Topic: Cutting The Gordanian Knot

[David Johansen]

The main beef people seem to have with RMSS is the skill category system and even I'll admit that it'd be nice to be able to drop it for pickup games and even when starting a new campaign.

Now, for the Spacemaster Accelerator I basically built packages of two or three skills and a category and totalled the costs.  This has a lot of problems though, since it isn't able to handle special skills  (I don't think anyone would have complained if they'd been called twofers and threefers, it's having names that confuses people.)  Anyhow, it also bloats the cost of standard skills relative to Body Development, and requires a complete rebuild of the culture and training packages that's a lot of work and limits the usefulness of the existing materials for the simplified game.  Essentially you have to expand the accelerator instead of using regular Spacemaster supplements.

What I'm thinking is to simply cut the number of DPs in half, drop all the category ranks from the culture and training packages and return the dps from special and combined skills if and when the character is ever converted to the full system.  These could then be used to fill out extra skills that don't exist in the simplified system.

This would allow the costs and packages to be directly compatible and remove the need for a detailed conversion guide.

Please rip it apart so I can reformulate and improve the concept.

[markc]

 I do not knwo if you can cut the cost 1/2 and give them back the DP's if and when yoiu advacned to the whole system. I think you should do some test runs on a excel spreed sheet char gen prog. That way you can see the effect you are having and compair the results. I think I would do a fighter, Tech, semi-psi and a psi to see the results.

MDC

[David Johansen]

The main problem is that it essentially doubles the cost of any skills without categories in the name of a direct and simple solution.  One possible solution would be to total the costs, divide by two and treat them as Everyman skills.  Which would only carry the burden of having to buy the maximum number of ranks, and of course the inevitable fractions and rounding.

So if Body Development was 5/12, you'd get a cost of 17/2 = 8.5 for two ranks or alternately 4/4 or 4/5 depending how you wanted to round it.   I guess once you're rewriting the skill costs that'd be the way to go anyhow.

Like I say it's a bit of a tough knot to unravel.

One other thing I'd probably do is skip totalling bonuses for spells and languages.  For the spells it's easy enough to build the profession bonus and one stat into the spell casting modifiers table and who really ever rolls for languages after the first couple times anyhow?

Alertness is another problem entirely as it gets used and the stats involved matter a lot more than skill ranks.

[markc]

No offence but I think the system is fine as it is. I have generally found people play up to the system. But I have seen a couple of people who refused to learn it because they just did not want to. IMO it is not that though of a system to handel.

MDC

[Kalu]

If you want to do away with the category part of the skill system, why not simply reverse the concept: remove the categories, double the cost of Standard Progression skills and change the Standard Progression skills into Combined Progression skills. Personally, though, I too prefer the existing system - especially compared to the old Similar Skills concept...!

//K

[vroomfogle]

ugh, RMSS skill categories.  Similar skills.   If you need a similar skill system it means you have too much overlap between skills and therefore too many skills.   The RMSS 'similar skill 'mechanism' only makes sense for a couple categories such as weapons.  IMHO of course.

[Marc R]

I gag at the mention of similar skills.

I play RM2/C and really dislike the category system, so I'm always observing your threads on removing it. . .but even I have to admit that unrestrained similar skills is FAR FAR worse.

Then again, varied difficulty always did seem to work.

Like if looking for this herb in the woods the skills Perception or Foraging or Herbalism or Lore: Herbs might apply. . . just at different difficulty levels.

Similarity, and categories, always struck me as attempts to deal with the above, that RM does well, and the below, that RM does poorly:

If you have Perception, Foraging, Herbalism AND Lore: Herbs and all skills apply to the task do the bonuses in any way combine or stack?

The category bonus does a decent job of covering the part of the skill that would overlap between them, but I wish there was some logical means of using two or more skills at the same time when it made sense, rather than creating an artificial meta category bonus. (especially if the two skills you want to use together lie in different categories.)

i.e. if you have 20 ranks of foraging, and 20 ranks of Herbalism, that should make foraging for herbs easier, or allow some sort of cross bonus. . .but neither system allows for it that I know of. This gets especially hard with two utterly varied skills in different categories that use different stats.

[vroomfogle]

Foraging and Herbalism is a good example of trying to make different skills do similar things when they shouldn't.  Separate out the task into individual parts.  Use Herbalism to figure out what it is that you are actually looking for (herbs), and Foraging to actually locate them.   

If there really is some overlap then varying difficulty categories as you said is a good solution.  But overlap can be minimized by careful selection of skills.   Ironically RMSS skill bloat causes the very problem it is trying to solve.

But point taken for other cases where skills might work in a synergistic manner.   School of Hard Knocks had a pretty good write-up of how to do use skills in combination if I recall.

[David Johansen]

No offence but I think the system is fine as it is. I have generally found people play up to the system. But I have seen a couple of people who refused to learn it because they just did not want to. IMO it is not that though of a system to handel.

MDC

It's not that there's a problem with the system as it is as much as that I'm looking for the best way to cut it down for an introductory product.

People always say with this option and that you could just be using RMC but by the time I change stat generation, stat bonuses, stat gain rolls, development point awards, add skill categories, add training packages, add talents and flaws...it seems simpler to just use RMSS.

[Fidoric]

In RMSS, skills used in conjunction are easily handled. Each static maneuver table offers a modifiers for each result (eg. Absolute failure -10-->, Unusual success +50-->).
When two skills or more are used in conjunction, determine the main one. Roll the 'secondary' first, and look the bonus you gain from it then roll for the main skill and adjust the roll by the modifier from the first roll...
Doesn't seem clear to me. Example :
Herb Lore used to help a Foraging roll to find a rare herb.
1. Roll for Herb lore (using any modifier you can think of), and read the bonus gained (for example, on table A-1.16, a near success grants you a +10 bonus noted +10-->, ie +10 to any subsequent maneuver),
2. Roll your Foraging attemps using any appropriate modifier +10 for the previous herb lore.

I think it's the way RMSS handles skills combination. And it's rather close to the way Harp does the thing too.

[Marc R]

That sounds like potentially a lot of rolls, which I have enough of already.

[RandalThor]

This is the way I would handle that:

Character A has Foraging no/little herbalism: he takes a negative to his foraging to find the right herb.
Character B has Herbalism no/little foraging: he takes a negative on herbalism to find the fight herb.
Character C has both Herbalism & Foraging: he takes no negative when looking for herbs (other than envifonmental, rarity of herb, etc.).
Both A & B can go together and in that case I would make it a Foraging roll by Character A, but without a negative for not having Herbalism (heck, two of them are going off so there are 2 pairs of eyes).

Also, for all the skill & skill categories problems I am just making all standard skills combined skills and no one increases categories. If someone is doing something that could be classified as similar to another skill in a category then they use that skill bonus -15. Other wise it is the category bonus -15 if no applicable skill can be found.

This means that those categories they neglect (like urban for a Ranger) they will very likely have low bonuses - as they should. But for those categories they use many skills from (like weapon categories for Fighters) they will verly likely have another skill there to use from and it won't be a massive difference (sorry but I have always thought that a Fighter shouldn't lose 50-70% of his OB just because he has to use a shortsword now instead of his normal weapon a longsword).

[Marc R]

I think that's where we started on this slippery slope. . .as Vroom said above, similarity doesn't really make real sense except within a skill's subskills. . .like Riding: Camel and Riding Horse, or 1hd Edged: shortsword and 1HD Edged: Longsword.

I have no real problem with certain sub skills working cross to other subs, like the above. . .OTOH sometimes the subs are utterly unrelated.

Riding:Camel may have little cross over to Riding: Sea Serpent or Riding: Dragon. . . .much less General Lore: Baseball Cards with General Lore: Japanese Tea Ceremonies.

[markc]

No offence but I think the system is fine as it is. I have generally found people play up to the system. But I have seen a couple of people who refused to learn it because they just did not want to. IMO it is not that though of a system to handel.

MDC

It's not that there's a problem with the system as it is as much as that I'm looking for the best way to cut it down for an introductory product.

People always say with this option and that you could just be using RMC but by the time I change stat generation, stat bonuses, stat gain rolls, development point awards, add skill categories, add training packages, add talents and flaws...it seems simpler to just use RMSS.

David, I remember you talking about before wanting to slim down SM for an intro product. IMO you have picked a tough row to ho or a tough nut to crack. I think thier are just too many skills and elements that are relevant to a space game to reduce to a product like RMX. Note I do not own RMX but from what I have heard it reduces RMC/RM2 to its minable playable elements. But I do think you could do it as a product if it was about twice as big as RMX but if yuou try and go the same size you will not have a good product.

MDC

[David Johansen]

If people didn't keep on saying it can't be done I wouldn't be so obsessed with it

[markc]

If people didn't keep on saying it can't be done I wouldn't be so obsessed with it

I can understand that!

Good luck and wonderful thoughts.
MDC

[Koraq]

I think RMSS works as it is, but see the problem the OP is trying to solve. I think you have to go along the lines of RMX (or further!) so succeed, though.

But, I once posted a suggestion for simplifying the RMSS skill system by removing everything except the categories, and only keeping sub-skills as "specialties" or something like that. I still think it would be a feasible option, but have not done any more work on it, and probably wont for a while yet, since my RM stuff is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Might be worth investigating, though.

[pastaav]

Now, for the Spacemaster Accelerator I basically built packages of two or three skills and a category and totalled the costs.

If the goal is to simplify the category system in a introductionary product I would suggest that it is imperative that you make the building block more easy but that you don't obfuscate the basic parts.

My suggestion would be that "half built" characters is the way to go. For instance creating concept packages that don't give any dp discount. A typical concept would be starfighter pilot. Each package would constitute a number of predefind skill and category purchases and a price for each profession. The packages should ideally be presented in some kind of three to allow ease to find what the player is looking for.

When the player change to the full system his character is still valid. Additions to Spacemaster Accelerator would essentially introduce some new skills and give concept packages that allow purchase of the new skills.

The point with the idea is that simplification is created by making the process easier for the user and not by trying to fix the category or skill system to make more sense. If you design the accelerator to make it more easy to answer "how should I make my concept come true" you have simplyfied the game, else you have added just another level of complexity.

[markc]

 As someone said above if you simply had the skill categories you could drastically simplify the game and rules and maybe get down to 10-20 dp per average level. It would take some time to work out all the professions but in time I think it would work. But I would be sure to tell them that this is a very siimplified version of the game and that skill allotment is drastically diffeent in the full version.

MDC

[David Johansen]

I like using specific skills to indicate the whole category rather than using the category names.  Essentially that's what I did with the Accelerator.  You buy a rank in Swimming and you also get a rank in another Athletic Endurance skill and the category.

It works, but its very self limiting.  You can't really expand it with the full game without stepping up to the full skill system.  Since ICE would want a product that makes future sales it's not really an option.