Revision as of 14:30, 13 February 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.

Exception-Based Design: Reinventing the Wheel

It occurs to me that some of my issues with "oh no you get random stuff from exploration" is a bit silly. We don't have a core mechanic here, and we need one.

So let's do that.

On your turn, you can make an exploration attack against a zone. If you hit, you deal damage to the zone's EPs. In addition, you trigger one random event from the zone's event list, like finding an entrance to another zone, finding a weird thing, whatever; each event on the list has an EP threshold, which you must meet to hit that event.

That's really all there is to it. Each attack you make represents you wandering around, poking at things, investigating interesting bits of scenery. Your attack is measured in potency, and is probably based off a stat (which reminds me - we were going to change weapon damage to be based off of stats, rather than static values - look into that more).

This is a parallel to combat. We've determined that everyone proficient in a sword can make an attack with a sword and deal damage with a sword. Everyone uses the same attack bonus: mages and einhanders both, at first level, have the "same" chance to hit a guy and deal the "same" damage. Stats influence this, obviously, but they are equally good at the base action. We represent skill with weapons by maneuvers: einhanders have a bunch of tricks up their sleeves that let them do better stuff. Make an attack but at +4 to hit. Make two attacks. Make an attack but deal more damage. The basic maneuvers are, well, basic, but help to represent the abilities of fighters that in trad d20 were pretty solely represented by "hey, you have a slightly (read: 5%) chance better to hit. Go you."

In a similar vein, exploration play needs to do the same stuff. If we've decided that everyone is vaguely competent - and we have - then that means that classes that interact with the exploration/skill system need to have similar abilities that play this stuff up. We've already established that in the skill-based class design notes scattered throughout the wiki, but I think it's important to reiterate it here.

So a basic explorer might have some of the following abilities:

• gain a +4 bonus on an exploration check
• make two exploration checks
• make an exploration check, increase its potency

Now, there needs to be more fiddly bits. Combat isn't just attack and damage - it's also positioning, status effects, healing. There are lots of things to fiddle with in combat, and exploration play needs to be similarly engaging. There doesn't need to be a 1:1 correspondence here, but they need to have similar mechanical bits to play with, otherwise it becomes stale - and in the same vein, we need those elements to have high points of contact with how exploration in the real world actually works, so that there's not crazy disconnect (I know we've already gone abstract with this, but I think that high PoC and abstraction aren't immediately opposed).

So let's try to figure some of those out.

Hidden Stuff and How to Find It

The immediate first thing that comes to mind is hidden stuff. We need a solid way to handle this, in a way that isn't annoying and fiddly like finding hidden objects in early D&D, while also avoiding the trad d20 thing of "roll search checks until you find it." There needs to be... a clear means to finding things that makes sense, both in-world and mechanically, that is sensible without being arduous.

So we've already established that zones have events - these are finding things like passages to other zones, interesting rooms or loot, potential encounters, or what-have-you. That's not what we're talking about here.

Hidden objects need a couple weird stats. They need an EP threshold: this is the minimum EP the zone needs to be reduced to in order for you to even have a chance of finding the hidden thing.

Aha, and we've found out what crits in exploration do: you find a hidden thing in the zone, if one exists at your current EP or higher. Because you spend AP to trigger crits, and AP is gained from Luck, this is entirely sensible to me. If you don't have abilities that let you find hidden stuff, you literally have to stumble across it. You just happened to poke at the right spot in the wall to trigger the secret door. Just like you can't aim well at a target if you aren't an archer (but you can still sorta aim in the sense that you can still hit stuff), you have to be an explorer to have gained the skills necessary to do thorough searches and know how to notice things like a brick out of place that indicate the secret door.

Saying "I search for hidden stuff" isn't something you can say, just like saying "I aim at his eye" isn't a thing you can say unless you're an archer. You have to be an explorer.

Now, let's say that a zone has three hidden objects. We'll call them stone, rod, cup. Zone has 20 EP (pot 8), 15 Def. Stone has EP TH 18, rod has EP TH 14, cup has EP TH 2.

Let's say you've reduced the zone's EPs to 10. So anybody doing exploration right now could crit, and find either the stone or the rod. How do we determine which, or either?

...

Getting held up on this seems silly at the moment, so let's just go with "if you crit, you get a random one from those you can access."

Can't Someone Else Do It: Resource Management

Okay, so now we have a vague outline of how exploration works, and a rough sketch for core mechanics. So now let's talk explorer, the class that deals with all this stuff.

We already have the concept of the exploration turn or adventuring turn - this is a 12-minute stretch of time, and you theoretically can adventure for 40 of them a day. When you take a short rest, it burns one of these ATs or ETs. Let's call 'em ETs, because that makes it a little more generic and can be used for other stuff.

So you already have a limited number of ETs to work with. I'm not sure how we're going to try to force that limit, but let's just pretend for now that we have done that already.

Hmm... does the explorer really need a resource mechanic... going to go with yeah, there has to be one.

Here's my thoughts on this: I think that each of the nine skill classes above can be grouped into one of three sets, with each set having a different base unit for its time-keeping. So explorers are in exploration turns, and so might reckoners and crafters - so they would all use the same resource. Harvesters, merchants, and nobles might all be on a "daily" schedule, so would use a different resource.

Seems... sensible, at first glance.

Let's call the explorer resource grit. I was going to say "energy," but I want something less generic but also with the kind of idea that you are a bit closer to combat time than other skill folk. You need perseverance but have to function in smaller timelines. It fits, deal with it.

Grit will be slow to recover, but doable in a day. So an artisan might be able to craft a couple pieces a day, if he rests between them for awhile.

• Explorers - Per, Brv (notice stuff, bold enough to go there)
• Reckoner - Int, Dex (smarts to hack, dex for fine motor skills)
• Artisan - Con, Wis (con for endurance, wis for intuition and "reading" mats)

Grit will be similar to berserker rage numbers, I think.

Oh yeah, and "expertise die" is gone. Everything is on potency now. Everything.