Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Suskeyhose" data-source="post: 9468443" data-attributes="member: 6840540">Something I'd like to point out is that while 4 is the "average" score, that's likely in the sense of the "median" score. That is to say: for any given specific attribute, the majority of humans have a score of 4.Critically, that does not meant that any human is 4s across the board.The guidelines that are given for skills and attributes indicate that an average unexceptional person a couple years into their chosen profession that they have trained for will have 3 points in one or more relevant skills, and will have a score of at least 6 in the relevant attribute for their job. This results in the average unexceptional person in the age range from 20 to 35 having 5d6 in their profession.If you then take into account that most NPCs are accredited with not taking their careers at a fast pace, this likely means that the average joe off the street won't be much better than that unexceptional person, even as they reach a greater age. But that "unexceptional person" is just going to be a 55 year old plumber who was content with his paycheck who never put great effort in, never got promoted, never tried to start his own business, and is looking to just coast on by to an uninspired retirement supported by social security. Anyone who is more motivated than that will have less or no time between their career grades. A woman born into the middle class in a racial minority who rose to become a CEO likely has no time between career grades and likely rolled low on most of her age rolls, because she had to fight against the systems to get to where she is.If you look at the types of people that an adventurer is likely to run into, they are extremely likely to skew towards the higher end of the spectrum, with attribute scores in the 10-14 range for even secondary attributes, and 6-9 points in at least one relevant skill to their job. And the level of this just goes up as the players make themselves particularly exceptional.A relevant thing to remember here is that PCs have two advantages over NPCs in the "default setting," both of which will skew them towards being exceptional characters at young ages, if you don't change your GMing style. First, PCs always have the option to have their careers "densely packed," they don't have gap years after chargen. This will skew them towards the best of the best NPCs. Second, they get adventure experience, and generally at a pretty good rate with about 4 sessions required to get a new grade if you are following the basic guidelines for XP.It also appears that NOW in general is somewhat outdated in various ways. If you look at the "What Attribute Scores Mean" sidebar in OLD on page 17, likely Einstein would be considered an "Exceptional Genius" and be attributed with a score from 15 to 20 in LOG, with a REP score in the same category or even higher, and likely a similar score in physics.If you put this all together, I think this paints a picture where the PCs are still most definitely exceptional, but not quite as much as it might feel given the OP's math.Personally, I have a few small recommendations for how to GM WOiN and one houserule for how to make player characters feel a little less exceptional, without removing the feeling of growth that players get.First, the houserule: no career except an origin can give +2 to a single attribute. All careers which currently give +2 to an attribute need to have it redistributed by the GM and documented before character creation. The only way to boost attributes faster than this should be through exploits like you see with the Diabolist in OLD where it grants +2 to MAG  but makes you take 1 point of damage any time you do something magical. Maybe the existing careers that give +2 should pick up a similar exploit.Next, give your adventures some space. Between individual arcs allow years to pass, and let your players buy grades with time. If you're feeling generous then allow them to pack that time tightly with careers, but if you want your players not to feel particularly exceptional then have them pre-roll the time for the next career before they choose it and if that'd take them beyond the number of downtime years you have planned, don't let them take the career. Only fudge this if the spread of MDP values between your players gets to be more than 1. It's OK to have even many grades' worth of difference, as long as that MDP value doesn't get out of whack, then you start to see the balancing issues you get in other games when dealing with wildly imbalanced characters.Finally, consider using the slow XP progression by making grades cost 20 times the new grade instead of 10 times. This will mean that it will rapidly become far too expensive to use XP to grade up, and a better use of XP will be to patch up holes in characters by taking new skills or bumping the occasional focused skill or attribute up, while grades will be provided by the downtime between arcs.</blockquote>

Verification