I've been touching on this in my recent threads. In an attempt to discuss it a little more focuse I start up a new thread here.

Let's start with an example.

I'm making a character, Brighthands. The idea is "Almost Reformed Thief gone Hero". Naturally I pump him up with thieving skills and then the hero fighter adventure kit.

Now, creating Brighthands I will in most sim games be punished for doing so. Even though to all effects the thief skills are nothing but colour (I don't expect them to be useful), I will usually have to pay for them as if they are. In some games they might be cheaper, reflecting that - but I'd still have to pay for them.

No matter what, I will have less points to put into fighting skills than a fellow player making Urk the Barbarian.

Urk doesn't have any other skills than fighting. Urk can fight, very well with a wide range of weapons and he also has fighting talents which makes him even more optimized.

Despite both are supposed to be fighter/heroes, Brighthand starts out with a disadvantage.

Anyway, 20 dungeoncrawls later, the situation varies depending on the system.

1. In a game which only let's you improve skills you use during the adventures, Urk and Brighthand now looks pretty much the same. They become more and more a reflection of their skill rolls than their character concepts. Even Urk becomes less of a barbarian and more of a honed treasure hunting fighting-machine.

For Brighthand, he probably has lost all his initial characteristics as that "Almost Reformed Thief", for aside from stealing from his friends there is little chance to practice those thieving skills.

2. In a game which let's you improve any skill for a cost, I have two choices:

Either I optimize Brighthand as a treasure hunting fighter or I try to stay true to the original character concept. In the former, I'll end up with a character much like in 1), whereas in the latter I'll after a while have a well characterized although compared to say Urk, a very useless character.


This appears in many many games. It's not a big concern in those games where character improvement is rare. The characters simply don't improve too much beyond their initial concept. However, there is the issue of the original concept. Is there a concept or is there simply optimization? Even if it's not as simple as a dungeoncrawl, there are still plenty of ways to optimize, and thus be punished if you choose well characterized characters rather than optimized.

Although a GM might be kind and let a player use their character's "colour" skills more or less often, I don't see that as a solution. The fact is that the game system is working against the characterization if it is rewarding to make optimized characters. There has to be a way to avoid that.

In a way D&D avoids the problem, because of two things: a) there are no skill choices to make and b) all skills improve on level up.

With AD&D that changes of course. At least from what I heard of 3rd ed.

A game with a similar but not the same take would be Palladium's Robotech. Here you get plenty of skill choices made for you after choosing class, but since the "optimal" skills are so few, you have plenty of chance to choose "useless" but characterizing skills to make it a little different. Level up in Robotech and all your skills increase by a step depending on the skill (usually around 5%).

What would I like to see then?

Well, I want a game where the character is firmly grounded in a concept from beginning to the end, and that the game facilitates that and not punishes it.

I'm playing around with ideas of allowing for a huge bunch of "colour skills". These are not traded with for example combat-efficient skills.

In addition, these colour skills also should be increased separately from combat skills.


Sounds good? Well it has already been tried. Rolemaster had primary skills and secondary skills. Primary skills were the optimized adventuring abilities and secondary skills were stuff like fletching and bowmaking and equally only semi-useful skills.

Originally the secondary skills were optional and if you used them you got an extra batch of devpoints to put only on those.

Only that got too complicated and later supplements ended up extending the secondary skills until almost anything conceivable was there. That together with starting to treat primary and secondary skills equally. This was semi successful as you could only increase a skill by two or three steps and originally that was enough for most of what you want.

However as the skills began to increase it really got out of hand. Besides, everyone took pretty much any skill they could and there wasn't left any "extra colour" feeling to the secondary skills of RM.

Anyway. What I'm saying is: If the same currency is used to buy character in-game effectiveness as you buy character colour, you are going to punish players who come up with interesting characters.

However, separating colour from effectiveness is not always easy, so there has to be a compromise somewhere. I'm suggesting that the compromise shouldn't be put so that the imaginative players suffer for it. That's it.

Now, creating Brighthands I will in most sim games be punished for doing so. Even though to all effects the thief skills are nothing but colour (I don't expect them to be useful),

Anyway. What I'm saying is: If the same currency is used to buy character in-game effectiveness as you buy character colour, you are going to punish players who come up with interesting characters.

contracycle wrote: Eh? Why are they useless? Why doesn't this character do thieving things?

This is true. But, I challenge your assumption that thiefly skills are "just" colour; there is no reason that even D&D cannot be a game about a group of thieves, say - or several actual thieves and some muscle. In these circumstances, the thieving skills are not colour, they are effectiveness. And lastly, I completely obviate the problem by not asking the payers to pay for either effectiveness or colour, cos I can't be bothered to limit their ideas.

Pale Fire wrote:
The solution you point out could work in some games, but it wouldn't in say AD&D. Nor does it work in Ygg. There has to be a certain balance and limit to the player efficiency. However, I don't want that to obstruct player use of skills as a means of providing colour.

I think this just about sums it all up:

The question is this: why would the skill to know pi to a thousand decimals be available to take if it was not relevant to the game?

contracycle wrote: What is it that would not work in AD&D? I have run all-thief or nearly so games in D&D.

contracycle wrote: And lastly, I completely obviate the problem by not asking the payers to pay for either effectiveness or colour, cos I can't be bothered to limit their ideas.

There is no way to work around the central problem: if your players design a bunch of violent psychos, and you send them somewhere that violent psychodom is a Bad Thing, then the characters are not going to be effective.

Pale Fire wrote: Anyway, 20 dungeoncrawls later,

Pale Fire wrote: However, there is the issue of the original concept. Is there a concept or is there simply optimization?

Pale Fire wrote: What would I like to see then?

Well, I want a game where the character is firmly grounded in a concept from beginning to the end, and that the game facilitates that and not punishes it.

Pale Fire wrote: Actually we could look at a game where everything was about thieving and there was no chance for real fighting and most of the barabarian's skills would similarly be considered "useless" for the sake of illustrating the problem.

Pale Fire wrote: what doesn't work in AD&D without changing the premise of the game.

Pale Fire wrote: Problem 2: If skills used are easier to improve, how do we prevent that from making the characters increasingly more alike as the story progresses?

Ok, this thread is going in circles a bit and I think I know why.

PF has brought up a very valid point that is a problem with some games. Unfortuneately the example he chose to illustrate the point is not a very good one and so people are concentrating on picking apart the example.

So I suggest...forget the thief thing.

One is really being discussed is this:

1) The system offers a game reward (like XPs) for activity X.
2) The character creation system offers ways to minmax character effectiveness to maximize the ability to perform X and get the reward.
3) Players who create such characters generally pass up a lot of the "flavorful" type of character feature in order to concentrate on those features that specifically maximize the ability to achieve X.
4) Players who instead choose to create characters with depth, may enjoy the added depth, but are effectively penalized by the system because they can't accumulate the reward nearly as fast as the min maxed character can.

PF's example focused on the idea of having to pay for a character background that is no longer relevant. An extreme example of my own: A game of naval combat in the age of Napoleon. The PC creates his background as a free farmer who had been in town selling his crop when the gangs pressed him. If the game requires that background to be "paid for" in some way, it is essentially a hit to PC effectiveness because in the scope of the game there will be virtually no use for a farmers skills, so those points are essentially "wasted".

There are many other examples (Having every single Paladium character be an acrobatic boxer is my favorite). The deaf combat god with the crippled son is another aspect of the same issue.

Really this issue is nothing new. It is the standard issue of "character balance". What PF is having issues with is simply that a player who develops a deeper character will be unbalanced compared to players who develop a min maxed character and how then to encourage deep characters.

The solution Christoffer is one that has been suggested many times. You have to broaden your horizons beyond the games you are familiar with (especially D&D). There are many games that have no such problems.

Some ways of addressing the issue:

1) Use class/professions/skill packages. Take a look at Riddle of Steel. You select 2 skill packages. You select how effective the character is at the package, the package provides the skills you have, and the level of each skill depends on how important it is in the package relative to your overall ability with the package. This doesn't eliminate the problem altogether (you can still pick a less "effective" package) but it does reduce it conciderably since players don't have the option of building maxed out 1 dimensional characters (all packages have "less effective" (as in less frequently used) skills, so there is no ability to pass up those flavorful skills in preference to "good" ones. The other thing RoS does is completely seperate combat effectiveness (proficiencies) from non combat effectiveness (skills). Strangely this dichotomy stretches back to AD&D 1ed's Unearthed Arcana book, later hugely expanded in 2ed. Those games used Non Combat Proficiencies just so that players wouldn't have to "waste" weapon slots on "color" skills.

2) Change the reward system. This is the very CORE of good game design. Its one of the fundamental concepts of GNS. What you reward is how the game will be played (by most players anyway). If you build a reward system into the game where reward is given for X than there should be no surprise that players will find ways to make their characters more effective at X. Thats not a player problem, thats a design problem. The solution is simple. Don't reward X.

I offer up 2 dramatically different methods that are similiar only in that the "X" they reward is very different from the sort of "traditional" things one used to see in RPG advancement systems.

First Brian Gleichman's Age of Heroes rewards players for showing up to play. I may be remembering it wrong, but I think its something like 200XPs for being present...no bonuses for roleplaying, kills, successful skill rolls...just showing up. I can't say I particularly like that solution, but it does effectively eliminate any motivation to min-max for reward purposes.

Second, Riddle of Steel again. The game's central mechanic is combat based, but the reward system has nothing whatsoever to do with combat. It is purely behavior based. The player selects how his character is supposed to behave (in terms of what is important to him) and earns points for playing that way. Points which then can be used for improvement.


So PF, yes your issue is a very real one. But its also one that can be dealt with and there are literally dozens of different ways to address it.

I think the solution for you lies (once again) in decideing what the game is meant to be about. What kind of thing do you want PLAYERS to do? Is having deep, thought out, interesting character backgrounds important to you? Then design a system that rewards such backgrounds. Talking in witty one liners in character was important for Dieing Earth so there is a mechanic that rewards it. Being willing to risk your character on amazing feats of derring do was important to 7th Sea, so they designed a system that rewarded high profile risk taking (rather than penalizing it like most systems would). Having your character suffer through and perservere against a never ending stream of Trouble in a world that really IS out to get you was important for Orkworld and so Trouble is how players are rewarded.

What do you want the PLAYERS to be doing in your game. Reward that. Problem solved.

You got it right Ralph, I just want to point out one more thing before going to bed:

Valamir wrote: 1) The system offers a game reward (like XPs) for activity X.

A person (character) only has so many hours in a given day, days in a given week, weeks and in a given month etc.. I fail to see how this punsihes a character. Now, I am all for those skills which are purely for color as they add a more realistic flavor to the character (ie Steven Segal's character in Under Siege "I'm a Cook" etc) .

However, many player's want to be able to be expert cooks, wizards, sowrdmasters etc etc and this makes no sense what so ever. Yes a general XP or reward system can be too generic as skills which were never used move up. Those system which reward a skill for being used make more sense but how often do you get to cook?

Well right there is the whole crx of the issue, in my opinion. Its not a case of "I want my color skills to be useful" as much as it is a chance to USE those skills provided by the GM.

A typical fantasy campaign may take place over one or two years in which the players start as 17 year old nobodies and are 19 year old Mega-Gods by the end. Two years of constant campaigning takes a toll phsycially and mentally but this is often ignored. Needless to say there woul dnot be alot of time for learning how to sew.

To get back to the point, a game system needs to foster an approach to reward which makes sense. When we do something Heroic (ugh I hate that phrase) in real life we are given money and medals and fame. In an RPG you get this AND a PHD in Cthulu-ology. Huh? Does not make too much sense.

Time. One cannot become an expert in twenty skills in two to three years unless they devote all of their time to study study study and it does not leave alot of time for other things.

The best system would reward a character for skills they use and or study on a regular basis with a better understanding of those skills. A skill one does not use in three months (or ever) may very well begin to deteriote.

Just my 2 Lunars...

SMH
ADGBoss

Understood. It still works the same way, however.

You have a game with alot of combat. The characters have a limited number of resources to buy effectiveness with so spending those resouces on non combat things reduces combat effectiveness. That's an issue as old as RPGs.

However, its ONLY a problem if the primary way of earning character improvement rewards is through combat, thus you have the vicious circle of I have to fight to get better at fighting, but I can't fight well, so I keep falling farther and farther behind.

If the character improvement system rewards <other things> than the initially non combat oriented character (PC-A) will have as many opportunities to earn rewards as the combat oriented character (PC-B) does. Since most games have some sort diminishing returns for improvement, PC-A will be able to catch PC-B in terms of combat effectiveness if he so desires. If he doesn't desire, than obviously he doesn't have an issue with relative combat effectiveness.

This is, in fact, exactly what RoS does.

I can make a character where I put Gifts and Skill very high on my priority list (for background purposes) but Proficiencies (Combat stuff) very low. You can do the opposite. Initially you'll mop the floor with me. However, I can play my character's Spiritual Attributes as much or more than you do and increase my combat effectiveness accordingly

So mechanical rewards are still worthwhile here.


However, you are quite correct in pointing out that "being effective in combat" is its own reward. The solution to that, even aside from mechanical rewards, is to make sure that other aspects of the game are equally rewarding. Most players who design a character who isn't a combat god already understand they aren't going to be as effective in combat as someone else. This is ONLY a problem if the ONLY interesting activity in your game is combat. If the other activities in your game are equally interesting than a player desiring that sort of character will have no problem trading one interesting activity for another.

Another solution is to make your combat actually entertaining. That means make is quick, cinematic (meaning focused and interesting not necessarily unrealistic), and exciting. If the combat is enjoyable enough to watch, the non combat players won't mind sitting on the sidelines as much. Contrast this to AD&D where combat is hideously painfully slow even for the effective participants and down right agonizing to the point of leaving the table to go play Playstation for the inneffective ones.

If a combat takes 3 hours to resolve than you have an issue of how to keep the non combatants interested. If a combat take 3 minutes, or even 13...no biggie. Its over quickly, move on to something else.

Hey Chris,

It seems to me that you might be making a box out of air.

What I mean is, while 1) is correct, there is also the variant that "the system often has activity X, although there is no reward associated with it, it is so common that most players would like to have the skills associated with the activity or have little to contribute with in most situations"

Valamir wrote:
If the character improvement system rewards <other things> than the initially non combat oriented character (PC-A) will have as many opportunities to earn rewards as the combat oriented character (PC-B) does. Since most games have some sort diminishing returns for improvement, PC-A will be able to catch PC-B in terms of combat effectiveness if he so desires. If he doesn't desire, than obviously he doesn't have an issue with relative combat effectiveness.

Since Ralph already asked about my game focus and I think some of the nuances of this problem might be better illustrated by bringing up my particular problems with my game, I'll talk about how Ygg fits into this discussion.

First, a month back or so I resigned to the fact that things would probably be the easiest if everyone was a fighter. You can take a look at older threads for more background on that.

What I mean by that is that every character should be able to be competent in combat. Of course if the stats and skills suck they won't be that good, but there is nothing within the system which is supposed to yield a disadvantage in fighting to a certain type of characters.

Basically think about everyone as of the "adventurer" class. Any character would build on top of that.

Thinking a little about it, I couldn't see people coming up with nice character archetypes fitting the setting without making a lot of compromises to abilities or introducing professions/classes as a kind of start-up kit.

I chose the latter.

Now looking at these classes, they are to be understood as fighters with different color added on top. Think about the fighter subclasses of Ranger and Paladin. Only in my game there are no "pure" fighters like in AD&D.

Sketching at the character classes I wrote them with keywords, like this:

Dwarven Artillery Man
Armour Movement
Crossbow
Ballista/Catapult
Pyroalchemy (little)
Bomb throwing

It didn't mean there necessarily was a skill of Pyroalchemy to be selected in the game, but it was a hint that this was something associated with the particular archetype.

Having ready-made classes like this pretty much throws out any problems with balancing. I can fiddle with that as I design them, there is no need to cover player optimizations because there are no choices. At least not with the design like this.

However, what would happen with our Dwarven Artilleryman as he continued adventuring? Oh, he could run around trying to make bombs every second, trying to find ballistas and catapults to operate and things. Otherwise after a few adventures he'd become simply a master of the most frequently used skills.

He would no longer be an Artilleryman but more of that basic "Adventurer" class with the skills associated with it.

Or in other words, the character would lose the class flavour.

If the skills were paid for in any case. I could always go the D&D route and let everything increase. However, that feels not a little unsatisfying.

Beyond that there was the possible aquirement of new skills. Some skills like "Resist Pain" seems like a good choice for a Dwarven Soldier, but it gets silly if the Goblin Fortuneseeker has the chance to pick up the same skill. Although one might disallow certain races from picking up different things it seems like one is going quickly down the D&D road of "mages can't use armour or swords".

The best solution I can come up with right now is to isolate them into groups like this:

Abilities, Learned Skills, Stats and Moves & Spells

Abilities covers everything associated with the class. They are the same level as the character (have to introduce levels for this to work). You can't learn an ability of a different class. These are usually very wide skills and special abilities.

Learned Skills work outside of that system. You don't use these for combat or anything like that. They are... colour. If I want to be able to cook well, I might have a skill in cooking. Whatever. These can be freely taken. They can also be learned in game. There would be rather lasseiz-faire rules for how to aquire and increase them.

Stats stats cover the basic stats as well as the most important skill ratings such as close combat skill and magical ability. Here there is a clear currency trading.

Moves & Spells. This is a little vague yet, but if it turns out like I'm thinking of it, you basically get to add a little extra effect to a known spell or create a martial art move every time you level up. There is no great advantage to doing so, it is mostly for colour. However it is regulated so that there are no great disparities between the characters.

Anyway, that's the best I can come up with. As for the Artillery Man, he'd be increasing those abilities corresponding to the keywords as he levels up. He can learn any skills he wants by training, but they won't be as powerful as the abilities. Stats and skills may be increased and he might be making up new colourful missile attack moves with every level up (if I create that rule).

That's Ygg.

Dwarven Artillery Man
Armour Movement
Crossbow
Ballista/Catapult
Pyroalchemy (little)
Bomb throwin

However, what would happen with our Dwarven Artilleryman as he continued adventuring? Oh, he could run around trying to make bombs every second, trying to find ballistas and catapults to operate and things. Otherwise after a few adventures he'd become simply a master of the most frequently used skills.

contracycle wrote: What does a Dwarven Atrilleryman do?

However. When Our Hero is removed from his comfortable artillery barracks and the reassuring smell of gonne-powder in the night, obviosuly they are out of their depth. Being toe-to-toe with Goblin Wolf-riders is precisely not this characters expertise. And they only reason they are in this scenario, and not smoking a pipe behind the ammo shed, is the convention that Adventurers go down dark stinking holes and slaughter the inhabitants thereof.

Pale Fire wrote:
Although though you interpret it differently, the artilleryman is not at all thrown into the adventuring game without any particular reason. The classes I made up were all selected because they would be characters who had a very real reason for adventuring.

Just chiming in to say that I'm surprised that noone has mentioned Zero, since it handles this sort of situation explicitly and is my prefered system for fantasy.

In any case there are two key points that fit the discussion directly.

The first is that the character development system is about development rather than advancement. Characters continue to define who they are and don't become more powerful.

The second point is that the rewards offered in Zero are not persistent. Xp give a one time effect or they are used to reshape your character.

Pale Fire wrote: I've been touching on this in my recent threads. In an attempt to discuss it a little more focuse I start up a new thread here.

Let's start with an example.

I'm making a character, Brighthands. The idea is "Almost Reformed Thief gone Hero". Naturally I pump him up with thieving skills and then the hero fighter adventure kit.

Now, creating Brighthands I will in most sim games be punished for doing so. Even though to all effects the thief skills are nothing but colour (I don't expect them to be useful), I will usually have to pay for them as if they are. In some games they might be cheaper, reflecting that - but I'd still have to pay for them.

No matter what, I will have less points to put into fighting skills than a fellow player making Urk the Barbarian.

Urk doesn't have any other skills than fighting. Urk can fight, very well with a wide range of weapons and he also has fighting talents which makes him even more optimized.

Despite both are supposed to be fighter/heroes, Brighthand starts out with a disadvantage.

Anyway, 20 dungeoncrawls later, the situation varies depending on the system.
.

contracycle wrote: Fine, I understand what you are saying. But as soon as you establish that they "go adventuring" you have just defined their real profession. They are not actually a Dwarven Artilleryman; they are an Adventurer who once upon a time trained as a Dwarven Artilleryman.

Christoffer,

Have you considered classifying a character's "class" as a whole as a point based skill?

For example, Dwarven Artillery Man is the skill, which has a subset of abilities listed under it that are as effective as whatever rating the Dwarven Artillery Man skill has. Only abilities that define what it means to be a Dwarven Artillery Man would be listed under it. This way, since you want characters to advance in their professions between bouts of adventuring, you could assign between-play skill points that would account for what the character's do when they're not being played. Or just say that for however much game time the character's spend between adventures their professional skills go up a set amount. There could also be a scale for how many skill points are earned when a character uses his professional skills while adventuring.

This would be in addition to other skills outside those that define a profession, which would most likely vary for different character types.

Just an idea.

-Chris

C. Edwards wrote: Christoffer,

Have you considered classifying a character's "class" as a whole as a point based skill?

This way, since you want characters to advance in their professions between bouts of adventuring, you could assign between-play skill points that would account for what the character's do when they're not being played.

There could also be a scale for how many skill points are earned when a character uses his professional skills while adventuring.


-Chris

Re: the whole random events btw adventures

Brilliant.

The skills not used during adventures could be defined as 'between adventure skills', probably by the GM specific to the campaign, and having lots of these skills could give a big bonus to the random event roll. The thief and smooth talker do a lot better between hackfests than the wandering psychopath.

I think your idea has real potential.

C. Edwards wrote: Have you considered classifying a character's "class" as a whole as a point based skill?

Pale Fire wrote

I could go with your idea, but it seems like a lot of rules to balance up. Can you think of a way to streamline them?

Don't worry. Look at the two latest Ygg postings, those include rules I have had up for discussion recently. I think I'm actually getting somewhere again. But it needed these discussions to get there.

(Not that I got any comments on those postings (yet), but Fang assures me that is not necessarily a bad thing - it might simply mean it was ok and noone had any special comments)

If you are concerned that "colour" skills or the original character concept skills will be glossed over in favour of more directly relavent adventuring skills, then change their cost structure. Make the colour skills very broad in scope or as a package, while other skills are very specific, at the same cost (or even less for the colour skills). Thus the player has a choice of increasing their special attack move by one point, or for the same cost up all the parts of their background package (the hierarchy listing of skills mentioned earlier would work nicely here).

A cooking skill will not (for the type of game you are describing) be as useful as a good Parry skill, but if cooking is part of a large package that gives the character info on regional or cultural lore, better chance to detect a poison (say due to a refined sense of smell and taste) or things along those lines, it becomes much more useful. Present the tradeoff of colour skills with dozens of possible uses, versus very scope limited (but more frequently used) adventuring skills.

The question is if this colour skill becomes something other than colour. If I'm using "clour skills" as a way of making my character distinct from the other million fighters out there, it kind of sucks if I only get to choose between a few packages. That will pretty much ensure that of the fighters I make there will at least be a few with identical profiles.

However, I'm playing the devil's advocate.

In a way, it's the perfect thing: put them into a group and let them be useful.

I'm thinking of actually doing that and ON TOP of that putting characteristic (character differentiating) colour skills.

The former will take care of maintaining the archetype and the latter will take care of character differentiation. However just presented like this it looks like an awful mess, so I have to think of a sly way to streamline it.

The question is if this colour skill becomes something other than colour. If I'm using "clour skills" as a way of making my character distinct from the other million fighters out there, it kind of sucks if I only get to choose between a few packages. That will pretty much ensure that of the fighters I make there will at least be a few with identical profiles.