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

[Scott Adams]

At 08:52 PM 6/23/00 +0200, you wrote:
>
>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.

Yeah with alot of systems hard to tell from a player standpoint..


>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.

Bards are good to run.  Actually I have a important NPC with some skills in
music that the players are about to meet soon :)

>
>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)

IIRC?  That's about average and some good scores...


>
>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.

Yeah that's initial increases based on 2d6+14 and then usually divided up
on thsoe points on a table...

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

Bard would bes tto buy at least a CEL1, Some cps and tons of wealth
and 1/3 expertise I'd say...

>
>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).

Well theres where I like to help players I give them the skill chart and at
least
show them what they need to drive for.  Say a skill that needs dex and such
and depending on their current stats so they can get a general overview.
OTherwise if its a confused player new to rpging I'll give them a top 10
selection and generate based on weights and such they give.

>
>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.

Ouch yeah that would hurt for a bard.  That's the special events table based
on age/10 rules and (2-3) and allows good stuff and bad stuff.

>
>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.

A well versed and mingled group :)

>
>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).

Now that must be a house rule...unless I've missed something or
forgot :)

>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).

Mages...teaching a thief....hmmmm


>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).

Always a good route to go...

>
>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.

hahah...sounds like balrog in the '80s...he'd love 'accidental' fumbles
on others :)

>
>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?

hmm..recall any names? of counties or countries?

>
>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.

I don't mind fudging if a character had a real problem and just goofed or
didn't
deserve it in SOME cases.  But then again a fool who wades across a water
pool with acid buckets and a trip wire in plain sight deserves what he gets :)

>
>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.

Honorable is always good :)

>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.

Its always good to start out with fighter types in any system till
ya get used to the rules in any system.

>
>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.

Well depends...a character who is average can surpass one that is
super bogus.  I always had a guy who miracously rolled super high
(you know the type).  But he would be surpassed cause he was too
st in his ways on other things and didn't confirm or change or adapt.

>
>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.

ERr yeah the multiplers are the roll I listed way up there..just realized
my goof...the initial increases are age/station and other factors.

>
>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.

Yes..bonuses are very useful :)
And can mean the difference between life and death for some...

>
>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).

War staff is my fav for mages :)
Then for the skills you could've got supernatural tongues and gone that
route..
Or use a house skill of Mythology or such...

>
>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.

Ahh..so he did random selection of the spells yes tht's the law list
in book 2.  I don't mind letting players choose the spells they want
though most like every spell and its like all zeros in the spells rather
than concentrate on one or two.

>
>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.

Special events like that always add spice...gives youa villian sherriff to
avoid :)
or bounty hunters...

>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.

Naughty naughty...evil...bad...:)

>
>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.

heh

>
>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.

hey now....I can have characters meet in the middle of a ocean and on a boat
if I plan it well enough :)  But yeah...


>
>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.

sigh..a too much common problem of today...including myself...

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

Yeah...might get the pc generator I  did on the site and look at it..goes
throught the steps and such..

>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.

Oh yes you get those types that just want to have the GM do all the work and
them just roll dice :)  Which is fine it lets more role playing seap in...

>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)

Cool a good system like pnp allows a GM to append to the system it generates
like skills and such..

>
>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?

A gm balances it as you do with offsets to those skills if you get those
skills you don't get others.  Basic economics.  I don't mind generating
skills that are not on the list since there are things that are just not
covered on a list that can be used.  Like Burt's extended skill list
has Brewer or Vinter there might be npcs that actually use those
skills and thus a player might want to learn them.  Heck I've had
cases where they've been used in games :)

>
>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...

Basically its a one page skill set....about 20 or so combat general types like
Sword which might have Short Sword and Sword skill in it and that
of a more specific skill set like Husbandry and Thief.

>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.

Yep....

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

Then you have GMs like a old Fantasy Hero GM I had back in the '80s that
(was a good system that invented the noun Viddles as a hit location (not
hard to imagine)) that would sit there and say "now what do you do?" and
that's basically it he would not go much further than that basic question.
Too much player control and 0 or little GM input...

>
>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.

Yeah that occurs alot with new systems you play...I don't run for example
Gurps or Marvel so have to depend on what the GM's knowledge is
and don't memorize the skills.

>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.

Same here...heck a early pnp game I had back in the early 80s had a guy
play a beggar...he died in a hut that killed off a major npc villian but
he died a hero and become the "Beggar who lost a arm"...in rpg circles
(a gross but inside joke on the death of the two...)


>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.

Well I don't give that out I tend to throw folks into things this and that
and let the players decide which area of thegame they want to go.
So that if they go here I do Story A if there Story B and Storcy C might
interact with A which caused D to fuddle up B :)


>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"...

Always good stuff.  My game now has a place for everyone even a scholar and
even those who might not see it yet.  I tend to develop something for everyone
:)
So they feel they have some part of it...

>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).

Yes..its not that difficult to start a mage just about a 20 min
session on a demo mage routine would get ya started....


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