I think you run into a lot of problems with using the background. It's just too broad. Also what if your background is your profession. Like your group is going for a pirate campaign and you picked the pirate background. You would get a skill bonus on practically anything you do.
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Approaches to Skills - Ideas Thread
- Thread starter Balesir
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I think you run into a lot of problems with using the background. It's just too broad. Also what if your background is your profession. Like your group is going for a pirate campaign and you picked the pirate background. You would get a skill bonus on practically anything you do.
I could see two ways of handling this. One is to say that pirate is not a legitimate background for a pirate campaign - that every PC has to have a landlubber-ish background that explains how they became a pirate.
The second way would just be to say, OK, everyone's a pirate, so all DCs are set relative to the difficulty for a pirate, and so it ends up being a game of pure stat rolls. (Except for whatever skills are gained from one's class.)
Ridley's Cohort
First Post
To a degree, that is inevitable. If I were running an Arthurian Campaign, would we complain that "Chivalric Knight" background seems pretty darn useful?
If the campaign is strongly focused, there will be an onus on the DM to help create non-lousy options that provide differentiation. Sure Pirate is a good background. But could Maritine Merchant work okay? How about Seamonster Hunter?
As long as a few of your comrades choose Pirate, are you really required? Let them duel while swinging on ropes. You find something else that contributes.
In 3e, Spot and Listen to the most consistently useful skills. It was hardly true that everyone needed that skill. Every once in a blue moon, you sucked up a Surprise Round. But if a couple of comrades were there to try and cover your arse, you might be better off with some other skill.
It's mostly the degree of things. If you broadly define your skills on your background, then it becomes too easily to justify a background bonus on everything. I'm a pirate and I'm picking a lock that must mean that pirates know how to pick locks because I'm a pirate and I'm doing that. Then that same logic that be called on no matter what you do. I'm a pirate and I am cooking a birthday cake.
That's why I like narrowly defined skills over broad backgrounds. If you have the open lock skill, it's a lot harder to claim you should get to use it to fix a boat.
CasvalRemDeikun
Adventurer
Well, apparently I have given you XP recently, so you get a post quote instead. Hooray for you.
This definitely gives me hope with the skill system, since one of my big fears, which seems to be related to how skills are displayed on character sheets (perhaps just how they are worded), is that Underwater Basketweaving could be a skill at some point.
Balesir
Adventurer
This feeds into what I was getting at about PrimeTime Adventures; given loosely defined "backgrounds" players will, quite naturally, try to get the bonus from their chosen background to apply to as wide an array of things as possible. Broadly, this breaks down into two approaches to such bonuses that are not completely mutually exclusive, but are very different in focus:
1) Skills, backgrounds, etc. are limited by scope. For this, each skill or background should have a clearly defined set of criteria by which it can be decided whether or not it applies to a given situation. These criteria are much better if carefully thought out beforehand, so this approach favours a limited list of skills that are carefully designed in advance in an attempt to be clear, balanced and to avoid "subset skills", "obsoleted skills" and so on.
2) Bonuses from skills, backgrounds and other such "traits" are limited by the number of times they may be applied - note that FATE does this by requiring a Fate Point expenditure. Now the traits do not need to be so rigorously defined; they can even be left for the players to write their own to best fit their character concept. The actual "rule" in use is based on the limited frequency of bonus use, so no "power creep" or "obsoleting" or such like is really possible - but some people object to this on the basis of "verisimilitude".
I believed you the first time
The context of the original discussion, though, was that [MENTION=19265]Connorsrpg[/MENTION] was saying that he and his group really liked the "unlimited skills" notion apparent in the playtest materials. I think such a system can be done in a well conceived way, but to have no limitation in the rules at all for either the scope or the quantity of skill bonus use I think will lead to a plethora of issues down the road.
I think there's a third option - which is to get the player to justify the bonus by detailing a concrete example by asking lots of questions and using that to feedback into the game.
Which sounds kinda mealy-mouthed but it goes (as an example) a bit like:
Player: I use my spy background for a bonus with the explosives.
GM: So when did you use explosives as a spy?
Player: Well, err, I had to blow something up.
GM: What did you blow up?
Player: Err, a tavern
GM: Why did you do that?
Player: Well, it was a meeting place for a group of mercenaries and I was paid to do it by one of the city's political factions.
The GM can ask names of people, groups, when this happened, etc
In one conversation you establish that the spy was employed by a political group to blow up some mercenaries. You establish they have a mercenary company for an enemy. You establish they their shady past is known by politicians who may seek to exploit the leverage. All based on player input.
In other words, the bonus doesn't come 'free'. It comes with implicit threats, and enemies and new situations, built by a to and fro between the player and GM.
It's a GM-ing skill to let go of 'the world' and ask the questions (and run with the answers), and a player skill to create troublesome situations without turtling, but games with unbounded skills (like HeroQuest) often rely on this kind of back and forth to establish new fiction details for later scene-framing and action.
Sadras
Legend
Okay let us use the example of the Spy background
Off the top of my head - Stealth, Perception, Disguise, Bluff, Diplomacy - perhaps Acrobatics, from the above example Engineering (explosives)...the number of skills/activities can draw out from one background can become quite numerous!
Are we happy with this?
Off the top of my head - Stealth, Perception, Disguise, Bluff, Diplomacy - perhaps Acrobatics, from the above example Engineering (explosives)...the number of skills/activities can draw out from one background can become quite numerous!
Are we happy with this?
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I can't XP you, but what you say is pretty much what I had in mind when I said:
One advantage of going this way, I think, is that players who push hard to broaden their skills will also have to give the GM the necessary backstory narrative to hang that on - which then gives the GM new material on the basis of which to introduce complications or challenges for that PC, and the group more generally. So it is at least a bit more self-regulating as far as balance is concerned.
And HeroQuest was one system that I had in mind. Also Burning Wheel with its Circles and "wises".
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