Wednesday 3 February 2016

what we want !!

So 2016 is underway, and with it a more regular and more detailed set of blogs.

When I put the game together, I wanted something fast and flexible, not in the way of the fun, something that could let me portray characters from films and books - more than average ability, but not superheroes.

To this end I stripped the rules back and thought about each part and it's place in the game.

I thought about attributes [dexterity, strength, intelligence, etc] and decided that most of the time, such attributes  have little use after character generation - they are usually used as a basis for skills, and thereafter a default for when a skill isn't available.

But if you take away attributes, how to define a character in terms of his lifting power, health, and so on ??

Completely legitimate concerns that needs addressing.

There are games that define a character according to his career - Knight 3, Dwarf 2, etc. This means that when the character does anything relevant to those careers, the career value is used - so when faced with health issues, Dwarf 2 might indicate hardiness and Knight 3 high indicate ability to swing a sword.

So maybe careers instead of attributes ??

If that's the case, how to deal with skills and skill lists ??
After all, even if attributes don't have to be specified, everyone needs to be able to do things.


The vagueness of having a character described as Knight 3 allows lots of things, that the player and GM agree on, to be available to the player during a game - without lists of skills and abilities and equipment.

But what about when similar careers are involved - Knight and Mercenary ?? Do overlapping skills stack, or does the character broaden his skills ?? But if he uses a sword in both, shouldn't he be better ??

Most games have it almost impossible to have all the skills that someone should have - simply because there's never enough character points to have them all.

Then you have the competence of characters, where most games have characters barely competent in things that they should be able to do - being heroes.

This lack of competence brings either characters with several skills, most of which are not at a reasonable level of competence, or characters who have to have a very tight range of skills just to be able to do the things the character should be good at - and almost no ability at anything else, simply because there's never enough character points to have them all.

In most games character depth is usually lacking - although characters are supposed to backgrounds and histories, they're rarely noted or developed in any way.

So, I want stacking skill groups, no attributes, enough skills to be useful, enough competence to be useful, careers and character depth.

Whew !!