Just (another) game idea

[jphannil]

I would say I limit the affinity for traits mentioned in the character trait list, otherwise every player can come up with a dozen of useful affinity traits for every occasion.

If I divide traits to Broad (B), Average (A) and Narrow (N), and assess that in character creation, every character has x B:s, y A:s and z N:s, would that solve the problem ?

Then in experience system B-traits are harder to raise than A or N and so forth.

Would that be enough ?

[jphannil]

Further more, only natural trait +0 is free, obtained trait +0 costs points. The amount of traits is also fixed from 5 to 15 so only important ones can be picked. Also the traits must be in the story so the abuse of the +0 traits is quite minimal, I think.

[Mike Holmes]

Natural traits are traits which every person of the culture the character is representing can posses with average quality without training or special experience. During gameplay, if natural trait is called for, everyone is assumed to have +0 value in such a trait if it is not mentioned in his trait lists or story.

These don't count against the limit of 15, do they? Are you saying that called for natural traits can't be used as Affinity traits? If so, that would work, but needs to be in the rules explicitly.

As far as the basic problem, I like your solution in terms of chargen. The problem would sorta remain for experience. The broad skills are in some ways always more important than the narrow ones unless you make them prohibitively expensive. What you'd have to gamble on is that players playing for short-term advantage would capitalize on the cheap narrow skills (can't do this with chargen because there's only one "term").

Which they might go for. It'd be worth playtesting. I think if you played with it enough that you could come up with a reasonable exchange rate. What costs were you thinking?

Mike

[jphannil]

Nope, default traits +0 do not count against the limit of 15. They are put together during play if a trait is needed and there are none present. I'll write clarification to the affinity (so that unnamed traits cannot be used in affinity).

I've thought of the following:

In chargen, character can have a maximum of 5 Broad, 5 Average and 5 Narrow traits, less can be chosen at will, but at least 5 total traits must be chosen. I haven't yet thought how to differentiate the costs of the traits in point based chargen.

In experience, I haven't yet really thought of the rates. The starting point for me was that Average traits cost double as much as Narrow and Broad cost triple. However that could mean that I must change the experience system somehow, it feels kind of clunky. At least I must make tables so I can see the relative costs of different trait breadths.

Best regards

[Mike Holmes]

Are the points divided up between the categories as well for these? Because if the point generation system uses only a single pool, the problem pops up again. What I'd do is just break up the pool into three parts, and then allow them to buy as many or few Traits of each sort as they like.

This is, of course, problematic for ongoing advancement.

Have you considered only two tiers? I say that because its much easier to handle. Basically in creating Traits, there's only one "line" that the players and GM's have to understand. When you have two lines differentiating you tend to get these problems of comparison. Not something that can't be overcome, but the question is what's gained by the third level of discrimination?

Anyhow, if you only have two levels, then you can just declare that the broad ones don't advance at all in the course of play, or only during "strategic play" or the like. Basically, dividing up the points again into two pools. Because any ratio like the one you're describing is problematic. Why pay the single cost for Sword, Dodge, Marching, and Toughness, when Military is cheaper (going with x3) and covers them all and more?

Mike

[jphannil]

Hmm, good suggestions, I'll have to think about these for applying.

The two-level model sounds good because it's quite like a stat/skill system after all, and the difficulty of deciding if something is of level average or broad goes away. It's intuitively quite easy to declare if a trait is narrow or broad, but average was quite difficult.

How about this, two cathegories, during character creation points spread even with these (50 and 50 for example), they can be risen normally with same costs (natural and obtained trait difference counts as usual).

In play when you gain 10 XP you gain one point of Broad XP which can be used in broad trait experience. Broad XP can be only used to broad traits and normal XP to narrow traits.

However what to do with the RuneQuestian style experience (raising the traits through using them), I love this way of dealing with experience and had to add it to the game as well :)

Best regards

[Andrew Martin]

However what to do with the RuneQuestian style experience (raising the traits through using them), I love this way of dealing with experience and had to add it to the game as well :)

I wouldn't bother too much with this. Our groups with multiple GMs over years of play found there was too much hassle with the rules. RQII and RQIII and Basic RPS had these problems we discovered:

[*]Encouraged unrealistic tactics in combat -- players would switch weapons in combat immediately after scoring a hit (and so gaining an experience tick);
[*]Encouraged players to go out on extremely short adventures and avoid long adventure -- players were rewarded by returing to base after the first encounter to convert experience ticks to +1D6% increments to skill;
[*]High whiff factor encouraged players to prioritise skill growth over all other factors -- players who prioritised other modes of play were penalised by loosing their characters in combat and being generally ineffectual in non-combat situations;
[/list:u]

Our best and most memorable play in this type of system occured when characters had over 100% in most combat skills, and were generally highly experienced in other skills. Players were either extremely lucky in dice rolls to get here, or played it "safe". I had one player make it to Rune Lord/Priest (100%+) level purely through luck, and two other players who made it to this level through playing by the ways the rules prioritised. The remaining dozen or so players were left with very poor play through characters that died in stupid ways or by chance, and so they had to start again or they took up other activities instead.

At the time, I knew no better, I was just following the rules as I thought 'surely the writers know more than me!'.

So don't make the same mistake as me and my fellow GMs and players.

[jphannil]

Yep, by RuneQuestian I don't mean I would fall to the same pitfalls RQ did. The thing that fascinated me is the idea that game system mechanics work so that you learn what you do.

If you read through Chaos & Order, you will see there are different methods to distribute 'marked experience points', one is that RQ-style so that you gain one per adventure. There are, however, other solutions as well, you get points for dramatic successes for example, this changes the whole approach to this and removes the problems you mentioned. Other way is so that you gain xp by dramatic failures, that changes the atmosphere also (note that these different methods are just suggestions, things that could be used in different settings and for different 'level' of characters)

Of the issua with RQ:s deadliness and randomness in experience, yep that's how it is. However I haven't copied that part of RQ, in my RQish experience system there is nothing random at all (at the moment).

Best regards

[Mike Holmes]

If you're going to use a "Use increases ability" system, then what are the EXP all about? I'd just drop them, and say that a character can only advance via the in-game method. If you want to reward a player by giving them some advancement out of game, just announce that you're doing so, and give them the level in the skill with some retroactive explanation. That's much more immediately gratifying, and simpler.

Also, if you want to have a simutaneous advancement system, then say that a player can, at any time, trade in three points of narrow skills to increase a broad skill that they all "default" to by one point. There's an exchange rate there, but I don't know if it'll have any problems (I'd have to think about it more).

Mike

[jphannil]

The problem is, there is no 'defaulting' for narrow traits to broader traits. They are combined in affinity when the situation occurs and after that there is no connection. Or did I somehow misunderstood your point ?

Any good 'use increases ability' methods to suggest with broad and narrow traits ?

Best regards

[Mike Holmes]

That's why I put 'default' in quotes. How about "make sense as part of". So I've got a character with:

Warrior (broad) 1
Sword 2
Shield 2
Alertness 2

I can reduce the latter three to level one in order to make Warrior level 2 (note, to clarify, I can't take more than one level from any ability, it has to be one from each of three). What this means is that instead of using Sword augmented by Warrior in a fight, the character will switch over to using warrior augmented by sword. Same effect, but, since warrior includes things outside of the three things mentioned, it's advantageous. In fact, I'd make this the result of a reward, only, and not completely at the player's option. Else I think you'd soon see all skills collapse into broad skills.

Mike

[jphannil]

Yes, in your example I can see that thing happening, broad traits getting higher and narrow traits reduced.

But what about, in chargen, if I have 50 points to broad traits and 50 points to narrow traits, cost of the traits is the same (the ratio could be modified even if the setting requires it), then I throw the xp out of the window.

Now every trait gathers experience ticks, broad and narrow alike. The ticks can be gathered in different ways (depending on setting, as I describe them in the experience chapter). When used in affinity, all affined traits get experience ticks, but the main trait used gains perhaps more.

Now, the narrow traits get raised up when trait value + 10 ticks have been gathered, broad traits need trait value + 20 ticks. How's that ?

There are two problems:

1) lots of bookkeeping (but it may be unavoidable in learning by doing experience systems)

2) If gm wants to reward player with good roleplaying, he has to come up with something else than xp, free ticks perhaps?

Of course gm can decide if some of characters traits raise or not, even without ticks.

How's this ?

[Mike Holmes]

Sounds OK in mechanical terms, but now I agree with Andrew. What's to stop players in this sort of a system from trying to vary their skill use to get ticks in more places, and other behavior like that? The worst is the "practice picking" phenomenon, where the character locks and opens his own door repeatedly to get ticks. Yes there are all sorts of caveats and such that you can put in the game to try and prevent this. But the point is that the mechanic puts the focus on these sorts of improvements. If you don't want that to be a player consideration, then you need a system that doesn't reward them for thinking about it.

Mike

[jphannil]

I would say thinking of a good way to distribute ticks is the key to minimizing such activities, for example:

If ticks are adventure-based, then short adventures and different skill combinations are immediately favoured, but if ticks are granted for difficult tasks accomplished, for example one tick per success when difficulty is greater than your trait (i.e. you get 2 ticks for accomplishing a task where your trait is +2 and the difficulty is 4). There are lots of alterations to this, but you get my idea (this also reduces the player tendency to open own door -experience, since the door is hardly more difficult than you can handle).

Other way would be to reward ticks for major fumbles as well, failure will give you ticks as many as your trait is higher than the difficulty.

Combining these two methods you would get a system which will reward for extraordinary successes or failures during adventures, but note that the amount of ticks can change, so there is no point in trying to 'hunt a single tick' to get the experience up as in runequest.

[Mike Holmes]

If ticks are adventure-based, then short adventures and different skill combinations are immediately favoured, but if ticks are granted for difficult tasks accomplished, for example one tick per success when difficulty is greater than your trait (i.e. you get 2 ticks for accomplishing a task where your trait is +2 and the difficulty is 4). There are lots of alterations to this, but you get my idea (this also reduces the player tendency to open own door -experience, since the door is hardly more difficult than you can handle).

What if I get a door that's hard to open? What this really demands is some system that says that a task once successfully completed becomes less difficult. But then, again, we're just trying to input some real world effects here. What would happen in this case, is that I would get my locksmith friend to make a new and different lock each day.

More to the point, it gets players thinking in terms of play being about looking for locks to pick. Adventure length doesn't matter, really. Short adventures just mean that all the characters with lockpicking skill will be fighting over who gets to pick the one lock they find. If the adventure is long with many locks, you get players taking turns in order to improve.

Other way would be to reward ticks for major fumbles as well, failure will give you ticks as many as your trait is higher than the difficulty.

This and your other suggestions still only reward finding the tasks in question. This means one of two things. Either players will only discover the tasks that you put in front of them, and hence only advance in terms of what challenges you pose, or they'll go looking for challenges outside of those that you've posed. In the first case, the GM completely controls how the players are changing. In the second, the players are encouraged to go off and "practice".

Thing is that, "realistically", practice is how we improve. We don't really get all that much better in the application of a skill unless the application seems like practice, i.e. has loads of repetition. But that's what the system doesn't require. Repetition. What the system does is to say that if you do something during an adventure that you're rewarded for it by unrealistically weighting that accomplishment. Because if you don't weight the accomplishment, the character takes forever to advance. Unfortunately, this means that players have strong incentives to have their characters do unrealisitic things to take advantage of the unrealistic rates of advancement.

Typically with such systems, the rationale is that there's training going on outside of the adventuring environment. I think that's just fine. It means that players understand that they can't advance by that method, since they're already using it, in effect, and that they can only count on something happening in an adventure to get them ahead. But how to make this seem realistic, and link it to something that's happening in-game.

Here's an idea. Give the player one point before each session (more if you want faster development). The player can, at any point. Declare that the skill they're using for a task goes up by one. The rationales are that the event itself has caused some realization that unlocks the next level for the character, and that the character has been training in this during his "downtime" or the like. The advantages of the system are that the player will not go out of his way to test all of his skills, because he knows which will go up. He probably won't even go out of his way to raise a particular skill looking for some use for it, because it makes more sense to wait for some important task to come along and decided to use it at that point. If the player wastes it on something that's practice, he won't have the advantage of an extra level on something important to the adventure.

Add to this whole discussion the idea that reward systems can be used to motivate players to do certain things. Right now, the player really has no particular direction being imparted by the system (other than to unrealistically test all his skills just to get more powerful). Is there something that you'd like to see? If it's to attempt dangerous things (as your failure idea would indicate), then, if you were using my example system, then you could say that the player could only use his point when the difficulty exceeded his skill or the like.

Any other behaviors that you want to provide an incentive for?

Mike