Idea: Talent Categories

By ProfessorTerrible, in Genesys

I've been slowly homebrewing my own science fiction/space opera setting and have been studying the topic of talents, both the pyramid in the core rulebook and the specializations in the expanded players' guide and the Star Wars FFG game. I am trying to balance between three competing issues in how I handle talents and progression:

  • Flexibility: I want my players to be able to take the toolbox and build what they want to, as much as possible. I personally love the flexibility of the Talent Pyramid.
  • Direction: I've GM'ed and played enough (generally, not specifically in Genesys) enough to know that, while flexibility is great, there is such a thing as too many choices at once, especially when a player is relatively new to a game. A sense of direction is often quite welcome, which is the advantage of classes in other systems.
  • Work: I really don't want to do an excessive amount of work designing multiple individual specializations, like is seen in Star Wars FFG

I've been looking through topics, but am yet to find an answer to my quandary so I thought I'd just ask it.

Has there been an approach yet developed by anyone that finds a happy medium between the structure and sense of direction that comes with Specialization Trees without losing all the flexibility that seems to be gained from the Talent Pyramid?

Common Sense.

No, really. No joke. When building your character you have a lot of choices. The Star Wars specializations and their talent trees take away the massive freedom of choice compared to the Genesys talent pyramid, which in turn makes it awfully hard to get to those Tier 5 talents. Star Wars does have a clear Direction , where the Work has been done for you, while Genesys gives great Flexibility at the cost of slower progress towards Tier 5. Of course, Genesys would need a lot of work to incorporate talent trees if you build them yourself. Simply copying them from Star Wars with a slight reskin of skill names, removing the Force, and sneaking in some of the newer talents appropriate to the theme of the talent tree reduces that work load. Also, I think there have been thousands of new talent trees made for Genesys. Somewhere out there, especially after the Expanded Player's Guide came out, but probably before that already. Ask around and see if people have them.

Then, to keep flexibility within those talent trees, you might have a small group of talents that players are always able to choose outside of those talent trees. Why is Grit or Toughened part of a talent tree at all? Simply have Grit and Toughened, and a couple of others, disappear from talent trees, fill them with other talents appropriate for the specialization.

Another thing you might do (more work) is to rebuild talent trees, so that the left-most column is always empty, for free choices, and the other three columns have their (snaking) path through the tree with all those thematic talents.

But what about that common sense? Well, to keep the work load as light as possible, simply use Genesys as is. No changes, no additions, no copies. Use common sense and a dialogue with the player, even if they are completely new to the game, and while keeping the flexibility, have common sense be the guide to pick new talents to keep the character on a certain path, to maintain its direction.

I toyed with both sides of this for a bit. In the end, I stayed with the Genesys pyramid, but began putting more requirements between talents where they made sense. So, to get to that uber tier 5 melee ability, you need some requirements of lower tier combat talents first, not just a tier 5 slot opened up. That way, you can't have a character who has been unlocking political and mercantile talents all along, unlock a tier 5 for the first time and suddenly pick a tier 5 combat talent. You still have the open decisions of the pyramid (unlike the talent trees), but it's a tad more realistic.

My personal preference is to stick with the pyramid because of all the work required for talent trees and that most of it goes to waste.

That being said, if you really like talent trees, then talk with your players and work with them to make their own custom talent trees! That way you get the best of all worlds!

Definitely the pyramid. The one aspect I didn't appreciate in narrative dice Star Wars was the inflexibility in character progression. In Genesys though, you do not have to hop around several careers to acquire certain talents and have to buy a ton of talents that are of no use to you, you can truly develope your character freely. @Xcapobl , thus tier 5 talents don't necessarily have to be more expensive, if you can focus on those tier 1 to 4 talents, you really want to get.

2 hours ago, DarthDude said:

Definitely the pyramid. The one aspect I didn't appreciate in narrative dice Star Wars was the inflexibility in character progression. In Genesys though, you do not have to hop around several careers to acquire certain talents and have to buy a ton of talents that are of no use to you, you can truly develope your character freely. @Xcapobl , thus tier 5 talents don't necessarily have to be more expensive, if you can focus on those tier 1 to 4 talents, you really want to get.

Depends on the way you look at it.

Star Wars (talent tree with a Tier 1 to Tier 5 line straight down, they do exist). 5 +10 +15 +20 +25 = 75 XP.

Genesys (Talent Pyramid, meaning you must have more lower Tier than higher first). 5 +5 +10 +5 +10 +15 +5 +10 +15 +20 +5 +10 +15 +20 +25 = 175 XP.

Yep. The shortest possible route from Tier 1 to Tier 5 is slightly more expensive in Genesys. And most Talent Trees in Star Wars don't force you onto a detour the size of 100 XP. What really makes Star Wars Talent progression so expensive is, as you indicated, career/specialization hopping. But total flexibility to get that first Tier 5 talent in Genesys does come at a minimum cost of 100 XP.

And then there is the fact that sometimes, depending on your character and talent tree of course, in Star Wars you may simply follow the connection, and slide horizontally to the next Tier 5 talent for just 25 XP. In Genesys that means getting another string of Tiers 1 through 4 inclusive first. Another 75 XP for that second Tier 5. Not to mention the fact that in Genesys those ranked talents Tier-up. When I could get Dedication, I would probably not waste time, effort and XP on my fifth rank of Toughened (if I had Tiers 4, or even 3 of that already).

Don't get me wrong, I like the Talent Pyramid just as well. And sometimes I do see the restrictions in the Star Wars Talent Trees. I mean, the pilot trees from the first books remained the same. They never changed to incorporate newer talents from newer publications. So an Edge smuggler pilot could never learn to perform a Barrel Roll without diving onto other careers. That is a problem of a whole other magnitude if you ask me.

Thanks for all your thoughts.

I had a thought bubble about sorting talents into broad themes reflective of the setting (Military, Underworld, Mercantile etc) and giving some kind of modest XP discount if you have certain other "Foundation Talents" (just what I called them in my head), with the Foundation Talents representing distinct training or background elements. I didn't want to sort them by categories like "combat", "social", etc because that would probably encourage players into a mentality of hyper-specializing.

To give an example:

Quote

Free Trader (Foundation Talent: Commerce)
Tier: 2
Activation: Passive
Ranked: No

Negotiation, Ranged (Light), and Knowledge (Commerce) are now career skills for your character. The cost to purchase commerce talents is reduced by 5 XP (to a minimum of 5 XP).

In this idea for a foundation talent for the Commerce/Merchant theme I've deliberately given skills across categories, including a combat skill. My thinking here is that in a space opera/sci-fi setting, even an honest trader will want to know how to handle sidearm to deal with pirates or unsavoury characters. Negotiation is an obvious application for a trader, and a knowledge area is similar.

Players could still take talents they don't have a foundation for, they'd just need to buy those talents at full price or (if they thought they'd be going into more than one) they can buy into that theme with a foundation talent. It would create an incentive-based bottleneck and sense of direction while still affording them their freedom?

For a military-themed talent, the skills might be Coercion, Ranged (Heavy), and Athletics?

As I said... this is an idle thought bubble I had from reading the replies and mulling this issue over. However, I wonder if this might help to provide something toward that direction/freedom balance that I am aiming for? I feel like I've also essentially retooled the role of careers in character creation, and I'm not sure what I think of that.

4 hours ago, ProfessorTerrible said:

For a military-themed talent, the skills might be Coercion, Ranged (Heavy), and Athletics?

Depending on the military. I would rather see Discipline than Coercion in most armed forces, the other two skills seem logical right off the bat. however, most Airforce organizations are part of a nation's armed forces as well, even if they feel rather superior to the lowly grunts down there in the dirt. A form of Piloting and Gunnery would be rather appropriate.

With this base idea,however, you might have a foundation talent that offers basic stuff (Brawl, Ranged Light, and Knowledge Warfare, for example) and then have talents following up this foundation with specific branches. Air Force Training: Piloting and Gunnery become additional Career skills. Mechanized Armed Forces Training: Driving and Gunnery become additional Career skills. Commando Training, Melee and Stealth become additional Career skills. something like that.

And that's just an example about armed forces. You could have a financial talent string, one for sciences (with medical, psychological and physics subsidiary talents), one for criminality (hackers, thugs, burglars, etc).

Edited in:

And yes, this might mess a bit with the basics of Genesys Careers. Basically, you are now making advanced Careers through the talents system. But then again, Genesys (and in some way, Star Wars) are not aware of people rethinking their lives and reschooling themselves. One might have been a mariner for several years, enlist in courses or school or some form of academy, and start a way new Career that way. Real life example, I have seen a guy who was a professional butcher turn into a prison guard by reschooling. In Star Wars you might buy into a Specialization from a different Career. Genesys seems to allow this through the talent system, where you use talents instead of XP and specializations to get new Career skills and turn around your character's life.

Cheers.

Edited by Xcapobl
Careers thoughts

You raise a good point in the diversity of the military.

I think the important thing would be to have multiple foundation talents in each theme, that reflect different ways to buy into that theme as well as the different obvious careers in that theme. As you say, a pilot would probably get more use from Piloting and Ranged (Light), giving them their ability to fly and skill with a sidearm for self-defence when they aren't in their plane. Or a quartermaster would be a military-based negotiator, both requisitioning but also haggling with different supply chains to get what their unit needs.

I really appreciate everyone's thoughts. It's given me some good stuff to chew over.

So happy I came across this. I’ve been considering doing something similar with my Genesys fantasy campaign setting. I initially made a class system that was way over the top (36 classes!) and have been considering replacing that with a free form “class” system where you select skills with some restrictions and then you can select “talent packages” organized by theme.

Did you ever fully pursue this idea? If so, how did it go? Although I’m using a different setting, I’m curious to see how you built your talent categories.

A simple way to present this concept would be to use “Keywords”. Every talent has a couple of Keywords, every career has a couple of Keywords. If one or more of the keywords match when you’re choosing a talent then it’s tier rating is reduced by 1

Just my quick opinion:

1.) You have standard/improved/supreme versions of talents so why not have different groupings of talents. Have it as a “suggested” group of talents.

2.) You might have some special rule governing talent groups. For example you might say, “If you possess at least two talents in the same talent group, once per session you may add <AD> to a skill check using Ranged, Knowledge (Warfare), or Leadership, a number of times equal to the number of talents you possess in this talent group.” That might even in the Tier 1 talent. Use existing or new talents but the Tier 1 is a base talent for the group.

Lastly, to @ProfessorTerrible , could I use this as a question on The Forge? It so good re a discussion.

Hooly! Not the OP here, but I would LOVE to hear this on The Forge.