Skills as described vs. skills as used

So I was visiting Dan and Arthur over the holidays, and we had many conversations about roleplaying, of course. One of them eventually pottered around to musing on skill interpretation. Or, to be a little uncharitable, skill misinterpretation.

Here, as usual, "skill" means an aspect of an RPG's mechanics which determine your competence in a specific field of activity. In some cases things we would normally consider to be Attributes or Statistics or something work in a way similar enough that we can also consider them here. White Wolf's dots, for example, are basically the same whether they're in an Attribute or a... whatever you call the other things, I forget.

Let's take as read for this article that a skill has four components: a Name, an optional Fluff, a Description, and an Application. The Name is literally the name of the skill ("Ignite Fish"). The Fluff is a bit of flavour text which some games include. The Description is the section of the rules which explains what the skill is, and may give specific mechanical subsystems, special uses, examples and so on; descriptions may be very mechanical or largely narrative.

Finally, the Application is simply the way a given set of players actually uses the skill in their games. This does not necessarily correspond to any of the above.

The Hive Mind 3: copying combat

So, having carefully stolen the the skill spheres system and the serious injury model how can I steal Necromunda's combat system and make it my own?

To recap, the melée combat system works like this:

• You each have a Weapon Skill stat
• You each have an Attacks stat
• You roll dice equal to your Attacks and pick the highest
• Opponents with a parry (mostly due to a sword) can make you reroll one die
• You subtract 1s
• You add +1 for any additional 6s
• You add your WS to this number
• You compare totals
• On a tie, the highest Initiative stat wins
• You can roll to wound once for each point of difference (minimum 1)

I'm actually wondering whether you couldn't extrapolate this to other resolution mechanics, given a different statline. And there will definitely be a different statline.

Off the top of my head, for purposes of experimenting, I'm going to propose something like this:

• Might - governs physical brawn and toughness
• Agility - governs nimbleness, dexterity and reaction
• Intellect - governs memory, logic, reason and knowledge
• Charisma - governs social graces, plausibility, charm, leadership
• Weaponry - weapon use
• Stealth - sneaking, disguise, camouflage and sleight-of-hand
• Persuasion - influencing others
• Athletics - physical feats
• Lore - all learning

Lore could be broken down further, but I'm not convinced it needs to be. There's certainly some characters (and real-life people) who are experts in science but not history, or history but not politics, or whatever. But given there's one skill for using all weapons, and one skill for all interpersonal interactions, I'm not sure we need more. Obviously this will depend on the kind of game - in a magical system you might not want learning and magic to be all tied up together, even though that's the most common model.

The first four are stats, the remainder are skills (and I'm going to use the "skill" term here even though that means something different in Necromunda). Basically, all opposed tasks would be resolving using a Stat Dicepool + Skill Modifier roll. The stat determines how many dice you roll, both making a higher stat more reliable and slightly increasing its maximum potential, but you're all human and there aren't vast differences in your raw potential. That difference comes from skills, which represent actual experience and training in a particular task. Someone with a lot of training in weapon use can still get reliable results, even if they're physically outclassed. On the other hand, that burly thug might just overwhelm you with brute force and luck, because the range possible on a die is similar to the range of possible skill levels.

These will usually be combined in particular ways, but occasionally something different crops up. For example, you might easily use Intellect + W for forensics on a murder scene, or Charisma + W when regaling people with exploits of derring-do. Persuasion can be readily used with Might (physical intimidation or showing off), Agility (ditto), Intellect (reasoned discourse and argumentation, whether true or not) or Charisma (charming, beguiling and befuddling). Intellect + Stealth would help plan ways to disguise or hide an object, as well as tracking down what's hidden already. Stealth + Charisma is used for impersonation.

Having an argument? Roll Intellect + Persuasion if you're debating, or Charisma + Persuasion if you're relying on force of personality. The low-Persuasion mook might just flummox you with a killer question you just can't quite formulate the answer to by rolling a 6. Or you might land a series of lethal QEDs that shut her down completely, because you roll 3, 4, 5=best and you're adding a 4 and she only rolled a 3+2.

Parries could be generalised to a set of equipment or abilities that let you gain a similar benefit. A particular debating trick might allow you to "parry" a Charisma roll by undermining the other party or throwing them off balance with unexpected gambits. In a high-tech setting, a piece of cyberware might allow hackers to parry intrusion attempts and the efforts of security systems. Wizards might "parry" in a magical duel by expending a specific spell component, while specific charms might allow anyone to parry magical attacks.

The Hive Mind 2: playing with ability pools

So I was looting Necromunda for ideas. Let's see what else could be done with the skill pools system.

As a reminder, the original ability pools are: Agility, Combat, Ferocity, Muscle, Shooting, Stealth, Techno.

Although the ideal option is probably to flesh this out into a vaguely similar gritty sci-fi setting that isn't focused purely on combat, I think I'll actually try to replicate D&D instead. That's because moving from wargame to combat-heavy game is easier than directly to lowish-combat game.

Sword and Sorcery

So here I'm going to try and throw together a set of special abilities that broadly cover the sorts of things you might expect from a fantasy adventure game, substituting for classes.

The first thing I note is that of the seven Necromunda pools, two are directly tied to raw physical ability mostly as it applies to melée combat, one is a mixture of combat and dexterity, one is a sort of willpower thing that includes toughness and scariness and more melée combat, and one is shooting. That seems excessive in an RPG.

I suggest the following seven pools to begin with, assuming a pretty straightforward dungeoneering approach to the game:

• Agility skills are about grace and reflexes
• Might skills are about physical power
• Zeal skills cover willpower, drive and encouragement
• Stealth skills are about secrecy and concealment
• Smite skills unleash destructive magic
• Conjure skills summon helpful spirits
• Enchant skills beguile and influence minds

Agility

• Catfall - you can easily maintain balance, halve the distance fallen when determining affects of a fall, and don't land prone unless you want to
• Dodge - you can burn your next action to make a save against an attack or hazard you've detected, moving up to 2m if you succeed
• Reflexes - you double your initiative and are never taken Off-Guard by traps or ambushes
• Light Fingers - you can reroll a failed Prestidigitation roll (pickpocketing, lockpicking, manipulating small objects, planting, palming, card tricks)
• Spring Up - you can stand from prone without using an action
• Quick Draw - once per round, you can draw or stash an item without spending an action

Muscle

• Sprint - you triple your speed when you run, rather than doubling it
• Hurl - if you win a combat, you can trade all your hits to shove your opponent 1d6+hits in feet and knock them prone. Larger enemies halve the distance once per size category, rounding down; if it reaches 0 this ability cannot be used
• Tireless - you treat armour and baggage as one step lighter when determining movement and fatigue
• Steel Jaw - you gain a +2 bonus to resist stunning and knockdowns
• Iron Thews - you treat weapons and shields as one category lighter when determining wielding rules
• Demolition - you deal +1 additional damage to objects and constructs, and can reroll a failed Bend Bars Lift Gates attempt.

This set may be a little opaque in the absence of rules. The idea is that our Muscly hero can use these rules to dual-wield full-sized weaponry, or carry oversized weapons, or run around with a tower shield and so on. Tireless is supposed to let them avoid speed penalties, swimming and climbing penalties, or penalties for sleeping in armour.

Zeal

• Vicious Reputation - you gain a +1 bonus to intimidate or overawe, including Fear and Retreat tests you inflict, but suffer a -2 penalty to befriend or win over NPCs.
• Nerves of Steel - you may reroll failed Pinning and Retreat tests.
• True Grit - you can make a Will test to subtract 1 from a wounding roll against you, to a minimum of 1.
• Iron Focus - you may reroll failed tests to avoid distraction, and exhaustion tests when concentrating for long periods, including overwatch and standoffs.
• Rallying Cry - you can spend your action calling reassurance to nearby comrades or silently reassuring an adjacent ally. All affected allies can immediately roll to escape one morale effect, such as Pinning or Fear.
• All Out - you can throw yourself wholeheartedly into your actions, increasing your potential, but leaving you vulnerable to error. When you do so, increase your margin of success or failure by 1.

Stealth

• Ambush - you can use a single action to attempt a Hide roll and ready an action
• Blend In - when hiding, sneaking or disguised, double the effective distance when testing whether other characters notice you or pick you out in a crowd
• Act Natural - you have advantage on rolls to maintain a disguise if you're blending into a group or have recently observed the type of person you're disguised as, unless you do something drastically out of character
• Backstab - you strike with advantage if you attack when hidden
• Soft Footed - you can move at full speed while sneaking
• Slink - you can move through small spaces at full speed and without stealth penalties

Smite

• Havoc - you gesture and the ground erupts violently, blasting everyone nearby
• Dragonsbreath - flames gush from your palms in a blazing arc
• Lance - blazing light sears a single target
• Fellblade - a glowing weapon manifests in your hand
• Banestorm - mystical energies wrack your chosen spot until you bid them cease
• Whirlwind - a spiral of air moves at your command, hurling foes and obstacles aside

Conjure

• Guardian - the spirit intervenes to protect its ward from danger
• Veil - the spirit cloaks its ward to conceal it from sight
• Steed - the spirit carries its ward swiftly along
• Healer - the spirit tends the wounds of its ward
• Servant - the spirit fetches, carries, labours and cleans as requested
• Mantle - the spirit infuses its ward with power

Enchant

• Beguile - you charm and manipulate the target into doing as you wish
• Pacify - you lull a target into distraction, slumber or a deep trance
• Mesmerize - you transfix a target with your gaze, and attempt to command them
• Hallucination - you confuse the target with misleading illusions
• Disguise - you warp perceptions with a magical veil that disguises reality
• Bewitch - you reach deep into the target's mind, sensing or influencing their memories and feelings

So, let's see. Our classic brute hero would gain access to the Muscle and Zeal pools. A thief would have Agility and Stealth. A hardy cleric might have Conjure and Muscle, while a demagogue might have Enchant and Zeal. A wizard or wrathful priest would have Smite and Conjure. This is only a very basic attempt at the model, but I think it kind of works.

Politomunda: the city-world

So we've got massive grimdark cities, and you're a bunch of, let us say, questionably-moralled individuals who are trying to get by. Each of the Houses has its own particular philosophies, genetic lineages, education systems and resources that leave their members tending towards similar abilities.

I'm going to suggest Reflex, Combat, Zeal, Stealth, Tech, Face, Instinct, Wits. Remember that these skills are not the basic mechanics for interacting with the world; they are pools of special abilities that replace things like class powers.

• Speed skills are about reactions and movement.
• Combat skills provide benefits and options when attacking or defending.
• Zeal skills cover willpower, drive and encouragement
• Stealth skills are about secrecy and concealment
• Tech skills cover interaction with technology
• Face skills apply to social interactions
• Connections skills cover society and street smarts
• Wits skills involve knowledge, understanding and perception

The specific bonuses and penalties below are arbitrary, since there's no system here!

Speed

• Catfall - you halve the distance fallen when determining affects of a fall, and don't land prone unless you want to
• Dodge - you can burn your next action to make a save against an attack or hazard you've detected, 6+ on 1d6, moving up to 2m if you succeed
• Sprint - you triple your speed when you run, rather than doubling it
• Quick Draw - once per round, you can draw or stash a handheld item without spending an action
• Reflexes - you double your initiative in any standoff and can't be surprised
• Ease of Practice - when performing Extended Actions for which you are trained, you reduce the time required by one-quarter

Combat

• Interference - enemies don't benefit from strength of numbers against you
• Pinpoint Strike - you can reroll an attack's hit location once per round, accepting the second result
• Turn Aside Blow - you can parry without a parrying weapon, or take the best of two results with a parrying weapon
• Snap Attack - you can treat your movement as one category less when determining attack penalties, but suffer a -1 penalty and cannot use sights
• Duck and Dive - instead of taking a Pinning test, you can fall prone if this would give you cover from the attacker
• Suppressing Attack - roll no damage on a hit, but inflict two Pinning rolls (ranged) or Retreat rolls (melée)

Zeal

• Vicious Reputation - you gain a +1 bonus to intimidate or overawe, but suffer a -2 penalty to befriend or win over NPCs.
• Nerves of Steel - you may reroll failed Pinning and Retreat tests.
• True Grit - you can make a Will test to subtract 1 from a wounding roll against you, to a minimum of 1.
• Laser Focus - you may reroll failed tests to avoid distraction, and exhaustion tests when concentrating for long periods, including overwatch and standoffs.
• Rallying Cry - you can spend your action calling reassurance to nearby comrades or silently reassuring an adjacent ally. All affected allies can immediately roll to escape one morale effect, such as Pinning or Fear.
• All Out - you can throw yourself wholeheartedly into your actions, increasing your potential, but leaving you vulnerable to error. When you do so, increase your margin of success or failure by 1.

Stealth

• Ambush - the character can use a single action to attempt a Hide roll and ready an action
• Blend In - when the character is hiding, sneaking or disguised, double the effective distance when testing whether other characters notice them. When hacking, systems and sysadmins treat their activities as one rank less suspicious than normal
• Method Actor - when disguised, the character treats their cover identity and cover story as true for the purposes of psychology and lie-detection
• Light Fingers - the character can reroll a failed Prestidigitation roll (pickpocketing, manipulating small objects, planting, palming, card tricks)
• Trackless - when attempting to track, trace or identify the character, treat time elapsed as one step higher (minute, hour, day, week, month, year)
• Uniform - providing the character is dressed appropriately, their presence in a location is considered one rank less suspicious than normal.

This section assumes the existence of a set of infiltration mechanics, rather more elaborate than the classic single-roll Stealth/Disguise-type mechanics, which feature:

• Ranks of suspicion for presence and activities in an area
• Ranks of security for particular zones
• A general system for determining whether people notice you and what they notice about you

I might try to rough this out at some point, it seems useful.

Tech

• Percussive Maintenance - the character can attempt a short-term fix as a single action, but the results are unreliable
• Changelog - the character always has a chance to notice hacks and modifications without actively searching, and rolls twice when searching.

Tech is hard to do without actually building the systems for doing tech stuff, because it needs to interact usefully with those.

Face

• Read Intention - the character can roll [stat] to gauge what a partner hopes to get out of a social interaction
• No Hard Feelings - when the character bargains, strikes a deal, persuades or influences an NPC, they can reduce any negative change in attitude by one rank with a successful [stat] roll. If they used Intimidation, the roll is at a penalty
• One of the Guys - the character can use an extended action to roll [stat] with a non-hostile group. If successful, they're treated as a Peer for social rolls until they fail a roll or do anything that antagonises them
• Afterthought - when the character amicably gets information from a source, within 1 week they can think of one additional question. They roll as normal; if successful, the source contacts them spontaneously to provide related information. The GM decides how and when the information arrives.
• My Pleasure - when the character strikes a bargain or seeks a favour from an NPC, if they roll [very good] the NPC feels as though the character has done them a favour.
• Between These Four Walls - when the character seeks information or antagonises an NPC, as long as the outcome is amicable, their sources are reluctant to report the incident. The chances of raising suspicion are reduced, and it is one step more difficult than usual for others to find out that the character was making enquiries.

Connections

• Find the Core - when observing a conversation or interaction, the character can roll [some stat] to understand the social dynamics between the parties
• Know a Guy - the character can roll [stat] once per day to tap a contact with a necessary skill at [level] or higher. The result determines the time it will take (minutes, hours or days) and/or the level of the contact's skill.
• Social Butterfly - the character can roll [stat] once per day to tap a contact with connections to an organisation or public figure. The result determines the degree of separation and/or the time it will take (minutes, hours or days).
• Name Dropper - the character can attempt to sway an NPC by mentioning their contacts. This requires a [stat] roll, but grants a bonus on subsequent rolls. On a botched roll, the NPC is antagonised and subsequent rolls are penalised. In either case, it is one step easier for others to learn about the interaction.
• Middleman - the character can play two NPCs off against each other, either immediately (with a penalty) or as an extended action. The NPCs must be Amiable or worse in their mutual relationship. Roll [stat] against each NPC's [discernment stat]; the character can repeat this, but each subsequent set of rolls must gain [better result] or the attempt fails as the NPCs realise what is happening. The accumulated bonus can be applied to one interaction with each NPC, and overrides their limiters for Common Sense and Professionalism.

I envision that this game would have mechanics for organisations and social connections. Perhaps there are degrees of separation, which determine your influence over NPCs and ability to interact with (or infiltrate) their organisations.

It will be much easier to interact with large, public organisations and much harder to interact with small, private and illegal organisations. Similarly, it's easy to tap a contact who slightly knows a media personality, and hard to tap anyone who's close to a criminal, let alone anyone whose real identity is unknown.

The reason for this complexity is basically that I think it makes the Face character both deeper and more distinctive. If anyone can do social magic then being the Face is a matter of quantity rather than quality, which is somewhat less interesting than other roles which have distinct and unique capabilities. Secondly, it makes it less powerful: it's easy for social systems to end up being a sort of binary, where a low roll means you achieve nothing and a high roll lets you win over a paranoid criminal you've never met before. I'm not claiming I can write a game that fixes social skills, I'm just saying this imaginary game could attempt this kind of mechanic. It's less social combat and more a framework for establishing and tracking the difficulty and scope of social interactions.

In the last example, assume that an NPC has some kind of basic behaviour limiters. There's a point where common sense kicks in, and a point where professionalism kicks in (and probably at least one for self-preservation) so that it's very hard to push NPCs into unrealistic behaviour with simple social interaction. Maybe it's something approaching a Wisdom save, and the more inappropriate or self-destructive the action, the easier it is to resist. In the case of Middeman, the PC can try to work up antagonism between NPCs so that they forget themselves and act rashly.

Wits

• Rapid Recollection - the character can make a Knowledge test to recall or recognise omething without spending an action
• Spider Sense - the character halves distances when testing to detect hidden or sneaking characters, tails and anyone watching them
• Weakness in Numbers - enemies don't benefit from strength of numbers against the character
• Skim - if the character succeed on a roll to research or analyse information, they halve the time required
• Erudition - they character's ability to grasp new information means they never count as untrained in intellectual tasks, including conversation
• Expertise - when the character draws on their training, knowledge and education they can use [stat] in place of [stat] for a social roll

Okay, I'm not going to claim this is an amazing new revolutionary game or anything, but I feel like I can see the shape of an acceptable game emerging here. Everyone gets the basic game mechanics for Doing Stuff, then they choose an archetype that draws on a subset of the talent pools; these pools let them select specific special abilities that let them do things the other characters can't.

You could push these up to more impressive effects, depending on the style of game you want. This is generally easiest with combat, which we're used to having be quite mechanical, and hardest with social/magic/technology skills where you kind of need a robust subsystem in place for your special abilities to work with. It's hard to devise special social mechanics if everything's basically left for the GM to interpret anyway, because the whole point is that the Face (for example) lets you do things the other characters cannot. I could have made these more mind-controlly, but that's a specific genre. And then you start getting into issues of "what if the character uses these on a powerful NPC" issue, because the ability to influence any NPC is extremely potent in a way that combat mechanics aren't usually allowed to be.

In general, though, you could easily use this structure to build in things like:

• Attacking multiple enemies at once
• Charming an NPC so well that they spontaneously act in your favour later (like a one-use aftereffect)
• Becoming practically invisible when you hide

I'm going to stop there for now, I feel like this bit is done, and I'm not up for actually writing (another) game right now...

On failure, its outcomes and its implications: psychology

I feel like it's been ages since I was able to put together anything substantial for this blog. To be fair, nothing I write now is ever likely to compare to the insane (in relative terms) popularity of my post about animal companions...

And also to be fair, it's been a very busy few months and I'm ill. But still. I do enjoy writing for this blog and feeling like someone appreciated it.

This is going to be a miniseries about failure in RPGs, or at least in some RPGs. I fear it may be a bit dry and very rambly. Still, I present it for your delectation, or at least to keep you mildly diverted on the bus.

So a while ago I wrote some responses to a Walking Eye episode about Numenera. Very little of that is relevant right now, so let me pull out the bit which, randomly, sparked this week's post-game conversation. It is is in fact talking about Dungeon World, for some reason.

The Hive mind: stealing from Necromunda for fun and profit

So an idea I've had vaguely floating around for a while is to use Necromunda - or rather, its mechanics - as the basis of an RPG.

For those of you not in the know, Necromunda is a tabletop skirmish campaign wargame of bloody battles between rival gangs in the Underhive, a festering hellhole chemical wasteland miles beneath the unthinkably vast future-gothic city-spires of the Hives where the mass of humanity eke out their miserable existence. Let me clarify that working 20-hour days welding shut ration packs in a factory powered by unshielded reactors and filled with toxic fumes that will kill you before your fourth decade, then splitting your miserable wage between religious tithes, flavourless algal slop, a variety of even more lethal drugs to get you through the day, and gambling in mob-run hells in the faint hope of a fractional and temporary improvement in your circumstances or at least an entertaining brawl, monitored all the while by a fascist regime that crushes the faintest hint of worker uprisings with appalling ferocity, and under the perpetual threat of irresistable annihilation by either an incursion of horrific Chaos demons or any of the myriad alien races whose xenophobia is exceeded only by your own, is the cushy life of law-abiding mid-Hive citizens. Your distant, implausible dream is to one day retire there.

Making Deathwatch combat overly complicated

So it's been a while, but I've spent a lot of time wittering about the skill system in the Warhammer 40,000 setting, in particular with particular reference to its effect on Knowing Things, including the effects of modifier distributions.

I've been thinking more about this and have some ideas I wanted to play with.

The two major points are de-compartmentalising non-combat skill and compartmentalising combat skill

Jaegerausflug

So me and a friend are both great fans of Girl Genius by the Foglios, and last time I visited we were talking about this, and in particular enthusing about Jaegermonsters. Somehow, this ended up with me promising to write and run a game of Jaegers when I next visit.

Part of the reason I felt this was remotely feasible was that old friend-or-foe-undetermined, FATE. I remain troubled by how to actually run it, but pulpy action-adventure is what FATE is made for. I suppose I could have written a game from scratch, but let's be honest: I'm currently writing/wrote but haven't done anything with the following games:

• Monitors (awaiting feedback)
• Feckless Wastrels (awaiting playtesting)
• Into Ploughshares
• Friendly Neighbourhood Necromancers
• Alpha Dregs
• Jacobeans vs. Aliens (awaiting period research)
• Beneath Dark Skies
• In the Darkness Find Them (awaiting playtesting)
• Vessel
• Heartbreaker High (not previously mentioned on this blog)
• A Band of Bunglers (awaiting playtesting)
• Morris
• De Jure (awaiting playtesting)
• The Call of Cthulhu thing where you're all mutants
• Almost certainly some others I've forgotten about

So I felt reskinning an existing game was an acceptable shortcut. And FATE is eminently reskinnable compared to most other games I know. And I've been wanting to try it out again.

Knowing it all

A belated follow-up to this earlier post.

Basically, I started wondering what other ways there are of modelling skills, that might lead to less of a discrepancy between combat skill and just about everything else.

Games don't usually have skills for fighting orks, fighting ratmen, fighting elves and fighting giants. They don't have skills for fighting lumbering golems and skills for fighting agile displacer beasts. They have skills for fighting with a small variety of alternative combat styles, based around very broad weapon categories, of which you normally pick one. In some cases they have only a couple of skills, like "attack" and "defence", or "ranged", "melée" and "dodge".

Games also avoid letting choice of combat skills cut off your options. Things like melée range, mobility and niche use that should probably make some weapons essentially useless in some situations are usually ignored. If you want to fight the giant with a dagger, the bear with a spiked chain or the wasp with a greataxe, those are all legitimate mechanical options rather than laughably doomed.

Manipulating playstyles with modifiers: the case of Deathwatch

So, it's ages since I griped about Deathwatch! But I had some more thoughts due to working through our latest podcast (I foolishly and accidentally posted the post-podcast post way ahead of schedule - now taken down, with apologies).

Bonus scheme

One of the things that struck me is that the skill mechanics in Deathwatch further exacerbate some of the issues I have discussed by dint of where the designers choose to build in bonuses and penalties.

Let's use Brother Iacomo and his heavy bolter as our first example. He begins with a BS of about 40, and we can reasonably assume that he will rapidly start buying up BS enhancements to at least 50, which is easily achievable as a starting character. Many devastators will take the Immovable Warrior ability for an additional +10 whenever they are in cover. If possible, Iacomo will prepare for the shot by spending a full action aiming for a +20 bonus on his next attack roll. Firing on full auto, which is almost inevitable, Iacomo can gain a +20 bonus to hit; semi-auto will offer +10 to hit. If the target is larger than human - such as a xenos monstrosity or any significant group of weaker targets modelled as a Horde - there will be a modifier ranging from +10 to +30. Should Iacomo be facing an onrushing horde at close range, another +10 to +30 is available. A variety of targeting sights also offer +10 bonuses in specific situations. A signum and signum link can be purchased for an additional +5 or (if he's lucky) +10 bonus.

Numenera, The Walking Eye and some counter-thoughts

This post is based on the Walking Eye Numenera review of a while ago. It started life as a comment that, as so often, got out of hand. As such it probably isn't as coherent as I'd like if you haven't listened to the podcast, which you should.

Rolling 3s

There's naturally a certain amount of discussion about the mechanics, and one thing that is bound to come up is the slightly odd choice in Numenera of doing things based around Difficulties 1-9 (or arguably higher) that represent numbers 3-27 on your d20 before you manage to modify them. In brief, you establish a difficulty, you use a range of skills, effort and situational modifiers to adjust that difficulty, and then you multiply it by 3 to see what your target number is.

While the 3s thing in Numenera is a bit strange, I’m pretty sure that multiplying by three at the end is the simplest way to use this system. If you set challenges to Difficulty 12 instead of 4, then each change in difficulty means adding or subtracting 3, which is a little faffier to track; or, as I'd tend to do, tracking how many changes are being applied, then multiplying the net change by 3, and then applying it. Early on, the numbers will often be very small, and so the multiplication isn't much different from addition.

Skill atrophy, part 2

So last time I was talking in general terms about how skill development in real life doesn't really match the constant escalation of most games. Let's see what we could do about that.

Introducing skill atrophy to games

If we wanted to have a system where people's skills shifted more naturally to match their activities, what could we do? What would we be looking for?

1. Skills increase with use
2. Skills fade with neglect
3. Neglected skills are easier to revive than new skills are to acquire
4. Skills follow a curve - it's easy to master the basics, but every improvement is a little harder than the last

Skill atrophy, part 1

Yet another entry in the continuing series of posts inspired by Shannon.

Key quote:

The point about pushing people out of the fun is a good one. Ranking is also quite odd, on reflection. Games tend to model highly skilled PCs acquiring rank and power as they level, whereas in real life this isn't how it works. A large proportion of prestigious people either inherit a position or get there through a kind of attrition. Promotion to high rank tends to involve having, and honing, management and political skills rather than those suited to lower-rank assignments, and these high-rank skills get practiced while the others are neglected or get outdated. There's only a handful of people in an organisation who are both highly respected for their skills, and able to use that respect to exert power - usually technical specialists, in my experience. I suspect a large part of the reason is that games really don't tend to have skill atrophy.

Monitors: helping hands

So, first second on my list of undone Monitors tasks is a mechanic for working together. This is a pretty important one, because there are many things you can logically cooperate on and expect to improve your chances: breaking down doors, intimidating people, keeping watch... it's a decent list. There are also tasks where cooperation as such isn't quite the thing, but where a more skilled person may be able to alleviate the inexperience of companions: climbing mountains, cooking, sailing, and so on.

My first inclination is to split these up into two types: Collaboration and Synchrony. Assistance is a further sub-type of Synchrony. These terms are for convenient discussion, and not jargon I particularly plan to include in the final game.

On skill synergy; or, Why it's hard to be a know-it-all

Like about a third of my posts, this one is inspired by Dan, specifically his comments on this article. I'll quote for ease of reference. I'm going to talk about differences between combat and knowledge skills, and how this results in it being easier to make combat monsters than polymaths, though as I have no solutions to present it's perhaps not very useful.

For reference, I'm using "skill" in a very general sense below - things like Base Attack Bonus, feats, attribute points and so on can be considered skills here.

There *are* Sage characters in DH (I think they're even called Sages) and they have exactly this problem. You generally can't make a knowledgey character in a 40K RPG that does knowledge as well as a fighty character does fighting, partially because of the generalist/specialist issue rearing its head again.

It strikes me that part of the problem with sages is that, because most games model combat with a small number of skills that often support each other, wile they model knowledge with a large number of skills that are unrelated to each other, a Sage is necessarily a generalist character. They might seem specialised, because their role is specifically "knowledge and research" but in reality you're a generalist who is spreading their skills over (say) Accounting, Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, History and so on while the combat characters just need to invest in Fist and Shotgun. You *could* design a specific class/splat/specialisation to get massive bonuses to all knowledge-related tasks, but games tend not to do that.

Because of the way knowledge is handled in most RPGs, you can't really have a character who is *generically* good at knowing about lots of stuff, because knowledge is almost always based on a wide variety of completely unrelated skills. A character who wants to be good at fighting usually has to invest in a single weapon, which they can then use to kill anything they meet. A character who wants to be good at knowledge has to invest in everything you might every conceivably want to know about. About the only exception I can think of to this in a mainstream RPG (and it's only partial) is the way Call of Cthulhu uses Library Use and Know Rolls as generic Find All The Knowledge skills.

Interestingly the one-and-a-half exceptions I can think of are World of Darkness, which has one skill covering all of Academics and to some extent Call of Cthulhu if you assume that all you really need to find stuff out are Library Use and Know.

This strikes me as a very good point.

I think a large proportion of the issue breaks down into two aspects: synergy and granularity (I talk about granularity way too much).

Monitors: a tangent on traits and difficulties

On the current working model for Monitors, characters use a combination of generic attributes and specific traits.

My original idea for traits was that each would provide a flat modifier to relevant attribute rolls. Dan mentioned a few concerns about this when last we met, which I will try to recall here. This post naturally presents my point of view, which I actually remember and can develop here, far more favourably than the stuff Dan said that I can't really remember.

• It can be difficult to make modifiers reasonable. With a large modifier, traits will be all-important and nobody without a trait is likely to succeed. With smaller modifiers, someone with a trait will only succeed slightly more often than someone without it. I'm not yet sure how far I agree with these, but worth noting.
• He also noted that with (say) a +5 training trait, there's no mechanical difference between Wits 5 + Mad Scientist (+5), and Wits 10. This is true enough, and he argued that the psychological difference is important.
• The combination of difficulty levels and training gets tricky (is solving a differential equation easy, which a mathematician might say, or impossible, which someone without maths would say?). I was originally aiming for an objective difficulty system, but that may be problematic. In fairness, I think all difficulty systems are problematic, so it's a question of finding the least annoying one.
• He also stated a preference for avoiding maths, which is reasonable enough but I'm less concerned about that. Doing arithmetic is a common enough aspect of games that I don't feel including it is a major drawback.
• He thinks training should mean auto-success on routine tasks. I also think this, and attempted to design the system to ensure it, so no issue there.

On variable skill resolution

So, I was doing some very tenuous rambling about skills.

For reference, "skill" here means anything that behaves roughly like a "skill" as in various major RPGs. "Attempt" means either an attempt in the traditional sense, the consumption of one arbitrary amount of resources, or an arbitrary amount of time and effort. "Roll" means whatever mechanic is used for determining the effectiveness of a skill. "Resources" include time, and this is probably the most common resource.

So last time I rambled a lot about the different kinds of situations skill use represents, and some awkwardness that results if you treat these situations as mechanically equivalent.

So, what kind of distinctions might it be useful to draw, if we're looking for skill use to roughly reflect likely outcomes in real life?

On why not all skills are created equal

I spend probably more time thinking about skills than is good for me, but this is something I touched on previously and would like to discuss a bit.

Essentially, I've been thinking that (for understandable reasons) games tend to take a one-size-fits-all approach to "skills", and that this can end with some unsatisfying results. Call of Cthulhu is my core example here, but it's not unique to that game. The same mechanics that adjudicate whether a single bullet fired from your handgun hits a crazed cultist also determine whether your attempt to eavesdrop on an hour-long conversation between two Russian spies results in a) absolute and flawless understanding of every nuance of the conversation, or b) a glazed expression and a slight headache.

There are some differences between these two situations that aren't reflected in the single d100 roll you'd typically make. One is that using a universal resolution system ironically results in widely different ways of resolving outcomes, because of the way the challenge is modelled.

Monitors: back to traits

While mulling over various things, I’ve gone back to a previous model for Monitors that I want to investigate again.

One of the niggling concerns I’ve had has been that the skill distribution doesn’t necessarily support the kind of game I want to make. While combat and direct conflict is supposed to be a significant aspect of the game, I also want there to be some depth to non-violent conflicts that troubleshooters might be sent to handle. Examples of these would be investigating serious fraud and corruption, intervening in political issues, tracking down interstellar criminals, assisting with scientific investigations, or looking into occult problems that aren’t just about demon-smashing. This is not intended to be Deathwatch for lizards. However, while I’ve got skills that help in dealing with all those situations, there’s only a couple that you’re likely to use for each given kind of situation. Investigating a complex fraud is likely to mean a lot of Bureaucracy rolls and maybe the odd bit of Parlay or Perception – unless, of course, you avoid using the actual skills that people apply to these cases, in favour of over-loading a handful of general Investigation skills.

(Not, of course, that I have any idea how to write a fraud-based scenario if I wanted to. But I’d like it to be an option that didn’t rapidly turn into a mere plot hook for another gun-based adventure)

It's the Skill of the Fight, part one

I'm supposed to be working on Monitors, but my next logical step seems to be playing with NPCs to work out a very rough way to gauge effectiveness at opposing PCs, and I don't have the energy for that. Also, particularly after some analyses of other games, I'm having second thoughts about whether the list of skills will actually promote the kind of game I'm after. So, procrastination!

For quite a while - following the post I always quote, Dan's one about Parkour Murder Simulator, and Shannon's follow-on - I've been knocking around the idea of a game where the outcome of entire combats is determined by rolling a Fight check, in just the same way that games typically resolve being sneaky, influencing NPCs or translating multi-volume works from ancient Arabic.

At the moment I'm fairly worn out and irritable, not hugely inspired by the Monitors stuff I need to do, and not feeling intellectual enough for the complicated diatribe on skills I started writing last week (pending). This feels like something a bit more logical that I should be able to work through.

Feckless Wastrels: some more mechanics

Having outlined some very rough mechanics last time, let’s take a look at some specifics.

Influences

Influences are the factors that mostly affect what you can, want to and must do. There are two internal Influences (Pride and Mood), which indicate how you feel about things, and two external ones (Fidelity and Respectability), which indicate what people think of you. As these increase or decrease, your interactions with the rest of the world change.

Pride

Pride represents a combination of self-esteem, self-image, egotism, actual pride, resolve and bloody-mindedness. Pride makes it harder to do badly at things, tolerate provocation, accept criticism and refuse flattering requests. On the other hand, it makes it easier to stick to your guns, or push beyond your normal limits rather than accept defeat. Running out of Pride leaves you humbled, broken and shameless, a prey to any familial scheme or criminal opportunity; topping-out Pride leaves you puffed-up and manipulable, easy pickings for any wily matchmaker or would-be debtor.

You gain Pride when something happens that increases your opinion of yourself. NPCs may use flattery to try and puff you up so it's hard to say no to them. Having your plans go off smoothly, getting praised or coming up with a dashed clever idea could all increase Pride. You lose Pride when things happen to decrease your opinion of yourself, such as being humiliated, having a plan go badly wrong or realising that you are a cad and bounder.