[Lords of Sky] Skill systems_can simple be realistic?

[Andre Canivet]

Hello again.  I've been working on a stubborn project (introduced here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=29095.0 ), and I'm having trouble with the skill / ability system.

The goal for the game is a fast & loose system with a traditional feel (think Cortex, Silhouette, or Savage Worlds), with strong story-game influences---perhaps a kind of hybrid game or anyway a game which allows for some narrative-type play but will still appeal to more traditional players.  It must include some system for unique martial arts styles and systems of magic.  So far it's combat focused, but I'm hoping to broaden the design once I get the basics worked out.

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So far, my skill system seems much more complicated than what I want.  The structure I started with had roughly 4 layers: aptitudes (physical, intellectual/technical, social/instinctive), which only determined how quickly certain skills could be improved; broad skills, (e.g. hand to hand combat) and specializations (e.g. kick, parry, strike, grapple); and feats & advantages, which would include advanced maneuvers & in-born benefits, like "dual weapon technique" or "double jointed."

All this seems a bit on the clunky side.  I'm trying to work out a way to drop a couple of layers and just have "abilities," and some level of specialization or special techniques.  If I did that, the system would probably look a bit more like Fate / Spirit of the Century, with it's skills & stunts.  The problem is, while it is much simpler, it also feels less "realistic" (although I realize that's an ephemeral term).

Certain abilities just seem governed by some sort of fundamental aptitude or attribute, like agility or strength or stamina.  And some skills seem to be based on other skills (for example; is hand to hand combat a sub-set of athletics?  It would seem to be, but most systems separate the two).  But there seems to be only two approaches: a raw list of skills with no attributes; or an attribute + skill type system.  Both seem like kludges...

I've read some discussion on the matter: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2051.0 and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=2050.0 and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=139.0 but they don't really get at the "realism" issue.  They may avoid it because realism maybe boils down to personal preference, but I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on the issue.

Ultimately, I am wondering: how can I simplify and yet maintain some sort of distinction between different fundamental abilities; particularly the physical differences...  what separates a strong hero from a fast hero in a system with just a skill list and no attributes?

Am I over-thinking this, or being too perfectionist?

-A.

[Excalibur]

I sort of like the notion of getting rid of attributes all together and using aspects. I forget which game aspects came from (heard of it first in an RPG design tutorial video) but you can use them in place of everything else.

For example, you want a strong character. You could use an attribute titled Strength (Physical Strength, Muscle, whatever) that has a score (say from 3-18) with the higher scores meaning a stronger character.

Or, you could just have an aspect titled Strong, Muscular, Weight-Lifter, or some general, descriptive text. The meaning of this might be that instead of rolling the standard d10 for task resolution, they roll a d20 or they add 10 to the d10.

Say you want a fast, wiry character. Well, you could represent that with attributes such as speed and dexterity. Or you could just give the character the aspects Fleet of Foot and Wiry. This character may gain bonuses to certain tasks such as running, initiative, or wiggling into places a normal person couldn't fit.

This also makes characters relatively unique, just like in real life. I mean, everyone has strength of some type. Why constantly state it over and over again with a quantified strength attribute? If most people have average strength, then there's no real need to go granular and stat that this person is slightly stronger than your average person and therefore gains a +1 bonus. Or this person is extremely weak and has a strength that gives a -2 penalty.

Instead you can just describe the character, not worry about the norms, and get on with gaming.

In terms of task resolution (including conflict resolution), Savage Worlds looked interesting. I am personally fond of success/failure dice pools, resource allocation, and press-your-luck mechanics.

[Locke]

since savage worlds and these pulp games exist, than why create another one.  Save worlds covers all genres.  What is the aim of your game?

[Andre Canivet]

Hi guys,

Aspects are used by Spirit of the Century -- it's really quite a solid game.  Although, I don't want to simply re-create it, I do like how it handles abilities that aren't skills.  Actually--I was kind of inspired in a similar direction by the InSpectres demo version (it's 4 pages; every profession has four skills--Academics, Athletics, Technical, & Contact which are very broad--and 1 talent that gives a moderate bonus in certain situations).

Savage Worlds I am less familiar with (it's the only game I mentioned that I don't own), but I certainly don't want to just re-create it, either.

My design has several things going for it that I don't think any of the systems mentioned have.  For example, resolving a conflict is based as much on resource allocation as it is on luck; reflecting both the character's abilities, and how invested they are in the outcome.  This is one point in which narrativist-facilitating features come in; as the character's emotional & ethical qualities can affect available resources, and I believe can be used to address a premise--or at least, a character premise if not one for the entire game.

There's also martial arts; which I don't think Savage Worlds focuses on (although I really don't know).  Spirit of the Century does it a little bit (and well for what it does), but not extensively; and Cortex and Silhouette don't really do it at all.  So, that's probably the major aim--cinematic action (physical, social, whatever) with lots of flexibility.

I had also been toying with a Fortune in the Middle (FitM) resolution system; although I'm kind of torn on that.  I do want the game to appeal to traditionalists, but I like the idea of fortune in the middle, because it allows for the details of combat to be narrated instead of decided with a lot of rolling.  There would of course be rewards for exciting narration.  I have a dice mechanic that will handle FitM and Fortune at the End equally well, so I'd even been thinking of including rules for both.

-A.

[Excalibur]

You mention resource allocation for resolution. Have you seen Marvel's Marvel Universe RPG? They deal with a lot of that there and it's a pretty interesting system.

For Martial Arts, there's Hero System's Ultimate Martial Arts (I think that's the title). Though you might get bogged down in the system a bit. You could always look at Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies and Mystic China. Those two books have a wealth of Martial Arts styles that could possibly be inspiration.

[Andre Canivet]

Unfortunately, I haven't seen Marvel Universe, although I'll keep an eye out for it.  Conflicts in Lords of Sky use a combination of action points and die rolls.  You can do basic actions for little or no cost, while advanced actions cost action points.  In either case, you make a die roll.  You can also boost your die rolls by spending more action points, and depending on what you do, you can earn spent action points back or gain other bonuses.

I've pretty much got the special moves for the martial arts figured out--at least in a general sense.  I don't have the Hero book, but I have copies of Ninjas & Superspies and Mystic China, which are certainly handy, as well as kung-fu movies and conversations with martial arts instructors.  So, I'm fairly comfortable with my research there. 

It's just the sorting of the main skill system that's really holding me up.  Something like Aspects in SotC might be the best way to go for attribute-like qualities.  I just don't want to re-invent their system.  And I still need to work out if and how hand to hand skills are separate from non-combat athletics skills.

[Excalibur]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Universe_Roleplaying_Game will get you to a basic rundown of MURP.

As for martial arts and non-combat skills, is there any reason why you wouldn't want a unified mechanic that handled both?

[contracycle]

Briefly, on realism.  There are two issues here: firstly, people don't always agree on what is realistic, and secondly, realism is a term that could apply to so many things that it doesn't communicate much.  As a result it's not very useful as a design concept.  Instead, decide what it is that you want to do, and describe and discuss that. 

Looking at what you've written, it seems that what you want is for abilities that get used in play to have a reasonable dependency on the definition of the character.  The first point to make about this is that strictly speaking it is unnecessary; it can be done, as you observe, with only one tier of attributes.  The second thing to say is that mutliple tiers may have the consequence of introducing redundancy.  After all, for most purposes AD&D2 attributes might as well not have existed, and we might as well just had the modifiers to AC or save or whatever instead.  So if you do have multiple tiers, each tier must have it's own function.

With that in mind, we can construct some sorts of dependencies that are meaningful.  You can have skills that relate to the attribute in the forms "can be no higher than", "must have minimum", "are added to", "rolls are modified by", etc.

What distinguishes a strong hero from a fast hero in a system with no attributes is the skills themselves.  Now the difference here is that you are probably thinking of skills that are generic, like melee or leaping or something like that, while those systems actually use skills that are descriptive, like "can catch flies in chopsticks".  So when a descriptive skill of this nature is invoked, you simultaneously get information about how the character does what they do; the difference between the two characters, and the situational applicability of their skills, is immediately obvious.

[Andre Canivet]

Thanks for the link Excalibur.  From the wiki article, MURP's resolution actually seems a bit like an earlier system I was toying with (using concepts of "effort" and "resistance" as well as skill and difficulty--see previous Lords of Sky thread, linked in first line of this thread), only MURP is pure resource allocation.

In general, the martial arts and non-combat actions use the same resolution system; it's just that combat, as well as complex social interactions, use a system of extended conflict (a series of rolls), while most other stuff (say, constructing a shelter using your survival skill) uses a single roll.

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Also, thanks for the feedback, Contracycle--that's a lot to think about.  It's true that my standards of "realism" are probably arbitrary and unconscious; and perhaps better abandoned in favour of coherence.  I think I'm struggling to find coherence in the design because I'm trying to make a game using more modern design features that will still appeal to the traditional gamers I play with, but It may be that my initial RPG experiences are interfering.

I've thought about going to fully descriptive, player-defined skills.  The system already has descriptive "tags" giving character background, relationships, and various hindrances which can be player-defined or chosen from a list.  I had resisted doing that with skills so that I could maintain some of the structure of a traditional game, as well as for the speed & simplicity of a pre-defined skill list (which, admittedly, is only assumed).

Going way back, I used to have a system where you had an attribute, added to a skill, added to a die roll, versus a competing difficulty + die roll (or an opposing attrib + skill + die roll).  The problem was that GM'ing became quite a pain, because I had a large number of attributes, and skills weren't tied to a particular one--so I was always having to decide which skill to use with which attribute, which really bogged down the game.  That's when I decided to use only skills, and have "aptitudes" that affected starting skill levels and skill improvement, but didn't affect resolution during conflicts.

I need to contemplate this.

-A.

[stefoid]

Ultimately, I am wondering: how can I simplify and yet maintain some sort of distinction between different fundamental abilities; particularly the physical differences...  what separates a strong hero from a fast hero in a system with just a skill list and no attributes?

cut out the middleman?  you can have skills called "hit things hard"  and another skill called "hit things fast"    A nice outcome is that the skill implies extra information - the effect of the 'skill' is built in -- if you succeed at your hit things fast skill, by definition, you beat the other guy to the punch who isnt using hit things fast.  Likewise if you succeed at your hit things hard skill, you do more damage than someone using hit things<some other way>.

This is a pet idea of mine where you describe a character purely in terms of effects they can generate, rather than a combination of 'causes' (stats + skills), which via the application of a multitude of rules, eventually results in effects. 

yes , you do have to have a huge laundry list of 'skills' for this to work, but a bit of categorization would make sense of them, as a given character is probably going to concentrate in a few areas to fit the players characters.

[stefoid]

err, that last sentence should read "fit the players character concept"

another advantage of this idea is that the rules to the game are distributed amongst all the skills rather than there being 'here are the skills" and "here are the rules which define how they are applied"

eg:  Hit things fast:  If you succeed at this, your attack happens before anyone else, unless they are also using hit things fast, in which case attacks by fast hitters proceed in order of highest roll, with a tie being simultaneous.  Because being fast takes priority over force of the blow, apply half weapon damage.


...everything you need to know about the determining the effect of the skill is right there with the skill, because the skill IS the effect.  As such, probably a better term is  'technique'.  You could put them all on cards or something and play them face down to give an element of gamist guesswork.

[Excalibur]

err, that last sentence should read "fit the players character concept"

another advantage of this idea is that the rules to the game are distributed amongst all the skills rather than there being 'here are the skills" and "here are the rules which define how they are applied"

eg:  Hit things fast:  If you succeed at this, your attack happens before anyone else, unless they are also using hit things fast, in which case attacks by fast hitters proceed in order of highest roll, with a tie being simultaneous.  Because being fast takes priority over force of the blow, apply half weapon damage.


...everything you need to know about the determining the effect of the skill is right there with the skill, because the skill IS the effect.  As such, probably a better term is  'technique'.  You could put them all on cards or something and play them face down to give an element of gamist guesswork.

Perhaps the better term is effects or FX. Each character is defined by the FX that he can generate. "Hit things hard," "Hit things fast," "Run really fast," etc. I like the idea of defining a character this way and doing away with all the other fluff. In a way, you could design a series of character FX that when put together in some fashion describe what the character can do.

You don't really need a laundry list of skills. Perhaps you can abstract what all the ideas do down to a list of simple rules (ooooh, maybe I'm treading on hero system grounds here...). I'm talking about Fast: The ability to act before anybody else in a given situation. Actions with the Fast modifier concentrate on the speed of accomplishing the action rather than the quality of the action and therefore are at half effectiveness. Unless, of course, the act of being Fast is the primary action such as Running Fast.

In essence, you build a system based on verbs and adverbs with the effects stacking. It will probably take a lot of player-GM interaction though.

[Andre Canivet]

You don't really need a laundry list of skills. Perhaps you can abstract what all the ideas do down to a list of simple rules...

I always figured that the standard list of general skills was intended to abstract things down so you don't need specific rules for every possible situation--because it's hard to anticipate many of the specific situations that will arise in play and create a rule for each.  But if you have a general skill or attribute that covers it, you can default to that without much problem. 

Ultimately, it's a matter of preference for how specific or detailed you want abilities to get.  I think for my own system, I'm going to go with a list of 20 or so pre-defined skills, with provision for specializations or specific maneuvers, and rules for defining new skills & abilities.  I can get rid of one or two layers of abilities that way.

-A.

[Falc]

I have a dice mechanic that will handle FitM and Fortune at the End equally well, so I'd even been thinking of including rules for both.

I noticed this in one of your earlier posts. Would you rather end up having to change your dice mechanic to accomodate a new view on traits/skills/aspects/wh'ever, or would you prefer to keep your mechanic and change the rest of the system? Because you haven't spoken of your mechanic yet and if it matters to you, then I think you should explain it.

[stefoid]

You don't really need a laundry list of skills. Perhaps you can abstract what all the ideas do down to a list of simple rules...

I always figured that the standard list of general skills was intended to abstract things down so you don't need specific rules for every possible situation--because it's hard to anticipate many of the specific situations that will arise in play and create a rule for each.  But if you have a general skill or attribute that covers it, you can default to that without much problem. 

Ultimately, it's a matter of preference for how specific or detailed you want abilities to get.  I think for my own system, I'm going to go with a list of 20 or so pre-defined skills, with provision for specializations or specific maneuvers, and rules for defining new skills & abilities.  I can get rid of one or two layers of abilities that way.

-A.

Yeah, its a continuum.   I had a bash at outlining a framework for the idea here   http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=29513.0 so as not to hijack other threads so much.  But the basic dif is that a skill entitles the character to perform a range of related activities, but doesnt in itself define the outcome for successfully using that skill.  To do that you need   at least two of :    skill success  and/or mechanics  and/or   human interpretation  to get an outcome.   Whereas  with these 'techniques' they basically are outcomes.

Depends what you are aiming for.  In a gamist type of game, I think you want to minimise human interpretation being involved in determining outcomes.  It could lead to problems.  which generally leads to a lot of mechanics instead.

For other types of games, where the exact nature of the outcome isnt as important as maybe the context of the contest, I think you want to minimise the mechanics, and very broad 'skills' used in conjunction with human interpretation seem best.