I ran the game a few times last week, and it was a blast. I have a few negative observations that I wish to address, but please don't take that as my overall view. Overall, the game handled very smoothly.

Stealth Skills

I was uncomfortable with the animal-guise/camoflauge/sneak skills. I think I prefer something like warhammer's "concealment urban, rural" split better. This is my initial reaction, we'll see where it takes me.

Social Skills

I was also a bit uncomfortable with the persuasion/sincerity/intrigue/etc... line of skills. I sometimes had a hard time determining what skill & attribute to use, and how to split these up. For example, I had a character who was ugly with a social of 3 trying to rally some retreating militia (not in battle, they were retreating from a city that was a few days from being sieged). If he wants to persuade them to return, then it's either WP or Wit, but somehow I think the social part is being left out. I think I went with social/persuasion at the time for expediancy, but I didn't like the way I handled that.

This may just be something I need to work through (I'm already getting some ideas as I type this), but I thought I'd share.

-Jeff

Hi Jeff. I wrote a long reply to this one, and my computer ate it. I hate these things...

Anyway, here we go again, but shorter this time.

I ran the game a few times last week, and it was a blast. I have a few negative observations that I wish to address, but please don't take that as my overall view. Overall, the game handled very smoothly.

Stealth Skills

I was uncomfortable with the animal-guise/camoflauge/sneak skills. I think I prefer something like warhammer's "concealment urban, rural" split better. This is my initial reaction, we'll see where it takes me.

Social Skills

I was also a bit uncomfortable with the persuasion/sincerity/intrigue/etc... line of skills. I sometimes had a hard time determining what skill & attribute to use, and how to split these up. For example, I had a character who was ugly with a social of 3 trying to rally some retreating militia (not in battle, they were retreating from a city that was a few days from being sieged). If he wants to persuade them to return, then it's either WP or Wit, but somehow I think the social part is being left out. I think I went with social/persuasion at the time for expediancy, but I didn't like the way I handled that.

In reverse order:

RE: Social Skills

I'm still not entirely happy (no, I'm not crying in my coffee<g>) about lumping it as a social/persuasion roll. I almost want to make the audience roll to dislike the PC first, and use that to oppose a wit/persuasion roll. Something on those lines.

RE: Stealth Skills

That does help quite a bit. Thanks.

RE: Positive Stuff

1) The skill system functioned smoothly. There weren't any hitches or starts as a player tried to figure out modifiers and stuff, just roll att/skill and tell the GM the number of successes. As an aside, I've seen players (both in my typical group and at conventions) waste massive amounts of time on extremely simple die rolls. They wave the dice around, play with them, recalculate ad-nauseum, and so-on. In this game, the principle time-waster (in terms of mechanics) was me. (BTW, not saying that this is unique to Riddle. Our primary games are ICE and Warhammer, and players can take forever in ICE.)

2) The skill-experience system is starting to suck the players in. Yep, we're evil "G"s, and now they're all clamoring for checkmarks.

3) The SAs were another story. Everyone played to their character, but most of us forgot that there were mechanics for it. So, someone with a conscience may try to save someone, but then forget to add conscience dice, and I'd forget to give them a point afterwords. The funny part is that I tended to remember the added-dice part, and remind them of it, while they'd remember the "gimme points" side, and remind me of that.

4) I almost forgot - character gen was an absolute breeze. I'm like you - it's fun to have a lot of skills, but it sucks combing through a massive list and wondering if you're missing something big.

5) We had few combats, but they had a feel that we liked. It was scary and decisive, not deterministic and drawn-out. For me, the best part is when 20 NPC enemy light cavalrymen were spotted a few miles from town: the only thing the players discussed was hiding vs. running.

6) Bows are very powerful in this game. One example:

Our major bowman has night vision - he sees in the dark as if it were day. He spots 4 black-hats carrying a human-shaped bundle across an open plain to a campsite; an obvious kidnapping. He sneaks up within 30 yards (he has a good bow that's +1/15yds) and takes a shot, killing his first victim. Next round he makes his reflex roll to draw faster; meanwhile the black-hats roll for hesitation; one runs away randomly (I just rolled a random compass direction), and two actually got lucky and kept their wits about them. One of them notices the player a round later, but that's the one he's aiming at and he skewers him. I decide at this point the other guy's smart move is to run, and so he does.

Around 6 seconds of combat, and 2 people are shot dead in the face (did I mention major gift:accuracy?), and 2 others run away.

-Jeff

I'm still not entirely happy (no, I'm not crying in my coffee<g>) about lumping it as a social/persuasion roll. I almost want to make the audience roll to dislike the PC first, and use that to oppose a wit/persuasion roll. Something on those lines.

Ack, just lost a long reply. Your gain, my loss. :-)

I think where I'm going with this is something like:

Wit/Persuation contesting TN/social+2 (yeah, reversed on purpose).

So, I determine that approaching militia on the road is average, and the PC's ugly trait bumps that up one to 7. Therefore, as a GM, I roll 7 dice with a target of 5 (the player's social+2), and the player has to beat my successes. If it wasn't under stressful conditions, it's easy, which reduces things by 2 dice. If the militia is bored at the barracks and looking for a fight, it's foolproof and there goes another 2 dice.

Tangent time. Anybody else notice that a TN of 10 and 11 are the same thing? Funky quirk. :-)

-Jeff

Jaif wrote: Tangent time. Anybody else notice that a TN of 10 and 11 are the same thing? Funky quirk. :-)

Hey,

Hero Wars has the same thing with its ability value of "20" at one scale shifting to "1w" at the next scale up, but the effectiveness remaining the same.

Best,
Ron

It's not really a freaky thing guys, it happens in many games. In fact, ANY game that uses a "roll maximum and you get to roll again and add" system is going to have this come up.

Hell, Deadlands uses no even difficulty numbers at all, because 4,6,8,10 and 12 are all impossible depending on which die you have for the attribute/skill you're rolling...

Brian.

Mage Blade has the same issue, when rolling against TRs of 21 or higher, but as modifiers are common, that 1 point can effect things.

However, back on topic.. I think some good comments were made here regarding skills and packets, and some good answers were given as well.

One thing that comes to my mind, though.. I was creating my bounty hunter, and I decided that Skill Packet: Woodsman/Ranger seemed the most appropriate out of what was there for the tracker side, but there are several skills in that packet that just plainly do not make sense for the character. Animal Guise is one of them specifically, because he would have been trained to track bounties through urban and wilderness settings, be able to survive, hide, sneak, hunt, etc. but would have little to no reason to learn how to disguise himself from animals. What I was considering at the time was an option (at Seneschal's discretion) to remove inappropriate skills from the packets (on a character-by-character basis) and allow them to be counted the same as a point of MA for determining additional skills/languages/skill modifiers. Does this sound kosher to anyone else, or do you think the player should just suffer with the inappropriate skill?

Wolfen wrote: What I was considering at the time was an option (at Seneschal's discretion) to remove inappropriate skills from the packets (on a character-by-character basis) and allow them to be counted the same as a point of MA for determining additional skills/languages/skill modifiers. Does this sound kosher to anyone else, or do you think the player should just suffer with the inappropriate skill?

Admittedly yes, it could be abused, but no more than the line saying that a player can (at Seneschal's discretion) create their own Skill Packets with 5-15 (or was it 5-12? Or some other number? My book is currently loaned out to prospective players...) skills apiece. The important phrase, both from the book, and from my own idea is the part in parenthesis here. at Seneschal's discretion

Limiting it to 3 doesn't sound like a bad idea, though. If there are more than 3 skills which are inappropriate, then why did you pick that Skill Packet?

Also, for the record, I created a new Skill Packet called Lawman/Guard for my character. If I had my character (it's with the book) I'd post the Skill Packet for others to use or discard at their preference.

BrianL wrote: A better way to do it, though, would be to say to the player "ok, go away and build me a new 'Bounter Hunter' skill packet, and we'll see how it looks".

Rattlehead wrote:

BrianL wrote: A better way to do it, though, would be to say to the player "ok, go away and build me a new 'Bounter Hunter' skill packet, and we'll see how it looks".

This sounds like the best way in my opinion. Plus, you can keep it for use later. Even better, you could share it with the rest of us.

Hey Jake, maybe you could put a page on the website for "home-grown" skill packets?

Brandon

Me, I'm in the "player should suffer with the inappropriate skill" camp, as Woffen put it. I frankly don't regard it as suffering if you end up with a skill you don't use (I personally have a ton, like calculus<g>).

If it's the case that no combination of packages is giving you the grounding you need for your character, than it's time for new package-making and some wheeling and dealing.

Somewhere between one extra skill (animal guise bad!) and no packages acceptable is a gray area where I'm sure we all differ. After much experience in Monty Haul campaigns, and giving into player grubbing, I've become somewhat hardbitten and default to "no" an awful lot.

I surprised the hell out of my players this game. Two of them started with no money (social F), and I gave'em a burlap sack to wear and that's it. Furthermore, I started them out near a village; no one had a job for them, and their wasn't any food easily available nearby (w/o resorting to stealing). Boy did they strip a dead body down when they found it. :-)

-Jeff

Whenever I see these "new skill" packet ideas I cringe big time.

IMO there should be *no* new skill packets that are not first socially and cultureally justifiable. The "bounty hunter" packet especially raises flags with me. The sort of Bobba Fett character being implied by the desired skill combinations just doesn't really have any historical parallel. There were bounties and there were people who cashed them in, but there really isn't any group of people who are "trained" in these skills. Frankly I find that modern notions of training and education color our conceptions of appropriate character professions far too greatly.

For any character idea here are the steps that I'd go through as a GM:
1) does this character concept involve an area where the character would have recieved actual training in the area in some formal environment?

2) If so, does that institution actually exist in Wyert/my game world currently.

3) If it does not exist currently what effect would it have on my world to assume it does exist. Here is where most people fall down, IMO. Inserting a group of "professionional trained X" into the world would generally have far more far reaching effects than most people realise at first look. The very concept of an organized group that is not directly connected to church or state is a hugely foriegn idea throughout much of history. The rise of a merchant guild structure, for instance, derived from and lead to far reaching cultureal and economic changes.

4) If there is no such organization, but the concept of the character is a sound one...than pick a back ground that represents what the character was doing BEFORE he hit upon this unique career path. THAT should be his skill packet base. He can then begin to pick up more career path appropriate skills in play as he pursues that path until he evolves into the concept desired. OR, a generous GM may use the character advancement rules to advance the character artificially to reflect that some of this process has already occured.


Basically creating a new skill packet for a new character concept should IMO be the absolute last choice and then only if all other possibilities are grossly unsatisfactory; or, the choice is one that is obviously appropriate for the game world and could be considered a "standard" packet that was just missed. Very very few character concepts would qualify as the latter IMO.

I have to agree with Ralph (Valamir) - new skill packets for every character idea is a pretty bad idea.

The optimum solution would be for the Senechesal to sit down before play and create skill packets for all the standard occupations in the culture the game is to take place in, but that's obviously a lot of work. (Something like this on the net would be awesome, though - you could have an expanded book on Stahl, for example, with all the skill packages common to Stahl.)

Yeah, that would be ideal. I personally would not be thrilled with new skill packets appearing on the website that were not cultureally specific and appropriate to whatever region of Wyerth they can be found.

I agree with Valamir too. I'm also very flexible on chargen - Frankly I don't used point systems much, I'm happy for players to just describe their charctrs to me and take whatevers appropriate - if the story hangs together thats fine. Packages are still convenient for this though, but I'm against leaving the player to suffer - I have sometimes found this sort of thing challenging to my character concept, as a player.

When I created Tiberius, I looked through every skill packet, and decided on a couple of them more than once, but I just wasn't satisfied. Swordsman didn't work, because Tiberius, as a person, would have no knowledge nor care for weapon style, for example. Others likewise did not really work.. So I created the Lawman/Guard Skill Packet. I checked the balance against all of the others in the book, and it seemed good. Then I chose Woodsman/Ranger for the second packet. The reason behind the choice on these two packets is fairly simple.. He was born on the northern coast of Stahl (near Savaxen) in a spread out subsistence community. His family, however, was slaughtered/stolen by Hef when he was just a boy.. He escaped only by hiding until they'd left. After that, he ended up in... (I don't remember the town name.. It's on the map, near the western edge of Stahl) and became one of the guardsman for a time, before meeting up with a bounty hunter who showed him the ropes.

Bounty Hunter is a default option from the Concept List, and Guardsman and Ranger seemed the best two to reflect the type. However, there were just a few things in the Ranger packet which didn't quite ring true, which is why I am considering the option of packet customization. It's not a desire to power game or minmax, only that things do not, like Contracycle mentions, entirely ring true with the character concept.

I think it bears mentioning that while bounty hunters were probably in short supply during earth's medieval time period, this is a fantasy setting. I can swallow bounty hunters in a fantasy setting, medieval or not. Also, due to Boba Fett and his ilk, the bounty hunter has become a sort of "character archetype" in modern fiction. Especially in movies but, I imagine, in print as well.

Brandon

IMO thats not much of an argument - by analogy, firearms are established now so we should feel free to have firearms too, yes? Me and my full-auto blunderbuss have a bone to pick...

contracycle wrote: IMO thats not much of an argument - by analogy, firearms are established now so we should feel free to have firearms too, yes? Me and my full-auto blunderbuss have a bone to pick...

Rattlehead wrote:
Still, a full-auto blunderbuss would be a sight to see...

Ammunition, storage of it, feeding it to the gun, cooling the gun, accuracy (hah!), yada, yada yada.

I imagine you would have an ATN of about 8 or 9, but a range increment of about 25 yards or even more. (And a really NASTY damage rating).

Quick semi-relevant question: Let's say you've got a Zaporozhyan feller, lived there into his early teens, soaked up a fair bit of horsemanry and a heavy dose of fantazya. But a chain of events took him mostways across the continent, and by now he's set up pretty well in the Court of a western country, playing on his talent for fancy swordsmanship and Dashing Foreigner Appeal. Still got his dad's bow and shortsword, but more likely to draw his Case of Rapiers.

Assuming this is even remotely feasible, I'm in a quandary for his skill packs. He definitely needs two of Warrior, Courtier, and Swordsman, but I dunno which. What do you think?

Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to raise the dead, I swear!

No problem raising the dead. I don't see how he'll need whole new skill packs. What he'll need it a new proficiency and a new Ettiquite skill... both of which are easily bought with SA points over time.

Jake

Hmm.. see, what I described there is backstory, more or less. (This guy is mostly a character-creation experiment, at least for the time being.) I intend the character as more of a kozak-flavored swashbuckler than a swashbuckler-flavored kozak, but it's still an important part of him. My inclination is to give him Warrior and Courtier, and buy the important Swordsman skills with SA points. As long as the "I had this skill the whole time, and just did not deign to use it" trick is allowed in TRoS...

Valamir wrote: IMO there should be *no* new skill packets that are not first socially and cultureally justifiable. The "bounty hunter" packet especially raises flags with me. The sort of Bobba Fett character being implied by the desired skill combinations just doesn't really have any historical parallel. There were bounties and there were people who cashed them in, but there really isn't any group of people who are "trained" in these skills. Frankly I find that modern notions of training and education color our conceptions of appropriate character professions far too greatly.