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<blockquote data-quote="Merova" data-source="post: 1076170" data-attributes="member: 2505">Currency &amp; Passive Narrative ControlHi all!Skill points represent a form of &quot;currency&quot; by which you delineate those tasks where your character has a certain degree of expertise. Like any other form of currency, they may be wasted by ill-considered investments. So, you may want to consider the following questions:How is the campaign designed?If you are in a game where the GM is implementing strict narrative control, and if you spend any &quot;currency&quot; in a manner that does not fit with the GMs preplanned adventure &quot;itinerary,&quot; then you are &quot;wasting&quot; your resources. Of course, clever game play and fluid task delineation may allow you opportunities to use these skills, but, overall, they'll see very little utilization in the game.OTOH, if your GM bases the campaign on the Player Characters, then you're &quot;buying&quot; narrative &quot;spotlight.&quot; By placing points in these skills, you're telling the GM to implement certain types of challenges or stories. Let's look at this concept in one of its earliest game text expressions, from the Amber Diceless RPG.So, in a player based campaign, these points are an investment in story type, a form of passive narrative control. Therefore, they are never &quot;wasted.&quot; However, there's something else to consider.What are the player interests?I notice that you refer to these skill points expenditures as &quot;background.&quot; This tells me that you don't intend to use the skills in game play. If so, then these are extremely wasteful allocations. Only buy those things that you want to see in play. Would you, IRL, go out an spend a bunch of money on good that you never intend to use? Then why would you purchase such things for your character, especially given the limited degree of &quot;currency&quot; that you have available?Moreover, you need to consider how your allocation of your currency works in conjunction with the group. If you're spending &quot;currency&quot; in a way that marginalizes your &quot;spot light&quot; from the overall interests of the group, then you're doing everybody a disservice. If the group &quot;purchases&quot; a combat-heavy dungeon crawl, then maybe &quot;buying&quot; spotlight as a combat-inept Harem Girl wasn't the best investment.In conclusion, you need to design your character within the context of your interests, your fellow players' interests, and the GM's interests. When ever you stray from any of these desires, you're minimalizing the return on your skill point investment. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Thanks for reading!---Merova</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Merova, post: 1076170, member: 2505"] [b]Currency & Passive Narrative Control[/b] Hi all! Skill points represent a form of "currency" by which you delineate those tasks where your character has a certain degree of expertise. Like any other form of currency, they may be wasted by ill-considered investments. So, you may want to consider the following questions: [b]How is the campaign designed?[/b] If you are in a game where the GM is implementing strict narrative control, and if you spend any "currency" in a manner that does not fit with the GMs preplanned adventure "itinerary," then you are "wasting" your resources. Of course, clever game play and fluid task delineation may allow you opportunities to use these skills, but, overall, they'll see very little utilization in the game. OTOH, if your GM bases the campaign on the Player Characters, then you're "buying" narrative "spotlight." By placing points in these skills, you're telling the GM to implement certain types of challenges or stories. Let's look at this concept in one of its earliest game text expressions, from the [i]Amber Diceless[/i] RPG. So, in a player based campaign, these points are an investment in story type, a form of passive narrative control. Therefore, they are never "wasted." However, there's something else to consider. [B]What are the player interests?[/B] I notice that you refer to these skill points expenditures as "background." This tells me that you don't intend to [i]use[/i] the skills in game play. If so, then these are extremely wasteful allocations. Only buy those things that you [i]want[/i] to see in play. Would you, IRL, go out an spend a bunch of money on good that you never intend to use? Then why would you purchase such things for your character, especially given the limited degree of "currency" that you have available? Moreover, you need to consider how your allocation of your currency works in conjunction with the group. If you're spending "currency" in a way that marginalizes your "spot light" from the overall interests of the group, then you're doing everybody a disservice. If the group "purchases" a combat-heavy dungeon crawl, then maybe "buying" spotlight as a combat-inept Harem Girl wasn't the best investment. In conclusion, you need to design your character within the context of your interests, your fellow players' interests, and the GM's interests. When ever you stray from any of these desires, you're minimalizing the return on your skill point investment. ;) Thanks for reading! ---Merova [/QUOTE]

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