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omnipus
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 02:37

So what? Many characters shoot a gun better than the player, or know more about medicine than the player. I don't require them to give me detailed info about how they're treating a patient before I decide whether it's valid -- although I certainly wouldn't stop one. By this logic, you are giving characters an unearned advantage if their player is smarter than they are. Which is more defensible, since everyone wants to feel smart and cool. But it undermines the concept of roleplaying and, probably, other players at the table!

So, it's the same as any other skill in a roleplaying game. The player says what the character is trying to do, the GM evaluates whether they have the skill to do it, calls for a roll if necessary, and then puppetmasters reality accordingly. A great tactician can make a terrible blunder and a very bad one can get lucky once in a while.
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omnipus
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 02:50

And, if they consistently are metagaming their skills, then they get warned and eventually get punished accordingly.

If I have a character who has negligible command/tactical skill, but the player is always coming up with elaborate plans using their real-life knowledge, then I would politely ask them how their character knows such things. If they keep doing it, they get told to knock it off. If they keep doing it after all, then fine: execute your brilliant plan. I will try to hint to the other players that it is going to go catastrophically bad because Pvt Miller doesn't actually know what they're doing. But at that point I wouldn't stop them from driving right into an ambush.

I would do the same for any other skill that's at all knowledge based. Metagaming is bad.
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paladin2019
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 03:11

If we're talking about skills, Recon (when it is in the game) has always been the general fieldcraft skill. It has also cost twice as much to improve because it is so broad. It is not explicitly a means of recognizing deception and the like type of interpersonal skills. The aforementioned liberal arts major might be better served by an appropriate specialization of Persuasion. Also, Historian should definitely be shifted away from Recon, as this is the sole justification for the skill in higher education. Same for professor. But where does it go?

As far as Tech, I think it is generally are fine as is. It is their specialties that really define them. And if you believe picking a lock is a different occupational skillset than rebuilding a carburetor or fuel pump, I've got some bad news for you. Scientist could reasonably become its own skill if the skill list is expanded, but there's a valid question of whether that level of granularity is appropriate to the system.

Tactics is a valid skill if you are only concerned about the abstract outcome of a fight. In games where tactics are played out, it gets subsumed by all of the other tests to resolve it in a less abstract way. And this game is in no way a primer to teach aspiring tacticians fundamentals like force ratios and resource management. :P
(If your players really need it, FM 7-8/3-20.8 is open source.)
 
paladin2019
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 03:16

If I have a character who has negligible command/tactical skill, but the player is always coming up with elaborate plans using their real-life knowledge, then I would politely ask them how their character knows such things. If they keep doing it, they get told to knock it off. If they keep doing it after all, then fine: execute your brilliant plan. I will try to hint to the other players that it is going to go catastrophically bad because Pvt Miller doesn't actually know what they're doing. But at that point I wouldn't stop them from driving right into an ambush.
This is where I have a hard disagreement. As long as the knowledgeable player is feeding this to/through the unskilled Tactician player, I don't see a problem. I take the same approach in other games to allow the super-genius level wizard to benefit from the collective of the group in playing the character.

If they want to be the spotlight ranger.......
 
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omnipus
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 03:23

Tactics is probably the most important aspect to how the fight develops and happens in the first place! If you've been in a combat situation then you ought to know that you care quite a bit about the abstract outcome of the fight, which is the direct result of the recon, planning, and circumstances that got you here.

In any case, I am just pointing out areas where there are some skills that seem very overly broad (and therefore appealing/rewarding to have), and others that are far less utilized. Diversifying skills a bit would be better for being able to create a broader range of characters, and to more accurately represent a range of careers that will let players create the characters they want to have.
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omnipus
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 03:27

If I have a character who has negligible command/tactical skill, but the player is always coming up with elaborate plans using their real-life knowledge, then I would politely ask them how their character knows such things. If they keep doing it, they get told to knock it off. If they keep doing it after all, then fine: execute your brilliant plan. I will try to hint to the other players that it is going to go catastrophically bad because Pvt Miller doesn't actually know what they're doing. But at that point I wouldn't stop them from driving right into an ambush.
This is where I have a hard disagreement. As long as the knowledgeable player is feeding this to/through the unskilled Tactician player, I don't see a problem. I take the same approach in other games to allow the super-genius level wizard to benefit from the collective of the group in playing the character.

If they want to be the spotlight ranger.......
And yeah sure if there's someone in the party that has more experience and a better idea, they sure should share it. In character. If the situation permits. And the GM should assist and facilitate and nudge that. That is roleplaying. Omnipotent players constantly being OOC is bad roleplaying, which is a kinder way of saying: cheating. My experience is that if you continue to tolerate and reward bad roleplaying, it ends up being all you're left with because it drives a social competition at the table. Whereas if you foster good roleplay, you end up with some truly outstanding collaborative stories and rich, unexpected situations.
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omnipus
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 03:41

All that said, after some thought I don't really think Command is one of the overly-broad skills. It quite reasonably covers tactics, and that's fine. Just spitballing some ideas.
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welsh
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 04:08

Shooting a gun, treating a wound, or driving a vehicle are hard skills. They're not at all the same as knowledge skills. We don't require players to tell us how they would shoot the gun; they just shoot the gun. This is not the same as a Tactics skill.

Skills like Tactics never work out well because it is the player, not the character, who decides how to handle a situation. This is going to happen no matter how much you lecture people about metagaming. It's ultimately the player who plays the game.

Stuff like this only becomes metagaming when you turn it into metagaming by inventing a Tactics skill.
 
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 12:32

Or a Command skill. Or an Intelligence attribute. Or, or, or. Skills in no way take away the player's ability to decide how to handle situations. They shape the situation itself.
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welsh
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Re: [ALPHA] Character generation

Thu 31 Dec 2020, 16:34

A tactics skill is not analogous to an INT attribute or a Command skill. A Command skill is abstract: your attempt to rally a panicked group of NPCs is not a concrete action and so resolving it requires a die roll.

Shooting a gun in an RPG is similarly abstract. We abstract away all questions of technique and roll against the character's skill at shooting. If shooting were concrete, we would require the player to actually indicate how he takes aim, controls his breathing, etc., and his success or failure would be the assured outcome of those concrete actions. The game analogy for a concrete shooting skill is an FPS videogame in which success of failure depends not on Solid Snake's skills but on the ability of a player to manipulate a controller and to see things on a screen. We don't want that in an RPG because we want our characters to be able to do things we can't.

An INT attribute straddles the line between the concrete and the abstract. It allows us to resolve abstract game problems that we approach without concrete knowledge. We can ask whether the player can determine if the bridge is unsafe to cross without having any knowledge of engineering or an example of an actual damaged bridge to examine. But on the other hand we can't practically constrain players from using their own intelligence to solve concrete game problems. Indeed, using your own intelligence to solve concrete game problems is what makes RPGs fun. So intelligence is both a concrete and an abstract aspect of the game, and there is no practical way to limit its concrete application without alienating players.

I see Tactics not as "make-a-plan" but as (a) the ability to look at a piece of ground and to understand how that ground affects the accomplishment of a task, and (b) a knowledge of military doctrine. This is only an abstract skill when we operate in theatre-of-mind: player succeeds on Tactics roll, so we tell him there's low ground on the left that permits a covered approach to his goal. As soon as we lay a hex map down, Tactics is concrete. The player sees the covered approach, or does not. And we can't tell the player that he's not allowed to use that approach because his character doesn't have Tactics skill, and that his character must walk across the open field and be killed by the sniper, because metagaming. Not if we want to keep that player.

So the first problem with a Tactics skill is that it operates only in theatre-of-mind, while most potential applications are on a hex map. But even in theatre-of-mind, we have a problem: your military character already has certain knowledge by dint of being a military character. There are things we just don't roll for, and "you see a hill that dominates the approach to the bridge" ought to be one of them. This is in the same realm as checking the oil on your M113: if you are an M113 driver, you don't need to make a roll to know the oil is low. You just look at the dipstick.

Skills like Tactics, in my view, quickly turn out to be useless at a game level because it operates only in the abstract but its application is almost always concrete. In theory, your armour captain ought to have a Tactics skill; in practice, it's the player who looks at the map and decides what to do.

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