Systems part 1: character stats
This article is a long time coming, and mainly focusses on the White Wolf d10 system for their RPGs. However, I really want to use it as a framework to express my frustrations with systems I've played.
Let's start by saying that although I'm a system nut, there is a reason for it. Although systems should be the 'invisible' part of roleplaying, they underpin how players view the game. Take for instance one of my pet peeves, the Computing skill. I know many computer experts and none of them know how to hack a bank (well, some of them probably could take a stab). There are so many skillsets within computing that to put them all within one category is misleading. And yet so often they all go in under one skill. Relevance: players assume their character can do all manner of computery things. Similarly for all sorts of skills ("Science"). Alternatively, if Celerity is clearly the most useful discipline around then players will flock to it (or alternatively feel useless when everyone around them uses it). Systems do affect how the game is played, and a bad system will lead players to play the system not the game. (Hello D&D.)
__Social Skills__
It's not necessarily wrong to put skills into broad groups. Vampire was, after all, meant to be a game of social intrigue combined with brutal take-downs. It doesn't want to get bogged down into how much your character knows about dark matter or chemical reactions, just that you know a bit about it. So it has a ton of different social skills which nobody understands much and are very rarely called upon. I know there are some players and STs out there who DO look at a character's social stats when responding to them; and there's some who play socially inept characters well; but the vast majority of players and STs I have come across manage to ignore them wholly. If you say something witty, great; if you don't, you lose. But at least you get to use them for social displines like Presence. What was that, you are now totally entranced by the bad guy; but don't worry, I know you will find a way around it because it would be terrible if PCs lost their free will...
Lesson one: don't include social stats in your system
Notable exceptions: The Dying Earth RPG puts Persuade only equal to Combat. Characters are constantly put in peril of agreeing to something they really, really know they shouldn't, and players have to go along with this. It does, in fact, drive the plot. It's also a silly game (in the right way). Nobilis lets players have godlike social skills, but then they can be godlike in so many ways.
__Attributes__
While clearly the basis of the White Wolf system but also many others, it bugs me when it's simply take X and Y. Innate ability works quite differently to learned/practiced skill. Sure you may be intelligent, but you don't know as much about medicine from your first aid course as the idiot who has spent 5 years studying it. Moreover, the system often leads players to improve attributes and neglect skills which is pretty far from real life. It's a pretty small point, but leads me to my next one.
Dexterity. White Wolf has historically been ridiculously bad about assigning just about every physical skill to Dexterity. We're talking about fine motor control here, presumably with an element of hand-eye coordination. What has this got to do with running speed? Sure, it helps if you don't trip over but physical power in the legs seems a stronger bet. Similarly, dodging: it requires much of a physical effort to move out the way than knowing where the blow is landing will tell you. I think the problem is, the authors somehow mixed Agility into the Dexterity stat without explicitly acknowledging this let alone analyzing its consequences. And the problem is this: if Strength is used for lifting stuff (so that's... once every 5 years?) and Stamina for endurance (once per year) and resisting poison (once per two years) and soaking (ok, every other game) then why take anything beyond minimum levels of any physical stat but Dexterity? The world becomes by default a world where all the competent combatants don't bother getting strong. The guys who experiment with high strength find their blows get dodged and the guy with high stamina soaks the licks but rarely gets in any himself.
Most players acknowledge this, and usually the result is, "Well, you could have taken Dexterity instead" (or even sometimes, "but high strength is good too"). I'll quickly address the latter: I may acknowledge that high strength CAN be useful, but it's at best no more useful than Dexterity but definitely lacks the flexibility both in and out of combat. Character creation becomes a lot more interesting when prioritising different traits becomes not only balanced but actually leads to different (valid) approaches to combat. There is no denying that any system will only be a crude simulation of real life, but that means you have to make choices to how you define the simulation. Try and keep those choices balanced and interesting while maintaining a level of sense.
Some quick asides here. People talk about how it requires coordination to dodge/climb/hit someone: sure, but most of that is reflected in the relevant ability. If someone hits me in the solar plexus, it's their hand-to-hand experience that hits me and their strength that overcomes my weak resistance. If someone is climbing over a tricky overhang, it's pure strength combined with experience to apply it effectively that pulls you over, while fitness (i.e. stamina) that let's your other arm hold on long enough. On the latter, I have the experience of having virtually no coordination as a teenager, but plenty of energy; I was great at climbing.
Lesson 2: Make sure your attributes are all equally and uniquely useful
__Abilities__
I've already mentioned a few gripes. Let me mention some more issues with specific abilities before going into general ideas.
DODGE: So how many people ever learned to dodge? I believe the two of you who played a season of dodgeball might have done, and maybe some rugby players (the backs obviously). Another thing: I have seen a friend do a beautiful backwards roll designed to get him out of the way of an incoming blow, but most combat skills teach people not to dodge as such, but to parry, block or counter-threat. Moreover, those martial arts which teach evasion do so as part of combat training. That's BRAWL. Save pure dodging for slow incoming objects, like javelins, dodgeballs or the opposing prop forward.
INTUITION: "The answer is 57." "You can read those symbols." "No, it just feels right." I'm always wary of any ability which threatens to solve plots all by itself. It's bad enough that White Wolf still uses the Investigation skill (I don't need to follow the clues, I'll just roll a dice and Investigate), now they don't even have to be there they can just guess the answer. Any ability which can replicate the benefits of so many others can't be good; such an ability which can lead to solving plot without needing to think or interact is definitely bad. If there an ST really wants you to know something she will find a way. Investigation's main flaw is that the choice of word is poor: it really means 'Search'.
OCCULT: This one has confused me a lot. Why? It is essentially a specialised form of Academics, referring as it does to branches of hidden knowledge about mystic abilities. And curiously, most people who know about the occult... are academic. Sure, practical knowledge of the mysteries can help you with certain things but ... yeah, considering how vague all the other knowledges are that one always got me confused.
However, my main problem with abilities is that they rarely seem to be an accurate description of what you do. You and, if he's sensible, your storyteller, try to match your character concept to the abilities available, and one of two things will happen. Either you end up spread so thin that something has to be sacrificed; or you end up up with abilities which cover areas that are irrelevant; or both. It's not always the case. L5R is such a tailored system that the list of abilities seperates nicely and makes absolute sense. The danger is that abilties don't define the character, only what the character can do. For that reason, I'm part of a growing crowd that is moving away from abilities altogether. While I tend towards "professions" (in effect, ability sets) as stats, there are a number of systems like Gumshoe which instead ask players to choose defining phrases that define both their characters and their abilities.
There remains a case for skill lists. White Wolf likes to use them to 'power' supernatural abilties which don't have dicepools of their own, something that is substantially more difficult to organise if you can't predict the words on the character sheet, but the designer (and ideally the ST) should understand what effect they have on players.
Lesson 3: Understand the role of ability lists vs player defined characteristics
As an addititional aside, specialities are often ignored or used fairly crudely in White Wolf. Making specialities much more relevant gets around many of the problems right at the top of this rant, but pushes abilitiy lists right back into the area of player defined characteristics.
__Merits and Flaws__
I have only ever seen one system of merits and flaws which genuinely works, and that's Ars Magica. The merits and flaws are all singularly powerful and are balanced within their own unique area. "+2 to Abilty X" doesn't sound much in most systems, but when three is a practical maximum at character creation (and hard to increase), you are talking about being substantially gifted (and requires a substantial flaw to balance it). However, in systems as loose as White Wolf's, giving players a choice between a higher ability and a merit that's cheaper (and better in many cases) they will take the merit. For the most part, I find point-buy systems fairer (and certainly more concept-driven) than random character creation, but badly designed merits and flaws ruin this.
A lot of the perils of merits and flaws can be removed by taking them out of the points-buy system altogether. Ars Magica used one method, but there are cases where they give you points if they make an impact on the game. The original Babylon 5 RPG was my first instance of this, where Edges gave you XP if they caused you problems in game (with no negative effect for benefits), but I have seen others since then. Another way is to give good and bad Kharma as appropriate. The advantage of these methods is that the costing isn't an arbitary figure up front, but based on how much it comes up in the game making it much fairer. The disadvantage is that players lose a bit of flexibility in character creation, but that just requires planning.
I should note that White Wolf largely integrated Merits and Backgrounds in WoD2. It actually makes a lot of sense in many ways since they often covered the same areas, but they made it too confusing (and too inflexible) to work out the costs! Another drawback of this system is that merits are no longer such 'unique' twists on a character, but mere bells and whistles. Arguably it pushes players more into the player-defined characterstics area in the section above, and it's not a game requirement that merits and flaws are character-defining.
Lesson 4: Merits and flaws a great way to unbalance a balanced system. Be careful.
And that's it for part 1. Part 2, whenever I write it, will move away from the character sheet to the mechanics of randomness
Let's start by saying that although I'm a system nut, there is a reason for it. Although systems should be the 'invisible' part of roleplaying, they underpin how players view the game. Take for instance one of my pet peeves, the Computing skill. I know many computer experts and none of them know how to hack a bank (well, some of them probably could take a stab). There are so many skillsets within computing that to put them all within one category is misleading. And yet so often they all go in under one skill. Relevance: players assume their character can do all manner of computery things. Similarly for all sorts of skills ("Science"). Alternatively, if Celerity is clearly the most useful discipline around then players will flock to it (or alternatively feel useless when everyone around them uses it). Systems do affect how the game is played, and a bad system will lead players to play the system not the game. (Hello D&D.)
__Social Skills__
It's not necessarily wrong to put skills into broad groups. Vampire was, after all, meant to be a game of social intrigue combined with brutal take-downs. It doesn't want to get bogged down into how much your character knows about dark matter or chemical reactions, just that you know a bit about it. So it has a ton of different social skills which nobody understands much and are very rarely called upon. I know there are some players and STs out there who DO look at a character's social stats when responding to them; and there's some who play socially inept characters well; but the vast majority of players and STs I have come across manage to ignore them wholly. If you say something witty, great; if you don't, you lose. But at least you get to use them for social displines like Presence. What was that, you are now totally entranced by the bad guy; but don't worry, I know you will find a way around it because it would be terrible if PCs lost their free will...
Lesson one: don't include social stats in your system
Notable exceptions: The Dying Earth RPG puts Persuade only equal to Combat. Characters are constantly put in peril of agreeing to something they really, really know they shouldn't, and players have to go along with this. It does, in fact, drive the plot. It's also a silly game (in the right way). Nobilis lets players have godlike social skills, but then they can be godlike in so many ways.
__Attributes__
While clearly the basis of the White Wolf system but also many others, it bugs me when it's simply take X and Y. Innate ability works quite differently to learned/practiced skill. Sure you may be intelligent, but you don't know as much about medicine from your first aid course as the idiot who has spent 5 years studying it. Moreover, the system often leads players to improve attributes and neglect skills which is pretty far from real life. It's a pretty small point, but leads me to my next one.
Dexterity. White Wolf has historically been ridiculously bad about assigning just about every physical skill to Dexterity. We're talking about fine motor control here, presumably with an element of hand-eye coordination. What has this got to do with running speed? Sure, it helps if you don't trip over but physical power in the legs seems a stronger bet. Similarly, dodging: it requires much of a physical effort to move out the way than knowing where the blow is landing will tell you. I think the problem is, the authors somehow mixed Agility into the Dexterity stat without explicitly acknowledging this let alone analyzing its consequences. And the problem is this: if Strength is used for lifting stuff (so that's... once every 5 years?) and Stamina for endurance (once per year) and resisting poison (once per two years) and soaking (ok, every other game) then why take anything beyond minimum levels of any physical stat but Dexterity? The world becomes by default a world where all the competent combatants don't bother getting strong. The guys who experiment with high strength find their blows get dodged and the guy with high stamina soaks the licks but rarely gets in any himself.
Most players acknowledge this, and usually the result is, "Well, you could have taken Dexterity instead" (or even sometimes, "but high strength is good too"). I'll quickly address the latter: I may acknowledge that high strength CAN be useful, but it's at best no more useful than Dexterity but definitely lacks the flexibility both in and out of combat. Character creation becomes a lot more interesting when prioritising different traits becomes not only balanced but actually leads to different (valid) approaches to combat. There is no denying that any system will only be a crude simulation of real life, but that means you have to make choices to how you define the simulation. Try and keep those choices balanced and interesting while maintaining a level of sense.
Some quick asides here. People talk about how it requires coordination to dodge/climb/hit someone: sure, but most of that is reflected in the relevant ability. If someone hits me in the solar plexus, it's their hand-to-hand experience that hits me and their strength that overcomes my weak resistance. If someone is climbing over a tricky overhang, it's pure strength combined with experience to apply it effectively that pulls you over, while fitness (i.e. stamina) that let's your other arm hold on long enough. On the latter, I have the experience of having virtually no coordination as a teenager, but plenty of energy; I was great at climbing.
Lesson 2: Make sure your attributes are all equally and uniquely useful
__Abilities__
I've already mentioned a few gripes. Let me mention some more issues with specific abilities before going into general ideas.
DODGE: So how many people ever learned to dodge? I believe the two of you who played a season of dodgeball might have done, and maybe some rugby players (the backs obviously). Another thing: I have seen a friend do a beautiful backwards roll designed to get him out of the way of an incoming blow, but most combat skills teach people not to dodge as such, but to parry, block or counter-threat. Moreover, those martial arts which teach evasion do so as part of combat training. That's BRAWL. Save pure dodging for slow incoming objects, like javelins, dodgeballs or the opposing prop forward.
INTUITION: "The answer is 57." "You can read those symbols." "No, it just feels right." I'm always wary of any ability which threatens to solve plots all by itself. It's bad enough that White Wolf still uses the Investigation skill (I don't need to follow the clues, I'll just roll a dice and Investigate), now they don't even have to be there they can just guess the answer. Any ability which can replicate the benefits of so many others can't be good; such an ability which can lead to solving plot without needing to think or interact is definitely bad. If there an ST really wants you to know something she will find a way. Investigation's main flaw is that the choice of word is poor: it really means 'Search'.
OCCULT: This one has confused me a lot. Why? It is essentially a specialised form of Academics, referring as it does to branches of hidden knowledge about mystic abilities. And curiously, most people who know about the occult... are academic. Sure, practical knowledge of the mysteries can help you with certain things but ... yeah, considering how vague all the other knowledges are that one always got me confused.
However, my main problem with abilities is that they rarely seem to be an accurate description of what you do. You and, if he's sensible, your storyteller, try to match your character concept to the abilities available, and one of two things will happen. Either you end up spread so thin that something has to be sacrificed; or you end up up with abilities which cover areas that are irrelevant; or both. It's not always the case. L5R is such a tailored system that the list of abilities seperates nicely and makes absolute sense. The danger is that abilties don't define the character, only what the character can do. For that reason, I'm part of a growing crowd that is moving away from abilities altogether. While I tend towards "professions" (in effect, ability sets) as stats, there are a number of systems like Gumshoe which instead ask players to choose defining phrases that define both their characters and their abilities.
There remains a case for skill lists. White Wolf likes to use them to 'power' supernatural abilties which don't have dicepools of their own, something that is substantially more difficult to organise if you can't predict the words on the character sheet, but the designer (and ideally the ST) should understand what effect they have on players.
Lesson 3: Understand the role of ability lists vs player defined characteristics
As an addititional aside, specialities are often ignored or used fairly crudely in White Wolf. Making specialities much more relevant gets around many of the problems right at the top of this rant, but pushes abilitiy lists right back into the area of player defined characteristics.
__Merits and Flaws__
I have only ever seen one system of merits and flaws which genuinely works, and that's Ars Magica. The merits and flaws are all singularly powerful and are balanced within their own unique area. "+2 to Abilty X" doesn't sound much in most systems, but when three is a practical maximum at character creation (and hard to increase), you are talking about being substantially gifted (and requires a substantial flaw to balance it). However, in systems as loose as White Wolf's, giving players a choice between a higher ability and a merit that's cheaper (and better in many cases) they will take the merit. For the most part, I find point-buy systems fairer (and certainly more concept-driven) than random character creation, but badly designed merits and flaws ruin this.
A lot of the perils of merits and flaws can be removed by taking them out of the points-buy system altogether. Ars Magica used one method, but there are cases where they give you points if they make an impact on the game. The original Babylon 5 RPG was my first instance of this, where Edges gave you XP if they caused you problems in game (with no negative effect for benefits), but I have seen others since then. Another way is to give good and bad Kharma as appropriate. The advantage of these methods is that the costing isn't an arbitary figure up front, but based on how much it comes up in the game making it much fairer. The disadvantage is that players lose a bit of flexibility in character creation, but that just requires planning.
I should note that White Wolf largely integrated Merits and Backgrounds in WoD2. It actually makes a lot of sense in many ways since they often covered the same areas, but they made it too confusing (and too inflexible) to work out the costs! Another drawback of this system is that merits are no longer such 'unique' twists on a character, but mere bells and whistles. Arguably it pushes players more into the player-defined characterstics area in the section above, and it's not a game requirement that merits and flaws are character-defining.
Lesson 4: Merits and flaws a great way to unbalance a balanced system. Be careful.
And that's it for part 1. Part 2, whenever I write it, will move away from the character sheet to the mechanics of randomness