Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I write this post because I want to get some clarity about the current skill system, especially after reading the complete skills page. And I have some musings about what might constitute a better system (based on the information currently available). This post is meant is constructive criticism, so feel free to comment on my reasoning or proposal. (I have added pseudo-headers to this post to counter the wall-of-text effect.)

This post was mainly inspired by the following sentence:

Below is a list of the Skills that have been defined so far. However, you are free to create your own to fit your character!

Analysis of current System
I'm a bit confused by the current skills. It seems to me that some of the skills on the list are rather specific, while others cover a broad range of specific uses. Take for example Slicing versus Wilderness Survival -- based on the descriptions I read from the list, slicing covers the gaining of access to encrypted computer systems, however, once there it appears to be useless since all other computer skill are covered by Programming; Wilderness Survival on the other hand appears to range from foraging (i.e. hunting, finding edible plants, etc.) all the way over to navigation and protection against environmental hazards, a rather broad set of skills in my opinion.

A subset of the skills appears to me as if they should be governed in part by some other system: Acrobatics, Athletics and Explosives. These sound to me like combat and manoeuvrability related things. This might just be because I'm used to another interpretation of the word 'skill' -- maybe a better term might be 'abilities' (which are learned and practised applications of knowledge; instead of attributes, which are intrinsic to your being).

Then there is 'Trader'. The single social skill in the set. I'm not sure whether it is the admin's intention to ignore all social skills; we do have a rather high level of roleplay in the current settings, so maybe we should just omit them. But then let's ignore Trader as well. Or, we could have a slight set of social skills dealing with getting information from the populace, or rousing them into action.

But what irks me the most is the "However, you are free to create your own to fit your character!" sentence. I'm all for players coming up with their own ideas, but it seems to me that a solid set of examples should be defined to prevent wild-growth of the skill set. For example, the first two things that popped into my head when trying to think up skills for my character were: 'Fleet Command' and 'Martial Arts' -- the second being discarded immediately because it sounded like a combat style, but then I saw Explosives...

I propose a slightly different system that hopefully keeps the flexibility and customizability of the current system intact but that also keeps the number of skills in check. (This system is largely inspired by White Wolf's Exalted.)

Proposal
The main idea is to have a fixed core of broadly applicable skills that cover the day-to-day actions and training of Jedi. On top of this core skill one can learn specialities. A speciality is a specialization in a core skill, for example 'Pod Racing' is a speciality of 'Piloting', just as 'Battleship Manoeuvring' is a speciality of 'Piloting' and 'Within Cities' is a speciality of 'Stealth'. These specializations are the method of customizing and adding flavour to your character, of course you should check whether your custom speciality is narrow enough according to admin.

A speciality has a rating of 1 through 3, and gives a bonus commensurate to its rating to checks to which it can be applied. E.g. a rating 2 speciality in fighter piloting gives a +2 on checks to pilot a fighter-like vehicle.

A character can have at most three points of speciality for any one core skill. For example, one can have 3 rating one specialities, or 2 specialities rated one and two respectively. This means that a very strong specialization excludes specialization of the same core skill on another field of application -- one can not be a specialist in all fields.

I am not yet sure as to the exact number of starting skill points, and specialization points. These might have to be determined by admin should this system be used in favour of the current system.

I envision the exact list of core skills as follows (of course subject to change during discussion):

• Melee - Everything from brawling with barstools to highly organized martial arts with.
• Ranged - Combat with ranged weapons like bows, blasters, rocket launchers, sniper rifles.
• Lightsaber Combat - Lightsaber combat styles, special moves and tricks.
• Thrown - All thrown weapons, things like rocks, grenades, thrown daggers.
• War - Large and small scale army strategic planning and analysis of strategy.

• *Integrity - Protection to both normal (i.e. reasoning) and force-powered mental influences
• Resistance - Protection from poisons, harsh weather and diseases.
• Survival - Surviving natural environments. Things like tracking, natural hazards, foraging and trapping.
• *Presence - Leadership, persuasiveness, intimidation. Social influence on a single person.
• *Performance - Music, dance, artistic expression, public speaking. Social influence on groups.

• Craft - The creation, fixing or alteration of hardware. Things like space ships, weapons, engines, windmills, power generators.
• Computers - The creation, fixing or alteration of software. Things like computer operations, programming, hacking, etc.
• Lore - Knowledge, education, history, geography, force related knowledge or rituals.
• Medicine - Skill with medical implements, Bacta tanks, scalpels, but also bandaging and first aid.
• Investigation - Interrogation, uncover hiding or obscure information, search an archive, reconstruct a crime from the scene.

• Stealth - Evasion of notice, both by natural senses as well as artificial ones.
• Athletics - Jumping, climbing, balance, move with grace and coordination, acrobatics.
• Awareness - Perception of environment, actively look or listen for danger, notice signs of ambush.
• Larceny - Disguises, sleight of hand, open mechanical locks, legerdemain, pickpocketing.

• *Bureaucracy - Dealing with commerce, laws and official regulations.
• Ride - Riding small vehicles and animals. (Things like speeders and horses)
• Piloting - Piloting vessels such as cruisers, fighters or mass transit cargo freighters.
• Linguistics - You speak additional languages and can easily use translation matrices and software.
• *Socialize - The capacity to understand feelings and motives of others and negotiate the complex network of customs and etiquette.

The first five skills in this list are geared toward combat situations. They can be left out, but I feel they have a place here. Combat skills are, after all, skills. Saber Combat is specifically interesting, as it does not necessarily define your skill as a lightsaber combatant, but rather the number of styles you mastered.

All skills marked with '*' are social skills. They are mainly used to influence others by direct interaction or by proxy (e.g. writing a letter). Since nobody is a perfect roleplayer, the social skills might help out when things become slowed down. The roleplay bonus assigned by admin will most likely keep the flow going.

This leaves us with 24 cores skills (19 without either combat or social skills, 14 with no social and no combat skills).


What do you people think? Comments, criticism, tl;dr?

[Mercury]

From what I see of the alternative system, there is a predetermined set of the core skills, with players being able to invest either in that particular skill or in a speciality, which is usable in fewer circumstances, but which provides a bonus when the speciality circumstance applies (since the character is very good at that obviously) - basically a bit like the system of Knowledge Skills used in D&D.

Ironically, avoiding this kind of system is exactly why I added the "you are free to create your own to fit your character!" bit. Allow me to explain.

Any system of skills has to be less complicated than the real world. Certain abstractions must always be made. This holds for my current one and for the proposed alternative.

The alternative system does this by taking the complicated reality and slicing it up into 24 (or perhaps another number) core skills. Specialisations are sub-sets of these core skills, effectively smaller pieces of the same piece of the pie of possibilities. Following the eternal 'tastes great / less filling' debate, the more specialised the better the bonus but the fewer applications. This system works very well and it is the foundation of many roleplaying games such as D&D, World of Darkness and every single computer RPG ever created by virtue of necessity.

However, it follows a philosophy that I have actively and deliberately been trying to keep out of the game: it abstracts by implementing boundaries. The alternative skill system (and D&D, and WoD, and every computer RPG ever created) creates a set of all possibilities and gives you the freedom of creativity within those boundaries.

As a framework, this is incredibly helpful in working out most characters - they look at the core skills, see what they want to do and pick an associated specialisation if they so desire. The system effectively supports you in developing your character and it guides you to fill the requirements that make a general consensus over what your character can and cannot do easy to reach.

However, such a system also places limitations on your options. You can specialise, but a skill must be a specialisation of a specific core skill. What if it is covered by two such skills? And what if you want something for which there is no core skill at all?

I deliberately don't name any examples here, because I don't want to debate over how my example can be resolved; I do not doubt that it can be resolved. The point is not that no solution can be found. The point is that the framework forces you to come up with a solution in the first place: anything that doesn't fit the basic mould created by the system has to be hammered until it fits.

By contrast, the current skill system (and the system building and the economic model) uses a different philosophy: it abstracts not by laying out the boundaries within which you can fit your idea's, but by providing you with the basic building blocks from which to construct them.

The system building outlines the ways in which you can construct planets, moons and stars, but it also opens up the options of 'specials'. These give you the space to make unique idea's a possibility - not just between the boundaries of the system (i.e. the layout of your continents which doesn't affect the game), but even strange things that do affect the way your system works. You want your system to be clouded in gas? We make an extended heliosheath. You want your blue giant star to be a Wolf–Rayet star? We'll just make that a new special! Want your planet to be covered in gigantic trees? There's a climate for that!

Of course there are boundaries - you won't get a planet with +500 on all production because it happens to be the uber planet of uber richness. There is balance to consider. But the system takes creativity into account and there is no reason why your world could not eat up all specials to spam huge production bonuses on every zone and turn the planet into a very rich world.

The Jedi system is full of such things as well - Lightsaber construction has basic components you can mix and match and if you want something strange not covered by the system... well, I can fit it right in using those rules. Force Powers are set up likewise - you can make up your own!

Even the economic system provides a clear set of products to trade and exchange for taxes, but it also offers the option of inventing your own technologies to do things previously impossible and to create your own projects. Though it hasn't been used yet, it also offers the option of inventing your own special projects. Maybe you want planetary shielding - sounds like something you'd pay for with Exotic Matter Devices - lets draw something up!

I use this myself as well - suppose a player wants to organise a large scale aid mission to another faction? How do I represent this? Why not collect Food and Healthcare products?

Admittedly btw, the number of products and raw materials is limited and thus corporations fit within the boundary model rather than the building block model - being the building blocks for the rest of the economic model themselves, I could not find a way around that (its a boot-strapping problem I suppose ^_^)

I haven't tackled your specific problems with specific skills yet. To be honest, some of this will have to be play tested and seen as the game develops - if you spend a lot of time around computers, two computer skills may not even be enough, however if it turns out you spend most of your time in the jungle then two is heavy overkill and wilderness survival would be heavily underrated. I'll get to combat vs social vs other skills in a bit, let me first talk about the skill system in general some more:

Currently the skill building blocks are very simple. You have X ranks in a skill where X might be zero or more. That's it. I can certainly see a system where more and less specialised skills have special treatment for bonuses and usefulness - that'd extend the skill building blocks beyond the current ultra-simple model. However, I have no problem with overlapping skills even if they overlap multiple area's. I was already planning on providing bonuses for specifically applicable skills over general skills when assigning difficulties as a resolution to the earlier specialist vs generalist skills problem, but as mentioned I have no problem making the building blocks in this more specific for clarity if nothing else.

However, I do not feel that skills should use a boundary model as this will limit player creativity. I'd rather have a building block model where players can come up with their own skills without feeling limiting pressure from the existing skill set. I can see a merger of the two systems however which would satisfy the building block model - though from the sounds of it you'd prefer a boundary model?

---

Now, on combat skills -

Acrobatics and Athletics are intended to get from spot A to spot B. They might be useful in combat (so might Wilderness Survival mind you), but their primary intent is movement. As such I do not feel these are combat skills.

The combat system does not have a detailed system for keeping track of player positions. What I want to avoid, at least unless adequate software can be made for it, is me having to draw up a new map every few posts - experience teaches that text based roleplaying (and even verbal roleplay without models) causes confusion as to position very easily. This is why though certain special manoeuvres may involve position relative between two or three individuals, I haven't added rules for things like flanking, bull-rushing, etc. That's not oversight or didn't-get-to-it-yet, but a deliberate omission.

As there is no hard details on position, the Acrobatics and Athletics skills may influence a battle, but they don't have a direct influence on actual combat.

Explosives likewise is not intended as a in-combat skill. Sure, you might set up a booby trap, but between Jedi Senses warning the Jedi of the presence of bombs, the quick Jedi reflexes that allow them to jump into cover quick enough (and yes, a simple flimsy table is enough to save your life from a big boom - proof) and if you are unlucky, the Jedi might use the force to toss the explosives in your direction.

That being said, this is a Star Wars style roleplay, not Hitman. The idea is not to assassinate your Sith enemy using a bomb strapped underneath their car, but to face them in actual combat. You can surely use a bomb to gain advantage, but they're not your primary method of attack. I see a Jedi using a bomb to crash an enemies vehicle and ambush them or to blow up a bridge to force them to go on foot. Not tossing fragmentation grenades out of cover until they get lucky and the enemy is killed.

You proposed a Melee, Ranged, Thrown and Lightsaber skill - however, these are already covered by combat styles and weapons in the combat system. Admittedly the combat system is lightsaber centric - not only are ranged weapons (and explosives as mentioned) weaker then lightsabers, but they get the short end of the stick in options as well - that is to say, they have none whatsoever. This is very deliberate - Jedi and their sabers are the focus of the game and as a result massively superior to storm troopers with blaster rifles. Otherwise every Jedi would carry a blaster rifle instead - that'd miss the point.

on social skills -

I chose not to add social skills for the simple reason that I don't want social interaction to be handled by adding up modifiers. Since there'll be a lot of politics involved in the Jedi game, it'd be rather disappointing to resolve the centuries old conflict because the Jedi who came to solve it spent all their skills on 'diplomacy'.

Also, in my experience, especially in text-based roleplay these skills tend to encourage meta-gaming. A particularly bad example happened on a 3rd edition D&D chat game when a character who's login name was 'Sir Percival' introduced himself as Johnathan and everyone rolled Sense Motive. That was bad enough in and of itself (why on earth are they rolling in the first place?) but those who rolled their sense motive higher than Sir Percival's bluff check subsequently announced that they believed he was a liar and proceeded to mistrust his words. How you can take one look at someone and determine by his way of speaking that his name is not actually Johnathan as he suggested is completely beyond me.

To avoid such problems, I left social skills out of the equation.

So why would I include 'trader' then?

Well, all the political interaction already involves a lot of haggling on both sides, trying to negotiate better deals, etc. That's all fine and good, but I don't want to turn the Jedi part of the game into that as well. I don't want to turn the Jedi roleplay into the small scale equivalent, with roleplay of haggling over prices for ships, equipment and lightsaber components. There's a reason you don't get starting money or lists of possible equipment with set prices for exactly this reason.

Jedi should be out there being heroes, not worrying about whether or not to buy 15 or 20 foot of rope since 15 will save them enough money to add an extra day of trail rations. However, sometimes you want big things, like a house or a ship. Trader will get you a better deal and thus more extra's on this without having to roleplay out detailed haggling over such things - I can just look at your score and assign you a few extras - same for getting extra equipment from the Jedi Council. In short, the trading skill is there to cut out the boring stuff.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

After a careful read it seems to me that your choice of system is indeed the better of the two proposals. Mostly due to the new information that justifies having skills of any degree of specialism. Were the 'specialisation difficulty modifier' mentioned on the wiki it would've helped a lot with the understanding of your system.

I can also see a merger between the two systems work. I don't have a preference for the boundary model. I have to admit that I'm a bit afraid that the 'bring your own skills' attitude of the building block system will eventually lead to inflation of skill points. Since they seem to be a rather limited resource (only 6 at character creation), so when people start popping up all kinds of new (either broader or more specialised) it might seem that some skill points are worth more than others. Especially because we don't know anything about the generalist/specialist difficulty modifier's influence.

(As a side note, it doesn't seem like a good idea to invest your starting skill points in very specialized skills, since you'd basically be handicapped by your enormous expertise.)

On the merger-

Maybe the list I proposed (admittedly, as a boundary model) can be used as the beginning of the building blocks? I still think that, if we remove both social and combat-related skills, they define nice broad skills that could function well as 'basic training' skills. As you suggest, players are free to come up with their own skills, which can be more specialised or even overlapping between two or more of the listed skills.

I'm not really sure I like the 'no training, no try' way that Slicing is defined. Again, I'm a bit afraid that some people will come up with other skills that are based 'trained only' use. This would effectively prohibit other characters from doing that, where they could give it a try before the skill was defined.

On the social skills-

I completely agree with your reasoning. Role play should take the place of social skill checks, and boring things should be abstracted away. We want to be heroes, not hagglers.

On to the combat skills (and manoeuvrability)-

While I agree that having combat skills might be overdoing it (and mixing up things that work in different ways), I do think that the current system of combat, which as far as I can read mostly covers expertise in lightsaber combat, might have to be extended a bit. A lightsaber is a fine and mighty weapon, but only usable by those with the training and aptitude (whether Jedi, Sith or something else).

There will probably be loads of opponents (and not of the Stormtrooper level of accuracy of they get paid anything) other than lightsaber wielding gods of melee combat -- as far as I know Jedi are rather rare. And while it is also true that a Jedi will have no trouble mowing through hordes of stormtroopers, the setting does suggest (by way of Boba Fett) that a sufficiently skilled non-force user can actually hold his ground against a Jedi. However, at the moment we haven't got a clue how other weapons would match up against our character's defenses. ((Note: I'm not pushing admin to hurry, I'm mostly interested whether some stats for non-saber weapons will come up some time. Partly because I want my padawan to have considerably skill with an archery type weapon.))

And then there is the issue of Jedi using something other than a lightsaber. Don't understand me the wrong way here, I am a big fan of two Jedi facing of in an epic lightsaber duel -- all big issues will boil down to something like that once the Sith enter the scene. But a Jedi armed with a sniper rifle (or whatever passes as long-range assassination gear in the setting) is extremely deadly; extreme reflexes and insight allow one to take shots that are way to difficult for any normal person.

PS. It seems I went a bit off-topic here -- my apologies.

[Mercury]

One of the things the training RP is for is so I can test the combat system and see where it needs to be polished up. Once I got the lightsabers down properly, I will base non-lightsaber weapons on those stats, since balancing sabers is the primary trick that needs to be done right - other weapon power levels depend on those.

That said, I definitely do support other weapons beyond lightsabers being used. I envision these will even have their own combat styles even (even though the weapon will be somewhat more limited).

Beside flunkies like stormtroopers and basic batledroids (whom Jedi can dispatch by the dozens), and Sith (who fight you with lightsabers) you will also encounter elite troops from non-Union powers, who will use regular weapons but who won't be pushovers either, so if they can use regular weapons effectively, I don't see why your character couldn't.

Give me a little time to come up with some improvements on the skill system based on your alternative proposal and in the meantime, lets test the combat system a bit.

[Mercury]

I added some clarifications on the wiki and granted starting players a second combat style. Currently no such styles exist yet, but they're forthcoming.