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 !!

Attributes, Skills or... ??

Separate attributes and skills for a character has been the way of things since I started in RPGs.

But as I look to write my own, I wonder why  - and if that's the best way to build a character.

Attributes define the basics of a character, whilst skills define what the character can do.

However, looking at things more deeply, it seems that attributes are more present as default skills than anything else.

In most RPGs, the value used to resolve actions is based on a value derived from attribute+skill or attribute bonus+skill - and a default value based on the attribute if no skill available.

But other than that, attributes aren't used much at all after character generation.

I understand and appreciate the logic, even if i don't agree with it, where it would take lots of time and effort to list every skill that someone has and adds complexity to character generation - many of which would never be used in a RPG session.

I also understand that attributes define a character, allowing his strength and intelligence to be noted.

But for use in an RPG ??
I see little use, apart from default values.

For example, need medical training to treat wounds ??
Use medical skill, or default to intelligence attribute.

Need to hit someone in a fight ??
Use fighting skill, or default to dexterity attribute.

Need to drive a car to get away from the police ??
Use driving skill, or default to dexterity attribute.

Need to sweet talk someone to gather information ??
Use persuasion, or default to charisma attribute.

And so on.

So, I'm going to reverse the equation and have something that combines attributes and skills.

This has the advantage of simplifying character generation, as only a single set of values have to be determined.

These values will be present in all characters, in varying degrees, and will be umbrella skills that all skills and attributes fall into - In effect, characters will be defined by their ability to do things, but not by how that ability is determined.

Since Nexus Tales is a near future game of action, that is the setting my abilities need to fit into an work with.

My current abilities are :-

• Athletics - climbing, throwing, swimming, lifting, running
• Driving - cars, boats, helicopters, planes, bikes
• Fighting - fisticuffs, swords, claws, martial arts, clubs
• Shooting - pistols, lasers, rockets, smgs, crossbows
• Making - electronics, cooking, metalwork, carpentry
• Communication - talking, teaching, painting, streetwise
• Covert - pick locks, stealth, hiding, palming
• Outdoors - riding, survival, navigation, hunting, tracking
• Gaia - spells, rituals
• Learning - maths, research, law, area knowledge, trivia, design, memory

So, every skill that can be known will be contained within these 10 categories of ability.

Should specific attributes be required, they are inferred from the abilities - remembering the action film nature of the RPG.

For instance, someone with excellent athletics ability would probably be healthy, fit, strong, agile, with good stamina - so any need to check their health, strength or stamina could be accomplished by referring to the athletics ability.

And so on.

Doing Things 2

One of the things I dislike for many RPGs is their granularity - not because such granularity is bad, but because it's mostly unnecessary.

Real world realism relies on granularity because the real world is granular, and small difference can make a difference - however, the world of an RPG can never be as granular as the real world and such granularity just slows things down.

For a game of action, where flexibility and speed of resolution are desired, real world realism definitely isn't what I'm going to aim for.

Years ago I was a fan of TORG and DC Heroes, both of which are cinematic/action movie games with ungranular rules which helped speed up the game, at the cost of some real world realism.

Looking at this, and realising that RPGs are vague simulations of reality, I'm going to use one of my favourite non-linear progressions of 1, 3, 6, 10, etc. It allows me to have a broad scale of values, but keep with a narrow set of values.

Rather than having attributes and skills with values of 1-20, meaning theres a range of 1-20 slightly different results, i'm going to separate those numbers into bands - and those are the values that characters will have.

So, band a = value of 1-2, band b = value of 3-5, band c = value of 6-9, etc - allowing me to have 10 bands and values of 1-55, with the average being band c and value 6-9 for most people.

Now, looking at the values involved, characters will roll 2d10 + a value to overcome a difficulty rating.
That means an average band c will get 2d10 +6-9 [11 +6-9] when he rolls dice.

Ok, so we can see what characters will do.
As mentioned above, characters will overcome a value based on the difficulty of what they're trying to do, and it looks like the values above can be used for this !!

Looking at the average difficulty value that the average person, with a band c skill or attribute, can succeed at we have a value of 2d10 +6-9 to overcome a difficulty value of 6-9 about 1/2 the time.

That infers there are bands of difficulty, from band a = value of 1-2 to band b = value of 3-5 to band c = value of 6-9, etc.

Well, that looks promising.
But I don't think the variability of numbers will help the game run faster - so lets streamline things.

Attributes and skills have band a = value of 1 [instead of 1-2], band b = value of 3 [instead of 3-5], band c = value of 6 [instead of 6-9], etc.

This makes the dice roll to do anything 2d10 +1 or +3 or +6, etc
Much nicer and faster.

In the same way, difficulty values become band a = value of 1, band b = value of 3, band c = value of 6, etc.

Now, one of the things I've seen in game designs that I like are varying degrees of success - I feel it adds more to the game, and allows extra results for succeeding at things.

But how to implement it ??
Just a simple minimum dice roll [critical success] and maximum dice roll [critical failure] ??
Why can't the existing values be used ??

This would become, succeed by value of 1 = band a success, succeed by value of 3 = band b success, succeed by value of 6 = band c success, and so on.

that would give us...
2d10 +6 to overcome a difficulty of 6, with success value of 1, 3, 6

So, it looks like we have a set of attribute/skill values, a set of difficulty values and a set of success values.

It's not finished, but a good core is there.

Doing Things 1

One of my biggest challenges was the mechanics to be used - without knowing how things are done, it's difficult to make characters.

My basic mechanics choices have all been done before, which is Ok as I'm not trying to be radically different, and could be summed as :-

• xDy + modifiers or less - roll a limited number of dice to get a number less than attribute or skill
• xDy + modifiers v z - roll a limited number of dice to get a number more than the difficulty
• skill/attributeD6 v z - roll a number of dice equal to attribute/skill to get a number more than the difficulty
• D% + modifiers or less - roll D% to get a number less than skill or attribute
• D% + modifiers v z - roll D% to get a number more than difficulty
• xDy + skill + attribute + modifier v z - roll a limited number of dice, adding a skill number and an attribute number to get more than the difficulty

Phew, that's just some of the choices.

Looking at the choices, helps sort skill and attribute values.

For instance, if I want to keep things simple and use 3d6 to do things, my range is 3-18 and characters should have a value of approx 10-12 to be able to succeed roughly 1/2 the time.

That means either attributes and skills have to be in the range of 3-18 [probably 1-20 would be easier], so doing something can be done by rolling less than the attribute or skill on a 3d6 roll, or adding a skill number and an attribute number together would produce such a number.

In a similar way, if attributes and skills are to be rated on a scale of 1-6 [with 1 being the lowest, 3 being average and 6 being the highest], then an average charter would have 3+3 = 6 as his average have to do things.

Not so good for rolling 3d6 and trying to roll less than the accumulated number [6 or less on a roll of 3d6 is tough], but could be done by using a roll of 1d10 [6 or less on a roll of 1d10 is not too hard].

Rolling 3+3 = 6 d6 dice is another option to do things, where the results of each d6 are added to end with a total more than the difficulty.

Looking through the options above, I think I'd like to use 2d10 or 3d6 for characters to do things - it keeps the number of dice low, keeps the number used for doing things low and that should make it fast to get things done.