Among some people, the idea of a skill system is a controversial one. If you are a hard core OD&D player I guess that attitude makes sense. I grew up on MERP and BRP derivatives, so for me the existence of skills are natural. I see how the idea of skills can be limiting for the players, giving the intention you have to have a skill to try something out. Maybe they can be used in another way.
The thing is, if you always rely on the game mechanics to role play, you can use skills in another way. Having skills be fairly broad, they can be an indication of how to act or behave. Say that you have the skill "Play the Lute". Can you play the flute? On the other hand, if you have a skill like "Perform" or maybe even "Bard", you can take that as an indication you posses a cluster of knowledge you can use to build a personality around. Maybe skills, broadly sketched, are best used as a basis for roleplaying, not for rollplaying. I hope you catch my drift here?
In Tunnels & Trolls 7th ed. there are Talents. They are like skills, but you only have one as a starting character and I've seen them more like a kind of mechanical support for roleplaying, not mainly as a way to gain a bonus for when you roll dice. Maybe that attitude could be used in other old school games?
Showing posts with label Skill Systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skill Systems. Show all posts
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Friday, October 9, 2009
Reading T&T 7.5 - Talents p.31-35
Welcome back to Tunnels & Trolls Friday! Today I will focus on a new feature of 7th ed, namely Talents. Skill systems have been grafted onto Tunnels & Trolls since way back. Michael Stackpole wrote one that's included in the 5.5 printing, I've been told (my 5th ed is from 1979), and many lesser know designers have done so for their home campaigns. Talents is a idea in that vein, but by Ken St. Andre.
Back when I was a strong critic of all class based game systems, I used to think that since every character of a specific class at a specific level were basically all the same, and that it was boring. The system of Feats which were introduced in D&D 3rd ed. was to me a boon. Now you could finally differentiate your hero from everyone else! It turned out to be much more complicated than that, unfortunately. The Talents of T&T, though, have a similar function to make your imaginary persona a bit special. Lucky for us, the mechanics are way simpler. Even elegant.
Our designer mentions on page 31 how you can use Saving Rolls to make anything happen in a T&T session. Not until page 99 will we get a description how to make those rolls (SR for short) but here in this section Ken manages to descrive their general utility better than the section where they are the subject of discussion! So, since you can roll a SR for anything, why do you need Talents? Well, it isn't really argued in the rule text why. Well, there is that suggestion to the player to imagine what skill there are that defines who or what your character are, and to use that as a Talent. I'd say that their main utility is to make you special. It's chrome, really. Anything you can do with a SR can be a Talent. I like the idea.
When we get to the meat of the rules, we encounter some oddities. In the example we have a Rogue who takes Thievery as his Talent. Looking to see what it says in the description for the Rogue Type, we see that a newly created Rogue has to take Roguery as the first Talent! The example is thus breaking the rules. It makes you wonder if that rule was written later, and the example not modified. While we are talking about rules, I am wondering if the concept can't be taken further. Since your rating in a Talen will be determined randomly at creation and never changed, you might end up with a 1 or a 6. With a higher and higher attributes as you gain levels it will be less and less of an issue, but it feels like an itch I'd like to scratch.
In Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes by Michael Stackpole (still for sale from Flying Buffalo, and there's a solo written by Dave Arneson available! What are you waiting for? Go grab it, and tell Rick I sent you.), you can level up your skills. It would probably be possible to do the same for Talents. How about this? One way would be to put a tick mark beside the Talent when used, and when you have used it as many times as you have ranks in it, pay 100 AP and raise it by one. Possibly 100 x Rank. Well. Let me know if you try it out.
Another cool House Rule would be to not base Talents on a specific ability, but letting the situation dictate. Thanks Dalton for that one!
What I really likes about Talents, and I do like them, is things like page 33 where Ken really shows us how to take a trait and do a cool stunt, even in combat where the use of Talents wont work to just boost your combat ability. More examples like this in the chapter about SRs and people might take notice why we T&T junkies harp on about how cool the SR mechanic is.
So a Talent will set you apart, but will also boost your ability to be extra good at once special thing. Take not that when asked about their Talents, my players managed to be creative (mind you, you can make up anything, there's no list!) and one of them took Cooking! Belive it or not, it can be used both in combat, business and interacting with monsters. Talents are pure roleplaying opportunity in a box.
Let me finish off with a quote from the rules about Talents. Ken writes: "Saving Rolls against a Talent may be called for by either the GM or the player." Maybe it should not be necessary to put that in the rules, but it's still good to see it. You have a cool idea? Go for it! Say Yes or roll the dice. Heck, roll some dice anyway.
Next week: Levels!
Back when I was a strong critic of all class based game systems, I used to think that since every character of a specific class at a specific level were basically all the same, and that it was boring. The system of Feats which were introduced in D&D 3rd ed. was to me a boon. Now you could finally differentiate your hero from everyone else! It turned out to be much more complicated than that, unfortunately. The Talents of T&T, though, have a similar function to make your imaginary persona a bit special. Lucky for us, the mechanics are way simpler. Even elegant.
Our designer mentions on page 31 how you can use Saving Rolls to make anything happen in a T&T session. Not until page 99 will we get a description how to make those rolls (SR for short) but here in this section Ken manages to descrive their general utility better than the section where they are the subject of discussion! So, since you can roll a SR for anything, why do you need Talents? Well, it isn't really argued in the rule text why. Well, there is that suggestion to the player to imagine what skill there are that defines who or what your character are, and to use that as a Talent. I'd say that their main utility is to make you special. It's chrome, really. Anything you can do with a SR can be a Talent. I like the idea.
When we get to the meat of the rules, we encounter some oddities. In the example we have a Rogue who takes Thievery as his Talent. Looking to see what it says in the description for the Rogue Type, we see that a newly created Rogue has to take Roguery as the first Talent! The example is thus breaking the rules. It makes you wonder if that rule was written later, and the example not modified. While we are talking about rules, I am wondering if the concept can't be taken further. Since your rating in a Talen will be determined randomly at creation and never changed, you might end up with a 1 or a 6. With a higher and higher attributes as you gain levels it will be less and less of an issue, but it feels like an itch I'd like to scratch.
In Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes by Michael Stackpole (still for sale from Flying Buffalo, and there's a solo written by Dave Arneson available! What are you waiting for? Go grab it, and tell Rick I sent you.), you can level up your skills. It would probably be possible to do the same for Talents. How about this? One way would be to put a tick mark beside the Talent when used, and when you have used it as many times as you have ranks in it, pay 100 AP and raise it by one. Possibly 100 x Rank. Well. Let me know if you try it out.
Another cool House Rule would be to not base Talents on a specific ability, but letting the situation dictate. Thanks Dalton for that one!
What I really likes about Talents, and I do like them, is things like page 33 where Ken really shows us how to take a trait and do a cool stunt, even in combat where the use of Talents wont work to just boost your combat ability. More examples like this in the chapter about SRs and people might take notice why we T&T junkies harp on about how cool the SR mechanic is.
So a Talent will set you apart, but will also boost your ability to be extra good at once special thing. Take not that when asked about their Talents, my players managed to be creative (mind you, you can make up anything, there's no list!) and one of them took Cooking! Belive it or not, it can be used both in combat, business and interacting with monsters. Talents are pure roleplaying opportunity in a box.
Let me finish off with a quote from the rules about Talents. Ken writes: "Saving Rolls against a Talent may be called for by either the GM or the player." Maybe it should not be necessary to put that in the rules, but it's still good to see it. You have a cool idea? Go for it! Say Yes or roll the dice. Heck, roll some dice anyway.
Next week: Levels!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Call of Cthulhu - what are the rules used for?
Having ended a campaign I tend to think back a bit not only on the regular war stories, but also on the mechanics of the game. I have written about CoC before, and this is another musing an a little point after some real play. YMMV. CoC is an interesting game, based as it is on the very old and classic Runequest from the seventies. Just like D&D you roll your stats with a couple of d6, and they even look a lot the same. You have a Profession and you have skills. Already this is diverging from OD&D, since even if you were fooled into thinking that the Profession was something like a Class, that Skills things is something new. Now, since skills is the basis of everything you do you might sometimes actually wonder what those stats you rolled was actually supposed to be used for, right? This is were I found something interesting in real play.
As you might now, a few of the stats in CoC are used, multiplied by five to make a percentage, as the Luck, Know and Idea rolls. Up until now I have never much considered those. They sit on the character sheet not looking conspicuous at all. I did find out though, that our Keeper used them repeatedly in play and I seem to remember from reading the rules a few years back that thy are supposed to be used just like that. Since almost everything is based on a skill roll I started to wonder if those couldn't be transformed into skills as well, and the rest of the stats be done away with? Considering the age of CoC, I guess this must have been considered before. Even though I am a fan of the game, I haven't been playing it much at home and when you mostly play at conventions the rules often tend to fade to the back. If there have been a discussion about such an elimination of stats, I've missed it. It is intriguing, though.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Traps, weal or woe?
We have had some discussion over at ChattyDM about traps. Chatty started to talk about how to judge the one page dungeon contest, and what the difference between the old school and new school is. Soon we started talking about why traps should be interactive.
It struck me that the reason some people think a traps just means "send in the thief, roll some dice and get on with it" are not because they don't like the idea of traps, but that they have encountered situations which conditioned them to that reaction. Maybe that conditioning even turns them off the idea of traps altogether!
As someone who likes traps, and would like to see them used and enjoyed, I think I have to think more about how I deploy them in my own game. I think I will try to put down my philosophy of traps and their usage, and to stretch my wings a bit maybe I can make it accessible for gamers of any editions or game. Maybe it's to bold a project. We'll see.
Lastly, read this amusing narrative of a close encounter!
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