Quote from: LordVreeg;683298Sometimes ruleset complexity comes about from trying to better support a setting, as well.

True. Hmm...I guess whereas I've said "more realistic"* was a driving factor, realism* could just be regarded as one form of added setting support or "emulation").

*or verisimilitude, whatever.

Something you might consider adding is a section on Advancement. (If you haven't already, I couldn't find one other than the increasing skills section.)

When XP is granted, why, how it is tracked or used, etc. Use of XP to reward or encourage desired play styles. etc.

Could be something worth expanding on in more detail. Ta.

Thanks for bumping, I've been continuing to add detail to existing sections (it looks like someone has been reading since its at almost 9000 views).

Anyway, existing posts related are as you say here on XP:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=496053#post496053

The 'safety valve' section touches on systems where characters directly burn XP for rerolls as well.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=496230#post496230

Finally, theres' discussion on the effects of changing between linear and nonlinear costs in character generation and then later advancement in the attribute section, despite this being something that can also affect skills (e.g. in Storyteller). That's post #3.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=496044#post496044

In the first of the above posts I'd mentioned use of XP, ad-hoc increases, time-based and usage-based there. Probably I could add some more detail with respect to XP systems, for example:

*games with XP costs that are linear (e.g. Talislanta at fixed 25/level) vs. varying other curves (AD&D doubling each level, or 3E [level x 1000] to advance. Usually the XP awarded is adjusted to give a desired progression rate from balanced encounters of between a level/session to a level/3 sessions, with the main effect of increasingly non-linear costings being to allow lower level PCs to catch up more easily. There is a tradeoff in whether XP are useful for other things, for instance, Talislanta lets XPs be burned to gain other skills aside from level, which wouldn't be workable if XP costs ramped up rapidly.
0D&D on the other hand needs a fine-grained XP system to use its 1 GP = 1 XP formula, which despite being dumb is often considered these days to be essential to the incentive structure of the game, with PCs being encouraged to get the treasure while avoiding monsters.

Advancement is potentially a very interesting topic because of the psychological aspects - the theory is that players may rapidly gear themselves toward doing whatever the game rewards, be it hacking and slashing or RP. (and they tend to avoid things that produce major XP penalties, like killing in Marvel Super Heroes or DC Heroes).

A few interesting examples, perhaps counterexamples, would be
*Palladium, since its a game that on the face of it seems very hack n' slash (with character abilities that are often combat focussed and alignments that boil down to 'kill me' stickers on certain creatures) but with an XP system heavily geared toward rewarding problem-solving and RP.
 
*Storyteller which likewise was intended to foster RP but often seemed to turn into fanged superheroes.

IMHO its sort of like the Pavlovian reward theory grabs the wrong end of the stick and it'd be more accurate to say that players like reward systems that give them points for things that they'd do anyway e.g. they kill lots of stuff in Palladium and then wish they got more XP for it. Reward systems built to 'mind control' players kind of irks them. (thinking now of a podcast somewhere called 'Game Design Is Mind Control' w/ Luke Crane that I'm vaguely reminded of). Players probably do engage in more freaky sex playing Apocalypse World than they would normally, but the rules also deter many people from playing the game at all.

More later if I think of it. I may add a link from post 9 to here, particularly if anyone else has any further comments regarding advancement. (edit: note have added link).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;496040Attributes:
 
Number of attributes used in a system can be anything from 2 to 18 or so. i.e.
2 - Prince Valiant; 3:16 (in both cases the two are essentially 'Fighting Ability' and 'Non-Fighting Ability').
3 - TriStat, The Fantasy Trip (GURPS predecessor)(STR, DEX, INT)
4- GURPS, Amber
6- D&D
8 - Palladium
9- Storyteller, DC Heroes
10- Fuzion, Rolemaster
11- Harnmaster (approx; 13 if you want to count Frame and Morality).
18 - Space Opera

Torg had 7 Attributes.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;729000Torg had 7 Attributes.

Do we include derived sub stats as part of Attributes?
Just trying to keep this all straight.

And I will have to go over the exp section.

Not all advancement is by Experience Points, either.

-clash

Jeebus. That's an impressive body of work, I dunno how I missed this thread.

I haven't read the whole thing so I don't know if it's interesting or not, but reading some bits of the first post on number of attributes reminded me of Karim Nassar's Alternate Realities.

AR was a generic system inspired by object-oriented programming. The attributes were a freely selectable set, aligned on an inter-dependent tree structure, with four at the base, but each splitting out into sub attributes if you wanted more detail. At full kit I think it had somewhere around 30 or something insane like that.

The clever bit was, the parent attribute was always the average of the child attributes, so variants were still cross compatible regardless of what dials and attributes they were using: simpler systems could use the more complex games' stats just by finding the average to get the parent, while more complex ones just meant breaking down the parent into appropriate child values.

It had some other cool ideas around the OO thing, like an actual OO approach to item stats, and the nested complexity principle was extended to the skill system as well IIRC.

Sadly the whole thing was kind of doomed at the start by its resolution mechanic, the DRF. The Diminishing Returns Function was an actual trigonometric function you plugged your stat value into to get the target number on d100. The idea was that they'd finagled the math to give you a diminishing return for higher and higher stat values (something a lot of video games do in a very similar way because they can get away with that kind of math; WoW used something very like it at one point).

Unfortunately, the complexity of the math meant you basically either had to use a table, or a calculator or computer, in order to find your target number, and this being posted on the Internet in the mid-90s, this was basically the end of that. I actually did try to get some folks interested a few times, but no one would ever bite.

Still, it had some cool ideas that I've never quite seen any other game replicate, which seems relevant to the thread somehow. Plus I like talking about esoterica from internet homebrews from the 90s, because that's what *I* grew up reading.

This actually ties into the Rifts thing above: one of the reasons my friends and I loved Rifts was all the homebrew conversions for it on the internet. The setting meant that there was always an excuse for basically anything to show up on Rifts Earth, and the total lack of any kind of character balance meant its stats could reflect how powerful or not it actually would be. No one cared, because almost nothing could be more grossly overpowered than some of the stuff in official books anyway. Once I played a fucking Saiyan, and I wasn't even the most powerful guy on the party.

Quote from: J Arcane;729072Sadly the whole thing was kind of doomed at the start by its resolution mechanic, the DRF. The Diminishing Returns Function was an actual trigonometric function you plugged your stat value into to get the target number on d100. The idea was that they'd finagled the math to give you a diminishing return for higher and higher stat values (something a lot of video games do in a very similar way because they can get away with that kind of math; WoW used something very like it at one point).

Does the Diminishing Returns Function ever go exactly to zero, at a non-infinite value?

Quote from: ggroy;729078Does the Diminishing Returns Function ever go exactly to zero, at a non-infinite value?

It's an asymptotic function, so in theory the chance of success should never actually hit 100.

In practice, for rounding reasons, this effect is naturally limited unless you also use a computer to do the resolution itself instead of actual dice.

And on a more practical level, once you're getting into 8-digit decimals I don't think any actual group would ever notice the slightest difference.

EDIT: The site is still up, so you can take a look if you like: http://ar.karimnassar.com/

Wow life in the old girl yet. Thanks everyone. I hope its interesting J., I'll check out AR, sounds interesting.
Clash - I did mention some other approaches besides experience points in the earlier post (e.g. Runequest, per-year advancement like in Aliens and IIRC your games) but let me know anything I'm missing.

Quote from: LordVreeg;729058Do we include derived sub stats as part of Attributes?
Just trying to keep this all straight.

And I will have to go over the exp section.

I haven't been, but its one of those things where depending on in what context you're talking about, you might count them or not. At the end of the day they are an extra number/more complexity that everyone has that needs to go on the character sheet, so for that purpose yes, but they also can be just ways of converting specific attributes to a different scale for a specific use, like the way Savage Worlds has a Vigour that would be a die, then a Toughness thats just a conversion of that to a target number.  Or other games have derived attributes that are basically skills, like Gamma World 4Es' Stealth score. In another instance, you could think of 'hit points' in D&D as an attribute in a sense, but for the purpose of how I was going on about how more attributes = more free points to slosh around so its easier to max one attribute by dumping others,  it wouldn't count since you can't lower your HP to get extra INT, for example. (...though I think HERO and GURPS-4e basically lets you do that).

Wonder if anyone has ever figured out the complete WoW MMORPG mechanics, whether by trial and error, reverse engineering, pilfered documents, etc ...

Heh.  Somebody figured out the Dragon Age video game mechanics.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_mechanics_%28Origins%29
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_mechanics_%28Dragon_Age_II%29

(Dunno how they figured this out).

On the surface, it looks like "always fighting orcs" on steroids.  It would be an absolute nightmare implementing something like this on paper.  (The computer wouldn't complain about doing such calculations in real time).

Quote from: ggroy;729093Wonder if anyone has ever figured out the complete WoW MMORPG mechanics, whether by trial and error, reverse engineering, pilfered documents, etc ...

WoWWiki and ElitistJerks between them have most all of it covered at this point. With sites like the late Thottbot and WoWhead there used to be even pretty decent data on stuff like drop rates and stuff that's all server side.

As you might expect, there's a ludicrous amount of math involved.

Quote from: J Arcane;729072Unfortunately, the complexity of the math meant you basically either had to use a table, or a calculator or computer, in order to find your target number, and this being posted on the Internet in the mid-90s, this was basically the end of that.

Pity. Should have considered a roll-under skill mechanic, like GURPS. They have a built-in function like that: as the skill rises higher, each point is worth less and less. Would have simplified things to no end.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;729090Wow life in the old girl yet. Thanks everyone. I hope its interesting J., I'll check out AR, sounds interesting.
Clash - I did mention some other approaches besides experience points in the earlier post (e.g. Runequest, per-year advancement like in Aliens and IIRC your games) but let me know anything I'm missing.


I haven't been, but its one of those things where depending on in what context you're talking about, you might count them or not. At the end of the day they are an extra number/more complexity that everyone has that needs to go on the character sheet, so for that purpose yes, but they also can be just ways of converting specific attributes to a different scale for a specific use, like the way Savage Worlds has a Vigour that would be a die, then a Toughness thats just a conversion of that to a target number.  Or other games have derived attributes that are basically skills, like Gamma World 4Es' Stealth score. In another instance, you could think of 'hit points' in D&D as an attribute in a sense, but for the purpose of how I was going on about how more attributes = more free points to slosh around so its easier to max one attribute by dumping others,  it wouldn't count since you can't lower your HP to get extra INT, for example. (...though I think HERO and GURPS-4e basically lets you do that).

My saves (CCs) are all derived numbers plus skills.  IN the character sheet, they normally come right under the Main Attributes.  I consider them derived stats, frankly.