That said, I promised that the next time CPS would post something just to annoy other people he disagreed with, I would add this to the conversation:

Brevity is the soul of wit, CPS, so I'm pretty dense by that metric.

Also, Elior, this is another issue with the d100. However, if you give players a good baseline competence in things you can then get rid of the bloat of +10 bonuses in the game and just focus on the player doing something interesting. As a side benefit, you now lose the player fishing for those bonuses.

And again, the baseline for the game should be 2/3 times successful, probably more given the d100. DoS should play strongly into how successful something actually is, with less degrees being very minimal successes. The system sucks at having interesting things happen consistently, and upping success would help a lot with that.

I agree. I think it would work but in order to do so, I would remove all WS / BS increases and only give weapon mods and things like having high ground a +5.

I think that this would be a point where you could just have a binary "advantage/disadvantage" system where you either roll at a single penalty or roll at a single bonus.

Also, in terms of scaling, I think it would be simplest to just take advantage of the DoS system. Give characters bonus DoS but keeping them in that same 2/3 or so probability. They still fail, but when they hit it becomes much deadlier.

Gaunt, if you eliminate the bonus system from the math, there's nothing for players to hunt for. And if you don't give number values to everything players will jut be more creative in bonus hunting rather than always going for high ground, aim, etc.

Thats suggesting players are thinking all similar - they are not.

Some like systematic bonus-hunting and the thrill of optimizing math.

Not everyone is creative, nor does everyone wanna be creative.

Creativity is something nice, but there are also enough roleplayers in this imperfect world that are not overly creative, yet still enjoy playing very much in living a story & doing tactical thinking.

the flaw of the rules is only capturing half of this. Can't you perfectly picture a primitive guard, a master with a flintlock, having some difficulty with a lasgun? that handicap, however, would not be the same as that of character who doesn't know how to operate either rifles or laser weapons.

I could also see a person that has been using advanced weaponry their whole life having difficulty loading a black powder musket.

That said, I promised that the next time CPS would post something just to annoy other people he disagreed with, I would add this to the conversation:

We might see this pic more often in the near future then love it !

the flaw of the rules is only capturing half of this. Can't you perfectly picture a primitive guard, a master with a flintlock, having some difficulty with a lasgun? that handicap, however, would not be the same as that of character who doesn't know how to operate either rifles or laser weapons.

I could also see a person that has been using advanced weaponry their whole life having difficulty loading a black powder musket.

Thats why I think Low-Tech should be differ between ranged and melee at least.

In 40k, an average citizen is more likely able to use a knife than a bow or musket.

My intent wasn't to annoy anyone - it was to communicate the difficulty some people have grasping the position of myself and Nimsim. Elior's 2 posts at the top of this page perfectly encapsulate this. By painting the issue as "well let's just make everyone succeed all the time and not have negative modifiers since you probably think those are unfun too" he's really missing the forest for the trees. We say "competency taxes are not fun" and they hear "I want want want everything and can't be told 'no'" - a failure to communicate.

svs maybe you could explain the goblin d20 thing because I'm not getting it. I have no real love for the d20 system and every one of my posts is already accompanied by a goblin. Is it from something?

My intent wasn't to annoy anyone - it was to communicate the difficulty some people have grasping the position of myself and Nimsim. Elior's 2 posts at the top of this page perfectly encapsulate this. By painting the issue as "well let's just make everyone succeed all the time and not have negative modifiers since you probably think those are unfun too" he's really missing the forest for the trees. We say "competency taxes are not fun" and they hear "I want want want everything and can't be told 'no'" - a failure to communicate.

svs maybe you could explain the goblin d20 thing because I'm not getting it. I have no real love for the d20 system and every one of my posts is already accompanied by a goblin. Is it from something?

The only failure is to see the sarcasm in what I said. ;-)

My intent wasn't to annoy anyone - it was to communicate the difficulty some people have grasping the position of myself and Nimsim. Elior's 2 posts at the top of this page perfectly encapsulate this. By painting the issue as "well let's just make everyone succeed all the time and not have negative modifiers since you probably think those are unfun too" he's really missing the forest for the trees. We say "competency taxes are not fun" and they hear "I want want want everything and can't be told 'no'" - a failure to communicate.

svs maybe you could explain the goblin d20 thing because I'm not getting it. I have no real love for the d20 system and every one of my posts is already accompanied by a goblin. Is it from something?

Artificial naivity - interesting strategy. But you used that too much recently.

Phone posting so no quotes

Which wasn't even here this time, for which I thank you.

Honestly, that wouldn't be a bad thing were it not for how awful the probabilities of success are. Although I am more than aware of the mathematical equivalence, there is a lot to be said for the psychological impact of adding things rather than penalizing. I brought up in another thread that weapon proficiencies should just give you a flat bonus to a specific weapon and that otherwise all weapon proficiencies are the same. I'd be fine with that. And, here's an idea, recognize how **** the probability to start is, even with a maxed weapon skill, and account for that by allowing this weapon specialty. In general, characters should be succeeding at stuff about 2/3 of the time.

I'm not sure I agree with the 2/3 though. But that is a matter of taste, and neither something we're likely to agree on here and now, nor indeed something we need to agree on here and now.

I have been trying to explain (for a while now) locally how the WH-RPGs are systems of modifiers, not system of penalties. That is, your basic roll does not represent your best case probability (like many assume) but a value to modify.

Yeah, you are being a grognard about this. First off, I think its laughable that you're putting down "new and shiney" as a bad thing when you're posting about a game where you have chainsaw axes. If you're going to condescend about an immature attitude, keep in mind the position you're doing it from.

I also don't see anything fundamentally new and shiney about chain axes. More something dirty and depressing. But to each their own I suppose.

As for the position I'm doing it from? Just another poster I suppose, and one used to being misinterpreted in writing by now.

Also, the "bread and butter" talents are boring as hell, and are basically just having you pay for competence. Players are complaining about "samey" characters because everyone has to buy the same things to have generally functional characters. You get an issue where players are being incentivized to buy all the competence to start, followed by the obviously best talents, followed by worse ones. Players who deviate from that end up with less versatile characters that the system doesn't support doing a lot.

And you would get talent bloat regardless of having all cool talents or not, because that's how publishing works as that's what players and GMs will actually buy books for.

Yes it's based on experience. Players all have natural tendencies, but the system they use is going to guide them in how those tendencies come out. People obsessed with optimization will take as much as the system gives them as creative players will do the same. If the system eliminates most of the optimization and "false choices" it both reduces bloat and allows more room for players to think of creative things and actually run them well. I'm going to take a guess that your experience may not have included a lot of systems that encourage creativity through the rules, although I could be wrong.

And I must admit, in my experince, people are generally rather less creative than they think they are.

Do you know how you earn that? It's not a case where a player just says this out of the blue and it happens. You earn these things by working together on a story that puts you in the position to do it. That's it. These things need to have story and dramatic weight, and those are where the sense of them being earned comes from. It doesn't come from "well I've been playing long enough to buy horse riding, get a robot horse, train in fire bombs, learn how to write high gothic, and got ungodly rolls". No ones sense of earning something comes from their character sheet. It's from the story itself. I'd feel the same sense of accomplishment for doing that in the first session as I would the eighth, provided try both had the same dramatic weight. If your sense of earning something just comes from playing long enough to get bigger numbers, I have plenty of suggestions on better alternatives.

And yes, like CPS said, thanks for the old grognard chestnut of earning your chance to be a badass. As I said, these things don't happen in a vacuum, and tier weight comes from the story around them. I'd rather that the underlying system not act as such a gatekeeper to that outcome, because the story should have already done enough.

G

Brevity is the soul of wit, CPS, so I'm pretty dense by that metric.

Also, Elior, this is another issue with the d100. However, if you give players a good baseline competence in things you can then get rid of the bloat of +10 bonuses in the game and just focus on the player doing something interesting. As a side benefit, you now lose the player fishing for those bonuses.

And again, the baseline for the game should be 2/3 times successful, probably more given the d100. DoS should play strongly into how successful something actually is, with less degrees being very minimal successes. The system sucks at having interesting things happen consistently, and upping success would help a lot with that.

I agree. I think it would work but in order to do so, I would remove all WS / BS increases and only give weapon mods and things like having high ground a +5.

I think that this would be a point where you could just have a binary "advantage/disadvantage" system where you either roll at a single penalty or roll at a single bonus.

Also, in terms of scaling, I think it would be simplest to just take advantage of the DoS system. Give characters bonus DoS but keeping them in that same 2/3 or so probability. They still fail, but when they hit it becomes much deadlier.

Gaunt, if you eliminate the bonus system from the math, there's nothing for players to hunt for. And if you don't give number values to everything players will jut be more creative in bonus hunting rather than always going for high ground, aim, etc.

Thats suggesting players are thinking all similar - they are not.

Some like systematic bonus-hunting and the thrill of optimizing math.

Not everyone is creative, nor does everyone wanna be creative.

Creativity is something nice, but there are also enough roleplayers in this imperfect world that are not overly creative, yet still enjoy playing very much in living a story & doing tactical thinking.

On the other hand, I kind of have my doubts that you're going to be able to get a lot of satisfaction from a system that tries to appeal to both crowds. If you base enough things on numbers to keep the number cruncher happy, he is going to be given more weight in the story due to his greater weight in the system. If you run dungeon world, then yeah, the number cruncher isn't going to have a lot to do. If you make a hybrid of these things, chances are good that you're not going to do either well.

I'd also argue that DH really isn't that great of a system for number crunchers to actually play, given how swingy d100 is. All that work will go to waste pretty quickly once the dice hit the table.

I guess I'm saying that if you're running a game for multiple people, some of them are going to have to compromise what they're doing a bit. As CPS mentioned, I'm wondering how many times you've compromised and done a more narrative based game for your creative player as opposed to numbers heavy ones for the number cruncher. If the creative guy can find fun in a numbers heavy game, the cruncher should be able to find fun in a more narrative one.

With my group - one that is quite mixed - they indeed got to like games that differ.

The numbers cruncher even starts to enjoy the narrative parts, and the drama queen takes more part in tactical planning, even if it goes to the details.

In my opinion, a system should provide as much options as possible, because it is always easy not to use them, but harder to invent some yourself (and keep them in balance with each supplement made).

@Tenebrae

The reason why I would argue for a 2/3 success rate is that success is inherently more interesting in this system than failure is. I also added that I'd like success to start as a bare minimum with low degrees of success, in such a way that the player may have actually failed at some things (not being fatigued, looking cool, being subtle, not getting tailed) while succeeding at the main goal. I'm not advocating for complete success every time. In fact, I'd be fine with having complete success 1/3, complete failure 1/3, and a mix of both 1/3. Id guess that's more in line with what you'd like.

Making d100 a system of modifiers tends to obfuscate the system from players and heavily favors system mastery of pleads who know the laundry list of modifiers. The modifiers also don't account for its swinginess.

My point on punishing players for deviating from Conpetency>Best Talent>Worse Talents results in a lot of very samey character, and dis-incentivizes creativity. I know that people constantly say that creative players will be creative regardless, but shouldn't games based around telling a story reward people more or at least equally for story as for number crunching? That's not actually an impossible goal.

Most of my observations are based on Fate, Dungeon World, Apocalypse World, and WFRP 3E.

And if you agree with me about a sense of accomplishment coming from the story, then why are you using sense of accomplishment as an argument against changing system mechanics?

the flaw of the rules is only capturing half of this. Can't you perfectly picture a primitive guard, a master with a flintlock, having some difficulty with a lasgun? that handicap, however, would not be the same as that of character who doesn't know how to operate either rifles or laser weapons.

I could also see a person that has been using advanced weaponry their whole life having difficulty loading a black powder musket.

Thats why I think Low-Tech should be differ between ranged and melee at least.

In 40k, an average citizen is more likely able to use a knife than a bow or musket.

I heartily agree with that!

But a Low-Tech skill is not the same as simple weapons, I would say. It is, however, quite easy to use a knife.

As Aria said, just stick them with the pointy end.

The reason why I would argue for a 2/3 success rate is that success is inherently more interesting in this system than failure is. I also added that I'd like success to start as a bare minimum with low degrees of success, in such a way that the player may have actually failed at some things (not being fatigued, looking cool, being subtle, not getting tailed) while succeeding at the main goal. I'm not advocating for complete success every time. In fact, I'd be fine with having complete success 1/3, complete failure 1/3, and a mix of both 1/3. Id guess that's more in line with what you'd like.

Your second version is... maybe more in line with what I'd like. Personally I'm not even sure what I'd like in that regard.

Making d100 a system of modifiers tends to obfuscate the system from players and heavily favors system mastery of pleads who know the laundry list of modifiers. The modifiers also don't account for its swinginess.

It's not a good die. I liked the 3d6 bell-curve of GURPS or the multiple successes of Shadowrun or Storyteller.

This is perhaps my greatest dislike about the WH-RPG series.

My point on punishing players for deviating from Competency>Best Talent>Worse Talents results in a lot of very samey character, and dis-incentivizes creativity. I know that people constantly say that creative players will be creative regardless, but shouldn't games based around telling a story reward people more or at least equally for story as for number crunching? That's not actually an impossible goal.

And if you agree with me about a sense of accomplishment coming from the story, then why are you using sense of accomplishment as an argument against changing system mechanics?

You (appearantly?) argue that wider competency leads to greater stories. Is this correct?

I find that very rewarding stories arise from incompetency. From "We don't know how to do this, but we have to!" It's certainly not the only type of stories possible, but they are stories I find interesting and have seen people enjoy.

About half the people I play with like a style I beieve is known as 'Gutterpunk'. These are the people who will play point based systems with half the normal points, because otherwise "we'd actually be good at stuff."

This groups would complain if there were no weapon training talents because "What, you mean that just because I can use a lasgun I can use a slug thrower? But the differences re HUGE! the slug thrower has recoil!" and then complain about suspension of disbelief.

The other half less so, but then they tend to be so good at making the numbers dance that they shouldn't have more than half the normal points anyway.

This group would happily laugh with me when I suggested subtracting 20 from WS and BS and then have talents that add +20, because they've done math enough to instantly realise that there's no difference.

And this lot (usuall) still makes interesting characters, just from a different PoV than the first group. Or sometimes from both PoVs.

Double post, sorry

Yeah, this differs by group, but I'd argue that your group enjoying playing incompetents is more due to the skill of the GM at making failure interesting. If you're running something like I suggested with the 1/3 success/failure/mix, the rules can provide guidelines on how powerful to make the failures and how powerful to make the successes in order to adjust for group competency. I think its a lot more elegant to base the group dynamic on narrative effects rather than probabilities.

Go look up Sixth World Dungeon World hack. It uses the dungeon world system in the shadowrun universe and implements that idea of mixing success and failures.

Also, when it comes to people complaining about weapon realism, my eyes tend to glaze over. There are lots of other compromises to reality made by the other skills (Medicae lets you be a medic, doctor, cell biologist, and able to treat diseases and perform complicated medical procedures; tech-use lets you use literally everything that has moving parts; intelligence accounts for memory, ability I research, accumulates knowledge, medical skill, etc). Gun fighting isn't fun in real life. The game makes sacrifices to reality to make it fun. You and your group have a dynamic, but my response to a player complaining to me is that he's free to take a penalty if he wants to but I wouldn't enforce it. And the point of the making something a bonus rather than a penalty is not for use as a house rule; it's meant to be a core part of the game, so that the bonus is what is in the player's mind rather than a penalty.

If you're really concerned about it, have being untrained in a weapon limit the DoS you can get. For extra nastiness, also increase the chance of critically failing while trying to use it (more DoF). Now you start as being able to hit someone with it, but you'll never be as good as a trained user of the weapon. Given that WS and BS are basic characteristics, and that in the future there is only war, it makes sense that everyone knows how to handle a gun. Everyone can fire a weapon successfully and point it at a guy. Only the trained can make that weapon do exactly what they want.

And the difference between adding a greater chance of critical failure versus penalizing the chance of success is that you are left with the same chance of succeeding, but at greater risk, and with an increases chance of interesting result rather than decreased.

the flaw of the rules is only capturing half of this. Can't you perfectly picture a primitive guard, a master with a flintlock, having some difficulty with a lasgun? that handicap, however, would not be the same as that of character who doesn't know how to operate either rifles or laser weapons.

I could also see a person that has been using advanced weaponry their whole life having difficulty loading a black powder musket.

Thats why I think Low-Tech should be differ between ranged and melee at least.

In 40k, an average citizen is more likely able to use a knife than a bow or musket.

I heartily agree with that!

But a Low-Tech skill is not the same as simple weapons, I would say. It is, however, quite easy to use a knife.

As Aria said, just stick them with the pointy end.

Their is a huge difference though between a skilled knife fighter and an unskilled one though. Just sayin' ;-)

the flaw of the rules is only capturing half of this. Can't you perfectly picture a primitive guard, a master with a flintlock, having some difficulty with a lasgun? that handicap, however, would not be the same as that of character who doesn't know how to operate either rifles or laser weapons.

I could also see a person that has been using advanced weaponry their whole life having difficulty loading a black powder musket.

Thats why I think Low-Tech should be differ between ranged and melee at least.

In 40k, an average citizen is more likely able to use a knife than a bow or musket.

I was thinking the same thing. I agree completely that most of the classes (With the exception of maybe the Sage.) should get the low tech (melee) talent. It is far more believable to me that a ganger would know how to make effective use of a Knife or Club/Staff than a chainblade at the beginning of the game. I Have hard time even conceiving of a Warrior not knowing how to use a bayonet or combat knife (Any warrior from any setting!). I still maintain that anyone who believes that knowing how to use a weapon is automatic (No proficiency required) is fooling themselves. When someone calls it an xp tax all I here is "I don't wanna pay for it!" I'm sorry but it's true! Using a weapon is at least as complicated as any of the Tier 1 talents listed! That said, I really liked fgdsfg's idea for how to break them up but I don't know if ffg will go with it.

Btw: Saying you learned to play with Arneson only means you learned sometime before 2009 when he died. (Sadly). However if you want to go all Grognardy: I remember learning to play with his original book (Blackmoor) when it was still in print. Some of you claiming the title of grognard make me feel really old! (Just sayin'...)

I personally get a twinge of fun when my character no longer takes a -20 penalty to shoot flamethrowers. It makes my character a more interesting, flavorful individual with unique abilities.

That's the point of requiring Weapon Training Talents to use non-standard weapons: it makes the few characters who choose to specialize in those weapons rare , and thus more interesting. Without WTTs, the 'flamer specialist' is just the guy who happens to be carrying the flamer at the time; he can just as easily hand it off to the guy to his right, in which case he becomes the 'flamer specialist'. Yawn ...

Their is a huge difference though between a skilled knife fighter and an unskilled one though. Just sayin' ;-)

Indeed!

Oh, trust me, I do know that!

But that is what we have WS for. ;-)

Wouldn't it be far more interesting if the flamer specialist was the guy who's taken talents that allow him to use Flamers more efficiently in new and interesting ways, rather than the dude who's taken a talent to dodge a boring flat penalty on his attack roll?

*Sigh* The point of weapon talents is to allow one to use weapons with Basic effectiveness. Other talents (Typically tier 2 and 3) are for the flashy special stuff! There's nothing wrong with "new shiny" stuff but you must still have the basic knowledge of the weapon in question. I'm sorry guys but, at least as far as I'm concerned, the Idea of deleting weapon proficiencies is a non starter. There are many talents/skills that encompass far less "know how" than how to use a weapon. Now, we could make arguments for how those proficiencies are broken up any way you like but to not have them? Meh...Don't see it. It's not an XP tax! It's a valid path of character development! The idea that every character knows how to use every weapon is to my mind, silly.

I completely understand the point of the weapon talents. Everyone does. What I'm arguing is that people shouldn't have to pay an XP tax to acquire basic effectiveness with their weapon of choice. Basic competence should be the standard which characters build upon, I've never been a fan of characters starting out being awful at basically everything.

Personally, I like the realism that someone who's never fired a a plasma gun in their life doesn't just pick up a plasma gun and is automatically as competent with it as they are the lasgun they've been using for 10 years.

Can't that competence be better represented with talents that present interesting, unique ways to use las weapons though?