Armageddon General Discussion Board

General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Thomoto on June 22, 2019, 03:04:19 AM

Title: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Thomoto on June 22, 2019, 03:04:19 AM
So I've been thinking. So ArmageddonMUD, low-fantasy magick, a lot of mystery and a healthy dose of realism based beyond the code. My thought is that arm is a lot of realism based, even for a brutal desert planet. Though the thing is, how are guilds and sub guilds realistic, it does make sense to have a guild, eg fighter that has a lot of fighting based skills, branches from the skills and thats it. shouldn't anyone be able to learn anything? Sure something desert based be somewhat harder to do for someone who grew up in the city, should still be able to have learned?

What do you guys think?
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: John on June 22, 2019, 03:38:27 AM
 A classless system has been wanted for years. It isn't likely to get done anytime soon unfortunately. They are infinitely harder to balance.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: oggotale on June 22, 2019, 09:20:49 AM
Never going to happen, too intrusive.
I'd love a system that slows down skill gains and lets everyone get everything though, that way I foresee characters specializing a lot more.

The down-side is your long-lived badass is WAY TOO MUCH of a badass, and people might quit because of how slow progress is.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Lizzie on June 22, 2019, 09:44:48 AM
If everyone can learn anything, why bother making it a multi-player game at all? You already can do everything. You can forage, skin, kill in a variety of ways, craft, steal, avoid detection, go to every place in the game no matter what is needed to get there. You don't need anyone to do anything with you, or for you, because you can already do all that by yourself.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: path on June 22, 2019, 10:18:38 AM
To me it's part of the game finding other players with the skills I lack. I had soooo much fun several characters back finding someone who could skin rats for me. Those are the conversations I want to be having.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Riev on June 22, 2019, 11:04:53 AM
I've been told I'm wrong about it, but I've always thought of the system thusly:

Guild:
You are Mario, the guy who can jump really high, run fast, and wear tanuki suits. This is what you were born to be, your maximum potential lies in the fact that you are Mario.

Subguild:
You are Al, the plumber. You've been a plumber your whole life, plumbing is how you make your living. This is your chosen profession. This has nothing to do with potential, its what you've trained for.


Sure you could TRY to learn skinning on your Fighter, but thats not what you were born to do, it isn't your genetic potential. If you wanted to learn how to skin, pick a subguild that has skinning to reflect that you've dedicated your life to that, despite your lacking potential.


Also as others have said... interplayability. I'm a crafter... MAYBE I subbed some archery skills, but I can't collect resources on my own. I need someone who can fight, and guide me there. They might have no goddamned clue how to cut the wood I need to the lengths I need.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Greve on June 22, 2019, 01:07:45 PM
Classless worked amazingly well on Atonement and SoI3. Fantastic system. You had a maximum possible skill total that depended on your mental stats, skill caps that depended on whatever stats were associated (e.g. agi/str for shield block, int/dex for tailoring, etc.) and then you could just pick whatever skills made sense for your concept instead of having to shape your concept around a static skill list. It felt so good and I never encountered any problems whatsoever. Nobody was good at everything, characters weren't samey and all stats mattered for every type of character. If you wanted to be dumb and strong, you didn't get to have very many skills. If you wanted a lot of skills, you didn't get to be fast and strong and tough at the same time. It was just much more natural and realistic. It would be a godsend for this game, but nothing indicates that it has ever even been considered.

Needless to say, this would have to be accompanied by a painfully overdue redesign of Armageddon's horrific statrolling system.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Armaddict on June 22, 2019, 02:14:46 PM
I'm in favor of classless if there's a fairly elaborate system of weighting skills that you can choose, their starting points, and their maxxes.  Bonus points if there's some kind of way to get additional 'chargen' points later.  Karma will not suit for this.

Otherwise, it turns into a pretty bland flavor as far as characters intermeshing and coordinating (trying to come up with unit tactics that could be standardized as a Tor was incredibly enjoyable).

Highly disfavor Skyrim and Fable-esque systems where everyone ends up with everything, or the capability of everything.  Skyrim was at least saved by it taking a long time to max them all out, but in the end it made 'trying again as something new' pointless.  In a game where death is certain, that sucks.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Lizzie on June 22, 2019, 04:55:13 PM
I guess it's time again to resurrect the concept of skill point allocation. Different method of explanation:

There are templates, that give you a basic starting point. I pick "warrior."
So I'm able to "buy" ranks of ALL skills. However -
My single-hand and double-hand weapon skills will all cost me only 2 points per rank.
My natural offense will cost me only 4 points per rank.
My natural defense will cost me 6 points per rank.
Skinning, foraging, climb, riding, and stealth: 12 points per rank.
Crafting skills: 25 points per rank.
Mage skills: 50 points per rank (per spell, which would come with 3rd "level" of proficiency in that spell. Subsequent allocations to that spell would bring that singular spell up to the highest level of proficiency available)
Listen/scan/search/desert navigation: 8 points per rank.
Pickpocketing, steal, sleight of hand, etc = 20 points per rank.
Poison, brew, bandaging, bandagemaking, all 15 points each.

I choose elf as a race. I automatically start with 1 rank of climbing and one rank of each stealth skill. As a desert elf, I also start with wilderness quit and journeyman desert navigation (aka ranger-vision).

As a warrior, I automatically start with jman for slashing, thrusting, bludgeoning, axe, and pike. I get all other weapons at novice, whether branched off the main batch or all starting out of chargen.

Shields and rescue will start at jman. Parry will start at novice.

I have 100 points I can spend, however I want to spend them.

Once all of the skills that show up on my main guild prior to point allocation get to master, I will receive another 100 points that I can spend however I want to spend them.

All skills that "naturally come with" the template can master through use. All skills that only show up if you allocate points to buy them, can only go up if you allocate more points to buy more ranks.

So once all my main weapon skills, shield, parry, rescue, and elf-skill gifts get to master, I'll get a message saying I have another set of points available to spend if I wish. And I can "quit newbie" to get to a special hall of kings area reserved for the purpose, and add more skills, or more ranks of existing skills to skills I want to master but can't without allocating points.

In this way, my desert elf warrior COULD learn magick. But with 100 points available to spend, and a single spell (to the max possible level) would cost 100 points, it's not likely my desert elf warrior would ever actually learn a spell. For atmosphere or supplementation in emergencies, a rank in one of the healing spells might be useful. But at a great cost, and a huge hit on all the other possible auxiliary non-magick skills.
Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:04:43 PM
I think the RPI Engine system is just better than that. It has no flaws that I can identify. I legitimately think it's the perfect system for roleplaying, and I didn't work on the code or otherwise have any vested interest in saying so. It was just so fucking good. It's more realistic, it's better for roleplay, and it's better for gameplay. Plus, hey, it's open source so noone's gonna scoff if Armageddon copies it. If there was such a thing as a perfect solution, I think this would be it.

Like let's say you roll EX agility, VG strength, A wisdom and AA endurance. A skill that relies on agility and strenght could hit master, but one that relies on wisdom or endurance would cap at low advanced for you if you had those stats. With average wisdom, you'd have a skill point pool of, say, 500, which lets you master a total of about five or six skills plus some random advanced and journeyman ones. If you wanted a large selection of skills, you'd need to prioritize wisdom which means you don't get really high physical stats and lower skillcaps on skills based on those. Aside from the fact that Arm's stat system allows you to roll all great or all crap, which really ought to be changed anyway, it's a skill system that just works marvellously.

Instead, we have this 1990s system where everyone of a given class has all the same skills at the exact same level, aside from what little customization you can eke out of subclasses. It feels more like AD&D than a simulation of fantasy realism. It creates weird metagame situations where you find out what class someone is and use the information to your advantage if you have to fight them which, while ideally not something people should do, most definitely is something that people do. And I'd really like to play Armageddon in a setting where I can opt out of strength on a fighter, or into it on a crafter, and not feel like I'm pointlessly gimping myself for the sake of variety or whatever people tell themselves to feel better about this awful stat system.



Title: Re: Well, erm. Skill and realism rp.
Post by: Erythil on June 22, 2019, 06:15:31 PM
A certain level of video gameyness is part of the appeal of this game for me.  I like classes just fine.