Avoiding type of task primacy?

[chance.thirteen]

I am throwing together a RPG for my friends from standard parts.

The problem i have is linked to my own thinking. I tend to divide action in an arena (social, military, research, etc) into a few steps:

• perception and understanding of the situation
• act on that information, which is usually broken up into the finesse of the action and the power of the action
• any resisting of the action, note changes

The problem here is that perception ability becomes critical. One easy ansswer is to say that perception is all a part of ability in the arena, especially because most situations are a continuous cycle of perception and action with adjustments to the changing situation. However, that misses out on one division i enjoy, which is where someone is expert in a type of action, but not this specific situation (eg intrigues in a very foreign court).

It reminds of older RPG designs I an friends made where Intelligence affected almost every single action, because surely being smarter would help you no matter what.

My current thinking has mental perception, recogniztion and understanding rolled into one trait, Acumen. And I know that i ask for tons of perception style checks having to do with not just spotting something physical, but understanding a situation.

Am I making something of nothing? Should I break the habit of asking for that sort of test? Or have others encountered this problem with Attributes?

(Some may note that this resolution thinking is related to the MEGS breakdown of Attributes into Power Finesse and Resistance, also seen in Mechanical Dream.)

[Luke]

Hi Chance,

What do the players do in your game? What are the types of conflicts? What kind of characters do they play?

-L

[Callan S.]

Hi,

The fish out of water situation seems to be what you enjoy, yet your focus seems to be on making systems that make sense and have a certain logic and consistancy to them.

If I'm right in thinking that, the problem there is that the fish out of water (diplomat in a very foreign court) wouldn't come up very often, because it wouldn't make sense for it to come up often. So the thing you enjoy...wouldn't actually happen in play very much at all. Or to be blunt, play generally wouldn't be fun.

Or atleast that's how it turns out sometimes. What do you think?

[chance.thirteen]

Depends on the game. In general, they are most contented when the GM has a "vision" of the action and stories for a given setting and associated play. This has the unsettling effect on play.

So in the end, because I have strong views about what I want to know about the characters attentions and actions and abilities, and how I communicate this and other information to the players, my own mentality controls play to a degree. Thankfully everyone says they enjoy themselves, but I still wish they were more free with their thought. This is neither here nor there really.

This group of friends has played: ten years of Champions, several years of Chivalry and Sorcery, over a decade of Runequest, a few years Vampire/etc, years of D&D Advanced through 4E, Call of Cthulhu, CP2020. In those they have created the usual array of characters really.

As a group we tend to aim for a strong sense of either expertise in a limted area, or a strong sense of characterization with in game motivations, or both.

Investigation and combat of one sort or another are common both in the game systems, and our style of play. However, I am not sure how much tactical expertise or social or investigative savvy we have gained over time. I am sure many here would find our games simplistic.

In short, the players do not try to break me of my habits, I just don't want to overly encourage them to buy up some trait that i have over emphasized in my thinking, and thus in my game design, and my game play as GM.

The core of the problem isn't stats, it's skills, and the kind of actions I ask to have resolved. To me, perception and understanding of the situation is critical, and not the same as the ability to then resolve the problem. Usually it will be but not always. For instance, your intimidating super crime fighter may be great at intimidating the underworld, but not as good at intimidating the high technology/finance criminals.

Does that help? I can talk all day, but no one wants that.

Callan S. - clarify "Or to be blunt, play generally wouldn't be fun."? DFo you mean because funnest is fish out of water, or because all this detail bogs down and only applies rarely? I will say that the example was the extreme, to me skills and knowledge are not only what makes a character, but what differntiates them, and anything i can do to bring out the character in play makes me happy, and hopefully that is conveyed to the player.

Also: Isn't there some literary theorty that says heroes should get tossed out of their comfort zone because watching someone do what they routinely do easily is boring?

[Creatures of Destiny]

Depends on the game. In general, they are most contented when the GM has a "vision" of the action and stories for a given setting and associated play. This has the unsettling effect on play.

So in the end, because I have strong views about what I want to know about the characters attentions and actions and abilities, and how I communicate this and other information to the players, my own mentality controls play to a degree. Thankfully everyone says they enjoy themselves, but I still wish they were more free with their thought. This is neither here nor there really.

This group of friends has played: ten years of Champions, several years of Chivalry and Sorcery, over a decade of Runequest, a few years Vampire/etc, years of D&D Advanced through 4E, Call of Cthulhu, CP2020. In those they have created the usual array of characters really.

As a group we tend to aim for a strong sense of either expertise in a limted area, or a strong sense of characterization with in game motivations, or both.

Investigation and combat of one sort or another are common both in the game systems, and our style of play. However, I am not sure how much tactical expertise or social or investigative savvy we have gained over time. I am sure many here would find our games simplistic.

In short, the players do not try to break me of my habits, I just don't want to overly encourage them to buy up some trait that i have over emphasized in my thinking, and thus in my game design, and my game play as GM.

The core of the problem isn't stats, it's skills, and the kind of actions I ask to have resolved. To me, perception and understanding of the situation is critical, and not the same as the ability to then resolve the problem. Usually it will be but not always. For instance, your intimidating super crime fighter may be great at intimidating the underworld, but not as good at intimidating the high technology/finance criminals.

Does that help? I can talk all day, but no one wants that.

Callan S. - clarify "Or to be blunt, play generally wouldn't be fun."? DFo you mean because funnest is fish out of water, or because all this detail bogs down and only applies rarely? I will say that the example was the extreme, to me skills and knowledge are not only what makes a character, but what differntiates them, and anything i can do to bring out the character in play makes me happy, and hopefully that is conveyed to the player.

Also: Isn't there some literary theorty that says heroes should get tossed out of their comfort zone because watching someone do what they routinely do easily is boring?

First watch this video and count how many times the players pass the basketballs: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/flashmovie/15.php (if you know this already then it's obvious).

Perception could simply be part of someone's skills. A diplomat is trained to notice nuances of speech and mannerism. A marksman - movement. A proof-reader to notice errors in a text. A rainforest tribeswoman the subtle gradations of colour that distinguish a food plant from a deadly poison. Excellence in one of these will not aid the others (for example a diplomat may be very unperceptive about colour difference or even punctuation errors, while a marksmen's might have a poor eye for colours.

You could simply scrap Acumen and simply use the most appropriate skill. If players use different skills they get different information. Or maybe they just use Acumen as a kind of "saving throw".

For example a cop is looking for clues. The player says "I'm going to use my Forensics skill to look for prints/traces" While the cop is looking up close for prints the murderer comes back in. The GM rolls Acumen to see if the cop notices (the cop could spot a vital clue but be so wrapped up the killer gets the drop on him).

Also you could have skills feeding stats: so the more Strength skills you get, the more your strength goes up, the more Acumen skills you take the more you base Acumen goes up etc...

That way no-one is actually "pumping points into Acumen" they're pumping points into all kinds of stuff with Acumen going up as a consequence.

[Luke]

Hey Chance,

That was very helpful, but not the question I was asking! What do the players do in the game you're developing?

I hear you saying that you want to break them out of their routine. That's cool. That is very easy and very painful at the same time!

Game rules govern the behavior of the players.

All games have a premise. Premise helps focus rules so that the mechanics bring out the behavior that you want.

In three sentences tell me what your game is and what the players do.


-L

[chance.thirteen]

I do understand the question. The point is that i am not trying to break the players out of their habits, I am asking if I need to break MINE.

Am I letting some ideal about perception or intelligence rule my game design too much?

Have others discovered they do the same thing in their designs?

Should I be concerned about it, or accept that it is how I think and get into the action?

If not, what are possible routes out of this thought? Note, not out of this design, I know how to alter rules.

And what my players do in this game? Investigate mysteries, discover and counter a conspiracy, fight mythological creatures, discover their divine parentage and how that affects their nature and role in the world, encounter idealistic movements and the discontent that feeds them, attend The Season, travel the world and encounter foreign cultures galore.

In short, it's a rewrite of the game rules for Scion, set in 1848, where someone has stolen and given away the Promethean Flame causing the slow but soon to be explosive advent of more stereotypically Steampunk elements in technology.

So understanding and evaluation are indeed important. Foreign cultures, new technologies, new powers, new movements and ideals, and the impact on the world of all these elements feature highly.

[Bert]

Hi Chance,

Perception could simply be part of someone's skills.

Creatures of Destiny has it. The answer lies in your comment about the debate in the eighties and nineties about a single intelligence attribute.

It reminds of older RPG designs I an friends made where Intelligence affected almost every single action, because surely being smarter would help you no matter what.

It turns out there's no such thing as general intelligence anyway. Human intelligence can be divided into seven broad categories based on empircal factors. The different intelligence types are Bodily/Kinaesthetic, Logical/Mathematical, Linguistic, Auditory/Musical, Visual/Spatial, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. Some people have tried to prove the existence of other intelligence types, including Naturalistic, Existential and Spiritual, but they lack an empirical foundation. I've used all of these as attributes and the work really well for certain types of game.

Anyway, in the same way as there's no general intelligence, there's no general perception either. Its always linked to a particular kind of activity. If you want to get away from separate perception rolls for every action here's a perfectly good rationale. One roll is more realistic. Of course, realism isn't always useful in game design...

G'luck!

Bert

Bert

[Luke]

And what my players do in this game? Investigate mysteries, discover and counter a conspiracy, fight mythological creatures, discover their divine parentage and how that affects their nature and role in the world, encounter idealistic movements and the discontent that feeds them, attend The Season, travel the world and encounter foreign cultures galore.

Dude! That's awesome! It sounds like insight and understand are vital to your game.
You should absolutely make investigation and perception a mechanic or step in this game. There's dozens of ways to do it, but I think, based on that great concept, that it should be central.

Do you see the true nature of a problem? Or are you biased? Are you careless? Mistaken? Or just plain wrong? All of those oppositions have tremendous dramatic potential.

And if you do see truly, now you have power. Power brings responsibility. You've cut to the root of a problem, but you're the only one who can see it. How do you communicate this to everyone else who thinks you're wrong? Who's going to believe what they can't see? Who's going to believe your bizarre experiments are the true cure?

It's your design based on your premise. If you want perception to be central, then by gum, it's going to be central.
The trick now is to make it interesting. That's the art of it!

-L

[chance.thirteen]

I am familiar with multiple intelligences theory and it beckons to me like a siren to make the most complicated and likely unenjoyable game ever. To get around this in a Champions rewrite, I just moved attributes from skills and charged a cost based solely on the final skill level. The thinking was that if a high talent person had a low skill, either they had a block on this application of their talent, or they hadn't developed the talent much. It makes things much easier, though players often balk at having to define how smart their character is without a trait to point at.

Meanwhile, a key element to my thinking in terms of challenges (situations to overcome with skill) is the variables that contrast one person with another. A typical example would be fencers, both might have the same amount of fencing skill, but one is faster, or stronger, or more fit, or has a longer reach, or plays a more devious and deep mental tactics game. All of these can go right into a single skill check if you like, but it seems lacking to me. I use this example because I am a poor fencer, but I have faced more experienced but physically equal opponents, fancier move opponents, over confident opponents, and so on.

And to my own personal experience, just saying willy nilly that one of these was the reason why a contest went one way or another just seems arbitrary. So I try to emphasize the differences.

Same applies to a social or intellectual challenge, where specific experience matters, but so do general type skills, approach and personality. How do you make all these things show up, to show off the differences in how various characters get things done? And how do you make it interesting? It's already "interesting" because I as a GM focus on these mental elements, but the game could certainly help.

I have been tempted to run with "extra talents" (like fast reflexes, east to get along with, culturally open, etc) as FATE-like traits that you can call upon once, and after that they use up some resource, but thats more towards a game design answer than one that meets my actual desires. At least it feels that way thinking about it.

The more complex answer is to assign skills a general resolution mechanism (like 1d6 per skill level), then have as many other traits that might intrude also be rolled and modify the main result. So again you might have agility dice, inventiveness dice, dice for each of the multiple intelligence categoies mentioned above, and so on, and you could see when your edges paid off, and narrate accordingly. I would prefer to a degree that such traits altered the whole shebang really.

So in short, I was trying to point such things out with a perception or intellect attribute+skill check to get the mental lay of the problem, then another skill check. Probably not too exciting.

Now I could allow the various categories of action to have an advantage to modify perception checks in a given area ...