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Well, I guess I'm glad that my own firearm knowledge is extremely basic. None of that stuff bothers me at all.
So true. My inner biologist cries every time I read another nonsensical dungeon. But what's worse is that I'm almost always the GM and have a player who made his living as a car salesman for more than 20 years. He does more damage with haggling and persuasion than a barbarian with anger issues.Any knowledge is bad, trust me.
I've had biologists and physicists ruin Star Trek (the FASA one) games. I mean, don't play Star Trek is you're going to sneer at "aliens with wrinkly foreheads" or think that warp drive allows you to warp out 1 light day and then focus your telescopes really hard to see the stuff that happened yesterday.
The new rule in SWADE about how attributes and skills work is one of the major reasons I stayed with Deluxe instead. Strength got absolutely screwed because it's primarily used actively in real life, but all the stuff that people actually do in the game gets shoved into skills tied to agility instead. Want to pull off a feat of strength by toppling a statue over to slow down the bad guys chasing you? I hope your agility is high so that you can have a good athletics skill.
Then if you want to use the athletics skill tied to strength instead of agility, which is perfectly reasonable, you have to pay an Edge tax. No thank you. Boosting strength becomes an actual hindrance in modern and sci-fi games where you don't need to tote around heavy armor and a big weapon.
That's one of the advantages of systems that ditch attributes and just use skills. You avoid the megastat that boosts all the most useful skills in the game.Dexterity/Agility/etc. as a catch-all attribute is a very annoying sin. It touches to-hit roll, to-dodge roll, to-save reflex roll, initiative roll, then it affects passives on all the previous, typically 20%+ of all known skills (in some games much higher), movement bonuses, multiactions, and on and on and on.
Future Designers: when in doubt don't automatically dump new game elements on Dex/Agi -- do ANYTHING else, please. Too many games where I have to pencil out that bad design, including a majority of the famous big names. Every munchkin around knows to look for the stat that does the most, let alone nearly everything, and first check the game's Dex/Agi analog.
Dexterity/Agility/etc. as a catch-all attribute is a very annoying sin.
Rolemaster was often criticised for having too many stats in the day, one target being having Agility and Quickness. I always thought it was a perfectly reasonable distinction for the reason you give. Oddly almost nobody had a problem with the Memory/Reasoning split even though it's a distinction that comes up much less in most games.That's also one of the reasons that I like Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill as main attributes in WFRP. It's one the things people often complain about, but it means that being an talented acrobat doesn't automatically make you an expert killer. It also has separate Initiative and Agility attributes, so you can be twitchy but clumsy or slow but steady.
I think I'm generally of the view that it's better to have a reflexes/coordination split (or if that's still not distinct enough Coordination and Speed).Dexterity/Agility/etc. as a catch-all attribute is a very annoying sin. It touches to-hit roll, to-dodge roll, to-save reflex roll, initiative roll, then it affects passives on all the previous, typically 20%+ of all known skills (in some games much higher), movement bonuses, multiactions, and on and on and on.
Future Designers: when in doubt don't automatically dump new game elements on Dex/Agi -- do ANYTHING else, please. Too many games where I have to pencil out that bad design, including a majority of the famous big names. Every munchkin around knows to look for the stat that does the most, let alone nearly everything, and first check the game's Dex/Agi analog.
I'm not. I've seen too many super-fit gym-rat types (very strong) get run/walked into the ground by super-fit tramping types who were definitely far less strong.I'm also generally in favour of combining strength + stamina into one stat (although this does depend on the rest of the system.
I'm not. I've seen too many super-fit gym-rat types (very strong) get run/walked into the ground by super-fit tramping types who were definitely far less strong.
Also, unless you have a whole separate system for resistance to poisons, diseases, and other forms of systemic abuse, small women will be dying more readily to these things than big strong men, and that's not how it works.
That depends on what your goal is. Do you want to have a system of modelling a character with objective attributes and having a degree of detail, or are you looking to bring a focus onto the gameplay? Combining the two works OK if it is the latter.
The difficulty with a Con or Stamina ability is that it very rarely sees active use. It's sort of a boring tax on the player so that they don't die.
If you have a lot of poison and disease in a game, then it makes some sense to have it be seperate, but in my experience these things are pretty rare. (They could be covered with an advantage "Hardy").
Mingling it with Strength I find often makes sense because 1: Strength doesn't see a lot active use: and 2: in the area where Stamina most frequently sees use, resisting damage, they're related.
Of course even Strength doesn't always need to be an ability score. I think sometimes it is just out of habit.
In a modern game with guns and the like and little melee combat does it see enough use?
I could see using "Fitness" instead. Then make "Very Strong" and Advantage of some sort like "Attractive" usually is, that can give you a bonus on your Fitness roll to bash a door down or something (and also to a Presence roll to physically intimidate someone).
I think trying to do a real life simulator is doomed to failure but Cyberpunk 2020 does a decent balance between “realism” “playability” and “cinematic enough to be fun”I think one thing I find is that it is hard for a system to do guns or melee without nerfing one or the other, not even getting into maps between the two, like 800m in 1.5m squares ...
Especially when most kitchen tables that people game at may have about 20" x 30" of space free of books, dice, character sheets, and snacks at most.I think one thing I find is that it is hard for a system to do guns or melee without nerfing one or the other, not even getting into maps between the two, like 800m in 1.5m squares ...
In this vein I have played 40K in a school gym with more appropriate ranges for stuff. It was glorious.I think one thing I find is that it is hard for a system to do guns or melee without nerfing one or the other, not even getting into maps between the two, like 800m in 1.5m squares ...
If you are designing a game and you want people with melee weapons and people with guns to have balanced fights, you've already decided to make an action movie RPG. Don't worry about realism.I think one thing I find is that it is hard for a system to do guns or melee without nerfing one or the other, not even getting into maps between the two, like 800m in 1.5m squares ...
Well, if we're talking black powder with somewhat realistic loading times it might not be a complete mess.If you are designing a game and you want people with melee weapons and people with guns to have balanced fights, you've already decided to make an action movie RPG. Don't worry about realism.
This era is what I tend to think is Savage Worlds' sweet spot.Well, if we're talking black powder with somewhat realistic loading times it might not be a complete mess.
WHFRP manages it pretty well too.This era is what I tend to think is Savage Worlds' sweet spot.
I just don't like systems that conflate being a marathon runner, being someone blessed with an amazing immune system, and being a big guy who can lift a ton but has no stamina. Strength and health/constitution being one stat does this unless you then have traits that modify it, and unless they're quite coarse you rapidly end up at the point where having them split to start with would've been simpler.That depends on what your goal is. Do you want to have a system of modelling a character with objective attributes and having a degree of detail, or are you looking to bring a focus onto the gameplay? Combining the two works OK if it is the latter.
I think one of the big issues game systems have is trying to model things in the abstract rather than when they hit the game table.I just don't like systems that conflate being a marathon runner, being someone blessed with an amazing immune system, and being a big guy who can lift a ton but has no stamina. Strength and health/constitution being one stat does this unless you then have traits that modify it, and unless they're quite coarse you rapidly end up at the point where having them split to start with would've been simpler.
It's also messy when you move outside the human scale.
So about the only time I'd expect it to not annoy me would be in a game where it's never used and could just be part of the character's 'fluff' description anyway.
Could you expand? I feel like there's a word missing or transposed or something...Every roll a player makes should be basic on a characters level of skill or ability.
Just basically some things can just function on pure probability.Could you expand? I feel like there's a word missing or transposed or something...
See Feng Shui for a great example of this.If you are designing a game and you want people with melee weapons and people with guns to have balanced fights, you've already decided to make an action movie RPG. Don't worry about realism.
That's the first game that comes to mind for me when blackpowder in RPGs comes up.WHFRP manages it pretty well too.