From: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Re: net.rpg: Character Stats
Date: 20 Nov 92 22:54:24 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <KETIL.92Nov19173439@sandel.ii.uib.no> ketil@ii.uib.no writes:
>>>>>> On Thu, 19 Nov 1992 08:50:38 GMT, fks1@ellis.uchicago.edu (Scaramouche) said:
>
>In article <1992Nov18.221344.3370@alf.uib.no> magnus@ii.uib.no writes:
>
>	Sc> it.  i.e.  say Joe takes fencing.  If he takes it at a low
>	Sc> level he has a low Agility (or whatever), but if he takes
>	Sc> it high he has a high agility.  This doesn't make too much
>	Sc> sense.  Why can't Joe have a high AGI but be a poor
>	Sc> fencer?

	Question #1:  Why is Joe's fencing skill off agility?
	Question #2:  (alternatively) Why is Joe's fencing skill of
dex?
	Question #3:  Would it be off of a >gasp< average of the
two?  (To me, fencing seems to be a combination of the two...)  Then
why not combine the two stats?  It's been done for a long time now
under many RPGs and they haven't fallen apart at the seams yet :).
	Question #4:  WHY would Joe be a poor fencer?  In real life,
I've know many people who are high in Stat X but claim that they
Suck At Skill N.  When I've asked why, they always demand that
they've tried, but can't do anything.  On the other hand, some, when
forced to do just the thing they claim to be horrible at, and when
given appropriate incentive, turn out quite the opposite.  The more
I see this happen (with me as well as others), the more I question
that someone is necessarily "Bad" at something when their stat is
"good."
	In many cases things have turned out to be psychological,
not "physical."  In that case, that's the character's problem and
would probably be better off in a character writeup or as some minor
"disadvantage."  ("Doesn't think he can draw.")
	Question #5:  Why not include aspecting and allow the player
to define an alternate AGIL: Fencing which is lower than normal
AGIL?
	Question #6:  Why not just say that Joe sucks and leave it
at that?  Never put points into it (he sucks, feels that way about
it, and would never waste his time trying to get better...[see what
I mean about psychological?  Grin...]).  Very simple.
	Question #7:  How often does this come up in play and how
large of a problem is it?  From my own experience, the answer is
almost never and hardly...

>I think the point was that if Joe takes a lot of fencing it will
>increase his agility, if he takes a lot of badminton instead, that
>could be just as good.

	Umn, I think the point was similar to a common GURPS gripe:
If Joe has a high AGIL, his skill in Fencing will automatically be
high while if Joe has a low AGIL, his skill will be automatically
low.  Something I'd like to point out is that if you're putting
points into a skill, it means that you've been studying/practicing
it.  If Joe sucks because he's NEVER practiced (quite likely if he
thinks he sucks.  And even if he does, he probably would put very
little effort into it, "Why bother?  I'm not good at it."), well,
that's because he's never tried.  Did we all learn to write
perfectly on the first day?
	Yet a high stat tends to mean that a person is capable of
learning something more quickly than someone with a low stat.  Peopl
with high stats tend to pick up things much, much faster.  In game
terms, this is shown by Joe's "automatic" high skill as opposed to
the alternate Joe's "automatic" low skill.  The Joe with a high stat
is capable of picking certain things up very quickly.  (If real life
has anything to do with this, I've known many people like this.
While others are struggling with the basics, they're jogging along
thinking about stuff that won't even be covered next semester...)
	Is it unrealistic for this to happen?  Depends on the stat,
skill, and situation.  In many cases, though, I think that the
mechanic works.  At the high end, though, this can create some
fairly strange effects (unless it's just my own experience that
falters here...never met anyone with an 18 IQ in GURPS terms...
maybe they do pick up things incredibly fast...dunno).  It seems
simple enough to create a Ceiling and a Floor to handle this.  "When
a character is learning a skill and invests his first point, that
skill can never start out at a level above 14..."
	(Although in my opinion 100 hours [GURPS] of study time is a
LOT and justifies high skills...)

>In effect, you'd sum up his experiences, and form stats from them.

	Bad practice.  If Joe spent a lot of time fencing it doesn't
mean that that experience easily translates into other things.  That
"agility" is not necessarily the same as bicycling "agility" is not
the same as broadsword "agility" and so on.  I'd generally let stats
affect skills and not vice versa (my own preference.  There was a
game mentioned a few months back that allowed skills to affect
stats, but I have problems with it.  Skills are normally very
specific and very specialized and don't necessarily translate into
general gains aross the board for that one stat...).
	But it's your game, right?  Go ahead...

>--
> = Ketil Malde                     In real life:  ketil@ii.uib.no =
> = Nuke the whales!                    Honk if you love unicorns! =

	No!  Save the Earth!
	     Kill the humans!

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