[freeroleplay] Attribute Advancement

[Ricardo Gladwell]

On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 09:11 +0100, Samuel Penn wrote:
> On Fri, June 30, 2006 10:52, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 20:31 +0100, Samuel Penn wrote:
> >> Not enough to represent the increase in body mass caused by 10 years
> >> of intensive body building.
> >
> > But with enough training you could go from Athletics 0 to 5 which would
> > give you an advantage over someone with high Strength but who hadn't
> > trained.
> 
> What I'm not clear on[1], is how do you determine a character's body
> mass? (I'm concentrating on Strength here, since it's the easiest
> to imagine and describe).

Body mass would probably be abstract. Strength would not necessarily be
related to size, although a Large or Small advantage/disadvantage could
model this[1].

> In your system, what would you use? It would appear that you would
> need to use Strength + all the skills that are based on Strength.
> 
> How also do you determine encumbrance?

Using a separate Endurance skill probably (this would probably be a
racial skill possessed, for example, by dwarves and orcs). Of course,
this would mean that a weightlifter could get tired before someone who
has raised their Endurance skill. It could also mean that skill in
weightlifting might have no bearing on a character's general endurance.

There are some holes in this system, but I would argue no more so than
the current incarnation of the Fringe system or other, similar systems.

> If strength never goes
> up, then a gymnast may end up just as good at weightlifting as
> a weightlifter who started life with a low strength.

In my mind at least, that sounds about right to me. Although, I would
note that total realism is not my goal.

> To get around this, you'd need a much larger set of skills (e.g.,
> to differentiate between weightlifting and gymnastics and running).

I'm not sure a large skill set is necessarily a problem, but I don't see
why the above could not be modelled using just an Acrobatics and
Athletics skill. It does lump, say, running and weightlifting into the
same skill but the system is supposed to be a bit fuzzy. 

> [1] I'm asking all these questions to try and pin things down, so
>     hopefully I'm being constructive rather than negative.

No worries. I would also note that this is an idea I'm still thrashing
about in my own head so please don't take my remarks as statements of
fact on my part. I'm not even sure if I will use it, although it does
solve some other problems I'm having with Fringe design.

> [2] In Yags, Athletics is used for both strength based and agility
>     based activities, just using a different attribute based on
>     what you are doing. I do this to keep the number of skills down.

I see this system working in a similar way.

[1] We've been using the term 'model' here in the mathematical sense,
but I'm not sure it's the right term and I'm not sure what a better term
would be.

-- 
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free RPG Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president at freeroleplay.org