Ability Scope problems in Crux

[taalyn]

I am having problems figuring something out, so I'm hoping you all can help.

First, a basic run through of relevant details (mechanics only, as I've done setting numerous times):

Characters are defined by 3 things: Passions, Aspects, and Abilities.

Passions are what you'd expect - things the character is passionate about. They can be used for all sorts of cool narr/gamist stuff (I haven't figured out a sim use, if one even exists), such as redrawing, narrative control, and so on.

Aspects are the meat if Passions are the bones. They're the skills of other games, and the main part of any test. I have run 2, so I draw default 3 motes, and 2 more for the Aspect. Aspects are generally derived from or related to a Passion.

Then you have Abilities, the third member of the triad, and all the guts and connective tissue of the character "body".

Because a character can be pretty much anything a player desires, from stereotypical gold-grubbing dwarf all the way to hyperintelligent shades of blue, Abilities are where the specifics of your makeup are given.

The problem I'm having is how to restrict the scope of an Ability so that players/PCs can't take advantage of others. An example:

Amy has the Ability Raptor, because she's basically a giant bird woman. That includes flight, excellent eyesight, and maybe a gizzard.

Brad has the Ability Vampiric, because he's a vampire. As he defined it, that includes: flight, shapeshifting, healing, sun damage, speed, strength, and charm.

Both Abilities have a hand of 1, i.e. identical mechanics to handle them, which I originally thought would be enough. But notice how the scope of vampiric applies so much more frequently than raptor.

Is it okay to leave it like this? Would it be "unfair" or "unbalancing"? Or is it just a consequence of a player not being creative (or, narratively, not wanting to be that "kewl")?

On one hand, I'm sure I'm stuck in some assumption that belongs with all the other brown smelly stuff. On the other, I'm sure that it wouldn't be fair, and would cause problems, and garner complaints and death threats and so on.

Can anyone help me clarify?

[Shreyas Sampat]

If you're concerned that one will, through increased broadness of applicability, become more effective over time, you could introduce some kind of depletion mechanic that makes the Ability run out as you use it (or makes other stuff run out, I dunno...)

I don't think you need to hedge like that, though. HQ has gods that grant rare, sacred magical powers like Outsmart Pig. Crux doesn't strike me as the sort of game where you would worry about this kind of issue.

[jphannil]

Hi !

I had a similar problem with Chaos & Order (http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~jphannil/chaos_order.pdf). I have traits which are freeform and so the problem of breadth popped up, the most usual example I used to figure it out was this:

One has a warrior trait and the other has a swordplay trait. Now the warrior is much more applicable to situations than swordplay, even in the same field of expertise.

I 'fixed' the problem by dividing traits to broad and narrow category, the narrow ones rise more rapidly through experience than broad and in beginning you have to have a certain sum of both. This does not fix the problem entirely, but it flattens it out a bit. I guess you could do multiple breadths, I don't know how hard that would be.

Best regards

[Shreyas Sampat]

One think HeroQuest does that you might find useful to examine is the use of 'keywords', which are sort of large ability umbrellas.

Using JP's examples, "warrior" would be an HQ keyword, covering such abilities as:

[*]Fight With Gladius & Shield
[*]Defend Allies
[*]Group Battle Tactics
[*]Pitch & Strike Camp
[*]Loyalty to Officers[/list:u] and so on (anything that can be reasonably justified). These abilities all start at a value set by the keyword, but they must be improved independently to it. Importantly, abilities are synergistic; you can add some bonus to your "Defend Allies" Ability if you're defending an officer, by augmenting it with "Loyalty to Officers".
Meanwhile, "swordplay" is just one ability, all by its lonely self; this means that you have to reach outside it to get augmentations and such.

Obviously, this is a categorization solution. But it's a much more interesting one, I think, than simply saying, "This skill applies more, so it's costlier."

[taalyn]

I think I have a solution, without getting into complicated system. The discussion of broad/narrow was a help (for some reason, it took you guys to put it into my head the right way, even though I'd been reading Donjon, Over the Edge, and other freeform skill systems).

There are 3 kinds of "skills"  (Aspects or Abilities), based on the scope of usefulness:

  Broad: self explanatory
  Narrow: self-explanatory again, I hope
  Singular: those skills which you couldn't even try unless you had some skill in it, like Quantum Physics or an Art.

  Broad and Narrow are treated identically at chargen, but Narrow advances faster. Singular starts out with a hand of 0 for the first point put into it, at which point you can draw with the default hand of 3. Every point after raises the hand by one, but only at chargen. Advancement for Singular skills is very difficult. Generally, no Ability is Singular (the only example I can think of involves Caesurites, the most famous of which is Cthulhu).

  So, the Abilities I provided in the example above would be rated as Broad or Narrow. Hopefully it is obvious that Vampiric would be Broad (and thus advance a little slower), while Raptor would be Narrow.

  I think this will mostly fix any worries I had about Gamist players getting/giving the shaft. Sound good?

[Mike Holmes]

Nope, the Gamist player will still mess it up, in theory. The sim player might take Blacksmith, and the sim player then takes Smith. Both broad, but one obviously broader than the other. The thing is that one is probably too broad, or the other too narrow. So how do we know?

Examples, examples, examples. HQ gets away with allowing players to make up their own stuff by having so many examples that it's pretty clear what the breadth level should be - including an explicit section on how to handle those abilities that are too broad to be in the narrow category.

Lastly, I'd say that it doesn't matter, really. You'll never get it "perfect" and you shouldn't really try. No game with a skill list is perfect either this way. I mean, if I take something that seems as broadly useful as Medic skill, but nobody ever gets injured, then is it really worth more? As GM, you can and should tailor the conflcits that the player comes across so that they go against the character's appropriate ability. Thus, the Birdman and Vampire are "equal" from that POV as long as they experience a similar number of chances to use the ability.

Further, you forgot to list that the Raptors can use their green feathers to hide well in foliage. What I'm saying is that broad areas shouldn't be defined so well that players can't come up with creative uses for them. As long as that's true, and you're providing conflicts in which their abilities are useful, then it's not a problem at all.

Mike

[taalyn]

Good points, Mike.

Which leads me back to where I started - there is no distinction between broad or narrow (though singular is fairly easy to identify). So I'm going to drop that distinction, as unnecessary and irrelevant to play. Singular and normal will be the only distinction.