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[Draignean]

I'll look into it, the problem is in simplification w/o loss of precision. If I do use stats, then how many? How to differentiate different types of skill? The question always leads me down a dark path of numbers and the endless unfolding of new complexities.

When I started doing Our Salvation, I chose to do wounds like Sunless Sea did, where you only get one no matter how badly you get hit (barring special events like "being beaten into a near-unrecognizable pulp" putting you at 4), and set the max before death to 5.

You could go further and put down vague stats like Sunless Sea's as well, like Hearts (healing, bravery), Veils (sneakiness, intrigue), Pages (esoteric), Mirrors (perception, intellect), Iron (strength, toughness), and add their values as success chance to predetermined difficulties (percentile, can go into negatives). I went for a simpler system in my current game, where each character states a specialty that they get a +1 to rolls with - wouldn't recommend, however, since it hasn't really paid off in any particular way in about 1600 posts of game. You can also go with the classic kill-sneak-brain trio of stats, or expand it to kill-sneak-brain-face quartet if you think being hot is going to be helpful in this game. Or, like Apocalypse World, throw in another one for Cool - Hard - Hot - Sharp - Weird, wherein we come back to something like Sunless Sea - 5 vague stats covering 5 vague archetypal behaviors.

It's always better to have stats than to not have them, since stats are how the player mechanically communicates their character to the GM, and roll results are how the GM mechanically communicates back.

Alright. I feel it prudent to mention that my first idea ended up with a theoretical 27 skills before I realized I was backsliding terribly. So, that in my, here's my second, rather desperate cling to simplicity.

Skills fall in three Categories, Tech Skills, People Skills, and Conflict Skills. You have ten points to spend between these categories. The number of points spent determines your maximum possible bonus in those broad domains. If you have 2 Points in Tech, then your cap for bonuses to rolls related to technology is 2.

Now, within each category, you can define Assurances. Assurances are minimum bonuses for certain, more specific actions that fall within the original domain. You can spend as many points on Assurances as you spent on the parent category. When performing any action not covered by an assurance, the assurance is assumed to be 0. Example for Ceradi,

Tech: 2
-Jerry-Rigging: 2

People: 5
-Negotiation: 2
-Pick-Up Lines: 1
-Fast-Talking: 2

Conflict: 3
-Fleeing: 1
-Brute Force: 2

In the realm between the assurance and the cap, the bonus is dependent on the individual's tools and their particular situation. For actions not directly covered by an assurance, who the character is will also play a role in determining whether they get a bonus or not.

Thoughts?

[Digital Hellhound]

Alright. I feel it prudent to mention that my first idea ended up with a theoretical 27 skills before I realized I was backsliding terribly. So, that in my, here's my second, rather desperate cling to simplicity.

You are really not great at this 'simplicity' thing, huh.

I'm not sure Tech/People/Conflict actually covers all likely actions, though maybe the naming's just fooling me. Where would non-combat physical actions, such as acrobatics or feats of strength go? How about making art by whatever means - is that still Tech? Or People? I guess that's not that big of a deal, and that splitting them as Mental/Social/Physical or such might have its own limitations, but that came to mind. Of course, these kinds of actions could just go under the

For actions not directly covered by an assurance, who the character is will also play a role in determining whether they get a bonus or not.

Do the players create their own Assurances or do you have a list?

[Draignean]

Create your own, if I went with lists, things would get very complex very quickly. The problem with Physical/Mental/Social is that they're not disjoint. I suppose that list isn't either, but... Gah. Systems. It's like a floating point number. Sure, you can always add another point of precision, but you're still going to have error.

[Harry Baldman]

Thoughts?

I tend to advocate stats over skills primarily because you need far fewer of them, and I can't say I like specific specialties that you get to write out yourself - it leads to people putting up specialties that are either 50% completely goddamn useless or 100% completely metagamed and boring. Let people have their broad, steady bonuses that work in a variety of cases - it lends itself to people being able to improvise a wide variety of solutions on the fly, and you always want your players trying to improvise.

Alternatively, you could combine stats (stab-steal-sabotage-scam) and roles (engineer, security, space pirate, strongarm, intrepid farmer). Have stats give bonuses, and roles give advantage (when acting within your role, such as getting incredibly drunk, using single shot plasma pistols or engaging in laser cutlass duels as a space pirate, roll twice and take the better result, or double the stat bonus).

Add onto that the races, giving each one two special abilities, which are extraordinary things they can do that the other races cannot (spider men can climb walls and make webs, dolphin people can operate underwater unhindered and echolocate, snail people can lubricate surfaces and retreat inside a very tough shell, bird men still move and operate at half capacity while sleeping and navigate by magnetic fields, rock men can do mineral empathy and survive in the vacuum of space, that kind of thing).

Well, that's the way I'd do it, anyway. I think I'm basically just designing my own game at this point, though, so feel free to do your own thing.

[Draignean]

Bah, I'm going back to the original idea. Any system I spin is going to require end up in a jar, and that's my job, and I'd rather not transform my play into my job quite so rapidly.

The problem with general attributes (Intelligence, Charisma, Veils, Vitality, Poise, Finesse, whatever the name) is that they make no differentiation between someone skilled at different subgroups of skills that would naturally fall under the same attribute. Someone with high intelligence could be a doctor or a hacker, and without either the backstory or the skills to tell them apart, we can't know. Skills become endlessly complex when we try to define all the things that a person MIGHT want to do, and at a certain point they become so mechanically cumbersome that one loses the tree (let alone the forest) for trying to exactly describe the photo-synthetic properties of the leaf.

Player action success or failure will be determined on a basis of dieroll combined with whether or not I believe they could do it, and, of course, whether or not it makes a good story. Heuristics over algorithms in this instance, which naturally puts the burden of emphasizing story and scene over encounters on me.

[FallacyofUrist]

Potentially useful idea here:

Think of a skill... say, Computer Programming.
With a bit of top-down design, you can separate that skill into several subskills, like Hacking, AI Programming, General Programming...
And you can separate those subskills into even more subskills...

What I'm saying is that you can let someone take a more general skill, like Computer Programming, but they will get less of a bonus to it than if they choose a more specialized skill.

This concept will be nice for my upcoming game system test, Mastery. But if you'd like to use it, go right ahead.

[ATHATH]

Have you considered just taking a system from an already successful game?

I think Shadowrun's (5th edition) system might work well for you.

[Draignean]

Potentially useful idea here:

Think of a skill... say, Computer Programming.
With a bit of top-down design, you can separate that skill into several subskills, like Hacking, AI Programming, General Programming...
And you can separate those subskills into even more subskills...

What I'm saying is that you can let someone take a more general skill, like Computer Programming, but they will get less of a bonus to it than if they choose a more specialized skill.

This concept will be nice for my upcoming game system test, Mastery. But if you'd like to use it, go right ahead.

Precisely the point. Each one of those sub-categories can easily be broadened to include another three categories. What kind of AI? What do you mean by general programming? Each tier means something a bit different, splitting recursively in its refinement. Before long you're looking at O(N!) problem to define everything, and that never ends well. Ever. The original version of this game went with that approach, and ended up with well over 200 skills, each with multiple ranks. It was beautiful, and it was terrible.

Have you considered just taking a system from an already successful game?

I think Shadowrun's (5th edition) system might work well for you.

I have, and Shadowrun would have been my go to, but honestly I'm looking for something lighter than that.

EDIT: Whew. Slightly More than 80k characters, but it looks alright.

[Harry Baldman]

The problem with general attributes (Intelligence, Charisma, Veils, Vitality, Poise, Finesse, whatever the name) is that they make no differentiation between someone skilled at different subgroups of skills that would naturally fall under the same attribute. Someone with high intelligence could be a doctor or a hacker, and without either the backstory or the skills to tell them apart, we can't know.

That's why I suggested professions, though. There's the stuff you could have done if schooling and life worked out differently, and the stuff you were born to do - players are going to tend toward the latter, but the option to do the former in a pinch will be very much there.

Player action success or failure will be determined on a basis of dieroll combined with whether or not I believe they could do it, and, of course, whether or not it makes a good story. Heuristics over algorithms in this instance, which naturally puts the burden of emphasizing story and scene over encounters on me.

You can get into a bit of hot water like that if you leave things too loose. Trying to avoid skills and stats with a system like this still makes you end up with skills and stats, except in this case you don't have them written down, nobody really knows what they are and they are in constant flux.

On the other hand, RTD is ultimately much the same way, with both positive and negative examples readily available.

[ATHATH]

Potentially useful idea here:

Think of a skill... say, Computer Programming.
With a bit of top-down design, you can separate that skill into several subskills, like Hacking, AI Programming, General Programming...
And you can separate those subskills into even more subskills...

What I'm saying is that you can let someone take a more general skill, like Computer Programming, but they will get less of a bonus to it than if they choose a more specialized skill.

This concept will be nice for my upcoming game system test, Mastery. But if you'd like to use it, go right ahead.

Precisely the point. Each one of those sub-categories can easily be broadened to include another three categories. What kind of AI? What do you mean by general programming? Each tier means something a bit different, splitting recursively in its refinement. Before long you're looking at O(N!) problem to define everything, and that never ends well. Ever. The original version of this game went with that approach, and ended up with well over 200 skills, each with multiple ranks. It was beautiful, and it was terrible.

Have you considered just taking a system from an already successful game?

I think Shadowrun's (5th edition) system might work well for you.

I have, and Shadowrun would have been my go to, but honestly I'm looking for something lighter than that.

EDIT: Whew. Slightly More than 80k characters, but it looks alright.

I meant taking the core mechanics, rewriting/refluffing the races, traits, spells, programs, whatever technomancers use, and equipment as you see fit.

[Culise]

Lighter refers to fewer and less complex rules.  For instance, FATE is an example of a system that's a bit lighter than Shadowrun (at least, if 5th is anything like 4th), Risus clocks in at 4 pages for the entire rulebook, and on the flip side, Attack Vector Tactical and Starfleet Battles (though not RPGs) are about as "light" as neutron star.  Refluffing the rules doesn't actually change how complex or simple they are, and though a rewrite can, it seems to me that to significantly pare down a game to that degree would be more difficult than finding a less complex ruleset to begin with. 

[ATHATH]

Lighter refers to fewer and less complex rules.  For instance, FATE is an example of a system that's a bit lighter than Shadowrun (at least, if 5th is anything like 4th), Risus clocks in at 4 pages for the entire rulebook, and on the flip side, Attack Vector Tactical and Starfleet Battles (though not RPGs) are about as "light" as neutron star.  Refluffing the rules doesn't actually change how complex or simple they are, and though a rewrite can, it seems to me that to significantly pare down a game to that degree would be more difficult than finding a less complex ruleset to begin with.

Oh, I thought that when he said "lighter", he was referring the tone of the setting, not the complexity and/or number of rules and game mechanics. Nevermind.

[FallacyofUrist]

Precisely the point. Each one of those sub-categories can easily be broadened to include another three categories. What kind of AI? What do you mean by general programming? Each tier means something a bit different, splitting recursively in its refinement. Before long you're looking at O(N!) problem to define everything, and that never ends well. Ever. The original version of this game went with that approach, and ended up with well over 200 skills, each with multiple ranks. It was beautiful, and it was terrible.

Hm. Okay, well over 200 potential skills. I think that's manageable as long as most of them don't get picked.

If a player gets a skill, they can specialize from there later- go to AI programming, to Combat AI programming, to Swarm Control Combat AI Programming... but the catch is they can't branch more than once from each skill. So if they choose AI programming from programming, they can't go back to programming and split another skill off of that later, like accounting programming.

[Chiefwaffles]

I'm currently "designing" a management SG where the players manage a space agency. The basic idea is that you research and design ships to go further out into space, building mining outposts and research/civilian colonies.

The problem is the ships. How do I deal with them? My ideal world is one where I can simply have players design the ships from parts that they also designed, but I know from experience that a system like that would just be too much for me to handle. But then anything below that seems too abstracted and concrete to actually do anything with. If I have premade parts like engines and thrusters acquired from pre-made techs, then that becomes hard to push together - how do I determine size, crew, resource cost, etc.?
Having premade everything with a concrete tech tree unlocking thing like "Crew Cabin MK IV - 10 crew members, 500t" seems too mechanics-based for me. I may as well program it then.

The only solution I can really think of is just having premade ships coming from premade tech -  while it is very "mechanic-y", it minimizes effort in the area and let me focuses on other things. But it just feels like it takes away a vital aspect of the game.


TL;DR: I'm making a game where you expand into space with ships and outposts and research. I really want to have a system where players research new things and design new ships with their newly researched things and their designed/researched components, but I don't know how to do this without creating an insane amount of workload for me. Any ideas for how to implement this kind of thing?

[My Name is Immaterial]

Maybe go the Aurora route, where players design their own components, and then slap them together into ships. Lets say the station's factories are only programmed to build a few different components per type. For example:

Ship 1 design: Standard Miner
Medium sized hull ([INSERT STATS HERE]). -1 Hull blueprint.
Small Solid Fuel Engines ([INSERT STATS HERE]). -1 Engine blueprint.
Mining laser ([INSERT STATS HERE]). -1 Utility blueprint.
Etcetera.

From there, you could break the tech tree into generic blocks, like Solid Fuel -> Nuclear Fuel -> Ion Engines, Small Hulls -> Medium Hulls -> Large Hulls. I was going to suggest breaking it into the Aurora research system, but that'd be a lot of work.

As for the actual exploration part, that can be broken into phases, which each part affects differently. For example, a more advanced engine will cost more resources to build, but will cut the journey into a fraction of the time, or a better mining laser could harvest more minerals during a mining phase, or a worse life support system will damage morale, resulting in poor mission results, and longer shore leave.

Does that help?