Experience Gaining System

[Merak]

Originally posted by Ragnar-GD
a well designed, price awarded, free-download skill-based ingenious rule-system:
http://www.chaosium.com/forms/coc_quick_start_color.pdf

The system is so simple you can be up and running it within 15 minutes. Anyone telling this would be difficult to implement is simply wrong. Its simpler than D&D AND it is more reealistically, AND more fun. What more can you ask for? Oh yes, and this has been designed 25 years ago...

In Call of Cthulhu\'s system, any skill used with success during the adventure was ticked, and at the end a skill dice roll was done. If it failed, you could increase of 1D10. Of course, the stronger you were in that skill, the more difficult it was to loss the skill roll, and so to increase. On the contrary, if you were quite unskilled, you have chances to progress. This logarithmic progression was quite realistic.

Also, anyone has at least 01% in each skill, so if he was lucky he had a little chance to discover something by himself (who taught the first teatcher ?)

But, to prevent too fast progression, there was only one tick by skill by adventure. In a continuous system like PS\'s one, how can this period be implemented ? When shall occur the skill improvement ? There\'s a risk of too fast progression.

Moreover, as for most games, there is no way to loss a skill little by little because you haven\'t used it for long...(*)

So Call of Cth possess interesting ideas, but is not a solution in itself.


(*) And what about a bicycle-effect : if you don\'t do something for long, you loss little by little corresponding skill, but also you regain it faster when you learn it again..?

[Kaseijin]

First off i don\'t find this current system so bad. It\'s better then any level based system.
The only problem might be the required order...first theory and then practice. Or maybe allowing to gain levels without theory but at a very much slower pace.
Then again this system is just fine....
I find it weird that no one mentioned the morrowind skill gaining system...which was very good if you ask me...
It increases the skill you use...the choice of skills was very good...only it missed some misc skills like cooking and mining but that makes sense since they would not be much fun in a single player enviroment.

[Ragnar-GD]

Originally posted by Kaseijin
First off i don\'t find this current system so bad. It\'s better then any level based system.
I find it weird that no one mentioned the morrowind skill gaining system...which was very good if you ask me...

Funny, as you mention it: Morrowind has been designed by Ken Rolston. And Ken Rolston worked on Runequest 3rd Edition. And RuneQuest 3rd Edition is the same system as Call of Cthulu (both are based upon the \"chaosium basic roleplaying rules\", which are the rules of RuneQuest, Call of Cthulu, Elfquest, Pendragon, The prince Vaillant game, Stormbringer, and Ringworld, to just mention a few p&p-games...

Straight: Morrowind is a modified (more actual and computer-enabled) version of the \"chaosium basic roleplaying rules\" - the reasons for the modification also are a matter of \"intellectual property\"...

[Ragnar-GD]

Originally posted by Merak
But, to prevent too fast progression, there was only one tick by skill by adventure. In a continuous system like PS\'s one, how can this period be implemented ? When shall occur the skill improvement ? There\'s a risk of too fast progression.

This skill-system will not be implemented in PS, as it needs a pure skill-based system, whereas PS is a XP/class-based system.

Moreover, as for most games, there is no way to loss a skill little by little because you haven\'t used it for long... And what about a bicycle-effect : if you don\'t do something for long, you loss little by little corresponding skill, but also you regain it faster when you learn it again..? So CoC possess interesting ideas, but is not a solution in itself.

But it would be a start. With a server-based system, adding the \"skill-degradation\" would be a breeze. But this would also require ageing characters, which would mean perma-death. etc.
But PS is very D&Dish, compared to CoC or RQ, so I wouldn\'t even ask for such elaborate ideas, before the foundation of the game is more realistic (that is: No XP/classes/alignments, and all that fancy stuff from the Gary Gygax school of never-ending hitpoints).

[The Forgotten One]

well have any of you played Arcanum by troika studios. that was a skill system i liked.

Basically when you leveled up you were given one skill point and you could spend said skill point on any skill in one of many classes which included magery, social skills and and technological item crafting. but here is my point (and this kinda fits in with some of the posts above mine) is that you could gain exp and advance your skills on your own but if you went to a trainer you would get your skills enhanced in certain ways.  lets say your char was an archer and he trained himself instead of going to a teacher in the game he would still be a high lvl archer if the person playing put his or her mind to it but said archer would still be weaker then a person who decided after training their archer for a little bit to send them to a trainer who would then train them maybe giving them a bonus to speed and accuracy,or lets say alchemy that would be a bonus to rate of success or something

boy this is getting long ... but in any case all im saying is that  maybe you could make the trainers essential not by making them the only way to upgrade your skills but by making you more effective more powerful if you will. And  somewhere to store your loot would be nice as well

[zanzibar]

I don\'t like it.

i)  It\'s messy.
ii)  It doesn\'t sound very fun.

A better way to do it:

Limit how much levelling a character can do per RL day.

[Nikodemus]

/me kicks Zanzibar
Why? It is simple and isn\'t messy =P

A bit more serious:
i)world is messy.
ii)world is fun when you look at it from right side.
But i don\'t know why am I writing when you play a game rather than do somethink else.

Draklar got a nice explanation for not being able to train all day long, thus rp encouraging. Of course i can\'t agree will all of it, but general concept is good. If it was up to me i would make it a bit more restrictive and gave a bit more more clues about training to avoid being completly stuck thinking all is going right.
Too bad such system needs so a lot programming work...

[Cyl]

hmmm, my approach would be yeah, well simple.

For each action you do over a certain per hour limit, your correspodenting attribut goes down. Thus if you cast your 35th crytal/dark spell (I nearly said white/black) your charisma temporary goes down for one point, then if you perform well let\'s say 5 more spells of that kind in the following hour your charisma decreases by two additional points and so on ... and with about every half an hour after your last action from that attribute you get back one point in that attribute.

So if you overdo it you will slowly but surely start to loose any efficency useing that skill...

*disclaimer* the figures (hours, 1 point) I used are not something I have spent hours of my live, for figuring out. They are not balanced out or something..

[Induane]

At the very least I\'d think it would be easy to implement something like Draklar suggested.  his idea about say, taking a bath making training better is good.  We\'d need another status bar, something like happiness or the reverse - Tension.  

The idea would be that the greater your happiness, or the less tension you have the easier it is to level.  The only way to reduce tension or increase happiness, would be to engage in RP activites, like going to the tavern for a drink, taking a bath, or nap, or watching a play.  It should be enough of an effect so that it makes it worth while to engage in RP events, also perhaps allow GM\'s to  say releive tension for doing RP related things that aren\'t necessarily hard coded in.

[zanzibar]

No, it is messy.  Think about all the different factors and levels and activities involved.  It would be MUCH more convenient to simply limmit how much levelling a person can do in a day.  It\'s also more freeing, and it allows people to RP however they please.


The alternative would be people typing 1337 in the tavern until they can pop out to camp gladiators again.

[Ikarsik]

I like Draklars idea somewhat. dividing the potentials into physical and mental was a good idea, maybe even add an arcane potential, but anyway i think the potential should just act as a bonus to normal experience gaining so that with full physical potential you might gain say 150% normal experience, wheras with no physical potential you gain 100% normal experience. I dont think it would be a good idea to make it so that as physical potential approaches 0, experience gained approaches 0%.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Ikarsik
I like Draklars idea somewhat. dividing the potentials into physical and mental was a good idea, maybe even add an arcane potential, but anyway i think the potential should just act as a bonus to normal experience gaining so that with full physical potential you might gain say 150% normal experience, wheras with no physical potential you gain 100% normal experience. I dont think it would be a good idea to make it so that as physical potential approaches 0, experience gained approaches 0%.

Well, this way you could train non-stop for eternity without losing anything. It wouldn\'t solve anything.

And zanzibar, keep your idea in respective thread, where it is already discussed.
Plus it isn\'t that hard to warn/kick/ban people who are trolling in tavern.

[james brown]

while all these ideas have merit...

the key to roleplaying is character diversity...

plus you dont want to totally wreck the game for people who just want to do some occasional hack slash with their friends..

an easy and logical (based on real life situation) way to achieve diversity is to increase the cost of training additional skills (while Carl lewis was a briliand sprinter, i dont think he was also a grea ping pong player, or a chess grand master).

Example (keep in mind this is just to explain the model not to give actual numbers)

u decide to be a swordsman.. so you learn sword..
this costs you a basic no of points to progress...
 next skill you choose is blacksmith .. becouse you want to repair your own weapons..
this skill cost you say 50% more to learn..
Then u choose mmmm.... a body development skill..
this now costs you 2 times as much to train as your sword skill.. (becouse u chose to be a SWORdsman, not a body builder... so dont expect to be as developed as a guy whose primary skill is body dev.)

this type of system would creaty a diverse world of PC\'s
and hence encourage roleplaying...

a good party needs their mage specialist , thiev, healer etc..
or a blacksmith , herbalist...

and since each character wont be a combination of
Hercules, Mushashi Myamoto, Einstein, and a brain surgeon. a lot more team work will be involved.