Kromm's list of skills every adventurer ought to have

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The problem I have with this is that players (at least most of the one's I know) rarely want any kind of leadership or discipline. I'll usually include a few military or police games on a prospectus and they typically get 0s from quite a few people. I've asked about this and they said they "Don't want to have to be responsible to authority" or words to that effect. My last THS game failed miserably due to the players complete inability to behave in a plausible fashion in such a campaign.

I don't think they want to be part of a trained unit. They just expect that they are trained.

In an RPG setting, though, "trained unit" doesn't necessarily imply an offstage CO or military discipline. It just means they're a competent team that acts as a team, rather than a bunch of random individuals. In the real world, that's most likely in the context of police and special ops (at least, with the skills mentioned here or their equivalents), but in classic adventuring, as the Doc points out, this happens all the time.

Call it something different if it makes you more comfortable. But I think the general concept is right on the money.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

In an RPG setting, though, "trained unit" doesn't necessarily imply an offstage CO or military discipline. It just means they're a competent team that acts as a team, rather than a bunch of random individuals.

The key difference, though, is they rebel at any kind of command authority. That's not really "acting as a team", IMO, even football has the QB.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Molokh

That's part of the reason why I'm troubled about such a requirement. I'm not quite happy to see PCs trained as a paramilitary black ops team, unless they really are one. Based on character concepts and backgrounds, they usually aren't.

And based on what most real adventures actually contain, they usually need to be. It winds up pretty crucial that many common adventuring situations not be brought to a teeth-grinding halt because someone's rolling against a 6- to do something that's assumed to be a simple plot element.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't think they want to be part of a trained unit. They just expect that they are trained.

Yes...to a certain extent, modern special forces troops ARE RPG player characters. Their planning sessions are reputed to be...boisterous and pay little attention to rank and protocol.

A unit like that is a perfect setup for PCs, both from a "don't hold my creativity down, you authoritarian GM, you!" point of view, but also from a niche protection and specialization point of view.

Plus: blow stuff up.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't think they want to be part of a trained unit. They just expect that they are trained.

Do note that "unit" doesn't imply "leader." A well-coordinated pair of cops in their car is a "unit" even if neither outranks the other, for instance. Generally, all I mean by "unit" is that there are no important skill areas uncovered, no critical capabilities without backup, and nobody actively pulling to go off-mission 24/7. Leadership is nice but not a requirement, and I agree that it generally rubs gamers the wrong way.

In my current secret-agent campaign, for instance, there's an NPC team and a PC team that rate as "units." They have a handler but not leaders, and leadership is by consensus, not fiat. The teams are "led" by a shared desire to pursue a set of objectives, and cohesion is maintained by the knowledge that they can rely on each other, not by some boss telling them to pull together . . . or else. Mission failure is already a pretty convincing "or else."

The notion that units can't be cohesive or qualify as units sans leadership is accepted by military services because coordinating hundreds of thousands of guys does require leadership. An army works best if you subdivide all those soldiers into progressively smaller groups, implement leadership at each level, and establish a chain of command. It's hard to hand-pick legions of intelligent, trained, motivated people. It's plausible to find just 5 or 10, though – and for them, leadership isn't as important. If they're intelligent and motivated enough, they don't even need to train together for long to coordinate.

[Phaelen Bleux]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Looked at another way, it's simply annoying when the players are all playing special snowflakes who "just gotta be me." The result is a bunch of loners jostling for the spotlight, which rapidly spills over on the meta-game level to cause friction between players. And of course the GM can't plan on the PCs actually being effective and unified, so he has to dial down the difficulty . . . but be ready to dial it back up the instant that the tactician players decide to gang up . . . and then face their spears and arrows for having changed something on the fly.

Or, since as a GM I refuse to dial down the difficulty, having a party that can never accomplish the task at hand and simple heads back to the tavern to await the next adventure hook because you have 12 quarterbacks and no linemen, as it were.

And this is not to say that they party does not have specialists--those are the PCs that spent 8-16 points in that skill (or skill set). BUT, the rest of the party is composed of PCs with at least a point or two in similar skills, and maybe one or two who don't have said skill at all. So, as a unit, if the specialist goes down there are at least a couple of understudies who can step in temporarily; and if you get down to the last PC with that skill only at a default, well, the party's having pretty bad day already.

[martinl]

It seems to me another part of the issue here is exactly how you apply "cinematic" to your games. In many movies/books/etc., the action heroes are clearly using defaults. Attacking wildly with a baseball bat, falling off the horse, sneaking in a comically entertaining but ultimately futile way, outsmarting the villain and getting her to spill the plan through normal social interaction and trickery rather than applied psychology, etc. So players making PCs like those heroes don't expect to need to be professionals to succeed. (Luck is recommended though.)

GURPS can handle this fairly easily with cinematic IQ and DX, but a side effect of that in GURPS is to make the PCs absurdly awesome at the things they do put points into. This has pushed may GURPS players towards stat normalization, which makes most defaults in adventuring situations impractical. Which is realistic, but can kill the fun in cinematic settings.

Kromm's approach works fine with lower stats, but leads to character concept drift, mostly for less worldly types. IMO at least, part of the fun of character development in adventuring and adventure stories involves less worldly types becoming worldly via hard experience. It's probably a trope.

So another way to look at this is "Kromm's list of skills every adventurer ought to lean ASAP." Your nerdy hacker, idealistic farmboy, or academic wizard needn't start with all of these, but the GM should strongly encourage point investment given the slightest provocation.

"OK, this last session Lake Marsrunner blew his defualt stealth roll and alerted the Cuspidian Bandits to your presence. Perhaps he wants to work on his stealth?"

Then again, some characters are partly defined by their incompetencies. If your game can deal with the PCs being less optimized for their tasks, and the character flaws are fun to play with, I at least am not going to call you on hurting wrong fun.

[Phaelen Bleux]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The problem I have with this is that players (at least most of the one's I know) rarely want any kind of leadership or discipline. I'll usually include a few military or police games on a prospectus and they typically get 0s from quite a few people. I've asked about this and they said they "Don't want to have to be responsible to authority" or words to that effect. My last THS game failed miserably due to the players complete inability to behave in a plausible fashion in such a campaign.

I don't think they want to be part of a trained unit. They just expect that they are trained.

This is where as a GM I teach through reaction. If the players can't respond to authority or cannot cooperate, they all have to face the consequences of their lack of coordination. And if they don't get the campaign focus, maybe its time to try something else.

My classic example is when I tried to play and Indy Jones style campaign, and they kept just killing Nazis. I sent the cops after them for murder. When they complained, I said--listen guys, it's 1936. No war. Wanna play WWII instead? And so we changed campaigns.

Right now we are playing an "evil" PC campaign--vampires, necromancers, etc. But even in a circle of bandits--cutthroats and all--there is a large level of teamwork in the character party or you all stretch together.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Based on mission profile, though, it's usually assumed that they are. Read up on 100 campaigns on the Internet, or review 100 adventures written by RPG writers. I'd wager that 80-90 of them will assume that the PCs work as a team that has clear roles, and that allows for understudies and alternates. The premise that total strangers can meet up, "click," and operate as a team is a fundamental conceit of ensemble-cast adventure gaming and indeed ensemble-cast adventure fiction in general. You can have adventures where this isn't true, but they're extra work to run and make fun. Time-pressed gamers frequently have no desire to do the extra work.

Looked at another way, it's simply annoying when the players are all playing special snowflakes who "just gotta be me." The result is a bunch of loners jostling for the spotlight, which rapidly spills over on the meta-game level to cause friction between players. And of course the GM can't plan on the PCs actually being effective and unified, so he has to dial down the difficulty . . . but be ready to dial it back up the instant that the tactician players decide to gang up . . . and then face their spears and arrows for having changed something on the fly.

Meh, it might not be realistic, but "adventuring party = trained unit" is the most practical assumption when playing, running, or writing for an RPG. Lack of party unity makes one story feel like several, loosely related stories. Most people have trouble telling, following, or even caring about more than one.

Social games are a noteworthy exception, but these aren't adventure games. Note the title of the thread: "adventurer."

Well, I guess this has to do with the 'bunch of rag-tags' kind of party, where not everybody was an advernturer before life pushed them onto the adventure (i.e. the campaign).

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by martinl

So another way to look at this is "Kromm's list of skills every adventurer ought to lean ASAP." <snip>

Then again, some characters are partly defined by their incompetencies. If your game can deal with the PCs being less optimized for their tasks, and the character flaws are fun to play with, I at least am not going to call you on hurting wrong fun.

Sure. It's been asserted that this list is primarily for 'adventurers', where the set of 'characters' is a superset of the set of 'adventurers'. [edit: where not all 'characters' or even all 'player characters' are 'adventurers.] Some games (and other media) are about how non-adventurer characters become adventurers, or have adventures without adventuring skills. Which is soothing right fun, if that's what you're into.

Another approach is to this list is that of "this is what adventurers ought to have. If you choose not to take one or more of these during character creation, realize that your character may have trouble with basic adventuring. You can do this, but think about what you're doing"