Revision as of 23:03, 29 January 2017

Just going to throw some words on the page, and we'll see what sticks.

Tonight, we are discussing the thorny issue of skills, once again.

Overview and History

Once upon a time, we used the standard skill system. That... mostly worked.

Then I said "screw this noise," and made several attempts at fixing it. Expanding the skill list, moving to a PF-style skill system, consolidating the skill list, adding default skills... we did a lot of weirdness to this particular subsystem.

Then I encountered the idea of scaling feats, where the benefits of the feat scaled to something like your BAB. So Cleave gave you a bunch of different benefits, all based on your BAB. And I said... huh, that's kind of like how skills work. And then I found an alternate skill system in which you got discrete abilities at various skill ranks, and I said... huh, that looks kind of like feats.

So my thought process was - what if you switched the concepts of skills and feats?

Of course, many feats in d20 are defunct, because we let martials have nice things. So feats now are primarily about customization of your abilities or expanding into other classes, rather than ... whatever the hell they were for before. They cover generic improvements that anybody might want, and almost class-specific abilities but are useful for multiple classes, so allow some customization.

Which leaves... skills. Skills as feats, to be more precise. But just like how many combat feats got turned into martial powers, so, too, will these "skills-as-feats" be turned into powers. Just for another type of class, one which Trinity has always been sorely lacking in: the skill monkey.

We're going to try to cover all the ground, here. All of it. But we have to do some shit, first, like figure out how some basic subsystems work, and how classes fulfill those roles.

I'm also working on expanding the Expert class list. Right now, we have:

• Thief
• Mediator
• Explorer

I am contemplating adding the following:

• Scholar (for knowledge skills)
• Merchant (for interacting with economy)
• Harvester (for resource gathering skills)
• Noble (for leadership skills)
• Artisan (for crafting skills)
• Less solid, but... reckoner? for computer-y skills? You'll see why in a minute.

There, of course, must be nine. I'm not sure what the ninth is, but maybe it'll come to me.

I'm thinking this whole deal may very well replace the "background skill" stuff, which... nobody seems to really care about? So this will put some limelight on that.

Experts and Minigames

So, here's the deal. There's a ton of shit you can do in an RPG, and all of our classes that are actually written right now do one of two things: kill dudes with swords, or kill dudes with magic (for varying flavors of magic).

We need to represent the rest of the world, and - indeed - the rest of what you can do in a game.

How do we make this shit matter? We turn them into minigames. That term isn't meant to be insulting, because we already have one, and it's called combat.

So the goal here is that for each expert class, there is a minigame that it gives a fuck about. These minigames need to be relatively fast and painless, so that if only one person at the table cares, not everyone else is bored to tears. However, all classes also need abilities that can contribute to an adventuring party, in at least some way.

There should also be abilities for each class that allow them to straight-up ignore their class's specific minigame, so that if a player (or even group) decides they don't give a damn, they aren't obligated to deal with it. Likewise, these minigames need to be accessible to everyone: just because a thief is the sneaky asshole doesn't mean that the mage shouldn't be able to do it, they will just not be awesome at it. Deal with it.

Exploration Redesign: The Percolating

Links!

Abstract Dungeoneering

Schrödinger, Chekhov, Samus

Abstract Dungeon Track

Melan's analysis on dungeon layout

Alexandrian analysis on jacquaying dungeons

Storming the Wizard's Tower

And don't forget to get reacquainted with Journey exploration mechanics; not everything is there, though, and certainly not the bits about hexes having "exploration points" that are reduced as you travel through the hex, which is the important bit (among others, but that's the truly important concept).

First Go: Putting the Pieces Together

Abstract dungeon map, courtesy of Angry GM

Okay, so let's throw some things on the table and see what sticks.

Instead of having the whole dungeon mapped out to the square, instead we use an abstract dungeon map, like the one to the right. This divides the dungeon into zones - discrete areas that are unified, somehow, by theme or area or what-have-you. Connections between zones are just that: hallways, doors, teleporters... the precise mechanism for transit between zones is not really relevant here, I don't think. Because the dungeon is abstract, it can be whatever.

The mechanics of a zone... okay, there's a lot to go through, here. Basically we take from Journey: there's an idea that a zone has an exploration difficulty TN of some kind... no, that's not quite right, either. Hmm.

What is a zone? It's a collection of rooms, areas, and what-not.

...

There needs to be a distinction between "points of interest" and "hidden things," which is something that I'm having a bit of a holdup on right now.

Necessary corollaries to "has hands" are "has eyes" and "has brain" - that is, adventurers are thinking creatures able to perceive their environment. This is a useful observation, probably.

Events are to zones what attacks are to creatures, but instead of choosing which attack to use like a creature, zones randomly generate their events.

But... on the heels of that, events are triggered by a successful exploration roll. So if you hit the room, ... you deal damage to the zone's exploration points. Then the zone reacts with an event chosen randomly from its event list, where the valid events are those whose "EP threshold" is equal to or greater than the zone's remaining EPs.

At certain breakpoints, the difficulty to hit the room increases. Wait, but then... if you had an event that was available at initial EPs and you just didn't hit it, it would be harder to hit that one later... that doesn't make sense.

Maybe some events also have an AC of their own that you have to hit. So like... finding a hidden thing in a zone, not only do you have to hit the room, but you also have to hit it. And maybe it also has an EP threshold, so you can't find it right away, because it's deep in the zone. Or, if it's not deep in the zone, maybe it doesn't have an EP threshold, but still has its own AC you have to hit in order for it to crop up.

Wait... hold on. Events aren't actions, they're loot. Unlike with a creature, whose loot you get when you reduce its HP to 0, you can get "loot" from a zone over time. The zone still makes attacks against you, representing things like random monster encounters or traps or what have you.

...yeah, I think that's a good start.