Real skills helping your PC
Posted 27th August 2008 at 08:57 PM by Janx
I've categorized today's article under my Real2RPG (bringing real life stuff into your campaign) and RPG Philosophy (what I think about RPGs).
I think there's a real cross-over effect of what your know, and its impact on the game. It think there's two categories of this. The first category is Knowledge skills (things I learned that a normal, basic PC might not know). The second category is skills I have that immediately help my PC, compared to another player that doesn't have those skills.
The age old idea of "if I know how to make gun powder, can my PC invent it?" comes into mind, for a knowledge skill. Basically, bringing your real life knowledge into things to try in the game (be it med school, herbology, engineering, etc). The most blatant attempts at this is the gun powder trick. Where the player says, "I mix charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter and then light it, what happens?" The GM usually comes up with some lame counter of "nothing, science doesn't work in this world".
I think this is the wrong approach for the player. Instead, think about putting ranks in a skill that you know a lot about, and then using your knowledge to explain what your PC is doing when he uses that skill. Even with my meager guitar skills, my knowledge of playing will let me better describe what my bard is doing than my musically challenged DM. Using your real knowledge this way adds flavor, but doesn't give your PC an advantage.
The next step, is to use your real knowledge and appropriate ranks in a skill to advance the state of the art in the world. The trick is to start primitive. Really primitive. You can't jump in and do open heart surgey, just because you have 9 ranks in Healing. But you can start introducing the idea of sterilizing bandages, cleaning wounds and tools, as well as washing your hands before an after, to reduce infection, which might get you a +1 to your roll.
And you can justify it by "my PC has noticed that wounds tend to get red and worsen when the environment is dirty through years of tending to the wounded".
The second type of skills, is trickier. These are skills that not all players have, and you can't necessarily go to school for (though some folks have managed to improve). Two obvious ones to me are social skills and combat related skills.
Let's talk about social skills first. I take it as a fact that a persuasive person is more likely to get their way with a GM, than a non-persuasive person. Arguing with this is like arguing with the definition of "persuasive", it means to get your way with someone.
This means, that PC skills aside, a persuasive player will be more likely to convince an NPC to do someting, or get an in-game effect from the GM. This is a social skill. Not all people are good at it.
In the old days (1E), players had to be nice to NPCs and persuasive to get what they wanted. Rude and terse players seldom convinced the king to be nice to them, because the GM reacted to the player. Nowadays, (3E or higher), a tactless player can just make a Diplomacy roll. But here's the catch, a GM will probably forget to require a roll (or grant a bonus) to the socially adept player. Whereas, the tactless player will probably get asked for rolls with every rude sentence his PC utters. In short, real life skill impacts the game.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the social skills in the game. I prefer the player to role-play it out. It is jarring when a tactless player says tries to schmooze the king badly, and then says, "I rolled an 18, does he give me what I want?" There's a camp that says this is OK, because it opens the social characters up to the non-social players. I think this is hogwash, as combat skills suffer the exact same defect, yet nobody argues that the game balances it for tactical idiots.
Here's why tactical geniuses have an easier time, compared to non-tactical folks. 3E's use of the battle-grid helps reveal it. The short of it is, a tactically adept player will make better moves, get more flank opportunities, better coordinate attacks, and avoid attacks of opportunity, compared to the less combat saavy.
How many times have you played, and watched a player do things that were "stupid" compared to what you would have done, and seen that those actions incurred more damage and risk? Now some of this is due to experience, and rules knowledge, but that's my point, it's things you know and think about in a game fight, that they do not, that gives you an edge.
Here's a fun example: I played a game where our 1st level party were in a kobold tree city (think evil ewoks). The kobolds started cutting bridges. We're 60 feet up. My friend gets the idea to run and jump his dwarven monk 30' to the next platform. I tried to pause him and say "wait, tie a ...", but he thought I was trying to tell him what to do. Luckily the GM was nice enough to talk him down. The point being, I was always mindful of the tactical situation (we're high in a tree, that's a farther gap than we can jump), my friend was impulsive, and was not paying attention to such details (a common problem). My point, left to our own devices, I do fewer stupid things with my PC than he does, and with a crueler DM, my PCs would live longer.
Now being a tactical genius doesn't mean dawdling all day planning, it just means using your awareness of the situation to your advantage. Strategic geniuses are the ones who plan.
What all this means is, your social skills will help you with NPCs. Your tactical skills (knowldege of game rules, chess, situational awareness) will help you in combat. Those who don't have these real skills but have the same game scores as you are at an disadvantage.
From a role-playing perspective (as in playing a personality, not a group function), I try to act the way my PC's scores are. Low social stats, means doing less diplomacy and talking to NPCs. Lower intelligence, I tend to coordinate less with the group in combat (though I still avoid doing dumb things). I don't believe in taking sub-optimal actions just because I have bad stats. I simply avoid acting counter to those stats. Meaning the dumb guy with low charisma doesn't act as the effective leader or persuasive diplomat. I let others do it, I simply follow, in those cases. My fellow players get the impression that my PC isn't smart or suave, but I don't cause problems because of it.
In the end, my gaming philosophy is that the game need only simulate events that can't be handled in the real world. Combat and spell casting are examples. I need rules to simulate how strong my PC is and how much damage he does. I don't need rules to simulate if I out-maneuvered you in combat, because if I'm skilled and you're not, I will.
A counter-argument to this logic is, that if the game has rules so I can have a strength level that allows me to pick up cars (something I personally can't do), there should be rules to allow someone else to schmooze the king (something he can't do). That's probably fair. I'd just like it to not be jarring to my sensibility.
I think there's a real cross-over effect of what your know, and its impact on the game. It think there's two categories of this. The first category is Knowledge skills (things I learned that a normal, basic PC might not know). The second category is skills I have that immediately help my PC, compared to another player that doesn't have those skills.
The age old idea of "if I know how to make gun powder, can my PC invent it?" comes into mind, for a knowledge skill. Basically, bringing your real life knowledge into things to try in the game (be it med school, herbology, engineering, etc). The most blatant attempts at this is the gun powder trick. Where the player says, "I mix charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter and then light it, what happens?" The GM usually comes up with some lame counter of "nothing, science doesn't work in this world".
I think this is the wrong approach for the player. Instead, think about putting ranks in a skill that you know a lot about, and then using your knowledge to explain what your PC is doing when he uses that skill. Even with my meager guitar skills, my knowledge of playing will let me better describe what my bard is doing than my musically challenged DM. Using your real knowledge this way adds flavor, but doesn't give your PC an advantage.
The next step, is to use your real knowledge and appropriate ranks in a skill to advance the state of the art in the world. The trick is to start primitive. Really primitive. You can't jump in and do open heart surgey, just because you have 9 ranks in Healing. But you can start introducing the idea of sterilizing bandages, cleaning wounds and tools, as well as washing your hands before an after, to reduce infection, which might get you a +1 to your roll.
And you can justify it by "my PC has noticed that wounds tend to get red and worsen when the environment is dirty through years of tending to the wounded".
The second type of skills, is trickier. These are skills that not all players have, and you can't necessarily go to school for (though some folks have managed to improve). Two obvious ones to me are social skills and combat related skills.
Let's talk about social skills first. I take it as a fact that a persuasive person is more likely to get their way with a GM, than a non-persuasive person. Arguing with this is like arguing with the definition of "persuasive", it means to get your way with someone.
This means, that PC skills aside, a persuasive player will be more likely to convince an NPC to do someting, or get an in-game effect from the GM. This is a social skill. Not all people are good at it.
In the old days (1E), players had to be nice to NPCs and persuasive to get what they wanted. Rude and terse players seldom convinced the king to be nice to them, because the GM reacted to the player. Nowadays, (3E or higher), a tactless player can just make a Diplomacy roll. But here's the catch, a GM will probably forget to require a roll (or grant a bonus) to the socially adept player. Whereas, the tactless player will probably get asked for rolls with every rude sentence his PC utters. In short, real life skill impacts the game.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the social skills in the game. I prefer the player to role-play it out. It is jarring when a tactless player says tries to schmooze the king badly, and then says, "I rolled an 18, does he give me what I want?" There's a camp that says this is OK, because it opens the social characters up to the non-social players. I think this is hogwash, as combat skills suffer the exact same defect, yet nobody argues that the game balances it for tactical idiots.
Here's why tactical geniuses have an easier time, compared to non-tactical folks. 3E's use of the battle-grid helps reveal it. The short of it is, a tactically adept player will make better moves, get more flank opportunities, better coordinate attacks, and avoid attacks of opportunity, compared to the less combat saavy.
How many times have you played, and watched a player do things that were "stupid" compared to what you would have done, and seen that those actions incurred more damage and risk? Now some of this is due to experience, and rules knowledge, but that's my point, it's things you know and think about in a game fight, that they do not, that gives you an edge.
Here's a fun example: I played a game where our 1st level party were in a kobold tree city (think evil ewoks). The kobolds started cutting bridges. We're 60 feet up. My friend gets the idea to run and jump his dwarven monk 30' to the next platform. I tried to pause him and say "wait, tie a ...", but he thought I was trying to tell him what to do. Luckily the GM was nice enough to talk him down. The point being, I was always mindful of the tactical situation (we're high in a tree, that's a farther gap than we can jump), my friend was impulsive, and was not paying attention to such details (a common problem). My point, left to our own devices, I do fewer stupid things with my PC than he does, and with a crueler DM, my PCs would live longer.
Now being a tactical genius doesn't mean dawdling all day planning, it just means using your awareness of the situation to your advantage. Strategic geniuses are the ones who plan.
What all this means is, your social skills will help you with NPCs. Your tactical skills (knowldege of game rules, chess, situational awareness) will help you in combat. Those who don't have these real skills but have the same game scores as you are at an disadvantage.
From a role-playing perspective (as in playing a personality, not a group function), I try to act the way my PC's scores are. Low social stats, means doing less diplomacy and talking to NPCs. Lower intelligence, I tend to coordinate less with the group in combat (though I still avoid doing dumb things). I don't believe in taking sub-optimal actions just because I have bad stats. I simply avoid acting counter to those stats. Meaning the dumb guy with low charisma doesn't act as the effective leader or persuasive diplomat. I let others do it, I simply follow, in those cases. My fellow players get the impression that my PC isn't smart or suave, but I don't cause problems because of it.
In the end, my gaming philosophy is that the game need only simulate events that can't be handled in the real world. Combat and spell casting are examples. I need rules to simulate how strong my PC is and how much damage he does. I don't need rules to simulate if I out-maneuvered you in combat, because if I'm skilled and you're not, I will.
A counter-argument to this logic is, that if the game has rules so I can have a strength level that allows me to pick up cars (something I personally can't do), there should be rules to allow someone else to schmooze the king (something he can't do). That's probably fair. I'd just like it to not be jarring to my sensibility.
Total Comments 0
Comments
Total Trackbacks 0
And yet another word from our sponsors
