 1/100th of what the human can, because Small divides its lifting ability.

[Castellanus]

The problem with centering a value on human stats at 0 is that some people find it counterintuitive to think of a -1 as having a positive value (1/2 of typical hunam size, for instance, is still a pretty big animal all told.)

One thing I like to do for comparisons is to square the value of the number.  So if we are talking size (weight), a 0 is o (negligible weight, like an insect), 1 = 1 lb, 5 = 25lb, 10 = 100 lb, 20 = 400 lb and so on.  You get to elephant size at about 100 (if I remember elephants correctly) and T-Rexes and such a little past that.

Then its just a matter of assigning your character types states within a typical range -- for adult humans usually from 9-19 (2d6+7) from ballerina to defensive tackle.

Hope this helps.

Ed

[Mourglin]

The idea of using humans as the center of the scale is interesting but I have to agree with Shreyas about stats going into the negative.  I don't find that very appealing and wouldn't think many others would embrace the idea very well.

However what about using a decimal system up to 5 points, and whole numbers beyond that.  So stats from 0-5 would be represented by 1/10 increments starting with 1.0 and going up to 5.0.

So when a player rolls for his stats he/she starts with a 1 and generates *.2D10* which would average a 2.0.  The starting range would be 1.2 - 3.0.  This would carry onward to 5.0.  Anything beyond that would be 6, 7, 10, 15, 20 on up to 100.  Would this drilling down concept seem alien and too unorthadox to the average player?  I also wonder how this will affect future calculations pertaining to stats.  I think the system could potentially fall into an endless quagmire with the implementation of X.X type stats.   But this concept opens up a great deal more space to work with.  I would be interested in your thoughts about this concept, perhaps not so much from a mechanics feasibility but from the playability perception.  


Thanks

John

[Shreyas Sampat]

Castellanus, you mean.

Who didn't actually read my post, which specifically uses two opposing stats, both positive, rather than negative stats, which you didn't want in the first place.

Personally, I don't think it will do any service to your system to think, at all, about whether a concept "seems unorthodox and alien". Sometimes, these are the best possible solutions - see Paul Czege's designs for a whole crapload of these.

[Castellanus]

Castellanus, you mean.

Who didn't actually read my post, which specifically uses two opposing stats, both positive, rather than negative stats, which you didn't want in the first place.

You're right.  I read the 'centered on humans as base value' and jerked my knee against a poor gaming experience many years ago.  Sincere apologies.

I think it does work better with dual positive stats as you propose.  But then one gets into a couple of complications --

Does one need a pairing for every stat (Strong/weak, Agile/clumsy, etc.)?  Or is it just for matters of scale (which would be fine and useful all by itself)?

At what degree and to what extent does one differentiate? I.e. does a hobbit get a small of 1 or 5?  An Ogre a large of 2 or 20?  Meaning that some sense of what the numbers mean in absolute terms.

Again, that doesn't prevent the idea from being a useful technique, it just means that the designer has to pick some scale to use anyway -- every 5 or 10 units double or halve the stat, respectively.

Mourglin has a range of 0-40 (45 for legends) for stats increased by development.  The question he needs to answer for himself is what a 40 represents in comparison to an at start average (ca. 20) or baseline (10) value.  Unless its something I would consider relatively large (a 40 is 5x or 10x or so as good as a 20), an additional factor may well be needed.  Scale/size is as good as any.

But I'll point out that multiplying one stat bay another has more or less the same effect as squaring a base value :-)

Personally, I don't think it will do any service to your system to think, at all, about whether a concept "seems unorthodox and alien". Sometimes, these are the best possible solutions - see Paul Czege's designs for a whole crapload of these.

Its a new system.  Of course it may seem odd at first.  Doesn't mean it wont work, or isn't the best way to do things for you in this game.

Ed

[Alex Johnson]

Surprisingly similar to what I wanted in my Deathgate game, except that you wanted limited magic while my goal was to give the players near omnipotence (taking the burden off of the dice and putting it on the brainpower of the gamers).

My solution, which seemed quite natural once I said "I want everything to be a %...0 to 99" was that the big and the small fit in only if you use a non-linear space.  99% skill vs 33% skill is a very different thing than +6 skill vs +2 skill, anyone here should be able to see.  So the percentile space takes on a curved shape where the middle numbers are more likely than the extremes.  That dragon or titan will likely have a number around the top 5% while the neighbors' poodle will be in the bottom 10% and humans will fill a big range in the middle.  So I've sort of normalized on humans, but the big focus is that 0-99% is the absolute cap.  Picture a normal curve; integrate.  The stuff in the middle is more probable, but as you get to the top you approach the finite limit of 100% (or 1 in a unit normal, IIRC).

I've been feeling that Deathgate needs a fix, but the core mechanic is the one part I'm sure is solid.  So I came to the Forge to read the opinions of the experienced, and eventually ask my questions (once I figure out what they are).

[Mourglin]

Alex,
  It is becoming apparent to me that 1-100 or 0-99% is perhaps the best math conventions to relate to, for people in general.  Maybe I am going out on a limb some, maybe not.  Scaling in traditional D&D didn't seem wide enough with a 3D6 stat range.  Not only D&D but many other D6 bases systems followed suit.  If memory serves me right, didn't the gods / dragons etc only get into the mid twenties.
 Yet 1-100 still IMO falls short of the ranging needed, even though it approximately 4 times "wider" than the 3-18 systems.  When you break down how wide the gap can be between a 5'-6' man and a giant or a dragon, the space of 1-100 doesn't seem to due the big boys at the top of the food/size chain justice.  The percentile ideal becomes warped as you state, becoming in reality a curve.  Reminds me of the mercator map projections, where stuff in the middle is best represented but places like Greenland are grossly distorted.  
 My idea of using decimal break downs from 0-5 adds another 45 value points but creates 2 curves.  One curve is from 1-5 which is a subset (is that the right word?) of the larger curve.  Maybe like a bump on the bottom part of a bell curve if I had to visualize it.  I think I am going to run with the decimal concept and see how far I get using stats like 3.5 or 3.2 etc.  If it becomes a integration hindernace to other things I will can it and adjust back to whole numbers.  Wish me luck.. :-)  I will let you know how it pans out once I get the tables documented and begin to work on the relationship between stats and skills.

Best

John Madison

[ghostwolf]

For critters like Titans and Dragons, you could always use the Shadowrun style of dealing with overpowering critters.  The GM is basically told in (in the case of dragons) to not even bother rolling dice.  Stats are meaningless for creatures that have existed since the dawn of time and to whom Humanity is but a flea on the rump of Gaia.  

Epic creatures are a roleplaying opportunity, not something that you just swing a sword at. :)

[Mourglin]

For critters like Titans and Dragons, you could always use the Shadowrun style of dealing with overpowering critters.  The GM is basically told in (in the case of dragons) to not even bother rolling dice.  Stats are meaningless for creatures that have existed since the dawn of time and to whom Humanity is but a flea on the rump of Gaia.  

Epic creatures are a roleplaying opportunity, not something that you just swing a sword at. :)

That is a most excellent idea.  I would say the same goes with the gods etc.  To put stats to them removes the deity element completely.  I will still try to fit them in (at least as a scale test) even if I end up deciding that I won't give them any numerical values.

Thanks

John