What Mechanics or Systems Do You NEED?

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, if I have a base competency I dont have expectations on continual character improvement. When I played E6 back in 3E/PF1 I realized I could make a level 6 PC and essentially play it forever as long as the exploration and political intrigue keeps up; Just like my Traveller games. Also, the Traveller examples dont make much sense to me in improvement anyways. After basic training you gain a bump in 1-3 skills every 4 years (and sometimes none at all). If you use most of the skill improvement rules the character is likely to outpace chargen on development anyways. Its just not D&D proportions so folks feel its not right.

I didn't expect a lot of it; as I said, it had big chunky skills that you picked up over time. It was that you couldn't pick them up at all except by training. That doesn't fit my perception of reality or fiction.

 

[payn]

Its funny, but it never felt that deadly to me. I think I lost one character in play across two campaigns. I couldn't say that about, say, RuneQuest.

I found it only gets super dealy when you are using power armor and military grade weapons; which I hardly ever did. Which is why I find the Traveller is just a military game meme very strange.

 

[payn]

I didn't expect a lot of it; as I said, it had big chunky skills that you picked up over time. It was that you couldn't pick them up at all except by training. That doesn't fit my perception of reality or fiction.

Im having a hard time thinking of any RPGs that work that way anyways. Call of Cthulhu is the only one I can think of at the moment that has you improve by doing. In D&D you can improve at picking locks, swimming, or even using a sword without doing any of those things in practice or training just by leveling. So, im guessing this is a pretty common disconnect and complaint across the entire plethora of options.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I found it only gets super dealy when you are using power armor and military grade weapons; which I hardly ever did. Which is why I find the Traveller is just a military game meme very strange.

Even with those it didn't seem that bad because you had to either take a really massive hit all at one, which even most of the military weapons won't reliably do, or take a bunch of lesser hits and not figure out it was time to back out of the fight.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Im having a hard time thinking of any RPGs that work that way anyways. Call of Cthulhu is the only one I can think of at the moment that has you improve by doing. In D&D you can improve at picking locks, swimming, or even using a sword without doing any of those things in practice or training just by leveling. So, im guessing this is a pretty common disconnect and complaint across the entire plethora of options.

Well, as you mention, the whole BRP line, and even games with experience systems sometimes have assigned-experience subsystems so that you need to spend some of it on things you used. It wasn't actually all that uncommon in the 80's to have a closer connection than a experience system usually does. It just wasn't one of those mechanics that generally survived too well because it requires more complicated bookkeeping than a simple experience system, whether used directly or as a level-step control.

 

[Starfox]

Laurent starts the game with Wits, Investigation and Empathy all at 4. To advance in any of these would mean Laurent would go from one of the best to the very best in these things. That could possibly happen, but it's fairly unlikely, which when it comes to these things in real life, jives with my understanding of how the world works. At certain levels of proficiency just maintaining it can be a challenge.

It all depends on the level of heroism/cinematic style of the game, making this a matter of taste. I recall the Western RPG (at least in its earlier Swedish-only editions) required you to spend hours maintaining your skills, but I personally don't like that idea very much. My games are more heroic. I have no problem whatsoever with your game being different from mine. To each their own!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Some means of allowing for more than just binary pass/fail results.

Some form of meaningful consequence for characters beyond hit point loss.

 

[pemerton]

I get part of his point; as I've noted before, its odd to have people never improve at tasks they do, no matter how long. I'm not even sure it makes sense given the big chunky skill bonuses traditional Trav has.

Traveller does have improvement rules. They're in Book 2.

 

[pemerton]

I guess what I NEED is (i) a way to establish situation, and (ii) a way to resolve a player's declared actions for their PCs.

I've played RPGs where I've had to get part or all of (i) and (ii) from outside the game as presented in its rules - eg Cthulhu Dark. So I'm prepared to improvise a bit.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Traveller does have improvement rules. They're in Book 2.

Unless I'm misremembering, however, they're training rules, not learn-by-doing, which is what I'm talking about.