CofD and Professional Training

[Misadventure]

Make each area of craft the skill applies to past a first into a cheap Merit. Since we are too lazy to deal with multiple crafts, melee weapons, vehicles, sciences, etc.

[surreality]

@Misadventure WoD has some major issues with skills. Some are vague, some seem to double up more than a little, and some are insanely broad. (Crafts is absolutely the prime example of this.) Something like a 'on rolls related to their profession' is definitely a reasonable requirement, but it doesn't fix the core problem of the pretty dang broken skillset the game is using on the whole and how inconsistent the usefulness of certain skills is.

That said, I haven't seen people frequently trying to use things outside their profession, since the profession is typically what they want to focus on in play if that's what they took, and have definitely not seen a significant instance of 'they just want to take the merit for overly broad things so they can abuse it', let alone a majority.

[Ghost]

@surreality said in CofD and Professional Training:

@Ghost That's a problem with the overly broad skills in WoD, not a problem with PT.

Is what you're describing it any less ridiculous without PT? Nah, because their pool for Crafts is the same for all of those things with or without PT. Which is already oceans of dumb.

Right, but PT exacerbates that problem

[surreality]

@Ghost No more than anything else that grants again/rote. Supernaturally gifted singer isn't automatically the world's best photojournalist, but what you're suggesting as a revision makes it so.

[Ghost]

The point that I'm trying to make is when you have a skills system that rolls up 'all crafts' into crafts, then a merit (such as PT) that makes it easier to have access to 8/9/rote in every single craft known to mankind is an exacerbation of the problem.

There is now a fairly cheap way to get 8/9/rote in all uses of a skill, and that is PT.

[surreality]

@Ghost I'm not seeing how that's not exactly the same problem with supernatural applications of the same mechanic, unless 'supernaturally gifted singer' = 'expert photojournalist'. It's a problem with a really badly constructed skillset, or with the mechanic, but it is not a problem unique to the PT merit in any way.

[Derp]

@Misadventure said in CofD and Professional Training:

Make each area of craft the skill applies to past a first into a cheap Merit. Since we are too lazy to deal with multiple crafts, melee weapons, vehicles, sciences, etc.

Or require specialties for areas of focus. Maybe not super better, but still a way to do it.

[ThatGuyThere]

Sadly the only way to not have skills with ginormous areas that are covered such as Crafts, or the worst offender to me, Academics, would be to have ginormous skill list that breaks them out which brings the other bad headache of wow if I want to cover the skill set of someone who passed all their gen eds in college I need a bunch more points then starting characters get.

[Ghost]

@ThatGuyThere Do you remember Secondary Skills? I liked those. oWoD had all kinds of secondary skills and super-type specific knowledge/lore skills to buy up, which I think was a better way to go than ACADEMICS, which makes you just as good at understanding ANCIENT ROME as you are at understanding THE HISTORY OF NEPAL.

The way it appears to me, NWoD wanted to streamline XP use so that there weren't so many skills to buy (which, newer RPGs really are minimizing the # of skills to buy in play. Rolemaster had HUNDREDS of skills. Newer RPGs are skills-lite).

[surreality]

@Ghost WoD's overly-broad skill problem is one of the big reasons I started writing something up myself.

It may work for tabletop, where the social/downtime/offscreen stuff isn't as frequently played out, but since that's the bulk of the interaction on a MUX, it really exacerbates the overly-broad skill problem. It tends to come up more often, since it's what people typically spend the bulk of their game time doing.

[Coin]

CofD's Skill set is the way it is for the same reason their Resource Merit works the way it works: the character sheet is an abstraction and meant to work within the context of a table, with a consistent storyteller that will look a master photographer who wants to suddenly write a Nebula-winning novel a look like 'yeah, okay, settle down, Renaissance Man'.

If your dude with Academics five is a historian, he probably shouldn't automatically know all about Law. However--he does have a 5 in Academics, which speaks to a level of dedication within an academic lifestyle that might, with some time (i.e. research) give him the knowledge needed. So someone with Academics 5 might be able to roll at a low difficulty (no penalties) to answer an obscure history question, but if the question is about Mississippi Law, he might be like, 'I can totally answer that if you give me a few hours and an internet connection'.

The problem is people don't viedw it this way.

Crafts is a weird Skill, no doubt. However, the things that fit into Crafts are often not terribly useful within a campaign as the game was designed to be played. You typically use Crafts for mechanics, of making explosions, or building traps, or eventually, making weapons. These are things that people in the situations the characters find themselves often need to learn to do as a group of Skills.

One good way of viewing Crafts is probably the same way Drive views riding motorcycles. If you're not familiar or forgot, if you have no Drive Skill, you can't ride a motorcycle at all, or at least with a lot of difficulty, mostly because you don't have the Skill (-1), and you don't have the Specialty (-2, see next point). If you have Drive, you ride a motorcycle with a -2 penalty. The only way to get rid of this penalty is by buying the Motorcyle Specialty for Drive, which works as a normal Specialty, and also gets rid of the Penalty (which is why if you don't have the Skill at all, you're at -3).

It would be easy to apply this backwards to Crafts and Expression and Academics, for example. When you take your first dot in the Skill, pick an area. Anything that falls into any other area gets a -2, unless you buy the appropriate Specialty. Of course, this comes with its own problem, because let's say my character has Academics 5 and he's a Historian. Okay, great. But he's tired of taking the -2 to Law. so he buys the Law Specialty. Now he has 5 Skill dice for History stuff, and 6 for Law stuff. WTF?

So, you know. Somewhere in between.

Personally, I'm fine with how it is. PCs should be special in some ways, and making people who have (often criminally underused) Skills like Expression, Academics, Science, and Crafts effective polyglots in those areas is fine.

Plus, while the CofD is gritty and all that, it's still pretty shiny in terms of character tropes. How many scientists on TV and in movies are surprise experts in basically every scientific field? It's almost like it should be a trope of some sort.

[Misadventure]

I choose conscious decisions in design to model the reality I want players to RP in.

If I want scientists to know everything, I will either let them spend xps on multiple sciences, provide a base science/education/art/crafts skill for general stuff with additional skill levels as specialties to deal with specifics areas of study, or allow a merit that makes buying more of the same thing a little cheaper if you feel people need encouragement.

However, real world? I'd be happy if the players could try to stick to the canon material and maybe touch on the basic themes before descending into shenanigans.

[Arkandel]

@Misadventure See, I think of it the other way. I think of niches; when you create a character you know in advance the ability set you're setting them up with won't be unique - that's just not realistic - but you're still entitled to hope it'll be fairly sought after so it can be turned into a reason others look for you.

Specialization is a handy tool in that regard. Sure you can have a character who can fire a pistol but you'll still try to be friends with the gunslinger for when shit goes down, and although you might know how to use a computer you still need an expert to figure out what the bad guys' car license plate is ('enhance! ENHANCE MORE!').

If everyone can do everything well that tool is lost. If my gunslinger is also an academic who moonlights as a world-class hacker there's less plausible IC imperative to go out and talk people into doing your dirty work... since you can just do it all yourself.

[Misadventure]

Yep, its an IF type decision.

Niche protection does not reside in covering all science or crafts or academics with those three skills. I design so it is otherwise.

[Thenomain]

The Storytelling system is broken in certain precise circumstances. News at 11.

[Templari]

@Ghost said in CofD and Professional Training:

I have zero doubt that Gordon Ramsay could cook me up a super-nice, rote-grade version of macaroni and cheese with his eyes closed, but where PT is concerned, Gordon Ramsay (crafts5 w 8/9/rote) could approach the following as if they were as difficult as making macaroni and cheese:

• Making a katana
• Cooking a Michelin Star grade meal for the Queen of England
• a birthday cake made out of human skin
• Recreating the Mona Lisa with matching brush strokes
• Making a samurai grade suit of lamellar armor to go along with a Hanzo sword of his own design.

This is where I think PT is broken. IMO the benefits should all be restricted to uses WITHIN SAID PROFESSION and the rote usage should be restricted to dice rolls that are not considered extended dice rolls.

Be it NWoD or CofD, I've seen too many people apply benefits of PT to other used outside of their professional training. Staff should make this distinction and keep an eye on it.

In short: Being an expert pastry chef with 8/9/rote on crafts rolls should never be applied to forging Hattori Hanzo katana

Edit/Afterthought: It is my belief that the draw for PT isn't to have 8/9/rote in <skillname> rolls pertaining to profession, but to have 8/9/rote in all uses of that skill, which is overpowered and, IMO, gamebreaking.

I don't disagree with this point here. However, wasn't oWoD all based on skills and subskills, points in cooking etc etc? Seems a general skill roll is what was being aimed for.

[ThatOneDude]

The info below is taken straight from the CofD book. I have a hard time with the "want" for people to make the game something more rigid and more difficult than I think its meant to be. Reading a lot of the discussions I feel like a lot of the intent of the game is missed. If our goal is RP/Story telling... why is PT an issue? Why is it a problem that my handy inventor with crafts 5 and dex 2 is good at repairing not only cars but knives, armor or sewing a torn shirt (if successes on a roll are hit)?

Skills defined in CofD:
Skills are learned and practiced abilities, rather than the innate abilities that Attributes represent. Skills reflect a character’s origins and interests, and can be acquired in many ways, from institutionalized learning to hands-on experience. Skills are divided into the same Mental, Physical, and Social categories as Attributes.

Skills are very broad abilities, representing whole fields of knowledge or training. A Skill Specialty is a more focused application of a Skill, representing a specific subcategory of the Skill that the character is particularly talented or trained in. Skill Specialties allow you to personalize your character more. Two characters with very similar Skills can feel very different in play, if they have different Specialties.

Example Skill:
Academics represents general higher education and knowledge of arts and humanities. It covers topics like history, language, literature, law, and economics. It is a very broad Skill that covers general knowledge in all of these areas, but Skill Specialties can be used to represent a specific focus. The Academics Skill often represents the amount of schooling a character has. However, some characters are self-taught or have learned a great deal about relevant topics without actually setting foot on a college campus. Also, some people with advanced degrees pay no attention to topics outside their area of expertise, and have a low rating in Academics.

The above is used to show its super flexible and to show you could have a Doctorate with one dot of academics and specialties related to an area of expertise...

With crafts the same is true in how its defined. But for CofD the following should be remembered:

The Storyteller is responsible for…
…bringing the Chronicles of Darkness to life through description.
…deciding where scenes start and what’s going on.
…portraying characters who don’t belong to other players.
…involving each player and her character in the ongoing story.
…putting players’ characters in tough spots, encouraging interesting decisions.
…facilitating the actions players’ characters take, while making sure there are always complications.
…making sure that poor dice rolls affect but don’t stop the story.

The players are responsible for…
…creating their own individual characters as members of the cast.
…deciding what actions their characters take.
…making decisions that create drama and help keep the story moving.
…highlighting their characters’ strengths and weaknesses.
…confronting the problems the Storyteller introduces.
…developing their characters’ personalities and abilities over time, and telling personal stories within the overall story of the game.

Everyone is responsible for…
…giving other players chances to highlight their characters’ abilities and personal stories, whether that’s by showing them at their strongest or weakest.
…making suggestions about the story and action, while keeping in mind the authority of players over their characters and the responsibility of the Storyteller to occasionally make trouble.

[The Sands]

@Thenomain said in CofD and Professional Training:

The Storytelling system is broken in certain precise circumstances. News at 11.

Are those certain precise circumstances days ending in 'y'?

And while that may sound snarky I still play it. I learned long ago that a game is largely what you make out of it. Yes, you can decide that because you bought 'academics' you are equally comfortable speaking about ancient Etruscan poetry, corporate finance law, and chemistry since the rules allow that or you could voluntarily limit yourself (at which point maybe you are still equally comfortable with all those for some actual reason beyond the rules but you happen to suck at math).

Usually I try and limit myself but right now I'm playing a wizened changeling who tends to mostly stick with blacksmithing but who is still pretty comfortable with making shields (contrary to what Captain America teaches us most shields are made out of wood), working with kevlar, wood, leather, and doing automotive repair because he's a magical freaking creature (although at present if you were to ask him to make a bomb he would tell you he doesn't have a clue how to do so, even though that's crafts as well according to some people).

Yeah, sometimes it hacks me off when I run across someone who's character seems to have a Ph.D. in Science, but that's they're problem and not mine.

[Thenomain]

@The-Sands

No more than D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Eclipse Phase, or Fill In The Blank are broken by default. Each system does a thing well and does a thing not well. Life is pain, Princess; anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

[Misadventure]

@Thenomain said in CofD and Professional Training:
Life is pain, Princess; anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.