Quote from: jdrakehSlowing advancement is the easiest way to obscure the power escalation of which I speak, though it doesn't get rid of it, rather it merely prolongs the process. This does solve the problem of time management that I spoke of, though it does nothing to address the natural (and fairly commonplace) atrophy of learned aptitudes due to non-use.

Tracking non-use of skills can be a pain, though.  

One simplified approach is that rather than just giving players XP with which to raise skills, allow them to shift points from one skill to another.  The principle is that they'll draw points out of skills which aren't being used, and put them into skills that are.

Quote from: jhkimTracking non-use of skills can be a pain, though.

I've Game Mastered HERO and D&D 3.5 -- tracking skill atrophy should be a cinch compared to keeping track of the myriad arcane, exception-based, rules in both of those games

QuoteOne simplified approach is that rather than just giving players XP with which to raise skills, allow them to shift points from one skill to another.  The principle is that they'll draw points out of skills which aren't being used, and put them into skills that are.

This is pretty much what JimBob was suggesting earlier with GURPS. The trick is that this will work better with point-based charcter grwoth (e.g., GURPS, Runequest) than level-based character growth (e.g., Rolemaster, D&D 3x), specifically because when you gain levels you gain things other than skill points (e.g., feats, special abilities, combat bonuses, etc).

I guess that I may have to design a system (or rules patch for existing systems) that handles skill/ability atrophy, while simultaneously tapering off rapid character improvement. I still can't think of a system that does both of these things. And I'd really like to see one that did, as I like extended campaign play and this makes such play much more viable.

Quote from: SilverlionAnd of course "no advancement" whatsoever doesn't quite work for fantasy games, because too many examples of heroes in fiction who do begin as schlubs and work their way up or who were already great, now fallen, who must regain what they lost.

Oh, sure -- I'm just not familiar with very many stories where heroes continually spiral upward in aptitude/talent without hitting some kind of ceilingm be that ceiling in the form of social disgrace, physical failing, or simple inability to get much bette than they already are.

Sigfried suffers hardships. Ditto Achilles. And Jason. Hercules never got much better than 'really fooking strong', nor did Odysseus get much more clever or agile than he was at the begining of his tale -- these heroes didn't continue to amass all manner of new abilities/skills/etc over the course of their lives.

In a great many fantasy RPGs, the PCs just get better and better and better (ad infinitum).

Oooo. . . I just had an idea. Mechanically, many fantasy RPG characters are already the equivalent of the Mayfly in terms of rapid development -- sans death, of course. So why not factor that in? That is, characters start off as mundanes, quickly acquire superhuman abilities until they reach a certain plateau of excellence -- and then they simply die.

It would certainly explain a lot of so-called 'D&D-isms' (such as why heroes and villains, as commonplace as they tend to be in many fantasy settings, haven't seized control of the whole globe). That said, it would also change a lot of established fantasy settings, though I think that those changes might be good in the long run.

Hmm. . . I might look into this when I get my Rolemaster books.

Quote from: David JohansenAs I think about it GURPS actually does a pretty good job of realistic skill development as well and has some optional atrophy rules somewhere.

Those are in 4th edition, that if a skill hasn't been used for six months or more, you make an IQ roll, and if you fail, the skill degrades by one level. Also, if you know a skill above Attribute+10, you must make this IQ roll every day you go without at least one hour of practice in it; once the skill drops to Attribute+10, it reverts to those six-monthly checks.

Realistically few if any gamers are going to keep track of this stuff. The Attribute+10+ master characters will either be assumed to get up every morning and practice, or else they're in a cinematic game where no-one's skills ever degrade, the little 95 year old martial arts master living in a cave kicks your arse. As for other skills, well either you're roleplaying out those six months, or you're not. If you're roleplaying them out, who can keep track of which skills were used in that time? If you're saying, "a year passes before your next adventure, are there any skills which you don't practice in that year? They might degrade"... obviously the player will say, "I find time to practice them all at some point. Unless the character is in prison or on a desert island or something, that'll be plausible.

So I take that GURPS 4e optional rule more as a reminder about what to do to get a realistic feel to games, rather than a real rule anyone will use.

A house rule we've used in our GURPS 4e games is about ability degradation. It works like this: for every 2 points you drop one ability by, you get 1 point free to put in some other ability.

What happens is that the player sees that there's some skill their character never uses, and decides, "with those points I could improve something I am using." So it's a meta-gaming, minimaxing sort of thing. But from the point of view of the character, old unused abilities are forgotten and new ones gained. Of course this is combined with the normal "gain points through adventuring" thing, so that the character shouldn't become overall worse... unless the player really wants them to, and degrades stuff like crazy.

So you can get things like, "Okay, as my guy turned 40 his Strength dropped a level, but that was mostly because he spent more time inside on his computer, improving his Computer Operations, Programming and Writing."

How you'd do this with a class/level-based system, I don't know. Might be easier if the PCs are all multi-classed

I may be misremembering but I think maybe Burning Wheel has some sort of skill/ability degradation rule as well. At least it handles an issue I had with Harnmaster, namely that generating "pre-experienced" characters tended to produce supermen without much of a tradeoff compared to normal inexperienced characters. With BW (based on the little experience I've had with it), older/experienced starting characters certainly have more skill points but they pay a pretty a significant price in abilities (which skills are based directly off of). It feels as if an inexperienced starting character is likely to have a steeper improvement curve via play than the comparable curve for inexperienced vs. experienced characters.

Anyway what I've been toying with in my head is a system of skill caps combined with a profession system akin to what's found in The Fantasy Trip. In other words, your character may have a job during off-time, which provides income (variable in some cases), occasional risk (which can be abstracted as saving throws against some ability or other), and experience/maintenance for a specific set of skills. If you have true "free time" then willpower governs how many other skills you can also train/maintain. Only those skills trained/maintained will stay above the cap; others will degrade pretty rapidly. (I'm suggesting rapid degradation simply because slow degradation is a bother to keep track of.)

I haven't really encountered the problem that this thread is trying to fix; I've been happy enough with the speed of advancement in level-based games that I've played, and didn't have the feeling that I was playing only 1 or 2 big adventures out of the hero's lifetime.  Maybe I've just had stingy gms or perhaps I'm more impatient than James (I've also not played the later iterations of D&D).

It seems to me that skill degradation would be very easy to implement in a Runequest/BRP system.  Players are already keeping track of which skills they are using each session.  It would be easy to add a rule that any skill not used has a chance to degrade.

The main problem I'd see with a lot of these systems is that encourage unrealistic behavior by P.C.s.  The fix I've just mentioned would lead to people going out of their way to use skills just to avoid degradation.  This already happens in an attempt to get skill increases, but I think adding the stick to the carrot would just make things worse.

Quote from: FritzefI haven't really encountered the problem that this thread is trying to fix; I've been happy enough with the speed of advancement in level-based games that I've played, and didn't have the feeling that I was playing only 1 or 2 big adventures out of the hero's lifetime.  Maybe I've just had stingy gms or perhaps I'm more impatient than James (I've also not played the later iterations of D&D).

Odds are that you're just not as much a fan of reality simulation as I am. I don't play games strictly for escapism and, in that light, the unhindered accumulation of power for PCs in most fantasy RPGs presents a huge problem for me (and many of my players). We like our fantasy to be at least somewhat grounded in reality (as contradictory as that may sound).

Quote from: jdrakehWe like our fantasy to be at least somewhat grounded in reality (as contradictory as that may sound).

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I don't find that contradictory at all. My group is the same way.