Quote from: jhkim;280392Well, this depends on your definition of "fair".  To many, the idea that the least competent person is the one paid the best (or highest rank/status/etc.) is considered unfair.

That may as be, but studies from not too long ago show that the people who get promoted the most often and paid the best are really good at...  getting promoted.  Seriously.  Whether or not that is a skill, or a particular skill set, is still up for debate.  It wasn't because they were particularly good at their job.  Research seemed to show they were pretty much average across the board on a number of factors.

The point being:  they really did put 'skill points' into getting a promotion or more pay instead of a number of technical or other skills.  While it might be unfair, that is more or less exactly how things play out in the real world.

Quote from: CavScout;280380It has little to do with "life" being fair but rather that it is a game and you generally want players thinking their hand is fair compared to the next guy.

You aren't adding any meaning to my initial statement here. But thanks for the clarification.

Quote from: jhkim;280022Hold on, let's be clear.  I'm not talking about point systems overall -- but specifically about costly advantages for things like wealth, status, and rank that in the real world may be correlated with greater training or talent.  

With regards to the general, the point isn't that the private will be better at guns than the general -- but that the private may be better at all skills than the general.  Imagine each character has 40 points left after spending equally on attributes and non-military skills. Now imagine that the rank of general costs 30 points.  So the private has 40 points of military skills, and the general has 10 points of military skills.  Imagine if you don't just go to the private for shooting -- you go to him for tactics as well.  

Now, I realize that there are many ways to explain how less competent person can get ahead, but it still peculiar.

But here is the problem, you are asssuming a game where one player play a private and the other play a general, and both are built with the same number of points, this is not impossible, but it is a little weird. It is like playing a super hero game where both Jimmy Olsen and Superman are built on 500 points and complain that Jimmy is as much as powerful as Superman.

And about how to explain it, an easy fix the general have an higher number/more disadvantages (Duty come to mind), and use the extra-points to buy the necessary skills.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;280414You aren't adding any meaning to my initial statement here. But thanks for the clarification.

You're missing the point, again, it seems. It isn't about life bing fair, it's about the game.

Quote from: CavScout;280426You're missing the point, again, it seems. It isn't about life bing fair, it's about the game.

I think you're the one who might be missing the point. That the game is an intrinsic element here should be obvious from the fact that we are talking about point buy system for a game. But my original point was that point buy systems exist substantially to equalize the characters within the game. Thus, within the context of the game, the founding philosophy is that life (of the characters) is fair.

So again, you aren't saying anything that I wasn't saying in the first place.

Quote from: Just Another User;280422And about how to explain it, an easy fix the general have an higher number/more disadvantages (Duty come to mind), and use the extra-points to buy the necessary skills.

I think this is a very good idea, if you want to stay within the general paradigm of "infinitely fungible point-buy". Although for many systems (e.g., the standard GURPS rules at least prior to 4e), it would amount to a houserule, and thus doesn't invalidate the criticism of system as written, to allow more than a certain number/value of disads.

Other comments...

Rob (Estar),

QuoteFor GURPS the points instead became reflective of the difficultly or rarity in relation to real life.

Although this was true of earlier versions of GURPS, I think I've been told that GURPS 4e has moved away from this approach. That is, points are supposed to reflect utility in game terms. But because they attempt to be comprehensive, the rules must necessarily be based on certain assumptions about how the game is going to be played. E.g. if 50 points spent on combat-related characteristics, skills, and advantages are supposed to be "balanced" against 50 points spent on social advantages, then those social advantages must have, in some sense, an equivalent impact on play whether it be in terms of overcoming challenges or garnering spotlight time. And this is something that's ultimately going to be in the hands of the GM and players.

To me this suggests that a group ought to think about the type of play that a given point system would really be balanced for, and then make adjustments, such as breaking the points down into categories and requiring a certain range of expenditures in each. I imagine a game could be designed that'd allow the group to specify beforehand how important different areas would be, which would yield multipliers. So that for example if social status or holding an office is mainly incidental to the real action of the game, it won't make much difference in points whether you're a high muckety-muck or the lowest of the low.

Quote from: StormBringer;280402That may as be, but studies from not too long ago show that the people who get promoted the most often and paid the best are really good at...  getting promoted.  Seriously.  Whether or not that is a skill, or a particular skill set, is still up for debate.  It wasn't because they were particularly good at their job.  Research seemed to show they were pretty much average across the board on a number of factors.

The point being:  they really did put 'skill points' into getting a promotion or more pay instead of a number of technical or other skills.  While it might be unfair, that is more or less exactly how things play out in the real world.

This is going to vary a lot depending on what the job is, and what rank you're considering.  For instance, in the US army and others with similar rank system, there's a break-point at the rank of Major.  Speed of getting promoted to Major from Captain may owe a lot to "getting promoted" skill.  But only a few officers are promoted from Major to Lt Colonel, and those are usually men with a demonstrated leadership ability.  After that though, getting promoted from Lt Colonel up into the General ranks again owes a lot to getting-promoted skill and not so much at ability to do the actual job.

So you get a situation where officers with Lt Colonel and Colonel rank are likely to be more talented than those with Major rank, but also more talented than those with General rank.

Quote from: S'mon;280473This is going to vary a lot depending on what the job is, and what rank you're considering.  For instance, in the US army and others with similar rank system, there's a break-point at the rank of Major.  Speed of getting promoted to Major from Captain may owe a lot to "getting promoted" skill.  But only a few officers are promoted from Major to Lt Colonel, and those are usually men with a demonstrated leadership ability.  After that though, getting promoted from Lt Colonel up into the General ranks again owes a lot to getting-promoted skill and not so much at ability to do the actual job.

So you get a situation where officers with Lt Colonel and Colonel rank are likely to be more talented than those with Major rank, but also more talented than those with General rank.

True story.  The studies I recall were focussed on the business world, somewhat in light of recent stories regarding golden parachutes for CEOs and other executives that performed poorly at the helm.

The military, as you note, is quite different.  Promotion among the non-commissioned is based, in large part, on testing scores, but eventually, your time in rank and time in service may come to equal out, so your test scores are not as important.  Which rather makes sense, the more experience you have in your rank and in the service make up for book learning or being good at taking tests.  Whether or not that is entirely accurate is another debate altogether.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;280218The fundamental driving force behind most point-buy system is that life is fair (at least among the PCs).

I think I see what you mean: point-buy assumes everyone who is going to get together to do this thing [adventure, job, whatever] has almost exactly the same ability, overall, to effect the world, which is highly unlikely to happen in real life; usually, any given group of people doing a thing together will be on rough parity, but a much rougher parity than you'd get be giving them all the same number of points.

One fix I can think of would be to randomly determine the number of points each player gets. This might seem ridiculous - why not just randomly assign the character's values, then? - but it combines the realism of a rougher parity with the control necessary to develop the character first, and the numbers second. On the other hand, I can certainly see cases in which players would get frustrated at being the lowest-powered guy in the room, or even the highest-powered guy. So it'd be a solution with a narrow scope of applicability.

Even if the leader is the least skilled in the, "group," most point buy systems produce characters so much more powerful than people in the real world that it wouldn't look strange to the people that knew the characters.

If I was written up in a White Wolf style game with skills ranging from 1-5, my sheet would look something like that:

Martial Arts 3
Paramedic 2
Computer 1
Driving 2
Engineering 2
Athletics 2

and that is probably just about it. Here is a sample character: a realistic, real world physician with martial arts for a hobby:

Physician 3
Paramedic 4
Martial Arts 2
Athletics 2
Driving 2
Computer 1
Survival 2
Dancing 2

That's it, and that's a pretty realistic, real world character, and if that guy were running tons of shit, no one would bat an eye at it.

There is, however, no possible fucking way that that character would fly as a player character. Too weak, too boring. The player character version would have twice that much shit. The game master might write him up an an NPC running the ED or something, but not as an adventurer. The fact that this guy is telling a PC what to do is crazy.

Quote from: Cranewings;280499...most point buy systems produce characters so much more powerful than people in the real world...

Is that uniquely inherent to point-buy systems, or a characteristic of roleplaying games in general, do you suppose? I've only played a few games with random generation, but they seem exceptional compared to the average real-life person, too.

Quote from: Cranewings;280499There is, however, no possible fucking way that that character would fly as a player character. Too weak, too boring.

For what it's worth, we've done games with incredibly low point values, and I've found them stimulating and interesting, provided they're given challenges appropriate to their power level.

Quote from: Engine;280501For what it's worth, we've done games with incredibly low point values, and I've found them stimulating and interesting, provided they're given challenges appropriate to their power level.

That's something that can be applied to any level of power the characters may have. I think too many people lose focus of it.

Quote from: CavScout;280504That's something that can be applied to any level of power the characters may have. I think too many people lose focus of it.

Agreed. And while every group has different ideals of the degree of challenge that should be presented - some like a walkover, while others like to always be on the verge of getting curbstomped - the idea of proportionate challenges is a powerful one. One exception to the general rule is the hands-off sandbox game, in which the characters are supposed to determine how great a challenge they're willing to face; my own sympathies lie somewhere in-between, in which the players/characters decide who to face and where and when, while I keep my fingers on the scale to make sure they're always just a hairsbreadth away from victory or defeat, and ideally do so in such a way as to be unnoticed.

I personally love playing very low-power games, in which the characters are just the man-on-the-street, an average person put into an extraordinary situation which stretches their abilities to the maximum, but many people find the lack of options to be suffocating, largely because they're used to having so many more powers and abilities. But once people get used to it, their perspective comes back, and they realize that even just having the ability to shoot a gun reasonably well is a tremendous ability when calibrated against the real world, which my games seek to emulate.

[Edit: And that perspective allows an amazing shift in how players view different challenges; while in real life, a single guy with a gun saying, "Jewelry, keys, wallet," is an intimidating thing, for the average Shadowrun character, that's just Wednesday evening. Shifting the perspective downward allows players to compare the game events to real-life events, and not to fantasy events, and I've found that's a real asset toward immersion.]

Quote from: Engine;280501Is that uniquely inherent to point-buy systems, or a characteristic of roleplaying games in general, do you suppose? I've only played a few games with random generation, but they seem exceptional compared to the average real-life person, too.


For what it's worth, we've done games with incredibly low point values, and I've found them stimulating and interesting, provided they're given challenges appropriate to their power level.

A friend of mine is a cop / power lifter / cage fighting camp. If vampires or something attacked Dayton Ohio, he wouldn't be a bad player character. That said, he gets salty on occasion in an RPG when his character, which is usually a warrior, gets taken down by something that he thinks he could live through (:

The only low powered game that I've ever tried to run was Beyond the Supernatural. It had potential to be good but we didn't get very far with it.

As far as your first point, yeah, almost all rpgs make characters that are more powerful than real life.

Quote from: Cranewings;280499Even if the leader is the least skilled in the, "group," most point buy systems produce characters so much more powerful than people in the real world that it wouldn't look strange to the people that knew the characters.

The problem that I referred to isn't that the point-buy system leads to characters that are unbelievable by themselves.  Rather, within the group of PCs, the ones with more status, wealth, and fame will be the ones with less skill.  

I'll bring up again my initial examples.  Suppose there are professionals in the party -- say two PCs who are both mercenaries.  One of them has spent points on wealth and fame, while the other hasn't.  The mercenary who is rich and famous is less capable than the one who is poor and unknown.  Similarly, if the PCs are a starship crew, the one who has rank Captain and correspondingly greater pay is less skilled than his subordinate officers.  

One can generally find a rationale for this for any given set of characters. However, the trend is notable.  It's not unplayable or anything -- one can still have a perfectly fun game where the famous mercenary is riding on his connections and is actually outclassed by his less-reknown peer.  There are good stories about the crack squad saddled with a green lieutenant.  We can quibble about how common this is in real life, but the main thing is that it isn't always the case in either real life or fiction.  i.e. There might be times when you want a group where the captain isn't less competent than the lower-rank officers, or the famous mercenary isn't outshone by the unknown.  

Thus, I'm interested in talking about ways to not have this feature.  

1) High-status PCs are given more points.  This is balanced by rotating who gets to play a high-status PC.  This is like the approach of Ars Magica, where the magi are flat-out more powerful, and companions are more powerful than grogs.  

2) High-status PCs are given more points, and this is balanced by giving out-of-character perks.  This is like the approach of the Buffy RPG, where the Slayer or other Heroes get more power but fewer Drama Points than the White Hats.  

3) Players can get a random number of points, like 50 + (2d10 x 5).  This in theory allows for a high-status PC who is just as competent as a low-status PC.  However, unless those who roll high regularly spend the extra points on status, this doesn't inherently change the trend.  

4) As GM, I can occasionally giving extra points to certain PCs for cool concepts.  However, unless the cool PC ideas tend to be the high-status ones, this doesn't change the dynamic.  

5) As GM, I can give extra points to the high-status PCs, without requiring anything in balance.  This may cause issues with consideration of fairness.  i.e. How does the group determine whose PC gets to be high status?  

6) Status traits (like wealth, rank, and fame) can be random or otherwise independently assigned, while everything else is point-bought.