Experience, Personality, Skills, Abilities & Emotions = Experskabilition?

[whoknowswhynot]

I have decided to combine these things together (Experience, Personality, Skills, Abilities, Emotions, Baggage, Background, etc.) into one metric which I simply call experience because for the purposes of MAYA, they are all interrelated (If you are interested how please ask).  The problem I have encountered and desperately seek help with is where Emotions and Baggage come into play.  Originally, these were individual metrics that were rated from 1-10.  This was changed because in play the number would change frequently and the character creation process was just too complicated.  Originally, I was going for a visual effect of erasing marks from little bubbles to represent the process of letting go of these emotions and bad life experiences.  Now, with Emotions and Baggage as part of the same metric and rated like skills [A (+5), B (+3), C (+0), D (-3), F (-5) this part is still under construction...], everything is simpler and more streamlined except I have encountered a problem with character creation and advancement which is points based.  There are 10 fear-based emotions (Paranoid, Dishonest, Arrogant, Hateful, Worried, Cowardly, Greedy, Unforgiving, Zealous and Depressed) and 10 "Life Experience" [Baggage] groups (Death, Trauma, Crime, Addiction, Horror, Heartache, Victim, Enmity, Accused and Isolation [still plan on renaming some of these]) in MAYA and originally they were ranked (conveniently) 1-10 which maxed out at a convenient 100 points for the average (not-too-damaged) character.  With the A-F rating system I'm not sure how to handle counting points as characters are created and during play where the 1-10 ranking system obviously did work better.  Any suggestions?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Scott,

Things have been restructured a little since you posted last. I'll help out by making sure these are available in this thread:

Your game website: Maya the RPG

And here's some background for previous Forge work: MAYA the RPG<<Seeking constructive criticism

Carry on, and welcome back.

Best, Ron

[whoknowswhynot]

Hey thanks for your help!  That is the website, however there has been a problem recently.  I am unable to edit the website.  I am still working on getting this fixed.  Any questions about MAYA, please ask until then.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi Scott,

With the A-F rating system I'm not sure how to handle counting points as characters are created
and during play where the 1-10 ranking system obviously did work better.  Any suggestions?

It seems like you still have a numeric system attached to the letters, right? And there's still a 10 point difference between the top and the bottom rungs, right?  You could just rank them accordingly:

A =10
B = 8
C = 5
D = 2
F = 0

This assumes you just add 5 to the numbers you listed.  You may want to tweak them a bit to get closer to your 1-10 model, so F would be 1 and you might want to bump D to 3 and B to 7, or whatever works well for you.

Of course, instead of a raw numerical system for character creation, maybe you just list some sets and players pick a set and assign accordingly:

Set 1: A, A , B, B, C, C, D, D, F, F
Set 2. A, B, B, C, C, C, D, D, D, F
etc.

Then players don't have to do any math at all and you've set limits on how far anything can go, in the event you were worried about the effects of min-maxing on the system.

Chris

[whoknowswhynot]

Thank you!  This never occured to me!  That type of system could work very well.  Maybe something like:
U-10  F-5     D-3        C+0         B+3         A+5
X       F-5O   D-3OO  C+0OOO  B+3OOO  A+5O
0            1         2 3        4 5 6        7 8 9        10
Where U-10 equals the "Unknown" default level.  Just thinking out loud, but This could work.  I guess I just don't want to have to change the character sheet too much.  I need to try this out.

[Paul DuPont]

Another option is to keep the 1-10 system for the chosen traits only. This would allow you to keep the idea of adding or erasing the traits.

I agree that having sets to choose from is easier for character creation than point based. You could even have both options so that a player who wants to tweak their characters traits can use the point based but allow most characters to be built simply by picking sets.

[whoknowswhynot]

I like that idea too.  You are right.  Honestly it seems like trying to simplify this aspect has only made it more complicated in my head.  Using both systems is the best solution since the points will be measured in play as well for things like Karma and spiritual rank.  This system reminds me of Rolemaster with the skill ranks and I guess it was partly an influence.  I will just need to change the character sheet slightly for this.