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Old 10-25-2018, 04:27 AM   #101
Celti
 
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
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:
PHYSICAL
  • Strength (ST): Physical strength, but kept on the 1-20 scale so rolls against it make sense. Actual strength would be multiplied by a separate Size trait, which could be real size (as for dwarves and giants) or equivalent size (as for supers). The latter would cost slightly more because it wouldn't come with drawbacks like being easier to hit and see, and needing more expensive armor.
  • Agility (AG): A measure of balance and flexibility, governing whole-body movement such as Acrobatics, Dancing, Jumping, and melee combat.
  • Dexterity (DX): A measure of manual dexterity, governing fine motor skills in areas like Filch, Leatherworking, Pickpocket, and Sleight of Hand.
  • Health (HT): Physical fitness and resistance, pretty much what it is right now.

MENTAL
  • Presence (PR): Social intelligence with a catchier name, governing just about any skill that could be seen as social, including not just Influence skills but also stuff like Leadership and Public Speaking.
  • Alertness (AL): Awareness of the real world, governing a lot of the same stuff it does right now: Scrounging, Search, Tracking, etc. – but also (and most likely controversially) vehicle operation and ranged combat.
  • Intellect (IN): Pure braininess, governing arts, sciences, and technical skills that aren't otherwise the realm of DX or AL.
  • Willpower (WL): Mental resistance to fatigue, fear, pain, and PR skills.

SUPERNATURAL
  • Power (PW): Raw supernatural ability, limiting such things as damage dice for spells and super abilities, and maximum ST boosts from stuff like Power Blow.
  • Awareness (AW): Awareness of the supernatural world, governing spells and abilities for finding and detecting things, plus resistance to supernatural forms of obscuration and illusion.
  • Control (CN): Control of supernatural ability, used as the base for success rolls for most spells and abilities that affect the world.
  • Resistance (RS): Resistance to being directly controlled or affected by magic, psi, and the like.

FIGURED
  • Basic Speed: How quickly you react to changes in the environment. (AG + AL)/4.
  • Movement: How fast you walk, run, swim, fly, etc. (AG + HT)/4.
  • Hit Points: Same idea as now. (ST + HT)/2, multiplied by the same Size trait that adjusts ST.
  • Fatigue Points: Same idea as now, but not used for supernatural gifts. (HT + WL)/2.
  • Essence Points: Used instead of FP to power supernatural gifts and absorb supernatural harm. (PW + RS)/2.
It 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.
I have a half-written article I'd had vague intentions of trying to get into an Alternate GURPS issue of Pyramid someday that was almost exactly that — down to most of the names — minus the "supernatural" section.
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Old 10-25-2018, 07:27 AM   #102
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

When it comes to splitting up IQ! I've occasionally wondered whether using Talents might be the way to go.
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Old 10-25-2018, 07:34 AM   #103
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

On whether "split social stuff into three or four scores and leave supernatural stuff to specific games" or "split supernatural stuff into three or four scores and leave social stuff as one attribute" is better, I can see both sides.

I believe "social" is a subset of "mental" and not its own entire realm, even if it is distinct from the more cerebral side of things. In addition, so few abilities and rules pertain to social interactions that I'd be hesitant to propose more than one social attribute without adding a lot more such mechanics. For the most part, then, I'm happy enough leaving social stuff under my Presence attribute – and resisting it under Willpower – and calling it a day. That seems to be about the right depth of detail for the GURPS approach to social interactions. By contrast, supernatural abilities are involved and fill entire books, so having four scores to control them is hardly excessive.

Moving further into supernatural abilities, I'm not a huge fan of switches that let specific characters use the (physical, mental, and/or social) attributes that govern mundane abilities to control supernatural ones as well. Fiction is too full of weak, clumsy kung fu disciples who find an alternate path through their chi, and apprentice wizards who are more powerful than their masters, just less wise. My feeling is that if you don't like seeing those scores on character sheets in campaigns without the supernatural, you simply rule that they're frozen at 10 and nobody can raise or lower them, and then omit them from the sheet as irrelevant . . . sort of how nobody in such a campaign can buy Magery and write it on a character sheet now. If the supernatural shows up later, people can grow "sensitized" or not as they wish, and you can put the scores back on the sheet. I believe this is a preferable approach for a generic, universal game.

So in the balance, I think "four physical, four mental (one of them social), and four supernatural" is a better basis for generic gaming than is "four physical, four mental, four social, and supernatural stuff is setting-specific advantages."



As for the names . . . who really cares? I tend to choose these with a thesaurus in hand, and were I actually publishing a rules set, I'd make sure I picked 12 names that didn't start with the same letter so there would be no chance of making mistakes at a glance (like my poorly chosen AG, AL, and AW).
PHYSICAL
Strength (ST): Physical strength.
Agility (AG): Balance, flexibility, quickness.
Manual Dexterity (MD): Fine manipulation.
Health (HT): Fitness, physical resistance.
MENTAL
Presence (PR): Social intelligence.
Keenness (KN): Awareness of the real-world environment.
Intellect (IN): Academic aptitude.
Willpower (WL): Fearlessness, mental resistance, resolve.
SUPERNATURAL
Essence (ES): Raw supernatural power.
Receptiveness (RE): Awareness of the supernatural environment.
Gift (GF): Control of supernatural ability.
Discipline (DS): Resistance to supernatural influence.
Other stuff you'd need to track would be:
Size (SIZ): The scaling factor for ST, HP, and perhaps MOV.
Reflexes (REF): Dodge, combat sequence, etc. (AG + KN)/4.
Movement (MOV): How fast you walk, run, swim, fly, etc. (AG + HT)/4.
That stuff could use three letters to avoid too much confusion. Various resource points would inevitably start duplicating letters, but you could reserve "P" for "Points" for that, which gamers seem to look for.
Hit Points: (ST + HT)/2.
Fatigue Points: (HT + WL)/2.
Sanity Points: WL.
Power Points: (ES + DS)/2.
Etc.



Finally, I tend to agree that elegance has its virtues. Doug's idea of top-level scores is a good one. It would be interesting if all 12 of the above attributes cost 10 points/level but started at a base equal to, say, Body (BOD), Mind (MIN), and Spirit (SPI), which would replace my Physical, Mental, and Supernatural – and receive three-letter abbreviations to distinguish them. These three would cost 40 points/level and be a quick way to create jocks, brains, and freaks without fiddling too much.
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Old 10-25-2018, 12:40 PM   #104
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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So in the balance, I think "four physical, four mental (one of them social), and four supernatural" is a better basis for generic gaming than is "four physical, four mental, four social, and supernatural stuff is setting-specific advantages."
Some years ago I designed a system that did something like this, in a matrix: speed, power, accuracy and endurance, for each of physical, mental and social (and, in campaigns that would use it, supernatural).

This is most obvious with the physical stats: physical speed is dex/reaction speed, physical power is strength, physical accuracy is dex/fine motor control, physical endurance is constitution.

Mental are a bit more fiddly: speed is how fast you think, power is how complicated the things you think about can be, accuracy is how precisely you can think about something, and endurance is willpower.

Interpersonal is a lot more fiddly, but power is for projecting your charisma at other people, accuracy is for fine control of the effect you have, and endurance is for resisting them doing it to you.

(Speed fed directly into a complex initiative system that determined how long it would take for you to do an action.)

In retrospect I was probably more enthusiastic about the clean matrix design than the system warranted, but I still rather like it.
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Old 10-25-2018, 12:44 PM   #105
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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In retrospect I was probably more enthusiastic about the clean matrix design than the system warranted, but I still rather like it.
Such designs adhere to the principle that I learned in consulting school, which was "MECE."

Mutually Exclusive and Comprehensively Exhaustive. Designing something with minimal confusion and overlap is an excellent design goal, and having your matrix be comprehensive as well, so that anything can fit into the framework is also satisfying. What one is looking for is the playable minimum, I think. The fewest number of mandatory moving parts that will be MECE, with subdivisions that preclude the STAT! "issue" but may nonetheless be fine tuned to taste.
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Old 10-25-2018, 12:58 PM   #106
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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Moving further into supernatural abilities, I'm not a huge fan of switches that let specific characters use the (physical, mental, and/or social) attributes that govern mundane abilities to control supernatural ones as well. Fiction is too full of weak, clumsy kung fu disciples who find an alternate path through their chi, and apprentice wizards who are more powerful than their masters, just less wise.
That's just special effects. There is not really a difference between "I hit you really hard because I have massive bulging muscles" and "I hit you really hard because I have amazing control over my chi", nor between "I use massive power to turn you into a frog" and "I use modest power and perfect control to turn you into a frog". You can create differences, but they're usually very setting specific and best implemented as Power Source limitations.
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Old 10-25-2018, 01:36 PM   #107
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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I believe "social" is a subset of "mental" and not its own entire realm, even if it is distinct from the more cerebral side of things.
Naturally I tremble before disagreeing, but I'm not sure I agree with this one - there are just so many forms of fiction in which the brainy archetypes are socially inept, and vice versa.

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
In addition, so few abilities and rules pertain to social interactions that I'd be hesitant to propose more than one social attribute without adding a lot more such mechanics. For the most part, then, I'm happy enough leaving social stuff under my Presence attribute – and resisting it under Willpower – and calling it a day. That seems to be about the right depth of detail for the GURPS approach to social interactions.
This is a really interesting point, and (I think?) quite distinct from the one above. From a game designer's perspective this seems like an excellent reason not to create a new attribute governing social ability alone, let alone many new attributes to govern many different aspects of social interaction.

But - throwing my two cents in - my instinct is to take the other route. Rather than accepting that GURPS handles social interactions in a significantly more freeform way than it does, say, fighting, my preference would be to try to build a new set of sub-systems for social interaction that would make social encounters as mechanically and tactically rich as GURPS combat already is.

One standard response is "Well, gamers are more interested in fighting than in social drama". But I don't think this need be the case. I think that if we had a more mechanically rich way of handling social interaction, then a whole array of new genres would become available to us - adding things like "drama" "tragedy" "comedy" etc (or whatever you want to call them) to the default RPG standard "action adventure." Being able to do this well would help me to attract new players to my game; one of the truly welcome side effects would be that it would also do wonders for the gender balance among the players.

And heading back toward the topic, whenever I try to sketch out some notes toward such a system, just in my own homebrew kind of way, I end up wanting a wider array of stats and skills to handle all the different aspects of social interaction. I'm not sure why I'm saying this, really, except that I truly long and yearn to see someone put together such a system in a serious way. So I hereby propose that someone else do all the hard work of taking this more arduous route, so I can reap the benefits. Huzzah!

In passing: none of this is meant as a slight on GURPS Social Engineering, which is a damned great supplement - it just takes a different approach, showing you how to use the existing system to its fullest, rather than expanding social interaction into a new set of mechanically sophisticated subsystems, which would be my preference.
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Old 10-25-2018, 01:48 PM   #108
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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One standard response is "Well, gamers are more interested in fighting than in social drama".
Another standard response is "Everyone knows how to talk, not everyone knows how to fight."

I'm sure we can all agree the first part of that statement is not true.
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Old 10-25-2018, 02:00 PM   #109
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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But - throwing my two cents in - my instinct is to take the other route. Rather than accepting that GURPS handles social interactions in a significantly more freeform way than it does, say, fighting, my preference would be to try to build a new set of sub-systems for social interaction that would make social encounters as mechanically and tactically rich as GURPS combat already is.
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Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw View Post
Another standard response is "Everyone knows how to talk, not everyone knows how to fight."

I'm sure we can all agree the first part of that statement is not true.
One thing I noticed when I put my simplified version of Technical Grappling into basic D&D, D&D5e/Dragon Heresy, and the Fantastic Dungeon Grappling rules into Hall of Judgment and watched the at-the-table play:

If you have a mechanic that bogs play, is irritating, irrational, and fattening, folks won't do it.

If you have a mechanic that's intuitive, worthwhile, logical, and is both easy to implement and provides satisfying outcomes (ideally with tuneable verisimilitude), it will be used. Frequently.

I've come to the conclusion - though likely a biased one - that folks don't grapple because the rules are bad or unsatisfying.

If there were "social conflict" rules that were intuitive, worthwhile, logical, and resulted in pleasing outcomes, then the mechanics would be used, sought after, and points spent on them. Those that hew to "just use player skill" could still do so; those that wanted mechanical help ("I roll persuasion!") could also do so.
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Old 10-25-2018, 02:31 PM   #110
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

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That's just special effects. There is not really a difference between "I hit you really hard because I have massive bulging muscles" and "I hit you really hard because I have amazing control over my chi", nor between "I use massive power to turn you into a frog" and "I use modest power and perfect control to turn you into a frog". You can create differences, but they're usually very setting specific and best implemented as Power Source limitations.
I suppose.

On the other hand, being on the receiving end on customer feedback as I am, I can assure you that a significant minority and perhaps the majority of gamers aren't happy with "That's just special effects." After the simple rules clarifications, the bulk of the questions I field are of the "How do I do this thing from fiction?" variety. To which I reply, "That's right here in the rules, just with different special effects, which you could change." To which they reply, "But that's totally different . . . it doesn't feel right."

Also, while I don't want to speak ill of power modifiers (which would be hypocritical given that I wrote GURPS Powers), they demand a fair bit of system familiarity to grasp and tinkering to use. That goes for enhancements and limitations in general. Not everybody wants IQ (Only for spells, -X%); in fact, I'd say that's the kind of thing that earns GURPS a bad reputation for having too much math. The average gamer is far more forgiving of lots of attribute scores than they are of even a whiff of "doing math" to "build" abilities.

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Naturally I tremble before disagreeing, but I'm not sure I agree with this one - there are just so many forms of fiction in which the brainy archetypes are socially inept, and vice versa.
Sure, but please note that my proposed structure acknowledges that. This is why (using the most recent names upthread), Presence and Intellect are different things. Also, Keenness is distinct to cover the canny, cunning archetype. And Willpower for the rock of stability. All of these things fall under "Mental" or "Mind" or whatever, but only one is archetypally brainy. I'm simply arguing that you can distinguish social ability from, say, the mathematical and artistic kind without giving each branch of the tree four attributes.

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But - throwing my two cents in - my instinct is to take the other route. Rather than accepting that GURPS handles social interactions in a significantly more freeform way than it does, say, fighting, my preference would be to try to build a new set of sub-systems for social interaction that would make social encounters as mechanically and tactically rich as GURPS combat already is.
I agree. Currently, though, that's not the case . . . and I was setting up my alternative framework to replace the attribute system while leaving just about everything else alone. Of course one would have to rename stuff all over the place and rebase lots of skills, but the renamings and rebasings wouldn't add new rules covering other situations in greater depth.

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The “Social stuff doesn't need much mechanical support” argument clashes with GURPS Social Engineering.
I'm not even sure what that means. Yes, there are a couple of supplements out there to expand on social stuff . . . Now look at how many there are on fighting, or on supernatural abilities. There's really no comparison.

Based on what we've actually published, it would be easy to justify eight or 10 attributes just for combat, and probably six or eight for strange powers. But social interaction doesn't have the depth of rules support to need anything so grand. Again, I feel that were this to change, and more material were to be written to handle social interactions, there would be a stronger case for social attributes. But I'm not talking about writing more rules to go with more attributes; I'm talking about introducing extra attributes for use with the existing rules, largely with the goal of making it hard to be omnicompetent via a couple of "god attributes."
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