The Gaming Den

Space Madness! (which I really need to get back to fucking finishing) has 4 attributes and 16 skills, with optional expanding list of tags and certs.

Hiram McDaniels wrote:What's the bare minimum amount of stats and skills that people will accept for a d&d type game?

People are going to want to do things and they're going to want to find ways to increase their odds of success on doing those things. If your game allows narrative descriptions to result in successes, people are going to be happy for their character. But the darkside of human nature is that things don't feel special is everyone else can do it, too. So skills allow a player to invest a resource to literally prove that they're 'better' at something than somebody else. If skills are never 'adversarial', you can probably get by with virtually none - just tags like 'strong' and the player describes how being strong allows them to succeed.

The minimum number of stats is of course zero. You could get rid of stats entirely and just have more skills.

But if you have any stats and they are meaningful, then I feel like 3 is the minimum or else you cannot cover some of the conflicts that you want to resolve in a game that is supposed to have fighting, magic and subterfuge. I would accept a fantasy 3 stat game with Might, Magic, and Trickery. That would cover most conflict resolution. Could maybe have a few skills underneath each one to cover likely adventure tasks:
[align=center][/td][td]Might[/td][td]Magic[/td][td]Trickery[/align] [/td][/tr]

Melee Attack	Magic Attack	Sneak
Ranged Attack	Counterspell	Deception
Mobility	Lore	Traps

I think that gives you enough bones to build a simple fantasy RPG. You can put some meat on the bones with backgrounds and traits, and then you can have enough diversity that people aren't all playing the same character. If you have two Might guys where one can turn into a wolf and the other has a barbarian clan they can call upon for some situations, then that's different enough.

Hehe. Might guys.

The most popular versions of D&D characters had ...

1e: stats, attacks, saves, non-combat profs, combat profs, thief skills, items, and spells.
3e: stats, attacks, saves, skills you no take, combat feats, useful skills, items, and spells.

Also Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Flings, Gnomes, Half Orcs, Half Elves, plus some.
Also Fighters, Mages (a couple of 'em), Clerics, Rogues, Paladins, Druids, Rangers, Monks, plus some.

Generally there's like 4 major spell lists, that are quite large, and there's various mechanisms to limit how many spells each character can take from them to make their in-game choices more fun (so either a short list or a subsection of it per character).

Numbers, like, there's 6 stats and maybe 8-12 useful skills and dozens of fluffy ones. Cutting back the numbers from that is not valuable, having about 7+-2 options at each step is a good thing, it makes people happy. Which is to say, dump stats and crap skills are good for you because you can not put points in them.

Ancient History wrote:Space Madness! (which I really need to get back to fucking finishing) has 4 attributes and 16 skills, with optional expanding list of tags and certs.

What's the stats and skills?

For my scifantasy heartbreaker I'm going with...

Stats are your defenses and core skills
Body- physical toughness, strength skills
Agility- phys evasion, acrobatics and balance skills
Will- mental toughness, concentration and endurance skill
Sense- perception stuff

The skills are not mixed with stats

Physical
Melee
Aim
Thievery
Survival
Stealth

Social
Inspire
Insight
Tactics
Bureaucracy
Animal Ken

Technical
Mechanics
Biotic- medicine healing and such
Rigging- demolitions, combat engineering stuff
Code- programming, hacking
Pilot

I feel this covers everything I want to do in an rpg covering shadowrun/40k/D&D... figure I'm missing anything?

Schleiermacher wrote:I would prefer to have skills, but if you are talking about accept I definitely think you can run an old school game with four stats (STR/DEX/MIND/CHA, a refinement of the D&D six) and no skill system at all (just use stat checks, class features and player skill).

Conversely, you could just have a short list of skills and no stats. I've seen a few games do that, like Querp where your basic scores are:

Fighting
Magic
Strength
Charisma
Stealth
Knowledge

erik wrote:The minimum number of stats is of course zero. You could get rid of stats entirely and just have more skills.

But if you have any stats and they are meaningful, then I feel like 3 is the minimum or else you cannot cover some of the conflicts that you want to resolve in a game that is supposed to have fighting, magic and subterfuge. I would accept a fantasy 3 stat game with Might, Magic, and Trickery. That would cover most conflict resolution. Could maybe have a few skills underneath each one to cover likely adventure tasks:
[align=center][/td][td]Might[/td][td]Magic[/td][td]Trickery[/align] [/td][/tr]

Melee Attack	Magic Attack	Sneak
Ranged Attack	Counterspell	Deception
Mobility	Lore	Traps

I think that gives you enough bones to build a simple fantasy RPG. You can put some meat on the bones with backgrounds and traits, and then you can have enough diversity that people aren't all playing the same character. If you have two Might guys where one can turn into a wolf and the other has a barbarian clan they can call upon for some situations, then that's different enough.

I like that model. Nice and concise.

tussock wrote:Numbers, like, there's 6 stats and maybe 8-12 useful skills and dozens of fluffy ones. Cutting back the numbers from that is not valuable, having about 7+-2 options at each step is a good thing, it makes people happy. Which is to say, dump stats and crap skills are good for you because you can not put points in them.

Uhh that's completely, wild-eyed, pants shitting bonkers - unless you're writing a game about playing a hoarder or something. If a game has options where their only purpose is to be the wrong choice, then it doesn't belong in the game.

If you write a game about going on adventures, then the only skills that matter are ones that are used to complete the adventure. Skills that help you be a better mud farming peasant are at best clutter and at worst traps. If you MUST include underwater basketweaving skills, then shunt that stuff off to its own section of the character sheet, so johnny ROLEplay can feel good about writing Barber +4; Baker +3; Candlestick Maker +2 and then never touch that shit again.

OgreBattle wrote:

Ancient History wrote:Space Madness! (which I really need to get back to fucking finishing) has 4 attributes and 16 skills, with optional expanding list of tags and certs.

What's the stats and skills?

Charisma: Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion, Therapy
Courage: Combatives, Pilot, Screen, Survival
Intellect: Computing, Engineering, Law, Medicine
Perception: Empathy, Forensics, Navigation, Visualization

TRhanks, curious as to what therapy and visualization are used for.

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Is the idea of the five room dungeon a sound one, did the Den ever make guidelines for dungeon/conflict design before
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Five_Room_Dungeon

Simply from knowing that the game is called Space Madness! I'm going to assume that they have to do with reducing a target's madness score over time and combating madness forces trying to take over your mind by singing Marry Had A Little Lamb instead.

Anyone get ahold of the rules for Red Markets? I'm curious as to whether it's any good.

Gonna play in a one-shot in two days - trying to help one person make a character and myself one. Rules are 3.5, 26 point buy, level 4, no flask rogue, no clerics, minor splat permission.

My current build idea is:

The Kraken (human transmuter 4)
Feats: Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Grapple, Aberration Blood
Stats: Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 12, Cha 10
Skills: Balance +4, Concentration +9, Knowledge (Geography) +10, Profession (sailor) +8, Spellcraft +10, Swim +3
Spells Known: Enlarge, Silent Image, Grease, Magic Weapon, Pro' from Evil, Endure Elements, Feather Fall; Fearsome Grapple, See Invis, Web, Alter Self
Notes: Octopus familiar, DM is waffling on babau slime, so I'm assuming that and bladeweave are unlikely

Friend is currently considering a Water Orc Fighter Archer, to go with the aquatic aesthetic I created. Neither of us have a clue what kind of gear to buy, since it's a one-shot.

virgil wrote: Friend is currently considering a Water Orc Fighter Archer, to go with the aquatic aesthetic I created. Neither of us have a clue what kind of gear to buy, since it's a one-shot.

Is the DM allowing you to by WBL-appropriate magic gear?

RobbyPants wrote:

virgil wrote:Friend is currently considering a Water Orc Fighter Archer, to go with the aquatic aesthetic I created. Neither of us have a clue what kind of gear to buy, since it's a one-shot.

Is the DM allowing you to by WBL-appropriate magic gear?

Yes, 5.4kgp each. The DM doesn't want to engage in accounting for a one-shot, so he's not doing line-item vetoes or anything like that. There's obviously a desire to not just lather myself in amber necklaces, ~80% consumables, or similar nonsense.

Ok, I have a dumb idea I need help with- CW McCall's Convoy makes me want to run a game based around, like, commie trucker pirates. Truckers in 60s America that are all laborers-rights and anti-government.

I'm kind of looking at hacking d20 Modern into some kind of quasi-functional kludge, but is there a system that would work well for something like that? Also, is there a GURPS book (or books) that would help with building that world?

virgil wrote:Yes, 5.4kgp each. The DM doesn't want to engage in accounting for a one-shot, so he's not doing line-item vetoes or anything like that. There's obviously a desire to not just lather myself in amber necklaces, ~80% consumables, or similar nonsense.

For your friend with the archer, I'd suggest a +1 mighty composite longbow (to take advantage of his likely big Str mod) and arrows made from different materials.

For you, I can't think of much all that good other than consumables. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that gives a boost to grapple checks. Two things that pop out:

• Anklet of Translocation, which can help you get out of an unwinnable grapple or various AoE problems.
• +1 twilight mithril shirt for +5 AC with 0% ASF. That's pretty much all of your money, so I can see why you wouldn't want to purchase it.

If someone in the group has something adamantine, you can bypass most things that rely on hardness to stop you/slow you down. That sucks up 3,000gp, which is a lot, unless you cheat and just get a bolt,or something.

Prak: Look into Car Wars and GURPS Autoduel. Car Wars has spectacularly good driving rules (caveat: it can play pretty slow). Also, the setting is heavy on that kind of 'truckers as a union' thing.

Ah, thanks, Hadanelith!

RobbyPants: Another option, if your GM allows custom magic items, would be a limitless wand of Extract Drug. When used on metal or stone it lowers the object's hardness by 1, and it can be used repeatedly. The "downside" is that it releases fumes that act as a given BoED drug. But that can be obviated by just holding your breath for a round. Well, however many rounds it takes to crumble the object.
A wand of Extract Drug with infinite uses would be 750 gp (to make, I guess. 1500 to buy. still cheaper)

I'm thinking of dropping the thievery skill for my heartbreaker and instead make it a specialization of Survival.

The idea being that when you take Survival you get general 'stay alive' utility out of it but also specializations so a thief is an 'Urban Survivalist' and has the skills to pick locks, sleight of hand and so on. So an urban survivalist has a bonus against urban obstacles like locks and urban monsters like the police while a jungle survivalist has a bonus against jungle obstacles like quicksand and jungle monsters like tigers.

Or is explaining this too much of a headache and most people would prefer Thievery (pick locks, conceal items, steal, urban survival stuff) to be its own skill separate from Survival.

Ogrebattle wrote:Or is explaining this too much of a headache and most people would prefer Thievery (pick locks, conceal items, steal, urban survival stuff) to be its own skill separate from Survival.

Are you expecting players to want to play Druids and Rogues? Are you expecting that some player might actually want to play a character who can track in the forest and also pick a lock?

If the answer to all those questions is "Yes," you should not merge the skills.

-Username17

Yah, I'd think merging Survival and Thivery separately with some sort of Lore/Knowledge would make more sense than with each other.

Is there a lovecraft monster that the beholder is based off of?

OgreBattle wrote:Is there a lovecraft monster that the beholder is based off of?

Per Gary: no.

In After Sundown, when challenged to fulfill your Driving Passion, by how much do you get to raise the attribute you choose? I assume by your Edge, since the other thing Driving Passions do is let you refresh one Edge.

Also: when Rodney Kinging someone, free attacks mean attacks made at Threshold 0, right?

So in designing an RPG how should one look at the skill list vs how many skills the PC's are competent in?

I've been eyeballing things based on experience with D&D and Shadowrun discussions here, but wondering if there was any formal way to look at it like "If the party is expected to be X people with Z total skills to choose from then they should have Y amount of skills each"

As an extremely simple rule, if you have X people with Y skills each, then the skill list should have approximately X*Y entries.

Things get more complicated in practice, unsurprisingly. Some skills are things that every character wants to have. For example, in a lot of games it's pretty common that everyone wants to have Perception. Also, X is usually going to vary from 3-6, which means that it's basically impossible to have a situation where a party of 3 isn't missing huge chunks of the list but also a party of 6 doesn't have any overlap. Which way you want to err depends a lot on how much of a character's archetype is defined by the skills they have. If the difference between a wizard and a warrior is that the first one gets spells and the second one gets combat techniques and those are fully distinct power lists exclusive to the class, it's fine to have a skill list small enough that large parties will have overlap. If the difference between a wizard and a warrior is that the wizard is putting lots of skill points into Spellcraft and the warrior is putting lots of skill points into Combat, it's important that the skill list be large enough that a party of six isn't forced to include redundant characters.

It's also important that it always be obvious which skill is relevant to roll in any situation that could be reasonably be expected to come up in the kind of stories your game generates, and that you support genre-relevant distinctions in character abilities. If Flynn Rider and Rapunzel are both supposed to be supported by your system, Charm and Deception need to be different skills.