Working on a new game- Stats

Post by Scooter the Mighty
I wanted to have mental abilities divided into more than just a general
"intelligence," so I picked "common sense" for the other stat. This is
probably not the best name for what I want. I'm thinking that
"Intelligence" will cover mental manipulation of data (remembering
small facts, doing math in your head, and so on), and "Common Sense"
will cover things like judgement and people skills.

What stat governs the ability to spot an ambush? In most of my
games that stat comes up a *lot*, whatever it is. (It's also
the one, generally, that governs finding a trap, searching for
something, maybe tracking; it may also govern things like
spotting a forgery or penetrating a disguise.)

I haven't found bundling it with Intelligence very satisfactory;
with your two, I'd bundle it with Common Sense.

Do you have a plan for how to handle players who lack common
sense or manipulative intelligence, but play characters who
have them, or vice versa? These are the trickiest stats in
that regard; it's easy for a weak player to play a strong
character because we don't act out breaking down doors, but
most games do act out tactical problem-solving, some puzzle
solving, strategic planning, and some negotiation.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Scooter the Mighty

2006-07-28 04:08:52 UTC

Most of those things are going to require a skill. Each skill will
have a stat that gives it a bonus (or penalty if your stat is crappy).
The relevant stat here will be Common Sense. You might also be able to
buy heightened senses if you are non-human or the GM allows for
cinematically abilitied humans, and that may give a further bonus.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I haven't found bundling it with Intelligence very satisfactory;
with your two, I'd bundle it with Common Sense.

I agree.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Do you have a plan for how to handle players who lack common
sense or manipulative intelligence, but play characters who
have them, or vice versa? These are the trickiest stats in
that regard; it's easy for a weak player to play a strong
character because we don't act out breaking down doors, but
most games do act out tactical problem-solving, some puzzle
solving, strategic planning, and some negotiation.

This is always a tough issue, and I've had arguments about this on
various newsgroups a lot. I personally feel like people should write
up characters they can play or else not complain when they can't play
them effectively.

In this system, having high stats will at least get you some high
skills. I'll require that the player think to say "I look for traps,"
but their roll to find them will be relatively good if they have good
common sense.

I'll recommend that GMs drop hints to character with high scores, but
that's pretty non-specific and most GMs aren't going to blow their
plotline by giving too many hints.

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

2006-07-30 09:05:34 UTC

"Play", in what sense?

I'm militantly opposed to requirements for players to micromanage their
character's activities. That's what the *skills*, on the character
sheet, are for. When I talk about intelligence and roleplaying, I'm
talking about the strategic decisions (as opposed to the tactical
decisions) made by the player (always on behalf of the character,
obviously). The position that players should roleplay bargaining instead
of making a Merchant skill roll is bogus. We're role-playing, not
self-playing.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
In this system, having high stats will at least get you some high
skills. I'll require that the player think to say "I look for traps,"

So you're positing an additive relation between innate talent and
acquired ability?

Post by Scooter the Mighty
but their roll to find them will be relatively good if they have good
common sense.
I'll recommend that GMs drop hints to character with high scores, but
that's pretty non-specific and most GMs aren't going to blow their
plotline by giving too many hints.

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Simon Smith

2006-07-30 12:55:25 UTC

Post by Peter Knutsen (usenet)
The position that players should roleplay bargaining instead
of making a Merchant skill roll is bogus. We're role-playing, not
self-playing.

My own opinions on this are less clear-cut. A typical system will have a
variety of interaction skills, ranging from Con Artist to Bargain to
Intimidate. If an interaction skill is disposed of with a single opposed
roll between PC and NPC, you are abstracting perhaps hours of interaction
between a PC and an NPC into a few seconds. Do that consistently, and you
will find that combat dominates the game, because combat is much harder to
compress in the same way. OTOH, requiring players to roleplay bargaining can
turn things into a self-playing exercise, as you state.

I confess to being dissatisfied with both approaches; negotiation sessions
of all kinds are obvious places for actual role-playing to occur, and it
seems a shame to waste them.

See this older post of mine, where I think I articulated the problem
better:-

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups/profile?enc_user=XR1SPRoAAABrB8pBjllXOcRGbbQBXstsvyFmxraAehKhcXBVssTkqw&hl=en

. . . but don't really come up with any good soluition.

--
Simon Smith

When emailing me, please use my preferred email address,
which is on my web site at http://www.simon-smith.org

Klaus Æ. Mogensen

2006-07-31 09:58:52 UTC

Post by Simon Smith
A typical system will have a
variety of interaction skills, ranging from Con Artist to Bargain to
Intimidate. If an interaction skill is disposed of with a single opposed
roll between PC and NPC, you are abstracting perhaps hours of interaction
between a PC and an NPC into a few seconds. Do that consistently, and you
will find that combat dominates the game, because combat is much harder to
compress in the same way. OTOH, requiring players to roleplay bargaining can
turn things into a self-playing exercise, as you state.

I have sometimes considered designing a game where negotiation is
handled with a detail similar to how combat is handled.

This could for instance be done by having a number of negotiation
'maneuvers' to choose from:
- Probe: trying to establish the position of the opponent without giving
too much away about your own position
- Strong thrust: trying to establish an unreasonable demand as a
position for further bargaining. If unsuccessful, all further
negotiation will be more difficult.
- Feint: throwing something new into the negotiation: "I can't lower my
price for the sword, but I'll throw in this nice scabbard"
- Compromise: Giving up some of your demands in return for the opponent
giving up some of her demands. Showing that you are willing to give this
up may weaken your bargaining position, but can bring a resolution closer.
- All-out attack: stating a final demand, with the threat that you will
walk away if this demand isn't met. If you succeed, you get what you
want, but if you fail, either the negotiation breaks down or you show
weakness by not actually walking away as threatened.

Such a contest could be represented by a line of squares with the
opponents starting at either end, with a number of steps between them
representing points of difference (in price or specific demands).
Success will bring the opponent closer to your position (or, in the case
of compromise, both of you closer to the middle), while failure will
bring you closer to the opponent (or cause a breakdown in negotiation).
This should be resolved by opposed rolls, with modifiers according to
how reasonable or unreasonable your demands seem to the opponent.
Voluntarily moving one step closer to your opponent could make the
difficulty easier.

A simpler version:
Again, use a line of squares, with the middle being what the GM thinks
would be a fair compromise.
The opponents state their initial demands, and the GM breaks these into
a number of steps from the middle. The opponents can start at unequal
distances from the middle (the fair compromise) depending on how
reasonable or unreasonable their demands are.
The initial difficulty is based on your bargaining position: How much do
you need what the opponent has, and how much does she need what you have?
The difficulty is increased by how much further you are from the middle
than the opponent is.
In each round of negotiation (the length of which may vary from a few
seconds for haggling to several days for high-level diplomatic
negotiations), you can either choose a power move or a compromise.
When performing a power move, you make an opposed roll modified by the
current level of difficulty. If you win, the opponent moves a step
(perhaps more) closer to your position. If you lose, the opponent
retains her position, and the difficulty of later power moves is
increased one step. A botch may cause the opponent to break off the
negotiations.
A compromise simply consists of moving your position a step closer to
the opponent's, which will reduce the difficulty of later power moves.
If the opponents do not meet (reach a compromise) within a certain
number of rounds, the negotiations break down.

This sort of solution brings strategy and tactics into negotiation,
which should hopefully make it more exciting.

- Klaus

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-07-30 12:50:50 UTC

Post by Peter Knutsen (usenet)
I'm militantly opposed to requirements for players to micromanage their
character's activities. That's what the *skills*, on the character
sheet, are for. When I talk about intelligence and roleplaying, I'm
talking about the strategic decisions (as opposed to the tactical
decisions) made by the player (always on behalf of the character,
obviously). The position that players should roleplay bargaining instead
of making a Merchant skill roll is bogus. We're role-playing, not
self-playing.

The problems generally come up in the grey area between strategy
and tactics. A marketplace bargaining session is usually easy to
abstract, because the PC's goals and means are well defined and
can easily be determined: "I want to pay as little as possible and
won't pay more than 100 gold."

But suppose that the characters want to persuade a lord to back
them in becoming privateers. We can certainly abstract the
persuasiveness of their presentation, but it may be troublesome
to abstract the contents. For example, we need to know if they
promise the lord a share of their loot, or attention to raiding
his enemies and not his friends, or protection of a specific
shipping lane, or assistance in some other matter--because the
PCs will need to know what's expected of them (whether or not
they do it). And it would be useful to know whether the lord
seems to want to micro-manage their raids or would prefer
deniability.

If this all goes into a die roll the players may feel disenfranchised--
maybe they didn't *want* to promise to protect a shipping lane,
because they really intend to raid somewhere else that they
aren't supposed to be, but would have been happy to promise a
share of the loot. Maybe their offer really depends on their
sense of whether the lord will micromanage, and they need to
pick that up from the bargaining session.

On the other hand, when you play this sort of scene out, you
may find that some players are hopelessly bad at it and others
are good, even putting aside presentation skills. I had one
player who for some reason was inclined to turn down counter-
offers from the other side, no matter how good they were; he
never wanted anything but the original goal he'd set. All of
his PCs bombed in negotiation scenes as a result. I couldn't
"fix" this without overruling the player's decisions, so it was
a pretty intractable problem.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Erol K. Bayburt

2006-07-30 22:58:23 UTC

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 12:50:50 +0000 (UTC),

[snip example]

There's also the problem, in my perfered style at least, of getting
the sense of "being there" in the character's skin. If the skill rolls
are too abstracted, and my own efforts have too little effect on what
happens to the character, then I'm distanced from the character. In
the extreme case: "I'm going home. You can continue playing this
character as an NPC - it won't make any difference in terms of what
happens, after all."

On the other hand, if what happens depends too much on my own efforts
- and too little on the character's abilities as written on his
character sheet - then I lose the desirable experience of being in the
skin of a character who can do things I can't.

It's a tricky problem.

--
Erol K. Bayburt
***@aol.com

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-07-31 03:58:20 UTC

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
There's also the problem, in my perfered style at least, of getting
the sense of "being there" in the character's skin. If the skill rolls
are too abstracted, and my own efforts have too little effect on what
happens to the character, then I'm distanced from the character. In
the extreme case: "I'm going home. You can continue playing this
character as an NPC - it won't make any difference in terms of what
happens, after all."
On the other hand, if what happens depends too much on my own efforts
- and too little on the character's abilities as written on his
character sheet - then I lose the desirable experience of being in the
skin of a character who can do things I can't.
It's a tricky problem.

It is indeed. I don't think there are any universal solutions;
gamers will continue to explore different parts of the abstract-
versus-roleplay spectrum, because there may possibly be an optimum
for a specific group, but not one for the hobby as a whole.

There are some ways to try to give the "in their head" experience
while not relying on the player's skills, but they are darned
tricky to make work, and almost always very demanding on the
GM. And they get harder and harder as the number of players
increases. I've seen very impressive stuff done with one, two
or three players but don't think I could duplicate it with more
(and the three-player game had *amazingly* patient players,
willing to sit and listen for literally hours on end).

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Neelakantan Krishnaswami

2006-07-30 23:37:44 UTC

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
But suppose that the characters want to persuade a lord to back
them in becoming privateers. We can certainly abstract the
persuasiveness of their presentation, but it may be troublesome
to abstract the contents. For example, we need to know if they
promise the lord a share of their loot, or attention to raiding
his enemies and not his friends, or protection of a specific
shipping lane, or assistance in some other matter--because the
PCs will need to know what's expected of them (whether or not
they do it). And it would be useful to know whether the lord
seems to want to micro-manage their raids or would prefer
deniability.
If this all goes into a die roll the players may feel
disenfranchised-- maybe they didn't *want* to promise to protect a
shipping lane, because they really intend to raid somewhere else
that they aren't supposed to be, but would have been happy to
promise a share of the loot. Maybe their offer really depends on
their sense of whether the lord will micromanage, and they need to
pick that up from the bargaining session.
On the other hand, when you play this sort of scene out, you
may find that some players are hopelessly bad at it and others
are good, even putting aside presentation skills. I had one
player who for some reason was inclined to turn down counter-
offers from the other side, no matter how good they were; he
never wanted anything but the original goal he'd set. All of
his PCs bombed in negotiation scenes as a result. I couldn't
"fix" this without overruling the player's decisions, so it was
a pretty intractable problem.

It's actually fairly straightforward to cook up mechanics that handle
this kind of thing. Here's one such.

So, we have a negotiation scene where the players and the NPCs are
trying to negotiate an agreement. Each side has a preferred outcome,
and would like the result to be as close as possible to that as
possible.

Each of our PCs have Diplomacy skill, and each character also has a
number of Goodwill Points (based on Charisma, say). We negotiate by
roleplaying, and taking turns making offers.

When you make an offer, you propose some new terms, and the two
players make an opposed Haggling check. If you win the exchange, then
the other player can choose to accept the offer, break off
negotiations, or refuse but keep negotiating.

o If they accept the offer, the scene ends with an agreement.

o If they break off negotiations, their PC doesn't accept, but
the negotiations have failed.

o If they decide to refuse it, then they must spend a number of
points of Goodwill equal to the margin of success, representing
them exhausting some of the patience of the other side.

o If they don't have enough Goodwill left, then they must make a
/concession/ if they want to keep negotiating. That is, they have
to alter their offered terms to make it more favorable to the
other party.

--
Neel Krishnaswami
***@cs.cmu.edu

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-07-31 01:27:04 UTC

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I had one
player who for some reason was inclined to turn down counter-
offers from the other side, no matter how good they were; he
never wanted anything but the original goal he'd set. All of
his PCs bombed in negotiation scenes as a result.

It's actually fairly straightforward to cook up mechanics that handle
this kind of thing. Here's one such.
When you make an offer, you propose some new terms, and the two
players make an opposed Haggling check. If you win the exchange, then
the other player can choose to accept the offer, break off
negotiations, or refuse but keep negotiating.

My impression of my player was that he ruled out getting anything
but what he asked for first--that wasn't a success for him,
and he'd turn it down. I don't see how any mechanic helps.
If the NPC would not or could not do what he wanted, he would
stop negotiations at that point. The other players, who didn't
do this, invariably got better outcomes no matter how high
this player's PC's social skills were, and he was bugged by
this....

I mean, if the PC says "Give us the princess" and the NPC
says truthfully "I don't have her," there's no way a social
skill, no matter how high, can make that first demand succeed.

In your system, this would map onto a player who used up all
his Goodwill points and then would not make a concession,
whereas the other players sometimes would. Of course he is
not going to do as well, unless he has *hugely* more points.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Neelakantan Krishnaswami

2006-07-31 17:14:20 UTC

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My impression of my player was that he ruled out getting anything
but what he asked for first--that wasn't a success for him,
and he'd turn it down. I don't see how any mechanic helps.

In my experience, that kind of intrasigence arises from one of three
possibilities:

(a) it's a status thing at the inter-player level; the player thinks
that if his PC concedes anything to another character, then he,
as a player, is admitting to lower status than the other character's
player.

(b) the player is mis-estimating how frustrated the NPCs are
getting; he thinks he has more slack to push than he really
does, or otherwise thinks that unrealistic goals are actually
possible.

(c) it's a metagame manipulation; the player reasons that the game
will be derailed if the negotiations fail, and that the other
players will concede to keep the game on track.

Having this kind of mechanic helps in all three cases.

a) Having a mechanic helps make the distinction between player and
character sharper, which makes it easier to think in terms of "My
PC is giving in to Mary's NPC" rather than "I'm giving in to Mary".

b) Having a concrete number like Goodwill makes the amount of slack in
the negotiations concrete in the same way that hit points make it
concrete how much longer a PC can fight. This makes such mis-estimates
easy to clear up.

c) Attempts to take the game hostage are still possible, of course,
but the system makes the responsibility more obvious -- if you've run
out of goodwill points and try to hang tough, it's clear that the
failure of the negotiations is due to you. IME, that tends to
discourage such attempts.

(I'm specifically excluding the case where the character is supposed
to be charming but stubborn, because in that case failures arising
from unwillingness to compromise are part of the fun of playing that
PC, and you specifically said your player was unhappy.)

--
Neel Krishnaswami
***@cs.cmu.edu

s***@sonic.net

2006-08-17 05:38:21 UTC

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The problems generally come up in the grey area between strategy
and tactics. A marketplace bargaining session is usually easy to
abstract, because the PC's goals and means are well defined and
can easily be determined: "I want to pay as little as possible and
won't pay more than 100 gold."

I see this as the classical issue of "social skills" as a score in
a "RPG" where the "Role" /is/ a social-interaction thing. I call
it a "classical" issue because it's (IMHO) often-discussed, and has
been for a long time... ;-)

Do the skills/score cut into the "role playing" bit?

It can, certainly.

OTOH, some players just *can't* RP a scene that the PC *can*. I
recall in particular at a 'Con one time, when a guy of about 15
years (RL) was playing a debonair 30something ladies-man PC; his
PC met an attractive female PC ("attractive" both in the game-
mechanical sense of having high scores in "attractiveness" traits,
AND in the "that character is interesting to my current goals" sense).
It was totally, 100% in-character for the male PC to flirt with
the female PC; in fact, it would have been VERY strange for him NOT
to!

Problem was, the *player* of the female PC was *also* female, and
VERY attractive, and "dressed-up" ('Con style) to flaunt it. Lots
of guys would have found her "intimidating" in the "she's out of
my class" way... and this poor 15-year-old could barely get out a
sentence without stammering and blushing, kept getting obviously-
distracted by the other players cleavage, had trouble meeting her
eyes, etc etc etc. About as un-debonair as you can imagine.

Well, you *could* make each point on the Lord's agenda (and the PC's)
a separate die-roll. Some rolls might be opposed, others might not;
yet other points might be RP'd instead of diced... This might give a
good simile for the give-and-take of extended negotiations on compelex
matters (or it might end up feeling kind of random).

Similarly, some sort of social-perception roll *could* be used to give
the players (or NOT give them) that "sense of whether the lord will
micromanage"

--
Steve Saunders
to de-spam me, de-capitalize me

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-08-17 23:52:17 UTC

Post by s***@sonic.net
Problem was, the *player* of the female PC was *also* female, and
VERY attractive, and "dressed-up" ('Con style) to flaunt it. Lots
of guys would have found her "intimidating" in the "she's out of
my class" way... and this poor 15-year-old could barely get out a
sentence without stammering and blushing, kept getting obviously-
distracted by the other players cleavage, had trouble meeting her
eyes, etc etc etc.

Was the flirtation needed in order to determine the outcome of
something, or was it just for flavor? Because if it's wanted for
flavor, substituting dice doesn't work well. Might as well just
say "My character flirts with her character" and be done with it,
rather than drawing attention to the weakness by stopping to roll
dice.

If it's needed to determine the outcome, that's a much bigger
issue. I sympathize, but I don't have a great solution to offer.

I'm afraid this example immediately brings back to mind one of the
two times I've walked out of a game. The young socially awkward
guy *did* have a dice mechanic to fall back on, and his PC ended
up seducing mine on first encounter and giving her a nasty social
disease. I felt alienated by this as it wasn't at all what I
thought my character would do, and also I resented the sense that
my own gender was contributing to the player's (and GM's) enjoyment
of the scene. I'm not saying things will always go that badly, but
social mechanics used player-to-player have a *lot* of pitfalls.

(My non-enjoyment of that game was made a lot worse by the fact
that I'd asked to play a male PC, and the GM had said no. I
should have taken the hint right away.)

Post by s***@sonic.net
Well, you *could* make each point on the Lord's agenda (and the PC's)
a separate die-roll. Some rolls might be opposed, others might not;
yet other points might be RP'd instead of diced... This might give a
good simile for the give-and-take of extended negotiations on compelex
matters (or it might end up feeling kind of random).

The problem with this for me is: who does it?

If I work out the players' and the NPC's agendas, I'm practically
running the scene by myself. I might as well just make a call on
the fly. The players could work out their own agenda, but in my
experience you often don't know enough at the beginning of a complex
negotiation like this to do it well. So they'd have to be updating it
on the fly. Eventually the correct use of the rules mechanic starts
to require just as much player smarts as the original scene....

My most problematic player used to make bad decisions when drawing
up his agenda. (We didn't use a mechanic to resolve the outcomes, but
we did talk about agendas, so it was pretty clear.) The only way
I could stop him from doing that would be to do it for him, or make
the dice do it for him. That's pushing it, in my experience, in
terms of player enjoyment.

What he really wanted was a die roll that would make the NPC do what
the PC said. But if you have much complexity in your game world this
just isn't always going to be possible (for a gross example, "Give
me the princess" is no use if he hasn't *got* the princess; for a
less gross one, "fall in love with me" strains disbelief if you
are of a species or gender he can't abide).

It also becomes nearly impossible to do this with dicing out each
point if the points interrelate: we want the border keep, and we
want the troops, but we don't want the keep without the troops!

Post by s***@sonic.net
Similarly, some sort of social-perception roll *could* be used to give
the players (or NOT give them) that "sense of whether the lord will
micromanage"

Either I have to guess that the players care about micromanagement, or
the players have to tell me. I've found both of those problematic.

I certainly don't mind using a roll for this, if the players ask a
specific question, or I can tell they care about a specific question.
But someone has to figure that out. And if I do too much of it, we
rapidly get into "what is left for the players to do here?" territory.

I've come to feel that if the players aren't good at negotiation,
it's just better to avoid negotiation-heavy scenarios; just as, if the
players are crappy at managing combat, you don't want to throw a
lot of really tough fights at them. (And mechanics clearly don't
stop some players from being crappy at combat. If you give my husband
equal forces at a middling to high D&D power level, he will *always*
beat me.)

Maybe my views on this are colored by the fact that in my own experience,
being charming and personable does matter, but having a good negotiating
plan matters a lot more, and that's the part I'm most interested in
during my own games. If you ask for the wrong thing, being charming
will just lead to you getting the wrong thing; you still won't come across
as competent.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

s***@sonic.net

2006-08-26 06:54:38 UTC

Post by s***@sonic.net
... and this poor 15-year-old could barely get out a
sentence without stammering and blushing...

Was the flirtation needed in order to determine the outcome of
something, or was it just for flavor?

Both, as I recall.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
If it's needed to determine the outcome, that's a much bigger
issue. I sympathize, but I don't have a great solution to offer.

Yeah.
:-/

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I'm afraid this example immediately brings back to mind one of the
two times I've walked out of a game.

<SNIP horrible example>

This is a problem with a certain insular demographic...

And y'all know who you are (at least some of you do...)

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
guy *did* have a dice mechanic to fall back on, and his PC ended
up seducing mine on first encounter

Well, you shouldn't have had your PC wear her chainmail bikini then,
SHOULD you?

(Sorry, bad joke -- the guys obviously saw *all* F. PC's in this light,
no matter how they were characterized or played... Their own socially-
maladjusted little porno-fantasies.)

FWIW, I note that not only did the GM break a cardinal RPG rule (about
all the players having fun), but he obviously had custom mechanics that
were ALSO broken, as they delivered such a badly out-of-whack result.

--
Steve Saunders
to de-spam me, de-capitalize me

Erol K. Bayburt

2006-08-26 20:18:03 UTC

Post by s***@sonic.net

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I'm afraid this example immediately brings back to mind one of the
two times I've walked out of a game.

<SNIP horrible example>
This is a problem with a certain insular demographic...
And y'all know who you are (at least some of you do...)

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
guy *did* have a dice mechanic to fall back on, and his PC ended
up seducing mine on first encounter

Well, I admit to having heavy, and heavily politically-incorrect
porno-fantasies - most of my fiction involves them. (E.g. a couple of
novels that are in large part homages to John Norman's Gor.) And I'll
also admit to having had a "play your own gender" rule for a very long
time.

But I'll plead "Not Guilty" - I've always tried to keep the porn out
of my RPGs as "not belonging there," and I especially avoid
stereotyping the female PCs. It's the players' job to decide if they
want to play their female PCs as adventurers first and females second,
or as sexpot sorceresses, or as shy & chaste rougeless rogues, or as
militantly feminist amazons, or whatever.

And my "play your own gender" rule wasn't aimed at female players but
rather at certain munchkinoid male players who would always play
female characters - badly - and then cry "Look at me! I'm tackling a
Real Roleplaying Challenge(TM)! Gimme XP!"

(I've dropped the "play your own gender" rule since then, having
decided that other methods were better at dealing with such players.)

Post by s***@sonic.net
FWIW, I note that not only did the GM break a cardinal RPG rule (about
all the players having fun), but he obviously had custom mechanics that
were ALSO broken, as they delivered such a badly out-of-whack result.

I did once have a female player query me on my alcohol rules before
her PC took a drink. She explained that she once had had a bad
experience with a GM who had one drink rendering her PC in that game
blotto. And then it went downhill from there.

I was able to reassure her that I didn't do things that way. That a
weak drink would have absolutely no effect unless the PC had more than
one, a single strong drink would have only a minimal effect, and
several strong drinks might leave the PC staggering but never blotto
in the way the other GM used.

--
Erol K. Bayburt
***@aol.com

Scooter the Mighty

2006-07-30 15:32:49 UTC

"Play", in what sense?
I'm militantly opposed to requirements for players to micromanage their
character's activities. That's what the *skills*, on the character
sheet, are for. When I talk about intelligence and roleplaying, I'm
talking about the strategic decisions (as opposed to the tactical
decisions) made by the player (always on behalf of the character,
obviously). The position that players should roleplay bargaining instead
of making a Merchant skill roll is bogus. We're role-playing, not
self-playing.

I've had this argument before, and in the end it seems to boil down to
different people enjoy different things. I tend to dice roll the
unimportant stuff, and require some level of player intellectual
engagement on the more important stuff. My system won't require this,
and you are under no obligation to enjoy the way I GM.

Personally, I find that the logical extension of dice-rolling
everything is "I use my problem solving skill to complete the
adventure. Let's go get a pizza." Obviously some level of
"micro-managing" is required.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
In this system, having high stats will at least get you some high
skills. I'll require that the player think to say "I look for traps,"

So you're positing an additive relation between innate talent and
acquired ability?

Yes

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

2006-07-30 09:02:52 UTC

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
What stat governs the ability to spot an ambush? In most of my

My guess would be that Scooter handles this via some kind of Advantage.
Either one that gives a bonus to the relevant attribute (Common Sense,
or perhaps Intelligence) when the purpose of the roll is to notice
something, or else an Advantage that gives a bonus to a default value,
so that for instance characters without the Advantage have a base chance
(before modifiers) of 40% to notice unobvious things, whereas characters
with the Advantage have a 80% chance.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
games that stat comes up a *lot*, whatever it is. (It's also
the one, generally, that governs finding a trap, searching for
something, maybe tracking; it may also govern things like
spotting a forgery or penetrating a disguise.)
I haven't found bundling it with Intelligence very satisfactory;
with your two, I'd bundle it with Common Sense.

I'd tend to agree, except that Intelligence in Scooter's system sounds
underpowered. Thus I'd be tempted to classify perception under
Intelligence, just to boost the usefulness of the attribute.

I, personally, do not have any plans or solutions for how dumb players
can play smart characters. Intelligence (in Sagatafl - Wits in the AM
RPG) does handle memory, so there's some small benefit there for a
player who can't remember well or who can't or won't take notes, but
it's basically not a good idea to try such a combo.

As for the opposite, you do not play your character as smarter than what
you've paid for. The solution is experience point penalties until
behaviral correction occurs, or until the player leaves the campaign, or
until he retires his character and creates one with a level of
intelligence that matches his own.

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

psychohist

2006-08-16 03:22:47 UTC

Mary K. Kuhner posts, in part:

What stat governs the ability to spot an ambush? In most of my
games that stat comes up a *lot*, whatever it is. (It's also
the one, generally, that governs finding a trap, searching for
something, maybe tracking; it may also govern things like
spotting a forgery or penetrating a disguise.)

I haven't found bundling it with Intelligence very satisfactory;
with your two, I'd bundle it with Common Sense.

I'm curious - why do you find bundling it with intelligence
unsatisfactory?

I would agree with those who consider these things to be separate and
perhaps highly trainable skills; my brother in fact describes special
forces training courses that involve training those skills. Between
intelligence and common sense, however, they seem to me less knowledge
based and more perception based, and thus more correlated with
intelligence - though perhaps this is a function of my own biases about
what intelligence is.

I'm also curious as to why the original poster finds dexterity more
correlated with agility than with strength; I used to feel the same
way, but now I feel the opposite.

Warren J. Dew

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-08-16 05:54:58 UTC

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
What stat governs the ability to spot an ambush? In most of my
games that stat comes up a *lot*, whatever it is. (It's also
the one, generally, that governs finding a trap, searching for
something, maybe tracking; it may also govern things like
spotting a forgery or penetrating a disguise.)
I haven't found bundling it with Intelligence very satisfactory;
with your two, I'd bundle it with Common Sense.
I'm curious - why do you find bundling it with intelligence
unsatisfactory?

It did damage to a couple of archetypes which have been common in my
games:

--the scholar who is somewhat detached from or oblivious to the
immediate physical world, but has great powers of abstraction and
reasoning.
--the feral person who is instinctually attuned to his surroundings,
but has little ability to abstract.

I suspect that you have reasons to consider intelligence and perceptiveness
highly correlated, but I'm more concerned about allowing concepts like
the above to occur than I am about realism.

We had similar problems with AD&Dv3's bundling of perception and
wisdom; superficially that sounds better to me than perception and
intelligence, but it did subtle things to the society that I didn't
much care for. It just felt weird to be looking at priests as
the best arbiters of physical as well as moral fine distinctions!

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Klaus Æ. Mogensen

2006-08-16 08:57:50 UTC

Many games have a Perception stat, which is used for spotting ambushes,
following tracks, finding clues, recognizing people, and such. Other
names I have seen for such a stat is Awareness and Intuition. The
Perception stat should in my opinion also be used for ranged attacks,
especially modern firearms, since hitting things at range have more to
do with aiming correctly and adjusting for distance and wind that it has
do with having nimble fingers.

- Klaus

Erol K. Bayburt

2006-08-18 02:45:06 UTC

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:54:58 +0000 (UTC),

It did damage to a couple of archetypes which have been common in my
--the scholar who is somewhat detached from or oblivious to the
immediate physical world, but has great powers of abstraction and
reasoning.
--the feral person who is instinctually attuned to his surroundings,
but has little ability to abstract.

My preference is to bundle and then use either advantages or
disadvantages to distinguish these sorts of characters. I take it this
doesn't work for you?

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I suspect that you have reasons to consider intelligence and perceptiveness
highly correlated, but I'm more concerned about allowing concepts like
the above to occur than I am about realism.
We had similar problems with AD&Dv3's bundling of perception and
wisdom; superficially that sounds better to me than perception and
intelligence, but it did subtle things to the society that I didn't
much care for. It just felt weird to be looking at priests as
the best arbiters of physical as well as moral fine distinctions!

This is mitigated by the physical-perception skills being cross-class
for clerics. But ISTR that you prefer what I consider very low-level
play, e.g. you prefer caps at around 5th or 6th level - at what I
consider to be the start of D&D's "sweet spot." At those levels,
ability score modifiers are going to be relatively large, vs ranks in
skill.

--
Erol K. Bayburt
***@aol.com

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-08-18 05:24:28 UTC

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:54:58 +0000 (UTC),

I'm curious - why do you find bundling [perception] with intelligence
unsatisfactory?

My preference is to bundle and then use either advantages or
disadvantages to distinguish these sorts of characters. I take it this
doesn't work for you?

When the character types that need to be handled with advantages/
disadvantages seem more frequent than the ones which don't, I figure I
have the stats bundled poorly. I find these two more common in
practice than the reverse: the Sherlock Holmes character who is both
extremely smart and eagle-eyed, and the character who is neither
abstractly intelligent nor perceptive about his surroundings. (The
latter is doubtless common in real life, but has drawbacks as a PC.)

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
This is mitigated by the physical-perception skills being cross-class
for clerics. But ISTR that you prefer what I consider very low-level
play, e.g. you prefer caps at around 5th or 6th level - at what I
consider to be the start of D&D's "sweet spot." At those levels,
ability score modifiers are going to be relatively large, vs ranks in
skill.

Yes, you're right.

We also tend not to use the cross-class skill rule. I just don't
care for it. In general, I much prefer a rule which says "Don't do this"
or "Do this only with permission" to a rule that says "Do this if
you want but your character will be somewhat crippled because of it."
If skills matter, and there is a choice between a useful class skill
and a useful cross-class skill, you really hurt your character taking
the cross-class skill. (And if skills don't matter much, there is no
need for this complicated fussy rule.) I understand the motivation
but it just doesn't please me as player or GM.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Erol K. Bayburt

2006-08-18 07:34:31 UTC

On Fri, 18 Aug 2006 05:24:28 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:54:58 +0000 (UTC),

I'm curious - why do you find bundling [perception] with intelligence
unsatisfactory?

My preference is to bundle and then use either advantages or
disadvantages to distinguish these sorts of characters. I take it this
doesn't work for you?

I guessed it might be something like that.

In theory, I agree that "When the character types that need to be
handled with advantages/disadvantages seem more frequent than the ones
which don't, I figure I have the stats bundled poorly." But in
practice I find characters like the absent-minded professor or the
feral person to be exceptions, with the bright & perceptive, and
average & averagely perceptive being more common. YMMV (and obviously
does).

(Of course animals are a common exception to the Int/perception
bundling, but they're an exception as a class, and not common PC types
either.)

Yes, you're right.
We also tend not to use the cross-class skill rule. I just don't
care for it. In general, I much prefer a rule which says "Don't do this"
or "Do this only with permission" to a rule that says "Do this if
you want but your character will be somewhat crippled because of it."
If skills matter, and there is a choice between a useful class skill
and a useful cross-class skill, you really hurt your character taking
the cross-class skill. (And if skills don't matter much, there is no
need for this complicated fussy rule.) I understand the motivation
but it just doesn't please me as player or GM.

I find the cross-class rule as written to be too strong, so I've
weakened it to "the first three ranks in a cross-class skill cost
double, and your max ranks is equal to your level, rather than (level
+3)." I don't want to drop the class vs cross-class distinction
entirely, since I think it's important for niche protection, but I
also think that being -3 behind for a given investment in skill points
is enough niche protection without inflicting the horrible punishment
that the standard rule imposes on mid to high level characters.

--
Erol K. Bayburt
***@aol.com

David Meadows

2006-08-20 20:21:20 UTC

The only way I have found to avoid this type of problem is never bundle
*anything* with *anything*. Don't base one thing on another thing in order
to calculate its effect -- simply "buy" the effect. It's the most flexible
system you can have (and it's what Champions/Hero is supposed to do in do in
theory but doesn't actually do in practice).

Want to be brilliant but oblivious? Want a powerlifter who punches like a
girl? No problem, because buying Intelligence isn't going to make you
automatically perceptive and buying lifting strength isn't going to
automatically give you punching strength.

This moves the onus of creating "logical associations" from the rules to the
player, which is fine in my book. Say a player buys massive hand-to-hand
damage but neglects lifting strength. GM queries him on it -- and the player
explains that the damage comes from his amazing knowledge of the body's
pressure points. Say a player buys massive intelligence but neglects
perception -- GM calls him on it and the player offers the
brilliant-but-distracted-academic explanation.

In fact, forcing the player to think through these explanations is a
positive effect -- it should produce deeper characters.

--
David Meadows
Heroes: the comic book http://www.heroes.force9.co.uk/scripts
Issue #36 "Police Action! Featuring Joe Thursday" on line now

Mary K. Kuhner

2006-08-20 21:22:14 UTC

Post by David Meadows
The only way I have found to avoid this type of problem is never bundle
*anything* with *anything*. Don't base one thing on another thing in order
to calculate its effect -- simply "buy" the effect. It's the most flexible
system you can have (and it's what Champions/Hero is supposed to do in do in
theory but doesn't actually do in practice).

I like this idea in theory but in practice I can't grasp more than
about six to eight stats when looking at a character sheet. This might
be okay when designing my own PC, as presumably I start from a mental
image and work out the stats from there. (Well, to be honest, I
don't always do it that way. But I suppose I could.) But it makes looking at
a player's PC, or at someone else's writeup of an NPC, futile for me--
I just can't put the pieces back together into an intuitive sense of
what the character can do.

I have fairly low complexity limits; this might work fine for someone
else.

A compromise that worked better for me was to lump the stats, but allow
the player to split them out if necessary; so most characters only had
Reflexes but a few had separate scores in Agility and Dexterity, for
example. This is not easy to balance if you want point costs, but we
were using the system purely descriptively and it seemed to work well.

Allowing the player too much fine-tuning of stats turned out to be
hard on the GM, though, who had to keep the possibilities in mind when
asking for a roll ("should I ask for Agility or Dexterity here? Oh,
don't forget, Mark's PC also has Hand-Eye Coordination and Flexibility.")

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

Neelakantan Krishnaswami

2006-07-28 16:35:41 UTC

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Another thing I'm interested in opinions on for my new game is what
statistics to use.
Opinons?

Why do you have stats? What purpose, exactly, is served by
distinguishing between "stats" and "skills"? Why not just have
"traits"?

In depth:

If you have a) stats and skills, b) base skill levels on stats, and c)
have a unified pool of points to buy them with, then for any given
level of skill, there will be a single optimal tradeoff between stats
and skills.

This means that if the players are reasonably aware of optimization
issues, then the variety of characters you'll see in play is actually
much smaller than the variety of theoretically possible character
designs. Since the whole point of point-buy system is to make a wider
range of character designs feasible, you can see that this kind of
system is a failure -- it does not actually does not meet its goals.

For an effective point-buy design your choices are to drop the
distinction, like Over the Edge and Sorcerer do, fully decouple skills
and stats, like Fudge does, or to have totally separate point pools
for skills and stats. I don't know any games that do this last well,
because to do it right you would need to carry it into the experience
system, too; you'd need a different kind of experience for each kind
of trait, and you'd have to strictly forbid conversions between the
different kinds of xp.

--
Neel Krishnaswami
***@cs.cmu.edu

Scooter the Mighty

2006-07-28 19:24:08 UTC

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Another thing I'm interested in opinions on for my new game is what
statistics to use.
Opinons?

I don't know that I entirely agree with that. For one thing, since
different skills are based on different stats, what stats you choose to
emphasize will depend on personal preference of character type, not a
mathmatical formula. Since there will be other non-stat or skill
things to spend points on, the amount of points available to optimize
stats and skills will depend on other choices.

Also, since the character's will be able to increase their skills after
creation, the player isn't working with a finite number of points to be
balanced. Also, stats have other uses besides providing high skill
levels, so that has to be factored in.

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami
This means that if the players are reasonably aware of optimization
issues, then the variety of characters you'll see in play is actually
much smaller than the variety of theoretically possible character
designs. Since the whole point of point-buy system is to make a wider
range of character designs feasible, you can see that this kind of
system is a failure -- it does not actually does not meet its goals.

I dunno. I see your point, but I don't know that variety of characters
is best described by variations in stats. I've been playing GURPS for
the last decade or so and while most of the characters I've seen were
fairly close stats-wise (high DEX and IQ, moderate Strength and Heath)
they still varied quite a bit.

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami
For an effective point-buy design your choices are to drop the
distinction, like Over the Edge and Sorcerer do, fully decouple skills
and stats, like Fudge does, or to have totally separate point pools
for skills and stats. I don't know any games that do this last well,
because to do it right you would need to carry it into the experience
system, too; you'd need a different kind of experience for each kind
of trait, and you'd have to strictly forbid conversions between the
different kinds of xp.

I guess I'm not as familiar with the modern gaming systems as perhaps I
ought to be, and haven't seen either Over the Edge or Sorcerer. I
don't see how naming both skills and stats "traits" changes anything
unless you also decouple them. I also don't see how decoupling skills
and stats helps that much. You're still going to have a situation
where the relative value of skills and stats suggests something like an
optimum design, even if they aren't based on each other.

The only way I see to encourage the maximum possible character
variation is if all the possible choices are equally beneficial, and
that just seems too weird.

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

2006-07-30 09:13:35 UTC

[...]

I'm intensely serious when I accuse GURPS of being a class-based system,
with four character classes:

1. Very high DX.
2. Very High IQ.
3. High DX and high IQ.
4. Not optimized (this is what in d20 parlance is called an NPC class).

I guess I'm not as familiar with the modern gaming systems as perhaps I
ought to be, and haven't seen either Over the Edge or Sorcerer. I

I don't think those systems would have anything to offer to me. However,
Neel's general point *is* worth considering.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
don't see how naming both skills and stats "traits" changes anything
unless you also decouple them. I also don't see how decoupling skills
and stats helps that much. You're still going to have a situation
where the relative value of skills and stats suggests something like an
optimum design, even if they aren't based on each other.
The only way I see to encourage the maximum possible character
variation is if all the possible choices are equally beneficial, and
that just seems too weird.

I agree.

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Scooter the Mighty

2006-07-30 15:37:08 UTC

Post by Peter Knutsen (usenet)
[...]

I'm intensely serious when I accuse GURPS of being a class-based system,
1. Very high DX.
2. Very High IQ.
3. High DX and high IQ.
4. Not optimized (this is what in d20 parlance is called an NPC class).

I think that GURPS has character classes, but I don't agree that these
are them. I think GURPS character classes are "Mage, Martial Artist,
Priest" or what ever special ability systems the GM allows in his
campaign.

I guess I'm not as familiar with the modern gaming systems as perhaps I
ought to be, and haven't seen either Over the Edge or Sorcerer. I

I don't think those systems would have anything to offer to me. However,
Neel's general point *is* worth considering.

I agree.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

2006-07-30 09:11:08 UTC

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami

[...]

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Opinons?

Why do you have stats? What purpose, exactly, is served by
distinguishing between "stats" and "skills"? Why not just have
"traits"?
If you have a) stats and skills, b) base skill levels on stats, and c)
have a unified pool of points to buy them with, then for any given
level of skill, there will be a single optimal tradeoff between stats
and skills.
This means that if the players are reasonably aware of optimization
issues, then the variety of characters you'll see in play is actually
much smaller than the variety of theoretically possible character
designs. Since the whole point of point-buy system is to make a wider

That's not the whole point. One major point is to dis-involve the GM
from the character creation process, so that the player can relax and
let his creative juices flow, without worrying about another person
trying to interfere and stepping in and making ad hoc decisions. With a
point-based system, the GM can be assumed to already have thought things
through, and written a list of combinations of abilities which he will
not allow, and so forth.

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami
range of character designs feasible, you can see that this kind of
system is a failure -- it does not actually does not meet its goals.
For an effective point-buy design your choices are to drop the
distinction, like Over the Edge and Sorcerer do, fully decouple skills
and stats, like Fudge does, or to have totally separate point pools

One major disadvantage of decoupling skills and attributes is that it
then becomes legal to create characters with contradictory traits. For
instance, a character with an abysmal level of intelligence but a
multitude of very high levels in mental skills. Such a character would
be a severe threat to the suspension of disbelief of any player who is
inclined and able to appreciate realism.

Post by Neelakantan Krishnaswami
for skills and stats. I don't know any games that do this last well,
because to do it right you would need to carry it into the experience
system, too; you'd need a different kind of experience for each kind
of trait, and you'd have to strictly forbid conversions between the
different kinds of xp.

As soon as you switch from true point-based character creation and to a
system where there are two or more pools of points, without unlimited
translation between point types, the system is dictating to the player
what kind of character to make, e.g. to make a character with a high
degree of innate talent but limited training and experience.

I do *not* like systems which tell me what to do. Character creation is,
for me, one of the most important aspects of roleplaying gaming. The
fact that *I* get a lot of freedom to make choices within a formal
context. Choices which will influence, to a great degree, future events.

(This goes for system which require very stereotypical optimization
strategies too, such as GURPS and other systems in which the relation
between innate talent and acquired ability is of an additive nature)

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Peter Knutsen (usenet)

2006-07-30 08:58:46 UTC

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Another thing I'm interested in opinions on for my new game is what
statistics to use.
So far in the rough draft, I'm going with Strength, Dexterity, Agility,
Intelligence, and Common Sense.
Strength is pretty straightforwards, and probably necessary for just
about any game.

I disagree. In Sagatafl, Strength is cheap to purchase. In the Action
Movie RPG, higher-than-normal Strength is handled as a (learnable) Gift.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Dexterity and Agility seem a bit too closely related, but I do think
that there is a lot of people who have one and not the other, and they
both have a lot of uses in most games.

I agree, loudly. There are many character concepts - exceedingly valid
character concepts - which need to be high in one but not the other.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
I wanted to have mental abilities divided into more than just a general

I'm much in favour of this. I consider GURPSs "IQ" to be a crime. With a
keen interest in the intellectual aspects of my characters, my
preference is for a system that offers many of what I call "axes of
differentiation" that pertain to mental abilities.

My ambitious homebrew, Sagatafl (formerly FFRE), has six mental
attributes, although two of them pertain only to magic. The other four
are Intelligence, Will, Perception and Charisma. Several of them also
divide into sub-attributes, so that for instance you can have a good
Will in general, but a very high Will for the purpose of restiing fear.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
"intelligence," so I picked "common sense" for the other stat. This is
probably not the best name for what I want. I'm thinking that
"Intelligence" will cover mental manipulation of data (remembering
small facts, doing math in your head, and so on), and "Common Sense"
will cover things like judgement and people skills.

What about roleplaying your character as smarter than what you've paid
for? Will the limting factor be the Intelligence attribute or the Common
Sense attribute? "Both", as an answer, will cause confusion and frustration.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
The two that I thought of and discarded are Will Power and Health. I
did this for several reasons. Firstly, this is going to be a "build
your character with points" system, and I didn't want too many stats
for point balance reasons.

I'm going with many attributes in Sagatafl, which is a point build
system. It is just a question of making sure that all the stats are
useful. Also if they are not equally useful, they should not cost the same.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
As far as Will Power goes, it seems a bit too limited in scope to
justify being a stat, so I plan on offering several levels of higher
than average Will Power as a special purchase and leave it at that.

I do that too, sometimes. Not with Sagatafl, generally, but with my
current (and slightly less ambitious design) I've removed many of the
traditional attributes, because they simply aren't sufficiently useful.

Attributes in RPG generally serve three different purposes.

1. They are rolled for directly, when the rules (or the GM, on an ad hoc
basis) call for checks. "Roll for Agility".

2. They affect skills, in that high values in relevant attributes make
skills easier to learn, in some way.

3. They are the basis of derived values. For instance, a character's
hitpoints may be the average of Constitution and Size.

In the Action Movie RPG, I've decided to drop item #2, because I want to
keep the system simple, and to avoid the major synergies (which are one
of the high points of Sagatafl). It follows from this that attributes
which can not be expected to require many direct rolls must be removed.
This includes Dexterity and Agility.

Charisma is changed to a Gift (actually two: Charisma and Great
Charisma). Strength is also a series of Gifts: Strong, Very Strong and
Extremely Strong.

What's left is five attributes, which in the rules are always referred
to as Saving Throws or Saves: Health (formerly Fortitude), Perception,
Reflexes, Will and Wits. It is safe to assume that these will frequently
be rolled for during the course of a typical action adventure campaign,
and therefore they remain.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
I think that the things that Health usually represents (stamina,
resistance to poison, resistance to disease, chance of waking up from
unconciousness) aren't really all that closely related, and would just
as soon offer each of those items as special purchases than use it as a
stat.

In both Sagatafl and the Action Movie RPG, I base most of the above off
Constitution/Health, with the exception that Stamina (exertion capacity)
in the Action Movie RPG is unrelated to Health.

If you want special resistance (or vulnerability) to a particular health
hazard, such as temperature extremes, you purchase a sub-attribute bonus
that applies only versus that phenomenon.

Having a Constitution attribute caters to the kind of player who wants
to play a generally tough and durable hero. Don't you think that is a
target audience that is worth servicing?

(The same goes for Willpower, I think. Many players like to play
characters who are mentally tough.)

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Opinons?

Many years ago, the issue of the best attribute list was discussed on
the RPG-Create mailing list, and consensus emerged (note, this was
relatively early in the list's life, before a bunch of people with a
very negative attitude towards rules engineering and rules quality arrived):

Strength
Constitution
Dexterity
Agility
Charisma
Will
Perception
Intelligence

That list still strikes me as quite reasonable. My only real complaints
are that in settings with magic, I prefer to have a separate attribute
for magic instead of basing it off Intelligence (or Will), and that I'd
like some option for characters to be of non-standard (skeletal, as
opposed to fatty-tissue-based) size - but not necessarily via an attribute.

--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org

Scooter the Mighty

2006-07-30 16:00:01 UTC

I disagree. In Sagatafl, Strength is cheap to purchase. In the Action
Movie RPG, higher-than-normal Strength is handled as a (learnable) Gift.

Well, I did say "just about," and your two examples had strength scores
of somekind.
<snip>

Post by Peter Knutsen (usenet)
"intelligence," so I picked "common sense" for the other stat. This is

Post by Scooter the Mighty
probably not the best name for what I want. I'm thinking that
"Intelligence" will cover mental manipulation of data (remembering
small facts, doing math in your head, and so on), and "Common Sense"
will cover things like judgement and people skills.

It depends on what you mean by "smarter." If you mean they do math in
their head, Intelligence. If you mean they divine the subtle emotions
that play across an NPCs face, then Common Sense.

I do that too, sometimes. Not with Sagatafl, generally, but with my
current (and slightly less ambitious design) I've removed many of the
traditional attributes, because they simply aren't sufficiently useful.
Attributes in RPG generally serve three different purposes.
1. They are rolled for directly, when the rules (or the GM, on an ad hoc
basis) call for checks. "Roll for Agility".
2. They affect skills, in that high values in relevant attributes make
skills easier to learn, in some way.
3. They are the basis of derived values. For instance, a character's
hitpoints may be the average of Constitution and Size.
In the Action Movie RPG, I've decided to drop item #2, because I want to
keep the system simple, and to avoid the major synergies (which are one
of the high points of Sagatafl). It follows from this that attributes
which can not be expected to require many direct rolls must be removed.
This includes Dexterity and Agility.
Charisma is changed to a Gift (actually two: Charisma and Great
Charisma). Strength is also a series of Gifts: Strong, Very Strong and
Extremely Strong.
What's left is five attributes, which in the rules are always referred
to as Saving Throws or Saves: Health (formerly Fortitude), Perception,
Reflexes, Will and Wits. It is safe to assume that these will frequently
be rolled for during the course of a typical action adventure campaign,
and therefore they remain.

In both Sagatafl and the Action Movie RPG, I base most of the above off
Constitution/Health, with the exception that Stamina (exertion capacity)
in the Action Movie RPG is unrelated to Health.
If you want special resistance (or vulnerability) to a particular health
hazard, such as temperature extremes, you purchase a sub-attribute bonus
that applies only versus that phenomenon.
Having a Constitution attribute caters to the kind of player who wants
to play a generally tough and durable hero. Don't you think that is a
target audience that is worth servicing?

There will still be ways to have that sort of character. You can take
extra hit points, higher levels of fitness, resistance to disease, and
other more specific attributes.

Post by Peter Knutsen (usenet)
(The same goes for Willpower, I think. Many players like to play
characters who are mentally tough.)

Again, there will be a couple of higher than normal mental toughness
special purchases available.