@Misadventure said:
@faraday creates a cgen/MU* for 7The Sea 2nd Edition?
LOL. I actually enjoyed playing 7th sea back in the day.
Anyway, your point about giving some kind of XP bonus (or penalty) at the end of chargen strikes me as a reasonable compromise. It doesn't make chargen any more complicated, but could be enabled/disabled for those who care more about leveling the playing field.
@Jennkryst I'm sorry if I came across too argumentative. I have a weakness for debate. I asked for feedback, which I got. Even if I don't agree with everything said, I nonetheless appreciate everyone taking the time to provide that feedback.
@bored said:
But they will. After 6 months playing, the master will have picked up all your rounded skills, and you will have gained only a fraction of their knowledge.
It's hard to argue without citing specific examples, but I haven't seen that phenomenon. But if true, I would suggest that's a case of the XP awards or costs needing to be adjusted, rather than a problem with chargen itself.
'You have 80 points to spend, things cost one, you hit a command and it tells you how many points you have left'
In 3rd edition it's more like: "Here are 20 points to spend and 10 skills to spend them on (unless you need an expertise or more than 4 hobbies). " It's WAY simpler, precisely because - as you said - the old version wasn't simple enough.
As for your vision, again, I find that strange that you're forcing a particular vision on people to access what you otherwise put forward as a generic system.
Flattering as it is, I think perhaps you have overestimated my altruism 
My intent was never to present FS3 as a "here's a system that'll do anything you want." It's more like "here's a system I created for myself based on what I like, feel free to use it."
To me, there is no perfect system. Character classes? Roll/keep vs single die systems? Linear chargen versus balanced cg/xp? Big skill list vs flexible background skills? Each of these things has pros and cons. Everything is a tradeoff.
@Jennkryst said:
If it's about simple chargen, why are XP costs for anything even involved? Because it's not just about chargen.
I meant that simple chargen was the core of the system. Obviously there are other parts of the system too, but chargen is IMHO the most important thing. Everybody goes through chargen, and it can be a big bottleneck for many games. Lots of people never spend their XP, 'cause they just don't care. Lots of people never get into combats. But chargen is the first stop.
@bored If you start out as a master, it's because you have spent your entire life prior to chargen reaching that point. Most games portray only a short time window - a year, two at the most. Does someone really have a chance of "catching up" to the master in that timeframe?
I say no. That said, if you believe the answer should be 'yes', just adjust your XP awards and/or costs accordingly. They're configurable!
Why is this a sticking point for me? Because FS3 is about simple chargen. That is its core reason for being. As soon as you make chargen about point-per-level juggling, or age-based point rewards, or whatever, it becomes complicated.
Now I'm not saying any of those things are "bad design" or "bad ideas". They just don't fit the vision I have for FS3.
For me it's like saying "I like D20 but I don't want to use character classes or twenty-sided dice." Those are such hallmarks of the system that if you take them away, IMHO it's not really D20 any more.
@Jennkryst Except for the fact that I've witnessed well-rounded, non-min-maxed characters on several games using this system. And it didn't even require them being smacked down by staff to do so. So I reject the idea that creating well-rounded characters is as improbable as the legendary Nigerian prince.
If folks don't like it, they don't like it. No biggie. I hate D20 personally, but I know a lot of people enjoy it. Everyone has their own tastes.
@bored said:
Making your chargens work this way punishes the people who min-max the least, and make the most well-rounded characters. You may be able to deal with extreme cases as staff, but it's still bad design.
Have you looked at the actual system, though? If you have, fair enough, otherwise I think you're comparing apples and oranges.
Min/maxing usually happens when you don't have enough points to make the kind of character you want.
Through generous point allocations, a minimal skill list, and giving a bunch of hobby/interest skills absolutely free of charge, there's ample opportunity for people to make skilled and well-rounded characters in chargen. It doesn't have to be a trade-off.
@mietze - That's interesting. I haven't observed that phenomenon myself. I've seen lots of scenes with 5+ people get done in just a couple hours. Even combats. I don't doubt you've experienced it, but maybe it's related to genre, STs, or something.
@Seraphim73 said:
The randomness of the multiple, independent d100 rolls may drive me insane (give me bell curves!)
Pretty much everything in FS3 uses bell curves, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. Anyway, I'd guess you're probably hitting some kind of Penn queue or attribute count limit. Could probably work around it somehow if you really wanted to (not really a subject for this thread though.)
@Groth said:
What kind of barbarian uses say or pose? Nothing of value would be lost if those commands were removed <.< >.>
LOL. Say, I agree. But pose? I use that constantly in scenes where there's more than one other person. It helps me keep track of who's doing what to see the names first.
@Lisse24 said:
I couldn't disagree more. Places for large scenes are something that I consider essential. Perhaps I should say extra-large in that I mean 10+ people. Places serve several very valuable functions including keeping non-essential spam out of most people's screens. They also allow me to hold a side scene, which is what keeps me from totally zoning out.
Well, naturally everyone has their own preferences, but I question how "essential" it can be when I've been running games just fine for 10+ years without it
But more seriously, if everyone's running side scenes in separate places with no interaction, then it's not really a big scene any more and there's no reason why they need to be in the same room in the first place. Split people off into RP rooms or whatever. The benefit of having having one scene is that X and Y can be having an argument at their table and then someone else can react to it. Places code takes that away.
@Bobotron - Probably you could, but I've never seen places code that did so.
@Seraphim73 - LOL, oops. I confess I never tried a scene that big.
@Arkandel said:
IMHO that's a very bad inclination in large scenes. Their pace is already way off from normal roleplay, the last thing they need is one idle person slowing everything down to a crawl.
It depends on the scene. If it's a big party scene, there's no reason why the idleness of someone at a side table would slow down the scene for everyone.
I also tend to run big combat scenes, and my +combat code has a pose tracker that lets me nudge players who haven't posed their turn yet. I give them a couple minutes and then move on without them.
I agree that pacing is key, but I still think it's courteous to give people a chance to respond - up to a point. There's a balance. It's helpful to know that the person you're waiting on isn't going to do anything.
@Arkandel said:
For instance a scene I was in recently had a pose like this: "Bob has nothing to say now so he will just wait until later to tell Jane some things". I am not even paraphrasing much at all! That basically only adds spam to the scene and offers nothing to anyone else; there's nothing to hook onto or to respond to, it's just... white words on a black background.
But if I'm sitting at a table with Bob and Jane having a conversation, my natural inclination in any MUSH environment is to wait until Bob has a chance to react. Sure you can wave the "3 pose rule" banner to permit RP to continue, but if Bob makes it clear he has nothing to add (through a nods quietly pose or an OOC aside) then I'm going to proceed with my pose much faster than if he didn't.
@Roz said:
It didn't make the groups' poses invisible to each other, but rather players could join an area in the room and then their poses could be started with a colored phrase location, such as "At the bar" or "Near the window" or something like that. Each place would have a different color. So it made it a lot easier for people to keep track of who was in their general vicinity but everyone's poses were still visible to everyone else, which made it easier for people to drift between groups and know what was going on.
I like that a lot better, but it still wouldn't solve my two biggest gripes about places code, which are a- it requires special commands to pose, which means b- nobody ever wants to use it. Also c- it's a pain to set up and limits you to only certain places, though if you allowed it to be more freeform that wouldn't necessarily be so much of a problem.
I strongly dislike places code. If you're going to do places, you might as well just be in separate MUSH rooms. Less obtrusive. But I haven't seen a lot of trouble with people making and managing their own sub-groups naturally, even when they're in the same room.
But yes, in general I agree with the rest of it and would add:
Skip the fluff. Summarize boring parts in a "moving right along..." type pose. Weddings are a prime example of this (OMG how I hate wedding scenes). One round of poses can summarize most - if not all - of the ceremony.
Start poses with your name instead of an emit. It makes it a lot easier to see who's doing what and keep track of the smaller sub-groups. Setting up a client-side highlighter for your character name can also help you avoid missing people talking to you.
Keep it moving. If you're the organizer and someone's holding things up, take charge. Pose around them. Don't let things stall or you'll have a lot of bored and frustrated players on your hands.
@Thenomain said:
@faraday, are you still using
regedit()? That is, can I try to port it to Mux again? I don't think we ever got past that one particular function.
I honestly haven't touched the code in years, so unless MUX has become more compatible in the meantime I imagine you'll run into the same issues.
I'm no longer actively maintaining the softcode package (unless there's a critical bugfix); spending all my effort on AresMUSH these days.
@Packrat said:
One thing that I always run into with FS is that it suffers from the 'linear character generation, geometric progression' problem where having a stat of say, 5 in character generation, will cost 5 points while a stat at 1 will cost 1 point.
To quote a common software saying: "That's not a bug, that's a feature." Not to say anyone has to like it or agree with it, but it's designed that way quite on purpose.
FS3 subscribes to a very simple philosophy that It takes a very long time to get really good at something. So if you want to be an expert in something, you need to start out as an expert rather than relying on XP to get you there during gameplay. (Edit to add: I also see no reason to penalize people in chargen for wanting to be experts by making them pay more. You're designing characters, not character sheets.)
So it's not meant as a "punishment", it's just a consequence of a cardinal assumption in the system's design.
Min/maxing in my experience is easily dealt with during chargen, especially with the new version of FS3 where you get up to 4 interest skills for free. Everyone can be well-rounded without sacrificing their action abilities.
@Tez said:
- How are advantages dealt with in +rolls? Like action skills?
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, they're just like skills.
- Do ruling attributes (aptitudes, in this case!) still figure in for action skillls, expertise and interests.
Yes, the basic mechanics are the same. Staff sets a "related aptitude" for each action skill, you can custom-set one for each expertise/interest, and you can always override the default by specifying it in a roll (Creative+Firearms, for whatever weird reason).
- I'm curious why you dropped the rating scale / how this impacts XP & XP costs.
Conceptually FS3 always had 4 main skill brackets - novice, proficient, veteran, master. You could think of them almost like 4 skill levels. The in-between levels were just "fluff" to give folks some intermediate advancement steps.
What I observed on countless FS3 games was that folks would agonize/argue over those intermediate steps - like whether someone should have a 4 or a 5 - when it didn't really matter.
Likewise, several games seemed to be okay with the idea of restricting levels 1-3 (because they felt it sucked too much) and 9-12 (because they thought it was too overpowering). So instead of a 1-12 rating system, you ended up with a 4-8 rating system... not really what was intended.
Simplifying/streamlining the ratings was intended to resolve these issues and just generally make the system easier to use and review.
The XP works basically the same, but it's kinda like you're buying 2 levels at a time so the costs are higher. The intermediate levels are combined in one purchase.
Some of the things that I'd like to see...
I'll add the combat suggestions to the wish list, except for the idea of making lethality/mod things public. Those are meant as GM "hacks", as it were, to tune combat as befits the story. They're the equivalent of rolling behind the GM screen, so by their nature they're intended to be private.
(dice) making it difficult to create an NPC that is a real challenge for players...
@Three-Eyed-Crow said the same - This is really what those lethality/mod commands are for. By its simplistic nature, FS3 is not designed to accommodate ratings beyond the PC-equivalent range. But with creative use of armor, lethality and GM mods, you can usually do a pretty decent job at making things tougher for the PCs.
I never advocate using it to gang up on players meanly or be underhanded, but sometimes it's more fun for everyone if you can tune things on the fly.
Code should never replace story. Unless of course you want it to.
@Three-Eyed-Crow said:
Any major differences in how this works in/with +combat versus the old system?
Little tweaks and a few features folks have been asking for (like having different armor ratings for different areas to reflect weak spots), but no fundamental differences.
@Lithium said:
Reminds me very much of Strands of Fate system in many ways (That's a hack of Fate book).
Never seen that one. But it's not too surprising. FS3 is kind of a mashup between FUDGE and Shadowrun4, and FATE (as I understand it) derived from FUDGE as well, so there are bound to be similarities.
I've been beta-testing some third edition changes to FS3 on a small sandbox game. The feedback so far has been good, but I wanted to open it up to a wider audience.
Here's a summary of what's new in FS3 3rd Edition.
Read more here.
I'm mostly interested in feedback on the changes that were added in 3rd edition, or things that maybe you wish had been added but weren't.
For those who don't know, the "S3" stands for "Simple Skill System". It's designed to get you into RP with minimal hassle in Chargen and very minimal review time required from the app staff. So if you're looking for a complex system that accounts fur subtle variations among characters, this is not it!