Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

Chris Rice · 01-19-2018, 05:38 AM

I know there's been some debate on these forums about Talents but I thought we should have a specific thread. These are my thoughts.

When I first received ITL the Talents were a bit of a "WOW" moment for me. At that time (1980?) D&D and T&T didn't have specific skill systems at all; abilities were tied completely to Character Class. Runequest had a skill system, but everyone had some sort of chance to perform every skill (or as I saw it, everyone had a mediocre chance to do everything). Finally here was a skill system that I felt better reflected reality, albeit in a highly simplified way. After all, in the real world you can either drive a car or you can't. You can either ride a horse or you can't. Sure, you can get better at something once you know how to do it, but if you don't know how to do it you can't do it at all.

To me the Talent system is the defining feature of TFT and should be kept pretty much unchanged. I don't mind the fact that an individual will only have a few key Talents - I like that and feel it makes characters individual. What I don't want is a system where characters have too many Talents as I feel they will then become too similar.

In my long running campaigns I only remember a few characters learning a new Talent and even then it was only one each. However, they got better at all of them due to attribute increase.

So what would I change? I followed the advice in an issue of the Space Gamer and split attributes. INT was split into IQ (Intelligence=level of Talent/ Spell you can know) and KN (Knowledge=number of Talents/Spells you can know). The split into 6 attributes allowed a bit more variety in characters at the attribute level and meant that if you wanted more Talents you could have them without having to have a higher IQ as well.

As far as individual Talents were concerned I scrapped New Followers/Monster Followers. I always thought this was better dealt with by Charisma, Language ability and situational factors. Those Talents felt far too artificial to me.

So my vote is not to muck about with Talents too much. They were the heart of the RPG to my mind and I'm very fond of them.

01-19-2018, 05:38 AM	#1
Chris Rice Join Date: Dec 2017 Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland	Talent System I know there's been some debate on these forums about Talents but I thought we should have a specific thread. These are my thoughts. When I first received ITL the Talents were a bit of a "WOW" moment for me. At that time (1980?) D&D and T&T didn't have specific skill systems at all; abilities were tied completely to Character Class. Runequest had a skill system, but everyone had some sort of chance to perform every skill (or as I saw it, everyone had a mediocre chance to do everything). Finally here was a skill system that I felt better reflected reality, albeit in a highly simplified way. After all, in the real world you can either drive a car or you can't. You can either ride a horse or you can't. Sure, you can get better at something once you know how to do it, but if you don't know how to do it you can't do it at all. To me the Talent system is the defining feature of TFT and should be kept pretty much unchanged. I don't mind the fact that an individual will only have a few key Talents - I like that and feel it makes characters individual. What I don't want is a system where characters have too many Talents as I feel they will then become too similar. In my long running campaigns I only remember a few characters learning a new Talent and even then it was only one each. However, they got better at all of them due to attribute increase. So what would I change? I followed the advice in an issue of the Space Gamer and split attributes. INT was split into IQ (Intelligence=level of Talent/ Spell you can know) and KN (Knowledge=number of Talents/Spells you can know). The split into 6 attributes allowed a bit more variety in characters at the attribute level and meant that if you wanted more Talents you could have them without having to have a higher IQ as well. As far as individual Talents were concerned I scrapped New Followers/Monster Followers. I always thought this was better dealt with by Charisma, Language ability and situational factors. Those Talents felt far too artificial to me. So my vote is not to muck about with Talents too much. They were the heart of the RPG to my mind and I'm very fond of them.