As I'm working on Ygg writing stuff together, I am struck by how uneven it is in its current state.

Not surprising considering the parts have had a lot of different polishing.

What looks the most promising seems to be the combat system. It boils down to rolling a single die and checking the margin. For the margin you kind of "buy" effects. You can narrate what you will but you're limited by the effects you have bought with the margin. Effects are damage, thrown, sweeped, grabbed, hit on a specific spot - and so on. Depending on the margin you can stack a differing amount of effects. There are also "special moves" which are "effect packages" which are cheaper than simply buying them on the fly with margin. Creating special moves is trivial and a quick name generator is also included.

Once you have established the effects, you roll for them dicepool style. The successes indicate the extent of success for the particular effect. You can choose to narrate before or after you roll the effect. It doesn't really matter.

To get more margin you can do use Inspirations a currently very loosely defined mechanic, which basically gives you a bonus D6 or something to add to your margin as long as you can motivate it. Inspirations are stuff like "seeing a loved one die at the hands of the enemy" or other things that inspire to actions beyond the normal. You can only be inspired by an event once. After that it's "used up".

(Note that not all of this is written down in the rule draft yet)

On the other hand, the skill mechanics is a mess. Partly because I don't want skills (so I default to stats, treating them as representing average skill level) partly because I don't want excessive randomness. However I recognize that randomness sometimes is useful, so I popped in a mechanism which allows for shifting randomness. Initially I also had something called "Riskbreakers" which was kind a retroactive skill increase roll. I don't know what to do with that right now though.
However, my point was only to remove people looking up and down skill lists, so I introduced descriptors which was supposed to only vaguely function as skill bonuses. How those then related to character classes and professions weren't very clear however.

Right now I'm stuck with a mess of rules and I get the feeling that the way out of this is solving things the way the combat system was solved. However I'm a little unsure how. The main point of the mechanics is to allow for narrating results and limited directorial/authorial? control to gloss over traditional weaknesses in sim style systems, without preventing it to be run sim style.

If you look at say Basic D&D, then all skills and stuff had to be improvised. This was usually no problem since the main skills (dungeon exploring ones) were carefully covered. If you steered of the route you ended up in No-Rule-Land.
I want people in similar position playing Ygg, but instead of No-Rule-Land they are supposed to end up in flexible rules using Author/Directorial style to guide them instead of true free-form.

What my mistake might have been is that I worked on those skill rules without any clear understanding of what their true use would be. What they truly should do is to drive the premise, which is exploration of Situation. I'm only starting to realise that however, and I'm not yet sure what it means as far as actual mechanics go.
I only know I wish it was a little more like my combat system :) Any ideas or things I could take a look at - especially skill mechanics used to enchance exploration of situation - I'd be grateful.

Pale Fire wrote:
What my mistake might have been is that I worked on those skill rules without any clear understanding of what their true use would be. What they truly should do is to drive the premise, which is exploration of Situation. I'm only starting to realise that however, and I'm not yet sure what it means as far as actual mechanics go.

Contra, as for the skill system I'm very willing to do that, but do you mean it is necessary for all the other parts of the system as well?

[Edit: I wanted to add something more... As for the game itself and what you do - that hasn't changed. What has changed is my understanding of how I can eliminate problems by changing interpretations of mechanics as well as introducing meta mechanics. It's for the skills that I go something like: "doh, why the hell am I messing around with these things anyway I don't want them". That said, I still would like to see some impact of the stats and I don't want to leave the GM totally without any guidance.]

[Edit2: To clarify - the combat system is looking great, the skill system isn't. The magic system I never thought it could work in it's old shape anyway so that isn't much to worry about. When I'm talking about system problems I'm talking about the skill system. It should be noted that the skill system is actually a minor part (10%?) of the game (whereas the combat system is maybe 50% or more)]

Sorry about double posting but I had even more on my mind.

Ideally, what I'd like to have system-wise is the simplicity of Donjon. From the previews I've seen it's actually similar to what I was thinking of in forms of skills and stats. Similarly to Donjon I also want to keep skills few.
Of course Donjon is directorial mechanic driven and mine is mainly Sim. I'm not looking to borrow Donjon stuff, I'm merely pointing out how Ygg should look like in the end when it comes to skills.

Problem is I don't know how the heck I get there.

Again, of course, I'm overlooking the problem "how does this lead to explore situation"?

I'm not sure. What is slightly important though is that the players really feel that their characters are equiped to explore the situation (which might be monster hunting or saving villages from bandits or whatever). A random thought is that knowledge skills can be a great help for the GM to guide the players right in their mission. Another thing to consider is that characters should grow in ability with time. Although this is very firmly in my mind with regards to combat, the transition to skills are not clear.
Sometimes very high skills can be permissable without ruining the "increasing ability" feeling, sometimes it is not. How to strike a balance there is also a good question.

All right then: chop the skills out and look at the bloody stump left on the core resolution mechanic: what kind of input is it looking for? A number? All you have to do is find another way to get that number.

Thatas the crude reduction, but it'll do. The problem is that the situation is probably not that simple - the number has to be in a certain range, is going to be modified by a certain range of numbers, and measured against an already established range. IME, its usally simpler to start again, this time knowing that you don;t want skills and designing a suitable core mechanic that doesn't assume that sort of input.

contracycle wrote: All right then: chop the skills out and look at the bloody stump left on the core resolution mechanic

Pale Fire wrote:

contracycle wrote: Actually it's a little simpler than that. You see it's the core resolution mechanic that I want to throw out. The skills are right now just an arbitrary add-on to the stats.

Well then, what do you want to keep? And if you are not going to keep the core mechanic, why resist a reqwrite from scratch?

This is the part I'm unhappy with. Note that this part only is resolving non-combat stuff. It's not to be used for any combat resolution.

Why?

contracycle wrote: Well then, what do you want to keep? And if you are not going to keep the core mechanic, why resist a reqwrite from scratch?

Pale Fire wrote: If you look at say Basic D&D, then all skills and stuff had to be improvised. This was usually no problem since the main skills (dungeon exploring ones) were carefully covered. If you steered of the route you ended up in No-Rule-Land.
I want people in similar position playing Ygg, but instead of No- Rule-Land they are supposed to end up in flexible rules using Author/Directorial style to guide them instead of true free-form.

Pale Fire wrote:
But maybe core mechanics is a little misleading. The core stuff is in the combat mechanics after all (and a little with stats generation). Skill resolution is in the perifery. The reason it ended up like that I already explaine in the first posting:

Pale Fire wrote:
If you look at say Basic D&D, then all skills and stuff had to be improvised. This was usually no problem since the main skills (dungeon exploring ones) were carefully covered. If you steered of the route you ended up in No-Rule-Land.
I want people in similar position playing Ygg, but instead of No-Rule-Land they are supposed to end up in flexible rules using Author/Directorial style to guide them instead of true free-form.

contracycle wrote: Fine. I regard this as one of the major failings of D&D, arguably THE major failing; so to me this is itroducing a problem. Seocndly, if the skills are not related to the resolution, and do not provide inputs, then theyr can be neither important nor unbalancing, it would seem to me.

OK, lets forget about actual skill resolution mechanics for a moment and go back to the basics. Say I create an Ygg character with stats and combat abilities, and now I want that character to be able to "pick locks" and "climb". Since you don't have or want skill lists, how do I know if the character can do this or not? Has this issue been resolved?

That's the point ks13. It's not quite resolved. Originally (or I mean up to now) I was delegating such things to descriptors. Those were incidentally a little looser that usual descriptors as I figured them both as bonuses and stand alone skills.

Let's say you had herb lore. Then this could be considered a bonus (+1 compared to stat or whatever) when looking for a particular herb (after all you're more familiar than most of where it grows, and how it looks like) or it could be considered a stand-alone skill "is there a herbal cure to this disease and do I know how to do it". The latter is for the case when there is no obvious basic chance (and stat to derive it from). In that case you don't roll stat+descriptor bonus, but simply a value derived from the descriptor maybe say 4 dice would be appropriate for a simple "Herb Lore" descriptor, whereas "specialist in herbal medicine" would be 6 or 7 dice.

The problems with this method are many though. First of all, what about big vs. small skills. "Gem Trader" vs. "Evaluate Gems" for example. One way is to have a rule that the more the descriptor contains the less it is worth. So if I have "making the poison called Rykaz" compared to "making poisons", I'm gonna be much better at making the Rykaz, but when it comes to the general stuff I will have less of an idea. Unfortunately I find it hard to translate this into some kind of guidelines for the HM.

Besides, as the "Gem Trader" vs "Evaluate Gems" illustrate it is not necessarily so that one can see that the more general skill necessarily should be less good than the specialist.

Then of course there is the whole descriptor as a bonus or as a stand-alone thing. Merely treating it as a bonus is unsatisfactory, but relatively painless. With a double face as stand alone or bonus it gets even more complicated. Not only does a descriptor have a bonus which varies depending how general the descriptor is compared to the action, it also also has an independent rating which is varying in maybe a different manner. An we haven't yet come to the problem of analysing different degrees of descriptor qualities, such as "Good at Evaluating Gems" vs "Master as Evaluating Gems".

This only goes to show how naive my original implementation was.

Still, we can draw out three important points that ought to hold for the descriptors:

* They should be possible to interpret in terms of a number (bonus or stand alone rating) similar in magnitude to the stats

* Actions covered by skills should use the same mechanic for resolution as those "defaulting" to a stat (remember stats are supposed to give the average skill level of skills involving that stat which is why they are "defaulted to")

* There should be no extensive skill lists to look through

That's what I thought. It seems that people are offering dice mechanic suggestions, when you are still trying to decide on the functionality of skills. At this point, trying to talk in terms of dice and modifiers or any solid numbers is not helpful. You really need to pin down what you want skills to represent and to be able to do.

Is a descriptor based skill system a must have?

Does the detail in terms of skill scope need to be present? Do you really want to make distinctions between stuff like "Herbal Lore", "Find Herbs", "Identify Herbs & Plants", "Botany", etc.?

What about handling skills that anyone has a reasonable shot at trying and succeeding, versus those that only trained persons can do (nobody should get a chance to perform brain surgery and figure it out as they go along - at least I don't think this is something you are after).

You could try something similar to the following:
create several ability levels, such as "General Ability", "Basic Training", "Advanced Training", "Master Level Skill", "Godlike", or something similar with as many gradients as you want. Each task then will require one of these levels in oder to perform the task with some decent chance of success (this can later be defined as a specific probability of success). General Ability is anything you feel anyone has a chance of trying and succeeding. Everything else requires some level of skill (by which I mean training and experience). Climbing a wall or tree is a Gen. Ability, scaling a mountain side with all the proper equipment (attaching lines for others following you for example) would require a skill - some degree of training. Have the descriptors provide very general skill areas, or skill packages. Any skill that falls under this broad category can be said to be at the basic level. More specific descriptors would provide higher levels of training/experience. Unlike General Ability, having basic training should provide some chance at performing the skill at a higher level, and thus dealing with a more difficult task. Likewise going backward (a master performing a simple task) will reduce the possibility of failure.

This means that there will be a fair amount of judgement calls. Does a descriptor of "very athletic" provide a long distance running skill of base or advanced level? This can be dealt with by providing guide lines on how to write the descriptors. For example, "athletic" = basic, "very athletic" = basic but broader scope (more likely to apply to different situations), "excellent runner" = advanced. Let the players create the specific descriptors and skills sets, keeping their characters as broad or as specific as they want. Once you can decide on how you want the skill system to work, the dice mechanics can be built to suit the concept.

As you done, make a list of the feature that should be present in the skill system, avoiding any reference to dice resolution for the moment, and pick out what must absolutely be there. Then stick with this decision and build around these features.

Pale Fire wrote:
Mmm... What exactly is the problem? That there are no skills in the conventional sense or that there are only skills for combat?

Perhaps you would want to limit skills to a single word...
for instance there would be no Gem Seller, versus Jeweler conflict...
you might have the skill Gems, or Seller(Selling or Merchant), or Jeweler. These could be used in any way useful for the player.
Herbs- could be used to find herbs, know which are good for healing, poisons or cooking and how to use them, or grow them, maybe even how much to sell them for

Burglary- various building related thief type stuff...but different than
Pickpocket- various street thief stuff

I'd be inclined to use mastery labels of Apprentice, Journeyman, Master myself
an idea anyway...

Bob: I although your "single word" has some merit, it would seem that it does not necessary help. Think of "jumping" and "engineer". Both are one word but they are very different in scope.

CC: I agree that having focus on weapon skills leads to weapon use. It's kind of ok since that play is what I more or less prepare for. In fact all characters are geared up to be pretty good at fighting to prevent some players feeling that their characters are left out.
Since I knew that would make other skills less worth I tried to put them at close to zero worth so I wouldn't need to balance them. But that leads to problems as well.
Your idea about backgrounds is neat, but 1 thing per level seems a little to little. It could be developed into something useful I think. However, I was also thinking of some almost solely colour things.. and sometimes the skills wouldn't be skills, but unusual LACK of them. Like "my character can't swim even though my Movement Stat would give me a fair chance to succeed" and so on. So the background is not the only use of it, but it's also a way to describe character oddities. Or that's what I planned anyway. At second glance that might be a bad idea, it's better that such things are defined in play rather than before play.
But I've been on that road before... I'm very interested in having character background (and skill) development *during* play rather than before play. In fact your suggestion on getting facts for background is a version of that, which is partly why I like the idea I guess :)

ks13: No descriptors are not necessary, in fact a skill system is not necessarily what I need to have. That's a thing I try to figure out. I *would* like to have characteristic skills though. For example it makes sense that my Demon Hunter is better at figuring out how to kill a demon than the Barbarian from the Northern Wastes, right? Now if I had a profession system that could be in the background package, but it's not clear if I have professions or not...

As for your further questions ks13: All parts of the skill system is open for debate, but I know I don't want long skill lists and I don't want people to sit in char gen and try to figure out how to get the most value for their skill points. I personally think it's friggin hard to select level of detail for skills. I have no preference either way, general and specific skills, both have advantages and disadvantages.

I like the idea of developing skills on the fly. Why not setup a system where the characters proficiency, past training, experience, etc, is setup in very general terms in the background, and the skills decided as you play. How specific (i.e. how narrow its definition) each skill is depends upon the player. This might result in a long list of skills for the characters, but no long lists in the game and nothing to worry about during chargen.

A possible approach would be that each time a player wants to "reveal" a skill, the GM decides how likely it is to be present, Very likely, Probably, or Unlikely based on the background description. Assign % to each (like 90, 60, 30) and have a pool that gets spent to acquire skills. If a roll indicates that the skill is not present, list it under "training" since this the something the player wants, but the character does not yet have. There is no cost to have skills in "training", but there should be a limit. If the player really wants the skill, allow them to spend a point from the pool, add 10% to the roll and re-roll. The degree of efficiency in each skill could be based on the level system suggested by Contracycle, with more cost per higher efficiency.

Also, unknown skills might be listed aside from "skills being learned". In your swimming example, I wouldn't see it being remarkable that someone from a desert doesn't know how to swim. On the otherhand, someone you would expect to have this skill and they don't is more noteworthy.

So for a Demon Hunter, if the player wants to have a skill "Spot Demon Activity", that might be a very likely skill to have. "Lockpicking" skill on the other hand would be rather unlikely if there was nothing in the characters background descrpition that would indicate this type of knowledge. If the skills can be presented during play as needed, than there is no chance that a player will have a skill they never use since they "buy" the skill just before they are about to use it. The flip side is that they don't want to exhaust the skill pool right away.

I like your idea KS, however the random thing might be a problem to get to work well.

I was thinking of a little simplified scheme.

Basically you start out with:

o Former Profession(s) (this might be jeweller, demon hunter, goat herder or whatever)

o Land of Origin or Home (this would basically signify a culture and a geographical location: "A village in the moors of Akunhar", "The Glorious City of the Moon"

Now, the player and GM can come up with the actual names an such. A few basic types of professions and appropriate geographical locations will be provided. There is nothing stopping someone from saying they grew up in place X and then went to live in place Y, but they're only gonna get half of the bonuses from each.

That means you don't get the full "city bonus" to your roll for knowing about city housing if you grew up in a village and only much later moved to the city for example.

Beyond that you get an amount of development points. When you want to pass a skill you can declare that you are skilled at the task an spend some of those points. If you make the skill roll with the bonus provided by the dev points, you get to dictate how you got the skill. If you fail you write it up as "training". If you have a skill that is already written as "training" and you haven't used it since you got the last batch of development points, you succeed by default to notch it up one step, however the reason written for having this skill can only be "trained it", it can never be a background thing.

This assumes you get batches of dev points to put in at regular intervals though, with the problems that involves.

To sum it up...

With development points you can:

o Declare you are familiar with a skill you have not used so far with this character, add the bonus you're "supposed to have" to the skill roll and roll for it. If you succeed then your "claim" is true. You can now dictate what the exact background is, paying the appropriate amount of dev points. If the roll should fail, you write up the skill as "training" and pay one dev point.

o Declare you have finished training a skill you have written up as "training" during a former adventure. Simply pay 1 dev point and create a "trained in <skillname>"

o Declare you are training a skill which you haven't used so far in this adventure. Pay 1 dev point and write "training <skillname>". The "training" label does not give any bonuses to skill rolls.


What do you think ks13. Is this a little in the vein you were thinking? (With a few modifications of course)

What do you think ks13. Is this a little in the vein you were thinking? (With a few modifications of course)

Pale Fire,

One thing bothers me about this, and here is the gratuitous chasm jumping example. If I have decided I want to be Indiana Jones, I might choose tomb robber for my background. When I come to said chasm I would declare I have the skill Jumping, the concept of Mr Jones' fantastic athletic moves on my mind. Critical fail, and I hang on the edge of the chasm, and further still my background has been changed. I have gone in my mind from great jumper to jumper in training. I am now very deprotagonised, as the mechanics have encroached on my character concept. I still want to have been a great jumper in the past.

It just seems to me that with this system, any whiff factor extends not only to the roll at hand, but will affect my character in the long term.

Jeremy

Jeremy, you bring up an important consideration. Let's see how it looks with the system KS suggested:

Name: Indytoo
Profession: Tomb Robber
Skills: None

You come to a chasm and want to jump. There are now actually 2 options. One is to declare that your profession makes you a great jumper. If the GM agrees then you don't even need to spend a point. If you had created the profession "A Guy Like Indiana Jones" you'd have even better support for your claim to use that profession skill.

If that isn't possible (the GM says no) we do run into the possibility of deprotagonization you mention. A few ways around this exist, but I can't think of any clear solution.
One would be to allow putting several dev points into a skill to make sure you succeed in getting the skill. Developing skills without needing to roll for them should be possible at chargen, so you can assure that you have the skill to begin with. Finally you might simply accept that there is no way your character starts out "as good as Indiana Jones at everything", because a lot of play aims at increasing player effectiveness as the campaign goes along. Indy of the movies already had a lot of adventures behind him, your starting character won't.

For me I don't feel it would be so much of a problem because if I thought a skill was important I'd write it down during chargen.

How do you feel Jeremy, is this enough to eliminate your fear of protagonization or is it still there?