The Forge Archives

Ok. Maybe I have to capitulate and introduce the classes after all.

Classes can be done a lot of different ways, but I was actually going with the level approach.

Actually, I feel that a lot of the modern games still has levels in a kind of "fuzzy level" approach. Any game where you get points to spend on your character development after completing an adventure where the development isn't explicitly tied to the skills used during the adventure has this approach.

Only the clear "you advance on what you used" or hybrids with that and "you get extra experience to put on any skill to simulate that you might have used skills 'off-screen'" wouldn't belong to at least the "fuzzy level" thing.

Take a look at Shadowrun where you collect karma and buy increases in any skill. You could easily make Shadowrun into a level system by awarding experience instead of karma and then at increasing a level you get a bunch of karma to buy stuff for.

What the level system does is to make the increases discrete, whereas the currently popular "buy improvment with experience" guarantees possible increases after every session.

The advantage of the latter is of course that you don't get discrete jumps in your ability. This increases the SMC (Setting to Mechanics consistency) of the game which usually is a good thing.

The advantage of the level system is that you don't have to limit yourself to skill improvements. You can have other things change in an orderly and balanced fashion. The level system lets you calculate how powerful a character could possibly be simply through a glance. It's a useful tool to interface with other meta game mechanics too.

Anyway, I was thinking of a level system for Ygg. As Earthdawn shows, and there are probably other examples as well, you can have a level system side by side with skills and "fuzzy level" mechanics.

Originally, when I still had plans to have a standard skill system for Ygg, I was thinking of have it parallell to a "hero level" which only affected meta game mechanics such as fate points. I cut away the skill system from Ygg though. It didn't seem necessary. Too much junk.

But, I wasn't going to go AD&D on you. AD&D (at least the versions I played) have two specific things I wasn't gonna have in Ygg's system:

1. Kill XP. Look at Palladium. Palladium got XP right.

2. Progressively more time between levels. In AD&D (and Palladium as well) you need more and more XP to increase a level. I don't want that.

So what does that leave us?

Pretty much almost like a "fuzzy level" system. Only with a level label written on it.

Quick rules:

1. Start at level 1. Every 1000 XP (or 500 XP), it's supposed to be between a normal session and two sessions worth of XP.

2. Every time you gain a level you do the level up stuff which is increasing abilities and so on yadda yadda.

Yes, this means that after a 100 adventures the character is at level 100.

How is that helpful? Why not go along with the "fuzzy level" approach?

Well, as I said, it's a helpful value to input into the meta mechanics.

Let's say we have Fate points. Then maybe at level 1 you have 1.
Level 3 you have 2. Level 9 you have 3. Level 27 you have 4. Or whatever numerical series I feel like using.

Anyway, it works better than having the players buy them at increasing cost or something like that.

(Of course, I could have made level 3 into level 2, level 9 into level 4 and so on and I'd have a standard progressively slower increase in abilities just like say AD&D. But that's not really what I want. I want fuzzy levels with a Level label put on top. Earthdawn has another scheme for doing the same thing, but it's friggin complicated. This has pretty much the same effect as ED's system but it's much much simpler)

Unfortunately, not having increasingly costly level increases has a bad side-effect. You see it already in the fate point thing. Although it might be permissible if it's just about meta-resources, if you want to use this level as a way to limit skills aquirements you run into problems.

Or maybe it's just me who thinks seeing a list saying "You need to be level 347 to buy this skill" feels a little silly? It would have been a different thing if every level would have given access to a new skill or something. Of course I could use the base 10 and every 10 levels you get new skill/talent/feat choices. But even that sucks. You get this "jump" in progress you don't really want. Right?

As far as I can tell, the only good way out would be to put in the limits in the talents/feats/skills themselves, demanding that "you need to have x in talent y before you can learn this". Ok in theory but I dread the task of balancing that.

Do I have any alternatives?

Quote from: Pale FireDo I have any alternatives?

As usual your deconstruction of these things leaves me shaking my head. You say that Levels and CP are the same thing, but then point to the differences. Then you set up these false dichotomies as if there are only two ways to do things and then ask if there are other alternatives. When there are infinite options all bassed across spectra. What's the point of all this?

Almost every system (BRP is a notable exception) uses the "fuzzy" system in that they allow advancement in things the character did not do in active play, as long as they can explain how the character got the skill "reasonably". This "reasonably" shifts from system to system. In some CP systems you are only buying one thing at a time, and since this is a small amount of stuff to be working on, the usual "I worked on it in my spare time" is sufficient. In D&D leveling up indicated a lot of increase in ability, and the game supposedly required you to go off for a period of time and train. But in play it seems that this requirement was often dropped. Gamists sometimes (note, sometimes) don't care enough about in-game consistency to be bothered with an iterruption of the challenge to go off and become more powerful. Thus the rationale was that the character had learned stuff as he went along, and was just suddenly a quantum leap more powerful than previously.

In practice different systems usually require more or less of such rationales, but in the end they almost all have some version of this. The exceptions mostly include games where the idea of "advancement" is dropped. But even radical systems like OTE, have such systems. I think what you want falls right into this usual category in terms of rationale. That is, requiring characters to have some sort of reasoning behind how they get the skills they do. The strenuousness with which you require this is a matter of aesthetics that only you can answer.

The only real question here is if there is a value to the actual level mechanic. I agree with you in that the only value I can see from it is in the realm of meta-game. As soon as you start to try to rationalize level in terms of something "realistic" or in-game, it usually falls apart without some real stretches of the imagination. But that said, what meta-game are you going to link to it? The Fate points? Won't those vary with use? Just dole one out with each package/level taken, and that takes care of itself.

And there is the question of utility for using level to discern character power. This I disagree with for the most part. If I am a level 100 Accountant, I will probably have a much worse time with the dragon than the level 4 Warrior. Who wqill not be able to compete with me when it comes to helping th King balance his books. The skills that the character has in question will be a better determinant of the character's ability to take care of a particular circumstance. As such that eliminates the only other use for level I can think of.

Don't use levels. They are additinal accounting with no real purpose.

Mike

As I've been reading these recent Ygg threads, I've been contemplating the problem of character advancement, which seems to be a common issue underlying all these topics (classes, levels, abilities, specialization vs. generalism, etc.). Weighing heavily in my thoughts have been the following:

- Few characters, in the fantasy literature that Ygg is intended to invoke the spirit of, "advance" in any significant way.

- As Mike just laid out, adequate justification for advancement is rare in role playing games. The reason is simple. Realistic training for skill improvement, even off camera, is tedious and isn't any part of what you term "standard fantasy."

- The exceptions in the literature are, in the vast majority of cases, young characters of unknown (but often great) potential.

Focusing in on those exceptions, we see occasional stories that attempt to depict the young character being trained. But even in those cases, the character usually progresses through training extraordinary quickly. Either that, or the training fails but then the character comes into his or her own by responding to a crisis. (Luke Skywalker exhibits both phenomena in succession, in Episodes IV and V) The impression is always that natural "gifts" or innate talents are being revealed, rather than being created through tedious training. This is true whether or not the abilities have any overtly supernatural quality.

I believe this aspect of the literature arises from two sources: as a metaphor for the changes and discoveries of adolescence, and the nearly universal pleasurable fantasy of being able to get things without working hard for them. (It's the same reason sports writers like to pretend that the latest "young phenom quarterback" in the NFL just woke up one day and discovered he had a great passing arm -- hey, maybe the same thing could happen to me tomorrow -- instead of acknowledging that the guy spent all his time for the past ten years, through high school, college, and training squads, practicing.)

So, you want Ygg to better evoke the literature, and solve some of these otherwise intractable design problems at the same time? Then have two kinds of characters. For convenience I'll call them "adults" and "adolescents" but you'll need more colorful terms.

Adults are fully accomplished in their abilities. (They may or may not have yet begun applying those abilities in any dramatic way -- that is, they may or may not yet have reputations or have already done heroic deeds.) Adult characters do not advance. At least, not in any "systematic" way; a spellcaster might still discover a new spell or a warrior might encounter and learn a new technique or a character might learn to swim during play, but these would be occasional and haphazard occurrences driven by the turn of events, not the post hoc rationales for an advancement system.

Adolescents start out as "low level" characters and they advance. This advancement can be as dramatic as in D&D, but it's interpreted as the realization of their existing potential or the revealing of their natural gifts, which can eventually exceed those of the adult characters. It does not come about through training (though training can be depicted occasionally for color) nor from ordinary use of abilities. It happens as a result of crises survived. In the system this occurrence could be related to the use of Fate Points. Adolescent characters define a large portion of their "potential" at character creation, which gives the characters a direction for advancement and prevents them from developing into generalists. The advancent is also always uncertain (as is, of course, the survival of the character). After all, gifted and "fated" characters in fiction are often fated to die young while using their gifts to achieve a crucial end, rather than fated to become successful and powerful. ("Now I know why I was cursed with such great strength. It was to be able to hold this collapsing tunnel up for just long enough for the rest of you to escape.")

This is decidedly and purposefully unbalanced between adult and adolescent characters. (The lack of this unbalance in fantasy novels written based on traditional RPG "parties" is one reason they come across so flat.)

Niche protection and protagonism are an issue. Adolescent characters mixed with adults will have generally inferior abilities, with the exception of maybe a precocious wild talent or two. But I'd also give the adolescent characters way more Fate Points than the adults, as well as individual situational advantages. In general, setting up this imbalance in Ygg would force you to consider ways of protagonizing characters other than abilities, the importance of which Mike pointed out. See this recent thread for a discussion of one case of trading off between direct effectiveness and another aspect of a character's situation.

This requires some development to thrash out the next level of detail, but on the surface it appears to solve most of the recently discussed Ygg problems. Abilities and balance for adult characters are made easier because they don't advance. Advancement for adolescent characters is guided in large part by their pre-established "potentials," so those have direction and specialization. Balance for adolescent characters is nonexistent, so you don't have to worry about the system maintaining it. There are no EPs, no counting of levels, no fixed milestones. Advancement is situational, and it's based on the kind of situations you want to have a lot of in play (adventurous crises) rather than on ones you don't (training sessions).

Played with a mixture of adult and adolescent characters, this strikes me as much more evocative of the Lord Of The Rings - Dune - Star Wars fantasy fiction vein (and therefore, of certain mythologies and heroic traditions as well) than most of what I've seen in RPGs. If I were playing a game with a system like this, it would be a difficult decision for me whether to play an adult or an adolescent -- which I believe is a good sign.

- Walt

Walt, excellent notes.

Only one problem, however. I'll head PF off at the pass, here. He's going to say that Standard Fantasy relates to how gamers percieve things. IOW, Standard Fantasy is D&D. Which means that they expect advancement.

Betcha two to one, Christoff comes back and says that what you propose is too radical, and that he must have a more standard "advancement" system in his game.

Mike

Hey Mike.  Give the man some credit.  He's had a lot of pretty good and fairly novel ideas.  His biggest problem is simply picking one to test in an actual game.  I wouldn't be so quick to put words in his mouth.

Mike: I'm not taking that bet. :)

Walt,
     It seems to me that characthers DO advance in Fantasy.
It's just that they usually need to be trained to start off. Luke needes Obi-wan to teach him how to use the force and a light saber, but once he knows he gets better on his own. Earthdawn sorta does this. You can advance a power(talent) on your own,but  you need to train with someone to learn new ones.
     You could always do a more 'meta' advancement also. Charachters get experiance, but they don't spend it on improving themseveles, but instead spend it on other things.
The advancement==connectedness comes to mind. An 'adult' might better equipment or a patron or a follower with their Fate points, rather than actually getting stronger or more skilled.

    Another way to do with would be to have an explicit 'non-adventuring' system. Ars Magica goes this very well, with explicit and fairly simple rules for how charachters can spend non-adventuring time training or doing research. Also, it used large scale discreet time of a 'season'. Honestly, I think discreet time helps a system like this alot, as the book keeping gets easier. I think you could do this with fantasy also, although I'd go by 'month' rather than season.  You adventure one month and mabye train the next.

You could always limit levels to 10 or less and simply make them worth more to achieve.  I use a skill system with only four degrees (e.g., 'levels') of achievement for any skill with the 4th level being master level and that grants a hefty dose of author stance power to the player whenever their character uses that skill.

As to gaining levels, I follow the fuzzy "if you use it enough" it can increase.  But better yet, how about failure?  People do learn from mistakes.  I wrote up a little rule about this whereby the player may simply change their character's so-called 'critical-success' into a stupendous failure as a means of possibly learning from the whiff.

So maybe failure could be looked at and made into some kind of dice mechanic for advancement?

If Christoffer decides as Mike anticipates, I'll assume it's because he's right, in the context of his own goals and target audience. Either way he has my thanks for letting me use his game design in progress as a platform for airing out some ideas. I've already seen these Ygg threads pointed to as an ongoing design case study. The variety of opinions we contribute here serve a useful purpose in that context, regardless of which ones are adopted in the Ygg design.

That said, I imagine Mike and I probably share some of the same personal reservations about the generally conservative trend of Ygg system design decisions so far. (And that's speaking as one who likes D&D-like systems and plays them often.) I've so far failed to grasp Christoffer's vision for how he plans to give Ygg the distinctive feel he intends. It appears to me that he has so far failed to fully grasp the utility of system in helping to create such a distinctive feel (applying the System Does Matter postulate). But I could be wrong.

Damion, I agree that some characters do advance in fantsay fiction. However, my point is that most of that advancement is associated with specific characters of specific types and is usually unrelated to realistic amounts of training or practice. Luke Skywalker is a perfect representative of what I called the "adolescent" character types who advance this way. (Note that "adolescent" is not intended to be a precise description of the character's actual age or temperament.) Obi-Wan "trains" Luke for at most a few hours or days aboard the Falcon (however long the flight to Alderaan is supposed to take). This has no similarity to spending months or seasons at a time in training, and doing so over and over again. Yoda's training of Luke is at most a few weeks (the time it takes for Vader to arrive at Cloud City after Han and Leia arrive, which doesn't seem to be more than a few days but I guess could be a little longer). And that training is unsuccessful. We know now that Jedi training is normally fifteen years or so. Luke isn't just a would-be Jedi, but also a certain type of fantasy protagonist. Those rules don't apply to him.

In the same series Han, Leia, Chewbacca, Lando, and Darth Vader don't advance, at least not in terms of increased personal abilities. (Your point about substituting other kinds of advancement is well taken. I completely agree and should have made that clearer in my post. I linked the same advancement=connectedness thread you referred to, for the same reason.) Nor do the majority of fantasy protagonists including Conan, Elric, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser, Cugel the Clever, and even many young naive characters like Mouse in Ladyhawke, or Frodo. (Compare Merry and Pippin, who are the only advancing "adolescent" type characters in LoTR. Do they train? No, they drink ent-water and then jump into battle.)

What I see happening over and over in fantasy fiction (and many other semi-fantasy genres -- especially sports fiction) might be described as "advancement in the middle:"

1. Character is about to fail at an ability, or confronts a test of an ability that appears beyond capability.

2. Character invokes applicable TRoS style SAs either to make a final greater effort, or (usually in the case of supernatural abilities) have an inspiration that suddenly makes the task seem doable.

3. If step #2 is successful, the action succeeds, AND the character will now perform that feat at a higher level of effectiveness in the future.

Badda bing, make step 2 a fortune roll and there's your system. And I don't see any reason a system incoporating that mechanism would need any other mechanism for ability advancement. If you must include rigorous practice or training, make the effect of that be a modifier on the roll in step 2. So a character can re-enact the training montage from a Rocky movie if you want ("If we hear any inspirational power chords, just sit down until it goes away" -- Giles, in Buffy: The Musical), but you don't see the effects until the chips are down in the ring.

- Walt

JSDiamond you just said the magic words: Failure-based advancement.

This is something I've been kicking around for a while now. I am contemplating a system wherein XP's are awarded ONLY for Serious or Critical Failure.

********Warning: The following mechanic is unapologetically GAMIST *******

It uses a Trait + Skill + 2d10 (versus Target Number) mechanic for task resolution (including combat). If you roll between -1 and -4 (relative to Target #), it's a Failure (whiff or Stymie). Between -5 and -8, and it's a Serious Failure (Something Bad happens). Less than -9 and it's a Critical Failure (Really Bad, potentially fatal?).

You get 1 XP for a Serious Failure and 3 XP's for a Crit Failure. The XP's can only be used to advanced the skill for which they were earned.

The reason I've gone into detail above is to point out a key (IMO) necessity of failure-based XP award. Namely, the more difficult the task is (for a given character), the greater the chance for a serious failure (and thus an XP award). The "natural 20 = Crit Fail" mechanic is too arbitrary & capricious and does not properly reward/punish excessive risk-taking.

Here's what I like about the Failure = XP's mechanic:

- Unlike similar systems that reward _success_, this system discourages the practice of attempting extraneous easy tasks merely to get a chance to earn xp's. (I know a good GM will guard against this, but having it built into the system is better, IMHO).

- It automatically rewards PC's (of ALL levels) for attempting challenging tasks. PC's who take on more challenging situations (and the lumps that go with them) progress faster than timid PCs. This seems very believable and intuitively correct.

- The GM does not have to figure out how many XP's a particular opponent or situation or play session was worth. He'd just try to make the opponents & situations challenging but not impossible - which he should be doing anyway, right? The XP's would come automatically.

- Failure Mitigation: "Oops, you fell off the castle wall and busted your arm. Oh, and your cry of pain alerts the castle guards. But hey, at least you get 3 experience points"

- It is inherently ADAPTIVE; if the players keep coming up against hard situations that land them on their asses, they will quickly grow stronger and more capable. Soon these difficult tasks will become much easier for them.

The potential problems:

- Some people think it's too illogical on its face. "You don't learn by screwing up!" They want to reward success too, but this completely short-circuits the desired effect.

- Skills will probably have to be "normalized" so that those skills which are used less frequently by their nature are "cheaper" in XP's. (eg combat involves more rolls than, say, a protracted magic ritual.)

- (this is the tricky one) Ideally, the undesirable consequences of failure in any given instance should *just* outweigh the benefit of the XP award. This is so that characters don't go abuse the system by looking for excuses to screw up merely to gain XP's. Of course, the GM will also  prohibit this kind of abuse outright, but the character should pay a fair price for bad luck/bad judgement and its associated lessons. Kinda hard to strike this perfect balance all the time, though?

Anyhow, condolences for the long post but I thought I'd chime in since someone mentioned failure-based advancement.

Walt,
      I think we agree, we're just comming at it in different ways. My point was that fantasy characthers tend to train once and just get better from then without really training again. I.e. no levels.
Luke get's trained and is pretty incompetent with a lightsaber when Vader cuts off his hand. But then later he's a wirling dervish of death on Jabba's barge. He got better, but no-one trained him.

I'm not quite sure movies like Star Wars are the best place to look for a model. A movie is scripted, thus it always works, while a game should remain consistent in a wide variety of situations that cannot be perfectly forseen. Star Wars would have been ruined if say Vader got better and kicked Luke's rear all over the death star, because both of them advanced, but Vader started out better.

Robert, how did the failure based traing work in practice? Like you mentioned, it seems a hard balance to strike.

I would suggest a hybrid system between the the two already mentioned.

I would suggest that players earn experiance as normal, but they can spend these experiance to advance whenever they fail at something. If you fail, you can raise your skill and try again. This would give the 'Someone always has just the right skill effect you often see.'  Then you make up a justification for it. For combat skills this would probably be 'I'm losing! Must try harder!'
This gives the effect you see in fantasy where fighters appear to become more skilled mid-battle. 'I have a secret. What? I'm not left handed.'   Also, this means GM's don't have to tailor adventures to the charachters skills as much. If you find an old tablet, possibly someone could buy a level in that ancient language. 'I remember seeing this somewhere before...' and they can read some of it.

I would suggest having increasing skill costs, maybe a limit on how many times it can be done for a given skill per scene  and a GM veto of course, but only for rare situations.

I'm gonna give a more complete reply later, but just a few quick lines for right now:

Mike: CP & Level usually both drop the requirement that the skills worked on should be the same as skills actually worked on within the adventures themselves. Level can be considered a variant of CP, kind of a "packaged CP" model. That's what I'm thinking of when I say that they're alike. If each level increase is sufficiently small it becomes the same as CP.

Walt: Actually, my main inspiration for the adventures are manga series, and in those there do are significant increases in power, however those are not necessarily linked to increasing skill levels.

Anyway, that said I don't disagree with with your analysis. In manga too, it is easy to disconcern who are the "adolscents" and who are the "adults". Although let me use a different terminology. Let me call them incompetent and competent respectively.

In these stories, the only actual growth of the competent comes when faced with situations where they are not competent. Where the situation for some reason are above their ability. In most stories the incompetent are usually guided by the competent so that the former can have chance to develop their potential. Whereas the incompetent's limits are yet to be established, the competent is more limited to the powers that character is known to have. The real improvments for the competent usually comes from external sources, like getting a magical sword or something. The incompetent however, might be able to simply whip up these unknown resources from within.

This might be exactly what you're saying too. I'm just rephrasing it from my understanding of it.

At first glance though, I'd wonder who'd want to play a competent as the character growth is so sure to be slow.

At second glance another thought strikes me: isn't this like AD&D after all? It's just that you let some characters start on a really high level and some start at level 1. The effect would be pretty much (let's say a couple of level 12's with a few level 1 characters) the same (except for the 'unknowns' in the level 1 character, which of course is different). The high leveled character won't improve significantly, the lower level characters will and there will be quick and definate improvements for them.

Or am I missing something?

James (damion): Sorry to have to point it out, but Luke is supposed to have trained a lot between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

As for the failure based advancement: Hmm.. interestingly enough I wrote something for the martial arts system which might be interesting. James pointed out that if I use a method where the most powerful and cool moves only can be used if the marginal success is good high enough, then when the characters really need it (as in fighting the boss) they won't be able to use it.

My immediate answer to that was: well maybe you could get an "Inpiration Roll". Like you see your friends getting hurt and that enrages you. So you can get one free roll for that. Just roll a Dx and add that to your marginal of success.

I was also going to introduce "Riskbreaking Roll" for my skills. Basically my skills are karma resolution (except for the 50-50 situation where you roll a 50-50). But what if you need to jump those 5 meters and you maximum in the system can jump 4 with that broken leg? I was thinking of a "Riskbreaking Roll" where you actually got a chance for it.

In addition you have Fate which also can get you to succeed in near impossible situations. I possibly could tie those together making a system where you increase in situations by doing the impossible and making things come out of nowhere.

But it doesn't seem easy. :-I

Back! With a little more detailed reply:

Quote from: MikeBut even radical systems like OTE, have such systems.

OTE is...?

Quote from: MikeI think what you want falls right into this usual category in terms of rationale. That is, requiring characters to have some sort of reasoning behind how they get the skills they do. The strenuousness with which you require this is a matter of aesthetics that only you can answer.

I put the priority on playability rather that to have some pseudo-realistic rationale for it. In the end this level question is one of convenience.

Look at BRP. I've never played the original, but I assume that like the derivatives popular in Sweden you can also take time off to "train" if you find a teacher good enough.

In actual play what happened was that you tried to accumulate gold, then sit there and try to figure out just how much training you could afford before you were broke and had to go out adventuring again.

In practice those games almost always became complicated "GOLD=XP" systems. If this how it works in actual play, why not be upfront about it and say: "increase your skill to this level costs x amount of gold"?

My rationale for introducing levels are the similar. They give the players a clear sense of achievment, they conveniently package increases so that they are easier to keep track of, they can be used for meta-mechanics. All these things are only to decrease the complexities and increase playability. Now of course if someone is so bothered by levels that they are totally put off from playing the game, then it's worthless. However, if it actually works as a simplification which give the players more time to concentrate on actually playing then I feel it can be a good thing.

I'd have to be crazy to try to label levels as being something realistic. :)

Quote from: MikeBut that said, what meta-game are you going to link to it? The Fate points? Won't those vary with use? Just dole one out with each package/level taken, and that takes care of itself.

Fate is just the first obvious thing. If one decides to go with levels I expect there are other situations where they could be put to use.

As for fate, it works a little different from Warhammer. You have a set pool of Fate which is replenished at the end of a story. So having 3 Fate means you have 3 fate points to use for the whole story. After the story you go up to full 3 points again. That means you can safely spend everything at the end of the story.

I'm no big fan of "expendable" fate points which permanently disappears after you used them, they don't work half as well.

Quote from: MikeAnd there is the question of utility for using level to discern character power. This I disagree with for the most part. If I am a level 100 Accountant, I will probably have a much worse time with the dragon than the level 4 Warrior.

There are two reasons I don't see that applying to Ygg. The first is that everyone play basically equally powered warriors only the expressions and minor talents are different (there is no "plain fighter" class in Ygg), so at equal level they should have about the same chance fighting a dragon.

Secondly, as you write yourself. If you're a level 100 Accountant, of course you don't use the warrior stuff as well as the Warrior. However, if the GM allows creative use of talents, I bet that level 100 Accountant has a better chance of getting the dragon's treasure using his amazing skills in embezzling, than the Warrior has of taking it with the head-on approach.

Quote from: Walt- Few characters, in the fantasy literature that Ygg is intended to invoke the spirit of, "advance" in any significant way.

It could be argued (as I'm doing now I guess) that many fantasy stories only represent a few rpg adventure session and so their advancement even within a rpg supportive of such things might be limited.

Quote from: Walt- As Mike just laid out, adequate justification for advancement is rare in role playing games. The reason is simple. Realistic training for skill improvement, even off camera, is tedious and isn't any part of what you term "standard fantasy."

As I mention above, it ("realistic traing") is present in BRP, but tends to be extremely tedious and adding very little to the enjoyment of playing. In fact, it felt even more mechanical than leveling up your characters in AD&D despite the former has a more realistic rationale.

Quote from: WaltAdults are fully accomplished in their abilities. (They may or may not have yet begun applying those abilities in any dramatic way -- that is, they may or may not yet have reputations or have already done heroic deeds.)

Are these characters fun to play? Wouldn't it be similar to playing a level 20 character in AD&D fighting goblins or something? Also, so me a significant part of the enjoyment is actually improving skills and see the character explore its potential. Of course I could do an "adolescent" character if I like that. But are there people who would want to play "adults"? Really?

Quote from: WaltAdolescents start out as "low level" characters and they advance. This advancement can be as dramatic as in D&D, but it's interpreted as the realization of their existing potential or the revealing of their natural gifts, which can eventually exceed those of the adult characters.

This is a very interesting idea. I can see it working especially well with my skill system which has well defined results (you either fail, succeed or have a 50% chance). Having that "Break through your limit"-roll to define your skills could work very well.

However, there is a concern. Remember the problem I stated about skills with little use? Well again in this scheme the characters would still only develop skills they challenge. And thus the thief, having had to pick locks increasing his skills through this mechanic might despite many adventures still SUCK at pick pocketing. Even if the game would allow for huge jumps in skill, who'd want to pay that for creating a consistent character?

Do you see the problem? Let's say the thief has three skills:

Fight With Dagger 1
Pick Locks 1
Pick Pockets 1

Now x adventures later the thief looks like this:

Fight With Dagger 13
Pick Locks 19
Pick Pockets 1

Because there wasn't a single monster he could pick the pockets of. Still this is a defining qulity of the character as a thief.

What has happened is that our thief as essentiall LOST a characteristic. In some cases this might be a desireable outcome. The Thief doesn't want to be a pick pocket. But what if the concept of the player really is that of a pick pocketing thief, there are simply no opportunities to use that skill in play, or the player is unwilling because it gives less points to put on more efficient skills?

This also has to be taken into account somehow. I know that usually this is something ignored.

I started on something in the "currency issues"-thread. Something about defining a future destiny for the character. That way one could automatically improve skills.

What I'm thinking is something like "the skills you use in play can increase by 1 point, but every 'characteristic' skill you have automatically goes up by at least 1/2 a point". Something like that to keep the character from losing "useless" skills.

Because I don't see this mechanic helping that problem.

Quote from: JamesYou could always do a more 'meta' advancement also. Charachters get experiance, but they don't spend it on improving themseveles, but instead spend it on other things.
The advancement==connectedness comes to mind. An 'adult' might better equipment or a patron or a follower with their Fate points, rather than actually getting stronger or more skilled.

Good idea. That way both groups could feel improvment, although the adult doesn't improve so much in skill as in other areas like social connections and items.

Quote from: WaltI've so far failed to grasp Christoffer's vision for how he plans to give Ygg the distinctive feel he intends. It appears to me that he has so far failed to fully grasp the utility of system in helping to create such a distinctive feel (applying the System Does Matter postulate). But I could be wrong.

It could be interesting (feel free to PM me if that is more appropriate) of what you think Ygg is. I feel that recently I've done so much rethinking in terms of the system. It would surprise me if I haven't had any progress. However, most of those things are not solidly written down yet as I feel I have to work out some important things (like the levels we are discussing right now!) before I can assemble all of the new tools I've aquired into a new draft.

Admittedly, the game as it appeared originally was nothing novel. Nor was it truly intended to. It was simply supposed to incorporate the best mechanics I new into an enjoyable whole. Since coming here I've learned of a lot of new techniques I might be able to use. However I have to make them fit with the original frame of the game, which is a simple almost D&D like game. On the outside it should be that simple, on the inside I try to fit in those ideas which I believe could amplify the experience for the players. However, I do am limited in some regards. For example, Ygg won't be Donjon. Doesn't matter that Donjon is good and also monster fighting. It still isn't D&D on the outside.

(with "D&D on the outside" you might get quite different associations than what I'm thinking about, don't get too hung up by that description)

Anyway, Walt (and others too!) if you can tell me you think Ygg is, it'd make it easier for me to know a) what your objections really are and b) what the current impressions of "how Ygg works" is. If you feel you have the time. It's not that important.

When I really feel I have worked out the problems, I'll of course present a new draft. But as it is the original game is kind of ripped apart and in for a major revision if not a near complete rewrite. (Mainly the mechanics)

Quote from: Walt1. Character is about to fail at an ability, or confronts a test of an ability that appears beyond capability.

2. Character invokes applicable TRoS style SAs either to make a final greater effort, or (usually in the case of supernatural abilities) have an inspiration that suddenly makes the task seem doable.

3. If step #2 is successful, the action succeeds, AND the character will now perform that feat at a higher level of effectiveness in the future.

I think this is a marvelous way of presenting character advancement. But there is the "pick pocket" problem I mention above.

Quote from: wfreitagDamion, I agree that some characters do advance in fantsay fiction. However, my point is that most of that advancement is associated with specific characters of specific types and is usually unrelated to realistic amounts of training or practice. Luke Skywalker is a perfect representative of what I called the "adolescent" character types who advance this way. (Note that "adolescent" is not intended to be a precise description of the character's actual age or temperament.) Obi-Wan "trains" Luke for at most a few hours or days aboard the Falcon (however long the flight to Alderaan is supposed to take). This has no similarity to spending months or seasons at a time in training, and doing so over and over again. Yoda's training of Luke is at most a few weeks (the time it takes for Vader to arrive at Cloud City after Han and Leia arrive, which doesn't seem to be more than a few days but I guess could be a little longer). And that training is unsuccessful. We know now that Jedi training is normally fifteen years or so. Luke isn't just a would-be Jedi, but also a certain type of fantasy protagonist. Those rules don't apply to him.

I dig these ideas, and for the most part, I agree.  But just to be clear, if I recall the movie correctly, the hyperdrive on the Milennium Falcon was inoperable (major plot point, actually), and so the trip would likely have taken many weeks, if not a couple of months.  At the speed of light, it takes over five hours to reach the farthest point in our own solar system.  They were definately not traveling that quickly.  And this was well after they seperated from Luke somewhere outside the Hoth system.  The hyperdrive was inoperable since before they left Hoth, so that could have been several more weeks they had been flying around, trying to get to the Rebel rendezvous, before the run in with Star Destroyers, and their decision to go to Bespin.  I don't think I have ever seen any definite rating of how fast a sub-light engine can go, but the name says it all.  Sub-light.  So, counting time to decelerate, maneuver into a good position to enter the planet's atomosphere and all, it may have taken up to three quarters of a day just to get from the outermost planet in the Bespin system to Cloud City, granting that the system is similar in size to our own.  I would assume that traveling at or near the speed of light would be extremely dangerous, considering the higher level of debris floating about within a planetary system.  And they only said that Bespin was the closest system, not how close.  Considering how much Luke's skills improved in the training montage (did anyone else hear an 80's hard rock tune faintly in the background through that?  :)  ), I would guess he was there for at least a couple of months, probably longer.  He would have had to have left sooner than Han and Leia arrived at Cloud City, however, as Dagobah was described as being pretty backwater, which means a good distance from another system, to me.  So he also had a transit time from Dagobah to Bespin, which could have been several days to a couple of weeks, considering he had  functional hyperdrive unit.  Han and Leia were at Cloud City for only a couple of days, a week at the extreme.  The earliest he could have left was at the same time they arrived, and that seems unlikely, with the travel times concerned.  I know someone can trot out the rules, or possibly some arcane Star Wars reference book to get the 'real' numbers on this, but I think we can go with rough estimates here.  I feel pretty confident that the assumptions I make are not wildly different than 'reality'.

I guess that was rather long-ish, and a bit off topic, but what I am getting at is that Luke was in training for a while.  Army recruits are in basic training for 8wks.  The Marines are in basic training for 12.  So, Luke would have been through his 'Jedi boot camp' by the time he left.  A very basic, but likely quite thorough level of training.

Now, one could say he is still in his 'adolescent' stage when he leaves.  That is entirely possible.  Also, between the end of Empire, and the beginning of Jedi, there is also an indeterminate amount of time.  Enough for Lando to insinuate himself into a mobster organization, and work his way up to Throne Room Guard.  I don't think a leader of Jabba's skill is going to throw the new guy into the same room as himself with a loaded weapon.  So, maybe a year there.  Probably at least another six months to a year to get it planned, and deal with other things going on.  So, anywhere from a year and a half, to two years passes between the two movies.  I would say that is plenty of time for Luke to work on his skills in training.  Perhaps not under the tuteledge of a Master, but nonetheless, he does have quite a bit of time there.  Still part of his 'adolescence'?  Perhaps.  Maybe he did go back for a time to study under Yoda.  Official canon may not support this, or maybe even contradicts it directly, but the possibility still exists that he could have.

So, after a couple of months of 'basic training', then a year and a half or more of personal time to hone his skills, he comes back as a pretty competant Jedi.  Compared to Obi-Wan at the same age, however, he is well behind the curve still.  We will assume there actually was a difference in their abilities, and not just a difference in the special effects.  :)  From where did this difference arise?

Training.  Obi-Wan was thoroughly trained, and likely continued that training as constantly as possible, not just by trips to negotiate treaties and being attacked by Destroyer Droids.  Still in his 'adolescence'?  Perhaps.  But he also fought Vader to a standstill when he was a very old man, and only lost because he stopped fighting.  I think he continued to grow in skill throughout his life.  In other words, even as an 'adult', he still advanced his skills.

So, I think there is a basis for having characters advance throughout their 'careers', although it may get more difficult as they get older, for a variety of reasons.  Their body of knowledge and experience may simply become too great to be able to actually find something new to learn.

However, I don't support the level system.  I am definately in the 'skill-based' camp of players.  But I do think it's perfectly reasonable to advance a character, even when very late in their career.  And even if the cost of advancing a skill becomes prohibitively expensive, there are always secondary skills the character would be able to buy up.  Therefore, it becomes rather a mess in keeping track of what the character is 'adolescent' in, and what they are 'adult' in.  If one is referring to a strictly level-based system, then the distinction would be appropriate, although I still wouldn't stop a player from advancing their character past a certain level, 'adult' or no.

Perhaps a large part of the problem is that literary characters are only really focused on for relatively brief, discontinuous periods at a time.  And usually after they have undergone their training, and whatever experience has led them to their current level of skill when the story in question shines the spotlight on them.  Longer, epic stories, like Star Wars or LotR have a greater scope, so the characters in them actually have the time to advance.  Whereas, players tend to focus on their characters for longer, continuous periods at a stretch.  So, there would have to be a mechanic in place to advance them, because they are doing things more or less routinely, that literary characters only do about once in their lifetime.  And literary characters are often in the middle of a crisis for much of the story, which is the heart of the drama, of course.  

So, in general, what happens to a literary character before or after the story occurs is usually unknown.  It can be alluded to, as a plot point, but for the most part, it's simply irrelevant, as are most of the secondary skills, some of which the character may be getting schooling for as the story unfolds.  Perhaps the local pizza delivery person has been studying martial arts in their off-time.  Well, a story about them delivering pizza would certainly be uninteresting in the fantasy market, so we are going to concentrate on the martial arts stuff.  Perhaps in some way, the person's ability to quickly add and subtract numbers, gained on the delivery route, may come in as a plot point.  But generally, it's irrelevant what they were doing before.  And only a truly bizarre circumstance would cause them to improve their delivery related skills, although it's not in the realm of the impossible, by any means.  For that reason, increasing skills that aren't being used is also something I like to avoid, also.

I hope that wasn't overlong, my brain was kind of spun up tonight.  :)

Thanks for listening!

1)If pick-pockets is a defining charitaristic of the characther, they should complain to the GM that they havn't gotten to use it. Some like 'At least let me go to a town or something!'.

Other points: Losing a charitaristic may be ok, if it doesn't fit with that champaign. Unless the player really minds, it's not a problem. This is actually an advantage over level based systems, where effort is 'wasted' improving unused abilities. (A level improves everything, theoretically without that ability, you'd level faster.)

There are various sub issues here.
1)You mentioned that your much more likely to run into may things that need to be hit with a dagger than you there are pockets to be picked. Thus it should improve more 'per use' . It seems tough to select this though, and complicated, as you need an 'improvment spec' per skill.

2)In the setting you mentioned, it doesn't have that much utility. Adventurers aren't usually sent out to pick a pocket. It can be worked in so that it is usefull (pickpocket a guard for a key is the common one) but other than that it's a pretty selfish skill, a way for the thief to make pocket change. Also, most GM's don't want players aquiring unbounded amounts of money, so there won't be many opportunities, or if there are, they won't give you much money, so it's hardly worth it.  This I think is a problem with having it as a skill. My point is that it's difficult for the player to 'proactivly use it.'  The solution would be to eliminate it as a seperate skill and have it as a subset of a more general skill.

3)Minimum level of competince-A lot of skills have a minimum level to be usefull, becasue the penalty for failure is pretty bad. In the case of pickpocket, you get chased by the law. Thus the player may have difficulty using it starting out anyway. The GM can make low difficutly numbers for some things. Easy monsters make sense, but a lot of easily picked pockets seems weird. (Why didn't someone else get this guy already?). The solution would be to start the skill level pretty high.


4)It's also a 'solo skill'. Actually most thief skills have this problem. While the thief is sneaking around scouting or picking pockets, the other players sit there, as it effectivly splits the group. Not sure the solution here.  I've considered group skills-i.e. a thief can bring a couple people through shadows with him. Not sure how to do it for pickpocket though.

Anyway: Possible solutions
1)As you said Chris, levels increase everything.

2)Not require a skill to be used to be improved, player can
improve it if they want. Then when it's needed, it's there. Also, the GM can wait till there is a good chance of success. This seems to lose versimilitude.

3)More general skills-I.e. a skill does many things, so doing one improves everything-again, you lose detail.

Hi,

I've just had the good fortune to find this site and have spent a good few minutes reading through this thread.  Is it worth mentioning the GNS question here?

A gamist design would base improvement on superior performance in contrast to the other players (which ironically imbalances the system).  This would mean kills, successful dice rolls, and all that.

A simulationist system may focus on training, a rookie becoming a veteran, an adolescent developing his natural and supernatural abilities, etc.

A narrative system would tie advancement to dramatically suitable points, a character who takes a challenge far greater than he was previously capable ofd, may find his abilities improve at said climactic moment.  Alternatively, a narrative system may find it most appropriate to have no advancement or minimal advancement, unless you have the classic adolescent or rookie or unpolished prodigy character stories.

Perhaps the best way to decide on a system is to look at where you sit on good old GNS.[/i]