various about my experiences as a P&P player (long)

[Peter Knutsen]

Scott Adams wrote:
>
> At 11:12 AM 6/22/00 +0200, you wrote:
> >Scott Adams wrote:
> >
> >> So did you run or just play P&P?
> >
> >I only played. And the GM was the kind who prefers that the
> >players doesn't get to know the rules except when necesarry.
> >He also used a modified P&P rules set, I believe in real P&P
> >you have to roll 1d100 to do skill checks, but he used a
> >2d10 method instead.
>
> Yeah depends on the rule variation system and the GM on which method you use.

Yeah, this is why the following description may sound extremely
weird. As far as I know, the GM could have used dozens and
dozens of house rules.

> So what kinda character did you play?

I told the GM that I wanted to play a kind of bard character.
Not the AD&D'ish "jack-of-all-trades" Bard class, but a person
with a focus on musical and social skills, and some entertainment
and thievery as less emphasized skills.

So first he had me roll up the main attributes. IIRC there
were 10 or so, but I rolled some that didn't look very bard-
like, so he allowed me to re-roll once and then once again.
Then I got something that he said was useable. As far as I
could see it was mostly average (I rolled 2d10 per attribute
IIRC, and the highest roll was 13 or 14, which were not in
attributes that seemed very useful to me) with a few low
ones (Will was horribly low, but I didn't really mind that,
as it could fit the character concept)

So we ended up deciding that this was the attribute set my
character would have. Then I was told to roll again, and
this time I generated a sum of points that I could split
between 4 categories. One was Wealth, one was Skill, one
was Attribute Multipliers and one was Social Class, IIRC.

I think I split them fairly evenly, but I may remember
wrongly.

Skill selection was messy because I had no list of skills to
look at, so I had to "guess words", something I hate. I also
didn't know whether it was a good idea for me to just mention
a few skills (say, 7-9 skill names I could think of) or if
I should mention many skills (more than a dozen).

But things turned out, if not okay then at least decently,
and my character Vindor was born. He also somehow got two
rolls on a random table which gave him an animal companion,
a semi-large wild cat, a lynx. The second roll gave him a
bad skin condition which lowered his Appearance from the
average 12 to the abysmal 6. Not good since my character was
intended as a "social manipulator" type, but the GM told me
that maybe there'd be a way to change it.

Still, I had a good Charisma attribute (it wasn't called Charisma,
but I've forgotten the name), so my Influence Roll was good. I
never seemed to get to use it, though...


My character was to join an already-established group of
adventurers, consisting of a kind of warrior, a kind of
thief (who wanted to be a mage, but was from a culture
where magic was forbidden) and a mage.

We went through a few adventures in which my character failed
to be useless, except he did make a few good Singing skill
rolls which impressed the natives. (the skill mehcanic the
GM used, for non-combat/non-magic skills, was to roll 2d10
and add a skill level. A skill of 0 was low, a skill of 3
was "pretty good" or something. I your final result was 9
it was "adequate", 12 it was "good", 15 it was "very good"
and so on).

Then we helped some kind of wizard (or a whole small guild of
them, I'm not sure) and as reward they promised to train the
thief in the party (he had an Intelligence of 21 and a
multiplier of 84. He also had good Will and Empathy).

The training would last 6 months, so the other three
characters also got an opportunity to go and do something.
My character had realized that he wasn't a very good or
heroic fighter after all (he used sling and a light meelee
weapon - I can't recall whether it was dagger or shortsword),
so he wanted to train. He travelled to a nearby city and spend
the next six months training under a teacher (at first the GM
thought he had wanted to train alone, but then I reminded him
that my character wanted to seek out a teacher and pay for
good training).

The original mage in the party was of the Law side. He constantly
failed to impress people, though. Before I joined, he had
performed an astounding amount of spell fumbles/misfires, turning
the thief into a dog for 14 days, rendering him mute (on another
occasion) and in general the other party members did not respect
the mage. He had healed my bard character on several occasions,
though, so Vindor did more or less admire the mage.

Anyway, the thief who was trained as a mage choose the Neutral
side, so he got a different selection of spells.

After the training-pause, the party decided that they would
head into the elvenforest on the southwestern part of
the continent, because of rumours that there was a magic
spring in there. Maybe it could cure Vindor's skin condition?

We went in there and had a few adventures, and then Vindor
was killed by a ghost. The GM didn't fudge anything to save
Vindor, but I don't mind that, I find fudging to make the
game less interesting and exciting, so the less you fudge the
better.

Also, Vindor died gloriously fighting an evil supernatural
creature (or at least trying to fight it). It was the kind of
death he would have wanted.



I rolled up a new character, telling the GM that this time I
wanted a kind of fighter/mage combination character (the first
bard character had been made because I was in the mood for
mostly "quite roleplaying" and "citycrawling", but while
playing Vindor I realized that the campaign world was rather
hostile, and that a more combat-relevant character would be
more fun to play in the events that the party usually
experienced.

Unfortunately, I rolled a very high Strength and average values
for the other attributes. I wanted to re-roll, hoping to get
better Will and Intelligence and Empathy, but the GM and the
other players more or less pressured me into accepting the
rolled character. They did tell me that I could use the
multipliers - which was true, but with an average Intelligence
of 11 or 12, and a maximum multiplier of x4, my new character
would never reach the heights of the two mages already in the
party.

Anyway, I rolled very lucky when I rolled that "general
ressource" roll, so I had lots of points to distribute
between Wealth, Social Class, Skill and Attributes.

IIRC I also got to roll for attribute multipliers where I
got a really good roll, so I could get many high multipliers.
I choose to apply the least possible multiplier to Strength,
though, x1,5, and the highest possible (x4) to Will, Empathy
and Intelligence. Dexterity and Constitution also got fair
values (x3 IIRC) because I wanted my character to be both
a fighter and a mage. And I did have a lot of "multiplier
points" to distribute.

When it became time to distribute actual points to my
attributes, I choose to place the attributes at a value
of 32 when possible, knowing that you got a +1 bonus for
each full 16 you had in an attribute. So I got like 32
in Con, Dex, and maybe 32 or 48 in Intelligence, Will
and Empathy. The GM wasn't too happy with that, but as
he said: "That just means that there's a loooong while
before you reach the next bonus level", so it was a fair
choice.

For skill choice, I (still without having anythig resembling
a list of skills I could choose from) requested various
weapon skills and training in magic (Law magic, of course).
Since my character would be a devoted destroyer of undead
and dark creatures (I had demons more in mind than generic
"monsters", though) I also requested some skills that would
give me knowledge about such creatures. And, of course,
Survival (natural underground) and Survival (manmade under-
ground).

For spells, I had to make random rolls (I think I got 8 rolls
or so) from a list the GM had (I didn't get to see the list)
which didn't seem very sensible to me, but the rolls were
from some kind of Law-aligned list, so I supposed they'd
fit my character concept.

He also got one "random chance" roll, which meant that the GM
pulled me aside and told me that the roll said I was some kind
of outlaw or exile. He also asked me if it was okay with me or
if I'd rather re-roll, but I said it was okay, and that I could
work it into my background story.

When the GM first invited me to the campaign, he sent me some
sample background material, both a very brief text on the
rules (explaining the 2d10+skill_level skill check system
which I suppose was a house rule) and also a sample culture
writeup, a culture that was in the southeastern part of the
map, a mixture of Arabic and Egyptian culture, it seemed to
me. Very corrupt and decadent and evil.

I decided that my character would be from that country, but
exiled due to political and theological conflicts (he'd be
a good guy, basically, a defender of justice and innocence!).
His father was a government-assassin (who had a major cannabis
habit), named something-Paladin, so my character's name was
Mustafa ibn Paladin. He was somehow stranded in a part of
the world far away from his home, but since he was acutely
embarassed about being an exile (people might think he had
done somthing wrong!!!) he'd try to keep that a secret. The
other players didn't know about it.

I was looking forward to playing this character, but I had to
wait a session because the party was in the middle of the Elven
forest where it was unrealistic that they'd bump into me.

Then, a few days before I was going to play the character, the
GM e-mailed me and the other players and told us that he had
to cancel the campaign, he had too much work and he didn't have
time to prepare properly for the sessions. Rather than give us
bad roleplaying he preferred to stop the campaign.



It was kinda fun while it lasted, but it would have been more
fun with more rules-transparancy, especially during character
creation.



> Actually that would be a good topic for the list.  Do you as a GM prefer to
> let
> players know the rules or not.  I personally will give as much info as I can

Absolutely! I don't GM P&P, but a freeware system named "Quest",
and I always tell my players that they can have as much knowledge
about the rules as they want. In reality, they all prefer to
just play and let me handle most of the rules stuff, which is
fine with me. But the rules are there if they want to get to
know them.

Character creation in particular is important to me. The Quest
RPG system has a short "shopping list" of skills (maybe 250
or so - a lot of them spell lists specific to different
religions, though) from which players can choose. The list
is divided into 18 categories so it's easy to manage (12 of
the lists deals with general Clerical magic and Clerical magic
specific to 11 different religions, and 1 other list deals
with minor skills. The five most used lists deals with
Mage spell lists, Fighter skills, Thief skills, Technical
skills and Open skills - Open is anything that doesn't fit
any of the other lists)

I don't like RPGs in which you get to define your own skill
names. Take FUDGE as an example. I could choose a broad skill
such as "Burglary" or a narrow skill such as "making copies of
metal key". How do you balance that?

But the example from P&P is even more absurd, because the
skill list did exist, I just wasn't allowed to see it.
I couldn't know whether P&P operated with broad or narrow
skills. It was frustrating, and it was needless frustration...

> to help them play their character.  Details on like animal portages or the
> swimming table is a bit too overkill.  But I don't also on that note hide a
> rule.
> If for example a character doesn't want to kill but only wound I'll explain
> that portion of the rules for subdual damage.  That kinda thing.


Both during character creation, and during play, I function as
a sort of advocate for the players, when I GM. If a character
is an experienced fighter, and wants to subdue someone, I'll
help the player work with the game rules towards that goal.

The GM is there to help the players. It's a kind of service-
function.

Not that the P&P GM was a problem during play, then he was
fair enough, but character creation was too hazy. I had to
make choices without accurate knowledge of the consequences
of my choices.


> >
> >It was a fun campaign, although I found the character creation
> >procedure non-transparent. I had no idea about how many skills it
> >would be a good idea to select for my character.
>
> Yeah I like to add skills and allow any type of character that can be played.

I play in a rather world-focused style (not plot-focus or character-
focus but setting-focus), so I have to limit characters to ones that
would actually make some kind of sense in the given culture. It's
no big deal, though. If a player wants to play a specific type of
character, with an odd skillset, I can usually find a culture in
which such a character would only be unusual, and not downright
unique.

> If you want to play a farmer that's fine...want to play a inn keeper that's
> fine as well.  I don't really restrict the type of character.

One thing I feel is important is that the player gets an idea
about what the campaign is going to be like, before making a
character. For instance, I thought the campaign would be
fairly mixed, sometimes military, sometimes social inter-
action, when I came up with the bard character concept. Then
it turned out it was mostly military.

The Quest RPG-driven campaign I'm GM'ing now is intended to be
"fairly mixed", though. So far we've had five long sessions
(and one short one), two of which were "dangerous action"
(one was a trip to an island to kill an assassin, the other
was a venture into a dungeon to kill a necromancer) and three
sessions of what I call "citycrawling". So all of the PCs are
getting to use their skills, rather unlike my Vindor"...

> Longshot - ZC of AdventureNet International Echomail Network

--
Peter Knutsen

PS. I think it might have been fun playing a mage in P&P, but
then again I'm not sure. The first mage in the party did
fail his spells very often, and he fumbled a few times
while Vindor was in the party, plus Vindor heard many "old
war stories" about previous fumbles made by the mage PC.
I think that if an RPG rules system makes spellcasting too
prone to failure and fumbling, spellcaster characters won't
get the respect they deserve. Of course going to the other
extreme, having spellcasting always be reliable (like AD&d
does it) is equally problematic, but I believe a happy medium
can be found (such as Quest RPG, for instance).