Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9148177" data-attributes="member: 6690965">I generally agree, in that it's not always necessary to go through the complete process for every single character, and ideally system familiarity should allow you to get close enough without the formal process over time. I specifically called out that some hacks to simplify the process world generally be desirable.But the questions aren't at all unrelated. The goal is to have a system that both kinds of actors can feed inputs into to see what happens, which requires they be the same kind of object. If the basic rules for functionality can't be understood as a player, if they can't use knowledge about the world to make predictions about what can or will happen, than you don't have a gameplay loop they can engage in.I can imagine a reasonable metaphysics that would allow for specific NPC/PC build differences and not violate that principle, but it completely changes the relationship of the PCs and PC classes in general to the world. There are no &quot;wizards&quot; in that world, there is one Wizard, who has a totally unique relationship to written spells, and uses a unique level categorization system that doesn't align with the world at large. Plus, is still want a consistent system to derive NPC abilities, it would just be different to the PC one, and spmething else for the characters to learn.Honestly if RPGs weren't so long and complicated to design, it would be kind of a fun premise to give the PCs a science project to figure out the underlying rules governing everyone outside themselves. You'd just have to create two compatible games, which sounds exhausting, even to me, someone who thinks it reasonable to stat out NPC wizards with complete spellbooks.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 9148177, member: 6690965"] I generally agree, in that it's not always necessary to go through the complete process for every single character, and ideally system familiarity should allow you to get close enough without the formal process over time. I specifically called out that some hacks to simplify the process world generally be desirable. But the questions aren't at all unrelated. The goal is to have a system that both kinds of actors can feed inputs into to see what happens, which requires they be the same kind of object. If the basic rules for functionality can't be understood as a player, if they can't use knowledge about the world to make predictions about what can or will happen, than you don't have a gameplay loop they can engage in. I can imagine a reasonable metaphysics that would allow for specific NPC/PC build differences and not violate that principle, but it completely changes the relationship of the PCs and PC classes in general to the world. There are no "wizards" in that world, there is one Wizard, who has a totally unique relationship to written spells, and uses a unique level categorization system that doesn't align with the world at large. Plus, is still want a consistent system to derive NPC abilities, it would just be different to the PC one, and spmething else for the characters to learn. Honestly if RPGs weren't so long and complicated to design, it would be kind of a fun premise to give the PCs a science project to figure out the underlying rules governing everyone outside themselves. You'd just have to create two compatible games, which sounds exhausting, even to me, someone who thinks it reasonable to stat out NPC wizards with complete spellbooks. [/QUOTE]

Verification