De-characterizing Effects of Currency

[contracycle]

However, what would happen with our Dwarven Artilleryman as he continued adventuring? Oh, he could run around trying to make bombs every second, trying to find ballistas and catapults to operate and things. Otherwise after a few adventures he'd become simply a master of the most frequently used skills.

Well, WHY would that happen?  It would only happen if the most frequently used skills are NOT the ones that define the character.  In which case, WHY is the character involved?

What does a Dwarven Atrilleryman do?  They service and maintain dwarven artillery; when the hordes of goblins come over the hill, they fire them.  They live in fear of being overun by Goblin Wolf-Riders - becuase their skills are in Artillery, not Melee.  If a Dwarven Artilleryman was actually a Dwarven Artilleryman, then the problem would not arise because they would continually reinforce his Dwarven Artillery-ness.

However.  When Our Hero is removed from his comfortable artillery barracks and the reassuring smell of gonne-powder in the night, obviosuly they are out of their depth.  Being toe-to-toe with Goblin Wolf-riders is precisely not this characters expertise.  And they only reason they are in this scenario, and not smoking a pipe behind the ammo shed, is the convention that Adventurers go down dark stinking holes and slaughter the inhabitants thereof.  And of course, if they spend all their time down a dark stinking hole slaughtering the inhabitants thereof, they are learning "Adventuring" skills instead of Artilleryman skills; the Artillerman factoid has been rendered background colour.

So, if you are going to send them down dark stinking holes, why is the Dwarven Artilleryman even on the table as a character concept?

[Christoffer Lernö]

What does a Dwarven Atrilleryman do?

Obviously a Dwarf skilled in the esoteric arts of artillery, pyrotechnics and the like. The standard weapon he is trained in would be the crossbow although naturally variations appear. Why is he out adventuring? Because culturally Dwarven warriors are supposed to go out in the world and prove their mettle. Kill a few critters and get promoted that sort of thing.

Although though you interpret it differently, the artilleryman is not at all thrown into the adventuring game without any particular reason. The classes I made up were all selected because they would be characters who had a very real reason for adventuring.

Now his adventures for the year over, he might return to his gunkegs, maybe visit Uncle Bufopp and his family. Make sure all his weapons are in top trim, practice that ballista shooting at the millitary barracks.

However this doesn't get covered in most adventures, but like Pendragon I do envision a time of rest for all the heroes where they can work on their off skills. Although I have a plausible cause for them to improve, it might not be as easy to convinve the players in picking them if it means letting go of more useful skills. Which is why I'm thinking of different ways of handling it.

However.  When Our Hero is removed from his comfortable artillery barracks and the reassuring smell of gonne-powder in the night, obviosuly they are out of their depth.  Being toe-to-toe with Goblin Wolf-riders is precisely not this characters expertise.  And they only reason they are in this scenario, and not smoking a pipe behind the ammo shed, is the convention that Adventurers go down dark stinking holes and slaughter the inhabitants thereof.

I just must mention I loved this passage :)

[contracycle]

Although though you interpret it differently, the artilleryman is not at all thrown into the adventuring game without any particular reason. The classes I made up were all selected because they would be characters who had a very real reason for adventuring.

Fine, I understand what you are saying.  But as soon as you establish that they "go adventuring" you have just defined their real profession.  They are not actually a Dwarven Artilleryman; they are an Adventurer who once upon a time trained as a Dwarven Artilleryman.

It is not therefore surprising that bog-standard Adventuring skills dominate their selections.  I trained as a Commercial Programmer, but I have never programmed for a living.  Ten years down the line, it's unlikely I could remotely reproduce the work of Real Programmers (TM) without extensive re-training.  What I have done instead is sorta generalist troubleshooting; and that is where my actually developed skills are located (I just rebooted the coffee machine).

Whether or not the character class makes sense in context is notr germain - the point is that they no longer do what they typically should be doing.  And hence, they are not developing the skills typical to their profession, they are developing the skills typical to their actual behaviour.

[Bailey]

Just chiming in to say that I'm surprised that noone has mentioned Zero, since it handles this sort of situation explicitly and is my prefered system for fantasy.

In any case there are two key points that fit the discussion directly.

The first is that the character development system is about development rather than advancement.  Characters continue to define who they are and don't become more powerful.

The second point is that the rewards offered in Zero are not persistent.  Xp give a one time effect or they are used to reshape your character.

[Ace]

I've been touching on this in my recent threads. In an attempt to discuss it a little more focuse I start up a new thread here.

Let's start with an example.

I'm making a character, Brighthands. The idea is "Almost Reformed Thief gone Hero". Naturally I pump him up with thieving skills and then the hero fighter adventure kit.

Now, creating Brighthands I will in most sim games be punished for doing so. Even though to all effects the thief skills are nothing but colour (I don't expect them to be useful), I will usually have to pay for them as if they are. In some games they might be cheaper, reflecting that - but I'd still have to pay for them.

No matter what, I will have less points to put into fighting skills than a fellow player making Urk the Barbarian.

Urk doesn't have any other skills than fighting. Urk can fight, very well with a wide range of weapons and he also has fighting talents which makes him even more optimized.

Despite both are supposed to be fighter/heroes, Brighthand starts out with a disadvantage.

Anyway, 20 dungeoncrawls later, the situation varies depending on the system.
.

Go get a copy of Big Eyes Small Mouth by Guardians of Order and cjech how they handle skill prgression .

How it works basically is that tHe more usefull a skill is in the general type of game being played the more it costs

For example

Roaring 20's Action --- Automobile might cost 4 Guns 4 Sword only 1

Steampunk with a few guns and cars  Steamcar 1 Guns 2 Sword 4

and so on. In some generes Cooking costs more say Mecha Piloting!

This works quite well IMO

[Christoffer Lernö]

Fine, I understand what you are saying.  But as soon as you establish that they "go adventuring" you have just defined their real profession.  They are not actually a Dwarven Artilleryman; they are an Adventurer who once upon a time trained as a Dwarven Artilleryman.

In a sense, but as I also state I expect the Dwarven Artilleryman to go back to being just that after a session of adventure. Therefore it is not implausible for the character to increase in those skills.

However, if we use the BRP model we can only increase skills in use during the adventure and thus despite our Dwarven friend has lots of drills every day he's not allowed to increase within this system as that is not done during adventure time.

The second alternative would be let the player pay for the advancing skills. However, that would mean that if he choses to maintain a consistent character he will be paying points for that. Some other player might care little about having a colourful character and put all the skills in adventuring.

In the second case we're actually punishing the player who tries to put more colour into the character.

Finally one note to Ace: No matter how cheap a skill gets, it will still be more optimized to put ALL points in the useful skills. So it doesn't solve the problem, just make it less acute.

[C. Edwards]

Christoffer,

Have you considered classifying a character's "class" as a whole as a point based skill?

For example, Dwarven Artillery Man is the skill, which has a subset of abilities listed under it that are as effective as whatever rating the Dwarven Artillery Man skill has.  Only abilities that define what it means to be a Dwarven Artillery Man would be listed under it.  This way, since you want characters to advance in their professions between bouts of adventuring, you could assign between-play skill points that would account for what the character's do when they're not being played.  Or just say that for however much game time the character's spend between adventures their professional skills go up a set amount.  There could also be a scale for how many skill points are earned when a character uses his professional skills while adventuring.

This would be in addition to other skills outside those that define a profession, which would most likely vary for different character types.

Just an idea.

 -Chris

[Robert K Beckett]

Christoffer,

Have you considered classifying a character's "class" as a whole as a point based skill?

This way, since you want characters to advance in their professions between bouts of adventuring, you could assign between-play skill points that would account for what the character's do when they're not being played.  

There could also be a scale for how many skill points are earned when a character uses his professional skills while adventuring.


 -Chris

Hey that is an interesting idea. Each (non- adventuring) class or skill or whatever could have a sort of "Random Events Table" that you could roll on for each month or season that the PC is not adventuring. Results could be more money (from wages), contacts, experience points for the skill, injuries, or more interesting stuff that I can't think of right now (caffiene deficiency).

The roll itself or the table column you roll on could be modified by stuff like the PC's current skill level, how often the skill was used in the last adventure, the PC's level in certain relevant characteristics, and (especially) the player's choices of what the PC will & won't do between adventures.

come to think of it, you could just have one master table with generic results keyed to and explained in each skill description.

hmmm...

[Jeremy Cole]

Re: the whole random events btw adventures

Brilliant.

The skills not used during adventures could be defined as 'between adventure skills', probably by the GM specific to the campaign, and having lots of these skills could give a big bonus to the random event roll.  The thief and smooth talker do a lot better between hackfests than the wandering psychopath.

I think your idea has real potential.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Have you considered classifying a character's "class" as a whole as a point based skill?

In a sense. Since I was imagining a solution where skills were developed independetly of level, but where the level drove up the character's class-based skill/talents.

The difference between that and what you're suggestion is of course that in the level scenario there is improvment of the class during play, and in your suggestion it's partly put into the off-play time.

I could go with your idea, but it seems like a lot of rules to balance up. Can you think of a way to streamline them?

[C. Edwards]

Pale Fire wrote

I could go with your idea, but it seems like a lot of rules to balance up. Can you think of a way to streamline them?

Well Christoffer, I can probably think of a dozen ways to handle the rules, but I don't know what you want.  You seem to be beating a dead horse and doing everything but the one thing that is required of you to complete Ygg, make some decisions.

There comes a point where you (general, not you specifically) have to stop fishing for ideas and gathering data and sit down and make some decisions as to how a game is going to function.

I think that within the threads that concern Ygg, and the ones that don't, there are more than enough quality ideas for you to grab and run with. And there is nothing keeping you from changing your mind about something at a later date.  

Also, I believe that waiting for someone to deliver exactly what you're looking for isn't the best strategy.  For one thing it denies you, in part, one less opportunity to put your individual stamp on the game.  

My advice, for what its worth, is to take what you've got and go build a game.  Take the suggestions from The Forge and your own brainstorming and make some decisions.

And please don't take this post as some kind of scolding or harsh criticism.  It really is just some heart-felt advice.

-Chris

[Christoffer Lernö]

Don't worry. Look at the two latest Ygg postings, those include rules I have had up for discussion recently. I think I'm actually getting somewhere again. But it needed these discussions to get there.

(Not that I got any comments on those postings (yet), but Fang assures me that is not necessarily a bad thing - it might simply mean it was ok and noone had any special comments)

[ks13]

If you are concerned that "colour" skills or the original character concept skills will be glossed over in favour of more directly relavent adventuring skills, then change their cost structure. Make the colour skills very broad in scope or as a package, while other skills are very specific, at the same cost (or even less for the colour skills). Thus the player has a choice of increasing their special attack move by one point, or for the same cost up all the parts of their background package (the hierarchy listing of skills mentioned earlier would work nicely here).

A cooking skill will not (for the type of game you are describing) be as useful as a good Parry skill, but if cooking is part of a large package that gives the character info on regional or cultural lore, better chance to detect a poison (say due to a refined sense of smell and taste) or things along those lines, it becomes much more useful. Present the tradeoff of colour skills with dozens of possible uses, versus very scope limited (but more frequently used) adventuring skills.

[Christoffer Lernö]

The question is if this colour skill becomes something other than colour. If I'm using "clour skills" as a way of making my character distinct from the other million fighters out there, it kind of sucks if I only get to choose between a few packages. That will pretty much ensure that of the fighters I make there will at least be a few with identical profiles.

However, I'm playing the devil's advocate.

In a way, it's the perfect thing: put them into a group and let them be useful.

I'm thinking of actually doing that and ON TOP of that putting characteristic (character differentiating) colour skills.

The former will take care of maintaining the archetype and the latter will take care of character differentiation. However just presented like this it looks like an awful mess, so I have to think of a sly way to streamline it.

[ks13]

The question is if this colour skill becomes something other than colour. If I'm using "clour skills" as a way of making my character distinct from the other million fighters out there, it kind of sucks if I only get to choose between a few packages. That will pretty much ensure that of the fighters I make there will at least be a few with identical profiles.

Perhaps not. I say its a matter of implementation. You could either go with sub-categories in each skill group and allow a limited number to be chosen, or do not define each sub-skill and ability and instead have the player describe how the skill package was acquired. If we go back to the cooking example, a low class character with such a skill package would more likely be familiar with finding and preparing edible plants, homemade remedies, making moonshine, etc. While a higher-born's cooking skill package would perhaps include much more information on winetasting, value and use of spices, different regional foods and so on. Each specific difference does not need to be listed, when a general description of the scope and type of abilities/skills/knowledge likely to be known is sufficient. I would say that allowing the player to choose and in some ways define the colour skill package is much more involving than sorting through a list. This means that there is more interpretation and judgement calls that need to be made during play, but this should be fine as these are bonus skills, not something that is a matter of life and death. These should not be intended as "must have" skills in order to be successful adventurers, just something extra that adds flavour and perhaps a bonus to a roll or situation.