On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>I like a fairly heavily structured system, in part because I like to be RBW>able to define a character quite closely. Even looking through a RBW>system's list of powers and abilities often gives me ideas. Oh, I'm not by *any* means discouraging having a structured system. I'm just saying when you're building your character with that structured system, I'm thinking you ought to be able to put everything that's really *important* to your character into one of the points. Points might, like my EVAR example, sum up a whole batch of skills and disads and all that sort of stuff. It means you *can* gloss them, especially if you're the sort who goes "Oh, I forgot my character would obviously have this skill!" later in the game, but it doesn't necessarily mean you ought to. RBW>The descriptive idea that Karen suggests later, though, isn't purely RBW>narrative. I'm going to call it instead a "four important things" or Is that "GNS narrative" or "Forge narrative"? (Not that I think anybody's established what the latter term actually means...) RBW>"FIT" system, since that seems to be the usual sort of number and RBW>matches Karen's "three to five". Another, somewhat more complex, example RBW>would be Chad Underkoffler's PDQ system RBW>(http://www.atomicsockmonkey.com/freebies/di/pdq-core.pdf for the free RBW>core rules). I think I've looked it over. I like odd numbers better, though. It's a visual-artist thang. RBW>To me, that not only drags things out, it throws me _more_ out of RBW>suspension of disbelief than simply rolling the dice would. I as the RBW>player am negotiating the reality of the game world with the GM, which RBW>kills the immersion; it may just be that I've done an awful lot of RBW>wargaming and whatnot, but saying "I'll try to sneak up on him to hit RBW>him with a bottle, my Stealth is 11, his Perception is 14, -2 because RBW>there's a lot of distraction, (roll) (roll) OK I made it" just doesn't RBW>kill the mood for me in the same way. Nah, in my games you don't get to negotiate reality. I get to roll all the dice (imaginary or otherwise) is all... RBW>As a secondary problem, this sort of system gives an advantage to glib RBW>players, of whom I am usually not one. :-) That's why I like PBeM. RBW>In the PBEM games I've run, I've usually gone for a fairly complex RBW>character generation system (first Dark Conspiracy heavily modified, RBW>then later Rolemaster and currently GURPS), because I find a detailed RBW>character sheet serves as an aide-memoire. "What can I do in this RBW>situation?" (Looks through sheet, spies a skill that he's forgotten RBW>about.) "Hey, I'm sure I remember something about lock-picking. Remember RBW>when that spy showed me the basics?" That one point in a never-used RBW>skill would be such a small part of the character that it would fall RBW>through the cracks of a FIT-based description, but rather than the RBW>player having to say "oh, um, I have Hangs Out In Low Dives, and maybe I RBW>could have learned it there" it's right there on the sheet... Some of that is more of a problem with design-at-start vs. develop-in-play (if I recall the terminology correctly). Only with my, it's a clearly developed character (often, anyway) that I can't quite get out of my head onto the paper. I can't list off all the skills and whatnot, but when the time comes I have a solid gut feeling about whether the character should be good at something or not. "Oh, that fits," or "No, that doesn't fit." No, it really doesn't make sense, but that's how my brane werkz. Sometimes. Other times yeah, the character sheet IS the character, right from the get-go, and I'm fine. RBW>I _don't_ necessarily use detailed _play_ mechanics in those PBEM games. RBW>I certainly don't set up full GURPS tactical combats. I do make skill RBW>rolls for the PCs and generally abide by the random results, but I don't RBW>think the stories have been wrecked by unexpected criticals or fumbles. That's because you haven't had Carl and his Curse Of The Green Pickle in your games. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
