Brian, question about attributes…

To keep it short, If I don’t exactly agree with the attributes you’ve established (Wit comes to mind, as IMO that attribute is imbedded in your weapon/combat skills), what if I wanted to subtract one as a house rule? How would the point distribution change when assigning attributes at each priority level upon character creation? (or at least one) What if I were to add one? I’m guessing you wouldn’t recommend it, but imagine you had to, how would you handle it?

Thx for everything,

-Alan

I'm not Brian, but I'd do things proportionally. I don't have the book on me but...

There's 10 attributes in standard TRoS. Say that you have 47 points to distribute between them, that's an average of 4.7 per attribute. Now there's 11 attributes... so take 4.7, and multiply it by 11... that's 51.7, which naturally rounds up to 52. If there's 9 attributes, that's 42.3, which naturally rounds down to 42.

So. That's that with that.

Alex, sounds reasonable to me :-)

Alan, changing the number and type of attributes in TROS has been floated a few times in the past. You could try searching for those (there may be a link in the forum directory too, I'm not sure).

In a nutshell though, people suggested reducing the 10 down to 6 (I think on the temporal side He, En and To all became one stat and on the other side, WP, Wit and MA all became one stat). As Alex suggested, you would proportionally reduce the number of points to spend, I guess. You could even distill the attributes down all the way, perhaps simply having one Mental and one Temporal attribute, but of course the more you remove attributes the less distinctive each character becomes (and you shift the game from simulationist in the direction of narrativist, but that's an entirely different discussion).

Personally? I like Wit. It's your "mental reflexes" as opposed to your physical reflexes (which is Ag). To be adept in weaponry, you need speed of hand AND speed of thought. But it's not only useful when fighting - IMC I require wit rolls fairly often, whenever a character has to think on his feet etc. It's also quite different from your mental toughness (WP) and your intelligence/ability to learn (MA). But YMMV and of courese you're free to do whatever you like with the game; you bought it, so it's yours now :-)

Brian.

Brian Leybourne wrote: Alex, sounds reasonable to me :-)

Personally? I like Wit. It's your "mental reflexes" as opposed to your physical reflexes (which is Ag). To be adept in weaponry, you need speed of hand AND speed of thought. It's also quite different from your mental toughness (WP) and your intelligence/ability to learn (MA). But YMMV and of courese you're free to do whatever you like with the game; you bought it, so it's yours now :-)

Brian.

Correct me if I'm wrong.. But are you, Alan, addressing Brian as though he were the creator of the game?

Something about the way you phrased this:

To keep it short, If I don’t exactly agree with the attributes you’ve established

Wolfen wrote: Brian got his in by way of doing massive amounts of fanboy volunteering,

Actually, I like to think I got my "in" by being a good writer, Lance (Well, a passable one anyway). As for OBAM, there are seven and a half entries and three NPC's (lets be generous and say six pages) that were not written by me.

Brian.

(By the way, don't take my suggestions on "How To" do something as an endorsement. The ten attributes are perfectly fine for me - but if you're going to change the rules, change them RIGHT, y'know?)

Brian> I think you got your "in" on OBAM by being a good writer. You got your "in" as a Driftwood representative (and thus as a contact point on here, to the point where the whole "It's not Brian's game" comes up once every month or two) by being a fan. In other words, you're both right. ;)

I AM THE CREATOR

[earth shakes]

BRIAN: COMMIT SEPPUKU NOW!

[earth shakes]

BUT FINISH YOUR PART ON TFOB FIRST!!!

[earth shakes. creator laughs maniacally]

Heh. Brian's the man.

I am a big fan of wit, and it comes into games in many more places than combat. If I reduced TROS attributes, I'd leave it with physical and mental strength, speed, and endurance. That would be ST and WP, AG and Wit/Per/Soc, and EN and MA/Per/Soc. Thus Wit is integral to the game design.

However, you bought it, it's your game. Hack away!

Jake

*Cowers in fear as the Earth trembles before the might of the Creator!*

Just figured I'd throw a word or two in. I understand the interest in narrowing down the attributes, but through gameplay I've come to find them broken down in a manner that is hard to improve on. My only problem is always figuring out exactly which attribute to have the players roll when unexpected situations arrise. I'm getting better with practice, but find Perception and Wit are both good. I've been trying to be realistic and not seem like I'm always telling them to roll the same attribute every time.

Brian Leybourne wrote: Actually, I like to think I got my "in" by being a good writer, Lance (Well, a passable one anyway). As for OBAM, there are seven and a half entries and three NPC's (lets be generous and say six pages) that were not written by me.

maybe this should be split to as seperate thread, but it could fit here so I will leave it to the mods to decide.

what are the different situations in which you apply wit rather than ma?

I usually define wit as anything thought up on the fly or not related to what I would call academic ability. I mean, for ex, trying to remember a name- roll ma, trying to BS that you didn't forget the name: wit.

maybe it would be useful to give examples and explain the variations for all the attributes....

I would use Wit for anything that required quick thinking. MA for things that allowed more time to think about. To me quickly adding numbers in your head while in the market would be Wit. Working out the engineering details of a church would be MA. Both mathematical but different time scales.

Darwin had a low Wit but high MA....NT

Yeah, I agree with Toli. I use Wit for anything that requires quick thinking, snaps of intuition, and suchlike, and MA for anything memory or intelligence related. They're really not that similar IMO.

Lance, no, being a fanboy isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the suggestion that I got to write OBAM because I was hanging around like a bad smell rather than because my writing was suitable is a tiny bit offensive. Anyway, it's not important and lets drop it while we remain good friends.

Brian.

I think wit is an important enough characteristic to stand on its own. It's what distinguishes Robin Williams from Albert Einstein: both are geniuses in their own right, but very, very different.

Also, I don't always mandate the attribute a player uses. For example, if a player is interrogating a person, I may give them their choice of wit, soc, or even ma, to represent different ways that someone could go about the situation. If I was interested in more detail, I would probably make wit a quick but all-or-nothing roll, while soc & ma rolls could be made over long periods of time, but successes accumulate.

To clear the record:

Brian submitted 10 pages (+/-) for OBAM at the beginning of the project. At that same time I was swamped with my last year of school and I was impressed by the quality of his work, so I said, "You want to finish it?" He said "Sure."

He submitted more material of better quality and had showed supreme dependibility. That's that.

Jake

coughcough 30 pages coughcough

:-)

Brian.