So, I'm going to stop posting here at the community, since it's not being used much. Please see my standard livejournal (qhudspeth) for further updates. I won't be closing down the community, though, so you can still post here if you like, and perhaps in the future things will pick up here again. But otherwise, there's little point at this time to double post stuff.

As a going away package, here is a new addition to the manuscript — a narrative gameplay demo that will be accompanied by a gameplay script showing how the mechanics work at key points in the narrative. I hope as a whole it works out well.( Click here for the text )

I just realized it's been a while since I posted an update, so here goes.

I'm nearly done with the first draft of the Aliens Revisited section. I'm finishing up the Cholak entry right now, leaving only the Sheolin entry, which is half done. I still need to go back over each entry to see which ones I listed as having colonies, so I can put in some guidelines for travel times between them.

After that, I think I'll move on to the Sample Characters section. I want to include a dozen or so samples for people to work with. Ideally, I'd like to take each sample through the five paces to show how the character would differ in each one. I may settle for doing that for just a few. I'll be stealing the characters of everyone who has playtested and modifying them to fit the newest CharGen scheme. Let me know if you don't want your character included for some reason. Plus, I'll have to come up with a few new ones to round things out.

There are one or two other small things that need doing, but they slip my mind right now.

Oh, I'll be trying to run a game at Genericon this year (Jan 23–25). I'll run the segment I was preparing for last year, which I tested as the first mission for my current game. The team of five pulled it off in three hours, with all but one of them being new to the game, but experienced gamers. So, I think it should be suitable.

I don't mind telling you, I'm daunted by this prospect with a capital D.

Slaintè,
Q

What?

Oh, I had this idea to scan in my hand-drawn maps for the current venue of the SftS game, then print them out using the poster mode of my printer, and tape the pieces together.
So Sunday I can lay out the floor we're on, covering up the places we have yet to see, and hopefully everyone can get a better feel for where we are without my crappy markerboard sketches (which suck muchly). I may even raid Kaylin's lego stash for some pieces to represent characters and baddies.

So far they look good, and have a ~1 inch = 5ft scale.

Slaintè,
Q

...is a broken down train.

Well, it's not that bad. Progress has been slow, but there is progress. I almost have the Aliens section done. I need to finish the Meyonites and Tofkians, linking them to the Thalocks, and I'll be done. It should only take a few hours total time. After that comes scouring the text for sections that need to be adjusted for the recent rules edits, such as Item Creation, Nonhuman PCs, and several areas of the Deep in the Life chapter that haven't come up in play yet. Then, I need to put together some Sample Characters ( a task I have started many times, but each rule revision has required a restart). After that, I think it will be time for some editing. I still hope to have this ready by the end of the year, so I can get it off to Colin for layout and prepublishing jiggery-pokery. Busy as he's been lately, though, I'm pretty sure we're going to have to work out some sort of sharing of duties for that.

Anyway, I'm off to work.

Slaintè,
Q

Having the ranges for the Throw Ability written out as a function of the inverse square root of the weight of the thrown object may have been physically accurate and continuous enough to apply to any weight, but in practice, it was difficult to compute on the fly. Since players who rarely use Throw are unlikely to have pre-calculated their accuracy ranges for common weights (i.e. their grenades), and anyone trying to toss an unfamiliar object would have the same trouble, I have revised the Throw description with a handy look-up table that discretizes some common weights.

Table 9: Throw Ranges xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?
Weight (pounds)	PL0 Range (feet)	Range per PL (feet)	Penalty Increment per PL (feet)
<0.25	3 3/4	15	5
0.25–0.5	5	20	10
0.5–1	3 3/4	15	7
1–2	2 1/2	10	5
2–4	1 3/4	7	2
4–8	1 1/4	5	1
8–16	1	4	1
16–32	3/4	3	1
32–64	1/2	2	1/2
≥64	1/4	1	1/2

Throw (2; Environmental): The Throw ability covers facility with tossing grenades, darts, throwing knives, javelins, rocks, vases, beer mugs, chairs…in short; if you can heft it, you can hurl it. As with Marksmanship, proficiency represents two aspects of throwing a projectile: 1) the percent chance of hitting the spot you are aiming at in a controlled environment; 2) the percent chance you can heft an object, toss it, and hit reasonably close to the spot you are aiming at, dealing damage to the target. The Narrator may assign a penalty to throws with unusual objects. Throw is an Environmentally opposed Ability, so players roll off against the Normal 3p6 base, modified by circumstance. Since it is generally harder to hit something or someone with a thrown object than with a gun, difficulty modifiers will in general be twice as large. For example, if the target is moving, a +2 Difficulty is called for. Unlike with blasters, with thrown objects a Character’s Acrobatics ability can help, increasing the Difficulty by one for every two PL if he can see the thrown weapon coming.

Characters may take as a Favored weapon any number of thrown object types — chairs, darts, grenades, knives, etc. — to receive a +2 Situational bonus to throws with their Favored weapon(s). Favored Weapons may be purchased at Character Genesis for 10 BP, or later in the game for 10 XP.

Thrown accuracy is limited by the weight (in pounds) of the weapon, as show in Table 9: Throw Ranges. A Character may throw a weapon at normal Difficulty up to and including the listed Range increment times their PL (or the Base PL0 Range). Characters attempting to throw a weapon past their accuracy Range receive a +1 Difficulty modifier. Characters suffer an additional +1 Difficulty penalty for each additional Penalty Increment. Finally, Situational bonuses should be considered for targets significantly within the accuracy range (+1 for within half the range; +2 for within one fourth the range).

As an example, suppose Character with Throw:PL3 is attempting to throw a 3 lb object. She has a Normal difficulty range of 21 feet. If she needs to hit a target greater than 21 feet, but less than or equal to 27 feet away, she suffers a +1 difficulty modifier. If she needs to hit a target more than 27 feet, but less than or equal to 33 feet away, she suffers a +2 difficulty modifier.

After a brief pre-game discussion with light_in_motion and blimix clarifying the use of the Dexterous and Butterfingered Nuances, we have a new Merit/Flaw pair Deft and Maladroit. Further, Dexterous and Maladroit have been revised to refer to fine motor control, rather than heightened manual dexterity.

Deft

Cost: Variable

Description: You have good hand-eye (and foot-eye) coordination.

Effect: You receive a +1 Situational bonus to all checks requiring gross motor control and spatial coordination, which may include, but not be limited to, Pilot, Drive, Athletics, Acrobatics, Marksmanship, et cetera. This Merit may be taken multiple times, with each level increasing the bonus by +1, and the cost of each successive level increasing as shown in Table 15: Leveled Merit Costs.

Maladroit

Cost: Variable

Description: You have poor hand-eye (and foot-eye) coordination.

Effect: You receive a -1 Situational penalty to all checks requiring gross motor control and spatial coordination, which may include, but not be limited to, Pilot, Drive, Athletics, Acrobatics, Marksmanship, et cetera. This Flaw may be taken multiple times, with each level increasing the penalty by -1, and the cost of each successive level increasing as shown in Table 18: Leveled Flaw Costs.

Slaintè,
Q

So, over the course of the last few sessions I've been dismayed at the number of dice we needed to roll and then scan for matches. Mark's character Drake has so much proficiency in Martial Arts that he needs almost the whole bag to make a roll. This is an extreme example of a munchkined character*, but similar rolls are the norm for the other players, too. Most of the other characters have a fairly broad spread of Abilities, but we are still tossing decent sized handfuls of dice. Especially when Drake is fighting, the tallying of matches seems to slow things down a bit. I wonder if my players are starting to feel annoyed with the mechanic now that the novelty has worn off and the humor of Drake's bag-o-dice rolls is going stale.

I like many aspects of this mechanic:

• It fits very well with the all-checks-opposed axiom, except in a very few cases, in which it only works fairly well.
• It is easy to comprehend
• It is fairly original
• It works with an open-ended proficiency rating (10 is no longer the max PL)

But, I fear it could be getting out of hand. I certainly feel a dragging sensation when I have to count out more than six dice. I can scoop out that many with a quick glance, but more takes a careful count.
One can always house rule some sort of cut-off for saying "you always win". Say, if you would roll 3× the opposing pool, you automatically win. Aside from having problems for small pools (there's still a decent chance that 1p6 can beat 3p6) my feeling is that if you have to house-rule to fix it, maybe it's severely broken. I've always wanted to keep the number of dice rolled to a minimum, hence the d100 mechanic. I tried out this one because of its novelty, but I still have my doubts about it.

I do have an idea for a mechanic that would work with the open-ended proficiencies, but I am hesitant to inflict another grand change on my players. I'll have to see what develops.

Slaintè,
Q

---

* Well, to be fair, Drake isn't all that munchkinized. He has a slight spread into a few other physical Abilities, but is concentrated on Martial Arts and Marksmanship. I think Mark keeps pumping the XP mainly into those Abilities, though.

I'll probably need to cross post this with the SftS development journal, but I started the thread here, so....

Sunday's game went quite well. We were off to a bit of a slow start, catching up markrosenberry who missed the previous session and reminding ourselves of where we stood. Then the players needed to decide how they would move forward on the bust of the "G-7" as the contraband distribution syndicate got dubbed. Everyone seemed to like the "Wouldn't it be cool if..." cards, and the storygate cards with the Chutzpah bounties set on them. light_in_motion even made her own Cool Card which I like so much I boosted and which Mark attempted to collect on. We agreed to keep them around, and to keep light_in_motion's CC around as a running gag, even though it was battle-setting specific. It should be fun to see how often we work in an exploding fish tank!

The second experiment was to involve the whole crew in the building of the battle setting. As I mentioned before, leaving so much story control in the hands of the players means making up battle scenes on the fly. So this time, when we needed to set up the restaurant/karaoke-bar where the G-7 were meeting to discuss business, I pulled out a roll of craft paper, and drew a large square with a set of double doors. I said this was the restaurant and then had the players take turns adding elements to the setting, paying out 1 Chutzpah per element. I still added things in too, but I did it for free (bwa ha ha). We ended up with more detail than I would have been comfortable taking time to add alone, but we had fun planning and plotting the location, so it did not take away from the game at all. It was during this that someone put in the ubiquitous restaurant fish tanks flanking the kitchen doors that light_in_motionwas hoping we would explode. Mark did try JackieChaning off one of the tanks in an effort to vault over the detritus of an adhesive grenade. Unfortunately, he made his roll, so he made the jump without busting the tank. But, we had a nice win-win contest there. If he blew the roll, he would have still earned 3 Chutzpah. As it is, he got one for the attempt and didn't get stuck to the floor.

So, we'll keep this plug-in working too, and thanks again to Amagi Games for the inspiration.

Slaintè,
Q

Pack Rat

Cost: 15 BP

Description: You collect things; lots of things. Maybe you were a Boy Scout; maybe you just learned to be prepared on the street; but you always seem to have the item you need when the time is right.

Effect: You need it; you have it. If it’s a small item, you have it in a pocket or otherwise attached to your person. If it’s too big to carry, it’s back on the ship. Most of the storage space on the ship is filled with your crap.

I'm hoping to get light_in_motion and markrosenberry to test out the Command Ability for free, since no one felt they could afford to buy it.
Looking over its entry, I saw it needed some clarification, thus:

Command (3; Willpower): Command is the Ability of leadership, and it is mainly progressed by (role-playing) leading. With proficiency in leadership comes the ability to inspire, and motivate those under your command. Command is useful for asserting control over a group, especially in times of distress. During sticky situations, the good leader can provide morale bonuses to Checks, as though Aiding the Characters via his Command Ability. Those with high Command can even take control of a mob (or incite one to riot!).

To motivate a Character, the Commander must succeed at a Check opposed by the target’s Willpower. If he succeeds, he may then add one die to the target Character’s Check Pool, as well as use his Command Ability to Aid the Character. When controlling a group of NPCs, the opposition is the average Willpower of the group, plus any Difficulty modifiers stemming from the mood of the group. With success the Commander may deliver very simple commands (such as, “Move along; nothing to see here.”) that a typical person would be likely to follow, or provide a +1 morale bonus to Ability Checks.

The duration of successful Command Check is PL×PL Rounds after which a new Command check may be made. Should any Command check fail, the Commander may not attempt another for (10 – PL) Rounds.

Thinking about Sufficiently Advanced meme attacks got me thinking about the use of the Counsel Ability in an offensive capacity. Why shouldn't someone proficient at seeing into your soul be able to use that ability to fight dirty in a conflict. I mean, hey, humans do it all the time.

So, below in blue is an addition to the Counsel Ability entry:

Counsel (1; Willpower, Environmental): Counseling is generally the bailiwick of NPCs, but some characters may find others are drawn to them and they usually end up as confidants, shoulders to cry on, etc. These Characters naturally seem to accrue proficiency in Counseling. This tendency is to be encouraged. Any team will benefit from the presence of a good listener. Paradoxically, however,the Counselor Characters often find themselves shut out from everyday mundane interactions, as they are put up on ever higher pedestals.

Characters progress in proficiency by study of contemporary psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, as well as making active Counseling checks. A successful Counseling Check, in conjunction with some “shoulder” time, can remove one point of stress from the target’s Character’s Stress Sump.

Characters receiving Counsel will generally have some subconscious resistance to effecting change within themselves. Characters with high Willpower will be more readily able to benefit from Counseling; those with low Willpower, much less so. To model this effect, Players must make a reversed check with their Willpower Ability when receiving Counseling. For a reversed check, roll ([10 – PL]+1)p6, rather than the usual (PL+1)p6. Thus, a person with Willpower: PL2 would roll 9p6.

Counsel can also be used to attempt an understanding of other people’s motives — are they lying? are they trustworthy? is everyone out to get me? — through the psychology/psychiatry aspect of the Ability. When used in lieu of Insight to assay a person’s motives, or resist a Bluff, Counsel operates at a -1 Situational penalty.

Finally, Characters may use Counsel to get an edge in a Conflict. As a Measured action in Combat, or before making a Gambit or Rebuttal in Social Conflict, and at +2 Difficulty, a Character may “size up” one Opponent, attempting to garner some glimpse of his psyche. If successful, a Character in Combat may use the next available Measured action to attempt to verbally influence that Opponent. The Character makes a Counsel Check opposed by the Opponent’s Willpower, while shouting something appropriately snide, insulting,or venomous. If successful, the Opponent will suffer a -1 Situational morale penalty for a number of rounds equal to the Character’s Counsel PL. For Social Conflicts, a Character who successfully sizes up her Opponent gets a +1 Situational bonus for the duration of the Conflict.

Here are a few nuances designed to mimic the effects of the old Intelligence attribute.

Adaptable

Cost: Variable

Description: You are a quick thinker, capable of dealing with new and trying situations by adapting the environment to your needs, or adapting yourself to the environment.

Effect: You receive a +1 Situational bonus to all Breach, Emergency Medicine, Escape Artist, Etiquette, Evade, Pursue, Wilderness Survival, and Urban Survival Checks. This Merit may be taken multiple times, with each level increasing the benefits by +1, and the cost of each successive level increasing as shown in Table 15: Leveled Merit Costs.

Rigid

Cost: Variable

Description: You are a slow thinker, and not very adaptable.

Effect: You receive a -1 Situational bonus to all Breach, Emergency Medicine, Escape Artist, Etiquette, Evade, Pursue, Wilderness Survival, and Urban Survival Checks. This Flaw may be taken multiple times, with each level increasing the penalties by -1, and the cost of each successive level increasing as shown in Table 18: Leveled Flaw Costs.

Also, here are some modified Intelligence-based nuances. The old Memory nuances that existed before the removal of attributes needed to be tweaked a little, and I thought a new, weaker memory-based one would be a good idea.

Excellent Recall

Cost: 5 BP

Description: Your memory has always been very accurate.

Effect: You receive a +1 Situational bonus to all Memory and Knowledge Checks.

Photographic Memory

Cost: 15 BP

Description: Your memory functions like a slide show of events from your life. You can recall visuals, but not sound, very accurately.

Effect: You have a good chance of being able to pull up a mental picture of an event or item that provides useful information. You need not make Memory Checks for recall of recent events (a few days) when you can describe a memory photographically. Recall of images from more than five days past requires a Memory Check for which you receive a +3 Situational bonus. These bonuses also apply to Knowledge Checks.

Eidetic Memory

Cost: 25 BP

Description: You are able to remember events in exquisite detail, as though replaying a high definition recording in your head.

Effect: You need not make Memory Checks for recall of recent events (a few days) when you can describe a memory cinematically. Recall of events more than five days distant requires a Memory Check for which you receive a +5 Situational bonus. These bonuses also apply to Knowledge Checks.

Poor Recall

Cost: -10 BP

Description: You’ve always had a poor memory, jumbling dates, confusing places, and even forgetting people.

Effect: You receive a -2 Situational penalty to all Memory and Knowledge Checks.

Look, I made a wordle. It's memetastic.



This is the word balloon created from this very journal. Silly, huh?

Look I made a wordle. It's from the text of the current manuscript. Neat, eh?

I've been considering converting the system back to English, rather than metric. I forget now why I changed it in the first place, other than 5 meters per round was an easy base to work with. I'm sure I had some reason, but I'm finding the metric system a bit of an impediment to game flow. We keep having to remind ourselves approximately what a meter is. How tall is an average building in meters? A car? Other common items? And I haven't really used metric in many years now, so I'm losing my feel for it too.

Conversion would be pretty simple on the face of things — just change meter to yard for the base movements. I may even have an old .doc using English measurements. Some other measurements might require slight modification, but that's okay.

I dunno. I'm balking at the effort, since it just amounts to bookkeeping edits (i.e. boring), but it might be worth it.

Q

So, session four went well yesterday. We didn't get much done, plot-wise, but there was much mirth, which, IMHO, is what it's all about.

We're still discovering artifacts in the manuscript referring to outdated rules. That always disrupts play. But, I think the marksmanship rules are working better, now. Fewer thrashes, but still reasonable hits. And "dodging" seems a little better. Allowing for cover and movement to increase difficulty seems to help.

Here is a link to the audio file, if anyone is interested:

http://cid-82eed7b3f53bedc4.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Stories%20from%20the%20Shelter/Playtest%20Recordings/Stories%20from%20the%20Shelter%20Session%204%206-15-08.mp4

Okay, I finished making (most) of the changes needed for the latest revisions discussed below and during the gaming sessions.
Here is a link to the relevant sections: The Measure of Man, Character Genesis, and Adventuring. I still need to edit Equipment for the damage changes. But that shouldn't take too long.

Slaintè,
Q

markrosenberry just emailed me a suggestion for CharGen edits. I reproduce it here, with my response.
( Read more... )

If you're interested, here is the recording of Sunday's second session.

Slaintè,
Q

Here are the pages with the new Knowledge edits. Not my best writing, so I hope to clean things up before publication, but I think it will suffice for playtesting. Oh, and I took the AXP bit out of the Experience section, so that's there too.
Comments?

So, I think I know what I'll do about Knowledge.
My plan is to remove Knowledge and Academics from the Ability list. Characters will have another lesser trait added: Path (Habit, Tenet), Ability, Knowledge. At CharGen you get to pick a number of Knowledges equal to the Pace of the game, and everyone is assumed to have a decent general knowledge. More Knowledges can be purchased at CharGen or in game. They'll be relatively cheap, like Order 0 Abilities or something. Mechanically, they give you ready access to information within their purview, but also the intellectual means to synthesize and use that information. Everyone with Computers: PL1 can pull up whatever superficial information they want from the Galactinet, given enough time (with increased Computers proficiency reducing that time, ad hoc). But, information is not knowledge, so even if someone pulls up the latest treatise on physical cosmology, it doesn't do them any good with out a knowledge of Physics, and even then, it'll take a lot of time to make sense of, unless they have Knowledge: Cosmology. Plus, it might still take a while to digest unless they have greater physics specialization, like Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. Costs to buy "new" Knowledge subsets of an existing Knowledge would be reduced. Start with Physics for, say, 5 BP, then Astrophysics only costs 4 BP, Physical Cosmology, only 3 BP, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, only 2 BP. Or, you could start with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and buy back up the chain, but buying up always costs 5 BP, as does any wholly new Knowledge.

My idea is that you'd just buy Knowledges to flesh out your character, defining what his interests are, but they might only come in handy some times, so they shouldn't be too expensive. Someone might start with the following knowledges: Cosmology, Brewing, Scrapbooking, Antique Automobiles, Kalen Art. Though, scrapbooking would probably be a waste of points, and what a weirdly eclectic character that would be.

It still needs some thought, but things are starting to gel, I think.
Now for some lunch.

Q

Here is a pdf of step 3 of CharGen, with the new Nuances that replace Attributes. Tell me what you think of its viability, and what I might have missed.

Slaintè,
Q

Well, I certainly haven't come up with a solution to the knowledge problem, yet. The current spate of proposed revisions was spawned by considering the problem, so it hasn't been fruitless, but the question still stands as to how to deal with all the categories that knowledge brings and what to do about using them in checks. In the back of my mind there seems to be an answer, but it's like when you have that dream that you've solved the theory of everything, but then you wake up and you can't remember what it was you came up with. (What? You never had that dream?)

I'm thinking perhaps I could make Academics/Knowledge a low order Ability. In fact, I was thinking about reordering the Abilities based not on difficulty of learning (realism) but on utility (gamism). So Abilities that get used more or tend to be more powerful would have higher order. The Psychic Abilities would continue to be highest ordered (4), but Marksmanship and Martial Arts might both be moved to Order 3, while Academics/Knowledge (currently 3/2) and Clinical Medicine (3) would be moved to Order 1. This would allow more flavor for Characters. You could buy up these items rather cheaply, but they might rarely be used. Something tells me this might be a better ordering.

On the other hand, Knowledge could be removed as an Ability, but retained as a separate trait. Everyone would be assumed to have Knowledge: Galactic Pop Culture, just from being around a bit, but others could be added to suit the Character's background—Brewing, Antique Cars, Comic Books, Trillid Mating Calls. Whatever. The idea being if you happen to come across a situation that fits your knowledge, well, good for you. You know some shit. Work out some sort of ad hoc benefit with the Narrator. This way, you get to have the flavor, but not have to spend quite so much to get it.

On the gripping hand, a combination of those two ideas might be best. (It's interesting how often in physics, and probably the other sciences, that when some new phenomenon has to be explained and there are two competing theories, eventually someone comes along and shows that, no, actually it's both.)

Slaintè,
Q

While I'm discussing major revisions, I was thinking about replacing the dice-roll-determined damage for conflict with simple Wound/Stun/Resolve "bars". Basically, xd6 LD-->x Wounds; yd6 SD-->y+1 Stuns, zd3-->z Stuns; PLd3 RD-->PL RD. (Where LD = Lethal Damage, SD = Stun Damage, RD = Resolve Damage).

Have y'all experience with this type of damage system, and how do you like it over the randomized results?

---

---

So, I've been thinking over the weekend about how to address the imbalance in Abilities rules that Kowledge and Language seem to embody. I've been thinking about stripping Abilities down into a set of core Skills, and relegating all else to Hobbies. The idea would be that Hobbies would be a bit cheaper to buy proficiency in, because they are not useful as often. Rather than restricting Knowledge to a set of four categories, characters would just have several knowledge-based hobbies (if they wanted them) along with other things like Forge, Evade, Seduce, Mechanic. Things that, realistically, you might not have time for formal training on after you graduate.

I'm not real sure about this idea, though. For one thing, determining the core Skills could be problematic. I want them to be useful skills, but be limited in scope to a sort of basic training package (like the current Basics TP). Not sure how to dovetail the Skills/Hobbies break down into the extant Training Packages of CharGen.
I might try tackling this from the rear, looking at what current Abilities work well as hobbies (like all the ones included for background flavor).

Slaintè,
Q

So, I was thinking this morning: In a setting where Characters essentially have a library strapped to their wrists, is a Knowledge Ability even necessary? A simple Computers check should be enough to determine whether you can dig up information on just about anything. Heck, for most applications, you wouldn't even need a check for that, just some proficiency with computers.

Why not assume that all characters are reasonably knowledgeable about the common things they will encounter and not belabor the issue? IF they find something dubious, they can simply check the ship's library, or whatever. If they're ever cut off from access, then it either won't matter a whit, or it'll make for interesting play.

Thoughts?

Q

Well, Sunday's first "real" session went fairly well. The scenario I put forth was the one I was going to run at Genericon this past January, but never got worked up. Based on Sunday's session, it seems it would fit well within the four hour con slot, so I think I'll go ahead and run it at the next Con (so I'll put spoiler warnings up for anyone who might join me at that session) and I'll post some details about it in a separate post.

Just thought I'd jot down some of the thoughts I've had since the game.
I'm worried about some of the mechanics' broad applicability. These are not new worries, but undocumented, at least. I foresee a problem with some of the abilities and the "Player gets the description" mechanic. For example, it really doesn't work with Knowledge skills. A player can't read the Narrator's mind and therefore can't describe the recall of knowledge he doesn't have. On the other hand, a player could just make stuff up that suited the story. That actually works well with a shared-storytelling game, but SftS is sort of a hybrid between shared-storytelling and traditional gaming. As such, having the player ad lib about info in the game world places a huge burden on the players and a strain on the Narrator. It's not too bad to come up with an action description of-the-cuff, because there is enough story invested in the moment that a player can reasonably be expected to add to what's going on. With knowledge, you're talking about something almost exogenous to play.

I find that Language as an ability has issues, too. As written, it should be Checked each time a conversation occurs, but we used it rather as an indicator of how well a person could speak, and roleplayed the transfer of information accordingly, with halting speech and poor word choices and stilted grammar. This strikes me as a more natural and favored way of handling language. If I were to have had light_in_motion make a check on her PL1 Usarian every time she tried to talk to the Shelnarians, then simply stated, "what you understood was blah, blah, blah", it would have made a rather stiff and boring gaming session.

Now, I realize these issues crop up in other game systems. Rolemaster, for example (in which I am currently participating in an email campaign) has multiple language skills. So far, we've sort of handled things the same way. The rules are written such that the efficacy of each language rank is explicitly spelled out in a nice little table. (While SftS is no stranger to the nice little table, I do try to minimize their presence. I've even recently deleted a few, so maybe there's room for another?). The GM handles speech interactions with a hybrid of the two methods I mentioned above. He'll give the gist of the conversation, peppered with direct quotes.

D&D, as I recall, had a similar vagueness.

So, I realize that this isn't a major problem, merely a hiccup, but it still chafes me. I'm sure some GMs normally follow the doling-out-of-information route, rather than trying to act in partnership with the player(s), so perhaps it's not too much of an issue. It's just something we need to keep an eye on as we go. And I'll have to flag other potentially problematic Abilities.

An interesting note about the Rolemaster language rules: Two conversants are limited to the communication ability of the lesser-ranked person, unless the higher ranked person makes a successful check. If successful, the lower-ranked person has an effective rank equal to the higher-ranked person for the duration of the conversation. That's a rather interesting way of dealing with language barriers, but other than that one specific, the rules seem to be just as handwavy as mine.

Let's see...what else?
Ah. One thought I had about dealing with the Abilities like Language and Knowledge is to break Abilities into Skills (active) and Abilities (passive), with slightly different check rules for each. On the surface, it sounds reasonable; however, I am loathe to add complexity to the rules when I have worked so hard to remove it.

Another reason for considering such an edit is the effortful study method of accruing AbilityXP. See, the problem is, no language checks means no chance for advancement. Well, except that you can spend StoryXP (at a 2 for 1 rate) to increase Abilities. But SXP seems like it will accrue more slowly even than AXP. Perhaps a 1 to 1 rate would suffice, but still, saving up 20 SXP to spend on an Ability seems like a lot to ask. There is, of course, the option of having the Narrator also award SXP, rather than leaving it all up to the players, but that might only double the accrual rate. Still not much. And, allowing AXP for lesser difficulty checks might help, too, though there'd be more record keeping that way. Anyway, the point is, with Skills and Abilities, we could have two methods of XP accrual (yes, adding more complexity). Skills based on usage and Abilities based on...exactly what would be the problem.

Anyway, as always, I'm very open to suggestions or just examples of other systems. My experience is rather limited. I'll keep you posted on how experience pans out over time.


One other problem I noticed we all had trouble with was working with the Intent, Stakes, Roll, Describe method of conflict resolution. Specifically, we skipped over the discussion of Stakes for the rolls. We actually had a brief discussion about it as Stakes concern Language and Knowledge. I mean, one has to get pretty creative with high-difficulty stakes (to recap: the higher the difficulty of the check, the more detrimental failure should be) for a knowledge check. Let's see, what do I remember about Kewpie Dolls? Oh right, Kewpie Dolls are... How do you make a failure about that detrimental, considering recalling a tidbit about Kewpies would be around +3 Difficulty? I realize you have to make it fit the circumstances—exactly why are you trying to remember something about Kewpies?—otherwise, there's no need for the check, but I dunno...just seems off. Perhaps as we get into the habit of Stakes discussion before rolling we'll get a better feel for how to deal with Language and Knowledge.

I'm hoping a quick reference sheet for everyone will help keep us to the ISRD method.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now.

Slaintè,
Q