Supporting organic character development

[PhoneLobster]

Something I've done a fair number of times and had a great deal of success with is encouraging almost pure organic character creation/development during game play.

Players walk in with a blank or largely blank character sheet, and through playing the actual game and sending their characters on adventures rapidly fill it in. "Oh we need a light aircraft pilot to escape the volcano? Well you guys will never guess what I've suddenly spent an unspent skill point on, looks like my character used to be a bit of an aviator! I think I might call him Biggles from now on... what with his name still needing filling out too...".

That sort of thing.

It makes character creation fun. It makes learning the game fun, it means there is no notable set up time, it's great for brief pick up games etc...

I've managed this with systems up to around about the d20 cthulhu level of complexity, but then somewhere in the lower levels of 3.x DND it starts to get tricky and hit road bumps.

This thread asks the question, well, what if you decided you wanted to support this sort of play as your standard for character creation, and possibly character development?

As things currently stand there are a few major obstacles. The main one simply being that more complex systems have (and should have) lots of character creation and development options and it just plain takes time to sift through them at the table during game play.

I'm not thinking strict randomized limitations to advancement particularly cut it either, unless they are regular and you can simply call "pass I'll pick next time something good pops up." without too much trouble resulting.

Having a convenient list of available advancement/creation options related to scenario can work in highly pre written adventures, but only for so long and only for the same single adventure.

Having abilities sort of indexed by categories of "What this stuff does" would probably be an enormous help for more on the fly and generic adventure support of this sort of thing. And might be a helpful tool to have handy anyway, but very probably wouldn't be enough.

And all of this of course assumes that Your advancement/creation system is very much about giving out some form of advancement/creation resources that do not require their immediate expenditure. You get skill points or whatever when you level up, but leveling up mostly consists of just adding some skill points to your unspent skill points box on your sheet. You spend them when it becomes apparent you want or need an ability in game play. So there is going to be some need for some fairly basic mechanical support in that regard.

Including respecing options is probably over all a good idea, since players are more likely to fall into "trap" options or combos in such a system, though you might suggest that it undermines the whole point of organic character creation, or might even make respecing too powerful and desirable without some sorts of limitations.

Anyway. This is mostly vague drivel here. Just a different topic I'd like to see discussed a bit.

[K]

I'd probably give all characters some ability to spend a limited and rechargable resource to use any ability on their "list" in addition to their regular abilities selected off their list.

For example, you'd let a Sorcerer spent a point of something to cast a spell on his Sorcerer list even if it wasn't one of his actual spells known.

Then just let people switch out abilities for other abilities on their list as needed during downtime.

That way you'd be able to cast Guards and Wards that one time when it would be awesome and never would need it on your list crowding out real abilities. It would also give the impression that you've done a lot of stuff, but your at-will stuff was the stuff you kept in practice with.

Or kung-fu style training flashbacks. Those are cool.

[Fuchs]

What I did and do is letting players have some flexibility with character builds during play. Mostly it means they can redo builds if new stuff is published, but when starting games I also let players change their characters around to add stuff they only realized during play they wanted or needed.

[Dean]

Including respecing options is probably over all a good idea, since players are more likely to fall into "trap" options or combos in such a system, though you might suggest that it undermines the whole point of organic character creation, or might even make respecing too powerful and desirable without some sorts of limitations.

I feel this is the opposite of true. In this system players would be vastly LESS likely to fall into trap options IMO. If the DM never calls for a Knowledge nobility roll (which they won't) then those points are never spent. Conversely everyone would have points in spot by the second session even if no one in the group knew that Spot was awesome and Knowledge Nobility was hot garbage. I consider this a large boon to this system.

Respeccing is something this system should include but only because every system should. Everyone should be able to change their spells known or skills or feats or whatever and they should be able to do it in just a few days. If a player wants to change a feat choice they are just going to DO that so there's no point in pretending it's not happening and systemize it

edit:whoops, broke the thread. fixed it

[icyshadowlord]

Who are you quoting there?

[shadzar]

This thread asks the question, well, what if you decided you wanted to support this sort of play as your standard for character creation, and possibly character development?

start a 0-level game, and play through it and remember you dont need to fill in everything right away when you level.

i wouldnt call this organic play, but deus ex machina play, cause of how you have the right thing at the right time always.

just limit the amount of crap you use of the source material. pick maybe 1 book outside of the core system that people are familiar with and there shouldnt be any flipping through lists to find that "right thing" to give Biggles a little more depth.

[PhoneLobster]

This thread now asks the question... did Shadzar really write that reply without reading ANY of the initial post? Do we care, will his non sequitur kill the thread? Has everyone just started sensibly ignoring him yet?

[...You Lost Me]

Backgrounds (like aWoD) would work well with this.

I also think a beer & pretzels game with "oh wait, I just remembered! I have full BAB!" would be a fun game for a one-shot.

[Mistborn]

This thread now asks the question... did Shadzar really write that reply without reading ANY of the initial post? Do we care, will his non sequitur kill the thread? Has everyone just started sensibly ignoring him yet?

I'm sort of at a loss for why he's still posting here given that theRPGsite would welcome him with open arms. Given that the only response he gets is "oh fuck Shadzar just posted the thread in ruined forever" I think he's just here to troll.

Maybe we should actually just ignore him since our resistance only makes his e-peen harder.

[Koumei]

You're right that it gets harder for the systems that are more complex, have more advancement and have more splats (and thus, options hidden away). So, D&D on every single count there.

For D&D, for instance, it'd probably be best that people pre-select their:
[*]Name (because people might want to talk to each other in game)
[*]Appearance (because they can see each other)
[*]Race (linked to the above)
[*]Class (because that determines their HP, which they don't choose to use, they just flat-out get interacted with)

You might actually want to also make them select their ability scores. Or give everyone a kind of "meh" array to place, and a pool of upgrades they can apply when they want to go "Actually, all this door-kicking has made me stronger" or "I didn't want to say anything, but I'm a genius".

Then this means they have a pool of skill points, and can just spend them as they go along. Likewise all character options (Feats, Spells, Bibbletops and so on) can be chosen as you go.

Now if you wanted a game of similar complexity and advancement, but didn't care about using an existing system like D&D, you have a lot more freedom. You don't actually need to tie HP and skill points to classes, so you really can just say "And here are the classes/character archetypes/whatever, pick one when you think that's the one you want" or jetisson the whole idea of classes and say "Here are the powers. You have X slots for powers, spend them as seems relevant".

At that stage, you're getting close to something like BESM, but with mandated amounts of points spent on skills and on abilities etc. (so, 2Ed BESM). Preferably without being quite so crazy and unbalanced.

Edit: I know I'm not saying anything you don't already know, but it's important not to let Shadzar's inane ramblings derail the thread.

[PhoneLobster]

Well. Of course the more modular the complex system the better. What I'm asking is what else are you going to do to support a more organic character development system?

My best guess at the moment is basically cheat sheets.

I already have sort of summary cheat sheets "selling" the various abilities in my game to the players with a brief description of what each group of abilities does "The Pyromancy skill set sets things on fire, has explosions and lets you fly like a rocket, a rocket ON FIRE" etc... , and another cheat sheet selling other ability groups based on which skill sets they play nicely with "The Thievery Skill set works nicely with the Assassin and Illusion Skill sets for stacking hide bonuses/abilities" etc...

What I'm thinking is I need a more detailed index of individual abilities based on their basic function. So that I can support a casual adventure where we say go...

"I see you guys are stuck in the bottom of a pit!"

"Well Bob and Sally have unspent skill points on Betty The Indomitable and As Yet Unamed Stranger."

"Perhaps you guys might like to have a quick peruse of the Mobility Skills cheat sheet!"

So what I'm saying is what about indexing individual ability options into categories like "Mobility", "Ranged Attacks", "Attacks that Hurt Things with Immunities/Resistances", "Crazy defense crap that will save your life at the last second" etc...

I could see such an index actually being of genuine value in character creation ANYWAY, but the point is it SEEMS like a really useful resource for pulling this whole organic character development thing too.

And I can't really think of many ideas better than that to further promote that sort of character development methodology. There has to be something else?

[Koumei]

Yeah, cheat sheets/abilities all being tagged based on the sub-heading they fit under. That's a good idea.

I'd suggest having basically no prerequisites involved. If you need X to get Y, then that means people who want Y will need to plan for it by taking X. Sure, if "Use a computer" and "Computer hacking" are going to be separate skills, then arguably the latter requires the former, but that's more a case for making the latter simply be part of the former.

That's ultimately the main enemy of organic character generation: having to plan this shit out. I mean, before playing D&D I always chose abilities based on what I had been doing, rather than what I wanted to do in the future. The existence of, say, Whirlwind Attack (pretend for a moment it's worth the feats, because "You spin around LIKE A HURRICANE, RIPPING EVERYONE UP AND RUINING HOUSES AND SENDING PEOPLE TO OZ" sounds awesome) is one of the worst things for "developing the character as you go", given it's basically the top of a Feat Pyramid.

(I can see limitations based on power level, so "Starting characters can't summon comets" or whatever. Just the level 10 comet summoning shouldn't require slingshot proficiency, billiards/snooker training, the megagravity spell and spin-bowling.)

[PhoneLobster]

I was afraid that my existing system would be problematic to adapt to this, but after looking, it seems pretty much like it's a pretty close fit already.

So skill prerequisites in my current system work like this.

Must Unlock Access to skill set
A stupid idea for flavor basically. You must have unlocked the themed skill set the skill belongs to.

Starting characters get 2 unlocked sets for free. If you started as an advanced character there would be more. It's already written in that such unlocks don't have to be spent in advance and can be revealed as you spend points.

After that there are minimal downtime costs for training skill set unlocks. But you could easily wave those, or allow generic training time for a new unlock or something.

Be the right tier of character
Super awesome skills are only available to super awesome tier characters. So if you are a low tier character you just get your skills/skill sets from the low tier ones. So that's basically your "no meteors for 1st levels" there.

Equipment requirements
You can't use some skills unless you have the right (fairly broad) categories of item. Melee weapon skills need a sword or a spear or a hammer or something, projectile skills need guns or bows, plate armour skills need an armour with plate or sometimes Heavy (which might just be plate armour, or might be various other partially plated suits). Etc...

It would not be hard to include a small tag on equipment requirements in the cheat sheets and give out free minimal equipment requirements with skill selections. "You reveal yourself as a master of the Robe Escape skill, so you get a free robe. Then you presumably throw it at someone's face and escape."

Hard Skill dependencies
There are a very limited number of skills in the system that absolutely require one specific other skill in order to function. These are generally not so much "prerequisites" as they are more "this skill doesn't even do anything unless you have that other skill, because all it does is modify it/it is triggered by use of the other skill, etc...

Throwing a quick note on the relevant entries on cheat sheets would be doable. On any such cheat sheet, most such hard dependencies skills would mostly not appear as their own entries and be sub entries of upgrades for the primary skill anyway.

Soft Dependency and Synergy Skills
Some skills require another skill to function, or require another type of skill to function effectively... but it could be one of several skills. Harder to represent but not impossible.

Fairly easy to stick a reminder in the Assassination skills cheat sheet that people should REALLY go refer to the Sneaky skills cheat sheet or the Social skills cheat sheet to make the skills there more effective.


So really I just need the cheat sheets and some small changes to the Skill Set unlock bullshit, which is largely just there to piss people off for no reason anyway.

The question is. What else can I do?

[Username17]

Well. Of course the more modular the complex system the better. What I'm asking is what else are you going to do to support a more organic character development system?

Really short and incredibly segregated ability lists. If you tried to do something like this for D&D Sorcerer spells, it just wouldn't fucking work. The spell lists are over five hundred pages long and asking people to select out of them on the fly is completely absurd. Only the fact that Sorcerers choose their spells between sessions makes that class anything other than a war crime.

On the flip side, having people choose spontaneously from 3 or 4 options when the need arises would probably be fine. Sorcerers rarely slow down play much while choose which spells to cast, even though they'd bring the game to a frickin halt if they had to choose which spells to know in the middle of combat.

So having people put down a marker that "foreshadows" the selection of one of a few selections is probably the way to go. Now your task would be to make sure that none of your tiny lists is full of shitty powers. Foreshadowing "Cosmic Wizard Abilities" is likely to be better than foreshadowing "Beekeeper Abilities" unless you work on it really hard.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

I've managed this with systems up to around about the d20 cthulhu level of complexity, but then somewhere in the lower levels of 3.x DND it starts to get tricky and hit road bumps.

This thread asks the question, well, what if you decided you wanted to support this sort of play as your standard for character creation, and possibly character development?

If you're looking at something like 3E D&D, you'll have a lot of trouble with prerequisites for stuff like PrCs. It seems that people will either luck into or out of various PrCs, or they'll secretly plan their advancement anyway, and only do things that gets them closer to being a Frenzied Berserker, or whatever.

Are you fine with people having builds and dictating their actions based on that?

Including respecing options is probably over all a good idea, since players are more likely to fall into "trap" options or combos in such a system, though you might suggest that it undermines the whole point of organic character creation, or might even make respecing too powerful and desirable without some sorts of limitations.

I think this is important, especially because of the prereq thing I mentioned earlier.

This thread now asks the question... did Shadzar really write that reply without reading ANY of the initial post? Do we care, will his non sequitur kill the thread? Has everyone just started sensibly ignoring him yet?

You have added this person to your Ignore List. Click HERE to view this post.

I don't think it kills the thread. Breaks up the pacing a bit, but oh well.

[Koumei]

Equipment requirements
You can't use some skills unless you have the right (fairly broad) categories of item. Melee weapon skills need a sword or a spear or a hammer or something, projectile skills need guns or bows, plate armour skills need an armour with plate or sometimes Heavy (which might just be plate armour, or might be various other partially plated suits). Etc...

It would not be hard to include a small tag on equipment requirements in the cheat sheets and give out free minimal equipment requirements with skill selections. "You reveal yourself as a master of the Robe Escape skill, so you get a free robe. Then you presumably throw it at someone's face and escape."

Just checking, does that mean "You need to use (item) before gaining proficiency or whatever" or "Heavy Armour Use only applies when wearing Heavy Armour"?

The former could be a little annoying and lead to people making sure to play dress-ups for half an hour just to cover all bases, even if it's realistic for people to practice with X before being good at X - part of the point of this "system" is being able to go "Surprise! I was good at X all along!"

The latter (what I think you mean) sounds like it almost goes without saying, but if "Heavy Armour Use" is less "You don't take the -8 penalty to attack rolls for wearing heavy armour" and is more "Because your armour makes you so heavy, you can't be knocked around the place or picked up and thrown." then I suppose it doesn't hurt to say that. Basically the same as "You need hands (or an appropriate substitute) in order to take Juggling" and "You need to be able to see in order to use the Spot Hidden Crap skill".

[PhoneLobster]

Just checking

The second one. Heavy armour use only applies when you are wearing heavy armour sort of thing.

The first option sort of tangentially occured as part of the original system for unlocking access to skill sets beyond the first background sets. But was always the worst and stupidest part of skill set unlocks, which should really be changed anyway for this sort of set up.

Originally there WAS an inclusion of stuff like "Use Melee Weapon to kill things" as the unlock requirement for the Melee Weapon skill set. Though it did give you free access to some skills from the set to help you out while you attempted to do that.

But like I said. The unlock stuff was questionable experimental material from the get go, and probably needs removal for better support of organic advancement, and the organic advancement actually happens to do most of the better stuff that the unlock requirements did anyway, so... yeah...

As to Franks comments about "limited choices".

Like I said in the initial one. You might be able to do "here are your four choices" bullshit. But if so you have to do it often and with no punishment for someone saying "nah pass, they all suck". And we just know he is about to try and get all Winds of Suck all over this so no. We don't really want to randomize those either.

Cheat sheets plus SOME remaining limitations/costs on just how many skill sets you can unlock means that the bottom of pit scenario gets you a cheat sheet list of 10-20 options from the mobility cheat sheet. (generally less complex than sorcerer/wizard spells, more like d20 feats).

Then the player can immediately eliminate the options from skill sets they do not have access to, or do not want to spend access on. "I don't feel like a Pyromancer" immediately rules out rocket powered flight, "I already have the acrobatics skill set" puts wall running firmly on the list of considerations. All in all they will probably only seriously be considering a small number of actual options off any given cheat sheet referencing event.

Also while you can throw out a fair number of points and resources the limit for available points to spend on upgrades is vastly smaller than the number of occasions that you are going to be, well, doing things. So not EVERY action or even every encounter in the game will see someone saying "no, wait, I could spend a skill point on this".

Further while we are inserting some additional time costs into game play we are REMOVING time costs at the same time from "leveling up" and other existing character advancement time costs. Very possibly even removing more time costs than we are adding. There is certainly something to worry about if you insert too long a delay or break in real game play, and such extended breaks might be best thrown into a pile and done outside of organic play, but this doesn't look like it's an issue.

[shadzar]

This thread now asks the question... did Shadzar really write that reply without reading ANY of the initial post? Do we care, will his non sequitur kill the thread? Has everyone just started sensibly ignoring him yet?

or maybe it asks did you even read what you wrote.

i replied that i dont think this would work, but with ideas to make it work.

even used your example character Biggles

1- start a o-level game, one where race and name are about the only things picked, and let players learn HOW to learn and choose things as they play. class will be developed through what they do. try Treasure Hunt if you need an example of this, it is sort of made for the thing you are trying to create. also i said to limit the amount of choices to prevent book flipping to look for something. the more options or choices there is to make when the time comes to need Skill: underwater basket-weaving, then the more time it will take to look it up.

you are reverse engineering AD&D to D&D and the NWPs, back to common sense really. wherein one to swim you needed the swim skill, and in the other, if the PCs need to swim, then unless there is a good reason they couldnt, they can swim. which is what MANY did with NWPs anyway, and just assumed that a character can build a fire in all the the most extreme circumstances, and not having the "fire-building" skill, doesnt prevent from being able to build a fire.

read what you write and the question you ask, then you might be able to understand the answer given. if you are too incompetent to understand the answer, then ask for more details on the answer.

you want character creation to happen during play, not before play, so that options chosen are ones needed, not jsut guessing you might need this or that. old problem, been solved many times in many ways. maybe you missed them in the @40 years of RPGs.

TL;DR

you are trying to turn character creation into MTP. good luck with that in this day and age.

[Username17]

Wait, your plan now is to hand people a list of twenty options in the middle of their combat turn and they don't even fucking qualify for some of that shit? That's cruel to the other players. It's cruel to the player being asked to do it to, but every second you spend reading an option that you can't actually take when you're supposed to be moving your fucking character is a second that no one at the table can ever get back.

If you want to do organic in-play chargen simply and easily, have players select a list of potential options to advance into during downtime. Then let them spend their points on the list they themselves drew up during play. This allows you to have the stupidly long ability lists that everyone loves reading through when it isn't their fucking turn and still gives people a short and functional list to contemplate when other people are actually waiting for their actual decision. And if it turns out that none of the abilities they chose are really that useful? Well, don't buy any of them, keep the points, and swap out the potential purchases between sessions. Next time you can spend the points on something that seems more useful.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Wait, your plan now is to hand people a list of twenty options in the middle of their combat turn and they don't even fucking qualify for some of that shit?

It's pretty fucking simple Frank. List of UP TO 20 options (note the up to, these are cheat sheet indexes drawn from a lot of sources they're going to vary wildly in size) and yes not qualifying for, or having a limited resource with which to qualify for some of them IS a fucking feature

I know you would prefer to limit choice with a random dice roll. But really the arbitrary prior selection of, say, 4 categories and having the cheat sheet prominently feature the category of each skill means that players look at a sheet, and get MAYBE 4 options to pick from off the sheet.

Occasionally they will have a resource to unlock a new category and theoretically have (up to) 20 options to pick from. But even then players WILL and DO eliminate large swathes of them simply by saying "Plate armour? Projectile Weapons? Ick, not wizardy enough!". And when they DO make that sort of choice it is rarer and more than justifiable for them to take a moment extra.

A moment extra which WILL BE SHORTER THAN DOWN TIME and will also REMOVE DOWN TIME costs from the game. You have to pay the time cost at some point, and this is not an especially inefficient way to pay it, and it is only an occasional cost with long term benefits.

If you want to do organic in-play chargen simply and easily, have players select a list of potential options to advance into during downtime.

Oops... you could also read that "suggestion" of yours there as in most respects exactly the fucking same as the option you just criticized.

Your skill categories that limit your in game choices to shorter lists are previously purchased choices. You have effectively bought in to a group of options from which to select in play... and you just said that shit doesn't work! Then you recommended THE EXACT SAME THING.

Only in your version instead of the GM handing the player a preprinted prepared cheat sheet they can quickly select their previously limited options from... YOU require the players to invest hefty amounts of additional down time searching through the entire game and writing their own cheat sheets by hand..

You effectively are suggesting a strictly inferior version of the SAME THING.

[Username17]

A moment extra which WILL BE SHORTER THAN DOWN TIME and will also REMOVE DOWN TIME costs from the game. You have to pay the time cost at some point, and this is not an especially inefficient way to pay it, and it is only an occasional cost with long term benefits.

Between session time costs are not costs. People like catalog shopping through big ability lists. It's a game in and of itself. Whether you're talking gadget shopping in Shadowrun, spell shopping in D&D, discipline shopping in Vampire, or skill shopping in RIFTS, people love that shit. Big ability lists make people happy. It's only when other people have to wait for you to sort through a big list that it becomes a net negative utility. And that's simply because watching someone read a book is a genuine cost. Every second spend with three to five other people staring at your indecisive ass while you contemplate a list of options is bad.

But having the ability to fiddle around with a big list of potentials between gaming sessions is awesome.

I know you would prefer to limit choice with a random dice roll.

What the fucking hell are you talking about? WoF systems are a method for dealing with large numbers of abilities on the character sheet while still delivering fast play. We're talking about how to deliver large numbers of abilities in the ability catalog while still delivering fast play - which is a completely different problem and requires completely different solutions. The solution in this case is not a random roll or an abbreviated cheat sheet or any of that shit - it's simply making all selections from the big list at times other than actual play so that you don't slow the evening down. It fucking works for Sorcerers in D&D and has for the last 12 years.

Clerics slow the fucking game down to a fucking crawl when they go to the big list of all possible Cleric magic to make a battle plan in the middle of an adventure. Wizards slow the game down a lot less, because their entire list of possible daily spells is already culled from the giant list and written on their fucking character sheet. Sorcerers don't slow the game down at all, because they are only allowed to fuck with their spell list between sessions.

I can't take your organic growth plan seriously unless and until you come to grips with the fact that time spent catalog shopping at home is fundamentally not the same in cost as time spent with other people actually waiting for you to make a decision.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

How about you acknowledge the following.

Scenario A)
1) I look at some sets of abilities. I decide I like some. I pick them.
2) In play I then see a small number of abilities from those sets that appear on cheat sheets related to the situation I am in.
3) I pick from that small list.

Scenario B)
1) I look at ALL the abilities. I pick a bunch. I write up a cheat sheet list of, some sub set of them.
2) In play when I want to advance I do NOT get a sub list related to the situation. I get... the entire list I had to select and write out myself that may not be relevant.
3) I pick from that small list.

Note how those two scenarios are well nigh identical except for small differences that make scenario B utterly inferior compared to A when it comes to meeting the goals described in this thread.

Scenario B requires MORE time in step 1. Scenario B is LESS well adapted to the context of the situation in step 2). Scenario B requires actual parsing of what abilities on the list DO to eliminate abilities not relevant to the situation EVERY time, while the equivalent initial elimination of options for Scenario B is "does it have one of a very small number of skill set tags next to it?".

Scenario A can give out broad skill sets that actually have options usable in a WIDE range of situations, such that it will generate choices between 2-4 abilities pretty reliably for numerous situations, while Scenario B... requires you to pick only about 4 ish abilities in the first place, which WON'T cover a broad variety of situations as a result, and require you to REGULARLY return to down time and repeat step 1 again and again, which Scenario A does NOT require regularly.

Frank. Acknowledge that or leave this thread.

[Ice9]

2) In play I then see a small number of abilities from those sets that appear on cheat sheets related to the situation I am in.

Ok, this is where it breaks down. The "situation you are in" is not a discrete and clearly defined entity unless you abilities are all niche powers for very specific situations.

Let's say that "the situation" is that I'm in some treacherous terrain on a mountain-top while wyvern-riders fly around shooting me. What list should I be picking off, exactly?
* The movement list, to get flight / acrobatic balance?
* The earth mastery list, to get stability of the mountain? Or burrowing to escape with?
* One of several ranged combat lists to get better ranged attacks? (You'd need several lists, or else one very huge one).
* The curses list, to get a wingbinding hex?
* The stealth list, to turn invisible / camouflaged and escape?
* Whatever the fuck list has Teleport, so you can just leave?
* The abjuration list, to get Protection from Arrows?
* The summoning list, to get a flying mount or some flying minions?
* The weather control list, to make a hurricane so they have to land?
* The social-mastery list, so I can get them to parley?
* The transmutation list, so I can turn into a form that can do one of the above?
* The psychic powers list, so I can mind control some of them?
* And so on ...

Most non-contrived situations are going to have multiple different angles you could use to deal with them, and often multiple problems to deal with. Picking the list to pick off is going to be as bad or worse than the between-session shopping you're complaining about.


That said, I'm completely in favor of enabling real-time character building. I just don't think this list / cheat-sheat thing solves it.

[Username17]

How about you acknowledge the following.

Scenario A)
1) I look at some sets of abilities. I decide I like some. I pick them.
2) In play I then see a small number of abilities from those sets that appear on cheat sheets related to the situation I am in.
3) I pick from that small list.

Scenario B)
1) I look at ALL the abilities. I pick a bunch. I write up a cheat sheet list of, some sub set of them.
2) In play when I want to advance I do NOT get a sub list related to the situation. I get... the entire list I had to select and write out myself that may not be relevant.
3) I pick from that small list.

Nice strawman. Why would your list of selections not be segregated into whatever categories you would put out cheat sheets for? If you want to segregate abilities into a movement list, a social list, an investigation list, and an attack list (or whatever), you can have people select possibilities for those lists and then their own selections will necessarily be divided up among the sublists you thought were important when you were making the game.

And once you put the abilities into sublists, you still haven't actually guaranteed that they are relevant to the situation you are in during the game. Sure, you need to get from Point A to Point B so you're definitely looking at the "mobility" list or whatever the fuck, but lots of shit on that list won't do a fuck bit of good in the situation you happen to be in. If you need to get to the end of a tunnel full of skeletons, everything involving flying and jumping is completely unhelpful.

All you're really doing is limiting any possible sublist for the entire game to whatever length you optimistically think is a short enough list to be able to handle on the fly. Because the list of "attack options" has to be short enough for the entire game that you can hand it to someone when they decide that their already established attacks aren't helpful and want a new one - and then have them read it all and make a decision before they attack in a short enough timeframe to keep the other people at the table from becoming bored and resentful. So you're Xing out the possibility of having dozens or hundreds of attacks. Hell, Megaman 2 might have too many attacks for your hypothetical system to handle.

And what have you gotten for it in smoothness of play? Literally nothing.

Frank. Acknowledge that or leave this thread.

Since I refuse to acknowledge your proposition on the grounds that it is both wrong and deceitful, I guess I have no choice.

/Thread Left.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

I just don't think this list / cheat-sheat thing solves it.

I don't think it's a perfect solution either.

But, it is a PARTIAL solution. And a pretty good one. Situational cheat sheet indexes of abilities will not be perfect, but sometimes they will in fact be useful. That is... well, a crap load more than just not having that.

MORE solutions are welcome. Better ones if you have them. But I fail to see why you would reject something that works rather well when you don't actually have something better, and Frank's only offered alternative is "Fuck you I like downtime character creation and I want it to take fucking forever, and what do you mean people don't DO downtime creation between games for elaborate home brew rules sets they've never seen before they hit the table?".