Roleplay Rundown..

[Reiloth]

The staff doesn't have to do anything of that sort. They have enough on their hands.

Detail does not mean saying "Before you stands a man with muscles so large, that when you look at them, your eyes strain to their magnificense".

You can still describe your character in the most acute of details, and leave out anything super specific to having gigantic muscles. And who's to say that having "average" strength doesn't mean you worked out your whole life? Theres body-builder status...and then theres joe shmoe status.

I think you're focusing a little too much on stats...

I think the ideal roleplayer went along with your other points..Someone who can maintain a personality, whatever and however many that may be, and make his character an example for realism.

I played a skitso a while back...Hardest thing i've done.

I think I played him well..And I don't remember his stats. they were awful.

[Dresan]

You can always do what people do in real life if they feel they are too weak...work out and exercise...I'm sure if your a warrior and have poor strength or are a thief with shitty agility and you RP it out, try to solve it ICly by doing specific exercises for a while, the imms will look down kindly on you.

[Kalden]

One of the big problems is the fact that you'll get a bunch of strong warriors, smart magickers, and agile thieves. That's retarded.

Yeah, that is up there on the list of 'most retarded things I have heard of'.

[Agent_137]

One of the big problems is the fact that you'll get a bunch of strong warriors, smart magickers, and agile thieves. That's retarded.

Yeah, that is up there on the list of 'most retarded things I have heard of'.

in a RPI environment, I'd say it is.

People aren't born with good strength, and think, I'm going to grow up to be a warrior!

And people aren't born agile, and think, "I'd be a great thief!"

And people sure as fuck aren't born smart, and want to be sorcerers.

In zalanthas, you deal with the cards you're dealt. Your guild and subguild chioce should come from your background, NOT your stats.

If it wasn't meant to be that way, it would roll your stats first, then let you write a background.

[Kalden]

Is it retarded to say that kids with big muscles grow up to be football players and jocks?

Or that  bookish kids grow up to be nerdy scientists?

The question is whether stats or some 'inner choice' decides our profession and abilities. Unfortunately, genetics tells us it's the former. I can grow up wanting to be a jock all I want, but I'm not not beefy enough. I've tried, and I am, sad to say, only mediocre. My class is truly not athlete.

When you say that kids make the choice.... what kid makes a choice in Zalanthas? They do what they can to survive. A dexterous kid picks pockets. A brawny kid finds he can shove the dexterous kid down and steal his food. They follow that pattern, and classes emerge.

There are exceptions. Watch Rudy, the movie about the scrawny little football player. Exceptions, especially when they're common as shit, are not realistic.

A sorceror, obviously, depends on his mind to memorize an obscure language.  

An elemantalist has an advantage over other people from the start, and thus doesn't develop any survival skills. His mind, like ours, is left to languish and imagine. He is the only one who favors a stat that he wouldn't naturally lean into, but the fact that he has the luxury of philosophizing and also speaks an arcane language makes it more likely he is smart.

[flurry]

Well this is reflected in skills, rather than stats.    People with an aptitude for using weapons might grow up to be warriors, etc., regardless of raw strength.

It sounds like the best way to make sure all warriors are strong, all thieves are agile, etc. would be to give some kind of bonus based on guild choice.   I don't like that personally.   I like having guild and stats be independent of each other.

There will be physically strong warriors and physically weak warriors, but what they have in common is an aptitude to learn all about the use of weapons.

[spawnloser]

Aptitude to learn is reflected in stats...it's called wisdom.  Aptitude to learn certain things is based in guild...but what you have the aptitude to learn is based on choices made in childhood...and some of those choices are based on the child's stats, basically.  A strong and agile child would quickly learn that he has a physical advantage over the neighboorhood kids and may turn into a bully (warrior/thug) or a protector of those weaker than him from the bully (warrior/guard)...while the kid that was a weakling, but smart, may simply learn to make things and talk his way out of conflict, (merchant/con-artist).

The only guilds that I could see no choice in, based off of childhood stats, would be the elementalist guilds, as that is something you are born to.

Personally, if people's choices were monitored and they didn't just play warrior with the same stat-ordering every time (as that's worse than someone that only plays one guild over and over again) I would have no problem with stat-ordering.

[flurry]

Oh I don't really have a problem with stat-ordering either (as long as age related modifiers are applied AFTER the stats are re-ordered.  Otherwise it's a cheesy way to avoid age modifiers.  Or rather, to get around them working the way they are intended to work.).

I just don't agree that there's something inherently wrong or pointless with having stats that are something other than the archetypical warrior, theif, etc.

[spawnloser]

Oh, agreed completely, flurry.  Any modifiers, like race and age should be done after the random role that determines your stats.  Instead of going, roll 3d6 for strength, then for agility, then wisdom, then endurance, add modifiers as appropriate...roll 3d6 four times, assign values to stats, add modifiers.

[Larrath]

I think this robs us of something, being able to order stats.

Many guilds, and I believe non-elven thieves are especially suspectible to this, are forced into their trade.  Maybe someone wanted to be a water seller but had to resort to theft?  Or maybe some aspiring merchant was forced out of business by one of the Merchant Houses and was made to work as a mercenary to fill his mug?

On the same coin, a guy who wanted to be a Red Scorpion or a Militia guy might have been rejected and forced to steal or bully and then hawk the goods...etc., etc..


Yes, yes, I know.  If we can order stats, we can have these people be statted appropriately, too!  But is that a good thing?  I say, let's have the strong and capable warriors be the cream of the crop and not every average Joe.

If your character is SO reliant on having uber stats, just special app.

"Hello, I would like to make a warrior whose purpose will be to create a band of raiders and systematically destroy House Kurac.  The character is a former laborer of the House, but was also taught the basic concept of trade by an aide he befriended.  He escaped under such and such circumstances, blah blah blah.

In order to make this concept work and to more realistically reflect the character, I would like to have the following statistics:  str - exceptional, agi - above average, wis - good, endu - very good."

Is this particular special app likely to be accepted?  Probably not, but then again, people send special apps for muls, psionicists, defilers and were-gwoshi.  Everything is possible, and if you have a good enough concept, it just might be possible.


Obviously, you should not start special apping Tatlum and Kentu-speaking defiler muls with all-around AI stats and an immunity to psionicism and bashing weapons.

I have dibs on that one.

[Bestatte]

Ordering stats isn't the same as setting them. When you order your stats, you're just saying "I want my highest stat to be wisdom, next highest endurance, next agility, last strength." You still won't know what wisdom will end up as until the roll shows up...but you'll know, at least, that if you DO end up with "average" wisdom, all the other ones will suck eggs <snicker>.

I know I'd have liked to order stats on previous characters...because one who had AI endurance really didn't have any use for it. But she -really- could've used better physical strength.

Another one had "good" strength, but average wisdom. If I had the option, I would have loved to place her wisdom as a priority and strength either 3rd or 4th down the line.

So again - ordering the stats doesn't mean you're saying "I want the "good" stat to go here and the "very good" stat to go there. You're saying "I want whatever stat ends up being the highest of the four to go there."

[Sir Diealot]

That..would be what I am an advocate of.

But, obviously, I am a sickening powergamer for wanting realism in the fact that -- people who swing weapons all day get either more agile, or stronger.. and people who spend all their time memorizing a dead language usually expand their mind's ability to remember.

There was an experiement done in london where it proved that taxi drivers have build their memory, and spatial ability, due to their profession.  

Pro Atheletes obviously build their bodies, either to be stronger or more agile.

And thieves/street magicians build their nimbleness up by frequent use of those facilities.

[spawnloser]

Yeah, Larrath...if you're playing a water-seller that had to turn to theft, you should be playing a merchant/thief...and if you had a crappy agility, you probably would have turned to prostitution instead.  I mean, people do what they have a chance to do, not necessarily the first thing to come along.

[Sir Diealot]

Hey, hey hey.. -no- prostitutes with crappy agility.. I'm getting tired of breaking them with my HG.

[Larrath]

It could be a Merchant/Thief or it could be a Pickpocket/anything else.  

The 'Merchant' guild is for people who are actually merchants; speak Cavilish, haggle, sometimes make stuff, all that.  Water sellers are just hawkers that don't really haggle all that much.

The point I'm trying to make is that making misfit characters is not a bad thing.  I'm not saying we should all make Merchants and join the T'zai Byn, but misfit warriors who are NOT fit to join the most elite force of fighters is a good thing.

It's my dream where "the brawny, towering man" goes to House Tor and gets rejected because he's just not l33t enough.  I know it might be bad for people who do want to play in House Tor, but I'm still against the idea of ordering stats.  If it's crucial, special app.  If it's not, just roll with the blow and find something different to do with the character, or play it anyway in spite of the bad stats.

[Sir Diealot]

Ah, see.. that's where the change in order comes in.  Lets say you make Billy the Wannabe Tor!

But, all his life, Billy had to run-run-run  from the bigger boys... So, while Billy had high endurance..and maybe agi.. his strength never got that good..

Billy can't join Tor, even though it's his life goal..

BUT! Billy's stats -do- make sense with his background. Hence the realism.. Hence the way the RPI should be run, imo.

[spawnloser]

If everyone doesn't make the brawny, hugely-muscled warrior, ordering stats is a good thing.  People that abuse ordering should be treated like someone that abuses everything else.  Why make everyone have to come up with excuses after character creation, adapting everything to their newly rolled stats because a few may abuse something?  As I've said in the past, nearly anything could be abused, but I'd like to think that we can trust the majority of people to NOT abuse anything that comes their way.

[Larrath]

Why is it abuse if every politically-inclined character said that 'wisdom' is obviously their greatest feat, or every pickpocket obviously had to be more agile than he is durable?

I think that the chance that you will become some bumbling misfit whatever-guild-you-picked is a good thing.

[Avril]

However we put it, a system in which stats were chosen in order would be vastly superior to the one we have right now. A few people argued that if stat ordering was in place, every warrior would pick a high strength or endurance, theives would opt for agility, crafters for wisdom... This isn't really true. After all, by the same logic, every warrior would pick dwarf for his race, while thieves and crafters would all be playing short elves with an ear mutation. As long as you hide it well enough, nobody's going to know, IC (or sometimes even OOC) that you're not human, just as nobody's going to know your stats. Sure, there's a difference between picking a suitable race and suitable stats. A race might actually affect role-playing, whereas stats don't, but there's a reason for that - stats have nothing to do with IC behavior because they're some random numbers rolled up by a server that couldn't care less about your character concept. If I design an intelligent, hardy, weak and clumsy character, and play him out that way, do you think I'll ever take his stats into account?

As it is right now, if stats were in any way visible, you'd be forced to adjust not just your physical appearance, but also your whole character concept to suit them. Low wisdom? Well, obviously, your character's either a moron, absent-minded fool, or chronic amnesiac. Take your pick. High strength? It wouldn't make sense for your obese self, who never worked in his life and never will, to be able to pull his fist up without help, let alone punch a muscular man in the face. Still, you can always blame it all on luck... But why keep trying to deliver blame on everything but the problem itself? Right now, stats don't exactly show up before you start sparring, although they do stir up a mess whenever skills have to be used.

The arguments that "you can get around it" are pointless. It's a problem, and one that can very easily be solved. You don't "get around" a problem when you can solve it. Suppose your race was randomly chosen, and you had to get around that. When it came to writing a main desc, you'd try to make it as generic as possible, avoiding mention of almond eyes or the color of your hair (which may or may not exist). In the end, you'd create a generic character description and background that could suit any race. Good for you. You'd also have to deal with that chubby dwarven pickpocket of yours, who will spend his whole life either failing at something he's completely unsuited for, or trying to make use of his natural strength as a warrior, only to find out that the code prevents him. So maybe you wanted a human pickpocket instead... Well, that's what special applications are for, right?

I think that the chance that you will become some bumbling misfit whatever-guild-you-picked is a good thing.

If stats are truly randomly assigned, then there's a fifty-fifty chance that you'll be a bumbling misfit at the guild you picked... And a fifty-fifty chance that some other guild would be useful for your character to have. Now, would the character himself have chosen the inappropriate guild, if he knew how much he sucked at it? Maybe. Should it be up to the player to decide? Yes.

Also note that some characters (fighters and rangers come to mind) don't exactly depend on a single stat. A fighter might start out with a high agility and a knack for learning from the enemy in mid-fight; he would use combat techniques that fitted these natural traits. If I put these techniques into my background, I'd rather not see my character start out with high strength and low agility... Even if it made him extremely powerful, it would be unrealistic and, yes, unfair.

If abuse is a concern, why not allow only those with 3 or more karma to set the order of their stats? It's not like they're the type to twink out.

I do see a few problems with introducing stat-ordering to Armageddon, however. One of these problems is that there are only four stats to decide the character's physical and mental prowess. Generally, the less you have, the more a character concept will come to depend on a single one of them.

However, suppose some of the four stats diverged into two different ones: "metabolism" would split from endurance, "perception" from agility and "concentration" from wisdom. Metabolism would handle such things as hunger and thirst, as well as the effects of poisons, while endurance dealt with everything else. I'm not sure what perception would affect, other than skills, though concentration could deal with, crafting rolls (not skill gain, though), the ability to learn from "teach" commands and the use of the Way. Each of the new stats would take over certain skills, so "perception" would give bonuses to listen and peek, for instance. Combined with a stat-ordering system, this would give people more room to design their characters' coded abilities, bringing the code and role-playing into harmony.

I'm sure someone's going to say that more code means less role-playing... Well, I'll argue that the more accurately the code supports character concepts, the better it is for the RP. Right now, the code pretty much ignores the character.

[Bestatte]

Actually, there are 8 stats. Strength, wisdom, endurance, agility, health points, stamina, stun, mana.

Remember that "stats" refers to "statistics," which is a numerical measurement.

A ranger who shows up at age 28 probably didn't just walk into the bar and decide "hey - I think I'll be a ranger!" He's probably been preparing his body and his mind over the last 28 years for the task of setting off into the wilds. His natural stamina will be in better shape than Lord Fancypants Fale, who only needs enough stamina to keep him awake when he's kanking his bed slave.

A guard or soldier will have a higher natural strength, because they have prepared prior to the character ever showing up in the game, to build muscles and make them capable of holding a Vorpal Buttfucker With Massive SAP Crits +5.

A merchant will show up in the game already having a better general understanding of commerce than the average guard/thug, but he will know the value of Psi and Barrier better than the average guard/thug - and so his stun points might actually be on part with the average guard/thug who gets smacked around in the head fairly often in the sparring ring.

[Sir Diealot]

All excellent points.

All unsupported by the current system.

All vehemently fought against as 'unrealistic' by Larrath and co. (not singling you out, you were just the most recent).

[Marauder Moe]

Correct me if I'm wrong... but aren't things like "getting stronger through training" and such reflected in skill increases?  I haven't played any 20+ day old warriors or such, but I'd imagine a 20 day warrior with crappy stats could still kick the ass of a newbie warrior with good stats.

I know some people are going to hate me for saying this... but sometimes I wonder why stats aren't hidden from the player just like skill levels.

[spawnloser]

That'd never work, Moe.  People DO need to have a general feel for how agile they are without having to go test it on things.  They'd know from over their years of growing up that they're a bit stronger than average. or clumsy as an ox in a china shop, or able to remain doing strenuous work for a while longer, or that everyone they knew figured everything before they did.

[Bestatte]

Correct me if I'm wrong... but aren't things like "getting stronger through training" and such reflected in skill increases?  I haven't played any 20+ day old warriors or such, but I'd imagine a 20 day warrior with crappy stats could still kick the ass of a newbie warrior with good stats.

I know some people are going to hate me for saying this... but sometimes I wonder why stats aren't hidden from the player just like skill levels.

My reasoning for stat increases...

I start out with "average" strength. This is because up until this point, I've lived an "average" life, and my muscle mass is "average" and I haven't really done anything significant to change the capacity of what I can handle.

For the next three years, I go on a specialized course of training, including weight lifting, aerobic exercise, long hikes in mountain regions with a thinner oxygen supply, working slowly but steadily over the three year period.

After that period ends, my -capacity- to be strong has increased.  My muscles don't merely look stronger than they were when I started. They ARE stronger. I can do more now than I could before - not just because I learned how to use a broadsword with finesse and skill - but because my muscles work seamlessly with that weapon to wield it with less effort than when I was merely "skilled."

Skill and ability are two completely different things. That is why we HAVE stats in the first place. And if skills can increase, theoretically, stats should be capable of increasing as well.

I have no problem with my warrior character starting out with "average" strength. My concern is more if my warrior starts out with "average" strength and "very good" agility. It's a waste of a stat that would have worked just fine for my character concept if it was only average, and kinda puts a damper on the stat that would've been better served with that "very good" mark.

The same with a magicker/archer with lousy strength and wisdom, but really uber agility and endurance. How am I supposed to cover my magickal abilities by claiming I'm an archer, if I can't even wield a bow because my strength is too low to allow me to do so? And how can I practice magick if I only have 60 mana and it takes a RL hour to get it all back? I'd be pretty useless, with no other method of acquiring food and water.

So - I'm totally in favor of stat ordering. But only if the order is determined prior to learning what those stats will be.

[Mook]

Just a humble sidenote regarding the original discussion..  would like to add that I really appreciate the dialogue of many players - discussions of ideology, (possibly made-up) current events, culture and the everflowing cycle of change (yes, even in Zalanthas) - even, or especially, when its just stuff about some new fighting style that Sarg soandso is developing, or the dire need of preserving the noble breed of kanks from some now-enslaved tribe.  Or... whatever.  Stuff that keeps the game dynamic, without blowing-up a city-state and calling on the staff to code it up again
   It just brings the world alive, by painting the issues that are whirling around our characters, besides their own personal goals of better gear and killing/usurping their superior's place.  Not to say that isn't good fun as well.  :twisted: