10-23-2018, 08:19 PM | #71 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
But is the whole "academic intelligence =/= X" just a manifestation of calling the attribute "IQ"?
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10-23-2018, 08:22 PM | #72 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
No. The basic assumption is that if two skills are controlled by the same attribute, there's a correlation between those two skills -- someone likely to be good at one is also likely to be good at the other. If the correlation is weak or nonexistent, that suggests that either one of those skills is misclassified, or the attribute doesn't actually exist (there's also the stat normalization option, which assumes that GURPS in general has the relative importance of stat and skill wrong).
Last edited by Anthony; 10-23-2018 at 08:25 PM. |
10-23-2018, 10:30 PM | #73 | |
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Southern Sweden, possibly on an Alternate Earth
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
Quote:
Still, there is no equivalent to QN, which is why I found this article in pyramid interesting. And like Doug and Kromm are saying, those attributes are still very broad when used as a base for skills... however I doubt if additional complexity to mitigate this is wortwhile. |
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10-23-2018, 11:44 PM | #74 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
Quote:
They were: ST/MAS (Mass; for useful purposes it equated to HP, thus working like ST/HP in 4e) DX/MDX (Manual Dexterity) HT/FTG (Fatigue; again, the pair works like 4e does now) IQ/MSP (Mental Speed; used for any test of quick thinking, including recovery from surprise, and intended to replace Combat Reflexes) PR/WIL (Presence/Will; essentially Charisma (force of will in influencing others) and Will (force of will in resisting influence)) AW/SAW (Awareness/Self-Awareness) The last pair needs explanation: Awareness would be represent awareness of the "outside" (including "unseen") world, acting as Perception does now and replacing IQ for purposes of spells and magical skills, and creative and artistic skills; it'd possibly also work like Empathy somehow. Self-Awareness would represent "inward" awareness, harmony with the self, etc. – i.e., it'd form the basis for "chi" skills, maybe psionics, probably Intuition-like abilities, and – maybe, if there's some game need – "enlightenment". I used the first four pairs in a game (I think PR/WIL too; I forget), but I never got around to defining AW/SAW well and didn't use them. It's all amusing stuff. But 4e, with its more fleshed-out advantages and talents, makes it easier to get similar results without diverging from other people's GURPS games in this most basic of areas. (Still. Breaking IQ apart to get a separate social attribute, and maybe even a separate "mystical" attribute, remains a tempting idea.)
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10-24-2018, 04:44 AM | #75 |
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Southern Sweden, possibly on an Alternate Earth
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
Well, as always it is a question of elegance vs versatility. Having more attributes gives more details in characters by just looking at the numbers; having just four core attributes makes everything simple and elegant. In the end, after playing around with this, I really prefer a smaller set of attributes and fleshing out a character with traits. Which, I guess, is one of the reasons I really like GURPS - simple and elegant at the core, but still with endless possibilities for details.
Tbone, I think your attributes are very interesting. |
10-24-2018, 06:08 AM | #76 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
I'm a bit mystified by Fluid Skills. It seems to me to be taking a problem that RPGs don't suffer from - inconsistency in character abilities driven by careless scriptwriters - and going to some lengths to recreate the problem.
I get that it's modelling something that's common in scripted media, but is it something that players or GMs actually want?
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10-24-2018, 07:33 AM | #77 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
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My late friend Mike was fond of the idea of a tool for varying characters so they wouldn't become boringly predictable. He disliked the potential abuse lurking in traits such as Modular Abilities, however, which placed that variability under player control within the course of the same adventure, perhaps even in minutes or seconds. He was seeking a meta-game dramatic tool, not an in-world superpower. As a player, he often proposed "lateral character development": Moving points between skills to reflect a shift in the character's outlook based on recent experiences. Mike was also a fan of serialized pulp stories, where the hero rarely grew more capable but often drifted in focus to keep the series fresh. Mike and two other friends from the same era (CM and WL) were fond of the idea of character development without character advancement. The three didn't view this the same way, but "lateral character development" was always on the table. Their basic thesis was that players crave advancement not because they want more power but because they don't want to be stuck doing the same thing for many adventures and dozens of game sessions. This was proven to me years later by three other friends (MB, RS, and ST), who were in the habit of retiring old, high-points PCs to create new ones at lower power levels, giving up powerful characters to play less-capable ones who were utterly and completely different. Based on these experiences, I'm not sure the sole motivation is "modeling scripted media." Of the six players referred to above, only Mike was a fan of serialized fiction of that kind. Of the others, two were motivated by theoretical interests in narratology and dramaturgy, two were digital-games diehards who enjoyed creating "alts" and seeing how the software responded to radically different approaches, and one was motivated by what looked to me like attention deficit. Of course, it isn't for everyone! Some players do want more power. Some like being secure in the same role for a long time. Many feel that the only legitimate form of character development is character advancement. I'm on the fence, but I'll point out that I proposed The No-Growth Campaign (GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys, p. 19) back in 2012.
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10-24-2018, 07:44 AM | #78 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
Cerebral vs. Visceral; thoughts and reason vs. feelings and intuition. Intelligence vs. Wisdom. Mind vs. Soul.
If I were to break IQ up into just two parts to alleviate the “IQ does too much” issue without increasing the number of attributes any more than absolutely necessary, this is the dividing line I'd use. The new trait (which I'll refer to as “EQ” with about as much accuracy as IQ has in describing what it covers) would be the basis for social skills, artistic skills, and mystical skills; Will would be based off of EQ instead of IQ (but see below); Perception would mostly remain with IQ, except for what I term as “insight”: recognizing the emotional or aesthetic significance of a detail. Things like Danger Sense, Intuition, Common Sense, and Empathy would be based on EQ rather than IQ, but would still benefit from increased or reduced Perception — that is, you should be able to “float” Perception from IQ to EQ when perceiving matters such as feelings, aesthetics, or mysticism instead of logic and facts. (I could also see “floating” it to DX for the various targeting skills.) This still lumps things together more than I'd like, mainly by having Will so closely tied to EQ. To me, that's akin to basing HT off of DX; and my own preference would be to go with six Attributes: ST, HT, DX, IQ, EQ, and Will. Relating this to “The Fifth Attribute”, most of the functions of Quintessence would be handled by EQ; but the ones that deal with how powerful or tough you are rather than how much aptitude you have would be handled by Will: in particular, “Quintessence Points” would be replaced by Will-based “Stress Points” which, in addition to doing everything Quintessence Points do, would also get worn down by Fright Checks and other kinds of emotional stress. As well: Will, not EQ, would be used for supernatural resistance. I might even go as far as eight, breaking Speed out from DX and forming a new “Focus” Attribute out of parts of Will and IQ: Like Will, Focus would be a mental “power trait”; like IQ, it would be cerebral rather than visceral in nature. Focus would deal with your ability to concentrate amid distractions and to recall pertinent facts: things like Single-Minded, Attentive, Distractible, Short Attention Span, and Eidetic Memory would be governed or replaced by it. As well: in campaigns featuring Sanity-Blasting Fright Checks, it (not Will) would be what you use to cope with Disquiet. Mental attacks would wear down a pool of “Focus Points” rather than Hit Points. A concept I've toyed with but haven't figured out how to implement would be to devise some sort of mental analog to Encumbrance, which would be Focus-based: how much information can you process at once? A computer's Complexity rating would be tied to Focus, not IQ, and might be thought of as the mental analog of the Size Modifier. So: ST, HT, DX, Speed; Focus, Will, IQ, EQ. I list them in this order because there are parallels: Focus is the mental analog of ST; Will is the mental analog of HT; IQ is the mental analog of DX; and EQ is the mental analog of Speed. Last edited by dataweaver; 10-24-2018 at 08:07 AM. |
10-24-2018, 07:56 AM | #79 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
Oh: and it probably goes without saying, but I'll stay it anyway. Conditional Injury world very nicely with Knowing Your Own Strength: with ST on a logarithmic scale too, you can determine your Robustness directly instead of having to use a table.
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10-24-2018, 08:12 AM | #80 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V
Quote:
As the system's nominal guardian, I'm supposed to be conservative in this regard. As a gamer, I often feel I'd be happier with more attributes. I've put dozens of schemes on paper, but I've never actually tried any of them in play. I tend to come back to something like this: PHYSICALIt goes without saying that skills would be spread out as much as possible among the attributes, but especially AG, DX, PR, AL, IN, AW, and CN.
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alternate gurps, pyramid |
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