Testing SAs (Split from "Negative Review")

[Jaif]

How do you test belief? You can do it mechanistically (like pendragon), I suppose, but you can also do it in the story.  Run actual tests of their behavior - create scenarios where they decide between their SA and something else.  Don't make it easy, either.  Like if they love a women, make her the type of women who holds the purse-strings, and demands control of all the finances and an accounting of the money her man spends.  Then create a scenario where some dirt-poor peasants do something crucial to help your adventurers, and see if the particular player gives all the money to his love, or slips some to the needy peasants.

That was off the top of my head, and maybe not so good, but hopefully it gets the point across.  Granted, there are times it would be nice to say "the slut looks pretty; make a chaste roll or you're going off with her for the night", but I think there's something to be said for building it into the story.

-jeff

[Valamir]

I'm not sure what you're asking Ian.

The number as it currently stands doesn't measure anything.  

As a value it is simply an indication of the frequency with which the player addresses it (and is thus awarded more points) summed with the frequency with which the player spends it.  Only indirectly does it measure player committment to anything.  Presumeably something that a player really is engaging with will go up faster than the things he is not.  But its also possible for a value to simply be horded at a high level with no future engagment, so only tracing the entire history of the value can any conclusion really be drawn.


So in this sense an SA is a binary condition.  You either "Are" or you "Aren't", with the number saying nothing about "how much".  The bonus that the number supplies to rolls doesn't really represent anything from a simulationist perspective either.  It can kind of be thought of as passion or adrenaline if that helps...but in reality its a carrot.  

It is nothing more complicated than a reward to the player for engaging with the story.  

Engage with the story, get bonus dice used to enhance your character's effectiveness.  Don't engage with the story, don't get any bonus dice.  In this way even players who normally aren't all that interested in engaging will do so, if for no other reason than getting the dice.

Why are the dice tied to character improvement.  Simple.  Because in order to work as a reward the value of the reward must be capped (an SA that reaches a score of 30 just overwhelms everything).  However, once capped the player is motivated to engage just enough to hit the cap and then has no incentive to keep engageing.  So in order to continue to be an effective carrot the value must go down at some point so the player is motivated to keep engageing to get it back up.

TROS is very big on NOT penalizing a player for failing to engage so you can't just take dice away (in most cases), so instead you find a way to encourage the player to spend them voluntarily, what would a player be willing to spend them on...voila character improvement.

The values are nothing more than an incredibly effective, high powered, pavlovian reward system.  They don't MEAN anything.


So as for being testable...how would you suggest testing a binary condition?

Now, do please note that the bonus dice from SAs are not restricted to combat.  They can be spent on any kind of roll.  So if you're asking a player to roll to resist temptation and you deem that his Faith would apply (because its a temptation his Faith preaches against), then simply allow him to roll his Faith SA as bonus dice in the temptation roll.  Voila...effect achieved.

However, again...this is not a matter of someone with *stronger* Faith having an advantage over someone with *weaker*.  The Faith itself is binary.  The number of dice is just a purely metagame reward for a player who's taken the time to roleplay his Faith appropriately.

I'm not sure I'm actually answering your question though...

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

In TRoS, how do you test belief?

I think TROS does test your 'current level' of belief throught the mechanic of SA's aiding you in time of stress.  If you believe strongly in a cause, you get bonus die...and all that.  That is a great mechanic (as I think most of us agree...).

What about belief in the sense of spiritual beliefs rather than SAs?

For instance, a character has grown up in a single-religion community. He therefore is quite familiar with the catechisms of that religion, he believes they are true, but he doesn't base his life around the ideals of the religion (that is, he has no SAs based on the religion). This character meets an itinerant friar, proselytizing for a different religion.

How do we handle the conversion process? It sounds like it should be a resisted roll -- the Friar's Theology skill being resisted by that which measures how strongly our character adheres to the religion of his upbringing.

Does the Theology skill represent how much the character believes in the religion in question? Personally I would say that Theology is quite separate from belief particularly if you are trying to model the medieval western-European environment. If this is the case should there be a Faith skill as well as a Theology skill, if religion or the clash of religions is important to your campaign? If so, what Attribute(s) would be rolled against the Faith skill?

Cheers,

[Trevis Martin]

Should TRoS have testable attributes that relate to the spirit of the character? Should TRoS cater for spiritual development as it does mental and physical development?

Hi Ian,

TROS is notable for the fact that it doesn't really model what I can 'inside' phenomena.  That is things like belief, commitment and intelligence.  There is a sentence where Jake notes that intelligence is up to the player's portrayal, MA merely measures how much aptitude for learning a character has.

I think a cue can be taken from that.  Belief is demonstrated by action of the player.  Put him in a situation that challenges beleif and the way he reacts is the test itself.  If he happens to have some dice in his faith SA then they can be contributed to the die roll of the action that demonstrates his belief, but there is nothing that models 'beleif' directly because this is the arena where TROS says we have to make our own decisions.  Those things are where the meaning comes from.

I think Ralphs suggestions of an SA being a binary is apt.  Even if an SA is, for the moment, at 0 doesn't mean the character has none.  Not at all.  Until a player actually changes the SA I think it must be assumed that they have it.  Even at 0.  Now if they neglect it by refusing to engage any meaningful tests of it then they will not have the metagame bonus to help them with those situations.  There are only five slots for SA's but there are Seven possible, one of which can be used multiple times.  Even before points TROS is asking the player to commit to a certain set of stuff important to him or that he wants to engage in.  We must, in order to preserve the integrity of the player's vision, ASSUME that those things exist in the character, whether they have points or not.  And as I said above, their test is in the action of play, the meat of the game.

regards,

Trevis

[toli]

I would agree that Theology is separate from belief.  ONe can understand the theological basis for some thing with out believing in it.

I would say if the belief doesn't figure into the character's SA's, its not that strong a belief that it really affects the character's life in a way that requires an in game mechanic.  Switching from one religion to the next would be the Player's choice and have no earth shattering impacts on the PC unless it is taken as a new Faith SA.  In the absense of a newly formed SA, the belief would simply be roleplayed.  How strongly the character believes the new religion would be played out in how the Player decides to play the PC.

NT

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

I'm not sure what you're asking Ian.

And I'm not sure which post you are responding to, so we're even! ; ^ )

The number as it currently stands doesn't measure anything.

Quite correct.

Why are the dice tied to character improvement. (Snip)

Again, quite correct. For the SAs to be used as a reward mechanism they must function in the way that they do.

TROS is very big on NOT penalizing a player for failing to engage so you can't just take dice away (in most cases), (Snip)

Page 67 seems to go against what you are saying here. Conscience, Drive, Faith, Passion all drop when the character fails to engage given the right opportunity. This makes sense to me -- there is no free lunch, or at least there shouldn't be.

So if you're asking a player to roll to resist temptation and you deem that his Faith would apply (because its a temptation his Faith preaches against), then simply allow him to roll his Faith SA as bonus dice in the temptation roll.  Voila...effect achieved.

I'm happy to allow the Faith SA to be used as bonus dice in the temptation process -- but what skill is used for the underlying roll?

Having resisted the temptation, how do we indicate that the character is less likely to succumb to temptation in the future?

Having traded in 5 points of Faith SA to bump an attribute, why is the character more likely to succumb to temptation when it next presents? What are we simulating here?

How does the believer who doesn't centre their life around their belief (no SA, representing the ordinary adherent to the religion rather than the cleric or paladin of the religion) measure their degree of belief, their capacity to resist temptation?

SAs are a great idea. Their initial definition allows the player to indicate to the referee what they want from the plot of the campaign. Their ongoing development allows the player opportunity to role-play and the referee to reward that role-play. The player is able to role-play the situations where their SAs are being followed and when they are not.

Neither of these functions is inherently linked to or even particularly served by the SA point trading mechanism. In addition, it is the SA point trading mechanism that requires the value of an SA to have no meaning, prevents the SAs from being directly testable, and leads to players feeling that they are being punished if an SA value is decreased by the referee when their character fails to act on an SA-related opportunity.

Perhaps it is possible to alter the mechanic such that the benefits of SAs to the game for player and referee alike are retained yet the development of the PAs/MAs/Proficiencies aren't linked to the development of SAs?

Cheers,

[Lance D. Allen]

Temptation: Willpower, natch.

I'm not seeing how this is a difficult question. You are trying to resist something, so it's a matter of how strong your will is. If you're weak-willed, you give in easily. If you're strong willed, you don't. TN determined by how strong the temptation is. If it's a recurring or constant temptation, make it an extended contest, requiring multiple successes to "win" for the time being.

[Valamir]

Page 67 seems to go against what you are saying here. Conscience, Drive, Faith, Passion all drop when the character fails to engage given the right opportunity. This makes sense to me -- there is no free lunch, or at least there shouldn't be.

You are correct.  I had forgotten that.  Doesn't change the necessity of finding something else to spend the SAs on, but good catch on my error.

I'm happy to allow the Faith SA to be used as bonus dice in the temptation process -- but what skill is used for the underlying roll?

Good question.  There is no skill that immediately comes to mind.  But one can get a good idea from looking over the existing skills.  When trying to persuade someone the target resists using persuade or a default.  When trying to intimidate someone the target resists using intimidate or a default.  Same for winning debates with orate and a couple of others.  If memory serves the default for all of these are 10 (or maybe 11).

An exception to this is the Sincerity Skill which is an attempt to convince someone with lies.  I believe the TN there is just a flat 8.

So taking these as a precedent I'd say setting a TN of 8, 9 or 10 depending on the severity of the temptation.

Having resisted the temptation, how do we indicate that the character is less likely to succumb to temptation in the future?

Hmmm. I'm not sure that is a reasonable thing to expect as a blanket effect.  Would the target be less likely?  Maybe.  But I could just as easily see the target becoming MORE likely reflecting repeated exposure wearing him down.  I'm thinking here about things like a college kid who refused a joint when first got to school, but after constant peer pressure is a regular user by his senior year.  Or the guy who resisted the advances of his buddy's girlfriend at first.  But after repeated attempts finally succumbed.

Seems to me like you'd have to adjucate on a case by case basis whether the character has become more or less susceptable and simply modify the target number accordingly.

The best idea I have would be if the character succeeded with extra successes on the initial resistance roll, that those extra successes get to be kept as bonus dice to use on a future roll.

Having traded in 5 points of Faith SA to bump an attribute, why is the character more likely to succumb to temptation when it next presents? What are we simulating here?

Well, as I attempted to explain in some detail in the post above.  Nothing.  There is nothing being simulated here.  If you want to create an in game justification for it, consider it a point of temporary weakness.  Perhaps the player wishes to role play out a crisis of Faith...

But in the end, the points that helped him resist the first time were NOT due to his strong Faith at all.  They were, as I said, simply a metagame carrot.  A reward for engaging.  A reward which he no longer has access to for metagame reasons.

How does the believer who doesn't centre their life around their belief (no SA, representing the ordinary adherent to the religion rather than the cleric or paladin of the religion) measure their degree of belief, their capacity to resist temptation?

Sounds like a case for a Will Power vs assigned Target Number roll to me...

Neither of these functions is inherently linked to or even particularly served by the SA point trading mechanism.

I don't know that I agree with that.  I gave what I think is a particularly good reason for the linkage, but perhaps it got lossed in the simultaneous mistake I made about losing points.

If SAs are not capped they'll grow to become a disproportionately dominate feature of the mechanic.  Additionally they'll allow characters to become 1 dimensional because players won't need to work to get 2-3 SA firing at the same time in order to get alot of dice at once.

However, if SAs *are*capped then the problem is that once a character hits that cap that the SAs no longer serve any kind of motivational purpose for the player...since they can't get any higher anyway.

Thus, in order to function there has to be a mechanism that players *want* to engage in that causes points to bleed out of the SAs so that the player must keep engaging in order to maintain their bonus.

Relying on penalties for bad roleplaying I don't think will do that, a) because players won't necessarily give you opportunities to penalize them, and b) no one really likes a system that relies on the GM punishing the player.

Having the SAs be spent when they're used so they have to be replaced I don't think will work as well either, because a) that doesn't model anything any more realistically anyway and b) it robs the player of being able to excel over the course of an entire battle without worrying about running out of points.

Can you think of another way to get players to voluntarily reduce their SAs in order to keep the treadmill running?


Thanks for clarifying what you were asking.  I think I missed the thrust of your question the first time.

[Jake Norwood]

This has become a suprisingly complicated thread, so I can't even think to address everything or do it justice, but a few things stuck out to me.

[quote'"Ian.Plumb"]In TRoS, how do you test belief? [/quote]

This has been assessed pretty well by a lot of folks, but here's my take on it. In TROS, you assess belief in the same way that you do IRL. You put it to a test of real-life priorities.

I'm going to use an example from my own life here. I am, as many of you know, a practicing Mormon. This religion, more than most Christian religions, is a lifestyle. The tennants of my faith dictate to some degree what I drink and how I spend large quantities of my time. When I was called by the leadership of the church to spend two years as a missionary in Poland at my own expense, I went. During that time I was something like a minister, a monk, and a door-to-door teacher. The rules--dogmatic or otherwise--that I was asked to obey as a missionary were very, very strict.

This was, of course, a test of my faith. What does God care if I get up at 6:30 am every day? Even now, I don't think that he does...but it was required of me by the institution in which I place my faith. Thus my faith was tested.

In TROS, it works the same way. SAs are tested when the players are given a chance to "put their money where their mouth is." Is it a test that the GM can predict? No, but then again neither is a roll. Is it a trait that can be rolled against something? No, it's not, and if it was, it would reduce the power of a player's decision in the story and in play.

Notice how difficult it was to come up with an MA that really suited a check against temptation? Would you use a measure of the character's mental reflex and sharpness to test against temptation? Would you use a measure of how quickly the character learns to resist temptation? Would you use a measure of mental endurance and determination to resist temptation?

The thing is, you don't tempt the character sheet. You tempt the character by tempting the player's desires for that character. Is it "metagame?" I guess it might be, but who cares? If you tempt the numbers on a character sheet than no temptation has come through...it was just a computerized model with no human element. BUT if you tempt the player's vision of the character, then not only have you as the GM done something noteworthy, but the player's decision for their character--whichever way that decision goes--will be worth remembering and will make a wonderful story and game. SAs are not unlike Ron Edward's kickers in that way, although I had no idea that anything like them even existed at the time I wrote TROS.

...was it really a good idea to tie character advancement so closely to SA development and use?

It was the best idea in the lot! The mistake may have been calling the SAs "attributes" at all, instead of "motivations" or "values," but I confess that what I was doing at the time was "new" even for me. See, in the end, the game ends up being "about" whatever the advancement system is "about." Rolemaster is wonderful this way, because it's "about" experiencing things by doing...and the advancement system reflects this. D&D is good here, too. In it's raw old-school form D&D is "about" killing things, taking their stuff, and overcoming challenges, and XP reward exactly that. GURPS, IMO, fails here somewhat, because the Character Points are handed out for things like "role playing" and "overcoming objectives" which generally means that everybody gets the same 4 points at the end of every session regardless of what they really did (understand that I played GURPs fanatically through High School, and I still like the game, even if it violates all kinds of theory and is no longer really to my taste).

TROS, as stated in the GM section, is about exploring "passions, motivations, and beliefs...pitted against one another...These things are the Riddle of Steel--a deeper understanding of who we all are and what is important to us. ... Sure, [TROS] is an RPG, and a strategy game, but it's also a kind of moral play. Try it out that way...it'll be a different kind of roleplaying experience for you and your players. We promise." (TROS p. 214-215)

Therefore, the reward system should be about passions, motivations, and beliefs so that a moral play is created. When people say "TROS claims to be so real, but the character creation and the SAs aren't," then they aren't reading the ad copy close enough. The combat mechanic is "realistic." The rest--spearheaded by SAs--is all literary...what some would call "narrativist," and blatantly so.

Jake

[Valamir]

Nice answer.  I think I've been pretty clear on what I think of metagame elements, so no surprise that I agree entirely.

As a thought, you may want to consider splitting Ian's series of posts and responses off from the original review commentary thread for archival purposes.  They're certainly worthy of a thread of their own.

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

I'm happy to allow the Faith SA to be used as bonus dice in the temptation process -- but what skill is used for the underlying roll?

Good question.  There is no skill that immediately comes to mind.  But one can get a good idea from looking over the existing skills.  When trying to persuade someone the target resists using persuade or a default.  When trying to intimidate someone the target resists using intimidate or a default.  Same for winning debates with orate and a couple of others.  If memory serves the default for all of these are 10 (or maybe 11).

An exception to this is the Sincerity Skill which is an attempt to convince someone with lies.  I believe the TN there is just a flat 8.

So taking these as a precedent I'd say setting a TN of 8, 9 or 10 depending on the severity of the temptation.

OK, please correct me I'm misunderstanding what you're saying here:

As referee I build a scene where the PC obtains the key to the manorial cellar. The PC is well aware that the cellar contains a fine red wine collection. The spiritual force of Greed presents temptation to the PC in the form of an opportunity to sample these fine wines undetected...

The character is not usually a thief, but there are spiritual forces at play. The player doesn't understand why their character is being inexorably drawn towards that cellar door, to remove the key from their pocket, to take a last furtive glance around the corridor, to reach for the door handle. While the player clamours their denials the moment of decision is reached...

The referee assigns a strength to the spiritual force of Greed. Lets say it has a strength of 5. The referee assigns a TN to the task of tempting the character. Lets say a TN of 8 -- the character is law abiding and trustworthy. The roll is resisted by the player. The referee determines that the temptation is not great -- the character doesn't particularly like red wine. So it's a TN of, say, 6. The player rolls (X dice plus appropriate SAs) against the TN of 6. The referee rolls 5 dice against a TN of 8.

If this is the case, what would you use as the base number of dice for the player?

Having resisted the temptation, how do we indicate that the character is less likely to succumb to temptation in the future?

Hmmm. I'm not sure that is a reasonable thing to expect as a blanket effect.  Would the target be less likely?  Maybe.  But I could just as easily see the target becoming MORE likely reflecting repeated exposure wearing him down.

I agree that either is possible. There should be a mechanism for allowing either of these to be the end result. For example, if the player devotes development to this area then they get stronger. If not then weaker. Like TRoS's SAs, fluctuation up and down...

The best idea I have would be if the character succeeded with extra successes on the initial resistance roll, that those extra successes get to be kept as bonus dice to use on a future roll.

Hmmm, I like this too. Particularly if it applied to a particular form of temptation. Resist the test of the cellar door successfully and the next time Avarice rears its ugly head you get the bonus. Conversely, if the test of the cellar door is failed then the degree of failure acts as a penalty the next time you try to resist the same form of temptation...

Having traded in 5 points of Faith SA to bump an attribute, why is the character more likely to succumb to temptation when it next presents? What are we simulating here?

Well, as I attempted to explain in some detail in the post above.  Nothing.  There is nothing being simulated here. (Snip)

I understand that the SA value and reward/expend mechanism aren't there to simulate anything. For me that's OK, unless it gets in the way of the in-game outcome. In the above example it would seem to have produced a result that is difficult to rationalise.

How does the believer who doesn't centre their life around their belief (no SA, representing the ordinary adherent to the religion rather than the cleric or paladin of the religion) measure their degree of belief, their capacity to resist temptation?

Sounds like a case for a Will Power vs assigned Target Number roll to me.

Really? You'd use the Attribute that reflects the character's level of determination to check an adherent's level of belief? Their capacity to resist temptation? That's interesting. It is probably the best of those available but I wouldn't have thought it was a good measure of the character's capacity to stick to their moral code. In the sense that you'd probably say that politicians are very determined people to have gotten where they are but I wouldn't describe politicians as a particularly moral group. Not that an example makes or breaks a rule -- WP is the most appropriate attribute of those available.

Neither of these functions is inherently linked to or even particularly served by the SA point trading mechanism.

I don't know that I agree with that.  I gave what I think is a particularly good reason for the linkage, but perhaps it got lossed in the simultaneous mistake I made about losing points. (Snip)

I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis.

Imagine for a moment that the PAs and MAs can be developed directly through usage. They're also capped at 5 (human maximum, can't be exceeded). However, points from these can be traded into points in SAs (not as TRoS currently defines SAs but rather attributes that reflected the spiritual side of the character -- Faith, Compassion, Patience, etc.). These new SAs are used to combat spiritual attacks -- the main crux of this awful gaming construct.

The mechanics work -- the players want their characters to perform tasks that use their PAs and MAs as that is how they develop, and they need their SAs to increase in order to combat the evil forces at work in the world -- but there is no logic to such a system, no inherent reason for linking the different attributes in this way.

Our gaming group uses an RPG whose character development is experience point driven. The last time we received experience points was thirty months ago. As you can imagine, changes on the character sheet are not the reason we game. I can't imagine many long-term gamers rate their participation or enjoyment of a TRoS game by how many times their SAs were used or rewarded in a session. To me, SAs look really handy for experienced players with new characters, extremely useful for novice players, and almost vital for novice referees with novice players (the sort of vital that makes you wonder why it hasn't been done before in other games).

Relying on penalties for bad roleplaying I don't think will do that, a) because players won't necessarily give you opportunities to penalize them, and b) no one really likes a system that relies on the GM punishing the player.

Well I wouldn't say that a player having their character go against their SAs represents bad role-playing.

As SAs are used as a reward mechanism losing a point in an SA is seen as a punishment. Ipso facto the person being punished must have been doing something bad.

On the other hand you could argue that the character who goes through life adding to their SAs, never losing a point, is not behaving like a real person.

Having the SAs be spent when they're used so they have to be replaced I don't think will work as well either, because a) that doesn't model anything any more realistically anyway and b) it robs the player of being able to excel over the course of an entire battle without worrying about running out of points.

Doesn't the Luck SA work in this way?

Can you think of another way to get players to voluntarily reduce their SAs in order to keep the treadmill running?

Absolutely not -- if you're going to drive PA/SA/Proficiency development through the SAs then this is the way to do it.

I sit in the simulationist camp (no secret there I guess) so I'd rather see logical mechanisms driving character development. Well, not just character development but most areas of the game. That is why I admire the combat system yet balk at the implications of the SA system.

Personally, I wish the current SAs were called something else. It confuses the issue to have some attributes that are testable and some that are not, some that are capped and some that are not, some that develop directly and some that develop indirectly. I also wish that the system did have some spiritual attributes that were testable and worked in the same manner as PAs and MAs. It would certainly make delving into aspects of the spiritual realm a lot easier.

Many thanks for taking the time to detail your thoughts here. It has been interesting.

Cheers,

[Ian.Plumb]

Hi,

In TRoS, how do you test belief?

This has been assessed pretty well by a lot of folks, but here's my take on it. In TROS, you assess belief in the same way that you do IRL. You put it to a test of real-life priorities.

(Snip example)

In TROS, it works the same way. SAs are tested when the players are given a chance to "put their money where their mouth is." Is it a test that the GM can predict? No, but then again neither is a roll. Is it a trait that can be rolled against something? No, it's not, and if it was, it would reduce the power of a player's decision in the story and in play.

SAs are tested in this way but what about belief? As has been discussed previously unless a character's beliefs are central to their existence then they don't warrant an SA. Beliefs are part of the character's culture, their upbringing, their socialization -- they have importance to everyone in a medieval western-European society but they're not usually SA-worthy for non-clerical/templar characters.

If the spiritual development of a character wasn't one of the main themes of the campaign then I'd handle all aspects of spiritual development and conflict in an ad hoc manner. It would occur infrequently and so, I guess, can be fudged as required.

If on the other hand spiritual development and conflict is one of several cornerstones to the campaign then mechanisms are required to handle these activities. You need consistency of approach.

If, for instance, temptation can always be resisted simply by the player stating that they don't want their character to succumb to temptation then spiritual development and conflict probably isn't going to be much of a feature of the campaign.

Notice how difficult it was to come up with an MA that really suited a check against temptation? Would you use a measure of the character's mental reflex and sharpness to test against temptation? Would you use a measure of how quickly the character learns to resist temptation? Would you use a measure of mental endurance and determination to resist temptation?

The thing is, you don't tempt the character sheet. You tempt the character by tempting the player's desires for that character. Is it "metagame?" I guess it might be, but who cares?

I do.

The SAs, as written, are designed to focus the player on ensuring that their character behaves according to the goals they defined for the character. If they're good and behave as expected then they're given points. If they're bad and don't follow up on the situations we as referees have designed with their character's SAs in mind then they can be punished by taking points away.

This is very neat and simple.

On the other hand, it looks like a complicated concept such as temptation should be handled situationally with the player simply deciding what the character will do, rather than situationally with a mechanism determining whether the character is able to do what the player intends for them.

Is there any other facet of the gaming environment that is handled this way?

...was it really a good idea to tie character advancement so closely to SA development and use?

It was the best idea in the lot! The mistake may have been calling the SAs "attributes" at all, instead of "motivations" or "values," but I confess that what I was doing at the time was "new" even for me. See, in the end, the game ends up being "about" whatever the advancement system is "about."

The game is about improving the values in the character's SAs?

Cheers,

[Valamir]

OK, please correct me I'm misunderstanding what you're saying here:

If this is the case, what would you use as the base number of dice for the player?

You could do it that way as an opposed roll if you wished.  I'd probably only do that if the tempation was being actively encouraged by a another person  "sure...take a drink, you can handle it, no one will know" in which case it would be a pretty straight forward Persuasion Test.

For a static temptation, like just the wine being there...I'd just go with strait Will Power vs TN based on strength of Temptation; and have WP be boostable by any applicable SA (such as Loyalty to Lord if the wine belongs to the lord)

Sounds like a case for a Will Power vs assigned Target Number roll to me.

Really? You'd use the Attribute that reflects the character's level of determination to check an adherent's level of belief? Their capacity to resist temptation? That's interesting. It is probably the best of those available but I wouldn't have thought it was a good measure of the character's capacity to stick to their moral code. In the sense that you'd probably say that politicians are very determined people to have gotten where they are but I wouldn't describe politicians as a particularly moral group. Not that an example makes or breaks a rule -- WP is the most appropriate attribute of those available.

I'd say resisting temptation, whether that a seduction to a married man or a piece of chocolate cake to a dieter is pretty much will power based.

If you want to build the slippery politician type, I'd take my cue from the Lecherous Flaw and go from there.  The Lecherous Flaw deals directly with idea of seduction as a temptation.  It takes the approach of calling for tests more frequently but uses a pretty generous default TN of 6 to resist.  

Alternatively (and perhaps simply) You could just have such a flaw mandate a more difficult TN for whatever the test would ordinarily be.

[Bob Richter]

How do you deal with beliefs in DnD?

Actually, fairly well. You don't want to do something, you say so. Someone tries to force you, you make a Will save.

TROS is pretty similar, and I think it's fine.

If you don't have a problem with drinking and whoring, you don't make the check, you just do it.
:)

[Morfedel]

To me. temptation and such should be based on roleplaying, not rollplaying here. Make something that the player would find tempting, or that the really good roleplayer thinks would tempt the character, and you have a moral situation.

For example, its a lot of fun to take the character that has, say, oaths of poverty or somesuch, and then wave very powerful magic items or tons of gold; the greed that lights up in the players' eyes as they contemplate it is a ton of fun.

But if you feel that it has to be a rolled test, its simple; make it a willpower test with bonus dice where SAs are applicable, against a TN that you think appropriate.

For instance, lets say you are playing a human warrior named, oh, Boromir. Boromir has an SA called "Defend the Fellowship" with 4 dice and a WP of 4.

His friend, Frodo, stumbles and drops a magical ring that he picks up. This hypothetical ring has a magical enchantment on it that makes everyone tempted to pick it up. The Seneschal judges that its temptation power is a 7, but it constantly exerts its temptation whenever it becomes reachable; a single failed test could mean the person falls under its temptive control.

Boromir picks up the ring and rolls his test. He rolls 8 dice against the 9, and gets one success. With Aragorn's intercession, he barely manages to shrug off its effects and give it back to frodo.

(Could be fun to give the ring  score of dice it rolls on an opposed test against Boromir and others over extended period of time too).

Point being, make it a WP test if you don't want to RP it out; set a TN or make it opposed.