aWoD: Skills

[Username17]

OK, so the basic dice pool in aWoD is similar to White Wolf or Shadowrun obviously enough. It generates a logarithmic probability chance by throwing out extra dice, while keeping numbers approachable by having small numbers of d6s looking for 5s and then requiring multiple hits rather than the more accurate but painful method of using large piles of d30s looking for 30s. That has its advantages and disadvantages, but it's basically non-negotiable.

What is negotiable is the skills actually used. Different versions of World of Darkness and Shadowrun have used wildly different skills. And it has all worked. Sometimes better and other times worse, but always worked at all. And that means that it's really negotiable.

So you're going to be rolling Attribute + Skill and looking for fives. The skills I'm fairly happy with, although they could be name changed without panty twisting.

Things that I feel strongly about:

• Shadowrun has too many weapon skills. Seriously man, way too many. It's not even sensible how many weapon skills there all. Frankly, nWoD has too many weapon skills. Fighting just isn't that interesting and mostly people get to choose their own weapon layout. So really even having more than one shooty or melee skill serves little purpose save to screw characters who improvise weapons. And improvising weapons is awesome, so that's not even a sensible goal.
• Anything that the game wants to emphasize should be emphasized by the skill system.
• Splitting diplomacy (or negotiation or socialize or whatever) from bluff (or con or persuasion or whatever) seems to be a bad thing.

Now, I know that number 2 and number three seem to counteract on another. If talking to people is supposed to be emphasized by the game, it's going to want a lot of skill coverage. And yet the fact remains that when the tasks of specialization are clearly delineated between truth and lies, that the game kind of bogs down. What is desirable is for everyone to be motivated to do stuff in conversation modes.

So here are some crazy ideas:

• No Socialize Skill at all. You can be interesting conversationally by using appropriate knowledge skills with your charisma. Using the same topic is boring if you do it a lot, and you get progressive penalties. If you want to be persuasive about a topic, you have to relate it to a knowledge skill with penalties for obscurity.
• Social Skills by social group. Divide the social groups up like old SR Etiquette. High Society, Streets, Muppets, Clubs, Whatever. You make a list, you check it twice, and then you use the appropriate skill based on your peer group whether you are trying to convince them to believe you about the zombie threat or want to have sex with you.

Honestly, the same basic question comes down for the magic use skills. The Shadowrun "Sorcery" skill is too good, and the nWoD "Occult" skill is fucking way too good. Everyone has magic powers, there seriously can't be a magic powers skill.

-Username17

[IB90]

I definitely agree about not splitting up combat skills. Just have guns (which also applies to crossbows, supersoakers, and whatever) and melee (which applies to monster attacks, weapons, and maybe throwing a chair at someone.)

Also, I'm not all that familiar with Shadowrun, but I imagine it has a great deal of weapon specialization. I don't really think you need to differentiate from multiple kinds of pistols or the difference between a broadsword and a katana. All the characters really need to worry about is whether a weapon is concealable (in which case it does less damage) and whether a weapon is made of materials like silver or iron.

Players should be encourage not to carry around big, obvious weapons. I think it's more thematic for a werewolf to decapitate someone than it is for the werewolf to use a sniper rifle.

[Starmaker]

I support no social skills. In fact, I have already replaced them with knowledge skills in my games.

It's less dissociative.
Diplomacy is not only too powerful, it's bland and dissociated like 4e powers. Bluffing and persuasion can appeal to hard logic, personal preferences or emotions (Charisma), but they are founded in actual knowledge.

It rewards creativity and enhances the story.
Using Knowledge is basically "mother may I" where the requirement is cooking up a line of reasoning using the skill in question. "Pretty pretty please" (roll sth generic) is a bad argument. "It's safe" or "profitable" or "glamorous" is a good argument, and you can build on the result of that roll, which is also good.

No one (hopefully) goes to play Smash Bros.
Every character has some applicable knowledge, so potentially everyone can do the "mother may I". This is in contrast with diplomacy by social groups, where Jack engages in all discussions in high society and Jill does all the talking in the slums. We can always have some social group modifiers on top of knowledge.

[Username17]

Knowledge skills as interaction skills certainly has the ability to get people involved. Even a low Charisma character is going to end up with topics that are interesting in a situation at a high rating and have a decent overall dice pool. However it essentially precludes using the nWoD mental skills. Science/Academics/Medicine/Politics just isn't enough interests to keep things interesting. The Shadowrun system of "whatever fucking interests you want to have" would work better. But it's kind of sketchy, it may need to be nailed down more than that.

One very real possibility would be to give people a news bonus of up to several dice if they had something new to talk about. That could encourage people to take knowledge football and the like as they will regularly have something to socialize with.

However, what I don't want to happen is for people to put 6 in Knowledge Magic Stuff and then spam it every time they talk to anyone on the far side of the mask.

[Quantumboost]

Knowledge skills as interaction skills certainly has the ability to get people involved. Even a low Charisma character is going to end up with topics that are interesting in a situation at a high rating and have a decent overall dice pool. However it essentially precludes using the nWoD mental skills. Science/Academics/Medicine/Politics just isn't enough interests to keep things interesting. The Shadowrun system of "whatever fucking interests you want to have" would work better. But it's kind of sketchy, it may need to be nailed down more than that.

Also, how do we want to tie in "Knowledge: Biochemistry" or whatever to "fix a damaged digestive tract" or "make Super-Serum"? Are we going with SR4's "you get active skills and knowledge skills, and are encouraged to pick up science knowledges if you do sciency things", or do we want to have the same thing be used for brewing up some TNT as for discussing the latest advances in fullerene production? Or something else?

[Username17]

Extreme Options include:

• Full Mother May I! This is the system ostensibly used by movies like Flash Gordon and horror movies around the world that feel the need to do extensive "foreshadowing." The idea is that you have completely arbitrary activities, interests, and knowledges and you use them in conjunction with whatever attribute happens to be appropriate for whatever you are trying to do at the moment.
  Example: Flash is good at American Football, so he can beat up Ming's troops by clotheslining them. Meg Penny is a cheerleader, so she can jump across the chasm.
• Complete Codification. It is also entirely possible to take some arbitrarily list and cut everything up into chunks. This tends to be how things work when there is no exposition or a lot of writers. In this version, the skill system looks more like nWoD or 4e D&D where the skills are preprinted on the character sheet.
  Example: Giles knows stuff and can make an exposition roll at pretty much any time. Rambo is good at fighting so he can use his fighting score to kill people with anything he happens to have.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

If anything, the the fuckwads who seperated "martial" from "simple" (a big fucking mistake imo) should have seperated this longsword from that longsword.

I've got a few knives, and I've done a bit work with a borrowed officer's sabre, a length of dowel, a kendo bokken, and some other things.

Really, the differences in one weapon and an other are not between "club" and "sword".

The differences between weapons are seriously "this knife, is a 12" long double-edged knife that's flexible and has razor edges" and "this is a bowie knife, high carbon steel and very stained, it swings like a tiny axe". Which is honestly much more granular than any game that I can recall has ever represented.

I believe that "weapons" should be much more generic.

Swinging a sword, or a wooden dowel is the same fucking thing.

You're using an.... fuck, I forget what it is exactly, but it's either a reverse lever or a double lever, or something. The principle is almost always the same.

Stabbing and slashing with any knife is the same overall, even if the knives are all of different types.

You should seriously just have weapons classified by "size", not type. Then have specializations for a -specific- weapon.

You can have a 12" iron spike be your "knife-sized" weapon specialization, or an actual commando knife like a fairbairn-sykes, I don't care, the princiles of their use is the same, but knowing the nuances of one will not teach you the foibles of the other.

Weapons can come in the following sizes:

body strikes
short weapons (knives, shivs, hatchets)
long weapons (clubs, maces, swords)
great weapons (polearms, two-handed swords)

handguns
long guns

wierd/heavy guns (you need to spend at least a few minutes looking at a new heavy gun, or wierd gun; like a flamethrower, if you haven't ever used one before)

If you know one, you also know one specific weapon in that type, but you can seriously grab a piece of rebar and break some faces if you know how to swing a sword. Also, rebar is a lot easier to find than swords are.

[Prak]

If anything, the the fuckwads who seperated "martial" from "simple" (a big fucking mistake imo) should have seperated this longsword from that longsword.

I've got a few knives, and I've done a bit work with a borrowed officer's sabre, a length of dowel, a kendo bokken, and some other things.

Really, the differences in one weapon and an other are not between "club" and "sword".

The differences between weapons are seriously "this knife, is a 12" long double-edged knife that's flexible and has razor edges" and "this is a bowie knife, high carbon steel and very stained, it swings like a tiny axe". Which is honestly much more granular than any game that I can recall has ever represented.

I believe that "weapons" should be much more generic.

Swinging a sword, or a wooden dowel is the same fucking thing.

You're using an.... fuck, I forget what it is exactly, but it's either a reverse lever or a double lever, or something. The principle is almost always the same.

Stabbing and slashing with any knife is the same overall, even if the knives are all of different types.

You should seriously just have weapons classified by "size", not type. Then have specializations for a -specific- weapon.

You can have a 12" iron spike be your "knife-sized" weapon specialization, or an actual commando knife like a fairbairn-sykes, I don't care, the princiles of their use is the same, but knowing the nuances of one will not teach you the foibles of the other.

Weapons can come in the following sizes:

body strikes
short weapons (knives, shivs, hatchets)
long weapons (clubs, maces, swords)
great weapons (polearms, two-handed swords)

handguns
long guns

wierd/heavy guns (you need to spend at least a few minutes looking at a new heavy gun, or wierd gun; like a flamethrower, if you haven't ever used one before)

If you know one, you also know one specific weapon in that type, but you can seriously grab a piece of rebar and break some faces if you know how to swing a sword. Also, rebar is a lot easier to find than swords are.

this is pretty much true... I was, specifically, trained with escrima sticks, rattan sticks, just shy of a meter long. With that training, and some natural talent, I can adapt to pretty much any one handed striking weapon, regardless of whether blunt or edged.

It makes the WoD system of Brawl, Firearms, Melee actually make a good deal of sense.

[Thymos]

Does anyone else view Social Skills as optional?

What I mean is that the skills are nice to have when someone wants to play a charismatic person but isn't charismatic themselves. At the same time it's easy to ignore the skills and just let the charismatic guy roleplay. Either way having the rules is nice.

[Quantumboost]

One of the major focuses of the game discussed - a new version of WoD - is politics. Characters' social interaction is the entire point. Playing as someone who can muster influence in supernatural society, even if you personally don't have incredible social influence, is the entire point.

You don't hear people suggesting acting out a combat scene as a resolution to D&D combat, you hear people suggesting they play a freeform LARP instead of D&D, or maybe sparring. Because D&D is a combat game. In the same way, if you're playing AWoD, you don't use roleplay as a political and social resolution system. You suggest playing a freeform RPG. Or maybe joining a debate club or going into politics.

So... it might be optional in some games, like D&D or Street Fighter: the RPG. This is not that game.

I mean, I personally would like to be able to actually play this thing without resorting to being the dumb muscle or Dr. Phlebotinum all the time.

[Josh_Kablack]

What about a "maneuver" based social system? Instead of just one skill, or just spamming a skill you could actually write up a whole series of "social combat" around conversational gambits and tropes from fiction:

I'm a bit unclear of what the stats even are, but here's an off-the-top of my head prototype for what this might look like:

Conversations
During a conversational scene, you are trying to learn one or more facts and/or extract one or more favors/promises from an NPC (or NPC group). Meanwhile the NPC is trying extract information and favors/promises from you (and the other PCs)

Conversational gambits:

• Dazzle with Brilliance Roll Cha + {relevant knowledge} to convince the target that you know all about this. Any successes convince the target of your basic competence, but having more successes than the opponent has ranks in that knowledge convince them that you are more knowledgeable on this matter than they are. Each success allows you to convince them that one fact on this topic they knew previously was in error
• Baffle with Bullshit Roll Cha + Persuasion opposed by the target's Wisdom + {relevant knowledge} to convince the opponent that you know more than they do about this. If successful, you may extract one fact or promise based on the relevant knowledge skill from them
• Quickly Change the Subject Roll Cha + Stealth opposed by the target's Int + Perception. If successful you change the topic of conversation to one you are more prepared for. You may substitute any knowledge skill for any other knowledge skill on your next social test this scene.
• Play Dumb (aka Stonewall) Roll Wisdom + Poker Face opposed by the target's Wisdom + Cardshark to convince the target that you know nothing about the current subject, and hopefully get them to move on to a new one.
• Get him to gloat Roll Manipulation + Espionage against the opponent's Potence. Each success causes the opponent to let one key fact slip. Bonuses if they have already captured you and left you in a seemingly-inescapable deathtrap.
• Physical Threat Roll Str + Intimidation to convince the target that you can and will hurt them now if they do not co-operate. This generally leaves the target more hostile to you following the conversation.
• Pull Rank Roll Potence + Status against a friendly target's Potence + status to convince them that you have authority here. If successful, they will give you one fact or promise. generally this only works on extras or members of your covenent
• Lay out your cards (aka Quid pro quo). Give up one fact or promise, then roll Cha + barter vs Target's Wisdom + barter to convince the target to give you one (or more) facts or promises in exchange for it.
• Beg Roll Cha + Desperation to get an opponent to just give you something.

It would clearly need to be fleshed out a quite bit and balanced, (and not written drunk at 2:30 AM) but that might be the way to go here.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The skill system of Vampire should probably be rather minimal, as disciplines are where characters are really supposed to shine. With that in mind, a simple attribute/tag system (like SotC or the 'knowledgeable persuasion' system) or skill system would probably work best. I think that individual abilities would be altogether too complex.

Josh, I think the system you're describing is a good one, but that it isn't a great fit for AWoD.

[Username17]

So here's a sketch:

You got two skills that let you be trained in socialness: Blather and Intimidate. Most of the time when you want to speak to someone you make a check with a social stat and a background skill that the person you're interacting with also has. So if you're dealing with sports fans you can make a Charisma + Football check and if you're dealing with respectable types you can get by with a Charisma + High Society test. But if you want to bullshit people, you can make a Willpower + Blather or Charisma + Blather test.

This way Face or Cover Girl have an actual skill that they can measurably perform, but you still have everyone talking during diplomatic missions. The face characters get a skill that lets them fast talk guards (a rapid resolution activity), but they don't get to kick everyone else out of doing legwork at the Prince's reception.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

That works.

What else does AWoD need before it's done?

[Quantumboost]

That works.

What else does AWoD need before it's done?

To be roughly playable, the rest of the non-interest skills, powers for the Fallen, finalizing the Devotions and powers for the Disciplines, and actual rules for what the powers do. I think we have Fortitude, Celerity, and Walk of Flame (from a while ago), and a couple Devotions defined, and otherwise mostly flavor. Also an updated assignment of what weaknesses apply to each type.

We may want some idea of how non-Supernatural Luminaries (mad scientists and cultists) accomplish rituals like reanimating the dead or opening a door to the Dark Reflection.

Other than that, expanded flavor text, further description of the gameworld, and organizing the information into a complete document. We may also want sample characters/NPCs or an example scenario.

Am I missing anything?