P&Pv2, design questions (to Richard)

Thu Feb 5 16:10:11 CET 2004

I like the way randomness can generate interesting characters, but you can
get the situation where you have everyone with more-or-less average
characters, and one person who did well and has a "super" character that
owns everyone.  Or the alternate where someone rolls poorly and makes a
gimp.

Point based systems provide more evenness between players, but you can end
up with eveyone looking the same.

One compromise I proposed, back when I last ran P&P (short lived game, it
was fun enough, but we had two newbish players and all the math drove them
bonkers.  Priority one has to be to eliminate all the in-game monkey
makework math) was a "Karma" system.  Basically, when rolling their
characters they had the option of taking rerolls for base attributes
(unlimited, but you had to take the roll, not take the highest of that new
roll and what you had before), for determining multipliers, specials etc.
You gained 2 points of Karma if the reroll was a single die (d10, d6, d100),
and 1 point of karma if it was a bell-curve die (2d10, 2d6).

The purpose of the gained karma was to screw the character on good
rolls...basically, "bad karma" that had to be worked off in play (and you
had to take the lumps -- the karma burn would only apply if the roll was
meaningful, at my discretion).  When karma came into play the player had to
re-roll the dice she just rolled.  Obviously you only force this on a good
roll.

AT this time I was using my 2d10 system for skills, so to be objective about
it a Karma hit came about when you rolled doubles on your skill roll and
would have succeeded in your skill.  For magic and combat (which still used
perecentile), you had to re-roll if your die roll ended in a "1" (i.e. 01,
21, 41, etc).

I think one player had about 55 Karma at the start of the game, and after
the 4 or 5 sessiones we played had gotten it down to 50.  Most of the
rerolls didn't hurt too bad (a few cases of deadly/severe hits turned to
misses or shield hits), and one skill roll he REALLY wanted had to be
sacrificed to the karma god.

----------------------------------------
Burton Choinski
Principal Software Engineer, Quality Engineering
email: burton.choinski at matrixone.com

phone: 978-589-4089
fax:      978-589-5903

MatrixOne, Inc.
210 Littleton Rd.
Westford, Ma 01886
www.matrixone.com

The First in Intelligent Collaborative Commerce
----------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Albert Sales [mailto:drite_mi at YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 5:30 AM
To: POWERS-AND-PERILS at GEO.CITG.TUDELFT.NL
Subject: Re: P&Pv2, design questions (to Richard)

   We used a similar house rule. We assigned a
set number of multipliers then added 1d10 to
(Mult +1)x2 to get a native range of 4-20 that
very closely represented the character that our
players wanted. It also helped keep the game
balanced. We did not allow this with con and
appearance. They were as rolled.

--- Sylverrs_ dragon <abnaric at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> The thought, right or wrong, was that Con and
> Ap were things a person was
> born with and could not alter. Thus the fixed
> multiplier.
> The rationale with the other eight stats is
> allowing the player to assign
> multipliers allowed him to make the character
> the person he wanted it to be
> within the limits of its native ability and
> other factors that I felt have
> an influence.
> The result makes creating a character more
> complex but I feel it also makes
> the resulting person more unique and important
> to the player.
>
>
> >From: "Choinski, Burton"
> <Burton.Choinski at MATRIXONE.COM>
> >Reply-To: Powers and Perils Fantasy
> Roleplaying Game Mailing List
> ><POWERS-AND-PERILS at GEO.CITG.TUDELFT.NL>
> >To: POWERS-AND-PERILS at GEO.CITG.TUDELFT.NL
> >Subject: P&Pv2, design questions (to Richard)
> >Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 10:40:17 -0500
> >
> >I was playing around with some ideas for v2 as
> proposals to the list, or as
> >a simpler "house version".  I was just
> tinkering with the very start of
> >things, characteristics.
> >
> >Richard, what was the reasoning behind
> allowing players to alter the native
> >ability modifier for the existing 8
> characteristics, but not Con and App?
> >What was the reasoning behind making those two
> "special" (besides the
> >obvious mechanic in that you have multipliers
> that you can roll that you
> >cannot allocate).
> >
> >WHy wasn't the system simply streamlined such
> that things were normalized
> >for the standard "x1 to x4" range?  Or why not
> Emp as well?  Perhaps they
> >all should use a rolled table (which will
> differentiate the races more),
> >and
> >the players simply "bid" for their rolls by
> adding native ability points.
> >when all are used up you are stuck with what
> you roll.
> >
> >Example: Joe has 21 Native ability points.  He
> really wants to have a
> >decent
> >S and St, and so bids 5 each (the max) for
> each of those rolls.  He also
> >wants a good con and bids 5 into that.  The
> remaining 6 points are bid as 2
> >into A, 2 into D and 1 each into W and I.
> >
> >Looking at the human table, he rolls a d10 for
> each characteristic, adding
> >any bid amount, the result being his native
> aptituce multiplier.  The table
> >could go a little beyond 10 (perhaps 11-14 for
> a tad more, and 15 for 1
> >level higher).  Each person would get the same
> number of bidding points
> >(don't roll the 2d6+14), and go from there.
> >
> >
> >Are there plans to stick with the standard 10,
> or will there be some
> >changes
> >there? (more, fewer, or different)
> >
> >
> >----------------------------------------
> >Burton Choinski
> >Principal Software Engineer, Quality
> Engineering
> >email: burton.choinski at matrixone.com
> >
> >phone: 978-589-4089
> >fax:      978-589-5903
> >
> >MatrixOne, Inc.
> >210 Littleton Rd.
> >Westford, Ma 01886
> >www.matrixone.com
> >
> >The First in Intelligent Collaborative
> Commerce
> >----------------------------------------
>
>
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